PREFACE.
I
Object and limits of the Work. John of Fordun.
In the latter part of the fourteentli century, John of Fordun, a priest of the diocese of St. Andrews, and chaplain of the church of Aberdeen, compiled the first formal history of Scotland. He did not live to complete it. He left behind him the first five books of his history, bringing it down to the death of David the First, and the materials for the rest of his history arranged by himself, the last date in which is 1385. Between the years 1420 and 1424, Andrew of Wyntoun, a canon-regular of St. Andrews, and prior of the monastery of St. Serf's Inch, in Loch Leven, wrote his "Orygynale Cronykil" of Scotland." He does not appear to have known of Fordun's history; but not long after, in the year 1441, Walter Bower, or Bowmaker, Abbot of Inchcolm, wrote a continuation of Fordun's history, bringing it down to the year 1437, in which he not only added the history of the additional period to the death of James the First, but interpolated the five books composed by Fordun with additional
