XX11 INTRODUCTION 



treatise was written, though it is not impossible that some 

 mention of this Walter may sooner or later turn up. 



If a guess were hazarded as to the direction in which it 

 would be best worth while to begin such a search, there are 

 some grounds for examining the splendid collection of 

 records in the Cathedral library at Canterbury. Walter of 

 Henley's treatise was known at Canterbury at a very early 

 date ; it continued to be prized and copied at Christchurch, 

 as no fewer than four of the existing manuscripts were 

 written there. Curiously enough, there are two or three 

 Canterbury manors in the immediate neighbourhood of 

 Henley, at Monks Eisborough, Newington, and Brightwell. 

 It has been suggested to me as at least conceivable that 

 y Walter was a trusted retainer of the great abbey, who 

 might be called on to serve as a man-at-arms, and who 

 discharged the responsible duties of bailiff on these manors ; 

 and there may be documentary evidence which would favour 

 this ingenious suggestion. 



The argument which Professor Thorold Eogers bases on 

 the silence of the treatise in regard to the scab does not 

 seem very forcible. 1 Cases of this disease are not known to 

 have occurred in England before 1283, and the silence of 

 Walter of Henley shows that he wrote before that time, 

 since he discusses another disease— the rot — so fully. But 

 the passage which deals with the rot is an interpolation, 

 which is found in one family of MSS. from the end of the 

 thirteenth century onwards; and the transcribers would 

 apparently have had no scruple about introducing directions 

 for the treatment of the scab, if it had occurred to them to 

 do so. 



2. As has been stated above, the editions of Walter of 

 Henley contain his treatise in very mutilated forms, and 

 the manuscripts present a curious variety both in the 

 matter they contain and in the arrangement they adopt. 

 Some have considerable insertions ; but it does not seem 

 altogether impossible to arrange the MSS. in groups, and 

 to indicate briefly the relations of these various groups to 

 1 Agriculture and Prices, I. 460. 



