Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Gregory of Caergwent
GREGORY of Caergwent or Winchester (fl. 1270), historian, entered the monastery of St. Peter's at Gloucester, according to his own account, on 29 Oct. 1237 (M.S. Cott. Vesp. A. v. f. 201 recto), and is stated to have lived there for sixty years. He wrote the annals of his monastery from 682 to 1290, a work which has only survived in an epitome made by Lawrence Noel, and now contained in Cotton MS. Vesp. A. v. ff. 198-203. It consists almost entirely of obits and of notices relating to events which concerned his own monastery or the town of Gloucester, but even in the early part it includes matter which is not contained in the `Historia S. Petri Gloucestriæ,' printed in the Rolls Series. A Gregory of Karewent was dean of the arches in 1279 (Prynne, Hist. of K. John, &c., 1219, and in Peckham's 'Register' (Rolls Ser. iii. 1014) for the same year the livings of Tetbury, Gloucestershire, and Blockley, Worcestershire, are mentioned as vacant through the death of Gregory de Kerewent. A Philip de Kayrwent was prior of Gloucester in 1284 (Hist. S. Pet. Glouc. iii. 23), and Richard de Kayrwent was infirmarer in 1275 and 1284 (ib. i. 171, iii. 23). Gregory has also been supposed to be the author of the 'Metrical Life of St. Hugh of Lincoln '(MSS. Reg. 13, A. iv., in Brit. Mus., and Laud. 515 in Bodleian); but this is scarcely probable, since that poem appears to have been written before 1235 (Dimock, preface to Metrical Life of St. Hugh of Lincoln). The Laudiau MS., however, seems to contain a later edition, and ascribes the poem to a Gregory who had dedicated it to a bishop of Winchester, and it is therefore possible that our writer may have been the reviser of the older poem.
[Bals. iv. 346; Pits, p. 375; Tanner's Bibl. Brit. p. 343; Hardy's Cat. Brit, Hist. ii. 548, iii. 214, 341.]