1921 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 437 the duke in self-defence (Motey, p. 147) ; but it remains to be proved that Robert was entitled to demand such service or that, if he was, his right depended on a special treaty concluded by his ancestors with the duke. We have no evidence that the house of Belleme had any vassals in the Pays de Seez before the time of William Talvas I. The history of the Talvas family is comparatively simple after 1031. The Norman and the French estates were divided in 1033 between two brothers, Yves II and William II. Yves took Belleme, for which he did homage to Henry I of France ; he became bishop of Seez in 1035 (doubt- less through the influence of his brother) and died in 1070. William II predeceased his brother by about fourteen years, leaving as his sole heiress the notorious Countess Mabel, the wife of Roger of Montgomery, who even at that date was one of the greater Norman barons, holding estates which extended from Montgomery almost without a break to the sea, and also the hereditary vicomte of the Hiemois. In 1070 Mabel succeeded to Belleme, and her eldest son Robert II was designated as her heir. To his history M. du Motey has devoted special attention, and this volume con- tains some tantalizing references to unpublished materials which are reserved for a future monograph on this subject. There is one point on which we hope that he will reconsider his con- clusions before this monograph appears. He appears to assume that Belleme was still a fief of the French Crown after the death of Yves II. But the above-mentioned record of the lawsuit heard in the years 1070-8 l shows that Roger of Montgomery claimed to hold Belleme from the Conqueror ; and we are told by Orderic that Belleme was held by a ducal garrison at the time of the Conqueror's death. 2 Robert II of Belleme evidently attempted to revive the connexion with the Crown of France in or about the year 1092, when he is described by Philip I as quidam vassalus mens; 3 but in 1114 the suzerainty over Belleme was definitely conceded by Louis VI to Henry I. H. W. C. Davis. Recueil des Actes des Rois de Provence, 865-928. Publie sous la direction de Maurice Prou par Rene Poupardin. (Chartes et Diplomes publies par les soins de l'Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. Paris : Imprimerie Nationale, 1920.) M. Poupardin, under the experienced ' direction ' of M. Prou, has made in this work an excellent addition to the by-ways of Carolingian diplo- matic. He has laboriously collected, edited, and annotated every docu- ment that he could lay hands on that emanated from the ' chancery ' of the three kings of Provence, Charles, Boso, and Louis the Blind. Yet with all his efforts he could only find in a period of seventy-three years some fifty-nine acts, and some of these notorious forgeries. A much greater difficulty than that arising from fabrications, easily detected by the expert, is* the trouble springing from the fact that the great majority of M. Poupardin's charters are known to us only through late cartularies, and not a few only from seventeenth- or eighteenth-century copies of 2 Hist. Ecc. iii. 262. 3 Prou, Recueil, no. 129.
