After Alfred: Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and Chroniclers, 900-1150 9780198859642, 0198859643

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After Alfred

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After Alfred Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and Chroniclers, 900–1150 PAU L I N E S TA F F O R D

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1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Pauline Stafford 2020 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2020 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2019955169 ISBN 978–0–19–885964–2 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

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For William, Nye, and Jude

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Preface This book started life over two decades ago. In a late-night conversation at his home in Southampton, the much-lamented Tim Reuter asked me a question. What happened to the Anglo-Saxon chronicle after Alfred? It was a typically Tim question: apparently simple, but, as he knew, with huge implications in the light of recent European scholarship. At the time I gave a weak, late-night, narrowly English answer. I have been trying to improve on that ever since. This book presents the results to a wider public. Versions of work preparatory to this book have been given to academic audiences in Glasgow, Leeds, York, Oxford, and London, and to the University of Wales medieval seminar, located in this instance in Bangor. My thanks are due to all those who commented, criticized, and questioned on these occasions. The resulting book benefited enormously from this exposure. A number of Old English language scholars have been generous in discussion and advice on difficult or debatable points of language, namely Carole Hough, Susan Irvine, Sara Pons-Sanz, Thomas O’Donnell, and Elizabeth Tyler. I hope I have not misrepresented their opinions. Charles Insley read the first eight chapters; Elizabeth Tyler read and commented on the entire manuscript. I owe these busy people—Elizabeth in particular— a great debt of gratitude. Rory Naismith gave his usual generous help in securing access to journal material. OUP’s anonymous readers provided both encouragement and useful criticism. The production process at OUP involved a first-rate and scholarly Copy Editor in David Pelteret. I could not have hoped for better. He not only improved this book, he was one of its first readers and receivers. Any remaining errors are entirely my own. Special thanks are due to a group of silent advisers, namely the editors of the recent editions of the chronicles which are the subject of this book: Simon Taylor, Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, George Cubbin, Susan Irvine, Peter Baker, Angelika Lutz, and, in particular, Janet Bately. Their editions have made all recent work on these chronicles possible. They have been my constant, if unconscious, companions and guides over these last decades. They may not always agree with my readings and conclusions. I hope my footnotes do justice to the extent to which I have built on their work and found myself in agreement with them. I also owe a huge debt of gratitude to all staff of the British Library, the Parker Library, and the Bodleian Library who have worked to digitize manuscripts in these collections. Daily work on these manuscripts would not have been possible without the digitized versions freely available on the web. The Imaging Services of

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viii Preface the British Library and Dr Anne McLaughlin of the Parker Library provided prompt and efficient help with the provision of illustrations. Chapters 2 and 6 contain some sections closely based on my Prothero lecture, published in the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 27 (2017). They appear here by kind permission of the Society and Cambridge University Press. My husband, Bill, read the whole manuscript in earlier drafts and made many suggestions which greatly improved its clarity. He knows how important he has been at every stage of this book’s production. Jinty Nelson and Susan Reynolds are two friends, academic but also personal, who have sustained and when necessary cajoled through the long years of its preparation. This book is, however, dedicated to three little boys. Their arrival on the scene during the period of its gestation did not help in any way; indeed undoubtedly delayed its birth. Je ne regrette rien.

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Acknowledgements Illustrations 1, 3, and 4 are reproduced by kind permission of the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Illustrations 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 are © The British Library Board and are reproduced by permission of the British Library. Illustration 10 is reproduced by kind permission of The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.

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Contents List of Illustrations and Figure xiii List of Abbreviationsxv

1. Introduction

1

2. The Study and Editing of the Vernacular Chronicles

22

3. Alfred’s Chronicle and the First Continuations

39

4. Chronicle A and the Early Tenth Century

52

5. BC, B, and the Mid Tenth Century

78

6. The ‘Northern Recension’

106

7. The Lost Worcester Chronicle

135

8. Vernacular Chronicles c.1000149 9. The Annals of Æthelred and the Early Years of Cnut

175

10. The Making of Chronicle C and Mid-Eleventh-Century Chronicling 190 11. The Continuations of Chronicle C and the Development of Chronicles in the Mid Eleventh Century

207

12. Chronicle D: Crossing Conquest

233

13. Chronicle F and Canterbury Post-1066

268

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

297

15. Conclusion

321

Appendix 1: Weblinks and Definitions Appendix 2: Annals 983–1017: Agreements DE:C and CD:E Appendix 3: The Cult of St Olaf and the Dating of Chronicle C, Annal 1030

337 340

Select Bibliography Index

343 363

342

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List of Illustrations Illustrations 1. Chronicle A, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 173, fo 20v

55

2. Chronicle C, London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius B. i, fo 140r

66

3. Chronicle A, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 173, fo 26r

88

4. Chronicle A, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 173, fo 55v

151

5. Chronicle C, London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius B. i, fo 159r

209

6. Chronicle D, London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius B. iv, fo 77v

236

7. Chronicle D, London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius B. iv, fo 85v

239

8. Chronicle F, London, BL, MS Cotton Domitian A. viii, fo 47v

280

9. Chronicle F, London, BL, MS Cotton Domitian A. viii, fo 60r

287

10. Chronicle E, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 636, fo 14r

301

Figure 1.  Descent of the Family of Edmund Ironside

248

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List of Abbreviations Abbreviated items are omitted from the Select Bibliography. Æthelweard

A.  Campbell (ed.), Chronicle of Æthelweard (London and Edinburgh, 1962) ANS Anglo-Norman Studies ASE Anglo-Saxon England Asser W. H. Stevenson (ed.), Asser’s Life of King Alfred: Together with the Annals of Saint Neots erroneously ascribed to Asser (Oxford, 1904; new impression, 1959) Baker, Chronicle F P.  S.  Baker (ed.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, viii: MS F (Cambridge, 2000) BAR British Archaeological Reports Bately, Chronicle A J.  Bately (ed.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, iii: MS A (Cambridge, 1986) Bately, Texts and Textual Relationships J.  Bately, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Texts and Textual Relationships (Reading, 1991) Bede, HE + book and chapter number B.  Colgrave and R.  A.  B.  Mynors (eds), Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Oxford, 1969) BL British Library Bredehoft, Textual Histories T.  Bredehoft, Textual Histories: Readings in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Toronto, 2001) Brooks and Kelly, Charters N.  P.  Brooks and S.  E.  Kelly (eds.), Charters of of Christ Church Canterbury Christ Church Canterbury, Parts 1 and 2, AngloSaxon Charters, 17 and 18 (Oxford, 2013) Conner, Abingdon Chronicle P. W. Conner (ed.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, x: The Abingdon Chronicle, ad 956–1066 (Cambridge, 1996) Cubbin, Chronicle D G.  Cubbin (ed.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, vi: MS D (Cambridge, 1996) Dumville, ‘Some Aspects’ D. Dumville, ‘Some Aspects of Annalistic Writing at Canterbury in the Eleventh and Early Twelfth Centuries’, Peritia, 2 (1983), 23–57 Dumville, Wessex and England D.  Dumville, Wessex and England from Alfred to Edgar (Woodbridge, 1992) EHD, i and ii D.  Whitelock (ed.), English Historical Documents c.500–1042, English Historical Documents, i, (London, 1955; 2nd edn, 1979) and D. C. Douglas and G.  W.  Greenaway (eds), English Historical Documents 1042–1189, English Historical Documents, ii (London, 1953, 2nd edn, 1981) Gaimar Geffrei Gaimar, Estoire des Engleis. History of the English, ed. and tr. I. Short (Oxford, 2009)

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xvi  List of Abbreviations Gransden, Historical Writing A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England c.550 to c.1307 (London, 1974) EHR English Historical Review Hen and Innes, Uses of the Past Y. Hen and M. Innes (eds), The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2000) Henry of Huntingdon Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum. The History of the English People, ed. and tr. D. Greenway (Oxford, 1996) Historia Brittonum Nennius, British History and the Welsh Annals, ed. and tr. J. Morris (London and Chichester, 1980) HSJ Haskins Society Journal Irvine, Chronicle E S.  Irvine (ed.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, vii: MS E (Cambridge, 2004) John of Worcester + vol number The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ii, ed. R.  R.  Darlington and P.  McGurk, tr. J.  Bray and P. McGurk (Oxford, 1995); iii, ed. and tr. P. McGurk (Oxford, 1998) Jorgensen, Reading the A.  Jorgensen (ed.), Reading the Anglo-Saxon Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Chronicle: Language, Literature, History (Turnhout, 2010) Kelly, Charters of Abingdon S. E. Kelly (ed.), Charters of Abingdon Abbey, Parts 1 and 2, Anglo-Saxon Charters, 7 and 8 (Oxford, 2000–1) Kelly, Charters of Peterborough S.  E.  Kelly (ed.), Charters of Peterborough Abbey, Anglo-Saxon Charters, 14 (Oxford, 2009) Kelly, Charters of St. Augustine’s S.  E.  Kelly (ed.), Charters of St Augustine’s Abbey Canterbury and Minster-in-Thanet, Anglo-Saxon Charters, 4 (Oxford, 1995) Ker, Catalogue N.  R.  Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957) Keynes, Atlas of Attestations S. Keynes, An Atlas of Attestations in Anglo-Saxon Charters, c.670–1066 (Cambridge: Dept. of AngloSaxon, Norse, and Celtic, 1998) Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred the Great S. Keynes, and M. Lapidge, Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources (London, 1983) Lapidge, Vita Oswaldi Byrhtferth of Ramsey, The Lives of St Oswald and St Ecgwine, ed . and tr. M. Lapidge (Oxford, 2009) Liber Eliensis E. O. Blake (ed.), Liber Eliensis, Camden 3rd ser, 92 (London, 1962) Lutz, Chronicle G A.  Lutz (ed.), Die Version G der angelsächsischen Chronik: Rekonstruktion und Edition (Munich, 1981) Malmesbury, DGRA William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, i, ed. and tr. R.  A.  B.  Mynors, R.  M.  Thomson, and M.Winterbottom (Oxford, 1998) MGH SS Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores

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List of Abbreviations  xvii O’Brien O’Keeffe, Chronicle C

K.  O’Brien O’Keeffe (ed.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, v: MS C (Cambridge, 2001) Parkes, ‘The Palaeography’ M.  Parkes, ‘The Palaeography of the Parker Manuscript of the Chronicle, Laws and Sedulius, and Historiography at Winchester in the Late Ninth and Tenth Centuries’, ASE, 5 (1976), 149–71 PASE ‘Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England’, http:// www.pase.ac.uk, accessed 28 Nov. 2019 Plummer, Two Chronicles C.  Plummer and J.  Earle (eds), Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, with Supplementary Extracts from the Others, 2 vols (Oxford, 1892–9) S + number P.  H.  Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks (London, 1968), now updated and supplemented as ‘The Electronic Sawyer’, https://esawyer.lib.cam.ac.uk/about/index/ html, accessed 27 Nov. 2019 Sawyer, Charters of Burton P.  H.  Sawyer (ed.), The Charters of Burton Abbey, Anglo-Saxon Charters, 2 (Oxford, 1979) Stafford, ‘Staffordshire and P. Stafford, ‘Staffordshire and the Making of England the Making of England’ in the Early Tenth and Eleventh Centuries’, Staffordshire Studies, 22 (2020), pp. 1–31 Taylor, Chronicle B S.  Taylor (ed.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, iv: MS B (Cambridge, 1983). TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Whitelock, Peterborough Chronicle D. Whitelock (ed.), The Peterborough Chronicle: The Bodleian Manuscript Laud Misc. 636, With an Appendix by C. Clark, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, 4 (Copenhagen, 1954) Woodman, Charters D. A. Woodman (ed.), Charters of Northern Houses, of Northern Houses Anglo-Saxon Charters, 16 (Oxford, 2012)

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1

Introduction In the middle decades of the twelfth century, a monk at the fenland abbey of Peterborough penned an impassioned account of contemporary politics. Partial, emotional, his annals, especially that numbered 1137, provide a graphic picture of rule and lordship as experienced from the receiving end. His account was written in the English vernacular. It forms the final annals of a much longer chronicle, also in the English language. That chronicle and these annals are the last chronicle and the last annals we know of written in the vernacular in England in the earlier middle ages. Incorporated within the chronicle to which these annals were added was a much earlier one, written at the court of Alfred, king of the West Saxons, in the concluding decades of the ninth century. That was the first known vernacular chronicle written in England. It told an annalistic story which stretched from the arrival of the Romans, via the coming of a series of leaders and their followers from continental Europe and their conversion, through to a detailed account of the struggle against the Vikings by King Alfred and his immediate West Saxon forebears. The purpose of this book is to follow the developments in vernacular chron­ic­ ling between the time of Alfred and that of the Peterborough monk. During the two and a half centuries which separate Alfred and the Peterborough monk, a number of English vernacular chronicles were produced. Seven survive, plus a fragment of an eighth and a debatable ninth; others are lost. What unites them all is their unusual use of the English language for the writing of history; at this date Latin was the normal medium of writing, including of his­tor­ic­al writing, across most of Europe. These chronicles have become collectively known as ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’. This book follows the creation and development of these texts. It also aims to problematize that designation. It ac­know­ledges what links the chronicles together, including their common use of the vernacular, while fore­ fronting the distinct and separate developments which produced the chronicles we now have, and those we have lost. Over these 250 or so years, annals were written in the vernacular, intermit­ tently, at different times and places, and added to different chronicles. They are our major, though faltering, guides to the contemporary history of these cen­tur­ ies. These new annals have often engrossed modern historical study, and rightly so. This book will identify and discuss the writing of contemporary history, in the hope of adding to our knowledge of when, where, and why this happened. But After Alfred: Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and Chroniclers, 900–1150. Pauline Stafford, Oxford University Press 2020. © Pauline Stafford. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198859642.001.0001

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2  After Alfred over this same period copies of chronicles were made, new chronicles were ­produced from older materials, old chronicles were updated with new annals. In each case new histories, new stories were made. The chronicles are not merely sources of facts, they are facts in themselves. What histories were available, what histories were desired, what histories were made—by whom, for whom, when, where, and why—these questions have bearing on our reading of the facts their annals contain, but they are important for their own sake. The nature of the sur­ viving evidence makes them exceptionally difficult to answer. The central concern of this book is to attempt that task. Patrons, audience, reception will be its recur­ ring, if elusive, quarry. The centuries which these chronicles cover saw the emergence of a political unit broadly recognizable as ‘England’, and its conquest—first by Danes in the early eleventh century, famously by Normans in 1066. This period plays a crucial role in the English national story. That story has had an impact on the reading and study of the vernacular chronicles, from Alfred’s onwards. It contributes, for example, to the tendency to collapse them into a single entity, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’. Shifting emphasis to their individual developments and stories should open new perspectives. Their subject matter, especially kings, means that they cannot and should not be viewed entirely outwith these political developments. Ironically a new perspective may, at critical points, reaffirm their connection to that story, though more as engaged insiders than as neutral recorders. Exploring the politics of history-writing has much to contribute to the history of politics. The chronicles will thus be seen in context, though context is a slippery creature, too easily becoming an unquestioned given within which questionable sources can be discussed. The political context we think we know is itself constructed from the debatable sources we seek to test. Historical study has its own methods to tackle this. These chronicles will be read alongside other sources for the period: charters and their witness lists, royal titles, coins, saints’ lives, sermons—not so much to provide simple context, but to place them in that conversation from which our knowledge of history derives. A major aim of this book is to give these chronicles their voice in that discussion. The subject of this book is the study of anonymous, undated, sometimes lost texts. Its path is fraught with difficulty. Its questions cannot be asked, let alone answered, without close attention to palaeography, manuscript context, and detailed textual comparison. It cannot and does not claim to be a definitive account. It cannot provide all the answers. There will be many points at which inconclusiveness may be the only conclusion. There will be places where answers will necessarily be speculative. The hope is that others will question, disagree with, but also take forward its conclusions. Its aim is to open these vernacular chronicles to the productive questions which have shed so much light on the writing of history in the early and central middle ages across Europe and closer to home here in post-1066 England. The vernacular chronicles are mere annals,

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Introduction  3 Cinderella sources. The overarching aim of this book is to invite them to the ­historiographical ball.

The Chronicles All the chronicles studied in this book are annalistic texts. Their material is thus organized on a year-by-year basis. Like most texts of this kind, they are an­onym­ ous and undated. Such texts are usually the products of many people over a long period, though there are also particular points of new chronicle creation or bursts of annal writing. The study of these chronicles is more complex than that of the work of known, named authors. The chapters which follow will be concerned with many texts, including lost chronicles without which the overall story cannot be told. But study must begin from the chronicles which have survived. Awareness of these survivors and con­ sciousness of them as a group go back to the sixteenth century. They have been known by many names, some of them fossilizing the activity of early modern owners and students. Their very survival is owed to the activity of early modern collectors. They did not, however, escape unscathed from the attentions of these enthusiasts. Seven chronicles are extant in a more or less early medieval manuscript form, now usually lettered A to G: Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 173 (Chronicle A); London, BL, MSS Cotton Tiberius A. vi + Tiberius A. iii, folio 178 (Chronicle B); London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius B. i (Chronicle C); London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius  B.  iv (Chronicle D); Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 636 (Chronicle E); London, BL, Cotton Domitian A. viii (Chronicle F); and London, BL, MS Cotton Otho B. xi (Chronicle G). It is the one now named ‘G’ which requires the qualifying ‘more or less’. The manuscript Cotton Otho  B.  xi was largely consumed in the Cotton fire of 1731. Only fragments of it now sur­ vive.1 It has to be largely reconstructed from early modern transcripts and the first printed edition. Two fragments are usually added to this group of chronicles: London, BL, MS Cotton Domitian A. ix, folio 9 (Chronicle H), a single leaf, with events of 1113–14 recorded in annal form in the Old English vernacular, and London, BL, MS Cotton Caligula A. xv, folio 132v (Chronicle I), a Paschal table with entries in Old English, and from 1110 in Latin.2 The combination of annalis­ tic format and language has led to the association of these two fragments with the complete chronicles because genre and language have become the diagnostic tests for identifying these chronicles as a group. It should, however, be noted that 1  Description in Lutz, Chronicle G, pp. xvi and xxvii–l. 2 Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, p. xxxvii. For the Paschal Table see also Baker, Chronicle F, pp. 129–34.

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4  After Alfred Chronicle F is a bilingual chronicle, in Old English and Latin, and that Chronicle I shifts to Latin. All the chronicles contain some Latin, if only in the annal numbers. The dating of the manuscripts of these chronicles is subject to debate, and will form part of the discussion of each one. But roughly speaking, two manuscripts date from the tenth century: the earliest work on Chronicle A dates from its beginning, chronicle B to its end. Chronicle G is early eleventh century, Chronicle C mid eleventh century. Chronicles E and H are early twelfth century, and Chronicle F belongs c.1100. Chronicle I spans the later eleventh and early twelfth century. The date of the manuscript of Chronicle D is particularly debatable. It is no earlier than the mid eleventh century, and in part (some have argued wholly) post-1066. With texts such as these, questions about the dating of the material they con­ tain have to be carefully distinguished from the dating of the chronicle manu­ script. Most of the surviving manuscripts and chronicles are mid eleventh to mid twelfth century, but all our chronicles A to G contain annals numbered over ­cen­tur­ies. They are the end result, often final fair copies, of earlier stages of devel­ opment. Almost all these chronicles, even the latest ones, were added to in the surviving manuscript after the latter’s initial creation: extra annals, annotations, and marginalia mostly datable before the mid twelfth century. Chronicle A was added to spasmodically throughout the tenth to early twelfth centuries. Even the latest, Chronicle E, received additional annals at the end, those added by our Peterborough monk. Ideally study would begin with the identification of the place or places of pro­ duction and continuation of the surviving manuscripts, and, where relevant, study of the complete manuscripts of which they form a part. This is rarely easy in these cases. Recent advances in the study of history-writing in the earlier middle ages have exploited manuscript study to great effect. The identification of works which were bound with, and thus read alongside, each other plus careful attention to when and where histories were produced have revealed much about the uses of history by early medieval people. Such a manuscript context can be revealing as to how the chronicles were seen, read, and used. The uncertain manuscript history of many of these chronicles inhibits these approaches. The establishment of their tenth- to twelfth-century manuscript context is not straightforward, not least as a result of the activities of early modern scholars and collectors. Those men have left their mark, often literally, on the vernacular chronicles. The manuscripts are now part of large collections, in Cambridge, London, and Oxford; ‘British Library Cotton’ especially is a recurring appellation. In all cases their modern home results from activity in the sixteenth and seventeenth ­centuries. Two chronicles are now often called by names which signal their early modern owners: Chronicle A the ‘Parker Chronicle’, E the ‘Laud’. These are the names of the churchmen, scholars, and antiquaries in whose collections these

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Introduction  5 manuscripts were found in the early modern period. Men like Archbishop Parker in the sixteenth century, Archbishop Laud in the seventeenth, the antiquary and scholar Robert Cotton also in the seventeenth gathered together some of the debris from the wreck of the great medieval monastic libraries which occurred at the English Reformation. It was their collections which were later deposited in the university libraries of Oxford, of Cambridge (where Parker’s collection formed a nucleus of the Corpus Christi College collection), and of the British Museum, now the British Library, in London, which houses Cotton’s manuscripts. We owe to these men the salvation of so many of these manuscripts (though in Cotton’s case the fire in his library undid some of his good work!) But we also owe to them the state in which some of these manuscripts are now found. Early modern scholars and antiquaries annotated and used their manuscripts. The annotations by them, and by their secretaries, especially John Joscelyn, Archbishop Parker’s secretary, and by successive generations of early modern scholars are to be found throughout. They are testimony to continued use, and are important evidence of how the manuscripts were read at this date. In some cases they can be used to salvage losses since their own day. The work of early modern scholars such as Humphrey Wanley’s early-eighteenth-century catalogue, Nowell’s transcript, and Wheelocke’s seventeenth-century edition, not only enables us to reconstruct the largely burnt Chronicle G, but also the manuscript of which it formed part in the early eleventh century.3 However, these early scholars and collectors were also ready to amend manu­ scripts. Chronicle D, for example, lost sections at some date. They were supplied by Joscelyn from ‘other versions’ and Joscelyn added the paper folios 88–90.4 Men like Cotton likewise assembled manuscripts. Few of the vernacular chron­ icles stand alone. Unfortunately in many cases the larger manuscripts of which they form part are assemblages resulting from the work of early modern ­col­lect­ors. Thus the current bedfellows of a chronicle like F are not those which a­ ccompanied it in the twelfth century but those with which it was bound in the early modern period. Chronicle B forms part of a composite manuscript put together at some point probably after 1609.5 These attitudes to manuscripts are an interesting con­ trast to our own tendency to respectful non-intervention. Nonetheless it is still possible to ascertain the manuscript context of some of these chronicles as that was during the tenth to twelfth centuries. Where that is so, that context will be

3 Lutz, Chronicle G, p. xxvii; see also R.  Torkar, Eine altenglische Übersetzung von Alcuins De Virtutibus et Vitiis, Kap 20 (Liebermanns Judex): Untersuchungen und Textausgabe (Munich, 1981), pp. 37–167 and P.Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century, i: Legislation and its Limits (Oxford, 1999), pp. 172–81. 4 Cubbin, Chronicle D, x. Joscelyn likely owned this manuscript: see T. Graham, ‘Glosses and Notes in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts’, in G. R. Owen-Crocker (ed.), Working with Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts (Exeter, 2009), pp. 159–203 at p. 192. 5 Taylor, Chronicle B, pp. xvii–xviii.

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6  After Alfred used to give clues as to how these vernacular chronicles were seen and used at this early date. Where they were originally produced and/or continued during those centuries is a major unresolved question. The dissolution of the English monasteries and the dispersal of their libraries at the Reformation mean that even the later medi­ eval home of these manuscripts can be in doubt. Joscelyn made a list of the ver­ nacular chronicles he had consulted and gave each a provenance.6 Thus D was, according to Joscelyn’s sixteenth-century note, still at Worcester,7 B came from St  Augustine’s, Canterbury,8 C from Abingdon, E from Peterborough, A from Christ Church Canterbury. It is not, however, always clear on what authority Joscelyn made his attributions.9 Given all we know about medieval annotations in E and about its initial production (see further below, pp. 298–9 and pp. 300–3), the provenance of this manuscript was probably Peterborough, though it never features in Peterborough booklists.10 Since A was acquired by Archbishop Parker, Joscelyn’s own employer, the latter’s statement that it was acquired from the dean of Christ Church Canterbury is strong evidence that Canterbury was its late medieval home.11 F and G can be placed with some certainty. G by the thirteenth century was at the Augustinian priory of Southwick, Hampshire.12 F bears a Christ Church Canterbury library mark, and may feature in a ­fourteenth-century Christ Church catalogue.13 But C’s later medieval home is extraordinarily difficult to identify with any certainty. The questions which hang over their later medieval location pale into insignifi­ cance beside the problem of locating the tenth- to twelfth-century homes and sites of production of the chronicles. The quest for these will form a major part of discussion in this book. These chronicles have been known by a variety of names. Although that variety complicates their study, not least by sometimes suggesting simple geographical attributions, it also reveals much about their history. Names reflect the uncertainties about provenance, just as they highlight the role of the early modern scholars who compounded them. The earliest editions sometimes identified the manuscripts they used by their—then—current location and ownership. Thus Wheelocke in the seventeenth century used the chronicles we know as A and G, but called them the manuscripts in St Benet’s (now Corpus Christi) College, Cambridge and the Cotton manuscript respectively. The next editor, Gibson, working in Oxford, referred to the St Benedict and Cotton 6 The list is in London, BL, MS Cotton Nero  C.  iii, fo 298r; discussed in O’Brien O’Keeffe, Chronicle C, pp. lxxiv–lxxvii with special reference to C, but with wider relevance. 7 Cubbin, Chronicle D, p. ix and n. 4. 8  Thus accepted by Taylor, Chronicle B, p. xii. 9 Ker, Catalogue, p. 234. 10 Irvine, Chronicle E, pp. xiii–xiv. 11  See Bately, Chronicle A, p. xiv and n. 8. 12 N.  Ker (ed.), Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, 2nd edn, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks, 3 (London, 1964), p. 181 and Lutz, Chronicle G, p. xlviii. 13 Baker, Chronicle F, pp. ix–x.

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Introduction  7 manu­scripts, specifying them as used in Wheelocke’s edition, but checked these against what he identifies as the manuscript which belonged to Archbishop Laud, i.e. our E, recalling the early-seventeenth-century owner, but also his collection deposited in the Bodleian library. Gibson also used what he calls ‘Cant’, a tran­ script of what we now know as B, and ‘Codex Cotton’, our F. Denomination by early ­owners has in some cases continued: thus Chronicle A is often referred to as the ‘Parker’ chronicle, Chronicle E as the ‘Laud’. Names have also reflected the geographical locations which editors and com­ mentators have assigned to the original chronicles. Joscelyn’s attributions have been extremely influential. B and C are linked together by Garmonsway in his edition as ‘The Abingdon Chronicles’, indicating first the (unproblematic) recog­ nition that they are closely related chronicles, and second accepting a (much more debatable) Abingdon location for their common origins.14 The latter loosely derives from Joscelyn’s statements.15 Garmonsway calls D the ‘Worcester Chronicle’, again following Joscelyn.16 E is widely known as the Peterborough chronicle. F is the ‘Bilingual Canterbury Epitome’ for Garmonsway.17 Plummer’s edition recognizes and discusses geographical attributions in his Introduction. His edition prints two manuscripts identified by their early modern owners as the ‘Parker’ and ‘Laud’, but he uses letters to denominate all the others. This book will use the letters A–I to identify the chronicles. This is the nomen­ clature adopted in the recent epoch-making collaborative edition. It was used by Dorothy Whitelock in her influential translation, through which many modern students know these texts.18 The alphabetical letters, A–I, are used here for con­ sistency with most modern editions. The use of letters has the virtue of apparent neutrality; it carries with it no preconceptions of place, date, or authorship, which are all, as we shall see, debatable. It can, however, be a false friend, since it implies that we are dealing with manuscripts of what is in some respects a single chron­ icle; such letters are frequently used when constructing a stemma of a text’s devel­ opment through various manuscript forms. Moreover, even such an apparently neutral denomination enshrines attitudes and values, as its own history reveals. The practice of using letters to denote the various chronicles dates to the major nineteenth-century editions, and goes back to the Monumenta Historica Britannica

14  G. N. Garmonsway (tr.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, rev. edn (London, 1953), p. xxxvi. 15  See Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, p. xxxi, and cf. pp. lxxxviii–lxxxix on Γ, which Plummer sees as the common source of B and C.  He makes its home Abingdon, on the basis of the content of the annals 971–1018. 16  Garmonsway (tr.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, p. xxxvii; cf. Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, p. xxxiv, recognizing Joscelyn’s attribution, but himself preferring Evesham (p. lxxvi), though he does not use that title for D. 17  Garmonsway (tr.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, p. xxxix. 18 First published in EHD, i and ii, republished with a new introduction in D.  Whitelock, D.  C.  Douglas, and S.  I.  Tucker (eds), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Revised Translation (London, 1961).

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8  After Alfred edition of the 1840s. It has continued ever since. The usage was not at first consistent.19 At first sight the letters used simply follow the chronology of the manuscripts, with Chronicle A the oldest. Priority has usually been given to this Corpus Christi College, Cambridge manuscript on that score. This was the Monumenta’s A, used as the basis of their text because it was ‘the oldest manuscript known’, and it is still known as such.20 But Earle and Plummer labelled it Ā (effectively Ai), and renamed the Monumenta’s Chronicle G as A (effectively Aii). Age was the cri­ter­ ion here; Chronicle G could not be allowed to appear to be later than F.21 But age is not the consistent criterion. Plummer, like all others, places Chronicle E before F, even though he and others recognize that F is almost cer­ tainly older. His arguments embody value judgements deeply embedded in much vernacular chronicle scholarship. F was ‘a dead compilation . . . a secondary authority of no great critical power’, its language ‘far below the level of classical Anglo-Saxon prose’ as represented in ‘the best parts’ of our chronicles A, C, and D.22 The value judgements expressed here were already present in Earle’s view of our Chronicle G, ‘a servile reproduction’ and thus a ‘shadow’ of our Chronicle A, which it copied.23 Arrangement by age is an obvious and defensible system. But Chronicle G and F are so labelled for reasons other than their dates. Judgements of value are being made, and not merely the judgement that the age of a manuscript gives priority— itself debatable.24 Is a chronicle ‘dead’, a mere compilation, or ‘living’, added to over time?25 Yet in important ways none of our chronicles are ‘dead’, not even 19 The Monumenta used A to G, as they would now be employed: H. Petrie and J. Sharpe (eds), Monumenta Historica Britannica, or, Materials for the History of Britain from the Earliest Period (London: Published by Command of Her Majesty, 1848), p. 75. Benjamin Thorpe, editor for the Rolls Series, preferred ‘W’ for what is now generally known as ‘G’: B. Thorpe, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, According to the Several Original Authorities, published by the authority of the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty’s Treasury, under the direction of the Master of the Rolls, i (London, 1861), pp. xvi–xxi. Thorpe’s ‘W’ indicated his use of Wheelocke’s seventeenth-century edition for our G; Wheelocke had made G his base text (see Lutz, Chronicle G, pp. lxviii–lxxviii). John Earle sometimes called G ‘A’, and denominated what we now know as ‘A’ by the letter Ā,:J. Earle, Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel: With Supplementary Extracts from the Others (Oxford, 1865), p. liii. Plummer followed Earle in reject­ ing the denomination ‘G’ for a manuscript which was so much earlier than F: Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, p. xxviii. 20  Monumenta Historica Britannica, p. 75. 21 Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, p. xxviii. 22 Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, pp. xxxv–xxxvi, xxxviii. He is clear that the date order of the manu­ scripts as they now are was F first, then E. But, as he says on p. xxxviii, ‘In character, if not date, F is certainly later than E, being . . . a mere compilation, whereas E is a living Chronicle’. And compare pp. xliv–xlv: ‘F . . . is not a living chronicle, growing with the growth of events like Ā, C, D, and E; but a dead compilation, made in the eleventh and twelfth century, out of older materials . . . a secondary authority of no great critical power . . . ’, its language ‘far below the level of classical Anglo-Saxon prose, such as we find in the best parts of Ā, C and D’. 23 Earle, Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, p. liii. 24  See Dumville, Wessex and England, pp. 55–6 for this ‘general if misleading assumption’ of A’s authority on the grounds of age. 25 Baker, Chronicle F, xxviii on which chronicles should be seen as ‘living’, ‘growing with the growth of events’. Cf. Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, pp. xliv–xlv and his noting that Chronicle A is the ‘magnifi­ cent exception’.

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Introduction  9 Chronicle G; there was addition, change, annotation, or emendation to all of them after their first creation. The order of both F and G is affected by their ­perceived status as copies or compilations. But copying and compilation lies behind the history of all the vernacular chronicles. Chronicle F is acknowledged as earl­ier than Chronicle E, but a bilingual abbreviated chronicle which is seen as adding little or nothing to our factual knowledge of events could not be given priority over one which contained so much extra information. Yet F is our only working manuscript of a vernacular chronicle in the process of creation, showing us a collator and emender—a vernacular chronicle author—at work. At least one editor was influenced by his view of Chronicle F’s Old English, with quality meas­ ured on a scale awarding special value to a pre-1066 high point. No naming can be neutral, but our chronicles must be named if they are to be distinguished and studied. The alphabetical system, now enshrined in the new collaborative edition, is destined for a long life. This study will follow that edition in giving full value to each individual chronicle. Every chronicle is testimony to the desire of someone, somewhere, to have a text of this type. Respect for all our surviving chronicles will be a basic premise. One designation now overrides all others: ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’. That, too, is enshrined in the new edition. This is a relatively late appellation. Its devel­ opment is connected to the increasingly national, if not nationalist, context of the study of these chronicles, which will be considered in chapter  2. It remains to clarify the intellectual and historiographical context of this present work.

Annals and the Writing of History in the Earlier Middle Ages All the vernacular chronicles are anonymous, annalistic texts. New approaches to earlier medieval history-writing have brought texts like these in from the cold, questioning their neutrality whilst at the same time revaluing them. The notion that texts such as these are fundamentally different from named, authored texts has been eroded; the importance of understanding their patronage, audience, and evolution has been underlined. Attention has shifted from the ‘urtext’, the original text, and refocused on later developments—on continuations and additions, but also on rewritings, and on the manuscript context. The central questions now include not merely when and where texts were produced, and by whom, but also how texts are read and reread, and how they have impact on their audiences. In some senses these are the linear developments of historians’ established methods of source criticism, a Quellenkritik going back to the nineteenth century.26 But the fact that they have prompted fundamental criticism of some of the greatest

26  Hen and Innes, Uses of the Past, p. 2.

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10  After Alfred products of nineteenth-century methods, for example the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, should warn that more may be involved.27 The general intellectual context of contemporary approaches is that of the later twentieth century: of postmodernism, post-structuralism, and the linguistic turn. Consciously or not, epistemological questions about our textual access to ‘reality’, and specific questions about ‘works’ and ‘texts’, about readers and reception vis-àvis authors and intention, and about narrative have influenced these develop­ ments. The result has been a ‘heightened consciousness of the constructedness of sources’.28 The importance not merely of the writing, but also of the rewriting, of the past has been recognized—with consequent questions about the malleability of the past, and the limits to that. Writing the past has come to be seen increasingly as an exercise of power, with the past as a source of both authority and identity. These developments have been far from universal, and far from universally approved or accepted.29 For the historian ‘the extreme position . . . that all that we can work with is discourse’ will never be palatable.30 Nonetheless these questions have had implications not only for the reading of texts, but also for their editing and for the editions we habitually use. They have a particular significance for Cinderella-genres, like annals. These have been reappraised, not least through renewed attention to the way they develop and grow.

Annals All the texts studied in this book are called ‘chronicles’, yet they are all annalistic in nature. ‘Annals’ is a historical genre in which material is organized on a yearby-year basis, rather than thematically. The distinction between ‘annals’ and the­ matic, narratively organized, sometimes termed ‘rhetorical’, history is often seen as fundamental; the two genres have been distinguished from the very origins of historiography.31 A fundamental characteristic of annals is their capacity to 27  See R.  Corradini, ‘Die Annales Fuldenses—Identitätskonstruktionen im ostfränkischen Raum am Ende der Karolingerzeit’, in R.  Corradini, R.  Meens, C.  Pössel, and P.  Shaw (eds), Texts and Identities in the Early Middle Ages (Vienna, 2006), pp. 121–36; D.  Townsend, ‘Alcuin’s Willibrord, Wilhelm Levison and the MGH’, in IBTR. Frank (ed.), The Politics of Editing Medieval Texts (New York, 1993), pp. 107–30; and A. Frantzen, ‘The Living and the Dead: Responses to Papers on the Politics of Medieval Texts’, in ibid., pp. 159–81. 28  Hen and Innes, Uses of the Past, p. 3. 29  It is not surprising to find some of these differences surfacing in relation to text-editing. Compare M.  Lapidge, ‘The Edition, Emendation and Reconstruction of Anglo-Saxon Texts’, in R. Frank (ed.), The Politics of Editing Medieval Texts (New York, 1993), pp. 131–57 and A. J. Frantzen, ‘The Living and the Dead: Responses to Papers on the Politics of Editing Medieval Texts’, in ibid., pp. 159–81.Their differences on editing represent much wider and deeper divisions over these issues. 30  Hen and Innes, Uses of the Past, p. 3. 31  Cicero in his De oratore distinguished annalium confectio from those historical texts which incorporated judgement, analysis, reasons, or causation, and which gave the past sonus vocis

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Introduction  11 grow and develop. Unlike thematic chronicles, they can be added to readily: by con­tinu­ations, that is individual year annals or blocks of annals tacked on at the end, or by marginal additions and interlineations. Their year-by-year chronology lends itself to collation with other material organized, or organizable, in the same way; collation is a medieval chronicle equivalent of mail merging, when two or more sources are brought together. Annals can lose material as well as gain it: when new copies are made or when collation takes place, whole annals or parts of annals may be lost, deliberately or accidentally; marginalia or interlineations may be inserted or omitted; annals or parts of annals may be erased. This type of historical writing thus can (and does) develop organically over long periods. That development may include both contemporary historical writing—annals entered on a year-by-year basis or very close to events, and retro­ spective entries—annals written, collated, edited, or amended much later. Annals are thus not necessarily, perhaps even are rarely, the product of a single authorial voice,32 nor are they datable to a single precise point. The vernacular chronicles are all anonymous and undated, and that is typical of this type of text. Anonymity here does not simply mean unknown authors, but questions about whether authorial activity is the way to think about annals. Do annals have authors, given the quasi-mechanical processes which can and do go into their making? There are obviously points at which a scribe/author composes an annal, block of annals, or interlineation; and very significant points at which a scribe/collator—or a group of these—brings an annalistic compilation or chronicle together, collates it, or brings it up to date. But some of these processes could be argued to involve the mere mechanical assembly of material, far from the conscious choices and com­ position which characterize most views of authorial activity. The collator of a set of annals can appear as a very different beast from a named author, such as an eighth-century Bede or a twelfth-century William of Malmesbury. The distinction between annals and chronicles may also involve a value judge­ ment. Annals can be seen as naive, unreflective, unbiased, with the ‘ideal type’ written close to the events concerned and without the benefit of perspective. This is a view bound up with an evolutionary view of historical writing: annals repre­ sent an early, primitive historical life-form, crawling out of the primeval slime of the Dark Ages, overtaken by thematic histories in, for example the bright clear

(an oratorical, rhetorical style); see P. A. Hayward, The Winchcombe and Coventry Chronicles: Hitherto Unnoticed Witnesses to the Work of John of Worcester, 2 vols (Tempe, AZ, 2010), i, pp. 18–19—and for the value judgement inherent in this distinction. Cf. Gransden, Historical Writing, p. 29: ‘[C]hronicles are not in a literary form. A literary history has a sustained theme and the subject matter often over­ rides the chronological series of events.’ 32  Cf. Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, p. cxxiv: only Alfred’s chronicle ‘could be treated as the work of a single mind’.

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12  After Alfred light of the twelfth century.33 This attitude lurks unacknowledged behind some readings and treatment of annals. Ironically, it can give annals a particular value in positivist readings, where they readily become the simple, unvarnished, un­select­ed truth. It is an attitude which makes annals available as interchangeable quarries of factual material, legitimately decontextualized and reassembled by the modern historian. Their original context, it might be argued, has little to tell us, bounded as it is by the temporal myopia of their scribes. This view has been fundamentally challenged by recent work on historical writing in the earlier middle ages, and not merely through recognition of much retrospective and non-contemporary writing in annalistic texts. Annals and the­ matic history are now recognized as potentially alternative genres rather than evolutionary stages—and thus the choice between them is, at least potentially, precisely that: a choice.34 Annalistic works grew in very complex ways, through continuations, interlineations, collations; they were copied and recopied. In these processes both individual annals and blocks of annals, not to mention marginalia and interlineations, might be not merely written, but rewritten, selected, edited, and manipulated. Less consciously, annalistic chronicles, even the most mech­an­ ic­al of them, accumulated messages and meanings which changed through delib­ erate addition or overt manipulation, but also through the most mechanical of developments such as collation, interlineation, marginalia. Every final addition, or continuation, could reorientate the story which now led up to it.35 These approaches are new and thoughtful interpretations of important aspects of the nature of annals. They have also linked annals, like all historical writing, to power and its exercise, including power in its hegemonic, diffused, less than overt forms. They have influenced the study of Carolingian and post-Carolingian his­ tor­ ic­ al writing, from the Annales Regni Francorum and their predecessors, through their development and evolution in the Annals of Metz, of Fulda, of St Bertin, and into the tenth century in Flodoard or Regino of Prüm.36 They are particularly relevant for the interpretation of the English vernacular annals. 33 See P. A. Hayward, Winchcombe and Coventry Chronicles, ‘Introduction’ for an excellent discus­ sion. For Gransden’s view of the advantages of this ‘second-rateness’ see her Historical Writing, p. 31. 34  On the development of the annalistic form and its adoption in Carolingian Francia see M. Innes and R. McKitterick, ‘The Writing of History’, in R. McKitterick (ed.), Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 193–220, especially pp. 199–202 and cf. R.  McKitterick, History and Memory in the Carolingian World (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 97–100. 35  Discussed in relation to these vernacular chronicles by J.  Neville, ‘Making Their Own Sweet Time: The Scribes of Anglo-Saxon Chronicle A’, in E.  Kooper (ed.), The Medieval Chronicle, II (Amsterdam, 2002), pp. 166–77. See also J. Stodnick, ‘Second-Rate Stories? Changing Approaches to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, Literature Compass, 3/6 (2006), 1253–65, https://doi.org/10.1111/ j.1741-4113.2006.00380.x. 36  From a now huge bibliography see the work of Innes and McKitterick and McKitterick (above p. 12n34); Richard Corradini on the Annals of Fulda (above pp. 9–10n27); H. Reimitz, ‘The Art of Truth: Historiography and Identity in the Frankish World’, in R. Corradini, R. Meens, C. Pössel, and P. Shaw (eds), Texts and Identities in the Early Middle Ages (Vienna, 2006), pp. 88–103; H. Reimitz, History, Frankish Identity and the Framing of Western Ethnicity, 550–850 (Cambridge, 2015);

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Introduction  13

Writing about the Writing of History in the Earlier Middle Ages The last decades have seen much work, of great significance, on the writing of history in the middle ages. It is linked to interest in memory and identity, includ­ ing national identity in the aftermath of World War II. It is thus a child of its time: politically, and in its response to a shift towards the history of mentalities, itself part of a widening of history to include ‘everyman’—if not woman. The work of historians is always a dialogue of past and present; it cannot and should not stand outside its own times. In that respect this recent work should also be connected to wider movements in later twentieth-century philosophy and the humanities, loosely grouped under the headings of ‘postmodernism’ and ‘the linguistic turn’. Attention to reader and audience, to narrative; questions about authors and their authority, about the relationship of manuscript and edition: all have been sharp­ ened in this intellectual context. Historians’ work is, however, also a craft, employ­ ing a toolkit of methods and approaches honed over time; recent intellectual trends have added to, not replaced, its contents. The twentieth century witnessed widespread philosophical and literary interest in language and its relationship to reality. Language, or discourse, was seen not so much as a means of describing reality, but as constructing it. It is this world of language, or discourse, within which texts are produced, an essentially plural world in which meanings are not fixed.37 Attention, indeed power, is shifted from the author to the reader. At the most extreme, this prompts statements about the ‘death of the author’.38 The notion of ‘the work’, understood as a writing whose meaning was fixed by the author and passively consumed by the reader, is con­ trasted with the polysemic ‘text’, rewritten by every reader. The respective roles of readers and authors are rebalanced: questions about author and authorial inten­ tion must now be supplemented by others concerning readers and reception.39 As the primacy of authorial intention has been loosened, questions about meaning and how that is produced become not merely ones about the author and her/his R.  Collins, ‘The Reviser Revisited: Another Look at the Alternative Version of the Annales regni Francorum’, in A.  Murray (ed.), After Rome’s Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History (Toronto, 1998), pp. 191–213; R.  Collins, ‘Charlemagne’s Imperial Coronation and the Annals of Lorsch’, in J.  Story (ed.), Charlemagne, Empire and Society (Manchester, 2005), pp. 52–70; and J. L. Nelson, ‘History-Writing at the Courts of Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald’, in A. Scharer and G.  Scheibelreiter (eds), Historiographie im frűhen Mittelalter (Munich, 1994), 435–42. See also the introductions in J.  L.  Nelson, The Annals of St. Bertin (Manchester, 1991); T.  Reuter, The Annals of Fulda (Manchester, 1992); and History and Politics in Late Carolingian and Ottonian Europe: The Chronicle of Regino of Prüm and Adalbert of Magdeburg, tr. S. Maclean (Manchester, 2009). 37  Classically in Roland Barthes, ‘From Work to Text’, first published in Revue d’esthetique in 1971, translated by R. Howard, in Roland Barthes, The Rustle of Language (New York, 1986), pp. 56–64. 38  R. Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’, in Howard (tr.), Roland Barthes: The Rustle of Language, pp. 49–55. 39  There is an excellent introduction from a historian’s perspective in P. Burke, ‘The History and Theory of Reception’, in H. A. Lloyd (ed.), The Reception of Bodin (Leiden, 2013), pp. 21–37.

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14  After Alfred strategies, but about how and what the reader receives and about—unconscious or half-conscious—meanings written into the text, and its language, themselves. The challenge all this poses for historians can be measured in the—occasionally acrimonious—debate it has provoked.40 Yet positive value can be derived from a cautious recognition of its questions, asked in the context of wider ­his­tor­ic­al training.41 Its erosion of the simple line between literary, consciously authored works and ‘documentary’ sources has wide implications, including for the revalu­ ation of annals. If, for example, discourse and language speak to some degree through all texts, the difference between anonymous annals and the work of a named author like William of Malmesbury is eroded. Recognition of the im­port­ ance of readers and reception has contributed to the attention now being paid to rewritings of texts and to their later transmitted forms, in contrast to the engross­ ing interest of earlier scholarship in the original, authorial ‘work’, the ‘urtext’. This ‘linguistic turn’ is both allied and parallel to an interest in narrative and narration. Narrative organizes random events into stories.42 Narrative cannot, however, be approached merely from the point of view of the narrator: the receiver/reader/hearer is an active participant.43 Awareness of narrative involves awareness of its essential editing function; it presents the world in edited form, and does so powerfully and convincingly. This necessarily involves omission, and thus, whether deliberate or not, suppression. Attention is directed, again, to receivers as well as authors of the story. Narrative theory, at least loosely speaking, may underlie recent trends which are concerned with the power of writing the past. But that interest also reflects other late-twentieth-century ideas, including Foucaldian notions of the wide dis­ persal of power, and Gramscian ideas of hegemony, if not wider understanding of ideologies and how they function. Historians have an abiding interest in the exer­ cise of power, as witness the study of administrative institutions and of the deployment of brute force. They now ask other questions about how consent is managed and achieved, how power is maintained, how institutions work, why force is not always necessary. The power of the past, of ‘history’, is one more instrument in the ‘technologies of power’ by which such ends are achieved.44 40  For example that which took place in Past and Present between Gabrielle Spiegel, Lawrence Stone, and Patrick Joyce: Past and Present, nos 131 (1991), pp. 217–18; 133 (1991), pp. 204–13; and 135 (1992), pp. 189–208, and in G. Spiegel’s intellectual autobiography, ‘Theory into Practice: Reading Medieval Chronicles’, in E. Kooper (ed.), The Medieval Chronicle, I (Amsterdam, 1999), pp. 1–12. 41  Awareness of the power of narrative underlies much recent early medieval historiography, in particular that of the so-called ‘Vienna School’, but also wider work on Carolingian historical writing; see work cited above by McKitterick, Innes, Hen, Nelson, Pohl, Corradini, Reimitz, and De Jong. 42  P. Ricoeur, ‘The Narrative Function’, in J. B.Thompson (ed. and tr.), Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation (Cambridge and Paris, 1981), pp. 274–96. Ricoeur, in particular, pinpointed not only the nature of narrative, but also the potential sources of its power, i.e. its capacity to convince. 43 P.  Ricoeur, ‘Life in Quest of Narrative’, in D.  Wood (ed.), On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and Interpretation (London, 1991), pp. 20–33. 44 For ‘technologies of power’ see M.  Foucault, ‘Technologies of the Self,’ in L.  H.  Martin, H. Gutman, and P. H. Hutton (eds), Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault (Amherst,

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Introduction  15 The idea that all stories, and thus all history, involve selection from the chaos of past events is no novelty for historians. It has married readily with interest in memory, especially social memory.45 It is thus fundamental to much of the recent work on individual but especially group identity, since identity is formed and maintained through shared memory and stories.46 Readers and reception have their own place in established historical methods. Recent developments here have directed historical attention to later retellings of stories, and thus the later trans­ mission of texts. These developments have chimed with abiding historical con­ cerns with power and its exercise; historians are ready, perhaps a little too eager, to acknowledge the power inherent in telling the past. They have encouraged the idea of ‘soft’ texts, of a past which can be and was rewritten.47 In all these respects they have fed into some of the liveliest questions in recent work on his­tori­og­ raphy: on legitimation, and the writing of an authoritative past to do that; on eth­ nic identity and ethnogenesis; and the role of a shared memory in these processes. Such work has, inevitably, raised questions and conundrums, not least about the malleability of an authoritative past.48 What are the limits to the telling and retell­ ing of a past whose telling is designed to convince, legitimate, or identify, one whose telling invokes the authority of tradition? Are some texts ‘softer’ than ­others, and if so, why? The way early medieval texts were written and transmitted raises questions about deliberate authorial intention in any moulding of the past, and about its reception. As the reader, reception, and impact have become at least as important as the original author, the variants in texts over time, their adaptation to new uses, or simply the tell-tale manuscript signs of how they were read, have assumed new importance. Reuse can be as revealing as original creation. Transmission and

MA, 1988), pp. 16–49. Written history is, of course, only one form of such use and experience of the past, which also includes ritual, landscape, and a variety of objects and artefacts which may represent the past and its power. 45  C. Wickham and J. Fentress, Social Memory (Oxford, 1992). 46  See the group project ‘Texts and Identities in the Early Middle Ages’ and its numerous products: https://www.oeaw.ac.at/en/imafo/research/historical-identity-research/cooperations-workinggroups/texts-and-identities-in-the-early-middle-ages/, accessed 28 Nov. 2019. Mayke de Jong, Rosamund McKitterick, Ian Wood, and Walter Pohl were founder members. The interest in history writing was in some ways an offshoot of interest in identity, particularly the questions of identity and ethnogenesis pioneered by these four scholars and Herwig Wolfram. 47  M. Innes, ‘Introduction’, in Hen and Innes, Uses of the Past, 5 n. 10, citing the work of J. Nelson, ‘Public Histories and Private History in the Work of Nithard’, Speculum, 60 (1985), pp. 251–93. The theoretical underpinnings are wider. 48  W. Pohl, ‘The Construction of Communities and the Persistence of Paradox: An Introduction’, in R. Corradini, M. Diesenberger, and H. Reimitz (eds), The Construction of Communities in the Early Middle Ages: Texts, Resources and Artefacts (Leiden, 2003), pp. 1–15, especially pp. 4–5, for example, rejects a purely idealist stance, recognizing the social forces which led to the development of commu­ nities. He is also clear that there are pre-existing notions, perceptions, and feelings as well as manipu­ lative ideas; there are, in other words, limits to the malleability of the past, and these limitations include unconscious forces and factors which need to be considered alongside the overt and conscious manipulations.

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16  After Alfred reception have become critical, the successive generations of readers, their understanding and amendments taking their place alongside original authors. The variants and changes in the process of transmission are now seen as revealing in themselves; differences between texts are at least as important as ‘the reality they agree on’.49 There has been a special interest in the way such difference may provide insight into deeper concerns. We read for ‘tension, contradiction, hopes, disappointments, paradox’, that is, for the points where unspoken questions and arguments—if not unconscious ones—break into the text.50 Differences, adapta­ tions, copies are driven by disputes and contemporary problems, and become, in turn, clues to them. The decision to write history and the precise nature, indeed text, of the history written have become key evidence for our understanding of the past, and espe­ cially of periods of conflict and change.51 More broadly, the texts are recognized as engaged; they are not ‘quiet products of desk-bound scholars’.52 They are one voice in a (lost) conversation, in which the historian’s task is not only to listen carefully to and interpret the voice that can be heard, but also to attempt to reconstruct the ones now lost.53 The (ever-changing) text is the point at which the earl­ier medieval present’s concerns, attitudes, and questions met the authority of the past. These insights raise questions about those texts which remain very stable over time. They should also draw attention to another element in this dialogue, namely the authoritative past itself, and the limits of its malleability. Audience has been restored, and with it audience as a factor in limiting room for manipulation. The stories and memories of the audience, social memory, are one brake on the malle­ ability of the past, and of the text. So too is the (text’s) present, towards which the overall story must convincingly lead.54 Stories and memories may be invoked as a source of authority, including in prologues and epilogues, which merit serious attention. If social memory is one crucial context which must be restored, so too is manu­script context. Texts which modern categorizations have separated by genre travelled together in early medieval manuscripts, and were read and used to­gether.55 The return to manuscripts, a major trend in recent earlier medieval studies, makes this clear, just as it also clarifies who was interested in having 49  M. de Jong, R. McKitterick, W. Pohl, and I. Wood, ‘Introduction’, in R. Corradini, R. Meens, and C. Pössel (eds), Texts and Identities in the Early Middle Ages (Vienna, 2006), p. 12. 50  Pohl, ‘The Construction of Communities’ (2003), p. 6. 51  Corradini, ‘Die Annales Fuldenses’, in Texts and Identities (2006), p. 121. 52  Pohl, ‘The Construction of Communities’ (2003), p. 6. 53  Pohl’s allusion to Umberto Eco’s notion of the ‘lector in fabula’ is, again, indicative of the intel­ lectual frame of reference. 54  W. Pohl, ‘Memory, Identity and Power in Lombard Italy’, in Hen and Innes, Uses of the Past, pp. 9–28 at 27–8. 55  See Pohl, ‘Memory, Identity . . .’, esp. p. 11.

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Introduction  17 these works and where they were copied. Commissioners and patrons should not be clearly distinguished from readers and users, and none of these from scribes and collators. All were receivers and users of the past—a past which no one owned, though many used.56 Patrons, audiences, readers, and scribes are the— overlapping—receivers of these texts, as important as their original authors; their social memory in one sense a limiting ‘reality check’, yet itself deeply embedded in and part of the discourse of the past in which all are engaged. It is not simply the facts that the texts contain, but the fact of the texts them­ selves, and their own constant evolution and adaptation, which are crucial. Texts evolved: sometimes dramatically and radically,57 sometimes more subtlely and organically, though nonetheless significantly.58 Each stage, each reuse, each new variant is instructive. This shift of attention away from authors has been one among many factors which have brought the humble, anonymous annals back in from the cold. Terms such as ‘propaganda’ and ‘bias’ are at the crude end of a spectrum of ways of understanding these processes. Overt, crude manipulation could and did occur. But recent work has emphasized that the activities discussed above took place in a world of (often unconscious) ideology, as well as in one of deliberate dialogue between audience, adaptors, and texts. The whole delicate process of adapting and adopting history without compromising the authority of the past has been characterized by Helmut Reimitz as ‘the art of truth’.59 We are dealing with the constant rewriting of meaning by the context of reading, both the sociopolitical context and the codicological. The assembly of texts in itself can change the meaning of the component parts; an addition to a set of annals may change the meaning of what has gone before; each new conclusion rewrites the story which led to it.60 In all this it would be foolish to lose sight of authors entirely, though we need also to recognize that they were themselves not the ‘owners’ of the past they recorded; they were themselves constrained by social memory, by the discourse of the past. But they can no longer be our sole focus. The scribe, the reader, the audience—or rather the scribes, the readers, the audiences—must join the authors. Meaning has become central, and that is to be discovered not solely,

56  Pohl, ‘Memory, Identity . . .’ encapsulates much recent thinking here. 57  Such as Gregory of Tours’ Historiae, which were abbreviated and edited during the early medi­ eval period itself: see H.  Reimitz, ‘The Art of Truth: Historiography and Identity in the Frankish World’, in R. Corradini, R. Meens, C. Possel, and P. Shaw (eds), Texts and Identities in the Early Middle Ages (Vienna, 2006), pp. 88–103. 58 As in the case of the ‘Annals of Fulda’, see Reuter, The Annals of Fulda, ‘Introduction’ and Corradini, ‘Die Annales Fuldenses’, in Texts and Identities (2006). 59  Reimitz, ‘The Art of Truth’, in Texts and Identities (2006). 60  See, with specific reference to these vernacular chronicles, J. Neville, ‘Making Their Own Sweet Time’, in The Medieval Chronicle, II, pp. 166–77 and J.  Stodnick, ‘Second-Rate Stories?’, Literature Compass, 3/6 (2006).

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18  After Alfred not even mainly, in authorial intention, whatever that might have been, but in audience reception. Historians engaged in this study have, on the whole, kept their feet firmly on the ground, or at least grounded in the skills and methods of older Quellenkritik. Most historians would still employ an eclectic toolkit of methods, including a gamut of approaches to the reading of texts. Manuscript study has remained cen­ tral; indeed the new questions have made it more so. A powerful ‘back to the manuscripts’ movement has been driven, at least in some quarters, by precisely the questions raised above.61 The manuscript context of any given work is now viewed as potentially critical to its reading, not least because, again, this is a guide to how it was read and used. The transmission and reuse of texts is central to its study, as much if not more so than the original moment of composition; manu­ scripts are critical to tracking all this. These historiographical developments have had major implications for the use of existing editions. How the text is presented to us, how it has been edited and re-presented, has become a critical question for medieval historians—as for so many others. If annals have been brought in from the cold, the edition has been placed in the limelight. If the ‘authoritative identity of the text’ is a problematic question for the historian faced with a constantly evolving text, an even bigger one is the ‘authori­ tative identity of editions’, which preclude other interpretations and mask vari­ ation.62 Editions often impose a single identity on a text. The edition isolates the text from its codicological context and from the individuality of the manuscripts, discarding, overriding, choosing between later variants in favour of a recon­ structed ‘urtext’ or ‘metatext’—producing a text which may never have existed in this form, which may thus never have been read by any audience. The edition is itself an interpretation of the text, but it is one which readily becomes canonical. That canonization may mislead us, whether through misnomers,63 or more in­sidi­ous­ly in its masking of stages of development, even, in some cases, erasing important earlier stages.64 Some approaches to editing regard differences as mis­ takes, disdaining them as scribal errors.65 In both cases the variants and changes now seen as so revealing are hidden, even expunged as later accretions or 61  But for an early driver of this movement, especially for Old English studies, see F. C. Robinson, ‘Old English Literature in its Most Immediate Context’, in J. D. Niles (ed.), Old English Literature in Context (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 11–29. 62  Corradini, ‘Die Annales Fuldenses’, in Texts and Identities (2006), pp. 122–3. 63  As Tim Reuter and Jinty Nelson pointed out in their introductions to the Annals of Fulda and St Bertin. The names given to both texts are modern, not adequate descriptions of production, patronage, or use. 64  See Corradini, ‘Die Annales Fuldenses’, in Texts and Identities (2006) on the text behind the earliest ‘Annals of Fulda’. 65 Thus hiding the significance of each transmitted version. See M.  de Jong, R.  McKitterick, W.  Pohl, and I.  Wood, ‘Introduction’, in R.  Corradini, R.  Meens, and C.  Pössel (eds), Texts and Identities in the Early Middle Ages (Vienna, 2006).

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Introduction  19 as—unwarranted or erroneous—scribal changes. Not only do such editions hide variants, masking later stages of transmission and taking negligent scribes to task, but they disassemble manuscripts, and classify and separate works according to modern notions of genre. In all this they separate us from the readers and audi­ ences of works, and from, at least in some cases, their continual reshaping. Editorial practice has always raised questions.66 These have become sharper.67 But there is a renewed respect for the manuscript and the scribe.68 Texts are liv­ ing, and all stages of that life are of interest. The scribe is not only a possible author, but first reader and user of the text, as well as witness to the living lan­ guage in which it is recorded.69 An editorial practice which aims to reconstruct the urtext, the original work, obscures this constant process of change. Like the ‘metatext’ or ‘eclectic’ text assembled from readings in different manuscripts, it can also create texts which never existed, at the expense of ones which certainly did have a life, and which certainly were read. Awareness of the constructedness of the texts in editions we use and of the work of the ‘invisible’ editor is to be welcomed. Editions will always be with us. Some, like the recent collaborative edition of the vernacular chronicles, have allowed quantum leaps in study (see chapter 2). The skills and knowledge of the editor potentially enhance our understanding; every reader her own editor is a daunting and not necessarily an attractive proposition. It is all the more im­port­ ant to bear in mind editor and edition, as well as author and context, as we approach these texts on the printed page. For the purposes of this book, this recent work underlines the need for a study which disaggregates ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’ into the individual vernacular chronicles, and which pays attention to the stages of development. The attention given to reception demands that we be clear about precisely what history—or

66  See G. T. Tanselle, ‘Classical, Biblical and Medieval Textual Criticism and Modern Editing’, first published in 1983, repr. in G. T. Tanselle, Textual Criticism and Scholarly Editing (Charlottesville, VA, and London, 1990), pp. 274–321. 67  The ‘Death of the author’ is only the most extreme formulation of a range of questions about authors, intentionality, and the (changing) nature of the work. On these new approaches compare M. Lapidge, ‘On the Emendation of Old English Texts’, in D. C. Scragg and P. E. Szarmach (eds), The Editing of Old English (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 53–67, esp. 67, and Lapidge, ‘Edition, Emendation and Reconstruction of Anglo-Saxon Texts’, in R.  Frank (ed.), The Politics of Editing (New York, 1993), pp. 131–57 at p. 132, with A. J. Frantzen, ‘The Living and the Dead’, in ibid., pp. 159–81 and I. Small,‘The Editor as Annotator as Ideal Reader’, in I. Small and M. Walsh (eds), The Theory and Practice of Text-Editing (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 186–209. 68  L.  E.  Boyle, ‘ “Epistolae venerunt parum dulces”: The Place of Codicology in the Editing of  Medieval Latin Texts’, in R.  Landon (ed.), Editing and Editors: A Retrospect (New York, 1985), pp. 29–46. Boyle, p. 33, expresses a refreshing respect for the scribe. 69  On the importance of such respect in, for example, dictionary production see C. Brewer, ‘Words and Dictionaries: OED, MED and Chaucer’, in C.  Brewer and B.  A.  Windeatt (eds), Traditions and Innovations in the Study of Medieval English Literature: The Influence of Derek Brewer (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 215–61 at pp. 216–17.

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20  After Alfred rather histories—were available to readers in the tenth to twelfth centuries. The loosely political readings, where history-writing is often an engaged—though not necessarily always overtly conscious—participant in contemporary questions, encourage exploration of the dialogue between political context, widely defined, and the vernacular chronicles and their development. The recognition that this applies to anonymous, annalistic writing as much as to thematic, named authored texts is of particular relevance to the study of these chronicles. Awareness of the role of editions in shaping our view of texts, and renewed attention to manu­ scripts and manuscript context is important for texts which have a long history of editorial intervention. An extreme positivist approach to medieval historical works, especially to annals, cuts through the text to extract the ‘facts’ it contains. The more sophisticated version identifies the ‘bias’ of the author, the context and agendas, with the danger of simply opening the way to impose our own ‘biases’, contexts, and agendas on the text. The text is a fact in itself, and a revealing one. It is neither a transparent window on reality, nor simply a dirty one, to be cleaned for a better view; it is not even a distorting mirror to be corrected for. It is rather a partner in a dialogue with the historian. This book aims both to engage in that dialogue, and to lay the basis for the voice of these chronicles to be heard in it. Patrons, scribe/authors, places and dates of writing, and audiences are huge problems for the study of these texts. Postmodernism offers the siren call of liberation from such questions; the language speaks through the author. But historians can never be entirely happy with such approaches, and the most ­successful recent historical work has exploited contexts fruitfully. One task of this work will be the attempt to restore such contexts to these problematic texts. The old questions, of who, when, and why, have not lost their salience. * * * * * * * * * * * * The plan and methods of this book reflect the eclectic toolkit of an early-twentyfirst-century historian. It proceeds chronologically, even though many of the sur­ viving chronicles are late. The chronicle manuscripts are dealt with at the appropriate points. Earlier stages of their development and earlier lost chronicles are revealed through detailed comparison and close reading and are discussed in the relevant chronological chapters. Surviving chronicles, and additions to them, are first dated palaeographically; all texts, surviving and lost, are also placed through consideration of content. While eschewing crude notions of propaganda or bias, the working hypothesis is that no text is neutral. All construct a story, consciously or unconsciously, which gives insight into the circumstances of its creation even as it potentially affects them. The readings here will be constantly alert to the dialogues, debates, and questions in which the texts may be involved. Every effort wll be made to identify place, patron, audience, and scribe/authors: the use of he/she in some

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Introduction  21 cases indicates sufficient uncertainty to demand we allow for female scribe/ authors or patrons.70 The chronicles which this book addresses are texts of considerable complexity and difficulty. Faced with this, the book will not ignore or refuse to ask those questions to which simple, single, certain answers cannot be given. It will allow for multiple possibilities, laying out doubts and caveats, making clear what can be securely argued and what is questionable, admitting failures to answer. It is hoped that this practice and method will open debate and discussion of these important texts, encouraging further exploration rather than closing it down. The importance of these texts derives at least in part from their place in the ‘story of England’. One conclusion of this book will be that many—if not all—are close to those involved in the politics of an English kingdom which grew during the tenth and eleventh centuries through the expansion of a southern monarchy, a kingdom which underwent the traumas of two eleventh-century conquests. This book starts from the premise that the shape of that English kingdom—north of the Thames and especially of the Trent and Humber—was not inevitable. Insofar as these chronicles are part of the ‘English story’, they are not its neutral recorders but engaged participants in its writing—and all the more precious as a result. Just how far their own editing and presentation has been part of that on­going tale will become clear in the next chapter.

70  Such female patrons, audiences, and scribe/authors in England at this date are clear: P. Stafford, ‘Reading Women in Annals: Eadburg, Cuthburg, Cwenburg and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles’, in C.  La Rocca (ed.), Agire da Donna: Modelli e pratiche di rappresentazione (secoli VI–X) (Turnhout, 2007), pp. 269–88 and especially E. M. Tyler, England in Europe: English Royal Women and Literary Patronage, c.1000–c.1150 (Toronto, 2017).

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2

The Study and Editing of the Vernacular Chronicles In the early 1950s the English Historical Documents series was launched. The series aimed to ‘make generally accessible . . . fundamental sources of English history’. The first two volumes opened with the same text: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. In the eyes of the editors, this text merited ‘pride of place’. In their view ‘English narrative history is so dominated by this compilation that other ­writers . . . are mainly of interest as providing a commentary on it’.1 It was ‘the most important source for the political history of the period.’2 What lies behind that judgement? The vernacular chronicles are not the oldest texts of English history, not even the oldest narrative texts. The Ecclesiastical History of the Gens Anglorum written by Bede in the early eighth century predates any of these vernacular chronicles by over a century and a half. The British texts, the Historia Brittonum and Gildas’s De excidio et conquestu Britanniae, are earlier. The so-called ‘York Annals’ and other continuations of Bede, are of eighthto ninth-century date. Alfred’s Chronicle, the basis of the vernacular chronicles, is later than all of these, dating to the last decades of the ninth century. There are, however, many possible justifications for the primacy accorded it in the English Historical Documents. The Historia Brittonum and Gildas are classifiable as ‘British’ texts, emanating from the non-Anglo or Saxon inhabitants of the island, not ‘English’. Both then and now the York Annals lack a modern edition which establishes an easily usable text.3 Bede, however, is ‘English’, well-edited and early. But his is an ecclesiastical history. Volumes i and ii of the English Historical Documents series separated such sources. Both relegated ‘The Church’ to Part III, after ‘Selected Narratives’ which form the first section of each volume, and following ‘Charters and Laws’ (comprising administrative, social, and economic history) in Volume i, and ‘Government and Administration’ in Volume ii. 1  EHD, i, ed. D. Whitelock (1955) and ii, ed. D. C. Douglas and G. Greenaway (1953), quotes from EHD ii, pp. iii and 97. 2  D. Whitelock (ed.), with D. C. Douglas, and S. I. Tucker, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Revised Translation (London, 1961), p. xi, which brought together the EHD translations. 3  See ch. 6 on this text. There is much important recent work in J. Story, Carolingian Connections: Anglo-Saxon England and Carolingian Francia, c. 750–870 (Aldershot, 2003), especially pp. 95–133; J. Story, ‘After Bede: Continuing the Ecclesiastical History’, in S. Baxter, C. Karkov, J. L. Nelson, and D. Pelteret (eds), Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald (Farnham, 2009), pp. 165–84; and cf. J. Story, ‘The Frankish Annals of Lindisfarne and Kent’, ASE, 34 (2005), pp. 59–109. After Alfred: Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and Chroniclers, 900–1150. Pauline Stafford, Oxford University Press 2020. © Pauline Stafford. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198859642.001.0001

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The Study and Editing of the Vernacular Chronicles  23 The most important reason is that implied in the editors’ own comments. ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’—or rather the series of chronicles which somewhat misleadingly go under this heading—provide between them the only continuous narrative of the Anglo-Saxon period, that is of the period prior to 1066. ‘Continuous’ is an overstatement of their fragmentary coverage. None of them, including Alfred’s, tells anything like a complete tale. There are remarkable gaps in their coverage: both social—all of them, and not merely Alfred’s, are ­king-centred—and chronological—runs of years are blank, including for the tenth and eleventh centuries, which are the subject of this book. Nonetheless, with all these limitations, they provide our sole overall chronology. Combining them, we can piece together a story of English history from the arrival of Julius Caesar (but especially from the arrival of people we now call Anglo-Saxons) through to the early twelfth century (including the conquest of England by the Normans in 1066). That story may be decidedly patchy. But the primacy which the English Historical Documents volumes accord them is readily explicable. It is nonetheless revealing. Their combined and individual narratives are an overwhelmingly English, Anglo-Saxon story, told in the Old English vernacular. For Plummer at the end of the nineteenth century they were ‘the national chronicle’, whereas the York Annals, for example, were ‘merely local’.4 In their view of its English national significance, Plummer and the editors of the English Historical Documents were not inaugurating the primacy of ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, though in each case their judgements reflect the contemporary perceptions of their own day. That text or texts have long been accorded a fundamental status in the English national story. When and why that has been the case and how it has been reflected in and affected the series of editions of these texts are the subject of this chapter. Recent scholarship regarding them will form part of the detailed discussion in later chapters of this book. The focus here is especially on their study and particularly on their editing from the sixteenth century to the 1950s. The story of the study and shaping of these chronicles cannot be divorced from the shaping of England and Englishness itself. * * * * * * * * * * * * In 1066 the English kingdom fell to Norman control at the battle of Hastings. That Norman Conquest proved a traumatic event; it became a key date in later English history and historical writing. The period which preceded it came to play a crucial role in English national if not nationalist perceptions. The vernacular chronicles which recorded pre-1066 history have been implicated in these perceptions from the twelfth century onwards.

4 Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, p. civ at n. 3 specifically contrasts it with the Latin Gesta Northanhymbrorum, his title for the ‘York Annals’.

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24  After Alfred A generation or more after 1066, the early to mid twelfth century produced a flowering of English history writing, largely in Latin.5 That flowering can be cat­ egor­ized as part of wider European developments loosely termed ‘the TwelfthCentury Renaissance’; but their specific English context was the longer-term aftermath of the Norman Conquest. The work of three of its leading authors, William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, and Geffrei Gaimar, has been dubbed ‘The Matter of England’.6 The motivation of these writers was complex, but both William and Henry wrote explicitly ‘for love of the patria’, to tell of ‘the deeds of this kingdom and the origin of our people (gens)’.7 All went in search of the English past, of the story of the English, of English kings. In that quest they turned to the eighth-century Historia Ecclesiastica by Bede, but also to these vernacular chronicles. Gaimar’s major source, for example, was one of them. A copy of a vernacular chronicle which we now call the ‘Northern Recension’ (chapter 6 below), became in his hands the basis of an Anglo-Norman vernacular history.8 These twelfth-century historians are witness to, and participants in, con­tem­por­ ary questions concerning ‘England’ and ‘Englishness’, prompted by the long-term results of the Norman Conquest.9 These Old English chronicles were already their primary sources. Serious study of them dates from another such period, the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, during the English reformation and its aftermath. The names often given to two of these texts, the ‘Laud’ and ‘Parker’ chronicles, are witness to this interest, and its politics.10 In the sixteenth century the preservation of manuscripts of texts like these was explicitly and officially sanctioned. Queen Elizabeth’s Privy Council recorded the Queen’s ‘care and zeale . . . for the conservation of such auncient recordes and monuments’ seen as relevant to ‘both . . . the state of ecclesiastical and civile government’.11 Elizabeth’s archbishop of Canterbury, 5  R. Southern, ‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing: 4. The Sense of the Past’, TRHS, 5th ser, 23 (1973), pp. 243–63; J. Campbell, ‘Some Twelfth-Century Views of the Anglo-Saxon Past’, Peritia, 3 (1984), pp. 209–28; A. Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge, 1995), especially pp. 155–86. 6  The term ‘Matter of England’ was coined by Rees Davies, The Matter of Britain and the Matter of England (Oxford, 1996); see especially pp. 12–13. It signals both the significance and also the constructed, if not contestable, nature of the story created. 7  Malmesbury, DGRA, i, 14; Henry of Huntingdon, p. 4. 8 I.  Short, ‘Gaimar’s Epilogue and Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Liber vetustissimus’, Speculum, 69 (1994), pp. 323–43 at pp. 329–33. 9  On which see J. Gillingham, The English in the Twelfth Century: Imperialism, National Identity and Political Values (Woodbridge, 2000). 10  The indispensable guide is A. Lutz, ‘The Study of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in the Seventeenth Century and the Establishment of Old English Studies in the Universities’, in T.  Graham (ed.), The Recovery of Old English: Anglo-Saxon Studies in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Kalamazoo, MI, 2000), pp. 1–82. 11 C.  E.  Wright, ‘The Dispersal of the Monastic Libraries and the Beginnings of Anglo-Saxon Studies’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 1 (1949–53), pp. 208–37 at pp. 212–13; J.  Bruce and T.  Thomason Perowne (eds), Correspondence of Matthew Parker  D.D., Archbishop of Canterbury (Cambridge, 1853), pp. 327–8. See also R.  I.  Page, Matthew Parker and his Books (Kalamazoo, MI, 1993), p. 2.

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The Study and Editing of the Vernacular Chronicles  25 Matthew Parker, was to be allowed to peruse such manuscripts, with a promise to restore them safely to their owners. The size of the Parker collection in Cambridge suggests that, like many borrowers of books, the Archbishop was not always assiduous in returning them. That collection included the oldest surviving vernacular chronicle, ‘The Parker Chronicle’, what we now know as ‘Chronicle A’. Queen Elizabeth’s chief minister, Robert Cecil, owned the chronicle that passed later to Archbishop Laud, now known as ‘Chronicle E’. The circle surrounding Archbishop Parker was especially active in the collection, transcription, and study of these texts. The hand of Parker’s secretary, Joscelyn, can—literally—be seen in several.12 Early modern transcriptions, annotations, and additions are testimony to the interest in these chronicles at this date. The vernacular chronicles were not, of course, the only, or even the main, manuscripts targeted by Elizabeth’s Privy Council. Nor was interest in them, in the sixteenth century or later, purely political.13 It would be wrong to exclude disinterested scholarship, or the role of the English antiquarian. By the end of the seventeenth century their study was located within the English universities, where the first printed editions were produced. Disinterested scholarship, however, like antiquarian enthusiasm, has its own contexts. The seventeenth-century shift to a more scholarly locus of study was in part politically motivated and driven.14 The library of the manuscript collector, Sir Robert Cotton, contained most of our surviving chronicles by the early decades of that century. Cotton’s library, situated opposite the Houses of Parliament, was identified by the Stuart kings as a generator of seditious argument. It was closed from 1629 to 1631. The first University posts in Anglo-Saxon studies were founded at least in part in reaction to such royalist absolutism. One of the first published products of those posts was Wheelocke’s edition of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the Gens Anglorum, of the English people, to which he added one of the vernacular chronicles.15 Wheelocke’s, the earliest printed edition of any of these chronicles, was thus a product of the mid-seventeenth-century shift of Anglo-Saxon studies into the universities. But the earliest early modern users had already worked on them, producing annotations and transcripts. Together they reveal attitudes and 12  On Joscelyn’s work see R.  I.  Page, Matthew Parker and T.  Graham, ‘The Beginnings of Old English Studies: Evidence from the Manuscripts of Matthew Parker’, in S.  Sato (ed.), Back to the Manuscripts: Papers from the Symposium ‘The Integrated Approach to Manuscript Studies: A New Horizon’ held at the Eighth Meeting of the Japan Society for Medieval English Studies, Tokyo, December, 1992 (Tokyo 1997), pp. 29–50. 13 T.  Graham, ‘Anglo-Saxon Studies: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries’, in P.  Pulsiano and E. Treharne (eds), A Companion to Anglo-Saxon Literature (Oxford, 2001), pp. 415–33 at p. 422. 14  As argued by Lutz, ‘The Study’. 15  The form of his name used here is that found in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Hamilton, A.  (2004, September 23), ‘Wheelocke, Abraham (c.1593–1653), linguist and librarian’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. Retrieved 28 Nov. 2019, from https://www.oxforddnb. com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-29191.

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26  After Alfred practices which were shaping these chronicles, and which would continue to find echoes in many later editions. Early modern annotators and transcribers often had access to more than one chronicle in manuscript. Their practices, however, point to a view of the vernacular chronicles as interchangeable sets of annals whose contents were essentially collatable, if not to an underlying notion that they were in some ways a single chronicle. Joscelyn, Archbishop Parker’s secretary, was the most important ­sixteenth-century student of these texts. He studied the available manuscripts, but also annotated and added to some in instances where he had found extra material in others. Thus he copied bits of Chronicle B into A, used Chronicle C to insert annal numbers into B, and used B to make additions to Chronicle D. Joscelyn also annotated A with readings from Chronicle E.16 He filled in what he saw as lacunae in C from D,17 and supplied the lost material after folio 9 in D from other chronicles.18 He was far from alone in this readiness to make changes in the manuscripts. Nowell used B, C, and D to make additions to his collated copy of Chronicles G and E.19 William L’Isle consulted both A and E, and heavily annotated E as a result.20 Such practices signal a positivist attitude to these annals as sources for a list of dates and facts. That is explicit in Abraham Wheelocke’s first published edition.21 Printed in Cambridge in 1643–4, Wheelocke’s text was produced from chronicles A and G. Since G went no further than 1001 he added the last section from A. G is a copy of A. Spatchcocking these two together does not necessarily indicate any particular attitude to the manuscripts. But his title arguably does. For Wheelocke the text he was editing and producing was singular: the ‘Chronologia Anglo Saxonica’ or ‘Chronologia Saxonica’, Anglo Saxon or Saxon Chronology.22 Evidently in his view elements of that chronology could legitimately be assembled from different texts. Edmund Gibson produced the next published edition in 1692.23 He made use of several chronicles, starting from Wheelocke (thus via Wheelocke from our Chronicles G and A), then consulting and making use of Chronicle E. His location in Oxford meant that he worked in the Bodleian and thus had access to E, the ‘Laud Chronicle’. He also used the work of earlier scholars: Joscelyn’s transcript of 16 Taylor, Chronicle B, pp. xiii–xv, cf. e.g. Bately, Chronicle A, p. xv. 17  O’Brien O’Keeffe, Chronicle C, p. xvii–xviii. 18 Cubbin, Chronicle D, p. x. 19 Taylor, Chronicle B, p. xvi; O’Brien O’Keeffe, Chronicle C, pp. xvi–xvii; Lutz, Chronicle G, pp. lvii–lxv. 20 Bately, Chronicle A, pp. xv and xlv; Irvine, Chronicle E, p. xvi. 21  Abraham Wheelocke (ed.), Historiae ecclesiasticae gentis Anglorum libri v (Cambridge, 1643), to which the Chronologia Saxonica, produced by comparison of the two manuscripts now known as A and G, was appended. 22  ‘Chronologia Anglo Saxonica’ on his title page, ‘Chronologia Saxonica’ passim as running heads. 23  Chronicon Saxonicum, seu Annales rerum in Anglia præcipue gestarum, a Christo nato ad annum usque 1154 deducti, ac jam demum Latinitate donati , , , accedunt regulæ ad investigandas nominum locorum origines; et nominum locorum ac virorum in chronico memoratorum explicatio. Opera et studio E. Gibson (Oxford, 1692).

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The Study and Editing of the Vernacular Chronicles  27 B and Junius’s extracts from F.24 Gibson’s editorial practice mirrored that of men like Joscelyn. He normally combined all the manuscripts he used into one single narrative by collating them. His references make clear from which manuscripts particular readings come. But the reader cannot readily distinguish that in the annal itself.25 Editors and translators continued to treat the vernacular chronicles in this way until well into the nineteenth century, not least because of their reliance on these first editions. Thus the first translation into modern English, Anna Gurney’s translation of 1819, used Gibson’s edition.26 James Ingram produced a new edition and translation of the ‘Saxon Chronicle’ in 1823, again using several manuscripts, but again collating them. Gurney and Ingram are part of the next significant flowering of work on these chronicles in the nineteenth century; the context was again a flourishing of national feeling and of medievalism. Translation made these chronicles available to a wider public, though it should be stressed that they were never as popular as the tales of King Arthur. The sense of a ‘national’ chronicle became explicit in some nineteenth-century editions, like that of Charles Plummer at the end of the century (see p. 23 and p. 33). But that was already true for James Ingram in 1823. The Saxon Chronicle was, in his view, an all-important source of ‘facts’ on England: on ‘our commerce, our naval and military glory, our liberty and our ­religion [my emphasis]’. It contrasted with the ‘puerile’ ‘legendary tales’, ‘magical delusions’, and ‘miraculous exploits’ which characterized the native British or Norman French chronicles. The Saxon Chronicle was especially fitted to the ‘sober sense of Englishmen’.27 People had turned to these chronicles from the twelfth century onwards in pursuit of the story of the English kingdom, often in contexts of national ­def­in­ition. Interest in them has usually been part of a much wider interest in things Anglo-Saxon, where Anglo-Saxon times, the period which preceded the (French) Norman Conquest, have a special originary status: the first, the ­original, if not the true English. From twelfth-century reactions to the traumas of 1066 onwards, interest in them tracks periods of national sentiment, of concern for the national past. That concern has often meant that study of them has had official backing. All this becomes explicit in the mid nineteenth century. 24  Gibson, Preface; cf. Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, pp. cxxix–cxxx. 25  Thus e.g. in annal 547 he prints the genealogy as we find it in AG, followed by references to Bamburgh as in E. The notes make this clear, but the text collates the two. Under 1070 he begins with A’s account of Lanfranc and follows that without a break with E’s account of the year, including attacks on Peterborough. Compare, however, the annal for 1001, where the text is given as in A, with the E text as a variant in the note. 26  A Literal Translation of the Saxon Chronicle, by Miss Anna Gurney, For private circulation (Norwich, 1819). Anna Gurney’s translation was known to Ingram. It was the basis of the later Giles translation: see Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, p. cxxxiii. 27  The Saxon Chronicle with an English translation and notes, critical and explanatory. To which are added chronological, topographical, and glossarial indices, a short grammar of the Anglo-Saxon language, etc. by J. Ingram (London, 1823), pp. ii–v. His gendered vocabulary would repay analysis.

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28  After Alfred The judgement that they were somehow a ‘national chronicle’ now attracted not only backing, but funding. The ‘British Historical Monuments’, edited in 1848 by the Keeper of the Records of the Tower of London, Henry Petrie, was one such national project.28 The Monuments consciously referred back to an earlier, abandoned late-eighteenthcentury project. That had been backed by Edward Gibbon, to collect and publish the ‘national Historians of the Middle Ages . . . in a manner worthy of the subject and of the empire’. That earlier project had been conceived as a ‘grand National Collection’ on the model of the Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France.29 The role of national pride, and rivalry, in spurring historical publication is clear. The ‘British Historical Monuments’ themselves were an attempt to answer the great German historical enterprise, the Monumenta Germaniae Historica (Historical Monuments of Germany). The projected British Monuments proved hugely costly and ultimately abortive; only the first volume appeared. That volume included, among many other texts, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, edited by Richard Price. That chronicle was also among the first commissioned volumes of Britain’s more successful response to the German Monumenta, the Rolls Series. That was launched in 1857 under the auspices of the recently created Public Record Office and with parliamentary backing. It was specifically flagged as ‘an important national object . . . calculated to fill up the chasms existing in the printed material of English [sic] history.’30 The Rolls Series was to fill that gap, using treasury money. As a later chronicle editor, Plummer, ruefully put it, ‘Mr Thorpe [who edited these chronicles for the series] had behind him the resources of the English government’.31 The early to mid nineteenth century marked a great step forward in vernacular chronicle studies. Modern English translations appeared, together with new and now generally available editions: the Rolls Series, for example, was widely and officially circulated. In some ways these broke new ground. In other ways older attitudes were continued and confirmed. The Old English vernacular in which they were written has always been one of the special qualifications of these chronicles as ‘English stories’. The ­twelfth-century historian William of Malmesbury saw them as ‘barbaric writings’: a broken tale in the language of the fatherland. He would ‘season [them] with Roman salt’, in 28 On nineteenth-century government-backed editions see D.  M.  Knowles, ‘Great Historical Enterprises, IV. The Rolls Series’, TRHS, 5th ser., 11 (1961), pp. 137–59. 29  H. Petrie and J. Sharpe (eds), Monumenta Historica Britannica, or, Materials for the History of Britain from the Earliest Period (London, Published by Command of Her Majesty, 1848), p. 36. 30  General Preface to Rolls Series; cf. Knowles, ‘The Rolls Series’ (1961), pp. 141–2. 31 Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, p. cxxxvi, commenting on B.  Thorpe (ed.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, According to the Several Original Authorities, published by the authority of the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty’s Treasury, under the direction of the Master of the Rolls (London, 1861).

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The Study and Editing of the Vernacular Chronicles  29 other words write a history in Latin.32 But for most later seekers of England’s past, and even perhaps for William himself,33 that ‘barbaric’ tongue has always been part of their attraction. In the sixteenth century the context for their study was ecclesiastical and political debate about an ‘English’ church by contrast with a ‘Roman’ one: its beliefs, and its practices, including its use of the vernacular. The vernacular texts of pre-1066 England had a special legitimizing status. That link between the Old English/Anglo-Saxon vernacular and Englishness was never lost. For Ingram in 1823 the vernacular chronicles were ‘a faithful repository of our national idiom’.34 Yet already by the sixteenth century the Old English vernacular was a barrier to access. It was still the language of the fatherland to some twelfth-century authors, but five hundred years of development of that language meant it was incomprehensible to sixteenth- or seventeenth-century readers. The first editions in the seventeenth century translated these chronicles into Latin, the language of ­scholars and gentleman-antiquarians.35 When interest in them revived in the nineteenth-century the first translations into modern English were made. The earliest English translation has already been mentioned, that by Anna Gurney in 1819, printed for private circulation.36 It comes as no surprise to find a woman aware that Latin, as much as Old English, excluded most potential readers. This was followed in 1823 by Ingram’s translation, the earliest that was publicly available. It was destined to remain widely used. New translations were accompanied by new editions, often displaying even more attention to the range of manuscripts and changing the way the text was presented. Thus Ingram went back to the original of our Chronicles A, B, and F—and was the first to use C and D.37 The Monumenta edition based its text to 975 on that in Chronicle A, but consulted the full range of chronicles. The printed text is essentially collated; notes at the foot of the page allow the reader to check from which chronicle a particular annal was taken. Only occasionally is a

32  Malmesbury, DGRA, i, 14. 33 R.  Thomson, ‘William of Malmesbury’s Diatribe against the Normans’, in M.  Brett and D. A. Woodman (eds), The Long Twelfth-Century View of the Anglo-Saxon Past (Farnham, 2015), pp. 113–21 for tensions in Malmesbury. 34 Ingram, The Saxon Chronicle with an English Translation, p. iii. 35  The first edition was Abraham Wheelocke (ed.), Historiae ecclesiasticae gentis Anglorum libri v (Cambridge, 1643), to which the Chronologia Saxonica—essentially an edition of Chronicle G—was appended. The second appeared in 1692 in Oxford: Chronicon Saxonicum, seu Annales rerum in Anglia præcipue gestarum, a Christo nato ad annum usque 1154 deducti, ac jam demum Latinitate donati . . . accedunt regulæ ad investigandas nominum locorum origines; et nominum locorum ac virorum in chronico memoratorum explicatio. Opera et studio E. Gibson. 36 A.  Gurney, A Literal Translation of the Saxon Chronicle (Norwich, 1819.) See Brookman, H. (2016, October 06). Gurney, Anna (1795–1857), Old English scholar. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved 28 Nov. 2019, from https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref. odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-11759. 37 Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, p. cxxxii.

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30  After Alfred significant variant printed in full below the line.38 But Benjamin Thorpe’s edition for the Rolls Series in 1861 was the first, and so far the only, edition to print the various chronicles in parallel. It is The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: According to the Several Original Authorities, though the translation is of the collated text in the Price/Petrie edition of 1848. That latter translation had also been used by Stevenson in 1853.39 The consultation of more and more manuscripts, as opposed to transcripts, marked these editions; so too did a desire to indicate more clearly what material came from which manuscript. Yet judgements about the chronicles and their content is evident. Thorpe’s sixtext parallel edition did not print all six chronicles in full. What was omitted is, again, revealing. The Latin entries from Chronicle E were omitted, and Chronicle F’s Latin text is largely neglected.40 Thorpe gave primacy to the vernacular elem­ ents of these chronicles, omitting the ‘Latin notices interspersed between ad 114 and ad 812’ in Chronicles E and F.41 Thorpe’s edition was quickly followed in 1865 by John Earle’s Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel.42 As the title suggests, Earle printed two chronicles in full, A and E, with supplementary material taken from others printed at the bottom of the page. The edition thus recognizes the importance of individual chronicles, alongside a positivist treatment aimed at extracting all the factual information they collectively contained. It was Earle’s text which Plummer revised in 1892. Plummer retained Earle’s combination of two full texts plus additions, although he would have preferred to print more; his comments are a reminder of the financial constraints on editors.43 Plummer added a full volume of Introduction, Notes, and Index, which has never been fully superseded. Following the two printed chronicle texts, he also added appendices, extending those found in Earle. Earle had included in his appendices a couple of lengthy additions from F on Canterbury affairs;44 the ‘little Mercian Register . . . which may be styled “The Annals of Æthelflæd” ’, found especially in Chronicles B and C; and the Latin text 38  For the methodology made explicit see H.  Petrie and J.  Sharpe (eds), Monumenta Historica Britannica, or, Materials for the History of Britain from the Earliest Period (London, 1848), pp. 77 and 291 note. AG 1001 is an example of a different annal printed below the line, p. 407. Peterborough additions found in E are given as part of the collated text, but with a note: see p. 312. E and F’s Latin annals are not printed as part of the collated text, but are in the notes. 39 J.  Stevenson, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: The Chronicle of Florence of Worcester (London, 1853), p. xv. 40 Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, pp. cxxxv–cxxxvi. Thorpe mentions (p. xix) the ‘Latin notices’ in E, but does not print them. The ‘spurious charters’ of Peterborough are printed beneath the line ‘so as not to interrupt the narrative’ (p. xix n. 1). See Plummer’s suggestion that there was some rearrangement and correction of annals: the ‘Mercian Register’ was conflated with ABC and the parallelism of years 1044–1052 was not well handled. 41 B. Thorpe, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: According to the Several Original Authorities, Rolls Series (London, 1861), p. xix. 42 J.  Earle, Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, with Supplementary Extracts from the Others (Oxford, 1865). 43 Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, p. xxiii. 44  Chronicle F 796, and F 870; see Earle, pp. 267–8.

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The Study and Editing of the Vernacular Chronicles  31 we now know as the Acta Lanfranci, found in Chronicle A.45 Plummer’s Appendix B also printed the Acta Lanfranci, and extended Earle’s additions from F.  But Plummer printed the ‘Annals of Æthelflæd ’ in his main text, giving C’s version in full.46 His Appendix A contains the prefaces to C, the two texts Menologium and Maxims II (see below, chapter 10). The papal and episcopal lists, which had followed Chronicle A in some form or other since the late tenth century, are not printed by Plummer either in the texts or as appendices, though they had been printed by Wheelocke.47 Plummer nowhere prints the substantially different ­preface in F. Overall Plummer’s edition marks a high point, both in the quality of its texts and the fullness of its annotation and commentary. It remains an important ­edition for scholars. It became, for example, the basis of one of the best of the twentieth-century translations, that by Garmonsway in the Everyman Library. It is thus all the more necessary to be aware of the editorial decisions Plummer was making. His omissions combined with his appendices reveal his judgement of what was intrinsic and what extraneous to the chronicles. Plummer gave in full in the text the West Saxon Regnal list which begins Chronicle A and the account taken from Bede which prefaces Chronicles D and E.  Chronicle C’s prefatory material, by contrast, is relegated to an appendix. Chronicle F’s reworking of E’s preface to include more Britain-wide material is not printed in any form. The explanation here is that neither C nor F is one of Plummer’s base texts; but in neither case is any indication given at the relevant point that this prefatory ­material is different. Post-1066 Latin additions to F are also omitted. The misprision of F as a chronicle is clear. The unwary reader could easily miss the difference between the prefatory material of the various chronicles. Plummer’s editions of Chronicles A and E are very full, including E’s post-1066 Peterborough additions in Old English at, for example, annal 963 and the Latin additions made to E after 1066. Plummer made no simple editorial decision to omit Latin annals and prioritize vernacular Old English. But he followed Earle and relegated Chronicle A’s Latin Acta Lanfranci to an appendix. No justification is given, and Plummer reproduces Earle’s note (above p. 31n45). The omission of  the papal and episcopal material which ended Chronicle A by the eleventh century may simply be a question of space: they were separated from the chronicle text in the manuscript by the Laws, which Plummer also omits. Both are—quite 45  Earle, pp. 271–5, and cf. his comment on p. 208 in the note to the annal for Ā 1070: ‘Here ends the Englisc text of MS Ā. A later hand has continued the history of Lanfranc in Latin, and closes with the consecration of his successor Anselm. This piece will be given in the Appendix.’ Earle’s Appendix, p. 271, also included a ‘fragment’ from D, s.a. 1021. 46  This is in addition to D’s coverage of these years, which Earle had also printed as part of the main text. 47  Wheelocke, who was essentially printing A and G, has the papal and episcopal lists on pp. 567–70, carefully distinguishing those which are found in A alone. They are not printed, or referred to in notes, by Gibson or Thorpe.

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32  After Alfred justifiably—judged in that sense extraneous to the chronicle.48 The decision to relegate the Acta Lanfranci may result from the fact that they have an internal enumeration which could be taken to suggest that they were not conceived as a continuation of Chronicle A but were a separate text. Their omission does, however, change our reading of that chronicle’s final shape and story. The nineteenth-century trend was to consult and print more and more extracts from different chronicles. The twentieth century has seen a number of editions of individual chronicles, culminating in the recent epoch-making collaborative edition. Thus in 1926 Classen and Harmer published the chronicle in BL Cotton Tiberius B iv, what is now known as Chronicle D;49 in 1940 Rositzke’s edition of Chronicle C appeared;50 in 1947 Magoun edited the Latin annals in F, as the ‘Annales Domitiani’.51 Two chronicles were published in facsimile, one in the Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile series. Significantly, these were the two chosen by Plummer: Chronicle A, the Parker Chronicle52 and Chronicle E, the Peterborough Chronicle.53 The last thirty years have seen the most important of all the editions, with each single surviving Old English vernacular chronicle published in full and separately.54 Many of these scholarly editions, however, including Plummer’s, still provided no translations, a practice followed in the recent collaborative edition. Consequently most modern readers, even most non-specialist scholars, still use the two translated versions from the 1950s: that of Garmonsway, translating Plummer,55 and the influential English Historical Documents translation by Dorothy Whitelock. The language barrier has had long-lasting scholarly repercussions. Departments of English, not Departments of History, have been the home to most specialist study of these chronicles. The vernacular Old English

48  Plummer recognized that they belonged together: Two Chronicles, ii, pp. xxiii–xxiv. Compare the comments of the general editors of the Collaborative edition, Dumville and Keynes, in Bately, Chronicle A, p. viii: [The Acta Lanfranci and papal and episcopal lists, etc.] ‘might be considered extraneous to the Chronicle, but . . . are inseparable from the manuscript . . . .[The lists were] always intended (it seems) to complement the Chronicle–text.’ 49  E. Classen and F. E. Harmer (eds), An Anglo-Saxon Chronicle from British Museum Cotton MS. Tiberius B.IV (Manchester, 1926). 50  H. A. Rositzke (ed.), The C-Text of the Old English Chronicles, Beiträge zur englischen Philologie, Heft 34 (Bochum, 1940). 51  F. P. Magoun, ‘Annales Domitiani Latini: An Edition’, Mediaeval Studies, 9 (1947), pp. 235–95, specifically filling a gap in the printing of the ‘Old English annals’ left for example by Thorpe, p. 235. 52  R. Flower and H. Smith (eds), The Parker Chronicle and Laws, Corpus Christi College Cambridge, MS.173: A Facsimile (London, 1941). 53  D.  Whitelock (ed.), with an appendix by C.  Clark, The Peterborough Chronicle: The Bodleian Manuscript Laud Misc. 636 (Copenhagen, 1954). 54  Under the general editorship of David Dumville and Simon Keynes, published as The AngloSaxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition (Cambridge, 1983– ): MS A, ed. Janet Bately (1986); MS B, ed. Simon Taylor (1983); MS C, ed. Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe (2001); MS D, ed. George Cubbin (1996); MS E, ed. Susan Irvine (2004); MS F, ed. Peter Baker (2000). Chronicle G edited separately, Angelika Lutz, Die Version G der angelsächsischen Chronik (Munich, 1981). 55  The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, tr. G. N. Garmonsway (London, 1953; rev. edn, 1960).

