Francis would persuade us, the Celtic princes chose for acknowledging "the superiority of the Saxon basileus over the whole race whose chieftain bent before his throne."

We shall not open an argument against such history as this; we rather reserve ourselves for what Sir Francis considers the strength of his case-the record evidence of the supremacy of England, and acts of homage and vassalage done by Scotland. In this part, our historian rests mainly on a discovery of his own; and perhaps every one (the learned knight not excepted) is apt to give, at least its due value to his own trover. When Edward was most eager to make out a case, in support of his claim to the superiority of Scotland, he seems to have commanded all the monasteries of England to search their archives for proofs in aid of his title. This was not unknown before. Hailes and other industrious authors knew and recorded the proceeding; but it was reserved for Sir Francis Palgrave to collect the disjecta membra of this large search, or such of them as Edward the record king thought fit to treasure, and the moths of the chapter-house to spare. Sir Francis is of opinion that "this proceeding affords a strong testimony of the honour and integrity of the English king." (P. xcv., Introduction.) We fear the keeper of the records has an undue leaning towards the recording king. If all these scraps were to be admitted, they do not go a great way in the proof, though some of them seem the produce of contributors willing enough to help the king at his utmost need. We have no acts showing the wardship of the English king during minority of Scotch princes; no summonses of the Scotch king to the English Court on high solemnities; no military services; no feudal aids; no jurisdiction of appeal from the courts of the one country to the other. These are the facts which, in two countries then long feudalised, must have appeared on the records, if there had indeed been any superiority of old claimed and acknowledged.

But there are some serious objections to admitting all this class of evidence in the present case. The cloister chronicler was a useful recorder of passing events where he had no interest to misrepresent, or where his interest and misrepresentation were so transparent, that we can see the truth distinctly through them; but when one of two parties disputing, is allowed access to the monks record at pleasure; when that party has not only the selection of what he will extract, but the power of inserting what pleases him; when both he and the recorder are found not over scrupulous either as to the truth of the matter recorded, or the manner of dealing with records after they are framed-the chronicles of the monasteries suffer somewhat in trustworthiness.

That Edward was in the habit of sending to the greater monas

teries, such documents as he chose to be recorded, is well known. We have more than one instance of this mentioned by Sir Francis, who seems to think it a proceeding free from all suspicion or objection. Now, we have some objection to the same party making a record, and using the record for his own purposes; but we have other cause of complaint against the custodiers.

The early English monks have in truth earned an awkward reputation for tampering with records. Soon after the Conquest, the Normans, eager for a few slices of church lands, thought it a good scheme to call upon the monks of the great religious houses, to produce written titles for their property, suspecting that none existed. But they mistook their men. The Anglo-Saxon monks, to be sure, had not been in the habit of holding their lands by scraps of parchment; but it was easier to meet the Normans in their own way than to convince, or to resist those long-sworded men. It was, after all, a pious fraud! It was all for the honour of God and Holy Church! And charters were supplied as fast as their new masters demanded them. Fortunately, they were not very clerkly, those first Normans, and they passed without criticism the mistaken styles, the false dates, the impossible witnesses, which Mr. Kemble so maliciously detects a thousand years afterwards. To judge from the mass of spurious monkish charters, far outnumbering the genuine, there must have been forgery and coining of seals wholesale in the monasteries of England during the eleventh and twelfth centuries; so that a powerful prince of the next age, expressing an earnest desire to find in their repositories something of record to suit a certain claim, was not very likely to be disappointed. But, strange to say, there is some reason to suspect that Edward could help himself in the same manner, and as well as the monks! How shall we speak it of the English Justinian? He loved records, and devoted himself to their construction. They were his tools and weapons quite as much as the sword, though Longshanks knew how to wield it too. The care with which he compiled the instruments of the humiliating homage of the Scots, and of the miserable surrender of his royal rights by Balliol, is worthy of a better cause. The Scotch envoys at Rome boldly accused Edward of forging the deeds of resignation of the kingdom by the wretched Balliol. That charge was probably unfounded; but we know he could, when it suited his purpose, frame a fabulous story, and depose to its truth to the Pope, and in the face of Christendom, and then direct his fable to be carefully disseminated, to be preserved in all the abbeys of England. It now turns out that to serve his great end, he could condescend to alter the great national records of England, cause the words to be erased which set forth the truth, and substitute others, not over dexterously, to suit his purpose.

It is matter of history, that in 1278, the young king of Scotland, Alexander III., did homage to Edward at Westminster. Like his predecessors he held lands in England, for which it is admitted he was bound to do homage to the English king, just as that king did to his cousin of France, for his dukedom of Aquitaine. Sir Francis Palgrave thinks that he owed homage also for his kingdom of Scotland. After Alexander's death, Edward pretended that he did so; and then the first question came to be-how was the homage done? Sir Francis Palgrave knows that it is an important point, and so did Edward. We turn to the Record. It is on the Close Rolls, a national record of the highest authority, preserved in the chief record office in the Tower of London. The entry runs as follows:- "In the Parliament of Edward the King, at Westminster, in Michaelmas, the sixth year of his reign, in presence of &c., came Alexander King of Scots, son of Alexander late King of Scots, to the said Edward King of England, in his chamber, and there offered to become his man, and to do him his homage, and that he did in these words: I Alexander King of Scots become liege man of my Lord Edward King of England, against all people: and the King of England received his homage; saving the right and claim of the King of England and his heirs to the homage of the King of Scotland and his heirs for the kingdom of Scotland, when of that they should think proper to treat.

