It is however not improbable that he found only the first statement in the register and added the date. Both the catalogues of the Provincial Ministers state that he was buried at Hereford[1197].
65. Thomas Oterborne can hardly have written the chronicle generally ascribed to him. The chronicle itself bears no marks of having been written by a Franciscan; even the notices of the Order given in Walsingham and the Eulogium Historiarum are sometimes omitted, and usually shortened, in the so-called Otterbourne. But apart from this, the evidence of dates is fairly conclusive: the chronicle, as edited by Hearne, leaves off abruptly in the year 1420, and Hearne puts Otterbourne’s death at 1421. Pits and Wood suppose from MSS. which end in 1411 that the writer died in that year. Hearne says
‘there are not wanting MSS. which bring the history hardly beyond Edward III.’
But even assuming the existence of such MSS. it is practically impossible that they can have been the work of the Franciscan doctor. Thomas Oterborne must have lectured at Oxford before 1350. It is true that the last nine names of lectors given in the list are in a more recent hand than the earlier ones; but the names of Went and Oterborne are in the same writing, and there can be no reasonable doubt that they were contemporaries. The dates of Oterborne’s two immediate successors at Oxford are unknown[1198], and the list of lectors here comes to an end. We cannot therefore know whether there were any more lectors before Simon Tunstede. Assuming that he was the sixty-eighth lector, we may naturally conclude that the sixty-fifth read several years before him, i.e. several years before 1351 when Simon was ‘regent among the Minorites at Oxford[1199].’ It is therefore most probable that Thomas was reader not later than 1345. The historian was perhaps the Thomas Otterburn who became rector of Chingford in 1393 and was ordained priest in 1394[1200].
66. John Valeys[1201] was perhaps the Friar John Wells who took a prominent part in the disputed election to the Chancellorship in 1349, as a supporter of John Wyllyot, fellow of Merton, whose conduct seems to have been of a peculiarly riotous and lawless character[1202]. He may possibly be the John Welle, S.T.P. and Friar Minor[1203], who was robbed by his servant in London in 1377; some curious details about this affair will be found in Appendix B.
67. Richard Malevile of the London Custody (c. 1350?); this name is added in a still later hand.
CHAPTER III.
FRANCISCANS WHO STUDIED IN THE CONVENT AT OXFORD, OR HAD SOME OTHER CONNEXION WITH THE TOWN OR THE UNIVERSITY.