me of them
would render still more important services; and, by pointing out the
daily habits and most familiar occurrences of the lives of our kings
and other eminent personages who figure in our history, lead us to a
much more accurate estimate of their genius than any that has hitherto
been formed. With this view, the close rolls are amongst the most
minute and interesting of those documents which remain unexplored. The
character of King John has had but scanty justice done to it; and
perhaps those who have formed their notions of that monarch from the
ordinary accounts of him, will be surprised to find him writing to the
Abbot of Reading to acknowledge the receipt of "six volumes of books,
containing the whole of the Old Testament, Master Hugh de St. Victor's
treatise on the Sacraments, the Sentences of Peter Lombard, the
Epistles of St. Augustine on the City of God, and on the 3rd part of
the Psalter, Valerian de Moribus, Origen's treatise on the Old
Testament, and Candidus Arianus to Marius;"--and that on another
occasion shortly afterwards he acknowledges the receipt of "his copy
of Pliny," which had been in the custody of the same Abbot. Still less
does it consist with the commonly adopted notions of his selfish
tyranny, that he should address Bryan de Insula in terms like the
following: "Know that we are quite willing that our chief barons,
concerning whom you wrote to us, may hunt while passing through your
bailiwick, provided that you know who they are and what they take; for
we do not keep our forests, nor our beasts, for our own use only, but
for the use also of our faithful subjects. See, however, that they are
well guarded on account of robbers, for the beasts are more frightened
by robbers than by the aforesaid barons." Of the reign of Henry III.
the particulars are still more minute. Notwithstanding its connexion
with superstitions which exist no longer, we may sympathize with the
pious charity that suggested that monarch's order "for feeding as many
poor persons as can enter the greater and lesser hall at Westminster
on Friday next after the octaves of St. Matthew, being the anniversary
of Eleanor, the King's sister, formerly Queen of Scotland, for the
good of the said Eleanor's soul." His taste for the fine arts, and his
encouragement of its professors, are frequently to be traced in the
entries upon these rolls. In one of them he gives directions for
having the great chamber at Westminster painted with