Robert of Gloucester (fl. c. 1260 – c. 1300) wrote a chronicle of British, English, and Norman history sometime in the mid- or late-thirteenth century. Biography Little is known about Robert himself; the key reason for attributing the Chronicle to a person of this name is a mention in the continuation of the longer version that 'roberd / þat verst þis boc made' ('Robert / that first this book made', lines 11748-49) personally witnessed an eclipse that accompanied the Battle of Evesham (1265). The appellation 'of Gloucester' was added by early modern antiquarians on the basis of the perspective taken in later sections of the longer version of the chronicle. Manuscripts and versions The chronicle survives in two versions; there are seven manuscripts of each. Up to 1135 (the death of Henry I, line 9137 in Wright's edition of the longer version), the versions are 'broadly identical', 'but they then have wholly different continuations'. The longer version contains almost 3000 more lines, is more detailed, and ends (in the least incomplete manuscript) in 1271. The shorter version only contains a further 592 lines, and ends in the 1280s. However, this shorter version adds about 800 lines earlier in the text, some of them deriving from Laȝamon's Brut. The manuscripts of the longer version are: Cotton Caligula A. xi (s. xiv in.) BL Add. MS. 19677 (s. xiv/xv) (with gaps partly filled by BL Add. 50848) Harley 201 (s. xv1, breaking off at line 9259) BL Add. 18631 (s. xv mid., abbreviated) Glasgow, Hunterian V. 3. 13 (s. xvi mid.) Balliol College, Oxford, 695.h.6: two binding fragments (s. xiv2) College of Arms lviii (completed 1448, with prose and verse insertions) The manuscripts of the shorter version are: Trinity College, Cambridge R.4.26 (c. 1400) Magdalene College, Cambridge, Pepys Library 2014 (s. xv in., defective) Bodleian Library, Digby 205 (s. xv in.) Huntington Library, HM. 126 (s. xv1) London University Library 278 (s. xv mid.) BL Sloane 2027 (s. xv mid, abbreviated) Cambridge University Library Ee.4.31 (s. xv mid) Relationship with the South English Legendary The chronicle is similar to the South English Legendary (probably first composed c. 1270-85), and between them they comprise 'two huge monuments of later thirteenth-century literary activity' in England: The South English Legendary [...] and the historical chronicle that goes under the name of Robert of Gloucester, have long been known to be intimately related. They are written