#Metre:# Alliterative long line, of somewhat rude construction, without transitional rhymes or assonances. The alliteration extends mostly to two consonants, sometimes to three, as 5, 17; l. 16 is pure syllabic verse. The scribe sometimes misplaced the pause stop, as at 9, and sometimes omitted it. #Introduction:# In this scrap, some English patriot laments the wholesale substitution of foreign prelates for English under William the Conqueror. At the end of 1070 A.D. there were only two native bishops, Wulfstan at Worcester and Siward at Rochester. This may point roughly to the time, as the preponderance of names connected with Winchester to the place, of the composition. The absence of the names of Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester (1002-1016 A.D.) and Archbishop of York (1002-1023), the author of the Homilies; of Wærferth, Bishop of Worcester (872-915), translator of Pope Gregory’s Dialogues; of the later Wulfstan (1062-1095), under whose rule there was great activity in the collection and transcription of Homilies and other literature in English (Keller, W., Die litterarischen Bestrebungen von Worcester in AS. Zeit, p. 64); together with the writer’s ignorance of the North, shows that it was not composed at Worcester. And the mistakes in Sipum 1/11 and heoueshame 1/12 would hardly be made by a Worcester transcriber. The heading is from Numbers xxvii. 17. 2. #⁊# = and: _ond_ apparently does not occur in the twelfth century. [#writen#]: Varnhagen supplies _bec_. Comp. ‘þa writen me beoð to icume,’ L 9131. #awende#. Bede translated into English the Gospel of S. John and some extracts from Isidore (Baedae Opera Historica, ed. Plummer, i. pp. lxxv, clxii). 3. #ꝥ . . . þurh#, by which. The preposition separated from its relative and placed with the verb is common in ME. See Anklam, Das Englische Relativ im 11. und 12. Jahrhundert, pp. 15-19, 44-6. Comp. in these texts, _þet . . . bi_, 72/182; _inne_, 84/45, 131/104; _of_, 38/155, 66/96, 116, 117/8, 139/11, 211/476; _on_, 96/53, 179/112; _to_, 142/75, 79, 143/98; _þe . . . embe_, 81/77; _inne_, 11/3, 4; _mide_, 81/79; _offe_, 85/84; _one_, 83/9, 119/73; _to_, 96/54; _uppe_, 84/71; _þer . . . in_, 7/59, 54/1, 147/148; _of_, 64/61; _on_, 106/210; _to_, 89/32; _wið_, 48/300. Similarly _hem . . . to_, 193/564; _þa . . . to_, 96/58.