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All About History Books

The 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. Available at Amazon in eBook and Paperback.

Culture, General Things, Church Monuments Books, Monumental Effigies of Great Britain, Effigy in Temple Church

Effigy in Temple Church is in Monumental Effigies of Great Britain.

THIS unappropriated bgure of an ecclesiastic lies under the south wall of the Temple Church, London [Map]. It is sculptured in a hard stone, in very sharp relief. He wears the pontifical mitre, gloves, and in his left hand is the pastoral staff which is swathed by an ornamental banda. He treads on a winged dragon. At the top of the Gothic niche in which he is placed are two supporting angels.

Note a. These bandages are represented as attached to the pastoral staves of Bishops, in the MSS. and monuments of this and the following periods of the middle age. The pastoral staff and the crosier, although often confounded, are distinct appendages. The crosier, or cross, is borne by the Archbishop; the pastoral staff, or shepherd's crook, by the Bishop, &c. "Next before the chariot went two men, bare-headed, in linen garments down to the foot, girt and shoes of blue velvet, who carried, the one a crosier, the other a pastoral staff^ like a sheep-hook." Bacon, New Atlantis.