Other fifteenth-century authors have been proposed, ranging from a contemporary poet to an Ecclesiast, but since even the exact dates of its composition are also debated it has been impossible for historians to definitively attribute the authorship to any known individual.
[2] The manuscript is a quarto volume written on paper in 223 leaves; since it also contains random items not connected to the Chronicle itself (for example, poems and health advice),[3] it was clearly a commonplace book.
[3] It is predominantly London-centric, particularly pertaining to major political events such as the rebellion of Jack Cade in 1450 and the resultant 'harvest of heads' on London Bridge Gate, as the chronicle calls it.
[6] The Chronicle tends towards a broader view of affairs in the next decade, where, for example, it discusses King Edward IV's debasement of the currency in 1464.
[7] On matters of smaller, more localised concern, some differences in the various surviving manuscripts exist (for instance in the members of Civic Lists).
This is generally because, although it continues after Gregory's death, it also appears to have been written in the same neat hand throughout,[1] albeit with the last three years being stylistically different from the preceding ones.
Kingsford's contemporary, James Gairdner, believed Gregory could have stopped writing at points in his career as distant as the year of his mayoralty in 1451, to his death in 1467.
[1] More recently it has been proposed that the true author was Henry Lovelich, a poet, whom Gregory would have known well, since they are both mentioned in the will of a prominent London merchant in July 1434.