Page:Englishhistorica36londuoft.djvu/622

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614 SHORT NOTICES October and in the sacred pictures of the late Cretan school of artists. The monas- tery of the Archangels is the most interesting building in the island ; Dr. G-erola, in his detailed account of it, omits to notice Zerlentes's paper about it in that scholar's recent 'Io-to/hkcu "Epewai irepi ras 'Ek/cA^o-io.? tm> NtJow. 1 W. M. The sixth volume of Inquisitions and Assessments relating to Feudal Aids, 1284-1431 (London : Stationery Office, 1920) is of greater interest and value than was to be expected. Of the series of returns which the deputy-keeper of the records began to print in 1899, all had been published in the previous volumes save those for Yorkshire, and of the Yorkshire returns three — Kirkby's Quest, the returns of 1302-3, and the Nomina Villarum of 1316 — had been printed over fifty years ago by the Surtees Society. It happens, too, that the records of the later inquisitions and levies prove to be somewhat disappointing, those for 1346 being by no means complete and those for 1402 very meagre. These Yorkshire returns, however, take up little more than half the volume, and the editors have made a wise use of the space at their disposal by adding a number of miscellaneous records. Among these may be mentioned (1) supplementary returns of 1346, 1402, and 1428 (taken from subsidy rolls ' lately incor- porated in the existing collection ') for the counties of Berks, Lincoln, Oxford, Rutland, and Surrey ; (2) returns for twenty counties of the inquisition of 1412 as to owners of lands or rents of £20 a year ; (3) lists of knights' fees of the duchy of Lancaster. There are several indexes, which appear to be thorough and scholarly. Those responsible for the preparation of this volume are to be congratulated on the generous spirit in which they have accomplished their task, and on the completion of a work that will prove of abiding value to the ' local ' historian, the genealogist, and the student of place-names. W. T. W. In Walter de Wenloh Abbot of Westminster (London : Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, 1920), Dr. E. H. Pearce, now bishop of Worcester, continues and, it is to be feared, concludes his valuable researches in the rich muniments of Westminster Abbey. Fortunately the archives of his see offer opportunities, as Canon Wilson has shown, and we hope that the bishop may find time to use them. The preservation of between three and four hundred of Wenlock's business letters, of elaborate ordinances for the regulation of his household, printed here with a selection of other documents, and of accounts for some of his journeys at home and abroad, enable Dr. Pearce to give a very full and vivid account of his abbacy. The evidence hardly supports the imputation of sleepiness and slackness which has been made against Wenlock and his monks in explanation of the burglary of the royal treasury in 1303, though it does not contribute much to clear up that mysterious affair beyond an apparently clear statement that the repository of the treasure was the prior's chamber near the refectory, and not the chapel of the pyx or the vault under the chapter-house which have been suggested by Dr. Armitage Robinson and Professor Tout and others respectively. Wenlock was an

  • i. 63-91.