BOWER, WALTER (1385-1449)

This article appears in Volume V04, Page 343 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: BOS-BRI

BOWER, WALTER (1385-1449) , Scottish chronicler, was born about 1385 at Haddington. He was abbot of Inchcolm (in the Firth of Forth) from 1418, was one of the commissioners for the collection of the

ransom

RANSOM (from Lat. redemptio, through Fr. rancon)

of James I., king of Scots, in 1423 and 1424, and in 1433 one of the embassy to Paris on the business of the

marriage

MARRIAGE

of the king's daughter to the dauphin. He played an important part at the council of Perth (1432) in the defence of Scottish rights. During his closing years he was engaged on his

work

WORK

the Scotichronicon, on which his reputation now chiefly rests. This

work

WORK

, undertaken in 1440 by desire of a neighbour, Sir David Stewart of Rosyth, was a continuation of the Chronica Gentis Scotorum of Fordun. The completed work, in its

original

ORIGINAL

form, consisted of sixteen books, of which the first five and a portion of the

sixth

SIXTH

(to 1163) are Fordun'sor mainly his, for Bower added to them at places. In the later books, down to the reign of Robert I. (1371), he was aided by Fordun's Gesta Annalia, but from that point to the close the work is

original

ORIGINAL

and of contemporary importance, especially for James I., with whose death it ends. The task was finished in 1447. In the two remaining years of his life he was engaged on a reduction or " abridgment " of this work, which is known as the Book of Cupar, and is preserved in the

Advocates

ADVOCATES, FACULTY OF

' library, Edinburgh (MS. 35. I. 7). Other abridgments, not by Bower, were made about the same time, one about 1450 (perhaps by Patrick Russell, a Carthusian of Perth) preserved in the

Advocates

ADVOCATES, FACULTY OF

' library (MS. 35. 6. 7) and another in 1461 by an unknown writer, also preserved in the same collection (MS. 35. 5. 2). Copies of the full text of the Scotichronicon, by different scribes, are extant. There are two in the British Museum, in The Black Book of Paisley, and in Harl. MS. 712; one in the Advocates' library, from which Walter Goodall printed his edition (Edin., 1759), and one in the library of Corpus Christi,

Cambridge

.
Goodall's is the only complete modern edition of Bower's text. See also W. F. Skene's edition of Fordun in the

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

of Historians of

Scotland

(1871). Personal references are to be found in the Exchequer Rolls of

Scotland

, iii. and iv. The best

recent

RECENT

account is that by T. A. Archer in the Diet. of Nat. Biog.

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