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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.

To my astonishment Magna Charta and the Dialogus de Scaccario were thoroughly good reading. The answer to "Quod est murdrum" was a thrilling revelation of what the Norman Conquest was and was not. I understood; and what is more delightful than that? There were even good courses, I found, in such apparently univiting a feast as "The Constitutions of Clarendon."

Richard Fitz-Neal, son of Bishop Nigel of Ely and great-nephew of Roger of Salisbury, and himself Treasurer of the Exchequer and Bishop of London, began in 1178 the Dialogus de Scaccario, an elaborate account of the whole system of administration.

Not a single one of them is classical, not one printed; Aquinas, Bernard, Anselm, Grosseteste, Albertus Magnus, Chrysostom in Latin, Vincent de Beauvais, Summa Bibliorum, Tractatus de scaccario moralis iuxta mores hominum, Exempla de animalibus. The Prior's outlook was very different from the Bishop's.