No contemporary Scottish chronicles of importance deal with the War of Independence, though fairly full Scottish versions of it exist in later books.  The earliest of these is the Bruce of JOHN BARBOUR, Archdeacon of Aberdeen.  Written in 1375 at the instigation of Robert II., Barbour’s spirited verses are inspired by patriotic rather than historic motives.  His details are minute, but impossible to control by other sources, and he is more valuable as the epic poet of Scottish liberty than as an historical authority.  He is edited by Skeat (Early English Text Soc.), Jamieson, and Innes.  The earliest prose Scottish chronicle, that of JOHN FORDUN, who died about 1384 (ed.  Skene, in Historians of Scotland), is of value for the fourteenth century.  ANDREW WYNTONN’S Originale, a metrical history written in the fifteenth century, has next to no authority until the end of this period (ed.  Laing, in Historians of Scotland), BLIND HARRY’S Wallace, written in 1488, is romance not history.

Wales is more fortunate than Scotland in preserving contemporary thirteenth century annals, of which a Latin chronicle, Annales Cambriae, extending to 1288, and a Welsh one, Brut y Tywysogion (i.e., Chronicle of the Princes), down to 1278, are edited by J. Williams in the Rolls Series, the latter with an English translation.  A more critical version of the Welsh text of the Brut is that of J. RHYS and J.G.  EVANS’ Red Book of Hergest, vol. ii. (1890).

The close relations between England and France for the whole of this period render the French chronicles by far the most important of foreign sources for English history.  They are enumerated in detail by Auguste Molinier in vols. iii. (up to 1328) and iv. (after 1328) of the first part of Les Sources de l’Histoire de France (Manuels de Bibliographie historique).  The chief French chronicles of the period 1226-1328 are collected in vols. xx.-xxiv. of the Recueil des Historiens de la France begun by Dom Bouquet.  Some of them are of special importance for English history.  For Anglo-Netherlandish relations under Edward I. see Annales Gandenses (1296-1310), “la chronique la plus remarquable de la fin du xiiie siecle,” the French Chronique Artesienne (1295-1304), and the Chronique Tournaisienne (1296-1314), all edited by F. Funck-Brentano in the already mentioned Collection de Textes.  For the Hundred Years’ War the French chroniclers are indispensable, especially for military history.  The most famous of these writers, JEAN FROISSART, has been characterised in my text (p. 419).  He can best be studied in Luce and Raynouart’s excellent edition for the Soc. de l’Histoire de France (tomes i.-viii., 1869-1888) which completes the story up to Edward III.’s death.  Luce’s careful “sommaire et commentaire critique” often affords means of checking Froissart by other sources.  The magnificent volumes of indexes of