(Jiistory of Robert Fabyan but few notices have reached us...)
Jiistory of Robert Fabyan but few notices have reached us. There was nothing remarkable in his descent, and he made but little figure in public life. He was, however, an alderman of London, and presents us with the rare instance of a citizen and merchant, in the fifteenth century, devoting himself to the pleasures of Learning. Frotn his Will it appears that his fathers name was lohn Fabyan ;and there is reason to believe that although he was apprenticed to a trade his family were people of substantial respectability in Essex. Stephen Fabyan, one of his ancestors, hekl considerable property atS tisted in 1404; and afterwards became possessed of the manor of lenkins, (S ee Morant sH ist, of Essex vol. ii. pp. 173, 392. A charter in the Harleian Collection, at theB ritish Museum, (marked 85 D. 25.) mentions a Robert Fabyan of Concton inS urrey, in the tenth year of Henry IV. A nother charter occurs in the same Collection (51 A. 9.) fthe third year of Henry theS ixth, in which William Grouthous of Coggeshale in Essex, grants a messuage and its appurtenances to Stephen Fabyan, Robert Fabyan, lohn Fabyan, lohnS tarlyng and others. There is also, in the Prerogative Office, theW ill of lohn Fabyan, citizen and draper, dated in 1477, in which he speaks of his brethren Stephen andR obert Fabyan. His residence appears to have been at Coggeshall, where the first mentioned Stephen, according toM orant, was a cordwainer. A nother Will occurs, also, of aT homas Fabyan early in the sixteenth century. Strype in his edition of Stowe sS urvey, 1720, vol. ii. b. iv. p. 113, mentions the will of lohn Fabyan, gent. ;of the parish of St. Clement Danes, dated March 16, 1541 :in which he bequeaths to his sister Martha four nobles yearly, out of the lands he had purchased in Ovington, co. Essex, for her life. To theL ady Mamey he bcqueatlis all his books of meditation, and his Ckroni (Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)
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He was born in 1450 in London. He belonged to an Essex family, members of which had been connected with trade in London. Robert Fabyan was the son of John Fabyan and his wife, Agnes. He had a brother, John. His nephew, John Fabyan, married Anne Waldegrave, by whom he had a daughter, Mary Fabian, wife of Sir Thomas Spert.
He was a member of the Drapers company, alderman of Farringdon Without, and served as sheriff in 1 4931 494. In 1496 he was one of those appointed to make representations to the king on the new impositions on English cloth in Flanders. Next year he was one of the aldermen employed in keeping watch at the time of the Cornish rebellion. He resigned his aldermanry in 1502, on the pretext of poverty, apparently in order to avoid the expense of mayoralty. He had, however, acquired considerable wealth with his wife Elizabeth Pake, by whom he had a numerous family. He spent his latter years on his estate of Halstedys at Theydon Garnon in Essex. He died on the 28th of February 1513. His will, dated the r rth of July 1511, was proved on the 12th of July 1513. Fabyan's Chronicle was first published by Richard Pynson in 1516 as The new chronicles of England and of France. In this edition it ends with the reign of Richard III. , and this probably represents the work as Fabyan left it, though with the omission of an autobiographical note and some religious verses, which form the Envoi of his history. The note and verses are first found in the second edition, printed by John Rastell in 1533 with continuations down to 1509. A third edition appeared in 1542, and a fourth in 1559 with additions to that year. The only modern edition is that of Sir Henry Ellis, 1811. In the note above mentioned Fabyan himself says: "and here I make an ende of the vii. parte and hole werke, the vii. day of November in the yere of our Lord Jesu Christes Incarnacion M. vc. and iiij. " This seems conclusive that in 1504 he did not contemplate any extension of his chronicles beyond 1485. The continuations printed by Rastell are certainly not Fabyan's work. But Stow in his Collections (ap. Survey of London, ii. 305-306, ed. C. L. Kingsford) states that Fabyan wrote "a Chronicle of London, England and of France, beginning at the creation and endynge in the third year of Henry VIII. , which both I have in written hand. " In his Survey of London (i. r9r, 209, ii. 55, 116) Stow several times quotes Fabyan as his authority for statements which are not to be found in the printed continuations of Rastell. Some further evidence may be found in other notes of Stow's (ap. Survey of London, ii. 280, 283, 365-366), and in the citation by Hakluyt of an unprinted work of Fabyan as the authority for his note of Cabot's voyages. That Fabyan had continued his Chronicle to 1511 may be accepted as certain, but no trace of the manuscript can now be found. It is only the seventh part of Fabyan's Chronicle, from the Norman Conquest onwards, that possesses any historical value. For his French history he followed chiefly the Compendium super Francorum gestic of Robert Gaguin, printed at Paris in 1497. For English history his best source was the old Chronicles of London, from which he borrowed also the arrangement of his work in civic form. From 1440 to 1485 he follows, as a rule with great fidelity, the original of the London Chronicle in Cotton MS. Vitellius A. XVI. (printed in Chronicles of London, 1905, pp. 153-264).
Fabyan's own merits are little more than those of an industrious compiler, who strung together the accounts of his different authorities without any critical capacity. He says expressly that his work was "gaderyd without understandynge, " and speaks of himself as "of cunnynge full destitute. " Nevertheless he deserves the praise which he has received as an early worker, and for having made public information which through Hall and Holinshed has become the common property of later historians, and has only recently been otherwise accessible. Bale alleges that the first edition was burnt by order of Cardinal Wolsey because it reflected on the wealth of the clergy; this probably refers to his version of the Lollards Bill of 1410, which Fabyan extracted from one of the London Chronicles.
(Jiistory of Robert Fabyan but few notices have reached us...)
Quotations: “The Duke of Clarence . . . a prisoner in the Tower, was secretly put to death and drowned in a barrel of Malmesey wine. ”
Fabyan married Elizabeth Pake, daughter and heir of a London draper, John Pake, by Elizabeth Stokker, by whom he had sixteen children, only six of whom, four sons, John, Robert, Thomas, and Anthony, and two daughters, Joan Haryat and Mary, were alive at his death.
