Blake, E. O. (ed.) Liber Eliensis - Camden Society Third Series Volume XCII [92] , London: Royal Historical Society, 1962.

First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/No DJ. Lge 8vo Puple cloth covered boards wirh bright embossed gilt titling and decorations. Book plate on f. paste down. No ownership inscription. lx, 463 pages clean and tight. Latin & Old English text. FOREWORD The Liber Eliensis is unique among post-Conquest monastic histories in the extensive use it makes in Book II of vernacular documents. This makes it an important source for the history in pre-Conquest times of an area of England for which evidence is not plentiful. It is therefore desirable to say a few words on the nature of the documents used and on the various types of information they afford the historian. Book II can be divided into two sections, the first, extending to chapter 49, consisting of a version, with a few additions, of an earlier extant work, the Libellus quorundam insignium operum beati thelwoldi episcopi, which was translated from a vernacular source between izog and 1131 1; and the second, the remainder of the book, in which the author uses among other sources vernacular documents preserved in the archives of his house. The Libellus portion is much the more interesting. The sources available to the compiler of the Libellus probably included a list of the acquisitions made in the time of Bishop EEthelwold, very similar to one concerning his other foundation, Peterborough, which has survived 2o One may, for example, compare the building up of the estate of Ashton by Abbot Ealdulf of Peterborough by the purchase of a mill from one man, a hide of land from another, twenty acres in wood and field from a third, and one and a half hides from a fourth, with the similar series of transactions which created the Ely estate of Hill and Haddenham in ch. i6 3 or of Wilburton in ch. U. Like the Peterborough list, the Ely record normally included the name of the place where the transaction was performed, and the names of the sureties at the sale and of the witnesses to the delivery of the purchase money. Some lands reached the respective abbeys by forfeiture; Castor was given to Peterborough by Osgot ' for the outlawry when he slew Styrcyr ', and Yelling was forfeited to Ely by Wulfwine Cocus and his wife (ch. 7). There are similarities in phraseology: the extremum denarium of ch. 34 is Jane latestan penign of the Peterborough list 4, and placitum . . . apud Walmesford in octo hundretis (ch. ii) translates whte hundred gemote at Wylmesforda 5. A comparison of the records suggests that vades renders either Old Norse festermen or its English equivalent borh or borhhand, which is also translated fidejussores, and that pradium represents toft. Much litigation over the Ely lands arose after the death of Edgar. The accounts of these suits are obviously based on records similar to some that have survived from other churches. (Book ref. 129862)  £25.00

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