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THE BLACK BOOK OF ST. DAVIDS The Black Book of St. Davids was edited, with a map and introduction, from British Museum Additional MS. 341351 by Mr. J.W.Willis-Bund, F.S.A.,and published by the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion in its Record Series in 19022. Additional MS. 34135 is itself, however, but a transcript of the original record, made in the six- teenth century.3 There is also another text, of the seventeenth century, probably copied from the Additional MS. transcript, which is now at the National Library of Wales.4 This latter is probably the transcript which Richard Smallbroke, Bishop of St. Davids, acknowledged as having received into his custody on 22 August, 1724, by order of the chapter and with the leave of Mr. Register Ottley 1.5 The rubric of both these transcripts runs as follows Extent of all the lands and rents of the Lord Bishop of St. Davids made by Master David Francis, Chancellor of St. Davids, in the time of the Venerable Father the Lord David Martin, by the grace of God, Bishop of the place, in the year of our Lord 1326.6 Arising from a note added at the end of the transcript to the effect that the Extent was renewed in 1516,7 (renouatum fuit) by order of Edward Vaughan, Bishop of St. Davids from 1509 to 1522, doubts have been expressed whether 1 There has been no opportunity of checking the published transcript with the original manuscript from which it was copied as the British Museum has been unable to provide the necessary facilities. Several inaccuracies in transcription have, however, made themselves apparent; some of the more important of these will be dealt with later, when the manuscript has been inspected. 2 As No. 5 in the Cymmrodorion Record Series Introduction pp. cxi., Text and Translation, pp. 331. On the title-page the MS. is incorrectly called Additional MS. 34125, instead of 34135, an error which has unfortunately been copied in several places, including Edward Owen's Catalogue of the MSS. relating to Wales in the British Museum (1903), Pt. II, p. 467. This printed text is clearly corrupt in many passages, but without a minute examination of the MS. from which it was taken it is not possible to determine which of the corruptions are due to the sixteenth century scribe and which to the twentieth century transcriber. More- over, it is very dangerous to follow the translation. With many of the views put forward in the Introduction it is not possible to agree and this should be used with great caution. Place-names on the map, too, are inaccurate. 3 It is described in the British Museum Catalogue of Additions to the MSS., 1888-1893, p. 209, as Extent of the possessions of the Bishop of St. Davids and as taken from an incomplete copy of the original Survey' for it does not contain the Feoda Militum Episcopi Menevensis, A.D. 1326, printed (privately) by Sir T. Phillipps about 1840 from the Liber Niger Actually not only does the MS. contain the Feoda (pp. 94-104) but Sir Thomas Phillipps gives the pagination of the transcript described in note 4 as his source 4 Deposited in 1934 by the Welsh Church Commission, which received it in 1920 from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for England, who in turn must have received it from the episcopal or capitular authorities of St. Davids when their estates were vested in that body. It bears the registration mark E.C.E. No. 170, 320. This transcript, which also contains the complete text of the Extent (a few of the later additions are missing), has been bound in the wrong order; the correct order is ff. 58X (2ff), 59¾171, 1-30, 59X (2 ff), 31-58, 172-322. Another later transcript taken from this was known to Sir T. Phillipps (cf. Feoda mentioned in note 3 above.) 5 National Library of Wales, Ottley MS. 2016. I am indebted to Mr. Evan D. Jones for this reference. The reference must be to the Black Book of St. Davids unless there was a Book of Statutes there also known as the Black Book; if so the reference is probably to British Museum Harleian MS. 6280 called the Book of Statutes' 6 p. 12. References to the text are throughout given as to the Latin text in the Cymmrodorion Record Series 7 p. 328,