INTRODUCTION XXXIX 



passage about the leagues to suit some local usages ; the 

 Liber Horn represents a copy which was corrupted by the 

 insertion of the passage on sheep farming; the Lumeld 

 scribe omitted the calculations about the two field system. 

 The copy prepared in the thirteenth century for a noble 

 lady was recklessly mutilated, interpolated, and rearranged, 

 and the author of Fleta was unscrupulous in his mode of 

 quotation. But, fortunately, some early MS. survived 

 untampered with, and this was more carefully dealt with 

 by the transcribers of the Heading group in the fourteenth 

 and fifteenth centuries. 



For the present edition the Lumeld MS. has been 

 selected on three grounds : (1) Alone among the early MSS. 

 it does not appear to have any interpolations. (2) The text 

 is divided as it is in by far the greater number of MSS., and 

 in the earliest MSS., for in this matter the Beading group 

 stands alone. (3) The peculiarities of the language in which 

 it is written give it additional interest. 



4. It is unnecessary to say much of the editions of 

 Walter of Henley. The author has been badly treated by 

 those who have printed his work, as in no case has it been 

 issued under his own name. 



The earliest edition was the English translation issued 

 by Wynkyn de Worde ; a copy, said to be unique, is in the 

 University Library at Cambridge, but is undated. It must 

 have been printed from a MS. which was very closely con- 

 nected with the one preserved in the Sloane collection ; it 

 has the same title, ascribing the translation to Grosseteste ; 

 it has similar divisions and headings. It is immediately 

 followed both in the MS. and in the printed copy by a 

 tract on the Planting and Grafting of Trees, adapted and 

 translated from Palladius. At the same time there are so 

 many minor differences of spelling and language that we 

 cannot suppose that Wynkyn de Worde printed from the 

 MS. still preserved. 



Selden's edition of Fleta, containing long extracts from 

 Walter of Henley, was published in 1647 ; it does not seem 



