The Pershore Flores Historiarum

Historians of the period of reform and rebellion in England between 1258 and 1265 make extensive use of a chronicle called the Flores Historiarum.1 This is not surprising, because the Flores covers the revolution of 1258, the baronial regime of 1258–60, the king’s recovery of power in 1261, the civil war of 1263, the battle of Lewes in 1264, and the rule of Simon de Montfort down to his defeat and death at the battle of Evesham in 1265. In the earliest surviving text of the Flores, which belongs to Chetham’s Library in Manchester, the account of these revolutionary years is part of a longer section of the chronicle which begins in the year 1249. From that point, until the battle of Evesham in 1265, the text is unified, and distinguished from what comes before and after, by the way in which capital letters at the beginning of sections are decorated and, in particular, by the decoration given to the letter ‘A’ in the ‘Anno’ at the beginning of each year.2 The text is also unified, and set apart, by being written, save for a short section at the start, in the same thirteenth-century hand and having very much the appearance of a fair copy.3 Historians who have studied the chronicle have nearly all assumed that this part of the Flores was copied at St Albans Abbey from the work of Matthew Paris and his continuator.4 This article will suggest something very different. Far from being exclusively a product of St Albans, major parts of the Flores in these years were actually composed at Pershore Abbey in Worcestershire. This makes the extensive local content of the chronicle, hitherto unnoticed, both more explicable and more believable. It is also very relevant to the remarkably balanced account which the chronicle provides of the Montfortian period of reform and rebellion. The content and manuscript of the chronicle, we will argue, show that this account was written while Montfort was still at the height of his power. The Flores thus stands with the great poem ‘The Song of Lewes’ as offering an absolutely contemporary picture of the Montfortian movement, before its destruction at the battle of Evesham.5 Whereas, however, the ‘Song’ gives Montfort passionate and unqualified support, the picture provided in the Flores is far more nuanced. On the one hand, the Flores is hostile to aliens and strongly supports Montfort’s cause; on the other, it also sympathises with the predicament of the king, lauds the energy and courage of the queen, admires the valour of their son, the Lord Edward, and laments the division and destruction of the civil war. In all this, it may reflect the views of the abbot of Pershore, Eleurius, a monk from Fécamp in Normandy and a sometime official of King Henry III. Not everyone at Pershore was satisfied with the resulting chronicle, and, as we will see, the account of the battle of Lewes was later doctored to give it a more Montfortian twist. The Pershore Flores thus reveals the very different ways in which contemporaries could view this revolutionary period in English history

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