ROGER DE, born of an illustrious family in Yorkshire, most probably at the town of that name, now called Howden, some time in the reign of Henry I. After he had received the first parts of education in his native country, he studied the civil and canon law, which were then become most fashionable and lucrative branches of learning. He became domestic chaplain to Henry II. who employed him to transact several ecclesiastical affairs; in which he acquitted himself with honour. But his most meritorious work was his annals of England, from A.D. 731, when Bede's ecclesiastical history ends, to A.D. 1202. This work, which is one of the most voluminous of our ancient histories, is more valuable for the sincerity with which it is written, and the great variety of facts which it contains, than for the beauty of its style, or the regularity of its arrangement.