nts the information given
by a Kempis, a translation of it is annexed to this book. The writer was
Prior of Mount St. Agnes before his promotion to the same office in the
Superior House, and it was under his rule that a Kempis spent the early
years of his priesthood, those years in which he composed the first part
at least of the great work with which his name is associated. William
Vorniken also tells in outline the story of the conversion of the Low
Countries to Christianity by Anglo-Saxon missionaries, and for all these
reasons it has been thought that his "letter" may be of interest to
English readers.

It will be seen that the spelling of proper names is both peculiar and
variable, but the principle observed in this translation has been to
adopt the spelling given in the text, except in cases where variation is
evidently the result of a printer's error, and in those instances in
which the writer _translated_ names, _e.g_., Hertzogenbosch appears in
the Chronicle as Buscoducis, and Gerard is called sometimes Groote,
Groot, or Groet, and sometimes Magnus.

Further accounts of the lives of some of the Brothers who are mentioned
in this Chronicle may be found in a translation of another work of a
Kempis published last year, and entitled "The founders of the New
Devotion," Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.; and the history of the
other houses of the Chapter to which the Monastery of Mount St. Agnes
belonged, has been treated exhaustively by Dr. J. G. R. Acquoy, "Het
Klooster te Windesheim." Utrecht, 1880.

For the English reader the best accounts of the Brotherhood and of a
Kempis himself, are the works of Rev. S. Kettlewell and Sir F. R. Cruise.
The former, however, is quite unreliable as a translator, and draws
untenable deductions from extracts whose purport he has misunderstood;
but the latter is both accurate and interesting, being in fact the
leading English authority on the subject which he has made his own.

PREFACE.

The pious desire of certain of our Brothers hath constrained me to put
together a short chronicle concerning the beginning of our House, and the
first foundation of our Monastery on Mount St. Agnes, that the said
chronicle may be a comfort to them that are now alive, and a memorial for
them that come after. Wherefore humbly assenting to their pious desires,
I have gathered together a few things out of many, and these I have seen
with mine own eyes, or have heard from the Elders of