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. Volume 3, covering 1265 to 1326, contains the majority of these independent annals, including some which are the work of the Westminster monk Robert of Reading. This volume also includes an introduction discussing the historical value of the chronicle and an exceptionally thorough index, which is invaluable for navigating all three volumes. English side-notes to the text are provided throughout.