Chronicle F and Canterbury Post-1066

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.

The Continuations of Chronicle C and the Development of Chronicles in the Mid Eleventh Century

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.

Conclusion

This chapter draws together the major themes and conclusions of the book and presents an overall picture of these chronicles, including lost chronicles, and their development. It deals with patrons, scribe/authors and place(s) of production, emphasizing the role of the court. It covers story and content, including discussion of the chronicle poems and poetic annals. It discusses the role of bishops, especially archbishops, and the religious houses and households connected to them. It pays attention to the identity of anonymous scribe/authors and to audiences. It emphasizes the plurality of these chronicles alongside a tradition of vernacular history-writing. It questions deliberate circulation buts stresses engaged history-writing including the importance of apparently neutral copies. It offers answers to the question of why this tradition of writing ended.

Chronicle D: Crossing Conquest

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.

Chronicle A and the Early Tenth Century

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.

The Study and Editing of the Vernacular Chronicles

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.

Chronicles E, /E, and H: The End of the Tradition?

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.

The Making of Chronicle C and Mid-Eleventh-Century Chronicling

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.

The Annals of Æthelred and the Early Years of Cnut

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.

Vernacular Chronicles c.1000

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.