FLORENCE OF

See also:

• WORCESTER
• WORCESTER, EARLS AND MARQUESSES OF
• WORCESTER, JOHN TIPTOFT, EARL OF (1427—1470)
• WORCESTER, WILLIAM (c. 1415-c. 1482)

WORCESTER (d. 1 x18)  , English chronicler, was a monk of Worcester, who died, as we learn from his continuator, on the 7th of July 1118 . Beyond this fact nothing is known of his life . He compiled a chronicle called Chronicon ex chronicis which begins with the creation and ends in 1117 . The basis of his work was a chronicle compiled by Marianus Scotus, an Irish recluse, who lived first at Fulda, afterwards at Mainz . Marianus, who began his work after Io69, carried it up to 1082 . Florence supplements Marianus from a lost version of the English Chronicle, and from Asser . He is always worth comparing with the extant English Chronicles; and from i Io6 he is an independent annalist, dry but accurate . Either Florence or a later editor of his work made considerable borrowings from the first four books of Eadmer's .Historia novorum . Florence's work is continued, up to 1141, by a certain John of Worcester, who wrote about 1150 . John is valuable for the latter years of Henry I. and the early years of Stephen . He is friendly to Stephen, but not an indiscriminate partisan . The first edition of these two writers is that of 1592 (by William Howard) .

The most accessible is that of B .

Thorpe (Eng . Hist . Soc., 2 vols., 1848–1849) ; but Thorpe's text of John's continuation needs revision . Thorpe gives, without explanations, the insertions of an ill-informed Gloucester monk who has obscured the accurate chronology of the original . Thorpe also prints a continuation by John Taxter (died c . 1295), a 13th-century writer and a monk of Bury St Edmunds . Florence and John of Worcester are translated by J . Stevenson in his Ckurch Historians of England, vol. ii. pt. i . (London, 1853) ; T . Forester's translation in Bohn's Antiquarian Library (London, 1854) gives the work of Taxter also . (H .

W, C .