John Trevisa

Trevisa was born at Trevessa in the parish of St Enoder in mid-Cornwall, in Britain and was a native Cornish speaker.

He likewise made various other translations, including Bartholomaeus Anglicus' On the Properties of Things (De Proprietatibus Rerum), a medieval forerunner of the encyclopedia.

[5]: 96 Subsequently, he translated a number of books of the Bible into French for Lord Berkeley, including a version of the Book of Revelation, which his patron had written up onto the ceiling of the chapel at Berkeley Castle.

Trevisa's reputation as a writer rests principally on his translations of encyclopaedic works from Latin into English, undertaken with the support of his patron, Thomas (IV), the fifth Baron Berkeley, as a continuous programme of enlightenment for the laity.

[6] John Trevisa is the 18th most frequently cited author in the Oxford English Dictionary and the third most frequently cited source for the first evidence of a word (after Geoffrey Chaucer and the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society).