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Chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker of Swinbroke
Baker was a secular clerk from Swinbroke, now Swinbrook, an Oxfordshire village two miles east of Burford. His Chronicle describes the events of the period 1303-1356: Gaveston, Bannockburn, Boroughbridge, the murder of King Edward II, the Scottish Wars, Sluys, Crécy, the Black Death, Winchelsea and Poitiers. To quote Herbert Bruce 'it possesses a vigorous and characteristic style, and its value for particular events between 1303 and 1356 has been recognised by its editor and by subsequent writers'. The book provides remarkable detail about the events it describes. Baker's text has been augmented with hundreds of notes, including extracts from other contemporary chronicles, such as the Annales Londonienses, Annales Paulini, Murimuth, Lanercost, Avesbury, Guisborough and Froissart to enrich the reader's understanding. The translation takes as its source the 'Chronicon Galfridi le Baker de Swynebroke' published in 1889, edited by Edward Maunde Thompson.
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Annales by William Camden is in Tudor Books.
[20th December 1583] 20. On the other side some Papists bookes against the Queene and Princes excommunicate drew some which had the Popes power in great reverence for their obedience, and amongst others they so distracted one Somervill (deceased), a gentilman, that in haste he undertooke a journey privily to the Queenes Court, and breathing nothing but blood against the Protestants, he furiously set upon one or two by the way with his sword drawne. Being apprehended, hee professed that hee would have killed the Queene with his owne hands. Whereupon he, and by his appeachment Edward Ardern (age 50) his wives father, a man of very ancient gentility in the County of Warwicke, Ardern's wife, their daughter Somervill, and Hall a Priest, as accessaries, were arrraigned and condemned. After three daies Somervill was found strangled in prison; Arderne, being condemned, was the next day after hanged and quartered; the woman and the Priest were spared. This woefull end of this gentleman, who was drawne in by the cunning of the Priest and cast by his own testimony, was commonly imputed to Leicesters (age 51) malice. For certaine it is that hee had incurred Leicesters heavie displeasure, and not without cause, against whom hee had rashly opposed himselfe in all hee could, had reproached him as an adulterer, and detracted him as a new upstart.
