Obviously this cannot apply to the purely historical documents of which the collection itself consists. It is, however, strongly suggestive of the “Boke of Noblesse,” to which they are, as it were, an appendix, and coupled with the evidence of the handwriting of the additions, it leaves little room for doubt that William Worcester was its author. At the same time, it is by no means unlikely that Stephen Scrope also had a hand in it. If indeed it was wholly compiled in 1475, this is impossible, since he died in 1472.[95] Assuming, however, for the reason given above, that it dates from 1451, or thereabouts, he was residing at the time with Fastolf and was no doubt on familiar terms with Worcester. As already remarked, a prominent feature of the work is the number of extracts translated from the so-called “Arbre de Batailles” of “Dame Cristyn.” This, however, was not, as the editor supposed, Honoré Bonet’s treatise of that name[96] assigned to a wrong author, but Christine de Pisan’s “Faits d’armes et de chevalerie” under a wrong title.[97] Whether Worcester was capable of making translations from it as early as 1451 is somewhat doubtful; for he seems to have only begun to learn French about August, 1458,[98] little more than a year before Fastolf’s death. Scrope on the contrary had before this translated two French works for the latter, one of them being by the same Christine, and it is therefore in this part of the “Boke of Noblesse,” if at all, that he may possibly have collaborated. Unlike the last-named work, the anonymous English version of Cicero’s “De Senectute” which Caxton printed in 1481 has already been attributed to William Worcester,[99] the ground of this assumption being an entry made in his “Itinerarium,”[100] that on 10th August, 1473, he presented to Bishop Waynflete at Esher a translation which he had made of this treatise, but got nothing in return. Apart from this statement there is no more reason for attributing Caxton’s text to Worcester than to Scrope. The language is better than might have been expected from either of them, but as no MS. copy exists, we cannot tell to what extent it was edited by Caxton. In the preface, as may be seen above (p. xxx.), it is said that the translation was made from the French of Laurence de Premierfait by Sir John Fastolf’s “ordenaunce and desyre.” As there is no reason to doubt this, its date cannot be later than 1459, so that, if Worcester was the translator, he kept it at least thirteen years before he offered it to Waynflete. This does not seem very likely, and his translation was therefore possibly a different one altogether, completed shortly before the occasion when the bishop so disappointed him by his cold acceptance of it. The earlier version in that case was almost certainly by Scrope; but, where so much is left to conjecture, the most that can be said is that the evidence upon which it has hitherto been assigned to Worcester is not wholly conclusive.