Between 1863 and 1876, the Rolls Series published several works from or about the abbey of St Albans, edited by Henry Thomas Riley (1816–78) under the rubric 'Chronica monasterii S. Albani'. This two-volume edition of the 'History of England' by Thomas Walsingham (c.1340–c.1422), who supervised the scriptorium at St Albans until 1394, appeared in 1863–4. Riley followed a fifteenth-century manuscript, Arundel M.S. VII, but the appendix to Volume 2 supplies additional material from an earlier manuscript, Brit. Mus. Reg. 13. E. IX. Modern scholars argue that this work, with several others previously published separately, belongs to a larger Chronica majora overseen by Walsingham, and that its complicated manuscript tradition reveals Thomas' changing opinions of Richard II and John of Gaunt. For over a century Riley's edition was acknowledged as authoritative for the central period 1377–92. The text appears in Latin, with English side-notes.
