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This chapter discusses the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that covers the history of England from the time of the earliest English invaders down to ad 1155. It notes that the work begins even earlier, with the record of Caesar's invasion of Britain in 60 bc, followed (as in Versions A and B for instance) by a continuous numbering of years by ad reckoning from the birth of Christ (ad I) onwards. It further notes that Stenton summed up the supreme importance of this source thus: ‘From the age of the Saxon migration to the Anarchy of Stephen's reign, the various recensions of the Chronicle continue to offer information which may be rejected but cannot be ignored. The criticism of the Chronicle is the basis of Early English Historiography.’ It states that there are seven recensions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, labelled A to G by Plummer and Earle.

This chapter discusses the literary plan adopted by King Alfred's biographer which has been recognized by scholars as far apart in their views as Wright and Stevenson to consist of blocks of biographical prose gathered onto a framework provided by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. It notes that the Life taken as a whole — consisting of a Latin translation of the Alfredian section of the Chronicle; interpolations and glosses added to the Chronicle; and the biographical passages on Alfred — is agreed to have been put together, however crudely, by one compiler. It further notes that of the first seventy-two chapters in the Life of Alfred, which cover the period from Alfred's supposed birth in 849 up to and including 885 — or the first thirty-six years of his life — only twelve contain biographical narrative of the same genre as those which appear from chapter 73 onwards.

This chapter examines in detail the recording of the Chronicle compiled within Wessex, which has had a formative influence on the narrative of Alfred's reign throughout the decade from 881 to 891. It also observes that the twelve years from 881 to 892 contain Frankish reporting for all years except 888 and 889. It notes that these years are covered by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for Frankish events because the death of the emperor Charles the Fat, which took place in January 888, is entered in the Chronicle under 887, while a reference to civil wars in Italy, which had been connected with a succession struggles within the empire, was entered in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under 887 yet it actually refers to the battle of Brescia in the autumn of 888 and the battle of Trebbia which took place in the spring of 889.

This chapter considers how the Anglo-Saxon chronicles (ninth to twelfth century) depict three waves of migration: the coming of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, the Viking invasions, and the Norman Conquest. By focusing on the form and language of the texts, the chapter shows that the chronicles were not only preoccupied by migration as one of its central themes but were themselves deeply shaped by the literary cultures brought to England by immigrants, whether they came as conquerors or as learned clerical advisors. The result is a set of texts whose account of the origins of the English reveals the wide European horizons of their literary culture.

This chapter surveys interest in the vernacular Anglo-Saxon chronicles from the sixteenth century to the twentieth, together with their study and editing. It sees these endeavours as both scholarly and antiquarian, but they also as linked to periods of definition of, and concern with, England and Englishness from the Reformation through to nineteenth-century medievalism. It discusses successive editions and their presentation of these chronicles, and argues that editions have not been neutral but have played a role in constructing these texts as a single national chronicle. It stresses the importance of the most recent editions, which present each chronicle separately.

The second major myth, the “myth of the unbroken tradition”, is the focus of Chapter 3 and it is closely associated with the establishment of an ancient pedigree for English. The unbroken tradition myth, considered discursively, is the myth of an unbroken discourse archive. The argument in this chapter is that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, rather than representing continuity, display clear signs of discursive transformation up till the accession of Henry II to the throne of England in 1154. The transformation, particularly after the reign of Æthelred II, is revealed in a marked increase in inscribed orality, which reaches its peak in the Second Continuation of the Peterborough Chronicle. The final break in the discourse archive of Anglo-Saxon England is marked by a temporary halt in vernacular chronicle writing and a political break in the process of law-making, in both of which a significant shift occurs from written English to Latin and Anglo-Norman French.

Chapter four argues for a significant pattern of political alliance in the Welsh borderlands in the later Anglo-Saxon period, beginning in the tenth century, where half a dozen raids carried out jointly by Mercian earls and northern Welsh rulers have gone unnoticed because they are recorded largely in Welsh sources. This pattern of political cohesion within the Welsh borderlands continues in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle throughout the eleventh century, both before and after the Norman arrival in 1066. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle represents the Welsh borderlands as a region which acted as an independent political force throughout the eleventh century. Chapter four also argues that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle represents the military culture of the Welsh borderlands in a distinctive way which aligns its inhabitants with outlaws.

