Author: James Gairdner

Publisher:

Published: 2015-08-04

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 9781332137039

Excerpt from The Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century: Containing: I. John Page's Poem on the Siege of Rouen; II. Lydgate's Verses on the Kings of England; III. William Gregory's Chronicle of London And it was even conceivable that the real writer and the year of his mayoralty were originally disclosed at the end of the work, which is now lost. But on the whole it seemed to me more probable that this was really Gregory's Chronicle, transcribed and continued by another hand; and on careful examination of the text I found various evidences that tended to confirm me in this opinion. In the first place - though the fact might suggest an opposite inference - it was a little remarkable that in this thirtieth year not only the name of Gregory himself as mayor but also those of the two sheriffs are entered in a manner quite unusual in this narrative. Only the surnames without the Christian name of any one of the civic officers at first stood at the head of this mayor's year, although in the case of Gregory himself the omission has been supplied in a later hand. Not a single other instance occurs in the whole Chronicle in which the Christian names of all three civic officers have been omitted; for, though there are cases in which the sheriffs are mentioned only by their surnames, it is never so with the mayor. Now it is true the omission of a man's own Christian name does not look much like a sign of authorship, for it is a thing that could hardly have been occasioned by modesty, and if owing to ignorance the argument, of course, tells conclusively the other way. But there is a third cause, slovenliness, to which it may more reasonably be attributed; and the fact that in this instance surnames only were jotted down both of the mayor and his two sheriffs agrees very well with the supposition that the labours of office had interfered with the work of continuing the Chronicle, and that the writer had left it off just at that point, with a very brief memorandum of what was done in the year of his own mayoralty. Gregory's Chronicle may then have been transcribed by another hand, which continued the work to the year 1469 or later. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.