120 BE VIEWS OF BOOKS January where the booty, seized in Winchelsea harbour, and consisting of a cargo of herring, wax, and ' Clothes of Tapestry work ', was afterwards disposed of at Southampton. Mr. Gidden hints that the men of the last-named town were not altogether above reproach as regards their conduct on the high seas. One of these royal letters — of no intrinsic interest otherwise — bears the rare signature ' R. Gloucestre ' and is dated ' at London the iiij th day of Marche '. Mr. Gidden assigns it tentatively to Richard's protectorate ; this, however, cannot be. No fourth of March saw him protector of England. Edward IV died on 9 April 1483, and by 26 June Richard III was king. A very interesting document, and curiously full of names belonging to distant Warwickshire, is the commission in which the child, Prince Edward, afterwards the Black Prince, appoints (1339) Thomas Beau- champ, earl of Warwick, ' guardian ' of Southampton, mentioning individually the knights, squires, and archers who formed the guard. This earl was, however, not the younger Thomas who fell out with Richard II and gave his name (Beauchamp) to that part of the Tower of London where he suffered imprisonment, but his father, who died in 1369 after serving with distinction in the French wars. From his county the earl brought a Verdon of Brandon, Pecche of Honiley, Lucy of Charlcote, and from Hartshill probably a Hardeshull, though the ancient spelling of the place and family is Hardreshull. From Astley, hard "by, came too the ' banneret ' of the company, the earl's brother-in-law, Thomas de Astleye, much celebrated for his works of piety, for he founded and endowed the fine collegiate church of his native place. Altogether the list of names is of great interest. Mr. Gidden is puzzled by the derivation of one of these — le Ken. Should we not read ; le Keu ', i. e. the cook ? To the precept for the proclamation of the statute concerning measures and labourers (11 Henry VII) Mr. Gidden appends a useful dissertation on the purchasing power of wages in the fifteenth century with a view to challenging Thorold Rogers's dictum that that period was the golden age of English labour. It is a difficult matter to estimate money values in a past age ; commodities vary so from age to age as well as the standard of life. And yet the ordinary labourer of 1496 seems to us a prosperous man. He could buy a goose (3d.) with the proceeds of a winter's day's work, and five summer days' work (Is. Sd.) would bring him the worth of a flitch of bacon, satisfactory purchases even if poultry were smaller and pigs leaner than to-day. The transcription seems careful — though here and there the printer has slipped, giving ' proceffe ' for ' processe ' and ' redula ' for ' cedula ' — and there are a quantity of notes. The index is excellent, and the book should prove valuable to the local historian. M. Dormer Harris. The Lollard Bible and other Medieval Biblical Versions. By Margaret Deanesly. (Cambridge : University Press, 1920.) Miss Deanesly 's Lollard Bible is the first volume of a series of ' Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought ' edited by Mr. Coulton : it is
