FITZ THEDMAR, ARNOLD London chron icler and merchant, was born in London, Aug. 9, 1201, of parents whose families had come to London from Germany. He became, as he tells us, alderman of a London ward and an active partisan in municipal politics. In the Barons' War he took the royal side against the populace and the mayor, Thomas Fitz Thomas. The popular party planned, in 1265, to try him for his life before the folk-moot, but he was saved by the news of the battle of Evesham which arrived on the very day appointed for the trial. In 127o he was one of the four citizens to whom the muniments of the city were entrusted. To this we probably owe the compilation of his chronicle, Chronica Maiorum et Vicecomitum, which begins at the year 1188 and is continued to 1274. From 1239 onwards this work is a mine of curious information. Though municipal in its outlook, it is valuable for the general history of the kingdom, owing to the important part which London played in the agitation against the misrule of Henry III. Arnold was by no means blind to the faults of Henry's government, but preferred an autocracy to the mob-rule which Simon de .Montfort countenanced in London.
The Chronica Maiorum et Vicecomitum, with the other contents of Arnold's commonplace book, were edited for the Camden Society by T. Stapleton (1846), under the title Liber de Antiquis Legibus. Our knowledge of Arnold's life comes from the Chronica and his own biographical notes. Extracts, with valuable notes, are edited in G. H. Pertz's Mon. Germaniae historica, Scriptores, vol. xxviii. See also J. M. Lappenberg's Urkundliche Geschichte des Hansischen Stahlho f es zu London (Hamburg, 1850.