[827] _Gesta_ (ed. Howlett), pp. 32, 73. [828] Aumâle ("Albemarle") is notoriously a difficult title, as one of those of which the bearer enjoyed comital rank, though whether as a Norman count or as an English earl, it is, at first, difficult to decide. Eventually, of course, the dignity became an English earldom. [829] Nor was it an earldom of Stephen's creation. [830] It was granted at Northampton. Its date is of importance as proving that the charter to the Earl of Arundel, being attested by Hugh as earl, must be of later date. Mr. Eyton, however, oddly enough, reverses the order of the two (_Itinerary of Henry II._, pp. 2, 3). He was thus misled by an error in the witnesses to the Earl of Arundel's charter, which Foss had acutely detected and explained long before. APPENDIX E. THE ARRIVAL OF THE EMPRESS. (See p. 55.) The true date of this event is involved in considerable obscurity. The two most detailed versions are those of William of Malmesbury and of the Continuator of Florence of Worcester. The former states precisely that the Ecclesiastical Council lasted from August 29 to September 1 (1139), and that the Empress landed, at Arundel, on September 30; the latter gives no date for the council, but asserts that the Empress landed, at Portsmouth, before August 1—that is, two months earlier. These grave discrepancies have been carefully discussed by Mr. Howlett,[831] though he fails to note that the Continuator is thoroughly consistent in his narrative, for he subsequently makes the Empress remove from Bristol, after spending "more than two months" there, to Gloucester in the middle of October. He is, however, almost certainly wrong in placing the landing at Portsmouth,[832] and no less mistaken in placing it so early in the year. The "in autumno" of Ordericus clearly favours William rather than the Continuator. Mr. Howlett, in his detailed investigation of this "exceedingly complex chronological difficulty," endeavours to exalt the value of the _Gesta_ by laying peculiar stress on its mention of Baldwin de Bedvers' landing, as suggestive of a fresh conjecture. Urging that "Baldwin's was in very truth the main army of invasion," he advances the "theory that the expedition came in two sections, for the _Gesta Stephani_ say that Baldwin de Bedvers arrived 'forti militum catervâ,' as no doubt he did, for it was only his presence in force that could render the coming of Maud and her brother with twenty or thirty retainers anything else than an act of madness."