Later writers went further, Sir Egerton Brydges denounced the roll as "a disgusting forgery," and E. A. Freeman dismissed it as "a transparent fiction.
Produced in London in the 1330s, it acquired its name from its first known owner Alexander Boswell, Lord Auchinleck, who discovered the manuscript in 1740 and donated it to the precursor of the National Library in 1744.
The compiler of the Battle Abbey Roll appears to have been influenced by the French sound of names, and to have included many families of later settlement, such as that of Grandson, which did not in fact come to England from Savoy until two centuries after the Conquest.
In 1866 a proposed list of the Conqueror's followers, compiled from Domesday Book and other authentic records, was set up in the church of Dives-sur-Mer in Normandy by Léopold Delisle, and is reproduced in the Duchess's work.
[1] The fact remains that only 15 of the combatants at Hastings in 1066 can be named with certainty, as given in Cokayne's The Complete Peerage,[8] while this list of Companions of William the Conqueror has been expanded to 21 individuals by subsequent scholars, most notably D. C. Douglas in 1943,[9] based on circumstantial evidence.