The second is 1119. This suspiciously resembles an adaptation of the preceding date, but may have been suggested, and in the case of Mr. Clark (vide infra) probably was, by reading Dugdale wrong.[1207] It seems to have first appeared in a footnote to William of Malmesbury (1840), as edited for the English Historical Society by the late Sir Thomas Duffus (then Mr.) Hardy. It is there stated that Robert "was created Earl of Gloucester in 1119" (vol. ii. p. 692). No authority whatever is given for this statement, but the same date is adopted by Mr. Clark (1878), who asserts that "Robert certainly bore it [the title] 1119, 20th Henry I." (Arch. Journ., xxxv. 5); by Mr. Doyle (1886) in his valuable Official Baronage (ii. 9); and lastly (1887) by Mr. Hunt in his Bristol (p. 17). In none of these cases, however, is the source of the statement given.[1208]
In the mean while, a third date, viz. shortly before Easter (April 2), 1116, was advanced with much assurance. In his essay on the Survey of Lindsey (1882), Mr. Chester Waters wrote:
"We know that the earldom was conferred on him before Easter, 1116, for he attested as earl the royal charter in favour of Tewkesbury Abbey, which was executed at Winchester on the eve of the king's embarkation for Normandy" (p. 3).
The date attributed to this charter having aroused the curiosity of antiquaries, the somewhat singular discovery was made that it could also be found in the MSS. of Mr. Eyton, then lately deceased.[1209] For the time, however, Mr. Waters enjoyed the credit of having solved an ancient problem, and "the ennobling of Robert fitz Roy in 1116" was accepted by no less an authority than Mr. Elton.[1210]
I propose to show that these three dates are all alike erroneous, and that the Tewkesbury charter is spurious.
Let us first observe that there is no evidence for the belief that Robert received his earldom at the time of his marriage to the heiress of Robert fitz Hamon. There is, on the contrary, a probability that he did not. I do not insist on the Tewkesbury charter (Mon. Ang., ii. 66), in which the king speaks of the demesne of Robert fitz Hamon as being now "Dominium Roberti filii mei," for we have more direct evidence in a charter of Robert to the church of Rochester, in which he confirmed the gifts made by his wife and father, not as Robert Earl of Gloucester, but merely as "Ego Rodbertus Henrici Regis filius."
We must further dismiss late authorities, in which, as we might expect, we find a tendency to throw back the creation of a title to an early period of the grantee's life. We cannot accept as valid evidence the rhymes of Robert of Gloucester (circa 1300), the confusion of later writers, or the assumptions of the fourteenth-century Chronicque de Normandie, in which last work Robert is represented as already "Earl of Gloucester" at the battle of Tinchebrai (1106).
The only chronicle that we can safely consult is that of the Continuator of William of Jumièges, and this, unfortunately, tells us nothing as to the date of the creation, which, however, it seems to place some time after the marriage. It is worth mentioning that the writer's words—
"Præterea, quia parum erat filium Regis ingentia prædia possidere absque nomine et honore alicujus publicæ dignitatis, dedit illi pater pius comitatum Gloecestre" (Lib. viii. cap. 29, ed. Duchesne, p. 306).
are suspiciously suggestive of Robert of Gloucester's famous story that Robert's bride refused to marry him "bote he adde an tuo name." It would be very satisfactory if we could thus trace the story to its source, the more so as the chronicle is not among those from which Robert is supposed to have drawn.