
John Rous (c. 1411/20 – 24 January 1492) was an English historian and
antiquary, most noted for his ''Historia Regum Angliae'' ("History of the Kings of England"), which describes ancient British and English rulers from
Brutus to King
Henry VII. His historical work is now considered to have "displayed no critical faculty" and to have made credulous the "imaginative embellishments (of) the myths of
Geoffrey of Monmouth
Geoffrey of Monmouth (; ; ) was a Catholic cleric from Monmouth, Wales, and one of the major figures in the development of British historiography and the popularity of tales of King Arthur. He is best known for his chronicle '' The History of ...
." However his ''Rous Roll'' and ''Warwick Roll'' are noted for their historically important illustrations, often credited to Rous's hand but not with certainty.
Origins
Rous was born at
Warwick, probably in 1420, though this is uncertain. He was the son of Geoffrey Rous of Warwick, a younger son of Thomas Rous of Brinklow, by his wife Margaret Fyncham, a daughter of Richard Fyncham, both of armigerous gentry families.
Career
He was educated at
Oxford University
The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...
. He entered holy orders, remaining in the vicinity of Warwick for most of his clerical career but making some travels to study archives for his historical research. He spent most of his career in the service of the
Yorkist dynasty. He was chaplain of the chapel of
Guy's Cliffe during the reign of King
Richard III
Richard III (2 October 1452 – 22 August 1485) was King of England from 26 June 1483 until his death in 1485. He was the last king of the Plantagenet dynasty and its cadet branch the House of York. His defeat and death at the Battle of Boswor ...
(1483-1485) and was a canon of the
Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick.
Works
Rous Roll

He was responsible for creating the "Rous Roll", written during the reign of Richard III (1483–1485), which presents a pro-Yorkist version of contemporary English history. In it he praises Richard as a "good lord" who punished "oppressors of the commons".
[Charles Ross, ''Richard III'', xxii-xxiv.] However, he reversed his position dramatically in his later ''Historia Regum Angliae'' written in the following reign under Henry VII (1485–1509), Richard's deposer, in which he portrays Richard as a freakish individual born with fully-formed teeth and shoulder-length hair after having been in his mother's womb for two years, and as an adult with a stunted and distorted body with one shoulder higher than the other. In the later work Rous also attributes the 1471 murder of
King Henry VI to Richard, and claims that he poisoned his own wife. The Rous Roll also contains details of the prophesies of the anchoress
Emma Rawghton who lived until 1436.
Warwick Roll
The "Warwick Roll" is a family chronicle of the Beauchamp family, concerned mainly with the life of
Richard Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick (1382–1439).
''Historia Regum Angliae''
In his ''Historia Regum Angliae'' ("History of the Kings of England") Rous was mainly interested in antiquarian details of social life and the development of scholarly institutions. For example in his life of King
Henry V (1413–1422) Rous describes that king's educational history and his social projects but omits to mention the
Battle of Agincourt
The Battle of Agincourt ( ; ) was an English victory in the Hundred Years' War. It took place on 25 October 1415 (Saint Crispin's Day) near Azincourt, in northern France. The unexpected victory of the vastly outnumbered English troops agains ...
, the central event in his reign, merely noting that he "campaigned in France" and was "renowned for his military skills".
[Anne Curry, ''The Battle of Agincourt: Sources and Interpretations'', Boydell Press, 2000, p.196.]
Other works
Rous appears to have written a number of other works about Warwickshire local history and histories of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. He also wrote a treatise on giants whom he supposed lived after the
Great Flood, but most of these works are now lost.
Death
He died on 24 January 1492, aged 81 according to some sources, and was buried in the
Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick, to which he bequeathed his library, directing that a special room to house it be built.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rous, John
1491 deaths
English chroniclers
English antiquarians
15th-century antiquarians
People from Warwick
Year of birth uncertain
English male non-fiction writers
Sigillographers