Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 43.djvu/216

 and many portraits. Three likenesses of Paris are known; one early in the volume containing his ‘Historia Anglorum,’ as Sir F. Madden calls it, Reg. MS. 14, C. 7, represents him as adoring the Virgin and Child, and is reproduced in Dr. Luard's edition of the ‘Chronica Majora,’ vol. i. Another, later in the same volume, at the end of the last part of the ‘Chronica Majora,’ where the author's work breaks off in 1259, shows him in bed, dying, with his head supported by his left arm, which rests on an open book inscribed ‘Liber Cronicorum Mathei Parisiensis,’ and above ‘Hic obit Matheus Parisiensis.’ It is reproduced in the same edition of the ‘Chronica Majora,’ vol. iv. The third is in Cotton. MS. Nero, D. 7, and is the work of a certain Alan Straylere, circ. 1400 (, Introduction, p. xliii, and p. 464). The engraved portrait in Wats's edition of the ‘Historia Major’ or ‘Chronica Majora,’ 1640, is founded on the first of these paintings. Matthew Paris gave many ornaments to St. Albans, among them two silver cups, a gold monile, with a fragment of the true cross, a rich cloth given to him by Queen Eleanor, a fringe that he received from King Hacon, and a silk cloth from Henry III, and many books, among which were his ‘Chronica Majora,’ now belonging to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and the volume Reg. MS. 14, C. 7, containing his ‘Historia Minor’ or ‘Historia Anglorum,’ and other matters.

Of the works of Matthew Paris, the greatest (1), the ‘Chronica Majora,’ is a composite chronicle, containing the St. Albans compilation to the end of 1188, Roger de Wendover's chronicle, 1189–1235, both revised by Paris, and his own work from 1235 to 1259. All manuscripts under the name of Matthew of Westminster or Roger de Wendover being left out of consideration here, the ‘Chronica Majora’ may, as far as 1253, be said to exist in two volumes in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MSS. 26 and 16, the former containing the St. Albans compilation (Chronica Majora, ii. 336 n.), the latter the rest of the work from 1189 down to the end of 1253. Of these volumes there are two copies, Cotton. MS. Nero, D. 5, ending with 1250, and Harl. MS. 1620, ending with some independent matter in 1189. The literary history of the book has been worked out by Dr. Luard in his prefaces to the seven volumes of his edition of it. Paris had the St. Albans compilation copied out and corrected with his own hand, making many additions to it; eighty-seven of these additions being noted by Luard as inserted between 1066 and 1188, besides the additional passages at the end of each year, which he discovered for the most part to have been taken from the ‘Southwark Annals,’ Cotton. MS. Faustina, A. 8. Paris also subjected Roger de Wendover's independent chronicle to a similar revision, correcting and otherwise editing the copy before him to 1213 in the margin and in the text, though he sometimes abstains from correcting an error in his predecessor's work, but adds his own version of the matter. With the year 1213, when in C.C.C.C. MS. 16 a new St. Albans handwriting, though not that of Paris, begins, he ceased merely to correct and interpolate on a previously written page, and from this point incorporates his own matter in the text, making such important alterations and additions as ‘to give a new character to the history’ (Chronica Majora, vol. ii. Preface, p. x, and p. 567 n., vol. vii. Preface, p. xii). He took up Wendover's work where it ends abruptly in 1235, and continued it without a break. His independent work is in three parts, the first of which extends to the end of 1250, where he intended to leave off (see above). Having completed this, he caused the whole book of the ‘Chronica’ so far to be copied in Cotton. MS. D. 5, with a few alterations and additions, writing, probably with his own hand, some marginal notes. He also revised the original draft of his work in C.C.C.C. MS. 16, softening many severe sentences either by omission or alterations in the text, words being erased carefully, and in some cases others written in their place. For example, a simple erasure occurs under the year 1245; Matthew having at first described Boniface, archbishop-elect of Canterbury, and two other bishops as ‘domino Papæ specialiores et Anglis suspectiores,’ erased the last three words (ib. iv. 403); while his description of Boniface under 1241 may be referred to as an illustration of the alterations that he made in order to soften a severe remark (ib. p. 104). His original words are preserved in the copy Cotton. MS. Nero, D. 5, made before the revision. Paris further marked his work for abridgment with marginal notes against passages that referred to foreign affairs, and might be omitted in a history of England, or that were likely to be offensive to the king, writing, for example, opposite the charges against Hubert de Burgh the note ‘Vacat quia offendiculum’ (ib. iii. 618), and ‘Impertinens Anglis usque huc,’ followed by a reference mark, against a long passage relating to the Tartars, and the invasion of the Holy Land by the Kharismians (ib. iv. 298–311). He continued his great chronicle, and wrote the second part of it, extending from 1251 to the end of 1253, where he evidently again made a pause, for at that