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Alfred Hiatt, The Making of Medieval Forgenes: False Documentation in Fifteenth-Century England (London: The British Library, 2004). xiv + 226 pp.; 24 blackand-white, 8 colour illustrations. ISBN 0-7123-4815-8. £40.00.
This book presents several case studies of historical forgery in late medieval England. All involve the fabrication of forms of documentation: the charters of Crowland Abbey, bulls and charters connected with the University of Cambridge, and the charters and maps made by John Hardyng to support the English claims to Scotland. These examinations of particular groups of documents are preceded by two opening, discursive chapters on the nature of medieval forgery and are followed by two on sixteenth-century aspects of this subject, one on the Donation of Constantine and one on 'The humanist discourse of forgery'. There is a brief conclusion.
The great strength of the book is in its central chapters which demonstrate a capacity for sustained and...