[104] It is necessary to check by authentic charters and other trustworthy evidence the chronicles printed in the _Monasticon_ under Walden Abbey. One of these was taken from a long and interesting MS., formerly in the possession of the Royal Society, but now among the Arundel MSS. in the British Museum. This, which is only partially printed, and which ought to be published in its entirety, has the commencement wanting, and is, unfortunately, very inaccurate for the early period of which I treat. It is this narrative which makes the wild misstatements as to the circumstances of the foundation, which grossly misdates Geoffrey's death, etc., etc. All its statements are accepted by Dugdale. The other chronicle, which he printed from Cott. MS., Titus, D. 20, is far more accurate, gives Geoffrey's death correctly, and rightly assigns him as wife the _sister_ (not the daughter) of the Earl of Oxford, thus correcting Dugdale's error. It is the latter chronicle which Dugdale has misquoted with reference to the charge of the Tower. [105] Who was really Peter de Valognes. [106] "Madox ... has shown ... that Geoffrey Fitzpeter, Earl of Essex, obtained from the Crown Grants of the shrievalty of the Counties of Essex and Hertford when the Earls, commonly called Earls of Clare, were Earls of Hertford, and had the Third Penny of the Pleas of that County" (iii. 69, ed. 1829). [107] "The County of Hertford appears to have been, at the time of the Survey, in the King's hands, and Peter was then Sheriff; and the Sheriffwick of Hertfordshire was afterwards granted in Fee, by the Empress Maud, to Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex, at a rent as his father and grandfather had held it. The father of Geoffrey was Geoffrey Fitz Peter, and probably was son of Peter, the Sheriff at the time of the Survey. The first trace which the Committee has discovered of the title of the Earls of Clare to the Third Penny of the County is in the reign of Henry the Second, subsequent to the grants under which the Earls of Essex claimed the Shrievalty in fee, at a fee-farm rent. But the grant of the Third Penny must have been of an earlier date, as the grant to the Earl of Essex was subject to that charge. The family of Clare must therefore have had the Third Penny either before or early in the Reign of King Stephen" (iii. 125). [108] _Const. Hist._, i. 362. [109] _Official Baronage_, ii. 175. [110] See Appendix C. [111] See Frontispiece. [112] _Degrees of England._ [113] "Note that this is the most ancient creation-charter which hath ever been known." _Vide_ Selden, _Titles of Honour_, p. 647. [114] _Historic Peerage_, p. 178. [115] _Journ. Brit. Arch. Ass._, xxxi. 386. [116] _Addl. MSS._, 31,943, fol. 97. [117] Comp. fol. 96: "My position is that where this system of counter-charters between Stephen and the Empress _is proved_, the former generally is the first in point of date." [118] See p. 41 _ad pedem_. [119] _Notes and Queries_, 6th Series, v. 83.