Flores historiarum

The nineteenth-century academic and university administrator Henry Richards Luard (1825-91) was a major contributor to the Rolls Series. His edition of the Flores historiarum, published in three volumes in 1890, remains the standard work. This Latin chronicle, compiled at St Albans and Westminster, is largely a version of Matthew Paris’s Chronica majora to 1259; subsequent annals are independent and serve as a significant primary source for the last years of Henry III and the reigns of Edward I and Edward II. Following an important introduction describing the surviving manuscripts and the evolution of the chronicle, Volume 1 contains the annals from the Creation to 1066. Luard helpfully prints material derived from the Chronica majora in a smaller typeface, enabling the reader to distinguish at a glance what the compiler of the later chronicle has added. English side-notes to the text are provided throughout.