Thomas Walsingham

Thomas Walsingham (died c. 1422) was an English chronicler, to whom we owe much of our knowledge of the reigns of Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V, and the careers of John Wycliff and Wat Tyler.

Walsingham was a Benedictine monk who spent most of his life at St. Albans Abbey, where he was superintendent of the copying-room (scriptorarius). His works include Chronicon Angliæ, controversially attacking John of Gaunt, and Ypodigma Neustriæ (Chronicle of Normandy), justifying Henry V’s invasion, and dedicated to him in 1419.

He was no relation to Sir Francis Walsingham, spymaster to Queen Elizabeth I.

He became a monk at St Albans, where he appears to have passed the whole of his monastic life, excepting a period from 1394 to 1396 during which he was prior of Wymondham Abbey, Norfolk, England, another Benedictine house. At St Albans he was in charge of the scriptorium, or writing room, and he died about 1422.

Walsingham is stated by Bale and Pits to have been a native of Norfolk. This is probably an inference from his name, as Walsingham is a village in that county. From an early period he was connected with the abbey of St Albans Abbey at St Albans, Hertfordshire, and was doubtless at school there. An inconclusive passage in his Historia Anglicana has been taken as evidence that he was educated at Oxford. The abbey of St. Albans, however, maintained particularly close relations with Oxford, sending its novices to be trained at St. Alban Hall and its monks at Gloucester College. It is probable, therefore, that Walsingham was at the university.

...
Wikipedia