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A Chronicle drawn up at the monastery of Barnwell near Cambridge, and which has been embodied in the "Memoriale" of Walter of Coventry, gives us a contemporary account of the period from 1201 to 1225. We possess another contemporary annalist for the same period in Roger of Wendover, the first of the published chroniclers of St. Albans, whose work extends to 1235. Though full of detail Roger is inaccurate, and he has strong royal and ecclesiastical sympathies; but his chronicle was subsequently revised in a more patriotic sense by another monk of the same abbey, Matthew Paris, and continued in the "Greater Chronicle" of the latter.

Matthew has left a parallel but shorter account of the time in his "Historia Anglorum" (from the Conquest to 1253). He is the last of the great chroniclers of his house; for the chronicles of Rishanger, his successor at St. Albans, and of the obscurer annalists who worked on at that Abbey till the Wars of the Roses are little save scant and lifeless jottings of events which become more and more local as time goes on. The annals of the abbeys of Waverley, Dunstable, and Burton, which have been published in the "Annales Monastici" of the Rolls series, add important details for the reigns of John and Henry III. Those of Melrose, Osney, and Lanercost help us in the close of the latter reign, where help is especially welcome. For the Barons' war we have besides these the royalist chronicle of Wykes, Rishanger's fragment published by the Camden Society, and a chronicle of Bartholomew de Cotton, which is contemporary from 1264 to 1298. Where the chronicles fail however the public documents of the realm become of high importance. The "Royal Letters" (1216–1272) which have been printed from the Patent Rolls by Professor Shirley (Rolls Series) throw great light on Henry's politics.

Our municipal history during this period is fully represented by that of London. For the general history of the capital the Rolls series has given us its "Liber Albus" and "Liber Custumarum," while a vivid account of its communal revolution is to be found in the "Liber de Antiquis Legibus" published by the Camden Society. A store of documents will be found in the Charter Rolls published by the Record Commission, in Brady's work on "English Boroughs," and in the "Ordinances of English Gilds," published with a remarkable preface from the pen of Dr. Brentano by the Early English Text Society. For our religious and intellectual history materials now become abundant. Grosseteste's Letters throw light on the state of the Church and its relations with Rome; those of Adam Marsh give us interesting details of Earl Simon's relation to the religious movement of his day; and Eceleston's tract on the arrival of the Friars is embodied in the "Monumenta Franciscana." For the Universities we have the collection of materials edited by Mr. Anstey under the name of "Munimenta Academica."

With the close of Henry's reign our directly historic materials become scantier and scantier. The monastic annals we have before mentioned are supplemented by the jejune entries of Trivet and Murimuth, by the "Annales Anglic et Scotias," by Rishanger's Chronicle, his "Gesta Edwardi Primi," and three fragments of his annals (all published in the Rolls Series). The portion of the so-called "Walsingham's History" which relates to this period is now attributed by Mr. Riley to Rishanger's hand. For the wars in the north and in the west we have no records from the side of the conquered. The social and physical state of Wales indeed is illustrated by the "Itinerarium" which Gerald de Barri drew up in the twelfth century, but Scotland has no contemporary chronicles for this period; the jingling rimes of Blind Harry are two hundred years later than his hero, Wallace. We possess however a copious collection of State papers in the "Rotuli Scotiæ," the "Documents and Records illustrative of the History of Scotland" which were edited by Sir F. Palgrave, as well as in Rymer's Foedera. For the history of our Parliament the most noteworthy materials have been collected by Professor Stubbs in his Select Charters, and he has added to them a short treatise called "Modus Tenendi Parliamentum," which may be taken as a fair account of its actual state and powers in the fourteenth century.