User:Chantryjean/Wavrin

Jehan (or Jean) de Waurin (or Wavrin) (Born near 1398, died near 1474) was a French soldier, chronicler and compiler. He belonged to a noble family of Artois, and witnessed the battle of Agincourt from the French side, but later fought on the Anglo-Burgundian side in the later stages of the Hundred Years' War. As a historian he put together the first chronicle intended as a complete history of England, very extensive but largely undigested and uncritical.

Life
He was illegitimate, the son of Robert de Waurin and Michielle de Croix; he was legitimated in 1437 and knighted five years later. He fought for the Burgundians at Verneuil and elsewhere, and then occupying a high position at the court of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, was sent as ambassador to Rome in 1463.

Works
Jehan compiled the Recueil des croniques et anchiennes istories de la Grant Bretaigne, a collection of the sources of English history from the earliest times to 1471. For this work he borrowed from Froissart, Monstrelet and others; but for the period between 1444 and 1471 the Recueil is original and valuable, although somewhat untrustworthy with regard to affairs in England itself. It also includes an off-topic contemporary chronicle relating to the Crusade of Varna. He gives a valuable account of the impulsive love marriage of Edward IV to Elizabeth Woodville, and the horrified reaction of the Privy Council who told the King with great frankness that " he must know she was no wife for a prince such as himself".

The text remained in manuscript. The only complete version was in the library of Louis de Gruuthuse. . Two volumes of the work owned by Edward IV are now in the Royal Collection at the British Library, From the beginning to 688, and again from 1399 to 1471, the text was edited for the Rolls Series (5 vols, London, 1864–1891), by William Hardy and E. L. C. P. Hardy, who also translated most of it into English. The section from 1325 to 1471 was edited by L. M. E. Dupont (Paris, 1858–1863).