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Jogular Morotario Sectory 09
Page 06
For the last half of the reign of Henry II we have the advantage of a valuable and in some respects very interesting and attractive chronicle. This is the Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi, associated with the name of BENEDICT OF PETERBOROUGH (Rolls Series, 2 vols.). Benedict, however, was not the author, and no certain evidence as to who he was can be derived from any source, nor does the chronicle itself supply many of those incidental indications from which it is often possible to learn much regarding the author of an anonymous book. The tentative suggestion of Bishop Stubbs that it may have been written by Richard Fitz Neal, the author of the Dialogus de Scaccario, is now generally regarded as inadmissible. The work begins in 1170, and from a date a year or two later is evidently contemporaneous to its close in 1192, with perhaps a slight interruption at 1177. It is written in a simple and straightforward way, and with a sure touch, unusual accuracy of statement, and a clear understanding of constitutional details; it suggests an interesting personality in its author, with whom we constantly desire a closer acquaintance. Whoever he was, he possessed good sources of information, though apparently too great consideration for king or court keeps him sometimes from saying all he knows or believes, and he has inserted in his work many letters and important documents.
It is in France that we find the greatest wealth of relics of Cave-men. Sir John Lubbock has left us a description of the valley of the Vezere, where these caverns occur. The Vezere is a small tributary of the Dordogne. "The rivers of the Dordogne run in deep valleys cut through calcareous strata: and while the sides of the valley in chalk districts are generally sloping, in this case, owing probably to the hardness of the rock, they are frequently vertical. Small caves and grottoes frequently occur: besides which, as the different strata possess unequal power of resistance against atmospheric influence, the face of the rock is, as it were, scooped out in many places, and thus 'rockshelters' are produced. In very ancient times these caves and rock-shelters were inhabited by men, who have left behind them abundant evidence of their presence.
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