194 KICARDTJS CORINENSIS. 



cast the odium of their forgery on Abbot Ingulfus himself, who died 

 A.D. 1109. Sir Francis Palgrave thinks both History and Charters 

 no older than the end of the thirteenth, or first half of the fourteenth 

 century. But Mr. H. T. Riley, in his " History and Charters of 

 Ingulfus considered," (Archceol. Journ.) fixes on Prior Richard him- 

 self as contriver, forger, and producer of the fraudulent documents : 

 not as a literary hoax; but as deliberately forged evidence in the 

 prosecution of a suit in the Courts of Henry V. at Westminster. 



Such legal forgeries appear to have been no less characteristic of the 

 fourteenth and fifteenth centuries than the literary ones of Macpherson 

 and Ireland were of their later age. Their manufacture had become a 

 regular trade ; and not only spurious Royal Charters, but even Papal 

 Bulls, could be had to order: such as those ascribed to the Popes 

 Honorius and Sergius L, produced by the Prior of Barnwell, as papal 

 delegate for Pope Martin V. in 1430, and still inscribed on the Great 

 Register of the University of Cambridge. 



The History and Charters of Croyland Abbey were prepared by its 

 prior with a graver criminal intent than the MS. of his reputed West- 

 minster namesake. Both achieved the amplest success that their 

 forgers could desire ; but the discrediting of the former is no more 

 than a curious question of antiquarian research, whereas the latter has 

 not wholly ceased even now to sully the pure stream of historical 

 evidence. Let us then review the grounds on which it has at length 

 been displaced from its long accredited position as an indisputable 

 authority on the traces of the Roman occupation of Britain ; and fol- 

 low out the researches which first cast suspicion on a treatise appealed 

 to without hesitation from the days of Gibbon almost to our own. 

 The Itinerary, itself, as has been already said, was a simple enough 

 invention, though now it is the only part of the work for which 

 any defence is attempted. The Commentary consists of two books 

 the first of which extends to eight chapters. Book II. breaks off, 

 in a fragmentary condition, in its second chapter. The narrative is, 

 for the most part, prosaic enough to have proceeded from the Bene- 

 dictine scriptorium ; but in his seventh chapter the old monk is repre- 

 sented as thrown into some doubt about the profitableness of antiqua- 

 rian researches. His Abbot had, it would seem, taken him to task 

 for wasting the precious hours of life, all too brief for occupations 

 that ought to engross the thoughts of a cloistered Benedictine, on 

 what were only fit to delude the world with unmeaning trifles. Richard 



