Robert of Gloucester wrote a chronicle of British, English, and Norman history sometime in the mid or late thirteenth century. The Chronicle survives in some 16 manuscripts, ranging in date from the early fourteenth to mid-fifteenth centuries, and was of considerable interest to contemporaries and antiquarian scholars. It wasn't until after the editing of the text by William Aldis Wright that its neglect - "worthless as history" and "verse without one spark of poetry" according to its editor - became widespread. Historically, the text is of interest primarily for materials relating to the Barons' War, to which the author (or an author of a portion of the text) seems to have been a witness. The first part of the Chronicle translates materials from Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britanniae, narrating fabulous British history. The majority of English/Anglo-Saxon history is compiled from the works of Henry of Huntingdon and William of Malmesbury, and the post-Conquest portions are translated from numerous sources densely interwoven with original text.
ROBERT OF GLOUCESTER, English chronicler, is known only through his connexion with the work which bears his name.
The author gives his name as Robert; the dialect which he uses, and his acquaintance with local traditions, justify the supposition that he was a monk of Gloucester.
Robert's chronicle was first edited by T. Hearne (2 vols., Oxford, 1724); but this text is now superseded by that of W. Aldis Wright (2 vols., Rolls Series, 1887).
The earliest of the three chronicles mentioned above was written about 1300, and is generally known by the name of Robert of Gloucester, though it is very uncertain whether he was the original author of the whole work.
The detailed acquaintance with local affairs shown by the writer of the longer continuation proves that he lived near the city, while we have his own authority for the fact that he was within thirty miles of Evesham at the time of the battle so ably described by him.
The coincidences are certainly not striking enough to justify the assertion that the Gloucester Chronicle owed anything to the Geste des Bretons, though Aldis Wright has shown that the writer of the second recension was acquainted with Layamon’s version of Wace’s poems.
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