Richard of Cirencester

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Richard of Cirencester (c. 1335 – c. 1401), historical writer, was a member of the Benedictine abbey at Westminster, and his name (Circestre) first appears on the chamberlain's list of the monks of that foundation drawn up in the year 1355.

In 1391 he obtained a licence from the abbot to go to Rome and in this the abbot gave his testimony to Richard's perfect and sincere observance of religion for upwards of thirty years. In 1400 Richard was in the infirmary of the abbey, where he died in the following year.

His only known extant work is Speculum Historiale de Gestis Regum Angliae, 447-1066. The manuscript of this is in the university library at Cambridge, and has been edited for the Rolls Series (No. 30) by Professor JEB Mayor (2 vols., London, 1863-69). It is in four books, and at the conclusion of the fourth book Richard expresses his intention of continuing his narrative from the accession of William I, and incorporating a sketch of the Conqueror's career from his birth. This design he does not, however, appear to have carried into effect.

The value of the Speculum as a contribution to our historical knowledge is but slight, for it is mainly a compilation from other writers; while even in transcribing these the compiler is guilty of great carelessness. He gives, however, numerous charters relating to Westminster Abbey, and also a very complete account of the saints whose tombs were in the abbey church, and especially of Edward the Confessor. The work was, however, largely used by historians and antiquaries, until, with the rise of a more critical spirit, its value became more accurately estimated. Besides the Speculum Richard also wrote, according to the statement of William of Woodford in his Answer to Wycliffe (Edward Brown, Fasciculus Rerum expetendarum, p. 193), a treatise De Officiis; and there was formerly in the cathedral library at Peterborough another tractate from his pen, entitled Super Symbolum. Of neither of these works, however, does any known copy now exist.

The Speculum affords the most conclusive proof of the spuriousness of another work attributed to Richard and long accepted by the learned world as his. This was the De Situ Britanniae, an elaborate forgery relating to the antiquities of Roman Britain, which first appeared at Copenhagen in 1747. It was printed with the works of Gildas and Nennius, under the editorship of Charles Julius Bertram, professor of English in the academy of Copenhagen in the middle of the 18th century, with the following special title: Richardi Corinensis monachi Westmonasteriensis de situ Britanniae libri duo. E Codicis MS. descripsit, Notisque et Indice adornavit Carolus Bertram.

This forgery was accepted as genuine by a well-known 18th century antiquarian, Dr William Stukeley, and under the sanction of his authority continued for a long time to be regarded in the same light by numerous scholars and antiquaries, including Gibbon and Lingard. On the other hand, other later critics concluded otherwise, on various grounds.

All doubt on the subject was set at rest by the masterly exposure of the whole fraud drawn up by Mayor in the preface to the above-mentioned edition of the Speculum, in which he not only demonstrated, from both external and internal evidence, the spuriousness of the whole treatise, but in a collation (extending to nearly a hundred pages) of numerous passages with corresponding passages in classical medieval authorities, also traced out the various sources whence Bertram derived the terminology and the facts which he reproduced in the De Situ.