RALPH OF COGGESHALL

born , Cambridgeshire, Eng. died after 1227 English chronicler of the late 12th and early 13th centuries. Ralph was a monk of the Cistercian abbey at Coggeshall, Essex, and abbot there from 1207 until 1218, when he resigned because of ill health. The abbey already possessed its own Chronicon Anglicanum, beginning at 1066, the year of the Norman conquest of England; Ralph continued this chronicle from 1187 to 1224. He also wrote some short annals covering the whole period from 1066 to 1223 and continued from 1162 to 1178 the chronicle of Ralph Niger (believed to have been archdeacon of Gloucester). Ralph of Coggeshall's writings were published in Radulphi Nigri chronicon ab initio mundi ad A.D. 1199 (ed. Robert Anstruther, 1851) and Radulphi de Coggeshall chronicon Anglicanum (ed. Joseph Stevenson, 1875).