left out much that he saw could not have come from the original author. Yet these were ancient notes, worthy at least of record; and most of them Hearne supposed to have been written by Adam of Domerham to whom the codex had probably belonged. Hearne therefore edited the work afresh as it stood in the manuscript, with the marginal notes in various hands which he endeavoured to discriminate: at the foot of the page he gave the variants of Gale's edition and the readings of Cox Macro's Register (M). A glance at the manuscript will show that, if Hearne's edition presents a somewhat repellent appearance, this is due to the faithfulness with which the editor has done his work.[1]
William of Malmesbury entitled his book De Antiquitate Glastoniensis Ecclesiae. It is unfortunate that it has come to be commonly described as 'The Antiquities of Glastonbury'.[2] For the author's purpose was plainly indicated by his title. Doubt had been cast on the early date of Glastonbury. The Canterbury Chanter— for William of Malmesbury will not mention Osbern's name—had actually said in his Life of St Dunstan that the first abbot of Glastonbury was Dunstan himself. Our author proposes with the help of documents to show the line of succession from a very early time; and, after he has recorded the names and dates of some nineteen abbots of the English line alone before the year 940, he says: 'I fancy it will now be clear how far that writer was from the truth who wildly stated that the blessed Dunstan was the first abbot of Glastonbury'.[3] Moreover in his Dedicatory Letter, addressed to Henry of Blois, who held the abbey from 1126 to his death in 1171, he speaks
- ↑ The Trinity College MS is of the middle of the thirteenth century: it is fully described in Dr. M. R. James's Catalogue, ii. 198 ff. Besides the two historical pieces it contains a miscellaneous collection of Glastonbury notes and charters. Hearne's 'M' is now in the British Museum (Addit. MS 22934). This is a similar miscellany: the De Antiq. is followed immediately by Adam of Domerham's history, and the narrative is brought down to 1307, which is not far from the date of the manuscript. In Vesp. D 22 (xiv-xv) portions of the De Antiq. are found with other matter, some of which appears also in John of Glastonbury. Mention may here be made of what Ussher (loc. cit., p. 36) speaks of as 'Glastoniense Chronicon anno 1259 conscriptum'. This is Cleop. C 10, a paper MS which contains in a completer form the fragment (Addit. Bodl. II D 11 [xiii] ) described by Hardy, Cat. of MSS. iii. 150.
- ↑ The mistake goes back at least as far as Pits (cited by Hearne, Ad. of Dom. I, p. xv), who speaks of the Liber Antiquitatum Glasconiae. In Vesp. D 22 the Dedicatory Letter is followed, after a gap of a page and a half, by the rubric: 'Incipiunt antiquitates monasterii Glastonie, quomodo xii discipuli sanctorum Philippi et Jacobi,' &c. And John of Glastonbury in his prologue (p. 6) speaks of William of Malmesbury as having recorded 'nostra cronica et antiquitates ab adventu sancti Josephi'.
- ↑ De Antiq., p. 71.
