 The earliest editor, William Wats, argues that the texts are older than Matthew's day but were revised by him; he bases this view on stylistic elements, such as the inclusion in the first "Vita" of a quotation from Lucan ("Pharsalia" I.92–3) which also appears repeatedly in Matthew's "Chronica maiora".The text concerns two kings, King Offa of the Angles, a fourth or fifth-century ancestor figure of the Mercians, and King Offa of Mercia (r. 757-796), through whose lives the text recounts the foundation of St Alban's Abbey