RICHARD OF CIRENCESTER, an old monkish historian, was born in the beginning of the fourteenth century at Cirencester in Gloucestershire, and entered the Benedictine monastery of St Peter, Westminster, in 1350. During his leisure hours in the cloister he addressed himself to the study of British history and antiquities. To perfect his information, he is said to have explored all the different libraries in England. The chief result of his labour and investigation began to appear in the form of a treatise, De Situ Britannie. The body of the matter was compiled from Cæsar and other classical authors. The Itinerary he professed to have taken chiefly from certain fragments left by a Roman general. The work was proceeding successfully when the author met with an interruption. His ecclesiastical superior the abbot found fault with him for wasting his consecrated time upon such secular pursuits. He indeed vindicated his conduct in an enlightened and spirited manner; but he felt himself obliged to bow to authority, and to bring his book to a premature close. The death of Richard is supposed to have taken place about 1401. The above-mentioned work was discovered in 1747, and published in 1757 by Charles Julius Bertram, professor of English in the Royal Marine Academy at Copenhagen. An English translation appeared in 1848, forming, along with five other old English chronicles, a volume of Bohn's "Antiquarian Library." Richard of Cirencester is also the author of the following unpublished works:—Historia ab Hengisto ad Ann. 1348, the former part of which is in the public library of the university of Cambridge; and Tractatus super Symbolum Majus et Minus; and Liber de Officiis Ecclesiasticis, both in the Peterborough library.