PREFACE. THE only printed version of this valuable Chronicle is that contained in the " Scriptores post Bedam" of Sir Henry Saville, London, 1596, and reprinted at Frankfort in 1601. The typographical errors and omissions in both these editions are almost innumerable ; so much so, that of necessity the more onerous duties of an Editor* devolve in a considerable degree upon the Translator of any of the authors contained in the volume. In the present Translation the text has been carefully examined throughout, and the greater portion, it is believed, of the errors corrected ; in many instances on the safest of all grounds—reference to the works of contemporary writers. Attention is called in the Notes to the more important of these * This was sensibly felt to he the case by Mr. Sharpe, in his translation of William of Malmesbury. Archbishop Nicolson says, in his " English Historical Library," p. 59, " Hoveden's History was published by Sir H. Saville ; but (as Sir H. Spelraan observes in bis Glossary, on the word Frithborga) there are many errors in that foreign Edition of this, and all our other Historians, and, therefore, he well cautions the English reader attentively to consider the spelling of such words as are of our own growth, as very frequently mistaken by printers, that are strangers to our country and language." It is but just to remark that, in the present instance, the errore in the English edition are almost as numerous as in the foreign one,