PREFACE. vii Wendover's work, we shall not be wrong in asserting that by far the most important part of his history is that which treats of his own times. In relating the events which happened in his own day, i. e. during about fifty years preceding A.D . 1235, he rises into the character of an original writer. But the most curious point connected with Wendover and his writings remains still to be told. It is well known that the monastic historians were in the habit of copying largely from one another; and no discredit has ever been thrown on them for having done so. Every monastery had its chronicler, whose duty it was to record the events of the day. When a history or chronicle of past events was copied for the use of the brethren, or to be sent out into the world, it was an obvious proceeding to bring down the narrative to the time of the writer. The form, also, into which nearly all the old chronicles were thrown, appearing more like a chronological table than a history, well favoured this practice. A new writer, moreover, did not hesitate to copy or abridge, ad libitum, the work of his predecessor : and in some cases, in consequence of this practice, the original disappeared altogether from existence. This would have been the case with Roger de Wendover, were it not for the curious fact, that the very copy of his work, which Matthew Paris, his continuator, used as a basis for his own more extended labours, is still in existence. From an inspection of this MS., and a comparison of it with other copies of Matthew Paris's own history, it appears that the latter writer embodied Roger de Wendover verbatim into his own work, altering occasionally a single sentence, or adding a few paragraphs of his own.