Bernadette Williams is the doyenne of modern editions of Latin annals emanating from English Ireland in the Middle Ages. Over the past quarter-century with Four Courts Press, Dr Williams has produced celebrated editions of the annals of the Kilkenny Franciscan John Clyn, the Dominicans of Ireland (2007) and of Multyfarnham Friary (2012). Each demonstrates her flair for sympathetic translation, detailed historical, literary and material context and for democratising sources. Her latest edition, of the annals of the Dublin Dominican John de Pembridge and his continuator, extends her legacy. This exceptional edition features a fulsome introduction and index, facing-page transcription and translation of the original Latin, with extensive foot-and endnotes, where she weaves these annals into other contemporary histories of Ireland, English and Irish. It is a model of the format.

The annals she presents are found in two manuscripts (TCD Library MS 583; Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. MS 526). Dr Williams argues for the primacy of MS 583 as the closest chronologically to the original, being in a late-fourteenth-century hand (1). She, therefore, collates variants from Laud 526 to produce a composite text, matching the composite paper and parchment collations of both copies (14–15, 25–6). Both manuscripts are copies of a now lost text produced by a vibrant Dominican convent in Dublin, St Saviour’s. The introduction features biographical sketches of the manuscripts (materials, provenance, circulation history, layout and comparison between copies) and the authors (identification, personal interests and sources). The annals flowed from the pens of two obscure men, John de Pembridge, prior of St Saviour’s (c.1329–c.1343), and an anonymous continuator who may have been a member of the Savage family (44–6). The latter compiled entries from 1348–70 in pursuance to those drafted by Pembridge, who largely used personal experience from the time of the Bruce invasion of 1315 but who mined earlier sources for entries covering the century and a half beforehand. Their interests diverge, Pembridge being more concerned with heresy and a didactic narrative, but both demonstrate knowledge of patrons, notably their potential intended recipients, the Geraldine earls of Kildare (24–5).

The annals provide snapshots, some more detailed than others, of events during specific years. Many years are omitted, which from internal evidence seems intentional: coverage from 1180–1260 is very patchy, while the mid 1330s are ill-served (2), perhaps explained by Pembridge’s attendance at general or provincial chapter (31). Content is a mix between serious historical events, including the Crusades and the Edwardian conquests of Wales and Scotland, and vivid vignettes of everyday life in Dublin. Pembridge is particularly strong on the Bruce invasion; his is the primary, near-contemporary account of the years 1316–18 (125–51). He notes the constant ebb and flow of chief governors, parliaments, battles and internecine struggles within the magnate settler community, and the founding (and occasionally slighting) of religious houses. When discussing the fate of significant individuals, Pembridge often adopts a moralising tone. Under 1204, he gives a lengthy passage on Hugh de Lacy’s battle with John de Courcy, the latter’s victory but subsequent betrayal, King John’s endowment of Hugh as first earl of Ulster, and de Courcy’s imprisonment due to his removal of secular canons from Down and their replacement with Benedictines (70–73). Under 1325, he provides a sensational account of the infamous witchcraft trial of Alice Kyteler, being the only annalist to claim Alice had applied ointment to a wooden beam (cowltre), allowing her to fly wherever she wished (153–5). Pembridge’s battle descriptions are also notably bloodthirsty with often huge (and hugely improbable) numbers of Irish being slain and their heads being sent to Dublin, or in the case of the 1316 battle of Athenry, their armour and spoil lining the walls of the castle (135).

There is little wonder that St Saviour’s could be well informed. The priory was situated by a bridge on the north bank of the Liffey; anyone coming to or from Meath, Ulster or the north-west would pass its gates (5). Likewise, throughout its existence, it hosted important figures: Dr Williams notes the personal connections of John de Hotham, Irish exchequer official and later bishop of Ely, and the possibility that he provided information for the extended passages on the Bruce invasion (35–41). It was also through personal contacts with the archdeacon of Dublin that Pembridge heard the story of the resignation of Master Richard de Haveringes as archbishop of Dublin (s.a. 1306) due to a crushing nightmare (111). What emerges, though, particularly for the years from 1315, is an account compiled from the lived experiences of two men and their confrères; the frequency with which Pembridge speaks of ‘rumours’ and ‘news’ reaching him is telling. His is the only account of the founding of a university in Dublin in 1320 which names the founding masters (4, 151). Similarly, Pembridge provides what might be an eyewitness account of the destruction of the Dublin suburbs, including of much of his own priory, by the panicked burgesses, early in 1317, to prevent the Scots capturing the city (139–41), and of the burning of the ‘heretic’ Adam Dubh for denying the Trinity at Hoggen (later College) Green, Dublin, in 1328 (159).

But his account is also rich with detail of urban life juxtaposed with natural phenomena. In 1308, for instance, we hear of the building activities of John le Decer, mayor of Dublin, who funded a marble cistern to improve the city’s water supply, and structural works at St Saviour’s (115). Two years later, Pembridge vividly describes ‘a new kind of torment’ inflicted upon Dublin’s bakers for selling underweight bread, they being dragged through the city at the tails of horses (117). In 1331, he records a mass stranding of 500 whales at the mouth of the Dodder; on the justiciar’s authority many were slaughtered to feed the citizens (171). The annals are replete with portentous natural disasters: earthquakes in 1246 and 1298 (83, 103); storms and flooding in 1330 (167); and the big freeze of 1338, where the Liffey froze over, allowing dancing and feasting (179). In 1312, we read of an astonishing moon, which Pembridge links to the abolition of the Templar Order (121). Perhaps the most devastating and well-attested phenomena are the numerous famines that ravaged Ireland, including those of the Bruce invasion which encouraged cannibalism (85, 95, 131, 147, 171).

Despite this, some omissions are remarkable: no mention is made of the deposition and possible murder of Edward II in 1326/7, or of the proposed expedition to Ireland in 1332 of his son, Edward III. Overall, though, the annals of Pembridge and his continuator, who gives us a much briefer and coloured portrait of post-plague Ireland, and as analysed and presented in this superb edition, contain much to interest researchers across numerous disciplines and those interested in life in medieval Ireland and in its capital.