modern English historian. Our writers on battles, Mr. Oman and Mr. H. B. George, have no word about it. Dr. Mackinnon, who devotes a few sentences to the subject, omits nearly every point of real interest.[1] But a good recent account of it can be read in M. Arthur de la Borderie's valuable Histoire de Bretagne, This writer is fully justified in claiming for it an important place in history and in lamenting the way in which historians have neglected it.[2] The fight at Mauron settled the fate of Brittany for twelve years, and it was not until 1363 that the partisans of Charles of Blois dared again take the offensive. Its importance as the last link in the chain which connects Crecy with Poitiers was not within the special scope of the historian of Brittany.
The Cipher in Monmouth's Diary.
In appendix xiv. to Welwood's Memoirs we have some highly inter- esting extracts from a diary kept by the duke of Monmouth. They are fragmentary and belong to the period from the detection of the Eye House plot down to the death of Charles II. The appendix in question is entitled * Some Passages out of the Duke of Monmouth's Pocket Book that was Seized about Him in the West.' In the body of the Memoirs Welwood informs us that this pocket- book was delivered up to James II, and that by some ' accident ' which he does not relate he had obtained leave to copy it. ' A great many dark Passages,' he says, * there are in it, and some clear enough, that shall be eternally buried for me : And perhaps it had been for King James's Honour to have committed them to the Flames, as Julius Caesar is said to have done upon a like occasion.' He is careful to add that he merely gives a few extracts from it to confirm his narrative of Monmouth's career.^ The volume itself has long disappeared. As Welwood's Memoirs were published before the death of James II it is possible that the latter acted upon the hint and committed the book, or the pages containing the diary, to the flames. If he did not do so, it is probable that it perished along with the other papers formerly belonging to that monarch which were destroyed at the time of the French Eevolution.^ In the document as Welwood has delivered it to us some persons are indicated by numbers and others by letters of the alphabet, and the only aid towards elucidating it which he gives is
- r1 P. 171.
- r2 Fea, King Monmouth, p. xx.
- ↑ History of Edward III, pp. 393-4.
- ↑ Hist de Bretagne, iii. 530-2 (1899). 'Nos historiens ont en general meconnu l'importance de cette journee; tous en parlent fort peu, Men que les renseignements {{subst:a`}} ce sujet ne fassent pas d{{subst:e'}}faut.' To the Chronique Normande and Bentley's report in Avesbury, p. 416, Geoffrey le Baker, p. 120, must be added as a chief source.
