HIGDON (or HIGDEN), RANULF (c. 1299—c. 1363)  , English chronicler, was a Benedictine monk of the monastery of St Werburg in Chester, in which he lived, it is said, for sixty-four years, and died " in a good old age," probably in 1363 . Higdon was the author of a long chronicle, one of several such works based on a plan taken from Scripture, and written for the amusement and instruction of his society . It closes the long series of general chronicles, which were soon superseded by the invention of printing . It is commonly styled the Polychronicon, from the longer title Ranulphi Castrensis, cognomine Higdon, Polychronicon (sive Historia Polycratica) ab initio mundi usque ad mortem regis Edwardi III. in septem libros dispositum . The work is divided into seven books, in humble imitation of the seven days of Genesis, and, with exception of the last book, is a summary of general history, a compilation made with considerable style and taste . It seems to have enjoyed no little popularity in the 15th century . It was the standard work on general history, and more than a hundred MSS. of it are known to exist . The Christ Church MS. says that Higdon wrote it down to the year 1342; the fine MS. at Christ's College, Cam-bridge, states that he wrote to the year 1344, after which date, with the. omission of two years, John of Malvern, a monk of Worcester, carried the history on to 1357, at which date it ends . According, however, to its latest editor, Higdon's part of the work goes no further than 1326 or 1327 at latest, after which time it was carried on by two continuators to the end . Thomas Gale, in his Hist . Brit . &c., scriptores, xv .

(Oxon., 1691), published that portion of it, in the

original Latin, which comes down to io66 . Three early translations of the Polychronicon exist . The first was made by John of Trevisa, chaplain to Lord Berkeley, in 1387, and was printed by Caxton in 1482; the second by an anonymous writer, was written between 1432 and 1450; the third, based on Trevisa's version, with the addition of an eighth book, was prepared by Caxton . These versions are specially valuable as illustrating the change of the English language during the period they cover . The Polychronicon, with the continuations and the English versions, was edited for the Rolls Series (No . 41) by Churchill Babington (vols. i. and ii.) and Joseph Rawson Lumby (1865--1886) . This edition was adversely criticized by Mandell Creighton in the Eng . Hist . Rev. for October 1888 .