ab anno Christi 1162 usque ad annum 1370,’ printed for the first time by Camden in 1607, at the end of his ‘Britannia,’ and again in 1884 by J. T. Gilbert in ‘Chartularies of St. Mary's Abbey, Dublin.’ The chief, and indeed the only, authority for ascribing the authorship of these annals to Pembridge, unless we include Archbishop Ussher, who once in his ‘Ecclesiastical Antiquities’ (p. 425) refers to ‘Pembrigii Annal. Hib. apud Camden,’ is Sir James Ware (Writers of Ireland, ed. Harris, p. 83). The original manuscript used by Camden is preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (Laud 526). A note on the last page, written by the same hand as the body of the volume, states that it belonged to William Preston, viscount Gormanston, who died in 1532. It was probably given by him to Thomas Howard, second earl of Surrey, viceroy of Ireland in 1520, whose grandson, William, lord Howard of Naworth, gave it to Camden, from whom it passed to Sir George Carew, and afterwards to Archbishop Laud, who bequeathed it to the Bodleian Library. Other copies, but apparently of a later date, are preserved in Trinity College, Dublin (cf. Hist. MSS. Comm. 4th Rep. p. 597). It is supposed that Pembridge is identical with the certain ‘nameless author’ to whom Philip Flattisbury [q. v.], and through him Richard Stanihurst (Holinshed, Chronicles, ed. 1587, ii. 59), and also probably Edmund Campion (‘Address to the Reader’ prefixed to his ‘History of Ireland’), were indebted for their information regarding Ireland between 1162 and 1370.
The Latin ‘Annales Hiberniæ,’ which are attributed to James Grace of Kilkenny, and were published in an English translation by the Irish Archæological Society, under the care of Richard Butler, in 1842, from a manuscript at Trinity College, Dublin, ‘agree in substance’ with those ascribed to Pembridge. But Grace's editor, Butler, thinks that ‘the occasional difference of their contents and the constant difference in their language’ render it unlikely that the ‘Annales’ of Grace were merely abridged from those of Pembridge; and he suggests that both were probably ‘translated from some common original composed in some other language than Latin.’ However this may be, the work attributed to Pembridge is by far the more valuable.
[Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hib. s.v. Pembrigius; Ware's Writers of Ireland, ed. Harris, pp. 83, 92; Gilbert's Chartularies of St. Mary's Abbey, Dublin (Rolls Ser.); Nicolson's Historical Libraries; Grace's Annales Hiberniæ, ed. Butler (Irish Archæol. Soc.); Camden's Britannia, London, 1607.]
PEMBRIDGE or PEMBRUGGE, Sir RICHARD de (d. 1375), soldier, was a native of Herefordshire. His family had been settled at Pembridge in that county as early as the reign of Stephen, but it seems impossible to fix his parentage with certainty. Several members of the family were fairly prominent in the early part of the fourteenth century (cf. Roberts, Calendarium Genealogicum, i. 278, ii. 518–9; Palgrave, Parliamentary Writs, iv. 1271–2). Richard at his death held, among other manors, those of Clehonger, Straddel, and Monyton, in Herefordshire. He was therefore, probably, a relative of the Henry de Pembridge who held Clehonger on 5 March 1316. At the same date a Richard de Pembridge was returned as lord of Monyton and Straddel. This Richard was a follower of Roger Mortimer, and an adherent of Thomas of Lancaster in 1322, and in 1325 was summoned for service in Guyenne (ib. iv. 1272; Cal. Close Rolls, Edward II, 1318–23, p. 573). On 6 Nov. 1328 Richard de Pembridge was appointed warden of the castle of Droslan, on 18 May 1329 was on the commission of peace for Hereford, and on 7 July following was a commissioner to bring into the king's peace those concerned in the disturbances in the parts of Senghenith (Cal. Pat. Rolls, Edward III, 1327–30, pp. 335, 430, 432). On 10 Oct. 1331 he was a commissioner of oyer and terminer for the county of Hereford (ib. 1330–4, p. 201), and was knight of the shire for the county in the parliaments of September 1337 and February 1338 (Return of Members of Parliament).
The later references, at all events, probably relate to the subject of this notice. Sir Richard de Pembrugge was, however, present as a knight at the sea-fight off Sluys on 24 June 1340, and in 1346 took part in the campaign of Creçy (Froissart, i. 222–3, iii. 130; Fœdera, iii. 51). In July 1355 he served in the abortive expedition of Edward III, and, afterwards proceeding to Guyenne, was present at the battle of Poitiers on 19 Sept. 1356 (Froissart, iv. 136, cf. p. liv, v. 32). In 1359 he served with the king in his French expedition (ib. v. 201; Fœdera, iii. 445). In 1361 he had a grant of the custody of Southampton Castle, the park of Lyndhurst, the New Forest, and the hundred of Redbridge for life. On 17 June 1363 he was appointed to take an oath from the Count of St. Pol, one of the French hostages then in England (ib. iii. 706). In November he was one of the courtiers appointed to receive Peter de Lusignan, king of Cyprus, at Dover, and on