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The Study and Editing of the Vernacular Chronicles  33 may have enhanced the legitimizing ‘Englishness’ of these chronicles; but it has excluded as well as included. The attentive reader may have noted an apparent contradiction in the treatment of this tale of study, edition, and reception. While this book overtly aims to give full value to each separate vernacular chronicle, this discussion has often slipped into THE Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in the singular. This is no oversight. The story of the study and editions is often a story of ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’. That slippage is in the titles of the editions themselves. It indicates a common way of referring to these plural chronicles as if they were in some ways one, and the tendency to treat and publish them as if they were one, or at least employ ways of treating and publishing them which emphasize their common ground. In the sixteenth century Joscelyn happily supplied bits missing from one chronicle with excerpts from another. Wheelocke printed ‘the Saxon [or Anglo Saxon] Chronology’, Gibson the Chronicon Saxonicum, both singular. ‘Saxon’ chronicle, or some version of this, remained the norm until Petrie entitled his text ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, a name taken up by Stevenson’s translation of 1853. Thorpe’s Rolls Series edition published six chronicles side by side, but entitled his book ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, and prioritized the common material in his translation.56 Earle, followed by Plummer, preferred ‘Two of the Saxon Chronicles’, and Plummer was well aware that ‘the Anglo-Saxon chronicle’ (his italics) does no justice to the complexity of the texts.57 But even for Plummer, the hold of the singular ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’ was great. He uses the term throughout his introduction, shifting between ‘Chronicle’ and the plural, ‘Chronicles’. Small wonder that the translations by Whitelock and Garmonsway retained the singular title, and that Whitelock forefronts the commonalities in her page layout. There is a long and venerable history of discussing, and publishing, THE Saxon, or AngloSaxon, Chronicle. That long history is perhaps linked to the view of a ‘national chronicle’; for Plummer it was the singular, ‘the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, which was ‘the national chronicle’.58 It flags, too, the problems of editing and publishing a series of very similar texts, including the economics of publishing such an endeavour. These chronicles are simultaneously both separate and yet also in some ways linked and connected. They contain much common material, though, as we shall discover, in bewildering combinations. How do we explain the combination of similarity and difference? How can all this be presented on the page? No resulting decision can be neutral in its influence on the reader. 56  Joscelyn replaced a lost section of D (Cubbin, Chronicle D, p. x), added bits to B from A (Taylor, Chronicle B, xiii), and to C from D (O’Brien O’Keeffe, Chronicle C, pp. xvii–xviii). Thorpe’s translation is ‘formed from those of the original which, coinciding in matter, are susceptible to collation; all deviations [an interesting choice of word] from which are placed beneath the line’: Thorpe, The AngloSaxon Chronicle, i, p. xv. 57 Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, p. xxiii. 58 Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, p. civ.

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34  After Alfred The twentieth-century trend towards the editing of individual chronicles and the printing of facsimiles is a response to these problems, culminating in the most significant development in their study and editing, the new collaborative edition. The latter has been epoch-making. Six chronicles have been published in full. Chronicle G was not edited in this project since it was recently the object of an excellent edition by Angelika Lutz. Lutz’s work is a reminder of the very substantial contribution of German scholars to the study of Old English.59 The collaborative edition, taken together with Lutz’s G, has made available for the first time the full text of each of the seven separate chronicle manuscripts. Each one can now be read as a separate chronicle. That applies not only to those chronicles long con­ sidered most significant—A, C, D, and E—but also to the ‘Cinderella’ texts: B, which is very close to C; G, which is a copy of A; and F, a bilingual abbreviation and translation into Latin of a predecessor of Chronicle  E.  Not only does Chronicle F now get equal billing, two volumes are devoted to it: an edition and a facsimile. The latter signals the overall editors’ judgement of the value of this sole autograph working manuscript of a vernacular chronicle. Baker’s F also includes an edition of Chronicle I, the brief Old English annals in the Canterbury Paschal Table.60 In each volume a treatment of language is included: in the case of Chronicle A, for instance, orthography, phonology, and morphology,61 alongside notes on the palaeography and codicology, thus on the scribes, layout, manuscript associations, and contents. Some attention is paid to the development of the text, including commentary on the likely chronology and geography of this. These latter sections, in particular, vary in length and utility. None of them, however, pretends to a full treatment of these questions, many of which still remain to be resolved. The editors of these collaborative volumes, including Angelika Lutz, are professional students of the Old English vernacular. That has been the case to a greater or lesser extent from the beginning of the editorial history of these chronicles. Abraham Wheelocke was a student of Arabic who went on to hold the first chair of Anglo-Saxon in Cambridge in the mid seventeenth century.62 Benjamin Thorpe, who edited the chronicles for the Rolls Series, was an assiduous student of Old English, albeit without any formal academic position. The civil list pension 59  Harry Rositzke was the son of German immigrants. 60 Baker, Chronicle F, pp. 129–34. See above, ch. 1, n. 2. 61  Cf. Taylor, Chronicle B: phonology, grammar and syntax, other stylistic features, vocabulary, prefixes, proper nouns; Irvine, Chronicle E has Bately’s headings, plus syntax, vocabulary, proper nouns; Baker has Bately’s three plus syntax and vocabulary; O’Brien O Keeffe, Chronicle C Bately’s three for Hands 1–7 and orthography and accidence for Hand 8. Cubbin, Chronicle D arranges his linguistic material by scribe, but he does not consider the phonological or grammatical rules which underlie the forms used by each scribe, rather highlighting the ‘linguistic characteristics’ of each scribe considered (p. lxxxiv). 62  A. Hamilton (2004, September 23), ‘Wheelocke, Abraham (c.1593–1653), linguist and librarian’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Ed. Retrieved 8 Aug. 2018, from https://www.oxforddnb. com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-29191.

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The Study and Editing of the Vernacular Chronicles  35 which he was given is another indication of the perception of the contribution his work in this field made to the national project.63 Rositzke, Classen, Harmer, and Whitelock were all employed as scholars of Old English; Rositzke’s career as a spymaster came later.64 In most cases, the editors of the collaborative volumes are scholars who have produced much work beyond the editions. Janet Bately, the editor of Chronicle A, is probably unmatched in the range and significance of this. Her work on vocabulary, manuscript layout, and comparative textual studies of these chronicles is fundamental for developments up to the end of the ninth century and on into the tenth.65 In all cases, this work has been largely on the linguistic, literary or manuscript aspects of the chronicles. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of these volumes for the study of the vernacular chronicles. They have been the basis of the recent mini-renaissance of chronicle studies. It is, for example, no accident that the first two full-length monographs on these chronicles, by Bredehoft and Sheppard, and the first essay collection devoted to them have followed in its wake.66 This book, too, would be impossible without them. It is thus all the more necessary to be clear about their scope and aims. As the general editors emphasize in their Foreword to the first published volume, these are semi-diplomatic editions adhering ‘faithfully to the manuscript in respect of spelling, chronology and detailed content, but introduc[ing] modern punctuation, capitalisation, and annalistic layout to facilitate the reader’s con­sult­ ation of the text’.67 Thus, for example, the way that Chronicles B and C number annals differs in some ways from the system in Chronicles A, D, E, and G. Blank annal numbers are not given a line to themselves in B and C, but run along the line. This does not appear in these editions, though attention is drawn to it in the

63 T.  Seccombe (2004, September 23), ‘Thorpe, Benjamin (1781/2–1870), Old English scholar’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Ed. Retrieved 8 Aug. 2018, from https://www.oxforddnb. com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-27375. 64  Harry Rositzke taught Old English at Harvard—but was also head of CIA’s Soviet operations from 1942–1970: see the obituary in The Independent, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/harry-rositzke-603791.html and that in The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/08/ us/harry-rositzke-91-linguist-and-american-spymaster.html?src=pm, both accessed 26 Sept. 2011. 65 Alongside her edition of Chronicle A see J.  Bately, ‘The Compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 60 B.C. to A.D. 890: Vocabulary as Evidence’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 64 (1980), pp. 93–129; J. Bately, ‘The Compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Once More’, Leeds Studies in English, NS, 16 (1985), pp. 7–26; Bately, Texts and Textual Relationships, especially important for its study of relations between A and B; and see also her 1996 review of Patrick  W.  Conner (ed.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 10: The Abingdon Chronicle A.D. 956–1066 (MS C, with Reference to BDE), in The Medieval Review, 96.11.06, https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/tmr/article/view/14426, accessed 2 Dec. 2019; J.  Bately, ‘Manuscript Layout and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 70 (1988), pp. 21–43. 66 Bredehoft, Textual Histories; A.  Sheppard, Families of the King: Writing Identity in the AngloSaxon Chronicle (Toronto, 2004); and Jorgensen, Reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. All are by literary scholars, though Jorgensen has some contributions from historians. 67 Taylor, Chronicle B, p. vii.

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36  After Alfred critical apparatus. Numbers are supplied in the edition of B, even though the manuscript lacks numbers for annals with text from the annal for 652 more or less until that for 947.68 In the manuscript, Chronicle A has its material arranged on folios 2r­–4r in two columns, an arrangement which is noted and discussed in the introduction,69 but not reproduced on the page. The reader must pay full attention to the critical apparatus and introductions when using these editions. The effect, indeed the purpose, of these overall editorial decisions is to normalize presentation across all these chronicles ‘to facilitate the reader’s consultation of the text’, perhaps, as Bately suggests in her own personal preface to A, aimed especially at historians’ use of it.70 The Collaborative Edition certainly reflects the problems of editing and presenting these chronicles, which are at the same time both free-standing texts, yet clearly interconnected. The Collaborative Edition tends to a view of ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’. The assignment of letters to all the manuscripts, A to G, follows widely accepted practice, though like that practice it encourages a reading of each as a manuscript of a single work rather than as one of a series of chronicles each in its own right. That perception is announced on the spine and cover, which entitle them ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’ with a volume number. Even editors’ names are omitted from the covers of editions of C, D, and F, whilst the overall editors, not the volume editor, is given on the spine of B. Such an overall presentation encourages a view of a unity which may or may not be the case. The habits of editors may seem the arcane concern of a modern Casaubon, ivory-tower navel gazing. Nor should we be too ready to take editors to task. Most editors have been fully aware of the differences between individual chronicles.71 They have been constrained by the harsh facts of publishing economics. Plummer recognized four major chronicles, but was able to print only two in full—hence his rueful comment on the luxury of Thorpe’s government funding.72 There is evidence of continued contact among these texts across the tenth and eleventh, and possibly even twelfth, centuries. There is much common material, which might justify assumptions of a common historical enterprise, if not a common source text. Nonetheless we must be aware that editors make assumptions, overtly or not, about the text they are presenting. Many editors have adopted approaches or titles which enshrine a view of a single historical project, a view consistent with, if not encouraged by, the idea of an English ‘national chronicle’. Because there is much that is common between these chronicles, it is easy to see why they have so often 68 Taylor, Chronicle B, p. xxviii. 69 Bately, Chronicle A, pp. lvi–lviii. 70 Bately, Chronicle A, p. xii makes clear that this is not the edition she would have produced had she not been working within the parameters of the collaborative edition, though she does not specify exactly how she might have changed it. 71  See e.g. Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, p. xxiii. Petrie in the Monumenta edition, p. 74 speaks of ‘the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle or Chronicles’. 72 Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, p. cxxxvi.

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The Study and Editing of the Vernacular Chronicles  37 been treated as one. That common ground is part of their own story. But that common ground, including their shared vernacular language, has to prompt questions, not be treated as givens. Recognizing and explaining what is common, as well as what differs, will be a major task of this present study. The new editions mark a watershed moment. Textual variants between the chronicles can now be more readily identified, though nothing can replace a return to the manuscripts themselves. Increasingly it is the ‘versions’ and ‘variants’ that interest us, because it is there that authors, scribes, early medieval readers, patrons, contexts reveal themselves.73 Attention to editions is not a marginal question.74 It reminds us that what we are reading is not always what original authors wrote or audiences read. From the sixteenth century onwards, editions and transcripts have played a major part in the way we conceive of these chronicles, and the way we read them. Their editors and transcribers have in important ways made these chronicles—or remade them. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, and later, these chronicles were produced, continued, and read as separate texts. It is difficult to read those separate texts in  most editions. The majority of modern readers never read them as their tenth- and eleventh-century producers made them, or as their tenth- and ­eleventh-century audiences received them. Since the twelfth century, when writers of history turned to these chronicles in the aftermath of the traumas of 1066, there has been a broadly national and a loosely political context for the study, editing, and reception of the Old English vernacular chronicles. The context of national feeling and pride is less immediately obvious by the twentieth century. It may simply be coincidence that both excellent modern translations of the vernacular chronicles, by Garmonsway and Whitelock, appeared in the early 1950s, in the decade following World War II, though it is a coincidence worthy of remark. Recent scholarship has returned to Englishness, the English nation, and English identity in the vernacular chronicles. Late-twentieth-century work has redirected attention to contemporary audiences and meanings, but also to the function of these chronicles in the making and shaping of tenth- and eleventh-century England and Englishness.75 For Janet Thormann, the Anglo-Saxon chronicle (still 73  See W. Pohl, ‘Memory, Identity and Power in Lombard Italy’, in Hen and Innes, Uses of the Past, pp. 9–28, especially pp. 11–12; M. de Jong, R. McKitterick, W. Pohl, and I. Wood, ‘Introduction’, in R.  Corradini, R.  Meens, and C.  Pössel (eds), Texts and Identities in the Early Middle Ages (Vienna, 2006); on the problems of editions see R. Corradini, ‘Die Annales Fuldenses—Identitätskonstruktionen im ostfrankischen Raum am Ende der Karolingerzeit’, in ibid., pp. 121–36. 74  On the MGH see Corradini, ‘Die Annales Fuldenses’ and D.  Townsend, ‘Alcuin’s Willibrord, Wilhelm Levison and the MGH’, in R. Frank (ed.), The Politics of Editing Medieval Texts (New York, 1993), pp. 107–30 and A. Frantzen, ‘The Living and the Dead: Responses to Papers on the Politics of Editing Medieval Texts’, in ibid., pp. 159–81. 75 J.  Thormann, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Poems and the Making of the English Nation’, in A. J. Frantzen and J. D. Niles (eds), Anglo-Saxonism and the Construction of Social Identity (Gainesville, FL, 1997), pp. 60–85 and T. Bredehoft, Textual Histories.

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38  After Alfred singular) was where the ‘English nation was imagined’.76 Some scholars now see them as revealing, constructing, and enshrining English identity.77 In these chronicles, as Sarah Foot puts it, ‘those who were able could contemplate a ­collective history preserved in Bede and in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’.78 These approaches signal important new thinking. They have revisited national questions, but now in the context of the original chronicles’ production. But they have also sharpened other questions: what was available, when, and for whom? In whose minds, where, and when was England being imagined? Is the imagining of England the primary story or message of every chronicle, at every stage of its development? In the chapters which follow, there will be no prioritizing of common over separate; the plurality of these chronicles will be central, though their shared material will be also be recognized and considered. The contemporary context of production—in the loosest sense, the politics—and their own dialogue with that context will be paramount. Nothing will be taken for granted: common language and form are questions, not givens. The history of the chronicles themselves, not the history they record, is the subject. But the premise is that the latter cannot be understood without consideration of the former.

76  Thormann, pp. 62–3. 77  S. Foot, ‘The Making of Angelcynn: English Identity before the Norman Conquest’, TRHS, 6th ser., 6 (1996), pp. 25–49; and S. Foot, ‘The Historiography of the Anglo-Saxon “Nation-State” ’, in L. Scales and O. Zimmer (eds), Power and the Nation in European History (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 125–42. 78  Foot, ‘The Historiography’, p. 132.

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3

Alfred’s Chronicle and the First Continuations Alfred’s Chronicle is the beginning of our story. All vernacular chronicles grow from it. All follow the pattern it set of vernacular chronicling in the annalistic genre. The original has not survived. It is revealed—like so much in this book— through detailed comparison of later, surviving texts. Alfred’s Chronicle is not a central concern of this book; that would demand a volume to itself. But the content, story, and messages it transmitted to later chronicles must be considered. The overall story told by Alfred’s Chronicle, if not all its details, are relatively uncontentious. Where it ended raises far more questions, especially around its compilation and alleged circulation. Careful comparison of the later surviving chronicles confirms their origin in Alfred’s, but also raises doubts about its deliberate circulation. This chapter raises the possibility that Alfred’s was an evolving chronicle, compiled, then added to, and continued—and not only by the widely recognized ‘First Continuation’. All the chronicles discussed in this book preserve the shape of a lost Alfredian text which ran to c.890. However, their stories may begin not in a single act of circulation, but rather in copies of an evolving chronicle, made at different points within the textual community of Alfred’s court. The various annals for the 890s already show divergences, but also contact, dialogue, and ‘political’ debate. These are the patterns which will continue to characterize much vernacular chronicle development.

Alfred’s Chronicle and its Story At the end of the ninth century a vernacular chronicle was produced at the court of Alfred, king of the West Saxons. That chronicle is the ultimate ancestor of all our Old English chronicles; all incorporate it; all follow its annalistic format and its use of the Old English language. It was produced in the West Saxon kingdom, and much of the content reflects its origin. In part that content is dynastic history, especially of Alfred’s ninth-century ancestors. West Saxon material bulks large in the—often extremely sparse—coverage of earlier centuries. Its fullest accounts are of contemporary history of the later ninth century, of Alfred’s own reign, and especially of his struggle and that of his immediate ancestors against invasions After Alfred: Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and Chroniclers, 900–1150. Pauline Stafford, Oxford University Press 2020. © Pauline Stafford. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198859642.001.0001

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40  After Alfred from Scandinavia. This chronicle’s reach, however, is wider, including some details of other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms within the area we would now call ‘England’. It begins not with the arrival of Anglo-Saxon leaders and their followers, but with the Roman invasion of 60 BC. At some points its coverage contains more detail on Christian than on secular history. The story it told remained a part of all later vernacular chronicle narratives, and long continued to influence them. Alfred’s Chronicle is not extant in its original form. The earliest surviving copy, Chronicle A, is just that—a copy.1 The original chronicle has to be reconstructed from the common material now found in all surviving vernacular chronicles. That common material begins with the arrival of Romans in Britain: 60 winters before Christ was made flesh, Gaius Julius the Caesar of the Romans first sought Bretenlond and fought with the Britons (Brettas) . . . 2

It is not clear whether Alfred’s Chronicle had any prefatory material. Its first annal records British, not specifically Anglo-Saxon or English let alone West Saxon history, and locates that history within a Roman and Christian context. Christian and Roman events continued to dominate the extremely sparse annals covering the next five hundred years or so. In this it was to a large extent led by its sources. Prominent among the latter was the so-called ‘Epitome’, an annalistic listing which ended Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the ‘Gens Anglorum’ (the ethnic term in that title appearing to contrast ‘Angles’ to ‘Saxons’, though Bede’s text covers the history of both), but this was not the sole source.3 Following in Bede’s footsteps, Alfred’s Chronicle blossomed, relatively speaking, with the arrival in the fifth century of the peoples we would now call Anglo-Saxons, and especially with the story of their conversion in the seventh. This chronicle contained accounts of the arrivals of men later remembered as the founding fathers of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Here it often went beyond Bede, using other sources. Its compilers had knowledge of the genealogies of these founding fathers, presumably from a collection of such texts. The details of descent are given for many of them, and not merely for the forebears of West Saxon kings. Already, however, West Saxon kings and West Saxons events were prominent. In the annals numbered to the eighth century it was West Saxon kings who were covered more ‘fully’—as always, a relative term in this thin stream of annals—though never exclusively. Some information on, for example, the great Mercian king Offa was included, and the Mercians continue to feature in the 1 Bately, Texts and Textual Relationships, passim, with conclusions at pp. 59–62. 2  Thus Chronicle A, unnumbered: ‘AER Cristes geflæscnesse .lx. wintra . . . ’ 3 Bede, HE, V. 24; on sources of these early sections see J. Bately, ‘World History in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Its Sources and its Separateness from the Old English Orosius’, ASE, 8 (1979), pp. 177–94 and J.  Bately, ‘The Compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 60 B.C.  to A.D.  890: Vocabulary as Evidence’, Proceedings of British Academy, 64 (1979 for 1978), pp. 93–129.

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Alfred ’ s Chronicle and the First Continuations  41 annals covering the ninth century. Increasingly, however, they play walk-on parts in what becomes a predominantly West Saxon dynastic story, centred on Alfred, his father, and grandfather and their military activities, concentrating more and more on their engagement with the Scandinavian invaders. Those attacks, and responses to them, were the focus of the annals numbered from the mid ninth century. One of the longest annals in Alfred’s Chronicle dealt with the life and genealogy of Alfred’s father, Æthelwulf (Chronicle A, s.a. 855). A second, dated exactly one hundred years earlier, combined the accession and genealogy of Offa and a story of loyalty to kings, even unto death (Chronicle A, s.a. 755).4 The dates here are not accidental: these annals were arguably meant to be read together. They juxtapose Mercian and West Saxon events, but with a decided weighting towards the latter. A third long annal dealt with the year of Alfred’s accession and its military engagements against Scandinavian invaders (Chronicle A, s.a. 871), signalling the overriding theme of the later ninth century. A Christian thread, however, was woven throughout this tale. The conversion of all the kingdoms of the Angles and Saxons is the major theme of its seventhcentury coverage. Alfred’s Chronicle also had much on the succession of archbishops (largely those of Canterbury), some bishops, and to a much lesser extent, popes. Much of this derives from Bede, but it continues after Bede dries up as a source.5 The chronicle began as a Christian story, and this theme was never lost, although its subject matter became overwhelmingly the activities, and especially the military activities, of kings. Alfred’s Chronicle was thus a dynastic chronicle, but also a wider Christian, if not an Anglo-Saxon Christian, one. It was not narrowly and exclusively West Saxon. The emphasis, however, increasingly lay on West Saxon history, especially in the annals for the eighth and ninth centuries. Mercia was not excluded entirely from its story. After Bede ceased to be a source, material on Northumbria and Northern Britain was exiguous.

4  Among much work see especially Bredehoft, Textual Histories, pp. 39–60 and excellent discussion in B.  Yorke, ‘The Representation of Early West Saxon History in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, in Jorgensen, Reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, pp. 141–59 at pp. 142–8. 5  Alfred’s Chronicle appears to have had a more or less complete list of archbishops of Canterbury, plus, for example, some information on Rochester—see e.g. A 741, 802, 896. It had some records of early West Saxon bishops, though far from complete: nothing apparently between Cyneheard (756– 759 x 778) and Wigthegn (805 x 814–836); and nothing on Sherborne between Aldhelm (c.705–709) and Ealhstan in the latter half of the ninth century. (For the dates see E. B. Fryde, D. E. Greenway, S. Porter, and I. Roy (eds), Handbook of British Chronology, 3rd edn (Cambridge, 1986). Information on Popes was very intermittent after the apostle pope, Gregory. It was often linked to archbishops’ receipt of the pallium such as A 736, 764, and 804. Adrian’s death is noted in A 794 and there are a cluster of references to Pope Leo and his immediate successors, perhaps in large part linked to Archbishop Wulfred: see A 797, 813, 814, and 816. Leo and Marinus are noted because of their involvement in Alfred’s story: see A 853 and 885.

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42  After Alfred This was a chronicle whose coverage was in large part determined by its sources. That does not mean that authorial choices, conscious or half-conscious, were not made; nor does it mean that a story, a narrative, was not there to be read. That narrative was one which culminated in Alfred and his military activities. It placed him as a king of the West Saxons, but within a wider Anglo-Saxon or English context, and a Christian one. This was the story Alfred’s Chronicle bequeathed to its successors. That chronicle has not survived. There is no manuscript to examine, no palaeographical or similar clues to the date—or dates—when this story was first written, or to its earliest development. Who wrote it? Who compiled it and/or continued it? Where and when? In what form or forms did it begin its journey? From what original location did the journey with which this book is centrally concerned start? Indeed, where and when should this book begin? The West Saxon royal court is the short answer to the ‘Where?’, an answer almost as hard fought as Alfred’s own wars. There is now a general consensus on that score.6 A rethinking of ‘the court’ helps resolve many problems (see pp. 49–50 and p. 333). Alfred’s court is also the most likely source of much of the contemporary information, and the audience for this chronicle’s shaping of it. ‘When?’ is a question which has produced more agreement. 892, the last annal common to all surviving vernacular chronicles, has been argued as the point of circulation, if not compilation. The apparent agreement of all vernacular chron­ icles on the inclusion of this annal is one of the strongest arguments in favour of this view. That agreement is not, however, straightforward, and there is evidence which suggests that annals for the 880s may already have been part of an evolving text first compiled at an earlier date.

An Evolving Chronicle: 1. The Evidence of Language The unusual nature of Alfred’s Chronicle as a vernacular text has ensured that it has attracted the attention of outstanding linguistic scholars. The work of Janet 6  See A. Scharer, ‘The Writing of History at King Alfred’s Court’, Early Medieval Europe, 5 (1996), pp. 177–206 and A. Scharer, Herrschaft und Repräsentation: Studien zur Hofkultur König Alfreds des Grossen (Vienna and Munich, 2000), though cf. the earlier debate between R. H. C. Davis, ‘Alfred the Great, Propaganda and Truth’, History, 56 (1971), pp. 169–82 and J. Wallace-Hadrill, ‘The Franks and the English in the Ninth Century: Some Common Historical Interests’, History, 35 (1950), pp. 202–18 on the one hand and D.  Whitelock ‘The Importance of the Battle of Edington, AD 878’, in D.  Whitelock, From Bede to Alfred: Studies in Early Anglo-Saxon Literature and History (London, 1980) on the other. Janet Bately, ‘The Compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’ remained unconvinced by the ‘court’ argument. See also F. M. Stenton, ‘The South-Western Element in the Old English Chronicle’, first published in 1925, repr. in D. M. Stenton (ed.), Preparatory to Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1970), pp. 106–15 and Dumville, Wessex and England, pp. 71–2, with specific reference to a Winchester location, against M. Parkes, ‘The Palaeography’, pp. 149–7. Parkes was also arguing for a court-centred text. Note the nuanced conclusions of Barbara Yorke, ‘The Representation of Early West Saxon History’ at pp. 158–9.

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Alfred ’ s Chronicle and the First Continuations  43 Bately is fundamental.7 She distinguishes a series of authors: of annals numbered to c.880, and those numbered to the 880s and 890s. Linguistically, the annals numbered up to c.880 stand apart from those for the 880s and 890s; the latter, including 891 and 892, are themselves the work of more than one author. This evidence could argue for two or more compilers working simultaneously as late as c.892. But it also allows for the possibility of a chronicle which grew and evolved from the late 870s, if not before. The significant break, and thus the point of first compilation of Alfred’s Chronicle, would be placed in the annals ‘for the closing years of the 870s, or shortly after’.8 Bately’s evaluation suggests c.880 as the date for the making of this chronicle. The annals for the 880s, and those for 891 and 892, would thus become continuations.

An Evolving Chronicle: 2. The Evidence of Asser The Life of King Alfred produced by Asser, a Welshman at Alfred’s court, may also signal that Alfred’s Chronicle once ended earlier than the 892 annal. The Life was written, or at least completed, in 893, as Asser himself tells us.9 Asser made use of an annalistic chronicle, clearly identifiable as what is here termed ‘Alfred’s Chronicle’. The last annal which Asser used was that which he and the vernacular chronicles numbered 887.10 That annal in the form Asser used, and as it survives in later chronicles, had been written, or revised, after 887. It shows knowledge of battles on continental Europe which did not occur until 888 and 889.11 It cannot have taken the form in which he used it before 889 x 890. Was this 887 annal an earlier ending of Alfred’s Chronicle, though one not written in 887 itself but instead no earlier than 889 x 890? Perhaps; though Asser was writing a life of the king, not an annalistic account of Alfred’s doings. Asser is important proof of the existence of a vernacular chronicle by 893, and of the fact that that chronicle extended at least to the annal for 887. He leaves us unsure whether the text he knew went beyond 887. At precisely this point Asser shifts his attention from military matters—thus the ­chronicle—to Alfred’s reading practices. Had his annalistic source dried up, or did he fail to return to it again after this digression?12 Asser had been distracted from his 7  Bately, ‘The Compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’ and J. Bately, ‘The Compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Once More’, Leeds Studies in English, NS, 16 (1985), pp. 7–26. 8  e.g. Bately, ‘The Compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, p. 115. 9  See Asser’s comment in c. 91 that he was writing in Alfred’s 45th year: Asser, p. 76. 10  So numbered in all our surviving chronicles except C 888 and B. There is no number in B, but by inference it is 888 there too. C’s dating was here, as in the 890s, dislocated as a result of transmission errors. 11  See Bately, ‘The Compilation . . . Once More’ at p. 7. The battles appear to be those at Brescia in 888 and Trebbia in 889. 12  Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred the Great, p. 222 n. 116 and cf. pp. 278–9.

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44  After Alfred presentation of material from the annals before, and had returned to them. After the annal he numbers 885 he inserted another long biographical section (cap. 73–81), before returning to the annals to record the material from 886 and 887.13 He included no further material from the annals after the annal numbered 887. That may mean that his annalistic source had dried up, but we cannot be sure. Asser is tantalizing. The evidence of language suggests an earlier stage of compilation. But the agreement of all chronicles in their inclusion of annal 892 is apparently a strong argument for this annal as a significant stage in that chronicle’s development, perhaps the point at which a text was circulated, its copies becoming the origin of the later diverging developments which this book will track.

An Evolving Chronicle: 3. The Annals for the Early 890s All surviving vernacular chronicles appear at first sight to have been based on a chronicle which ended with the annal for 892. Their common material ends here.14 It has also been argued that this annal was not only the end of the original chronicle, but that it is important evidence that the whole chronicle was compiled or revised at this point. The reference at the beginning of 892 to the army about which ‘We have often spoken’15 is taken as evidence that the movements of the Viking army on continental Europe, followed in the annals for the 880s, were written up after its return to Britain in 892.16 There are, of course, other possible explanations for this interest in the great army in Francia—including ‘fear that it might return’,17 as well as the interest of Franks at Alfred’s court.18 The agreement of almost all chronicles dependent on Alfred’s in annals to 892 is nonetheless important.19 That agreement is not, however, as straightforward as it appears. The annals covering the early 890s are best considered together. They are variously numbered in different chronicles; over time copying and recopying produced omissions or duplications of dates, a first warning that we now see these annals in later—often much later—copies. I will label them by content. The first covers the taking of the alms of the West Saxons to Rome; the death of the ‘Northern’ king Guthrum, King Alfred’s godson; and movements of the Viking army in Francia. This annal (the ‘Guthrum annal’) is numbered 890 in A and its 13  ‘Igitur ut ad id unde digressus sum redeam . . . ’: Asser, p. 54, cap. 73. 14  Thus Chronicles AGE, plus the Annals of St Neots and the Chronicle of Æthelweard, both of which used a vernacular chronicle. Chronicles B and C agree in this, but their dating dislocation means that this is annal 893. D has the annal, with B and C’s date, 893. 15  Keynes and Lapidge note the ‘unusual personal intrusion’ here: Alfred the Great, p. 283 n. 18. 16 Thus  P.  Sawyer, Age of the Vikings, 2nd edn (London, 1971), p. 19: ‘it had already reached England when he was compiling the Chronicle’; cf. Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred the Great, who are more circumspect: see pp. 278–9 and 283 n. 18. 17  Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred the Great, p. 279. 18  Cf. Parkes, ‘The Palaeography’, pp. 164–5. 19  It impressed Janet Bately, and greatly influenced her arguments, e.g. ‘The Compilation . . . Once More’, p. 12.

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Alfred ’ s Chronicle and the First Continuations  45 copy G; 890 in D, E, and F; and 891 in B and C, whose dating was ahead by one year. The second (the ‘Irish annal’) deals with movements of the Viking army in Francia; the arrival of three Irish men at Alfred’s court in a boat and the death of an Irish scholar; and the appearance of a comet. It is numbered 891 in A and G; 892 in B and C and also D; not present in any form in Chronicle E nor in Gaimar’s chronicle; but also found in Chronicle F under 891.20 The third (the ‘Return of the army annal’) is concerned with the return of the Viking army to England . This is the last annal found in all the vernacular chronicles; in the Latin chronicle of Æthelweard, compiled c. AD 1000 on the basis of a lost vernacular chronicle; and in the twelfth-century chronicler, Gaimar, who used a vernacular chronicle. It was originally dated 892 in A, and thus in Æthelweard; altered in the manuscript to 893 during the tenth century and thus 893 in G; it is 893 in B, C, and D; and 892 in E and F. It is this annal, found across the range of vernacular chron­ icles and later translations of vernacular chronicles, which provides the strongest argument for circulation, if not compilation, of Alfred’s Chronicle at this point. This detailed comparison sounds immediate warnings. Chronicle E has the ‘Return of the army annal’, but not the ‘Irish annal’. This latter annal, in truncated form, is a candidate for late inclusion c. AD 1100 in F, which in other respects is very close to E. The ‘Irish annal’ is also missing from Gaimar. Both Chronicle E and Gaimar derive from the same lost tenth-century chronicle, the so-called Northern Recension (see chapter 6).21 Did the Northern Recension lack the ‘Irish annal’? Yet Chronicle D, which derives from that same lost chronicle, has it—but its source here is likely to be a chronicle like B and C, which was collated into an earlier form of Chronicle D at some stage in the tenth or eleventh century. D’s dating from 892 onwards follows the dislocated dating of B and C, not, as it had done to 890, the dating of Chronicle E. But Chronicle D, still like E, has a blank number for the year 891, the year to which A allocates the ‘Irish annal’. Did the copy of Alfred’s Chronicle on which the Northern recension was based end with the ‘Guthrum annal’ of 890?22 All chronicles contain the ‘Return of the army annal’, including D, and E and F, the major descendants of the Northern Recension. They did not, however, all acquire it from the same source. That annal is found in two textually different versions: one common to A, G, E, and F, and one common to B, C, and D.23 20 Baker, Chronicle F, p. xli lists the 891 annal as one which F took from A. 21  Gaimar, p. ix. 22  Note also here the evidence of Symeon of Durham. The first section of what is now called Symeon’s Historia Regum is a late-tenth-century compilation. That compilation used Asser for much of its ninth-century coverage (see chapter  6). But Symeon—or the tenth-century original—went beyond Asser, and clearly made use of a vernacular chronicle. Thus, unlike Asser, it has annals for 888 (as in AGDEF 888 and C(B) 889) and 890 (as in AGDEF 890 and C(B) 891), but nothing which is common with the other vernacular chronicles for 891 or 892: see Symeon of Durham, ed. I. Hodgson Hinde, Surtees Society, 51 (1868 for 1867), pp. 61–2. Was Symeon using a Northern Recension for these years? The possibility that Symeon abbreviated and omitted must be acknowledged. 23  Thus AGEF mid ccl scipa, BCD 893 mid cc scipa; AGEF miclam wuda, BCD 893 ilcan wuda; AEF inne on þæm fenne, BCD 893 inne on þam fæstene.

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46  After Alfred Chronicle D acquired it at a much later stage of its development, from a chronicle like B or C. But E, normally linked to D as witnesses to the lost Northern recension, has it in the form found also in A and G!24 This complexity underlines a first lesson, namely that the later histories of individual chronicle development need to be borne in mind when assessing the significance of material now common to them. These later histories brought material into chronicles at different points and in varying circumstances. The presence of the ‘Return of the army annal’ in all the chronicles may have as much to do with later developments as with the content of copies of Alfred’s Chronicle at the end of the ninth century. That annal certainly becomes more debatable as proof of a deliberate act of distribution or circulation, let alone compilation of Alfred’s Chronicle at this date. The complex story of these few annals was squarely faced by Janet Bately. She argued that the answer lay in a separate circulation of the annal for 892, though contacts between chronicles at various later stages clearly played a part. The differences and similarities among the various chronicles in the annals for these years suggested to her a common text ending c.890, an argument with which Dorothy Whitelock agreed.25 Bately also noted the linguistic complexity of the ‘Irish annal’, involving different authors, perhaps growing by accumulation.26 Taken together all this evidence shows Alfred’s as an evolving chronicle, a compilation with continuations long before the 892 annal. The various omissions and later acquisitions already flag the possibility that our vernacular chronicles do not all derive from a single act of circulation c.892. These divergences become even sharper in the annals for the rest of the 890s.

Annals for the Mid 890s The differences already noted among annals numbered to the early 890s become more marked thereafter. There is room for debate about the compilation and circulation of Alfred’s Chronicle to c.890 x 892; but up to annal 890 all the chronicles 24 It is tempting to see E acquiring this annal at Canterbury after 1066, when the maker of Chronicle F actively worked on both A and E, and transferred material between them: see chapter 13. But E has the annal dated to 892. By the end of the eleventh century that date had been changed in Chronicle A to 893. 25  Bately, ‘The Compilation . . . Once More’ at p. 18, and see p. 9 for Whitelock’s opinion. 26  Linguistically and textually it falls into three parts. The final section, telling of the appearance of the comet, is distinguished in language from the whole of the chronicle to that point: see Bately, ‘The Compilation . . . Once More’, p. 11. Its divisions are echoed in some chronicles. Scribe 1 of Chronicle A has the first two parts, followed by a blank number, 892, as if that were the end; Scribe 2 added the last part, then gave the number 892 again. The later chroniclers dependent on Alfred’s Chronicle, Henry of Huntingdon and the Annals of St Neots, also diverged in their treatment of this annal. The Annals of St Neots have the third part but not parts one or two; the twelfth-century chronicler Henry of Huntingdon has the first part, but not the other two.

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Alfred ’ s Chronicle and the First Continuations  47 are remarkably close in their transmission of a common text. The 890s annals begin to show significant divergence. If Alfred’s Chronicle was already evolving and being continued from c.880, all surviving chronicles are ultimately products of one evolution to c.890. From then on, their development begins to take differing paths. In Chronicles A, B, and C—and D via a later collation with a chronicle like B and C—there is a detailed account of the years 893/4–896/7. The Latin chronicle of Æthelweard preserves a different version of these mid 890s annals. The Northern Recension, as preserved in Chronicles E, F, and Gaimar, had no coverage for these years. The detailed annals numbered 893/4–896/7 in Chronicles A, G, B, C, and D are now called the ‘First Continuation’. They are distinguished and linked by stylistic, thematic, and linguistic coherence. They are unusual in their fullness and detail, standing out from the very brief annals for the end of Alfred’s reign. They deal with the movements of the Viking army after its return, and responses to these. They appear to have been written, or at least rewritten, as a group no earlier than 896.27 Linguistic evidence raises some questions concerning the beginning and the end of this group. The 896/7 annal, with its opening section on the departure of the Viking army, appears to round them off. Yet that annal falls into three sections; the second, with the list of the dead, and use of the first person—that is, engaged intervention by the author—is perhaps linked to the first; the third, on Alfred’s ships, stands apart from all the annals which precede it. There are questions about whether the 892 annal should be seen as part of this group or, more likely, separate.28 This group is found in slightly different versions in later Latin chronicles.29 The Chronicle of Æthelweard, produced by an ealdorman of that name in the late tenth century during the reign of Æthelred II, preserves a significantly different version. This Latin chronicle used a vernacular chronicle as its source. To 891 that source was very close to what lay behind Chronicle A.30 Like A, it had the ‘Return of the army annal’ under 892. Its annal for 893 began to diverge, though it is still con27 See C.  Clark, ‘The Narrative Mode of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle before the Conquest’, in P.  Clemoes and K.  Hughes (eds), England before the Conquest (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 215–35; cf. Whitelock, EHD, i, p. 123 and T.  Shippey, ‘A Missing Army: Some Doubts about the Alfredian Chronicle’, In Geardagum, 4 (1982), pp. 41–55, revised and reprinted in Anglo-Saxon, 1 (2007), pp. 219–38: ‘a unity of incompetence’! Parkes, ‘The Palaeography’ followed by Bately, ‘The Compilation . . . Once More’, especially pp. 12–15 at p. 15 notes the ‘history layout’ of these years in Chronicle A (the annals are not introduced as annals or treated as such) and the fact that there are linkages between and within them. 28  Bately, ‘The Compilation . . . Once More’, p. 18. 29  The Annals of St Neots have an abbreviated version of AGBC(D)’s annals for 893/4 and 894/5; they lack the annal for 895, and their annal for 895 consists of the opening of AG 896 (BCD 897). Symeon, Historia Regum has two annals for 893 and 894, unlike Chronicle E, which is blank for these years. They appear, as in the Annals of St Neots, to be an abbreviated version of AGBCD. 30 Bately, Texts and Textual Relationships, pp. 59–62; note its lack (as in A) of mention of the Raven banner: see DE 878, BC 879.

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48  After Alfred nected to that found in AGBCD. Divergence is marked in annals for 894 and 895, which are its own. Æthelweard and ABCDG tell two rather different stories of this decade. Both begin by following the Viking army which returned in 892, and military responses to that. Æthelweard’s source, however, is alone in giving a named and prominent role to Alfred’s son Edward, the future king, in the encounters covered in the annal for 893. Edward is presented in alliance with his brother-in-law, Æthelred, leader of the Mercians, here called, uniquely in Anglo-Saxon sources, ‘King’ of the Mercians. King Alfred himself is not mentioned, though other West Saxon leaders are: Ealdormen Æthelhelm and Æthelnoth (‘ealdorman’ denotes a noble, local leader at least nominally a royal subordinate). By contrast the story of this year 893 in AGBCD names King Alfred. The Mercian Æthelred is also named, as a co-godparent with Alfred of the sons of the Viking leader. But here he is firmly ‘ealdorman’, not ‘king’. Ealdormen Æthelhelm and Æthelnoth again lead a force, cooperating with Æthelred. This longer annal also mentions other king’s thegns, but not Alfred’s son Edward. Æthelweard’s short annals for 894 and 895 differ fundamentally from all ­others. 894 tells of a journey by Ealdorman Æthelnoth to York, where he negotiated about old Mercian territory around Stamford, now in Scandinavian hands. The 895 annal records the death of Guthfrith, Viking ‘king’ (sic) of the Northumbrians.31 In AGBCD there is far more detail of 894 and 895 and the campaigns of these years, not merely in Wessex and the South-East, but also in Mercia, including a siege of the city of Chester ‘in Wirral’, a very unusual reference to north-west Mercia. Guthfrith gets no mention, with or without the royal title. Alfred’s son Edward and his action is in one story, absent in the other. Æthelred of Mercia features prominently in both, as a military leader and in AGBCD alongside his father-in-law Alfred as co-godparent. Æthelweard’s source alone accords Æthelred of Mercia the royal title, just as Æthelweard alone recognizes the kingship of the Scandinavian Guthfrith at York. Both stories acknowledge the role of other leaders. These include Æthelhelm, possibly King Alfred’s nephew and Edward’s cousin. If so, he was the brother of the man who launched a powerful claim to the throne on Alfred’s death (see chapter 4).32 AGBCD’s account is fuller in its record of military involvement and geographically wider in its tale of military encounters, including ones deep in Mercian territory. Alfred himself is missing from the story as found in the Chronicle of Æthelweard. 31  Also in Symeon, Historia Regum, with more precise details. 32  For differing opinions on the identity of Æthelhelm see P.  Stafford, Queens, Concubines and Dowagers: The King’s Wife in the Early Middle Ages (London, 1983), pp. 43–4 and B. Yorke, ‘Edward as Ætheling’, in N. J. Higham and D. H. Hill (eds), Edward the Elder (London and New York, 2001), pp. 25–39 at pp. 33–4. Our knowledge of Alfred’s family has been so carefully edited that there is little certainty about its structure or its normal practices.

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Alfred ’ s Chronicle and the First Continuations  49 Both versions demand caution. Æthelweard is not only a later user of a ­vernacular chronicle writing in a new political context, but a recognized editor and abbreviator. He was himself of the royal line, being a descendant of Alfred’s father Æthelwulf. Understandably, therefore, he was interested in royal genealogy and in the activity of men like himself. His Chronicle is not easy to use to reconstruct his source, though where, as here, his details differ from other chronicles, they surely derive from that text. Æthelweard’s source text is not entirely independent of that now found in AGBCD. Interpretation of these differences is necessarily speculative. Do differences such as these represent differing West Saxon and Mercian perspectives: Æthelred’s Mercian kingship, for example, recognized in one but not the other? What should be made of the prominence given in one story to Alfred’s son, Edward, and his absence from the other? One can at least be certain that these two differing groups of annals signify that different stories of the 890s could be, and were, told—and perhaps retold. Their content hints strongly at the issues such stories addressed. The return of the Viking army and the response to that were the central events. Responses by whom, how, and with what success were the vehicle for commentary revealing the political questions and stances of the day. By the 890s, if not before, succession to Alfred’s throne must have been a pressing issue.33 Alfred was a king who ruled as the fifth successive son of his father, the youngest of five brothers, all of whom had ruled before him. By the 880s and certainly the 890s he had an adult son, but also adult nephews, sons of father(s) who had once been kings. Relations between the old independent kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia must have been delicate. By the 880s they were united, though probably uneasily, in Alfred’s hands; a political novelty whose continuation could not be assumed, not least as questions around the succession mounted. Both stories take Mercia very seriously. Æthelweard’s source was concerned with negotiation about territory on Mercia’s borders; thus relations with the Viking kingdom of York, Mercia’s northern neighbour. AGBCD’s annals stress Mercian and West Saxon co­oper­ ation, and take a West Saxon king, Alfred, deep into Mercian territory in pursuit of its defence. Mercia, succession, response to Viking return. All three issues were intimately entwined. Two stories do not, however, necessarily mean two locations, let alone rival West Saxon and Mercian centres. Æthelweard’s source was not entirely independent of that found in AGBCD. The answer to the ‘where’ of Alfred’s Chronicle was ‘the court’. As well as West Saxons, Alfred’s court included Mercians like Wærferth, bishop of Worcester, a man deeply involved in the king’s intellectual project. The 33  See J. L. Nelson, ‘Reconstructing a Royal Family: Reflections on Alfred from Asser, Chapter 2’, in I. Wood and N. Lund (eds), People and Places in Northern Europe, 500–1600 (Woodbridge, 1991), pp. 47–66, but cf. B. Yorke, ‘Edward as Ætheling’. On the family tensions of Alfred’s reign see P. Stafford, ‘Succession and Inheritance: A Gendered Perspective on Alfred’s Family History’, in T. Reuter (ed.), Alfred the Great: Papers from the Eleventh-Centenary Conferences (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 251–64.

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50  After Alfred ‘court’ should be defined loosely. It included those in constant attendance on the king, but also men like Asser, who arrived there, lived at court, and was later given a bishopric—an office which did not necessarily remove him permanently from contact with the court. Mercians such as Wærferth of Worcester, were part of it. Others came regularly to it. It may well have included women, heads of female religious houses often connected to the royal family. When Alfred’s Chronicle was first compiled, earlier material from female houses was possibly among its sources.34 Such people are the likely authors and audience of the ori­ gin­al chronicle, the probable patrons, authors, and audience for copies—and for continuations, like those of the 890s. These differing stories may express perspectives within the court. A chronicle or chronicles emanating from or linked to members of that court are very different beasts from ‘official propaganda’ and even ‘official court chronicles’ may be a misnomer. In the annals for the 890s Alfred’s Chronicle may have already begun development in such a court context; the links between Æthelweard’s source and that of AGBCD hint at such a common matrix. That context need not imply a unified voice. * * * * * * * * * * * * At the end of the ninth century a vernacular annalistic chronicle was produced at the court of King Alfred. The story it told became part of all later vernacular chronicles, though its different continuations might alter some of its meanings. In its origins it was a complex tale in which Alfred and his family became the ul­tim­ ate inheritors and defenders of Angelcynn (a term which comes into use at this date to denote a political entity wider than Wessex) and their defining Christian past.35 It was dynastic and West Saxon whilst simultaneously evoking a wider inclusionary identity, culminating in heroic military struggles. It was a tale with great potential. Alfred’s was a court chronicle and an evolving one; its audience, authors, arguably its patrons, were within that court. It was not simply or necessarily primarily a possession of the king but of the wider circle surrounding him. We should not necessarily expect it to end abruptly in the 890s with the death of the king. We should be alert for, ready to look for, its continued development after 900. It is very likely that copies were made before Alfred’s death. A deliberate act of circulation cannot be ruled out, but a scenario involving copies made more independently at differing points is just as likely. That scenario frees us to look for copies made after 900 as well as before. 34  P.  Stafford, ‘Reading Women in Annals: Eadburg, Cuthburg, Cwenburg and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles’, in Cristina La Rocca (ed.), Agire da Donna (Turnhout, 2007), pp. 269–88. 35  S. Foot, ‘The Making of Angelcynn: English Identity before the Norman Conquest’, TRHS, 6th ser., 6 (1996), pp. 25–49 and cf. P. Stafford, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, Identity and the Making of England’, HSJ, 19 (2007), pp. 28–50 at pp. 32–3.

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Alfred ’ s Chronicle and the First Continuations  51 At least some copies remained within the court circle, broadly defined. The evidence for such copies points especially to after c.890; their existence now reveals some of the political issues of the day in differing tales. Those tales should not necessarily be placed outwith the court. Their making may be considered neutral, merely revealing the court’s internal debates and dialogue—or, in voicing these, also driving them; the making of copies and continuations a response to discussion, but also an agent in fomenting it. Alfred’s Chronicle was from the start ‘political’, not in the sense of ‘propaganda’, more as a celebratory, legitimizing text; engaged in the ‘art of truth’, selecting and omitting, with emphases and studied silences. That is even clearer in the continuations of different copies in the 890s. We should never forget that copies could be made to which no addition was made (as seems to have been the case with that used in the later ‘Northern Recension’), simply in order to ‘have a copy of the court chronicle’—though that is in itself a political statement of sorts. Detailed textual argument was a key to bigger questions about Alfred’s Chronicle. It will remain so. Attention to much later development of the vernacular chronicles was an essential element in an understanding of the late ninth century. That development is a story in itself, the one which this book centrally addresses. It is time to follow it.

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4

Chronicle A and the Early Tenth Century Chronicle A is the earliest surviving vernacular chronicle. It was produced in the decades around ad 900, then continued to receive intermittent additions until the twelfth century. In Chronicle A Alfred’s story leads on to that of his son, King Edward the Elder, focused, again, on military activity. The earliest work on it ended with annal 920, recording Edward’s triumphant meeting with rulers of Britain. Chronicle A is the only survivor in manuscript form from around 900, but it was not the only vernacular chronicling at this date. The later chronicles B, C, and D attest to two other chronicles, now lost, which were made and/or were active then. One of these had annals close to but not identical with those found in Chronicle A to 914. The other told a very different story of these decades, again continuing that of Alfred but here centred on the military exploits of Alfred’s daughter, Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians. It continued after her death through the accession of King Æthelstan to that king’s triumphant meeting with rulers of Britain in 926. All three chronicles were recording contemporary history; in no case did this interest extend beyond events of 926 at the latest. The writing of contemporary history in vernacular annalistic form thus continued from its origin at Alfred’s court. That first impetus, if not the politics which drove it, was apparently played out by c.930. The subject matter of all these early-tenth-century vernacular chronicles continued that of Alfred’s Chronicle. They were preoccupied with the consequences of Scandinavian activity and settlement within what is now England. This was undoubtedly a major issue of contemporary politics, but it was nonetheless a narrative choice. As in the decisions to copy Alfred’s Chronicle and to continue vernacular chronicling itself, that choice represented homage to and appropriation of Alfred’s legacy. In two of the three chronicles, however, the succession crisis which followed Alfred’s death loomed large, a question intertwined with the political consequences of the Scandinavian presence. Indeed it is arguable that all vernacular chronicling surviving from the early tenth century spoke to the central issue of succession to Alfred’s rule, not just in Wessex but in Wessex and Mercia. This first stage of vernacular chronicling ‘After Alfred’ dries up when the accession and establishment of Æthelstan as king of Mercians and West Saxons in the 920s produced an, at least temporary, resolution of that question. After Alfred: Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and Chroniclers, 900–1150. Pauline Stafford, Oxford University Press 2020. © Pauline Stafford. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198859642.001.0001

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Chronicle A and the Early Tenth Century  53

The Making and Early Development of Chronicle A Chronicle A forms part of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 173 (folios 1–32r). That is a composite manuscript of some complexity.1 Two scribes made the initial chronicle, copying annals through to 920. Chronicle A then continued to receive additions in the hands of numerous scribes until the early twelfth century. Its most recent editor identifies sixteen in total.2 This chapter is concerned with Chronicle A up to the end of the annal for 920 (now numbered 924) at folio 25v.3 This marks an important break in work on this text. It is the end of the work of scribe 2 and of a quire of folios; a half folio blank space follows annal 920. The next annals on the following quire, beginning with that numbered 925, are the work of a single scribe through to 955; they were added in a single stint in the mid tenth century (see illustration  3).4 The annal recording King Edward the Elder’s death (A 925), was thus not added until mid century. Until then Chronicle A had ended at the 920 annal. Up to that numbered 920, the annals for the early tenth century were much fuller. After that annal, the coverage becomes decidedly thin. Textually and palaeographically a break at this point is clear. Chronicle A to folio 25v, annal for 920, is now widely accepted as the work of two scribes. The first copied a vernacular chronicle to the annal 891 on folio 16r, the second added to 891 and was responsible for the annals from 892 to 920 running from folios 16v to 25v, though these were not all written at the same time. The dating of the work of these two scribes has provoked considerable debate. There is now general consensus that their work belongs to c.900.5 Both wrote a transitional script which is difficult to date precisely.6 There are arguments for placing both not only after 900, but as late as the second and third decades of the tenth century. The fact that Scribe 2 completed Scribe 1’s last annal for 891 may

1 Full description of the manuscript’s contents in M.  R.  James, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Corpus Christi College Cambridge, i (Cambridge, 1912), at pp. 395–401 and Ker, Catalogue, pp. 57–9, no. 39. Extensive bibliography in H.  Gneuss and M.  Lapidge, AngloSaxon Manuscripts (Toronto, 2014), pp. 61–2. 2 Bately, Chronicle A, pp. xxi–xliii. This number includes the scribes of the lists, but not two undatable ‘medieval hands’. 3  From Scribe 1’s original 892 onwards the numbers were altered—before the creation of Chronicle G in the early eleventh century, which has the altered numbers. I have given the scribes’ original numbers in each case. See Dumville, Wessex and England, pp. 99–103 on the numbering of A. 4  Compare Plummer, ‘from 892 . . . entries were made not very long after the events they describe’, Two Chronicles, ii, p. xxvii. 5  N. Sparks, ‘The “Parker Chronicle” Chronology Gone Awry’, in J. Dresvina and N. Sparks (eds), The Medieval Chronicle, VII (Amsterdam, 2011), pp. 63–84 at pp. 64 and 72. 6  Compare M. Parkes, ‘The Palaeography’, pp. 158–60, who dates the first scribe to the late ninth century, with Ker, Catalogue, p. 58: ninth/tenth century, and now Dumville, Wessex and England, pp. 89–97: second to third decades of the tenth century. See also T. A. M. Bishop, ‘An Early Example of the Square Minuscule’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 4 (1964–8), pp. 246–52.

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54  After Alfred argue for collaboration between them, and would push Scribe 1’s work forward to a date around Scribe 2’s first writing. The work of Scribe 2 is firmly placed in the first decades of the tenth century. There are, however, counter arguments which would distance the work of these two scribes one from the other.7 The creation of chronicle A may belong in its entirety to post-900; not to the reign of Alfred, but to that of his son, Edward the Elder. Scribe 2’s work, from annal 891 onwards, belongs then. The date of Scribe 1’s work remains debatable. Scribe 1’s work shows relatively little variation in either script or layout, at least after the first few folios where a two-column layout is used for what is mostly just a list of year numbers. The impression is of a text before him/her which was unproblematic and copied in its entirety. From the point at which the second scribe takes over, this changes: the ruling of the folios is different,8 and the treatment of numbers and their layout varies, as does the appearance of his/ her writing.9 The annals numbered from 891 to 911 are recognized as scribally closely connected.10 A 912–914 may be a different scribal stint.11 At several points, the second scribe ends the copying of a block of annals with a series of blank numbers. These occur after annals 896, 904, and 911 (see Illustration 1). At fo 24v, before annal 918, the ink changed. This may also coincide with one of the changes in the appearance of Scribe 2’s script.12 Confusing? Later-tenth-century readers certainly found it so. Faced with blank numbers and repetitions they corrected numbers (see Illustration 1). By c. ad 1000 annals originally numbered 913 to 920 had been corrected by four years. Chronicle A’s original years 913 to 920 now read 917 to 924. 7  The fact that Scribe 2 completed Scribe 1’s 891 annal may indicate not close collaboration, but his/her use of a different exemplar. The final part of the 891 annal, added by Scribe 2, is linguistically distinct from the earlier sections. Note also that Scribe 1 ended his/her work with a major punctuation mark, suggesting a decided ending: Sparks, ‘The “Parker Chronicle” ’, p. 73. Quire III, beginning on fo 17, perhaps added to take Scribe 2’s work, also shows significant differences: Sparks, ‘The “Parker Chronicle” ’, pp. 70–1. 8  Scribe 1’s last folios were ruled with 36 lines; fo 16v, the first written by Scribe 2, is ruled for 39 lines. From fo 17r to 22v the pages are ruled with 26 lines. This changes to 25 lines at fo 22r through to fo 25v. 9  Marginal annal numbers, the norm for Scribe 1, disappear from fo 16v. From fos 18r to 19— annals for the years 894–896—the numbers are mid line. Numbers originally 897, 898, and 899 were a run-on, against which annal 897 was then added. Marginal numbers return on fo 20r, from the year numbered 900—though it and 901 appear to have originally been blank, with the long annal on the death of Alfred added alongside both. 902 to 904 are marginal numbers with an annal attached, as we would expect, in each case. 905, 906, and 907 again appear to be a run-on of blank numbers against which an annal for 905 was then added (see illustration  1), and the same thing occurs after annal numbered 911 (fo 21r)—where 912, 913, 914, and 915 appear to have been a run-on of blanks. The scribe then entered the next annal alongside these numbers, beginning with that originally numbered 912. The numbering then continued on to 920. 10  Recognized by Parkes, ‘The Palaeography’, pp. 158–61 and Dumville, Wessex and England, pp. 67–9. 11 Dumville, Wessex and England, p. 69. 12 Bately, Chronicle A has her Scribe 2f begin at the top of fo 25r, five lines into this annal, pp. xxviii and 68 note. Her arguments are compelling, and it is still the same scribe at work across this annal. But the new ink may mark the beginning of his/her last stint.

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Chronicle A and the Early Tenth Century  55

Illustration 1.  Chronicle A. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 173, fo 20v: the work of Scribe 2. Note the run-on and alteration of numbers, and also the marking of names of Ealhswith and Frithestan with crosses. Reproduced by permission of the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

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56  After Alfred Behind all this lie writing contexts which are now difficult to recover but are nonetheless suggestive. Scribe 1’s uniformity argues a single source for which a fairly uniform layout could be planned. The end of his/her work may suggest an exemplar which had annal 891, but without the end found in some other chron­ icles; perhaps more evidence for the variety of copies of Alfred’s Chronicle which once existed.13 Scribe 2’s work suggests more complex writing contexts, at different times and/or with different sources. We may need to allow for a number of separate stints, sometimes finished with a flourish with a run of blank years. Although all the annals from 891 are now usually seen as the work of this single scribe, there is considerable variation in her/his work, consistent with time lapses if not with an experimental period in the development of English Square minuscule script.14 The blank run-ons may indicate work taken up and put down, or poor handling of the combination of different sources. Prima facie the scribes’ work suggests, for Scribe 1, a finished text ready for unproblematic copying to 891, but an altogether more complex situation for the annals which followed. Chronicle A begins with the so-called ‘Genealogical Preface’. This combined three elements: a West Saxon kinglist (i.e. kings with the lengths of their reigns), genealogical comment linking kings back to the founding father, Cerdic, and a full genealogy of King Alfred. Both the list and the genealogies culminate in Alfred. This preface occupies the whole of folio 1r, taking up 36 of the 37 lines ruled on the folios of this first quire, with the first line of text across two lines. It is in the hand of the first scribe. This text is found elsewhere and had a separate existence. It may or may not have prefaced Alfred’s own chronicle. It may or may not have already prefaced Scribe 1’s exemplar. Its inclusion may have been Scribe 1’s own decision. There is, however, no doubt that it fulfilled the function of a preface in Chronicle A from the initial conception of that chronicle, directing the reading of what followed. In Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 173, Chronicle A has a number of travelling companions: the Laws of Alfred (now folios 33–52), papal lists and episcopal lists (folios 53–5), and other Latin texts (folios 57–83), chiefly an eighth-century copy of letters of Sedulius Caelius and his Carmen Paschale. The Laws were likely written a little later than Scribe 2’s final work on the chronicle, and attached to it within a decade or so of his/her work. They were not written by Scribe 2, but they are not much later, and were produced in the same scriptorium.15 13  Note also the fact that the last folio containing his/her work, 16, looks like a supply leaf: see Sparks, ‘The “Parker Chronicle” ’, p. 69. Was this added to complete work on an exemplar which went no further? 14  Janet Bately allows for the variation by labelling the work as ‘Hands 2a–2f ’: Bately, Chronicle A, pp. xxv–xxxiv. Her suggestions are not identical with those of Dumville. But both allow for the variety in the work of a single scribe over time. It is easy to see why Plummer argued for a number of different scribes: Two Chronicles, ii, pp. xxv–xxvi. 15  Thus Dumville, Wessex and England, pp. 136–9, and suggesting the 930s. Ker, Catalogue, p. 58 and Parkes, ‘The Palaeography’, pp. 166–7 would also suggest a date between 920 and the 940s.

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Chronicle A and the Early Tenth Century  57 They were added to the chronicle, as completed by Scribe 2, before the addition of the annals from 924 to 955.16 Someone working in the same context as Chronicle A’s making attached them to that chronicle. S/he simultaneously both recognized the Alfredian connection of the chronicle they followed and underlined it.17 A set of lists was also added to Chronicle A. This happened c. ad 1000 and will be dealt with later (see chapter 8). There is no consensus on where and when the Sedulius texts found their way into CCCC, MS 173. They were once a separate manuscript, copied in the eighth century. That manuscript was badly damaged by water and restored c.900, most likely by Scribe 1 of Chronicle A.18 It was certainly annotated in the tenth century, including with the addition of the name Friðestan diacon at the beginning. Frithestan was also the name of the early-tenth-century bishop of Winchester (910–931), whose accession is not only recorded in Chronicle A, but marked out by a cross in the margin, possibly by the same annotator (see illustration  1).19 Some scholars have thus argued that the Sedulius manuscript may have been added to Chronicle A in the tenth century by someone who remembered that the bishop had owned it.20 However, this makes arguments and assumptions about the Winchester location of chronicle and laws, a hotly contested attribution.21 Unfortunately the reassembly of so many manuscripts in the early modern period may mean that it was the keen eye of a later antiquarian which spotted a connection and added the Sedulius.22 Were Bishop Frithestan the link, that would lead to Winchester. That city, if not bishopric, is a likely, but debatable, location for the making of Chronicle A. By the eleventh century that chronicle was at Canterbury. That was not where it was made. Its place in the evolution of English Square minuscule makes Wessex its likely original home.23 Other early examples of that developing script, closely connected to this chronicle’s scribal hands, have been identified in manuscripts 16  For the evidence here from quire signatures see P.  Wormald, Making of English Law (Oxford, 1999), p. 166. 17  Note also that the text contained errors which make it unlikely to have been a text for use. Its historical meaning rather than practical value seems uppermost: see Wormald, Making of English Law, pp. 171–2 stressing the inaccuracies of the text, even allowing for Dumville’s point in Wessex and England, pp. 137–8 that the Laws were corrected. 18  See T. Graham, ‘Glosses and Notes in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts’, in G. R. Owen-Crocker (ed.), Working with Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts (Exeter, 2009), pp. 159–203 at pp. 175–7 and cf. Dumville, Wessex and England, pp. 85–6. 19  Parkes, ‘The Palaeography’, p. 168; cf. Bately, Chronicle A, p. xix. 20 Cf. Ker, Catalogue, p. 59: the addition of the name ‘Friðestan’ ‘in an early hand’ to the Sedulius thus bound with the chronicle and laws ‘at an early date’. Parkes, ‘The Palaeography’ agrees: pp. 168–70. 21 Dumville, Wessex and England, pp. 65, 72–88. 22  Parkes was cautious as to whether they were brought together by a later antiquary who made the connection, or in the tenth century itself: ‘The Palaeography’, p. 170. Plummer felt that the Sedulius material was only added to the manuscript during a later binding: Two Chronicles, ii, p. xxiv—and Ker noted that it was not mentioned in the Canterbury library catalogue which gave details of Chronicle A plus the Laws. 23  Dumville, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Origins of English Square Minuscule Script’, in Dumville, Wessex and England, pp. 55–139.

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58  After Alfred linked to Winchester, its religious houses and personnel—Nunnaminster, Bishop Frithestan—but also in a gospel book belonging to the community at Bedwyn, Wiltshire, and in manuscripts, such as the Gandersheim Gospels or London, BL, MS Royal 1. B. vii. In the latter two cases, production cannot be precisely localized, but the link is with King Æthelstan: in the case of the Gandersheim Gospels, a clear connection to that king’s court, since it was a gift from him, bearing an inscription to that effect.24 Bedwyn was a royally connected house, on land which King Alfred left to his son, the future Edward the Elder, in his will.25 Such a royal connection applies equally to Winchester. The Old and New Minsters were West Saxon royal foundations and mausolea; Nunnaminster was founded on land belonging to King Alfred’s wife, Ealhswith—her death is picked out with a marginal cross in Chronicle A (see illustration 1).26 Winchester was one of the sites of meetings of the royal court in the late ninth and early tenth centuries.27 The city remains a strong contender for Chronicle A’s original home;28 its early-tenth-century annals record a Winchester episcopal obit and succession. More generally, the common denominator for all the manuscripts linked palaeographically to Chronicle A is closeness to the king, the dynasty, and the court. The making of Chronicle A belongs in a court, if not a specifically Winchester, context.

Palaeography, Layout, and Content The first stints of work on Chronicle A, by both scribes, were completed by the 920s with Scribe 2’s last annal numbered 920. As the chronicle would then have read, it began with Alfred’s Chronicle to 891, repeating its story and messages. Whatever the opening of Alfred’s Chronicle, this one began with the genealogical kinglist, which culminated in Alfred. The dynastic and legitimating messages were underscored. The first scribe ended work with 891, following that annal with 24  These manuscripts are discussed in Dumville, Wessex and England, pp. 72–98, arguing against Winchester, and particularly against the views of Parkes ‘The Palaeography’. On Æthelstan’s gifts see S.  Keynes, ‘King Athelstan’s Books’, in M.  Lapidge and H.  Gneuss (eds), Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 143–99. London, BL, MS Royal 1. B. vii is an eighthcentury Gospel Book which contains a record of a manumission made by King Æthelstan immediately after he became king: see Dumville, Wessex and England, p. 94 n. 192 for a personal communication from Nicholas Brooks expressing scepticism over a Canterbury connection for this manuscript. For Bedwyn see S. Foot, Veiled Women, ii (Aldershot, 2000), pp. 35–8. 25 Harmer, Select English Historical Documents, no. 11 (S 1507). 26  Note, however, that the same annotator picked out the name Alfred in a similar way five times: Bately, Chronicle A, p. xliv. 27 D. Hill, An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1981), maps 147 and 154. 28  Judicious discussion in Wormald, Making of English Law, pp. 163–72, and again pp. 172–181. See e.g. his ‘European analogies’: p. 171 and the difficulty of distinguishing the interests of court and royal abbey ‘in continental context’: p. 170. He quotes Bischoff ’s view on Carolingian leges scriptoria in ‘the neighbourhood of the court’ and the making of texts by ‘parties near the centre of events’: p. 172.

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Chronicle A and the Early Tenth Century  59 a blank number 892; the second added to annal 891 and then continued the story, repeating the number and leading to a later correction of all following numbers by one year. His/her work falls textually and often narratively into a series of  blocks. The palaeography more or less chimes with these: recurring series of blank numbers marry with shifts in content. They follow the 890s continuation, the great succession crisis which began Edward’s reign, and the death of Æthelred, Lord of the Mercians, when Edward took over London. Within the annals 912–20, however, more writing stints could be distinguished: 912–14, 915–17, 918–20. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, the second scribe began work by adding to annal 891 and writing annal 892. This was followed by the account of the campaigns in the 890s against the returning Viking army; as discussed in chapter 3, this very full account cast its net widely to encompass Mercia and to give roles not only to Alfred himself but also to a range of West Saxon and Mercian leaders, all designated as thegns or ealdorman, thus the king’s subordinates. The second scribe distinguished the last annals in this block by the layout on the page; A 894–6, unusually, give each number centre page, with a line to itself. This block was followed by a run of—marginal—blank numbers. These numbers were then overridden, or ignored, by more annals entered alongside them and continuing beyond these overridden numbers. These covered two obits, of an ealdorman and bishop (were these marginalia in Scribe 2’s exemplar?), and the death of Alfred himself ‘son of Æthelwulf ’, and king over ‘all “Ongelcyn” [= Angelcynn] except that part under the control of the Danes’. This annal elaborated on the accession of his son Edward, and the challenge to that ­ by  Edward’s cousin, Æthelwold. Another lengthy annal numbered 904 detailed the campaign which ended that challenge, and covered Edward’s—far from inevitable—victory at the battle at Holme. Another run of blank numbers followed A 904 (see illustration 1). Again these blank numbers were overridden by annals recording the making of peace between Edward and the East Angles and Northumbrians (905), and by obits of the reeve of Bath (905), the bishop of Winchester (908), and the latter’s successor (909).29 Annals 909 and 910 returned to the military theme, with Edward leading an army of West Saxons and Mercians, the breaking of the ensuing peace by Northumbrians, and another joint action against them. 911 has the death of Æthelred, ealdorman (thus in A) of the Mercians, and records that Edward ‘succeeded to’ (the Old English feng to usually carries this weight) London, Oxford, and the areas which belonged to them.

29  Given that the first group of these annals are entered alongside originally blank numbers, which they override, the coincidence of events and number may be more random than this numbering suggests.

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60  After Alfred Another run of four blank numbers followed, 912 to 915, in turn overridden by the first account in these annals of Edward’s fortification building. That overriding produced later corrections which complicated A’s numbering still further, throwing out all subsequent numbers for the reign of Edward by four years. The remaining annals from the early-tenth-century work on Chronicle A were ori­gin­ al­ly numbered 913–920. They retailed the triumphs of Edward’s later years: his burh (fortification) building, and a series of submissions to him of Scandinavian groups in 914, 915, 916, 917, and 918. This climaxed in the building of the fortification at Bakewell in the Peak District and the meeting there where Edward was chosen as ‘father and lord’ by the king of the Scots and all the Scottish people, by Ragnald (the Scandinavian king at York), by the sons of Eadulf and all the Northumbrians—English (Englisce), Danes, Northmen and others—and by the king of the Strathclyde Welsh and all the Strathclyde Welsh. There is some narrative unity in this group, but there are possible palaeographical breaks after annals 914 and 917. As discussed earlier, the story ended with annal 920, the ending of Chronicle A until it was added to in the mid tenth century. Edward’s death was recorded by the next scribe, part of a block of entries added then (see illustration 3). Chronicle A thus continued the practice of contemporary history writing, and the theme of military activity, both of which characterized Alfred’s Chronicle. It ended in triumph—the events of 920—but there are hints of an evolving story, of different earlier endings along the way. Its central concern was with Edward, though it is not primarily or exclusively West Saxon in coverage: there is attention to Mercia and records of joint action. The last campaigns of Edward here recorded were deep in Mercian territory. There is an obvious geographical logic in the advancing conquest of Scandinavian controlled areas further and further north and east. But these last campaigns are nonetheless narrative choices. The exclusive attention to military questions, especially marked in the last annals, was just such a choice. The connection with Alfred’s Chronicle is clear, including in the continuation of annalistic form and vernacular language, neither of which should be taken for granted. By the 930s the Alfredian message was underscored with the addition of Alfred’s laws, though this was probably after the chronicle’s creation. Chronicle A continued the Alfredian story into the early decades of the tenth century. It was not alone in doing so.

Lost Chronicles from the Early Tenth Century Chronicle A must be the beginning of any study of the writing of vernacular chronicles in the early tenth century; it alone survives in its early-tenth-century form. But it cannot engross that study. Careful reading and comparison point to other chronicles, and hint at writings and rewritings. These lost texts are

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Chronicle A and the Early Tenth Century  61 im­port­ant not only in their own right, but also for the light they throw on Chronicle A’s own development. Taken together they provide a picture of engaged historical writing. They are an entrée into the political arguments in the decades after Alfred’s death. Two other chronicles are identifiable, both fossilized in chronicles B, C, and D. These latter three chronicles are much later, dating from the end of the tenth century and the mid to later eleventh. All have a history of growth, sometimes through several stages of development. In every case these stages involved the merging or addition of more than one earlier chronicle text. It is those earlier texts which are the quarry here. They included two lost chronicles from the early tenth century: one with annals very close to those in ‘A’ up to its annal for 914, and another more famous one, now known as the ‘Mercian Register’ or ‘Annals of Æthelflæd’.

i)  A Chronicle Ancestor of B, C, and D Linked to but Not Identical with Chronicle A The late-tenth-century B and mid-eleventh-century C derive ultimately from a copy of Alfred’s Chronicle, but one which was different from that found in Chronicle A. It contained, for example, reference to the capture of the Vikings’ Raven banner (C 879),30 the papal gift of the wood of the cross, the sending of alms to Rome, and an additional military encounter (C 884).31 None of this is found in Chronicle A. For the annals to the early 890s, the textual ancestor from which B and C descend was a copy of Alfred’s Chronicle, but not our surviving Chronicle A. For the annals from C 894 to C 915, that ancestor of Chronicles B and C was close to Chronicle A in many respects. In common with Chronicle A, that ancestor— and B and C as a result—have the very full annals for the 890s, those covering the challenge to Edward the Elder from his cousin, Æthelwold,32 and the run of annals which describe the death of Æthelred of Mercia, Edward’s accession to London and Oxford, and his first subsequent burh building and campaigns.33 These annals in B and C include the Winchester episcopal details found in A,34 and like A they call Æthelred ‘ealdorman of the Mercians’. There can be little doubt that these annals, from the early 890s to A 914/C 915 have a common origin. In B and C that commonality ends with the 915 (A 914) annal. The triumphs of Edward’s later years found in Chronicle A are lacking. This probably means

30  C 879, cf. A 878. In all cases numbers from B and C will be given as C. See ch. 5 for the lack of rubrication in sections of Chronicle B. 31  C 884, cf. A 883. 32  C 901–905, A 900–904. 33  C 906–915, A 905–914. 34  C 909 and 910, A 908 and 909.

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62  After Alfred that they were lacking in B and C’s ancestor. But at this point both these ­chron­icles, and their exemplar, inserted the ‘Annals of Æthelflæd’. It is conceivable that these substituted the annals on the end of Edward’s reign now found in Chronicle A (and its copy G) alone. Chronicle D’s ancestry is more complex. To 890/1 its ultimate source was the ‘Northern Recension’ (see below, chapter  6). Chronicle D, however, had a long history of growth, during which that text had been collated at a point or points with others, acquiring new material. The joins sometimes show. In the long annal 855 on Alfred’s father, King Æthelwulf, for example, repetition indicates the spatchcocking of an annal like E 855 with another like that now found in A, B, C, and G. D’s annals numbered from 892 to 926 were acquired by a process of this type: by merging with a chronicle like that which lies behind B and C.  These annals are almost entirely lacking in the Northern Recension, D’s source to 890/1. For these annals D is closer to B and C than to A. It has the same annals, same lacks, as B and C through to that numbered 915. Like B and C it includes the Annals of Æthelflæd. The numbering of these years follows that in Chronicles B and C, not A.35 For these annals D’s history thus involved collation with a chron­ icle very like that behind B and C.  In D, however, there was more editing and merging, and Chronicle D’s source or sources went beyond B and C in the case of the Annals of Æthelflæd, to 926 (see below, p. 64 and pp. 67–9). B, C, and D are testimony to a chronicle which was in some ways like A, in others different. Like A, it copied that of Alfred, but independently. Like A, it continued beyond 892 with annals numbered through into the second decade of the tenth century—to 914. For these continuations, that chronicle closely paralleled A, even to including detailed obits and Winchester episcopal notices. But it was not A itself. It differed in ways which preclude Chronicle A as the source of B, C, and D. After the breaking of the peace by Northumbrians (A 910, C and D 911), A, B, C, and D recount Edward’s response, namely, his sending an army of West Saxons and Mercians which successfully engaged with a Northumbrian force en route for home. Chronicle A ends with ‘many thousands killed, and King Ecwils killed there’; B and C list and name twelve leaders killed—2 kings, 2 eorls, five men with the title ‘hold’, and three others. D has a shorter list of six, but all overlapping B and C, and all named and titled.36 Chronicle A cannot be the source of this annal in B, C, and D. A number of significant differences cluster in the annals covering the challenge to Edward by his cousin, Æthelwold, at the beginning of the reign. There are differences from the outset in how Æthelwold is described and his actions 35  D’s numbering of 893 onwards could derive from A, whose numbers were corrected during the tenth century. But its difference in 892, A 891, C 892, could not derive from A, which was never ­corrected here. 36 For other differences see A 914 and BCD 915, which call the island in the Severn estuary ­re­spect­ive­ly Flatholme and Steepleholme. These are closely adjacent but distinct islands.

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Chronicle A and the Early Tenth Century  63 presented.37 When B and C introduce Æthelwold, they twice give him the title ‘ætheling’, son of a king, thus a potential claimant to the throne. A lacks this title. Whereas Chronicles B and C state that he was chosen king by the Northumbrians and that they bowed/submitted to him, Chronicle A has the king (Edward) send after him, and has him ‘steal away’ by night. Chronicle A makes no reference to the nature of his reception by the Northumbrians and to his acceptance there as a king. In the annal numbered A 903/C 904 Chronicle A has Æthelwold come mid þæm flotan þe he mid wæs on Eastsexe, ‘with the ships he was with into Essex’. In B and C this is mid eallum þam flotan þe he begitan mihte 7 him to gebogen wæs on Eastseaxum, i.e. ‘with all the ships that he could gather and which had bowed/ submitted [again the reference to his acceptance as a ruler] to him in Essex/ among the East Saxons’.38 Under 904 Chronicle A has Æthelwold ‘enticing/luring’ (aspon) the here (Scandinavian army) to break the peace, where B and C 905 have him ‘lead’ them (gelædde) to this. In 904, recording Æthelwold’s death, Chronicle A states that among the dead on the Danish side were Eohric their king, and Æthelwold—here ‘ætheling’—‘who had enticed them to break the peace’ (ðe hine to þæm unfriðe gespon). B and C have Eohric as king, and Æthelwold ætheling ‘whom they had chosen king’ (þe hi him to cinge gecuron).39 The sum total of these differences amounts to more than transmission errors. These comparisons reveal two different versions of the annals from the accession of Edward the Elder to A 914/C 915, one found in Chronicle A, the other in B, C, and D—thus in the common ancestor of all three. The two versions are closely connected, not only in general themes but in detailed annals and in the inclusion of the same obits, including the succession of Winchester bishops. Behind both must lie a common text, whether a single completed account to 914, or a series of groups of annals copied differently into each. Does either simply transmit that common source? The ancestor of B, C, and D cannot be a copy of Chronicle A’s version; Chronicle A could be a copy of B, C, and D’s ancestor, though, if so, it was changed in significant ways. The palaeographical signs of Scribe 2 writing annals in batches argue against A copying a straightforwardly completed text to 914. In any event, the two versions are so close that they must have been in contact in some way. That closeness ran to A 914/C 915; for whatever reason, not beyond

37  Chronicle A in 900 introduces Æthelwold as fædran sunu, Edward’s ‘father’s brother’s son’. He butan ðæs cynges leafe . . . bestæl hine on niht onweg 7 gesohte þone here on Norðumbrum se cyng het ridan æfter 7 þa ne mehte hine mon ofridan. B and C here begin by calling him ‘æðeling’ as well as ‘fædran sunu’. They then continue ‘þæs cinges unþances . . . rad se æþeling on niht aweg 7 gesohte þone here on Norðumbrum 7 hi hine underfengon hym to cinge and him to bugon’. 38  Note the amalgamation of these two in Whitelock’s EHD translation. 39  D on the whole follows BC in these variations—though in 904 it, like A, has an interesting ac­cusa­tive rather than dative plural: East Seaxe as opposed to BC’s Eastsexum. Note also that D in these annals begins each with Her—capitalized, and often then capitalizes Her again mid annal. This signals the material deriving ultimately from two different sources, and may indicate that D itself, or a stage not far in D’s past, represents that collation, with the two manuscripts at hand before the scribe.

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64  After Alfred that. The close agreement ends here. Chronicle A continues to annal 920, with annals not found in any form in B, C, or D. In both versions of these closely related annals to A 914/C 915, King Edward and his actions are central: they could be labelled ‘the Edward Annals’. Both Chronicle A and the ancestor of B, C, and D share the same subject matter, themes and are for the most part word-for-word alike. Chronicle A was tentatively associated with Winchester, more broadly with the royal court. The ancestor of B, C, and D was likely produced in that same milieu: Edward’s court, close to Winchester. If these are the court annals of Edward, two subtly but significantly different versions have survived. Before pursuing the implications of this, a third account of the early tenth century must first be considered.

ii)  The ‘Annals of Æthelflæd’, or ‘Mercian Register’ Chronicles B, C, and D fossilize a second version of the Edward court annals in their accounts of the early tenth cetnury. All three also contain another group of annals numbered from 902 to 924 (B and C) and to 926 (D). They are found as a separate block in B and C; they have been combined with the ‘Edward annals’ into a single chronological narrative in D.  Their content is overwhelmingly, though not exclusively, concerned with the military struggles against the Scandinavian settlements; if D 926 represents their original ending, they cul­min­ ated, like Chronicle A 920, in an account of the submission of kings of these islands to a southern ruler, in this case King Æthelstan. Until her death in 918, their focus is on Æthelflæd and her military activities. She was sister of Edward and daughter of Alfred, termed Lady of the Mercians through her marriage to Æthelred of Mercia. After her death that attention switches briefly to her daughter, Ælfwyn, then to Edward’s son, Æthelflæd’s nephew, Æthelstan. It is with his triumph at Eamont Bridge that these annals end in D.  In sharp contrast to the ‘Edward annals’, in either Chronicle A or BCD, virtually no attention is paid to King Edward. His building of a fortification at Cledemuþa in 921, and his death at Farndon (in north Mercia) are the solitary mentions. The distinctive nature of this set of annals has long been recognized. They are commonly known as the ‘Mercian Register’, or the ‘Annals of Æthelflæd’. It will be argued here that they, too, were originally a continuation or continuations of Alfred’s Chronicle.40 This group of annals is now found in Chronicles B, C, and D.  As with the ‘Edward annals’, in B and C they are in almost identical form, deriving in both

40 Plummer, Two Chronicles, i, 92 n. 7. I have discussed these annals more fully in,‘ “The Annals of Æthelflæd”: Annals, History and Politics in Early Tenth-Century England’, in J.  Barrow and A.  Wareham (eds), Myth, Rulership, Church and Charters: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Brooks (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 101–16.

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Chronicle A and the Early Tenth Century  65 cases from a common exemplar: the lost Chronicle BC, which will be the subject of chapter 5.41 In B and C, and thus in BC, they are inserted as a block, after the ‘Edward annals’, which end with C 915. The numbering of annals then jumps back, in the case of C to 896, in B to 816! A run of blank annal numbers—C 896–901, B 816–19, 900–901—comes before the next number with material: 902 (see illustration  2) . In B and C the group ends with the annal for 924, in mid sentence ‘he (King Æthelstan) gave his sister’. This is followed by another run of blank annal numbers, in each case 925 to 933. The makers, presumably of BC, had a new source for this group. They did not attempt to collate it fully, but merely added this material en bloc. Is it possible to identify the nature of that new source? Was that a Latin Gesta Æthælflædae as recently suggested? Or an annalistic source, even one comparable to Chronicle A itself? Were these annals, now surviving as a discrete block, originally a continuation or continuations of Alfred’s Chronicle? Was BC’s source here thus a parallel to Chronicle A itself, namely a copy of Alfred’s Chronicle but with a completely different continuation? The layout is a first clue, specifically the runs of blank numbers at the beginning. Does that point to a longer text, which began before 902 and whose earlier section is now lost? Did BC’s scribe/compiler omit that earlier section because it duplicated material already copied? The blank annals would signal its existence.42 It would be a small step from this to argue that what once preceded the ‘Mercian Register’/Æthelflædan annals was the Alfredian chronicle—already copied by BC from another source. The blank annal numbers should be read within the normal practice of the scribes of B, C—and presumably thus of BC. Blank annal numbers, run on along the line, are the normal way of treating years without any material in this group of chronicles. At times they are the only numbers in the partially rubricated Chronicle  B.43 Internally, within this group, the blank years 903, 906, 908, 922, 923, and in C alone 920, are treated similarly, with the blank number on the same line as the end of the previous annal. They could thus argue for an annalistic form of the source text when BC used it. They may indicate lost annals once preceding 41  B and C are not identical. B lacks C’s 921 annal on Edward’s fortification at Cledemuþa. These are, as we shall see later, arguments against seeing the later C as a copy of B here, and for positing a lost bc at some remove from both of them. See also chapter 5. 42 Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, p. cxviii n. 3, and cf. p. lxxxviii n. 9. He argues that a text would not begin with a list of blank numbers—though perhaps an Easter Table might? Earlier annals were omitted because ‘they were in substance identical’ with what BC already had. He was less clear on the nature of this longer text, or of the Æthelflædan material itself. He suggested that the longer text, of which these annals formed part, duplicated BC’s other source, hence its omission in the process of compilation, yet that it was a separate text, not already inserted into a Chronicle like B or C.  The implication of Plummer’s arguments is that he felt the Æthelflædan material was in annal form. Cf. e.g. Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, p. cxviii and n. 3 with pp. lxii–lxiii and n. 1 and i, p. 92 n. 7. 43  B contains few numbers for ‘fruitful’ annals between 652 and 946, and not consistently after that date. The MS probably never received final rubrication: Taylor, Chronicle B, especially pp. xxxi, xxxvi, and l, and for its annal numbering in detail, pp. xxxvii–xlix; on C’s treatment of annal numbers see O’Keeffe, Chronicle C, pp. xl–xlii.

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66  After Alfred

Illustration 2.  Chronicle C. London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius B. i, fo 140r: the work of Scribe 2. Note the run-on of numbers at the beginning of the ‘Annals of Æthelflæd’. © The British Library Board.

it, now indicated by the run-on of blank numbers. These signs of annalistic format of the source text argue against a Latin, poetic Gesta of Æthelflæd as the source here.44 44  As argued by P. Szarmach, ‘Æthelflæd of Mercia: Mise en Page’, in P. S. Baker and N. Howe (eds), Words and Works: Studies in Medieval English Language and Literature in Honour of Fred C. Robinson (Toronto, 1998), pp. 105–26. He does not discuss in detail at what point the Latin poem was turned

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Chronicle A and the Early Tenth Century  67 The run-ons of blank annals which mark off this block in B and C could have another meaning or function. They might indicate the chronological difficulty created when BC’s scribe(s) turned from a source or sources which ran to 914 to a new text with entries before that date, that is from 902; a row of blank numbers managed that. Had BC’s makers used Chronicle A or something like it for the annals to 914, they could have been confused—as we are—by the run-ons of blank annals in that source.45 Chronicle A itself, however, was not BC’s source. The manuscript layout hints, albeit inconclusively, at the original location of the ‘Mercian Register’ or ‘Annals of Æthelflæd’ in a longer, annalistic text. That argument is strengthened by content, which points in the same direction. The block, 902–924/926, extends at beginning and end beyond Æthelflæd and her activity. A Gesta Æthælflædae might explain the beginning: the death of Ealhswith, wife of Alfred, and Æthelflæd’s—Mercian—mother. But why should it extend forward into the early years of Æthelstan?46 In Chronicle D, the ‘Mercian into vernacular annals. An original Latin Gesta would require a stage of translation of language and form into Old English and annals. It arguably requires that translation to have been effected before BC’s compiler found this material. BC’s compiler fairly consistently used run-on numbers at the end of a previous entry to indicate blank annals in the source text. The blank years treated in this way within this group of annals, as well as at the beginning, point to a text already in annalistic form when BC’s scribe(s) saw it. It is conceivable that the compiler of BC translated a Gesta, placed it in a set of annals with other entries, complete with blank years which s/he then transcribed as run-ons when combining the resulting text with another. Ockham’s razor would suggest otherwise, though that implement is a false friend in the study of annalistic developments. Szarmach also argued for Latinate dative absolutes in the vernacular as opposed to the more ‘ “native” prepositional phrases’ in the annals for 913 and 917. Janet Bately, however, noted the use of such Latinate constructions in the vernacular work of Wærferth, bishop of Worcester: ‘Old English Prose Before and After the Reign of Alfred’, ASE, 17 (1988), pp. 93–138, especially pp. 120–1. 45  Plummer’s arguments seem to assume that the blank numbers here were either in the second text, and/or marked duplication between it and a Chronicle like A. That is not, however, the only possibility, as Whitelock has pointed out in EHD, i, p. 112. The blank numbers are not identical in B and C. In C they read 896 to 901, in B 816 to 819, then 900 and 901. Whitelock argued that B has the closer reading of BC and BC’s source(s) here, including an A-type manuscript which had blanks running on as 916, 917, and perhaps beyond. B miscopied these as 816 and 817 and so on, C rationalized them as a run of numbers preceding 902. This would mean that it was the A-type chronicle which was the source of the blank years, leaving fewer grounds to argue for a second text which stretched back before 902. However, it should be noted that recent work has seen C as the product of a very conservative and careful copyist: see O’Keeffe, Chronicle C, pp. ciii–cvii and cx, and cf. her response at p. lxii to Bately’s argument in Texts and Textual Relationships. Although earlier in date, B is not necessarily closer to the original. It is perfectly possible that the compiler here departed from his/her normal practice of using run-ons to indicate blank numbers, instead using them to mark the awkward join. S/he inserted sufficient to fill the space left by the annal for 914 taken from the A-type chronicle, and part of the next line. There was space for more numbers on the line in B, fo. 30r and C, fo. 140r. Neither need indicate the layout in BC, and even there such a space might signify miscalculation rather than act as a straightforward guide to the blank numbers in its source. 46  Although they centre on Æthelflæd, they begin with annals apparently unrelated to her, and they end with annals which extend beyond her death. The annals numbered in C to 907 and 909 have strong Æthelflædan connections even if they do not name her: the first concerns the refortification of Chester, the second the movement of St Oswald’s bones from Bardney to Mercia. But the annals for 904 and 905 are merely records of astronomical events: the eclipse of the moon and the appearance of a comet. The comet is given in D with a date, xiii kalendas Novembris, perhaps another indication that the text behind D here was very similar to that behind BC, but not identical.

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68  After Alfred Register’ material went as far as 926, including the marriages of two of Æthelstan’s sisters and his triumphant meeting with rulers of Britain at Eamont Bridge.47 And why should it include astronomical events, an eclipse of the moon and appearance of a comet, in 904 and 905, and a short reference to the battle of the Holme in East Anglia, under the correct date of 902?48 This content suggests an annalistic text, longer at the beginning if not the end. Was that text in the vernacular? The copy of it in B, C, and D is in that language. The burden of proof is on arguments against that as the language of the original text. As with any attempt to recreate a lost source, there can be no absolute certainty, but the balance of evidence suggests that the Mercian Register once formed the end of a longer text, and that that text began with Alfred’s Chronicle. The makers of the source behind B, C, and D omitted Alfred’s Chronicle because they had already copied it. The blank annal numbers are one sign of its presence, but there are others. The source they found was in annalistic form and in the vernacular; it also provided numbers for years even when there was no text for them. All these are choices of treatment, none are necessarily obvious; all were choices of treatment already made by the Alfred chronicler(s). The emphasis on Æthelflæd and her military activity reinforces these arguments. The overriding theme of these annals is, as with other continuations of Alfred’s Chronicle, military activity and reaction to Scandinavian armies and settlements. A daughter of Alfred is the primary focus. Her brother Edward is centre stage in another continuation. These ‘Mercian annals’ parallel Edward’s ‘court annals’ in many ways. When would this lost chronicle, which lies behind BC, have been produced? Its final annals—as now preserved—date no earlier than 926, probably no earlier than c.929 x 930. Chronicle BC’s last annal, as represented now in B and C, was for 924; it breaks off in mid sentence. Chronicle D completes 924 with the marriage of Eadgyth, sister of King Æthelstan, to the ‘Old Saxon’ Otto. D’s annals then continue to 926, ending with Æthelstan’s meeting with other rulers at Eamont 47  B and C end with his accession in 924, and—in mid sentence—with the giving of his sister. Chronicle D continues with details of that marriage, ‘oversea to the son of the king of the Old Saxons’, then annals for 925 and 926: the marriage of another sister to the Scandinavian king of the Northumbrians, and the triumphant meeting at Eamont Bridge between Æthelstan and other rulers of the British Isles. Chronicle D used the ‘Mercian Register’ material from whatever source, but abbreviated and collated it. D is less full than the annals in B or C. It preserves a different ending from that found in the BC group, evidence that this block of annals existed in more than one copy. The annals for 924–6, where D first completes an annal truncated in B and C, then continues with the same themes, suggest that D here preserves the original ending of this block. Like B and C and BC, it then has little else for the next decade or more: like them, merely a run of blank numbers from 927 to 933. Chronicle D is an eleventh-century chronicle, and it is debatable at what point in its evolution these annals were inserted. They were not, however, copied from Chronicle B, C—or their exemplar, BC. Whatever the source from which this block of annals derived, it existed in more than one copy. On the marriages see P. Stafford, ‘Gender and the Gift: The Giving and Receiving of Women in Early Medieval England’, in R. Balzaretti, J. Barrow, and P. Skinner (eds.), Italy and Early Medieval Europe: Papers for Chris Wickham (Oxford, 2018), pp. 73–86. 48  This latter is more explicable, as a battle with familial implications for Edward and his sister, though there is no attempt to bring this out.

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Chronicle A and the Early Tenth Century  69 Bridge in Cumbria. If, as seems likely, D here represents the end of the chronicle which also lies behind BC, the 924 annal is unlikely to have been written much before 929 x 930. The marriage of Eadgyth and Otto did not take place until 929 x 930. Negotiations for it may have started as early as 924, but the annal’s emphasis suggests its author knew of their successful outcome and fulfilment. The chron­ icle’s final annals would thus have been written in the later 920s. A development in stages is, however, possible. The later 920s and 930s are largely barren, for the most part a mere run of blank numbers in B, C, and D. Like Chronicle A, this lost chronicle would show a burst of chronicling activity covering these early decades of the tenth century, but one whose interest did not extend beyond the mid 920s. Where was this putative lost chronicle produced? Content points to Mercia. All the events and concerns are Mercian, a fact recognized in the name often given to this group of annals, the ‘Mercian Register’. Within that, their major, though not sole, subject is Alfred’s daughter, Æthelflæd. In that respect they parallel Chronicle A, whose central figure was her brother, Edward. They parallel A also in their primary emphasis on military activity. However, they continued beyond Æthelflæd’s death and the ousting of her daughter. The annals are sparse for the years C 920 to 923 until the group of annals concerned with the accession of Æthelstan: chosen as king ‘by the Mercians’ (of Myrcum),49 negotiating and sealing friendships, including especially with the rulers of lands along the northern and western borders of Mercia. The sole references to King Edward in these annals are to his burh built at Cledemuþa, and his death at Farndon in Mercia, on Myrcum.50 In their concern with a Mercian ruler, paralleling A’s concern with Edward, could these annals and their chronicle have been produced at, or in some connection with, the Mercian court? Charters from the early 900s point to the existence of such a court.51 Some of its members would qualify as patrons if not an audience for such a chronicle. Worcester and its bishops are candidates. The work of 49  I am grateful to Susan Irvine for discussion of the translation here. In her view ‘The preposition “of ” in this kind of context seems to contain an element of origin (“coming from”) overlapping with the idea of agency (“by”)’. See B.  Mitchell, Old English Syntax, i (Oxford, 1985), pp. 342–3 and 506–10. 50  Cledemuþa is unfortunately unidentified. The best guess is probably still the mouth of the Clywd river near Rhuddlan: see F. T. Wainwright, ‘Cledemutha’, EHR, 65 (1950), pp. 203–12, followed by J. McN. Dodgson, ‘The Background to Brunanburh’, Saga Book of the Viking Society, 14/4 (1957), pp. 303–16. 51  See P. Stafford, ‘Political Women in Mercia, Eighth to Early Tenth Centuries’, in M. P. Brown and C. A. Farr (eds), Mercia: An Anglo-Saxon Kingdom in Europe (London, 2001), pp. 35–49 at pp. 45–7 and Stafford, ‘Staffordshire and the Making of England’. The court had retreated to south and west Mercia from the 880s. It is recorded as meeting in these decades at Risborough, Bucks. in 884 (S 219); Saltwich, Worcs. in 888 (S 220); and Shrewsbury, Salop. in 901 (S 221). Charter survival clearly affects the pattern, but the pattern of archives which determines that survival is no different pre- and post870, though shifts in Canterbury’s relations with Mercian rulers over the ninth century clearly had an impact. For rebuilding at Gloucester see M.  Hare, The Two Anglo-Saxon Minsters at Gloucester, Deerhurst Lecture, 1992 ([Deerhurst], 1993) and A.  T.  Thacker, ‘Chester and Gloucester: Early Ecclesiastical Organization in Two Midland Burhs’, Northern History, 18 (1982), pp. 199–211.

