Richard Fox of St Albans: the life, work and connections of a fifteenth-century chronicler

Résumé

In 1448, Richard Fox, a lay man employed by St Albans Abbey, completed a substantial prose chronicle of British and Continental affairs. This article examines what is known about Fox, first by giving an overview of the Chronicle and the manuscript in which it appears and also by appraising three key sources: his will of 1454, his literary miscellany and his appearance in the annals of Saint Albans. In doing so it shows the important connections that Fox had, both to medieval book culture and to influential people including Abbot John Whethamstede and translator Eleanor Hull, which may have contributed to his Chronicle.

Bibliographical references

Sources 

Manuscript sources 

Cambridge, Cambridge University Library MS Kk.1.6

Hertford, Hertfordshire Record Office ASA/1AR Register of Wills: Stoneham.

London, National Archives, Early Chancery Proceedings, Bundle 44, no. 235.

Woburn, Woburn Abbey MS 181.

Printed sources

AMUNDESAHM, Johannes – Annales Monasterii S. Albani. (ed.) RILEY, Henry T., Vol. 1 (1870).

AMUNDESAHM, Johannes – Annales Monasterii S. Albani. (ed.) RILEY, Henry T., Vol. 2 (1871).

BARRAT, Alexandra (ed.) – A Commentary on the Penitential Psalms Translated by Dame Eleanor Hull EETS 307. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

CLARK, John Willis (ed.) – Liber Memorandum Ecclesie de Bernewelle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1907.

DAVIES, John Silvester (ed.) – An English chronicle of the reigns of Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, and Henry VI. London: Longman, Green, 1829.

Prik of Conscience – ed. James Morey Teams Middle English Texts Series (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2012).

WALSINGHAM, Thomas – Gesta Abbatum Monasterii Sancti Albani. RILEY, Henry (ed.) Vol. 3. London: Longmans, Green and co., 1906.

Studies

BRUNDAGE, James A. – The Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession: Canonists, Civilians and Courts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.

CLARK, James G. – “Wallingford, William”. In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Available at https://doi-org.liverpool.idm.oclc.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/28566

DANIELL, Christopher – Death and Burial in Medieval England 1066-1550. London: Routledge, 1997.

DUFFY, Eamon – The Stripping of the Altars. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.

JAMES, M. R. – Unpublished description by M.R. James of Cambridge, University Library, MS Kk.1.6 (Eleanor Hull, Meditation on the Seven Psalms, extracts from Augustine, Anselm, Bernard of Clairvaux and others, On the Passion, and other texts), 2021, Available at https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.68083

MATHESON, Lister M. – “The Peasants’ Revolt through Five Centuries of Rumor and Reporting: Richard Fox, John Stow, and Their Successors”. Studies in Philology 95:2  (1998), pp. 121-151.

MATHESON, Lister M. – The Prose Brut: The Development of a Middle English Chronicle. Tempe, Arizona: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1998.

Middle English Dictionary - Accessed 24 october 2022. Available at https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary

OWST, G. R. – “Everyday Life in Medieval St Albans: Some Notes on a Fifteenth Century Register of Wills”. In Transactions of the St Albans and Hertfordshire Architectural and Archaeological Society, 1926, pp. 190-206.

OWST, G. R. – “Some Books and Book-Owners of Fifteenth-Century St Albans: A Further Study of the Stoneham Register”. In Transactions of the St Albans and Hertfordshire Architectural and Archaeological Society, 1928, pp. 176-95.

DA ROLD, Orietta – Paper in Medieval England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

SAWYER, Daniel – Reading English Verse in Manuscript c.1350-1500. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.

SMITH, David (ed.) – The Heads of Religious Houses: England and Wales, III 1377-1540. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

SUMMERFIELD, Thea – “Fox, Richard”. In Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle. Vol. 1. DUNPHY, Graeme (ed.). Leiden: Brill, 2010.

WAKELIN, Daniel – “Writing the Words”. In The Production of Book in England 1350-1500. GILLESPIE, Alexandra and WAKELIN, Daniel Wakelin (eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, pp. 34-58.