The odd inconsistency of reserving a claim to fealty for the kingdom, after terms of homage so broad as those quoted, naturally excited the curiosity of those interested in the dispute; but it was only lately that it occurred to any one to examine critically the record itself. We do not know who has the merit of this examination; we believe its result was first published in Mr. Allen's pamphlet; when he announced the startling fact, that the entry in the close roll has been tampered with, the important part of it erased, and the words which at present are put in the mouth of the King of Scots, written upon the erasure.

In

Mr. Allen conjectured that the words erased had contained the homage for Alexander's lands in England, which might be consistent enough with the reservation of the English king's claim. It was a reasonable conjecture; and the publication of a recent volume of Scotch records, establishes its truth. the venerable register of the Abbey of Dunfermline, is preserved a memorandum regarding this matter, running as follows:"In the year of grace 1278, on the day of the Apostles St. Simon and St. Jude, at Westminster, Alexander King of Scots did homage to Edward King of England, in these words: I become your man for the lands which I hold of you in the kingdom of England, for which I owe you homage: saving my king

dom. Then said the Bishop of Norwich, And saving to the King of England, if he right have to your homage for your kingdom: to whom the king immediately answered, saying aloud, To homage for my kingdom of Scotland, no one has right but God alone, nor do I hold it of any but of God."-Regist. Dunferm. No. 321.

There cannot now be any doubt, which is the true version of the story; and a more dispassionate Saxon than Sir Francis Palgrave would be content to maintain from such documents that a protest for superiority was made, rather than that the claim was established or admitted. It is a damaging fact for one of the parties in a dispute of this kind to be convicted of using forgery; but even the forgery, which is undoubtedly ancient, here goes to prove the antiquity of the claim, not of its admission. The mistake and gross blunder of this and the subsequent state forgeries of England, was precisely the same with that of Sir F. Palgrave's argument. It is easy to convict them of error, when they attempt to prove what is inconsistent with the whole history and ascertained transactions of the two countries. So late as the middle of the 15th century, the famous John Hardyng carried on an extensive trade of this kind, and furnished to the English government, charters of Scotch kings from Malcolm Canmore downwards, acknowledging their absolute dependence and subjection to England. His forgeries are clumsy and palpable. He was contented with nibbling off the name from the circumscription of a false seal, while the remaining part convicts him equally of the falsehood. He scarcely disguised his writing to suit the period. Anything passed muster at that time; and he celebrated his achievements in verses after his own fashion.*

For these good deeds he had a pension of twenty pounds a year out of the county of Lincoln, and the manor of Geddyngton, in the county of Northampton. Sir Francis tells us that he was the sworn enemy of the Scots; and suggests that "his historical investigations, which convinced him that the Scots had unduly withdrawn their subjection, may have contributed to excite his feelings; and he may perhaps have deluded himself into the belief that the pious fraud was innocent, since his own country would be served thereby"-a charitable suggestion certainly,

"And Hardynges owne self hath the partie bee,
That from Scotlande oft tymes hath brought
Their seales of homage and fealtee

Unto the King of Englande, as he ought;
Unto whom the Scottes then sued and sought,
Yeldyng to live in humble subjection

Of Englandes governance and protection."

HARDYNG, by Ellis, p. 2.

which would have more weight, had we not been told of the Lincolnshire pension and the manor of Geddyngton.

England has large collections of authentic ancient diplomacy; and the wrecks of the charters of Scotland have been of late collected with some diligence and care; and Sir Francis Palgrave knows that in the multitude of these records there is no evidence of the actual performance of homage for Scotland, nor any of that most convincing kind of proof that would result from the casual and unobserved occurrence of exactions and concessions, such as take place between a dominant and a vassal state. Sir Francis feels how this negative evidence pinches his argument, and he evades it by alleging that the dominion of England was one of a peculiar nature"-" a special tenure"-"not to be cramped by arguments drawn from a late jurisprudence." The dominion may well be called peculiar, and it was indeed a very special tenure where dependence was established without acts of homage; where the dominant exercised no authority of any kind over the subject prince; where the whole proof of the tenure consisted of a tradition alleged by one party, denied by the other. Such a shadowy sovereignty may well be styled peculiar, and it will require Sir Francis Palgrave's ingenuity to define somewhat more precisely, wherein it specially consisted. Assuredly it was something very different from such an airy superiority that Edward the First vindicated as the "directum dominium" of the kingdom, in virtue of which he could take the judgment of its law-suits into his own courts, decide in cases of disputed succession to the throne, and, in fact, make and unmake its kings.

And now we take our leave of Sir Francis Palgrave, who has done so much for Anglo-Saxon history and constitutional antiquities, that he can afford to be told that he has not brought a fair spirit of inquiry to the study of Scotch history. The volume of documents of which we have prefixed the title, is of considerable importance, and carefully edited, notwithstanding occasional slips, scarcely to be avoided by a stranger, dealing with Scotch names of persons and places; and we should be glad to see the series continued, without a continuation of the pleading to which the Editor makes his present volume subservient, which is much misplaced in a Record publication, prepared at the public expense, and losing its value if deprived of its character of unprejudiced impartiality.

"The evil that men do lives after them,

The good is oft interred with their bones."

It was not so with Edward. He died without accomplishing the great object of his life-the entire subjugation of Scotland, though not without well earning the character given him on his tomb in