Adam of Usk

An English priest, canonist, and chronicler, born at Usk, in Monmouthshire, between 1360 and 1365; date of death unknown. He studied at Oxford, where he obtained his doctorate and became extraordinarius in canon law. He practised in the archiepiscopal court of Canterbury, 1390-97, and in 1399 accompanied the Archbishop and Bolingbroke's army on the march to Chester. After Richard's surrender Adam was rewarded with the living of Kemsing and Seal in Kent, and later with a prebend in the church of Bangor. However, he forfeited the King's favour by the boldness of his criticisms, and was banished to Rome in 1402, where in 1404 and later he was successively nominated to the sees of Hereford and St. David's, but was unable to obtain possession of either. He left a Latin chronicle of English history from 1377 to 1404, edited by Edward Maunde Thompson for the Royal Society of Literature, as "Chronicon Adæ de Usk" (London, 1876).

Thompson, in Dict. Nat. Biog., s.v.; Hurter, Nomenclator, s.v. ; Balzani, La storia di Roma nella Cronaca di Adamo da Usk, in Archiv soc. Rom. stor. patr. (1880), III, 473-488; Gairdner, in Academy (1877), XI, 4-5; Gross, Sources and Lit. of Eng. History (New York, 1900), s.v.

THOMAS WALSH