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70  After Alfred Bishop Wærferth (869 x 872–907 x 915) shows some of the linguistic peculiarities associated with the ‘Annals of Æthelflæd’. He is perhaps too early in his own right, but there is a possible link to Worcester learning (above, pp. 66–7n44). His later successor, Cenwald (928 x 929–957 x 958), who may have been a priest in King Æthelstan’s household before his appointment, had a special interest in the Saxon marriage, which D (perhaps also B and C in truncated form) record. He accompanied Æthelstan’s sister Eadgyth on her journey to Saxony.52 Another bishop could be in the frame. The political significance of bishops of Lichfield re-emerged strongly in the early decades of the tenth century under Æthelflæd and her husband Æthelred, culminating in their role at Æthelstan’s court.53 Bishops are, however, only one group within a court which is a possible location for the production and continuation of this lost chronicle. If all this is correct, the ‘Mercian Register’ is a remnant of a vernacular chron­ icle, which, like Chronicle A, began with Alfred’s. Like Chronicle A, this lost chronicle would have told a story which began with Alfred’s, but in this case continued it with one which increasingly focused on his daughter, Æthelflæd, and ended with his grandson, Æthelstan. It would parallel Chronicle A and the other (closely-linked) lost chronicle, whose stories had the same beginning but led rather to Edward, and, in Chronicle A’s case at least, to his triumph in 920. These would be stories available to be read in the earlier part of the tenth century. All continued the major themes of Alfred’s later annals, the concern with Scandinavian attacks and settlements and military response. They diverged, though in parallel, in their respective focus on the son and daughter of Alfred. In the case of the Mercian Register the final culmination was Alfred’s grandson, Edward’s son, Æthelflæd’s foster-son: Æthelstan. The historiographical interest they betoken did not extend beyond annals numbered to the 920s, specifically to the early years of Æthelstan.

Historiography and Politics: Succession and the Survival and Rule of Angelcynn The production of chronicles, the writing of contemporary history, should never be taken for granted. The urge to do so demands explanation. The political issues bequeathed after Alfred’s death were the context for all this historiographical activity around his ruling children, his son, Edward, and daughter, Æthelflæd. The history written is both a guide to those issues and an active participant in them. 52 On Cenwald and the marriage see W.  Georgi, ‘Koenwald von Worcester und die Heirat Ottos  I.  mit Edgitha’, Historisches Jahrbuch, 115 (1995), pp. 1–40 and S.  Keynes, ‘Koenwald’, in M. Lapidge, J. Blair, S. Keynes, and D. Scragg (eds), Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1999), pp. 273–5. 53  On these bishops and their significance see now Stafford, ‘Staffordshire and the Making of England’.

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Chronicle A and the Early Tenth Century  71 In Edward’s case political crisis engulfed his reign at the outset, in the form of a formidable challenge by his cousin Æthelwold for the throne.54 As a son of Alfred’s older brother, who had ruled before him, Æthelwold’s claims were strong. His bid for the throne was a serious one. He commanded support—perhaps in Wessex, certainly in Scandinavian-ruled areas. Coins were struck in his name in the North. Only the accident of his death at the battle of Holme removed the immediate threat to Edward’s early reign. No surviving chronicle supports him. But the two versions of annals from Edward’s own court circle reveal different arguments about him. Comparison of these two accounts of Edward’s reign show an accumulation of variations which combine to tell different stories of this succession crisis. From the outset Chronicle A’s presentation delegitimized Æthelwold. It initially denied him the title of ‘ætheling’, never called him ‘king’, and presented his arrival with the fleet which accompanied him in Essex in the most neutral terms. In A he was a man who ‘steals away’ by night, who lures/entices others to break the peace. B and C—and thus the lost chronicle which is their source—introduced him as ‘ætheling’ and acknowledged his kingship, repeating that acknowledgement at his death. They have the ships in Essex ‘bow/submit’ to him, giving weight to him as an accepted leader. At his death Chronicle A’s Æthelwold was an ‘ætheling’, but one ‘who had enticed [those on the Danish side] to break the peace’ (ðe hine to þæm unfriðe gespon); B and C by contrast here call him Æthelwold ‘ætheling’ ‘whom they had chosen king’ (þe hi him to cinge gecuron).55 Chronicle A’s word-choices paint a negative picture of Æthelwold. B and C’s story could scarcely be said to be an apologia for him. But it arguably gives him greater legitimacy, especially his choice as king—or rather A’s choices more decidedly delegitimize, explicitly in the lack of the title ‘ætheling’ in A 900, but also in the lack of any reference to his kingship.56 Some differences between B and C and A could also, however, be read as commentary on the actions of Northumbrians, East Saxons, and others. B and C make clear that they chose Æthelwold, i.e. someone other than Edward, as king. A’s annals carry no such implications. Their actions and choices may also be at issue here. Is BC, or rather its source, pointing a finger at their treachery, or constructing them as treacherous? In an ‘England’ whose shape and rule was far from fixed 54  J. Campbell, ‘What is Not Known about the Reign of Edward the Elder’, in N. J. Higham and D. H. Hill (eds), Edward the Elder, 899–924 (London, 2001), pp. 12–24 and R. Lavelle, ‘The Politics of Rebellion: The Ætheling Æthelwold and West Saxon Royal Succession, 899–902’, in P. Skinner (ed.), Challenging the Boundaries of Medieval History: The Legacy of Timothy Reuter (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 51–80. 55  D on the whole follows BC in these variations. 56  For the reality of that kingship, accepted by many in the North, witness the York coinage which bears his name on one side, and the legend ‘The Lord God is King’ on the other: see R.  Naismith, Medieval European Coinage, viii: Britain and Ireland c.400–1066 (Cambridge, 2017), pp. 293–4 and 830–1, no. 2576.

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72  After Alfred in the early tenth century, Northumbrians if not East Saxons and East Angles had their own political agendas. To draw attention to their choice of an alternative king was to make a political point—from a southern court’s viewpoint—not ­simply to record a fact. Whatever the case, these two versions transmit differing reactions, differing responses to Æthelwold and his challenge, both arguably close to Edward’s court itself. Which, if either, was ‘original’ is very difficult now to determine. More important they provide evidence of interpretation of, if not argument over, these events. Whether conscious political arguments, or half-conscious, even unconscious, reactions, they underscore the importance, possibly the continuing importance, of Æthelwold’s challenge and the support it attracted. Chronicle A’s account appears as the most delegitimizing. That need not mean it is the earliest. Æthelwold was at least thirty years old by ad 900. The possibility that he had a son by the time of his death is strong. Chronicle A’s more critical account could have been aimed as much at a son as at Æthelwold himself. Emphasis on and interpretation of Æthelwold’s actions would have had continuing relevance for his descendants long after his death. Chronicle A contains other variations with implications for arguments over the succession. The geneaological preface which opens Chronicle A may or may not have been used in Alfred’s Chronicle. It was certainly used now. This kinglistcum-genealogy survives as a separate text. In Chronicle A (and A’s copy G) it is  subtly different from all other known versions. There are changes to the ­all-important generations of the West Saxon founding fathers. In Chronicles A and G alone, a generation is missing from the founding fathers. In the genealogical preface as found in A and G Cynric, who according to all chronicles succeeded Cerdic the first king, was Cerdic’s son. In the other manuscripts of that genealogical text, Cynric was the son of Creoda, son of Cerdic—i.e. Cerdic’s grandson by a non-ruling father: Creoda does not appear as a king in any chronicle. The ‘error’ is repeated in Chronicle A in the genealogy of Alfred’s father, Æthelwulf, in the AG 855 annal. In all other copies of this genealogy, whether in Asser, within a vernacular chronicle or independent from it, the genealogy contains a succession from grandfather to grandson via a—apparently—non-ruling son. In A and G alone, the succession is from ruling father to son.57 Changes to such critical generations are not neutral. These were the founding fathers of the West Saxon line. These were the generations whose practices could be used to legitimize later succession claims, and which certainly could be invoked in arguments about them. The ‘error’ in A (and G), especially the repeated

57  On this ‘error’ see D.  Dumville, ‘The West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List’, Peritia, 4 (1985), pp. 21–66 at pp. 59–60; Nelson, ‘Reconstructing a Royal Family’ at pp. 62–4; and B. Yorke, ‘Edward as Ætheling’. The preface—and this ‘error’—is discussed by Stafford, ‘Reading Women in Annals’, in Agire da Donna, at pp. 275–83.

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Chronicle A and the Early Tenth Century  73 ‘error’ in preface and annal, looks deliberate and significant.58 When was that ‘error’ made? In the reign of Alfred?59 Or in that of his son, Edward? The dating of the work of scribe 1, a vexed question, holds the key. Both preface and annal are in his/her work. If that belongs as late as the second or third decade of the tenth century, even if ‘c.900’ means very early tenth century, then Chronicle A was produced entirely within the reign of Edward. His court would thus become the candidate for the introduction of these ‘errors’. All other versions potentially validate claims to rule as son of a non-ruling father, who had been himself the son of a king. Chronicle A’s version removes that argument. A son of Æthelwold would be an obvious loser, since Æthelwold as Chronicle A portrays him was never a king. Whether apropos his own claims, or those of a son, the legitimacy of Æthelwold as a claimant vis-à-vis Edward was an argument Chronicle A in particular seems to address. At the same time, the very fact of continuing his father’s chronicle, its themes, genre, language, and concerns, writing Edward and his own reign as a continuation of his father’s staked a claim to Edward’s own legitimate succession. Chronicle A is not merely a record of the arguments. It was part of them. The chronicle in which the Annals of Æthelflæd/Mercian Register were found has been argued as Mercian. Its emphasis was on another child of Alfred. For Æthelflæd, too, legitimacy was an issue, not least after the death of her husband in 911. She was a ruling woman in an age which saw few such aberrations. The lost Mercian chronicle employs strategies of legitimation which parallel those of Edward’s. Like Edward’s, this lost Mercian chronicle continued that of Alfred, and, like Edward’s, lays claim to rule through military success. Its annals also make play constantly with the divine help which backed her actions. In 913 Gode forgyfendum she went to Tamworth and built the burh there; in 917 Æthelflæd Gode fultumgendum foran to Hlæfmassan (‘before Lammas’) took Derby; in 918 mid Godes fultume she took Leicester. Æthelflæd and her advisers knew how to commandeer religious imagery and symbolism on her behalf. Her fortification of the burh at Scergeat in 912 was undertaken ‘on the eve of the Invention of the Holy Cross’, a feast associated with St Helena, a mother of an Emperor if not a model for a female ruler, and one already linked to Mercian queenly power.60 This was a careful staging of her rule and its authoritative precedents, recorded in this lost chronicle. The fact that this same chronicle makes repeated play with religious support may be yet another reason to associate it with the close court circle around 58  Note Nelson on the divergent forms of this pedigree reflecting the arguments of different sides in the 890s, ‘Reconstructing a Royal Family’, p. 64. 59  Thus Nelson. 60  Stafford, ‘Political Women in Mercia’, in Brown and Farr (eds), Mercia, pp. 37–41, citing also Ann Gannon’s doctoral thesis. See now A. Gannon, The Iconography of Early Anglo-Saxon Coinage, Sixth to Eighth Centuries (Oxford, 2003), pp. 40–1.

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74  After Alfred Æthelflæd herself. It maximizes her power. At her death in 918 it states that she had held sole power, anweald, of the Mercians with right lordship for eight years. Early-tenth-century coins give some recognition to her rule, but never accord her any name or title.61 The apparent difference here between the claims of chronicle and coinage is a reminder that varying audiences and their patrons affect presentation. Coinage was widely available and used, and had its own infrastructure of production—different from that of chronicles. Its imagery and symbolism speak, among much else, to the common ground between issuers and users of coins. The Æthelflæd of this chronicle was more likely one framed at court by Mercian elites, speaking especially to them. This lost Mercian chronicle can be read as the ‘Annals of Æthelflæd’. Yet it continued beyond her death. Her daughter, Ælfwyn, was accepted as ruler in some quarters after her mother. She was soon deprived of power and taken to Wessex. Was the composition of the chronicle, or its continuation, sparked by the need for this daughter to claim her mother’s inheritance, an assertion of her legitimacy by her followers even after her deprivation? Was Æthelstan’s accession the occasion for its writing, or for its continuation? Æthelstan was son of Edward the Elder, but was raised at the Mercian court of his aunt. In 924, this Mercian chronicle records his father’s death, the accession and sudden death of his (younger) half-brother Ælfweard, and Æthelstan’s own choice as king of Myrcum, ‘by the Mercians’ (BCD 924). Compressed within this brief record of events are political needs: to justify Æthelstan’s rule both in Mercia, which had been ruled by his father since 918, and then in Wessex and Mercia, and to assert his claims vis-à-vis younger and arguably more legitimate brothers born of marital unions whose status—unlike that of his own mother—was unquestionable.62 In 924 Æthelstan would be a beneficiary of the legitimate rule of a West Saxon aunt who had become Lady of the Mercians. The chronicle which emphasized that, even if not initially produced now, had continued relevance in these circumstances. The last annals in this Mercian Chronicle followed Æthelstan’s early successes through to his triumphant meeting with the rulers of Britain at Eamont Bridge in Cumbria (D 926). There ‘all the kings that were on this island’, Howel, king of the West Welsh, Constantine, king of the Scots, Owen, king of Gwent, and Ealdred, son of Ealdulf from Bamburgh were under his power, wæron he gewylde, and ‘with pledge and oath’ fastened peace there. After this, the Mercian Chronicle falls silent. There is no indication that it ever extended into the later 920s and early 930s. Is it coincidence that both Edward’s annals and this Mercian chronicle 61  For coins which are probably associated with Æthelflæd see R.  Naismith, Medieval European Coinage, viii: Britain and Ireland c.400–1066 (Cambridge, 2017), at pp. 182, 196, and 198–200. There is further discussion in Stafford, ‘Staffordshire and the Making of England’. 62  Questions around the union of Edward and the mother of Æthelstan were already current at this date: Stafford, ‘Gender and the Gift’, pp. 77–8.

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Chronicle A and the Early Tenth Century  75 ended in meetings of the rulers of Britain with a southern king and that neither shows a continued interest much beyond these points? These are not the only parallels between Chronicle A and this lost chronicle. Both tell a tale centred on military action, one of the defining activities of kings. Some parallels hint at more: at a dialogue between them, if not at one answering the other. ‘Edward’s annals’ from 911 took up a story of military activity including burh building. This was an activity of Æthelflæd already signalled before this date in the Mercian chronicle. After 911 Edward as a Mercian ruler was an increasingly important part of Chronicle A’s presentation of the king. The last Edward court annals, numbered after the death of Æthelred of Mercia and that of Edward’s own sister Æthelflæd (recorded in Chronicle A 918 without any other title), are increasingly concerned with Mercia and its defence. An obvious subject perhaps: Edward now ruled Mercia, and the inexorable advance of southern conquest of Scandinavian-controlled England led north and north-east. Yet narrative choices are choices and there were good reasons to emphasize these actions of Edward. Edward as ruler of Mercia benefited from stress on Edward as protector of Mercia, as continuator of the actions of Mercian rulers— as would his likely successors.63 Edward’s rule in Mercia was not unchallenged after the death of his sister. The Mercian Chronicle (C 919) has Ælfwyn, daughter of Æthelred lord of the Mercians, accepted in Mercia. In 924 that challenge was expressed in rival claims of two of his own sons. As so often in tenth-century English history, the death of one, at Oxford on the southern edge of Mercia, resolved conflict. Æthelstan, raised and chosen in Mercia, became king of the West Saxons and Mercians. These two chronicle accounts may preserve echoes of the tensions of these years among the elites of two old kingdoms only recently brought together under Alfred’s rule. Their content addresses questions of ­legitimacy to succeed and rule, but also of succession to and rule over Wessex and Mercia, Angelcynn—Alfred’s inheritance in every way. Are Edward and Æthelflæd’s annals engaged in dialogue? The palaeography of Chronicle A allows for that, consistent with an accumulating account and an evolving story. Courts—their composition, the formation and allegiances of their members, and their aspirations—are once again critical. The courts of the early tenth century were Mercian, around Æthelred and Æthelflæd, and West Saxon, around Edward. But they also overlapped and coalesced. They contained members surviving from Alfred’s courts; a bishop of Worcester could straddle both. They could come together as courts of Angelcynn, which already included West Saxons and Mercians before 900. Angelcynn was the uneasy union of Wessex and Mercia, before and more decidedly after that date. Relations between West Saxon 63  The triumphalist tone and content of these annals might be explained partly in this way. On these last annals see M.  R.  Davidson, ‘The (Non)Submission of the Northern Kings in 920’, in N. J. Higham and D. H. Hill (eds), Edward the Elder (London, 2001), pp. 200–21.

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76  After Alfred and Mercian elites must have been critical. But for people formed, however ­partially, within such courts Mercian separatism was neither an obvious nor an uncomplicated political stance. Such courts were the matrix within which these chronicles may be placed, where dialogue and debate among them could occur, where the ambiguities of a ‘Mercian’ chronicle, Alfredian in its choice of content, form, and language, could be understood. The question was Alfred’s inheritance: both before 900, in issues around the succession, and across 900, in the control and definition of that inheritance. Alfred’s legacy was Angelcynn, or ‘Wessex-cum-Mercia’, not simply one or the other. After 900 the rule of Æthelred, Lord, in some eyes ‘King’, of the Mercians and his wife, Alfred’s daughter Æthelflæd, kept alive the Mercian court and may even have sharpened Mercian sensibility. Relations between Edward and his sister and brother-in-law were not straightforwardly those of king and subordinate, as between Alfred and Æthelred—though that latter too is subject to question.64 There may be hints of this in the very existence of the Mercian Chronicle. Yet the latter, like Edward’s, continued that of Alfred. Alfred’s inheritance was political but also intellectual and historiographical; no surprise if claims to the one were expressed in terms of the other. The big prize was rule of Angelcynn and all that went with that in terms of prestige and patronage. Was it a foregone conclusion that that rule be exercised from Wessex, not Mercia? What was Alfred’s inheritance, how was it to be capitalized on, and by whom, from where? These questions were resolved, at least temporarily, by the accession of Æthelstan. Son of a West Saxon king, he was raised in Mercia and was grandson of Alfred, who with his Mercian wife was the father of previous rulers of both kingdoms. Chronicle production and writing, another part of Alfred’s inheritance in which all these questions and tensions had been articulated, also ends, at least temporarily, early in Æthelstan’s reign. No more annals were written. The r­ esolution was perhaps still an uneasy one. The final annals on Æthelstan’s accession and early years were added c.930 to the Mercian chronicle. At a similar date, nothing was added about the new reign to Chronicle A. Rather the Alfredian nature of its story was underlined by the addition to it of that king’s lawcode, with which Chronicle A now travelled. * * * * * * * * * * * * These precise political readings are debatable, though engaged history-writing this surely was. For a son and daughter of Alfred, the writing of history and contemporary history may have seemed an obvious extra weapon in the search for legitimacy, an obvious additional technology of their power. So too for members of their courts, who had often started their lives at that of Alfred. Alfred’s 64  See  P.  Stafford, ‘Political Women in Mercia’, in Brown and Farr (eds), Mercia and P.  Stafford, ‘Staffordshire and the Making of England’.

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Chronicle A and the Early Tenth Century  77 inheritance was playing out in the early tenth century, including his intellectual and historiographical inheritance. It was also being contested. Two children of Alfred, court elites who included members carried over from his reign, neither court necessarily of a single mind, facing evolving questions of inheritance and succession. Chronicles which emanated from and grew within these contexts may well be our best guides to the arguments conducted in the contexts of those courts. These three chronicles—two from circles close to Edward, the other more Mercian in focus—should be read not merely as records of the events of the early tenth century, but as the voices of groups deeply involved in them. By the 920s generations who had learned to express their political arguments in historiographical terms were also dying. The way of Alfred’s court was far from a universal one. The writing of history, let alone contemporary vernacular history, was not inevitable. There was, apparently, only the most thin and spasmodic vernacular chronicling in the remaining decades of the tenth century. The impetus appeared to be spent. That impression is, however, misleading. The mid to later tenth century saw the making of new chronicles. The most significant vernacular chronicle after Alfred, the so-called Northern Recension, was produced now. The story of the rest of the tenth century is largely a story of lost chronicles, the Northern Recension, Chronicle BC, perhaps the Worcester chronicle. What was the shape of these chronicles? When, where, and for whom were they produced? BC brought together two of the chronicles discussed in this chapter. It is time to turn to it and the problems it poses.

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5

BC, B, and the Mid Tenth Century Only two vernacular chronicles survive in manuscript form from the tenth ­century: Chronicle A, from its beginning (though with later additions), and Chronicle B from its end. Comparison of all surviving chronicles suggests these are far from the full story. As was argued in chapter 4, there were other chronicles now lost. Three particularly significant ones are the subjects of the next three chapters. The lost chronicles are accessible only through surviving chronicles which used them. The later those surviving chronicles are, and the more the stages of development that preceded them, the harder it is to disentangle their textual history and identify the earlier texts which are the quarry of the next three chapters. Indeed the quest for such lost texts may appear hopeless, even a textual perversion. It could be argued that scholarly attention should be limited to the surviving manuscripts, the chronicles we know existed and were available to be read, not to those we have lost and can reconstruct only with varying degrees of certainty. Some of these lost texts, however, are of great potential significance. The story of vernacular chronicling would be not only incomplete but impoverished without attention to, for example, the lost ‘Northern Recension’. Moreover all question the apparent hiatus in interest in vernacular chronicling during much of the tenth century. The contemporary history-writing seen in the late ninth and early tenth appears to wane in the following decades. The lost chronicles, however, attest to a continued interest in the writing of history; not only in copying earlier chronicles but also in producing new compilations. The when, where, and why of this are as questions as important for interpreting these lost texts as for surviving manuscripts. In the following three chapters, three lost chronicles will be pursued: BC, the ‘Northern Recension’, and the lost ‘Worcester Chronicle’. In this chapter the focus will be on BC, the least problematic of the three. It should be noted, however, that exploring it will require thinking about a putative antecedent chronicle whose text, here called /BC, is more elusive. BC and this possible /BC involved the combination of Alfred’s Chronicle and two of its continuations, both of which have been discussed in chapter 4. BC and /BC, its assumed forerunner, extended the latter texts into the largely military triumphs—as they are here presented—of the southern kings in the 940s and BC at least then continued up to 977. BC and /BC take us back to Mercia, but a Mercia which is here part of the kingdom of the English under southern rule. Consciously or not, as historiography the BC and /BC chronicles are an expression After Alfred: Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and Chroniclers, 900–1150. Pauline Stafford, Oxford University Press 2020. © Pauline Stafford. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198859642.001.0001

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BC, B, and the Mid Tenth Century  79 of the ideology of this kingdom, linked in all probability to the politics and actors involved in its creation.

Chronicle B and BC It has long been recognized that a common source lies behind Chronicles B and C, here labelled BC.1 We have already encountered that text as key to uncovering early-tenth-century developments. It brought together many of the earlier tenthcentury annals discussed in chapter 4, following a copy of Alfred’s Chronicle and extending it to the mid and later tenth century. It can be reconstructed by comparison of Chronicles B and C. Its state at the end of the tenth century is attested by the survival of Chronicle B in manuscript form from that date. Comparison of B and C reveals detailed and close agreement, from the opening through to annal number 977, the last annal in B. That agreement is not, however, so straightforward as to allow a scenario where the mid-eleventh-century Chronicle C simply copied the late-tenth-century B.  A common exemplar or exemplars lie behind them, namely BC, this chapter’s quarry. In addition, in both B and C the annals numbered from the middle decades of the tenth century exhibit features which suggest change in their common exemplar(s) at about this point. They raise the possibility that BC was itself the result of a continuation of an earlier text, namely /BC, which originally ended in the central decades of the century. The quest for BC is thus a quest for a chronicle which stretched at least to annal 977, now represented by the copy—or snapshot—which is B.  The quest for BC should also allow for a possible earlier chronicle, /BC, lying behind it. Lost chronicle behind lost chronicle: this search treads an increasingly dangerous path, with the threat of a quagmire rather than a pot of gold at its end. Chronicle A, however, is contemporary testimony that the mid tenth century was a significant time in vernacular chronicling. /BC takes the quest on to shakier ground, but the evidence for its existence demands consideration.

Chronicle B Chronicle B (London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius A. vi) is the first witness. It is written in a single hand post-977, the number of the last annal. A single folio, now bound in London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius A. ii as folio 178, once formed the end of this chronicle. It is in the same hand as the annals to 977, and contains a genealogical regnal list, comparable to that which prefaces Chronicles A and G. Whereas in A

1 Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, p. lxxxix and cf. p. cxviii. Plummer called it Γ.

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80  After Alfred and G the list ends with Alfred, here it extends to eadweard . . . eadgares sunu, that is, to the reign of Edward ‘the Martyr’ (975–978 x 979), son of King Edgar, but no further. The length of Edward’s reign is not given, arguably because it had not ended when the list was authored. This has led to the dating of this manuscript very closely to the 970s, and more loosely to the last decades of the tenth century.2 Date of authoring is not, of course, the same as date of copying in B. The dating of B is, however, borne out by the script, a form of Anglo-Saxon Square minuscule characteristic of the late tenth century.3 The genealogical regnal list once followed two blank folios, immediately after the chronicle text.4 According to the early-modern commentator-cum-antiquary, Joscelyn, the text was once preceded by a (spurious) letter of Pope Boniface to King Æthelberht I of Kent. Neil Ker’s identification of Joscelyn’s copy of this letter suggests that it was taken from this manuscript, and that it was written at Christ Church Canterbury in the late eleventh century.5 Like other additions made at post-Conquest Canterbury, this will have much to tell us about the use of ver­ nacu­lar Chronicles after 1066 (see chapter 13). However, at the time of its making, and apparently for long after this, B’s initial folio was blank. Chronicle B has no preface. It begins abruptly with the arrival of Julius Caesar sixty years before Christ. The two blank folios at the end may suggest that continuations, or additional materials, were anticipated. If so, they never materialized or were never used. The genealogical kinglist was, however, apparently intended to round off the chronicle. It is in the same hand as the Chronicle text, and its format, number of lines to the page, and (before shrinkage in the Cotton fire) folio size, all point to it as integral to the manuscript.6 The marked stain on the outside of the folio with the genealogical kinglist could suggest that it was long the outer folio of this manuscript, though that stain may have been acquired after its detaching. Was the chronicle manuscript long unbound? The loss of the first folio, with its copy of the papal letter, might suggest this, though

2 Ker, Catalogue, p. 249: ‘probably between 977 and 979, since the chronicle ends in 977 and the regnal years of Edward the Martry [ended 978 x 979] have not been filled in’. Cf. also Whitelock, EHD, i, p. 111: ‘it is reasonable to assume that he was writing before Edward’s death on 18 Mar. 978’. Bately preferred a date after his death: Texts and Textual Relationships, pp. 4–5. For divided opinion over the end of Edward’s reign, 978 or 979, compare D. Dumville, ‘The Death of King Edward the Martyr—18 March, 979?’, Anglo-Saxon Essays, 2001–2007, Studies in Anglo-Saxon Culture, 1 (Aberdeen, 2008), pp. 251–65 and S. Keynes, ‘The Cult of Edward the Martyr during the Reign of King Æthelred the Unready’, in J. L. Nelson, S. Reynolds and S. M. Johns (eds), Gender and Historiography: Studies in the Earlier Middle Ages in Honour of Pauline Stafford (London, 2012), pp. 115–25. 3 Taylor, Chronicle B, pp. xxiii–xxiv. 4  On the basis of parchment and quire arrangement Taylor has argued that a first leaf has been lost and that the two blank folios which now follow the Canterbury material were part of the latetenth-century manuscript: Chronicle B, pp. xviii–xx. This argues both for a loss at the beginning and the original position of fos ‘35 and 36’, which now follow fo 35. 5 Ker, Catalogue, pp. 472–3. 6 Ker, Catalogue, p. 249 and Taylor, Chronicle B, p. xix.

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BC, B, and the Mid Tenth Century  81 this loss was post-medieval. There is, however, no evidence that Chronicle B was bound with any other works in the early medieval period. Chronicle B has every appearance of being an unfinished manuscript. The absence of a preface may point to that. But more important is the absence of rubrication, including annal numbers, in the second half of the chronicle. Chronicle B is fully rubricated with annal numbers only to the annal numbered 652. After this, it has very few numbers for annals with text, though it usually (not invariably) has all blank annal numbers: in this manuscript such numbers run along the line following the entered text. There are some exceptions to this. Within the ‘Mercian’ annals 902–24, discussed in chapter  4, the annals for 904 and 905, both reporting astronomical phenomena, are numbered oddly.7 The numbers for three annals for the mid century are difficult to interpret.8 These ‘errors’ may be pointers to the state of Chronicle B’s exemplar at this stage (see below, p. 83nn14 and 15). B is thus fully rubricated in its first folios, but that task was never completed. B is a very clean, fair copy, betraying little sign that any of the collation which lies behind it was being done by B’s scribe. Here was a vernacular chronicle produced towards the end of the tenth century, a copy of an existing one but a chronicle which was not completely finished. It shows little or no sign of continuation or use before 1066. Four crosses added to it point to someone’s reading. They cannot be securely dated, but post-Conquest Canterbury is the most likely time and place for their addition. They likely point to cross-checking and reading of B at Canterbury after 1066.9 The Chronicle was not added to in any way, whether by 7  The normal practice of B’s numbering was run-ons for blank years, and, where annals with text were given numbers, to place these in the outer margins (thus in the right-hand margin of the recto and left-hand margin of the verso). On fo 30r after the unnumbered text of 902 the scribe entered 903 as a run on. 904, with the ‘d’ of dcccciiii lost due to trimming, is then given in the left-hand margin, unusually for numbered annals on a folio recto with text where numbers are given. The text is then entered, followed by number 905 mid line. On the same line text is entered again, for the next annal, followed, in the right hand margin, by number 906, where we would expect a number on folio recto. This is an unusual layout in B. 8  Annals numbered in C to 956–9, with a run-on for the blank 958. In B, 956 is given a number, which reads 955, probably as a result of trimming. The next annal, on Edgar’s accession to Mercia, has no marginal number. The number 957 follows the text on the same line, which should mean it is a blank number. There would thus be no number for the text of the annal on Edgar’s accession to Mercia. The next annal has a marginal number, now reading 956, again apparently as a result of trimming. Taylor reconstructs this as 959, on the basis of C and the fact that the next blank run-on is 960. It might once have read dcccclviii or dcccclviiii. 9  Two are above blank annal numbers 96 and 443; two are in the regnal list. In the regnal list they may mark an omission, as in the case of the first, which marks the omission of Cuthred between Æthelheard and Sigebriht. The second in the regnal list, and most elaborate, marks the omission of  Æthelred, Alfred’s older brother—and/or Alfred’s own accession. Given the significance of Æthelwold, Æthelred’s son, after Alfred’s death, the omission of his father is at least worth noting. The cross over 96 is inexplicable—F apart, no other surviving chronicle has text for this year, so this is unlikely to indicate the identification of an omission. F’s text concerns St Dionysius, and is taken from Norman annals (Baker, Chronicle F, p. 8 and note) and B shows no other interest in these insertions in F. 96 was, however, an annal number given three times in Chronicle A (Bately, Chronicle A, p. 6 n. and cf. comment by Taylor, Chronicle B, p. 8 n.). B’s cross could suggest a reading of A and a note of this.

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82  After Alfred continuation, insertion, or marginalia, until after 1066, when it was at Canterbury, where the prefatory letter and material on popes and pallia were added.10 If other works were originally bound with it, there is now no evidence of them. It is now part of a composite manuscript, whose bedfellows were assembled in the early modern period. Chronicle B is evidence of someone’s interest in vernacular chronicles in the last decades of the tenth century. Further consideration places it as one of a family of chronicles deriving from an earlier, lost BC. The existence of such a parent chronicle is indicated by Chronicle C. Chronicle C (London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius B. i) is a vernacular chronicle written in mid-eleventh-century hands. Full discussion of it thus belongs to a later chapter. It is recognized that it is closely related to Chronicle B as far as the annal for 977, with which B ends; exactly how is less clear. There is no doubt that B and C are very close indeed, more than any other two chronicles apart from A and its copy G. Up to and including annal 977 they are in large part identical. Was the later C a copy of B, as G was of A? Many scholars have argued rather for a common exemplar, or even two exemplars, lying behind both.

BC and /BC Chronicles B and C agree closely in apparent omissions, insertions, and readings vis-à-vis other chronicles.11 This extends to letter-forms, accenting, and even to such details as an error in word division, a misinterpretation which links C’s reading with B’s layout.12 But Chronicle C is not a simple copy of B up to its annal for 977. C, for example, has annals and parts of annals before 977 that are missing from B.13 The combination of similarities and differences between them argues a lost common source, BC. Plummer’s recognition of this has been endorsed by most subsequent scholars, but they have seen the relations among BC, B, and C as Such a reading could also explain the regnal list crosses. 443 was an annal number given incorrectly in B as ccccliii, corrected in the same ink as the cross to cccc\x/liii. Again this may result from crosschecking. It may also be significant that this is a number which has an annal added by F’s scribe to A at Canterbury. 10  Fo 35r,v: see Taylor, Chronicle B, pp. xxi–xxii. 11  Plummer felt that B was ‘a mere pale reflexion’ of C (Two Chronicles, ii, p. lxxxii) and that their affinity was ‘closer than that of any two existing manuscripts of the [sic] Chronicle with the exception of Ā and A [our A and G]’: Two Chronicles, ii, p. lxxxvii and nn. 1–5 for their agreement in ‘mistakes’, ‘omissions’, ‘insertions’, ‘readings’, etc. 12  Partly following Plummer, but refining his arguments on palaeographical grounds, Ker argued that the relationship of B and C up to the annal for 652 is ‘so close as to suggest a common exemplar if not direct copying’: Catalogue, p. 253. He points to the archaic letter forms in B up to this point, also found in C, and the accenting of the same words in both. Moreover C has a mistake in word division in the annal for 547, where C reads finngod ulfing for finn godulfing. This mistake suggests that the C scribe was here copying an exemplar where the ‘god’ of ‘godulfing’ came at a line ending. This is precisely the layout in B. 13  See e.g. Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, p. lxxxvii nn. 6, 7, and to a lesser extent 8.

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BC, B, and the Mid Tenth Century  83 more complex. All detailed comparisons suggest an exemplar behind B and C. There remain questions whether we should posit one or two copies of that exemplar.14 The BC family of chronicles numbered at least three, possibly more. There is also general agreement that the annals numbered from the 940s are somehow distinct. This has led to arguments for these as a continuation of a chronicle which at one stage had run to annal 946, here named /BC.15 The odd­ ities in B’s numbering of the next annals with text (those for the 950s) would be consistent with this. There is consensus about the existence of the lost chronicle, BC. B is a copy of it, but C is not a copy of B; there must be at least one exemplar behind both. The ‘BC family’ c. ad 1000 consisted of at least B and BC, perhaps more than one copy of the latter. Here is a first indication of the interest in vernacular chronicles in the later tenth century. BC was in existence by the end of the tenth century, when B’s scribe copied it. But was it created then? What did it contain? Did it 14  See above, p. 82n12 for Ker’s view on annals to 652. Ker also argued in favour of a very close relationship for the annals numbered 945–977: see the omission in both of the year number ‘969’. Ker thus cautiously opens up again the possibility that C copied from B—though not, note, for the annals numbered 653 to 944. Another exemplar, in most respects very close to B, would still need to be posited for these years. Dorothy Whitelock in EHD, i, pp. 111–12, and her Introduction to The AngloSaxon Chronicle sees no evidence in annals numbered to 652 that C had access to any other MS than B. From 652, given B’s deficiencies as an unrubricated exemplar from this point, C’s scribe required another exemplar, followed from 653 to 944. C again copied B after the 945 annal, though Whitelock’s grounds for this are less clear. Recent work has universally recognized the existence of a common exemplar, but there is still division. Was Chronicle C directly dependent on B at any stage; did B and C use the same exemplar; did C have access to an earlier version of it? Differences, taken alongside obvious close similarities between B and C for the annals numbered 653 to 946, are such that we must argue that in this section C used a common exemplar and not B itself. But Taylor, following Ker here, sees C as directly copying from B for the years to 652 and again from 946–977. Bately, followed by O’Brien O’Keeffe, argued for C’s use of a common exemplar throughout—possibly not the exemplar used by B’s scribe, but one which was earlier—because more archaic than B’s own exemplar (though the conservatism of C’s scribe, whilst B’s updated the language rather more freely, could mean that the common exemplar would now appear rather differently in each). Bately sees many of the features linking B and C up to 652 as common to ALL vernacular chronicles, i.e. they do not argue anything about B and C’s specific relationship. C represents readings which would place it closer to the common archetype of ALL the chronicles, a major reason why she sees C as not using the source common to B but an earlier copy of that source. These arguments would mean a common source behind B and C for all of their common material (thus one which extended to 977), but also two copies of that source, at least to the annal for 945/946. For all this, including Bately’s arguments, see O’Brien O’Keeffe, Chronicle C, pp. lix–lxii. The annals from 945/946–977 pose some questions for this analysis. Taylor has textual arguments for a very close relationship between B and C in these annals (Chronicle B, pp. xlvii–xlix): linguistic similarities now: feala C 975, mynstre C 977 (cf. menst- spellings in C 652–947), mycclum (C 974 and 977), spellings typical of B throughout. Bately would, however, stress that C’s language in these years, as elsewhere, is more ‘archaic’ than that in B: Texts and Textual Relationships, p. 18. Bately also stresses changes in the layout of C in its tenth-century annals. These are inconsistent with a use of Chronicle B up to 977, and a switch from it in the late 970s. 15  Almost all argue for a difference in annals 945/947 to 977: see Ker, Catalogue, p. 252; Whitelock, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, p. xiii; Taylor, Chronicle B, p. xlvii. Bately, Texts and Textual Relationships, pp. 18–20 disputes the conclusions that C was copying B here, but agrees that these annals are in some ways distinct; see also O’Brien O’Keeffe, Chronicle C, pp. lvii–lxii. Conner, Abingdon Chronicle, p. lxx thought that BC was a ‘working copy’ and argued for an updating to 977 of a chronicle which had not been added to since the 946 annal: p. xxxix. Bately, in her review of Conner in The Medieval Review finds the idea of a c.977 updating ‘very attractive’.

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84  After Alfred always end with the annal for 977, or was it a chronicle with continuations? B is a fair copy and C a mid-eleventh-century manuscript. But can they enable us to recover not only BC, but also any earlier stages of BC’s own development? If answers to these questions can be found, it will be through detailed comparison and attention to the final annals and their peculiarities.

The Content of BC

What was the content of BC? Its form at the point that the copy B was made is beyond question. It began with Alfred’s Chronicle to annal C 891/3,16 in a version which was, in most respects, common with that in ADEG. But in various salient details, BC’s version differed. In some cases it agreed with D and E, against A and G.17 These include the name, ‘Ceolwulf ’, the ‘foolish king’s thegn’ to whom the victorious Scandinavian army entrusted part of Mercia (C 875, AGDE 874), a name lacking in AG. A version of Alfred’s Chronicle different in some details from that behind Chronicle A lies behind B, C, D, and E. But B and C have some readings present in no other vernacular chronicle. Some are omissions, whether major (the annal for 730) or minor.18 These are important as indicators of the common history of these two chronicles. There are, however, some more significant readings peculiar to B and C.  In their annal for 606, B and C alone give the parentage of Pope Gregory with the names of his father and mother.19 In their annal for 796 they alone have the correct name of the Mercian king Cynulf: all others have Ceolwulf;20 in their annal for 717, by contrast, B and C have ‘Ceolwold’ as king of the Mercians, where AGDE have the correct ‘Ceolred’. In the annal for 860, B and C make the leader of the men of Hampshire Wulfheard, while all other chronicles have Osric.21 These

16  Numbers in B and C will normally be given as C, since sections of B are unrubricated and thus unnumbered. Calculation from numbered annals suggests that B’s numbering would have been identical to that in C. 17  B and C had a version of Alfred’s Chronicle which included the reference to the Vikings’ Raven banner (DE 878, C 879, B without number) and the second reference to the sending of the wood of the cross by Pope Marinus (DE 883, C 884, B without number). 18  See Plummer’s list, Two Chronicles, ii, p. lxxxviii n. 2. Neither Æthelweard nor the Annals of St Neots are simple versions of Alfred’s Chronicle. For what it is worth, Æthelweard also lacks the 730 annal; but he has neither parent of Gregory at 606 and shares AGDE’s reading in 796 and 860. 19  Her name was available in the Whitby Life of Gregory, but not in Bede, The Earliest Life of Gregory the Great, ed. B. Colgrave (Kansas, 1968; Cambridge, 1985), pp. 72 and 141 n. 4. This detail is not evidence of a return to Bede. 20  D and E, thus the Northern Recension, like A and G, have Ceolwulf. See also under 716/717 BC has Ceolwold Myrcna king, AGDE has Ceolred. Here AGDE are correct, cf. Bede, HE, V. 24. 21  A Wulfheard dux appears in S 320, a grant by Æthelwulf of 5 hides in Wiltshire to Malmesbury dated 855. Is it relevant that the ‘Wulf ’ family fell from grace? See S 362 for Wulfhere ealdorman of Wiltshire’s loss of office and inheritance, cf. J. L. Nelson, ‘A King across the Sea: Alfred in Continental Perspective’, TRHS, 5th ser., 36 (1986), pp. 45–68 at p. 53 and n. 41. In her ‘Reconstructing a Royal Family’ at pp. 57–8 and n. 57 she points out that Osric and Wulfhere are given the—unusual—title princeps. She sees Osric and Wulfhere as possible brothers-in-law of kings.

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BC, B, and the Mid Tenth Century  85 variants are peculiar to B and C.22 They set BC apart. Finally in one instance the Alfred Chronicle annals in BC were glossed, or silently changed, and at a date after 900. Under the year 642, B and C, like all vernacular chronicles, record the foundation of a church at Winchester by King Cenwalh. But B and C gloss it as þa ealdan church. The ‘Old’ minster/church at Winchester only became so after the ‘New’ minster/church was founded, by Edward the Elder. This gloss is tenth-century. In BC, Alfred’s Chronicle was followed by the full version of the 890s annals, as also found in Chronicles A, G, and D, and the first set of Edward court annals to C 915, the latter in a version which differed from that in Chronicle A and its copy G.  (see above, chapter  4). At that point BC switched to the Mercian Register/ Annals of Æthelflæd, doubling back to the year number 902 to enter them as a block. Chronicle D also has these, which it collates with the Edward annals. BC lacks Chronicle D’s apparent conclusion of this block in its annals 925–926. In BC, as in all other chronicles, the later 920s and most of the 930s are blank. BC then contained annals 934–946. These annals deal with King Æthelstan’s campaign against Scotland (C 934, found in AGD and also in this case in E); his victory over Scandinavian and British rulers at Brunanburh (as in AGD—very brief in E); his death (as in AGD—very brief in E); and the campaigns of his successor and brother, King Edmund, to recover control of northern Mercia and Northumbria. The loss of these areas is never detailed in this chronicle or in these annals for 934–946. These, including their run of blank years, are also found in AG and D, though in D they have been combined at some stage with other ma­ter­ ial, whilst in AG they are filled out with some Winchester episcopal references. This group of annals is greatly abbreviated in Chronicle E. These annals end in 946 with the death of Edmund; the accession of his brother, Eadred; the latter’s overrunning of Northumbria and establishment of control over it; and the swearing of oaths to him by the Scots. From that point to annal 977, BC’s annals were in many cases (though not all) unique to it. These years are largely blank, mere runs of numbers. Annals with text briefly cover the accession of the brothers Kings Eadwig and Edgar (C 956, 957, 959), including Edgar’s accession to Mercia in the first instance (BC alone, though compare D 955 and marginally in F). The five last annals in BC include four long entries. The short exception to these long annals records the death of Edgar’s son, Edmund. Two of the long ones are episcopal obits with biographical elaboration: that of Oscytel, bishop of Dorchester and archbishop of York (C 971), and of Sideman, bishop of Devonshire/ Crediton, whose body was buried, against his will, at Abingdon (C 977). These 22  On which see Bately, Texts and Textual Relationships. The relationship between the BC version and D’s version of the annals taken from Alfred’s Chronicle is complicated by the fact that at some point in its evolution /D was collated with a chronicle like BC. Thus, e.g. its version of the genealogy of Alfred’s father, Æthelwulf, (D 855), missing from E, parallels that in bc 856, not that in AG.

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86  After Alfred two are in BC only. Three of BC’s last five annals are also in some other ­chronicles. The death of the ætheling Edmund (C 972) is found in D, E, and G. It was once in Chronicle A, but was erased, an erasure which occurred after G was copied from A in the first decade of the eleventh century. Two annals detail the consecration of Edgar at Bath, his death, and subsequent events (C 974 and 975). These latter two are also found in Chronicles A and G. They are long annals, and in poetic form. This poetic form is a feature of a number of the tenth-century annals in BC. These include 937 (so-called Battle of Brunanburh poem) and 942 (so-called Relief of the Five Boroughs). Poetic annals are found in no vernacular chronicle in annals numbered before the mid tenth century. They occur spasmodically from now on, and not merely in BC. Two are found in the 935–946 group, two in the last annals found in BC. In content, BC brought together Alfred’s Chronicle with continuations close to those found in AG to 914 (numbered C 915), though, as we have seen, not identical with them. It coupled to this annals numbered 902–924 taken from a Mercian chronicle, itself once a continuation of Alfred’s; a longer version of these, to 926, is now found in D.  It included annals for 934–946, annals with parallels now found in all other surviving vernacular chronicles, though in briefer form in E. From 947 to 971 and again at 977 it parts company with all other vernacular chronicles, though its annals here are sparse. In C 972–975 BC was very close to AG. It ends on its own note with the obit of Bishop Sideman under 977. All this is found in more or less identical form in Chronicle B, and also in Chronicle C to 977. The mid-eleventh-century makers of C added no further material to their chronicle up to annal 977.23

In Pursuit of /BC BC is thus clear. What of /BC? The oddities in the numbering of 956–959 (see above, p. 81n8) might suggest that the numbering of these years was difficult to interpret in the exemplar. Do they indicate annals added to a text which once finished before this /BC? Did that text end in mid century, with a block of annals, 934–946, a block also found in Chronicle A? Close textual and palaeographical analysis saw almost all scholars agreed that 946 was a significant annal in BC, before and after which the relation of B and C was different (see above, p. 83n14). Similar close work means that some scholars have also been inclined to see BC as a chronicle with continuation[s] (see above, p. 83n15). But the shape and especially ending of any putative /BC is unclear. The annals 934–946, found in so

23  C goes beyond 977, and this may be an indication that one copy of BC did so too.

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BC, B, and the Mid Tenth Century  87 many chronicles, look especially significant. Chronicle A provides strictly ­contemporary evidence for these mid-tenth-century decades.

i)  Chronicle A and the Mid-Century Annals A is witness to interest in this block of annals in the mid tenth century, providing an additional context within which its possible role as the original ending of /BC can be assessed. In Chronicle A the annals 934–946 were added as part of a single scribal stint no earlier than the 950s. They are copied into A but are unlikely to have been authored for that chronicle. The scribe who added them was involved in a wider process of updating A, and comparing and collating it with another chronicle or other chronicles. The context of this was Winchester, possibly episcopal. The annals 924 to 951/955 were added to Chronicle A as a single block by the third scribe who worked on this chronicle. As already mentioned, A’s second scribe had ended with annal 920, Edward the Elder’s triumph. The Laws of Alfred and Ine were attached to this.24 No new annals, or even blank numbers, were added to A in the 920s, the 930s, and for much of the 940s. The annals—and blank numbers—from 924 to 951 x 955 were all added in a single hand by a single scribe on a new quire no earlier than 946 x 947, and no later than c.956 (see illustration 3) .25 This mid-century bout of activity opened up Chronicle A for further additions. A new quire as well as new annals was added. All subsequent annal entries in Chronicle A through to the ‘Acta Lanfranci’ were written on this quire.

24  There is considerable agreement on the early date of the script of the laws: see Bately, Chronicle A, pp. xix, xvi–xvii and n. 23; Parkes, ‘The Palaeography’, p. 166 n. 4; Wormald, Making of English Law, p. 166; Dumville, Wessex and England, pp. 135–9; and Ker, Catalogue, p. 59. Ker sees the script as intermediate in character between that of the annals to 920 and those for 924–955 x 956, a judgement which Dumville still regards as ‘very appropriate’: p. 136. Dumville, following Bishop and Parkes, would see two scribes involved in the writing of the laws. 25  See Ker, Catalogue, p. 58; Bately, Chronicle A, pp. xxxiv–xxxv; Dumville, Wessex and England, pp. 62 ff. Bately’s and Ker’s Hand 3 begins with the record of Edward’s death, and, in their view, continues to the annal for 955 on the death of Eadred and accession of Eadwig. Bately observes (p. 74 n.) that ‘956’ was erased to accommodate the 955 annal, which perhaps suggests that 955 was added after the original stint, which comprised the annals and blank numbers from 924 to 956, and could thus have been written at any date after the last ‘fruitful’ annal number, 946: a run of blanks is a standard way of continuing into the future after an annal has been added (though it should be noted that such an attitude does not anticipate regular additions in the near future). Dumville notes that the annals for this section, excluding that for 955, ‘enjoy as much space as necessary’ and that they are in a very ‘even’ script of a date later than some of the earliest entries. So the treatment here suggests to Dumville that they were added all at one time from an ‘exemplar [which] failed after 946’. The copyist/scribe then, in his view, added annal numbers either to fill up the page or ‘to achieve the year of writing’, i.e. 956. Hence Dumville’s broad dating of this section to 947–955 x 956 and Ker’s c.956. Parkes, ‘The Palaeography’ had already stressed the distinctiveness of this section: a new quire, and no attempt to add annal numbers 921–3 to connect it with the Edward annals.

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88  After Alfred

Illustration 3.  Chronicle A. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 173, fo 26r: beginning of a block written by Scribe 3 in the mid tenth century, with additions at post-1066 Canterbury, including by the scribe of F. Reproduced by permission of the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

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BC, B, and the Mid Tenth Century  89 Chronicle A’s third scribe entered this group of annals as a block.26 The date range for the entry of these annals begins in 946 x 947 and ends with the annal for 955, the final work of this scribe.27 The 955 annal may have been entered sep­ar­ ate­ly. What is certain is a long period when no one was interested in adding annals to Chronicle A. Did the block of annals which ended in 946 rekindle that interest mid century? It is unlikely that this block was composed specifically for Chronicle A. This group of annals contains the first poetic entries in the vernacular chronicles. Their linguistic distinctiveness within Chronicle A is marked. The poems do not fit linguistically with the surrounding annals, though this may be in part a result of their composition in the ‘general Old English poetic dialect’. The A scribe was almost certainly not the composer of the poems; their origin or transmission points to a non-West Saxon background.28 The scribe who added these annals to Chronicle A was working in a context where historiographical interest was strong. The scriptorium where Chronicle A was updated mid century also produced other works. The same scribe who copied these annals into Chronicle A produced the manuscript of a medical text, Bald’s Leechbook, but also the copy of the vernacular translation of Bede.29 This latter was attached to Chronicle G, a copy of A, in the early eleventh century. Chronicle A’s scribe was involved not only in copying this block, but in checking and collating chronicle A with other chronicle(s). As well as copying new annals into A, s/he also clearly checked the preceding annals, and supplied an annal missing from A, that for 710.30 The scribe had another vernacular chronicle to hand, which s/he was comparing with A.  S/he was consciously updating Chronicle A.31 This process of active comparison gives valuable insight into how 26  They began with the death of King Edward, and ended with a run of blank numbers from 947 to 956 filling fo 28r. The final number, 956, was erased, presumably when the annal for the death of Eadred and accession of Eadwig was entered under 955, the last entry made by this scribe. The 955 annal may thus be a later addition, though see Bately, Chronicle A, pp. xxxiv–xxxv. Dumville, Wessex and England, pp. 62–4 sees it as an addition by ‘either of a new scribe practising the same type of style’ or ‘the same scribe at some years’ remove’, contra Bately, Chronicle A, xxxiv. Wormald, Making of English Law, p. 166 n. 6 agrees with Dumville that the 955 entries and possibly that for 951, on the death of Bishop Ælfheah, were written after the annals to 946 and numbers to 956. 27  The final run of blank annals could have been a page filler, perhaps indicating a scribe who did not expect regular updates. The blank numbers may, of course, indicate the date at which the scribe was writing c.955; his/her anticipated blank for 955 and 956 were overtaken by Eadred’s death and Eadwig’s accession, which s/he felt merited inclusion. 28  See Bately, Chronicle A, pp. cxlii–cxlvi on the poems in Hand 3 as the major exception to the typical Late West Saxon of Hands 3 to 6. Note also her point that there is a striking proportion of nonWest Saxon forms in these poems in A, which she feels may indicate ‘a non-West Saxon origin for the text of the poems or transmission through a scribe of non-West Saxon background’. Taylor, Chronicle B, pp. lxiii–lxv also notes that B has the most exceptions to Late West Saxon in the poems, though they conform to ‘general OE poetic dialect’. 29  See Ker, Catalogue, pp. 58–9 and nos 264 and 180. 30  ‘Her Beorhtfriþ ealdormon feaht wiþ Peohtas 7 Ine 7 Nun his maeg gefuhton wiþ Gerente Wala cyninge’. 31  With the sense of a text ‘intimately connected to his own’? Thus Dumville, Wessex and England, p. 66.

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90  After Alfred at least one updating of these chronicles occurred. That other chronicle was not like BC, but more akin to that which lies behind the ‘Northern Recension’.32 All this work was likely done at Winchester, or at least in its orbit. In A and its copy G alone, the annals for the 930s which were added now include a series of notices of the succession to the Winchester bishopric (see illustration 3).33 Chronicle A is thus a contemporary witness to a revival of interest in ver­nacu­ lar chronicling in or near Winchester in the mid tenth century. It was part of a wider historiographical interest. That revived interest led to the addition to Chronicle A of a block of annals ending at 946. This marks the end of scribe 3’s work on A. This same block marks a significant point in the lost BC and in D, and possibly E. Its content merits a little more attention.

ii)  Annals 934–946 These annals for 934 to 946 have a thematic unity.34 As found in almost all ver­ nacu­lar chronicles, they begin with King Æthelstan’s expedition by land and sea to Scotland (A 933, BCDE 934).35 Next comes the annal for 937, the battle of Brunanburh, and the long poem on this subject in AGBCD. This is followed by the 940 annal on the death of Æthelstan, with a precise date and regnal length, the accession of Edmund ‘ætheling’, and mention of his age: 18 years, also in AGBCD. This same annal in all these latter chronicles refers back to Alfred; Æthelstan is noted as having died 40 years less one night after the death of Alfred. Annals 942–946 cover King Edmund’s military activity, culminating in the accession of Eadred ‘who reduced all Northumbra land to submission and to whom the Scots took oaths’.36 They cover the Northern campaigns of Æthelstan and especially 32  Italicized sections in p. 89n30 above were in DE but not BC; but DE also has extra material in this annal, not in AG. This came from developments of the Northern Recension: see chapter 6. 33  Four annals numbered 931, 932, 933, and 934 (five if we include the 951 annal which appears to be in a slightly different, but probably closely contemporary, hand). On 951 cf. Dumville, Wessex and England, p. 63: ‘a later addition . . . in a very degenerate form of the script’ of Hand 3; ‘ . . . it could be contemporary [by which he clearly means strictly contemporary, i.e. 951 itself] but on balance this seems unlikely’; Bately, Chronicle A, pp. xxxv–xxxvi and 74 n.: probably after 955, though ‘two scribes could have been working together’; Ker, Catalogue, p. lix: ‘appears to be a later addition and probably by the scribe who wrote a charter of 956 (BMFacs iii 21)’ (i.e. S 636) and cf. Ker, Catalogue, p. 59: ‘seems to have been added later than the annal for 955 and may be in another hand’. See also. Lutz, Chronicle G, p. 227 n. 34  In Chronicle A scribe 3 began with a very brief reference to the death of Edward and the accession of Æthelstan, his son. This is not part of the block common to almost all chronicles. 35  Conflation with a Winchester bishopric notice seems to lie behind this annal in A. This perhaps accounts for A’s date: see Dumville, Wessex and England, p. 64. 36  Under the year 942 Chronicle A has the poem often now called the Relief of the Five Boroughs plus the baptisms of the Viking kings Anlaf and Ragnald. Chronicles B, C, and G have the same annal including the poem; Chronicle D has the poem, but gives the baptisms under the following year, 943: there are slight variations between AG, BC, and D in this record of the baptisms. Under 944 Chronicle A has the overrunning of Northumbria and the driving out of Anlaf and Ragnald, as do B, C, D, and G—and, in slightly different form, E. Under 945 Chronicle A has the overrunning of Cumberland and

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BC, B, and the Mid Tenth Century  91 Edmund, culminating in the submission of the Northumbrians to Eadred, here dated to the year of his accession, 946. Unity is apparent in other respects. This group of annals is marked out by a common formulaic opening, in each case beginning with the name of the king followed by his actions. This is not such a common formula for the vernacular annals as one might expect.37 They contain the first poems in the vernacular chronicles. The two poems elaborate, explicitly celebrate, and comment on military successes. As a group, they tell a coherent, if sparse, story: beginning with a campaign against Northern Britain and ending with a statement of Eadred’s overrunning of all Northumbria and the taking of oaths by the Scots. The latter events may have taken place immediately after Eadred’s accession; or they may be a resume of his actions over several years. The terminus post quem for the compilation of this group of annals is no earl­ ier than the end of 946. They may belong later in Eadred’s reign, but surely before his death. Chronicle A deleted blank numbers added as a run-on after the annal for 946 in order to record the death of Eadred in 955. That gives a likely terminus ante quem; the entry of this block in A and its run-on of numbers was before the date of that death was known. Whether the date of compilation was also the date of composition for all of them is a more moot point. The poems at least may have had a separate existence. These annals have a strong intertextuality with the earlier vernacular chron­icles. Their subject matter echoes that of both Alfred’s and his children’s chron­icles, with their emphasis on military advances. There is a deliberate reference to the past, including in the dating of Æthelstan’s death, forty years but one night after that of Alfred. This intertextuality is marked in the poems, with their explicit reference to earlier ‘books’, their harking back to the past of the Angles and Saxons since their arrival in Britain, and to the heroic history of the dynasty.38 It is

the alliance with Malcolm, again as found in Chronicles B, C, D, and G—and in abbreviated form in E. Under 946 there is an annal recording the death of Edmund, with precise date and regnal length, and the accession of his brother Eadred, who reduced all Northumbra land to submission and to whom the Scots took oaths. Chronicles B, C, and G have the same annal. Chronicle D elaborates it with details of Edmund’s death by stabbing and of his queen. Chronicle E has a briefer version, but one which also notes the death by stabbing. Finally Chronicle A has the death of Eadred under 955, with date, place, and regnal length, and then the accession of Eadwig, Edmund’s son. Only Chronicle G has this material in the same form, though note that Æthelweard had a closely parallel record—including the same precise date and regnal length—but with a difference in the description of Eadwig’s accession, giving him a reign of four years and calling him Pancali, ‘All fair’: Æthelweard, p. 55. 37  See S. Walker, ‘A Context for “Brunanburh” ’, in T. Reuter (ed.), Warriors and Churchmen in the High Middle Ages (London and Rio Grande, OH, 1992), pp. 21–40 at pp. 34–5. 38 See M.  Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture, ‘Grammatica’ and Literary Theory, 350–1100 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 453–6 and his ‘Medieval Textuality and the Archaeology of Textual Culture’, in A.  J.  Frantzen (ed.), Speaking Two Languages: Traditional Disciplines and Contemporary Theory in Medieval Studies (New York, 1991), pp. 181–210. For their historical awareness see Bredehoft, Textual Histories, p. 100.

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92  After Alfred debatable whether the poems were written for a vernacular chronicle, as opposed to simply incorporated in one.39 Some literary scholars have linked them with court culture, with praise poems, perhaps skaldic praise poems.40 But the wider intertextuality of both poems and this group of annals may argue that all were written to continue an existing vernacular chronicle. The content of this block of annals does not indicate a narrowly West Saxon perspective. The military activity they record lay in northern Mercia, and beyond. Such content fitted a desire to cast kings in a heroic mould; this was, in any event, the major field of southern kings’ military challenges in the mid tenth century. The Mercian geography, if not messages, is clear.41 The Brunanburh poem, for example, separates West Saxons and Mercians; they fight together, but they are not confounded in a single entity.42 There are strong grounds for treating these annals as a block. Were they circulated? Are they ‘official’? Do they indicate how the vernacular chronicles developed in the tenth century, through such official circulation?43 Their unity might suggest this; so, too, their appearance in almost all surviving chronicles. They do not, however, appear in identical form in Chronicle E or in F, which used /E, a chronicle lying behind E. In the form which contains the two famous poems they are found only in the A(G) and BC(D) groups of chronicles.44 The sparseness of the annals sits oddly with any view of circulation. The 934 annal, on Æthelstan’s expedition to Scotland, and 937, Brunanburh, are the only annals for Æthelstan’s reign. Both are thematically linked with the annals for 942 to 946 in their attention to military activity north of the Trent. But even the latter years, poem apart, look thin and scrappy for an officially circulated group. They could be explained

39 For the suggestion that they were free-standing—their initial line e.g. scanning without the annal opening—see M. Townend, ‘Pre-Cnut Praise-Poetry in Viking Age England’, Review of English Studies, NS, 51 (2000), pp. 249–70, especially pp. 351–3: the 937 and 942 poems scan without the initial Her of the opening line. 40  See M. Townend, ‘Pre-Cnut Praise-Poetry’; J. Opland, Anglo-Saxon Oral Poetry: A Study of the Traditions (New Haven, 1980), pp. 172–7; and cf. A. Campbell, The Battle of Brunanburh (London, 1938), p. 36. 41  I am in broad agreement with S. Walker, ‘A Context for “Brunanburh” ’ and N. Cumberledge, ‘Reading between the Lines: The Place of Mercia within an Expanding Wessex’, Midland History, 27 (2002), pp. 1–15 in the reading of this poem, though not with all their conclusions. 42  Cumberledge, ‘Reading between the Lines’, p. 11 and cf. F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd edn (Oxford, 1971), p. 343: ‘blurring traditions of ancient wars in a sense of a common memory of a great achievement’. 43  Most recently for this suggestion see N. Brooks, ‘ “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle(s)” or “Old English Royal Annals” ’, in J. L. Nelson, S. Reynolds and S. M. Johns (eds), Gender and Historiography: Studies in the Earlier Middle Ages in Honour of Pauline Stafford (London, 2012), pp. 35–48 and N. Brooks, ‘Why are the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles about Kings?’, ASE, 39 (2010), pp. 43–70. Cf. J. Thormann, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Poems and the Making of England’, in A. J. Frantzen and J. D. Niles (eds), Anglo-Saxonism and the Construction of Social Identity (Gainesville, FL, 1997), pp. 60–85 at p. 63, following Gransden, Historical Writing, p. 38 in arguing for circulation and instalments ‘from some sources now unknown’. 44  E does not have them in the same form as ABCDG, though there is clearly some link. E lacks the poems, but has the openings, the essentials of each annal from 934 to 945. It differs substantially in the 946 annal.

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BC, B, and the Mid Tenth Century  93 within the sort of court setting which has been posited for earlier developments, being composed and exchanged within such a context. Chronicle A in the mid century shows evidence for such interchange and comparison. This block of annals was in BC by the end of the tenth century. Scholars have seen the relationship of B and C as differing in annals before and after 946, the end of this block. Does the end of this group mark an earlier stage of evolution of chronicle BC? Were they, and the events they record, a spur to the making of /BC, as they may have spurred A’s third scribe to make additions to that chronicle? Was this also the point at which the combination of Edward’s court annals and a Mercian chronicle was made? Or was that combination earlier still, and now updated with annals from 934 to 946? Whatever the stages of the elusive /BC, the block of annals itself is fairly closely dated to mid century. This block alone demands that attention be paid to the period which was its context.

Historiography and Politics: The Middle Decades of the Tenth Century The mid-century block of annals covers, extremely sparsely, years of great significance in tenth-century English history. The 930s, 940s, and 950s saw dramatic assertions, and reversals, of the advancing power of southern kings. They spanned the maximum spread of Æthelstan’s hegemony, taking in even Northumbria, but also the collapse of that wide rule after his death. In the years after 939 a Northumbrian/Scandinavian ruler reached the gates of the old Mercian royal centre at Tamworth itself, and Scandinavian rulers took back control not only at York but also in the north of Mercia. The 940s and early 950s witnessed a determined attempt by the southern kings, Edmund and his brother Eadred, to claw back power north of the Trent in the face of recurring setbacks. The last Scandinavian ruler was expelled from York in 954, though ‘last’ is a retrospective judgement. Recent history would have given no such assurance. Across the years which witness these dramatic events three brothers succeeded each other in turn: Æthelstan, Edmund, and Eadred. Against this backdrop, the contemporary staging and presentation of southern kingship in assemblies, coins, and royal titles appears as a response, but not one which should be collapsed into a single message. The context changed; so too the framing and reception of the messages. This is particularly clear in what had been the old kingdom of Mercia. Æthelstan’s wide hegemony in the early 930s was staged in a series of great assemblies. These assemblies are known from the witness lists of a series of un­usual charters, the so-called ‘Æthelstan A’ charters.45 Here rulers of other parts 45  On which see S. Keynes, The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘the Unready’, 978–1016 (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 16–24 and 44; S. Foot, Æthelstan: The First King of England (New Haven, 2011), pp. 70–3.

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94  After Alfred of mainland Britain appear, as well as nobles from north of the Trent and Humber. Archbishops of York are recorded for the first time at the courts of southern kings. The king was given a very special title in these charters: King of the English, but also ruler of ‘all Britain’, totius Britanniae, the same title used on the coinage at this time.46 These charters are most likely the work of Mercian drafters. The bishop of Lichfield (or someone in his entourage) has been suggested as a possibility.47 The bishop of Lichfield was especially prominent at the court of Æthelstan in these years. Bishops of this see were recorded in witness lists, very regularly, as long as there were independent rulers of Mercia. And their status was very high: always near the top of the list of bishops. From 928 to 935 they are as regular and as high status as they had ever been under Mercian rulers, but now at the courts of a southern English king, one who had been raised in Mercia, and chosen king, as chronicle BC, or rather its early-tenth-century source chronicle, tells us, ‘by the Mercians’.48 The title rex totius Britanniae is also found on Æthelstan’s coins. In Æthelstan’s central years, from c.928 to c.935, his coins carried this new title ‘king of the whole of Britain’. This was used in coins struck across England. But it was abandoned by most moneyers in the mid 930s. The north-west Mercian mints retained it until the end of the reign.49 The reasons for this are rooted in a complex relationship of moneyer, king, and users of coins. They reflect to some extent the outward-facing political geography of Mercia.50

46  Rex Anglorum . . . totius Britanniae is the normal title in these charters from 930: see S 403, S 412, S 413, S 416, S 417, S 418, S 418a, S 419, S 379, S 422, S 425, S 407, S 434, S 435. S 423 has rex Anglorum, totius Albionis. The king’s style includes rex . . . Albionis in the witness list in S 434 and S 435. See G.  Molyneaux, ‘Why were Some Tenth-Century English Kings presented as Rulers of Britain?’, TRHS, 6th ser., 21 (2011), pp. 59–91 for important discussion of these wider claims and also J. Crick, ‘Edgar, Albion and Insular Dominion’, in D. Scragg (ed.), Edgar, King of the English, 959–975 (London, 2008), pp. 158–70. 47 Thus Foot, Æthelstan, p. 72; for the more general suggestion of Mercian drafting see Foot, Æthelstan, pp. 70–3 and S. Keynes, The Liber Vitae of the New Minster and Hyde Abbey Winchester, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, 26 (Copenhagen, 1996), p. 22. The hermeneutic Latin of these charters may have been especially characteristic of Mercian schools: see B. Snook, The Anglo-Saxon Chancery: The History, Language and Production of Anglo-Saxon Charters from Alfred to Edgar, AngloSaxon Studies, 28 (Woodbridge and Rochester, NY, 2015), p. 5 and B. Snook, ‘When Aldhelm met the Vikings. Advanced Latinity in Four Mercian Charters of the Ninth Century’, Mediaevistik, 26 (2013), pp. 111–47. 48  Note the slight but interesting hiccup in this pattern in the only two charters surviving from 926: S 397, for Uhtred, where he is eighth in the witness list, land in Derbyshire, from the Burton archive and S 396, parallel drafting to S 397, for Ealdred, where he is again eighth in the list, land in Bedfordshire, from the Abingdon archive. 49  On the title, its use, its abandonment, and its lingering use at York but especially in the northwest Midlands see C.  Blunt, ‘Coinage of Athelstan King of England 924–39’, British Numismatic Journal, 42 (1974), pp. 35–160, especially at pp. 47–9, 56, and 97–103. Cf. also rex Britanniae in western Mercian mints—and on a coin from Stafford, ibid., pp. 103–4. 50  Fully discussed in P. Stafford, ‘Staffordshire and the Making of England’.

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BC, B, and the Mid Tenth Century  95 We know little of the final years of Æthelstan’s reign in the second half of the 930s. Charters are now few. After his death, however, there are signs of the collapse of southern rule north of the Trent. A new Hiberno-Norse ruler, Anlaf, appeared at York, and advanced into north-east Mercia. Some Derby moneyers struck coins in his name c.940.51 Edmund’s campaigns of the 940s recovered much ground. But in the reign of his brother, Eadred, Scandinavian rulers were back at York again, the last one not expelled until 954.52 Another group of unusual charters, the so-called ‘alliterative’ or poetic charters, date especially to the 940s and early 950s.53 They too were produced and written by Mercians, probably in Mercia, and in this case most probably by the bishop of Worcester. They are strongly associated with the Mercian dioceses of Worcester, Lichfield, and Dorchester. Worcester, if not Lichfield, was a notable centre of bravura linguistic performance in Latin composition at this date. Cenwald, bishop of Worcester has been proposed as their author. The Mercian schools look like lively places in the mid tenth century, not least for their interest in ‘rhetorical and stylistic embellishment’.54 These charters were often given in assemblies like those of Æthelstan’s middle years. They regularly feature even more grandiose titles: ‘King of the Anglo-Saxons’, ‘Emperor of the Northumbrians’, ‘Defender of the Britons’.55 Unlike the earlier Æthelstan charters, these were over51  C. E. Blunt, I. Stewart, and C. S. S. Lyon, Coinage in Tenth-Century England: From Edward the Elder to Edgar’s Reform (Oxford, 1989), pp. 217–18. 52 See C.  Downham, Viking Kings of Britain and Ireland: The Dynasty of Ívarr to A.D.  1014 (Edinburgh, 2007). 53  These ‘alliterative’ charters are usually for lands and beneficiaries north of the Thames (though not all the meetings at which they were issued were located there), and were often, though not invariably, granted and written at meetings where British rulers and Northern nobles were present. They often, but not invariably, include grandiose royal titles—which are strongly correlated with the presence of Welsh/British kings and Scandinavian/Northern duces. Of those with this title but NOT these witnesses, S 549, S 548, and S 569 are all Burton charters with abbreviated lists; S 572 is an Ely charter whose cartulary scribe notes that the witness list was too long to copy out; and S 574 is a strange hybrid charter with an Old English section which links it to the alliterative group. The witness list now attached to this last one may not be that of the alliterative charter which went into its making. These charters are discussed by D.  Whitelock (tr. and examined), The Will of Æthelgifu (Oxford, 1968); Sawyer, Burton Charters, pp. xlvii–xlix (eight of these charters are found in the Burton archive); Kelly, Charters of Abingdon Abbey, Part I, pp. 94–8; S. Keynes, ‘King Athelstan’s Books’, in M. Lapidge and H. Gneuss (eds), Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 143–201 at pp. 153–9. 54 M. Gretsch, Ælfric and the Cult of the Saints in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 92–3 on Cenwald, including on his ‘interest in language and matters of linguistic detail’—as witness his preference for having his name spelled ‘Koenwald’ in the Old High German way. Gretsch is here discussing the ‘remarkable’ rhymed office in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 183, the rhymed office here being an ‘extravagant form’ developing at this date in continental centres like Utrecht, Liège, and St Gallen. Cenwald had spent time in St Gallen. Gretsch notes his probable drafting of the alliterative charters as evidence of his ‘interest in a rhetorical and stylistic embellishment of functional prose’. She links the style with the hermeneutic Latin of Æthelstan’s court. 55  Anglo-Saxons, Northumbrians, pagans, and Britons: S 392, S 520, S 549, S 569, S 572, S 633; English, Northumbrians, pagans and other provinces: S 544, S 552a; English, Northumbrians, pagans, and Britons: S 548, S 550; Anglo-Saxons and the whole of Britain: S 566; Anglo-Saxons, Northumbrians, pagans, Britons, and other provinces: S 931. The list of these charters, including the probably spurious: S 404 and S 392 (Æthelstan); S 472, 473, S 479, S 484, S 1606, S 1497 (Edmund—

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96  After Alfred whelmingly for beneficiaries in Mercia, and deal with lands north of the Thames.56 Northern Mercia had proved vulnerable to revived Scandinavian ambitions at York. There is as much bravado and signalling as straightforward description in the titles these charters give southern kings. Alliterative, poetic charters are as odd in the corpus of charters as the poems are within the vernacular annals.57 The coincidence of poetic charters and poetic annals has not gone unremarked.58 The poems, and the block of annals which contain them, belong to these same decades.59 This group of annals is no neutral, simple account of these years. They cover military advances and the triumphs of the 930s. They do not give any account of the huge setbacks to which those campaigns responded: Edmund ‘redeemed’ the five boroughs (Leicester, Derby, Nottingham, Lincoln, Stamford), but these annals had given no clue as to their loss. These are celebratory and triumphant annals, set in the longer context of military victories over Scandinavians. Their focus is exclusively on these ac­tiv­ities. They emphasize submissions, which in chronicling contexts read as a sequence which included Edward (A 920) and Æthelstan (D 926). The Brunanburh poem makes much of West Saxon–Mercian cooperation; much, too, of the co­oper­ation of Æthelstan and his brother, the ætheling (sic) and future king, Edmund, both here ‘sons of Edward’. This whole block of annals casts Æthelstan, Edmund, and Eadred, through subject matter and internal referentiality, as worthy sons of a worthy father (Edward), if not grandfather (Alfred). Their geographical coverage is exclusively focused on north Mercia and Britain to the north of that. Like the charter titles, they celebrate a king of ‘Anglo-Saxons, Northumbrians, and Britons’. It is tempting to attribute both the charters and the poems, if not the block of annals which contain the poems, to the same authorship, or at least the same

though none of these with the elaborate title); S 520, S 544, S 549, S 548, S 550, S 552a, S 556, S 557, S 569, S 572, S 566, S 574 (Eadred—all but S 556, S 557, and S 574 have elaborate titles); S 633 (Eadwig—with elaborate title). The only one later than Eadwig is S 931 (King Æthelred II for Thorney). Almost all these charters come from the dioceses of Lichfield (S 479, S 484, S 1606, S 549, S 548, S 557, S 569, S 574), Dorchester (S 1497, S 520, S 544, S 556, S 572, S 566, S 931), or Worcester (S 404, S 550, S 633, S 1290). 56  See e.g. Sawyer, Charters of Burton, no. 11 (S 557). 57  Cf. S. Walker, ‘A Context for “Brunanburh” ’, pp. 27–8. Cenwald, bishop of Worcester, is a suggested author of the alliterative charters. He witnesses eleven of them where a witness list survives. Pierre Chaplais, cited by Sawyer, Charters of Burton, p. xlviii, notes parallels with the Cenwald lease S 1290. Susan Kelly discusses apropos Abingdon, Charters of Abingdon Abbey, no. 43 = S 544. This survives as a sixteenth-century transcript. But note the highlighting of Cenwald’s name in the witness list by a display script, here presumably reflecting the original. See also the use of term monachus to describe Cenwald, even though he is in the middle of the bishops. In 949 this was a significant choice of description—‘surely . . . his own decision’ (Kelly). 58  S. Walker, ‘A Context for Brunanburh’, pp. 27–8. 59  Elizabeth Tyler drew my attention to the Latinate quality of the Brunanburh poem. See S. Zacher, ‘Multilingualism at the Court of King Æthelstan: Latin Praise Poetry and The Battle of Brunanburh’, in E. M. Tyler (ed.), Conceptualizing Multilingualism in England, c.800–c.1250 (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 77–103.

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BC, B, and the Mid Tenth Century  97 intellectual context. The poems, as we have seen, are difficult to locate, but appear non-West Saxon in authorship. Mercia and its schools are candidates for the drafting of the charters and the annals. The argument for the involvement of bishops in the production of vernacular chronicles becomes to some degree stronger now. Mercian bishops were prom­in­ ent in the royal courts of these years. They had been since Ælfwine of Lichfield had taken such precedence at Æthelstan’s court. Ælfwine (903 x 915–935 x 941) would be a prime candidate for the creation of a chronicle like the putative /BC. He was bishop of Lichfield, the foremost counsellor of Æthelstan, a king raised in Mercia by his aunt Æthelflæd but son and successor of a king of the West Saxons. Who would have been better placed than Ælfwine to bring together the annals of Edward and Æthelflæd into a chronicle which culminated in Æthelstan’s triumph at Eamont Bridge in 926? The early 930s would be a possible date for such a his­ torio­graph­ic­al enterprise, a parallel to the charters, also perhaps produced in Ælfwine’s orbit.60 There is another possibility. By the 940s and 950s the bishops of Lichfield had been eclipsed. In the reign of Edmund, it is Cenwald, bishop of Worcester, who appears regularly at court, listed fourth in witness lists after Canterbury, London, and Winchester. Cenwald and his entourage are also possible candidates for ver­ nacu­lar chronicle making or continuation, candidates, as they also are, for the alliterative charters produced about now. By this date the bishops of Lichfield look more like their episcopal brothers to the north such as the archbishop of York who appear only intermittently. They begin to reappear in the middle of Eadred’s reign, with the appointment of Bishop Cynesige, and the revival of meetings more like those of the early 930s.61 From about now, too, we witness not only the appearance at court of Oscytel, bishop of Dorchester, but also his meteoric rise.62 With Oscytel we come back from the further shores of speculation to more certain ground. The annals for 934–946 have an obvious home in the politics of the mid century, especially in the later 940s. They were available and copied then, as Chronicle A attests. Their place of writing and their original textual home are matters of speculation. They may have continued a chronicle /BC which already brought together the early-tenth-century annals; they are unlikely to have been created as 60  Its last annals, covering the marriage to Otto, would date them no earlier than c.930. 61  He appears in ad 949 in S 544, S 549, and S 550. He is present largely in alliterative, Mercian charters, but not exclusively—see S 546, S 561, S 560, S 564, S 565, S 570, S 563, and S 579. Cynesige along with Dunstan accosted Eadwig on his wedding day in the famous incident recorded in the B Life of Dunstan: see M. Lapidge and M. Winterbottom (eds and trs), The Early Lives of St Dunstan (Oxford, 2011), p. 68. Cynesige is there said to be a relative (consanguineus) of Dunstan. 62  His predessor Æthelwold was a relatively rare attender: see S 544 and S 549, both from ad 949. Oscytel begins to appear in ad 951–955 (S 554–seventh in the witness list; S 557–tenth; S 559–fourth; S 569–ninth; S 566–fifth; S 570–tenth). In 956 he was a regular attender at court, and rises rapidly to be third or fourth in the list of bishops—even second in e.g. S 581, S 630, and S 616.

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98  After Alfred a continuation of A. They may have sparked the creation of something like /BC, whose themes they would continue. The annals of such a chronicle would have culminated in a submission and triumph for Eadred in 946 parallel to that for Æthelstan in 926, being part of a chronicle which led to Eadred, the third brother in a row to succeed to the throne. There are tempting homes for all these scenarios in the households or entourages of Mercian bishops, bishops prominent at this date in the courts of kings of southern England, and active in other forms of literary promotion of the image of those kings. Much of this is just that, tempting. /BC itself, let alone its date and place, remains elusive. Oscytel points back to the firmer ground of BC.

The Last Annals of BC, and Chronicle B An unusually extended obit for Oscytel is one of the final annals in Chronicle  B.  These last annals have been set apart in various ways by current scholarship. There is considerable agreement that the relationship between B and C for the annals 947–977 differs from their relationship before annal 946.63 B and C are once again extremely close for these last annals. Some scholars have argued for BC as a ‘working copy’, updated with continuation(s) from annal 946.64 Chronicle B was copied at a point in that ‘working’. There are grounds for specific attention to the annals from 947. They shape the final story in B, and are a snapshot of that story as it was in BC at the point of B’s making.65 These last annals may hold clues as to the home of BC and B. The last annals begin with a brief account of the division of the kingdom in the years after King Eadred’s death, years in which Eadwig succeeded (annal 956), then Edgar became king of the Mercians alone (957), and finally succeeded to ‘the kingdom, both of West Saxons, Mercians, and Northumbrians. And he was 16 years old’ (959). A run-on of blank annal numbers follows, covering the years 960 to 970/971. In both B and C these blank numbers omitted number 969.66 Annal 971 then has a lengthy obit of Archbishop Oscytel. Annals 972, 974, and 975 closely parallel annals also found in Chronicle A(G): in B, C, A, and G these annals include two long poems on the consecration of King Edgar at Bath, and on Edgar’s death and the troubled events which followed that. Annal 972, the death of the ætheling Edmund, son of King Edgar, was once in Chronicles A, B, C, D, E, and G. It was erased from Chronicle A. The last annal in both B and C is another episcopal obit, that of Bishop Sideman, 977. The two episcopal obits of Oscytel 63  Especially for the relationship in annals numbered 653–946. Before and after this B and C are especially close but less so for annals 653–946. 64  Thus Conner and Bately agree: see above, p. 83n15. 65  See ch. 8 for the possibility that BC continued beyond 977 and that C shows that. 66  B’s scribe or someone else made preparations to correct this: see fo 33r.

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BC, B, and the Mid Tenth Century  99 and Sideman are peculiar to B and C, and thus BC. Their annals covering the ­succession in the 950s are also their own. This was the end of Chronicle BC and its story at the point where Chronicle B was made. In B at least, the last annal was followed by another ending—the ge­nea­logic­al kinglist. That text gave a résumé of West Saxon history and of that kingdom’s kings. In Chronicles AG, where it is the preface, the kinglist ends with  Alfred. In Chronicle B, it continues through to Edward, King Edgar’s son. In Chronicle B, if not its exemplar BC, the kinglist was used as a culmination of the story. It is not clear whether these last annals in BC should be read as a group which was authored or copied together. That cannot be checked palaeographically. Chronicle B is already a fair copy. If BC was a ‘working copy’ which might have provided evidence, it is no longer extant. There are arguments for separating out the annals on succession in the 950s as a group. They are followed by a long gap and blank annals. However, the reference in them to Edgar’s age at accession, ‘16 winters’ (959) is unusual. This might link annal 959 to the poem in C 974, where Edgar’s age is stressed: ‘29 winters, consecrated in his thirtieth’. But it is just as likely that it links back to the account of his father Edmund’s accession ‘and he was then 18 winters’ (C 940). Annals 956–959 could be a continuation of the earl­ ier BC, or /BC, which included the annals for mid century. There are grounds for seeing annals 972, 974, and 975 as a group, and as one which underlies all surviving vernacular chronicles at this point. Discussion of this requires consideration of all other chronicles and of the decades around the year 1000. It will be given in full in chapter 8. In the present context, it should be noted that these annals, and especially the poems, elaborate a monastic or ecclesiastical account, what might even be called a panegyric, of Edgar. This was a retrospective portrayal made in the context of events after his death, most likely during the troubled reign of his son, Edward, whose rule was challenged. The unusual record of the death of a son of King Edgar, Edmund, is plausibly linked to this same context and to the reading of these annals as a group. The birth and death of Edmund complicated King Edgar’s family arrangements, and contributed to the division of the kingdom among his surviving sons after his death. Chronicle B’s regnal list, updated to the reign of Edgar’s son Edward but no further, seems to belong in this same milieu. The combination of chronicle and regnal list suggests that Chronicle B was one made during, if not specifically addressing, a current political crisis. Compositionally, these last annals may fall into either one group or two. The balance of evidence favours the latter. In that case they cover two consecutive disputed royal successions, though in neither case as overt narration. Whether as one group or two, they ended BC as copied into B. The resulting story made Edgar and Edward heirs of the long story this vernacular chronicle now told. In Chronicle B and BC as B copied it, their inclusion culminated a story which had

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100  After Alfred brought in substantial Mercian material for the early decades of the tenth century. That story, and this culmination, were thus, again, not separatist. In it Edgar is presented as king of West Saxons, Mercians, and Northumbrians (959). In the poems he is a ruler/king of the English/Angles, Engla waldend, Engla cing (974 and 975). 956–959 may once have ended a story which legitimated Edgar around the time of his accession.67 In either case, the story presented Edgar as ruler of all the English: West Saxons, Mercians, and Northumbrians. Divisions among these added fuel to the disputed succession after Edgar’s death. These last annals benefited the claims of Edgar and his son. Their message, however, is far from simple. The 972–975 annals in Chronicle BC link it to A(G). Their common poems elaborate annals which also lie behind Chronicles D and E (see Chapter 8) Already there is a heroization of Edgar. The meeting of Edgar with kings of Britain at Chester on the River Dee (DE 972) reads as the last in the series of ‘triumph’ annals, continuing a story told in earlier chronicles. But the annals for these years are also portentous and doom-laden: the appearance of the comet, the exile of ealdorman Oslac, the famine. There is more overt comment on the contemporary world, and it is far from entirely positive. There is a strongly religious tone, with emphasis on violation of the rights of God and divine punishment. All this appears differently in different chronicles. Some of these last annals in BC point forward to the next stages of the vernacular chronicles’ story, ones which stand at an increasing, rather increasingly critical, distance from the politics they describe (see chapters 8 and 9). As mentioned, two of these last annals, 971 and 977, are episcopal obits, in each case more than merely noting the date of death. They occur in no other chronicle outside the BC family. There are some parallels, as we shall see, in Chronicle A’s concern with ecclesiastical events, particularly around Winchester. Such events play an increasing role in the vernacular chronicles from the late tenth century. In B and C, and thus BC, these obits of Oscytel, bishop of Dorchester and archbishop of York, and of Sideman, bishop of Devon/Crediton, at first sight appear oddly unconnected. The link is geographical, in the Thames valley, where Dorchester is close to Abingdon in the old borderlands of the West Saxons and Mercians. Oscytel as described in this annal was archbishop of York and bishop of Dorchester. He died at Thame, and was taken by his kinsman, Abbot Thurcytel, to Bedford for burial. Sideman, again as described here, died at a great meeting at Kirtlington. He was buried, according to this annal, against his wishes but at the command of King Edgar and Archbishop Dunstan, at Abingdon ‘where he is [sic] honourably buried in the porticus of St Paul’. These two annals containing 67  In the 934–946 block Edmund was described as ætheling at the point of accession, as was Eadred. It was not a title given to Edgar’s brother Eadwig in BC, nor did BC, unlike other chronicles, stress Eadwig’s descent at this point. It was a title given to Edgar (C 957).

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BC, B, and the Mid Tenth Century  101 episcopal obits have been explained by reference to the question of bishops buried away from their sees.68 This is true in both cases, though not fully persuasive in the light of the detail given about Oscytel. Whatever else, geography links them. Dorchester and Abingdon are both in the middle Thames valley; Dorchester lies only a few miles downstream from Abingdon. Oxford, to the north of which lies Kirtlington, is a few miles upstream. Thame, a possession of the bishopric, is north of Dorchester. This close geographical nexus places these annals in the orbit of Dorchester and Abingdon. A connection between the Sideman annal and a memorandum in a later Abingdon cartulary has been posited, and the claimed connection has been used as part of arguments that this annal is evidence for an ‘Abingdon Chronicle’. The connection with the cartulary and its interpretation is not, however, straightforward.69 Given the concern with a Dorchester bishop, and with no details of mid-tenth-century Abingdon and its abbots in BC, the episcopal seat is the more likely candidate for one, if not the other, of BC and B.70 Oscytel was a bishop of considerable political importance in the mid tenth century. His see at Dorchester was the place to which the old Mercian bishopric of Leicester had been moved as a result of Scandinavian activity and settlement in north-east Mercia. Its jurisdiction was huge, with a reach that extended up to and north of the Trent, and into the Fens. Post-1066 it would be replaced by the equally extensive diocese of Lincoln. Dorchester’s bishops had appeared in the witness lists of tenth-century charters, but not consistently—until Oscytel. Appointed at some point between 949 and 951, from the latter date onwards, he is listed as a witness and regularly from 955. His rapid move up the list of bishops marked his increasing importance in royal counsels and councils (see above, p.  97n62). He was a bishop who changed sides in the succession dispute after Eadred’s death. Along with most Mercian bishops he switched in 956 from initial support of King Eadwig to backing for Edgar. At some point between 956 and 959 he was appointed to the archdiocese of York, apparently in plurality with the ­bishopric of Dorchester. His see now stretched from the Thames in the south as far as Northumbria.71

68  Thus O’Brien O’Keeffe, Chronicle C, p. lxxix. 69  See Conner, Abingdon Chronicle, pp. xl–xlv, but compare Kelly, Charters of Abingdon, pp. lvi–lviii and 448–9 and O’Brien O’Keeffe, Chronicle C, pp. lxxiv–xcii, especially pp. lxxix–lxxxv. 70 C has Oscytel as an appointee of King Edward, an error and one unlikely to be made at Dorchester itself. But this is most likely a transmission error in C. B has King Eadred. 71 The best account of his career is by Julia Barrow: Barrow, J.  (2004, September 23), Oscytel [Oskytel] (d. 971), archbishop of York’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. Retrieved 19 Oct. 2018, from https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb9780198614128-e-20897. The situation at York may be even more complex than she argues here and the date of his appointment even more unclear.

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102  After Alfred Oscytel was a man of Scandinavian descent, probably related in some way to Oda, the mid-century archbishop of Canterbury (941–958).72 Oda was himself deeply involved in the events of the 940s and 950s. He was present in the campaigns of King Edmund in the early 940s. His role there was alongside that of Archbishop Wulfstan of York. Both were presented in some quarters as me­di­ ators.73 But Oda was responsible for the movement of the relics of the iconic Northumbrian saint, Bishop Wilfrid, from Ripon to Canterbury, and for the writing there of a new life of the saint. That move followed the shocking destruction and looting of the church of Ripon by King Eadred (D 948). Oda certainly and  Oscytel in his episcopal appointments at least were drawn into the events of  the 940s and 950s, critical decades in the advance of southern royal power northward. Oda and Oscytel were key figures in mid-tenth-century England, key figures also at the royal court. They were both involved in the succession dispute which followed the death of Eadred in 955, shifting their allegiance to Edgar during the course of it, though each had received land from his brother, King Eadwig. Oscytel, as bishop of Dorchester, first appears at Eadwig’s court, but then joined Edgar’s Mercian one, which re-emerged after 957.74 Oda was credited with the separation of King Eadwig and his wife (D 958), a move which was part of the undermining of that king’s rule. Depending on the date of Oscytel’s appointment to York, it is possible that, briefly, in the later 950s Oda and Oscytel ruled the English church as its two archbishops. Certainly they were major figures in the politics of these years. Small wonder, one might argue, that Oscytel’s obit is found in Chronicle BC. There is, however, no mention of Oda in that same chronicle. Inclusion is no simple measure of significance. Significance for whom?, and when?, are the questions. What does the presence of Oscytel in bc’s 971 annal mean? Is it a sign that some or all of this group of annals was written at Dorchester? That BC itself was written there? Could Chronicle BC or B have been a Dorchester product, an expression of the loyalty of that see and its bishops to Edgar and his sons? Could the production of B in particular be linked to Dorchester after 971, as that see’s significance waned after Oscytel’s death? Should Abingdon be in the frame, especially for a copy of BC—thus perhaps for Chronicle B? More generally, should Oscytel and Oda be kept in mind in the quest for the date and patronage of the earlier stages of /BC, even the initial making of a chronicle bringing together 72  The best account of his career is by Catherine Cubitt and Marios Costambeys: Cubitt, C., & Costambeys, M.  (2004, September 23), ‘Oda (St Oda, Odo) (d. 958), archbishop of Canterbury’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. Retrieved 19 Oct. 2018, from https://www.oxforddnb. com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-20541. 73  Thus Symeon of Durham, Historia Regum, s.a. 939, ed. I. Hodgson Hinde, p. 65. 74  See S 674, S 679, S 677, S 675, S 678, S 676, S 676a, and S 681. In all but S 677 Oscytel is listed first among the bishops, and first after the king. In S 677 that position is taken by Cynesige of Lichfield, who normally appears third in these charters.

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BC, B, and the Mid Tenth Century  103 Mercian and West Saxon court annals in the mid tenth century? Speculative ­scen­arios, but ones which are given greater weight by the association of another chronicle with York archbishops (see chapter 6). Finally, Oscytel was a bishop; two of the last, and longer, annals in BC concern bishops. They point up not only inclusion, but also absence. In the annals for the mid century with which this chapter has been concerned, there are no mentions of lay leaders other than the king. The story is always of kings. There must have been numerous lay leaders in the struggles of the 940s; we know from other sources of some of those in Mercia itself who were key to the northward advance of southern control.75 There is no mention of them in this chronicle, or in the group of annals it shares with Chronicle A. Kings engross the story. In the following chapters we will encounter other accounts of these decades. They will add to the tally of bishops and archbishops mentioned. Laymen, though not women, will remain conspicuous by their absence. Lay leaders are found in Alfred’s Chronicle, admittedly not in abundance. They are acknowledged in some of the first con­ tinu­ations of that chronicle. Their absence now may be a sign of the shift in the home, audience, and patronage of these chronicles towards the ecclesiastical, and especially episcopal, members of the court. That court, loosely conceptualized, still seems the best home for a vernacular chronicle like BC, and for the sort of exchange and comparison which the developments in Chronicle A signalled. It was in such a context that circulation, of a sort, could take place; though not circulation in the sense of a deliberate political act. In such circumstances, awareness of the existence of a group of annals/continuation like 934–946 might ensure their appearance in more than one chronicle. ‘Loosely conceptualized’ is worth emphasis. Neither BC nor the mid-century A can be seen as ‘court chronicles’ in any propagandist or official sense. Nor is B, or BC, or any of the likely stages of the putative /BC a court chronicle in the way that those identified for the early tenth century were. Their content, including the sparse, disjointed annals of the mid century, does not point in that direction. BC, or /BC, was in origin a fairly mechanical product, not even involving the merging of annals into a single narrative; simply, for example, adding one set of annals, the court annals of Edward, to another, those concerning Æthelflæd. It is difficult to see its unassimilated copying of a Mercian chronicle, thus duplicating chrono­ logic­al coverage, as sophisticated message-making, especially in comparison with the charters and their titles, the staged assemblies in which the charters were issued, or the coins. The audience of vernacular chronicles was probably far more restricted than that of charters, assemblies, or coins. Did that audience stretch much beyond the makers and patrons and their immediate circles? 75  See Stafford, ‘Staffordshire and the Making of England’ and P. Sawyer, ‘The Charters of Burton Abbey and the Unification of England’, Northern History, 10 (1975), pp. 28–39.

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104  After Alfred That does not argue for the neutrality of such chronicles. BC, or /BC, fit the context of a court, itself broadly conceived, where the rule of Mercia and Wessex by a single king was still a novelty and sometimes an issue. It was in such a context that someone made them: brought a Mercian and a West Saxon story together, however mechanically; wrote annals to continue them; added, if not composed, the poems they contain. The mindset and ideology of a court orbiting such kings frames them. The annals and chronicles of the early tenth century appeared more overtly political and engaged. Contemporary history-writing was, for Alfred’s immediate successors, still a mode of political expression. Contemporary questions of le­git­im­acy and succession found historiographical expression, however obtusely. Contemporary chronicling, as represented in a chronicle like BC, was much sparser. The making or continuation of vernacular chronicle(s), however mechanical, was nonetheless a deliberate act. The presentation of both Edmund in the mid-century annals, and of Edmund and Edgar in BC should not be read as neutral description—whatever that is. The ideology of the court as seen in these mid-century chronicling developments had a Mercian twist, if not potential Mercian messages. These latter were far from separatist. BC was a chronicle which began with Alfred’s, continued with that of his son, and added to that a Mercian perspective, but one linked to Alfred’s own daughter and his grandson. Such a chronicle is a historiographical equivalent of rex Anglorum as a charter title. Its combination of material nonetheless gave expression to more Mercian sensibilities. The content of BC, of the block of mid-century annals, of the development of Chronicle A, speak to a context within which poems, annals, if not whole chronicles, were read, exchanged, compared, and copied. If, as here argued, that was the court, Mercian aristocrats and bishops were part of it. The new southern kingdom of Angelcynn was as much Mercian as West Saxon. The production of individual chronicles within that milieu could have their own message. Chronicle B’s may have been particularly pertinent to Dorchester in the closing decades of the tenth century. In all cases, simply making and adding to a vernacular chronicle in the tradition of King Alfred and his children may have carried the most important message of all. * * * * * * * * * * * * BC’s own story initially looked simple. It was the chronicle lying immediately behind Chronicle B, in existence by c.980. It was a chronicle which included the early-tenth-century annals of Edward the Elder to 914, plus the largely Mercian ones of his sister, Æthelflæd. Its story extended through mid-century annals presenting the triumph of southern kings over Scandinavian rulers of York and ended in ones which can be read as making Edgar and his sons heirs to the tale. But there were arguments for earlier stages behind BC, here named /BC. The early-tenth-century annals could have been brought together at any point after

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BC, B, and the Mid Tenth Century  105 c.930. The mid-century annals may have continued such an earlier chronicle, as they manifestly did in chronicle A, or they may have been the spur for its production. A Chronicle /BC may lie in BC’s past. BC may have already included its continuations. Under whatever scenario, there is a strong Mercian element to the resulting content of BC. Tantalizing detail, like the correcting of the name of a Mercian king, point to Mercian knowledge or sensitivity. So too does the inclusion of the ‘Mercian Register’. Yet neither BC nor any of these putative earlier stages is sep­ar­ at­ist. Their combination of stories, like the emphasis on West Saxons and Mercians in the Brunanburh poem, recognized separate identities, but also common endeavour. Literary scholars have pointed to a more ‘national’ message in BC and these annals.76 It would be equally true to say they reflect the nature of a southern English polity which embraced both Wessex and Mercia under the rule of the successors of Alfred, an ideology of unity. BC’s final form, and especially Chronicle B, made Edgar and his son Edward the culmination of the story. The chronicles considered in this chapter and in chapter 4 give a picture of an early- and mid-tenth-century England centred on military endeavour, an ‘England’ made by military efforts. It was the ‘obvious’ story, but it was not the only possible one. The politics of that making, the tensions and strains, are almost entirely absent. It is a story, not the story, one which centred on southern rulers cast and legitimized in heroic mould. In some cases this looks very deliberate, as for example in the annals of Edward, Æthelflæd, and even perhaps the block cover­ing midcentury campaigns. In others the assembly into larger chronicles looks mechanical, the messages unconscious or half-conscious at best. That does not render them any the less ideological. Oscytel was, as the 971 annal notes, advanced to York. The appointment was in unusual circumstances. The previous archbishop, Wulfstan I, had been im­prisoned by the southern king. His death in the south opened the way for southern appointments to the northern archiepiscopal see, which from now on would be the norm. The northern archbishopric was of particular importance for the advance of southern rule, for a hegemony which the alliterative charters optimistically described as kingship of ‘Anglo-Saxons, Northumbrians, pagans, and Britons’, ‘English, Northumbrians, pagan and other provinces’, ‘English, Northumbrians, pagans, and Britons’, and ‘Anglo-Saxons, Northumbrians, pagans, Britons, and other provinces’. The role of one or more Mercian bishops in vernacular chroniclemaking in mid-century England is likely. These southern-appointed archbishops of the Northumbrian see are much more securely linked with the most significant development in tenth-century vernacular chronicling—the so-called ‘Northern Recension’. 76 Thus Bredehoft, Textual Histories and especially J.  Thormann, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Poems and the Making of the English Nation’.

