236 THE ANCESTOR The persistence of error is well illustrated in the interesting monograph on ' Medieval London * by two Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries, Canon Benham and Mr. Charles Welch, lately issued in the Portfolio Series. We there read of ^ the charter of Henry I. dated iioi ' and are told that Mn the year 11 00 Henry I. gave the city a fresh charter.* This great charter of liberties, a landmark in the history of medieval London, has no date at all ; and the guess, which developed into a belief that its date was i loi, was successfully assailed years ago by Mr. Round in his Geoffrey de Mande- ville^ where he showed that it belonged to the close rather than the opening of the reign. That this conclusion is accepted by historians is seen in the recent number of the English Historical RevieWy where it is pointed out that Professor Liebermann pronounces the charter to be a later interpolation in the Laws of Henry L, as its date may be taken as 113 1-3. It is singular that Mr. Round's discovery which is thus familiar in Berlin, should be unknown, it seems, to the Guildhall Librarian. Again, in a paper read before the Society of Antiquaries and published subsequently in Archao- logia the same scholar was able to show that the time-honoured date of 1 100 for the foundation of the Hospitallers* Priory at Clerkenwell was absolutely erroneous, and that the House cannot have been founded till some half a century later. This correction is of some importance, as St. John's, from its sup- posed early date, was considered the oldest House of all. Yet in * Medieval London * we still read that the Priory ot ' St. John of Jerusalem, at Clerkenwell, was founded in iioo.' But a more typical example of * what is believed * is afforded by the same monograph in its statement that King Athelstan (925—40) 'gave an impulse to the commerce of the city by promising patents of gentility ^ to every merchant who should make three voyages to the Mediterranean in his own ship.* This interesting allusion to the ' Mediterranean * is unknown, we believe, to historians ; and as for the ' patents of gentility * they are really worthy of a place beside the Anglo-Saxon Vavassour of Debrett, But perhaps the authors were think- ing of the patents of gentility which, as the same authority reminds us, confer the true nobility, and which are only genuine when supplied by a well known establishment in the City. ^ The italics are our own.
