HARDYNG, or Harding, John, an English rhyming chronicler of the 15th century, was born in 1378. Having been admitted at the age of twelve to the household of Henry Hotspur, son of the earl of Northumberland, he was afterwards present with his patron at the battles of Homildon (1402) and Cokelawe, and saw him fall in the fatal field of Shrewsbury (1402). He next entered the service of Sir Robert Umfraville, and held for some time the post of constable of the castle of Warkworth. In the beginning of the reign of King Henry V. he was commissioned to recover as many as possible of the deeds connected with the homage of the Scottish kings to the English crown: and we find him some time after presenting the results of his search to Henry at Bois de Vincennes. In recognition of his exertions he was promised the manor of Gedyngton in Northamptonshire (worth in the money of the time from £32 to £36), but the king dying before he obtained possession he was left, as he tells us, “without reward or lyfelode any wise.” Beyond a stray notice in the Lansdowne MS. of his chronicle, to the effect that Hardyngwas in 1424 at Rome consulting and transcribing the chronicle of Trogus Pompeius, there is little trace of his proceedings till 1434, when he received a safe conduct from James of Scotland, that he might bring with him “the thynges which we spake to you at Coldingham of, for which we binde us by this letters to pay you a thousand marks of English nobles.” A contract preserved in the Exchequer bears that in 1457 he delivered to the earl of Shrewsbury the letters in which David and Robert of Scotland recognized the English supremacy, and a number of less important documents of similar tendency; and in the same year letters patent were issued granting him a pension of .£20 ...