Sir Frederick Madden (1801–73) was for thirty years Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Library. His edition of the Latin text of Matthew Paris' Historia Anglorum has never been superseded: as Richard Vaughan wrote in 1958, 'it is one of the finest of all those published in the Rolls Series, and it set a standard of careful accuracy and profound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. Volume 2, covering the period 1189–1245, contains much unique information, including transcripts of important documents like the Magna Carta, which reveals Paris' wide range of interests and unlimited curiosity, along with his very English conservatism and suspicion of royal and papal authority.
