Pagina:Annales monastici Vol IV.djvu/43

PREFACE. XXXV of the earl of Gloucester, contradicts what had been said shortly before — that they laid waste prince Edward'fc lands, but spared those of the earl (p. 111). In pp. 138, 177, there is an error respecting the name of the mayor of London (see p. 177, note ^). In p. 295, the bishop of Rochester (Thomas of Ingoldsthorp) is called John, though Osney gives his name correctly. Thomas Wykes not unfrequently writes in the first person, and addresses his readers : for instance (p. 28), in writing of the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine with Henry of Normandy, he says, " Haec secundum historise " veritatem huic opusculo dignum inserenda judicavi ; " in p. 103, speaking of the dedication of Hayles, "taceo " de convivio," &c. ; p. 171, " prout in sequentibus " audietis," &c. On the whole, in spite of his ambitious Qj-e^t and flowery stj'le, and of the very decided view of the ^alue of history^ which his political leanings induced him to take, njcie. we must always look on Thomas Wykes as one of the most interesting and most trustworthy historians of his time. The Annals of the Priory of "Worcester, which Annals of are now for the first time printed in full, extend from ^°<=^st®'"- the Incarnation to the year 1808, with a few entries written later, v/hich bring them down to 1377. The MS. Cot- single MS. which contains them is preserved in the ^^^ ^ ^ Cotton Collection in the British Museum, Caligula, A. 10. It is a quarto, on parchment, containing 133 leaves; the whole down to 1303 was originally written in the same hand, of the beginning of the fourteenth century. There are many additions, chiefly relating to the priory, partly by the original hand, written later and with different inks, and partly by others. Many of the earlier years are blank, and there are also considerable spaces left between the later years, with an idea of their being filled in afterwards, as intimated in the preface which the author has adopted from the chronicle of another monastery (p. 355). This has caused the chronology in the earlier ' A curious example of this may I for William I. See Freeman's Nor- bc seen in the pedigree he makes out 1 man Conqnrst, ii. p. .589.