This chapter focuses on the manuscript and last stages of Chronicle D, the relationship of work on D to 1066 and the problem of where and for whom this chronicle’s last stages were written. It covers the complex palaeography and layout of Chronicle D, and the difficulties caused by its loss of several folios and their later replacement. The chapter argues that the core of D is pre-1066, in large part probably produced in the 1040s, but that much copying and some rewriting occurred post-1066. Key English survivors are central to Chronicle D—descendants of the pre-1066 dynasty, Edgar the ætheling and his sister Margaret, who married the Scottish king; Ealdred, last Anglo-Saxon archbishop of York; bishops of Durham in retirement at Peterborough; and Earl Waltheof. No single home is suggested for Chronicle D’s last stages whose writing may reflect the diaspora of these pre-1066 survivors.

This chapter considers the range of work on Anglo-Saxon vernacular chronicles at Canterbury after the Norman Conquest, including additions to Chronicles A and B, and the making of the bilingual Latin and Old English Chronicle F. The scribe of Chronicle F and his monastic house, Christ Church, connected to Canterbury’s archbishops, emerge as major players. The range, which included contact with Chronicle D, the use of Chronicle /E, and the making of a brief Chronicle I, suggests a conscious engagement with the tradition of vernacular chronicle writing and an awareness of what united it. The voice of F is more overtly monastic, with Christ Church history incorporated into the story. The bilingual F, including new Latin annals, some on Norman history, in both F and /E, addressed a new mixed audience and the new situation the Conquest had created. Additions on popes and their relations with archbishops address wider European changes.

This chapter considers the chronicles and annals, surviving and lost, dating from the mid to later tenth century and represented now especially by Chronicles B and C. It provides a detailed examination of Chronicle B and its manuscript. Lost chronicles lying behind B are considered: BC and perhaps /BC. These are dated to the middle decades of the tenth century. These chronicling developments are seen as linked to the politics of the mid century, which was concerned with the problems of making a wider England ruled from the south and threats to that England from Scandinavian rulers at York. It is argued that these developments are linked to bishops—those of Lichfield, Worcester, and Dorchester are in the frame—though in all cases they were prominent at the southern court and involved in its political project.

This chapter provides an overview of vernacular chronicling c. ad 1000. It discusses both work on the surviving manuscript of Chronicle A and Chronicle G, a copy of Chronicle A produced at this time. G is one of the few Anglo-Saxon vernacular chronicles to survive in an original manuscript setting alongside other works. This is used to underline the probable episcopal connections of G and A with Winchester and further to illuminate the reception of Bede. The chapter covers the production now of a Latin translation of a vernacular chronicle by a layman, Ealdorman Æthelweard. It places in the hands of Wulfstan II, archbishop of York, a copy of the Northern Recension, an important textual ancestor of Chronicle D, and considers the unusual references to women in D’s tenth-century annals. The chapter provides a conspectus of vernacular chronicling at the height of the so-called Monastic (or Benedictine) reform movement.

This chapter provides an overview of the texts and manuscripts of the vernacular Anglo-Saxon chronicles. It considers annals as a genre and their historiographical rehabilitation, including in the light of postmodernism, both as narrative and as engaged history-writing. It considers wider European scholarship on history-writing in the earlier middle ages, and its questions concerning the ‘power of the past’ and of writing and rewriting the past as a ‘technology of power’. It presents the methodology of this book.

This chapter deals with the last surviving Anglo-Saxon vernacular chronicle, E, produced at Peterborough c.1121, and the last stages of Chronicle /E which lies behind it. The content and palaeography of E place it at Peterborough. Peterborough monastic history is now incorporated into the story, though the result is not a simple ‘house history’. Questions are raised about E’s annals numbered c.1060 onwards, their likely home(s), and the stages of their composition. Work on /E is viewed in the context of burgeoning Latin historiography, with which it has much common ground. The fragment, Chronicle H, is placed in this same world. The networks and contacts invoked to explain patterns of composition and exchange from the mid eleventh century are seen as still relevant. The changing relationship of vernacular chronicling to the court heralds the end of a tradition of chronicling for and by an Anglo-Saxon elite who had disappeared.

