eports upon
whatever was worth recording. He had his correspondents all over Europe,
and that he sifted the evidence as it came to him we know.

Wherever there was any great event that deserved a place in the Abbey
Chronicle, some splendid pageant to describe, some battle, or treaty, or
pestilence, or flood, or famine, straightway tidings came to the
vigilant historiographer; and there was a comparison of the evidence
brought in, and some testing of witnesses, and finally the narrative was
drawn up and incorporated into Matthew's history. Again and again it
happened that a great personage who, while himself _making_ history, was
anxious that his own part in a transaction should be represented
favourably, would try and get the right side of the famous chronicler,
and would furnish him with private information. Even the King himself
thought it no scorn to communicate facts and documents to Brother
Matthew. Once when Henry saw him in a crowd on a memorable occasion, he
picked him out, and bade him take his seat by his side, and see to it
that he made a true and faithful report of what was going on; and it is
evident that the royal favour which he enjoyed through life must have
extended to furnishing him with many a story and many a detail which
none but the King could have supplied. The minute account of the attempt
to assassinate Henry in 1238; the curious State paper giving a narrative
of the dispute between the King and his nobles in 1242; the strange
scene at the tomb of William Marshall in 1245, and scores of other
incidents in the career of Bishop Grossteste and Richard of Cornwall,
were evidently 'inspired,' and can only have come from eye-witnesses of
the events recorded. Nevertheless Matthew, though he was willing enough
to receive information, and to utilise facts and documents, was by no
means the man to reproduce them exactly in the form in which they came
to him. More than once he ventured to remonstrate with the King, and
very much oftener than once he expresses his opinion of him in no
measured terms. Some of the severest censures he had marked for
omission, and some expressions he modified considerably, for we have the
good fortune to possess his chronicle both in an earlier and in a later
form; but even though the fuller and more outspoken record had perished,
we should still have had enough proof to make it clear that we have in
Matthew Paris an instance of a born historian, one who never consented
to be