P and D are not the same. P resembles the three fragments and is more intelligible than D, but it abbreviates details of the Grendon descent at the beginning of chapter seven; it also has the recall of Prior Henry, chapters 10 to 12, the detail that the Welbeck foundation lasted five years, and an account of the possessions of Nicholas, son of William Child; it also has the Musca chapter divisions.

Hope used all four texts for his transcription, but admitted he was unable to translate all the corrupt text. Colvin corrected bits of Hope’s work and added the last few lines from fragment three. Saltman obtained his chapters five to eight from the three fragments, and the rest from P, giving the D variants in footnotes.

The author of the Chronicle was canon Thomas de Musca, who identified himself by starting the paragraphs of his chronicle with his initial letters. There is an implication here that two chapters of the Chronicle are missing, as his name was probably de Muscamp. (The Cartulary has a Thomas de Muskham or Muschamp, and shows him as alive in 1277 to 1286.)

Two branches of the de Muskham family are known: one had estates in North Nottinghamshire, one in Stanton by Dale; the latter held lands at Stanton and Kirk Hallam and were benefactors of the abbey. Nevertheless, expert opinion considers that Thomas was most likely to have belonged to the north Nottinghamshire branch because Thomas knew Peter Cook of Bathley well, and Bathley adjoins North Muskham.

Thomas joined St Mary’s Abbey as a boy, voluntarily, probably some time in the mid 1230s when William de Hagnaby was the prior. He was probably born about 1225 and received the habit from Abbot John Grauncorth; he was a contemporary of Geoffrey de Southwell and Roger de Derby. He says in the Chronicle that he heard the material from Matilda de Salicosa Mara, which must have been in the early 1240s; it seems that he wrote it up later, between 1253 and 1286. Thomas was still active in the service of the Abbey in 1272: he features in the Chartulary (f. 79) as paying, on the abbot’s behalf, ten marks in silver to William de Morteyn for ingress and warrant of lands in Stanton.  A record from May 1286 shows Thomas witnessing the current abbot’s (Abbot Lawrence) composition with the prior of Dunstable.

Expert opinion on the literary value of the Chronicle is divided: one source says that Thomas was a good and accurate historian, a bit prone to exaggeration, quite widely read or informed, judging from his references to Cicero, Ulysses, Sirens, Homer, and St Benedict; another describes him as a man of literary tastes with a clear style and a cultured mind having suffered a recent sorrow; however, a third says the Chronicle has not ‘much literary merit’; but the ‘irritating stylistic device’ of a ‘series of passages in rhyming prose’.