This chapter considers the chronicles and annals produced in the first decades of the tenth century connected to the courts of King Alfred’s children, Edward the Elder in Wessex and Æthelflæd in Mercia, and probably also to Æthelstan’s court. It provides a detailed consideration of Chronicle A and its manuscript. It identifies three chronicles, two produced close to Edward and his court—one of which is the surviving Chronicle A in at least some of its stages—and one produced close to Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, and Æthelstan, a chronicle known as the ‘Mercian Register’ or ‘Annals of Æthelflæd’. It argues that these chronicling developments are not independent, but respond one to another and illuminate the issues and debates among the court elites of the early tenth century. Apparent resolution of those issues in the accession of King Æthelstan ended the first burst of vernacular chronicle writing and production.

This chapter considers the most famous lost vernacular chronicle, the so-called ‘Northern Recension’, fossilized in Chronicles D and E. It examines its making, patronage, and audience, and its connection to the extension of southern power to England north of the Trent and Humber. A detailed reconstruction of the text identifies its sources in Bede, the York Annals, and the chronicle produced at Alfred’s court, the use of Bede being part of the story of Bede’s reception in later Anglo-Saxon England. It considers the nature of the resulting chronicle, its continuities with and shifts from that of Alfred. The Northern Recension is the first identifiable chronicle to add substantially to the Alfred Chronicle’s text. It is argued that this chronicle is linked to the archbishops of York, who were southern appointees and agents of southern power, but its makers were Northumbrian and attention is paid to their voices in the text.

This chapter deals with mid-eleventh-century chronicling: the making of Chronicle C, activity at Canterbury on Chronicle /E, a lost West Midlands Chronicle and possible development of Chronicle /D. It includes detailed discussion of the Chronicle C’s manuscript and its accompanying texts. It argues that this flurry of vernacular chronicling is connected to the return of the native English dynasty in the person of Edward the Confessor, like the making of the Encomium Emmae Reginae at this date, itself witness to the political and historiographical impact of that return. It is suggested that the lost Mercian/West Midlands Chronicle lies behind annals in C and D, possibly connected to Earl Leofric. C and /E are, however, connected via the link at this date between the abbey of Abingdon and Canterbury’s archbishop. A model of contact, interchange, and debate is proposed to explain the bewildering parallels and differences among Chronicles C, D, and E.

This chapter considers the group of annals now found in Chronicles C, D, and E covering the reign of Æthelred II and the early years of the Danish conqueror Cnut. It discusses the identity of this group and their transmission, arguing for D and E’s close connections. The focus is on Danish invasions, but there is unusual attention to archbishops. On the basis of some annals in D, it argues, again, that D’s predecessor was in the hands of Archbishop Wulfstan II, and that these annals were thus already attached to his copy of the Northern Recension by the early 1020s. This group of annals is, it is argued, a passionate, partisan, and powerful retrospective story. It was self-consciously within the tradition begun at Alfred’s court; but in those chronicles where it is found it altered the story of the chronicle produced there.

This chapter is concerned with annals in Chronicles C, D, E, and the lost West Midlands Chronicle numbered to the 1040s and 1050s, including those covering 1049–1052, the crisis of Edward the Confessor’s reign. It tackles the question whether all these annals were authored and/or copied pre-1066, and uses Chronicle C’s continuations through to the 1050s as a starting point. The palaeography and layout of these annals in C are covered in detail. The chapter argues that the annals covering the 1040s and 1050s, including those for 1049–1052, are contemporary in C, E, and the lost West Midlands Chronicle, and possibly in D. The differences among them are argued as indications of the divisions of contemporary opinion over these events, including the fall and return of Earl Godwine and his family. The model of contact, debate, and exchange proposed in chapter 10 is seen as still relevant.