The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham (1376-1422)

After decades of relative neglect, chronicle writing at late medieval St Albans has recently benefited from a welcome revival of interest. To two splendid pieces of scholarship—the Oxford Medieval Texts edition of The St Albans Chronicle I: 1376–1394 (rev. ante, cxix (2004), 769–71) and James Clark's study of literary culture at St Albans in Walsingham's lifetime—is now added a compact one-volume English translation of a version of Walsingham's chronicle from 1376 to 1422. This new edition is intended chiefly for readers who lack Latin, most obviously undergraduates. No facing-page Latin text is provided, and the critical apparatus, while useful, is confined for the most part to essential explanatory notes and cross-references. Elegantly produced though the volume is (it should be at the price), it is definitely a ‘no frills’ job. The version of Walsingham's chronicle used here is the one published by Riley in the Rolls Series as the Historia Anglicana. This is the latest and most summary of the recensions of Walsingham's narratives. Its twin attractions are its conceptual unity and its brisk review of the period 1376–1422; its all too obvious drawback is the omission of much of the detail found in the longer recensions. In many ways it is to be regretted that the decision was not made to incorporate passages from the version published in the Rolls Series as the ‘Annales Ricardi Secundi’ and ‘Annales Henrici Quarti’; this longer text has a great deal of information relating to the battle of Shrewsbury, including a list of casualties, which is not included here. The translation differs substantially at many points from Leslie Watkiss's for the Oxford Medieval Texts edition, and not always for the better; the use of the phrase ‘middle classes’ (p. 91), for example, not justified by the Latin original, may cause raised eyebrows. Some of the claims which the editor makes in his Introduction appear a little overstated. To say that ‘it is largely to Walsingham that historians owe their knowledge of the course of key events such as the Peasants' Revolt and the Appellant crisis’ is hardly fair to the witness of the Anonimalle writer in the first instance, or the Monk of Westminster in the second. This new edition hardly serves as a substitute for the full Oxford Medieval Texts edition of Walsingham's work in prospect when the second volume from Childs and Taylor is published. In the meantime, however, it will be of considerable value in the teaching of undergraduate Special Subjects, and it will surely find a place in many university and college libraries

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