In the orthography of the proper names, that of Wace has been strictly observed in the translator's text; his notes generally giving what is conceived to be the proper or more modern version of each. The necessity for this precaution is abundantly shown by the confusion and mistakes that have arisen from modernizing names, (of the true relation or derivation of which a translator is sometimes scantily informed,) without supplying at the same time the opportunity of correction, by a faithful quotation of the original. The translator here begs to express his fear lest he has in one respect violated his own rule, by the use he has made of FITZ as a prefix. It is right the reader should bear in mind, that throughout the original the term used is filz,--such as 'le filz Osber de Bretuil,' &c.; and it might have been better, by a literal translation, to have avoided the appearance of an anachronous use of the patronymic form afterwards so common. The proper completion of the notes would consist in tracing the identity and possession of the fiefs, from the Red book roll of the exchequer down-wards, to the lists formed, after the general confiscation of the estates of king John's adherents, by Philip Augustus. The translator has only had access to the former, as to which a few words may be said. It is a beautiful transcript from a roll, a portion of which still exists, according to the report of Mr. Stapleton, in the Hotel Soubise at Paris. Ducarel has printed, though very incorrectly, a transcript from our exchequer record.[2] The roll itself was probably completed between the twentieth and thirtieth years of Hen. II.; but that part of it which relates to the fees of the cathedral church of Bayeux is an abstract of an inquest of an _earlier_ date, namely, of about 1133, taken on the death of Richard Fitz-Samson the bishop, and lately printed in the 8th vol. of the 'Mémoires des antiquaires de Normandie.' This circumstance creates anachronisms in the roll, that are still more apparent in the one published--also incorrectly--in Duchesne's Scriptores, from a MS. now in the King's library at Paris. The roll of Hen. II. is only the _basis_ of Duchesne's; which was obviously compiled after the confiscations of Philip Augustus; to whose era, and the then existing state of things, the entries are made to conform. Some who have not examined into the minutise of these records, have supposed that the list, with which they close, of men who neither appeared nor made any return, refers to those who adhered to John; instead of its being, as the fact is, a mere record of defaulters under Hen. II.