F1TZSTEPHEN, WILLIAM, autlfor of the earliest description of London extant, was of Norman extraction, but born in the metropolis. He became a monk of Canterbury, and was much connected with Archbishop Becket; he was one of his clerks, and an inmate in his family, filling different offices at different times in his train and house hold. He continued with the archbishop after his other clerks and servants had deserted him, and was also an eye-witness of his murder at Canterbury. Fitzstephen is supposed to have died in 1191. His `Description of the City of London' was part of another work, The Life and Passion of Archbishop Becket.' The description of London was probably written towards the end of the reign of Henry II. (who died in 1189); but in the carefully collated text of Fitzatephen in Mr. Thoma's edition of Stow, among the "illustrious and august princes" which "London in modern times has produced," Henricum regem tertium ' is named. This of course would make the 'Descrip tion ' to be of at least some thirty years later date than is usually assigned to its composition, and Fitzstephen to have been living at a correspondingly later period. But it is probably the error of a copyist
who has inserted the name of the third in the place of the second Henry. The description is one of the oldest and most remarkable mediaeval notices of any European capital. It was accordingly noticed by Leland and Stow, the latter of whom inserted a translation of it in his Survey of London.' Dr. Pegge iu 1772 published Fitzstephen's original text, with a more accurate translation and notes ; and Mr. Thorns, in his edition of Stow's Survey of London,' 1843, inserted a collated version of the original text with a revised translation. This is the best edition. Fitzstephen, if we may judge from his quota tions, was well versed in the Latin, and had looked into some of the Greek classics. There is a fine manuscript of Fitzstephen'a history among the Lansdowne volumes (No. 398) in the British Museum—that employed by Mr. Thorns ; and a fragment of another copy among the manuscripts of the late Francis Douce, Esq., in the Bodleian.