Robert Fabyan and the Nuremberg Chronicle

Abstract

This article identifies one of Robert Fabyan's source books, his copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle, which contains extensive notes and annotations in his hand. The volume is among the collections at Guildhall Library, London. The marginal notes are of particular interest, not only for the light they shed on Fabyan's working practice, but also because the similarities with the hands of the extant manuscripts of the latter part of the Great Chronicle of London, and The Newe Cronycles of England and Fraunce (Fabyan's Chronicle), demonstrate Fabyan's involvement in each work. This attribution has been doubted for some time. Fabyan also added interesting ownership and purchase information to the Nuremberg Chronicle.

The Guildhall Library, Robert Bale and the writing of London history

“…Its manuscript, Guildhall MS. 3313, has recently been definitely identified as in Fabyan's hand. 43 Here, under the year 1 Henry VIII, or 1507-8, Fabyan provides some satirical verses against a Genoese merchant, John Baptist de Grimaldi, who was associated with Henry VII's minister Edmund Dudley in his reputation for extortion. 44…”