Description

Between 1863 and 1876, the Rolls Series published several works from or about the abbey of St Albans, edited by Henry Thomas Riley (1816-78) under the rubric 'Chronica monasterii S. Albani'. This two-volume edition of the 'History of England' by Thomas Walsingham (c.1340-c.1422), who supervised the scriptorium at St Albans until 1394, appeared in 1863-4. Riley followed a fifteenth-century manuscript, Arundel M.S. VII, but the appendix to Volume 2 supplies additional material from an earlier manuscript, Brit. Mus. Reg. 13. E. IX. Modern scholars argue that this work, with several others previously published separately, belongs to a larger Chronica majora overseen by Walsingham, and that its complicated manuscript tradition reveals Thomas' changing opinions of Richard II and John of Gaunt. For over a century Riley's edition was acknowledged as authoritative for the central period 1377-92. The text appears in Latin, with English side-notes.