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6

The ‘Northern Recension’ The so-called ‘Northern Recension’ is the most important lost vernacular chron­icle. It was debatably northern, and much more than a recension. It was the only vernacular chronicle which both grew out of Alfred’s Chronicle, and made substantial changes to it. It is revealed, like Chronicle BC, through the comparison of surviving chronicles, though here that process is more complicated and fraught. Its existence is, nonetheless, recognized throughout vernacular chronicle scholarship. Its original shape remains an open question, as do its place and date of making. It has, however, been linked with archbishops of York. Its patron, authors/ makers—if not audience—can be plausibly identified. A chronicle potentially connected with such key political figures is worth pursuit, whatever the problems. Analysis of the Northern Recension is of special interest for the interaction of historiography and politics in tenth- and possibly early-eleventh-century England. The term ‘Northern Recension’ was first coined at the end of the nineteenth century.1 It was identified as the lost source which lies behind two chronicles which still survive, D and E (and thus also F, which is closely linked to E). The Northernness of this text cannot be assumed. ‘Northern Recension’ is sometimes placed in inverted commas, not least because of questions around this geo­graph­ ic­al identifier and what it implies.2 Was it made in the North? How Northern are its content and messages? The extent of difference between it and other surviving vernacular chronicles in the annals to c.890 question the categorization as a ‘recension’, pushing even the fullest sense of that word. This was a very thoroughly ‘revised edition’, to which extensive addition was made. Northern Recension will be used here because it is a widely accepted description of the lost chronicle assumed to lie behind D and E. The aim of this chapter is to answer, or at least sharpen, the manifold questions about it. 1  The coinage seems to have been Plummer’s: Two Chronicles, ii, pp. cxix, and cxix–cxx, where he distinguishes it from the recension behind ABC; see also Whitelock, Peterborough Chronicle, at pp. 13 and 28. Plummer’s discussion and especially that of Whitelock remain important. 2  See e.g. D. Dumville, ‘Textual Archaeology and Northumbrian History Subsequent to Bede’, in D. M. Metcalf, Coinage in Ninth-Century Northumbria: The Tenth Oxford Symposium on Coinage and Monetary History, BAR, British Series, 180 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 43–55 at p. 48: ‘so-called “Northern Recension” ’.

After Alfred: Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and Chroniclers, 900–1150. Pauline Stafford, Oxford University Press 2020. © Pauline Stafford. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198859642.001.0001

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The ‘ Northern Recension ’   107

In Search of the Northern Recension Lost chronicles are identifiable via their fossilized remains in later texts. In this case, those later texts are Chronicles D and E.3 It is through a comparison between the two of them that the Northern Recension can be revealed. D and E are late chronicles, mid if not late eleventh and early twelfth century respectively. There was scope for many stages of development, collation, and amendment in the course of their long histories. In the case of D that undoubtedly occurred, including a collation with a chronicle of a BC type. Chronicle E acquired clearly identifiable Latin annals and Peterborough additions post-1066.4 There continues to be common ground between these two chronicles through to the last annals in D, numbered to the 1070s. The common ground between D and E in mid- and late-eleventh-century annals is a result of chronicling activity and connections at these dates (see below, chapters 11 and 12) The sum total of agreements between D and E is not identical with the Northern Recension. At the core of both, however, lies a common source. D and E are very close in annals numbered to 890/892,5 and again in annals from 959 to 982, and from 983 to the early 1020s. The relationship between them is much more complicated in annals numbered 892 to 958, as it is in the mid-eleventh-century annals. 959 to 982, if not 983 to the early 1020s, are arguably a continuation or continuations of the original Northern Recension. (See chapter  9 for more discussion of annals 983–early 1020s) The quest for that text begins with the annals to 890/892. To this point a text behind D and E utilized a copy of Alfred’s Chronicle, but made substantial add­ itions to it. Those additions were taken from Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica, the con­ tinu­ations of Bede, the so-called 'York Annals', and other, apparently Northern, material which no longer survives. Unlike any other surviving vernacular chron­ icle, this text changed Alfred’s Chronicle through major additions, and, with those changes, altered its messages. Here is the core, if not the original Northern Recension.

3  Twelfth-century Latin chroniclers such as Henry of Huntingdon and Gaimar also employed it, or chronicles derived from it. Their testimony will occasionally be invoked. But the freedom of their approach to their sources mean that they must be used with care. 4  Thus e.g. E 114, 124, 134, 311, 403, 425, 431, 433, 439; and E 654, 656, 675, and 686. 5  Both also have the 892 annal. For the argument that D at least acquired this separately as part of much later development see chapter 3 .

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108  After Alfred

i)  The Annals to 731 Up to the annal numbered 731 both D and E follow a text which had combined Alfred’s Chronicle in a version close to but not identical with that behind BC6 with Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the ‘gens Anglorum’, plus another source or sources. That statement requires a caveat. Chronicle D is missing two quires, thus lacking a block of annals for 292 to 693.7 For this section D’s content cannot be checked or compared with that in E. However, D exhibits close similarities to E’s annals before and after this lost block. This inspires confidence that the common ground between D and E would have extended to the lost annals. Where D’s annals survive for comparison in this section, we can see the scale and the principles of the changes. Where ABCG (thus Alfred’s Chronicle) have forty-five annals, DE added six new ones, plus a different preface.8 A further twelve of Alfred’s annals were extended or developed.9 In almost all of these cases, the new material is taken from Bede. Alfred’s Chronicle had used, selectively, the annalistic Recapitulatio at the end of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica. The annals in DE both return to the Recapitulatio, and, more markedly, return to the full text of Bede to include more material. The text behind D and E had other sources for this section. These provided additional details, for the most part of Northern kings and locations, but also of bishops.10 These additional sources appear to have been overwhelmingly Northumbrian, though one should note the addition of detail on Wihtred of Kent (D and E 725). Where D and E survive to be compared, principles of selection and themes clearly emerge.11 The themes are Northumbrian12 and archiepiscopal/episcopal,13 6  ABCG have a roughly similar—though far from identical—version of the annals to 890/892; DEF have a very different one. The issue is complicated by the obvious parallels between DEFBC against AG. The version of the Alfred chronicle which lies behind DEF was in important ways similar to that in BC. On all this see Bately, Texts and Textual Relationships. 7 Ker, Catalogue, p. 254. Text here was supplied by Joscelyn from other chronicles. 8  DE 155, 693, 697, 699, 702, 727. 9  60 BC, 47, 167, 189, 705, 709, 710, 716, 721, 725, 729, 731. 10  Thus perhaps 702 as an addition, plus 705, the place of King Aldfrith’s death; 710 the location of the battle with the Picts; 716, the death of King Osred; 721, details of the length of the episcopate of John of Beverley; 725, the date of death and regnal length of King Wihtred of Kent; 729, dates and regnal lengths of Northumbrian kings. 11  This demands caution. First, Bede has his own themes and orientation: Northern, conversion, ecclesiastical. So what could be got from Bede must always be borne in mind. It should also be remembered that the sections where D’s annals survive and can be compared with E do not include the bulk of the conversion story in Bede. Second, and extending this, the collators may simply be taking all datable—and thus collatable—events from the body of the text; there is considerable evidence to support this view. And third, categorization of subject matter always involves judgements: should, for example, additions on archbishops of York be classified as ‘archiepiscopal’ or ‘Northern’. I have normally included such subject matter under both categorizations for safety’s sake. 12 New annals for 697, on Osthryth, sister of the Northumbrian king; 699—and perhaps 702 (where the labelling of Cenred as ‘Southumbrian’ suggests the political perspective): additions to the annals for 189, 705, 709, 710, 716, 721, and 731. Two of these concern archbishops of York. 13  Including Canterbury as well as York: new annals 693 and 727, both on Canterbury; additions to the annals 709, 721 (York), and 731 (Canterbury).

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The ‘ Northern Recension ’   109 though not to the exclusion of some Roman Imperial (s.a. 155) and Kentish (s.a. 725) detail. The Preface found in D and E puts together material taken from Bede’s prefatory matter. We cannot be certain what preface, if any, the lost Alfred Chronicle had. On the basis of these themes and methods of working, annals now found only in Chronicle E 261–692/3 can be identified as a likely part of the original common source.14 If so they mean that another twelve or thirteen new annals were added to Alfred’s Chronicle;15 another thirty-two or thirty-three annals were extended, developed, or recast.16 Bede’s Historia is still the major source for add­ itions, and the makers of this text were still returning to Bede’s full text in order to make these.17 Bede apart, in these annals E’s source was still using material of Northumbrian provenance. Much of it probably derives from a Northumbrian regnal list (i.e. a list of kings with the lengths of their reigns) and a chronicle, or regnal list-cumchronicle: for example 547, the regnal length of Ida; 560, Ælle’s regnal length; 633, Edwin’s regnal length; 685, regnal length and place of death of Ecgfrith.18 Details of the building of Bamburgh (547), of Hering Hussa’s son at the battle of Dægsanstan (603), or the fact that Edwin killed five kings of the West Saxons (626) may mean that we should suppose not merely a regnal list, but an annotated one.19 There is little or no sign of extra West Saxon sources. Annals on Wessex are taken with little change from Alfred’s Chronicle. Any additions usually consist of identifying detail: 519, 675, 676, adding e.g. ‘West Saxons’, and in one case, E 519, the comment ‘their descendants ruled from that day’. 14  692/693 since although D starts again at 693, it lacks the beginning of the annal. 15 Twelve or thirteen, depending on whether the very substantially rewritten annal for 685 is counted as effectively ‘new’: 286, 379, 423, 443, 583, 617, 624, 655, 667, 681, 684, (685), 692. E omits A 652—perhaps by scribal error. 16  380, 409, 449*, 547, 560, 565, 592, 593, 603*, 604*, 605*, 616*, 625, 626*, 627*, 633*, 634*, 639*, 641*, 643*, 654*, 664, 668, 670, 673, 675, 676, 678*, 679*, (685*), 686, 688*, 690. Many of these are major additions or recastings of annals (the latter marked with *), though we should be wary of how we interpret this given that much depends on what detail was available in Bede (i.e. the more he had, the more potential there was for recasting). 17 Though it should be noted that A(BCG) also involved some comparison between text and Recapitulatio. The following are augmented from Bede. AR indicates that A’s annal is basically Bede’s Recapitulatio; AR+ indicates that A had already used more than the Recapitulatio, including the body of Bede’s Historia; AR– where A has less than the Recapitulatio: 380 (AR), 409 (AR), 449 (AR+), 565 (AR), 592, 603 (AR), 604 (AR–), 605 (AR+), 616 (AR+), 625 (AR), 626 (AR+), 627 (AR), 633 (AR+), 634 (AR+), 639 (AR+), 641 (AR), 643 (AR), 654 (AR+), 664 (AR+), 668 (AR), 670 (AR), 673 (AR+/–), 678 (AR–), 679 (AR+), 685, 688, 690 (AR+) 18 Full list also includes 593, ‘on Norðhymbrum’ added to Æthelferth [Æthelfrith] plus a brief ge­neal­ogy of Ida; 634, regnal length of Oswald; 643, regnal length of Oswin. 19  The regnal length for Ida agrees with that in London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius B. v against that in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 183. The regnal length given for Edwin—7 years—is too short, though it reflects his reign as a Christian king, and fits CCCC 183 list’s length of his rule as such. CCCC 183 also agrees with the length of reign given to Oswald, as does Nennius. However, Oswine’s seven-year rule comes from no other known source. King Hussa is in the regnal lists, but his son Hering is known from no other surviving source, nor is the detail of five kings slain by Edwin. The place of Ecgfrith’s death given in 685 disagrees with Bede, HE, IV. 26: the latter has a defile (angustias) in remote mountains, E has be norðan sæ.

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110  After Alfred The themes of additions are, again, Northumbrian and archiepiscopal, but now also conversion: Bede’s own interests, and for these years conversion was the heart of his story. Like Bede, the geographical reach is wide, including Wessex, Kent, and the East Saxons.20 Archbishops feature prominently, as in Bede.21 Half or more of the additions are Northumbrian.22 In its lack of detail on Mercia, the source behind E again follows Bede, though there may be some hints of antiMercian feeling in details which are omitted or included. Under 654, for example, E unlike ABC has no reference to the fact that the Mercians were now Christian. Annal 697 brings in the murder of the Northumbrian King Ecgferth’s sister, Osthryth. She was in Bede’s Recapitulatio, but omitted by Alfred’s Chronicle. E’s source included her, and identified her murderers, though not as ‘Mercians’ but as ‘Southumbrians’. E’s source for 261–692/3 used Bede and (meagre) Northumbrian sources, exactly as D and E’s source had done for the annals found in both. Detailed comparison shows that its compilers brought in every event to which Bede gave a date, and which was thus collatable; in a few cases, using Bede, they went to some lengths to calculate a date.23 For the years now lacking in Chronicle D, Chronicle E (apart from the later Peterborough and Latin annals) is very likely an accurate representative of what was once in the text behind D and E. Alfred’s Chronicle remained the base text, but in comparison with other witnesses to that chronicle there are significant lacks or omissions in E’s annals for these years. Although for the most part E adds to A(BCG) in the annals 261–693, in a number of annals it lacks some of their detail. Some of these may be transmission losses that occurred over E’s long history.24 In one case it may point to a Northern identity on the part of the original scribe/author: a silent understanding that a particular detail was unnecessary for himself or his audience. Under 625 E lacks the identifier of Paulinus as bishop ‘for the Northumbrians/Northhymbrum’, though the author was well aware of details about Paulinus, adding the precise date of his consecration. The most consistent lack or omission, however, is of 20  Wessex and conversion (626, 634); Kent—all the Canterbury annals plus 565, 639; and the East Saxons—604, though here mostly apropos archbishops. 21  I have here included York, even before it became an archbishopric. 22  547, 560, 593, 603, 605, 625, 627, 633, 634, 641, 643, 654, 670, 678, 679, 685—again, the largest single group (over 50 %), but, again, also part of Bede’s emphasis. 23  See in various ways the compilation of annals for 596, 605, 627, and 634. In the case of 605, Æthelfrith and Chester, and 627 concerning Paulinus, these are ‘Northumbrian’ events. It should be noted that a number of conversion events relevant to East Anglia, East Saxons, and Mercians were calculable but the opportunities to include them were not taken (see e.g. Bede, HE, III. 18, 20, 22; IV. 3 and 5). However the opportunity to calculate Oswald’s calling in of Irish missionaries to 634 was not taken, nor was Bede, HE, III. 25 used to calculate the accession of Finan at Lindisfarne. The authors included the Northumbrian Drihthelm, with a very tenuous calculation to 693 on the basis of HE, V. 11, but omitted the dated Willibrord event given in the same chapter. 24  In 584 E lacks A’s last sentence on Ceawlin’s return home; in 605 it lacks the name of Pope Gregory’s father (note that BC here had not only Gregory’s father’s name. but also that of his mother); under 616 E lacks A’s calculation of 5,800 winters from the creation.

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The ‘ Northern Recension ’   111 genealogies of kings.25 Was this a consistent editing on the part of the makers of the Northern Recension? Chronicle E’s later history at Canterbury serves as a warning here. At Canterbury, post-1066, many of the genealogies of kings were erased from Chronicle  A.26 That was the work of the scribe of Chronicle F, who certainly worked on E as it then was, i.e. /E, our Chronicle E’s predecessor. Did the F scribe erase the genealogies in /E, too? Perhaps, though his interventions in Chronicle A show that he was, in general, bringing A in line with /E rather than vice versa. He erased the genealogy of King Ida, a Northumbrian king, from A, for example. But he added the fact that Ida built Bamburgh, and surrounded it by a hedge, details which are found in Chronicle /E. Chronicle D, not subject to F’s interventions, should be a check, but evidence here is ambiguous. From D’s annal 693, i.e. where D’s text resumes after the lost folios, genealogies are sometimes included, sometimes omitted. D has some genealogies not now found in E: of Wihtred in 694, of Oswald in 726, and of Osric in 731; but D, like E, lacks others, of Æthelbald in 716, and Offa in 755. However, D’s history had involved collation with a chronicle like BC, which would have provided an opportunity for the restoration of genealogies. There is strong evidence that this is what had happened.27 D is witness both to the lost text, the Northern Recension, that lay behind both D and E, and to a collation of that text with one like BC during Chronicle D’s long history of development. The clinching argument that D reacquired at least some genealogies during that later process of collation is its treatment of the famous genealogy in annal 855, that of Alfred’s own father Æthelwulf. E lacks this ge­neal­ ogy, consistent with its lack of almost all others. ABCG have it, and so does D. But in this annal D was a collation of two texts, and the join shows.28 D here preserves 25  The annals where E lacks material found in other chronicles are 547*n, 552*, 560*n, 584, 597*, 605, 611*, 625, 626*, 648*, 654, 670*n, 674*, 676*, 685*, and 688*. See also 716*, 728* (E has lost all reference to ætheling Oswald here), 731*, and Offa 755. In fifteen cases, asterisked here, it is the ge­neal­ogies in A which are lacking, three of them Northumbrian. 26  547: Ida’s genealogy was erased, almost certainly by the scribe of F, who has added details of Bamburgh from E; Ælle’s genealogy was similarly erased in 560, and again probably by F, since Hand 8 (i.e. F) substitutes E’s detail here. The 552 genealogy of Cynric has also been erased from A, that of Cynegils in 611, of Penda in 626, and of Cuthred in 648. Not all A’s genealogies were erased: that of Ceolwulf in 597 remains, as do those of Oswiu, 670, Æscwine, 674 (E 676), Ceadwalla, 685, Ine, 688, Wihtred, 694, Æthelbald, 716, Oswald, 728, Ceolwulf, 731, and Offa, 755. 27  D’s development involved collation with a chronicle like BC at some point. That chronicle would have contained the genealogies. There is some consistency in D’s inclusion/exclusion of them. It lacks the genealogical detail in 716. In this case it occurs in the body of the annal, where restoration would have entailed rewriting. In general 716 differs between ABC(G) and E, and D follows E. The 731 annal in D is an amalgamation of material from the annals as they are in A and E; here D was clearly collating. In 726 (A 728) the genealogy is at the end of the annal. E lacks all reference to Oswald. This, too, could have been restored to D by collation. The same may apply to Wihtred in 694, though in 726 and 694 it is equally plausible that D represents the lost Northern Recension, which had the genealogies. 28  D’s annal reads first as E’s; through to 7 þa fengon his ii suna to rice, Æþelbald to Suðrigean 7 to Westseaxna rice & he ricsode v gear (as in E only one son is named). It then begins the genealogy of Æthelwulf. And as in ABCG this ends Ond þa fengon Æþelwulfes ii suna to rice Æþelbald to Wesseaxna

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112  After Alfred both the abbreviated form of this annal, as in E, and the end of the fuller form with genealogy, as in BC.29 Overall it can be said with some confidence that E represents the Northern Recension where D is not available for comparison, and that that text had lost many of the genealogies found in Alfred’s Chronicle.30 It had also acquired substantial additional material from lost Northern sources—an annotated kinglist if not chronicle, and episcopal lists31—and especially from Bede. Its making should be added to the story of the reception of Bede in later Anglo-Saxon England.

ii)  Annals c.730–c.807 Bede and his Recapitulatio ended with the year 731. From here until annals numbered for the first decade of the ninth century the makers of D and E’s common text used new sources: still Alfred’s Chronicle, still augmented, but now from texts we know as Continuations of Bede and the ‘York Annals’. The latter survive in manuscripts from the twelfth century, and have likely accreted additions over time. They are not available in any good modern edition. The detailed comparison possible in the case of Bede’s Historia, is here more difficult and debatable. It nonetheless points to the use of Northumbrian sources, especially ones connected to York and its archbishops. Two continuations of Bede were used: that with material covering 731–4,32 but also a longer one now found in the so-called ‘German’ family of Bede manuscripts.33 This latter covers the years 732–66 and is effectively a chronicle of the episcopate of Ecgberht of York, bishop from 732 and archbishop, ‘the first since Paulinus’, from 735.34 Ecgberht died in 766. That continuation was, in turn, linked to the text now called the ‘York Annals’.35 rice & Æþelbryht to Cantwara rice 7 to Eastseaxna rice 7 to Suðrigea 7 to Suðseaxna rice 7 þa ricsode Æþelbald v gear. Thus D’s annal repeats itself. 29  D’s genealogy is as in BC not AG, without AG’s ‘error’. 30  E inserts a new genealogy, of Hengest and Horsa in 449, in its much extended annal for that year—a point where it is also stated that all the royal kin ‘ours and Southumbrian’ came from Woden. A brief genealogy of Æthelfrith is in E 593, but not in A. A detail such as the reference to Æscwine Cenfusing (E 675) suggests access to the sort of genealogical detail found in A 674. 31  The very precise detail on John of Beverley’s death in D and E 721 did not derive from Bede, HE, V. 6. This may, again, have come from a lost chronicle; more likely from archiepiscopal lists. 32  As found in the Moore manuscript of Bede. 33 Bede, HE, pp. lxvii–lxix for these manuscripts, none of which is English in origin. The con­tinu­ ations are usually printed as separate from the Historia Ecclesiastica, the surviving manuscripts ‘embed’ them in Bede, HE, V. 24, i.e. they appear as a continuation of the Recapitulatio. See J. Story, ‘After Bede: Continuing the Ecclesiastical History’, in S. Baxter, C. Karkov, J. L. Nelson and D. Pelteret (eds), Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald (Farnham, 2009), pp. 165–84 at p. 179. 34  Thus Joanna Story who also sees them as a ‘finished’ text, which crossed to the continent in the late eighth century. 35  Story, ‘After Bede’, p. 181 notes the parallel between the 754 annal, on the death of Boniface, and annals now found in the Melrose Chronicle and Symeon’s Historia Regum, both of which contain versions of the York Annals.

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The ‘ Northern Recension ’   113 The York Annals are known by a variety of names, including the ‘Old Northumbrian Annals’ and ‘Annals of Alcuin’.36 They circulated in what is now northern England/southern Scotland, as a foundational historiographical text. Their history goes back to the eighth and ninth centuries. These annals are substantially more detailed than the other Bede continuations. They were available to the makers of the lost Northern Recension behind D and E; in what precise form is uncertain.37 For the years numbered 731 to 805, the makers of the Northern Recension once again augmented Alfred’s Chronicle. ABC(G) have forty-one annals with material for these years, chronicles D and E made additions to nineteen of them and added fifteen new annals. Around 34 of DE’s total of fifty-six annals are new or changed, a remarkable 60 per cent or more of the annals in this section. The new material is overwhelmingly Northern. The bulk of that Northern material came from a version of the York Annals: twenty-seven of the thirty-four new or changed annals.38 Some additions again suggest a regnal list, perhaps with annotations and marginalia.39 Some are York-oriented, taken from the Continuations 36  ‘York Annals’ in J. Story, Carolingian Connections: Anglo-Saxon England and Carolingian Francia, c. 750–870 (Aldershot, 2003), p. 95, following P.  Hunter-Blair, ‘Some Observations on the Historia Regum attributed to Symeon of Durham’, in K. Jackson et al. (eds), Celt and Saxon: Studies in the Early British Border (Cambridge, 1963), pp. 63–118. For the title Gesta Veterum Northanhymbrorum, see Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, p. lxix n. 1, following Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, ii, ed. T. Arnold, Rolls Series (London, 1885), p. xix, who cited Raine’s edition of Richard of Hexham, p. 60. Gransden, Historical Writing, pp. 31–2 calls them Gesta Northanhumbrorum. They are ‘S 37: Northern Annals’ in D. W. Rollason with D. Gore and G. Fellows-Jensen, Sources for York History to ad 1100 (York, 1998), p. 17. They are Taylor’s ‘Old Northumbrian annals’: J. Taylor, Medieval Historical Writing in Yorkshire (York, 1961), pp. 4–6. The MGH prints the continental annals which form part of this work as ‘Annales Northumbrensis’, MGH SS, xiii, pp. 154–6. On this text, whatever its name, Hunter Blair remains important, and now J. Story, Carolingian Connections, ch. 4, especially pp. 116–33; J. Story, ‘After Bede: Continuing the Ecclesiastical History’, and M. Lapidge, ‘Byrhtferth of Ramsey and the Early Sections of the Historia Regum attributed to Symeon of Durham’, ASE, 10 (1981), pp. 97–122. 37  The York Annals were probably more or less in the form we now have them by c. ad 1000, by which date they were part of the so-called ‘Miscellany’ of historical texts compiled by Byrhtferth of Ramsey (see Lapidge, ‘Byrhtferth of Ramsey’). We cannot rule out his intervention in them. That ‘Miscellany’ forms the first section of Symeon of Durham’s so-called Historia Regum; on the development of Symeon’s Historia see D.  Rollason, ‘Symeon of Durham’s Historia de Regibus Anglorum et Dacorum as a Product of Twelfth-Century Historical Workshops’, in M. Brett and D. A. Woodman (eds), The Long Twelfth-Century View of the Anglo-Saxon Past (Farnham, 2015), pp. 95–111; the development is summarized on p. 107. They are also found in chronicles such as Roger of Howden (as the Historia post Bedam), Roger of Wendover, and the Melrose Chronicle. As they now survive in Symeon, they have certainly passed through Hexham hands: on the undoubted Hexham additions/material see H. S. Offler, ‘Hexham and the Historia Regum’, Transactions of the Architectural and Archaeological Society of Durham and Northumberland, NS, 2 (1970), pp. 51–62, repr. in H. S. Offler, North of the Tees: Studies in Medieval British History, ed. A. J. Piper and A. I. Doyle (Aldershot, 1996). There may have been other interventions. Current scholarship argues persuasively for an original date in the early ninth century, and an association of their form at that point with Alcuin: see Story, Carolingian Connections, especially pp. 116–33. The text we have, shorn of Hexham additions, may be quite close to that form. 38  741, 744, 757, 759, 765, 766, 768, 774, 776, 777, 778, 779, 780, 782, 785, 788, 789, 790, 791, 792, 793, 794, 795, 796, 797, 798, 803. 39  DE, for example, has regnal lengths not explicitly found in surviving texts of the York Annals under 759 and 765. In 774, DE have a different regnal length from surviving York Annals. In general the regnal lengths in DE agree with CCCC 183—though at E 765 (as London, BL, MS Cotton

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114  After Alfred of Bede and the York Annals, but also from some other, now unidentifiable, sources. York episcopal lists are again candidates.40 Some of these sources are hypothetical; they have not survived in any form. Others are now found only in later texts and manuscripts; the version in which they were available to the ­makers of the lost Northern Recension is unknown. Identifying the principles of selection becomes correspondingly more hazardous. The York Annals were annalistic, and, in all later manuscripts, relatively full. If this was their form as known by the makers of our lost Northern Recension, the latter abbreviated, often considerably. Those makers also omitted much material, especially up to the mid 770s and in particular material on secular Northumbrian politics.41 By contrast, the ecclesiastical detail on episcopal successions and consecrations was more often included. Any conclusion here must be very tentative. But it seems as if the makers had an eye more to ecclesiastical, especially York ecclesiastical, detail than secular. At the same time, they did include secular ma­ter­ial, and perhaps increasingly so for annals dated to the later years of the eighth century, years where the York Annals paint a picture of political chaos and of Viking attack. One of the most famous entries in all the vernacular chronicles derives from these last York annals. The arrival of the Vikings in Lindisfarne in 793, complete with the portents and fiery dragons, is found only in Chronicles D, E, and F. It is a very close translation from the Latin of the York Annals. In this section of the annals ranging from c.730 to c.807, D’s annals again show signs of the collation of the Northern Recension with a text like that of BC.42 The original makers of the Northern Recension were themselves still collating Alfred’s

Tiberius B. v) has eight years, D has nine, as CCCC 183. Both CCCC 183 and Tiberius B. v give regnal lengths for Osred and Æthelred which are not given in DE. 40  The York Annals (YA), as they now exist, were not the source of all additions. There is material on York in DE annals for 735, (737—should the mention of ‘Peter’s’ tonsure be in some sense a ‘York’ reference—and if so, cf. DE 716), 738 (shared with ABCG), 741 (YA), 744 (DE alone), 762 (DE alone, and with York as ‘Ceastre’), 766 (YA), 774 (DE alone specify York), 777 (DE alone mention place and date), 779 (DE alone mention ‘Ceastre’), 791 (DE alone have name of archbishop and date), 795 (DE alone name the place of royal consecration specifically as York), 796 (YA), 797 (YA, though detail here is now found variously in the Historia Regum and Historia post Bedam). In seven or eight cases, DE have a specific reference to York not found in the York Annals. Some of these may simply be glosses of a scribe, but some, involving e.g. episcopal consecrations (e.g. annals for 777 and perhaps 762), suggest a York text, either a version of the York Annals with more York detail or a separate text. The use of episcopal lists, including consecration details, was already suggested by e.g. the precise details given for John of Beverley’s episcopate (see above, p. 108n10 and p. 112n31). That possibility is now strengthened. D and E also have references to synods at Aclea under 782 and 789 found in neither ABC(G) nor the York Annals. Aclea is an unidentified site, perhaps in Kent: thus S.  Keynes, The Councils of Clofesho, Brixworth Lecture 1993, Vaughan Papers, no. 38 (Leicester, 1994), pp. 27–30, but cf. C.  Cubitt, Anglo-Saxon Church Councils, c.650–c.850 (Leicester, 1995), p. 219, making these Northern synods, perhaps on the basis of their appearance, exclusively in the Northern Recension. 41  Thus there is secular political material in the York Annals for 731, 744, 750, 756, 762, 769, 775, and 791 which is lacking in DE; the secular political material in the York Annals for 759, 765, 768, 774, 790, 792, 793, 795, and 798 is present only in abbreviated form in DE. 42  See D 731, perhaps 740 and 799, and 801 and 805.

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The ‘ Northern Recension ’   115 Chronicle with other sources,43 though the unadorned West Saxon tale was still sometimes preferred.44

iii)  Annals c.807–c.890/2 In annals for the ninth century this collation of sources changes (or ceases). For the annals numbered c.807 to 890/2, the makers of the Northern Recension used virtually nothing other than Alfred’s Chronicle. This may indicate the absence of other Northern sources now; there is little evidence for a lively chronicling trad­ ition in the North at this date.45 The result, however, was that the Northern Recension told the ninth century essentially as it had been told at the court of King Alfred. Essentially, but not identically: some variations point to the perspectives of the lost chronicle and perhaps give clues to its date. The makers of the Northern Recension were using a version of Alfred’s Chronicle closer to that now found in BC than that in A.46 But there are differences which set D and E apart. Some are peculiar to E. Most of these point to E’s very late date and the editing and changes it had undergone.47 Three look more significant. Annal 891 is not present in E, but is in D and other vernacular chron­ icles. It raises questions about Alfred’s Chronicle itself, discussed in chapter 3. As suggested there, D probably acquired this by collation. In annal 855, E lacks the 43  Both D and E have the death of Offa twice, once under 794 (from an ABCG-type text) and again under 796 (from a text like the York Annals). 44  Note DE’s annals for 745–756 are more or less as in ABCG, even though surviving York annals have Northumbrian political material for these years. 45 The York Annals went little, if at all, further than the annal numbered 806. In Byrhtferth’s Miscellany/the Historia Regum, the annals stop at that point, and are then followed by excerpts from Asser. This is a—Latin—parallel to what happened with the Northern Recension, whose makers collated the York Annals to 806, then followed them with the Alfred Chronicle. Roger of Wendover had access to some fragmentary annals covering the North in the ninth century, chiefly the succession of kings and archbishops, but with some extra detail of events late in the century, particularly relating to the Viking takeover: see Whitelock, EHD, i, no. 4. It is possible that the source behind Roger here was itself the source for the Alfred Chronicle’s account of 867 and 876, where there are very similar details: but Roger is so late that we cannot rule out influence in the opposite direction. There is no evidence in surviving sources of the continuation of a lively annalistic tradition in Northumbria after the end of the York Annals. 46  Some of the differences likely point to transmission: thus BCDE on the Raven Banner and the wood of the Cross (878 and 883), and the lack of phrases or words found in BCDE but not in A as in the annals for 868, 876, 886, and 887. Some may indicate marginalia in the original text, treated differently; in the annal variously numbered 851 and 853, for example, BCDE place the section on the activities of Æthelbald and Ealdorman Ealchere at the end of the annal, A in the middle. This may well indicate that this was a marginal addition which was copied in different ways into different chronicles (thus Whitelock, EHD, i, p. 188 n. 13). 47  As in the Latin annal concerning Archbishop Plegmund (890), which again looks like a late Canterbury addition. E alone calls King Edmund ‘Saint’ (s.a. 870), the sort of silent gloss one might expect from a later scribe/reader. And the 838 annal is omitted from E. It is in D and all other chron­ icles. Since DE omitted no other annals present in Alfred’s Chronicle, this looks like a late scribal error in transmission, parallel e.g. to A’s omission of the annal for 710. Scribal error presumably also explains E’s Wealwudu against all other chronicles’ Selewuda/Sealwyda in 878.

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116  After Alfred legitimating genealogy of Alfred’s father, Æthelwulf. Again this was probably lacking in the common text behind D and E, and is a candidate for later res­tor­ ation in D through collation (see above, pp. 111–12n28). There are strong arguments that E represents the original Northern Recension in both cases. In annal 885 E has a greatly abbreviated version of the Carolingian detail; D has it more fully, as in ABCG. Is this late editing in E, with D here having the original Northern Recension? Did D again restore through later collation? Or did the Northern Recension itself abbreviate, its original annal now in E alone? The overall treatment of Frankish detail suggests the last. The makers of the Northern Recension were not especially interested in Frankish material. They omitted Bede’s material on the Frankish mission of Willibrord, including Bede’s precisely dated consecration of Willibrord.48 In general those makers took from Bede all the material to which he gave precise dates and which was thus readily collatable into annal form; but not here. The York Annals had had Carolingian/Frankish material. The makers of the Northern Recension had shown little interest in it IF the text of the York Annals they used had those details.49 They may also have made a mistake in the identification of the Frankish port of Quentovic.50 On this pattern, it is annal 885 as presented in E which would preserve the Northern Recension, with, again, collation with another chronicle producing D’s extra detail. In general, however, D and E agree in their shared differences from other chronicles in these ninth-century annals, and are thus a less problematic witness to the lost Northern Recension.51 That includes a shared error in the identification

48 Bede, HE, V. 11. 49  The York Annals as found in Byrhtferth’s Miscellany have Carolingian/continental annals under 754, 768, 771, 772, 774, 775, 792, 794, 795, and 801. The Northern Recension has none of these, including that for 754 on Boniface and those for 767, 772, and 775 all concerning the Old Saxons. Story, Carolingian Connections, especially pp. 95–115 at p. 99 draws attention to the oddity of the omission of Saxon entries. She sees most of the Carolingian annals as original, though has some doubts about those for 799, 800, and 802. The Carolingian annals seem to have come from the Northumbrian Alcuin, who had lived in Francia, including at the Carolingian court, and who died in 804. The 793 annal is very close to Alcuin’s own version of events at Lindisfarne, and that 793 annal was in the text our collators used. The Frankish annals were in the version of the York Annals used by Roger of Howden, Symeon, the Melrose Chronicle, and Roger of Wendover—albeit employed se­lect­ ive­ly by some of these later authors. The 785 annal on the arrival of the papal legates sent by Pope Hadrian IS in D and E. That could be classified as a ‘continental’ or ‘Carolingian’ annal. 50  Under the year numbered 839 AG and B have Cwantawic, C has Cantwarabyrig, DE Cantwic. A and B thus have ‘Quentovic’, whereas C has ‘Canterbury’ and DE have something between the two. The textual context—with references also to London and Rochester—would encourage ‘Canterbury’ as a reading, though the likelihood is that A and B are correct. C’s difference here is in line with the late date of this chronicle; by the eleventh century when C was written, Quentovic would be an unlikely reading. But the mistake in D and E—which obviously derives from DE—may be a similar indication of a later date, or, of course, a geographical remoteness, in either case where Quentovic had lost meaning or resonance to the scribe. 51  They agree in errors and variant readings: e.g. 828, Bishop Æthelbald; 845, dux not ealdorman; 879, winter not gear; ‘Cantwic’ (see the previous note); 890, Scandlaudan; in omissions: 837, 865, 873, and 878; and in odd insertions such as the identifier ‘West Saxon’ in 823.

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The ‘ Northern Recension ’   117 of a member of Alfred’s own family. In the annal for 836, D and E have mistakes in the succession to King Ecgberht, Alfred’s grandfather. They make Æthelwulf ’s son, Æthelstan, a son of Ecgberht. This is not a minor error, but a mistake ­concerning one of Alfred’s older brothers. D and E also lack all reference to the sending of Alfred to Rome in 853 and his ‘hallowing’ there by Pope Leo.52 A number of D and E’s shared variations vis-à-vis A(G)BC concern Mercia: in 836, the lack of reference to the marriage of Eadburh daughter of Offa and the West Saxon king Beorhtric, and to that marriage’s responsibility for the help these kings offered each other; in 853 a different wording for the help given by Æthelwulf to Burgred, king of the Mercians, and likewise a different wording for the marriage of Æthelwulf ’s daughter (Alfred’s sister Æthelswith) to Burgred—in this case the wording in A(G)BC could be read as more favourable to Wessex; and in 873 the omission of ‘Lindsey’, but, more significantly, the failure to mention the Mercians making peace. It is hard to see any pattern in these differences. In 853 they seem to enhance Mercian agency, in 873 they omit it. Overall a number of the differences which distinguish D and E cluster around Alfred’s own family’s history, its legitimation, and at least one of its causes célèbres: the case of the ‘evil queen’ Eadburh.53 While these details mattered to the makers of Alfred’s Chronicle, they, like Frankish history, were not significant for those who made the Northern Recension. Were its makers more remote in time, place, and concerns from the context which shaped Alfred’s Chronicle? Or did the version of Alfred’s Chronicle they used take a different line on these matters? The error concerning Alfred’s brother in particular may point to remoteness in time and place from that king’s late-ninth-century court.

iv)  Annals beyond 890/2 A common text lying behind Chronicles D and E is identifiable in the annals to 890/2. Did that text end there? Is this the Northern Recension? Agreement between D and E does not end here. From this point, however, the picture becomes more complicated. It suggests an original Northern Recension with later continuation(s). For the years numbered 890/892 to 958 Chronicle E is very sparse.54 There is some agreement with Chronicle D, but the two rarely contain the identical

52  Gaimar, pp. 130–2 and Henry of Huntingdon, p. 264 share the error concerning Alfred’s brother. Henry, but not Gaimar, has the Rome events. 53  On this see Stafford, ‘Succession and Inheritance’, in T. Reuter (ed.), Alfred the Great (2003), pp. 251–64. 54  It has annals with text for the following years: 901, 906, 910, 918, 921, 923, (924, 925—probably added by F’s scribe after 1066: see e.g. Irvine, Chronicle E, pp. lxi–lxii), 927, (928: Latin, post-1066), 933, 934, 937, 940, 942, 944, 945, 948, 949, 952, 954, 955, and 956.

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118  After Alfred ma­ter­ial and wording which characterized them to 890.55 Chronicle D has much for these years, more than any other Chronicle (see below, chapter 8). But little of that is common with E; it results from D’s own separate and complex history. That situation then changes again, dramatically, in the annals from 959 to the early 1020s. D and E are now once again very close in wording. There are thus arguments for seeing some or all of the annals for 959 to the 1020s as part of the Northern Recension, either its original form or its con­tinu­ ations. Such arguments are weak for the annals 890/2 to 958. For these years the Northern Recension was either very thin in its coverage or contained nothing and was filled out in the later chronicles D and E, which are now its witness.56 This may be a first argument for seeing the original text as extending only to 890/2, and for the 959 and following annals as continuation(s). The annals from 959 onwards themselves fall into two groups. Those numbered 959 to 982 are shared by D and E; those numbered 983 to the early 1020s are found in C, D, and E. Explanation of this takes us into developments in the decades around 1000 (see below, chapters 8 and 9). None of these annals are earlier in their present form than the 980s; the 959–82 group show strong signs of retrospect. All this may be best explained as continuation(s) of the original Northern Recension. According to this reconstruction, the latter originally extended to 890/2, with at most sparse additions for the early tenth century, followed by continuations written or rewritten around the turn of the millennium. * * * * * * * * * * * * The reconstruction of a lost text like the Northern Recension is challenging, but necessary and rewarding. It allows us to see an annalistic chronicle in the making, through processes of combination and collation of sources. Such processes are often masked. They are clearer here because the sources of the Northern Recension can be identified with some certainty.

55  For the different origins of annal 892 in D and E see chapter 3. E has no annals in common with D for the 890s. From annal numbered 901 the relationship of E’s annals to those found in other chron­ icles varies. E 901 is equivalent to the opening of D; E 906: the end of D and E agree, to a point, though E adds that peace was made out of necessity (for neode); E 910 is a résumé of sorts of D 910, 912, and 915; E 918 is a brief version of D 917/918; 923: D and E agree; 934: ABCDE agree; 940: E has a brief version of ABCD; E 944 is a brief version of ABCD; E 945 is a brief version of ABCD; E 948 is a brief version of D; E 954 has the first sentence as in D; E 955 has a brief version of D. 56  Gaimar was clearly using something very like E for the years 890–c.960: like E he shows no sign of the ‘First Continuation’ for the 890s; Edward’s peace in his sixth year is described as ‘forced’ in Gaimar, p. 190, ‘for need’ in E. This use continues through to the accession of Edgar, with exceptions like Gaimar’s lack of E 933’s reference to the ætheling Edwin, and to Anlaf in 942. At Edgar’s accession Gaimar, p. 196 has reference to Thored: cf. E 966. Gaimar may here be witness to a Northern Recension common with E, or to the use of a chronicle very like E itself. He is a difficult source to use for our purposes, since his methods involved extensive rewriting in a more heroic, romance mode. From c.960 it is difficult to discern his relationship to vernacular chronicle sources, since he clearly had more colourful material available which suited his purposes better. However, it should be noted that there is no sign in his work of knowledge of the detailed annals for Æthelred’s reign.

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The ‘ Northern Recension ’   119 The reconstruction has revealed not only how collation works, but how mechanical it can be. Sources were combined; their content led, if not determined, what could be collated. Omissions and additions could be hard to pinpoint, given transmission questions and less than clear knowledge of the precise texts being used. Where changes were made it is difficult to be sure whether they were conscious or unconscious. Even the least conscious changes, however, offer possible insights into the makers of the chronicle and their mindsets, and into the contexts of the chronicle they produced. The cumulation of changes, along with the combination of sources, added up to a new story, whether deliberately crafted or not. Reconstruction is hazardous. The problem of assessing where the Northern Recension originally ended, whether the tenth-century annals are part of it or continuations, have underlined this. The making, or continuing, of this text was, however, deliberate, a conscious decision; in this case, it a decision to change Alfred’s own chronicle. The Northern Recension marks a major shift in vernacular chronicling. When, where, why, and for whom was it made?

How Northern is the Northern Recension? Answers to that question begin from the sources of this text, and the new story which it told. Both point North, but very ambiguously.

i)  Northern Sources? The makers of the Northern Recension, wherever that ended, used a number of sources which they collated with Alfred’s own chronicle. Some were apparently Northern; many were, however, available south of the Humber, if not the Trent. The York Annals and Northumbrian Regnal List were undoubtedly Northern sources, but were known south of the Humber certainly by c. ad 1000, as is clear from the ‘Miscellany’, compiled by Byrhtferth, a monk of Ramsey around that date. That text joined a Northumbrian regnal list to the York Annals and added Asser’s account of the ninth century, an account which was itself taken from Alfred’s vernacular chronicle. In some senses the ‘Miscellany’ parallels the Northern Recension, but as a Latin history. It was not, however, the simple or sole source for the Northern Recension’s access to this material. Byrhtferth’s Northumbrian regnal list does not contain the sort of annotation or material which was in the Northern Recension’s source(s). Bede is in some senses a Northern text, but one known and used in the south. Bede was a Northumbrian monk.The Northern Latin annalistic ­tradition grew out of continuations of his work. His vision was, however,

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120  After Alfred wider. He included all the Angle and Saxon kingdoms in his account of conversion. His Historia, and especially its annalistic Recapitulatio, were major sources of Alfred’s own chronicle. The makers of Alfred’s Chronicle may themselves have used the Northern sources available to the makers of the Northern Recension. That is most debatable in the case of the York Annals.57 But a Northumbrian regnal list or set of ge­neal­ ogies certainly lies behind Alfred’s Chronicle, though not necessarily the one used in the making of the Northern Recension. Alfred’s Chronicle does not contain all the details about Northumbrian kings found in that latter text. This may simply mean that the makers of the Northern Recension extracted more from a common source, as they did from Bede. Alternatively, their regnal list was fuller, annotated with or accompanying some brief chronicle-like material. There were thus Northern sources used in the making of the Northern Recension, though the base text which provided its framework was a product of the court of a southern king. In respect of its sources, the text lying behind chron­ icles D and E is Northern, if ambiguously so. The story it told could be similarly characterized.

ii)  A New—Northern—Story? Readers turning to the ‘Northern Recension’ for a detailed story of the North would be sadly disappointed. Rather they will find a weaving together of Alfred’s Chronicle and other sources producing not so much a Northern story as one which draws Northumbria into an England-wide tale, and one which emphasizes archbishops. Like Alfred’s, it began in 60 BC with the arrival of the Romans in Britain. It contained Alfred’s story: of conversion, of West Saxon history, by the ninth century of Alfred’s own family and its struggles against the Scandinavian attacks. It was less concerned with the legitimation of that family than Alfred’s had been, less concerned with genealogies in general. But from the outset its preface signals 57  Alfred’s chroniclers seem to have had access to a version of the Bede Continuatio—at least up to annal numbered 740. They seem also to have had access to a source—perhaps an annotated regnal list—which had the details of King Eadberht and his brother, Archbishop Ecgberht, that are found under 738 both in A and in DE from Alfred’s Chronicle: these details are not found in the York Annals and are not derived from them. Questions arise over the Mercian regnal details which are in YA 757/ ABCG 755, and YA 796/ABCG 794. In both cases ABCG have more detail, including regnal lengths; these details are more likely to have been derived from a Mercian regnal list rather than the YA. This leaves the death of Pope Hadrian in ABCG 794 and the murder of King Æthelred of Northumbria, with date, by his own people. YA have these events under 794 and 796. Is this the source for the— much abbreviated—annal in Alfred’s Chronicle? Was ABCG 797 on the mutilation and miraculous recovery of Pope Leo also derived from YA 799? (Story, Carolingian Connections, p. 123 sees this as the ‘papal version’, as opposed to the ‘more sceptical’ version in the Royal Frankish Annals. Her discussion does not bear directly on whether Alfred’s chroniclers had the text of the York Annals to hand here.)

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The ‘ Northern Recension ’   121 its wider orientation. There are questions around what if anything prefaced Alfred’s original chronicle. The Northern Recension’s preface described the arrival of all the people of Britain—a breadth of vision echoed in the extension of the 449 annal to include the coming of all the ‘Germanic’ peoples (of þrim mægðum Germaniae, E 449). That preface and its extension were taken from the Northern Recension’s second source, namely Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica. Alfred’s chroniclers had already used that source; the makers of the Northern Recension returned to it with a vengeance. Through the collation of—almost—everything datable in Bede, they filled out a story including Roman Emperors,58 conversion, and the archbishops of York and Canterbury. Their use of Bede produced a fuller picture of Northumbrian conversion—its careful crafting and recasting questioning a simple mechanical collation59—but also a fuller picture of conversion more generally, including in Wessex and Kent. They had other sources which provided more Northumbrian detail of Bede’s world; their inclusions from these occasionally hint not just at Northumbrian sentiments but even possible anti-West Saxon feeling.60 They maximized a Northumbrian story, sometimes including an event where Bede’s date was unclear,61 but always within the framework of Alfred’s Chronicle; they added more on York bishops/archbishops, but more, too, on Canterbury.62 As they moved on to the eighth century, the York Annals provided the makers of the Northern Recension with a detailed tale of Northumbrian secular politics and ecclesiastical events. They abbreviated the royal story, weighting their choices here towards the deeply divided politics of the late eighth century and the arrival of the Vikings. York and its archbishops became ever more prominent now. Alfred’s story was here becoming much more Northern, much more archiepiscopal, but, with the omission of Frankish material, not more continental European. From 807 to 890, however, the lost chronicle essentially told Alfred’s story, of his dynasty and its struggle against the Vikings. There are differences of emphasis: less attention to dynastic legitimation specific to Alfred and his immediate heirs,

58  For example, the accession of the Roman Emperors Marcus Aurelius and his brother in ad 155. 59  See e.g. annal 626, where Alfred’s Chronicle’s simple note of the baptism at Pentecost of Eanflæd, daughter of Edwin, king of Northumbrians, becomes a detailed story, to which was added the arrival of a West Saxon assassin to kill the still-pagan Edwin, and Edwin’s successful attack on the West Saxons where he destroyed five kings. Its annal ends with Penda, king of the Mercians, but much more briefly than in Alfred’s Chronicle, giving a regnal length without Penda’s age or his genealogy back to Woden. 60  Thus extra details of the battle æt Dægsanstane, substantially extended from Bede, HE, I. 34, with Bede’s tale, in turn, elaborated with the name of an otherwise unknown Northumbrian leader; not only the West Saxon assassin sent to kill King Edwin found in Bede, but the five West Saxon kings whom Edwin destroyed, not in Bede. 61  e.g. King Æthelfrith of Northumbria’s attack on Chester: Bede, HE, II. 1 and 2. 62  The very precise detail on John of Beverley’s death in D and E 721, which did not derive from Bede, HE, V. 6. Their extended entry on Paulinus under 627 drew from four separate chapters in Bede.

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122  After Alfred indeed less concern with genealogical detail in general in this chronicle. But if, as seems likely, the Northern Recension once ended with annals numbered c.890, its new story—more Northumbrian, more archiepiscopal—still culminated in Alfred’s own. In the process, however, Alfred’s story had been broadened and shifted into one which was more England-wide, and even more a tale of a Christian people and their Christian leaders. To see what has happened, Byrhtferth’s ‘Miscellany’ is an instructive comparison. It shared many of the Northern Recension’s sources; Bede can almost be taken for granted since the bulk of the ‘Miscellany’ could be seen to consist of continuations of his history. It culminates in Asser’s account, thus in Alfred’s own story—which might be read as yet another continuation of the Historia post Bedam (the name for this text in Roger of Howden). It was not a separatist text, but here an essentially Northumbrian history became a wider one only in the ninth-century sections. By contrast, the makers of the Northern recension took similar sources, translated them into Old English and combined them with Alfred’s Chronicle. Its story did not merely culminate in Alfred, its new sources were seamlessly interwoven with his tale from the start. Alfred’s Chronicle was incorporated more or less whole. The Northern Recension was emphatically a development within the vernacular chronicling tradition which Alfred’s text inaugurated. In language, in annalistic genre—if D and E are faithful guides, even in the detail of including all years, if only as blank numbers—the Northern recension followed Alfred’s lead. Like his chroniclers, its makers took Latin texts and translated them into Old English, took thematic material and turned it into annals. Their additions changed Alfred’s Chronicle in very signficant ways.63 Over 50 per cent of the annals to 806 are new or changed; even counting to 890, 13 per cent are completely new and 40 per cent either new or changed.64 This lost chronicle is the only vernacular chronicle which we can identify where Alfred’s Chronicle itself was greatly altered, as opposed to simply continued. The unusual fact and scale of the changes it ­contained is an important fact in itself. Labelling it as a ‘Recension’ of Alfred’s is arguably a misnomer; it qualifies as a new chronicle. But it was a new chronicle within the tradition stemming from that of Alfred. It was a, if not the, major ­post-Alfredian development within the vernacular tradition, but within that ­tradition it emphatically belonged. This is not a text of separatism, but reads more as one aimed to counter that. How successful it was in that aim is a question to which we must return (see below, Reception, pp. 128–34). 63  Up to the annal for 806 there are some 179 annal entries in ABC (including the 710 annal elided and later replaced in A). The Northern Recension added to these thirty-eight or so completely new annals and altered, chiefly through addition, a further seventy-two or seventy-three. 64  Totals would be A: 249 entries, DE: 287 entries; 13 per cent of DE would be new entries; DE would change 80 of A’s 249 entries (almost 33 per cent) and add 38, totalling 118. Thus just over 40 per cent of DE’s entries would be new or changed.

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The ‘ Northern Recension ’   123 When and where was this lost text produced? Its makers used Alfred’s Chronicle, perhaps in a copy which stopped short around annal 890 (see above, chapter 3), apparently one without any of the continuations found in Chronicles ABCG (and in D via a chronicle like BC). Did the Northern Recension end at annal 890? Should this place its making very early in the tenth century? Some of the errors might, however, place its creators at a remove from Alfred and his chronicle, in time or space. The annals in D and E numbered from 959 to 982, and again from 983 to the early 1020s showed the same close connection as those numbered to 890/2. Did the original text stretch as far as 982 or even the early 1020s? Was the Northern Recension made after c.980, even in the earlier 1020s? The likelihood is that these are continuations, and that the original text ended with the annals numbered c.890—though that provides only a terminus post quem. A wider date range remains open. In general its terminology provides little guidance, but one usage may point to a later rather than earlier date within this tenth-century range. In their annal for 785 both D and E have the word Ænglalande/Englalande. Usage of that term in Old English texts is overwhelmingly late tenth- or—especially—eleventh-century. It is found particularly in texts dating from the time of Ælfric, abbot of Cerne and Eynsham (late tenth to early eleventh century), onwards. Should this place the making of the Northern Recension no earlier than the later decades of the tenth century? There is, however, one earlier usage, in the Old English Bede dating from the early tenth century.65 Even if the usage is late, should it be taken as that of the original makers of this text, or seen as the gloss of a later scribe, who produced a copy which served as the common exemplar of D and E? The usage is suggestive, but far from conclusive evidence of date. For the dating of this text we are thus thrown, again, onto circumstantial evidence. The content, whether to 890 or to c.982, showed an interest which extended north as well as south of the Humber. Whether as a result of mechanical collation, or deliberate choice—the half-conscious selections which shape such assemblages straddle both options—the resulting text was ambiguously Northumbrian. During the later tenth century, its sources were available to a monk of Ramsey, whose founder, Oswald, was archbishop of York from 971 to 992. By the early 65  For a listing of uses see A.  diPaolo Healey, J.  Wilkins, and X.  Xiang (eds), ‘Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus’, https://www.doe.utoronto.ca/pages/index.html ‘Engla land’. Note that the charter, S 325, ostensibly mid ninth century, is a later text. Probably the earliest usage is found in the Tanner Bede, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Tanner 10, the oldest manuscript of the Old English Bede, at fo 104v in the hand of Scribe 1, with date limits c.890 x 930. See Ker, Catalogue, pp. 428–9 and especially R. Gameson, ‘The Decoration of the Tanner Bede’, ASE, 21 (1992), pp. 115–59. It is repeated twice here in the translation of HE, IV. 26, straightforwardly translating in regione Anglorum and, perhaps more ambiguously, in vicinia freti quod Anglorum terras Pictorumque disterminat—the latter as neah þan sæ þe englalonde 7 peohtas tosceadaþ—‘near the sea which divides’ either ‘England and the Picts’, or ‘the lands of the Angles/English and the Picts’. The normal usage of the translator was Ongol/Angelcynn or Ongol-/Angelþeod: S. M. Rowley, The Old English Version of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica (Cambridge, 2011), p. 67.

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124  After Alfred eleventh century we will place a copy of the Northern Recension in the hands of a York archbishop, Wulfstan II (see chapters 8 and 9). From the mid tenth century York archbishops themselves straddled the Humber divide, holding first Dorchester and then the rich southern bishopric of Worcester in plurality with the York archiepiscopal see. The sources of the Northern Recension suggest a connection with the archbishops.66 They and their history may provide a key to unlocking some of the problems surrounding this chronicle.

The Northern Recension and the Politics of History-Writing: Archbishops of York and the Politics of ‘England’ The Northern Recension is ambiguously Northern. ‘Ambiguously Northern’ is exactly how we might describe the archbishops of York, at least by the second half of the tenth century. From the 950s if not earlier archbishops of York had begun to look south, and were appointed, or approved, by southern kings. The northern archbishopric and its involvement in the politics of tenth-century England provide the likeliest context for the making of this new chronicle.

i)  The Archbishops Archbishops of York were major political players in Northumbria in the eighth and ninth centuries. It is unclear how the establishment of a Scandinavian kingdom of York at the end of the ninth century affected them. But the St Peter coinage of early-tenth-century York shows how far religious imagery connected with them continued to have strong symbolic value. St Peter was the patron saint of the minster (i.e. the cathedral at York), if not of the archbishops.67 The latter were potential figures of continuity across these turbulent decades. York archbishops until c.900 were chosen in and from Northumbria. That situation began to change in the tenth century, with the first signs of interference by southern kings. A shadowy Æthelbald was appointed c.900 and apparently consecrated in London.68 By 927 x 928 he had been succeeded by Hrothweard. Nothing is known of this appointment, but he is the first archbishop to begin to appear in the charters of southern kings. He and his successor, Wulfstan I, are found 66 See especially Whitelock, Peterborough Chronicle, ‘Introduction’, and D.  Dumville, ‘Textual Archaeology and Northumbrian History’ at pp. 48–9. 67 R.  Naismith, Medieval European Coinage, viii: Britain and Ireland c. 400–1066 (Cambridge, 2017), pp. 294–8. There is no evidence for the direct role of the archbishops in this coinage, and, indeed, this is unlikely. But in the turbulent churn of kings at York, the moneyers preferred a religious symbol. The extent to which the archbishops themselves could function as an element of continuity should not be underestimated. 68  Æthelweard, pp. 51–2.

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The ‘ Northern Recension ’   125 regularly in the witness lists of charters of King Æthelstan from 928 to 935. King Æthelstan’s extension of hegemony north had drawn them more closely into an enlarged kingdom. In 934 Æthelstan granted Wulfstan Amounderness, the first such grant north of the Humber by a southern king.69 This same king was remembered in Northumbria as a patron of Northern houses in the York diocese, at Beverley and Ripon.70 Wulfstan’s appearances at the southern king’s court after 935 became rarer.71 He would end his days detained at the southern king’s pleasure. Suspected of treachery by that king, he was imprisoned and died south of the Humber in 956.72 With his successor, Oscytel (956 x 958 x 959–971), a new chapter opened in the archbishopric’s history. As bishop of Dorchester(-on-Thames) he had risen fast in southern royal councils and dramatically in the royal assemblies of 956, usually now being among the top four bishops in witness lists. His see had no such earlier prominence (see above, chapter 5). Oscytel was a southern appointment to York, the first such that is identifiable with reasonable certainty.73 He retained his bishopric of Dorchester after his appointment, a pluralism which ensured that he kept one foot firmly planted well south of the Humber.74 He was the recipient of land grants from southern kings, including one south of the Humber at Southwell in Nottinghamshire.75 Oscytel’s archiepiscopacy may have been the point at which Nottinghamshire was added to the York archdiocese.76 During the early 960s, southern kings made other grants in the North, to Oslac and Gunner, men who feature in the scanty annals common to D and E.77 Oscytel himself was remembered as active in the acquisition of lands for York, lands which were lost after the arrival of Thored, another of the men mentioned in DE’s annals.78 The man who did that remembering was Oscytel’s successor, and kinsman, Oswald (961 x 971–992), author of a memorandum on York lands. He was again a pluralist, who kept his see at Worcester as well as holding York—as would his two successors, Ealdwulf, former abbot of Peterborough, and Wulfstan II. Oswald, like Oscytel, was a regular attender at southern courts and active as a monastic founder and ‘reformer’, including at the Fenland abbey of Ramsey. Ealdwulf was 69 Woodman, Charters of Northern Houses, no. 1. Just what we should understand by this ‘grant’ is moot. See Woodman’s careful discussion. 70 Woodman, Charters of Northern Houses, nos 12, 15, and 16. 71  His presence in charters of King Edmund was intermittent, but see S 1497 and S 479, S 484, S 495, and S 493. The same applies to the bishop of Lichfield. The setback to southern royal control at this date is indicated here. 72  Discussion in Woodman, Charters of Northern Houses, pp. 53–6. 73  Doubts around the date of his accession to York make it difficult to decide which king appointed him: Eadred, Eadwig, or Edgar. If it was Edgar, it was probably during his time as king of the Mercians. 74 On Oscytel see Woodman, Charters of Northern Houses, pp. 55–9 and especially J.  Barrow, ‘Oscytel’. 75 Woodman, Charters of Northern Houses, nos 2 and 3. 76  Barrow, Oscytel, in ODNB.. 77 Woodman, Charters of Northern Houses, nos 4 and 5. 78 Woodman, Charters of Northern Houses, no 6: memorandum on lands belonging to the archbishopric.

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126  After Alfred the first of a series of monks from Ramsey’s Fenland neighbour, Peterborough, appointed to or connected with northern sees. Wulfstan II was not only a regular attender of southern courts, but a major figure in the reign of Æthelred II, with a role in the king’s law-making and more generally. He will appear again as annotator if not author or instigator of annals 959–982. His interest in his see’s recent history is signalled by his personal annotation of Oswald’s memorandum. That annotation included its title ‘Archbishop Oswald composed this declaration and had it written’ and a statement articulated in Oswald’s own voice ‘I, Archbishop Oswald, declare that . . .’79 Oswald remembered Oscytel, Wulfstan invoked Oswald, thus constructing a continuous memory of these southern-appointed archbishops. The tenth century is therefore a story of the advancing control of southern kings over appointments to this key Northumbrian archbishopric. That went hand in hand with the conquest of Northumbria from the south, especially in the reign of Eadred (946–955), its ravaging, and other attempts to bring it under southern control. From the 950s onwards, York archbishops hailed consistently from south of the Trent, and appear to have been deliberately chosen for that reason.80 The history of the archbishopric charts some of the problems and tensions. The holding of York in plurality with a southern see has been seen as an answer to York’s poverty. More likely it tackles the significance of York to southern rulers attempting to control the North, and the problem—from their point of view—of York’s potential independence.81 Archbishops now had a substantial stake south of the Humber and Trent. The new situation of the York archbishops is flagged by a new pattern. They begin to appear regularly at the southern king’s court. Before the 950s their appearance there was infrequent, and worthy of remark. From then on it becomes commonplace.82 The listing of dates of archbishops masks a decidedly bumpy succession to the York see. Between Wulfstan I and Wulfstan II, from the 950s to 1002, no archbishop followed smoothly from his predecessor. Charter witnessing suggests a gap between Wulfstan I and Oscytel, perhaps as much as three years.83 Ealdwulf took over from Oswald at Worcester in 992, but only as archbishop at York three or four years later. From 992 to 996 he witnessed charters as Bishop of Worcester,

79 Woodman, Charters of Northern Houses, no 6, with full discussion. 80  D. Whitelock, ‘Dealings of the Kings of England with Northumbria in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries’, in P. Clemoes (ed.), The Anglo-Saxons: Studies in Some Aspects of their History and Culture presented to Bruce Dickins (London, 1959), pp. 70–88; D. Rollason, Northumbria 500–1100: Creation and Destruction of a Kingdom (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 202–8 and 228–30. 81 On the possible wealth of York and its community see T.  Pickles, Kingship, Society and the Church in Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire (Oxford, 2018), pp. 227–30, 235, and 243. 82  See the witness lists of southern royal charters in S. Keynes, Atlas of Attestations. 83  Barrow, ‘Oscytel’, ODNB.

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The ‘ Northern Recension ’   127 or archbishop-elect.84 The hiccups may in some cases be explained by awaiting collection or delivery of the pallium, the papally-bestowed symbol of archiepiscopal office. But between Oscytel and Oswald there was an archbishop Edwald, who, it was later said, ‘withdrew’, allowing the (nepotistic) succession of Oswald.85 Assumptions about an inevitable ‘England’, including Northumbria, may blind us to the problems in imposing or gaining acceptance of southern-appointed arch­ bishops at York.86 The history of the York archbishops in the tenth century parallels the story of southern conquest and advancing control of Northumbria. They were appointed by southern kings; none seems to be a member of the Northumbrian elite; all of them held episcopal office south as well as north of the Humber. From the 950s archbishops of York were, in most respects and in almost all cases, members of the southern elite; their appearance at the courts of southern kings, as tracked by their charter attestations, became regular. In the second half of the century if not before, the archbishops appear as agents if not embodiments of southern control. Prima facie the ‘ambiguously Northern’ Northern Recension fits one of these archbishops like a historiographical glove. The problem as far as dating these chronicle developments is concerned is which one; that glove would fit any of them. The shadowy Æthelbald must be kept in the frame, consecrated and probably appointed in the south. The errors in the Northern Recension could argue its making at some chronological remove from Alfred’s time, but Northumbrian scribes/authors could have made such mistakes at any date. Hrothweard cannot be ruled out; he is the first archbishop of York to appear at the court of a southern king. Wulfstan I is a strong contender. Discussion of Chronicle BC has already flagged the changing political picture across the mid tenth century: the im­port­ ance of Æthelstan’s reign, and especially the period from 928–935, in asserting the hegemonic control of southern kings north of the Thames; the setback north of the Humber if not the Trent in the 940s; and King Eadred’s reassertion of southern power. In the years around 930, and again from the late 940s, contemporary politics and a historiographical development which brought together Northumbrian and Southumbrian sources would make a snug partnership. The early stages of Oscytel’s archiepiscopate make their own claim for the production of the Northern Recension. Southern kings began to groom appointees to the York ealdormanry about now. Their grants north of the Humber increased. Oscytel appears as an especially active archbishop. Chronicle BC had a marked 84 Hunt, W., & Smith, M.    (2004,  September  23). Ealdwulf [Aldulf] (d. 1002), archbishop of York. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved 19 Dec. 2019, from https://www.oxforddnb. com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-317. 85  Symeon’s letter on York Archbishops, in Symeon of Durham, ed. Arnold, i, pp. 222–8 at p. 226. 86  After the Norman Conquest bishops of Bangor were intruded, exiled, and forced to live away from the bishopric, as described by Shaun McGuinness, ‘The Medieval Bishops of Bangor 1092–1307: Tested Loyalties, Identity and Ethnicity’, Paper delivered at Leeds International Medieval Congress, 2019. The situation at tenth-century York may have some parallels.

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128  After Alfred interest in him as is evident in its unusually long obit of him under 971. Recognition of that activity? Or even of his role in vernacular chronicle making? Oscytel’s Dorchester was a candidate for the original home of BC. Could Dorchester via its link with York have been home of the Northern Recension? However, if Dorchester were the home of BC or its continuations, there is scant sign of any of this in the sparse annals in Chronicle E for the 940s and 50s. Indeed the scant coverage of c.890 to 958 may in itself argue for a date relatively early in these decades for the making of the Northern Recension. Wulfstan I and Oscytel must, however, both remain strong candidates for association with the Northern Recension. Nor can Oswald, whose Ramsey abbey retained an interest in the sources of that text, be removed from the list of candidates. Oswald and Oscytel’s own family were certainly no strangers to the power of the text, including in the drive northward of southern rule. Oswald was the nephew of Oda, archbishop of Canterbury (941–958).87 Oda was, as we saw (chapter  5) a player in the southern kings’ involvement in the North: perhaps as a peace-maker, but also as an appropriator, or expropriator of Northern relics. The relics of Wilfrid were brought south to Canterbury by him, and Oda built an altar there to receive them and commissioned a new Vita Wilfridi to mark his acquisition. Here was a historiographical, textual appropriation of Northern history, following a literal expropriation of Wilfrid’s own relics, taken to Canterbury after the burning of Wilfrid’s church at Ripon in a raid by King Eadred in 948.88 This family was deeply implicated in the attempts to take control of Northumbria from the middle decades of the tenth century. The Vita Wilfridi is not only an indication of the potential place and role of literary work in such politics, but also a stark reminder of the brutal realities to which historiographical development could respond. The Vita Wilfridi may add to the case for Oscytel or Oswald’s connection to the making of the Northern Recension or its first continuation. It underscores the fact that no text exists in a vacuum, without context. Text and context are articulated through authorship, patronage, audience, and reception. Who wanted a chronicle, who made that chronicle, who read the result, and how? These are difficult questions about unlocated, undatable, anonymous texts, and doubly so for lost ones. Nonetheless they cannot be left unasked. Asking them throws its own meagre light, in turn, on the questions of the Northern Recension’s shape and date.

ii)  Patrons, Authors, and Reception The Northern Recension belongs, at the outside, between the 890s and the late tenth century. It is linked via its sources with the north and through those same 87  Cubitt and Costambeys, ‘Oda’, in ODNB. 88  Frithegodi Monachi Breviloquium Vitae Beati Wilfredi, ed. A. Campbell (Zurich, 1950). N. Brooks, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury (Leicester, 1984), pp. 227–31 for the full context.

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The ‘ Northern Recension ’   129 sources with York archbishops. The history of that archbishopric during the tenth century parallels the content and messages of this lost text. Recognizing that the Northern Recension had such a political context is not the same as casting it as a more or less crude historiographical tool of southern politics and its advance. To understand both its genesis and how it may have functioned, its content is critical. The Northern Recension was the only pre-Norman Conquest vernacular chronicle to make significant additions within the original Alfredian chronicle, and the only one to change it substantially.89 The result was a chronicle which amplified the original messages, for example about a people united by Christianity, and about Alfred’s predecessors, especially his ninth-century predecessors, and their struggle against Scandinavian invaders. But it also shifted those messages. The Northern Recension was less dynastic and more ‘England-wide’. Its story was more Northumbrian, but it was in no real sense a ‘Northern’ chronicle. It would be just as true to say that Alfred’s Chronicle had become more broadly ‘English’.90 The central focus remained the southern kings, especially those of Wessex. This is marginally less the case in the sparse annals covering the years 890 to 958, but it applies strongly again in the annals for 959 to 982. A Northumbrian story could be read in it, but one not always favourable to Northumbrian kings, at least not after Bede’s kings. The political failures and divisions of the late eighth century vis-à-vis the Vikings were, if anything, emphasized. If there were Northumbrian heroes in the Northern Recension, they were arch­ bishops of York, though ‘heroes’ is too strong a word. The archbishops feature more prominently, especially in the conversion period, as do archbishops in general. But the Northern Recension remained overall and primarily a story of kings, and of southern-based kings at that. The story may have had a foot either side of the Humber, but it leant heavily towards the south. It is not an expression of Northumbrian political separatism, though its reception may, as we shall see, have stirred such emotion. Rather Northumbria is written into an England-wide story; of an England firmly—and here rightly—ruled from the south. Whether it originally extended to 890, to 958, or to 982 x 983 this is what the Northern Recension was, and to some extent what it does. It tells this story; it shapes, consciously or not, history in this way. Should this be characterized as history as propaganda; as history as control; as historical writing deeply implicated in the exercise and creation of power, and in some respects a tool of that? If history-writing, even the most mechanical compilation, has a political context, how should we conceive of the politics of history-writing, particularly in this case? Anachronistic twentieth-century views of ‘history as propaganda’ are of little help. All this could, however, be characterized as the historiographical equivalent 89  Both E and F have additional material, largely in Latin, added into Alfred’s Chronicle almost certainly post-1066, mostly derived from a Norman set of annals: see Irvine, Chronicle E, pp. lxxxviii–xc and Baker Chronicle F, pp. l–liv. See further below, ch. 13. 90  ‘Nationalization’: thus T. Bredehoft, Textual Histories, pp. 67–71, term at p. 71.

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130  After Alfred of the southern kings’ conquest of the North. Its making could be seen as a brutal act, a parallel or even aid to military conquest: made to be sent North with these archbishops, arriving in their baggage train. There was a Northern historical trad­ition and a Latin one. Is this southern vernacular history thrust down Northumbrian throats? These are, however, excessively crude readings of history as control. They beg questions about both audience and makers. Was the Northern Recension created in the south with a view to keeping an archbishop like Wulfstan I loyal? Was it made to control people like him; made to impress the Alfredian messages of unity, alongside the successes of a southern dynasty? Or was it salutary bedtime reading for his successors, exiled to the dark Northern fastnesses, where they might be tempted to stray from loyalty to their southern masters—though we should be wary of overestimating how much time they spent north of the Humber?91 Was it a reminder of the Christian past which linked the kingdoms either side of the Humber; or a reminder of the triumphs of the southern dynasty the archbishops represented? These were certainly among the messages this new chronicle and its story carried. But the notion of deliberate control through history-writing demands careful handling; perhaps especially in the case of chronicles like these produced by fairly mechanical collation. It is more likely that it was made for an archbishop, at his own behest, under his patronage, even from sources which just happened to be available to him. A copy or copies of it continued to be connected to the arch­ bishops throughout the early and mid eleventh century (see chapters 8, 9, and 12). That does not, of course, deprive it of political impact; nor should it blind us to the decision to have a chronicle, and of this type, as a political act. The Northern Recension carried a story and messages which could convince the audience of the power of southern kings, and which wrote Northumbria into a tale essentially about southern English royal power. Consciously created or not, this story and messages must be kept in view. Its audience is elusive. Who were the intended, and actual, readers? Was it aimed at Northumbrian elites, Northumbrian clerics? New ealdormen representing southern kings should not be forgotten; nor should the York clergy, distinct from the archbishop’s own household, and potential losers in an extension of southern control over archbishops’ appointments.92 The impact of this new chronicle in the north may, however, have been limited. The Latin historical compilation incorporating the York Annals was available by the end of the tenth century. It was apparently more influential north of the Humber.93 91  On archbishops and their time at York, and their relationships with minster clergy see C. Norton, ‘York Minster in the Time of Wulfstan’, in M. Townend (ed.), Wulfstan, Archbishop of York (Turnhout, 2004), pp. 207–34. 92  On the ‘wealthy, literate and learned’ York community in the tenth century see Pickles, Kingship, Society and the Church, pp. 235–43. 93  Probably known at Durham: A.  J.  Piper, ‘The Historical Interests of the Monks of Durham’, in  D.  Rollason (ed.), Symeon of Durham: Historian of Durham and the North (Stamford, 1998),

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The ‘ Northern Recension ’   131 One audience the Northern Recension did reach was the archbishops themselves. It is easy to forget how important the primary decision was: to have a chronicle, and of this type: vernacular, annalistic, based on Alfred’s, though greatly extended. One or more archbishops probably continued and developed it. Should we see this chronicle, and its successors, as reactions of the archbishops to their own new situation, taking this vernacular history with them, though in the process, changing some of its messages? Was its function to tell their own—southern elite—story to themselves, fulfilling a major role of history as consolatory and reinforcing? If archbishops were the patrons of its making as well as its continuation, they chose to have a vernacular chronicle, to continue it, and to have Northern Latin sources translated into its annalistic and Old English vernacular format. Genre, language, the very making of this chronicle, and the add­itions to it: none of these should be taken for granted. Was a chronicle in the vernacular as much a political statement as an indication of intended audience? Were this chronicle and its continuations expressions of the archbishops’ self-inclusion within the ideology of southern rule, centred on Alfred’s dynasty? We need not conceive of deliberate manipulation to argue that vernacular history, and the stories it carried, came to function as narratives for the elites of which these men were part. The Northern Recension would be a forcible reminder of how far the late-tenth- and early-eleventh-century archbishops of York were members of that southern elite. Recent work on Northern charters sees a crucial distinction between York and Durham, with the charters of York, unlike those of Durham, facing south in their diplomatic forms.94 The Northern Recension exhibits that same orientation, though, as with the charters, it is debatable how far south-facing audiences or patrons extended beyond the archbishops themselves. One other audience is clear, the makers and continuators of the Northern Recension themselves. It was not necessarily produced at York, or even in the North; tenth-century archbishops had links with Dorchester, Ramsey, and Worcester, any of which is a possible site for its original making, if not its later extensions. The collators who made the Northern Recension are lost to us. In the absence of the original manuscript, its scribes, who may also have been its collators and authors, are lost. But we do occasionally catch the voices of those scribe/ authors in the text. They reveal themselves as Northumbrian, the sort of men (almost certainly here men) who would have been in the archbishop’s entourage.

pp. 301–32, at pp. 312 and 321 and n. 107; and see above, chapter 3 on Symeon’s possible knowledge of a vernacular chronicle which ended in 890. On the Latin compilation see M. Lapidge, ‘Byrhtferth of Ramsey and the Early Sections of the Historia Regum’, and Hunter Blair, ‘Some Observations’. For its twelfth-century significance see Taylor, Medieval Historical Writing in Yorkshire, pp. 4–6. 94 Woodman, Charters of Northern Houses, pp. 11–12.

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132  After Alfred Northern voices are difficult to hear in tenth- and eleventh-century England. These are precious testimonies.95 In the annals to 890/892 especially we occasionally hear the voices of the ­makers of the original Northern Recension. They are decidedly Northumbrian. It must, for instance, have been Northumbrians who casually assumed that references to ‘the City’ (Ceastre) would be read as references to York; they do not always bother to add the identification.96 Their self-revelation is sometimes even more explicit. They use the term ‘Southumbrians’, a term rarely found outside this text, and one which speaks of a perspective where the Humber is an important divide, looking south. On one occasion they identify ‘Southumbrians‘ as opposed to ‘us’.97 All the vernacular annals tend to the impersonal and the laconic. Their makers maintain anonymity. The collators/authors of this lost chronicle use ‘us’ very rarely. It features, however, at two signficant points where the question is of origins, and thus of identity. In the 785 annal the arrival of Pope Hadrian’s envoys prompted a reference back to Pope Gregory, who sent ‘us’ belief and peace.98 That ‘us’ could be Northumbrian; it is a direct translation from the York Annals. But the collator also speaks here of ‘England’, Ænglalande/Englalande. ‘We’ here means the English, significantly different from the ‘British’ found in surviving versions of the York Annals at this point. The scribes here translated but may also have altered the identity flagged in the York annals.99 The annal for 449 dealt with the arrival of peoples of ‘Germania’ (Germaniae). The author of this annal extended coverage here with material from Bede. Still following Bede, he referred to the descent of all the royal families of these peoples from Woden.100 But he glosses Bede with a statement about ‘all our royal kin and the Southumbrians also’. Here ‘we’ are definitely Northumbrian. Here, surely, was the identity of at least some of the collators who produced these annals, the makers. They were Northumbrians, who in some circumstances identified themselves as English. But are they the makers of the Northern Recension, or later copyists? These usages occur in Chronicles D and E, and thus in the Northern Recension which

95  The manuscripts from which the Northern Recension can be reconstructed are all later. Without the scribes’ autograph, we cannot see what dialect of Old English they were using. Chronicle D was the result of collation with other chronicles, whose language could have affected it. In the later manuscripts there are some few signs of Northern English usage: Cubbin, Chronicle D, at e.g. p. lxxxix; S. M. Pons-Sanz, ‘Norse-Derived Vocabulary in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, in Jorgensen, Reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, pp. 275–304. In general the language of D is Late West Saxon: Cubbin, Chronicle D, pp. lxxxiv–cli. 96  See E 685, DE 762, 779. 97  On the sense of ‘us-ness’, fuelled by recognition of a common past see W. Eggert and B. Pätzold, Wir-Gefühl und regnum Saxonum bei frühmittelalterlichen Geschichtsschreibern (Berlin, 1984). 98  Chronicle BC also showed enhanced interest in Pope Gregory, adding details of Pope Gregory’s family. 99  ‘may’ because we cannot be certain of the precise content of the York Annals they used. 100 Bede, HE, I. 15.

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The ‘ Northern Recension ’   133 lies behind them, a text which already extended at least to 982. That text was not necessarily, perhaps unlikely to be, the original, unadorned, uncontinued Northern Recension. The term ‘England’ (Ænglalande/Englalande) raised questions about the date of the text which lies behind D and E, though it did not argue conclusively for a late date.101 The ‘we’ of D and E’s exemplar points to a layered and complex identity. Is that the identity of the maker(s) of the original Northern Recension, or of a later copyist or copyists? The likelihood is that the Northumbrian ‘we’ went back to the original. The occasional explicit self-revelations are of a piece with the wider principles and mindset which governed the making of this work. The selections the scribes made, their deliberate assembling of Northumbrian material, in one case their teetering on the edge of a critique of West Saxon kings: all encourage that interpretation. The ‘Englishness’ of annal 785 is at first sight inconsistent with this Northumbrian identity, and invites a view of a later copyist. This may be the case, but not necessarily so. In what can appear as contradictory self-revelations, we may rather be witnessing a first reception of the Northern Recension—and a complex one. The wider principles and purpose of that text were, overwhelmingly, the construction of a text which drew Northumbria into a wider history. The scribe/authors were creating, reading, receiving the Northern Recension. Their reactions were far from simply Northumbrian separatist. They reveal themselves as English, or rather Christian English, in the account of the important point of origin when Christianity first arrived, the belief and peace sent to ‘us’ by Pope Gregory.102 Here the scribe/authors were receiving the text’s message of a Christian people, unified in their belief—with which they identified. They also revealed themselves as Northumbrian, significantly, at another point of origin, when they expanded on the arrival of the English people, of Angelcynn. Yet here they simultaneously identified themselves as Northumbrian, while also acknowledging that ‘our’ royal kin were from the same origin as ‘that of the Southumbrians’.103 These were also the people whose decisions, conscious, or half-conscious, had nudged a wider English story in a more Northumbrian direction; occasionally into a direction which celebrated Northumbrian triumph over Wessex;104 everywhere into a story which assembled as much as they could of Northumbrian detail. The identity which these makers reveal is far from simple, just as the reception of history is far from straightforward. On one level this text constructed southfacing loyalty if not identity—and that is in evidence; at another, it was capable of invoking, enhancing, and confirming Northumbrian identity. Making a story

101  See above, p. 123—and also P. Stafford, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, Identity and the Making of England’, HSJ, 19 (2008), pp. 28–50 at pp. 34 and 47. 102  DE 785. 103  E 449. 104  e.g. E 626: Edwin leading an expedition against the West Saxons and killing five kings.

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134  After Alfred which made a wider England may, paradoxically, have prompted a sharper awareness of Northumbrian-ness among its actual creators. * * * * * * * * * * * * It is difficult now to pin down the original making of the Northern Recension, though circumstantial evidence points to a mid- to late-tenth-century date between c.930 and the 980s. The uncertainties suggest a living text which was created, then added to. That was certainly the case c. ad 1000, when a copy in the hands of Archbishop Wulfstan II of York was annotated if not continued by him. He is unlikely to have been the first York archbishop to be involved with this evolving chronicle, nor, as we shall see, would he be the last. The influence of this important development among the vernacular chronicles would eventually spread beyond the archbishops. It became, as we shall see, the basis of a chronicle known if not revered at Canterbury which lies behind E and F. It was the base chronicle used by historical writers of the twelfth century such as Henry of Huntingdon and Gaimar. Its impact in the North may have been more limited. The rival Latin historical collection had a wide currency there. That collection’s more thoroughgoing Northernness may have been a factor, though its Latin language would also have ensured its longer life. The Northern Recension was a response to the ‘problem of the North’, firmly situated within the southern elite vernacular historiographical tradition. The ‘problem of the North’ would prove too intransigent for any mere historiographical weapon to solve. Yet the making of such a significant vernacular chronicle in the tenth century may be a sign of how far the scale of that problem was realized, and an indication of attempts to tackle it. Chronicle D is one of the two testimonies to the existence of this lost chronicle. Comparison of Chronicles D and E revealed its content; but also makes clear the extent of subsequent development in both. Chronicle D has a different take on the mid eleventh century from E, including much more on a York archbishop: Ealdred, who negotiated the difficult years around 1066. Chronicle D also has much more on the tenth century than E, including more on the North in the tenth century, and again more on a York archbishop, Wulfstan I and his alleged treachery. Chronicle D’s development takes us on into the eleventh century, and beyond 1066 itself. Its association with Archbishop Wulfstan II belongs with con­sid­er­ation of these vernacular chronicles at the turn of the eleventh century (see chapters 8 and 9). D’s tenth-century material demands special attention. From 971 intermittently until the early 1060s the archbishopric of York would be held alongside the wealthy bishopric of Worcester. Worcester was a centre for h ­ is­tor­ic­al writing after 1066, and may have been before that. The next chapters focus more on D’s extra material for the tenth century. They must begin with an even more elusive text, the ‘lost Worcester Chronicle’.

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7

The Lost Worcester Chronicle The third lost chronicle is the most elusive of all. Its shape, its making, even its existence are all debatable. BC and the Northern Recension were fossilized in later chronicles, but are more or less clearly recognizable. The third is but a ghostly presence lurking behind the later vernacular chronicles D and C and the twelfth-century Latin chronicle of John of Worcester. John was self-avowedly producing a ‘chronicle of chronicles’; disentangling a single one of them poses a huge challenge. D and C may preserve some of its content, especially D in its relatively full treatment of the mid tenth century. Chronicle D’s long history involved other sources, however. Once again, identifying what may derive from a single source is far from easy. The quest for this lost chronicle may do no more than make darkness visible. It will, however, refocus attention on the vernacular annals covering the mid tenth century. It will reveal a group of annals which ended the century, and more optimistically than those now found in the gloomy, doom-laden ‘Annals of Æthelred and Cnut’ (see chapter 9). It will confirm the significance of the lost /BC as an influential tenth-century text. Bishops will, once again, be to the fore.

Byrhtferth of Ramsey, John of Worcester, and the Lost Worcester Chronicle The ghost makes its most substantial appearance in material common to the work of Byrhtferth of Ramsey and John of Worcester. Byrhtferth, a monk of Ramsey at the turn of the millennium, was the author/compiler/annotator of the ‘Historical Miscellany’, which contained the York Annals and Northumbrian regnal list. He was also the author, among other works, of a Life of Archbishop Oswald, founder of Ramsey abbey as well as archbishop of York and bishop of Worcester. Byrhtferth’s Life began with a brief account of Oda, archbishop of Canterbury, Oswald’s kinsman. It is datable to between 997 and 1002.1 There are close verbal parallels between John of Worcester and the Life.2 The nature of these suggests

1 Lapidge, Vita Oswaldi, pp. lxv–lxxxii, on its dating see pp. lxvii–viii. 2  C.  Hart, ‘The Early Sections of the Worcester Chronicle’, Journal of Medieval History, 9 (1983), pp. 251–315, at pp. 258–65 and 311–12.

After Alfred: Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and Chroniclers, 900–1150. Pauline Stafford, Oxford University Press 2020. © Pauline Stafford. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198859642.001.0001

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136  After Alfred that they derive from lost vernacular annals, which here lie behind both Byrhtferth and John.3 These verbal parallels are found in John’s annals dated between the 950s and 992: 9884 and 959, the assessment of King Edgar:5 and 960, the appointment of Oswald as bishop.6 These parallels could be explained by John’s use of the Vita Oswaldi itself.7 But John’s precise dates, such as 960 for Oswald’s appointment, could not have derived from the Vita, which is typically unconcerned with chron­ ology. Rather, it has been argued that both John and Byrhtferth were using the same source, namely annals which spanned the years 958 to 992.8 Byrhtferth’s account of the battle of Maldon in 991 could derive from this same lost source.9 John used it to 992, and possibly even to 1017.10 It was originally in the ver­nacu­ lar, though Byrhtferth had probably translated it into Latin by c. ad 1000, the date of the Vita. This is the first sighting of the lost Worcester chronicle. The verbal parallels between John of Worcester and the Vita are striking. In both, for example, the 959 assessment of Edgar includes the Ottonian links between Edgar and Emperor Otto I, connected by John of Worcester with the marriage of Otto to Edgar’s aunt;11 the assessment of Bishop Æthelwold in John’s annal for 963 is close to that in the Vita;12 and John’s 979 annal on the translation of the body of King Edward the Martyr by Ælfhere, ealdorman of Mercia, is, again, close to Byrhtferth’s Latin.13 Some of this may well be due to John of Worcester’s use of the Vita Oswaldi itself. He used other saints’ lives, including the B Life of Dunstan.14 There are, however, cases where the agreement points to a common annalistic source. Nowhere is this clearer than in John’s annal for 988. The 988 annal deals with an attack by the Danes in the early years of King Æthelred’s reign. The parallels between John and Byrthtferth’s Vita are verbal, but also extend to narrative structure.15 Byrhtferth, typically, does not date these 3  M. Lapidge, ‘Byrhtferth and Oswald’, in N. Brooks and C. Cubitt (eds), St Oswald of Worcester, Life and influence, (London, 1996), pp. 64–83, at pp. 75–8. 4 Respectively John of Worcester, ii, pp. 426–7 and Lapidge, Vita Oswaldi, p. 140. 5  John of Worcester, ii, p. 412 and Lapidge, Vita Oswaldi, p. 103. 6  John of Worcester, ii, pp. 414–15 and Lapidge, Vita Oswaldi, p. 58—though the verbal parallels here are less close. 7  Thus e.g. John of Worcester, ii, pp. 411–12, at e.g. p. 412 n. 2. 8  Lapidge, ‘Byrhtferth and Oswald’, p. 78. 9  Lapidge, ‘Byrhtferth and Oswald’, pp. 73–4. 10  Lapidge is in substantial agreement with C. Hart, ‘The Early Section of the Worcester Chronicle’, Journal of Medieval History, 9 (1983), pp. 251–315. Hart argued that the chronicle extended to 1017. 11  John of Worcester, ii, p. 412. Cf. Lapidge, Vita Oswaldi, pp. 74 and 102. 12  John of Worcester, ii, p. 416; Lapidge, Vita Oswaldi, p. 78. 13  John of Worcester, ii, p. 430; Lapidge, Vita Oswaldi, p. 140. 14  See e.g. John of Worcester, ii, pp. 410–12, s.a. 959 and references in the notes there. 15  John reads (p. 436): ‘Wecedport a Danicis piratis devastatur, a quibus etiam satrap Domanie Goda nomine et miles fortissimus Strenuuoldus cum aliis nonnullis perimuntur, sed tamen ex illis plurioribus occisis, Angli loco dominantur funeris’. Compare Byrhtferth (Lapidge, Vita Oswaldi, pp. 154–6): ‘Factum est durissimum bellum in occidente, in quo fortiter resistentes nostrates (qui dicuntur Deuinysce) victoria sancti triumphi perceperunt, adquisita Gloria. Ceciderunt plurimi ex nostris, pluriores ex illis. Nam occisus est ex nostris miles fortissimus nomine Stremuuold, cum aliis nonnullis, qui bellica morte magis elegerunt vitam finire quam ignobiliter vivere.’

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The Lost Worcester Chronicle  137 events, though he implies that they took place not long after Æthelred’s accession, when the nefandi (‘unspeakable/heinous’) Dani arrived. A vernacular source lies behind both, linked to but not identical with that which underlies Chronicles C, D, and E. Thus Byrhtferth’s Old English Deuinysce (‘from Devon/Devon men’) recalls the Defenisca which Chronicles C, D, and E use in this year to describe the thegn Goda. Even more striking is the end of the annal in John. It is in Latin, as is all John’s chronicle. It reads: Angli loco dominantur funeris (‘the English controlled the place of death’). This is a straight translation of the vernacular wælstowe geweald ahton. This was a standard formula of Alfred’s Chronicle, and it continued to some extent into the Edward annals, as, for example in Chronicle A 905. It is never found in the mid-century annals in any surviving vernacular chronicle.16 A vernacular annal thus lies behind John here, and one which recalled or revived a standard usage of Alfred’s Chronicle. John may have translated it himself, or it may have come to him via a Latin translation made by Byrhtferth. In either case, there can be little doubt of its vernacular original.17 That annal’s composition, and if it occurred, its Latin translation is narrowly datable to between 988 and at latest 1002. The wider range of parallels between John and the Vita suggest it was part of a longer annalistic text. As witnessed in John and the Vita, that text’s account of the early years of Æthelred was less negative than that which now survives in Chronicles C, D, and E.  John’s source, for example, has a victory in 988 where the later ‘Æthelred annals’ have only defeat.18 How far did that text extend? The use of the Alfredian vernacular chronicle formula wælstowe geweald ahton suggests that its authors/makers had at least read Alfred’s Chronicle. Did the text itself extend back to include that chronicle? 16  See Jacqueline Stodnick, ‘Sentence to Story’, in Jorgensen, Reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, at pp. 105–6 and notes. This formula is specific to the vernacular chronicles, and especially to the annals numbered to the ninth century and to those dealing with Scandinavian attack. 17  Note that John uses a more or less identical translation of the same formula when it occurs earl­ ier: see e.g. John of Worcester, ii, pp. 276, s.a. 860 loco funeris dominati sunt; ii, p. 288, s.a. 871 loco funeris dominati sunt; ii, p. 360, s.a. 905 loco funeris dominati sunt. It is quite conceivable that John translated these stock formulae in stock ways himself. A Latin text common to Byrhtferth is equally possible, though it requires such a translation to have been made within a decade or so of this annal’s composition. 18  John has a significantly different take on 988. The comparable tale begins as CDE with the devastation of Watchet by pirates and their killing of Goda. John then adds ‘and Stremwold miles fortissimus with many others’. CDE have the ‘many others’ but not Stremwold. John continues ‘but however, more of them were killed, and the English had control of the place of death’, loco dominantur funeris. John then completes the annal with reference to blessed Dunstan’s death and Æthelgar, as in CDE. John’s differences cannot be accounted for by speculative elaboration. He has an additional named leader, and the encounter which appears in CDE as a defeat for the English is here specifically a victory. John’s treatment of the famous battle of Maldon in 991 also suggests a source other than the set of annals now in CDE. John’s addition of the more neutral ‘an infinite host was killed on either side’ might, again, look like elaboration, though its more even-handed account is in line with the 988 annal. But John has extra detail which is not just later elaboration. He alone has the name of the Danish leaders at Ipswich, Iustin et Guthmund filius Steitan. Once again, John may be preserving a version of 991 older, with less sense of doom and inevitable defeat, than that now found in CDE.

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138  After Alfred Does it belong alongside BC and the Northern Recension as a complete ver­nacu­lar chronicle, beginning, as they did, with Alfred’s own? The shape of this lost text is difficult to establish. The comparisons between Byrhtferth’s Vita and John provide the firmest ground. That ground is delimited, however, by the Vita’s focus on Oswald’s own life. By definition, it does not extend forward beyond his death in 992, and not much further back than the 950s. John of Worcester’s chronicle, by contrast, ­covers the entire chronological span of early English history. It is not bounded either in chronology or in subject matter by Oswald’s lifetime. Comparison with Byrhtferth gives a snapshot of their common source, but not necessarily a complete picture of it. Did more of John of Worcester’s chronicle derive from the lost text? Is he a guide to its content? John of Worcester was explicitly producing a ‘chronicle of chronicles’.19 He made use of several texts, including some closely connected to, if not identical with, our surviving vernacular chronicles. He also differs from these latter at a number of points. Can those differences and similarities be used to reveal a longer vernacular text? They certainly create a space where one could be inserted. Many of his sources can be identified; many more may lie behind the material we cannot now place. Searching for a single one is hazardous. Moving beyond the identifiable parallels with Byrhtferth means launching into dangerous waters. Those parallels point to a vernacular text in being by the end of the tenth century. Enquiry will thus be confined to John’s annals covering that century.

John of Worcester’s Annals for the Tenth Century John’s coverage of the tenth century can be briefly summarized. For the years to 926, he made use of a chronicle of the BC type, though not as that survives in B, C, or D. However he also used AG or something like them for the second set of annals, peculiar to these chronicles, covering Edward the Elder’s reign. Like all our surviving chronicles he is thin for the reign of Æthelstan; he has episcopal material for these years, which includes but extends beyond that found in AG and which is not in B, C, D, or E. For the 940s and 950s there are numerous parallels with Chronicle D, including the very critical account of Archbishop Wulfstan I of York, and a number, though not all, of D’s references to women in these years (see chapter  8). Like Chronicles D and E, he begins his annals for King Edgar’s reign with an assessment of that king, more positive on his foreign links than that found in D and E. He does not have most of the annals for 959–982 as they are found in D and E, that is the annals from the Northern Recension or its continuation. 19  John of Worcester, iii, p. 142: hec chronicarum chronica.

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The Lost Worcester Chronicle  139 From 972–978 he has annals which in their bare essentials connect with those now found in AGBC and DE for 972 to 975, where they appear in elaborated poetic form. From 978 to 982 the parallels are with Chronicle C, including ma­ter­ ial on the Ottonian family, which continue some of John’s earlier interest. For 988 and 991 he has different and more positive annals, though dealing with the same military encounters as in the famous account of Æthelred’s reign now found in chronicles C, D, and E. From the early 990s he largely follows this impassioned and full story, though there are details added throughout. In general, John was using vernacular chronicles, though no single surviving one accounts for all his material. He has additions taken from identifiable saints’ lives, like that of Dunstan. He has matter peculiar to him, such as the details of Edward the Elder’s family given at that king’s accession.20 It is difficult to be sure how much, if any, of all this is witness to a single vernacular chronicle of the tenth century, which also contained the material common to John and Byrhtferth’s Vita. For the early decades of the tenth century John had access to a text or texts very like Chronicles BC and D, i.e. one which contained the 890s extension of the Alfredian chronicle as in AGBCD, and the first Edward annals (to 914). He also had a text very like AG, since he had access to the second set of Edward annals to 920, now found in AG only. He also had the Annals of Æthelflæd, as now found in B and C, and thus BC, and, in collated form, in D. John here had a text which belonged to the BC family. If he had AG’s version of the first Edward annals, he did not use it. On key points, such as the list of the dead at the battle of Tettenhall (C 911) and the attribution of a royal title to King Edward’s cousin Æthelwold in annals for 901 and 905, he follows BCD. His text was not, however, the surviving B, C, or D. B and C, and thus BC, end abruptly in 924. Like D, John continues the story through to Æthelstan’s triumph at Eamont Bridge in 926, though without D’s detail on the renunciation of idolatry. But Chronicle D was not his source for these years. Like D, John has collated sources to produce a consecutive narrative of these years. But he was not using the abbreviated narrative in D. John has details missing from D but found in B and C.21 He lacks D’s annal on the Scandinavian Ragnald’s taking of York in 923, which D shares with E. John’s annals for the years from the 890s to the mid 920s are linked to those found in AG, B C, and D. The text or texts which contained them, were part of the closely connected group discussed in chapter  4. His major source was a chronicle of the /BC22 type which brought together the first annals of Edward and 20  John of Worcester, ii, p. 354, s.a. 901. John also has an annal which is in no surviving vernacular chronicle s.a. 922 (ii, p. 382) on the death of Æthelweard, brother of Edward the Elder. 21  Thus John has the 908 Chester foundation (C(B) 907, omitted by D), the building of the fort at Eddisbury (C(B) 914—omitted by D), the building of Chirbury, Weardbyrig, Runcorn (C(B) 915— omitted by D). 22 /BC not BC, since John has 925–926 which B and C lack.

