Throughout this time there was an historian at Peterborough. Hugo Albus was a monk there from 1114, and sub-prior from 1134 to 1154. In advanced age he wrote the History of the Monastery in Latin, in which, at any rate, he utilized the English Chronicle. Some have thought him the author of the latter also, but that view is rejected very decidedly by Liebermann (Ueber osteng. Geschichtsquellen, 5). His strongest argument is the difference of style, the comparative smoothness, elaboration, and coldness of the Latin. Some of that may be due to lapse of time, for there is probably fifteen years between the two compositions. Something too should be allowed for the difference in language and in purpose.
[1]. King Henry returned from Normandy to England in July, 1131. Henry of Poitou had been in turn bishop of Soissons, monk and prior of Cluny, prior of Savigny, abbot of S. Jean d’Angely in 1104, and, ‘quia versutus erat et callidus et ingeniosus,’ as Hugo says, he acquired the archbishopric of Besançon, from which he was expelled by the abbot of Cluny after three days’ tenure. Then he got and lost in the same way the bishopric of Saintes, which he held for a week. In 1123 he came to England as legate for the collection of Rome-scot, and returning in 1127 on the same errand he told the king, to whom he was related, that being old and tired of war and dissension in his own land, he desired to abandon S. Jean for Peterborough. But being made abbot of the latter in 1128, he held both till the monks of S. Jean expelled him in 1131, when he went to Cluny and was detained there till he swore to the abbot that, if permitted to return to England, he would procure the subjection of Peterborough as a priory to Cluny. What he charged the monks with is not known.
[2]. burch: S. Petri Burgum: ‘Medeshamstede monasterium . . quod nunc . . Burch vulgariter nominatur,’ Hugo, 23.
[3]. ð = þat 6/34, 7/60, 64; but þet 11/186 and þæt demonstrative 11/195, each once only.
[4]. sende efter: summoned the monks to Brampton in Hampshire: ‘rex . . misit propter monachos apud Bramtune,’ Hugo, 75. With efter comp. 5/9, 6/28.
[5]. Roger of Salisbury, chancellor 1101; named bishop of Salisbury 1102, but not consecrated till 1107; ‘secundus a rege,’ Henry of Huntingdon, 245; deprived of his castles at Oxford 1139 (6/42); died in the same year. Alexander, nephew of Roger, created bishop of Lincoln 1123; died 1148. b = biscop, see 8/83, 9/140. Seresberi with inorganic s is Sereberi 6/42, OE. Searoburg: Sælesberi in the AS. Chronicle MS. F anno 552 has dissimilated r, while the corresponding Latin is Seleberi: lincol is influenced by the common French form, Nicol: on Lincollan occurs at E 627.
[6]. In he feorde, he may be the king, who had to deal with guile: comp. ‘Al es bot a fantum þat [we] with ffare,’ ES xxi. 201/1; ‘Tandem non post multum temporis post haec intellexit rex fraudulentias eius,’ Hugo, 75. If he is the abbot, as in the next sentence, the sense is, he employed guile, so ‘Iactantia, ꝥ is idelȝelp on englisc, þenne mon bið lof-ȝeorn ⁊ mid fikenunge fearð,’ OEH i. 103/29. With the next sentence comp. ‘Cum autem quod cogitaverat perficere non posset, voluit nepotem suum Gerardum haeredem & abbatem facere pro se, ut quod ille non potuit, iste perficeret,’ Hugo, 75.
[9]. Henry returned to S. Jean. Hugo says he made a good end. His successor, Martin de Vecti, native of the Isle of Wight, usually called Martin de Bec, first prior after its second foundation of St. Neots, a cell to Bec, was received by the monks on June 29th, 1132. S’ = seint, sometimes sein; a French fashion. In MS. E, from 1066 to 1122, where a new section begins, sc̄e for sancte is normal and frequent, exceptions being Octabus sc͞i Martini 1114, Octabus sc͞i Johannis 1117, while sc͞e Marie is treated as a genitive depending on words like nativitas. From 1122 to 1131, S’ is regular save for three entries in 1125 and sc͞e Marie twice as genitive. neod = Neotus may be due to the Anglo-Norman tendency to substitute d for final t (Stimming, Boeve de Haumtone, 221). The pronunciation persisted, for in the church of St. Neots in Cornwall, whence the body of the saint was stolen by the people of St. Neots in Huntingdonshire, there is a tablet over his tomb with verses said to have been written in the sixteenth century, in which occurs the line ‘The vulgar call it now St. Need’s’ (Gorham, History of Eynesbury, 340). Sancti Neothi occurs twice in a document, Palaeograph. Society, First Series, pl. 193. The name is now pronounced like mod. Eng. neats.
[10]. Comp. ‘An preost wes on leoden; Laȝamon wes ihoten,’ L 1: ‘he com to þere dune oliueti his ihaten,’ OEH i. 3/5. This paratactic construction with hatan is confined to names of persons and places; it is colloquial and does not involve ellipsis of a relative.
[11]. mid micel wurscipe: ‘cum magno honore et gaudio,’ Hugo, 75: comp. 8/93, 11/188, 197, 207, 108/241.