In this assumption, however, he only follows Stapleton, to whom he here refers, and who relied on an abstract in the cartulary of Spalding (fol. 416 _a_, _b_). This abstract which cannot, from its form, preserve the wording of the original charter, runs: Sciant tam presentes quam futuri quod Hugo frater Rannulfi comitis Cestrie et Matild' uxor ejus, fil' filia [_sic_] Lucie comitisse concesserunt, etc., etc. Stapleton boldly rendered the obviously corrupt words as 'son and daughter-in-law of the countess Lucia',[9] and hence pronounced this Hugh to be 'a married brother of the whole blood' to the _second_ Randulf, Earl of Chester.[10] As he only knew their gift to Spalding to be 'prior to 1141', no chronological difficulty was caused by this view; but the occurrence of Hugh's name in the Lindsey Survey, as already in possession of his small fief, at once raises the difficulty I have explained. The solution that occurs to me is that the Hugh fitz Ranulf of our survey, and the 'Hugo frater Ranulfi Comitis Cestrie' of the Spalding charter, was a brother, not of the second but of the _first_ Earl Ranulf, and that the words 'fil' filia Comitisse Lucie' were introduced in error by the compiler, whose head was full of the Countess Lucy, and who had here confused the two Earls Randulf. Stapleton, Mr Waters has justly observed, was '_facile princeps_ of Anglo-Norman genealogists'.[11] Yet I venture to think that, as he here mistook a brother of the first Earl Ranulf for a son, so he confused William Meschin, another and better known brother, with William de Roumare, the Earl's stepson, afterwards Earl of Lincoln. William Meschin was not merely a considerable landowner in Lindsey, but had also estates in Northamptonshire and Leicestershire, as our survey of those counties show.[12] Stephen, according to Stapleton, created him Earl of Cambridge. Remembering the _dictum_ of Dr Stubbs that 'Stephen's earldoms are a matter of great constitutional importance', it is worth while to examine this earldom of Cambridge. In one of Stapleton's greatest essays, that on Holy Trinity Priory, York,[13] he writes of this William Meschin, that By King Stephen he was made Earl of Cambridge, as we learn from the following extract from a charter of Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, in 1139, founding the nunnery of Haverholm, in the parish of Ruskington, of the order of St. Gilbert of Sempringham. 'But this donation ... we have confirmed ... by the testimony of Rannulph, Earl of Chester, and of William, Earl of Cambridge, his brother' (p. 34). The words in the original are: Testimonio Rannulfi comitis Cestriæ et Willelmi comitis Cantebrigiæ fratris ejus (_Mon. Ang._, v. 949).