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140  After Alfred the Annals of Æthelflæd. It may have been the /BC chronicle which lies behind D, but it was not Chronicle D as we now have it. After the annals numbered to the mid 920s, all the surviving vernacular chron­ icles became very sparse. John mirrors this. Any text or texts he had did not en­able him to fill this gap. The picture of a very real hiatus in active chronicling, in the sense of the composition of new contemporary annals, is underlined. John’s source or sources remain firmly within vernacular chronicle developments discussed in earlier chapters. For these years he may have continued to have access to a chronicle like AG. Annals for 932, 934, and 935 follow the Winchester episcopal succession, as in Chronicle A and its copy G.  John, however, gives more detail of further episcopal successions. He had other sources here. For annals numbered to the mid-tenth-century decades, John is closest to Chronicle D. Thus he has a closely parallel treatment of the death of King Edmund under 946; and a closely parallel, though not identical, coverage of the events concerning Northumbria and Archbishop Wulfstan  I.23 Once again, however, it is difficult to argue that it was D as we now know it which was John’s source here. Chronicle D alone has the reference to the Scandinavian Anlaf ’s attack on the old Mercian centre of Tamworth, the capture there of the woman Wulfrun, and Edmund’s besieging of Anlaf and Archbishop Wulfstan I at Leicester, all in D 943. None of this is in John’s account. Nor does John have D’s reference in annal 946 to Æthelflæd of Damerham, Edward’s queen, or D’s reference to the Northumbrians driving out Eric under 954. By contrast, Chronicle D does not have John’s reference to the consecration of King Eadred at Kingston by Archbishop Oda under the year 955; though John, like Chronicles B, C (BC), and D had named Kingston as the place of consecration of Æthelstan s.a. 924. D as it now survives was not John’s source for these years. But there is some connection. Parallels between John’s source(s) and Chronicle D—and more rarely D and E, thus the Northern Recension and its continuation—are also found in the annals numbered from 959 through to the 980s. So, too, are the divergences. John, and D and E have an assessment of Edgar at 959. All lay some stress on that king’s con­ tin­en­tal links. John at this point is celebratory. He refers to the marriage of Otto I to Edgar’s aunt, the gifts Otto sent, and the firm peace between them.24 This is one of the points where there are close parallels with Byrhtferth.25 The assessment in D and E, by comparison, enters a note of criticism. It sees Edgar’s love for foreigners as his greatest misdeed, a comment perhaps coloured by the events of Æthelred’s

23  D 947, John 949; D 948, John 950; D 952, John 952; D 954, John 954. 24  John of Worcester, ii, p. 412. 25  Though there are also some significant differences. Cf. John of Worcester, ii, p. 412 and Lapidge, Vita Oswaldi, p. 102. Byrhtferth reports gifts from Edgar to the unnamed Emperor and names the envoys, Abbot Æscwig and the thegn Wulfmær, who brought gifts back. John names the emperor and he, unlike Byrhtferth, refers to the kinship link.

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The Lost Worcester Chronicle  141 reign.26 The difference is notable, but so too is the parallel, and, for vernacular chronicles unusual, comment on ‘foreign’ relations and overt assessment of a king. Some connection is likely. D’s annals, which were shared with E from 959 to the mid 970s (a possible continuation of the Northern Recension), were either unknown to John in the form now found in DE, or omitted by him. John and Chronicle D—not E—do share the reference to the marriage of King Edgar and Ælfthryth,27 again an un­usual reference to a royal marriage. But in general Chronicle D and John diverge for these years. John’s annal for 973 and DE’s 972 are both concerned with events at Chester, when other kings of these islands met Edgar and made common alliance with him. Once again, the Northern Recension behind D and E is not John’s source. John refers to eight kings at Chester, where DE had six. This might be dismissed as John’s elaboration, except that the closely contemporary Life of St Swithun also refers to eight kings of the Cumbrians and Scots.28 There are parallels, too, between John’s annals for 975 and 976 and DE: on Edgar’s death and the peace of his reign, Ealdorman Ælfhere’s attacks on monasteries (John 975), Ealdorman Oslac’s expulsion and the famine (John 976). DE has all these events. But whereas John records them under two separate years, they are brought together in a single, obviously retrospective, annal 975 in DE, which is elaborated in an overtly value-laden way and in poetic form. Where D shares a common set of annals with E for the years 959–975, John’s annals here show some parallels with Byrhtferth’s Vita, in annals for 959, 960, and 963. John’s source(s) for these years are once again linked to Chronicle D, but not to D as we now have it.29 From 978 to 982, John’s links are, by contrast, with Chronicle C. This begins with the account of Æthelred’s accession and consecration. C has this twice: once, quite simply, under 978, the date C shares with A(G).30 In the second, which C places under 979, Chronicle C’s account is fuller and very close to John: the consecration of Æthelred by two archbishops (whom John names) and ten bishops, at Kingston, on Sunday after Easter (John gives the precise date, C has fourteen nights after Easter) followed by bloody/fiery tokens in the sky in the middle of the night. The Northern Recension, thus DE, has some similarities, placing the 26  Ane misdæde he dyde þeah to swyðe, þæt he elþeodige unsida lufode, 7 hæðene þeawas innan þysan lande gebrohte to fæste 7 utlændisce hider in tihte 7 deoriende leoda bespeon to þysan earde. 27  John of Worcester, ii, s.a. 964, D s.a. 965. Chronicle F would later take this from D. 28  M. Lapidge (ed.), The Cult of St Swithun, Winchester Studies, 4.ii (Oxford, 2003), p. 606. Note Ælfric’s specific reference to Cumera and Scotta, Cumbrians and Scots. 29  Note also the dating dislocations between John and D, e.g. in the treatment of Wulfstan in the 940s and 950s where they move in and out of synchronization; Edgar’s marriage, where D is one year behind John; Chester events, where D is one year ahead of John. The number of possible stages which lie behind both and John’s possible changes make such evidence difficult to interpret. But they are another clear sign that D as we have it is not John’s source here. 30 For the argument that 979 was the correct date, D.  Dumville, ‘The Death of King Edward the Martyr—18 March, 979?’, in D. Dumville, Anglo-Saxon Essays, 2001–2007 (Aberdeen, 2008), pp. 251–65.

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142  After Alfred consecration very quickly after Æthelred’s accession, thus also in 979, and naming Kingston as the site. But D and E’s account refers only to the great joy of Angelcynnes witan (‘councillors of Angelcynn’), perhaps an abbreviation or editing of the source of John and C’s details. C and John share a source here, as they appear to do for John’s annals for 980, 981, and 982. These include the Viking attack on Chester, Thanet, and St Petroc’s; episcopal obits and successions; and the deaths of ealdormen and two abbesses. Such non-episcopal obits are far from normal in vernacular chronicles. There are also differences between C and John. Under 981 Chronicle C has the obit of Womaer, abbot at Ghent where John has that of Wulfstan of Glastonbury.31 But both include C’s ‘Ottonian’ annal, in both cases concluding it with the link to the English royal line via a daughter of Edward the Elder. This is the same daughter whose marriage had been noted earlier by John and by Chronicle D under 924, a marriage referenced again by John in his panegyric of Edgar—shared in part with Byrhtferth—under 959. The annals in C, D, E, and John of Worcester begin to show substantial agreement from around annal 983 onwards. All had access to the detailed, full Æthelred annals.32 There are signs, however, that John had annals which contained material not in either C or DE. John alone elaborates the brief reference to micla yrfecwealm (‘great plague of cattle’) in CDE 986, a reference which in CDE is retrospective— ærest (‘first’). John might simply appear to be elaborating here, as is his tendency. However, he makes this a fever in men and a plague in cattle, whereas C, D, and E have merely a plague in cattle. He includes the detail that the plague Anglice scitta vocatur (‘in English it is called the shits’). This looks like more than mere speculative elaboration.

Was there a Worcester Chronicle? The sum total of the content of John’s chronicle with its differences from and similarities to surviving vernacular chronicles points to a source or sources for the tenth century, in some cases provably vernacular, lying behind John of 31 See John of Worcester, ii, p. 433 n. 6 for this as John’s original reading here. 32  Relations among the different chronicles which have this set, i.e. C, D, E, and John, are close, but they are not identical. In annals for 988 and 991 there are still signs of a different source behind John. C, D, and E show signs of retrospective writing, e.g. in 988, where the length of Æthelgar’s tenure as archbishop is known and where the annal in its current form must thus be no earlier than 990. DE had already shown evidence of such a retrospective account in the annal for 981, where ships ‘first’ arrived to harry, and in the reference to Dunstan as se halga (‘the holy’) in 978, if not to Æthelwold as se halga muneca fæder in 984. DE shows much evidence of retrospect from the annals covering the 970s onwards. If C’s compilers had access to a version of these years identical with that in DE, they omitted these references; it is more likely that C was not here reliant on DE. In general C was using annals very similar to those in D and E from the annal for 983 onwards. John clearly had access to annals like those in DE; he has the Dunstan annal for 978 (John 977), which is lacking in C.

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The Lost Worcester Chronicle  143 Worcester’s early-twelfth-century chronicle. The relationship of the Vita Oswaldi and John’s annals; the recurring common ground with Chronicle D, where it is repeatedly clear that D itself is not John’s source; the BC-type chronicle which is not that identifiable in either B, C, or D; the common source which both John and the mid-eleventh-century Chronicle C used: all this points to John’s connection with vernacular chronicle(s), but not precisely those which have survived. John was, however, a chronicle of chronicles. Why should we see a single lost ver­nacu­ lar chronicle behind all or even much of this? Common themes across John’s annals for the tenth century give some grounds for arguing its existence. First, there is John of Worcester’s interest in the Ottonians, and particularly in the marriage of Otto I and Eadgyth, daughter of Edward the Elder and sister of Æthelstan. This is found in John’s annals through the mid century, in the annals common to Chronicle C, and in material where there are close parallels with Byrhtferth. John does not, however, mention it, as Chronicle D does, at 924, in the last annals which both D and John derive from a /BC chronicle. John mentions this marriage no fewer than five times, and, unlike D, names Otto, and the son of this union, Liudolf.33 Some of this is prompted by John’s use of the continental European chronicle of Marianus as a base text.34 But not all. John mentions it, for example, in his eulogy of Edgar. He, or his source(s), took a certain pride in it. His final reference comes in the annal for 982, with detail of an Ottonian battle in far away Italy, and the death of one of Otto and Eadgyth’s descendants. Such interest in ‘foreign affairs’ is very unusual within the ver­ nacu­lar chronicles, including Chronicle C, where it is also found. Yet John lacks the 924 reference in Chronicle D, arguably using the same /BC as John here. This need not mean it was not in his source. John was no mere slavish collator. He did not produce a thematic history, but he did re-arrange his material. This may be deliberate omission, keeping mention of it until his annal on Otto’s accession in 936. The second theme which appears across John’s tenth-century annals is royal consecrations and the place where they occurred, Kingston. John’s first reference here is in annal 924 apropos Æthelstan. This is shared by Chronicles B, C, and D. It was in the /BC which lies behind them all. It occurs again in annal 978 in respect of King Æthelred, where John and Chronicle C share a source. John alone has similar details for King Eadwig in 956. In two of John’s cases details are given of the consecration: in 956 the fact that Eadwig was consecrated by Archbishop Oda, in 978 the precise date—also known by C—and the ten bishops and two archbishops, whom John names as Dunstan and Oswald—in C, though there 33  John of Worcester, ii, p. 354, s.a. 901, in his details of Edward the Elder’s family, and again s.a. 936 (p. 392), apropos Otto’s accession; s.a. 955 (p. 405) in relation to the death of their son Liudolf; in the eulogy of King Edgar s.a. 959 (p. 412); and s.a. 982 (p. 432) in connection with the death of Liudolf ’s son. 34  See especially John of Worcester, ii, s.a. 936 and 955.

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144  After Alfred without the names.35 The 978 consecration is a case where John shares wording with Byrtferth’s Vita.36 Again, this interest marks John and his source(s) out. Vernacular chronicles rarely mention royal consecrations, let alone detail them. Finally, the parallels with Chronicle D recur across the tenth-century annals. This begins with their common use of a source which contained the annals for 924–926 missing in Chronicles B and C. It extends through the details of the mid century such as the death of King Edmund in 946, the critique of Archbishop Wulfstan I of York, Archbishop Oda’s separation of King Eadwig and Ælfgifu (958), and the marriage of King Edgar and Ælfthryth (D 965, John 964). Both include a eulogy of Edgar under 959. A common source lies behind their treatment of the mid 970s, including, again, a royal consecration at Bath, with precise date and the meeting with kings at Chester. In 959 and the 970s D like E has different elaborations from the material found in John. Chronicle D here represents the Northern Recension or its continuation as also found in E. That is not John’s source. The annals common to John and D, or more rarely to John, D, and E, again show interests which set them apart—in consecrations, in royal marriage, and possibly in archbishops. These themes and parallels stretch across John’s tenth-century annals. Cumulatively, two sources could be identified: a /BC which extended to 926, and a chronicle covering the middle decades of the tenth century onwards. A single chronicle where the second continued the first is also plausible. Such a chronicle would have an obvious home at Worcester. Bishops of Worcester had connections with the Ottonians, especially strong ones through the marriage which John mentions so often. Oswald, bishop of Worcester and newly appointed archbishop of York, may have been present in Rome for the coronation of Otto II, and the marriage and coronation of Theophanu, in April 972.37 Cenwald, bishop of Worcester, accompanied Æthelstan’s sister, Eadgyth, to Saxony in 929/930. A continued interest in this union, and its progeny, would not be out of place at tenth-century Worcester. That continued interest is found in John. An interest in consecrations could point to the same bishopric. The royal consecrations of 973 and 978 were probably the first in which an archbishop of York who was also bishop of Worcester was involved, in each case Oswald. The 956 consecration, also mentioned in John of Worcester’s source, was there said to have been performed by Oda, archbishop of Canterbury. Oda was Oswald’s kinsman, and at least one source connected to Oswald took a keen interest in him. 35  John of Worcester, ii, pp. 404 and 430. 36 Lapidge, Vita Oswaldi, p. 154. 37  For the uncertainty surrounding the timing of Oswald’s journey to Rome see Lapidge, Vita Oswaldi, p. 104 n. 47. Cf  K.Leyser, ‘The Ottonians and Wessex’, first published in 1983, repr. in T.  Reuter (ed.), Communications and Power in Medieval Europe: The Carolingian and Ottonian Centuries (London and Rio Grande, OH, 1994), pp. 73–104, at pp. 96–7 and D. Bullough, ‘St Oswald: Monk, Bishop, and Archbishop’, in Brooks and Cubitt (eds), St Oswald of Worcester, pp. 1–22 at p. 15.

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The Lost Worcester Chronicle  145 Byrhtferth of Ramsey’s Vita Oswaldi begins with a short life of Oda. Byrhtferth’s Vita Oswaldi is notorious for its concern with royal consecrations.38 The concern was arguably already present in the vernacular annalistic source he used.39 Oswald, bishop of Worcester and archbishop of York, is the common factor. Chronicle D can be placed in the hands of an archbishop of York and bishop of Worcester in the early eleventh century (see chapters  8 and  9). A link between that chronicle and a source connected to a bishop of Worcester would come as no surprise. The evidence of Byrhtferth’s Vita would date such a source as already in existence c. ad 1000.

Historiography and Politics The lost Worcester Chronicle must remain hypothetical; its story, let alone its context and the historiographical politics of its making, even more so. If the reconstruction offered above is correct, it would have begun, as all other known vernacular chronicles do, with Alfred’s, plus the two continuations, the ‘Edward’ and ‘Æthelflæd’ annals, which /BC had brought together. The significance of /BC as a stage in the making of several tenth-century vernacular chron­ icles would be underscored. John of Worcester and Chronicle D had the annals 933/934–946,which are found in all the vernacular chronicles (though only briefly in E). The lost text likely had them, though with so many possible sources it is unclear which John of Worcester was using. That lost text would, however, have given a fuller picture of the politics of the mid century than any chronicle other than D: the stabbing of King Edmund, the consecration of King Eadwig and the forced separation of him and his wife, a critique of the ‘perfidious’ Northumbrians and their archbishop. It exhibited an abiding interest in things Ottonian, especially the link of the English royal house to them, here a source of pride. In its later-tenth-century annals, its story would have covered revived Viking attacks, but not overpessimistically. Its annals for the 970s would have begun to show interest in lay leaders other than kings, such as ealdormen, especially those involved in the fraught politics of the 970s. The problems of these years would be hinted at: in the exile of ealdorman Oslac (unjustly, according to John),40 a great famine, the attacks on monasteries which followed Edgar’s death. These same events are found in other chronicles and their annals for the late tenth century, where they were elaborated further into poetic laments over Edgar’s death and its consequences, and poetic celebrations of that king and his consecration. The 38  Discussion in Lapidge, Vita Oswaldi, pp. 106–10 and notes and Lapidge, ‘Byrhtferth and Oswald’, pp. 70–3. 39  Even if he himself added these consecrations to such a text, those additions spanned the 950s to 970s, again arguing in favour of a text which covered these years. 40  John of Worcester, ii, p. 428.

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146  After Alfred heroization of Edgar was beginning in such annals, and that would have been the case too in this lost chronicle, albeit in a less developed form than in the poems found in B, C, A, and G. Its unusual eulogy of Edgar under 959 would, however, have made clear this text’s participation in the laudatory construction of that king. In other chronicles that was retrospective. As John transmitted it in the twelfth century, it was obviously retrospective; perhaps also in the lost text. At some stage in its making the behaviour of Northumbrians and the northern archbishop of York, Wulfstan I, in choosing Scandinavian kings in preference to a southern one would have been key issues. Such critical attention would not be out of place in a text from Worcester, whose bishop from 971 also held the York archbishopric. ‘Would’, ‘would’, ‘would’: all of this demands caveat upon caveat. The Worcester Chronicle remains the most elusive of the lost tenth-century texts, its existence let alone its reconstruction the most debatable.41 In the face of such uncertainty, any attempt to contextualize the Worcester Chronicle in specific tenth-century circumstances is futile: but to consider the significance of its ecclesiastical home in political geography is not. The Worcester Chronicle belongs north of the Thames, in south-west Mercia. Worcester gives it an ecclesiastical home which was politically important both throughout the tenth century and in the making of England. Beginning with the role of Bishop Wærferth at King Alfred’s court and extending through Cenwald as a trusted figure at that of King Æthelstan, Worcester was a bishopric of recurring significance in a kingdom where the negotiation of West Saxon/Mercian political relations was central. In the mid tenth century its bishops, along with those of Canterbury, York (when present), Winchester, and London, were often recorded near the top of charter witness lists, lists which record the courts of southern English kings and the perception of importance there.42 A Worcester Chronicle would thus be linked to bishops who were prominent at court, and increasingly involved in the northward extension of southern royal power. It would join the Northern Recension, if not BC (and /BC), as vernacular chronicles connected to such bishops. There were points (the eulogy of Edgar in annal 959, perhaps also in the annals for the mid 970s) where its content and that of the Northern Recension could be in dialogue. The three lost chronicles of the tenth century would all be associated with such bishops. It is dangerous to overemphasize that. There have been huge losses of manuscripts from early England. We can speak only of those chronicles which survive, or whose existence we can deduce from later texts. It is, however, 41  David Woodman’s forthcoming completion of the Oxford Medieval Texts edition of John of Worcester will place it on a firmer footing. 42  On witness lists and their utility in charting political developments see especially S. Keynes, The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘the Unready’, 978–1016: A Study in their Use as Historical Evidence (Cambridge, 1980).

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The Lost Worcester Chronicle  147 remarkable that those later texts, from as early as the twelfth century, give no clue to any major new vernacular chronicle developments from south of the Thames. All three lost chronicles could be seen, in part or in whole, as responses to a political context in which the extension of southern royal power northwards was central. Response to that broad context came especially from those most closely engaged in it. The pluralist bishops of Worcester and York and also Dorchester and York were critical players in that politics, linked at some points by kinship to Canterbury’s archbishops. The Fenland monasteries of Ramsey, if not Peterborough, also come into the picture. Ramsey abbey, connected to Worcester via its founder, Bishop/ Archbishop Oswald, was the home of Byrhtferth’s Miscellany, which included the York Annals and Northumbrian regnal list. The same Ramsey monk was author of the Vita Oswaldi, celebrating both Oswald and Archbishop Oda. Ramsey would provide a bishop of Dorchester c.1007; Eadnoth was abbot of Ramsey before his promotion to that bishopric.43 Oswald himself was succeeded at York and Worcester by Ealdwulf, abbot of Peterborough, Ramsey’s Fenland neighbour. Links among the bishoprics and religious houses in England north of the Thames and Trent complicate any firm allocation of the making of some of these texts. They are instructive in themselves. They knit together bishops and religious houses, Dorchester, Worcester, and York with Ramsey and Peterborough, in a matrix of ecclesiastical connections. They played their own part in pulling together England north of the Thames under the control of southern kings, and in producing historical texts, including vernacular chronicles, which spoke to those efforts. Their continuing role in in the intertwined story of vernacular chronicles and the politics of a southern court in the eleventh century will come as no surprise. The lost chronicles help fill the apparent mid-tenth-century gap in the ver­ nacu­lar chronicling story. They answered some questions, but posed others. What was the link between the lost source of John and the mid-eleventh-century Chronicle C for annals 978–983? What are we to make of the apparent link among all surviving chronicles—and this lost one behind John—for the 970s annals? Is it mere coincidence that a late-tenth-century ealdorman, Æthelweard, produced a Latin translation of a vernacular chronicle c. ad 1000, which was intended for and addressed to a descendant of that very Ottonian marriage that so interested John’s source? Is it coincidence, too, that annals common to John and Chronicle C, and those in all chronicles for the 970s, begin to speak of ealdormen and of other lay leaders; and that John’s source continues that into the 980s and early 990s? Ealdormen and other lay leaders are major players in the story as told by 43  C.  Hart, ‘Eadnoth I of Ramsey and Dorchester’, in C.  Hart, The Danelaw (London and Rio Grande, OH, 1992), pp. 613–23 (first published in Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, 56–7 (1964), pp. 61–7).

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148  After Alfred the retrospective annals of Æthelred’s reign. They were frequently the object of critical comment, setting a pattern which mid-eleventh-century chronicles would continue. These questions require consideration of the wider vernacular chronicling picture at the turn of the first millennium. Much work was done on vernacular chronicles around that date, work which continued to provide evidence for both divergence and interconnection. The role of bishops becomes clearer now. Surviving chronicle manuscripts provide welcome first-hand evidence for some developments. The navigation of the uncharted seas of reconstruction give way to—somewhat—firmer ground.

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8

Vernacular Chronicles c.1000 The decades either side of the year 1000 saw the renewal of Scandinavian attacks on England resulting in its conquest by the Danish kings, Swegn and Cnut, in 1013–1016. They witnessed the intellectual and political fruition of the monastic and religious developments of the mid and later tenth century, somewhat misleadingly lumped together as ‘The Monastic, or Benedictine, Reform’.1 In most editions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle(s), the decades are dominated by increasingly detailed and emotive annals. They cover the reign of King Æthelred II and the early years of the Danish conqueror Cnut. These annals, though striking, do not give a representative picture of activity across the vernacular chronicles around this date. In these decades, two of the surviving chronicles were produced, B and G, and work was done on Chronicle A. The Lost Worcester Chronicle, or at least a vernacular annalistic source or sources used by both Byrhtferth and John of Worcester, acquired new annals now. The Northern Recension was either made now, or, more likely, continued with annals retrospectively covering the years 959 to 981/982. Wulfstan II played some part here, a man whose long episcopal career took him from London (996–1002) to Worcester (1002–1016) and the arch­ bishop­ric of York (1002–1023). His hand is clear, too, in the evolution of Chronicle D at this date. Byrhtferth of Ramsey may have translated annals from a vernacular chronicle into Latin about now. A layman, Ealdorman Æthelweard, translated and adapted a whole one. The detailed, dramatic annals of Æthelred’s reign and its aftermath have their place, but they cannot be allowed to engross the picture of vernacular chronicles and chronicling c. AD 1000. That picture is far more diverse. It points strongly to the ecclesiastical, specifically episcopal, home of vernacular chronicling at this date.

Chronicle A We left Chronicle A in the mid tenth century, with the work of its third scribe. S/he added the annals, and blank annals, numbered 924 to 951/955, retrospectively, no earlier than 946 x 956. From the mid tenth century to the early eleventh, two 1  On the notion of ‘reform’ at this date see J.  Barrow, ‘Developing Definitions of Reform in the Church in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries’, in R.  Balzaretti, J.  Barrow, and P.  Skinner (eds), Italy in Early Medieval Europe: Papers for Chris Wickham (Oxford, 2018), pp. 501–11. After Alfred: Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and Chroniclers, 900–1150. Pauline Stafford, Oxford University Press 2020. © Pauline Stafford. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198859642.001.0001

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150  After Alfred or more scribes worked on this chronicle. Their work involved the addition of new sparse annals to 1001. That work seems to have progressed by fits and starts. Their annals with text are often followed by runs of blank annal numbers, which were then erased or overwritten to add new material. Around the year 1000, a new text was added to the manuscript of A, containing lists of popes and of ­bishops largely south of the Thames (see illustration 4: the lists in Columns 1, 2, and 3 of West Saxon, Sherborne, Wiltun (Ramsbury), and Crediton bishops are part of the original lists added now). From c.930 Chronicle A’s annals had been followed by a copy of the Laws of Kings Ine and Alfred. It is likely that these laws were moved now to follow these lists. Popes and bishops now stood between them and Chronicle A’s annals. The first later-tenth-century scribe is now known as Scribe 4. His/her work covered annals from the death of King Eadwig and the accession of Edgar (A 958), especially annals for 962–964.2 These latter are concerned almost exclusively with ecclesiastical affairs, plus some unusual obits of laymen: Ælfgar, the king’s relative, and the otherwise unknown King Sigferth, buried at Wilton and Wimborne respectively (A 962). The mortality in London, the burning of St Paul’s and the— precisely dated—visit of Athelmod the priest to Rome complete 962. Under A 963 the scribe noted the deaths of the deacon Wulfstan—again dated—and the priest Gyric, and the accession to the see of Winchester of abbot Æthelwold with the precise date and day of his consecration. Under 964 this scribe recorded—alongside an originally blank run of numbers 964–967—King Edgar’s driving out of the priests from the Old and New Minsters at Winchester and from Chertsey and Milton, and their replacement by monks, plus the abbatial appointments to the New Minster, Chertsey, and Milton. These 960s annals in Chronicle A are remarkable for their predominantly cler­ic­al/ecclesiastical subject matter, and in the record of people other than southern kings. In comparison with the earlier-tenth-century annals in Chronicle A, their focus is determinedly West Saxon, though extending occasionally to London. The Mercian shift in the later Edward and Æthelflæd annals, continued and geographically extended in the block added to Chronicle A by Hand 3, has disappeared. Not all the clerics named here have a provably Winchester connection;3 but for the scribe who wrote them, Winchester was a very familiar point of reference. S/he refers to it in 964 as Ceastre. S/he unconsciously assumed their own identification of ‘the Chester’ as obviously ‘Winchester’ would also be that of their audience.4 Chronicle A was given a distinctly ecclesiastical orientation in the second half of the tenth century, and a distinctly localized West Saxon if not Winchester one. It is no coincidence that the first—and only—indications of the use of this Chronicle 2 Bately, Chronicle A, p. xxxvi. 3  As stressed by Dumville, Wessex and England, p. 61 and n. 22. 4  On the Winchester connections of these and other annals, see Bately, Chronicle A, pp. xc–xci.

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Vernacular Chronicles c .1000  151

Illustration 4.  Chronicle A. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 173, fo 55v: lists of bishops added c. AD 1000, with a series of additions made at post-1066 Canterbury. Reproduced by permission of the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

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152  After Alfred for liturgical computational purposes come in this section. The bissextile years, that is leap years, are noted in the margins of 969 (recte 968) and 972.5 Scribe 4’s work is readily identified. It was originally followed by a run of blank annal numbers which stretched from 965 to 1000. There is some debate over how many scribes were involved in writing these.6 They were in turn erased, rewritten, and text added on more than one occasion, with, again, some differences of opinion about the number of scribes involved and their precise activity.7 However, the bulk, if not all, of the annals with text numbered between 965 and 1001 were written by Scribe 5.8 Critically, there is agreement that the two poems, under 973 and 975, were added at the same time by the same scribe, who probably also wrote the now erased annal for 971, which recorded the death of the ætheling Edmund, King Edgar’s son.9 The annals for 994 and 1001 seem to have been added at a later stage, and together. The erasing of numbers, addition of text, renumbering and overspilling into the margin in places points to a complex writing and revisiting of these years, and to spasmodic work. There is general agreement that all were added at different times but c. AD 1000, thus, for the most part, after the events they describe. The annals Scribe 5 entered continued the coverage of Winchester episcopal succession, but also returned to more ‘political’ events. Her/his work began with the death of the ætheling Edmund under 971. This is found also in Chronicle B and the lost BC, and in the annals common to D and E. A’s scribe added the detail that ‘his body lies at Romsey’ (in Wessex). The annal was later erased, though it can still be partly read in the manuscript. It was still in A when G copied it in the first decade of the eleventh century. The poems on Edgar’s consecration and death (973 and 975), also found in B and BC, were both the work of this scribe, as was notice of the ‘slaying’ of King Edward and the accession of Æthelred ætheling, his brother, under 978. S/he wrote the annal briefly recording the death of Ealdorman Ælfhere (of Mercia) (983), plus a longer annal (984) on the death of Bishop Æthelwold (of Winchester), se wellwillenda (‘the benevolent’), and the accession of his successor bishop Ælfheah, ‘whose other name was Godwine’, here with a precise date and place ‘in Winchester’. This annal, like that for 994 recording the 5  Cf. Bately, Chronicle A, p. 76 and notes to 969 and 972. Bissextile marking is common in Chronicle F and parts of C; on the latter see chapters 9 and 10. 6  Compare e.g. Dumville, Wessex and England, p. 56 and Bately, Chronicle A, pp. xxxvi–xxxvii. 7  Cf. Dumville, Wessex and England, pp. 56–61; Bately, Chronicle A, pp. xxxvii–xxxviii; and for the now erased 971 annal on the death of Ætheling Edmund see Lutz, Chronicle G, p. 229. 8  Thus Bately, Chronicle A. 9  Disagreement especially surrounds the latter, not helped by the fact that it has been erased and is difficult to read. Dumville. Wessex and England, p. 56 tentatively suggested a different hand here, though at p. 61 he notes that it is ‘perfectly possible’ that the annal was the work of Scribe 5. Lutz, Chronicle G, p. 229 is of this opinion. It is difficult to discern Janet Bately’s judgment, Chronicle A, p. xxxvii and n. 106. Dumville also argues for a complex development of revisiting and backfilling, with 973, 975, 978, and 983 entered at the same time, the end of 993, 994, and 1001 entered separately and with some backfilling.

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Vernacular Chronicles c .1000  153 death of Archbishop Sigeric and the accession of Ælfric ‘bishop of Wiltonshire’, crosses a number of annal numbers, which the scribe did not bother to erase. A longer annal was entered under 993. It covers the battle at Maldon against Scandinavian attackers and Ealdorman Byrhtnoth, the English leader at that battle. Chronicles C, D, and E place this under 991.10 Finally, a relatively long annal under 1001 covers a Scandinavian attack on Wessex, giving considerable detail of the deaths of local people and a flattering account of the local defence. It is the longest annal in A, poems apart, since those covering Edward’s military activities at the beginning of the tenth century. Its account of the events of this year, the attack on Hampshire and Devon and the response, differs markedly from the highly tendentious retrospective one in the Æthelred annals now found in C, D, and E.11 CDE’s generalized critique and judgement ‘and ever after it was worse than before . . . they [i.e. the Danes/ Scandinavians] went about as they wished and nothing withstood them’ is entirely absent. Instead Chronicle A has details of the encounters, names of the dead (including a bishop’s thegn and bishop’s son), and the treachery of Pallig, who broke his oaths to the king, in spite of the land, gold, and silver he had been given. The composer of this annal was certainly emotionally engaged: the telltale first person slips into the account ‘and they burnt the settlement (ham) æt Peonho and æt Glistune and many other good settlements whose names we do not know’ (þe we genemnan na cunnan). But her/his perspective is not that of the doom-laden Æthelred annalist. The annal ends with a reference to the making of peace soon after. Both Bately and Dumville would see this as an addition, as was the reference to peacemaking in the 993 annal. If it is an addition, it had been made before G copied A, soon after 1001. This is the last annal in the hand of Scribe 5, and the last which was in Chronicle A when Chronicle G’s maker copied it. Before the insertion of annal 1001, A had had a run of blank annal numbers through to 1006. They were erased after annal 1001 was added, as witness the indenting of the first five lines of the annal to accommodate them. The next annal numbers and the record of the Canterbury succession involving Ælfheah (bishop of Winchester) are in an early-twelfth-century

10  See J.  Bately, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, in D.  Scragg (ed.), The Battle of Maldon, AD 991 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 37–50, but also now Levi Roach, Æthelred the Unready (2016), pp. 119–22. The end of the annal in A refers to the making of peace and the king’s sponsorship of Olaf in baptism, events which C and D record under the year 994. It is important to realize that the end of the annal has been added later, whether by a subsequent scribe or the main scribe: see Bately, Chronicle A, p. 79 and notes. The end of the annal sign originally came before this, but was superseded by the addition, which spills into the margin. There were, in fact, two additions—the second in a later hand, Bately’s 7a (not in G) concerning Siric, archbishop of Canterbury. Was this a response to someone later reading the Æthelred annals, where Sigeric is the first to suggest payment of geld in 991? Siric is here made responsible for making peace. This would be an understandable Canterbury addition. 11  S. Keynes, ‘The Declining Reputation of King Æthelred the Unready’, in D. Hill (ed.), Ethelred the Unready, BAR, British Ser., 59 (Oxford, 1978), pp. 227–53.

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154  After Alfred Canterbury hand. With the possible exception of a few minor additions, nothing more would be written in Chronicle A until after 1066, at Canterbury.12 The insertion of annals does not exhaust the activity on Chronicle A c. AD 1000. Lists of popes and bishops were also added now. Chronicle A is now followed in the manuscript by the Laws of Alfred and Ine (folios 33r–52v) and by a series of lists: of popes, of popes and archbishops of Canterbury to whom the pallium (a symbol of archiepiscopal office) had been sent, and of archbishops and bishops of English sees (folios 53r–55rv). The pallia list is a late post-1066 add­ ition which belongs to Chronicle A’s time at Canterbury (see chapter  13). The episcopal lists were also augmented at a late date at Canterbury with lists for the Northern sees (see illustration 4). The original episcopal lists, added to A c. AD 1000, covered Wessex plus Canterbury, Rochester, and the East Saxons. Only the bishops of the ‘East Saxons’ (London) are included north of the river Thames.13 The Laws of Alfred and Ine and the lists of archbishops and (largely West Saxon) bishops were already associated with Chronicle A by c. AD 1000. They were not, however, added at the same time; nor were they both in the positions they now occupy in the manuscript. The Laws of Alfred and Ine were the first addition made to Chronicle A after the completion of the Edward annals, perhaps in the 930s (see chapters 4 and 5). As the original quire signatures show, they originally followed A’s annal numbered 920, but in a new quire. They were in this position before the addition of the annals numbered 924–955/956. The addition of a new quire which contains the annals from 924 onwards changed their original position, but not their close association with this chronicle. The episcopal lists were added later. They originally date from the 980s: Dunstan (d. 988) is given as the last archbishop of Canterbury, and other episcopal dates are consistent with an updating c. 985 x 986. Sigeric, for example is at Ramsbury (here Wiltun). The papal list originally went no further than Pope Damasus (folio 53r). These lists are all in a single hand of the late tenth century. Like the Laws, they are in a separate quire, which now follows the Laws.14 They could not have been added to Chronicle A before the late 980s, the earliest date for their completion. But they were there by the time Chronicle G was copied in the first decade or so of the eleventh century. Their addition thus belongs with the flurry of work on Chronicle A around AD 1000. If their placing in Chronicle G is indicative, in c.

12  See Bately, Chronicle A, pp. xxxix–xlii. The possible exceptions are annotations expanding the annal numbers under 200 and 300, which may be second quarter of the eleventh century: ibid, p. xlii. 13 On the lists and their West Saxon nature see S.  Keynes, ‘Between Bede and the Chronicle: London, BL, Cotton Vespasian B. vi, fols. 104–9’, in K. O’Brien O’Keeffe and A. Orchard (eds), Latin Learning and English Lore, i (Toronto, 2005), pp. 47–67, at pp. 61–2. 14  On all this see Ker, Catalogue, pp. 57–9; Bately, Chronicle A, pp. xlii–xliii and cf. p. xvi for quires.

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Vernacular Chronicles c .1000  155 AD 1000 these papal and episcopal lists followed immediately after the chronicle itself and were in turn followed by the Laws.15 We cannot, however, discount G’s own rearrangement. The updating of the lists by the G scribe points to an interest in them going beyond a mere decision to copy; rearrangement might be consistent with that. At a date before the making of G, the lists of popes, bishops, and archbishops had joined the Laws as texts following Chronicle A. The Laws were already judged as closely connected to the chronicle text by scribes who extended or copied it. The scribes who added extra annals in the mid tenth century reattached the laws after their extension. By the early eleventh century, both the Laws and the lists were seen in this way by the scribe who produced Chronicle G as a copy of Chronicle A. He copied the Laws and lists along with it, and updated the lists to some degree at the same time. Their order in his copy may reflect their relative positions in Chronicle A at this date. In the decades leading up to the year 1000, Chronicle A was brought up to date and worked on. Those who did this updating had only a limited interest in strictly contemporary chronicling, though some were clearly interested in the chronicle itself and its manuscript. The annals and lists show an episcopal interest, but not to the exclusion of all else. A group of annals were added which celebrated Edgar and his consecration in 973 and which lamented the state of affairs after his death in 975. There was some concern with the Scandinavian attacks which were so central to the whole of the Æthelred annalist’s account (chapter 9). They were not an engrossing interest, as they would be to this later writer, but the inclusion of a long annal on the events of 1001 is worth remark. It may argue a defensive reaction to the growing criticism of responses to these attacks. Local leaders were praised. The treachery is that of the foreigner, Pallig, who was a mercenary in the king’s employ. He had taken the king’s gold, yet betrayed him. This West Saxon/ Winchester annalist exculpated his/her own local area. Their analysis may reflect contemporary feeling and argument. The king would order the massacre of men like Pallig, Danish ‘enemies within’, on St Brice’s Day in 1002.

Annals 971–975 Chronicle A’s coverage of King Edgar’s reign is scanty. It blossoms in annals numbered 973 and 975, with two lengthy poems. They cover, respectively, the events at Bath where Edgar was consecrated in 973 and those which followed his death in

15  For the lists, their dating, updating, and placing in the manuscript of G see R. Torkar, Eine altenglische Übersetzung von Alcuins De Virtutibus et Vitiis, Kap 20 (Liebermanns Judex). Untersuchungen und Textausgabe, Texte und Untersuchungen zur englischen Philologie, 7 (Munich, 1981), especially pp. 77–81. There is a tabular résumé of his view of the order of this manuscript at p. 150.

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156  After Alfred 975. These poems and their content link all known chronicles, including the lost chronicle assumed to be John of Worcester’s source. These events are not, however, found in identical form in all chronicles. Even where they are recorded in poetic form, the poems are not all identical. These years raise again the question of links between chronicles and their explanation. Annal 971 should arguably be taken with them. The poems were copied into Chronicle A by Scribe 5, probably a couple of decades after the events they record. They were copied from A into Chronicle G. They are found in a more-or-less identical form in Chronicles B and C. They were thus present in Chronicle BC at the end of the tenth century, as that chronicle is represented by B. They are a celebration of Edgar.16 He appears as a hero, not in battle but rather in relation to the monastic movement, and by implication also as a maintainer of internal peace. These poems have been plausibly identified as products of the ‘reform’ movement.17 They belong in that intellectual environment. They are not, however, celebrations of Edgar tout court. They record, his consecration (973), but also the death of Bishop Cyneweard, attacks on God’s servants in Mercia, the exile of ealdorman Oslac, and the appearance of a comet and a famine (975). Literary scholars, recognizing this, have characterized at least the second half of annal 975 as a ‘verse chronicle’.18 The two poems combine all this in a wider retrospect on Edgar, not necessarily strictly contemporary. There is some debate about whether they were created specifically for a vernacular chron­ icle context, or simply reused there.19 They appear, however, to be based on annals found elsewhere in vernacular chronicles. These same events are found in annalistic form in John of Worcester, and thus arguably in his vernacular annalistic source for these decades. The reaction against the monastic movement, here given a named leader, Ealdorman Ælfhere of the Mercians (princeps Merciorum), the death of Cyneweard, the comet, the famine, the exile of Ealdorman Oslac—all are found in John, spread here over the years 975–976. The attacks on monasteries are elaborated in John’s chronicle, though not in poetic form. John’s source is here linked, again, to Byrhtferth,

16 Mercedes Salvador-Bello calls them ‘panegyric’: ‘The Edgar Panegyrics in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, in D. Scragg (ed.), Edgar, King of the English (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 252–72. 17  Salvador-Bello, p. 252: ‘created to propagandize reformist ideals’; cf. M.  Townend, ‘Pre-Cnut Praise-Poetry in Viking Age England’, Review of English Studies, NS, 51, no. 203 (2000), pp. 249–70 at p. 255—panegyric, not epic or narrative, with no details of battles. 18 Thus Townend, ‘Pre-Cnut Praise-Poetry’, p. 253, following A.  Campbell, and compare Janet Bately’s speculation that 973 and 975 in e.g. C were the work of an author ‘attempting to produce a continuous verse narrative in annal form’: see her 1996 review of P. W. Conner (ed.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 10: The Abingdon Chronicle, A.D. 956–1066 (MS. C, with Reference to Bede) in The Medieval Review, https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/tmr/article/view/14426. 19  Much has turned here on whether the initial Her, a typical annal opening, is essential to the scansion of the first line of the poems. See Townend, p. 252 and Salvador-Bello, p. 256. Even if the her is integral to the scansion, the first line of an independent poem could have been adapted to fit the new annalistic context.

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Vernacular Chronicles c .1000  157 whether that was via the Life of Oswald, or the common source.20 John’s account shares the judgement of the poem in AG and BC. Oslac was magnificus dux and was ‘unjustly’ exiled; in the poems he was a heroic figure, driven out, deprived of his home.21 John, however, differs from AG and BC in his presentation of the king himself. The panegyric here begins with his military prowess, the fleet which kept his enemies fearful. In 973, John’s record of the consecration at Bath is followed immediately by an account of Edgar’s sailing with a fleet to Chester, where eight named kings swore oaths to him. The AG/BC poem in annal 973 has none of this, giving details rather of the great horde of priests and monks who attended the consecration, and elaborating extensively on Edgar’s age and the date in relation to the millennium. Chronicle D and E follow the same events, but agree with John rather than with the AG/BC poems in their coverage. As in John, the Bath consecration of 973 is in annal not poetic form in D and E, and linked immediately to the Chester meeting. John has the probably more correct eight kings to their six (see chapter 7). Like AG and BC, D and E have 975 in poetic form. In detail this is again linked to John’s source, naming Ealdorman Ælfhere. It is even more overtly judgemental than AG and BC’s poem. The death of Edgar—friend of the West Saxons, protector of Mercians—whose fame had brought other kings to bow to him, so that no fleet troubled Angelcynn while he lived, was followed by the accession of his son, Edward, and by the comet’s appearance, the great hunger (John dates this 976), and much agitation. God’s enemies, led by Ælfhere (ealdorman of the Mercians), broke his law. There were attacks on monasteries and monks were driven out. Oslac, the mæra eorl (‘celebrated earl’) was exiled from Angelcynn. There is no reference to the death of Bishop Cyneweard. DE’s poem enhances the picture of attacks on ecclesiastics and on God’s law. This was even further enhanced in Chronicle D alone: 7 wydewan bestryptan oft 7 gelome 7 fela unrihta 7 yfelra unlage arysan up siððan 7 aa æfter þam hit yfelode swiðe (‘and widows were robbed very often and afterwards many wrongs and evil injustices rose up and ever after it grew much worse’). This addition is in the unmistakable style of Archbishop Wulfstan II. ‘And ever after it grew much worse’ underlines the retrospective nature of this addition. The whole poem, with its emphasis on the fact that Edgar kept England untroubled by fleets, is already a nostalgic view from the distance of Æthelred’s reign and the mounting problem of Scandinavian attacks. The same choice of events to record, the same judgements on Oslac and the justice of his exile: behind all these annals and poems surely lies a common set of annals, elaborated in different ways. The selection of facts and their juxtaposition 20 Cf. John of Worcester, ii, p. 426, s.a. 975 and Lapidge, Vita Oswaldi, pp. 120–8. 21  The poet uses significant heroic vocabulary here: deormod hæleð . . . gamolfeax hæleð; he was wis and wordsnotor. There is no doubt of the poet’s stance.

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158  After Alfred already crafted a story: comet, famine, the—always unjust—exile of an—always praiseworthy—ealdorman. This was no neutral record of simple events even in its original form. It was one already retrospective, already presaging disaster. In all versions, the disaster included attacks on monks and religious houses; in John and quite explicitly in DE also seaborne attacks, against which Edgar’s prowess was now seen as having protected. That picture was further heightened in the additions found in Chronicle D alone. This has all the appearance of an evolving, but always retrospective, tale. There were different perspectives: AG/BC’s poems were more clerical if not monastic; John’s source and DE increasingly emphasized military prowess and the consequences of its removal. The attacks on God’s servants are to the fore in all: underlining, perhaps, the ecclesiastical home of all these assessments, also indicating that the initial analysis was earlier than the severe escalation of attacks in the last decade of Æthelred’s reign. John’s source, as we saw, was less negative on events in 988 and 991 than the later account; Chronicle A’s 1001 annal was already aware of arguments about the causes of attack, but still praising local resistance. The writer of the addition to Chronicle D was fully aware that it grew worse and worse; DE’s 975 poem already painted the most negative picture. There may be a chrono­ logic­al sequence in this shifting analysis. We are surely witnessing a writing and rewriting of the end of Edgar’s reign, and of that king himself, perhaps increasingly retrospective.

Historiography and Politics c. AD 1000 These annals are closely linked, probably in a ‘court’ context, responding to events. Including the 971 annal within this group illuminates the connected argument. There are two, if not three, different revisitings of the same core events, sep­ar­ at­ing the development of AG/BC and DE at this point. Neither is identical with that now found in John of Worcester, though DE is closest. All are linked to an ultimate common source flagged also, perhaps, in the inclusion in all chronicles of the annal for 971. This is the brief record of the death of the Ætheling Edmund (DE 970, BC 972, AG and John 971 with the addition of the place of burial, Romsey). This is one of the far from numerous annals for the tenth century which is found in all surviving vernacular chronicles. The record of the death of a royal son is uncommon in itself, and stands out in the coverage of Edgar’s reign, which is sparse in all surviving chronicles. Why is it here? Narratively, it could be linked to the events of 975 and after. On the death of Edgar, there were moves against some monastic houses. There was also a dispute over the succession between Edgar’s oldest son, Edward, and Æthelred, son of Edgar and his second if not third—certainly last—wife Ælfthryth. Edward was eventually crowned, but was soon murdered and Æthelred succeeded. Ælfthryth

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Vernacular Chronicles c .1000  159 had outlived King Edgar, and was involved in this succession dispute, from which her surviving son, Æthelred II, emerged as king.22 Edmund was the first son of Edgar with Ælfthryth. His birth may have opened fissures in the royal family. The birth if not the death of Edmund could, retrospectively, be seen as connected to the struggle for the succession after 975 and to the ‘stirrings’ which followed Edgar’s death.23 It would thus be narratively linked to a group of annals dealing with those ‘stirrings’ and with assessments of Edgar in that context. How did a group of annals from 971 to 975 find their way, in different form, into all the surviving chronicles? Official circulation? Not in the form they are now, since they differ between AG/BC and DE and John. Probably not in their original form, either; from the outset the selection of events elaborated a critique of the later 970s and of political leadership which sits oddly with any official account. That critique was informed, engaged, but stood at a critical distance. The court, and especially (some of) its clerical members, provides an answer to the conundrum. Exchange within that physical and intellectual environment would explain the knowledge, the engagement, and the critique. The telling and retelling may mark different contemporary emphases and arguments within the court, emphases and arguments which may have developed over time. Such a ‘court’ would also provide a home for the production of a chronicle like B. Chronicle B ended by copying a genealogical kinglist which had been updated to the reign of Edward, son of Edgar. Edward’s accession is given, but not his death. The updating of that list belongs to the reign of Edward, his father Edgar’s ill-fated successor. It was suggested in chapter  5 that Chronicle B may have been made with an eye to the events after 975, perhaps to Dorchester bishops’ claims to continuing significance. Its making, which included this kinglist as the cul­min­ation of the story, evinces an interest in legitimacy; that of a king, Edward, whose reign, if not legitimacy, was challenged. The patron and/or makers of Chronicle B had an eye to this. Chronicle B is, as a manuscript, probably closest in date to the events following 975. The regnal list ending in Edward may point to a date during Edward’s reign itself. The deliberate inclusion of that list as a culmination of the chronicle oriented the chronicle’s legitimating story with Edward as its goal. Chronicle B arguably represents a different historiographical response to events after Edgar’s death, less retrospective, more closely contemporary, involved in the events; the making of a vernacular chronicle here an intervention in them, by comparison with slightly later comment from a critical distance.

22  On the politics of the royal family under Edgar see P. Stafford, Unification and Conquest (London, 1989), pp. 52–3 and P. Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith (Oxford, 1997), pp. 84 and 91–2. 23  There is no mention of the succession dispute in any of the vernacular chronicles, which is no surprise. But it was a live political issue, and was being linked to arguments about God’s punishment at a fairly early stage of Æthelred II’s reign. See S. Keynes, ‘The Cult of Edward the Martyr during the Reign of King Æthelred the Unready’, in Nelson, Reynolds, and Johns (eds), Gender and Historiography (2012), pp. 115–25.

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160  After Alfred The southern royal court around the year 1000 was one where histories were being made and remade. Among its members was an ealdorman, Æthelweard, who produced a translation into Latin of a vernacular chronicle. That was destined for an Ottonian ‘cousin’, the abbess of Essen; both she and Æthelweard claimed descent from the West Saxon royal line. In the abbess’s case descent was through the marriage of Eadgyth, daughter of Edward the Elder, and Otto I—that same marriage which had so interested John of Worcester or his late-tenth-century source. Was that Ottonian cousin known to Æthelweard via the same external, ‘foreign’ exchanges and connections of Edgar which John’s source celebrated? Were those the exchanges and connections which Chronicles D and E would— later?—pinpoint as Edgar’s one failing, his love of foreigners; known to, but now commented on and redefined by those who had been part of his court? Chronicle A’s annals for 971–975 are part of this nexus, a nexus that articulated a court linked to the Ottonian world, increasingly concerned with Scandinavian attacks, some of whose members were steeped in monastic learning, some of whom were framing contemporary argument in terms of both recent and longerterm history. The poems found in Chronicle A, G via A, and also BC are one response; that now found in chronicles D and E diverged.

Chronicles D, E, the Northern Recension, and Archbishop Wulfstan II The 975 poetic annal in D and E is found in the group of annals numbered 959 to 982 which these two chronicles share. That group is itself part of the common developments behind Chronicles D and E, whether as the original Northern Recension or its continuation. Wulfstan II, bishop of Worcester (1002–1016) and archbishop of York (1002–1023) , has been linked to their writing, in particular to the poetic or rhythmical prose annals they contain, including to the addition to annal 975 found in chronicle D alone. Wulfstan is involved in the development of vernacular chronicles around the turn of the millennium. The questions are how, and to what extent? These annals return to the vexed problem of the end of the Northern Recension. They point to an evolving, living chronicle as their source. They give the first firm indication that this story is linked, at some stage at least, to archbishops of York. The annals for 959 to 982 are largely identical in D and E.24 They include three long poetic annals,25 but are otherwise sparse and laconic. The poetic annals

24  D has Edgar’s marriage to Ælfthryth under 965. It was a late addition to Chronicle F. The long annal in E under 963 is a much later Peterborough addition, concerned with Peterborough history. 25  Dorothy Whitelock labels them ‘alliterative prose’ and ‘rhythmical with some assonance and rhyme’ in EHD, i, p. 225 n. 4, and p. 228 n. 2.

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Vernacular Chronicles c .1000  161 apart, they consist of a notice of the death of King Eadwig and the accession of Edgar (959); the harrying by Thored Gunner’s son of Westmorland and the accession of Oslac to an ealdormanry (966); Edgar’s harrying of Thanet (969); the death of the ætheling Edmund (970); the consecration of Edgar and his visit to Chester, when six kings came and took oaths of loyalty to him (972); the accident at Calne during a meeting of the royal assembly (yldestan Angelcynnes witan) where the ‘holy’ Dunstan alone was saved from falling (978); the murder and burial of King Edward (979); the translation of this ‘holy king’s’ body to Shaftesbury by Ealdorman Ælfhere (980); and the ‘first’ arrival of ships which harried Southampton (981). In both D and E a blank annal 982 follows, before the—increasingly detailed—coverage of Æthelred’s reign begins, in annals which D and E share with C. In both chronicles, these sparse annals from 959 to 982 are bulked out by three annals in poetic form, as noted above. The trio begins with the annal for 959, at Edgar’s accession, with a long poem assessing his reign, largely though not entirely positively. The poem is clearly a retrospective on a reign completed. Under 975 both D and E have a poem again assessing Edgar at his death as a king during whose reign no fleet dared attack Angelcynn and retailing the sorry events which followed his demise, specifying the attacks on churches and the expulsion of Ealdorman Oslac. The third poetic annal is under 979, where the initial note of the murder of King Edward (who had succeeded Edgar) is amplified as the worst deed since Angelcynn had arrived in Britain, and with clear reference to his sanctity: ‘those who would not bow to his living body now bend the knee to his dead bones’. As they are now found in both Chronicles D and E, this group of annals is clearly retrospective. 981 is the ‘first’ arrival of ships; 959 is an assessment of a reign now ended; the 975 poem, and perhaps too the 972 account of the consecration and journey to Chester, which is a reminder that under Edgar fleets carefully shunned the shores of England, speak from a later perspective. References to the sanctity of King Edward (979, 980), possibly also the reference to Archbishop Dunstan as ‘the holy’ (978), are not strictly contemporary.26 As we now have them, this group of annals was written, or rewritten, no earlier than the late 980s, and probably no earlier than the 990s. Their overall orientation is southern facing, not northern based. The group includes two bald annals dealing with northern events: 966, detailing the appointment of Ealdorman Oslac and the harrying of Westmorland by Thored Gunner’s son and 969, King Edgar’s harrying of Thanet. The latter is not immediately identifiable as ‘Northern’ in content. But a contemporary or near contemporary 26  The write-up of years 979–980 is distinctly hagiographical, including for example the translation of Edward’s body. The cult of Edward developed quickly, but this presentation of events, if not this choice of events to present, is unlikely to be strictly contemporary. Dunstan was not only ‘holy’, but by the time the 978 annal was written Calne was remembered as the location of his miraculous survival. He died in 988. Retrospect seems to be shaping both presentation and choice of record here.

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162  After Alfred northern audience would have filled in the backstory, of York merchants attacked in Thanet.27 There may be northern annals behind both, and York archiepiscopal interest is evident in them; the choice of the sparse northern events recorded points to a York connection.28 These two annals might be seen as laconic York/ Northumbrian annals filled out with the later, extensive, more southern-oriented poems. But these annals, too, face south, or at best straddle the Humber’s political divide. A southern king was presented chastising southern assailants of York merchants. Oslac if not Thored have ‘southern’ connections. Oslac was almost certainly the first southern-appointed ealdorman in the North, with family origins in the Fenlands.29 He was certainly the first ealdorman north of the Humber to appear regularly at southern courts, and Edgar made him responsible for the implementation of his lawcode, IV Edgar, in the North. After 979, a man named Thored begins to appear in southern charters. By the 990s a man of that name was leading a fleet along with other southern leaders, and a ‘Thored’ was father of King Æthelred’s first wife.30 The likelihood that these are all references to the same man, and the one mentioned in Chronicles D and E is strong. Whether as part of the original Northern Recension or of a continuation of it, these two annals underline the ambiguous Northernness of that text. The poetic or alliterative prose annals in this group have long been attributed to Archbishop Wulfstan II.31 Although that can be questioned, even sceptical 27  Roger of Wendover has that background story: York merchants had been attacked and robbed in Thanet, hence Edgar’s actions. Roger, though a thirteenth-century St Albans chronicler, apparently had access to some lost Northern material: see EHD, i, pp. 128 and 281 and D. Rollason et al. (eds), Sources for York History, p. 32. 28  All three men mentioned, Thored, Oslac, and Gunner, feature in the rare surviving York documents: Woodman, Charters of Northern Houses, no. 4 is a grant of Sherburn to Oslac in 963, a charter surviving at York minster; Woodman, Charters of Northern Houses, no. 5 is a grant of Newbald to Gunner in 963, again at York; Thored is probably mentioned in Archbishop Oswald’s memorandum on York estates (here unfortunately partly illegible), printed in Woodman, Charters of Northern Houses, no. 6 and EHD, i, p. 565. Sherburn was one of the most significant archiepiscopal estates: see the survey entered in 1020 x 1023 on fo 156v into the York Gospels, a personal book belonging to Archbishop Wulfstan, and S.  Keynes, ‘The Additions in Old English’, in N.  Barker (ed.), The York Gospels, Roxburghe Club (London, 1986), pp. 81–99 at pp. 86–9. The Oswald memorandum covers the recent history of York’s estates, including Newbald, purchased by Archbishop Oscytel and then lost to the church; the significant date in the memorandum is the ‘coming in’ of Thored, after which all these were lost. This document was annotated in Archbishop Wulfstan’s own hand. Thored was a benefactor of St Cuthbert’s, Durham: see Woodman, Charters of Northern Houses, no. 18, pp. 352–3, a record entered at the end of the tenth century in the Durham Liber Vitae. Some of the lands given by Thored to St Cuthbert were very close to York such as Crayke and Smeaton. It is surely more than just coincidence that the two men (three with Gunner) mentioned in DE annals are also those who are mentioned in York charters and documents dating from the later tenth century. 29  See D. Whitelock, ‘Dealings of the Kings of England with the Northumbrians in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries’, in P. Clemoes (ed.), The Anglo-Saxons: Studies presented to Bruce Dickins (London, 1959), pp. 70–88 at pp. 78–9 and Liber Eliensis, II, cap. 32 (p. 106). 30  For Oslac, see IV Edgar 15, in EHD, i, p. 437; charter witnesses in S. Keynes, Atlas of Attestations. For Thored see also Atlas of Attestations, and for his command of the fleet Chronicles C, D, and E, 992. For Thored as father of the wife of Æthelred seeAelred, Vita S. Edwardi Regis, in Patrologia Latina, 195 (Paris, 1855), col. 741. 31 K.  Jost, ‘Wulfstan und die Angelsächsische Chronik’, Anglia, 47 (1923), pp. 105–23, and cf. Whitelock on the 959 poem, EHD, i, p. 225 n. 4.

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Vernacular Chronicles c .1000  163 analysis allows some involvement on his part.32 They are also linked in some way to the material identified above in AG, BC, and John of Worcester. The special closeness to the latter would be explicable were both here drawing on a lost Worcester chronicle; Wulfstan held that see from 1002–1016.33 But there were complex connections among all the chronicles, which led back to the court. Wulfstan II, archbishop of York, bishop of Worcester, and a major clerical presence at the court of King Æthelred covers every base in the explanation of their genesis. And of their revision; if Wulfstan did not write this group, he annotated it. Chronicle D preserves those annotations. It departs from E in the annal for 975. The material common to D and E deals with the events after King Edgar’s death and in the brief reign of King Edward, including the attacks on monks. In D this is extended to intensify the description of the moves against monks and God’s servants, but D also adds that the perpetrators ‘plundered widows frequently/diligently and many wrongs and evil injustices arose afterwards and ever after that it got very much worse’. The characteristic phrases and concerns of Archbishop Wulfstan are unmistakable.34 The addition touches on a topic, widows and their protection, dear to his heart. It is in his—eminently imitable—style. Wulfstan is known as a compulsive annotator of manuscripts in his possession.35 The chron­icle /D which lies behind Chronicle D was surely in the hands of the archbishop before his death in 1023. More broadly, he had a likely role in the evolution of this entire block of annals.

Chronicle D’s Women, its Mid-Tenth-Century Annals and the Shape of Chronicle /D c. AD 1000 One other annal sets Chronicle D apart from E in this group: the record of the marriage of King Edgar to Ælfthryth, daughter of Ealdorman Ordgar, under 965. That annal is missing from Chronicle E, and, most likely from the continuation to the Northern Recension, which the annals 959–982 appear to be.36 The annal is, 32  S.  M.  Pons-Sanz, ‘A Paw in Every Pie: Wulfstan and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Again’, Leeds Studies in English, NS, 38 (2007), pp. 31–52 raises questions, especially about the 959 poem. L. Niedorf, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People’, English Studies, 97 (2016), pp. 207–25 argues for both the 959 and 975 poems as articulations of his historical views. 33  Wulfstan resigned Worcester in 1016, but kept York until his death. Among the extensive work on Wulfstan, note the papers in Townend (ed.), Wulfstan and for his political role, most recently, L. Roach, Æthelred the Unready (New Haven and London, 2016). 34  Cf. S.  Hollis, ‘ “The Protection of God and the King”: Wulfstan’s Legislation on Widows’, in Townend (ed.), Wulfstan, pp. 443–60 at p. 450 and Whitelock, EHD, i, p. 229 n. 2. 35  N. Ker, ‘The Handwriting of Archbishop Wulfstan’, in P. Clemoes and K. Hughes (eds), England Before the Conquest: Studies in Primary Sources presented to Dorothy Whitelock (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 315–31 and T. A. Heslop, ‘Art and the Man: Archbishop Wulfstan and the York Gospelbook’, in Townend (ed.), Wulfstan, pp. 279–308 at p. 308 for the notion of his ‘active possession’. 36  This annal was in Chronicle F, but the explanation here is F’s connection with Chronicle D in c.1100. See ch. 13.

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164  After Alfred however, in John of Worcester with a different date, 964. It is one of group of annals in Chronicle D unusually concerned with women. These annals may indicate just how widely Archbishop Wulfstan intervened in the vernacular chronicle he had before him, perhaps giving some clue as to the shape of Chronicle D at this point. They are also a reminder of Chronicle D’s complex development, which is now so hard to disentangle. Relatively speaking D has many women, including several in the annals numbered to the mid tenth century.37 They record the capture of Wulfrun at Tamworth under 943; the death of Æthelflæd of Damerham, daughter of Ealdorman Ælfgar, and queen of King Edmund, in 946; the statement that King Eadwig and King Edgar were the sons of Saint Ælfgifu in the annal for 955; the separation of King Eadwig from his wife, another Ælfgifu, by Archbishop Oda, under 958; and the marriage of King Edgar to ‘Ælfyðe’ (recte Ælfthryth), under 965. In each case the names, and additional detail, are in D—including biographical data and, in Ælfgifu’s case, sanctity. Most of these are in John of Worcester, but not all. He lacks Wulfrun and Æthelflæd of Damerham. They are not found in Chronicle  E.  The addition to the annal for 975 on the mistreatment of widows should be included in this group. That reference is peculiar to D. Neither it nor the poetic annal in which it occurs is in John. Widowhood is a status which connects D’s mid-century women, at least by the end of the century. Wulfrun, Æthelflæd, and Ælfthryth were all significant ­widows of the second half of the tenth century. Æthelflæd made a will at this date leaving extensive lands. These included a bequest to Glastonbury of one of its most valuable estates, Damerham, the very place by which she is identified in the 946 annal.38 Wulfrun founded or refounded the community at Wolverhampton in the later tenth century. In some charters of the 990s, her son, Wulfric, a prom­ in­ent counsellor at the court of King Æthelred, and himself a monastic founder of Burton abbey, is identified by a matronymic, ‘Wulfrun’s son’.39 Queen Ælfthryth, Edgar’s widow and King Æthelred’s mother, was an important player in 990s pol­ it­ics. She reappears as a charter witness at this date. The context suggests she was acting as a guardian of the royal children, but also that her landed interests—like theirs—had become a contemporary question.40 The treatment of widows was a live political issue c. AD 1000. It crops up in a group of charters of the 990s, themselves linked to a rethinking of kingship, 37  Discussed in P. Stafford, ‘Women in the D Chronicle: Writing and Rewriting the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles’, in E. Winkler and C. Lewis (eds), Rewriting the Anglo-Saxon Past (forthcoming). 38 On Damerham see L.  Abrams, Anglo-Saxon Glastonbury (Woodbridge, 1996), pp. 104–7. Æthelflæd’s will is dated 962 × 991, probably after 975. Her sister remained a significant widow until c.1000. See Anglo-Saxon Wills, ed. and tr. D. Whitelock (Cambridge, 1930), no. 14 (S 1494). 39  S 878 and S 877. 40  P. Stafford, ‘Political Ideas in Late Tenth-Century England: Charters as Evidence’, in P. Stafford, J. L. Nelson, and J. Martindale (eds), Law, Laity and Solidarities: Essays in Honour of Susan Reynolds (Manchester, 2001), pp. 68–82, especially p. 72.

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Vernacular Chronicles c .1000  165 including its responsibility for widows.41 Similar rethinking was the context for two Saints Lives produced about now, those of Archbishops Dunstan and Oswald. Both include reference to King Eadwig and his wife Ælfgifu, explicitly to their separation in the Vita Oswaldi. That separation is also noted in Chronicle D but in no other surviving vernacular chronicle.42 It is, however, in John of Worcester.43 There is, thus, a thread linking many of these annals in Chronicle D which include women. They have a context c. AD 1000. The tenth-century noble fathers by whom two of these women are identified are unlikely to have been remembered after the early decades of the eleventh century. They reflect concerns with widows current around the millennium, concerns which reflect both the real importance of some great landed widows at this time, but also a rethinking of kingship. Archbishop Wulfstan is a likely candidate for the annotation of the 975 annal in Chronicle D. Was he responsible for the inclusion of all these women in the chronicle /D, which lies at this point behind D? Did he, or those in his circle, write or annotate these annals? Some of these women are found in John of Worcester, some are not—an add­ itional reason to argue that John was not using D, or even /D, the earlier form of D, which Wulfstan II had. St Ælfgifu, Queen Ælfthryth, and the separation of King Eadwig and (another) Ælfgifu are all in John as well as in D. John’s interest in these royal women points up his lack of Edmund’s queen, found in D. Eadwig and Ælfgifu and their forcible separation were clearly a cause célèbre by the 990s, as the B Life of Dunstan shows. No surprise, then, to find it in John, who knew that Life.44 However, the details of the separation in John are not from the B Life of Dunstan, but bring together the two different reasons given respectively in Byrhtferth’s Life of Oswald and D: Eadwig loved her too passionately, and they were too closely related.45 Common ground between Byrhtferth and John of Worcester has been interpreted as evidence of the content of the lost Worcester chronicle. Is that chronicle also behind D here? The marriage of Edgar and Ælfthryth was in John and D. If a common source lies behind them, the different date they assign to this marriage suggests they took from that source in­de­pend­ent­ly. Was the lost Worcester chronicle the source of many of D’s women? And thus also for other common ground they share, for example the treatment of Archbishop Wulfstan I’s ‘treachery’. One woman, however, is found in the annal on the death of King Edmund which both John and D share. D alone mentions the woman, the queen, Æthelflæd.

41  Stafford, ‘Political Ideas in Late Tenth-Century England’. 42 Lapidge, Vita Oswaldi, p. 12. B’s Vita Dunstani refers to Eadwig’s lechery, but does not name the women or admit that one was Eadwig’s wife: The Early Lives of St Dunstan, ed. and tr. M. Winterbottom and M. Lapidge (Oxford, 2011), pp. 66–70. 43  John of Worcester, ii, p. 408, s.a. 958. 44  John of Worcester, ii, pp. 408–9 and notes. 45  Verbal parallels with the Vita Oswaldi are clear. Cf. John of Worcester, ii, p. 408 and Lapidge, Vita Oswaldi, p. 12: sub propria uxore adamavit, John: sub uxore propria alteram adamavit, Vita.

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166  After Alfred If she was in a source common to D and John, this is an odd omission on John’s part. Is it an addition in Chronicle D, a candidate for Wulfstan’s annotation? Did John simply overlook it? Consideration of the other woman not found in John suggests the hand of Wulfstan is the answer. Wulfrun is a woman found at this point in no other chronicle, Latin or vernacular. D notes her abduction under 943. The context is the attack of Anlaf—a Norse claimant to York—on Tamworth, where many fell on either side, great booty was taken, and the Danes had the victory. In the same year King Edmund besieged Anlaf and Archbishop Wulfstan I in Leicester, a siege from which Anlaf and Wulfstan only narrowly escaped. After that Anlaf sought Edmund’s friendship and was baptized a little before King Ragnald (Rægenald/Regnald/Rægnold, a claimant to York and Dublin) was also baptized, with Edmund standing as god­ father. The two baptisms are found in A, B, and C under 942, following the poem on the relief of the Five Boroughs, one of which was Leicester.46 This annal in D appears to be part of D’s telling of the story of Archbishop Wulfstan I and his treachery. But no part of it is found in John of Worcester, who covers the rest of Wulfstan’s tale. Nor is Wulfrun noted in any way in John at this point. John of Worcester’s chronicle shows a passion for details of individuals; his omission of a Mercian woman, like his omission of a royal wife Æthelflæd, would be especially unlikely. John’s relationship to Chronicle D and its development needs careful handling. However, not only does he show no evidence of knowledge of these women, but he does not seem to have had access to the material D’s later-tenth-century annals took from the continuation of the Northern Recension. These women raise serious doubts about John’s access to Chronicle D: whether as that Chronicle now survives (John also lacks D’s later elaboration of Queen Margaret of Scotland);47 or in its earlier forms, like /D, out of which D developed. Those earlier forms included a source/chronicle which had these women, described in ways which suggest composition c. AD 1000 and association with Wulfstan, archbishop of York and bishop of Worcester. If Wulfrun, Æthelflæd, and the widows were all his annotations, the Chronicle /D which he had already contained the mid-century annals, as well as the Northern Recension con­tinu­ation.

46  D has inserted this 943 annal after 942, where it has the first part of this poem—taken from its collation at whatever point with something like BC. The poem is itself retrospective. D’s running together of two sources, one with the poem, the other with this annal on Tamworth and Leicester, has compounded the chronological problems. These annals have long created difficulties in the establishment of a simple chronology of events mid century: M. L. R. Beaven, ‘King Edmund I and the Danes of York’, English Historical Review, 33 (1918), pp. 1–9 and now the important discussion in C. Downham, ‘The Chronology of the Last Scandinavian Kings of York’, Northern History, 40 (2003), pp. 25–51. 47  Further discussion of this annal in P. Stafford, ‘Noting Relations and Tracking Relationships in English Vernacular Chronicles, Late Ninth to Early Twelfth Century’, in I. Afanasyev, J. Dresvina, and E. Kooper (eds), The Medieval Chronicle, X (Amsterdam, 2015), pp. 23–48.

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Vernacular Chronicles c .1000  167 The addition to annal 926 found in D alone, stating that ‘all deofelgeld’ (‘devil payment, tribute to devils’) was renounced at Eamont Bridge, may be his work. It is in line with his interests. If so, that would mean that the major collations which shape Chronicle D’s annals to c. AD 1000 had already been made by 1023, the date of Wulfstan II’s death. D’s 943 annal on Anlaf and Archbishop Wulfstan I raises one final question about the accounts of that archbishop in different sources and their origins in the debates of the tenth century. D 943 is found in no other vernacular chronicle, nor, apparently, in John of Worcester’s lost source. But two sources echo its content: Æthelweard, in much abbreviated form, and the early-twelfth-century Latin text, Symeon of Durham’s annalistic Historia Regum—more fully, but minus the woman. John does not have D’s 943 annal on Anlaf, nor that for 941, where the Northumbrians are said to have ‘broken their word’ and chosen Anlaf as king. Symeon is linked to both. They form part of his sparse coverage of northern events and politics in annals numbered from 890 to the 950s. In the manuscript of Symeon, they connect Byrhtferth’s Historical Miscellany, which begins Symeon’s Historia, and Symeon’s use of John of Worcester. These sparse annals have a very complex evolution. Dorothy Whitelock prints some of them as the ‘second set of Northumbrian annals’. Taken as a whole they show signs of the collation of several sources.48 Among them is an annal with a clear link to the 941 and 943 annals in D. Under the year 939, ‘Symeon’ has the death of Æthelstan and succession of Edmund, his brother. Anlaf ‘first’ came to York now (this annal confuses two Anlaf ’s here), then went south to Hamtun (Northampton), which he besieged, unsuccessfully. He then proceeded to Tamworth, devastated around about, and after that went on to Leicester. King Edmund met him there. There was no battle because Archbishops Oda and Wulfstan made peace, and the boundary was set on Watling Street. Edmund held to the south, Anlaf to the north. This is a retrospective annal running events together which likely occurred over several years.49 It deals with the same events, in the same order, and with roughly the same dramatis personae as Chronicle D 943, but in a different way. The most marked differences are in the attitudes towards the Northumbrians and Archbishop Wulfstan I. Chronicle D’s annal explicitly accuses the Northumbrians of treachery in breaking their word and choosing Anlaf. It also implies the alliance of Wulfstan I and Anlaf, who flee Leicester together. The Historia’s annal makes no evaluative judgement concerning the Northumbrians. Its only reference to Archbishop Wulfstan I here is at worst neutral, at best complimentary: he is 48  See W.  S.  Angus,‘The Annals for the Tenth Century in Symeon of Durham’s Historia Regum’, Durham University Journal, 32 (1940), pp. 213–29. There are signs of a Hexham or Durham intervention or annals—in episcopal details and uncomplimentary references to the ‘York people’. The annals are printed in Symeonis Dunelmensis Opera, i, ed. Hodgson Hinde, pp. 62–6 and Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, ii, ed. Arnold, pp. 91–5. 49  Cf. C. Downham, ‘The Chronology’, pp. 32–8.

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168  After Alfred one of the two archbishops who brokered/made peace. Æthelweard’s brief comment is similarly friendly to the archbishop: he and the (unnamed) ealdorman of Mercia expelled the ‘traitors’ and reduced them to submission.50 It is tempting to link D’s 943 annal with its later annals accusing Northumbrians and the archbishop of treachery throughout the 940s and 950s. These other ‘Wulfstan I’ annals are not in Symeon or Æthelweard, but are found in John. John however lacks the story found in Symeon 939 and D 943, including the actions of Wulfstan I. Symeon’s source if not Æthelweard’s parallels D 943, but spins events differently. D 943 is not found in John, in spite of its concern with Wulfstan I, a subject which clearly interested him. D and John of Worcester are connected, probably via a common source, for the 940s annals. That did not, apparently, include all material for the 940s now found in D. There seem to be two separate sources behind D here. No source except D notes and names the woman, Wulfrun, as captured at Tamworth during this struggle. There is no evidence that D’s 941 and 943 annals were in the source which was common to John and D, and which included other Northern, and Wulfstan, annals. Rather, another source for D is opened up, one that is in some way common with or connected to the Historia Regum’s source and more debatably to Æthelweard’s. There are signs of the link between them again, especially in the Historia 950 and D 948, where both tell the tale of Eadred’s devastation of Northumbria, the Northumbrian ambush of his rearguard, Eadred’s ordering of the destruction of the province, and the casting out of King Eric to placate Eadred. Here the outline story is the same, though D has more detail. The sources for this section of the Historia Regum are unclear. There was more than one, involving at least an abbreviated version of southern annals and a sparse northern set.51 There are clear parallels with the thin annals in Chronicle E for these years, and contact between them is very likely. The intricacies of that contact are now almost impossible to unravel. The complex evolution of Chronicle D is again apparent. That evolution now needs to allow for contact with decidedly more Northern annals, such as also lie behind Symeon of Durham.52 As we now see them, Symeon and Chronicle D take very different lines on Wulfstan I of York. Is Chronicle D, more likely /D, here arguing against a more positive presentation of the archbishop? Influenced, perhaps, by the negative judgements on Wulfstan I from the source it shared with John of Worcester? Were Chronicle /D’s makers in dialogue with Symeon’s source, answering it? Or, vice versa, was Symeon’s Northern source answering a view of Wulfstan I’s treachery current by c. AD 1000, perhaps already framed by Archbishop 50  Æthelweard, p. 53. 51 W.  S.  Angus, ‘The Annals for the Tenth Century in Symeon of Durham’s Historia Regum’, Durham University Journal, 32 (1940), pp. 213–29. 52  Note Symeon’s detailed local knowledge of, for example, Æthelstan’s 933 campaign in the North.

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Vernacular Chronicles c .1000  169 Oswald; a view of the actions of archbishop and Northumbrians more generally defined in decidedly southern terms, using definitions of loyalty framed entirely from a southern viewpoint? For Chronicle /D, for the lost Chronicle behind John of Worcester, and for Symeon’s source if not Æthelweard’s the behaviour of the Northumbrians and Wulfstan I were key questions in the telling of these decades. That may have already been the case in the later tenth century. It likely remained so for the circle around Archbishop Wulfstan II, a key counsellor at the southern court as well as York archbishop. The evolution of Chronicle D, written, rewritten, and annotated around the turn of the millennium, is a clue to the contemporary salience of these issues.

The Making of Chronicle G The making of Chronicle G is one final identifiable vernacular chronicle development c. AD 1000. This was a very faithful copy of Chronicle A, closely datable to around 1010. G long survived in its early-eleventh-century form, including in the manuscript context for which it was made. It is possible to examine how some contemporaries viewed a vernacular chronicle, and the context in which it should be read, in the early eleventh century. That manuscript was a bishop’s book, belonging to an early-eleventh-century English bishop. Chronicle G is itself a vernacular chronicle connected to a bishop. G was contained in London, BL, MS Cotton Otho B. xi. The past tense is deliberate: Otho  B.  xi was badly burned in the Cotton Library fire.53 Only charred fragments remain. Early modern copies by Nowell and Lambarde, and Wheelocke’s seventeenth-century edition, which took G as its base text, are now major guides to Chronicle G and Otho B. xi’s contents.54 G was a very faithful copy of Chronicle A.55 It is a significant witness to the state of A in the first decade of the eleventh century. G’s scribes made no changes of substance to the content of Chronicle A, merely updating the episcopal lists with which A then ended. The updating of the lists dates the copy between 1001, the last annal in A written in the early eleventh century, and 1012 x 1013, the latest date consistent with the bishops added.56 Updating did not, however, extend

53  For G see the introduction in Lutz, Chronicle G and cf. Bately, Chronicle A at e.g. p. xiii; treatments of the contents of the manuscript as a whole by R. Torkar, Eine altenglische Übersetzung von Alcuins De Virtutibus et Vitiis, Kap. 20 (1981) and Wormald, Making of English Law, pp. 178–81. 54 Lutz, Chronicle G, pp. xvi–xviii. 55 Note e.g. the ‘astonishing’ morphological and phonological correspondence of G with A observed by Lutz, Chronicle G, p. xxv, with full discussion on pp. cli–cxciii. 56 Lutz, Chronicle G, p. xxxi.

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170  After Alfred to further annals. G’s annals, like A’s, end with 1001. Nor was any manuscript space left for further annals.57 There was no plan to continue G after its making.58 A vernacular chronicle was not, however, the only content of Otho B. xi. Other texts were added, and it was associated with a mid-tenth-century manuscript of the Old English translation of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica. G was from the outset part of a bigger compilation. Whereas the near-contemporary Chronicle B was made apparently as a free-standing chronicle, G was not. Patrick Wormald has seen the compilation of which Chronicle G is part as a ‘bishop’s book’. G might be dismissed as a mere copy, adding little to the matter contained in Chronicle A. But the making of a chronicle copy, one which can be linked to Winchester59 and one whose manuscript context can be examined, is instructive. G is a fact in itself. G is the last of the surviving chronicle manuscripts made or extended around the turn of the millennium. Someone wanted a vernacular chronicle, someone for whom A was the obvious text to copy, someone who made an extremely faithful copy of that chronicle. That person or persons did not update Chronicle A in any way, except in the episcopal lists. New annal production was neither natural nor obvious in the context in which G was made, and no further space was left for additional annals. Its modern editor links the making of Chronicle G with the move of Bishop Ælfheah of Winchester to Canterbury in 1005, taking Chronicle A with him. Chronicle G was produced to replace A at Winchester.60 Its full manuscript context points less to a chronicle copied with a view to continuation, more to the concerns and historical views of an early-eleventh-century bishop. Assigning G to Winchester returns to the arguments about Chronicle A’s association with that city. The content of A, especially as the addition of tenth-century annals proceeded, placed it more and more firmly in the Winchester diocese, if not in the city itself. It is Winchester bishops whose succession is given more or less in full in Chronicle A.61 Scribe 4’s casual reference to that city as ‘the ceastre’ reinforced the sense of a strong association. In that context the fact that pre-1066 work on A ends so close to the date of Bishop Ælfheah of Winchester’s move to Canterbury, where Chronicle A is found by the mid eleventh century, and that G was copied from it about now, looks like more than coincidence. Patrick Wormald’s tentative conclusions would place both A and G at Winchester; they have considerable strength.62 57  Ker’s pagination of Otho B. xi has been corrected by Torkar; cf. Ker, Catalogue, pp. 230–4 and Torkar, Eine altenglische Übersetzung, pp. 37–167 and also Lutz, Chronicle G, pp. xxviii–xxix. One important result of this is the realization that there was no manuscript space left for a continuation after 1001. 58  Thus Lutz and Torkar. 59  See below for more discussion. Winchester in Lutz’s view, Chronicle G, pp. xxix–xxxii, but cf. Dumville’s caveats in Wessex and England, ch. 3. 60 Lutz, Chronicle G, p. xxxii. 61  Bishop Ælfsige is omitted. Wormald, Making of English Law, p. 170 and n. 32 points out that his son is mentioned in the 1001 annal, and sees a damnatio memoriae at work here. 62 Wormald, Making of English Law, pp. 172–3.

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Vernacular Chronicles c .1000  171 Was Chronicle G, or A by c. AD 1000, thus a bishop’s book? The accumulating evidence of Winchester content in Chronicle A could alternatively point to an abbey, such as the New Minster or Nunnaminster in Winchester, not necessarily the bishop and his circle.63 The association of episcopal lists with Chronicle A— and again with G—is a suggestive but far from clinching fact. But the lack of any detail of abbatial successions could also be telling. Chronicle A, with its ac­com­ pany­ing legal texts, already has some of the appearance of a ‘bishop’s book’. That judgement is even stronger in the case of the manuscript in which G is found.64 Chronicle G can be examined within the manuscript context for which it was originally written. That context was decidedly historical.65 The manuscript began with the Old English translation of Bede. That translation was an earlier manuscript, written in a mid-tenth-century hand, none other than Scribe 3 of Chronicle A. The scribe of Chronicle G made the association between Bede and a vernacular chronicle, and confirmed his own intervention here by completing the Bede with the autobiographical note missing from the earlier manuscript. The scribe of G linked vernacular chronicle and (vernacular) Bede in no uncertain terms. That same scribe was responsible for the Laws of Alfred and Ine, and the papal and episcopal lists, copied faithfully from Chronicle A.66 The collection also contained a fragment of a code of King Æthelstan, by another contemporary scribe. But it appears to have been the main scribe who added three other pieces: the Burghal Hidage—a text linked to the defence of Wessex in the early tenth century; a poem, ‘Seasons of Fasting’, concerned with the Lenten fast and its observation; and a group of medical recipes. The Burghal Hidage is ‘historical’, in the sense that it was already a century out of date, perhaps also in its relevance to early-eleventh-century contemporary concerns with defence against Scandinavian attack. The makers of this manuscript would not have been the only people to draw parallels between their own day and earlier— successful—defence.67 It is more difficult to explain the other two in this way. Thus G is part of a decidedly historical manuscript, but also one all of whose contents could be connected, however loosely, with bishops. Laws and legal duties, medical roles, urban defence: all could be seen as episcopal functions.

63 Wormald, Making of English Law, pp. 170–1. 64 Wormald, Making of English Law, pp. 172–81. 65  For what follows see especially Wormald, Making of English Law, pp. 172–81, also using Torkar, pp. 37–167. Cf. the discussion of the MS in Ker, Catalogue, pp. 230–4, no. 180. Lutz, Chronicle G, p. xxvii sets out the content in tabular form. 66  There is one restoration of an omitted line in the laws. The state of the manuscript makes it difficult to know whether this restoration was made by the early modern transcriber, Nowell, or by an earlier scribe, and, if so, when. Wormald, Making of English Law, pp. 174–5 argues persuasively that it was the work of another scribe, contemporary with the main scribe, who also added Æthelstan material. 67  On the Æthelred annals as themselves drawing on such a comparison see S. Keynes, ‘Tale of Two Kings: Alfred the Great and Æthelred the Unready’, TRHS, 5th ser., 36 (1986), pp. 195–217.

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172  After Alfred A  Carolingian bishop has been linked to a book with similar content.68 Taken alongside the Winchester evidence, a connection of G if not A with that city’s bishops by c. AD 1000 looks very likely. A bishop of Winchester, and an archbishop of Canterbury associated with vernacular chronicles now; a book of his­ tor­ies made for one bishop, copying a chronicle taken by the other to his new metropolitan see: Chronicle G if not A would confirm a picture suggested by the content of A and BC and by Archbishop Wulfstan’s work on the Northern Recension and /D, namely the connection of these chronicles with bishops and archbishops by c. AD 1000, if not before. Chronicle G’s scribe associated Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica with a vernacular chronicle, in sequence; the one to be read before the other. He was not the first to make the connection. Bede had been a source of Alfred’s original chronicle. The Northern Recension had undertaken a complete new collation of Bede and a vernacular chronicle text. Chronicle G, like the Northern Recension, affirmed Bede’s continuing historiographical importance—or rather the renewal of that in England in the tenth and eleventh centuries.69 Bede was reused in different contexts. Alfred’s Chronicle used Bede, alongside other material, to produce a story of an England united by its Christian past, ruled by a West Saxon dynasty. The Northern Recension returned to the historiographical father of Christian England as much as to a Northumbrian monk. However, the collation with other sources in the Northern Recension produced a polysemic text, whose messages were complex. This second return to Bede diluted the dynastic messages of Alfred’s Chronicle, potentially drew out the Northumbrianness as well as affirming the Christianness of Bede’s story, and increased the archiepiscopal weight in the resulting tale. In the early eleventh century the scribe of Chronicle G returned to Bede yet again to preface the reading of a vernacular chronicle. That chronicle and that reading were continued by papal and episcopal lists copied at its end. The episcopal if not archiepiscopal meanings were enhanced by this combination. * * * * * * * * * * * * It would not, however, be Chronicle G which had the great archiepiscopal future. That was the destiny of the Northern Recension: the base, as we shall see, from which Chronicle D, a York archiepiscopal chronicle, evolved; the basis, too, of the vernacular chronicle most revered at Canterbury, Chronicle E, or rather its eleventh-century predecessors. Archbishops and their circles, coming into sharper focus c. AD 1000, will continue to feature as major players in the eleventh-century story of vernacular chronicling. 68  Thus Wormald, Making of English Law, p. 181. 69 See e.g. S.  M.  Rowley, ‘Bede in Later Anglo-Saxon England’, in S.  De Gregorio (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Bede (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 216–28.

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Vernacular Chronicles c .1000  173 The later-tenth-century content of Chronicle A and BC was turning in a cler­ic­al direction. Their poems on Edgar reflected the intellectual milieu of late-tenth-century ‘reform’, part of a wider construction of kingship in its own image. That milieu with its standardization of grammar and development of ‘Late West Saxon’ had given a fillip to the vernacular as a language of literature and learning, developments closely associated with the court.70 The poems, found in two different vernacular chronicle families, and perhaps inspiring those in DE, are another indication of the historiographical exchanges which were part of the vernacular tradition and for which the court was a likely context. They are witness, too, to the interchanges which formed that wider intellectual milieu. In its context around the year 1000 vernacular chronicles, continuations, and annals were being produced, and the tradition arguably reshaped. But only up to a point. Chronicles A and G were given a new episcopal ending or association around this date, but Chronicle B, made about this time, cul­min­ ated in the West Saxon genealogical kinglist, now extended by the tenth-century kings of a larger England. The author of the continuation found in D and E may have known one or more of the poems in A and BC. But his annals for 972 and 975 reasserted long-standing military definitions of kingship. After his cor­on­ ation at Bath, Edgar here was presented leading his fleet to Chester, where six kings met him and promised their alliance. In DE’s poetic annal for 975, this was a king in whose day no fleet was strong enough to find prey in Angelcynn. If A and BC’s poem was known here, it was being rewritten; with or without such knowledge, the DE annal addresses a new context in which such fleets were now a present menace. The vernacular chronicles at the turn of the first millennium look in many ways episcopal. But that does not make them apolitical. A man like Wulfstan II of York did not stand outside politics; bishop/court is not an antithesis; secular/ clerical is a distinction to be used with great care at this date. We should not expect chronicles associated with bishops to be unconcerned with the questions of legitimacy and succession reflected in Chronicle B, nor those of defence and attack which reshaped the assessments of Edgar in the evolving D.  Rather we might look to those chronicles for echoes of the arguments, discussions, and issues which were aired at the courts where these bishops met—and where, perhaps, their chronicles were exchanged and interacted. Bishop/court, secular/clerical are not to be sharply demarcated or divided, but nor are they to be completely ignored. They are aspects of the multiple and l­ ayered identities of the patrons and readers, if not authors of these chronicles. Like all identities, they were experienced and expressed contextually. An Edgar for Archbishop Wulfstan II facing mounting external attacks after AD 1000 would 70  S. Irvine, ‘Beginnings and Transitions: Old English’, in L. Mugglestone (ed.), The Oxford History of English (Oxford, 2006), pp. 32–60 at pp. 49–54.

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174  After Alfred not be the same as an Edgar viewed from the late tenth century. But each layer of identity carried its own powerful baggage, few stronger and heavier than the ancient Christian episcopal office. The growing evidence for bishops’ involvement with and in vernacular chronicles is an insight to take forward into the eleventh century. The full picture of vernacular chronicling either side of ad 1000 is a rich one: episcopal, monastic—no antithesis in an age of monastic bishops; eulogizing the recent past in King Edgar, but combining that with critique and critical distance; the court, loosely defined, as nexus of all. There was much activity, including the copying of two whole chronicles; rather less contemporary history writing. There are signs of dialogue: among the versions of the years 971–975; perhaps between John of Worcester’s 959 eulogy of Edgar and a more critical rewriting of the folly of that king’s love of foreigners in DE, the differing versions of Archbishop Wulfstan I may be late tenth century if they are not earlier. Chronicles were recording, perhaps also sparking and feeding debates. The context of all this was the court. Chronicling at this date was not overwhelmingly concerned with Scandinavian raids, though it was already affected by them; there was as yet no sense of nemesis or inevitable defeat, though there was already a sense of divine punishment for contemporary sins, attacks on religious houses chief among them. The most doom-laden commentary was that found in work associated with Wulfstan II, which may be as late as the early 1020s. Behind John of Worcester lie annals from the later tenth century whose attention was turning to attacks, but not as yet in despair or anger at internal leadership. John’s source here may underlie the impassioned retrospective account which now dominates our view of the vernacular chronicles at this date. That account may have rewritten John’s source. In c. AD 1000 the picture of vernacular chronicling was still one of diversity and diverging development, albeit at points connected. The annals of Æthelred’s reign, that impassioned retrospective account, are found, virtually identically, in the three chronicles which contain them, C, D, and E. There is no sign of them in A, B, or G. It is time to examine them more closely.

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9

The Annals of Æthelred and the Early Years of Cnut Annals numbered for the years from the 980s to the early 1020s cover much of the reign of Æthelred II, ‘the Unready’, and its immediate aftermath, thus the attacks on and conquest of the English kingdom by the Danes. They are re­mark­ ably full, especially for the last years of Æthelred’s reign and the conquest by King Swegn and his son, Cnut. In subject matter and in coverage of near-contemporary history they recall the reigns of Alfred himself, and of his children, though they are by contrast with these relentlessly critical and doom-laden. They are retro­ spective, written from the perspective of the end of Æthelred’s reign. There is no question here; these annals are ‘political’. They set a tone which would influence some of the later vernacular annal-writing of the mid eleventh century. Their original writer was sufficiently close to the political centre to be immersed in its ideology and to know of successive campaigns, but was in no way apologetic. This group of annals is now found in three later chronicles, C, D, and E. Their original textual home is unclear. There is no sign of them in Chronicles A, G, or B. They were not officially circulated annals, though they are without doubt part of the vernacular tradition. These annals have attracted considerable attention in recent historiography. They are usually now treated as a group. Their place within the vernacular tradition is the major concern of this chapter. Attention to them usually focuses on their impassioned account of military failure and defeat, and the damning picture of named contemporary leaders they paint. Running through them, however, is another thread: interest in archbishops. That, too, needs attention.

Annals c. 983 to c. 1022/1023 The annals numbered from c.983 to c.1022/1023 are closely similar in Chronicles C, D, and E. D and E had been close since the annal for 959; from around annal 983 Chronicle C joins them. All three then contain substantially the same annals through to those numbered 1022/1023. There are questions around both the beginning and end of their common material. 991 has been canvassed as an alter­ native beginning. The end may be as early as annal number 1017, or as late as that After Alfred: Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and Chroniclers, 900–1150. Pauline Stafford, Oxford University Press 2020. © Pauline Stafford. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198859642.001.0001

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176  After Alfred for 1023. It could even be argued that the agreement stretches through the annals from 1024 to 1032, frequently blank in all three chronicles.1 These doubts arise from divergences among C, D, and E.  These differences become greater after annal 1017.2 Some divergence, plus a change in tone, might also argue that the beginning should be placed at annal 991.3 However, the common ground, even in these debatable annals, is impressive, from the annal for 983 onwards. Those for 1017 to 1022 and 983 to 990, despite divergences, still show significant agree­ ments in C, D, and E. For the years between, the similarities are marked. C, D, and E have identical annals for 986, 991, 993, 994, 995, 996, 997, and 1005. These three chronicles are in substantial agreement for all the other annals. They are unified, too, by a common theme, which overrides all other coverage of the reign of Æthelred, what Plummer labelled ‘the second Danish struggle’.4 The unity of theme is matched by a unity of tone, especially from the 991 annal onwards: ‘imaginative, personal’, characterized by an ‘emotive rhetoric’ which ‘weld[s] the whole group of annals into a single narrative’.5 The ‘human noise’ in these annals is loud;6 loud enough in itself to demarcate this whole grouping. The 1  1024 blank in all; 1025 blank in C and D, not in E; 1026 blank in C and E, not in D; 1027 blank in all three; 1028 all share the first sentence, D and E then agree on development; 1029 C blank, D and E agree; 1030 D and E agree, C diverges; 1031 C blank, D and E similar; 1032 C and D blank, E diverges; 1033 C blank, D and E diverge; 1034 all agree on Bishop Ætheric’s death (D Ælfric), but diverge in the rest of this annal. 2  David Dumville and Sten Körner have both argued that the ‘Æthelred annals’ ended somewhere within those numbered 1017 to 1022. Both see a new source text, from which ALL surviving chron­ icles derive, covering the annals from 1017/1019 or perhaps 1022 to 1044. Thus Dumville, ‘Some Aspects’ at p. 26; Körner, The Battle of Hastings, England and Europe 1035–1066 (Lund, 1964), pp. 1–24. This means we could have a /CE for the years 980s to 1044 which was then copied with different versions of the years to 980s to become our /C and /E. An initial problem with this is the agreement of DE in the annals to the early 1020s vis à vis C. O’Brien O’Keeffe also emphasizes the ‘complex diver­ gence’ among C, D, and E from annal 1023 onwards: Chronicle C, pp. lxviii–lxix. 3  There are certainly differences among C, D, and E for the annals numbered 983–991, which might sustain such an argument. C e.g. adds the death of the pope at the annal for 983; DE agree against C in their (slightly) extended description of Bishop Æthelwold at 984; D lacks the Abingdon reference which C has under 985, E under 984; E alone extends the reference to Dunstan under 988. In addition, the numbering of annals in these years has some variations not present among these chronicles after 991. Thus C omits the number 987 which is in D as a blank annal. In E there is ma­ter­ ial under 987, which forms part of the 988 annal in C and D. C and D place material in 990, including the accession of Archbishop Sigeric of Canterbury, which E has under 989, with a blank in 990. 990 agrees with the evidence of the Leofric Missal: see the Paschal Tables on fo 53a in The Leofric Missal as used in the Cathedral of Exeter during the Episcopate of its First Bishop a.d. 1050–1072, ed. F. E. Warren (Oxford, 1883), p. 50, a source which also has the death of Edgar under 976, and of Bishop Æthelwold under 985. 4  Plummer: ‘all of one piece’ with ‘a strongly marked unity of subject’, written at Canterbury, Two Chronicles, ii, pp. cxvi, 187, and 190 for his view of evidence of contemporary writing. For retrospect see also Körner, The Battle of Hastings, pp. 7–10. 5  C. Clark, ‘The Narrative Mode of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle before the Conquest’, in P. Clemoes and K. Hughes (eds), England before the Conquest (Cambridge, 1971), at pp. 225 and 228; Clark (p. 230) sees them as falling short of ‘history’, lacking a sense of perspective or causation; rendering ‘with literary skill, but without intellectual sophistication, the feelings of an ordinary observer of the events recorded’. 6  Thus A. Jorgensen, ‘Rewriting the Æthelredian Chronicle: Narrative Style and Identity in AngloSaxon Chronicle MS F’, in Jorgensen, Reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, pp. 113–38 at p. 119. For ‘human noise’, and as a synonym for style, see N. Howe, ‘What We Talk About When We Talk about Style’, in C. E. Karkov and G. H. Brown (eds), Anglo-Saxon Styles (Ann Arbor, 2003), pp. 169–78.

