Robert of Gloucester (historian)
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Robert of Gloucester wrote a chronicle of British, English, and Norman history sometime in the mid- or late-thirteenth century. The Chronicle survives in some 16 manuscripts, ranging in date from the early fourteenth to mid-fifteenth centuries, and was of considerable interest to contemporaries and antiquarian scholars. It was not until after the editing of the text by William Aldis Wright that its neglect - "worthless as history" and "verse without one spark of poetry" according to its editor - became widespread.
Historically, the text is of interest primarily for materials relating to the Second Barons' War, to which the author (or an author of a portion of the text) seems to have been a witness. The first part of the Chronicle translates materials from Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britanniae, narrating fabulous British history. The majority of English/Anglo-Saxon history is compiled from the works of Henry of Huntingdon and William of Malmesbury, and the post-Conquest portions are translated from numerous sources densely interwoven with original text.
