MATTHEW OF PARIS (d. 1259), English monk and chronicler known to us only through his voluminous writings. In spite of his surname, and of his knowledge of the French language, his attitude towards foreigners attests that he was of English birth. He may have studied at Paris in his youth, but the earliest fact which he records of himself is his admission as a monk at St Albans in the year 1217. His life was mainly spent in this religious house. In 1248, however, he was sent to Norway as the bearer of a message from Louis IX. of France to Haakon VI.; he made himself so agreeable to the Norwegian sovereign that he was invited, a little later, to superintend the reformation of the Benedictine monastery of St Benet Holme at Trondhjem. Apart from these missions, his activities were devoted to the composition of history, a pursuit for which the monks of St Albans had long been famous. Matthew edited anew the works of Abbot John de Cella and Roger of Wendover, which in their altered form constitute the first part of his most important work, the _Chronica majora_. From 1235, the point at which Wendover dropped his pen, Matthew continued the history on the plan which his predecessors had followed. He derived much of his information from the letters of important personages, which he sometimes inserts, but much more from conversation with the eye-witnesses of events. Among his informants were Earl Richard of Cornwall and Henry III. With the latter he appears to have been on terms of intimacy. The king knew that Matthew was writing a history, and showed some anxiety that it should be as exact as possible. In 1257, in the course of a week's visit to St Albans, Henry kept the chronicler beside him night and day, "and guided my pen," says Paris, "with much good will and diligence." It is therefore curious that the _Chronica majora_ should give so unfavourable an account of the king's policy. Luard supposes that Matthew never intended his work to see the light in its present form, and many passages of the autograph have against them the note _offendiculum_, which shows that the writer understood the danger which he ran. On the other hand, unexpurgated copies were made in Matthew's lifetime; though the offending passages are duly omitted or softened in his abridgment of his longer work, the _Historia Anglorum_ (written about 1253), the real sentiments of the author must have been an open secret. In any case there is no ground for the old theory that he was an official historiographer.