The chronicle of Florence of Worcester covers events in England from A.D. 446 through A.D. 1295. Covering both political and ecclesiastical history, the book examines in graphic detail the often brutal world of yore-times, as the kings of different regions battled each other for supremacy and fought the hordes of Viking invaders. Note this colourful excerpt detailing the death of Thomas à Becket:This year the son of the empress Matilda held his court at Bures, in Normandy . . . in much sorrow and trouble at the refusal of the archbishop of Canterbury to absolve the English bishops from the sentence of excommunication which he had pronounced on them. The king’s indignation being thus raised, four knights of his household and family . . . secretly and without the king’s knowledge hurried to the coast, for the purpose of crossing the sea to England, and, having landed there, lost no time in taking the road to Canterbury. . . . [T]he four knights, or rather the hirelings of Satan, before mentioned, whose names are William de Tracy, Hugh de Morville, Richard Briton, and Reginald Fitz-Urse, rushed furiously and ready armed into the church, at the entrance of which they cried loudly, “ Where—where is the traitor?”. . . . “ Where is the archbishop of Canterbury?” Upon which he replied, “ Here am I, the servant of Christ, whom ye seek.” One of the ill-omened knights then said to him in a rage, “ You shall die, for it must not be that you live any longer.” The archbishop answered, with as much firmness of expression as of spirit, “ I am ready to give up my life in the cause of God, and as the champion of justice and of the liberties of the church. . . . Having said this, and seeing the executioners draw their swords, he bowed his head in the act of prayer, and poured forth these his last words : “ I commend myself and the cause of the church to God and St. Mary, and the saints who are the patrons of this church, and to St. Denys.”After that, in the midst of all his anguish, the undaunted martyr, with wonderful firmness, uttered not a word nor a cry, nor suffered a groan to escape him ; nor did he raise his arm or cover himself with his robe to protect himself from his assailants, but retained immovably the attitude he had assumed, bowing his head to the stroke of their swords, until their work was done. Thereupon the knights before mentioned . . . hastened the accomplishment of their villanous deed ; and one of them, brandishing his sword and aiming a blow at the archbishop’s head, nearly struck off the arm of a certain clerk, named Edward Grim at the same time wounding in the head the Lord’s anointed ; for this clerk had thrust out his arm over the father’s head to intercept the assailant, or rather to ward off the blow. Still the righteous sufferer for justice stood like an innocent lamb. . . . And now, that not one of the accursed gang might be able to say that the bishop was free from injury by his hands, a second and third knight dealt heavy blows on the head of the intrepid champion of the faith, which they fractured, and levelled the victim of the Holy Spirit to the ground ; and a fourth, raving with an excess of barbarity, cut off his shaven crown, while he was prostrate and at the last gasp, and, shattering his skull, inserted the point of his sword, and scattered his blood and brains on the stone pavement.This text is a must-have for all serious students of English history and for all those who take pride in their Anglo-Saxon heritage; along with the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Bede's Ecclesiastical History, it is of paramount importance to the understanding of English history.This rendering contains the text of Bohn's 1854 edition, translated by Thomas Forester. This edition does not include eleven pages of genealogies that appear in the original, nor does it include the index, which is immaterial to this electronic version.