EICARDUS CORINENSIS. 183 



Bertram; and it better suited the purpose he had in^iew to invent, for 

 an actual chronicler of the fourteenth century, the spurious contribution 

 to Roman history, which, with the aid of his name, obtained such uni- 

 versal and enduring credence. 



In the year 1350, when Abbot Nicholas de Lythington ruled over 

 the Benedictine Monastery of St. Peter, Westminster, Richard of 

 Cirencester, a native of the ancient city in Gloucestershire from 

 whence his name is derived, entered that Monastery, at an early age. 

 Hence, when the fame of his literary labours had given importance to 

 his name, he was sometimes referred to as the Monk of Westminster. 

 Nothing is known of his family ; though it has been inferred from the 

 education he had received, in an age when facilities for the attain- 

 ment of any high intellectual culture were beyond the reach of the 

 people at large, that his relatives must have belonged to a superior 

 rank in society. Education, however, was then exclusively in the 

 hands of the Church; and he may have been admitted to the enjoy- 

 ment of its advantages in return for his own eager desire for know- 

 ledge. His name occurs in documents of various dates, pertaining to 

 the monastery, up to the closing year of the century. He obtained in 

 1391, a licence to visit Rome, from Abbot William, of Colchester, who 

 records therein the virtues and piety of the literary monk, and his 

 regularity in fulfilling all the requirements of Benedictine rule. He 

 appears to have been an inmate of the Abbey infirmary in 1401, where 

 he died in that or the following year ; and doubtless his ashes lie in 

 the neighbouring cloisters, outside that Poet's Corner to which the 

 ambition of England's later generations of literary men turns in seeking 

 for death's rarest honours. The genuine historical work of Richard 

 of Cirencester is his " Speculum Historiale de Gestis regum Anglite." 

 His other authentic works are theological : his " Tractatus super Sym- 

 bolum Majus at Minus;" and his " Liber de Officiis Ecclesiasticis." 

 But whatever rightful merit pertained to him, has been eclipsed by the 

 spurious reputation which has attached to his name since the middle 

 of the eighteenth century, as a monk of such enlightened zeal, as to 

 have ransacked the libraries and. ecclesiastical establishments of Eng- 

 land, and explored its ancient remains, with a view to the elucidation of 

 Roman Britain. 



The fault of the Tractate, viewed simply as an ingenious invention, 

 is that it is too good for what it professes to be. To Whitaker, Roy, 

 Pinkerton, Chalmers, and all later Roman antiquaries, the idea of 



