Fordun undertook this task because his patriotic zeal was roused by the removal or destruction of many national records by Edward III of England.
[2] Thomas Innes argued that some of the history these men presented was doubtful in his Critical Essay (i, pp.
[1] Fordun's claim of an unbroken line of royal descent from Fergus I in 330 BC can be seen as a contribution to a Scottish national origin myth constructed to counter the legend of Brutus of Troy, which English monarchs deployed to claim sovereignty over the whole of Britain.
Gesta Annalia I ends when, in February 1285, King Alexander III despatches an embassy to France to find a new wife for him.
As to whether that scribe may have been Fordun himself and that he appended Gesta Annalia I to his own chronicle "is an open question", according to Professor Broun.
[4] Historical texts published before this new thinking was accepted will still refer to Fordun as the author of comments relating to the period after 1153.
These materials were used by a continuator who wrote in the middle of the 15th century, and who is identified with Walter Bower, abbot of the monastery of Inchcolm.
Bower's additions form eleven books, and bring forward the narrative to the death of King James I of Scots in 1437.
[6] In 1871 and 1872, Fordun's chronicle, in the original Latin and in an English translation, was edited by William F. Skene in The Historians of Scotland.