JOURNAL 



OF THE 



ROYAL INSTITUTION OF CORNWALL. 



No. XI. APRIL. 1870. 



I. — Notice of John cle Trevisa, a Cornish mecUceval author. — A.D. 

 1342-1412. — By John Jope Eogers, Penrose. 



rnO many Cornislimen now living the name of John de Trevisa 

 -L is probably unknown ; and I should have continued in 

 ignorance of the history of this county worthy, but for an enquiry 

 made of me some time ago by our learned Clerk of the Peace, 

 Mr. Henry Sewell Stokes, who, from a connection formed by one 

 of his family with Queen's College, Oxford, where Trevisa received 

 a part of his education, felt an interest in investigating his history. 



Mr. Stokes has permitted me to make this attempt, which the 

 duties of his office do not allow him sufficient leisure to accomplish, 

 and I hope that the interest which evfery Oxford man and every 

 Cornishman should feel in the relation which they bear to the 

 literature of the Middle Ages, will serve as my excuse for intruding 

 this notice upon the pages of the Joimial. 



The materials of illustration are, however, necessarily meagre, 

 owing to the remote date at which Trevisa flourished ; and I must 

 beg that this notice may be regarded rather as a peg whereon a 

 fuller memoir may at a future time be hung, than as at all pre- 

 tending to the character of completeness. 



Indeed, since the present Master of the Kolls first began to 

 open to the public tjie vast treasures of historical details which 

 have so long been buried in the great Eecord Office, so much has 

 been added to English History, both personal and political, that 

 we may reasonably hope that further materials for the life of so 



E 



