Richard Ashdowne

The two texts in this volume, The Second Continuation of the Chronicle of Crowland Abbey and Dominic Mancini’s Usurpation of Richard III, are the principal contemporary witnesses to the Wars of the Roses, particularly to the opaque and controversial reign of Richard III. The Crowland chronicler – an important but still unidentified bureaucrat – is intimately acquainted with the workings of the monarchy of Edward IV, whom he admires and criticizes, but he is apparently troubled by the monarchy of Richard III. He tells much (but not quite all) that he has seen on the inside. Mancini – a foreigner sent to London on some unknown mission by a minister of the French king – is the classic outsider, working the streets like a foreign correspondent to piece together an account for his overseas sponsors. He tells more than he actually knows, employing his acute powers of observation and inference to compensate for his lack of access. Together the bureaucrat and the correspondent provide the core narrative of the Wars of the Roses. This new edition brings together both texts in a single volume for the first time, each presented with a clear facing English translation and accompanied by explanatory notes. Readers will find up-to-date summaries of current interpretations and thorough discussions of historical and political background – all keyed to particular words and lines and passages, making the coverage useful and accessible to a wide audience.

A completely new guide to writing Latin from scratch, this user-friendly book includes key features such as: broad coverage - all the major grammatical constructions of the Latin language are covered, reinforcing what students have learnt from reading Latin; thorough accessible explanations - no previous experience of writing in Latin assumed; hundreds of examples - clear accurate illustrations of the constructions described, all with full translations; over six hundred practice sentences - graduated exercises leading students through three levels of difficulty from elementary to advanced level; introduction to Latin word order - a brief guide to some of the most important principles; and, longer passages for practising continuous prose composition - more challenging passages to stretch the most able students.It also includes features such as: commentaries on examples of Latin prose style - passages from great Latin prose writers focus attention on imitating real Latin usage; and, complete list of vocabulary - all the words needed for the exercises and a valuable reference for English-Latin work in general.