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The Annals of Æthelred and Cnut  177 ‘abrupt’ change of style in 1017 has been seen as marking the end, at least of initial work on them.7 The end date for the writing of at least some of these annals is the translation of Archbishop Ælfheah’s body to Canterbury in 1023. In the annal for 1012 Ælfheah ‘still’ rests in London. There is evidence of near-contemporary writing in the later sections from annals numbered 1009 onwards. There is no consensus as to the ‘Where?’ of their composition. Plummer argued for Canterbury on the grounds of the interest in Kent.8 Dorothy Whitelock was inclined towards Ramsey.9 Simon Keynes preferred London, identifying ‘some­ thing more personal behind these expressions of relief [in respect of the deliver­ ance of London]’.10 Their writer also had a wider perspective in his/her critique of recent history, constantly invoking Angelcynn, an identity with which s/he overtly self-identified.11 In sum, these annals have a unity. That was imposed at least in part by some­ one writing retrospectively, though there is some disagreement about whether the retrospective write-up was from after 1016, or began at a later stage in Æthelred’s reign.12 Questions remain about the place of original composition, and about whether this retrospective author was, at least in part, reworking earlier ma­ter­ ial.13 Since the end of the nineteenth century, however, there has been agreement that they are the work of a single author, writing retrospectively no earlier than the second decade of the eleventh century. ‘Work’ may, of course, include rewrit­ ing an earlier account, as well as composition from scratch. All these are grounds for seeing them as a group.

The Transmission of the Annals These annals are now found in three surviving chronicles, C, D, and E, all dating from the mid eleventh century onwards.14 There is no sign of them in other 7  S. Keynes, ‘The Declining Reputation of King Æthelred the Unready’, in D. Hill (ed.), Ethelred the Unready, British Ser., 59 (Oxford, 1978), pp. 227–53 at p. 245 n. 19. Keynes feels the earliest annals from 983 to 991 are the work of this chronicler, though he recognizes a change in tone in 991: Keynes, ‘Declining Reputation’, p. 234 and see also p. 246 n. 29, where he suggests that the annals from 983 to 990 may have been taken from an existing source. Clark, ‘The Narrative Mode’, p. 225 flagged a change at ‘about 991’, endorsed by Janet Bately in her review of Conner, Abingdon Chronicle. 8 Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, p. cxvi. 9  Keynes, ‘Declining Reputation’, p. 232 and n. 25; for East Anglia, again on the grounds of interest and local information, P.  Stafford, ‘The Reign of Æthelred II, a Study in the Limitations on Royal Policy and Action’, in D.  Hill (ed.), Ethelred the Unready, BAR, British Ser., 59 (Oxford, 1978), pp. 15–46, especially p. 16 and n. 7. 10  Keynes, ‘Declining Reputation’, p. 232. 11  P. Stafford, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, Identity and the Making of England’, HSJ, 19 (2007), pp. 28–50 at pp. 34–5. 12  For the latter, largely following Plummer’s suggestions of contemporary writing, see Stafford, ‘The Reign of Æthelred II’. 13  For some suggestion of this see Keynes, ‘Declining Reputation’, p. 233. 14  John of Worcester may have known them via these chronicles; his own lost source may have incorporated them. From the late 980s John’s source or sources were largely these annals, in whatever

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178  After Alfred closely contemporary surviving vernacular chronicles: they are not in Chronicle G, made within a decade of their likely composition, nor Chronicle A, to which annals were still being added in the first decade of the eleventh century, nor Chronicle B made at the end of the tenth century. It is unclear where they were originally written. There are questions about the geographical home of their writer or rewriter, though his/her knowledge and emotional involvement could point to Eastern or South-Eastern England. There can be little doubt, however, that they belonged from the outset to the vernacular chronicling tradition. These annals were produced in the vernacular in annalistic form, following the pattern first set by Alfred’s Chronicle itself. Their theme, the ‘second Danish Conquest’, echoes that of Alfred’s; it is a deliberate harking back. Their impas­ sioned critique of present defeat is informed and fuelled by a contrast with Alfred’s doughty successes, as transmitted in his own vernacular annals.15 There is every argument for considering them as a continuation of a vernacular chron­ icle which, like all surviving vernacular chronicles, began with Alfred’s own, and thus with Alfred’s story. As they stand, critical and querulous, these are surely not ‘official’ annals. Cecily Clark saw them as ‘the feelings of an ordinary observer of the events recorded’.16 How ‘ordinary’ is questionable, but these annals are unlikely candidates for any kind of official circulation. They are found now in the later chronicles, C, D, and E. Their close similarity in all three is impressive; in these annals there are no significant differences of substance between the three chronicles. A single source lies behind all of them. That said, there are differences. Some point to changes we might expect during transmission; one or more stages separate all these chronicles from the original of these annals. A number are explained by mid-eleventh-century developments, especially at Canterbury, in two of these vernacular chronicles. Mid-century Canterbury does not, however, explain how these annals got into these three chronicles. In all cases that transmission had already occurred via earlier stages of their development. The overall uniformity of C, D, and E in these annals should not mask differ­ ences of detail. D, for example, notes a number of ecclesiastical details found in neither C nor E. These will be considered below. Material peculiar to C alone is chronicle. He elaborates with post-Conquest development of the reputation of e.g. Ealdorman Eadric, with Saints’ Lives of Dunstan and Ælfheah, and with episcopal details. He has details throughout which may suggest a different copy of these annals: see in John alone e.g. 991, leaders of the Viking fleet; 1009, an extra fleet arriving in this year; 1010, more on the movements of the army; and 1016, a third battle at Brentford and the battle of Otford. He has a much fuller account of 1016 and 1017 with far more detail on the fate of Æthelred’s family and of the descendants of Edmund Ironside (thus in John). These latter may be additions made in connection with Bishop Ealdred’s interest in this family in the mid eleventh century or post-1066. See further, ch. 12. 15  S. Keynes, ‘A Tale of Two Kings: Alfred the Great and Æthelred the Unready’, TRHS, 5th ser., 36 (1986), pp. 195–217. 16  Clark, ‘The Narrative Mode’, p. 230.

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The Annals of Æthelred and Cnut  179 found only in the annals before that numbered 983.17 C has been considered the ‘best’ text, in the sense of fewest ‘errors’. In at least one edition C has been printed alone as the representative of these annals.18 But divergences go beyond this. Some are individual to one or other of them; some link two together, though not consistently the same two against a third. The picture of alignment and diver­ gence is at first sight bewildering. But confronting it is the first necessary step towards understanding the transmission of these annals. Chronicle E is a suitable starting point. D and E are generally aligned. Their agreements on word order, on word choice, in eyeleap or saut de même en même (that is when a scribe’s eye has jumped from identical phrase to an identical phrase omitting material between), and in their lack of the same details in many cases all point to a common source.19 But D and E are not identical. Annal 999, for example, largely the same in D and E as opposed to C, includes the flight of the Kentish local army (fyrd). Chronicle E alone adds that this occurred forþam þe hi næfdon fultum þe hi habban sceoldan (‘because they did not have the help they should have had’). Under 1006 E alone has the accession of Bishop Brihtwold: 7 Brihtwold biscop feng to þam rice on Wiltunscire. D and E are aligned in major ways, but in some significant details E agrees with C. Thus both C and E have information on Abingdon abbots that is entirely lack­ ing in D. E has a complete account of the succession to the abbacy of Abingdon under 984, 989, and 1018. Most of this is also found in C, though C lacks the last succession in 1018, found in E alone. On the other hand, C includes Abingdon detail under 981 where E, like D, lacks it. To compound the complexity, C and D sometimes agree against E,20 perhaps most significantly concerning Sigeric, archbishop of Canterbury. There are minor differences in the spelling of his name, but also the date of accession differs: C and D have 990, E has 989. All note his role in counselling the payment of gafol or tribute under 991, but only C and D have the claim that that he was the ‘first’ to counsel this. Under 992 C and D have an elaboration of the death of Archbishop Oswald, with wording which E uses of Archbishop Dunstan s.a. 988. Many of the differences make sense in the context of mid-eleventh-century chronicle developments at Canterbury. Chapter 10 will make clear that the home of Chronicle E, or rather its predecessor Chronicle /E, in mid century was Canterbury, and that /E’s links at that date were to the archbishops. Similarly Chronicle C’s production and its mid-century development have a Canterbury 17  C alone: 975 parallels A and B; 976, 977, 978, 979, 980, 981, and 982 are not as in D and E. C adds the pope to the 983 annal. 18  It is the version printed, without variants, by English and Norse Documents relating to the Reign of Ethelred the Unready, ed. M. Ashdown (Cambridge, 1930); see p. 14 for her justification. 19  See Appendix 2. 20  See Appendix 2.

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180  After Alfred context. In the 1040s an abbot of Abingdon was appointed as auxiliary to the ­ailing archbishop. It was in that context that Chronicle C itself was made and its first continuations added. There were tight chronicling links between C and /E at this date, as witness the closely similar wording of their annals for the 1040s. For the annals from 983 to the early 1020s, a series of references to Abingdon abbots distinguish C and E from D. The mid-century nexus of Canterbury and Abingdon explains that, too (see chapter 10). The presence of Chronicle E, or rather /E, at Canterbury mid century also explains other differences between it and other chronicles in these annals. This is the likely context for exculpatory comment on the actions of the people of Kent in E 999, found in E alone, which is a gloss reflecting local patriotism. E lacks the comment that Archbishop Sigeric was the ‘first’ counsellor of tribute to the Danes. These payments were the subject of much later criticism. A chronicle linked to the archbishops of Canterbury might well silently omit this detail. An archiepiscopal home by mid century would also explain why E, not C and D, elaborates on Dunstan, the late-tenth-century archbishop, using phraseology applied to archbishop Oswald in C and D. Archbishop Dunstan was of great interest at post- if not pre-Norman Conquest Canterbury (see chapter 13). Canterbury, too, is the key to E’s addition of details concerning Bishop Brihtwold.21 Some of the complexity of varying alignments between C, D, and E can be explained by reference to Canterbury. That is the common factor, sometimes linking E to C, sometimes differentiating E’s annals from C and D. Work at mid-eleventh-century Canterbury also tells us something about Chronicle C. Like E, it has the succession of Abingdon abbots, but under different years. This has been plausibly explained as a result of the fact that they were mar­ ginalia in the text used by both C and /E here. Chronicle /E’s scribes were thus not using C as we now have it, but an earlier text, also used in the making of C. The annotations did not extend back beyond 983. Chronicle C’s Abingdon detail in annal 981 was derived from a different source, and was not included by the scribes of /E (see chapter 10). Chronicle C’s ‘Æthelred annals’ look distinct in other ways. They were marked out in Chronicle C, and thus most likely in its source here, by the presence of bissextile notes (that is marking out the leap years). Those marks go no further back than 988, and end at 1020.22 C’s source text for the ‘Æthelred 21  There are two annals in E dated 1043, here numbered (1) and (2). The beginning of C 1045 and E 1043(2), recording the death of Bishop Brihtwold and the succession of Hereman, are very close, though not identical. C has the precise date of Brihtwold’s death; E 1043(2) has Brihtwold’s length of tenure. This latter links to the annal in E numbered 1006 within the group of Æthelred annals. Here E alone has Brihtwold’s accession to Ramsbury. Baker sees both the 1006 and 1043(2) details in E here as candidates for insertions by the F scribe: Baker, Chronicle F, pp. xxxvi–xxxviii. 22  There are two glimpses of the text behind Chronicle C for these years. The first is the Abingdon abbatial succession, given in C and E, but under different years. The details were probably marginalia in the source both used. The second is the presence of bissextile marking of the annal numbers. This marking of leap years is found in Chronicle C, but confined to this group of annals. It begins at 988

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The Annals of Æthelred and Cnut  181 annals’ appears to be clearly marked out as separate. This underlines the work which went into the making of Chronicle C, which will be dealt with in chapter 10. It suggests that the ‘Æthelred annals’ in C had passed through a stage where they were at Abingdon, the likely source of annotation with abbots’ successions, and probably the bissextile marking. Chronicle C may have the ‘best’ text, but it is one or more stages from the original annals. There is no ground here for making Abingdon the home of these latter. Chronicle C was not /E’s source for these annals. Nor was Chronicle C’s Abingdon source the route for transmission of these annals into Chronicle E. In the main, Chronicle E’s text for these annals is closer to that in D, especially once account has been taken of the changes made at mid-century Canterbury. This close link between D and E is clear not only in the detailed alignments already noted, but in the way that this group of annals is integrated into the story in both. Chronicle C’s annals for the 970s and 980s show a visible shift to the new ‘Æthelred annals’ source.23 In Chronicles D and E, these annals run on seamlessly from those numbered 959–982. Annal 981, part of the original group, remarks on the ‘first’ arrival of ships. This looks forward into Æthelred’s reign from the same retrospective viewpoint which characterizes the annals 983–1017/1023. The com­ ment in annal 981 draws the pre-983 annals into that coherent narrative. Chronicles D and E continue to be closely linked, including in the final annals of this group numbered 1017–1023, where their common divergences from Chronicle C become more marked. Thus for example they differ in the presen­ tation of resistance to the conqueror Cnut after 1016. DE refer to the churls’ king (D ceorla kyning, E ceorla cyng), the denomination of a leader of such resistance, in 1017 (C 1020), and more significantly DE, unlike C, do not specify that the

(not 984, as we might perhaps expect) and ends at 1020 (thus excluding 1024 onwards). The scribe has presumably taken these from his source, a source used for these years only, or having these numbers for these years only; the latter interpretation would itself be a remarkable coincidence. Thus also Conner, Abingdon Chronicle, pp. xxiv–xxv, who concludes that the scribe was drawing on a manu­ script which ‘was thus ultimately (if not immediately) derived from another source or sources’. Such numbers are a sign of a source used for, or designed for, computation. They are also witness to the C scribe’s conservative faithfulness to his original. Abbatial annotations, if not liturgical computational use, would place Chronicle C’s source for this group of annals in a monastic setting, most likely Abingdon. For more discussion of these as marginalia see ch. 10. 23  Chronicle C’s annals for the 970s and 980s suggest a number of sources before the scribe. There are signs at this point in this very fine manuscript of attempts on the part of the scribe to fit in ma­ter­ ial; a reduced sized script, and other indications that he was using a new source or sources (see ch. 10). One is identifiable. A BC-type chronicle accounts for the entire text to 977, possibly more than one BC-type chronicle. At least one more is clear, but not identifiable. C’s annals for 978–983 had two sources, flagged by the repetition of the accession of Æthelred. One of those may have been a continu­ ation of a BC chronicle already used, beyond the 977 date at which B stopped. The other was akin to the lost vernacular source behind John of Worcester, perhaps the Lost Worcester Chronicle. The Æthelred annals may suggest a third. The bissextile numbers do not extend back either to annals 978–983, nor before; thus into neither of these other putative sources. Prima facie, C’s source for the Æthelred annals was not the Lost Worcester Chronicle/John’s text, which C used for 978–983.

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182  After Alfred ætheling Eadwig, one of Æthelred II’s surviving sons, was killed. D and E also have a full account of the visit to Rome of Æthelnoth, archbishop-elect of Canterbury, to collect his pallium. The 959–982 annals were part of the Northern Recension, transmitted to D and E via their common derivation from this lost chronicle (see chapters 6 and 8). Were the ‘Æthelred annals’ in these two chronicles also part of the Northern Recension, one of its continuations; part of the chronicle which lay behind both D and E to annal 982? There is certainly good reason to see a common source behind D and E for the ‘Æthelred annals’. There is good reason, too, to see them as already present in the ancestor of D, thus /D, by c.1023. It is time to factor Chronicle D’s text of them into the equation. There are details which set D’s annals apart from Chronicle E, as well as those which connect them. Those details point to the hand of Wulfstan II of York, who died in 1023. D has a number of ecclesiastical details found in neither C nor E.  These are Archbishop Ælfheah of Canterbury’s journey to Rome for the pallium in annal 1007; the consecration of Bishop Ælfwig to London at York under 1014, with a precise date; and, under 1021, the death of Bishop Ælfgar, at the end of Christmas. D alone elaborates the description of Lyfing, archbishop of Canterbury, under 1019 as swiðe rædfast (‘very strong in counsel’), and under 1018 D alone adds the fact that Danes and English agreed at Oxford ‘to Edgar’s Law’. D also elaborates on the religious present at the consecration of the church at the battle site of Ashingdon, a church which symbolized the reconciliation of English and Danes after Cnut’s conquest; in that elaboration Chronicle D separates Archbishop Wulfstan II (of York) from Thurkell in its wording. Under the year 1022 both D and E agree in giving details of the collection by Æthelnoth, archbishop of Canterbury, of the pallium in Rome. But their descriptions differ in significant ways. The account of the translation of the bones of the martyred archbishop Ælfheah under 1023 is far more elaborate in D than in C or E. A common factor here is York and its archbishop. The note of Ælfwig’s conse­ cration at York is unusual. So, too, was the consecration. It was one which Wulfstan II himself probably performed, as the only archbishop in England before Lyfing collected his pallium.24 The reference to Eadgares lage apropos the Oxford meeting is a description which not only matches the importance of King Edgar’s law to Wulfstan II, but chimes precisely with the characterization of this meeting in a Wulfstan-connected manuscript.25 D’s additional details about Archbishop Lyfing of Canterbury s.a. 1019 highlight the strictly contemporary knowledge of his other name, Ælfstan, on the part of the writer, but again suggest a Wulfstan

24 N. Brooks, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury (Leicester, 1984), pp. 287–8. 25 Wormald, Making of English Law, pp. 129–31, also linking these chronicle references to Ealdred, and pp. 206–10 and 346. The Wulfstan text is edited and discussed in A.  G.  Kennedy, ‘Cnut’s Law Code of 1018’, ASE, 11 (1983), pp. 57–81.

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The Annals of Æthelred and Cnut  183 connection. They describe Lyfing, in very Wulfstanian terms, as swiðe rædfæst man, ægðer for Gode and for worulde (‘a very wise man, both in religious and secular matters’). The implication of strength in counsel is particularly noteworthy given Wulfstan’s interest in bishops as counsellors. D’s 1007 addition, Bishop Ælfheah’s journey to Rome to collect the pallium, may again point to the York archbishop. This was a journey whose costs were an issue close to Wulfstan’s heart.26 These look like Wulfstan II’s annotations. They would put a copy of the ‘Æthelred annals’ in the hands of Archbishop Wulfstan II, placing both the copy and its annotations before his death in 1023. There is need for considerable caution here. The reference to collection of the pallium from Rome can be categorized as Wulfstanian; a Canterbury interest in such a collection is also possible. The knowledge of Lyfing’s other name was as current at Canterbury as it was likely to be known in contemporary York.27 Contact between D and Canterbury post-1066 is very likely (see chapters  12 and 13). The development of Chronicles D and E was intertwined across the elev­ enth century. There was much scope for interaction and exchange between these two chronicles. D’s annals from 1016 also require careful handling. We shall see in chapter  12 that a quire of D was substituted in the decades after 1066. That ­covered the annals from 1016. D’s annal on Æthelnoth’s collection of the pallium is in annal 1022; it, along with its different version of the events in Rome, falls into this section. There was again scope for later changes, though D’s substituted annals fitted seamlessly into the original chronicle text and interest in the pallium is also shown in the 1007 annal, which is in the main hand of the manuscript. Even at York itself, members of Wulfstan’s household surviving after his death might be responsible for some of these additions apparently connected to him. We must be wary of collecting these details, labelling them all ‘Wulfstan II’, and then using them to place and date D’s version of the ‘Æthelred annals’. Nonetheless, the case that some if not all these peculiarities in D resulted from interventions in these annals by Archbishop Wulfstan II of York remains persuasive. There were similar signs of his intervention in the annals numbered 959–982. In both cases annals common to D and E received additions in D alone. The author(s) of all these additions in annals numbered to 982 and from 983 to 1023 show strong affinities with the concerns and style of Archbishop Wulfstan. Even if we widen the identification of those authors to Wulfstan II and survivors of his

26  For Wulfstan’s authorship of a letter complaining about costs of the journey to Rome and pay­ ments for the pallium see D. Bethurum, ‘A Letter of Protest from the English Bishops to the Pope’, in T.  A.  Kirby and H.  Woolf (eds), Philologica: The Malone Anniversary Studies (Baltimore, 1949), pp. 97–104. On the pallium see now F. Tinti, ‘The Archiepiscopal Pallium in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, in F. Tinti (ed.), England and Rome in the Early Middle Ages: Pilgrimage, Art, and Politics (Turnhout, 2014), pp. 307–42 and below ch. 13. 27  He was known as Ælfstan at Canterbury: see S 950, Cnut and Emma, a grant to Archbishop Ælfstan (i.e. Lyfing).

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184  After Alfred household, the Chronicle /D which we placed in his hands in chapter 8 would still have run to the 1020s and contained the annals of Æthelred and Cnut. An annotation, in D alone, of annal DE 975 included the comment ‘and ever after it grew worse and worse’. It parallels that in C, D, and E 1001 ‘and it was after worse than before’. Both comments pull together a single story; that in 975 drew the 959–982 continuation of the Northern Recension more completely into that powerful tale. The 975 addition was one of those most firmly connected to Wulfstan himself (see chapter 8). It would thus be in his circle that the events after Edgar’s death were knit ever more closely into the story of these ‘Æthelred annals’. Transmission errors have separated all our surviving texts of these annals in bewildering ways. None of them represents the original home; all are separated from that by stages of copying. There is a strong argument for seeing D and E’s version of them as deriving from the same original. These annals would already be attached to the Northern Recension by the 1020s, when a copy of that chron­ icle, /D, was in the hands of Archbishop Wulfstan II of York. None of this neces­ sarily implies that this group of annals was originally composed for the common source of D and E as a continuation of the Northern Recension, though it opens that possibility. It would, however, mean that a copy of these annals was attached to such a common chronicle source very soon after their composition. Another copy of them had found its way to Abingdon before the early 1040s. The links between C and E were the product of later circumstances, linking Abingdon and Canterbury in the 1040s. From the outset these annals were part of the vernacular tradition and of the mechanisms of exchange which constituted that tradition. They were already finding their way into some—not all—vernacular chronicles in the third or fourth decades of the eleventh century.

Archbishops This group of annals is united by content: the story of Danish attacks on England that culminated in Cnut’s takeover and its immediate aftermath. The Æthelred/ early Cnut annals are distinguished by their relative fullness, especially for the last years of Æthelred’s reign, and by the fact that they give names of so many lay leaders. That naming was rarely celebratory. It forms part of these annals’ sustained analysis and critique of the English leadership as a major cause of the defeat, one which by implication involved the king in its accusations of unræd, ‘poor counsel’ or ‘bad counsel’, an inability to give, take, or adhere to good counsel. This was, in this writer’s view, the reign’s nemesis. Recognition of this theme and its late perspective has been central to recent rereadings of the reign of Æthelred.28 28 S.  Keynes,‘The Declining Reputation’; L.  Roach, Æthelred the Unready; and P.  Stafford, ‘The Reign of Æthelred II’.

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The Annals of Æthelred and Cnut  185 Less obvious at first sight is the interest of this group of annals in archbishops, magnified in Chronicle D but present in the source common to D and E—and to C, thus in the original composition. Ælfheah’s journey to Rome for the pallium was present in D alone. But the notice of Ælfheah’s accession to Canterbury is in all three chronicles C, D, and E under the year 1006. Archbishops are not a theme in the way the failures of the reign are. But they are as remarkable in a vernacular chronicle as is the naming of English aristocratic leaders. As such, they are a thread worth pulling. The deaths and accession of archbishops are given with remarkable consistency in this group of annals. The death of Dunstan under 988; the accession of Æthelgar, his reign of one year and three months, and the consecration of Sigeric under 990 (E 989); the death of Sigeric (wrongly named abbot in D) under 995; the consecration of Archbishop Ælfric under 996; Ælfric’s death in 1006 and the accession of Ælfheah; under 1012 the murder of Archbishop Ælfheah; under 1013 the appointment of Archbishop Lyfing; 1019 (D) and 1020 (CE) on the death of Lyfing; and the accession of Æthelnoth under 1020. The archiepiscopal succession at Canterbury from the 980s to 1020s is thus given in full. So, to a slightly lesser extent, is that at York: in 992 the death of Oswald and succession of Ealdwulf; in 1002 the death of Ealdwulf. The missing archbishop here is Wulfstan II himself. No chronicle reports his accession to York in 1002.29 His death in 1023 and the accession of his successor Ælfric is in E alone, though D has the journey of Ælfric to Rome for the pallium under 1026. The recording of the succession of archbishops in a vernacular chronicle should not be taken for granted. In the vernacular tradition, only the Northern Recension matches this interest, and then only in its earlier annals. The Northern Recension’s use of Bede and the York Annals produced a very full coverage of archiepiscopal succession for the centuries to c.800. Alfred’s original chronicle had shown considerable interest in the Canterbury succession, which is complete from Tatwine (731–734) to the death of Ceolnoth in 870. But after that the inclusion of archbishops of Canterbury was much more spasmodic. The late-ninth- and tenth-century succession of archbishops in Chronicle A was inserted at a much later date.30

29  It is in John of Worcester who added much more on episcopal succession in general. 30  So e.g. it was only much later at Canterbury that Hand 7 added the Archbishops Æthe(l)red and Plegmund to Chronicle A, and Hand 9a Plegmund’s death. Hand 8 (i.e. the scribe of F) added the accession of Wulfhelm under 924, Hand 7 the death of Oda and the accession of Dunstan. (Note that later Canterbury hands continued to add archbishops to Chronicle A: Hand 7 records the death of Dunstan; Hand 9, the death of Ælfric, the consecration of Ælfheah, and Rodbert’s accession; Hand 10, the death of Archbishop Æthelnoth.) Insofar as Chronicle A had an interest in bishops in the tenthcentury annals in scribal work datable to the tenth century, it was in bishops of Winchester. Chronicle E has Wulfhelm under 925 and his journey to Rome under 927. The former, if not the latter, are add­ itions made by the F scribe at Canterbury c.1100. See Irvine, Chronicle E, pp. lxi–lxii and Baker, Chronicle F, p. xxxvi.

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186  After Alfred Archbishops of York are not found in Alfred’s Chronicle after Ecgbryht (A 738). Chronicles D and E have some detail for the tenth century, though in neither case is it systematic. E has the death of Archbishop Wulfhere of York under 892 and the death of Wulfstan I of York under 956. D shows considerable interest in the career of Archbishop Wulfstan I in its annals numbered to the 940s and 950s, and gives his death under 957 as well as the rather ambiguous notice of his (?re) acquisition of his bishopric in/of Dorchester under 954. If the agreements of D and E for the tenth century represent the Northern Recension, that chronicle did not include the tenth-century archbishops in any systematic way. Chronicles D and E acquired material on them via other sources and at later stages, at least in E’s case, but the Northern Recension’s tenth-century annals were not rewritten to include them. This systematic interest in archiepiscopal succession thus appears to be very much that of the author(s) of the Æthelred annals. That interest is more or less confined to archbishops, not to ecclesiastics in general. The Abingdon abbatial successions were later additions in C and E; the reference to Bishop Brihtwold (E 1006) is a candidate for later addition at Canterbury. The record of the death of Bishop Kenwulf (C, D, and E 1006) is to be understood in relation to Archbishop Ælfheah: Kenwulf briefly replaced him at Winchester, but died in the same year. D’s mention of Ælfwig’s consecration at York thus stands out yet again, as does D’s mention of Bishop Ælfgar in 1021, which is not in C or E. Is this latter another ‘Wulfstan’ addition, witness to his wider archiepiscopal concerns? He was pos­ sibly first-ranking archbishop until Æthelnoth collected his pallium in 1021.31 The treatment of ecclesiastics in the vernacular chronicles is a topic in itself. The systematic record of archiepiscopal successions in this group of annals is not the norm. The traumatic capture and murder of the archbishop of Canterbury, Ælfheah, by the Danish army in 1011 x 1012 may be one factor. Those events had a huge impact on the writer(s) of these annals, in many ways inspiring the annals and their tone and analysis. It is difficult, however, to see this as the sole reason for such systematic coverage, of York as well as Canterbury. The very fullness of the Æthelred annals may be part of the explanation, though the extensive coverage of Alfred’s reign does not match this interest. Even in the fullest annals, inclusion is always a choice, conscious or unconscious. The system­ atic coverage of archiepiscopal successions, Wulfstan II of York apart, is unusual. It recalls the Alfred Chronicle’s interest in Canterbury, perhaps another sign of how far the writing of the vernacular annals for these years was influenced by those original annals. But the ‘Æthelred’ author(s) were more systematic than their 31  Wulfstan heads the archbishops above Lyfing in charter witness lists in 1013 (S 931, S 931a, S 931b), in 1014 (S 933), and in 1015 (S 934). In 1018 he is the only archbishop in S 950, whereas Lyfing precedes him in S 951, S 952, and S 953 and likewise in 1019 in S 954 and S 956. Lyfing is absent in 1019 from S 955. In 1020 Æthelnoth precedes Wulfstan in S 957, but in 1022 Wulfstan precedes Æthelnoth in S 958.

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The Annals of Æthelred and Cnut  187 Alfredian predecessors. Were these annals not only included in an archiepiscopal chronicle (/D) by the early 1020s; were they also produced in an archiepiscopal context? Should we be stressing the archbishop as much as York in Wulfstan’s own involvement? As the sole surviving archbishop, he would have had a major role in the consecrations of Lyfing and Æthelnoth to Canterbury.32 The probable produc­ tion of his own personal gospel book, the York Gospels, at Canterbury during the last years of his life underlines the connections between the two archbishoprics.33 These last years, when both York and Canterbury may have been on Wulfstan II’s mind, are also those to which the composition of these annals is often dated. Could Archbishop Wulfstan himself have been the patron of these annals, as archbishop? The themes of his works are strikingly similar to theirs. His great ser­ mon preached to the English at the end of the reign of Æthelred reads almost as commentary on these annals:34 in attitudes to the payment of tribute, to counsel and bad counsel (unræd), to faithlessness and treachery they chime together. Both sermon and annals appeal to and construct a wider ‘English’ (the sermon has Engla; the annals, especially Angelcynn). As a former bishop of London before his move to York and Worcester, the annals’ personal emotion in respect of that city’s fate could have been his. In their overlaying of specific detail by impassioned rhetoric they mirror his style. The annals themselves were present in a chronicle we can place in his hands. But it would be as an archbishop that he would be especially involved. It would thus not come as a surprise to find that the resulting chronicle, including the Northern Recension and its extensions, is also the base of Chronicle /E, the chronicle continued and revered at Canterbury in the middle and later eleventh century. A close link c.1020 between the archbishop of York and the Canterbury archbishop he consecrated could be context. Busy as Wulfstan’s hands were, however, we may be in danger of seeing his ‘paw in every pie’!35 This group of annals belongs to the last years of Æthelred’s reign or its immediate aftermath. Many of Wulfstan’s own works are similarly dated. All are products of the same climate. Wulfstan was an archbishop, but also a prom­in­ ent adviser at the courts of Æthelred and Cnut. His personal analysis would not only have reflected the contemporary mood there, but helped shape it. Others 32  Just as the latter would have consecrated Wulfstan’s successor at York; Wulfstan’s death is in Chronicle E, not D. 33  T. E. Heslop, ‘Art and the Man: Archbishop Wulfstan and the York Gospels’ makes the case for his personal association, and for their production at Canterbury, involving the work of the famous Canterbury scribe, Eadwig Basan; see especially e.g. pp. 308 and 298 and n. 29. See also J. J. G. Alexander,‘The Illumination of the Gospels’, in N. Barker (ed.), The York Gospels, Roxburghe Club (London, 1986), pp. 65–79 at p. 76: the decorative and figurative style point to Canterbury. For earlier manuscript links between Wulfstan and Canterbury see G.Mann, ‘The Development of Wulfstan’s Alcuin Manuscript’, in Townend (ed.), Wulfstan, pp. 235–78. 34  On date and context see J. Wilcox, ‘Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi ad Anglos as Political Performance: 16 February 1014 and Beyond’, in Townend (ed.), Wulfstan, pp. 375–96. 35  The phrase is borrowed from S. Pons-Sanz, ‘A Paw in Every Pie: Wulfstan and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Again’, Leeds Studies in English, NS, 38 (2007), pp. 31–52.

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188  After Alfred would have picked it up. There is an arguable case for seeing these annals as ori­gin­al­ly written as a continuation of the Northern Recension—a text here behind D and E—a case, too, for linking Wulfstan to their composition. But a continuation of some other lost chronicle cannot be ruled out.36 The Canterbury side of the archiepiscopal pairing is also a conceivable home, and one which matches the south-eastern content of these annals well. * * * * * * * * * * * * Æthelred’s reign was written up in the second decade of the eleventh century or early in the third. In part it was rewritten; there is evidence for earlier annals behind at least those for the 980s and 990s. The final version was a full, passion­ ate, engaged annalistic account which has had considerable effect on the his­tor­ic­al picture of eleventh-century England. This chapter was concerned with the where, when, and who of this writing, and with audience and reception—especially in the latter case via the story of transmission. This group of annals was composed to continue a vernacular chronicle which, like all others, began with that of Alfred. Like Alfred’s, too, they recorded nearcontemporary history. There is nothing to compare with them since the annals produced at the court of Alfred and those of his children; not in any surviving vernacular chronicle, nor in any identifiable lost one, nor in any source available to the great Latin chroniclers of the early twelfth century. The chronicle for which they were produced is lost. It may have been the Northern Recension or a copy of that, though there are other possibilities. Whatever the case, very soon after their composition this group of annals was likely added to the Northern Recension, or a copy of it made for Archbishop Wulfstan II of York c.1020. The annals may have been composed for him. If not, they were already in circulation early in that decade. Where were they composed? Content might point to eastern or south-eastern England. Their sharply critical and querulous tone might point to an outside observer of the political scene. They parallel the annals produced around Alfred and his children in theme and fullness, but present a sharp contrast in stance. They do not read in any way as ‘official’ annals. Should we thus distance them and their writer(s) from the court? The mood of the English court around the end of Æthelred’s reign and in its aftermath was, however, itself critical and inwardturning—at least if Archbishop Wulfstan II’s work and sermons are any guide. The writer(s) of these annals were informed about major events—the details of court politics had rarely been the subject of vernacular chronicling. This first

36  John of Worcester’s lost chronicle must remain in play. He certainly knew these annals, and in a version with details which differ from C, D, and E. Some are probably later, some may be annotations made in a copy close to the date of composition. The possibility that his lost chronicle was their ori­gin­al home cannot be discounted.

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The Annals of Æthelred and Cnut  189 conquest of the eleventh-century English kingdom explains the tone of these annals; that tone need not distance them from the court. Their political identification is with Angelcynn, occasionally Englaland.37 They may be connected to one or other of the archbishops of the English church. Their critical distance is, however, a significant shift from the standpoint of earlier detailed vernacular annals. The annals, and their tone and critique, found their way into other chronicles. They had reached Canterbury and Abingdon before 1040. They were received, though not everywhere; not in Chronicles G or A or B.  Received, and read: discussion of their mid-century transmission indicated active reading and annotation, not merely slavish copying. That reading affected the picture given in the mid-century annals, and went on affecting annals written after 1066, as we shall see. Any chronicle which carried these annals had changed the story and the messages. They were not, however, immediately continued—in any chronicle. They are followed, in all chronicles where they are found, by largely blank years, with few annals for the 1020s and early 1030s. Detailed analysis pointed to two stages of reception: soon after their composition, and again c.1040. The end of the reign of Æthelred and the conquest by Cnut sparked their composition, if not first copy­ ing. Their rereading coincides chronologically with the return of the son of Æthelred, Edward the Confessor, from exile; so too their continuation—now, as we shall see, at more than one chronicling centre. Did that return not only coin­ cide with reading and continuation, but spark it? These annals had an impact on vernacular chronicling in the middle decades of the eleventh century. That chron­ icling is the subject of the next chapters.

37  Stafford, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, Identity and the Making of England’.

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10

The Making of Chronicle C and Mid-Eleventh-Century Chronicling Annals numbered to the mid eleventh century are found in three vernacular chronicles, C, D, and E. Only one of these, Chronicle C, is certainly dated as a manuscript to these decades. E belongs to the early twelfth century, D’s dating is very debatable. The annals now found in these three chronicles are clearly related in some way; exactly how has long been recognized as unclear.1 The three chron­ icles contain relatively detailed annals from the mid 1030s until 1066, and in D and E beyond the latter date. Sometimes D and E agree against C; sometimes C and E against D, sometimes C and D against E. All three may be closely linked, but this shifting pattern rules out any explanation which merely makes one the result of a straightforward collation of the other two. One explanation is unlikely to unlock all the puzzles they pose. The working hypothesis over these next two chapters will be that there was a series of contacts between chronicles and/or ­centres of chronicle writing. Comparison with the post-1066 Chronicle of John of Worcester suggests that we need to factor another important lost chronicle into the evolving picture, though again John’s working methods and his post-Conquest date demand caution. The 1030s and 1040s saw the end of Cnut’s reign, a bitter and prolonged suc­ cession dispute among his sons and those of Æthelred II, and finally the accession of Æthelred’s son, Edward ‘the Confessor’, now returned from exile. The years from 1035 are covered by often detailed annals in C, D, and E, in sharp contrast with the extremely sparse record of most of the reign of Cnut. Chronicle C was made in the 1040s. It will be argued in this chapter that its detailed annals for 1035 to 1042 are retrospective, as are those in D and E. The chapter will suggest a coincidence of chronicle making and annal writing with the return from exile of Edward, son of King Æthelred, and will pursue the implications of that. The Norman Conquest of 1066 casts its shadow across much modern histori­ ography of mid-eleventh-century England. The study of the annals numbered to the 1040s, 1050s, and early 1060s becomes all the more important, and all the more problematic. How contemporary are these annals? Were some written or rewritten in the aftermath of and in response to that traumatic event? That is 1 Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, pp. cxvi–cxvii: ‘all we can say is that in some cases two or more of them used common materials’. After Alfred: Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and Chroniclers, 900–1150. Pauline Stafford, Oxford University Press 2020. © Pauline Stafford. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198859642.001.0001

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MAKING OF C AND THE MID ELEVENTH-CENTURY  191 certainly a possibility in the case of two chronicles, D and E, which were copied or written in part or in whole after 1066 (see chapters 12 and 13). Can we be sure that the annals for these decades, as they now survive, are pre-1066 accounts of the events they describe? To what extent do the annals in C, D, and E preserve views and possible debates of the 1040, 1050s, and early 1060s? Can we be sure of the shape and content of C, /E, and /D in their strictly contemporary pre-1066 form? These are questions which will be tackled in this chapter and especially in the following ones. In these circumstances, Chronicle C is an essential starting point. Work on C was in large part completed before 1066. Its making and its continuations can be fairly closely dated. This chapter deals with the making of Chronicle C in the 1040s; the next focuses on the continuations of Chronicle C into the annals for the 1050s. Both seek to assess C and its annals, and to use them to help under­ stand the more debatably dated work now represented by the annals in D and E. The evidence of C will be placed in the wider vernacular chronicling context, and deployed in an effort to illuminate the latter. Together this chapter and the following will attempt to piece together the story of the vernacular chronicles in the decades immediately preceding 1066.

Chronicle C in its Manuscript Context Chronicle C is, in the main, beautifully produced and finished. It forms part of manuscript London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius  B.  i. The whole manuscript was designed to fit together. Chronicle C is thus another vernacular chronicle which can be examined in the manuscript context for which its makers intended it. Up to the annal for 1048 it is the work of two scribes, and of several scribes thereafter.2 The vernacular chronicle is preceded by the Old English version of Orosius’s Seven Books of Histories against the Pagans, a copy which dates from the earlier eleventh century.3 The Chronicle was designed to follow it in a careful attempt to fit with the Orosius, which sometimes made the layout of the annalis­ tic form of the vernacular chronicle more difficult for the scribe.4 The aim was, as its most recent editor argues, to produce a ‘book of histories’. Between the Orosius and the vernacular chronicle stand two Old English gno­ mic or wisdom texts now known as the Menologium and Maxims II (folios 112r–115v). There are strong palaeographical arguments for seeing these texts as 2  O’Brien O’Keeffe, Chronicle C, pp. xxvi–xxviii. Unlike Taylor, Chronicle B, p. xlix, she sees no new hand at 977/978 annal; unlike Conner she does not see a new scribe at annal 982 (see Conner, Abingdon Chronicle, p. xxiv, following Ker, Catalogue, p. 253). 3 See The Old English Orosius, ed. J. Bately, EETS, S.S., 6 (Oxford, 1980), p. xxv and Ker, Catalogue, no. 191, pp. 251–3. 4  Orosius, ed. Bately, pp. xli–xlii.

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192  After Alfred being deliberately associated with the succeeding vernacular chronicle.5 They are in the hand of the first chronicle scribe and serve as prefatory material to the vernacular chronicle.6 There is no overt dynastic association in vernacular Chronicle  C.  It neither begins nor ends with the genealogical kinglist which opens A and G, and once ended B. Nor, as in Chronicles D and E, does it orientate the story as an England-, even Britain-wide tale. As with G, however, Chronicle C follows another historical text: whereas G has Bede’s Christian history of the gens Anglorum, C associates a vernacular chronicle with a wider world history and the story of Christian struggle against pagans. There is considerable agreement on the palaeography of Chronicle  C.  The Menologium, Maxims II, and the vernacular chronicle up to the annal for 490 are all in the same hand datable to the mid eleventh century.7 Another mid-eleventhcentury scribe/hand began at annal 491 and wrote all the annals to the end of that for 1048 (see illustration 2 for an example of this scribe’s work). This second scribe thus wrote the bulk of the chronicle text, including the annals immediately following 978 in a reduced-size script, which we have already encountered.8 The appearance of his work changes in the annal for 1044/1045, and again in those for 1046, 1047, and 1048.9 Four more scribes continued the story through to 1066. The last part of annal number 1066 was supplied in the later twelfth century. Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe has argued that the scribe here supplied a replace­ ment text, but was copying what was originally there. This accords with a view that this was a replacement for a worn-out leaf.10 The implication is that this was for a long time the end of the manuscript, which was unbound. The work of Scribe 3 and his successors will be the subject of chapter  11. Scribes 1 and especially Scribe 2 are the concern of this chapter. They were the first makers of Chronicle  C.  The work of Scribe 2 provides a fixed point in C’s development. Taking over at annal 491, he wrote the bulk of the Chronicle, up to folio 157v: certainly to the end of 1044, perhaps to the end of the following sen­ tence, which is the first in the annal for 1045.11 The making of this chronicle can thus be no earlier than 1045. This scribe continued work through to folio 158r 5  See e.g. the arguments of Conner, Abingdon Chronicle, pp. xix and xxv. 6  O’Brien O’Keeffe, Chronicle C, p. xv. 7 Ker, Catalogue, no. 191, p. 253. 8  Ker and O’Brien O’Keeffe again date this to the mid eleventh century. Neither Ker nor O’Brien O’Keeffe accept a change of hand for the annals numbered 977/978 on, though both note a change in the appearance of the script here; in O’Brien O’Keeffe’s case, a reduced-size script. The same reducedsize script was used to add the annal 976 (which is not in Chronicle B, in other respects closely linked to C to the annal for 977). 9  Both Ker and O’Brien O’Keeffe note another change in the appearance of what they still consider the same hand in the annal for 1045, and again in that for 1046, 1047, and 1048. Ker observe that it is ‘as though they had been written up year by year’; O’Brien O’Keeffe, p. xxviii simply notes writing at a different time: ‘1046 and 1047 . . . all in one go . . . 1048 . . . separately’. 10  K. O’Brien O’Keeffe, ‘Reading the C-Text: the After-Lives of London British Library, Tiberius B I,’ in P. Pulsiano and E. M. Treharne (eds), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts and their Heritage (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 137–60; Conner, Abingdon Chronicle, p. xxx. 11  O’Brien O’Keeffe, Chronicle C, pp. xxvii–xxxii; Ker, Catalogue, p. 253.

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MAKING OF C AND THE MID ELEVENTH-CENTURY  193 line 14, i.e. to the end of the annal for 1048. His work on the annals 1045–1048 seems to have been undertaken on two or three separate occasions; although there is agreement that this is still the same scribe, his work has a different appearance from annal 1045 onwards. A new scribe began work at the annal numbered 1049. The scribes of the chronicle have not been securely identified with any scrip­ tor­ium. It has been suggested that some of those responsible for the last annals from 1052/1053 onwards ‘share characteristics’ which can be found in contemporary Worcester hands, linking them to one of the scribes of Chronicle D—the one who wrote the annals 1066–1068.12 No suggestions have been made for the location of the first two scribes. Chronicle C is often attributed to Abingdon. This is on the basis of parallels with Abingdon material, including material which is common to B and C, and thus was in BC,13 but also following the attribution to Abingdon by  John Joscelyn in the sixteenth century. That attribution has, however, been challenged.14 In the making of Chronicle C, the work of the first two scribes, and especially the second scribe, is critical. The second wrote the bulk of the C Chronicle up to the end of annal 1044/beginning of 1045. The changes in the appearance of his work in the annals for 1045 to 1048 have led to suggestions that he was now writ­ ing ‘at short intervals’, even that the annals for 1046 to 1048 were ‘written up year by year’.15 Such statements are based to some extent on assumptions about the nature of annals, and should be treated with caution. The rubrication also changes at the annal for 1045, moving from a marginal number with a pointed capital M to an indented number with rounded M.16 The annals which follow 1048 are not only the work of new scribes; they show marked changes in palaeography, rubri­ cation, and layout. On the basis of all this, a number of things can be said with reasonable cer­ tainty about Chronicle C, and several hypotheses follow. Chronicle C was made by two scribes datable to the mid eleventh century no earlier than 1048 (the last annal in the hand of its second major scribe) and most probably no earlier than 12  See Mary Swan, in Swan and Treharne, The Production and Use of English Manuscripts 1060–1220, https//www.le.ac/English/em1060to1220/mss/EM.BL.Tibe.B.i.htm, accessed 28 Feb. 2017. Examples of the distinctive letter forms of ð are found on fos 160v, 162r, 163rv, 161v. All these are in quire 21, annals from 1052/1053 onwards. Comparison is made with Tiberius B. iv (i.e. Chronicle D), fo 81: see Ker, Catalogue, p. 237. R. Gameson, ‘St Wulfstan and the Library of Worcester’, in J. S. Barrow and N. P. Brooks (eds), St Wulfstan and his World (Aldershot, 2005), pp. 59–104 at p. 103 tentatively iden­ tifies the hand of Tiberius B. iv, fos 79v ff. [sic] with Scribe 3 of Cotton Otho C. i—which at p. 93 he dated as ‘mainly xi med’. See also Ker, Catalogue, pp. 236–8. 13 Conner, Abingdon Chronicle, pp. xxxix–liii. 14  O’Brien O’Keeffe, Chronicle C, pp. lxxiv–xcii. See also Conner’s response: P. Conner, ‘Editing the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 103 (2004), pp. 269–380 at 377–80. 15  Cf. Ker, Catalogue, pp. 252–3 and O’Brien O’Keeffe, Chronicle C, p. xxviii. Ker suggested that annals 1046–1048 were ‘written up year by year’; O’Brien O’Keeffe is more circumspect. 16  However the rubrication of the early sections of the chronicle also exhibits some variation: note e.g. that of the Æthelred annals.

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194  After Alfred 1045, when the nature of his work changes. Scribe 2 continued work on the chronicle until the 1048 annal, probably at slightly later dates (or date). The change in the nature of his work in 1045 raises other questions. It is at this point that the appearance of the chronicle changes. Up to the annal for 1044/1045 Chronicle C is very fair scribal work. This last point raises two possible scenarios for the making of C.  Such fine work could mean that the first two scribes were copyists, not makers; that up to this point they were working from an exemplar rather than bringing sources together themselves. 1045 or thereabouts would mark the end of that exemplar, after which Scribe 2 made additions. A Chronicle /C extending to around 1045 would lie behind Chronicle  C.  /C would have been more or less identical to Chronicle C, but would not have shared its manuscript associations nor necessar­ ily its preface and place of copying. Alternatively, the first two scribes were them­ selves the makers, not the copyists of Chronicle C. They were very careful workers and thus any joins between material they—in particular the second scribe—used are hidden.17 For the moment, both scenarios will be working hypotheses.18 The making of Chronicle C thus has to be approached first from the manu­ script. To understand it and its genesis, it is also necessary, however, to consider the content of Chronicle C and the question of its growth and development.

The Making of Chronicle C: Scribe 2 and the 1040s Annals The annals numbered 1042 to the opening of 1045 are almost word for word identical in Chronicles C and E. These annals mark the end of the first continuous stints of work in C by Scribe 2. Chronicle C’s annals for 1043 and 1044 and the beginning of 1045 are very close to those found in Chronicle E.19 They record the consecration of Edward (the Confessor) by Archbishop Eadsige at Winchester on the first day of Easter, with a precise date, and his instruction of the king before all the people; the consecration of Bishop Stigand and the deprivation of Edward’s mother (Queen Ælfgifu/Emma) of land and gold and silver—followed in C alone 17  See the remarks of O’Brien O’Keeffe, Chronicle C, p. cx, e.g.where Hand 2 is seen as character­ ized by conservatism in spellings, in comparison with the—earlier—manuscript B: ‘a very careful copyist indeed’ (p. lxii). 18  Stephen Baxter’s distinction between the place of composition and of copying of the annals in C implies some of the same conclusions: see S.  Baxter,‘MS C of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Politics of Mid-Eleventh-Century England’, EHR, 122 (2007), pp. 1189–227 at p. 1218. He cautiously suggests Evesham as the place of composition. 19  In E s.a. 1042–1043(2) (E’s numbering is awry at this point). The annals differ in C’s extra detail on Stigand’s deposition s.a.1043. Because of its Annunciation dating, C has the marriage to Edith s.a. 1044; E has it s.a. 1043(2), i.e. 1045. C names her and says Edward nam . . . him to wife; E has no name and nam . . . him to cwene. The presentation of the death of Bishop Brihtwold also differs. Baker sees the 1043(2) details on Brihtwold in E as candidates for later insertions by the F scribe: Chronicle F, pp. xxxvi–xxxviii.

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MAKING OF C AND THE MID ELEVENTH-CENTURY  195 by Stigand’s deposition from his bishopric because he was so close to the king’s mother. Both C and E describe how Eadsige left his bishopric on account of ill­ ness and the consecration in his place of Siward, abbot of Abingdon, with the advice of Earl Godwine. There is an enigmatic reference to the mystery and suspi­ cion around this appointment: Eadsige is said to have feared interference and attempts to buy the position. C and E’s close connection extends to notice of fam­ ine, of the high price of wheat, and of the king’s leading a fleet to Sandwich. Both note the appointment of the churchwarden Æthelstan to the abbacy of Abingdon, E alone that Stigand returned to his bishopric. Both record the marriage of Edward and Godwine’s daughter—named as Eadgyth and dated as ten nights before Candlemas in C.  This, if not the next sentence on the appointment of Bishop Brihtwold, ends the first work of Scribe 2 in Chronicle C. These last annals in the initial making of Chronicle C thus cover the accession of Edward, with particular reference to his consecration and instruction. They have unusual detail of Canterbury archiepiscopal affairs, which include the appointment of an abbot of Abingdon as auxiliary. They also detail the succession to Siward at Abingdon. Interest in the connection of Canterbury and Abingdon continues in C and E’s annals 1045–1048, also added as already mentioned to Chronicle C by the second scribe. Thus both C and E have the death of Æthelstan, abbot of Abingdon (C  1047, E 1046(1)); the illness and death of Siward, Eadsige’s auxiliary bishop (C 1048, E 1046(1); D also has this under 1050). The interest continues beyond Scribe 2’s work; witness the king’s appointment of Sparrowhawk, abbot of Abingdon, to London and of Bishop Rothulf ‘his kinsman’ to the abbacy of Abingdon (C 1050, E 1048). The last is also in Chronicle D, here retrospective.20 On the whole C has the fuller details: the precise date of Abbot Æthelstan’s death, Siward’s illness and retreat to Abingdon before his death, the precise date of Archbishop Eadsige’s death after he took over all the bishopric. But it is E, not C, which gives the succession of Sparrowhawk, a monk of Bury, as abbot of Abingdon (1046(1), recte 1048). Sparrowhawk was someone of considerable interest in the crisis years of 1050–1052. In C Scribe 2 is responsible for most of this detail. This Abingdon material continues to connect C and E in the annals for 1049–1052. C and E are parallel in other ways in these annals. Both show considerable interest in ecclesiastical, especially episcopal appointments—all from the south­ ern, Canterbury archdiocese. Thus Bishops Brihtwold and Hereman (C 1045, E 1043(2)—C with the date, E with the reference to number of years of the episco­ pate); Lyfing (C 1045, E 1044); Grimcytel and Ælfwine (C 1047, E 1045—both

20  In Chronicle D (1051), without any reference to the Abingdon succession, Sparrowhawk was appointed ‘but it was afterwards taken from him before he was consecrated’.

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196  After Alfred with Ælfwine’s date of death). Again this continues, though with more diver­ gences, in the annals in C for 1049 to 1051. Close correspondence in wording in annals for the beginning of Edward’s reign, an interest in archiepiscopal affairs coupled with a continuing concern with Abingdon abbatial succession, detailed knowledge of, and record of succession to, bishoprics in the southern archdiocese: all this is found in Chronicles C and E in annals for the 1040s. Some of this continues into the annals for 1049–1052, which will be the subject of the next chapter. For the most part, these annals in Chronicle C are the work of Scribe 2, the scribe who had produced the bulk of the vernacu­ lar chronicle c.1045. There has been much debate over whether Chronicle C should be attributed to Abingdon or Canterbury.21 The 1040s annals and the work of Scribe 2 point to both. Was Chronicle C produced at Canterbury at Siward’s request? Did that Chronicle follow him when he returned to Abingdon?22 Whatever conclusion is reached, the link between the Canterbury archbishopric and the abbey of Abingdon created by the appointment of Siward as Archbishop Eadsige’s auxiliary is the context for Chronicle C’s production—whether at Abingdon, at Canterbury, or in an archiepiscopal household which united them both. It would also explain the Abingdon connection between the annals 983–1018 in Chronicles C and E (see chapter 9). This is the context for the production of Chronicle C, which is the copy of a vernacular chronicle now found in Cotton Tiberius B. i. It is thus the most likely context for the decisions to connect that vernacular chronicle to various other matter also found in that manuscript. That need not mean that it is the context for the production of the vernacular chronicle found there. Tiberius  B.  i may be a copy of a chronicle already made, /C. The quality of Chronicle C’s scribal work, the lack of much sign of collation or awkward joins when material was brought together, suggested that as a possibility. The fact that different stages of Scribe 2’s work in the 1040s annals are clear simply underscores the seamlessness of his work before that. A possible earlier /C has to be kept in play. C’s annals to 1042 may provide more clues.

The Making of Chronicle C, Annals to 1042 Chronicle C is a complete chronicle within the vernacular tradition. Like all our surviving vernacular chronicles, it begins with the year 60 BC. It clearly relied on earlier sources. For the annals from 60 BC to AD 977 there is no doubt of its

21  Cf. Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, pp. lxv–lxvi; Conner, Abingdon Chronicle, pp. xxxix–liii; O’Brien O’Keeffe, Chronicle C, pp. lxxiv–xcii. The debate includes material in the chronicle before the 1040s annals, and extends in some cases to BC. 22  Thus O’Brien O’Keeffe, Chronicle C, p. xc.

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MAKING OF C AND THE MID ELEVENTH-CENTURY  197 source: a chronicle of the BC family. As comparison with the late-tenth-century Chronicle B showed, its exemplar was not B itself, but a very faithful copy of a chronicle like B (see chapter 5). The makers of C or /C made no identifiable changes to BC. Up to the 977 annal this was its sole source. Chronicle C also contains the Æthelred and early Cnut annals, c.983–c.1022/1023. It is, as discussed in chapter 9, unclear what source was used here. Was it still a BC chronicle? In the form in which they now appear in C, two things characterized this group of annals. They had passed through if not been copied at Abingdon. They had also received marginalia on Abingdon abbots. This section of Chronicle C covering much of the reign of Æthelred and the early years of Cnut is also physically marked out in the surviving Chronicle C manuscript. These annals have bissextile marking of annal numbers, beginning with annal 984. This is con­ fined in C to these years alone. It suggests that C’s scribe was using a new source at this point which differed from that or those to around annal 984. Had the ‘Æthelred annals’ simply continued an earlier source of C, we might expect the bissextile numbering to have extended back to earlier leap years. It does not. The preservation of these markings in the making of Chronicle C suggests two other conclusions. First, that there were probably not many stages of copying between C and its source(s) since signs of such marking in earlier sources tend to disappear over several stages of copying. Second, they underline the fact that C’s scribe was a careful copyist. To recap: textual analysis shows that Chronicle C consisted of a BC chronicle to annal 977, plus either a continuation of this or another source for the annals 978–982 (see also chapters  7 and  8). Textual analysis plus the manuscript itself show that Chronicle C’s annals 983/984 to the early 1020s derive from a separate source. The only sign of these moves from source to source in the manuscript of Chronicle C is a reduced-size script to fit in the annals for the 970s and 980s. Does all this argue for a Chronicle /C, suggesting that the potentially messy work of collating had already been done before C was made? Or is it a sign of the great skill and care of Scribe 2, who was bringing this material together himself? Is it thus still consistent with Chronicle C itself as the first product of the work of collation? In the case of the ‘Æthelred annals’, Chronicle C’s source had passed through Abingdon hands before C’s scribe used it. Marginalia on Abingdon abbots had been added to it. These have been incorporated into the text of Chronicle C. Most of these Abingdon references are also found in Chronicle E, where their position again indicates that they have been taken from a text where they were marginalia. There is a year’s difference between them in C and E (/E), as if their respective scribes interpreted the correct position of marginal notes differently when absorbing them into the text. This is another sign of the Abingdon connection between the evolution of Chronicles C and E. It also suggests that the Abingdon source text was used independently in the development of these two chronicles. C or /C was not copying /E here, nor vice versa.

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198  After Alfred C’s source from the 1020s annals was arguably a new one. No Abingdon detail is found in C between the ‘Æthelred annals’ and the year numbered 1044; nor in E.  Neither chronicle, for example, records the appointment of Abbot Siward, a key figure in the connection between Abingdon and Canterbury in the 1040s. That new source was a lost Mercian/West Midlands chronicle,23 to which both John of Worcester and Chronicle D are also witness. From annal numbered 1023 until annal numbered 1035, C is very sparse. From 1035 to 1042 its annals once again blossom. For all these annals C’s links are not with Chronicle E. In annals 1035–1042 it is Chronicles C and D which are very close. Across all these annals there are also parallels with the annals in John of Worcester. After the annal numbered 1023, peculiar now to C, Chronicle C has a run of blank years. This is broken by the annal numbered 1028—where C’s brief sen­ tence ‘Here Cnut went to Norway with fifty ships’ is found also in D and E, the latter two developing it further. All three chronicles are extremely thin in their coverage of the years numbered 1024–1033. This single brief reference to Cnut’s journey to Norway with fifty ships under 1028 is the sum total of their common material for these years. In the annals numbered from 1029 to 1042, Chronicle C begins to show signs of a new source. First, it contains retrospective writing: these are not annals pro­ duced on a year by year basis, but compiled, and possibly rewritten, at a distance from the events. Second, it has marked Mercian material, which is often (though not always) common with Chronicle D. Third, it has one group of annals found in closely similar form in D. From 1035 C and D are now in very substantial agree­ ment vis-à-vis E. This relationship changed in the annal for C 1043/E 1042, from which point the agreement in the 1040s annals is more closely C and E. The signs of retrospective writing or revision begin in C’s annal for 1030. This is a compendium annal bringing together the events of more than one year with retrospective comment on the sanctity of the Norwegian king, Olaf. Under 1030 C, D, and E all refer to the death of Olaf. D and E are identical. Chronicle C’s annal, by contrast, is clearly retrospective: Olaf was killed and was ‘after’ holy, and ‘the year before’ Hakon was drowned. (On the dating of this cult see Appendix 3.) C’s annal here is a warning that laconic annals do not necessarily mean contem­ porary ones. Hakon was the son of Earl Eric of Northumbria, who was an earl in Mercia before his appointment as a successor to Olaf in Norway in 1028.24 The reference to Hakon, however, is in no other vernacular chronicle, but it is found

23  A lost source for many annals in C has been suggested by e.g. Baxter, ‘Manuscript C of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, especially at pp. 1218–22. As Baxter notes, the content points to Mercia and especially to West Mercia. The name adopted here registers that geographic uncertainty. 24  See S. Keynes, ‘Cnut’s Earls’, in A. Rumble (ed.), The Reign of Cnut (London, 1994), pp. 43–88 at pp. 61–2.

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MAKING OF C AND THE MID ELEVENTH-CENTURY  199 in John of Worcester; here again under 1030, again in the annal recording Olaf ’s death—though John had much more on Hakon in his annal for 1029. It is tempting to link the Olaf annal to Abingdon. Just how Olaf ’s cult had spread to England is unclear. Trade with the East of England is a likely route. But another possible one is via the English clergy whom Olaf is said to have taken to Norway to help with Christianization. Two of them, according to Adam of Bremen, were named Rodulf and Grimkil/Grimcytel. It is just possible that Grimkil was the bishop of that name who held the see of Selsey, and whose death is mentioned in Chronicles C and E in the 1040s annals which they share. Even more tantalizingly, Rodulf has been suggested as the cleric of that name who was given the abbacy of Abingdon in 1050—noted, again, in Chronicles C and E. However, this is too late to have influenced the content of a Chronicle C made c.1045—unless it is an argument for placing Scribe C’s work as late as this. Rodulf may, however, have already been a monk at Abingdon. C’s 1030 annal is not only retrospective, it is also ‘Mercian’. There is much Mercian material in C’s mid-century annals, often also found in Chronicle D. Thus under the year 1037 both C and D record the death of Æfic, dean of Evesham— the mention of clerics other than bishops is rare in the vernacular chronicles; under 1038 C and D give the date of the death of Bishop Brihtheah of Worcester; and C and D have the ravaging of Worcestershire under 1041 in response to the murder of housecarls who had been collecting taxes. This Mercian material in C argues a Mercian chronicle or text as one of its sources. Chronicle D has most of this, John of Worcester has all. Were both these latter copying C? Or are all drawing on a lost Mercian or Midlands text? The extra details in John, for example on Hakon, point to the latter explanation. John’s access to this material or lost chronicle was independent of C. Independent access seems also to apply to Chronicle D. Chronicle C alone has the annal for 1039. This contains the death of the bishop of Lichfield, and events in the Welsh marches, in which the English leader, Edwin, was slain. This annal is not in D. But these events are precisely referred back to in D’s second annal for 1052, the first full annal after D’s rewritten quire. D here notes an attack by King ‘Griffin’ in Herefordshire ‘on the same day in the thirteenth year since Eadwine and his companions were killed’. In the 1052 annal, Chronicle D appears to be using a source similar to that from which Chronicle C derived the 1039 annal. The 1039 annal is not in D; it is possible that it was lost during the much later rewriting of the quire containing D’s annals 1016–1052(1). However the 1052 annal referring back to these events is not in C. It looks as if a Mercian or West Midlands source lies behind C and D here, one from which both may have selected or copied independently. John of Worcester has both annals. The retrospect visible in C’s 1030 annal is again marked in those for 1035–1042. This group of annals was written or rewritten as late as the return of Edward in 1041/1042. Under 1035, Cnut’s widow Ælfgifu (Emma) stayed at Winchester ‘as

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200  After Alfred long as she could’—a comment unlikely to be made before 1037, when she was driven out; under 1037, Ælfgifu remained in Bruges ‘while need was’, thus written no earlier than 1040, the date of her return; under 1040 Harthacnut did nothing kingly ‘as long as he lived’ and under 1041 Edward lived in his brother’s court ‘as long as he lived’, with neither entry, therefore, written before 1042 when Harthacnut died. It is tempting to see this whole section as being composed after Edward’s accession in 1042, if not after his consecration in 1043. Both share a comment in 1042 that Edward was chosen after Harthacnut eallswa him gecynde [intensified in D: wel gecynde] wæs (‘as was his right by birth’, D: ‘well his right by birth’), asserting Edward’s right by kinship to the throne. These annals, with their sympathy with Edward and his mother, but not with his Scandinavian half-brother Harthacnut, take a clear stance on the disputed succession after Cnut’s death. They include the semi-hagiographical poem emphasizing the death of Edward’s brother Alfred. The long poem on the death of the ætheling, in the annal for 1036, shows signs of an incipient cult which may be strictly contemporary, but is more likely later. Equally significant, this ‘curious’ poem has strong echoes of the Latin rhymed prose found on the continent, and specifically of the Encomium Emmae Reginae. This latter text was produced for Queen Emma c.1041. It was the work of a Flemish author, addressed directly to the queen; an intervention in the arguments around the succession to Cnut and especially an apologia in the very difficult political situation produced by the return and designation of the future Edward the Confessor, her son with Æthelred II. The poem in C and D, it has been argued, is ‘the authentic echo’ of the Encomium.25 The annals for 1035–1042 address many of the same events. This group of annals 1035–1042 is found in Chronicle D as well as C.  They could have been written as late as c.1050, a response to the dramas of these years and the prominence in them of accusations about the death of Alfred.26 They are certainly not strictly contemporary commentary. Given Chronicle C’s development, and its shift from a close link with D via the common source in annal 1042, it seems most likely that this is a retrospect dating from the accession of Edward, shaped by the political context of that time. The links with the Encomium which addresses precisely the political context of these years, also argues for this early date. The last full annal in the block common to C and D is that numbered C 1042. But the first sentence of C and D 1043 is also identical: Her wæs Eadward gehalgod to cinge on Wincestre on forman Easter dæig (C) (‘here was Edward consecrated king in Winchester on the first day of Easter’). That opening is closely similar to

25  On the poem and the Encomium see A. Orchard, ‘The Literary Background to the Encomium Emmae Reginae’, Journal of Medieval Latin, 11 (2001), pp. 156–82 at pp. 180–2. 26 See The Life of King Edward Who Rests at Westminster, ed. and tr. F. Barlow, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1992), pp. 32–6.

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MAKING OF C AND THE MID ELEVENTH-CENTURY  201 that in E: Her wæs Æðward gehalgod to cyng on Winceastre on Æsterdæg. Both C and E follow that with mid mycclum wyrðscype (‘with great honour’) and details of the consecration by Archbishop Eadsige. C’s close parallels with Chronicle E begins here. The content of Chronicle C, that is the vernacular chronicle in Cotton Tiberius  B.  i, therefore derives from a number of sources. They consist of a BC-type chronicle (to 977); a text, via Abingdon, for the Æthelred–Cnut annals (c.983 to early 1020s); and a Mercian/West Midlands chronicle (c.1029 onwards). The latter was also used by John of Worcester and Chronicle  D.  It may be the same source common with John for C’s annals for 978–983 (see chapters 7 and 8). It is, however, debatable if not dangerous simply to see John and C’s sources here as a single lost chronicle. Was all this material assembled by the scribes of Chronicle C themselves, and especially by Scribe 2, in whose work they all came together? He was a skilled man, and there are signs on the page of him managing the assembly of sources in the treatment of the 970s and 980s. The preservation of bissextile markings for the years from the 980s to early 1020s suggest there were few, if any, copies between him and his source at this point. Chronicle C appears to have used its sources serially, turning from one to another, rather than in the more complex task of collating and merging. Serial transitions were easier to manage. The making and not just the copying of Chronicle C could all be largely his work. A Chronicle /C which he copied cannot, however, be discounted; arguments for its existence remain strong. A Chronicle /C would arguably have extended to annal 1043, to the sentence on the consecration of Edward. This is shared by Chronicles C, D, and E and marks the point at which agreement between C and D gives way to agreement between C and E.  Without strictly contemporary manuscripts to examine, ex­plan­ation of this must be hypothetical. But it could mark the point at which /C ended, and where Scribe 2 of Chronicle C turned to material produced in the— new—Abingdon/Canterbury context. Far less debatable is the existence of a Mercian/West Midlands Chronicle which this has revealed behind C. This may have been /C itself, in other words it would already have brought together these earlier sources. The fact that the Abingdon annotated Æthelred annals were available independently to C and /E in the 1040s argues against that. A chronicle which had already absorbed these annotations cannot account for the differences between them. The Mercian/West Midlands Chronicle also lies behind John of Worcester and Chronicle D. On the evidence of all these descendants, it was very thin for the 1020s and early 1030s. The years 1035–1041/1042, if not the 1020s to 1042, found in this Mercian/West Midlands source, were written up retrospectively in the early years of the 1040s, close in date to the making of Chronicle C itself.

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202  After Alfred The early 1040s thus saw the revival of vernacular chronicling, and the produc­ tion of at least two chronicles, as well as the Latin Encomium. The accession of Edward the Confessor was marked by a flurry of historiography, which included the making of chronicles, the writing of contemporary history after two decades or more of neglect, and the production of a work of political apologia directly addressing contemporary concerns. The respective authors were, in some cases at least, aware of each other’s work.

Historiography and Politics: Chronicle C and the Accession of Edward A revived interest in vernacular chronicling and chronicle making, including the writing of recent history, is datable to the early 1040s. It was arguably galvanized by the return of Edward, the exiled son of King Æthelred, and his accession to the throne. A revival of dynastic interest within the vernacular tradition? Chronicle C lacked the overt dynastic content found in Chronicle A if not B, though the return of the old dynasty may have provoked interest again in vernacular chronicles which had carried its earlier history. The immediate political context was the messy resolution of a succession dispute precipitated by the death of Cnut. That had played out between his sons with two wives, one of whom, Ælfgifu/Emma, was also the widow of King Æthelred and mother of that same Edward. Edward’s accession restored the tenth-century native English dynasty. But the preceding dispute, like many such civil dissensions, had entailed changes of sides, support for losing candidates, and twists of events, which left many people wrong-footed and with much to explain in its aftermath. Recent work has linked the production of Chronicle C to all this. Chronicle C has been associated with the aristocratic rivalries of Edward’s reign, in particular that between Earls Leofric and Godwine.27 The chronicle has been given a political home in the early years of Edward the Confessor’s reign and in the factional tensions at court in these years. Chronicle C has been associated in particular with Leofric, earl of Mercia, and a leading figure at court.28 This same analysis also recognizes a probably Mercian chronicle lying behind C. The Mercian/West Midlands chronicle would fit with this proposed pro-Leofric text, produced in a religious house sympathetic to Earl Leofric. Interest of a lay noble in history writing has a precedent in that of Ealdorman Æthelweard c. AD 1000. Whether Chronicle C itself was this pro-Leofric text is more debatable. 27  Baxter,‘MS C of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’. 28  Thus E.  Tyler, ‘Writing Universal History in Eleventh-Century England: Cotton Tiberius B I, German Imperial History Writing and Vernacular Lay Literacy’ in M. Campopiano and H. Bainton (eds), The Life of the Universal Chronicle in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2017), pp. 84–120, following Baxter, ‘MS C of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’.

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MAKING OF C AND THE MID ELEVENTH-CENTURY  203 This book has argued throughout for a ‘court’ context of vernacular chronicles. Its argument would cradle such alignments of individual chronicles and individ­ ual figures very well. This book has encouraged a political reading of vernacular historiography. The fuller eleventh-century sources might allow this to be mapped on to factional rivalries at court. Such a precise political context need not have been a new phenomenon. The interpretation of Chronicles C and E as re­spect­ ive­ly ‘pro-Leofric’ and ‘pro-Godwine’ is attractive and will need to be tested against the range of annals and the stances of these chronicles, a task for chap­ ter  11. It is, however, important to recognize local loyalties in these chronicles, geographic as well as factional. Chronicle E’s 999 annal, with its defence of the people of Kent and their response to attack, already gave signs of such local patri­ otism. Such loyalty could both chime with but also cross-cut aristocratic rivalries. As the details of annals in C and E are more fully considered in chapter 11, it must be given full weight in the understanding of these chronicles. Recent study has not only encouraged a political reading of mid-eleventh-century chronicling. Elizabeth Tyler’s work on the manuscript which contains Chronicle C has given more insight into how texts and manuscripts functioned in political discourse and discussion. Chronicle C forms part of Cotton Tiberius B. i, which was from the outset its manuscript context. Tiberius B. i is a ‘book of histories’. The whole can be seen as ‘an intellectually ambitious universal chronicle which functions as a highly coherent text’,29 and a sophisticated one. The Menologium’s fascination with time arguably bridges and negotiates the different chronologies of Orosius and Alfred’s vernacular chronicle;30 Maxims II has kingship to the fore.31 Both Menologium and Maxims II, like Orosius, place Anglo-Saxon history in a Roman, if not Imperial context. Their combined prefacing of a vernacular chronicle may signal an attempt to effect a translatio imperii, a transfer of rule from Rome to Anglo-Saxon kings.32 For whom and concerning whom would such a vision be articulated? Was the message of this manuscript ‘an imperially conceived kingship for the AngloDanish dynasty’?33 Or rather does this ‘grandest vision of Edward’s kingship’ cele­brate the return of the native dynasty? Should Tiberius B. i be linked to the Canterbury environment where, in 1043 at his consecration, an archbishop would have instructed Edward in kingship, or to the king’s marriage in early 1045? It was to this environment of Edward’s early years that Chronicle C’s genesis, and continuation, belonged. The more certain context of Chronicle C was the court and its ecclesiastical members with a strong connection to Canterbury, specifically archiepiscopal

29  Tyler, ‘Writing Universal History’, pp. 84–120 at p. 99. 30  Tyler, Writing Universal History’, p. 110. 31  Tyler, Writing Universal History’, p. 105. 32  Tyler, Writing Universal History’, pp. 101–9. 33  Tyler,‘Writing Universal History’, pp. 108–9.

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204  After Alfred Canterbury. If the questions are who wanted a chronicle, who wanted a vernacular chronicle, and who wanted it at that time, an archbishop of Canterbury must be in the frame; even more so for the creation of Tiberius B. i as a whole, a sophisti­ cated collection which expressed thinking, in some quarters, about kingship. Was this a book about, if not for, kings, of advice for kings, or for those who made and advised kings, a book particularly suitable in the wake of a period which had seen foreign conquest and rule? Was Chronicle C in its manuscript context part of a response to Edward’s consecration? A historical commentary on the advice an archbishop gave to the king he anointed? Is the entire manuscript in which Chronicle C is found an expression of some of the ideas and ideology encouraged by, if not lying behind, the events of Easter 1043, when Archbishop Eadsige ‘consecrated Edward as king . . . with great honour . . . and before all the people instructed him well and advised him thoroughly for his own need and that of all the people’ (C 1043)? Or is its immediate environment the king’s marriage, at Candlemas in early 1045? This was the last event entered in Scribe 2’s first stint of work on Chronicle C, recorded under 1044 since C was using Annunciation dating (see chapter 11).34 The marriage completed the years of accession. The making of Chronicle C belongs to this time. Tiberius B. i looked to the past to shape its messages about kingship. As Edward’s marriage was planned and executed, 1044 and 1045 would have been years full of hope for the future. Siward had, by now, stepped into Archbishop Eadsige’s place, forging the link between Canterbury and Abingdon which is so clear in C and E. An archbishop who was also a consecrator of kings, probably also an officiator at their weddings, is a likely patron and audience for such a manuscript, though it would be a grave error to exclude lay members of court or a wider circle of eccle­ siastics, including women, from the reception of the messages such a manuscript conveyed.35 Given the complexity of authorial voices, audience reception, and the context which shaped both, is it either wise or necessary to decide among these different interpretations? The court, with its pressing political concerns, discussions, and apologia, is the context of all this historiographical activity. Tiberius B. i should be read not only with an eye to all its content, but also with particular attention to its ending. The precise context for the revival of historiography in the 1040s is the return, conse­ cration, and marriage of King Edward. Tiberius B. i ended with Chronicle C. As Chronicle C would originally have read, it culminated in the horrors—as here 34  The first sentence of 1045, the death of Bishop Brihtwold, on 10 kal. May, i.e. 22 April, may be part of this first campaign of work by Scribe 2. Easter fell on 13 April in 1045. Did the death occur while the Easter court was still meeting? 35  See E. Tyler, England in Europe: English Royal Women and Literary Patronage, c. 1000–c. 1150 (Toronto, 2017) on the sophistication of court culture.

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MAKING OF C AND THE MID ELEVENTH-CENTURY  205 presented—of the reigns of Cnut’s sons, followed by the accession of Edward, his consecration—and, finally, his marriage. Royal marriages were not systematically noted, indeed they are relatively rare in these chronicles. This was a new dawn, with promise for the future. Yet the early years of Edward are already marked in these annals by violent actions, by dark rumours, and by natural disasters with harsh consequences such as the great hunger of 1044, when wheat soared to sixty pence a sester and more (C 1044, E 1043(1)). The revival of the early 1040s had included not merely the production of Tiberius B. i, but the writing of charged, emotive, and value-laden retrospects on the years 1035–1042. The tone of the 1035–1042 annals was not lost. In the eyes of the vernacular chroniclers who wrote the annals which once ended Chronicle C, this was a dawn over which shadows hung. The mood and tone is not one of unalloyed optimism. This was far from simple dynastic propaganda. The revival of vernacular chronicling, at least at Canterbury/Abingdon and at a Midlands centre, was embedded in the vernacular tradition itself, whose messages it continued to carry. Its place within an ecclesiastical if not episcopal context, itself part of the ‘court’, meant that this revival articulated some of the concerns and debates and discourse of that group, especially (though not necessarily exclusively) its ecclesiastical and episcopal members. Can we envisage the sort of meetings, gatherings in which the idea of making a chronicle, continuing an old one, writ­ ing or copying annals could have been mooted, and material for this exchanged; where memories of older chronicles would have been activated, seen again as relevant? This was a revival, but at particular centres, linked through the court. * * * * * * * * * * * * Chronicle C has been the focus of this chapter. Pursuit of it revealed other history-writing and chronicling c. AD 1040, a Mercian/West Midlands chronicle and perhaps Chronicle /C. The 1040s annals also connected Chronicles C and E, or better its predecessor /E. Where, in all this, should we place Chronicle /E? It, too, had annals for the years 1035–1042, here numbered 1036–1042. They cover the same period as those here argued as deriving from the Mercian/West Midland Chronicle, the same events, from the death of Cnut to the accession of Edward. Like those in C and D, they, too, are at least in part retrospective: Baldwin of Flanders welcomed Ælfgifu ‘as long as she was there’. They are even more clearly contemporary with the early stages of Edward’s reign. Recording the choice of Edward as king under 1041, E’s annal interjects ‘may he hold it as long as God grants’. E’s annals are as unusual as those in C and D; its detailed account of these years follows the largely blank annals for Cnut’s reign. Another retrospect on these years? Again from the perspective of the early years of Edward? At crucial points different from that in C and D; part of the same urgent discussion? Work

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206  After Alfred now on /E should arguably be added to this ferment of historical commentary. Perhaps on D, too. There is an argument that Chronicle D was, in part, made in the middle decades of the eleventh century. Developments in both /E and D will be examined in the following chapters. The links between C and E did not end with the work of Scribe 2. Even more, the links between C and D continued into the 1040s, and through to 1066. These links, and between D and E, are especially complex for the annals covering the political crisis of 1049–1052. The return of Edward had provoked a revival of vernacular contemporary history writing, a revival in a context, or creating a context, of exchange and debate. Writing, context, exchange, and debate continued. They link, and dog our interpretation of, developments in C, D, and E for the annals numbered through to 1066, the subject of the next chapter.

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11

The Continuations of Chronicle C and the Development of Chronicles in the Mid Eleventh Century The middle decades of the eleventh century, the 1040s, 1050s, and 1060s to 1066, are covered in some detail in Chronicles C, D, and E. These three chronicles have annals numbered to these decades, and there are clear signs of connection between them. When were these mid-century annals authored? Do they survive in their original form? What was the mid-century shape of chronicles C, D, and E? These questions are not easily answered. E is a much later chronicle. D’s palaeography leaves us uncertain what if any of its content was copied pre-1066. There were opportunities for changes and for the later acquisition of annals in both. The detailed coverage thickens in particular sets of annals, especially those for the years 1049–1052. These were years of acute political crisis, which involved the fall and return of the most powerful aristocratic family, that of Earl Godwine. The annals which cover them are marked by engaged historical writing, where the ‘human noise’ is sometimes especially loud. The significance of these events would have been reason enough for contemporary annal writing; contemporaries might be expected to comment, and in partisan ways. But the Norman Conquest of 1066 complicates the picture. The dramatis personae of the 1049–1052 crisis included key figures in the unfolding of the Norman conquest of 1066. The Norman Conquest had the potential to recast the preceding decades. Did it also produce a writing or rewriting of their story? How certain can we be that the annals numbered pre-1066 in these three chronicles were composed pre-1066 and remained unaltered? This chapter and the next confront these questions. The present chapter will argue that in C and E, if not D, we witness strictly contemporary annals and strictly contemporary argument. The next chapter will remind us that there was also likely rewriting of some annals after 1066, especially in Chronicle  D.  The firmest ground is Chronicle C, where the work of scribes who wrote these annals can, for the most part, be dated pre-1066.

After Alfred: Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and Chroniclers, 900–1150. Pauline Stafford, Oxford University Press 2020. © Pauline Stafford. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198859642.001.0001

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208  After Alfred

The Continuations of Chronicle C: Palaeography, Layout, and Dating The fair copy which was the original Chronicle C in Cotton Tiberius B. i ended at the first sentence of the annal numbered 1045. It was the work of two scribes. The second went on to write a few further continuations of that chronicle. Five scribes followed him in the mid eleventh century; in the twelfth an eighth scribe replaced the final text. The work of these scribes was spread over the final folios of the original Tiberius B. i, and continued on to a new quire, prepared, perhaps hastily, to take more annals. In the course of their work there were changes of layout and of rubrication, and a crucial change in the way the beginning of the year was calculated. The summation of all these lays a basis from which we can begin to understand contemporary history writing in the mid eleventh century. The major work of the second scribe of Chronicle C ended at the beginning of the 1045 annal. He had copied out the bulk of Chronicle C in manuscript Tiberius B. i, but that was not the end of his work. Chronicle C, that is the chron­ icle in Tiberius B. i, continued to grow. Scribe 2 completed 1045 and added annals for 1046–1048, apparently not all at the same time. The different appearance of these annals may point to year-by-year addition. It could also mean a scribe receiving material from different sources.1 Scribe 2 had finished his work by 1049 at the earliest. The third scribe started work at the annal for 1049 and ended part way through 1052; it could be argued that there is a significant change of appearance in his work after the first sentence of the 1050 annal (see illustration 5). The break between the work of this scribe and Scribe 4, who completed the 1052 annal, comes in mid sentence as well as mid annal. The change of scribes marks a new folio (161r), which is also the beginning of a new quire. The new quire contains the remaining annals to 1066. After finishing annal numbered 1052, the fourth scribe wrote the first sentence of annal 1053 on the bottom line of folio 161v. The fifth scribe began work here, completing that line, then writing annals 1053, 1054, 1055, and 1056. The annal for 1056 (folio 163v) is followed by a long gap extending to the end of this folio. The annal for 1065, next in the manuscript, begins on folio 160r, the work of the sixth scribe. He wrote annal 1065 and part of annal 1066. A seventh scribe wrote the rest of 1066, to the end of folio 162v, part way through the battle of Stamford Bridge. There are two short gaps in the writing of the annal for 1066.2 In the twelfth century an eighth scribe completed the account of the battle. This was

1 Ker, Catalogue, pp. 252–3 and O’Brien O’Keeffe, Chronicle C, p. xxviii. 2  Joscelyn supplied text from Chronicle D: see O’Brien O’Keeffe, Chronicle C, pp. 120–1 notes.

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Continuations of C and the Mid Eleventh Century  209

Illustration 5.  Chronicle C. London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius B. i, fo 159r, showing the change of appearance of the hand in annal 1050 and the unusual layout of annals 1050–1052. © The British Library Board.

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210  After Alfred arguably a replacement for a damaged or worn folio. It may faithfully represent the original end of work on this chronicle.3 The mid-annal transitions between Scribes 3 to 5 suggest that they were working together. The same is true of Scribes 6 and 7. The work of all of them has been dated to the mid eleventh century. Scribes 6 and 7 were working after 1066; Scribes 2 to 5 are normally assumed to have worked before. The signs of a gap between these two groups of scribes supports that assumption, though that argument is not watertight.4 Chronicle C as originally made did not fill the last quire of folios in Tiberius B. i. The first additions were written on the spare blank folios at the end. The long account of the events of 1050 to 1052 if not early 1053 could not be accommodated on those blank folios. A new quire, inferior in quality to the bulk of the fine manuscript which is Tiberius B. i, was prepared to receive them. The break between the work of Scribes 3 and 4 comes in the middle of annal 1052. It marks a new folio (161r) which is also the beginning of a new quire.5 The new quire contains the remaining annals. Its size—four folios—is anomalous for Tiberius B. i, though it is ruled to match earlier folios.6 It was misbound and thus misnumbered, almost certainly after the Cotton fire.7 Its folios should run in the order 161, 163, 160, 162. It is made of poor grade parchment, with some signs of hasty preparation.8 Although the ruling continues to match that of the earlier chronicle quires, it is ‘badly set on the page’, with changes to the top and bottom margins. In these senses, too, it is anomalous in Tiberius B. i. The rubrication and layout of these years has some peculiar features. In the earlier annals in C, from folio 144v (annal 991), annal numbers and the first capital of the text (usually ‘H’ of Her) are in a metallic oxidized red.9 The 1050–1052 numbers are still in this colour, but the initial ‘h’ is here picked out in the same ink as the body of the text (see illustration 5). Rubrication changes again for numbers 1053 and 1054, now in bright orange-red. Very unusually, annals 1051 and 1052 do not begin on a new line (see illustration 5). Rather these two annal numbers follow the text of the preceding annal, their own text continuing on the same line. These three annals thus appear on the page as continuous text, interrupted only by annal numbers placed mid line.

3  O’Brien O’Keeffe ‘Reading the C-Text’, pp. 141–7, on the lost ending of C. 4  On the dating of their work see Ker, Catalogue, p. 253, allocating all to mid century. He does not comment specifically on the date of individual scribes, though a 1040s date for Scribe 2 is implicit in his discussion. For the argument that ‘some time had passed and circumstances had changed between the work of scribes 5 and 6’ see O’Brien O’Keeffe, Chronicle C, p. lxxii. 5  This and the changeover after the first sentence of 1053 underlie O’Brien O’Keeffe’s view of ‘co-operative’ work by the scribes of the annals for 1049–1056: Chronicle C, pp. lxxii–lxxiii. 6  O’Brien O’Keeffe, Chronicle C, pp. xxiv and lxxiii. 7  O’Brien O’Keeffe, Chronicle C, p. xxiv n. 44. 8  O’Brien O’Keeffe, Chronicle C, pp. xxxiv–xxxv. 9  O’Brien O’Keeffe, Chronicle C, p. xxxix.

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Continuations of C and the Mid Eleventh Century  211 Whether or not deliberately intended, the effect was that they read as an ­uninterrupted narrative. 1054 is the last original annal number. 1055 and 1056, like 1065 and 1066, have no numbers. Space was left for rubrication of annals 1055 and 1056 and 1065.10 There is no space for the number 1066 (folio 160v) though space was left for the initial ‘I’ of In. If anything, it is the last sentence of 1065—the accession of King Harold—which was picked out visually on the page, with a separate line and a large 7 (‘And’) in the margin. The annal for 1056 (folio 163v) is followed by a long gap extending to the end of this folio. The annal for 1065, next in the manuscript, began on folio 160r. There are no blank numbers after the 1056 annal. Earlier in this Chronicle runons of numbers indicate years where the scribes knew they had no material in their exemplars or sources. This continued the practice of Chronicle BC from which C was descended. This practice was continued in the blank annals for the 1020s and 1030s. It had now been abandoned. Annals 1065 and 1066 are set apart by this gap, and in other ways. They were begun on a new folio (folio 160r), even though there was space at the end of the preceding folio 163v. The appearance of the hands from folio 160r onwards had changed markedly from those which preceded it. Chronicle C’s most recent editor concluded that ‘time had passed and circumstances changed’ before the work of these last scribes began.11 There is one other feature of these final annals to be noted: some of them begin the year at the Annunciation, i.e. 25 March, not on 1 January or 25 December. The annals numbered 1044 to 1053 in Chronicle C use this dating.12 This sets these annals apart from earlier sections of Chronicle C taken from other sources, and from Chronicles D and E.  It means events which occurred between 25 December and 25 March are recorded under the previous calendar year (as we would calculate that) in this section of Chronicle C. Year beginning can only be established where an annal gives details of dates. The 1040s are annals in which dating practices can be checked, not least because, in comparison with earlier annals, they contain a significant number of precisely dated deaths and successions of bishops. The year under which these are recorded often differs in C, D, and E. This is complicated by the fact that transmission over time has dislocated dates in D and E. But it is also because Chronicle C in these 10  The present numbers in the manuscript were supplied by early modern annotators; cf. O’Brien O’Keeffe, Chronicle C, pp. 115–19 notes. 11  Thus O’Brien O’Keeffe, Chronicle C, p. xxiv. She contrasts the ductus of the hands between fos 163v and 160r: ‘the script appears hurried, ignores the right margin of the verso, and commits careless errors’. 12 See  D.  Whitelock, Appendix to Introduction of Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, ‘On the Commencement of the Year in the Saxon Chronicles’, pp. cxxxix–cxliid at p. cxliib. She also argues that C was using such dating in 1065. This is less convincing, since C is obviously narrating a continuous story here and this produces dating anomalies.

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212  After Alfred annals uses an Annunciation year beginning, whereas Chronicles D and E change the year at Christmas or January.13 Annunciation dating applies to C’s annals for 1044–1053, but not to its annal for 1056.14 There the deaths of Æthelstan, bishop of Hereford, on 4 ides February (10 February) and of Earl Odda on 2 kal. September (31 August) are placed in the same year, a calendar year which must have begun at Christmas or on January 1. Had Annunciation dating been followed, Æthelstan’s death would have been recorded in the previous year. This change occurred sometime after C’s annals for 1052 and 1053 were written. Under 1052 C has the killing of Rhys, the Welsh king’s brother. Chronicle D places this under 1053, with his head brought to Gloucester ‘on twelfth eve’, i.e. early in January, thus falling in 1052 by Annunciation dating. Somewhere between annal 1052 and annal 1056, the dating convention used by Chronicle C’s scribes/makers changed. There are no diagnostic dates in the annals between C 1053 and 1056 to determine precisely at what point that occurred. Some initial conclusions can be drawn from all this. Chronicle C’s manuscript had room for continuation. That was used, and exceeded. The original manuscript, its parchment, and its script point to a carefully produced text to which some importance was attached. The final folios added to take the last chronicle continuations were rougher, more hastily prepared, and not rubricated to the same standards. The circumstances of the continuations changed at some point. Scribes 2, 3, and 4 worked in the same environment, probably the same scrip­tor­ ium. The work of Scribes 3 and 4 follows seamlessly, one taking over from the other in mid annal at the point where the new quire was added. They used Annunciation dating, as did Scribe 2. The first continuations were thus in the same scribal context as the making of Tiberius B. i, or at least the bulk of Chronicle C in that manuscript. Scribe 2, one of its original scribes, was working as late as 1049. The work of Scribe 5 marks a new departure. As noted earlier, Scribe 4 had begun annal 1053, which Scribe 5 took up and finished, an argument that he was still working collaboratively. But in his case that argument is weaker, since Scribe

13  Both complications are in play in e.g. the case of Bishop Lyfing. C has his death in 1045, 13 kal. April, i.e. 20 March. His death took place in 1046 by a Christmas/January year beginning. Chronicle E has it in 1044. E is two years adrift at this point, so this is 1046. D has 1047; it is one year in advance at this point. The deaths of Archbishops Eadsige and Ælfric are also given in different years in different chronicles, but can be explained in the same ways. C has them both in 1050, in each case with the precise dates, 4 kal. November and 11 kal. February respectively. The latter would be 1051 on Christmas/January dating. D is still one year out and has them respectively at 1051 and 1052. E has 1047 for the death of Eadsige with the precise date as in C. E’s dates are now seriously dislocated and this is again consistent. (F’s corrected date has 1049.) Similar calculations bring them all into line on Grim, bishop of the South Saxons, Ælfwine of Winchester and Stigand, all noted in C 1047, D 1048, E 1045; this is a simple question of dating dislocation. The difference between C 1045 and D 1047 for the death of Bishop Lyfing on 13 kal. April results again from a combination of dating dislocation and different year beginning. All the dislocations were corrected before the annals for 1052/1053. 14  C’s annals for 1065–1066 appear to return to Annunciation dating. On this see below. p. 229n51.

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Continuations of C and the Mid Eleventh Century  213 5, unlike Scribes 2, 3, and 4, used dating from Christmas or 1 January. 1056 is the first annal he wrote where dated material allows this to be checked. It may have applied to his work from its beginning. His first two annals, 1053 and 1054, are also rubricated differently. After annal 1054 his work is unrubricated, lacking even annal numbers. From the outset, and markedly so by its end, his work appears to be different. Some time elapsed between his work and that of the scribes who added 1065 and 1066. Chronicle C initially continued to develop in the same context in which it, and Tiberius B. i as a whole, had been produced. That is true of the continued work of the second scribe to annal 1048, and probably as far as the first sentence of annal 1053, where the fourth scribe finished work. Within that there are some divisions. There is a shift in the appearance of the work of the third scribe after the first sentence of the 1050 annal. In addition his next two annals do not begin on a line to themselves. Very unusually for any vernacular chronicle, the numbers are mid line, so that the text flows in a less visually interrupted way across these years. Scribe 3 wrote these annal numbers himself; they were then picked out in colour. 1050–1052 may have been received, or copied, or composed as a block. Annal 1053 returns to the practice of giving a new line to a new annal. The first sentence of this is the end of the work of Scribe 4 and thus, possibly, of the work in the same scriptorium or context as produced the initial chronicle. The long gap after Scribe 5’s (unnumbered) 1056 annal may mean that he, or the scribes who added 1065–1066 on a new folio, were expecting or hoping for more material. The lack of a run-on of blank numbers after 1056 is in line with the lack of rubrication of any sort after annal 1054. These last annals look rougher and less finished than the earlier work. Some of the last scribes were certainly copying text they had received from elsewhere. The gaps they left in the 1066 annal indicate either gaps in that text, or that it was difficult to read; also that the scribe hoped to have access to material which would enable him to finish them. These conclusions should be mapped on to Chronicle C’s content. The first work of Scribe 2 ended either with the marriage of Edward and Eadgyth, daughter of Earl Godwine, ten nights before Candlemas, or with the episcopal appointments in the spring of that year (1045). His Annunciation dating means that Scribe 2 gives these under different years, 1044 and 1045. From then until 1052/ early 1053 C’s annals were produced in the same scribal if not chronicling en­vir­ on­ment. They covered the rest of the 1040s, largely Scribe 2, and the crisis years of 1049–1052. These centred on the family of Earl Godwine, its fall and its return and reinstatement. All this was covered by Scribes 3 and 4. A new folio was added to take it. The central section, the heart of the story of fall and return, was written as a seamless tale. All this was done well before 1066. These continuations in chronicle C leave little doubt of the contemporary significance of these events, at least in the circles where additions were being made to this chronicle. Those circles were thus likely still the ones which had produced Chronicle C; that is a

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214  After Alfred context which brought together material from a Mercian/West Midlands source in an archiepiscopal setting, with a significant Abingdon input. The use of the masculine pronoun for Scribes 1 to 4 is likely justified. The environment in which Chronicle C’s final annals 1053/1054 to 1056/1066 were added may have been different. Doubts about the home of these annals and their scribes could prompt a substitution of ‘s/he’ for Scribes 5 to 7. The content of  annals 1054 to 1056 turns west and north, to the campaign of Earl Siward (of Northumbria) against the Scots and especially to what was happening on the western borders of Mercia against the Welsh. Chronicle C’s home was not apparently the place where this material was generated and authored: Scribe 5 received it at different times, from elsewhere, by whatever means and channels. The geographical interest of annals 1054–1056 continues into the work of Scribes 6 and 7 for 1065 and 1066, though in 1066 the frame opens up again to encompass more of the events of that fateful year. These annals may again have been received from elsewhere. They were added later. They are already a retrospect and a judgement, including another lengthy poem assessing Edward’s reign and its aftermath. To annal 1056, Chronicle C’s continuations can be taken as an indication of concerns and issues contemporary with the reign of Edward unaffected, as yet, by 1066. They are an invaluable starting point for comparison with the annals found in the much later manuscripts of Chronicles D and E. They should be interpreted according to the divisions and groups to which C’s manuscript itself has pointed.

The Annals for the 1040s in C, D, and E i)  C and E Chronicle C’s annals for 1045 to 1048 were the work of Scribe 2, the original chronicle scribe. He did not copy them all at the same time. One of his sources is identifiable: he was using, or receiving material from, a lost chronicle produced somewhere in Mercia, more specifically western Mercia. His work was most likely completed by c. AD 1050. The close links between Abingdon and Canterbury within which the original chronicle C was produced persisted, resulting in annals both authored and copied by 1050. This was the content of Chronicle C’s first continuations, and thus part of its mid-century content. Scribe 2’s annals continue to parallel those now found in Chronicle  E.  But Chronicle E as it now survives is early twelfth century. Do its annals faithfully represent the original content of its predecessor /E and of mid-eleventh-century work? Do E’s annals, as we now have them, represent the content of /E at this date? For the most part there is no reason to assume otherwise. As discussed in chapter 10, Chronicles C and E contain similar material for the annals 1043/1045–1048 (E 1046(1)). These years continue to weave together notices of episcopal deaths

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Continuations of C and the Mid Eleventh Century  215 and appointments with those of Abingdon abbots. They include some military events in the South-East, attacks, and the King’s movements of his ships, e.g. 1044 involving the Kentish port of Sandwich and the outlawing of Osgod Clapa. Abingdon notices are threaded through them. On the whole C has fuller details of these: the precise date of Abbot Æthelstan’s death, Siward’s illness and retreat to Abingdon before his death, the precise date of Archbishop Eadsige’s death after he took over all the bishopric. The Canterbury/Abingdon nexus was still live; Chronicle C’s Scribe 2, whether geographically or in his loyalties and knowledge, represents the Abingdon end. C and E also continue to include details of ecclesiastical appointments, especially but not exclusively episcopal, all from the southern, Canterbury archdiocese (see chapter  10). In C these are the continuing work of Scribe 2. Two abbatial successions are given: Chronicle C has more detail on Abingdon, E has the succession to St Augustine’s abbey, Canterbury.15 Until the retirement of Bishop Siward back to Abingdon in 1048, the link between Abingdon and Canterbury which he embodied continues to explain much of the content of C and E, and thus /E. If C’s scribe represents the Abingdon end, there is local Kentish knowledge and sympathy in Chronicle E’s annals which argues for a similarly contemporary writer at Canterbury. Thus whilst C and E note the attack on Sandwich,16 Chronicle E alone elaborates, striking a note of local Kentish pride and patriotism. Where C records the attack, and has all the ‘best men’ slain, E has con­sid­er­able detail: the names of the Scandinavian commanders, their attack on Thanet—also in Kent—where they were strongly withstood, before they went on to harry in Essex.17 Such local knowledge and local patriotism recall E’s annal for 999, where the Æthelred annals were glossed with exculpation of the retreat of a Kentish local force (see chapter 9); in this case local patriotism without additional detail. E’s—or rather /E’s—annal for 1046 points to a Kentish or Canterbury scribe/ author, and one close enough to events to add local knowledge. If C’s scribe viewed his material through a contemporary Abingdon lens, /E’s author was arguably wearing Kentish glasses. Was he the one who also glossed the 999 annal? C and E differ on some unexpected details. C alone notes that bishop Grimcytel was buried at Christ Church, Canterbury, s.a. 1047, an odd omission in E, unless it was lost in later stages of copying. There are also differences in their treatment of Bishop Stigand. C notes his appointment to East Anglia in 1043, also in E 1042, but only C notes his deprivation in that same year. Both have his succession to Ælfwine’s bishopric (Winchester), C alone specifying that it was the king who

15  E 1043(2) and 1044. 16  C 1048, E 1046. 17  þet landfolc hardlice wiðstodon 7 forwerndon heom ægðer ge upganges ge wæteres 7 aflymdon hi þanon mid ealle, before their harrying in Essex (E 1046(1)).

