FLORENCE OF WORCESTER (d. 1118), English chron icler, was a monk of Worcester, who died, as we learn from his continuator, on July 7, '1'8. Beyond this fact nothing is known of his life. He compiled a chronicle called Chronicon ex chronicis which begins with the creation and ends in 1117. The basis of his work was a chronicle compiled by Marianus Scotus, an Irish recluse, who lived first at Fulda, afterwards at Mainz. Marianus, who began his work after 1069, carried it up to 1082. Florence supplements Marianus from a lost version of the English Chronicle, and from Asser. He is always worth comparing with the extant English Chronicles; and from 11o6 he is an independent annalist, dry but accurate. Either Florence or a later editor of his work made considerable borrowings from the first four books of Eadmer's Historia novorum. Florence's work is continued up to 1141 by a certain John of Worcester, who wrote about 115o. John is valuable for the latter years of Henry I. and the early years of Stephen. He is friendly to Stephen, but not an indis criminate partisan.
The first edition of these two writers is that of 1592 (by William Howard) . The most accessible is that of B. Thorpe (Eng. Hist. Soc., 2 vols., ; but Thorpe's text of John's continuation needs revi sion. Thorpe gives, without explanations, the insertions of an ill-in formed Gloucester monk who has obscured the accurate chronology of the original. Thorpe also prints a continuation by John Taxter (died c. 1295), a 13th-century writer and a monk of Bury St. Edmunds. Florence and John of Worcester are translated by J. Stevenson in his Church Historians of England, vol. ii. pt. i. (1853) ; T. Forester's translation in Bohn's Antiquarian Library (London, 1854) gives the work of Taxter also.