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Chronicle of a Bourgeois of Valenciennes
Récits d’un bourgeois de Valenciennes aka The Chronicle of a Bourgeois of Valenciennes is a vivid 14th-century vernacular chronicle written by an anonymous urban chronicler from Valenciennes in the County of Hainaut. It survives in a manuscript that describes local and regional history from about 1253 to 1366, blending chronology, narrative episodes, and eyewitness-style accounts of political, military, and social events in medieval France, Flanders, and the Low Countries. The work begins with a chronological framework of events affecting Valenciennes and its region under rulers such as King Philip VI of France and the shifting allegiances of local nobility. It includes accounts of conflicts, sieges, diplomatic manoeuvres, and the impact of broader struggles like the Hundred Years’ War on urban life in Hainaut. Written from the perspective of a burgher (bourgeois) rather than a monastery or royal court, the chronicle offers a rare lay viewpoint on high politics and warfare, reflecting how merchants, townspeople, and civic institutions experienced the turbulence of the 13th and 14th centuries. Its narrative style combines straightforward reporting of events with moral and civic observations, making it a valuable source for readers interested in medieval urban society, regional politics, and the lived experience of war and governance in pre-modern Europe.
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Archaeologia Volume 5 Section 2 is in Archaeologia Volume 5.
In an adjacent field, without: Mr. Morgan's garden, is the hollow circular spot, known at Caerleon by the name of Arthur's Round Table which is generally supposed to be a Roman work, and to have served by way of amphitheatre. In this case it must be considered as one of the Castrensian kind, like that; at Richborough castle, not far from Sandwich in Kent, and many others. Stukeleyt mentions one at Silchester, and another three miles from Redruth in Cornwall. Probably the round entrenchment between Perith and Shap in Westmoreland, described by Salmonu, and compared: by him to a cockpit, or wrestling ring, is of the same kind. It asfo goes:by the name of Arthur's Round Tables as does that on the castle-wall at Winchester. Such temporary amphitheatres were probably the only ones used by the Romans in the distant provinces; since their more pompous edifices of this kind seem to have been confined to Italy, France, Spain, the coals of the Adriatic, and the neighbouring province of Helvetia, &c. Lipfius has given us a lift of such of these superb buildings, of which there are any remains, in his learned book De amphitheatris extra Romam.
Note t. Iter Curiosum, I. p. 156.
Note u. Survey, p. 637. Pennant, Tour 1769, p. 256. pi. 19. Stukeley II. 43. pi. 8a, Gibson's Camden Brit.