Richard of Cirencester (c.1335-1400) wrote his Latin history of the deeds of the English kings while he was a Benedictine monk at St Peter's, Westminster. His work is largely unoriginal and derivative of other historians, but it does contain valuable information about Westminster Abbey, as well as a full account of the saints whose tombs were to be seen in the abbey church. The fourth (and last) book concentrates solely on the reign and deeds of Edward the Confessor. Although Richard expresses an intention to continue his story in a fifth book, beginning with William the Conqueror, there is no evidence that he ever did so. This second volume, published in 1869, includes a lengthy preface by editor John Eyton Bickersteth Mayor (1825-1910) in which he discusses the work De situ Britanniae, once attributed to Richard, and establishes that it is in fact an eighteenth-century forgery.
