[33] Gesta Abbatum III, lxxii.
[34] The chronicle has survived in two forms, viz., Cotton MSS., Otho Cii (British Museum), and Bodleian MSS. 316 ff, 150–1, plus Harleian MSS. 6434. It has been printed in Chronicon Angliae (Rolls Series).
[35] The Royal MSS. E. ix (B.M.)—the basis of Walsingham’s Historia Anglicana.
[36] See Maunde Thompson. Intro. to Chronicon Angliae (Rolls Series).
[37] Historia Anglicana I, p. 339.
[38] The peasant armies in 1381 are said to have taken as their cry: ‘We will have no King named John.’
[39] See Armitage Smith, John of Gaunt, pp. 169–171.
[40] This is sufficient proof—if proof were needed—of the ‘independence’ of English chroniclers, i.e., they did not merely write what they were told.
[41] Tout. Polit. Hist. of England, 1216–1377, p. 452: ‘The monks were jealously proud of their library to which almost every abbot found it expedient to contribute largely.’ In 1326 there was great indignation when Abbot Richard gave or sold nearly forty volumes to Richard de Bury, a famous lover of books, to promote the interests of the abbot at Court. The incident was not forgotten, and after de Bury’s death the books were bought back by the new abbot.
[42] E.g. Higden’s Polychronicon, viii. 278.