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216  After Alfred gave it to him.18 These, too, may be losses in E’s transmission. But there is another possible explanation. Stigand would later become archbishop of Canterbury. After 1066 criticism of him would be central to Norman arguments about the failures of the English church. Stigand would be a Norman poster boy for those failings. Could differences here be the result of possible post-1066 editing in E, silently omitting his deprivation, and the royal involvement in his appointment? The balance of argument supports the view that E’s annals for the 1040s represent, in large part, annals entered into /E in the 1040s or close to that date. Stigand leaves a lingering question over later editing. Can the dating anomalies in E’s 1040s annals give any clues about the mideleventh-century state of /E? The dating of Chronicle E for the 1030s and 1040s is particularly confused. By 1051 it was three years out from the true date: E’s annal covering events of that year is numbered 1048. The problems began in the 1030s annals, and were compounded in those for the 1040s.19 Twice in the 1040s an annal number, 1043 and 1046, was repeated, thus throwing the year numbers out by three. The numbering is corrected for the year 1052—numbers 1049, 1050, and 1051 are simply omitted. This brings E into line with C’s numbering and with the true date. Why did Chronicle E’s numbering go so badly wrong in the 1040s annals? Is it the result of repeated and extremely slipshod copying? Is it indicative of an exemplar whose layout made the numbering of these years particularly difficult to decipher? Were some of these annals added to a chronicle, /E, unnumbered or unrubricated, as, for example, annals were added to C for the 1050s? Did the way annals were added to /E at this point make them difficult to decipher and copy later? Was there more than one source for /E? It is almost impossible now to establish the causes of this cluster of numbering errors with any certainty. But they are likely to point back to an earlier manuscript, where the 1040s annals were in a messy state, perhaps thus also to the stage at which these annals were added to /E, a stage which was not some later careful collation. Chronicle E is an early-twelfth-century manuscript. It is at least one provable copy away from the annals for the 1030s to 1050s, probably more. Each copy was an opportunity for errors and miscopyings. To argue from the current state of E to the mid-century state of the manuscript of /E is dangerous. But the numbering dislocations of E for these years are so marked, that they invite the attempt to do

18  C 1047 and E 1045. 19  Chronicle E left the year 1035 blank, giving 1036 as the year of Cnut’s death. 1037 and 1038 are back in line with C and D. Chronicle E then placed the death of Harold Harefoot in 1039 (not 1040 as C and D), and thus moved a year out again. These numbering errors are mutually inconsistent. E gives Cnut’s death in 1036 and the death of Harold in 1039, in the latter annal giving a precise regnal length of four years and sixteen weeks. These are mutually impossible.

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Continuations of C and the Mid Eleventh Century  217 so. It may be significant that the 1052 annal, which deals with the return of Earl Godwine and his family from exile, marks the end of the problem.20

ii)  C, D, and the Mercian/West Midlands Chronicle Chronicle C’s second scribe had another source for these years. It contained West Midlands events, as had the chronicle which both C and D had used for annals 1035–1042. That chronicle continues to underlie both C and D for the 1040s, and, as we shall see, beyond. But C and D diverge markedly in their 1040s annals. This lost chronicle was a significant voice in mid-eleventh-century chronicling; C’s closely datable second scribe was using it in the 1040s, at least by c.1050. Questions centre on the date at which Chronicle D acquired these annals, and thus about the date and shape of a Chronicle /D in the mid eleventh century. A common source with a decidedly Midlands if not West Midlands focus lies behind both C and D. Both took from that source independently. It was a source also known to, and used by, John of Worcester.21 A shared interest in West Midlands events marks out both C and D in their mid-eleventh-century annals, setting them apart from the development of E.  That interest stretches from the annals for the 1030s through to the last annals in C, i.e. the mid 1050s and 1065–1066;22 it is still found in Chronicle D’s annals which fill the gap in C from 1056 to 1065.23 Their common interests extend to natural phenomena and

20  We know that Chronicle F took E, or rather /E, as its base chronicle (see ch. 13). It has E’s blank annal for 1035, and shares the mistaken date for Harold’s death, and so, like E, moves one year behind for the 1040s. This was not corrected in F. But Chronicle F does not share the doubling up of annal numbers 1043 and 1046. Does this represent an earlier stage of E, without those errors? Or is it more likely a correction on F’s part? There are signs that he was correcting. F remains one year behind in the annals it numbers—through to 1051. Events allocated to 1052 in ALL other chronicles, including E, appear under 1051 in F. He appears to have been alerted to the errors in /E’s dating by the duplication of, or difficulty in interpreting, numbers 1043 and/or 1046. He corrected for this, and continued to correct until his annal numbered 1051 (recte 1052). By now /E’s dates had themselves been corrected, but F’s maker did not immediately notice. F then left 1052 blank, and all are in synchronization for 1053. The errors, and/or the layout which led to them, were arguably already in /E by the time F’s scribe saw it c.1100. The Annals of Waverley, which were dependent on something like Chronicle E, has dates which parallel F until 1049. But it is in line with the correct date of events by 1050, the death of Archbishop Eadsige, a date also given correctly in the late addition to Chronicle A under that year and in the Canterbury annals (the latter printed in Baker, Chronicle F, p. 131). 21  And, again, used it independently, not simply via C and D: s.a. 1054 and 1056 John has more on Bishop Ealdred. And s.a. 1057 he has the eulogy of Earl Leofric, which is not in D, though D may have substituted the poem on the Ætheling Edward as part of its post-Conquest development (see ch. 12). 22  The West Midlands or Midlands interest shown by annals in both C and D covering the mid eleventh century is strong and connects back to their shared block of annals for 1035–1042/1043. Thus e.g. the death of the dean of Evesham in CD 1037; the harrying of Worcestershire by Harthacnut in CD 1041; in C 1052 and D 1053 the death of the Welsh Rhys; the shared view that the judgement on Ælfgar, ealdorman of Mercia, in 1055 was unjust (a very different view is found in E); and the account of the attack on Hereford in 1056. 23  See D 1057, 1060, 1063.

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218  After Alfred disasters.24 This lost chronicle is a source for the annals in C and D up to 1042 and from 1053 onwards, though there are differences between them. D has more West Country detail, even whole annals not found in C.25 But sometimes it is C which has extra detail.26 The years numbered mid 1016 to 1052(2) in D are contained in a quire of folios substituted after 1066. But the differences cannot simply be explained by the fact of the substituted section in D, and the resulting possibility of later omissions since D sometimes has more than C. The sum total indicates that neither C nor D can be a copy of the other; each used a common source independently. Does that common source explain any of the annals in C and D for the 1040s? C’s mention in 1048 of earthquakes may have come from it; surely also Scribe 2’s annal for 1046, on events in Wales and the abduction of the abbess of Leominster by Earl Swegn (son of Earl Godwine). There is nothing equivalent to C 1046 in Chronicle D, nor, at first sight, in John of Worcester. But John knew about the abduction. He refers to it under 1049. His information did not come via post-1066 use of Chronicle C. John knew her name, Eadgifu, which C does not give. By contrast, Chronicle D in the 1040s has a distinctive series of annals following events in Scandinavia, or, rather, Scandinavian events which impinge on English politics.27 At first sight these Scandinavian annals are not obviously part 24  Though this is not found in the 1035–1042/1043 annals. Witness the comments on natural phenomena in C 1046, 1047, 1048, 1052 (strong winds) are paralleled in D 1048, 1049, 1053. Thus D 1049 records natural phenomena, and much more fully than C. In the case of the great wind in C 1052 and D 1053, the date difference here is most probably because C is using Annunciation dating, and this was a winter phenomenon. With the earthquake in D 1060, C had no annals between 1056 and 1065. Some interest in natural phenomena is not lacking in E. 25  The death of the bishop of London who had been abbot of Evesham (D 1045); details of the succession to Bishop Lyfing, including the succession of Ealdred to Worcester (D 1047); the impact of the earthquake on Worcester, Wic (Droitwich), and Derby, a very great human and cattle plague, and also wild fire in Derbyshire (D 1049); comment on the failure to help Bishop Ealdred faced with attack from Ireland (D 1050); the attack of Griffin (D 1052—with reference back to the attack which killed Edwin in 1039); the bringing of Rhys’s head to the king (D 1053); the succession to Winchcombe and the death of Ælfric, brother of Odda, at Deerhurst and his burial at Pershore (D 1053). Thus D has the Evesham succession in 1045, the detailed succession to Bishop Lyfing under 1047, the Welsh raid of 1052, and the death of Odda’s brother at Deerhurst and burial at Pershore in 1053; there is no equivalent coverage of any of this in C. Both C and D have notice of earthquakes under 1048 (D 1049); but while C refers generally to England, D specifies in Worcestershire, Wic, and Derby, and adds wildfire in Derbyshire. 26  The 1039 attack; Bishop Ealdred, Harold, and Leofric making peace s.a. 1054; and C is slightly fuller than D for 1055 concerning events at Hereford. D has a fuller account of the 1053 Welsh raid, C fuller details of those in 1055. C adds not only a more judgemental comment to the attacks of 1056, but the fact that Earls Leofric and Harold and Bishop Ealdred brokered an agreement with the Welsh king. The latter is of interest in view of the tendency to see Chronicle D as especially concerned with Ealdred: see P. Wormald, How do we Know so Much about Anglo-Saxon Deerhurst?, Deerhurst Lecture, 1991 (Deerhurst, 1992), but cf. Stafford, ‘Archbishop Ealdred and the D Chronicle’, in D. Crouch and K.  Thompson (eds), Normandy and its Neighbours, 900–1250: Essays for David Bates (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 135–56. 27  It has the driving out of the ‘noble woman’, Gunnhild, a relative of Cnut, and her sojourn at Bruges en route for Denmark (1045), and under 1046, Edward’s gathering of a fleet at Sandwich against the threat of Magnus of Norway, a threat never realized because of the struggle between King Swegn and Magnus. It includes Magnus’s victory in Denmark, D 1047. On two occasions D has Swegn

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Continuations of C and the Mid Eleventh Century  219 of the lost West Midlands Chronicle. However, they are also in John of Worcester, with occasional extra detail which might place them in that source.28 In John’s account, though not in Chronicle D, these Scandinavian questions are made bones of contention between Earls Leofric and Godwine in royal counsels.29 John’s Latin closely follows D’s Old English in these annals, but adds these extra details. Both seem to represent a common source in which English and Scandinavian events of the 1040s closely entwined. Did that source also link those events to divisions and debates in English counsels and to named protagonists? Or was that John’s own later addition? Godwine and Leofric were men whose reputations continued to be significant in post-1066 argument, that of Godwine in particular. Should this make us wary of John’s statements here, cautious about seeing them as near-contemporary comment? Chronicle D acknowledges argument in its 1040s annals, but does not attribute them to named English nobles, Godwine or Leofric. Is D more closely contemporary? Are either John or D witnesses to the content of the lost Mercian/West Midlands Chronicle for the 1040s? The major reason for arguing this would be their geographical bias, and John’s concern with Earl Leofric. If the latter is post-1066 editing, that argument weakens. The events of the 1040s had potential relevance to post-1066 debate in respect of Scandinavian alliance and threat. But do John’s extra details speak to the post-1066 context? Would the counsels of aid to offset invasion which he attributes to Godwine have appeared straightforwardly negative after 1066? These annals are not immediately obvious candidates for post-1066 rewriting in John or in D. They do, however, have relevance to events in the 1040s themselves. At this date Swegn, son of Godwine and an earl, was exiled and fled to Scandinavia, the land of his mother’s birth. In 1049 he returned, sparking events which flowed into the crisis of Edward the Confessor’s reign—the fall, and return, of the powerful Godwine family. Both John and Chronicle D provide a Scandinavian dimension to the return of Earl Swegn in 1049. The earlier references to events in of Denmark appeal to King Edward for help, under 1048 and 1049. In D 1048 Swegn’s embassy requested ships against Magnus; the request was ‘considered a great unræd by everyone’, and rejected. As a result Swegn was driven out, Magnus won Denmark, and became king there before dying in the same year. In D 1049, Swegn returned to Denmark and Harold succeeded in Norway. Harold sent an embassy to King Edward seeking peace and Swegn sent another, again asking for help, a request again rejected. Finally, under 1050, D records the return of Earl Swegn (son of Earl Godwine) to England from Denmark. He had gone there and had forworhte hine wið Denum; he now promised to bow to the king. 28  Gunnhild is now identified as the widow of Hakon, an earl in western Mercia. It was he whose death was noted in C 1030, in an annal arguably linked to the 1035–1042 block. 29 King Swegn’s request for aid in 1047 (D 1048) was, according to John, supported by Earl Godwine, but non videbatur consilium ‘by Earl Leofric and all the people’ (cf. D ac hit þuhte unræd eallum folce ‘but it seemed bad counsel to all the people/everyone’); and again in 1048 (D 1049) Earl Godwine was willing (voluisset) to send help, but ‘Earl Leofric and all the people spoke against with one voice’ (D has merely eall folc wiðcwæð, ‘all the people/everyone spoke against it’).

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220  After Alfred Scandinavia would be broadly relevant to this. Is there a measure of retrospect in the 1040s annals in both, from a perspective around 1050, not post-1066? Is there a degree of apologia in John’s presentation of Earl Leofric in the 1040s annals? Leofric speaks for ‘all the people’; his counsel was widely held. Is this an implied defence against the accusation that his advice was wrong, that more attention should have been paid to events in Scandinavia, as the return of Swegn would show? Was Chronicle C’s mention in annal 1046 of Swegn’s abduction of the abbess of Leominster linked to this same series of events? This was the cause of his exile, an exile which looked doubly significant after his return; John mentions this abduction, but under 1049 at Swegn’s return. Or do these 1040s annals in John, D, and perhaps C suggest a more complex story of writing and rewriting of annals within years of events, with the crisis years 1049–1052—not 1066—the catalyst? Leofric, Leominster, the natural disasters of 1048—the latter located in a specifically Midlands context in Chronicle D;30 all this suggests that the lost Mercian/ West Midlands Chronicle lies behind some of the 1040s annals in C and D and John. That chronicle appears to have been not only a West Midlands source, but a politically engaged and informed one. There is no good reason not to see it as very contemporary with these years. It is however possible that it, or other chron­icles which had access to its material, selected from or rewrote its annals long before 1066, in the light of events c.1050; it is possible that the drama of 1049–1052 led to a revisiting of political events and arguments of the 1040s—and the annals which described them.

Annals 1049–1052, C, D, and E The annals in C, D, and E for 1049–1052 are among the most detailed and overtly political in all the vernacular chronicles. These years saw dramatic events centred on the fall and rise again of the most powerful noble family in southern England, that of Earl Godwine. They involved the flight into self-exile of an archbishop of Canterbury. They brought the English elite close to civil war. That drama might, in itself, be felt sufficient to explain these annals. These three chronicles do not, however, tell the same story: though they have some material in common, agreement rarely extends to all three. If these annals are to be read and interpreted, their place within individual vernacular chronicles must first be understood. Once again the possible influence of arguments after 1066 must be considered; once again Chronicle C is the starting point.

30  As noted earlier, D 1049 (recte 1048) singles out Derby, Droitwich and Worcester for the plagues and Derbyshire for wildfire (see above, 218 n.25).

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Continuations of C and the Mid Eleventh Century  221 Historians have characterized these years in dramatic terms: ‘The Victorious King’, ‘The Revolution Undone’.31 Drama there undoubtedly was. The family which fell now included Eadgyth (Edith), Godwine’s daughter and King Edward’s queen, Earl Godwine himself, and his sons. The events of these years involved Norman actors; and both events and the political arguments mobilized now continued to resonate after 1066. They became caught up in debates about the Norman Conquest—as those were articulated in the early twelfth century. Many modern explanations of the Norman Conquest begin in these years.32 Thus the Norman Robert was appointed archbishop of Canterbury now, then fled into exile and was succeeded by the English bishop, Stigand. Archbishop Stigand became a central figure in Norman criticisms of the pre-1066 English church. One chronicle, D, records the visit to England of Count/Duke William of Normandy. The involvement of Earl Godwine in the death of the King’s brother, Alfred, in the succession dispute after Cnut’s death was raised.33 Among Godwine’s sons exiled now was Earl Harold, who would briefly be king after Edward the Confessor’s death. Godwine and his family continued to divide and polarize opinion in England on into the early twelfth century.34 The possibility that the surviving records of these events have been contaminated by post-1066 arguments cannot be discounted. Both Chronicles E and D survive in manuscripts written in whole or in part after 1066. Only Chronicle C’s account escapes that suspicion. However, comparison of C, D, and E reveals accounts arguably rooted in strictly contemporary debates and divisions over these dramas.

i)  Chronicle C The annals for these years in Chronicle C are the work of that chronicle’s Scribes 3 and 4. They were still working in the same environment as Scribe 2, the main chronicle scribe, as witness their shared Annunciation dating. Scribe 3 completed the bulk of them. His work may have changed after the first sentence at the beginning of annal 1050.35 He treated annals 1050 to 1052 as a continuous story in his layout on the page. These annals spilled over into the new, perhaps hastily prepared quire; Scribe 4 finished them on its first folio. His work was seamless with that of Scribe 3, completing the annal for 1052 which Scribe 3 left in mid sentence. Scribe 31  Thus the chapter headings in F. Barlow, Edward the Confessor (London, 1970). 32  See e.g. S.  Baxter, ‘Edward the Confessor and the Succession Question’, in R.  Mortimer (ed.), Edward the Confessor, pp. 77–118. 33 Barlow (ed.), Vita Edwardi, p. 32; on the question of Edward’s marriage and this crisis see P. Stafford, ‘Edith, Edward’s Wife and Queen’, in R. Mortimer (ed.), Edward the Confessor: The Man and the Legend (Woodbridge, 2009), pp. 119–38. 34  William of Malmesbury, Malmesbury, DGRA, i, p. 354. 35  O’Brien O’Keeffe, Chronicle C, p. 111 n.—agreeing with both Ker and Conner, though, as she notes here and p. xxxxiii this hand changes size several times.

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222  After Alfred 4 finished with the first sentence of 1053. This group of annals from 1050 at least were added as a group, arguably no earlier than 1053. The new quire of poorer grade parchment was added to take some or all of them. It may be this group as a whole, i.e. from annal 1049 on, which prompted its preparation—perhaps in haste—and addition. The manuscript of Chronicle C in some ways matches the drama of the events. It suggests how much they mattered at the time. C’s annals for these years are not all equally detailed. Those for 1049 and 1052 are lengthy, those for 1050 and 1051 much shorter. The saga of Earl Swegn’s return in 1049; his—in C’s view—treacherous betrayal and murder of his kinsman Beorn; the return of Earl Godwine from exile and the resolution of the crisis that exile provoked: these are what received lengthy treatment in C (1052). Godwine’s fall was treated fairly cursorily.36 Scribe 4’s work ends with the first sentence of 1053 describing the king with Godwine, Harold, and Tostig at Winchester at Easter. 1049 and the first sentence of 1050 may belong together palaeographically, ending with the deaths of the two archbishops. 1050–1052 are treated on the page almost as a single annal, which strongly indicates that they were entered together. They are almost two different stories, 1049–1050 and 1050–1052, though if so, C’s special concern with the fate of Swegn at the end of annal 1052—his death en route back from a penitential journey to Jerusalem—brings them together. C’s annals for 1049 and 1052 are impassioned and judgemental, telling a story, not merely recounting events. Palaeography and other evidence places them pre-1066, most likely not much later than the early 1050s. These events already provoked engaged comment and contemporary history writing. It is possible that part at least of annal 1053 belongs with these annals in narrative terms. This annal is largely the work of Scribe 5, but its beginning, on the fate of Earl Godwine, and its end, on the state of the English church, could be seen as completing the story told in the work of Scribes 3 and 4. The way in which these annals were entered in Chronicle C argued for one or two groups, not simple a year-by-year record. Were they composed in the same milieu in which they were copied? Are they retrospective in whole or in part? One thing is clear. They are somehow linked to the accounts now found in Chronicles D and E, and to that which was in the lost Mercian/West Midlands Chronicle.

ii)  C, D and E, and the Mercian/West Midlands Chronicle The Mercian/West Midlands chronicle is the likely source of the annals common to, but not identical in, C and D, namely annals 1049 and 1052. These are very 36  Under 1051 C’s annals records the return of Archbishop Robert with his pallium, ‘and’ (the 7 large and heavy) that Earl Godwine and all his sons were driven out of England. He went to Bruges with his wife and three sons, Swegn, Tostig, and Gyrth; Harold and Leofwine went to Ireland and stayed there over the winter. In March (recte 1052), the ‘old lady, King Edward’s mother and Harthacnut’s “Imme” (this name over an erasure) died and lies at Old Minster with King Cnut’.

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Continuations of C and the Mid Eleventh Century  223 close in these two chronicles.37 C and D are even closer in their annals for 1052. This was not a result of D copying C. D begins the year with the Welsh ravaging in Herefordshire near Leominster, thirteen years to the day since the death of Edwin; this is not found in C. D lacks C’s ending of this annal, the narrative conclusion in which C’s story followed the fates of all the Godwine family. C and D also follow different dating practices for these years.38 A common source behind both is likely. That source must be earlier than Chronicle C’s account, datable to the 1050s. C’s material also has links, though fewer, with the annals for these years as now found in E. These links still focus on ecclesiastical events and episcopal succession, and continue to pay some attention to Abingdon. But the parallels between C and E are increasingly outweighed by differences.39 C’s Scribes 3 and 4 were still working in the same context as Scribe 2, as witness their continued use of Annunciation dating for the year’s beginning. Like Scribe 2, they had access to material also found in E, or rather /E, and the lost West Midlands Chronicle. But their annals suggest a Canterbury connection was now more tenuous, the West Midlands more significant. C’s third and fourth scribes may also have provided their own résumés of events, as in annal 1051. The treatment of 1050–1051 in C could suggest that its scribes wrote up the brief annals for these years retro­spect­ ive­ly, and/or that these were largely their own, based on material now found also in E. Were they spurred by gaining access to the long account of 1052 which they 37  See 1049. In what follows, italicized words are those not in D; underlining indicates D has a paraphrase. The annal begins with an appeal from the Emperor to Edward for help against Baldwin of Flanders in the form of ships; which Edward provided. Among those with the Emperor at Nijmegen was, C tells us, the pope, Leo. C then recounts the return of Earl Swegn and his attempt to reinstate himself with the king, attempts opposed by his brother, Harold, and Beorn [his cousin], who refused to give back anything which the king had given them as a result of Swegn’s earlier disgrace. Swegn came to the king ‘mid hiwunge’ (‘hypocritically’) and attempted to gain Beorn’s help. The king refused. Swegn and his father Godwine mustered ships on the south coast at Bosham and Pevensey, Beorn being with Godwine. The king allowed all the Mercians to go home. News came to the king that Osgod [Clapa] was at Wulpe with ships, and Edward mustered ships against him. Osgod left his wife in Bruges and attacked the south coasts, especially in Wessex. Swegn came ‘mid facne’ (‘treacherously’) to Godwine and Beorn and asked them to go with him to the king, saying he would swear oaths and be faithful. Beorn went because of kinship, thinking he would not be betrayed, and rode to Bosham as if on their way to Sandwich where Swegn’s ships lay. He was bound, led to the ship, taken to Dartmouth, and there killed and buried deep. And his kinsman Harold took him to Winchester and buried him with his uncle, Cnut. The king and all the ‘here’ (‘army’) declared Swegn ‘nithing’. He had eight ships before the murder; all but two deserted him. He went to Bruges and stayed there with Baldwin. C’s annal then lists deaths and some successions of bishops and abbots: Eadnoth ‘the good’ ‘on Oxnafordscire’ (i.e. Dorchester), and the abbots of Thorney and Westminster. The king gave Ulf his priest the bishopric ‘7 hit yfele beteah’ (‘and he made a bad appointment’). And in the same year King Edward paid off five ships and ordered twelve months geld for them. In the same year Bishops Hereman and Ealdred went to Rome ‘on the king’s errand’. 38  C’s final section on the wind and the fate of Rhys is in D under 1053, as a result of their different dating practices. 39  At the end of annal 1049, C has some of the same material as E in 1050, on the bishops going to Rome and the partial disbanding of the fleet. Again these are in different years as a result of C’s dating. C’s ecclesiastical appointments in 1050 are largely found in E, though the latter does not have the death of the York archbishop, Ælfric. C 1051 links to E on the pallium, more to D on the date of the death of the old queen, Ælfgifu/Emma. C has 2 ides March, D 2 nones March: is the difference a transmission error in D?

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224  After Alfred have under the year 1052, apparently derived from their common source with D? Was Godwine’s return what really interested them and provoked them to write? The long annal for 1051 found in E and D—not in C—tells the story of the fall of Godwine. The annal is longest in E, and there falls into two parts. The second, longer, half covers the drama of Godwine and pays special attention to events at Dover involving Eustace, the king’s brother-in-law. This part is paralleled, though not identically, in Chronicle D and John of Worcester. Was this part of /E’s annal originally in the West Midlands Chronicle, even though it is not found in C?40 The first half of E’s annal for 1051 tells of the appointment of the (Norman) Robert as archbishop of Canterbury and of King Edward’s other episcopal and abbatial appointments at the same Lent meeting of his council, including that of his kinsman to the abbacy of Abingdon. It also records Robert’s journey to Rome for his pallium. There is a lengthy account of Robert’s return, his ritual occupation of the archiepiscopal throne,41 and his refusal to consecrate Sparrowhawk as bishop. The bare story of appointments, including to Abingdon, is also in C 1050 and 1051. But the elaboration around Robert’s return from Rome with the pallium and his subsequent actions is in E alone. D and John of Worcester have a brief record of the appointments, but not of the Abingdon abbacy. The differences and connections here are bewildering. Taking annals for 1050 to 1052 as found in C, D, E, and John together, they can be resolved. Ecclesiastical, especially episcopal, appointments link them all, though they are not identical. C and /E are still connected for example in Abingdon interest. The divergences come especially in the telling of the story of the fall and return of Godwine. E, John, and D follow the same events in 1051; but they divide first over the account of events in Dover.42 Here Chronicle E—or rather its source /E—exculpates the local men, and makes Eustace the aggressor. John and D—and thus the West Midlands chronicle?—tell a different tale. In their annals for 1052 John, D, C—and thus the West Midlands Chronicle?—again tell a different story from E. Divergences now centre first on the flight of Archbishop Robert and on the actions of Stigand, with E’s account most damning of Archbishop Robert and most positive about his successor, Stigand. Chronicle E gives the most detailed account of the flight of Robert and the other Frenchmen before judgement had even been given. Some went to the castles in the west. But Archbishop Robert and Bishop 40 It was in John of Worcester in a form close to D.  That might indicate the West Midlands Chronicle—an annal that was simply not available to or never received by C’s scribes. C’s home was almost certainly not where this chronicle was being written. D’s annal has a telltale indication of a perspective north of the Thames. At one point people were called out ofer ealne þisne norðende (‘over all this north part’), in Siward’s earldom (north of the Humber) and in Leofric’s (north of the Thames). This may point to the home of the 1051 annal, though this ‘northern-ness’ may be a later gloss of a northern scribe in D. 41  On which see Tinti, ‘The Archiepiscopal Pallium in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, in England and Rome in the Early Middle Ages, pp. 307–42. 42  D’s dates are dislocated here and it repeats the annal number. It has this as 1052(1).

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Continuations of C and the Mid Eleventh Century  225 Ulf and their companions left by Canterbury’s east gate (note the local knowledge), killing and injuring young men as they fled. They boarded a broken-down ship and departed overseas. The archbishop abandoned his pallium and all the Christian Church of this land. ‘This was God’s will, because he had gained that honour when it was not God’s will.’ By contrast, E has Bishop Stigand broker the peace between Earl Godwine and King Edward, the peace which precipitated the flight of these (guilty) men, ‘with God’s help and the wise men within borough and beyond’. Later in the same year, in Chronicle E alone, Stigand was made archbishop of Canterbury.43 E stands apart from all others, too, in how it presents the return of Godwine, and particularly the involvement of the people of Kent and the South-East. In the story of 1052 in Chronicles C and D, the people of Kent and the South-East appear as willing accomplices of Earl Godwine; Harold and Godwine were restrained in their actions there. E’s version by contrast has Harold and Godwine ravage the area. In CD there is no argument that the people of Kent were complicit out of fear. In E Harold and Godwine took ships and hostages, did damage, and burnt down settlements even as they progressed towards London. This is yet another indication of an apologia for the people of Kent in Chronicle E. Rival arguments are being articulated here. Are they contemporary, the divisions, debates, and recriminations of the early 1050s? Or are they inflected, at least in some part, by the later divisions, debates, and recriminations which followed 1066? Chronicle C is, once again, the precious control. It appears to be using the lost West Midlands Chronicle. That chronicle also lies behind John and D. It was thus already a voice, if not the major voice, in the strategic presentation of the events of these years. But C and D may add particular glosses to details of its story. Chronicle E appears to be the major responding voice. Is this a wholly contemporary response based on a contemporary Chronicle /E, or a later perspective? E’s narrative of Stigand and Robert raises most suspicion of a possible later perspective. The unsympathetic account of Robert’s flight and the emphasis on Stigand’s good counsels could arguably speak to post-1066 debate about the English church. After 1066, Stigand’s lack of a pallium, and specifically his use of the one left behind by Archbishop Robert, were accusations against him; they were used at the council which deposed him, along with accusations that he had occupied the archbishopric whilst Robert was still alive, held bishoprics in plurality, and accepted a pallium from the simoniac pope, Benedict.44 E’s story of Robert’s flight, which associates it with violence, presents it as peculiarly ignominious, and

43  The edition of John of Worcester, ii, at p. 572 has record of this appointment now. This is in some manuscripts only and is a later addition. Chronicles D and C lack the appointment. C’s annal for 1053 makes clear that its author did not consider Stigand to be archbishop. 44  John of Worcester, iii, pp. 10, 12, s.a. 1070.

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226  After Alfred declares his abandonment of his pallium and of the English church, to be an expression of ‘God’s will, because he had gained that honour [the archbishopric] when it was not God’s will’. It seems tailor-made to rebut these accusations. It is coupled with a picture of Stigand, the peace-maker, working with the wise to bring about reconciliation. E’s story could be read as a specific answer to post-1066 criticism. E’s story, now preserved in a twelfth-century chronicle, must be, at very least, a candidate for post-1066 editing. The end of Chronicle C’s annal for 1053, however, shows that the state of the English church in the early 1050s was a matter of concern before 1066. There was according to C’s 1053 annal no archbishop in that year: Stigand heold (‘held’) the bishopric in Canterbury, Cynesige that in York; the word choice is pointed. Neither could consecrate bishops, who had to go abroad. C’s 1053 annal is already highlighting problems and voicing contemporary assessment. The common factor for Stigand and Cynesige was the lack in both cases of the pallium given by the pope. Cynesige travelled for his in 1055 (D 1055). E’s comments on Robert, Stigand, and the pallium have a plausible home in the early 1050s. Much looks contemporary or near contemporary in E’s account of these years. Chronicle E’s presentation of events in Dover and its version of the return of Harold and Godwine betray the sort of local patriotism and apologia found in E’s mid-1040s annal and in that for 999. These annals in E are not pro-Godwine, that for 1052 emphatically not so. They are partisan and apologetic, but for the people of Kent, if not the South-East. In 1051 and 1052 E’s annal does not tell the story as in C and D, though it appears to know it, and respond to it; or CD’s story responds to E; or both record arguments and recriminations after 1052. The different slants of E vis-à-vis CD are part of an argument, and surely a fairly contemporary one. They are not tied into post-1066 stories. They are relevant to what happened in 1051/1052. Are they thus, in turn, an argument that the composition of the 1051 and 1052 annals, as found now in CD and E, was close to those events; an argument that they already formed part of the content of /E and /D by the 1050s? D poses the most acute problems. Its annals for 1049–1052 are the fullest, combining elements found in C and E. Is D here merely a later collation of these? Not in any simple way; it has its own voice.45 There may be stronger arguments for seeing D—with John of Worcester—as the fullest representatives of the lost West Midlands Chronicle, preserving its authentic voice.46 Was it that lost chronicle 45  Differences with C in 1049 could merely argue an abbreviation of C, though cumulatively they tone down C’s critique, or C ratchets that up. But it has material from the West Midlands Chronicle not found in C, like the expedition in D 1050, absent from C 1049, and the reference back there to an earlier expedition led by Edwin, which is not itself in D. D has material on Bishop Ealdred in 1050 (not in C 1049). Unlike C, its annal on Swegn’s return connects this to Denmark, and thus in turn to D’s, and John of Worcester’s ‘Scandinavian’ annals for the 1040s. 46  See D on Bishop Ulf ’s appointment: he was later driven out; he had never done anything ‘bishoply’ while holding it, as it ‘shames us to say’ (to tellanne)—a personal voice we will encounter again in C and D’s annals for the 1050s.

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Continuations of C and the Mid Eleventh Century  227 which recorded the visit of Count/Duke William of Normandy to England in 1051, found in D alone.47 D is, however, no straightforward collation of that lost chronicle with E; its take on events of 1051, on the Eustace incident for example, is not that of E.  The importance and difficulty of Chronicle D merit their own chapter (see chapter 12).

iii)  1049–1052: Dialogue and Argument? There are three or perhaps four closely contemporary takes on the events of 1049–1052: Chronicle C, the lost West Midlands Chronicle, most probably /E at Canterbury, more debatably /D. All differ, though all were somehow in contact and in dialogue close to the events they record. Their annals signal contemporary responses, a developing argument. It was an argument where the issues were Godwine’s return, its results, and the complicity of the people of the south coast in that. It was an argument about whether the right decisions were made, both in the build-up to Godwine’s exile, and perhaps, too, in the failure to resist his return. It was an argument about what precipitated all this, including thus the events at Dover, and, again, the role of the men of Kent. It was an argument about advice and decisions, good and bad. Perhaps, too, it was an argument about where all this began, with Swegn’s actions in 1049, or thus even further back with Swegn already showing his true colours in the abduction of an abbess; with the failure to recognize the significance for England of events in Scandinavia, if not the determination to ignore pleas from the Danish king for help, and the link of Earl Swegn’s actions in 1049 to that. Or perhaps it is two arguments: one concerning the events of 1051/1052, the flight and return of Godwine, and especially the events of 1052, which undid the  decisions of the previous year; a second—earlier?—and separate one about the events of 1049 and Swegn’s return; two arguments which by 1052/1053 could have looked to some like a single unfolding question around the Godwine family and its actions. C seems to separate the two, explaining 1049 and telling its story; then with little attention to 1050–1051 merely backfilling these years after the new drama of Godwine’s return in 1052. That drama in turn suggested to the scribes a unity between the two stories, encompassing Swegn, whose death in Constantinople becomes part of its overall narrative closure. Was there more than one stage in the development of Chronicle C’s story, more than one source behind it? The stories may stretch even further back. These events appear to come out of the blue; the annalistic genre is short on explanatory preamble. But there are possible links back into 1040s annals—via Osgod (in all chronicles); via Swegn

47  This annal is D 1052(1), but part of one of D’s pre-replacement annals whose lost opening would have been numbered 1051, thus not part of the final work on D. It is also found in John of Worcester.

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228  After Alfred and the abbess (in C); via the Scandinavian events (in D and its Midlands source). Were these 1040s events included because they were seen as linked and explanatory, because from different perspectives they made best sense of 1049 and Swegn? That would make the early 1050s the critical point for the writing up—or rewriting—of the later 1040s, too. That has to remain a possibility. It is not inconsistent with scribal work on Chronicle C. Contemporary history was here being written close to events of obvious significance. Were chronicles borrowed or exchanged? Were annals circulating? There are signs of continual addition and evolution, sufficiently close to the pol­it­ ical centre to keep up with events, though also sufficiently distanced from it to exhibit strong local connections and patriotism. The court and its arguments link them; these annals pay considerable attention to the counsels given there. The argument is thus for a group of chronicles or chronicling centres, and in contact. The chronicles produced continued with annals for the 1050s and 1060s. There are, however, signs of change in the 1050s. Chronicle C’s last stages are again the point of departure.

Annals 1053–1065 in C and D In the annal for 1053 a new scribe took over in Chronicle  C.  S/he would be responsible for the rest of its pre-1066 material. Changes which occur in the course of his/her work appear to flag shifts in the chronicling context of C. Answers to the questions of what they mean and how they are to be interpreted have a wider relevance to understanding of that context. Scribe 5 took over after the first sentence of annal 1053. The immediate assumption must be that s/he was still working closely with Scribe 4. A similar seamless transition between Scribes 3 and 4 in annal 1052 was interpreted in this way. During the course of Scribe 5’s work, however, Chronicle C’s dating practice changed. By his/her annal for 1056, a Christmas/January dating was being used, replacing the Annunciation dating of Scribes 2, 3, and 4. Lack of precise dates in annals 1053–1055 makes the point of change difficult to pin down. Also during Scribe 5’s stints the layout of Chronicle C and its rubrication changed. There are no numbers for annals 1055 and 1056, which are dated only by reference to other chronicles, specifically D. The end of his/her work is followed by a long gap in the manuscript. As raised above, was Scribe 5 working in the same environment as Scribes 2, 3 and 4, as annal 1053 suggests? Or does his/her work mark a new departure? To annal 1052 the mid-century annals in C and /E were somehow linked, though increasingly loosely. Some—recurring?—contact occurred. In the work of Scribe 5 that is increasingly debatable. It is arguable on the grounds of annal 1053, the details of the state of the English church, and the coverage of Godwine’s death.

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Continuations of C and the Mid Eleventh Century  229 E’s annal here is so brief, and Godwine’s death is in all three chronicles. But the detail of his burial in the Old Minster might link C and E.48 C has the fullest version of Godwine’s death, having both the details found in D and E, but also extending an account of the last hours of Godwine, deprived of speech and strength. Is this a cautionary tale, which may just represent the lost West Midlands Chronicle? John of Worcester also has C’s detail. But extended comment on the state of the English church and its lack of archbishops who could consecrate is found in C alone. The work of Scribe 5 may be linked still to /E.49 But the story is increasingly C’s own. Or rather, the story was increasingly that of the lost Mercian/West Midlands Chronicle. Scribe 5’s continued access to that lost chronicle is the clearest fact of these annals. Both he and D used it, but they chose to include different details.50 In the annals for 1054 to 1056, Chronicle C’s material is linked only to that now found in D and John of Worcester, not to /E. The active connections now are with the West Midlands Chronicle alone. C’s annals for these years are very close to those in D, but not identical. Both are edited versions of their common source. By annals 1055 and 1056, the circumstances of the connection between C’s scribe and his/her source could be argued to have changed. The annals were added but not rubricated with numbers, and the gap at the end suggests more was hoped for or expected, which never came. Was the chronicling home of C and that where the West Midlands Chronicle was written in more spasmodic contact now? Was the chronicling impetus which had produced C and its continuations flagging? Was Scribe 5 working in a new environment, one signalled by the fact that Annunciation dating was no longer the norm? Or were his/her last annals added hastily, with less of an attempt to rewrite to make them his/her own but instead merely copying without rethinking and numbering the material from his source?51

48  E’s annal for this year is a brief account of the death and burial at the Old Minster of Earl Godwine, and the successions to earldoms this precipitated—by Harold, his son, and in turn by Ælfgar (Leofric’s son) to that vacated by Harold. The same brief details are found in D, without the burial, but with the addition that Godwine fell sick whilst with the king at Winchester. 49  Chronicle E had brought out the ecclesiastical repercussions of 1051–1052 in its 1052 annal, but with specific reference to Robert, Canterbury, and Stigand. It had given some of the details of episcopal appointments which C has under 1053. 50  In 1053 C has the deaths and some successions of ecclesiastics: the bishop of Lichfield and the abbots of Winchcombe and Glastonbury. D has these, but more fully. Events on the Welsh border reported in D 1053 are in C 1052, the last signs of Annunciation dating and the work of Scribe 4. D has these events more fully than C, but C has another raid in 1053 which D lacks. 51  C’s annals for 1065–1066 appear to return to Annunciation dating, and so too, at first sight, does D. Thus both have the death of Edward the Confessor on Twelfth Night (January 1066) under 1065, and at the end of that same annal Harold’s accession. See Whitelock, Appendix to Introduction, in Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, pp. cxxxix–cxliid at cxliib. However, in both C and D this annal is clearly retrospective; the statement of Harold’s consecration includes reference to the problems he encountered ‘as long as he held the kingdom’. To some extent this is a continuous narrative, and one written later. Edward’s death and Harold’s accession could be seen to complete the narrative of 1065, and may thus be placed there.

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230  After Alfred Scribe 5’s work ends with the 1056 annal; so, for a long time, did work on Chronicle C. There is a gap in the manuscript, and a gap in coverage. The years 1057 to 1064 are not signalled in any way, even by blank numbers. No one took up the pen again until after 1066, when Scribes 6 and 7 recorded those tumultuous events, adding annals for 1065 and 1066 again apparently using that same West Midlands source. After 1066 Chronicle C has no more material. Have further annals been lost? Or does the final twelfth-century supply sheet, on which the later Scribe 8 completed the battle of Stamford Bridge, mark what was always the end of Chronicle C?52 Whoever added these years did not number them, but did mark the retrospective record of the accession of Harold, at the end of annal 1065. An ending of Chronicle C with Harold’s victory at Stamford Bridge rather than defeat at Hastings would not be out of keeping. During the course of Scribe 5’s work, Chronicle C changed. Its source chronicle, from the West Midlands, went on. It was still used in the development of Chronicle D in the later 1050s and early 1060s; still used by D, and C, for 1065–1066. Chronicle /E seems also to have continued to add annals in these years, mostly concerned with episcopal succession, and now, too, papal succession—a new departure. Some of this material, including local Canterbury matter on the deaths of Godwine, bishop of St Martin’s, and of an abbot of St Augustine’s Abbey, is also found in D—the latter precisely dated in both. Explanation of this must await fuller consideration of D’s development now. Suffice it to say that a network of vernacular chronicling still existed after the early 1050s. Chronicle C and its home were gradually losing touch with it. * * * * * * * * * * * * The annals dated to the mid eleventh century in three surviving vernacular chronicles pose particularly acute problems. They are undoubtedly linked, but in patterns which defy any simple answer of two chronicles collated to produce a third. The resolution proffered here points rather to the results of a period of closely contemporary history-writing, during which a number of centres were in contact. The return and consecration of King Edward in 1041/1042 galvanized that writing of contemporary history, and created the network within which it would be continued. The crisis of 1049/1051–1052 was chronicled in the context of the resulting links. The connection had not disappeared during the 1040s, and would still be in operation during the 1050s and after, albeit changing. Three or four chronicles were being actively continued during the reign of Edward: Chronicle C, in an initial context linking Canterbury and Abingdon, 52  O’Brien O’Keeffe, Chronicle C, pp. lxxiii–lxxiv. The ruling of the supply sheet, identical to that of earlier folios in C, may mean it was taken from that Chronicle. If so, it ended with at least one blank folio. I can see no compelling reason to think that it continued beyond 1066.

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Continuations of C and the Mid Eleventh Century  231 increasingly perhaps located at Abingdon itself; Chronicle /E, at Canterbury, most likely archiepiscopal Canterbury; a lost Mercian/West Midlands chronicle, perhaps at Worcester, still available to John of Worcester after 1066; and most debatably, Chronicle /D. We could make very tentative identifications of the chronicles being continued with those discussed in earlier chapters. At Canterbury, an archiepiscopal chron­ icle, /E, closely linked to one belonging to York archbishops c.1020, growing thus out of the Northern Recension; at Worcester, perhaps (though not necessarily) the lost Worcester Chronicle discussed in chapter  7. Chronicle C was a new chronicle produced about now. Neither /E nor the lost Worcester chronicle contained annals for much of the 1020s or 1030s. The network which produced the mid-century annals was created in the early 1040s, specifically by the appointment of an Abingdon abbot as auxiliary bishop at Canterbury, more broadly at the court where contemporary argument over the fraught politics of the royal succession after the death of Cnut had found historiographical expression. A fourth chronicle D—or rather /D—should arguably be included. Its midcentury annals may have been added to another chronicle identified in earlier chapters, that which was last seen in the hands of Archbishop Wulfstan II of York in the early 1020s. There are many possible explanations for this network. Episcopal pluralism joined Worcester and York, though that ended when Wulfstan II had resigned Worcester in 1016. The two sees would not be held again by a York archbishop except briefly, after Ealdred’s appointment to York in 1060 and in 1040–1041, in the hands of Archbishop Ælfric.53 Ælfric’s brief pluralism is mired in the politics of the reign of Harthacnut, and the succession to Cnut. It does, however, provide a context for the linking of a York chronicle’s development into what looks otherwise a southern network. The appointment of Ealdred, bishop of Worcester, to York was another such context. Earl Leofric may be somehow connected to this chronicling network. Was this no more than sympathy between a Midlands chronicling centre and the Mercian earl, or is it something closer than sympathy, even patronage or commissioning? The lost West Midlands Chronicle appears to have had the fullest and most overtly engaged account of the politics of these years. That chronicle was, however, deeply concerned with ecclesiastical questions, and, by the 1050s, overt judgement on ecclesiastics and their behaviour: witness Chronicle D and C and their accounts of the bishops of Hereford in annals 1055–1056. Wider European ecclesiastical

53  On whose career and reputation see J.  M.  Cooper, The Last Four Anglo-Saxon Archbishops of York, Borthwick Papers, 38 (York, 1970), pp. 14–18; cf. P.  Stafford, ‘Royal Women and Transitions: Emma and Ælfgifu in 1035–1042/3’, in L. Körntgen and D. Wassenhoven (eds), Patterns of Episcopal Power: Bishops in Tenth and Eleventh Century Western Europe (Berlin, 2011), pp. 127–44 at 139–40.

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232  After Alfred concerns—about the appointment and behaviour of bishops—already inform this. It is much more debatable whether there is a chronicle identifiable with or sympathetic to Earl Godwine. /E is more Kentish than Godwinist. The two archbishoprics and connection between them is another strand in this network. The court connects them all. The 1040s and 1050s saw bouts of contemporary vernacular history-writing. Such writing was not a continuous practice in any vernacular chronicle. It was sparked into life by events, and articulated across these networks. It was engaged, in both secular and ecclesiastical political terms. It provides a basis from which to understand developments across 1066. Particular crises sharpened and galvanized this contemporary writing. This writing provides a crucial insight into the political issues and debates—secular and ecclesiastical—of these years. There is no argument for seeing this as official history, though every reason to invoke the court as at least a partial explanation of its patterns and concerns. The closely parallel wording argues written not oral contact. Chronicle C was an evolving chronicle with continuations. The lost West Midlands one, if not /E, appears to have been the same. This writing is more or less ‘national’, in the sense that none of this is house history specific to a religious institution. But there are strong local perspectives. Accounts of events are sometimes inflected through such lenses. There is an awareness of ‘this land’, ‘this earth’, ‘this people’, ‘English’, and ‘foreigners’, mobilized in contemporary argument, heard in the very full accounts of these years. There are questions whether the late chronicles D and E, and John of Worcester, may have rewritten details of these accounts. C is already witness to the strength of contemporary feeling and the issues and rhetoric of contemporary argument. Such argument is, of course, still that of the southern-based court, its ideology, and rhetoric. The archbishops, already featuring in relation to earlier stages of vernacular chronicling and development, come into ever-sharper focus now—Canterbury now as well as York. They, their households, the religious houses connected to them—Christ Church Canterbury, if not at this stage Worcester—are candidates for the patronage, authoring, copying, and reading of vernacular chronicles. Not necessarily exclusively, but of continuing and recurring significance. That is an insight to take forward as we turn to Chronicle D.

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12

Chronicle D: Crossing Conquest Chronicle D is the fullest of the vernacular chronicles in its coverage of the tenth century, and one of the three chronicles to contain substantial annals for the eleventh. Its detail is a product of two hundred years or so of development, during which collation, continuation, and annotation all played a role. Chronicle D’s development has been a recurring concern of earlier chapters. This chapter is focused on the surviving manuscript of the chronicle, on D as we now have it and on the last stages of development which produced the chronicle which now survives. How much of the activity of collation and assembly of material which resulted in D’s detail belongs to these final stages? What were the final stages in the production of Chronicle D? Where, when, and for whom are they to be placed? The closer 1066 approaches, the more questions are raised about the impact of the events of that year and its aftermath on chronicles—the most difficult surrounding its potential effect on the rewriting of annals numbered before that year. These are acute in the case of Chronicle D. There is no doubt that work on this chronicle continued for decades after the Norman Conquest; no doubt, either, that at least one section of pre-1066 annals was recopied, if not rewritten, after 1066. There have been serious suggestions that the whole of this manuscript should be dated after that year.1 A simple answer to D’s content would be to see it as a collation of chronicles C and /E, made after the Conquest.2 Earlier chapters have already challenged that view. These last stages of D will continue to do so. Palaeography and codicology are, as always, the essential starting point. They are far from unambiguous guides.

The Manuscript of Chronicle D The first work on the manuscript of Chronicle D is no earlier than the mid eleventh century. Palaeographers have variously dated it in part or in whole post1066. The argument here will support a pre-Conquest date for most of its annals 1  Dumville, ‘Some Aspects’, p. 34. 2 Thus, though with differences, Dumville, ‘Some Aspects’ and Cubbin, Chronicle  D. See also T.  V.  Guimon, ‘The Writing of Annals in Eleventh-Century England: Palaeography and Textual History’, in A. R. Rumble (ed.), Writing Texts in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 137–45, though he is concerned specifically with the mid-eleventh-century annals. After Alfred: Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and Chroniclers, 900–1150. Pauline Stafford, Oxford University Press 2020. © Pauline Stafford. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198859642.001.0001

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234  After Alfred numbered pre-1066, but not for all. The loss and replacement late in the eleventh century of a quire of folios, covering annals from 1016 to 1052, complicates all discussion. As in earlier chapters the distinction between the copying of annals and their writing/authoring will often be critical. Chronicle D is found on folios 3–86 of London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius B. iv.3 The chronicle is now bound with a fourteenth-century chronicle of Walter of Guisborough, but there are no signs of any works which accompanied this vernacular chronicle before the early modern period. By the early sixteenth century the chronicle was at Worcester, as Archbishop Parker’s secretary, Joscelyn, states.4 It passed into Joscelyn’s own possession. It was extensively annotated by him, and he added annals at the end taken from Chronicle E on additional paper folios 88r–90v. Worcester is not, however, necessarily the place of any stage in its composition and production.

i) Scribes The chronicle is the work of a number of different scribes. There is no consensus about their number, their date, the precise points at which they change, or the significance of those changes.5 Some things are, however, agreed. The bulk of the chronicle, to the annal for 1016, is the work of two scribes. The last annals, numbered in D from 1071 are, obviously, post-1066; to 1079 they may be the work of more than one scribe, but if so, their work is closely similar.6 That scribe, or one of these, was also responsible for the replacement annals, 1016–1052. The last hand is twelfth-century, and supplies an annal covering events in 1130 wrongly dated to 1080.7 It is the annals numbered 1054 to 1068, and especially 1054 to 1066, where there is least agreement. For this section the palaeography of the manuscript becomes ‘a codicological problem’.8

3 Ker, Catalogue, no. 192, pp. 253–5. 4  ‘Est adhuc in bibliotheca ecclesiae’: London, BL, MS Cotton Nero C. iii, fo 208. On Joscelyn’s links with the manuscript see Ker, Catalogue, no. 192, p. 255. 5  The manuscript has been much discussed: see Howorth, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’ (1912), pp.  337–8; Cubbin, Chronicle D; Ker, Catalogue, no. 192, pp. 253–5; W.  Keller, Die literarischen Bestrebungen von Worcester in angelsächsischer Zeit (Strasbourg, 1900); Guimon, ‘The Writing’. 6  Compare Ker, Catalogue, p. 254, recognizing two sections, dividing at annal 1075, and Cubbin, Chronicle D, pp. xiv–xv, who sees a second, if not a third, scribe taking over in the annal for 1075. The suggestion of a third scribe by Cubbin rests on his identification of a new scribe in annal 1068. Ker argues that Scribe 3, responsible for the replacement annals, was also at work in the annals for 1071–1079. 7  Perhaps as a scribal error ‘LXXX’ for ‘CXXX’, thus Cubbin, Chronicle D, p. xv. For more on this see below, pp. 263–4. 8  Thus Guimon,‘The Writing’, p. 141; ‘the boundaries between hands are unclear’: Cubbin, Chronicle D, p. xiii; from the 1054 annal, and the work of Hand 5, ‘to the end the writing maintains a general similarity, but varies in appearance and in ink and slope from year to year’: Ker, Catalogue, p. 254.

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Chronicle D: Crossing Conquest  235 In annals numbered 1054–1068 all scholars identify the work of a series of scribes. They disagree over the number and the points where one takes over from another.9 The total number of hands in D varies from Cubbin’s eighteen to Plummer’s nine or ten, chiefly depending on the number distinguished in this section.10 Where changes of hand have been postulated they do not always occur at the beginning of an annal. Depending on whose opinion we follow, one possibly began in the last sentence of 1056; one in mid annal and mid sentence in 1061 (see illustration  6), another in mid sentence and mid annal in 1065, though in large part the changes ‘coincide or almost coincide with annalistic division’.11 The changes in appearance are usually taken to indicate different scribes. But other explanations are possible, related for example to different working conditions, times, and especially the availability of new material.12 One final tantalizing detail must be noted. The replacement quire and the fourth scribe end in mid annal (1052(1); on the numbering problem see below, pp. 238–40) on folio 73v. His work fits seamlessly into the pre-existing work of Scribe 5 (confusingly numbered 5 though his work pre-dates that of 4) on folio 74r. He had been writing an annal for 1051, the beginning of which is now lost. That annal contains the sentence on the arrival at Edward’s court of ‘William earl’—the future William the Conqueror. Scribe 5 begins this sentence with a large capital ‘Đ’—‘Đa sone com willelm eorl . . .’ This scribe does not scatter large capitals freely in his work, though we have only two folios for comparison.13 Is the highlighting of William in this way a sign of post-1066 work, of retrospect? Or does it indicate the importance of that event close to the 1051 date itself, of his perceived contemporary significance, even of a promise of the throne made to William now? If it represents post-1066 retrospective judgement, all subsequent work on this manuscript is post-Conquest, though the date of copying would not necessarily be that of the authoring of all subsequent annals. The palaeography will not provide a simple answer to the question, how much of Chronicle D was copied after 1066, let alone to another, namely how much was written/authored after that date. However many scribes were at work, it is unlikely 9  Thus a sixth hand begins in 1054, either at the beginning of the annal, or in the middle of the first sentence: Cubbin, Chronicle D, p. 74, [1054] n. 1 and Ker, Catalogue, p. 254 respectively. According to Cubbin, a seventh may begin at the start of annal 1056, an eighth around the beginning of 1057, where the rubrication also changes. A ninth hand would start about the beginning of annal 1061, though the rubrication had changed back before this. A tenth hand may begin annal 1065, but up to four scribes may have written this annal. Whichever, the last of them continued into the beginning of the annal for 1066, which was marked out in the manuscript with a year number given a line of its own. A new scribe, perhaps number fourteen, starts ‘somewhere in the first half of 1066’: Cubbin, Chronicle D, p. 79, [1066] n. 2. 10  Plummer and Cubbin included the twelfth-century hand: Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, p. xxxiii; cf. Cubbin, Chronicle D, pp. xi–xv. 11  Guimon, ‘The Writing’, p. 142. 12  Guimon, The Writing’, passim, especially p. 143. 13  The sixth scribe takes over at fo 75v, annal 1054.

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236  After Alfred

Illustration 6.  Chronicle D. London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius B. iv, fo 77v: change of hand and ink at annal 1061 in the middle of the first sentence. © The British Library Board.

that their work is separated by many decades, or years. Unfortunately not many decades or years separate the 1050s from the 1070s. As Neil Ker remarked, from annals numbered 1053–1054 to the end of the text ‘the writing maintains a general similarity’.14 14 Ker, Catalogue, p. 254.

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Chronicle D: Crossing Conquest  237 The bulk of the work is that of the first two scribes, who made a fair copy of a chronicle to 1016. Scribe 2’s work probably extended beyond this; the next folios are a replacement quire. Just how far his work extended it is now impossible to tell. His hand has been dated to the mid eleventh century, ‘perhaps somewhat earlier than 1050’.15 In the enigma which is Chronicle D, this may be a date on to which to hold.

ii)  Folios and Quiring Chronicle D has lost significant numbers of folios. Some losses are undatable, but one had occurred by c.1100. Its final folio is a half, with the annal for 1079 cut off in mid sentence, annal ‘1080’ on its dorse. The manuscript had undergone some vicissitudes if not deliberate mutilation by the early twelfth century. At some stage two quires covering the years AD 262–692/693 disappeared.16 This loss cannot be dated. It had occurred by the early modern period, when Joscelyn supplied substitute annals.17 Folios 68–73 replace another lost section, from mid annal AD 1016 to mid annal 1052(1).18 This loss was certainly early, since the replacement was made very close to the final date of the manuscript. The scribe of the bulk of this section is one of those who wrote the annals for 1071–1079.19 This replacement section thus forms a part of the evolution of the chronicle during the eleventh, at latest early twelfth century. The text of the replacement section fits precisely at either end, seamlessly continuing the text at either side.20 This section was thus very carefully made to fit between the preexisting folios 67 and 74.21 Scribe 2 was still working up to the beginning of this lost section; he was still writing to the bottom of folio 67v, that is until mid annal 1016. He had finished before the end of the lost section. The last quire of the chronicle manuscript is a gathering of four, ending with folio 85. The last folio—86—is a half, pasted to a stub. It is part of the original manuscript since one of the scribes who had been writing annals numbered 1071-8 continues on to the face, writing the annal for 1079. The missing bottom half of this folio apparently originally had annal text; 1079 ends in mid sentence. But the annals did not continue much beyond this. The dorse of this last half folio 15 Ker, Catalogue, p. 254. 16 Ker, Catalogue, p. 254. The first scribe wrote the annals up to the first two lost quires, the second had taken over at some point during those quires. 17  These two quires were replaced in the surviving manuscript by fos 10–18, added in the sixteenth century by Joscelyn, who also supplied substitute annals: see Ker, Catalogue, p. 254; Cubbin, Chronicle D, p. x. The loss had thus occurred before this date, and was not made good at any earlier date. 18  The copying of this section resulted in two annals dated 1052. 19 Ker, Catalogue, p. 254. His work on the replacement quire began mid annal, mid sentence, and mid word. A fourth hand has been identified on the last verso of the replacement section, 73v, beginning in the middle of annal 1052(1). 20  Scribe 4 ends in mid sentence and mid word. 21  As Guimon notes in ‘The Writing’, p. 141.

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238  After Alfred was originally blank. In the twelfth century an annal covering much later, Scottish events was written on it, numbered 1080. The language of this additional annal is in some respects distinct from that of the earlier ones. Pasted on to that same stub is a quite separate folio, 87. This is a leaf from the Canterbury manuscript, London, Lambeth Palace, MS 771, the ninth-century Maelbright MacDurnan Gospels. The leaf contains two writs of Cnut concerning Archbishop Æthelnoth of Canterbury, addressed to Bishop Eadsige, who was to succeed him.22 The rest of this stub is visible at folios 90–91, that is after the paper folios added by Joscelyn. When was this leaf attached, in the twelfth century, or in the early modern period? Joscelyn was certainly active in adding pages to the end of this chronicle manuscript. But the leaf may have been added in the final stage of the making of D, c.1100.

iii)  Rubrication, Dating Dislocation, and Ink Changes Rubrication, like scribal work, shows some contrast between annals to 1016, thus the end of Scribe 2’s work, and the annals after the replacement section, thus from 1053. The bulk of the manuscript, that is to annal 1016, was prepared for final rubrication in a uniform way. Annals were indented and the number was placed before the text on the first line, with blank numbers given a line to themselves. After the late replacement section, from annals 1052(2) to 1061, the number is placed at the end of the previous annal (see illustration 6), though 1057 is indented. 1063 and 1065 are indented. The number 1066 very unusually gets a line to itself, though the opening of the annal is indented. 1067–1068 are indented. After annal numbered 1068, two numbers, 1070 and 1071, run along the line from the last text; there is no number 1069. From here on the number is placed at the end of the previous annal. The last annals shift again (see illustration 7). The number 1078 begins at the end of the previous annal, then runs on into the indent of the text for the 1078 annal itself. 1079 is placed at the bottom of the folio, on a line to itself; its text, on the next folio, is indented with a large gap! The final annals are not only varied in rubrication: annal 1078 has two gaps, one stretching over six lines. Chronicle D’s dating of its annals is dislocated twice for those numbered for the eleventh century. The first dislocation occurs in the replacement section.

22  Dumville, ‘Some aspects’, p. 53 on the probable joining of this leaf to D at Canterbury, perhaps as early as the mid twelfth century. Nicholas Brooks in a personal communication stated that ‘there is every reason to suppose that its separation from its parent manuscript and insertion into the D Annals occurred in the course of 17th-century rebinding, for (pace Dumville) it is scarcely likely that Christ Church monks would have dismembered one of their prized altar-books, removed from it a leaf containing two of their writ-charters in order to insert the leaf into a manuscript of annals, lacking the authority provided by a gospel-book’. For these writs see Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church Canterbury, nos 156, 157. Brooks and Kelly, p. 86, state categorically that this leaf was detached and added to D in the early modern period after it came into the library of Robert Cotton.

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Chronicle D: Crossing Conquest  239

Illustration 7.  Chronicle D. London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius B. iv, fo 85v: penultimate folio, including changes in layout and a long gap within annal 1078. © The British Library Board.

There is no numeral or text for 1044. From this point until the end of the replacement D’s annals move one year ahead of the actual date. One result of this is the doubling up of annal number 1052 as the replacement section ends. There are two annals numbered 1052, here referred to as ‘1052(1)’ and ‘1052(2)’. The second occurred in the block of annals D shares with E after 1066. Its lengthy annals for

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240  After Alfred 1067 and 1068 combine material datable over the years 1067–1069.23 The annal number 1069 was then omitted, and 1070 and 1071 run along the line, again throwing out the numbering by one year. D’s 1071 annal is 1070 in E. The dislocation continues across the block which D and E share. They do not come into line again until 1079.24 Finally, ink changes. In the last folios, after the replacement section, these occur in annal numbered 1061, first sentence, mid line; and again in 1071, first sentence, mid line.25 The ink changed after the first words of annal 1061 Her for Ealdred to Rome æfter his pallium (‘Here Ealdred [Archbishop of York] went to Rome for his pallium’) (see illustration  6), and this ink was apparently26 used until the first sentence of annal 1071, Her se eorl Wælþeof gryðode wið þone cyngc (‘Here the earl Waltheof made peace with the king [William]’). There are four—or five—major palaeographical divisions in the manuscript of D. Annals numbered up to 1016 are the work of Scribes 1 and 2; annals 1016–1052(1) (recte 1051)—the replacement quire—Scribes 3 and 4; end of pre-replacement 1051[now 1052(1)]+1052(2)–1053 Scribe 5 (Scribe 5’s work probably began before the point in 1052(1) where his work now starts, writing some of the annals now covered by the replacement section. He may represent a fifth div­ision); 1054–1068 with numerous changes of hand and layout, and where the number of scribes is very debatable; annals numbered 1071–1077/1079 the work of one or two scribes, either identifiable with the scribes who wrote the replacement quire or closely similar (annals numbered 1078–1079 are still in the same hand, but layout and gaps in annal 1078 set these apart). Rubrication underlines some of these scribal divisions; new ink coincides with that in annal 1071.

iv)  Interim Conclusions The palaeography and codicology provide no easy answers or conclusions, but both set markers and boundaries. 23  Discussion in P.  Stafford, ‘Chronicle D, 1067 and Women: Gendering Conquest in EleventhCentury England’, in S. Keynes and A. P. Smyth (eds), Anglo-Saxons: Studies presented to Cyril Roy Hart (Dublin, 2006), pp. 208–23. 24  There is room for debate over whether D has Annunciation dating for any of its mid-century annals. That has been claimed for its 1065 annal, though here, as in 1067–1068, this looks more like a retrospective narrative overriding chronological annal boundaries. It could be argued that the difference between D and John of Worcester on the one hand and E on the other in the dating of the succession of Selsey bishops (D and John 1057, E 1058) is an example of Annunciation dating in the former two, unless it is a simple error. But D 1061 was not apparently using such dating. It has the deaths of a bishop of St Martin’s and Abbot Wulfric of St Augustine’s on 14 kal. April—i.e. 1060 on Annunciation dating. It agrees with E in giving 1061. E has the date 14 kal. May. D is probably in error here—though its error did not lead to reallocation of the year date. 25  Guimon,‘The Writing’, pp. 142–3. 26  A note of caution since in the annals for 1054 to 1068 the bewildering changes of scribe make interpretation of ink rather more difficult. The changes in 1061 and 1071 are marked.

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Chronicle D: Crossing Conquest  241 First, D to annal 1016 is a fair copy. Earlier chapters explained the content of Chronicle D as a result of a series of collations, continuations, and annotations. They are not evident on the page. They have been ironed out. The work of Scribes 1 and 2 is distinguished by the relative uniformity of its layout and rubrication. It looks like a fair copy, not a working manuscript, written and prepared for rubrication in a fairly consistent way. The major collations and whatever else which made Chronicle D’s annals up to the early eleventh century were complete by the time Scribe 2 worked. But, second, those processes may not have been long in the past. The manuscript still shows traces of them, which would have been unlikely to survive many recopyings. One collation involved a BC-type chronicle. A large ‘G’ in the margin of the Brunanburh poem (D 937) is matched in Chronicle C, though not in B. The ‘G’ presumably derives from an earlier common exemplar of BC.27 That BC exemplar was presumably also the source of Chronicle D’s Annals of Æthelflæd/ Mercian Register. In D these annals have been combined with the ‘Edward annals’ into a single edited chronological run. D’s layout, however, still distinguishes some of the material taken from Annals of Æthelflæd/Mercian Register and from ‘Edward’, beginning each with a capital and sometimes a space on the line.28 All this suggests that the manuscript of D as we now have that chronicle is not far removed from the work of collation which produced its annals to 1016. Earlier chapters postulated that D’s annals to 1016 came variously from the Northern Recension and its continuation(s), a chronicle of the BC family, and annotations linked to an archbishop of York, most likely Wulfstan II. Little of this is distinguishable now in Chronicle D. The process of bringing them together had been completed by the time Scribes 1 and 2 copied the result. Their immediate exemplar was already a collated text; Chronicle D to 1016 is a fair copy of that, though probably not many stages removed from it. By contrast the erratic rubrication and constantly changing scribes from annal 1054 onwards point to different if not changing circumstances of production. How far did that fair copy—and the collated exemplar behind it—extend? Chapters 10 and 11 underlined the significance of that question. Was the bulk of the manuscript of Chronicle D, thus D as we know it, made in the 1040s and then continued? Was D’s making part of that flurry of activity recognized c.1040? Or did its making respond to events c.1050? Ker’s dating of Scribe 2’s work to the mid eleventh century, earlier than 1050, supports either scenario.29 But the loss and 27 Cubbin, Chronicle D, p. liv. The ‘G’ is part of the later rubrication, but the manuscript was prepared for it, with the following ‘E’ of gewiton in small caps. 28  See e.g. D 905, 906, 909, and 913. All mark the second source material with a capital, two with a gap. 909 has no gap, but this is the start of a new line. 29  Thus Ker, Catalogue, p. 254: ‘careful, round hand of s. xi. med., perhaps somewhat earlier than 1050’. Both Guimon and Dumville place his work post-1066, though more as a result of their view of the compilation of D than of detailed discussion of the hand. Both see D as the result of a compilation which took place after 1066, involving C (thus Dumville, ‘Some Aspects’, p. 34, and Guimon, ‘The

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242  After Alfred replacement of folios containing annals 1016–1052(1) preclude firm conclusions. Should Scribe 5, who wrote annals 1052(2) to 1053 be included in this first making of D? His work is ‘calligraphic’ in marked contrast to subsequent annals. Or is the change in rubrication within the replaced section the ghost of an earlier ending?30 Or is the loss of an annal number, 1044, at precisely the point where chapter 11 argued that an earlier /D might have ended, an argument for seeing this as the end of the exemplar, a significant point in D’s making? Wherever the fair copy originally ended, the changes and variations in the hands and layout of the annals numbered from 1054 mark a real change—whether of working practice or working environment. There is a strong argument that these scribes were not producing a fair copy of a text, more likely continuing one. These annals would also allow for a series of shifts in that working environment (or environments) in which D was being produced. This would extend as far as the last annals in this chronicle. Third, it is beyond doubt that much scribal work on this chronicle is to be dated post-1066, arguably from annal 1054 onwards. The replacement annals, 1016–1052(1), may be as late as c.1100 and no earlier than the 1070s. The rubrication of the early folios of the manuscript was completed long after 1066.31 The close similarity of the hands for the annals from the 1050s onwards arguably places all of this post-1066. We need, of course, to remember the distinction between copying and authoring/writing. The content may be older than the copy. But the opportunities for changes, editing, and emendation of annals authored pre-1066 would nonetheless be opened up. The shifts and changes in scribal activity in annals numbered from 1054 would support a number of different scen­arios. They will be tested more against content later. Finally, changes of ink mark what could be two significant dates in all these shifts: at annals 1061 and 1071 (recte 1070). The first is the succession of Ealdred, bishop of Worcester, to the archbishopric of York—or, rather, his journey to Rome for the pallium. The change of ink may signal a hiatus in work. Was this a significant date for the scribes writing annals to this date; was work set aside in 1061 and not taken up again until later? However, the annal and new hand continue Writing’, p. 144). For reasons which will have become apparent in earlier chapters, I do not accept that D is the result of collation with Chronicle C. Guimon’s ‘W’, the lost source behind C and D, was in existence by the 1040s when used by C, and could have been used by /D before 1066. 30  The maker(s) of the replacement section were at pains to follow faithfully the layout of what had gone before. Thus they indented and added numbers, gave Mille in full, and gave blank annals a full line, in the same way as Scribe 2. At annal 1036 Mille begins to be abbreviated as in the annals after the replacement section. This is tantalizing since it is around the point where Chronicles C and D begin their close agreement for annals for the late 1030s. It does not, however, mark the beginning of that agreement at 1035. It does come at the top of a new folio, 70r. Note that the replacement section did not allow for the addition of an initial capital in colour in rubrication, as did annals to 1016. Mille is written in full, all in the ink of the annal itself. Was this section added after rubrication? 31 Ker, Catalogue, p. 254: ‘in a style later than the text and probably of s. xi. ex. or xii’.

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Chronicle D: Crossing Conquest  243 with the story of Ealdred in Rome. The change here is not an obvious narrative shift. The second comes in D’s annal for 1071 at what is a significant narrative point. This is a misdated annal in D, following a block covering the conquest and its aftermath. The misdating dislocated the numbering in the next block of annals by one year. The making of peace by Earl Waltheof, one of the most significant English survivors, is a narrative conclusion to the story of this block and these years involving the story of Margaret, a descendant of the pre-1066 royal line. Waltheof ’s peace-making is recorded in the first sentence of the annal numbered 1071, at which point the ink changes. The separateness of the following block, shared with Chronicle E, is underlined. It should, however, be noted that the ­writers of this next block continue to be interested in Waltheof. At first sight these ink changes coincide with events of some resonance in relation to D’s content. The pallium-collection of a York archbishop, Ealdred, in a chronicle whose history has shown a recurring connection with that metro­pol­ itan see; 1071, the end of a story in D of conquest, resistance, and survivors, in which Queen Margaret of Scotland had been eulogized. The coincidence of narrative shift and change of ink and hand is, however, less clear in 1061 than in 1071. Where was all this work undertaken? The palaeography offers few clues. Worcester, or a Worcester connection of some kind, has been suggested for some of it.32 If the Canterbury gospel leaf was added in the eleventh or twelfth century, contact with Canterbury if not its see might need to be allowed. The final misdated annal for ‘1080’ points firmly north. May the loss of folios suggest rough handling, a manuscript on the move? Could the vicissitudes it suffered be signs of its wanderings? Content will provide more food for thought on this score. The D manuscript is infamously problematic. On balance a pre-1066 date for a fair copy of an existing collated chronicle looks probable, perhaps in the 1040s, with continuations thereafter. The date of copying if not writing these latter may be post-1066. Doubt lingers. Some scholars see D as a collation of Chronicles C and /E, and thus post-1066 since later than the final annals in C.  Chapter  11 argued against this. It serves nonetheless as a reminder that in assessing Chronicle D content must also be taken into account.

The Content and Palaeography of Chronicle D How does content map onto the ambiguous evidence of the manuscript? In the following discussion ‘Chronicle D’ will indicate the chronicle we now have;

32  It has been suggested that some of those responsible for the last annals in C ‘share characteristics’ which can be found in contemporary Worcester hands, also linking them to one of the hands in Chronicle D, the one which wrote (at least some of) the annals 1066–1068—see above, p. 193n12.

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244  After Alfred ‘Chronicle /D’ its earlier stage or stages. A brief recapitulation of earlier conclusions is a reminder of some of these. Up to annals numbered to the early 1020s, Chronicle D is the result of a collation of the Northern Recension and its continuations with a chronicle of the BC type, which is not our surviving Chronicle C. This forms the bulk of the surviving D.  In addition Chronicle D contains material on the mid tenth century which links it to unidentified northern sources and to the lost Worcester Chronicle in ways now difficult to disentangle. The annals of Æthelred and Cnut are part of this collation, derived most likely from a continuation of the Northern Recension. From its 1030s annals, material from the lost West Midlands Chronicle had been incorporated into D, perhaps via a BC chronicle with continuation, perhaps from a different text. Can we be certain that all this represents a single stage which brought all this together, or a series of stages? Palaeography might suggest a shift in the 1040s or 1050s, with major collation already completed. There are other clues. First there are signs of interventions which can be associated with Archbishop Wulfstan II of York (d. 1023), or with his immediate circle. Earlier chapters identified these in the Northern Recension and its continuation (annals 959–982) and in the annals of Æthelred and Cnut. They were also found in the mid-tenth-century annals deriving from unidentified sources and common with the lost Worcester Chronicle. There was thus an argument that all this had been collated into a chronicle, /D, by the 1020s. If the reference to pagan practice found in D 926 alone is also a Wulfstanian intervention, a BC-type chronicle from which D 926 came had also already been collated into /D by this date. This solitary piece of debatable evidence may be insufficient to bear the weight of proof here. The possibility that the collation into /D of the BC-type chronicle was a separate and later stage must be kept open. The palaeography of Chronicle D made it clear that a BC chronicle had been collated by the time that Scribe 2 worked. Annals to 1016 are all part of a fair copy of an already collated text, copied by Scribes 1 and 2. That collated text which extended to 1016 already included a BC-type chronicle. The work of Scribe 2 was difficult to date, but it was no earlier than mid eleventh century. His work cannot help us decide whether /D c.1020 had already undergone this major collation. There are those who would date that major work as post-1066, but a second clue combining palaeography and content argues against this. The 1016 annal was begun by Scribe 2, and completed by the scribe of the post1066 replacement. Edmund ‘Ironside’, son of Æthelred II, features throughout the annal. The post-1066 scribe of D highlighted his name in capitals. There is no such treatment on the part of Scribe 2. After the Norman Conquest, Edmund’s reputation grew, including if not especially in the circles where Chronicle D was being produced. The (provably) post-Conquest annals in Chronicle D are an important sign of that (see below, 248–52). Scribe 2’s work is here untouched by it.

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Chronicle D: Crossing Conquest  245 Chapters  10 and  11 saw Chronicle D’s content to the 1050s and beyond drawing not from Chronicle C, but from an independent use of the lost West Midlands Chronicle, which was itself an evolving text. There is thus no compelling argument for dating the major collation(s) which produced D until after the completion of Chronicle C. There are thus good reasons to place the initial making of Chronicle D before 1066. Chapter  10 raised the possibility that a major stage in the evolution of Chronicle D occurred c.1040, coinciding with developments in C and E around the time of Edward the Confessor’s accession. That suggestion is consistent with the above arguments, though they cannot confirm it.

Annals in D numbered 1054 –1065: Pre- or Post-1066? The palaeography and layout of annals numbered from 1054 onwards could support a number of different scenarios: from a series of continuations made pre- and post-1066 to production (copying and potentially writing) in their entirety after the Norman Conquest. The greater burden of evidence is thus thrown upon content. The results remain ambiguous. The most likely scenario is that D’s annals numbered either side of 1066 were composed if not copied either side of that date. But there is scope for and likelihood of post-Conquest copying of pre-Conquest annals and for some reworking. Two case studies suggest the possibility, though not certainty, of such revisions.

i)  Ægelric and Ægelwine, Bishops of Durham in Chronicle D Ægelric and Ægelwine were brothers, monks of Peterborough who succeeded each other as bishop of Durham. They were the first southern appointees to this northerly see. Both survived the Norman Conquest. Both were connected in some way to centres of resistance after 1066. Both were taken into—ec­cle­si­as­tic­al— custody, where they died. Chronicle D pays considerable attention to them, in annals numbered before and after 1066. The first reference to one of these brothers is in an annal in the replacement section of D, s.a. 1041. Here D alone notes the consecration of Ægelric as bishop ‘to York’, with the precise date, 3 ides January. This is an otherwise unrecorded York archbishop, usually dismissed as a strange error in D.33 Chronicle D then 33  Leading some scholars to shy away form York as the home of D, at least in its final stages. Could York clerics have made such a mistake about the succession to their own see? Wormald, How do we Know so Much about Anglo-Saxon Deerhurst? (1991)’, p. 16, a mistake which had impressed I. Atkins, ‘The Origins of the Later Part of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Known as D’, EHR, 55 (1940), pp. 8–26 at p. 23 and Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, p. 220.

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246  After Alfred has a second reference to him in 1056, recording Ægelric’s retirement to Peterborough and his brother’s succession to him at Durham. Ægelric and his brother, Ægelwine, recur in post-1066 annals; they are among the very few ecclesiastics who are found in the closely connected annals in D and E. Coverage of them covers the accusation (forwregede, ‘strongly accused’) of Ægelric, who was at Peterborough, the taking of him to Westminster, and the outlawing of his brother (D 1068); the plundering of Peterborough by men whom Ægelric had excommunicated for taking his property (D 1071); events at Ely, where Ægelwine submitted to William, after which he was taken to Abingdon, where he died (D 1072); and finally the death of Ægelric at Westminster, with precise date and burial place, giving a brief biography (D1073), including a reprise of his unjust treatment with respect to York. The ‘error’ is now repeated, with feeling: he wæs to biscoppe gehadod to Eoferwic ac hit wæs mid unrihte him of genumen 7 geaf him þæt biscoprice æt Dunholme (‘He was consecrated as bishop to York, but it was taken from him unjustly, and he was given the bishopric of Durham’). It is now explicit: Ægelric was not only made bishop of York, but it was ‘unjustly’ taken from him. The post-1066 annals, not those pre-1066, are also found in E 1069, 1070, 1071, and 1072, largely identical, though with later Peterborough elaboration. At the point of Ægelric’s death E, like D, rails at the injustice of his treatment in the matter of the York archbishopric, like D repeating the ‘strange error’. So many annals following individual bishops are unusual in these chronicles. Bishops of Durham are particularly rare birds in vernacular chronicles. The attention to them in D and E may simply indicate their post-1066 importance. Both bishops ended their careers as the most significant ecclesiastical figures connected with English rebellion and resistance. Yet D and E tell us little or nothing of the fate of other English bishops after 1066. Such attention to Ægelric and Ægelwine may be an argument for connecting some stage of Chronicle D’s development to Durham—or Peterborough. The story in D and E is not the same as that told in Durham sources, which pay considerable attention to these episcopal brothers. Neither D nor E have the fuller story of Ægelwine’s relations with the Normans in the North, found in the Durham sources. These Durham sources lack the strange claim of Ægelric’s appointment to York in 1041 and his ‘unjust’ deprivation; nor do they have details of Ægelric at Peterborough or of his death at Westminster.34 Some of the detail is Peterborough/southern in orientation. Both were linked to Peterborough, where both had begun their ecclesiastical careers as monks. In the early twelfth century, Chronicle E at Peterborough elaborated on Ægelric’s actions, but they already

34  On the Durham stories, and for full consideration of the roles of these brothers, including after 1066, see W. Aird, St Cuthbert and the Normans (Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 60–99, with references, and cf. also pp. 49–52. We should not, however, rule out the possible difference between a Durham monastic story and one told in the bishops’ own households.

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Chronicle D: Crossing Conquest  247 featured, with the Peterborough location, in this group of post-1066 annals common to D and E. The annals which cover these bishops span 1066. Their role after that date invites speculation that their story has somehow been affected by Conquest, in its pre- as well as post-1066 elements. Could the entire coverage of them be explained as a story told after 1066, inserted as backfilling into the pre-1066 sections of D, constructed on the basis of post-1066 knowledge and perspective? D’s 1073 reference to Ægelric’s twelve years at Peterborough after leaving Durham, matches its annals for 1056 and 1068 giving details of his retirement and later accusation and imprisonment at Westminster. Was the 1056 annal constructed on the basis of material in the biography in annal 1073 and the 1068 annal? Is it arguable that the 1041 annal, too, is a later insertion on that same basis? The 1041 annal is part of the replacement section, whose scribe was at work late in the eleventh century. Could it even be argued that the need to insert this was a factor in the decision to replace—and thus rewrite—this section of annals in D?35 Were these annals all authored/written, not merely copied, post-1066, from knowledge gathered from the households/friends of these bishops, at Peterborough, the house to which one retired in the south? Is this a rewriting of pre-1066 history from post-1066 perspectives?36 The 1041 annal gives cause to pause. The precise date of Ægelric’s consecration is given there, which could not be worked out from the detail given in D 1073, though it might still have been known at Peterborough. The 1041 annal has none of the burning sense of injustice expressed in D 1073. The appointment to York and immediate deposition should not be ruled completely out of court as the error of a later ill-informed writer. The politics of the years 1040–1042 were fraught. Bishops and archbishops were involved in them. The reality of these events should not simply be dismissed. Error, unintentional or deliberate, is nonetheless possible. 1041 may originally have been the record of an appointment to Durham at York. Such a reference would be at home in a pre-1066 York archbishops’ chronicle, such as /D. As we now have 1041, it is part of the replacement section, written very late in D’s development. Did the scribe, influenced by the 1073 annal, substitute ‘to’ York (= ‘to’) for an original ‘æt’ York (= ‘at’) as he copied? Could such miscopying at an even earlier stage be the origin of the story—and emotion in the 1073 annal itself? That annal was added after 1066. It was without doubt the interpretation of someone 35  I owe this suggestion to Elizabeth Tyler. 36 The form in which their names are consistently given in these annals, with a medial ‘g’ in ‘Ægelric’ and ‘Ægelwine’, not ‘Æthelric’ and ‘Æthelwine’ is interesting, but probably not significant. These names can be spelled with a medial ‘g’, ‘þ’, ‘ð’, or ‘d’. Most of the examples of the name given in PASE have þ or ð. Examples with ‘g’ are predominantly eleventh century, and include a large number of examples of moneyers. A spelling with medial ‘g’ is not diagnostically a post-1066 spelling, though it is generally later rather than earlier. However, there are earlier uses of medial ‘g’, including in the vernacular chronicles.

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248  After Alfred for whom by now Ægelric and Ægelwine had particular importance—as ill-treated survivors of the late Anglo-Saxon church. These annals underscore the problem of dating the writing of D’s mid-century annals. There is no firm palaeographically based date for the scribes of the 1050s annals, or for the original date of the 1040s annals. There are arguments for pla­cing them after 1066. Post-1066 copying and post-1066 replacement gave scope for writing and rewriting, including in the case of these Durham bishops. The rewriting of earlier annals, even insertion of new annals, is possible. The annals concerning the family of King Edmund, son of Æthelred II, pose these same problems.

ii)  D’s Annals on the Family of Edmund ‘Ironside’ Many of Chronicle D’s annals concern the descendants of King Edmund: his son, Edward, and his grandchildren, Margaret and Edgar. The annals numbered span 1066, though they are concentrated after that annal number. Some are common with E, some are peculiar to or especially long and elaborate in D.  D’s annals include some lengthy accounts, and the most extended treatment of a woman if not of an individual in the entire vernacular chronicle corpus.37 Chronicle E continues to be interested in members of the family after D ends in annal 1079.

Æthelred II (978/9–1016) Edmund ‘Ironside’ (1016)

Edward ‘the Confessor’ (1042–66)

Edward ‘the exile’ Margaret

Edgar ‘the ætheling’

= Malcolm, King of Scots (1058–93)

Edith/Mathilda = Henry I (1100–35)

Fig 1.  Descent of the Family of Edmund Ironside 37  Discussed in Stafford, ‘Chronicle D, 1067 and Women’ and especially now in P. Stafford, ‘Noting Relations and Tracking Relationships in English Vernacular Chronicles’.

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Chronicle D: Crossing Conquest  249 Edmund was the older half-brother of Edward the Confessor, a son of King Æthelred II, and briefly king himself in 1016. After Edmund’s untimely death and Cnut’s conquest, Edmund’s son Edward spent most of his life in exile. The childless Edward the Confessor invited him back to England in 1057, where he very soon died. His own children were Edgar ‘the ætheling’, a claimant to the throne in 1066 and after, a rival to William of Normandy, and Margaret, later wife and queen of the king of the Scots. She was the mother of Edith/Mathilda, whom the Norman King Henry I married in 1100. This was a family of central significance to the ongoing succession questions which dominated English politics from the 1030s to the early 1100s. There was good reason to write annals about them before as after 1066. Most of the annals concerning them were written as well as copied after 1066. Is mention of them in annals numbered pre-1066 also to be dated then? Chronicle D’s annals on this family begin with that for 1057, and continue in those for 1066, 1067, 1068, and 1075. They cover the return to England of Edward ‘who was son of King Edward’s brother, Edmund \king/ [added], who was called Ironside for his bravery’ (snellscipe); Edward who had a ‘fair progeny’ with his wife, Agatha, a kinswoman of the emperor (D 1057). D 1066 notes attempts to make Edgar (Edward’s son) king after the battle at Hastings, and his participation in the submission of the English nobility to William at Berkhamstead. It has Edgar’s flight to Scotland (D 1067); his return, twice, to York and subsequent ­harrying (D 1068); his joining up with the Danes who arrived in the Humber (E 1069, part of the continuous narrative in D 1068). D’s 1067 annal covers the wooing and marriage by the Scottish king of Margaret, Edgar’s sister. D’s last annal on this family is that for 1075, which covers the movements and treatment of Edgar, with a lengthy account of the help Margaret and her husband Malcolm gave him and his reception by King William ‘with great honour’. In D these annals include two poetic sections: on the return of Edward in 1057 and on Margaret in annal 1067; in the latter case the result is one of the longest vernacular annals surviving, and certainly the longest on a woman. Its 1067 and 1068 annals, which include this family, have been combined into a narrative which in D overrides the chron­ology of events of these years and of 1069. That chronology is still apparent in Chronicle E and John of Worcester, both of whom share some, but not all, of D’s coverage. Thus both have a brief reference to the return of Edward in 1057, the flight to Scotland of Edgar and Margaret (E 1067, John 1068), and Edgar at York (E 1068 and 1069). Both E and John briefly cover Edgar’s movements (E 1074, John 1073). In neither is any of this elaborated as it is in Chronicle D. Chronicle E, however, continues after the end of D’s annals, and its coverage of this family also continues.38 Thus in E annals 1091 and 1093 make clear the 38  E 1085(2), 1091, 1093, 1097, 1100, 1106.

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250  After Alfred continuing threats in the North, in which Edgar and the Scots were involved; and annal 1106 reports Edgar’s involvement at Tinchebrai, a critical battle for Henry I. The death of Margaret ‘the good queen’ is part of E’s story of 1093. E 1100 is a long annal on the seizure of the throne by Henry I, the youngest son of William the Conqueror. It includes Henry’s marriage to ‘Mathilda, daughter of Malcolm king of Scotland and Margaret the good queen, kinswoman of King Edward, of the true/rightful (rihtan) royal kin of England’ and her consecration as queen by Archbishop Anselm. At this point E echoes Chronicle D. D’s 1067 annal on Margaret described her as ‘born of a noble and believing kin’, traced back through her paternal descent to Edgar ‘son of Eadred’ (sic—this should have been Edmund), at which point the D author’s vague grasp of tenth-century history petered out. But his point was clear. Margaret’s descent was from the English royal dynasty stretching back into the tenth century ‘and so forth on that royal kin’ (cynecynn). In D 1067 Margaret’s eulogy was followed immediately by the flight of Gytha, mother of the (dead) King Harold, and the arrival of Mathilda (wife of William), and her consecration by Ealdred as queen. Mathilda in fact arrived in 1068. The events of 1067 and 1068 were combined into a single year and story in D. D’s annal for this year has been rewritten, for increased narrative effect.39 The annals in D and E follow a family which continued to be central to postConquest politics into the twelfth century. Survivors of the pre-1066 royal line, claimants to the English throne, carriers of pre-1066 royal English blood to the kings of the Scots—blood and claims reappropriated if not totally repatriated by Henry I’s marriage to Edith/Mathilda in AD 1100. It is scarcely surprising to find Margaret and Edgar followed in post-1066 annals. But at some point D’s annals 1067–1068 were rewritten, emphasizing them. Chronicle E’s annal for 1100 ­echoes that of D 1067, if indeed the narrative structure of one did not affect that of the other. This family feature in annals because they are important in their own right, especially after 1066, and on into the early twelfth century. But how they feature, and where and when the annals covering them were written, are different questions. Only one of these annals is numbered pre-1066: the 1057 annal on the return of Margaret and Edgar’s father, Edward. D, E, and John of Worcester in annal 1057 record his return from exile. E or /E calls him ‘son of King Edmund’. John notes his birth, specifically that he was son of King Edmund ‘Ironside’ and that Edward (the Confessor) was his uncle; John notes his exile and King Edward’s establishment of him as his heir. Chronicle D’s annal, however, elaborates at 39 Stafford, ‘Chronicle D, 1067 and Women’. T.  Bredehoft, ‘Malcolm and Margaret: The Poem in Annal 1067D’, in Jorgensen, Reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, pp. 31–48 has argued persuasively that the 1067 annal has a lengthy poem which should be included among the corpus of poetic annals. In view of the substantial rewriting of annals in D for these years and the common source behind D, E, and John of Worcester, I find less compelling his suggestion that Chronicle E for this year is a simplification of D.

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Chronicle D: Crossing Conquest  251 length: he was son of Edward’s brother, called Irensid for his bravery, exiled by King Cnut to Ungerland, where he throve, as God granted. D’s annal notes his marriage to a relative of the emperor, Agatha, and his fægerne bearnteam, his ‘fair progeny’. There follows a very personal comment concerning the fact that he had not been able to see his kinsman, Edward, ‘Nor do we know why . . . ’ this had happened, and ‘alas’ (Wala) the harm that his death did to ‘this people . . . this poor people’. Does the emotion and the analysis it implies point to post-1066 writing when the consequences of Edward’s death had become all too apparent? In this same annal John—in many ways connected to D—has a long panegyric of Earl Leofric. Chronicle D lacks this, though it has details identical to those in John of Leofric’s burial at Coventry, of the accession of his son, and of Earl Ralf ’s death and burial at Peterborough. John’s annal and D’s are related, most likely through common use of the lost Worcester/West Midlands Chronicle. But they part company on the individual whose death is elaborated. A panegyric on Leofric would be likely in the common source of D and John, given the geographic knowledge—largely but not exclusively West Midlands—which distinguishes it. Leofric was earl of Mercia. Had the makers of chronicle D at some point displaced that, with the poem on Edward? If D’s poem here is pre-Conquest, it would be the earliest example of the use of the epithet ‘Ironside’ for Edmund, Edward’s own father.40 Edmund was of considerable interest to one of Chronicle D’s last scribes. His name—‘EADMUND cyng’—is highlighted in capitals in D’s annal for 1016 (folio 68r). This annal was the work of two scribes, Scribe 2 and a scribe who wrote D’s annals 1071–1079. The capitalization is in this late replacement section, datable no earlier than the 1070s. It is not found in the earlier stages of the annal (folios 66r–67v), which were the work of the second scribe; even after Edmund became king Scribe 2 does not mark him out visually. In the political context of the late eleventh if not early twelfth century, the late scribe singled Edmund out. Was it in such a context that the 1057 poem was added to D? 40  John of Worcester, like D, uses Ferrei Lateris/Irensid. This was the common usage in John: see e.g. cognomine Ferreum Latus, in John of Worcester, ii, p. 480, s.a. 1016; ferreo lateri, p. 486; ferreum latus, pp. 488, 490 (2x), 492; s.a.1017 scilicet Ferreum Latus, p. 504; s.a. 1054, p. 576, son of Eadmundi Ferrei Lateris located; 1057, p. 582, Eadmundi ferrei lateris filius brought back; as also in Henry of Huntingdon, Henry of Huntingdon, VI. 12, p. 356: qui uocatus est Irenside, id est latus ferreum; Edward is filius Edmundi Ireneside, VI. 24, p. 380. It is found in Hemming. London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius A. xiii, fo 128v: ‘King Eadmund whose forename (prenomen) was Ironside’. This is part of the so-called Codicil of Possessions, on the date of which, probably soon after 1095, see F. Tinti, Sustaining Belief: The Church of Worcester from c. 870 to c. 1100 (London, 2010), pp. 4, 137–8; also F.  Tinti, ‘ “Si litterali memorię commendaretur”: Memory and Cartularies in Eleventh-Century Worcester’, in S. Baxter et al., Early Medieval Studies, pp. 475–97 at p. 475; A. Williams, ‘The Spoliation of Worcester’, ANS 19 (1996), pp. 383–408 at pp. 384 and 388–90; and R.  Gameson, ‘St Wulfstan, the Library of Worcester and the Spirituality of the Medieval Book’, in J. S. Barrow and N. P. Brooks (eds), St Wulfstan and his World (Aldershot, 2005), pp. 59–104 at p. 96. D’s is the only possibly pre-Conquest usage—and if this annal is later, there are none. See also the highlighting of his name in capital letters in D’s replacement section beginning mid 1016.

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252  After Alfred D’s 1057 annal is a prime candidate for rewriting after 1066. If so, that must mean that it and all the annals from 1058 onwards must have been written in the sense of copied if not authored, after 1066. As part of the section written in the same ink and characterized by a confusion of layout and scribal changes after annal 1053, it may argue that all these were copied though not necessarily authored after 1066. Yet a basis of the 1057 annal in pre-1066 ones would still be likely. Both E and John, perhaps drawing on the lost West Midlands Chronicle, have the basic facts of this annal. But the strategic statements in each—John’s reference to Edward making the returning exile his heir, even E’s description flagging the kinship between exile and king—raise doubts. Do any of them represent untampered, pre-1066 text? Rewriting members of this family after 1066 did occur, as the 1067 annal in Chronicle D shows. The development of this annal may show more than one rewrite.41 The numbers of Chronicle D’s annals from the 1050s onwards cannot be taken as a simple guide to the date of their original writing/authoring or of their copying. Writing and rewriting on more than one occasion may lie behind them.42

D’s Annals, Late 1050s to 1079, and Chronicle /E The last annals in D are somehow connected to annals now found in Chronicle E, and most likely in its predecessor, /E. Annals linking D and E stretch across 1066, including in coverage of events of that year and its aftermath. Some, like D 1067–1068, have been rewritten. Some, in both D and E, show clear signs of retrospect and of a writing affected by the experience of 1066. They do not

41  Stafford, ‘Chronicle D and Women’. 42  The treatment of Stigand in Chronicle E poses some of the same questions about rewriting after 1066. Stigand receives considerable attention in Chronicle E: his appointment to East Anglia (E 1042) and return to his bishopric (E 1043(1)), where E lacks C’s information on his deprivation and the ­reasons for it; his role as a peace broker in the dramatic events of 1052 ‘acting with God’s help’; Pope Benedict’s sending him the pallium in 1058 (also in D) and his subsequent consecrations of bishops; the death of Abbot Wulfric (of St Augustine’s Canterbury) and the king’s appointment of Æthelsige, a monk of Old Minster, in his place, possibly described as a ‘follower of Stigand’ (see below, p. 307). Stigand would become emblematic of the criticisms of the Old English church: see M.  Smith, ‘Archbishop Stigand and the Eye of the Needle’, ANS, 16 (1993), pp. 199–219; cf. Brooks, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury, pp. 305–11, and F.  Barlow, The English Church, 1000–1066: A  Constitutional History (London, 1963), pp. 77–81. The negative characterization by William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, ed. M.  Winterbottom, i, pp. 46–8 has stuck. The specific accusation of Stigand at the council which deposed him in 1070, included his pluralism and his use, during the lifetime of Archbishop Robert, of the pallium which Robert had left behind when he was ‘unjustly’ driven out: see John of Worcester, iii, pp. 10–12. The story of Archbishop Robert’s ignominious and violent flight, of his abandonment of the pallium, and of Christianity in England, as told in E 1052, speak directly to these accusations. It, if not other editing of Stigand’s story, is a candidate for rewriting after 1066. It should, however, be noted that the lack of a properly constituted archbishop, with a pallium, was a contemporary issue in Chronicle C’s annal for 1053.

