Pagina:Annales monastici Vol IV.djvu/28

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XX PREFACE. the popular feeling respecting the bishop of Winchester, Peter des Roches. With the next year (1234) a new hand and possibly a new author begins, and this writer, apropos of an anecdote of a speech of Henry III. respecting the abbat of Osney, speaks in very high praise of that king's character, mentioning his devotion, his charities, his liberality, his foundations of hospitals and churches, his zeal for the conversion of the Jews (Judseis convertentibus se ad Christianitateni domum^ et necessaria providit), and concluding, " pater erat paupe- " rum et mcerentium consolator." This is the fullest portion of the chronicle. Full details follow (p. 78) of the death of Richard Marshal in Ireland. The death of the archbishop, Edmund of Abingdon, at Soissy is given with very interesting details (pp. 87, 88). In narrating the pi'oceedings of the Oxford parliament of 1258, and the barons' war, though so decided a partisan of the barons, the author does not conceal the wretched con- dition into which the country was brought by the war : " sseviebat gladius hostilis in Anglia, c?edibus et rapinis " omnia replebantur, ubique luctus, ubique clamor, " ubique desolatio. . . . Invaluit etiam fere inter omnes de " regno horrenda discordia, adeo ut quis cui crederet, " quis cui mentis suae secreta coramitteret, nesciretur. " Plena erat prsedonibus Anglia, nusquam tuta fides, " nusquam sine suspicione amor, sermo sine simulatione " (pp. 136-138). He, however, puts down the fire in Westchepe, which did so much damage in 1264, to the royalists (p. 147). Simon de Montfort is first mentioned as opposing the arrangement of 1261, and leaving the Reticence country in consequence (p. 129). A very remarkable spect to characteristick of this portion of the history is that prince prince Edward is never mentioned, not even in the accounts of the battles of Lewes and Evesham ; — at Evesham the Edward. 1 The domus conversoruvi for the I Preface to Grosseteste's Letters Jews was opened in 1233. See the I p. xxxv.