1906 to POPE CELESTINE III 98 the Description of the Interview Given by Boso
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1906 TO POPE CELESTINE III 98 the description of the interview given by Boso. Haec apud castrum Iiadulphi vidimus, writes Peter, %ii>i etiam Romanorum votis . plenioribus xeniis auri et argenti regia munificentia satisfecit.91 Some thirty years earlier Boso had written— In diebus illis predictus rex Anglorum domnum Alexandnun papam apud Dolense monasteriam corporali praesentia visitavit . Sed post oscula pedum aureis oblatis muTieribus ad oscula einsdem pontifioia eat receptoa . et largitis magnis muneribus aibi et fratribus suis, cum laetitia recessit ab eo.9s Downloaded from It is a tempting hypothesis, though it cannot be absolutely proved, that Peter of Blois was himself present at the meeting at Dol. He went to Home about 1161, to do honour to Alexander in, and was ill-treated by the followers.of the anti-pope.93 After this his biographers lose eight of him, until they find him a few years' http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ later studying at Paris. What is more likely than that he returned to France in the train of Alexander III, journeyed with him to Dol, and on to Tours, in his own country, near to his birthplace, Blois, and the scene of his early studies, and so to Paris ? M Such a theory would supply a missing link in the biography of Peter of Blois, and would explain his use of the first person when, in Epistle 144, he wrote of the emperor's excommunication, and of the interview with the English king at Chateauroux. Be this as it may, the at Georgetown University on August 31, 2015 letters written by Peter of Blois in 1198,81 by their incidental agreement with the contemporary biography of Alexander III, lend weight to the testimony of Boso, establish the fact of the meeting at Dol, and set at rest the vexed question of the whereabouts of Henry II from 18 to 20 Sept. in the year 1162. BEATRICE A. LEES. The Mythical Town of Orwell. WAS there ever a town of Orwell ? The river Orwell we know; Harwich harbour, the portus de OnceU or Orwell haven of the records, is its estuary. But Morant' asserts that there was once a town of Orwell; that it was situated on the West Hocks, off Walton " Ep. 144: cf. the opening of the passage: Quart non append itis in libra iustitiae beneficia quae bonae memoriae Henricut pater istius regia robis, ticut vidimus, in articulo summae necetritatis exhibvit ) " Watterich, Pont. Rom. Vit. ii. 393. •» Ep. 48. " It is perhaps fanciful to see a confirmation of this theory in Ep. 48, where he mentions Cardinal Jacincta (Hyacinth), who travelled to France with Alexander, and Bpeak9 of the schism as a storm threatening the ship of St. Peter, a simile used by Alexander III himself in a letter to the patriarch of Grado, written in 1161 (Watterich, op. cit. ii. 615), and also used by Peter of Blois in Ep. 144 in- connexion with the ChiteauroDx incident. '• Epp. 144 and 14G. Ep. 145 does not mention the Cbateauronx incident. 1 History of Essex, p. 601. 94 THE MYTHICAL TOWN OF ORWELL Jan. Naze, and that it was overwhelmed by the sea; Sir <Jharles Eyell * adds 'since the Conquest.' Camden says nothing of it; but his editor * of 1789 follows Morant; neither Gongh nor Morant gives any authority for his statement. There are, however, some docu- ments of the fourteenth and fifteenth centaries, which Morant might have cited, in which a town of Orwell, villa de Orwell, is mentioned. At first sight these seem to justify his statement, and if no town of Orwell ever existed they require explanation. There is, so far as the present writer is aware, no "other authority for the existence of the town. The probability is that Morant was Downloaded from misled by fishermen's tales and that no such town ever existed. The evidence from the records which appears to assert :the existence of the town is as follows : Between A.D. 1229- and 1466 writs were several times addressed, or were directed to issue, to the mayor, community, bailiffs, or men of Orwell town, ville de Orwell; http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ and in four * of the documents. Orwell appears to be distinguished from Harwich or Ipswich, for those towns are mentioned as well as Orwell. In 1847 a ship of the town of Orwell is mentioned.5 In 1870, the fleet having been ordered to assemble ad pwtum de Orewell, victuals were forbidden to be sold within a stated distance of Orwell town,, duodecim leucas a villa de Orewell.