Matthew of Westminster

Matthew of Westminster, long supposed to be the author of the meritorious Flores Historiarum. Sir F. Madden considered his existence as more than doubtful, the work being merely a special abridgment of the larger work of Matthew Paris, made under that writer's supervision down to 1249; brought down at St Albans to 1259, at which year Paris's chronicle ends; thereafter continued there down to 1265; next brought down to 1325 at Westminster, in part by John Bever, alias John of London. Sir T. D. Hardy, however, thinks it based on the original writer who preceded Wendover as historian at St Albans, whom he identifies as one Walter of St Albans, precentor and librarian in the latter half of the 12th century. Copies of his chronicle would become disseminated, and that at Westminster, by its borrowings from the works of Wendover and Matthew Paris, might well have been taken for a mere abridgment of these. Luard finally demolished the hypothetical author in his edition of the Flores (Rolls series, 1890). A translation by Yonge was published in 1853.