of having already written two books on St Dunstan's life, as well as Lives of SS. Patrick, Benignus and Indractus, and begs now a favourable hearing as he endeavours by tracing the successions of the abbots to rescue from suspicion the antiquity of the church, so far as the existing muniments of the abbey shall enable him to do so.[1] This exactly describes his aim, and throughout the work he seldom fails to cite the authorities on which his statements rest. If for the earlier period his authorities are sometimes weak, that is not his fault. And, though the charters of the Wessex kings are for the most part rejected by the modern critics, we may find reason to think that they contain a good deal of true history, and that the immense pains which he expended on their examination may. even raise his credit as an investigator of the distant past.
The chronology of William of Malmesbury's historical works has been carefully investigated by Bishop Stubbs in the Introduction to the Gesta Regum, which he edited for the Master of the Rolls in 1887. His conclusions are as follows: the Gesta Regum was completed in the year 1125: a second and a third edition were issued by the author between 1135 and 1140. The Gesta Pontificum was in course of composition concurrently with the Gesta Regum, and came out later in the same year 1125: this also was to some extent revised before 1140. The later editions of the Gesta Regum expressly refer to the work De Antiquitate Glastoniensis Ecclesiae. As this last-mentioned work was dedicated to Henry of Blois the bishop of Winchester, who is however not addressed as papal legate, it was probably written between 1129 and 1139. Now the Dedicatory Letter declares that the author has already completed for the monks of Glastonbury two books on the Life of St Dunstan. When we turn to these books we find that in the former of them he promises to explain the presence at Glastonbury of the bodies of certain northern saints, if he is allowed to complete his proposed work on the antiquity of that church. But in the preface to the second book he says that he has already completed that work.[2] The discrepancy of these statements is not a serious one. The last words of the De Antiquitate show that it was originally addressed to the monks of Glastonbury: the dedication to Henry of Blois, their abbot, was plainly an afterthought, and was written when the second book of the Life of St Dunstan was completed; but the De Antiquitate itself was finished before the introduction to that second book was written. In short, the two works were in hand together during the same period of the author's residence at Glastonbury.
