scholarly journals The Cronica de Anglia in London, British Library, Cotton MS Vitellius C.VIII, fols. 6v–21v: Another Product of John of Worcester's History Workshop

Traditio ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 70 ◽  
pp. 159-236
Author(s):  
Paul Antony Hayward

This article comprises a study and edition of the Cronica de Anglia, a significant but neglected history of England from AD 162 to 1125 whose importance lies chiefly in its connections to other accounts of the period. Though it is uniquely preserved in a late twelfth-century manuscript from Rievaulx Abbey, close reading confirms that it was composed between 1125 and 1137, not in the north of England but in the West Midlands, almost certainly at Worcester Cathedral Priory. If it is not the work of the priory's foremost historian, John of Worcester (d. after 1143), then it was almost certainly produced under his direction. Not only are its contents closely related to his Chronica chronicarum and Chronicula, they also shed new light on John's interests and the ways in which he and his helpers compiled and edited their histories. Turning to another purpose materials used in John's other works, Cronica de Anglia arranges them in order to speak to questions about the relative antiquity and status of the kingdom's bishoprics, churches, and monasteries — a concern not otherwise prominent in this corpus. This chronicle also sheds precious light on the immediate reception of William of Malmesbury's histories of the English, especially the first edition of Gesta pontificum Anglorum. Carefully suppressing dangerous nuances in William's reportage, Cronica de Anglia betrays John's anxiety to avoid becoming entangled in Malmesbury's campaign against the king's chief minister, Bishop Roger of Salisbury (1102–39). The article concludes with the first complete edition of the text.

1975 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 83-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Baker

Amongst the manuscripts bequeathed to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, by Matthew Parker in 1575 is one of the most important surviving collections of sources for the history of the north of England in the twelfth century. Manuscript 139, as it now is, contains, amongst other items, unique, or almost unique, copies of the so-called Historia Regum, which had been ascribed to Symeon of Durham before the end of the twelfth century, its continuation by John of Hexham, and the History of Richard of Hexham. It was a prime, and in part a unique, source of Twysden’s pioneering edition of 1652, and its value is in no way diminished today. This apart, the manuscript is of great interest as a manuscript, and the problems of its date, provenance and composition are still the subject of debate. The most recent and definitive account of the manuscript was given by Peter Hunter Blair in a fifty-five page article contributed to the volume of essays edited by Nora Chadwick under the title Celt and Saxon. His conclusions, which supersede all earlier views, were that the manuscript was compiled in the period c 1165–70 at the cistercian house of Sawley in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and the subsequent discovery of an erased Sawley ex libris, now visible only in ultra-violet light, and dated by Ker to the late twelfth/early thirteenth century, reinforced his view. Yet there still remain problems and uncertainties, and my purpose here is first to sketch in a little of the history of the manuscript in its present form, and secondly, by further examination of particular aspects of its to supplement and qualify Blair’s conclusions.


1982 ◽  
Vol 14 (10) ◽  
pp. 1389-1404 ◽  
Author(s):  
A R Townsend

The severe downturn in the British economy in 1980 is apparent in regional data for employment (provisional), redundancies, and unemployment. Five shift-share analyses are used here to explore the data on employment and redundancies, three of them conducted at ‘minimum list heading’ level. The period 1976 to 1979 is one of poor performance by regions of traditional policy interest, whereas the events of 1980 are seen as essentially a national phenomenon. However, bias in the industrial composition of the recession towards manufacturing in general and towards certain individual products is sufficient to focus its very worst effects on Wales, the West Midlands, and the North West.


1987 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 197-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
James P. Carley

The earliest identified surviving manuscripts from Glastonbury Abbey date from the ninth and tenth centuries, but there are reliable post-Conquest traditions claiming that valuable books were found at the monastery as early as the reign of Ine, king of the West Saxons (688–726). By the tenth century at the latest there are reports of an ‘Irish school’ at Glastonbury, famous for its learning and books, and St Dunstan's earliest biographer, the anonymous. B., relates that Dunstan himself studied with the Irish at Glastonbury. During Dunstan's abbacy (940–56) – that is, at the period when most historians would place the beginnings of the English tenth-century reform movement – there was a general revival at Glastonbury which included a concerted policy of book acquisition and the establishment of a productive scriptorium. Not surprisingly, Dunstan's abbacy was viewed by the community ever afterwards as one of the most glorious periods in the early history of the monastery, especially since the later Anglo-Saxon abbots showed a marked falling off in devotion and loyalty to the intellectual inheritance of their monastery. Æthelweard and Æthelnoth, the last two Anglo-Saxon abbots, were especially reprehensible, and confiscated lands and ornaments for the benefit of their own kin. Nor did the situation improve immediately after the Conquest: the first Norman abbot, Thurstan, actually had to call in soldiers to quell his unruly monks. In spite of these disruptions, a fine collection of pre-Conquest books seems to have survived more or less intact into the twelfth century; when the seasoned traveller and connoisseur of books, William of Malmesbury, saw the collection in the late 1120s he was greatly impressed: ‘tanta librorum pulchritudo et antiquitas exuberat’.


