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lishment in the kingdom; and in or before the year
1395 he was elected prior of St Serf's Inch, in Loch-
leven.1 Of this he himself gives an account in his
Cronyttil:�
" Of my defautte it is my name
Be baptisme, Andrew of Wyntowne,
Of Sanct Andrews, a chanoune
Regulare: but, noucht forthi
Of thaim al the lest worthy.
Bot of thair grace and thair favoure
I wes, but2 meryt, made prioure
Of the ynch within Lochlevyne."
Innes mentions " several authentic acts or public
instruments of Wyntown, as prior from 1395 till 1413,
in Extracts from the Register of the Priory of St.
Andrews" which points out part of the period of his
priorship; and as the death of Robert Duke of Al-
bany is noticed in the Cronykil, Wyntown must
have survived till beyond 1420, the year in which
the duke died. Supposing, as is probable, that he
brought down his narrative of events to the latest
period of his life, we may conjecture his death to
have occurred not long after the above date.
It was at the request of "Schyr Jhone of the
Wemys," ancestor of the Earls of Wemyss,3 that
Wyntown undertook his Chronicle;4 which although
the first historical record of Scotland in our own
language, was suffered to lie neglected for several
centuries. In 1795 Mr. David Macpherson laid be-
fore the public an admirable edition of that part of
it which more particularly relates to Scotland, accom-
panied with a series of valuable annotations. Like
most other old chroniclers, Wyntown in his history
goes as far back as the creation, and takes a general
view of the world before entering upon the proper
business of his undertaking. He treats of angels, of
the generations of Cain and Seth, of the primeval
race of giants, of the confusion of tongues, of the
situation of India, Egypt, Africa, and Europe, and of
other equally recondite subjects, before he adventures
upon the history of Scotland; so that five of the nine
books into which his Chronicle is divided are taken
up with matter which, however edifying and instruc-
tive at the time, is of no service to the modern his-
torical inquirer. Mr. Macpherson, therefore, in his
edition has suppressed all the extraneous and foreign
appendages, only preserving the metrical contents
of the chapters, by which the reader may know the
nature of what is withheld; and taking care that
nothing which relates to the British islands, whether
true or fabulous, is overlooked. It is not likely that
any future editor of Wyntown will adopt a different
plan; so that those parts which Mr. Macpherson has
omitted may be considered as having commenced
the undisturbed sleep of oblivion.
Though Wyntown was contemporary with Fordun,
and even survived him, it is certain that he never
saw Fordun's work; so that he has an equal claim
with that writer to the title of an original historian
of Scotland; and his Cronykil has the advantage over
Fordun's history, both in that it is brought down to
a later period, and is written in the language of the
country�
"Tyl ilke mannys wnderstandyng."
"In Wyntown's Chronicle" says Mr. Macpherson,
1  St. Serf is the name of a small island in that beautiful loch,
not far from the island which contains the castle of Lochleven,
celebrated as the prison-house of the Queen of Scots.
2 But, without.
3 A younger son of this family settled in the Venetian terri-
tories about 1600; and a copy of Wyntown's work is in the
possession of his descendants.
4 Book i. Prologue, 1. 54.
"the historian may find what, for want of more
ancient records which have long ago perished, we
must now consider as the original accounts of many
transactions, and also many events related from his
own knowledge or the reports of eye-witnesses. His
faithful adherence to his authorities appears from
comparing his accounts with unquestionable vouchers,
such as the Federa Angli�, and the existing remains
of the 'Register of the Priory of St. Andrews,' that
venerable monument of ancient Scottish history and
antiquities, generally coeval with the facts recorded
in it, whence he has given large extracts almost liter-
ally translated." His character as a historian is
in a great measure common to the other historical
writers of his age, who generally admitted into their
works the absurdity of tradition along with authentic
narrative, and often without any mark of discrimi-
nation, esteeming it a sufficient standard of historic
fidelity to narrate nothing but what they found written
by others before them. Indeed, it may be considered
fortunate that they adopted this method of compila-
tion, for through it we are presented with many genu-
ine transcripts from ancient authorities, of which their
extracts are the only existing remains. In Wyntown's
work, for example, we have nearly three hundred
lines of Barbour in a more genuine state than in any
manuscript of Barbour's own work; and we have also
preserved a little elegiac song on the death of Alex-
ander III., which must be nearly ninety years older
than Barbour's work. Of Barbour and other writers
Wyntown speaks in a generous and respectful man-
ner,5 and the same liberality of sentiment is displayed
by him regarding the enemies of his country, whose
gallantry he takes frequent occasion to praise. Con-
sidering the paucity of books in Scotland at the
time, Wyntown's learning and resources were by no
means contemptible. He quotes, among the ancient
authors, Aristotle, Galen, Palaephatus, Josephus,
Cicero, Livy, Justin, Solinus, and Valerius Maximus,
and also mentions Homer, Virgil, Horace, Ovid,
Statius, Boethius, Dionysius, Cato, Dares, Phrygius,
Origen, Augustin, Jerome, &c.
Wyntown's Chronicle being in rhyme, he ranks
among the poets of Scotland; and he is in point of
time the third of the few early ones whose works we
possess, Thomas the Rhymer and Barbour being
his only extant predecessors. His work is entirely
composed of couplets, and these generally of eight
syllables, though lines even of ten and others of six
syllables frequently occur. "Perhaps," says Mr.
Ellis, "the noblest modern versifier who should
undertake to enumerate in metre the years of our
Lord in only one century, would feel some respect
for the ingenuity with which Wyntown has contrived
to vary his rhymes throughout such a formidable
chronological series as he ventured to encounter.
His genius is certainly inferior to that of his prede-
cessor Barbour; but at least his versification is easy,
his language pure, and his style often animated."
There are various manuscripts of Wyntown's work,
more or less perfect, still extant. The one in the
British Museum is the oldest and the best; and after
it rank in antiquity and correctness the manuscripts
belonging to the Cotton Library and to the Advo-
cates' Library at Edinburgh.
8 He even avows his incompetency to write equal to Bar-
bour, as in the following lines:�
"The Stewards originale
The Archedekyne has tretyd hal
In metre fayre mare -wertivsly
Than I can thynk be my study" &c.
Cronykil b. viii. c. 7, v. 143,