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 specifying his authority, that Richard visited different libraries and ecclesiastical establishments in England in order to collect materials. It is at least certain that he obtained a licence to visit Rome, from his abbat, William of Colchester, in 1391; and there can be little doubt that a man of so industrious, observant, and sagacious a character profited by this journey to extend his historical and antiquarian knowledge, and to augment his collections. Tins license is given by Stukeley from the communication of Mr. Widmore, librarian of Westminster, and bears honourable testimony to the morals and piety of our author, and his regularity in performing the discipline of his order. He probably performed this journey in the interval between 1391 and 1397, for he appears to have been confined in the abbey infirmary in 1401, and died in that or the following year. His remains were doubtlessly interred in the cloisters of the abbey, but we cannot expect to find any memorial of a simple monk. We have abundant cause to regret that he was restrained in the pursuit of his favourite studies, by the authority of his abbat. In the seventh chapter of his first book he enters into a spirited justification of himself, but from the preface to his chronology he appears to have found it necessary to submit his better judgment to the will of his superior. His works are—Historia ab Hengisto ad Ann. 1348, in two parts. The first contains the period from the coming of the Saxons to the death of Harold, and is preserved in the public library of the University of Cambridge, Ff. i. 28. Whitaker, the historian of Manchester, thus speaks of it:—" The hope of meeting with discoveries as great in the Roman, British, and Saxon history as he has given us concerning the preceding period, induced me to examine the work. But my expectations were greatly disappointed. The learned scholar and the deep antiquarian I found sunk into an ignorant novice, sometimes the copier of Huntingdon, but generally the transcriber of Geoffrey. Deprived of his Roman guides, Richard showed himself as ignorant and as injudicious as any of his illiterate contemporaries about him."

The second part is probably a manuscript contained in the library of the Royal Society, p. 137, with the title of Britonum Anglorum et Saxonum Historia. In the library of