Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Roger of St. Albans

686923Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 49 — Roger of St. Albans1897Mary Bateson

ROGER of St. Albans (fl. 1450), genealogist, was born at St. Albans, and became a friar of the Carmelite house in London. He wrote a genealogy and chronological tables, tracing the descent of Henry VI from Adam, beginning ‘Considerans historie sacre prolixitatem,’ of which there are copies, both in fifteenth-century hands, at St. John's College, Oxford, Nos. xxiii. and lviii. (the last containing the biblical part only). A copy in Queen's College, Oxford (No. clxviii.), is said to be the very roll which the author presented to Henry VI (Tanner, Bibl. Brit.), but it is in a sixteenth-century hand (Coxe, Cat.) The biblical part of the same work is in the Cambridge University Library, ed. iii. 55, 56. The Cottonian copy (Otho D. 1) was destroyed by fire. A closely similar work in Jesus College, Oxford (cxiv.), begins ‘Cuilibet principi congruum,’ and carries the chronological table to 1473.

[Villiers de St. Etienne's Bibl. Carmel.; Tanner's Bibl. Brit.]

M. B.