is (2) GEOFFREY LE BAKER of Swinbrooke, an Oxfordshire man, and like Murimuth, a secular clerk, whose Chronicon (ed.  E.M.  Thompson), beginning in 1303 on the basis of Murimuth, has independent value after 1324, and is noteworthy for its touching details of Edward II.’s fall and death.  It ends in 1356 with an excellent account of the battle of Poitiers.  The early part of Baker’s chronicle, widely circulated as Vita et Mors Edwardi II., was previously assigned to Sir Thomas de la Moor, and was so edited by Stubbs, but Sir E.M.  Thompson showed clearly that this Oxfordshire knight was Baker’s patron and not the writer of a chronicle.  With many defects, Baker can tell a story picturesquely. (3) ROBERT OF AVESBURY, a canon lawyer, wrote De mirabilibus Gestis Edwardi III., of special importance for the war from 1339 to 1356, and containing many state documents.  It is edited by E.M.  Thompson in the same volume as Murimuth. (4) HENRY KNIGHTON, Canon of Leicester, wrote a Chronicle about 1366 which is valuable for the period 1336-1366 and includes the best contemporary account of the Black Death.  The latest edition by Lumby in the Rolls Series is not a scholarly work. (5) Eulogium Historiarum (ed.  Haydon, Rolls Series) is contemporary and valuable for 1356-1366 only.  There is a great dearth of English chronicles for the latter years of Edward III.  The signal exception is the important St. Alban’s Chronicon Angliae already mentioned.

In the age of Edward III. the Flores Historiarum were superseded by the Polychronicon (often called the “Brute” after WACE’S Brut d’Angleterre), the voluminous compilation (to 1352) of RANDOLPH HIGDEN, a monk of Chester (edited by Babington and Lumby, Rolls Series).  ROBERT OF GLOUCESTER, PETER LANGTOFT, and ROBERT MANNYNG have been referred to elsewhere.  The first is of some original value for the Barons’ Wars and Edward I., while Langtoft, a Yorkshire canon specially interested in the Scottish wars, is a contemporary for all Edward I.’s reign.  Among rhyming chronicles, French in tongue but English in origin, may be mentioned Le Siege de Carlaverock, 1300 (ed.  Nicolas, 1828), of value for heraldry, and CHANDOS HERALD’S Prince Noir (ed.  H.O.  Coxe, whose edition was pillaged by F. Michel for his more accessible version of 1883). L’Histoire de Foulques Fitz Warin (d. 1260?), a picturesque marcher hero, a prose romance of the end of the thirteenth century, can be read in Stevenson’s edition of COGGESHALL (Rolls Series), or Englished by A. Kemp-Welch (1904).