In the words "nondum comes" we find the clue we seek. If the writer had merely abstained from giving William his title, the value of his evidence would be slight; but when he goes, as it were, out of his way to inform us that though William, in virtue of his marriage, was already in possession of the queen's dower, he was "not yet an earl," he tells us, in unmistakable language, the very thing that we want to know. It was probably in order to accentuate his pride that his critic reminds us that the future earl was as yet only a _pincerna_;[938] but, whatever the motive, the fact remains, on first-hand evidence, that William was "not yet an earl" at a time when he possessed his wife's dower, and consequently Arundel Castle. This fact, hitherto overlooked, is completely destructive of the time-honoured belief that he acquired the earldom on, and by, obtaining possession of the castle. So far, all is clear. But the question is further complicated by William appearing in two distinct documents as earl, not of Arundel or Chichester, but of Lincoln! That he held this title is a fact so utterly unsuspected, and indeed so incredible, that Mr. Eyton, finding him so styled in a cartulary of Lewes Priory, dismissed the title, without hesitation, as an obvious error of the scribe.[939] But I have identified in the Public Record Office the actual charter from which the scribe worked, and the same style is there employed. Even so, error is possible; but the evidence does not stand alone. In a cartulary of Reading[940] we find William confirming, as Earl of Lincoln, a grant from the queen, his wife, and here again the original charter is there to prove that the cartulary is right.[941] The early history of the earldom of Lincoln is already difficult enough without this additional complication, of which I do not attempt to offer any solution. But so far as the earldom of "Arundel" is concerned, I claim to have established its true character, and to have shown that there is nothing to distinguish it in its origin from the other earldoms of the day. The erratic notion of "earldom by tenure," held when the strangest views prevailed as to peerage dignities, was a fallacy of the _post hoc propter hoc_ kind, based on the long connection of the castle with the earls. Nor has Mr. Freeman's strange fancy that the holder of this earldom is "the only one of his class left" any better foundation in fact. [921] _The Early Genealogical History of the House of Arundel_ (1882). [922] "Very certain it is that William Earl of Arundel died the 3rd (_sic_) of October, 1176, and equally certain is it that this was the son of the first earl." [923] Where the earl of the Becket quarrel is described as "probably his [the first earl's] son." [924] "It is possible that the new earl [son of the earl who died 1176] was the grandson of the first Earl of Arundel."