The author

We know very little about Geoffrey le Baker's personal circumstances. He himself tells us that he was from Swinbrook in Oxfordshire, and that he was a clericus living at Oseney in July 1347; this information comes from a note at the end of a very short chronicle which he wrote in that year for Sir Thomas de la More. Otherwise, there is a record of him as Geoffrey Pachon from Swinbrook in 1326, described as a chaplain, when he is pardoned for an unspecified offence by Edward II on condition that he helps the king to repel the invasion of queen Isabella, together with a long list of other criminals. If we accept this identification, he reappears as Geoffrey Pachoun, parson of the church of Wishford near Salisbury, who had been convicted as a felon by the Oxford justices, in 1332. This entry could in turn be connected with a complaint by the prior of Stogursey in July 1332 that Robert Fitzpayn and his supporters, including three clerics and Geoffrey le Baker, attacked his property, felling trees and carrying off cattle. Despite Geoffrey's presence at Oseney in 1347, his name does not appear in the records of Oseney Abbey, though he does insert two minor pieces of information about this house in his short chronicle, which would imply a good knowledge of its history. There is also a local item of Oxfordshire news under the year 1350, about the discovery of a curious two headed monster at Chipping Norton.