1893 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 396-401
Author(s):  
Henry Hicks

In a recent article on the Pre-Cambrian Rocks of the British Isles in the Journal of Geology, vol. i., No. 1, Sir Archibald Geikie makes the following statement: “There cannot, I think, be now any doubt that small tracts of gneiss, quite comparable in lithological character to portions of the Lewisian rocks of the North-West of Scotland, rise to the surface in a few places in England and Wales. In the heart of Anglesey, for example, a tract of such rocks presents some striking external or scenic resemblance to the characteristic types of ground where the oldest gneiss forms the surface in Scotland and the West of Ireland.” To those who have followed the controversy which has been going on for nearly thirty years between the chiefs of the British Geological Survey and some geologists who have been working amongst the rocks in Wales, the importance of the above admission will be readily apparent; but as it is possible that some may be unable to realize what such an admission means in showing geological progress in unravelling the history of the older rocks in Wales during the past thirty years, a brief summary of the results obtained may possibly be considered useful.


Inner Asia ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 361-373
Author(s):  
Elke Studer

AbstractThe article outlines the Mongolian influences on the biggest horse race festival in Nagchu prefecture in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR).Since old times these horse races have been closely linked to the worship of the local mountain deity by the patrilineal nomadic clans of the South-Eastern Changthang, the North Tibetan plain. In the seventeenth century the West Mongol chieftain Güüshi Khan shaped the history of Tibet. To support his political claims, he enlarged the horse race festival's size and scale, and had his troops compete in the different horse race and archery competitions in Nagchu. Since then, the winners of the big race are celebrated side by side with the political achievements and claims of the central government in power.


1957 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. W. Griffiths ◽  
J. Featherstone

1. During the period September 1954—August 1956 monthly samples of milk were obtained from individual cows in herds selected because of known history of low solids-not-fat. Records were kept of general feeding and management. Milk was analysed for total solids, butter fat and s.n.f. (by difference). Crude protein and lactose were also estimated at three-monthly intervals.2. Mean lactation averages were calculated for s.n.f. These showed a normal distribution around a mean of approximately 8·5%.3. Throughout the period a high proportion of samples failed to reach 8·5%. The seasonal effect is at its worst in March and April when 70% of the samples were below 8·5%.4. Effect of advancing lactation (uncorrected for the effect of season) agreed broadly with previously published work but marked differences in the shape of the lactation curve were found between different herds. Variations in s.n.f. are largely a reflexion of variations in crude protein.5. Age distribution of the cows agreed favourably with published figures for the national herd, and a mean regression of s.n.f. with age gave 0·11% per year.6. Supervision of the feeding of the herds in the investigation gave no measurable improvement in s.n.f. and no significant response was obtained from short-term trials where extra s.e. was fed.7. There was no undue incidence of disease of the udder, either clinical or subclinical.8. Little information could be obtained on breeding, but it is concluded that the major cause of the problem is the genetically poor potentialities of the cows as judged from the average composition of the milk they produce.


2007 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 295-306
Author(s):  
Emma Watson

The history of post-Reformation Catholicism in Yorkshire can be divided into two distinct periods: pre- and post-1570. Only in the aftermath of the 1569 Northern Rebellion did the Elizabethan government begin to implement fully the 1559 religious settlement in the north, and to take firm action against those who persistently flouted religious laws by continuing to practise the traditional religion of their forefathers. In the Northern Province, serious efforts to enforce conformity and to evangelize did not begin until the arrival of Edmund Grindal as Archbishop of York in 1571. He was joined a year later by the Puritan sympathizer Henry Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon, as President of the Council of the North and together they spear-headed the region’s first real evangelical challenge to traditional religion. 1571 also saw the enactment of the first real penal law against Catholics, although only in 15 81 was the term ‘recusant’ coined. Grindal and Huntingdon formed a powerful team committed to Protestant evangelization and the eradication of Catholicism in the North, however, in Yorkshire, their mission was not entirely successful. The North Riding consistently returned high numbers of recusants in the Elizabethan period, and was home to some well-established Catholic communities. In the West and East Ridings recusancy was not so widespread, although religious conservatism persisted, and Catholicism remained a much more significant force across Yorkshire than elsewhere.


1887 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 64-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. R. Paton

Mr. Newton in his History of Discoveries, p. 583, gives the following account of an excursion to the peninsula which lies to the west of Budrum (Halikarnassus) where he was then excavating:—We next proceeded to examine the hill with the level top. This hill is called Assarlik.Ascending from this gateway we passed several other lines of ancient walls, and on gaining the summit of the hill found a platform artificially levelled. There are not many traces of walls here. The sides of the hill are so steep on the north and east that they do not require walls. The platform terminates on the north-east in a rock rising vertically for many hundred feet from the valley below. The top of the rock is cut into beds to receive a tower. The view from this platform is magnificent.[After brief mention of several tombs passed in the way down, Mr. Newton proceeds:]The acropolis which anciently crowned the rock at Assarlik must have overlooked a great part of the peninsula and commanded the road from Halicarnassus to Myndus and Termera. From the number of tombs here, and their archaic character, it may be inferred that this was a fortress of some importance in very early times.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document