John de Pembridge, prior of the Dublin Dominicans from about 1329 to 1333 and then again from about 1341 to 1343, composed annals for the period 1162–1347; an anonymous continuator, whose knowledge and interests show him likewise to have been a Dublin Dominican, subsequently supplied entries for 1348–70, his headline event for that first year – ‘Prima pestilencia et maxima in Hibernia’ – probably accounting for why Pembridge had stopped when he did. The work survives in two copies, the earlier of which (Trinity College, Dublin, ms 583, datable to 1370x1408), explicitly attributes it to Pembridge. Previously published only in part, buried amid a miscellany of material in volume ii of Chartularies of St Mary’s Abbey, Dublin, edited by J. T. Gilbert (London 1884), these annals are here given the independent publication in full that they merit.

The introduction runs authoritatively through what is known and may be deduced about the two authors and their sources, the nature of the two manuscripts (the second being Bodleian Library, Oxford, ms Laud Misc. 526 of the later fifteenth century) and their relationship (independent transcriptions from a lost archetype, apparently). Extensive notes (pp. 205–75) elucidate individuals and events in the text, with reference to other chronicles and annals; there are also very occasionally (for example nn. 217, 467) comments on the wording of the text itself. One slightly irksome aspect of the presentation here is that short titles are used for all bibliographical references after the first citation but there is no general bibliography: consequently, one often finds oneself searching back through the notes for the elusive first reference with the full details.

The Latin text (based on the extracts that I could compare with the five pages from TCD, ms 583 that are reproduced here in gloomy, grey-scale reproductions; it is not a volume that has been digitised) seemed to have been accurately transcribed. Only occasionally were there readings (elsewhere) that appeared highly unlikely and for which there was neither an explanatory note nor a sic – such as ‘de dormitone’ (doubtless for ‘dormitione’) at p. 136, line 8, and ‘domes’ (presumably for ‘domus’) at p. 166, line 22.

The translation (the first of this text as a whole) is literal, occasionally to a fault, generally including all the relative pronouns and qualifiers intrinsic to Latin but alien to modern English (for example, ‘Item there was a deluge of water of the Boyne … by which flood all the bridges, both stone and wood being upon the said water were utterly breached’, p. 167) or, conversely, not expanding phrases where Latin is naturally terser than English. Thus ‘nullus prohibitus facere et asportare’ is rendered: ‘no one was prohibited to exploit and carry away’ (pp. 170–1) rather than more idiomatically along the lines of: ‘no one was prohibited from doing so and carrying them away’. Rare occasions where the exact meaning of the Latin is not reflected in the translation include the rendering of ‘et in capitibus eorum corpora coxerunt et comederunt’ as ‘and in the heads of their bodies they cooked and ate’ (pp. 146-7), as opposed to ‘and to cap it all, they cooked and ate their bodies’, the initial Latin phrase doubtless chosen for its verbal resonance, almost double entendre, in this context. More weighted is the translation of ‘Tempore Johannis Pape xxii … dicte civitatis Dublinensis universitas incepit’ as ‘In the time of Pope John xxii … the Dublin citizens began the university’ (pp. 150 –1), with its clear identification of civic agency, when the Latin would more naturally be rendered by the more neutral ‘And in the time of Pope John XXII … the university of the aforementioned city of Dublin began’ (elsewhere in the text civitas unequivocally means ‘city’ not ‘citizens’). The phase ‘Rex vero mala per predictos commissa in terra quantum sibi incumbebat, sub certa forma eis gratiose remisit (p. 170) that, if it has been transmitted and transcribed correctly, presumably means something like, ‘The king indeed, following his own inclination, graciously pardoned under a fixed statute the evils committed in the land by the aforementioned men’ is hardly elucidated by the translation: ‘In fact under certain terms, the king was himself inclining that he would send back his pardon for the evil committed by the aforesaid in the land’ (p. 171).

The parts of the text that have been most exploited by historians hitherto are the lengthy entries for the years from 1315 to 1318, which provide a reasonably coherent account of Edward Bruce’s invasion of Ireland, ending with his defeat in October 1318; Pembridge appears to have had some personal knowledge of these events, and repeatedly stated that he was drawing upon oral testimony. Readers of this Journal would be struck by the number of abbeys, friaries and churches that he records as being ravaged during these years – as also by the many disasters that are reported to have befallen ecclesiastical institutions in other years. The material history of the Dublin Dominican priory is intermittently logged, as one would expect – its destruction by fire in 1304, its rebuilding (commenced that same year), its benefactors and where they were buried – and, despite the limitations of the annalistic framework, there are reflections of Dominican spiritual and intellectual interests too – not least the reports of things that smacked of heresy or the disregarding of church teaching (the act of cannibalism that featured in the extract quoted above was moralised as God’s punishment on those who had eaten meat in Lent).

Just as Pembridge had a continuator so too did the editor of this edition, in the persons of Seán Duffy and Peter Crooks who, as the preface explains, prepared the work for publication when she was seriously ill: all three, along with the publisher, deserve thanks for finally making these important annals available in an accessible and reliable form.