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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.
Langtoft's Chronicle is in Georgian Books.
[23rd August 1305] We have heard news, among companions,
Of William Wallace, the master of thieves;
Sir John de Meneteith followed him at his heels,
Took him in hiding by the side of his concubine;
Carried him to London in shackles and bonds,
Where he was judged on the following conditions:
In the first place to the gallows he was drawn for treasons,
Hanged for robberies and slaughters;
And because he had annihilated by burnings,
Towns and churches and monasteries,
He is taken down from the gallows, his belly opened,
His heart and his bowels burnt to cinders,
And his head cut off for such treasons as follow:
Because he had by his assumptions of authority
Maintained the war, given protections,
Seized into his subjection the lordship
Of another's kingdom by his usurpations.
His body was cut into four parts;
Each one hangs by itself, in memory of his name,
In place of his banner these are his gonfanons.1
Note 1. 'gonfanons' i.e. 'pennants'. The poem is suggesting his body parts are his banners.
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A Fool's Bolt soon shott at Stonehenge.
From another MS. lent me by the same Friend, Mr. James West, of Balliol Coll. written in the same hand, and by the same anonymous Author.
Wander witt of Wiltshire, rambling to Rome to gaze at Antiquities, and there skrewing himself into the company of Antiquaries, they entreated him to illustrate unto them, that famous Monument in his Country, called Stonehenge. His Answer was, that he had never seen or ever heard of, it. Whereupon, they kicked him out of doors, and bad him goe home, ans ee Stone henge; and I wish all such Æsopicall Cocks, as slight these admired Stones, and other our domestick Monuments (by which they might be admonished, to eschew some evil, or doe some good) and' scrape for barley Cornes of vanity out of forreigne dunghills, might be handled, or rather footed, as he was. If I had been in his place, I should have been apt to have told them) that, surely, it was some heathonish temple demolished by the immediate hand of God, as an intollerable abomination unto him: yet reserving so much of it standing, as may deeclare what the whole was, and how, and why, so destroyed, that, as we are to remember Lot's wife, turned into a Piller of Salt, for looking back-ward towards Idolatrous Sodome, so we should remember, that these forlorne Pillers of Stone are left to be our remembrancers, dissuading us from looking back in ‘our licarts upon any thing of Idolatry, and persuading us, in imitation of Moses, and the Prophets, so to describe, and deride, it in it's uglie Coullers, that none of us, or our posterity, may returne, with Doggs, to such Vomit, or Sows to wallowing in such mite. And since all, that have (as yet) written on this Subject, have contradicted and: confuted each other, and never any hath as yet revealed this mysterie of iniquity to this purpose, and that Pedlers and Tinckers, vamping on London way near. it, may, and do, freely spend their mouthes on it, I know nothing to the contraty, but that also may shoot my bolt a little farther into i, however:I will adventure, were it: for nothing else, but to recreate my self somtimes, after other studies, and to provoke my friends, which imiportun'd mie to it, to shoote their acute shafts: at it ‘also, ‘hoping, that one or other of us, by art or accident, shall hit the mark. - My bolt is soon shott in this short conjecture: that Stondge was an old: British triumphall tropical temple, erected to Anaraith, their Godess of victory, in a blondy field there, wone, by illustrious Stanengs and his Cangick Giants, from K. Divitiacus and his Belgæ. In which temple the Captives and spoiles were sacrifised to the said Idol Aniraith. So that these 12 particulers hereof are to be demonstrated:
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