PREFACE. XXXIX it and the Tewkesbury Annals owe what they have in common to another source. Excepting for one short entry about Peter des Roches in 1205, the Vespasian MS. is not again used till 1219, and then but sparingly (the entries from it being written at the end of each year, and evidently later than the rest) until 12G1, when it .is again literally transcribed. In the later portion, the extracts from Matthew of Westminster, which its author has wi'itten at the end as a sort of supplement, are here placed under their proper years. Matthew of Westminster does not seem to have been consulted independently, but to be known only from the Win- chester MS., as when it ends, there is no more from him. The entries for the year 1282 and following which are taken from this MS. are post-dated by a year. In 1281 and 1283 there are some paragraphs in common with the chronicle of which there are some extracts in Leland's Collectanea, i. pp. 240 seqq. He considers it to have come from Pershore. From the year 1285, where the Vespasian MS. ends, there is much in common with Bartholomew Cotton ; but the Worcester chronicle may be considered original from that daje. With 1308 the oiiginal MS. ended. The names and gifts of some of the early bishops of Worcester (Appendix, pp. 5G3, 5G4) are written on spare leaves at the end, in the same hand as that in which most of the additions to the annals are written. They fill up some gaps in the succession of the bishops, as given in the annals themselves, and were probably placed there for want of room. The use that has been thus made of the Winchester Repeti- MS. has produced frequent repetitions — the annalist *'°"^' telling over again from some other source the account of some event he has already" transcribed from it. Thus in 1113 (p. 375) the account of the fire at Worcester is first given from Florence and then from the Vespasian MS. ; in 1117 and 1118 the death of Matilda queen of Henry I., in 1121 the marriage of Henry I. with Adelai,y of Louvain, in 1139 the arrival of the em])ress, are all