* In 1408 the harbour of the town of Orwell is mentioned : an arrest waff made at Georgetown University on August 31, 2015 apud Orwell... in portu dicte ville de Orewell.7 - A foreign writer • of the first part of the fifteentti century speaks of a town called ' Oriola,' which the French fleet proposed to attack : by ' Oriola' he appears to have meant Orwell; Oreuorela, Oruelle, is marked on maps of the period in the neighbourhood of the river. There are other references in the records to Orwell (without the villa), which are ambiguous; they may imply either a town or a harbour, but it would seem that the writers had in mind a place ashore and not-a stretch- of .water. Thus the Flemings in 1174," and Queen Isabella in 1826,10 are said to have landed at Orwell. Footmen ^go'to, stay at," and are furnished by " OrwelL A ship is arrested off Orwell,11 or ' on the water at Orwell, in the county * Elements of Geology, ed. 1875, L 536. * Gough's Ckmden, ed. 1789," iL 60. < Pat. Boll, 13 Hen. m, m. 4; CL Boll, 20 Ed. n, m: 10 d ; la. Roll, 44 Ed. HI, ed. Deron, p. 161; Pat. Boll; 6 Ed. IV, pt 2, m. 19 d. » CL' Boll, 20 Ed. II, m. 6. Ships ' of Orwell' are common. * Cl. BolL-44 Ed. Ill; m. 20 d. ' CL Boll, 9 Hen: IV, m. 19: • Dial de Gamei, he Tutorial, p. 870. • Apud ArftDtUdm, Matth. Paris, Chron. mai. (Bolls Sar.) iL 292. "- Apud Ortctlle in portn de Herewich, Adam de Marimuth, Bolls Ser. p. 282. Ct -Cfcron. and Memor. of Ed. II (Bolls Ser.) ii. 86, apud Hertwydu . .' applicuit; ibid. L 818; applicuit in portu de Areaellt. The difficulty suggested (ante, voL iir. p. 104)-a8 toihe following words, tt eepit terram qua* toeatur Coboatte.distantim de Hfrtvnch per. -t*v baou. is explained by Dndarstaiidiitg Irucat as- mils).; Ducange, subjtit. Isabella probably landed near Fellxstove in Colness. » Pat-BoU, 20 Ed, n.m.llt'Bre^eH.' " MkcelL Chaniexy, Axmi»nd Hav.'l/4. u Coram Orttcell, Pat BolL 17 John, m. 1. .1906 THE MYTHICAL TOWN OF ORWELL 9& of Essex, a place adjacent to Ipswich.' l* Portus de Orwell is some- times called a place, dictus locus de Onvell, locus rive portus, locus rive creca. Usque or apud Orwell is common ; and we find in partibus dt Orwell, rivaille a Orwell. There has long been a tradition among the Harwich people that there was once a town on the West Rocks. It is said that remains of buildings have been seen there, and that building stones have been dredged up from the sea bottom. At low water there is a depth in places of only a fathom or a fathom and a half, and the whole area of the West Bocks has been very throughly Downloaded from dredged (for cement stone) daring the last century. The present writer has been told by a dredgerman that he has himself seen part of' a church spire' dredged up; bat it does not seem to have been preserved, and such stories are common on the east coast. They probably have their origin in the fact that remains of the wholly http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/ or partially submerged towns of Ravenspur, Dunwich, Southwold, and Aldeburgh have been found. There is no doubt that Walton Naze once extended much further out to sea than it does now. It wastes daily, and so long ago as the fourteenth century parts of the possessions of the church of London in that locality were described as consumpta per Mare. In the face of this evidence it will seem a bold thing to say that Morant wa3 mistaken ; but it is probable that he was. With reference to the alteration of the coast line at Georgetown University on August 31, 2015 in the neighbourhood of Harwich it is probably the fact that, as Morant suggests, the rivers Stour and Orwell formerly flowed into the sea under Bull's Cliff at Felixstowe, some distance to the north of the present estuary. But this mast have been a long time ago, probably not .in historical times. The harbour mouth has not materially changed its position for upwards of 400 years. There are in existence sailing directions, which are certainly of. not later and probably of earlier date than the fifteenth century, and they give a course (south-west) from the anchorage off Harwich into the Wallet, which would surely have put the ship ashore if the Naze had then extended to the West Rocks, and there had been then, as Morant says there was, a town there. These directions give the flow of the tide within the haven as ' south and north,' the same as it is at the present day; when the harbour mouth wad under Bull's Cliff the tide would flow east south-east and west north-west.15 Assuming for the moment that there was once a 11 Exchequer, King's Bemembrancer's Mem.