JOHN DE TREVISA. 263 
22nd and 23rd years of the same reign, 1398-9, he is entered as 
still paying the same rent, it being stated there that this was only 
part of the amount which he had formerly paid,” (pp. 140, 141). 
These are the only entries relating to his personal history 
which I can find in the Reports of the Historical Manuscript 
Commission; and they seem to shew that Trevisa kept up his 
connection with Oxford by a partial residence there after his 
removal to Berkeley, for he dates his translation of Higden’s 
Polychronicon as having been finished April 18th, 1387, at the 
request of Thomas, lord of Berkeley, whose Chaplain he then was, 
eleven years before the last payment of rent for his chamber in 
Queen’s College. His translation of Glanville de proprietatibus 
rerum was finished, as he tells us, in 1398, “at Berkeley, on the 
6th of February.”* 
With regard to Trevisa’s scholarship, the following judgement 
is delivered by Mr. Hardy in the general introduction to Petrie’s 
Monumenta Britannica (p. 4): “This translation by Trevisa is 
generally strict and literal, but sometimes confused, from a mis- 
apprehension of the author’s meaning. Occasionally, short notices 
(to which Trevisa’s name is prefixed) are inserted by way of 
explanation. On the whole, Trevisa appears to have been shrewd 
and well informed.” And Professor Babington says of his trans. 
lation of Higden: “As one of the earliest specimens of English 
prose, (A.D. 1387), containing many rare words and curious 
expressions, the version of Trevisa will be gladly welcomed by 
Philologists, who will not be over severe upon his errors.” 
It only remains to notice the additional manuscripts to which 
allusion has been made: Caxton’s print of Trevisa’s Higden, and 
the important reprint of that work together with the original 
Latin, which is now in progress. 
And first, of Caxton. His well-known print of Trevisa’s 
translation of the Polychronicon (A.D. 1482) is by no means an 
accurate rendering of it, inasmuch as Caxton thought it desirable, 
throughout the entire work, to substitute very many words and 
phrases of his own time for those of Trevisa which were then 
falling into disuse; so that although, to the philologist, a com- 
* From the beautiful MS. in the library of Mr. Tollemache, at Hel- 
mingham Hall, Suffolk. 
