Flores Historiaum

According to wikipedia, The Flores Historiarum (Flowers of History) is the name of two different (though related) Latin chronicles by medieval English historians that were created in the 13th century, associated originally with the Abbey of St Albans. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature (1907-1921 v.1) reports the following about first edition of The Flores Historiarum which was compiled by Roger of Wendover:

The actual nucleus of the early part of Roger’s Flowers of History is supposed to have been the compilation of John de Cella, who was abbot of St. Albans from 1195 to 1214. John’s work extended down to the year 1188, and was revised and continued by Roger down to 1235, the year before his death. Roger claims in his preface to have selected “from the books of catholic writers worthy of credit, just as flowers of various colours are gathered from various fields.” Hence he called his work Flores Historiarum.

Encyclopædia Britannica (1911) reports the following about Roger of Wendover and extant manuscripts of the first part of The Flores Historiarum:

ROGER OF WENDOVER (d. 1236), English chronicler, was probably a native of Wendover in Buckinghamshire. At some uncertain date he became a monk of St Albans; afterwards he was appointed prior of the cell of Belvoir, but he forfeited this dignity in the early years of Henry III., having been found guilty of wasting the endowments. His latter years were passed at St Albans, where he died on the 6th of May 1236. He is the first of the important chroniclers who worked in the scriptorium of this house. His great work, the Flores Historiarum, begins at the creation and extends to 1235. It is of original value from 1202. Some critics have supposed, but on inconclusive evidence, that Wendover copied, up to 1189, an earlier compilation, the work of John de Cella, the twenty-first abbot of St Albans (1195–1214). Wendover’s work is known to us through one 13th-century manuscript in the Bodleian library (Douce MS. 207), a mutilated 14th-century copy in the British Museum (Cotton MS. Otho B. v.), and the edition prepared by Matthew Paris which forms the first part of that writer’s Chronica Majora (ed. H. R. Luard, Rolls Series, 7 vols.). The best edition of Wendover is that of H. O. Coxe (4 vols., London, 1841-42); there is another (from 1154) in the Rolls Series by H. G. Hewlett (3 vols., 1886–89). Wendover is a copious but inaccurate writer, less prejudiced but also less graphic than Matthew Paris. Where he is the sole authority for an event, he is to be used with caution. See Luard’s prefaces to vols. i., ii., iii. and vii. of the Chronica Majora; and the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores, Band xxviix. pp. 3–20.

The second edition of The Flores Historiarum was a continuation of the first edition. There may have been multiple authors of the continuation including Matthew Paris. Giles (1849 v. 1:vii) writes that it appears that Matthew Paris made an almost verbatim copy of the first edition of The Flores Historiarum only occasionally altering a single sentence, or adding a few paragraphs of his own.