Chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker of Swinbroke
Baker was a secular clerk from Swinbroke, now Swinbrook, an Oxfordshire village two miles east of Burford. His Chronicle describes the events of the period 1303-1356: Gaveston, Bannockburn, Boroughbridge, the murder of King Edward II, the Scottish Wars, Sluys, Crécy, the Black Death, Winchelsea and Poitiers. To quote Herbert Bruce 'it possesses a vigorous and characteristic style, and its value for particular events between 1303 and 1356 has been recognised by its editor and by subsequent writers'. The book provides remarkable detail about the events it describes. Baker's text has been augmented with hundreds of notes, including extracts from other contemporary chronicles, such as the Annales Londonienses, Annales Paulini, Murimuth, Lanercost, Avesbury, Guisborough and Froissart to enrich the reader's understanding. The translation takes as its source the 'Chronicon Galfridi le Baker de Swynebroke' published in 1889, edited by Edward Maunde Thompson.
Available at Amazon in eBook and Paperback format.
Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland by Francis Groome is in Victorian Books.
One of them was a favourite retreat of the author of The Seasons, who was a frequent inmate of Ancrum Manse, and is known as 'Thomson's Cave,' his name being carved on its roof, it is said, by his own hand. Remains of a Caledonian stone circle existed within this century at Harestanes, near Mounteviot, but all its stones save one have been removed; and a Roman road skirts Ancrum Moor, 1¾ mile NW of the village, which moor was the scene of one of the last great conflicts in the international war between Scotland and England. An English army, 5000 strong, under Sir Ralph Evera and Sir Bryan Latoun, in 1544, overran and wasted the Scottish Border northward to Melrose. Returning with their booty, they were overtaken at Ancrum Moor and utterly routed by a Scottish force under the Earl of Angus and Scott of Buccleuch. Lilliard, a maid of Teviotdale, made desperate by the loss of her lover, fought in the Scottish ranks till she fell beneath many wounds; and she has bequeathed to part of the battlefield the name of Lilliard's Edge. A monument, now broken and defaced, stands on the spot, and bore this legend, —
'Fair Maiden Lilliard lies under this stane;
Little was her stature, but great was her fame;
Upon the English loons she laid mony thumps,
And when her legs were cuttid off, she fought upon her stumps.