Sir Frederick Madden (1801–73) was for thirty years Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Library. His edition of Matthew Paris' Historia Anglorum has never been superseded: as Richard Vaughan wrote in 1958, 'it is one of the finest of all those published in the Rolls Series, and it set a standard of careful accuracy and profound scholarship which has seldom been equalled since'. Matthew Paris, a monk at St Albans Abbey from 1217 to 1259, wrote and illustrated the single complete surviving manuscript of this 'English History', which covers the years 1067–1253. The editor's introduction to Volume 1 magisterially surveys the manuscript's history and earliest editions of Paris' historical works. The Latin text from 1069 to 1189 follows, and derives chiefly from the work of Paris' predecessor at St Albans, Roger of Wendover, for its coverage of the Norman and Angevin Kings of England.
