Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 19.djvu/342

 earliest of them was a monk of Worcester named John. Orderic (p. 504) says that John, a monk of Worcester, added to the work of Marianus matters belonging to the reigns of the Conqueror and his sons, William Rufus and Henry, down to his own day, and that his chronicle, which covered nearly a hundred years, was undertaken at the command of Bishop Wulfstan. He no doubt found John employed on the works of Marianus and Florence when he visited Worcester about 1136, and probably confused the continuator, and possibly transcriber, of Florence with the original author. One continuator went down to 1031, another probably to 1037, another to 1141, and one manuscript has a continuation to 1295. Florence used a version of the ‘Chronicle’ which has since been lost; it was no doubt a version written at Worcester, which is to some extent represented by the Peterborough ‘Chronicle.’ This fact invests his work with peculiar importance, indeed it is one of the most valuable of the authorities for early English history; but it is impossible to say how much of the passages which are not to be traced to extant versions of the ‘Chronicle’ or other early sources is to be set down as translation from this lost Worcester chronicle, or is to be regarded as merely the amplifications of the twelfth-century compiler. Florence is an industrious and careful writer, but either he or the work which he copied adopted views on certain subjects, such, for example, as the causes of the English defeats in the reign of Æthelred the Unready, which seem exaggerated (, Conquest of England, p. 381). He wrote a list of the English bishops and genealogies of the kings, and, according to Bale, a book ‘De Rebus sui Cœnobii.’ Nine manuscripts of Florence's ‘Chronicle’ are extant. The first in the list of Sir T. D. Hardy, MS. C. C. C. Oxford, 12th cent. fol., ends abruptly at 1140; it belonged to the church of Worcester, contains the lists and genealogies, and insertions and a continuation by a contemporary monk of Worcester. MS. Lambeth, 12th cent. fol., ends at 1131, contains some lists, formerly belonged to Abingdon, and has some special Abingdon notices. MS. Bodl. 297, fol., also 12th cent., ends at 1131 and has notices of charters of Bury St. Edmunds. MS. C. C. C. Cambr. xcii., 13th cent. fol., ends at 1131 and has a continuation to 1295; it formerly belonged to Peterborough. Florence's ‘Chronicle’ was first printed in 1592 at London, 4to, under the editorship of William Howard of Naworth, third son of Thomas, duke of Norfolk, who dedicated his work to Lord Burghley; it was reprinted faultily at Frankfort, along with the ‘Flores Historiarum,’ 1601, fol. The two manuscripts used by Howard belong to Trinity College, Dublin; his edition ends with 1141. The portion from 450 to 1066 is edited by Petrie in the ‘Monumenta Historica Britannica,’ pp. 616–44, 1848, fol., where the portions taken from Marianus are omitted in the text, and the whole work from 450 with the C. C. C. Cambr. continuation to 1295 was edited by B. Thorpe for the English Historical Society, 1849, 2 vols. 8vo. Florence's ‘Chronicle’ has been translated by T. Forester for Bohn's ‘Historical Library,’ 1847, 8vo, and by J. Stevenson in his ‘Church Historians,’ vol. ii. pt. i. 1853, 8vo.



FLORIO, JOHN (1553?–1625), author, was born about 1553, according to the inscription on his portrait issued in 1611, where he was described as fifty-eight years old. His father,, a Florentine protestant, whose family was originally settled at Sienna, fled to England shortly before Edward VI's reign from persecution in the Valteline, and was in 1550 preacher to a congregation of Italian protestants in London. Sir William Cecil and Archbishop Cranmer both patronised him, but charges of gross immorality were brought against him; he was ultimately banished from Cecil's house, where he had resided, and he temporarily severed his connection with the Italian church in London (cp., Memorials, II. i. 377–378; , Cranmer, pp. 343, 881, 883). A manuscript by him in the Cambridge University Library, ‘Regole de la Lingua Thoscana,’ shows that he was for some time a teacher of Italian in London, perhaps in the service of William Herbert, first earl of Pembroke, to whose son Henry, ‘Signore Arrigo Herbert,’ this work is dedicated (London, 21 Aug. 1553). The elder Florio also wrote, ‘Catechismo, cioè forma breve per amaestrare i fanciuli: Laquale di tutta la Christiana disciplina cõtiene la somma … Tradotta di Latino in lingua Thoscana,’ without date or place, and ‘Historia de la vita e de la morte de l'illustrissima Signora G. Graia, già Regina eletta e publicata d'Inghilterra: e de le cose accadute in quel regno dopo la morte del re Edoardo VI,’ with Italian translations of several works attributed to Lady Jane Grey, 1607. The former work was probably published in London; the latter has been conjecturally assigned to a Dutch publishing house: on its title-page the author is described as ‘Fioren-