John of Wallingford

Who is John of Wallingford?

John of Wallingford was a Benedictine monk at the Abbey of St Albans, who served as the abbey's infirmarer at some time between c.1246-7 and his death in 1258.

He is now mostly known through a manuscript containing a miscellaneous collection of material, mostly written up by Wallingford from various works by his contemporary at the abbey Matthew Paris, which survives as British Library Cotton MS Julius D VII. Towards the end of the manuscript, accompanying three pages of obituaries of St. Albans monks taken from Paris, are statements indicating that he became a monk on 9 October 1231, and moved to St Albans itself between June 1246 and February 1247. It is also known that he was infirmarer, in charge of the infirmary at the abbey, until at least 1253, and that in about 1257 he moved again to Wymondham Abbey in Norfolk, another cell of St Albans. A final note, in another hand, records that he died there on 14 August 1258.