John of Wallingford (d. 1258) facts for kids

Drawing of John of Wallingford by Matthew Paris, ca. 1255. (British Library Cotton MS Julius D VII, f.42v)

John of Wallingford's "Description of the Elephant", apparently copied from Matthew Paris's drawing of the elephant given to Henry III. (British Library Cotton MS Julius D VII, f.114r)

John of Wallingford (died 1258) was a Benedictine monk at the Abbey of St Albans, who served as the abbey's infirmarer at some time between c.1246-7 and his death in 1258. He is now mostly known through a manuscript containing a miscellaneous collection of material, mostly written up by Wallingford from various works by his contemporary at the abbey Matthew Paris, which survives as British Library Cotton MS Julius D VII. This manuscript includes the so-called Chronica Joannis Wallingford or Chronicle of John of Wallingford.

Towards the end of the manuscript, accompanying three pages of obituaries of St. Albans monks taken from Paris, are statements indicating that he became a monk on 9 October 1231 (presumably at Wallingford Priory which was a cell of St Albans), and moved to St Albans itself between June 1246 and February 1247. It is also known that he was infirmarer, in charge of the infirmary at the abbey, until at least 1253, and that in about 1257 he moved again to Wymondham Abbey in Norfolk, another cell of St Albans. A final note, in another hand, records that he died there on 14 August 1258.

Amongst a miscellany of items, including an outline chronicle for a history of Britain, and a tide table for predicting "flod at London brigge" (i.e. the time of high tide at London Bridge), that is credited with being the earliest extant such tide table in Europe, other items in the manuscript include a drawing of Wallingford by Paris, a draft for a map of Britain by Paris to which Wallingford has added some further place-names, and a copy by Wallingford of Matthew Paris's picture of King Henry III's elephant.

The so-called Chronica Joannis Wallingford

Folios 10r to 33v of the manuscript are written in a different hand, and contain a chronicle of English history from the legendary Brutus to Cnut (d. 1035) – though more of it is in fact devoted to hagiographies of English saints than to history. The work shares many sources with Roger of Wendover's Flores Historiarum, presumably compiled from the same library at the same time; but its paraphrasing is different, and sometimes it is much more extensive in its extracts. In the past this anonymous chronicle has sometimes been attributed to the above John of Wallingford who was a contemporary of Matthew Paris, including in its first printed edition, and sometimes to his namesake, the John of Wallingford who was abbot of St Albans from 1195 to 1214. However it is now believed to have been written by an unknown monk at some point after Abbot John's time, but before John the infirmarer obtained the manuscript.

Richard Vaughan produced a critical edition of the work.

A heavily abridged extract from the chronicle had previously been printed by Thomas Gale in 1691 in his Historiæ Britannicæ Saxonicæ Anglo-Danicæ Scriptores XV. An English translation by Joseph Stevenson was published in 1854.