Piers Langtoft

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Piers Langtoft, also known as Pierre de Langtoft (died c. 1307) was an English historian and chronicler who took his name from the small village of Langtoft in what was then Yorkshire (now East Riding of Yorkshire).

Piers Langtoft was an Augustinian monk at Bridlington Priory who wrote a history of England in Anglo-Norman verse, popularly known as Langtoft's Chronicle. The history narrates from the legendary founding of Britain by Brutus to the death of King Edward I of England. Langtoft translates the first part of his Chronicle from Wace's Roman de Brut, and the second part from a number of sources, including Henry of Huntingdon's Historia Anglorum. The third part is widely considered to be original to Langtoft, wherein he includes such details not recorded elsewhere as the fate of Gwenllian, daughter of Llywelyn the Last of Wales. On the whole, the Chronicle is virulently anti-Scottish, and famously contains 9 'songs', in both Anglo-Norman and Middle English, supposedly capturing the taunts between English and Scottish soldiers during the English/Scottish conflict of the late-13th and early-14th centuries.

Langtoft's Chronicle was the source of the second part of Robert Mannyng's Middle English Chronicle, completed around 1338.

[edit] References

The Chronicle of Pierre de Langtoft. ed. T. Wright. Rerum Britannicarum medii aevii scriptores. London, 1859.