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Chronicle D: Crossing Conquest  253 necessarily represent a single stage of contact between these developing chronicles. As the last annals in D, they demand more consideration. They suggest how far the last stages of Chronicle D must still be seen within a wider context of vernacular chronicling exchanges. As chapter 11 showed, some close agreement between D and E stretches back to annals numbered to the 1050s. It is marked in those for the late 1050s and early 1060s. They are especially concerned with ecclesiastical events: episcopal appointments (D and E 1058 and 1060, and D 1060, E 1061 on Duduc and Giso, bishops of Somerset), one annal on the deaths of a Canterbury suffragan bishop and a Canterbury abbot of St Augustine’s (D and E 1061—E alone with the details of the abbot’s successor) and papal successions (D and E 1057, 1058—D alone that in 1061). E has extra Canterbury detail in 1061. D alone adds to the notice of the death of Cynesige, archbishop of York, his burial at Peterborough (D 1060), and the consecration of the steeple at Peterborough in annal 1059. Both have the appointment of Ealdred to York; D alone has Ealdred and Earl Tostig’s visit to Rome in 1061. The connection is close and largely concerned with ecclesiastical affairs. The extra detail links D to York and Peterborough. The latter is connected to York as the place of burial of Archbishop Cynesige; E is connected to Canterbury. D’s annals for 1065–1068 are far more complex. There is still common ground with those found in E, including evidence of retrospective writing, but D now combines these with material also found in Chronicle C’s last late additions, and D’s annals show evidence of at least one stage of rewriting. D 1065 and E 1064 (recte 1065) refer to the ravaging around Northampton in the wake of an uprising at York, which left the surrounding shires ‘worse for it for many winters’ (fela wintra ðe wyrsan). Such a remark is unlikely before c.1070. For 1065 and 1066 D was also using a source common with Chronicle C’s last annals, most likely still the lost West Midlands Chronicle. D was not using C itself.43 D’s annals for 1066–1068 (recte 1066–1069) have also been subject to rewriting, with an impassioned critique linked intertextually, as we shall see, with the Æthelred annals, spe­cif­ic­al­ly with the earlier chronicle which had been in the hands of Wulfstan II of York. The rewriting involved the addition of the long poem on Margaret of Scotland. The close link with /E is clear again from D 1071, E 1070 (recte 1070) and extends now to the end of D, annal 1079. These annals in D and E differ in subject matter from those which they shared for the years around 1060. They pay little or  no attention to episcopal or other ecclesiastical deaths or appointments. Surprisingly this includes the fate of the bulk of the Anglo-Saxon episcopate who were replaced in these years. Details of this are given in John of Worcester’s chronicle. D and E do include the annals on the brothers, bishops of Durham, retired or exiled to the Fenlands (see above, pp. 245–6), and the death of Æthelwig, 43  See e.g. the treatment of the story of the butsecarls in C and D 1066, which is incomplete in each and only makes full sense when both are combined.

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254  After Alfred abbot of Evesham (labelled se woruldsnotra, ‘wise/cunning in affairs of the world’ in D, which also names his successor, with the date of his death in E). In both D and E there is significant comment on events on the Humber, at York, and concerning Scotland, the latter further developed and with extra material in D. Their longest common annal is that for 1075 (D 1076) on the revolt of the earls against William I, especially as it centred in East Anglia. That revolt involved the most significant surviving English nobleman, Earl Waltheof. Both D and E note in the next annal that he was the only one put to death by King William. The 1075/1076 annal contains one of the last poetic sections in the vernacular chronicles. The singling out of Waltheof ’s death recalls its place at the change of hand and ink in D.  It was one of only a handful of ‘secular’ annals added to the Christ Church Easter table, Chronicle I (see chapter 13).44 It has been suggested that a common source lies behind D and E for this group, labelled as ‘Northern Annals’.45 Yet they show interests which point south, or at least to the Fens and East Anglia, as well as North. The label ‘Northern’ obscures the breadth of their concerns. ‘Annals of—some—English survivors’ would be an equally if not more accurate label. If these annals in some way constitute a group, it is unclear where that ends. D concludes abruptly. D’s last annal, D 1079, breaks in mid flow as the last half of folio 86 was cut off. The missing half sheet could have fitted another annal, such as E 1080 covering the murder of Walchere, the Norman bishop of Durham. That would fit with some of the concerns of earlier annals in D and E. D has lost something, but would not have had much more. The dorse of its final folio was ori­gin­al­ly blank, filled only much later by annal ‘1080’, recte 1130, which begins at the top of the page. E’s, and thus /E’s, annals continue. For whatever reason, D’s end here. D’s annals linked to E should almost certainly be divided pre- and post-1066. The interests of the annals before and after that year diverge markedly. That could, of course, be a function of the dramatic events of conquest and reaction to them. But the almost exclusive interest in ecclesiastical affairs in those numbered pre1066 and the almost complete absence of such interest in those numbered after point to different sources, and/or different circumstances, and/or different authors. Most of these annals are obviously written post-1066, but the impact of 1066 was clear in the common and retrospective material for 1065. D’s annals wrote and rewrote the Conquest years. In the annals numbered around 1060, an archiepiscopal Canterbury–York nexus could explain the common material in D and E, with each chronicle providing odd extra details. York archbishops are a source for some Peterborough 44  1076, the date as in E. It is in a new ink, the first of the entries made after the initial creation of the annals in I. No other entries were made by this scribe in this ink. 45  Dumville, ‘Some Aspects’, p. 36 and cf. Irvine, Chronicle E, pp. lxxxii–lxxxiv.

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Chronicle D: Crossing Conquest  255 detail in D; both Cynesige and his predecessor Archbishop Ælfric were buried there and gave substantial gifts to the abbey.46 The post-1066 annals focused on survivors, on the unfolding of conquest, and, via survivors, on Scotland—an interest enhanced in D, and one which must be pursued further. But to the end, D’s development was taking place in a context of contact/exchange among makers of vernacular chronicles in which /E was also involved. As the next chapter will show, the Canterbury scribe of Chronicle F had sight of it. Wherever D was, wherever its annals were written, D to the last was part of a wider vernacular chronicling network of the sort already seen in the mid-eleventh-century annals. With that in mind, it is time to turn to the question of D’s last home(s).

Where was Chronicle D Written? ‘Where was Chronicle D written?’ That question must acknowledge the complexity of this chronicle. On the basis of content and interests a number of possible homes for the last stages of Chronicle D have been canvassed and can be plausibly argued: the Scottish court, Durham, Archbishop Ealdred of York and/or his surviving household. Peterborough if not Canterbury must somehow be factored in.47 Scottish material features in D’s annals. Often this is connected with Margaret and Edgar, but not exclusively. There is much additional Scottish material, apparently unconnected with Edgar or Margaret, in annal 1078, where this material is distinguished by rubrication in the text,48 and includes a long gap suggesting more was expected (see illustration  7). The 1078 annal’s reference to King Malcolm’s attack on the enigmatic ‘Mælslæhtan’s mother’ is the sort of laconic fact apparently dropped into a void, which an author if not audience au fait with in­tern­al Scottish politics would have contextualized. Some of the Scottish material is also in E, but more briefly, or with a more critical edge. D’s 1075 annal is greatly extended vis-à-vis E 1074, here with information on Edgar, Margaret, and her husband. Does this point to the Scottish court as the final home of D, as the interest in Margaret might suggest? The last annals in D, unlike their equivalent in E, pass, perhaps tactfully, over King Malcolm’s ravaging southward.49 46 Cooper, Last Four Anglo-Saxon Archbishops of York, pp. 14–23. 47  On all these, and with full reference, see Stafford, ‘Chronicle D and Ealdred’. 48  A large capital decorated in red. 49  There are also questions about how D 1075, on Edgar the ætheling, Margaret’s brother, could be read. The brief statement in Chronicle E contrasts with D’s lengthy story of the help Margaret and Malcolm gave Edgar, his shipwreck, his return to Scotland, Malcolm’s making of peace with King William, and his then sending Edgar to the king with great treasure and honour, swiðe weorðlice hine eft of heora gryðe sendon. D tells how the sheriff of Yorkshire met him at Durham and then escorted him to the king, where he was received mid micclum weorðscype and received back his rights. D’s 1075 annal on Edgar could be an apologia for the sending of him south by his sister and brother-in-law, though it also emphasizes his regality: the sheriff escorted him south and he was provisioned at every castle. Frank Stenton felt that the later section of D was ‘originally composed’ in Archbishop Ealdred’s

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256  After Alfred Durham, however, is an equally arguable home for this interest.50 Margaret’s chaplain and later hagiographer, Turgot, was a monk of Durham, and Durham had other links with the Scottish court in the late eleventh century.51 The earliest Scottish charters were written there.52 Durham, its bishops, and community looked north as much as if not more than south. A Durham-based writer of D’s last annals could have spent time with members of the Scottish court; ‘Mælslæhtan’s mother’ need not have been the mystifying figure she undoubtedly would be to southern audiences. Would he have passed over Malcolm’s ravaging? The interest in the last two Anglo-Saxon bishops of Durham looks at first sight like a strong argument reinforcing Durham’s claims on D.  Yet the material on them is as likely to point south as north, as likely to be Peterborough, where one retired, or even Westminster, where one died, as Durham. ‘Scottish’ annals in D are concentrated after 1066, but are not exclusively found in annals numbered then. Two are in the earlier 1030s: 1031, concerning the submission of the Scottish king to Cnut ‘to which he held but little time’, and 1034, relating the death of Malcolm ‘king on (‘in/of ’) Scotland’. D’s annal for 1054 ­covers the expedition of Earl Siward (of Northumbria) against the Scots. In two cases the annals are found elsewhere, 1031 in E and 1054 in C.  Only D has all three. E 1031 has more detail, naming not only the Scotta cyng, Malcolm, but also two other kings, Mælbæthe and Iehmarc, who bowed to Cnut, but it lacks D’s reference to the failure to hold to the promise. In 1054 D has extra detail, naming the Scottish king, Macbeth, who was put to flight, the great slaughter of all the most prominent (betst) men, and the booty brought back such as never before. It also gives the date of the battle and the names of some of the slain, including Earl Siward’s own son, Osbern, and his sister’s son, Siward. Is this all post-1066 rewriting influenced by the Scottish concerns of D’s writers after this date? That is unlikely. These annals are in no way connected to the later stories, whose narratives (discussed above) may have driven other rewriting of pre-1066 annals. There is a contemporary context for this Scottish interest in the mid eleventh century itself: York and its archbishops. A chronicle connected to them was a probable home of the original 1041 annal on the Durham appointment. These annals, too, would fit snugly there. Siward, buried in York, the heart of his Northumbrian earldom, would be well known there; his triumph a cause for celebratory record. Scottish kings and their doings would be known via household, but argued, on the ground of content such as that on Margaret, that the manuscript was in ‘its final form’ destined for the Scottish court: Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 690. 50  Guimon’s favoured home. 51 G.  W.  S.  Barrow, ‘The Kings of Scotland and Durham’, in D.  Rollason, M.  Harvey, and M.  Prestwich (eds), Anglo-Norman Durham 1093–1193 (Woodbridge, 1994), pp. 311–23; G.  W.  S.  Barrow, ‘Scots in the Durham Liber Vitae’, in D.  Rollason, A.  J.  Piper, M.  Harvey, and L. Rollason (eds), The Durham Liber Vitae and its Context (Woodbridge, 2004), pp. 109–16 at p. 115. 52  A. A. M. Duncan, ‘Yes, the Earliest Scottish Charters’, Scottish Historical Review, 78 (1999), pp. 1–38.

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Chronicle D: Crossing Conquest  257 Siward’s own political concerns with the North; perhaps, too, via the archbishops’ interests. The York archbishopric, like Durham, looked north as well as south, as the history of the bishopric of Glasgow shows. The early history of the Scottish bishoprics is shrouded in mystery. Later archbishops would claim metropolitan rights there, strongly resisted at Glasgow.53 By the mid eleventh century there may have been bishops of Glasgow, but ones who never or rarely crossed the Solway. Rather, they were titular bishops, who, by the time of Archbishop Cynesige at least, were based at York, in the archbishop’s own entourage.54 However often they did or did not visit their sees, an interest in Scotland and Scottish affairs is more than likely, on their part and on the part of their metropolitan. The Scottish material in D, like much else, probably has no single explanation. It is further warning, if such is required, against collapsing together all D’s content. This was a chronicle with a long and complex history; perhaps a particularly complex one in the mid to later eleventh–early twelfth centuries. That said, many roads are leading to York. It is time to follow them, without assuming that they will take us to the end of the journey.

Chronicle D, York Archbishops, and Ealdred Chapter 9 left Chronicle /D c.1020 in the hands of the York archbishop, Wulfstan II. Many have associated D’s last stages of development with one of his successors, Archbishop Ealdred (archbishop of York, 1060–1069).55 The last Anglo-Saxon archbishops of York continue to be a key to understanding Chronicle D. Chronicle D has the most complete coverage of the eleventh-century AngloSaxon archbishops of York and Canterbury. The annals of Æthelred, common to C, D, and E already show this interest. It is continued to a degree in all three chronicles. Chronicle E, for example, has the complete succession to Canterbury through to Stigand. But D’s coverage is fullest. This is largely because D alone has the virtually complete succession at York—minus that of Wulfstan II—and the places of burial of Archbishops Ælfric, Cynesige, and Ealdred, Peterborough for the first two, York for the third. It also has this same virtually complete coverage of their collection of the archiepiscopal pallium from Rome. In some cases the relevant annals include precise dates for death, accession, or collection of the

53  N. F. Shead (ed.), Scottish Episcopal Acta, i: The Twelfth Century, Scottish History Society, 6th ser., 10 (Woodbridge, 2016), pp. xi–xii. 54  SeeA. A.  M.  Duncan, Medieval Scotland:The Making of the Kingdom (Edinburgh, 1975), pp. 258–9; N. F. Shead, ‘The Origins of the Medieval Diocese of Glasgow’, Scottish Historical Review, 48 (1969), pp. 220–5; and Cooper, The Last Four Anglo-Saxon Archbishops of York, pp. 258–9. 55  Thus Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 690, plus I. Atkins, ‘The Origins of the Later Part of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle known as D’, pp. 8–26 and especially now Wormald, How do we Know so Much about Anglo-Saxon Deerhurst? (1991); cf. Whitelock, EHD, i, pp. 114–15.

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258  After Alfred pallium.56 Some of this detail is in C, and with even more precision.57 D is re­mark­able, however, for the completeness of its coverage. That includes Canterbury, here paralleling E, though sometimes at greater length or with different emphasis. D’s account of Archbishop Æthelnoth’s collection of the pallium in Rome is linked to that in E, but diverges in its detail.58 Its account of the translation of the martyred archbishop, Ælfheah, is long and hagiographical.59 Unlike Chronicle E, D has no elaboration of Archbishop Robert’s ignominious flight from Canterbury and his abandonment of the pallium. But, like E, D notes Pope Benedict’s sending of a pallium to Stigand in 1058. Chronicle D is especially remarkable too for its details of the career of Ealdred, both before and after his elevation to the archbishopric. This sustained interest in an episcopal career is almost unique in the vernacular chronicles. The mid-tenthcentury annals on Wulfstan I of York, also found only in D, are a parallel, but concerned almost exclusively with his ‘treachery’. By contrast Ealdred is followed from appointment to Worcester in annal 1047 through to his death, noted in D’s 1068 annal. That death is given prominence on the page of D, highlighted in large capitals. D’s annals encompass Ealdred’s involvement in the crisis of 1050–1052: both his leadership of a force against Earl Swegn and the Welsh king Griffith when he got ‘little help’ and his despatch by King Edward with a troop to intercept Godwine’s flight, an interception which failed, perhaps deliberately, ac hi ne mihton oððe hi noldon (‘but they either couldn’t or wouldn’t’). D covers his ec­cle­ si­as­tic­al career: his appointment (D 1047); his (pluralist) succession to Hereford (D 1056), this latter contextualized in a long annal indicating how the previous warrior-bishop had brought about his own downfall; his consecration of the church at Gloucester, which he had personally completed, þe he sylf geforðode (D  1058); and his succession to Cynesige of York (D 1060), with subsequent journey to Rome for the pallium (D 1061). The latter is given without any reference to the initial papal refusal on the grounds of pluralism. D includes his honourable reception by the emperor in Cologne (D 1054) and the scale of the offerings he made on his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, a journey made with greater honour (weorðscipe) than any had done before (D 1058). D’s coverage includes the emphasis which D’s 1066 annal gives to Ealdred’s part in the choice and coronation of William the Conqueror. In D it was Ealdred and the Londoners who proposed the acceptance of Edgar cild (ætheling) as king, a proposal rejected by Earls Edwin and Morcar. After William’s harrying, first named among those who submitted at Berkhamstead was Ealdred arcebiscop. D records

56 Ælfric’s collection of the pallium, 1026 with precise date; Cynesige’s death, 1060 with date; Ealdred, 1068 with precise date and elaboration. 57  See C 1050, which gives the deaths of both archbishops and the precise date of each, plus Ælfric’s burial at Peterborough. 58  Cf. D and E 1022. 59  D 1023.

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Chronicle D: Crossing Conquest  259 Ealdred’s consecration of William at the end of the year. That event is picked out and capitalized on the page, and told with particular emphasis. Before Ealdred would crown William, he attempted to bind the Conqueror to just rule. He gave him the book (bible) and took an oath from him that he would be as good a king as the best of those before him. Yet, as D goes on to say, William took geld, led English hostages to Normandy, and ‘ever after it grew very much worse’ (a syððan hit yflade swiðe)—a ‘Wulfstanesque’ echo of the earlier chronicle behind D (see below, p. 263). It may even be that some of Chronicle D’s concern with Edgar and Margaret and their father should be included as ‘Ealdred detail’. Bishop Ealdred’s journey to Cologne in 1054 was, according to John of Worcester, specifically to bring back to England ‘the king’s nephew, Edward, that is the son of King Edmund Ironside’.60 In D, however, it was the honour shown to Ealdred by the emperor and the bishop of Cologne which merited comment. Given all this, it comes as no surprise that D’s eleventh-century development has been frequently connected to Archbishop Ealdred. The interest in Ealdred ends, unsurprisingly, at his death, but so, too, does Chronicle D’s interest in archbishops. The block of annals shared with Chronicle E showed no concern with them. The deposition of Stigand, archbishop of Canterbury, goes unremarked. The first Norman archbishops appear only in Chronicle E’s later annals: Lanfranc at his consecration of William II in 1086 and at his death in 1089, Thomas of York at his death in 1100. Chronicle D had ended with annal numbered 1079. It had no reference to archbishops after the death of Ealdred. Ealdred looks like a key, if not the key, to Chronicle D’s later development. Comparison with John of Worcester suggests that the lost Mercian/West Midlands Chronicle was interested in his career. It is the likely source of some at least of D’s detail. Did his appointment mark a significant stage in D’s development? Bishop of Worcester before he became archbishop of York, was it Ealdred who brought that chronicle, or a copy of it, to York, where it was combined with other material to produce a stage of chronicle /D? Could this have been the point at which /D’s annals as far back as those numbered to the 1030s were acquired for that chron­ icle? Arguments in chapters  10 and  11 have suggested that D’s annals for the 1040s and early 1050s may be earlier than c.1060. But questions hung over that dating. Did the appointment of this most ‘political’ of archbishops revitalize chronicling contacts between York and Canterbury? There are close links between annals in D and E from the late 1050s to early 1060s, including especially those dealing with episcopal appointments. There were possible Worcester connections of D’s 1066 scribes: members of the archbishop’s household? The first sentence of annal 1061, the collection by Ealdred of his pallium in Rome, marks a change of 60  John of Worcester, ii, pp. 574–6, s.a. 1054.

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260  After Alfred ink in the final manuscript of Chronicle D. Does this flag a significant stage of Chronicle D’s development? Ealdred cannot be ignored in the development of Chronicle D. Nor is he a deus ex machina to explain all or most of its problems. If there were doubts about the near-contemporary date of D’s annals for the 1040s and early 1050s there were also arguments in favour. Ealdred’s baggage train did not necessarily introduce the lost West Midlands chronicle into D’s development for the first time. Interest in him in Chronicle D, in annals numbered long before his appointment to York, derive from that chronicle. But from 1061 he would also have been of interest in a chronicle, /D, whose own development had been long entwined with the archbishops. Interpretation of the annalistic genre must always be alert both to narratives linking annals, but also to the development of and additions to annals over time. Not all interest in Ealdred in Chronicle D may belong in the same circumstances, or derive from the same sources. The picture given of him is in some ways inconsistent, and does not contain all the detail it might have chosen. Chronicle C also made use of the lost West Midlands Chronicle, and also had material on Ealdred. Chronicle D does not include all C’s details, including flattering ones. In 1056 C chose the extra detail of Ealdred’s involvement in making peace with the Welsh king—an odd omission in D.61 Both drew independently from the lost chronicle. D’s selection did not make the most of the bishop’s actions. Under 1052(1), D has the ambiguous account of Ealdred’s pursuit of Earl Godwine, on the king’s orders. He failed to intercept the earl—as the annal puts it—‘either he would not or he could not’. This sits oddly in an account close to the archbishop. By contrast, there are emphatically celebratory, if not apologetic annals on Ealdred in D. His honourable reception by the emperor in Cologne (D 1054) and the scale of the offerings he made on his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, if not his enhancement of the church at Gloucester, are a celebration which could also be read as quasi-apologia. Pluralism was the charge against Ealdred in Rome in 1061; D’s brief reference to his collection of the pallium elides all comment on his censure and judgement by the pope. But D’s 1056 annal could suggest that some of D’s authors were well aware of it. Does the elaborated account of the moustachioed bishop of Hereford, who fell in a battle wielding a secular sword, silently balance, if not justify, Ealdred’s pluralist takeover of the bishopric? Across his long clerical career, Ealdred was many things. Bishop of Worcester— to which he added Hereford; archbishop of York, which he held briefly alongside Worcester: a serial pluralist. He was the bishop who arranged the return of the family of Edmund Ironside to England. After 1066 he was the archbishop whom 61  Just how close to Ealdred was the lost chronicle itself? See the error, common to C and D, in annal 1056, where they misname the emperor who died as Cona (Conrad), not Henry. If anyone should have accurately known the name of the emperor, it was Ealdred and his circle.

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Chronicle D: Crossing Conquest  261 the Normans chose to acknowledge as the consecrator of William the Conqueror, and whom they continued to celebrate in that role.62 Do D’s annals on Ealdred reflect different dates in this long career, different contexts of authoring? Apologia for pluralism, following veiled critique, in turn succeeded by dialogue with a Norman picture of this last Anglo-Saxon archbishop of York? In Chronicle D not only was Ealdred a reluctant supporter of William ‘the Bastard’ (sic in D), backing Edgar as long as he could. He was also the archbishop who tried to use the consecration to bind the Conqueror to treat his new people well, an attempt which D’s author already knew would fail. The Ealdred of 1066, whether in the Norman writer William of Poitiers or in Chronicle D, is not the pluralist bishop censured in Rome, but a hero, respectively of Normans in search of legitimacy and of the surviving oppressed English. D’s annals numbered pre-1066 may be affected by this, too. D’s annals on Ealdred are neither a single connected narrative, nor a simple year-by-year perspectivefree account. They highlight a complex man, and a complex chronicle, if not a complex genre. Ealdred’s household and a diaspora of its members may explain something of D’s continuing development after 1066. If chronicle /D was an especially archi­ epis­co­pal book, it may have escaped the devastation of York and the loss of its manuscripts which followed 1066, as the York Gospels—an archbishop’s book— did.63 By the time the annals for 1066–1068 were not only written but rewritten, Ealdred was highlighted on the page. That writing and rewriting was complete before the last block was added, or at least copied. Could it be the work of members of that household? Did some take refuge elsewhere in the North, where news of Scottish affairs could reach them; where interest in the last Old English claimants, Edgar and Margaret, brought back to England as a result of Ealdred’s efforts, could be sustained? They must join the list of possible contributors to the last stages of D’s evolution. The answer to ‘Where was Chronicle D written?’ demands a reformulation of the question to encompass the last stages of copying and writing/authoring of Chronicle D. They point in more than one direction. This chronicle was especially concerned in its final stages with the English survivors of 1066. They had no single permanent home in these decades. The work done now on Chronicle D, and/ or on the sources which may lie behind D, was perhaps similarly peripatetic. * * * * * * * * * * * * 62  In this role he was celebrated in Norman sources: see The Gesta Guillelmi of William of Poitiers, ed. and tr. R. H. C. Davis and M. Chibnall (Oxford, 1998), p. 150 and cf. p. 186. David Bates notes the constant dialogue between Chronicle D and Poitiers in D. Bates, William the Conqueror (New Haven and London, 2016), p. 261. 63  For the distinction and arguments about the York Gospels in this context see C. Norton, ‘York Minster in the Time of Wulfstan’, in Townend (ed.), Wulfstan and cf. T.  Heslop, ‘Art and the Man: Archbishop Wulfstan and the York Gospelbook’, in Townend (ed.), Wulfstan.

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262  After Alfred D is the fullest chronicle, the most challenging, but ultimately the most rewarding. Its story, like that of Chronicle E, spans vernacular chronicle development from the late ninth century to c.1100. Its last annal, covering events of 1130, places it by this date in the hands of someone with an abiding interest in English survivors of 1066 and their descendants. That is D’s final home, but only the last stopping point on a long journey. Already by the early eleventh century /D was a York archiepiscopal chronicle, and that remains part of its character. It grew out of the Northern Recension. All, or almost all, roads led to York. But some seem to have passed on through it: north, whether to Durham, the Scottish court, or one of the last post-1066 refuges of Archbishop Ealdred’s household; or south: both Peterborough and Canterbury have some connection to D’s final story. Peterborough was not the first religious house to be factored into D’s evolution. That evolution had already encompassed houses connected to the York arch­ bishop­ric, first Ramsey, home of the sources of the Northern Recension, and always Worcester—its bishops if not its monks. In these final stages it is not clear how we should envisage the mechanics of the Peterborough connection: via oral testimony or personnel, via written annals and physical contact of written sources, via a series of connections and contacts with different archbishops and bishops. Roads were travelled, and retravelled, and in both directions. Peterborough will recur as the home of Chronicle E. The final stages of Chronicle D have provided some confirmation of the scen­ arios of its development suggested in earlier chapters. The making of a fair copy by Scribes 1 and 2 was especially significant, though the problem of dating that left frustrating uncertainty. There was confirmation, too, of the linked development of Chronicles D and E, perhaps to 1031, again from the late 1050s annals— at more than one point. Two archiepiscopal chronicles; but both were continued after 1066, and after their loss of immediate interest in archbishops. Again the mechanisms of contact are unclear. The ‘court’ as invoked in earlier chapters provides no easy answer now. By the early twelfth century there were clearly networks of contact for the writing of Latin histories with no necessary or obvious court context in all cases.64 Were similar networks in operation in the mid and late eleventh century? Consideration of Chronicles F and E in the next chapters will return to these questions. 1066 in that sense may not be as significant a divide as sometimes appears. In other respects, Chronicle D is witness to the violence of that caesura, and the arguments and emotions it stirred and left. More of D is to be dated post-1066 than appears at first sight, in its copying and possibly authoring. The last stages of 64  See especially M. Brett, ‘John of Worcester and his Contemporaries’, in R. H. C. Davis et al. (eds), The Wrting of History in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1981), pp. 101–26 and M. Brett, The English Church under Henry I (Oxford, 1975), p. 11.

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Chronicle D: Crossing Conquest  263 D span the Norman Conquest. Debates in its wake caused writing and rewriting of annals, including perhaps of some numbered pre-1066. That obscures stages of D’s development, but it is instructive in itself. Some of the makers of Chronicle D reacted to 1066, within the vernacular trad­ition. At least some of the last stages of Chronicle D were authored within the textual context of what looks like the developing chronicle of the York arch­ bishops; some of D’s last authors knew that chronicle as we identified it c.1020 and had read its annals for the later tenth and early eleventh centuries. The influence of these ‘Æthelred annals’ on Chronicle D’s account of the mid eleventh century is marked. In its annal for 1055 it repeats word for word a phrase from annal 1011, on counsel and its failures.65 The influence continues to be felt in D’s writing up of 1066, apropos Ealdred’s own admonition of William and the king’s subsequent actions. The admonition was in vain, ‘and ever after it got very much worse’, here a direct quotation from Wulfstan II’s own addition to the 975 annal (a syððan hit yflade swiðe). Two cases of such marked intertextuality may argue, again, for rewriting of that for 1055 after 1066. Both may indicate the immersion of the author in the earlier vernacular chronicle. Wherever the 1066 annal was written, that was in a changed political context, but textually a continuing vernacular chronicling one, and a specifically York archiepiscopal one at that. Chronicle D demands the usual questions: when? where? for whom? by whom?— eliciting by now familiarly tentative suggestions. There were many stages of development in Chronicle D, including in the eleventh century. It drew from several sources, especially the lost West Midlands Chronicle, but also a block now shared with E. Answers, even tentative ones, will be confined to D’s last stages; to those most likely to have produced the completed manuscript we now have. To the end, the chronicle in that manuscript is written in the Old English vernacular, by the author(s) writing in the Old English vernacular, for an audience and/or patron reading in the Old English vernacular. This is a truism, but one which merits emphasis. That applied to a chronicle completed perhaps a gen­er­ ation or so after 1066. Its post-1066 content evinces an interest in English sur­ vivors, not to the exclusion of all other matters, but significant nonetheless. That includes the rewriting of sections like annals numbered 1067–1068. It is an interest still apparent in the last annal, with events of 1130, misdated to 1080. The annal recorded the defeat of Angus of Moray in 1130. An odd addition at first sight; but on further investigation wholly at home. That defeat was, according to other sources, inflicted by Edward son of Siward, most likely a descendant of 65 1011, Ealle þa ungesælþa us gelumpon þurh unrædas . . . þonne he mæst to yfele gedon hæfdon;1055, 7 þa þa hi hæfdon mæst to yfele gedon, man gerædde þone ræd. This analysis, inspired by that of the Æthelred annals, permeates D’s account of 1065–1066. See e.g. D 1065: Ne wisten we hwa þone unræd ærest gerædde, which comes after the attack of the Welsh; 1066, when at Berkhamstead Ealdred and others came and bowed: þæt wæs micel unræd þæt man æror swa ne dyde, þa hit God betan nolde for urum synnum.

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264  After Alfred King Æthelred II, Edward the Confessor’s father, and now a constable of King David I of Scotland.66 Scotland and its court had been a refuge for many English survivors, especially northern English survivors. By the early twelfth century Chronicle D was in northern Britain/southern Scotland, written by someone with knowledge of events there, but with a particular interest in or connection to English survivors, perhaps especially of the pre-1066 English dynasty. The annal for 1130 continues the interests of other post-1066 annals.67 At the same time, the post-1066 annals show a shift away from an interest in archbishops, which had been such a feature of the earlier annals. If archbishops of York were patrons or audiences for earlier stages of /D, it is very unlikely that was still the case now. The author(s) of the post 1066 annals in D were no longer, apparently, as close to southern events as they had been, for example, in annals 1049–1052. They were still engaged in the political debates of their day. Such debate affected their rewriting(s), their presentation of Archbishop Ealdred, and also the tone of their work, especially in the annals for 1066–1068. The human noise is loud in these latter annals. Their author or authors reveal a perspective and a depth of emotion in their value-laden phraseology and word choice. The Norman William is ‘the Bastard’; technically correct, depending on which definitions of marriage are accepted, though here choosing the least favourable and least flattering in­ter­pret­ ation. Harold, by contrast, is ‘our king’, including in the description of his magnanimous and thus kingly behaviour after his victory at Stamford Bridge. Ealdred attempted to bind a conqueror, with consecration promises which could not restrain him. This is partisan writing, though still from people working within the strictures of annalistic genre and vernacular tradition. Containment within those same traditions mobilized an intertextuality which shaped the views of these readers/writers and did nothing to tone down their analysis.

66  The annal does not mention Edward, but it is truncated. Orderic Vitalis has a rebellion in 1130 which was put down by Edward, son of Siward, a kinsman and royal constable of David I: The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and tr. M.  Chibnall (Oxford, 1973), iv, pp. 276–7; A.  Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge, 1995), p. 95 contra Barrow and others is surely right in making Edward—a significant name in itself—a descendant of Siward, himself a descendant of King Æthelred II, not of the Northumbrian earl. Further discussion in P.  Stafford, ‘Fathers and Daughters: The Case of Æthelred II’, in R. Naismith and D. A. Woodman (eds), Writing, Kingship and Power in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, 2018), pp. 139–61, especially pp. 159–60. 67  Frank Stenton felt that the later section of D was ‘originally composed’ in Ealdred’s household, but argued, on the ground of content, that the manuscript was in ‘its final form’ destined for the Scottish court: Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 690. Whitelock, EHD, i, pp. 114–15 quotes, without explicitly endorsing, this suggestion that ‘in its later section it originates from a member of [Ealdred’s] household’ and Stenton’s views on the manuscript and the Scottish court. Both Plummer and Whitelock were impressed by the elaboration of the annal on Margaret, which they thus placed after her death. Cf. Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, p. lxxviii. This led Whitelock to argue that Ker’s dating of the penultimate hand of the manuscript which wrote annals 1071–1079 as being more or less contemporary with their composition was too early.

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Chronicle D: Crossing Conquest  265 These are English voices we are hearing, and northern ones. By comparison with Chronicle E, they were more concerned with York and its fate and with Edgar and Margaret in the North; Edgar in D1074 was led south from Durham by the sheriff of Yorkshire. There are tantalizing hints of Northern dialects and vocabulary. The annals from 1066 onwards may still be basically Late West Saxon, but they contain Norse vocabulary, unusual in the Old English corpus of texts. One word used by the authors of D is otherwise attested only in the Northumbrian glosses to the Lindisfarne Gospels. D shares many of these annals with Chronicle E, but the latter has more Standard Old English usages.68 Again there is little or nothing which is diagnostically Old Northumbrian in the language of these annals as they are found in D.69 A distinctive Norse-related vocabulary, however, came naturally to Chronicle D’s last authors, or copyists. The last annal, misnumbered 1080, has even been suggested as our first recorded example of Lowland Scots. There is, however, nothing to point conclusively in that direction, though all discussion is limited by the lack of early ex­amples of that language for comparison.70 The language alone would not have led to a Scottish attribution.71 The last annals of Chronicle D are the work of English-speaking authors/ scribes, most likely working in the north of England/south of Scotland, no longer close to the York archbishops but perhaps moving in the circles of English exiles and survivors. There is a strongly critical tone in some annals, including a general sense of a Norman king under whose aegis geld was taken, castles were built, and poor folk suffered. There are here the first signs of that non-elite viewpoint, of royal rule from the receiving end, most famously found in the poem incorporated into Chronicle E’s annal for 1086.72 The D author here was not ‘everyman’ or even ‘Northern everyman’, though ‘man’ he probably was. 1066 had in some respects shaken the vernacular tradition loose from the pattern of earlier elite patronage and its attitudes; though the beginnings of such critique and distance were already apparent in annals pre-1066. All that said, what is also abundantly clear is D’s continuing connection with other vernacular chronicling, and, if the dialogue with Norman arguments and 68 S.  M.  Pons-Sanz, ‘Norse-Derived Vocabulary in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, in Jorgensen, Reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, pp. 275–304 at pp. 293–300. The word peculiar to D and the Lindisfarne glosses, brydhlop (cf. Old Icelandic braðhlaup), used to describe a marriage festival, is in D 1076. The closely related annal in E has the more common Old English brydealu. In 1072, 1075, and 1076 D has tacan (cf. again Old Icelandic), where E has Standard Old English ateon or niman. 69  I am very grateful to Professor Carole Hough and Dr Sara Pons-Sanz for discussion and comment on all these annals and their language. 70 Cubbin, Chronicle D, p. cli. 71  I am very grateful to Carole Hough and Sara Pons Sanz for discussion of the language of this annal. Carole Hough’s overall comment was ‘conclusions regarding the location of the manuscript will determine whether or not the annal is regarded as a precious early example of Lowland Scots’. 72  See the perceptive comment of M.  T.  Clanchy, England and its Rulers, 1066–1272 (Glasgow, 1983), p. 54.

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266  After Alfred with William of Poitiers is correct, with post-1066 Latin historiography. To its end, D was in the historiographical loop, though one which now gave access to Scottish events and one whose last stages suggest a more intermittent and less reliable supply of material—a looser connection. If we place the last stages of D in Scotland, or the North more generally, we must also place post-1066 Scotland and the North within that wider world. Chronicle D defies easy interpretation, whether of content or manuscript. Its long story of development has left clues, tantalizing but rarely leading to firm conclusions. Even its final manuscript home remains unclear. The physical state of the manuscript poses two final questions; unsurprisingly they are suggestive but frustrating. The manuscript of Chronicle D survives in a mutilated state. Quires have been lost, one if not more in the eleventh century itself. There could be many ex­plan­ ations for this. It is however legitimate to speculate and to suggest the possibility of vicissitudes suffered in these last stages of its life. Chronicle D was produced as a first fair copy; then later stages were added, some to replace a section of that fair copy. Was the manuscript falling apart? Rough handling? A chronicle on the move? Carried to, written in different places? Does Chronicle D in its physical form embody something of the fate of the English whom it records? Pasted to the stub after D’s final complete folio is the fragment of a Canterbury book. Canterbury was a factor in /D’s early-eleventh-century development. A connection was evident in D’s final stages, in the annals from D 1071.73 At the end of the manuscript as it now survives, two writs for Archbishop Æthelnoth are pasted on a stub. They are a leaf from the Maelbright MacDurnan Gospels, a Canterbury book. How did it come to be here? Is this, as some have suggested, the result of early modern manuscript housekeeping, pasted there much later in e.g. the Cotton library (see above, p. 238n22)? As this argument goes, could a piece of such a precious book possibly have been detached and attached elsewhere as early as c.1100? But might that preciousness point in another direction, be part of the answer, not the problem. The MacDurnan Gospels was a Canterbury book, especially associated with Archbishop Æthelnoth. All the eleventh-century additions to this Gospel Book concern that archbishop and his lands; the first of these was the writ announcing to King Cnut and Queen Ælfgifu/Emma the consecration of Æthelnoth, a writ in the name of the archbishop who had performed that consecration, Wulfstan II, archbishop of York. Is that a reminder of the York/Canterbury connection, as well as a direct link between this book and Æthelnoth himself—and York? 73  The early 1020s connection cannot be examined in the manuscript, since this is part of the replaced section. I would argue that this connection was early, and its results already in the fair copy of D. The replacement section fits seamlessly into the annal at either side with no real change of layout. This suggests the replacement annals took up exactly the same space as those in the original manuscript folios being replaced.

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Chronicle D: Crossing Conquest  267 The leaf pasted to the end of Chronicle D is a fragment from a late-Anglo-Saxon archbishop’s book, an archbishop called ‘the good’ in D’s own text. It is attached to a chronicle which, through its eleventh-century stages was the chron­icle of his fellow archbishops at York. Is it too fanciful to see this as deliberately acquired c. AD 1100? A sort of relic? A physical connection with the Anglo-Saxon past which this chronicle had told, and which had in turn shaped it? In the post-1066 world of Anglo-Saxon survivors, is it a wild suggestion that such a relic could change hands—between members of the households of the last archbishops; perhaps men whose links were already established through their shared task of vernacular chronicling? Wild suggestions, perhaps; but in this context it is relevant to note that at some point around the year 1100 a Christ Church Canterbury monk had sight of Chronicle D. That monk was the author/scribe of Chronicle F. He took some midtenth-century annals from D and copied them into his own chronicle. That scribe, the Canterbury where he worked, and the chronicle he produced are the most firmly identifiable part of the story of vernacular chronicling after 1066. The next chapter is concerned with them. In that and the final chapter the subject will be chronicles which not only span 1066, but which were certainly made in that post-Conquest world.

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13

Chronicle F and Canterbury Post-1066 In the half century or more after 1066, Canterbury takes centre stage in the story of vernacular chronicling. Chronicles A and B were added to or reworked there; Chronicle D was known there. A new chronicle, F, was produced, by a scribe/ author who also intervened in others, including Chronicle /E, which was available and most probably continued in that city. If the text labelled ‘I’ is accepted as part of the vernacular chronicling canon, six vernacular chronicles were thus known, worked on, or added to at Canterbury now. For the first time in the history of these chronicles, activity on them can be securely placed and roughly dated. The scribe/author of Chronicle F and some of his colleagues can be identified at Christ Church Canterbury c. ad 1100. The scribe/author of F played a central role in all this activity, though he was not alone in his interest. Work on the vernacular chronicles is part of a wider picture of historical writing at Canterbury after 1066. This included historical texts such as Eadmer’s History of Recent Events and a range of hagiographical work on Anglo-Saxon saints by Goscelin, Osbern, and Eadmer himself. All this was in Latin, and it has received much attention.1 Both Christ Church, the house connected to the archbishops, and its close neighbour, St Augustine’s abbey, were involved. It will be necessary to unpick that general term ‘Canterbury’ and acknowledge the possible roles of both houses in vernacular as well as Latin texts. The vernacular historiography has attracted much less interest, yet the picture of historical writing at Canterbury after 1066 is incomplete without it.2 It is also a crucial chapter in the story of vernacular chronicling after Alfred. In some ways the work completed now appears to move in new directions: in its concern with 1  See e.g. R. Sharpe, ‘The Setting of St Augustine’s Translation, 1091’, M. Brett, ‘Gundulf and the Cathedral Communities of Canterbury and Rochester’, and J. Rubenstein, ‘The Life and Writings of Osbern of Canterbury’, all in R.  Eales and R.  Sharpe (eds), Canterbury and the Norman Conquest: Churches, Saints and Scholars (London and Rio Grande, OH, 1995) and cf. J.  Rubenstein, ‘Liturgy Against History: The Competing Visions of Lanfranc and Eadmer of Canterbury’, Speculum, 74 (1999), pp. 271–301; R. Southern, Saint Anselm and his Biographer (Cambridge, 1963); R. Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge, 1990); J.  Rubenstein (2004, September 23). Eadmer (Edmer) of Canterbury (b. c. 1060, d. in or after 1126), Benedictine monk and historian. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. Retrieved 21 Aug. 2018, from https://www.oxforddnb. com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-8383; and Rubenstein, J. (2004, September 23). Osbern (d. 1094?), Benedictine monk, hagiographer, and musician. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. Retrieved 6 Dec. 2018, from https://www.oxforddnb.com/ view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-20865. 2 The significant exception is David Dumville’s ground-breaking article, ‘Some Aspects of Historical Writing’. After Alfred: Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and Chroniclers, 900–1150. Pauline Stafford, Oxford University Press 2020. © Pauline Stafford. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198859642.001.0001

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Chronicle F and Canterbury Post-1066  269 archbishops, with the papacy, with the history of Christ Church if not Kent, and especially in the first bilingual Latin and Old English chronicle, F itself. In other respects it remains firmly within the tradition of vernacular annalistic writing and its subject matter, including in its reach across the pre-1066 past. Ironically vernacular chronicling has rarely appeared as such a unified and connected project as at Canterbury post-1066. As so many chronicles were assembled there in the hands of the scribe/author of F and his companions, their collective representation of pre-1066 history may have become apparent, questions about their sep­ ar­ate­ness raised. Work at Canterbury now has much to tell of historiographical reaction to the Norman Conquest and its aftermath.

Chronicles B and A Almost all surviving vernacular chronicles passed through Canterbury or were worked on or seen by Canterbury scribes in the decades after 1066.3 The work on Chronicles B and A is readily identifiable.

i)  Chronicle B Wherever Chronicle B was made c. ad 1000, it was at Canterbury after 1066, and was still there in the sixteenth century. Joscelyn locates it in the library of St Augustine’s abbey.4 Chronicle B c.1000 was an unfinished, unrubricated copy of BC; it remained unchanged for many decades. At post-Conquest Canterbury material was added at both the beginning and the end of the chronicle text. It was prefaced with a (now lost) forged papal letter. Two texts were added to its end, both concerned with the papacy, one with popes, archbishops of Canterbury, and receipt of the pallium. Chronicle B survived at St Augustine’s, yet palaeography links these latter texts with Christ Church. The forged papal letter, added now as a preface to B, was used at both Christ Church and St Augustine’s abbey in post1066 rewritings of their histories. Chronicle B raises immediately the need to unpack the general term ‘Canterbury’. Chronicle B had material at the beginning and end, added after the making of the chronicle, no earlier than c.1100. That at the beginning has disappeared. When Joscelyn saw the ‘saxon historye once belonging to the monastery of S Austines in Canterberye’, it was prefaced by a letter which has since been lost

3  Dumville ‘Some Aspects’; see below, p. 284 and p. 291n82 for Baker, especially now for discussion of F and Chronicle D—and the possibility that the F scribe may have seen D somewhere other than at Canterbury. 4 Taylor, Chronicle B, p. xii and n. 8.

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270  After Alfred from the manuscript: a purported letter of Pope Boniface IV to King Æthelberht of Kent, in Latin, with an Old English interlinear gloss.5 Although purporting to belong to the earliest stage of English conversion, it was composed in 1067 × 1075.6 The letter has long been recognized as a forgery, but one of great significance at both Christ Church Canterbury and St Augustine’s. It took the place of a foundation charter at Christ Church, where it was placed first in the Anglo-Norman cartulary which gathered together the charters of that house. It was one of the group of Christ Church documents entered into the Æthelstan ‘Coronation Gospels’, a ninth-century continental gospel book given by that king to Christ Church.7 The likelihood that this lost preface was added at Christ Church is increased by the material now found at the end of B. This consisted of two texts: a note on Pope Sergius finding a relic of the cross in St Peter’s on folio 35r,8 and on folio 35v a list of the archbishops (of Canterbury) who had received the pallium, and the popes who had sent or given it—from Pope Gregory and Augustine to Pope Urban and Anselm, with Gregory, Augustine, and Lanfranc highlighted on the page. The scribe(s) of both texts are identifiable in Christ Church Canterbury manuscripts.9 The date of the pallium list is late eleventh/early twelfth century, after Anselm became archbishop in 1095.10 Folio 35 is an addition to the original folios of Chronicle B; the initial letter, on the first folio from the original first quire, is now lost.11 Together they place Chronicle B at Canterbury by c. ad 1100, where these additions were made. Although its later association was with St Augustine’s, Christ Church is B’s likely home at the turn of the eleventh century.

5  See Ker, Catalogue, pp. 472–3. 6  See Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church Canterbury, pp. 61–2. 7  Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church Canterbury, pp. 89–91; see also Ker, Catalogue, pp. 239–40, no. 185—note that Cotton cut out all these documents and re-assembled them—and p. 472. The text in Chronicle B is ‘word-for-word identical to the original form in the gospel book’. 8  The note is a close editing of the biographical entry on Sergius in the Liber Pontificalis referring to the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross: see E. Thune, Image and Relic: Mediating the Sacred in Early Medieval Rome (Rome, 2003), pp. 20–1. 9  Ker identified the hand which wrote the pallium list with that which added a similar list to Chronicle A (Ker, Catalogue, p. 58 (no. 39) and p. 249 (no. 188)) and also with the scribe of a preliminary leaf of a translation of the Regularis Concordia which was in use at Christ Church Canterbury (Ker, Catalogue, p. 197 (no. 155)). Janet Bately agrees that these three lists were all written by the same hand: Bately, Chronicle A, p. xliii. Taylor distinguishes three hands in these additions on fo 35: that of the scribe of the Acta Lanfranci in Chronicle A and of the second half of the list of popes in that same chronicle; that of the Canterbury Regularis Concordia preliminary list of emperors and the pallium list in Chronicle A (as Ker and Bately); and that of a scribe with whom we will become very familiar—the scribe/author of Chronicle F and major interpolater of Chronicle A: Taylor, Chronicle B, p. xxi. Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, p. xxix had identified the scribe of Chronicle F, but attributed all the additions on fo 35 to him. Ker wrongly labelled the Regularis Concordia list as popes, not emperors (London, BL, MS Cotton Faustina B. iii, fo 158). 10  Paschalis and Radulfo are a later addition to the list in A: Ker, Catalogue, p. 58. 11  The place of fo 35 is discussed by Taylor, Chronicle B, pp. xx–xxi. It is a medieval not a Cottonian addition to the original manuscript. The script of the texts thereon is datable to s. xi/xii and the identity of the scribe points to Christ Church Canterbury: Ker, Catalogue, p. 249 and Taylor, Chronicle B, p. xxi.

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Chronicle F and Canterbury Post-1066  271 At some point in B’s history four superscript crosses were added, appearing above annal numbers 96 and 443, and in the genealogical regnal list which forms part of the annal on Alfred’s father, Æthelwulf.12 These are medieval, but almost impossible to date palaeographically. Whoever made them was carefully crosschecking, and with more than one other vernacular chronicle, including the Canterbury Chronicle F. The crosses would thus be no earlier than c.1100. They may provide evidence of reading and checking vernacular chronicles at Canterbury around that date.13 The additions made to B at the beginning and end of the chronicle reorientated its story, and reveal post-Conquest Canterbury preoccupations. B received a new preface, in the form of a letter to a Kentish king giving papal backing for a monastic foundation in Canterbury. At the end, a list of pallia and archbishops underlined archiepiscopal links with the papacy across the centuries. The scribe who added the pallia list to Chronicle B also added a similar list to Chronicle A. Additions to B are the first indications of the ferment of activity in Canterbury at the turn of the eleventh century, one in which vernacular chron­icles were deeply implicated. That ferment and its concerns are even clearer in the post-1066 activity on Chronicle A.

ii)  Additions and Changes to A At the beginning of the eleventh century Chronicle A was in Wessex, most likely at Winchester. By c.1100 it was at Christ Church Canterbury, where it was still

12 Taylor, Chronicle B, pp. xxii–xxiii and lxi–lxii. 13  In the genealogical regnal list crosses mark omissions of the reign of Cuthred and of that of Alfred’s brother, Æthelred, who ruled immediately before him. The 96 annal is blank, as it is in almost all the vernacular chronicles. But in F it has been filled by a Latin annal on the death of St Dionysius, deriving from a Norman Chronicle which was one of F’s sources: Baker, Chronicle F, p. 8, discussed on pp. l–liv. The fourth annal marks 443. This was blank in B, as in C, and, originally, in A and thus G. But in E and F it was filled, with an annal on the appeal of the Britons for help, recording the initial invitation which resulted in the arrival of Angelcynn in Britain. The annal was most likely in the earlier Northern Recension, of which E is largely a copy. Irvine, Chronicle E does not discuss this, suggesting that in her view it was part of the lost Northern Recension, which cannot here be cross-checked with D. It was added to F by Scribe 3: Baker, Chronicle F, p. 19, a scribe linked to Norman hands found in writs of the period: Baker, Chronicle F, p. xxiii, but it was inserted into Chronicle A—in the same form as it is found in E—by the F scribe. The crosses in B look suspiciously like the result of cross-checking. But the complexity of that is significant. These omissions could not have been identified by crossreference to any one surviving chronicle. The genealogical regnal list omissions suggest a cross-check with A; that list was missing from /E and F. The 443 annal could be a result of cross-checking with A after that chronicle had received Canterbury additions from /E.  But the 96 cross suggests a crosscheck with F (or its source). And the fact that the 443 annal is one of the later additions to F may suggest that it, too, was a result of later cross-referencing at Canterbury. As we shall see, historiographical activity at post-Conquest Canterbury involved precisely such cross-checking and addition, as well as the use of new sources. Was B marked for additions in that same environment which were never made? Were Chronicles A and especially /E, to which additions were made, seen as much more important examples of the vernacular tradition?

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272  After Alfred found at the end of the Middle Ages.14 Wherever it was between c.1000 and 1066, little or nothing more was added then.15 Post-Conquest, however, Chronicle A was the subject of numerous additions—annotations and continuations—by eight or more scribes, all dating from the later eleventh into the mid twelfth century.16 Content and in some cases work on other manuscripts locates these scribes at Christ Church. That is beyond doubt in the case of the principal intervener in Chronicle A, the scribe/author of Chronicle F. The archbishops, and their connections with the papacy, are a recurring theme, linking this activity on A with that on Chronicle  B.  Archiepiscopal politics, especially the fraught question of the primacy of Canterbury over York, was one likely context. The additions made to A, however, evince wider historiographical interests. The F scribe’s work on this chronicle shows an initial attempt to collate two vernacular chronicles, A and /E.  Had he continued, the results would have been comparable in some ways to the production of the Northern Recension a century or more before. His wider interest encompassed pre-1066 history more generally. The additions to Chronicle A—by him and by other scribes—are pointers as to how that history was being seen and addressed at post-Conquest Canterbury. When Joscelyn saw Chronicle A in the sixteenth century its first (now lost) leaf contained an Old English writ of William I to Lanfranc and Christ Church. This should probably be dated c.1070 from the time of Archbishop Lanfranc’s appointment. At some point it was added to Chronicle A, an addition paralleling that of the forged papal letter added to B. Chronicle A, like B, also received additions at the end; a hand which wrote the list of archbishops and pallia in B added an identical one to Chronicle A. But the work on A was much wider and more thoroughgoing, including an updating of the episcopal lists which followed the Laws of Alfred and Ine and the making of substantial changes to the text of the earlier annals. A, even more than Chronicle B, was being reoriented to create in some sense a Christ Church story.17 We left Chronicle A in its early-eleventh-century state. It remained substantially untouched until after 1066. One scribe now brought the chronicle numbers 14 Bately, Chronicle A, p. xiv. 15  The exception may be Hand 12 which added Twa hund gæra and Þreo hund gæra against blank numbers cc and ccc respectively, and may also be responsible for now erased text at ccl and cccl. Under cccl the erased text appears to have been another expansion of the numeral in words: Bately, Chronicle A, pp. 10–14, s.a., and p. xlii. The argument that it was moved at the time of Bishop Ælfheah’s appointment to Canterbury was discussed earlier (see above, p. 170). 16  Hands 7–16 as identified by Bately, Chronicle A, pp. xxxix–xliii, minus Hand 12, which she assigns to the second quarter of the eleventh century, and Scribe 14, who wrote the lists of popes, archbishops, and bishops at the end of the tenth century. 17  See D. Dumville’s preface to Bately, Chronicle A, p. viii. His remark that A now ‘began and ended with documents relating to Archbishop Lanfranc’ is suggestive, though the ‘ending’ is debatable since that could still be argued as the episcopal and other lists, to which additions were also made now. The writ is printed in D. Bates (ed.), Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I (1066–1087) (Oxford, 1998), no. 66, version I. The improved version, II, is in the same hand as T. A. M. Bishop and P. Chaplais (eds), Facsimiles of English Royal Writs to A.D. 1100 presented to V. H. Galbraith (Oxford, 1957), no. III, discussed in Bates, Acta, p. 304. The writ is not printed in Bately, Chronicle A.

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Chronicle F and Canterbury Post-1066  273 up to 1070 or further, and added the first part of the annal for 1070, an Old English account based on the so-called Scriptum Lanfranci de Primatu (‘Writing of Lanfranc concerning the Primacy’), a collection of material relevant to the primacy dispute with York probably compiled by Lanfranc himself around the mid 1070s.18 The—brief—substance of a number of annals for these years was added by another scribe no earlier than 1115.19 These additions consisted almost entirely of the accessions and obits of kings and archbishops of Canterbury, plus that of Earl Godwine in 1053, and a slightly longer annal on William’s conquest of England and the burning of Christ Church. These same two scribes, or others writing in a very similar style, filled out earl­ ier annals in Chronicle A with more detail on archbishops of Canterbury. This included material on the life of the tenth-century archbishop and saint, Dunstan: adding his birth to annal 924 (see illustration  3), his abbacy at Glastonbury to annal 942 and his expulsion from there under 955, his appointment to Worcester under 959, the death of Archbishop Oda and Dunstan’s accession to Canterbury under 961, and in the margin of the blank 988, Dunstan’s obit.20 Accessions of archbishops of Canterbury were added under 870 and 890, and a few words on the actions of Archbishop Sigeric and Bishop Ælfheah of Winchester (later, of course, of Canterbury) at the end of the annal for 993.21 The obit of Archbishop Plegmund was added to the annal originally dated 919 (by now misdated to 923).22 A scribe writing between c.1090 and the 1130s may have added the rest of annal 1070 on Lanfranc.23 The overwhelming interest of these additions, which continued well into the early decades of the twelfth century, was in archbishops of Canterbury. This interest is flagged in the addition of the writ on the first folio; it dominates the new material added to the final folios. Around ad 1000 these already contained lists of popes and archbishops. In this Canterbury work on Chronicle A, the list of popes was extended, though not brought up to date.24 But a new list was added of popes, pallia, and archbishops of Canterbury, very similar to that at the end of Chronicle B, and with the same egregious errors, including on the politically 18 Bately, Chronicle A, p. xxxix and H.  E.  J.  Cowdrey, Lanfranc: Scholar, Monk, and Archbishop (Oxford, 2003), p. 87. 19 Bately, Chronicle A, p. xli. Another scribe added the comet’s appearance to the year 1066. 20  This may be the work of the first of these two scribes, above. The erased, largely illegible words in annal 946 may also be his work. 21  A hand similar to this first scribe: see Bately, Chronicle A, p. xxxix. 22  A scribe was writing a hand very similar to the second scribe—or possibly this second scribe himself: Bately, Chronicle A, p. xli. 23 Bately, Chronicle A, pp. xli–xlii, perhaps also 1031 on Sandwich, the obit of Cnut (in the margin) and of Archbishop Æthelnoth (1038 margin) (but see below, pp. 275–6 and p. 286 for the possibility that the scribe of F wrote these). The second half of annal 1070 contains the Acta Lanfranci. If P. A. Hayward, ‘Some Reflections on the Historical Value of the So-Called Acta Lanfranci’, Historical Research, 77 (2004), pp. 141–60 is correct in placing that text c.1110, the scribe’s work on the 1070 annal cannot be earlier than this. 24  It was extended to ‘Marinus’, no. 135, i.e. to the late ninth century. The numbers were extended to 170, but no further names were added.

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274  After Alfred charged question of the pope who sent the pallium to Stigand.25 Pope Paschal (1099–1118) and Archbishop Ralph (1114–22) were added later. Since c.1000, the last folios of the manuscript had contained the episcopal lists of the southern sees. These were not brought up to date. But new lists were added of the archbishops of York and bishops of Lindisfarne/Durham, respectively, up to Archbishop Thomas II (c.1108–1114) and Bishop Rannulf (c.1099–1128). The York list has narrative elaboration, making much of the receipt—or rather nonreceipt—of the pallium by York archbishops. A separate note calls on Bede’s testimony to Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury’s powers in the North. The last addition to folio 55v is a list of kings of Kent from the time of the arrival of Augustine, in other words, from Æthelberht I up to Æthelberht II (d. 762). (See illustration 4 for all these additions.) In the hands of the scribes, working around 1100 and into the twelfth century, Chronicle A was becoming an increasingly archiepiscopal text. Additions were largely on the subject of the succession, activities, and concerns of archbishops of Canterbury, from the early tenth century onwards. Some of the last additions, on folio 55v, explicitly addressed the question of the primacy of Canterbury over York. The long, evolving annal for 1070 and the Latin Acts of Lanfranc (Acta Lanfranci) featured this same question. These latter also covered the relations of the archbishop and St Augustine’s abbey. For any reader of this chronicle in the early twelfth century, Canterbury and its archbishops would now predominate in annals from the late tenth century if not earlier. By contrast there was no attempt to fill out the eleventh century with either the annals of Æthelred’s reign, with the detailed annals from 1035 onwards, or with those post-1066. These were certainly available at Canterbury c.1100, as the work of the F scribe attests. Were they not added to A because of lack of space (only three folios were left before the Laws)? Were they not in the hands of all A’s new scribes? Were they deemed locally accessible in other vernacular chronicles, their information judged readily available close at hand? Is this rather witness to the new interests of these scribes? Many of these annals were both known to and used elsewhere by the major Canterbury interpolator of Chronicle A, the scribe identified as the author/compiler of Chronicle F. He was undoubtedly working at Christ Church Canterbury c.1100. His hand is writ large in Chronicle A. His attitude to that chronicle, and the history it contained, differed in many ways from that of the scribes already discussed.

25  This is given in both the Chronicle A and B lists as Pope Victor, not the more dubious pope, Benedict. However, the list becomes inaccurate from Eadsige and Robert. The last names in this column are squeezed in below the last ruled line: Eadsige, Robert, and Stigand. There appears to be some attempt to underscore the sending of the pallium to Stigand by Victor, since the name of the emissary, Godric the Deacon, is given in this instance alone. But the other errors make it difficult to interpret the significance of this.

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Chronicle F and Canterbury Post-1066  275

iii)  The Work of the F Scribe on A The work of the scribe/author of F is written throughout the text of Chronicle A. He was a major intervener in its annals.26 He was certainly re­spon­sible for some thirty-plus interventions—including erasures and the redating of material—from the beginning of the chronicle as far as annal 616. To this point his intentions are clear. He was comparing Chronicle A with /E, and adding to A accordingly. /E, as a chronicle deriving from the Northern Recension, was much fuller than A. His original aim was to extend Chronicle A with this extra material. He abandoned this task around the annal for 616. By now /E’s extra material may have become simply too copious to fit the manuscript of A. From this point there is some division of opinion over the scribe of F’s work on Chronicle  A.27 Janet Bately would see a group of about eight scribes, working together around the year 1100. Baker argues that all but one of them is the F scribe himself, returning to the manuscript over a period of time, the differences in the appearance of his work being the result of factors such as ‘cold fingers, ill health, haste or strong drink’.28 The scribe’s work on his own chronicle shows him going back and interpolating his own text over and over again. Work on A over a long period would be consistent with this. From annal 616 onwards, he, or he and others if we follow Bately, were much more selective in their additions to Chronicle A. They included the succession of the kings of Kent (640, 725, 748, 760, 768, 784),29 two additions on Archbishop Wulfhelm (924 and 940)30 (see illustration 3), and annals 1031, 1036, 1038, and part of 1070. 1036 and 1038 are marginal additions of the obits of King Cnut and Archbishop Æthelnoth.31 1031 is a record of Cnut’s gift to Christ Church Canterbury of the port of Sandwich. Sandwich was the subject of long and bitter 26 Plummer Two Chronicles, ii, p. xxvi; Ker, Catalogue, no. 39, p. 148; Dumville ‘Some Aspects’, p. 43; Bately, Chronicle A, pp. xl–xli. 27  See Bately, Chronicle A, pp. xl–xli and Baker, Chronicle F, pp. xx–xxiii. Annal 11 and the last words of annal 519 are the only differences of opinion before annal 616. The addition is over an erasure at the end of 519 stating that West Saxon royal kin ruled in Wessex from Cerdic and Cynric onwards. Note that though this is over erasure, G has nothing here, so the erased material must have been added after G was copied. Is this the F scribe correcting himself? 28 Bately, Chronicle A, p. xlii and Baker, Chronicle F, p. xxii. Neither would follow Plummer in seeing either F or this related group as being responsible for the Acta Lanfranci in annal 1070. 29  Under 640, 725, and 748 additions were made on the subject of the royal succession in Kent and similarly in the annals for 760 and 768 (though the ‘very poor hand’ noted by Bately, Chronicle A, p. xl here may indicate F at a later date?); also that for 784—where again the difference in hand MAY suggest a later date of addition (i.e. it is possible that the additions on Kentish kings were not all made at the same time). 30  The 924 annal addition is important in the dating of some of this activity. It must have been added after the work of the scribe who added the material on Dunstan, since it follows that in this annal. 31  Obits of Cnut and Archbishop Æthelnoth were made after 1031 had been added since they are marginal additions. The 1031 addition had used the space alongside annal numbers 1031–1038, which had obviously already been written.

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276  After Alfred dispute initiated by Cnut’s son, Harold Harefoot, involving rival claims of Christ Church and St Augustine’s.32 The second half of the vernacular section of annal 1070 details the breach between Lanfranc and Archbishop Thomas of York over whether Thomas should take an oath to Lanfranc, their appeal to Rome, and Thomas’s subsequent submission. After the 616 annal, there was no attempt to flesh out Chronicle A with all the extra material clearly available to the F scribe. More additions were nonetheless made. They centred on Kent, archbishops, and Christ Church’s landholding. Scribe F’s additions were now in line with other material added to Chronicle A at post-1066 Canterbury. There is a marked difference between the F scribe’s unquestionable additions up to 616, where he was working towards a fuller, collated story, and subsequent ones, whether his own or those of others apparently working at a very similar date and place. For all these scribes working on A’s later annals, F included, Chronicle A was now merely annotated to extend its archi­ epis­co­pal, Canterbury story.

Chronicle I That same story is told, in skeletal form, in a text which should arguably be included in the vernacular tradition. London, BL, MS Cotton Caligula  A.  xv contains an Easter Table to which a series of very brief annals has been added, spanning the years 925/988 to 1202. They are in the vernacular until the annal for 1109, and briefly again, in the annal for 1130.33 Plummer identified this text, and tentatively included it within the vernacular tradition.34 He labelled it ‘Chronicle I’. As content and palaeography indicate, Canterbury was the home of these brief annals. They form part of a computistical collection from Christ Church. The first scribal hand would date them to the later eleventh century;35 the same scribe wrote the Canterbury privileges entered into the Æthelstan Gospels, and other works, including a copy of the forged papal letter, the text which once prefaced Chronicle B. The scribe was also responsible for a number of documents relating to disputed Christ Church lands.36 32  On this dispute see the commentary to Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church Canterbury, nos 151 and 164. 33  Printed in Baker, Chronicle F, pp. 129–34, in an Appendix to Chronicle F as ‘The Canterbury Annals’. 34 Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, p. xxxvii, though with the significant caveat: ‘To these should perhaps be added, for the sake of completeness’ (my emphasis). 35 Ker, Catalogue, no. 139, pp. 175–6. Plummer dates their initial compilation to c.1058. Ker sees a single hand to 1073/1076, and the same ink as the rest of the manuscript as far as the 1073 annal. 36  Including Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church Canterbury, p. 93 and n. 15, and no. 164, a ‘partisan’ account of the Sandwich dispute; a ‘supposed’ confirmation of Christ Church lands by King Edward, perhaps to be linked to the Penenden dispute (see Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church Canterbury, p. 93 n. 15), plus possibly the two documents concerning agreements between

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Chronicle F and Canterbury Post-1066  277 One primary concern of I’s annals is the succession of Canterbury archbishops and their journeys to Rome. Collection of the pallium is obviously implicit. The Old English normally reads ‘went (for) to Rome’ or simply ‘to Rome’. There is, however, no mention of (the Norman) Robert’s journey (1051); are the annals pointed here, and in noting that Benedict ‘sent’ the pallium to Stigand?37 Attention is paid to two saintly archbishops. The Easter table begins at 988, but the birth and a brief biography of (Archbishop and St) Dunstan have been added at the top and in the margin under the year 925. The martyrdom and translation of Ælfheah are both given, as well as his accession and the related Scandinavian attack on Canterbury in 1011. Obits and most accessions of kings are noted, with the perhaps significant omission of Harold Harefoot. Harold was the source of the dispute over the possession of valuable rights in the port of Sandwich. The first scribe also omitted the accession of William in 1066, an oversight made good by the second. The death of the deacon Æthelwine (1029), the death of Earl Godwine (1053), and the burning of Christ Church in 1067 are all recorded. Lanfranc’s arrival and his building of Christ Church are given in slightly more detail. These Easter table annals continued after the work of the first scribe of the manuscript. He himself added the death of Waltheof under 1076; annals 1085 and 1087 were added together, dealing with Lanfranc’s translation of St Eadburg and the deaths and accessions of William I and II. Another scribe added the death of Lanfranc (1089). The final scribe of the vernacular annals added 1093–1109 together. Much of their (still brief) material is concerned with Anselm, but also includes the slaying of King Malcolm (1093), the beginning of the crusade (1096), and the translation—or at least exhumation—of (Archbishop) St Ælfheah (1105). The Latin annals which begin after 1109 continue the interest in archbishops and royal successions—though there is a particularly long annal for 1141 on the burning of Winchester and its churches. One final vernacular annal, for 1130, records the consecration of Christ Church on 4 nones May.38 These brief annals belong in the same historiographical mindset visible in the additions to Chronicle A if not B.  There is substantial overlap with the brief notices of eleventh-century events added to Chronicle A no earlier than 1115.39

Archbishops Æthelnoth and Eadsige and Toki, inserted into the MacDurnan Gospels: Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church Canterbury, nos 162 and 163, though note their caution concerning the work of this scribe. 37  Benedictus papa sende Stigande þone pallium. Lanfranc is not recorded here as either being sent the pallium or journeying to Rome. 38  It uses the same grammatical construction found in the annal for 1093: me bletsede Ansealme to biscope . . . me scloch Malculm cing . . . 1130 me halgode Cristes cirician. Me is the reduced form of man sometimes used in Middle English. I am grateful to Professor Thomas O’Donnell for discussion and guidance on this usage. 39 Bately, Chronicle A, p. xli, Hand 9.

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278  After Alfred They, too, consisted almost entirely of the accessions and obits of kings and archbishops of Canterbury—plus that of Earl Godwine in 1053. Chronicles A and I alone among vernacular chronicles have Archbishop Eadsige’s journey to Rome for the pallium in 1040. The A interpolator-scribe’s annal for 1066 on William’s conquest of England is longer, and William is here an integral part of the original annal, not an afterthought as in Chronicle I. Both include the burning of Christ Church. The scribe who wrote out the annals to 1073 in Chronicle I was also active on Canterbury forgeries, including a forged papal letter, a copy of which once prefaced Chronicle B, and the account of the Sandwich dispute from Christ Church’s perspective which now survives as a single sheet ‘original’.40 Brief as it is, Chronicle I has a view of history, constructing a past structured through the reigns of kings and the accessions and deaths of archbishops, entwined specifically with the history of Christ Church. This was a pared-down version of the view produced by the reshaping and reorientation of Chronicles B and A which was taking place at Canterbury at around the same time. In many respects these annals identified here as ‘Chronicle I’ could be judged to lie outside the developing vernacular tradition we have been following. They contrast sharply with annals for the eleventh and early twelfth century found in E, D, and F—and, as we shall see, in the fragment of the lost Chronicle  H.  Yet in other senses they are part of that tradition: in their concern with kings and archbishops, now central, albeit pared down to the minimum; in their identifiable links to other vernacular chronicles firmly within that tradition; and, of course, in their use of the vernacular as a historical medium. Brief as they are, in these contrasts and continuities Chronicle I’s annals fit into the picture of vernacular chronicling as that was evolving at Canterbury in the late eleventh and early twelfth century. The recent editor of Chronicle F prints these annals, Chronicle I, at least in part because he sees them as a source of F, one which the F scribe used to fill out some details of tenth-century archbishops.41 The link between Chronicle I and Canterbury work on A appears as close if not closer. F does not, for example, have Archbishop Eadsige’s Rome visit in 1040 found in I and A. At the same time, I has ‘abbot Wulfric’ (of St Augustine’s) under 1061, paralleling Chronicle E, whose predecessor, /E, was at Canterbury c.1100. I sits squarely within the matrix of vernacular historiographical work at post-Conquest Canterbury. Chronicle F’s scribe may or may not have made use of these annals in I. His own chronicling enterprise was, however, of a different order. His interventions in the early annals of Chronicle A betoken an author seeking to fill out a story. His own new chronicle was a major reshaping of the vernacular tradition, and not 40  Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church Canterbury, no. 164, p. 1150. 41 Baker, Chronicle F, p. xlvi.

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Chronicle F and Canterbury Post-1066  279 only in his inclusion of Latin translations. Chronicle F and its scribe/author are the major products of vernacular chronicling activity at post-Conquest Canterbury, and guides to at least some of its context and aims. They should not engross our picture of post-1066 Canterbury, but that picture would be seriously incomplete without them.

Chronicle F Chronicle F is a bilingual text; each Old English annal has an often loose Latin translation. In that sense it departs radically from all earlier vernacular chron­ icles. It is, unfortunately, defective; it has lost folios and now ends abruptly with the annal numbered 1058. Estimation of it is low; it has been judged as ‘his­tor­ic­ al­ly all but worthless’. Such a judgement is based on its perceived lack of utility as a source of new facts on pre-1066 England: it is largely derivative from other vernacular chronicles, most notably /E, a predecessor of Chronicle E which formed the base text.42 But its use of other sources is far from slavish copying; Chronicle F’s maker was an editor as well as a collator. Its bilingual format addresses a new, or at least changing, audience. It brings together a range of sources into a new chronicle. Moreover, it is a rare survival of a working, autograph vernacular chronicle in process of collation. Chronicle F follows in the established vernacular tradition; it begins its story, as Alfred’s Chronicle had done, with Julius Caesar’s arrival, and incorporates Alfred’s Chronicle in its first centuries. It belongs firmly within the story of vernacular historical writing ‘After Alfred’. As a new chronicle created, not merely copied and extended after 1066, it has a significant place in the vernacular trad­ ition. Chronicle F’s work of collation and editing produced a new story, on a scale comparable to the shift marked by the Northern Recension. However, its treatment of its vernacular chronicle sources differs from that in chronicles so far studied, both in its scribe/author’s readiness to edit, and in his determination to translate the Old English chronicle into Latin. Chronicle F is both a continuation of vernacular historiography and the product of a new world. Whatever the novelty or lack of novelty of the facts it contains, it is a fact in itself.

i)  Palaeography and Layout Chronicle F is found on folios 30–70 of the manuscript London, BL, MS Cotton Domitian A. viii. The manuscript is a composite, put together in the early modern

42 Baker, Chronicle F, p. vii.

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280  After Alfred

Illustration 8.  Chronicle F. London, BL, MS Cotton Domitian A. viii, fo 47v: annals 730–740, with annal 740 compressed, leading to it and 742—an insertion of Canterbury material—spilling into the margin. © The British Library Board.

period. Its current bedfellows are no guide to its original manuscript context.43 The first folio recto and last folio verso are considerably darkened and discoloured. If, as Neil Ker argued, this is a sign that the ‘manuscript was long without covers’, this is evidence that Chronicle F was for long a text unaccompanied by any others.44 Chronicle F was at Christ Church Canterbury during the Middle

43  D. Dumville (ed.)The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, i: Facsimile of MS F: The Domitian Bilingual, ed. D. Dumville (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 11–13. 44 Ker, Catalogue, p. 187. Baker, Chronicle F, p. xvi n. 26 suggests that these pages may have been pastedowns, and a reagent applied, perhaps again suggesting that it was once a manuscript without covers.

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Chronicle F and Canterbury Post-1066  281 Ages.45 In the early modern period it belonged, or was in the hands of, a preb­end­ary of Norwich Cathedral, Robert Talbot, and passed, via William Camden, to the Cotton library.46 The manuscript breaks off at the bottom of folio 70v in the middle of the annal for 1058. Something has been lost, but it is now impossible to say how far Chronicle F once extended. Two leaves were inserted during the initial production of the chronicle: the surviving folio 60 (illustration 9), inserted to take the long additional annal for 995, and a lost leaf between folios 47 and 48. In the latter case, the inserted sheet probably contained a copy of the annals for 740–752 which were erased for the insertion of annal 742 on the Council of Clovesho.47 The chronicle manuscript was very largely the work of a single scribe. He wrote the bulk of both the text and the insertions. This was an autograph, working copy, to which the scribe returned on several occasions, bouts of activity being marked by changes in both the appearance of his hand and, sometimes, his ink (see illustration 8). Two other scribes have been identified. Scribe 2 wrote thirteen lines on folio 66r, beginning in mid sentence and ending in the course of annal 1016. Scribe 3 was responsible for a number of insertions on folios 35v to 38v (in the Latin text, not the Old English) largely concerned with the arrival of the English (Angelcynn) in Kent.48 Scribe 2 was clearly working at the same time as Scribe 1, since his brief few lines are bounded seamlessly by the first scribe’s work.49 Scribe 3’s work implies someone reading and correcting the work close to the date of its making,50 and in the case of annal 443 of checking against Chronicle A or /E. Scribe 3 was someone capable, like the first, main scribe, of translating Old English into Latin. The changes in the script, but especially in the layout, provide clues to the making of Chronicle F. The pages of the first quires were ruled for a generous layout, and in its initial folios it is rubricated with annal numbers and run-on numbers in red. The layout changed from twenty-one to twenty-nine lines at the junction of quires II and III, thus mid annal for 694, a lengthy account of Wihtred of Kent’s

45  Note the library mark on fo 30r: Baker, Chronicle F, p. ix. Dumville agrees, though with some cautions: Dumville, Facsimile, p. 15. 46 Dumville, Facsimile, pp. 16–17, Baker, Chronicle F, pp. xii–xiv. 47 Baker, Chronicle F, pp. xv and 48–9 notes. 48  443, a Latin-only annal on the Britons’ appeal to Rome, then to Germania; 448, additions to the Latin only, naming Guorteguirno as the inviter of Hengest and Horsa and Hypƿinesflieot as the place of their landing; 456(b), addition to Latin only, adding after Hengest and Æsc’s victory at Creccanford et Britones Cantiam dimiserunt et cum magno timore Lundoniam fugerunt; 465, addition to Latin only stating that the UUipped for whom Uuippedesfleot was named was ex parte Hengest occiditur (information implicit in the Old English); and 565, on Gregory’s mission, Columbanus, the Picts, and Iona, adding to the Latin only videlicet xxxii anno sui, a detail given in an insertion into the Old English in a different hand. 49 Baker, Chronicle F, p. xxiii. 50 Baker, Chronicle F, p. xxiii compares the hand to the Norman ones of writs of the mid to late 1090s; see T. A. M. Bishop and P. Chaplais, Facsimiles of English Royal Writs to A.D. 1100 presented to V. H. Galbraith (Oxford, 1957), numbers V(b), XII, XVI, XVII(b), XXI, XXII, XXVII(a) and (b), datable 1095–1099, in their view a Chancery scribe: see notes to V(b).

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282  After Alfred grant of privileges to churches. The use of red ink had already become more erratic; it may be significant that the names of Wihtred and others are picked out in red in this annal. From folio 52v, i.e. annal number 836, the scribe began to rule his pages for even more lines, varying from now on, but never less than thirty-two. The initial quires and their layout suggested to the most recent editor an original intention to produce a fair copy, abandoned in the face of increasing numbers of insertions. This would place it in Bischoff ’s class of ‘first recensions (preliminary fair copies with deletions and expansions)’.51 Up to annal 955 the Old English and Latin are not always clearly separated. From there on, a paragraphus sign is used to mark the beginning of the Latin translation, though this often occurs mid line. The manuscript was—and is— increasingly difficult to read by this point, and the paragraphus sign mitigates this. So, too, the use of red ink to mark out numbers, including those which occur mid line, as e.g. on folios 63r and 66v. Such details may indicate a realization that the manuscript was difficult to follow, either by its readers or by later copyists, and the provision of aids to facilitate this. A major change comes at annal 992. From now on the scribe copied out batches of Old English annals, leaving space for the Latin, which was added later. That suggests that from this point the scribe was not working with an existing translation, but doing the work himself as he added more annals. F’s recent editor distinguishes four stints in these last stages of work: 992–1012, 1013–1021, 1022–1044, and 1045–1057.52 The chronicle manuscript the F scribe produced is the only surviving vernacular chronicle where bissextile (that is leap year) numbers are extensively marked (see illustration 8); this, too, ceases at annal 992. From that same point the scribe’s layout also changes, in ways which may argue that a bilingual exemplar ended about here.53 Chronicle F is thus largely the work of one man, a work revised on a number of occasions as new material came his way and/or as he sought it out. His ‘variable’, ‘undisciplined’ work arguably marks him as an administrator, not a scribe used to reproducing manuscripts as his daily task.54 His work is identifiable in other manuscripts, which place him at Christ Church, Canterbury c. ad 1100. He wrote at least two charters for Christ Church, both of which were produced in favour of that house and in the context of post-1066 dispute and uncertainty.55 51 Baker, Chronicle F, p. xxvii. 52 Baker, Chronicle F, pp. lxx and xxiv–xxvii. 53 Baker, Chronicle F, p. lxxi and cf. pp. xxiv–xxvi. 54 Baker, Chronicle F, p. xviii. 55  S 1221, Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church Canterbury, no. 152 concerning Saltwood, Kent and S 1088, Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church Canterbury, no. 179, a writ of Edward the Confessor, a palimpsest where the later work is that of the F scribe. See Baker, Chronicle F, p. xxiii and Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church Canterbury, pp. 1100 and 1198. Baker rejects the attribution to the F scribe of work on another Christ Church palimpsest, a writ of William I, printed in Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I (1066–1087), ed. D.  Bates, (Oxford, 1998), no. 66. Brooks and Kelly accept this as his work. In both cases, an original writ was largely erased and overwritten. See Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church Canterbury, p. 1102 for the early-twelfth-century context of the Saltwood charter; Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church Canterbury, pp. 1199–2000 on the series of writs produced at Christ Church of which no. 179 and William I’s form part.

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Chronicle F and Canterbury Post-1066  283 His work is not an example of the new Christ Church Canterbury style of script evolving after 1066. Was he a scribe trained elsewhere, or an older man, trained before the evolution of that distinctive style, even a survivor from the late AngloSaxon house?56 The Old English of his chronicle is overwhelmingly Late West Saxon. There are a few Kentish features, others characteristic of the late eleventh/early twelfth century. There are signs of some Late Old English/Early Middle English developments, and Late West Saxon and Non-West Saxon elements are found, especially in the long annals which the F scribe inserted and which are more obviously his own compositions.57 The scribe remains firmly within the linguistic traditions of late literary Old English, as did most of the vernacular chronicle scribes so far discussed. In view of the interest in the pallium at post-Conquest Canterbury, it should be noted that the F scribe has a word for this, arce/ærce, which occurs nowhere else in Old English, nor, apparently, in Middle English; a Canterbury coinage, even that of the F scribe himself?58

ii)  F—Sources and Working Methods The end of Chronicle F is missing. It is impossible to know whether its author/ scribe was a writer of contemporary history. He was certainly a collator of the history of pre-1066 England. His base text was a vernacular chronicle, /E, a predecessor of the surviving Chronicle E. He had access to and took material from Chronicles A and D. He also used Latin texts, including continental Latin texts, most significantly a set of Latin annals now generally know as the Annals of Rouen. Some of his longest insertions came from documents also found in the Christ Church Canterbury archives, related to the rights, lands, and privileges of the community and archbishops. The author/scribe of F had access to both Chronicles A and /E. He chose the latter as his base text. His initial intention may have been to work on the manuscript of A. His additions to and erasures in that manuscript’s early annals are clear. Did the problem of doing this, as /E’s extra material blossomed from the 600s annals on, contribute to his decision to abandon major work on A; perhaps even to his decision to produce a chronicle of his own? Was his choice of /E as the basis for

56  T. Webber, ‘Script and Manuscript Production at Christ Church, Canterbury after the Norman Conquest’, in Eales and Sharp (eds), Canterbury and the Norman Conquest, pp. 145–58 at p. 158 lists this manuscript as one of those produced at Canterbury after 1066 not in the new Christ Church style. She sees no special hierarchy of script/style and type of manuscript, no deliberate house style, rather ‘practical causes, most likely as a consequence of training scribes within the community’ but at the same time tolerating difference (p. 155). Baker, Chronicle F, p. xviii n. 37 prefers to see Webber’s Christ Church style as really that style at its height c.1120, cf. N. Ker, English Manuscripts after the Norman Conquest (Oxford, 1968), p. 27. In either case the F scribe is likely a man trained earlier rather than later, perhaps an older Anglo-Saxon monk? 57 Baker, Chronicle F, pp. xcii and lxxxii–lxxxiii. 58 Baker, Chronicle F, p. xcviii.

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284  After Alfred the latter due to some special respect for /E as a Canterbury chronicle? Yet his investment in Chronicle A, like that of other scribes, points to some regard for that manuscript at Christ Church, perhaps some recognition of its antiquity. His choice of base text was as likely to have been determined by the fact that /E told the fuller tale, including for the eleventh century. He continued to use Chronicle A even after the decision that /E would be his major source. He used Chronicle A to add annals to his own chronicle F, especially for the first half of the tenth century where /E was thin.59 He may occasionally have preferred A’s reading to that of /E, as in respect of annal 970.60 He was, however, just as happy to add to Chronicle A with his own material. Much of the common matter which marks out a relationship between A and F consists of additions to A made at Canterbury, including by this scribe himself.61 The F scribe took from A; he also in addition added to A material which he was also including in his own chronicle. These are precious evidence of the complex processes of annotation which could occur between annalistic texts; salutary warning, too, of what may have been lost in the largely fair copies of other vernacular chronicles which are usually all that now survives. The F scribe appears to have had access to Chronicles A and /E throughout his work. His contact with Chronicle D, or /D, was apparently more fleeting. A group of annals for the mid tenth century were taken from D or /D. They include the annals on the murder of King Edmund (948), on St Ælfgifu (mother of King Edgar), and on Edgar’s marriage to Ælfthryth, daughter of Ealdorman Ordgar (965). This small group of annals were added to F by its author as late annotations. They are all in the same now much-faded ink. They contain errors resulting from failure immediately to notice duplication, signs that the scribe may have been working in haste.62 It is also possible that the F scribe/author borrowed from the vernacular Easter Table annals, which were identified above as Chronicle I. His annals 925, 990, and 997 may come from this source.63 Like the earlier compilers of the Northern Recension, he also used Latin sources. In one case his access may have been as restricted and cursory as that to Chronicle D. Two insertions in 790 and 796 are of details otherwise found only in the York Annals. Wherever and however he saw these annals,64 he took only these 59  Thus e.g. annals F 910, 924, 931, 935, 940, and 955 all have material taken in whole or in part from Chronicle A. 60  D and E have the death of the ætheling Edmund here. The annal has been erased in A, and is not in F—perhaps here following A rather than the usual /E. The erasure in A took place after the copying of Chronicle G, so probably after A’s move to Canterbury. Did the F scribe himself erase it? There is no obvious motivation. 61  Thus e.g. F 955, 959, 961—all on the life of Dunstan, and all additions to A by Scribe 7. F 725 and 784 on Kentish kings have parallels in A, but in additions made by the F scribe. 62  Cf. Baker, Chronicle F, pp. xliv–xlv and lxxv. 63 Thus Baker, Chronicle F, p. xlvi. It is equally possible that both represent some common, Canterbury material. 64 Baker, Chronicle F, pp. xlix–l has him take them from Byrhtferth’s Miscellany, which is perfectly possible.

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Chronicle F and Canterbury Post-1066  285 two details. As in his borrowing from D, they are close together in his text; as with D, he made an initial error, entering the second detail on the mutilation of Eadberht Præn initially under 798, then erasing it and inserting it in the margin under 796 (folios 50 and 49). Such differences may appear minor. But they underline the differing working conditions under which annotations could be made. The F’s scribe’s use of Chronicle A and /E was continuing if not leisurely. These were available to him close at hand. Other sources came his way with less time and opportunity to compare them fully. The mechanisms of chronicle growth and writing, at least after 1066 and perhaps before, are illuminated in such details. The F scribe used other Latin sources, including Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica and De Temporum Ratione.65 He had access to Latin Winchester annals, now lost but reconstructed in part by Felix Liebermann.66 He added a new preface, in Latin only, taken from ‘Nennius’/the Historia Brittonum and inserted into a space left on the opening pages of the manuscript.67 Two Latin sources in particular provided him with much information: Norman annals, now loosely known as the Annals of Rouen, were widely available in post-Conquest England;68 and records, usually revised or forged, from Christ Church Canterbury archives concerning lands and privileges. The extent of his borrowing here, and his treatment of them in the manuscript, suggest how important these, and especially the second, were in the making of his chronicle—at least in its final form. The scribe of Chronicle F inserted four documents concerned with the Kentish churches, specifically Christ Church, and their landholdings and privileges. At annal 694, he included a charter of Wihtred granting privileges to the churches of Kent.69 He reruled the last folio of Quire II to move to a twenty-nine-line layout in the middle of this annal in Old English and Latin, presumably to accommodate it. The Latin version makes large claims for the powers of metropolitans (i.e. archbishops); both references to their role in the election and choice of bishops are interpolations.70 The second charter is at 742. It is in Latin only, and spills out into the margins. Its insertion involved the erasure of annals 743–752. (See illustration 8 for the beginning of this insertion at the foot of the page and the resulting compression and use of margins.) An inserted folio with a copy of those annals, and perhaps 65 Baker, Chronicle F, pp. lv–lvi. 66 Baker, Chronicle F, pp. xlvi–xlix; F.  Liebermann, Ungedruckte anglo-normannische Geschichtsquellen (Strassburg, 1879), pp. 61–96. A modern edition of these annals would illuminate his borrowings here. 67  Nennius, ed. and tr. J. Morris (London and Chichester, 1980), p. 60, cap. 10. 68 Baker, Chronicle F, pp. l–liv. 69  It is S 22, not S 20 as Baker, Chronicle F, p. lvii. Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church Canterbury, nos 8 and 8A is their edition of the bilingual version in F; see their discussion at i, pp. 308–13. 70  The text originally read ‘abbots and abbesses’ and other clergy. See the discussion in Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church Canterbury, p. 319. The text in F (8A in Brooks and Kelly), as interpolated, is a staging post en route to the full jurisdiction claimed in the version in the Cartulary, 8B in Brooks and Kelly.

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286  After Alfred with the Old English version of the charter, has probably been lost here.71 However, if there was once an Old English version, precedence in the text itself was given to the Latin, contrary to the F scribe’s normal practice of beginning with the Old English. The charter purportedly records the renewal of Wihtred’s privileges at the synod of Clofesho, with specific reference to Christ Church.72 The third charter is copied under 796. It is a decree of the synod of Clofesho, in the name of Archbishop Æthelheard, on the lay lordship of monasteries.73 There is no indication that it was not from the start an integral part of the intended text, though some of the Old English is squeezed in at the foot of folio 49r. The fourth charter is a record of Cnut’s grant of Sandwich to Christ Church. This was inserted on folio 67r, after the erasure of the Latin of annal 1025 to make room. The Latin text begins after annal 1029 and continues at the foot of the page. The Old English is very like the record of this grant written, probably by the F scribe, in Chronicle A at 1031. Sandwich was the subject of a challenge by Harold Harefoot, Cnut’s son and successor as king, who not only seized the port but also allegedly gave the third penny of its toll to St Augustine’s.74 In addition to these four charters or records of grants and privileges, there is a further long annal written on a page inserted between folios 59 and 61 (see illustration 9). It allows the continuation and completion of the lengthy annal for 995 in Old English and Latin concerning Archbishop Ælfric’s alleged expulsion of the clerics from Christ Church and their replacement by monks, with a legitimizing reference back to the earliest history of Canterbury under Augustine. A charter in the name of King Æthelred which purports to implement this change and to confirm Christ Church community’s estates is also copied in Latin and Old English.75 The account links the change to Ælfric’s visit to Rome, where the threatened clerics attempted to outflank him and purchase the pallium with the offer of a huge sum to the pope. A long insertion into annal 870 also deals with the same question of clerics and monks at Christ Church. It tells of the failure, in the face of Viking attack and devastation, of Archbishops Ceolnoth and Æthelred to effect this same change in the community at an earlier date. If any further proof were needed, this group of documents and insertions would clinch the argument for the association of Chronicle F and its scribe with

71 Baker, Chronicle F, pp. 49–50 and notes. The erasure meant the loss of annals 743–752, but probably involved 740, which is now written as part of the cramped insertion, like them spilling into the margin: see illustration 8. 72  The longer version is S 90. This version is printed in Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church Canterbury, no. 12A. Their statement at p. 347 that this was added in a gap seems less likely than Baker’s suggestion of erasure, especially since the missing annals are in Lambert of St Omer’s Liber Floridus, using F. 73  S 1431b, in Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church Canterbury, no. 33, dated 803. 74  Full details of the disputes and of the documents Christ Church produced in connection with it are in Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church Canterbury, pp. 1079–1098, nos 151, 151A, and 151B. 75  Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church Canterbury, no. 140.

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Chronicle F and Canterbury Post-1066  287

Illustration 9.  Chronicle F. London, BL, MS Cotton Domitian A. viii, fo 60r: a folio inserted to accommodate annal 995’s account of the replacement of clerks by monks at Christ Church Canterbury. © The British Library Board.

Christ Church, Canterbury. F is the earliest example of a vernacular chronicle incorporating charters in this way; we will encounter this again in Chronicle E. The scribe’s determination to include them is marked by their spillage beyond the bounds of his normal written text, by erasure, and by insertion in order to accommodate them. Most thus appear not to be part of his original text, perhaps not of his original intention.

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288  After Alfred Chronicle F’s scribe also made extensive use of Norman annalistic material, now loosely known as the ‘Annals of Rouen’. These were Latin annals, and from them the F scribe took numerous annals on early Christian and early ec­cle­si­as­ tic­al (especially papal) history, on the history of the Carolingians, and on that of the count/dukes of Normandy. From these or related sources, the F scribe took almost fifty annals, the bulk of them inserted as additions to the section deriving ultimately from Alfred’s Chronicle, the bedrock of the vernacular tradition.76 In his readiness to add to this early section, F’s scribe is comparable to the makers of the Northern Recension. These annals in F are for the most part later insertions, after the first work was completed. They are usually in Latin alone, interlined in a small hand. But a few are in Latin and Old English, and appear to have been added earlier as part of the original text. The scribe/author revisited this source on more than one occasion. There is no obvious pattern of priorities in what was taken first and what later, what is given in Latin and Old English and what is in Latin alone. Thus the death of Benedict, father of monks, is apparently earlier, and is in Latin and Old English at 509. An early addition, and in both languages to ensure it was available to the widest reading audience: this might be expected from a Christ Church monk who was also anxious to assert the superiority of monks in his additions in annal 995 and 870. But the death of the Frankish king, Dagobert at 715 is also given in Latin and Old English—for no obvious reason. Some of the annals on Norman history are later insertions, thus 942, 994, and perhaps 1024, whilst some appear to be part of the original text, thus 876, perhaps 1024, and 1031, the last the succession of William (the future Conqueror). Some of the Norman annals are in Latin and Old English, thus 876 and 1031; annal 928 has the Old English as an insertion. There is no simple principle to explain all these choices. The way the Latin annals are treated is an indication of the scribe’s working methods, but also underlines the danger and difficulty of reading F’s intentions, let alone his story, by reference to his insertions. Comparison with Chronicle E emphasizes this. Chronicle E also contains annals taken from this same source of Latin annals. These would have been added to /E, the chronicle as it was when F’s scribe saw it. They do not now appear as interlineations or insertions, but they almost certainly were, and the work of the F scribe himself. Thirty-eight Latin annals taken from this same source are found in Chronicle E; as in the case of Chronicle F, they were inserted into the original Alfred section as well as later. As with F they were taken from ‘Norman’ annals, and, again as in F, one (964) seems to draw on the lost Winchester Annals.77 In E, and presumably in /E, they are all left untranslated in Latin, as are the bulk of those in F.  They stand out from the Old English of 76 Baker, Chronicle F, pp. l–liv.

77 Irvine, Chronicle E, p. lxxxviii.

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Chronicle F and Canterbury Post-1066  289 surrounding annals in E. They derive from the same sources, and they are treated similarly in both chronicles. The argument that these annals in E are the work of the F scribe is strong, bolstered by the demonstrable activity of that scribe as an intervener in Chronicle A. They were most likely copied into both from the same manuscript at Christ Church Canterbury.78 They are testimony to the close relationship of the development of F and E c.1100. They are further witness to the readiness of the scribe of F to add to other vernacular chronicles. The sources and treatment are the same. But the choice of what to include in each chronicle is not. For the most part this scribe/author did not make the same additions in E and F. The choices here might be seen as indicative of the scribe’s intentions, indicative of the conscious or half-conscious stories he was telling. But they do not tell a simple tale. These two chronicles share some which were added to both, but in many respects they complement rather than reproduce each other.79 These Latin annals in E and F are usually grouped thematically, following Plummer’s lead: universal ecclesiastical history, Carolingian history, English ecclesiastical history, and continental, chiefly Norman, history. There is no immediately obvious agenda or pattern in the F scribe’s choice here of some for his own chronicle, some for /E. Grouped chronologically, however, a pattern does emerge.80 The scribe mostly inserted into F up to annal 158; mostly into E from 202 to 840 and again from 1046 onwards, and into both E and F for the annals 876 to 1031 (the latter group also including the English ecclesiastical annals). The differences would thus reflect the F scribe’s ‘compilation procedure’. Chronicle F’s procedures were, as his autograph shows, accumulative, returning to sources and adding more. As he turned from F to /E and back again to insert these Latin annals, the mechanical nature of such processes is underlined. There is certainly no obvious thematic logic to his additions from the Norman sources. Insertions cluster in sections of E and F.  There is thus more on the Universal Church/early Christian history/popes in F, because more was inserted into F’s early annals. There is more on Carolingians and Franks in E, because more was inserted into /E in annals from 202 to 840. Did the F scribe view his own chronicle and /E differently? It is difficult to be sure. The Frankish/Carolingian annals are, for example, overwhelmingly found in E, but 715, 767, and 840—Carolingian events—are only in F. The universal and early church history is mostly in F. The early annals also found in E, or in E alone, are largely concerned with changes to the liturgy, or significant liturgical calendar 78 Baker, Chronicle F, p. xxxiv. 79  Thus annals 114, 124, and 134 are found in both, as are 876, 928, 942, 994, 1024, and 1031—plus 890, 892, and 964, the latter three being the three English ecclesiastical annals. But a number are found only in F: 12, 15, 26, 28, 30, 38, 39, 44, 45, 46?, 47, 48, 50, 52, 53, 56, 58, 62, 63, 68, 70, 72, 74, 82, 96, 98, 99, 100, 104, 115, 137, 145, 157, 158, 509, 715, 767, and 840; others are only in E: 202, 254, 311, 379, 403, 425, 431, 433, 439, 490, 528, 596, 625, 769, 778, 788, 810, 812, 1046, 1054, 1056, 1060, and 1062. 80  Thus Irvine, Chronicle E, pp. lxxxix–xc.

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290  After Alfred decisions—though this is far from a simple distinction. There may be some indication that he saw his own F chronicle as the one most concerned with ec­cle­ si­as­tic­al affairs in the sense of events in ecclesiastical history, but that should be heavily caveated. The annals concerning Normandy were, however, for the most part, added to both, as were those on English ecclesiastical history. The Norman annals are found in annals 876, 928, 942, 994, 1024, and 1031, tracking the succession of Norman count/dukes. In E they are all in Latin. In F, those for 876, 928, and 1031 have been translated into Old English, in the case of 928 as a later insertion. In 1031 the Old English and Latin of F alone identifies William, ‘who was after king in England’. It is difficult not to see this group of annals as ones which the F scribe considered most significant, his (half-conscious?) reasoning appearing in this elaboration and translation into Old English in his own manuscript. F’s Latin insertions were made in /E, not in Chronicle  A.  This may indicate different stages of his work; when intervening in Chronicle A he may not have had access to, or had not decided to make use of, the ‘Norman sources’. It could be a sign of his special attention to /E, his base text. Could it even indicate a judgement that all three chronicles would be available in Canterbury, a conscious or halfconscious recognition of a history which could be read across all? The presence of so many vernacular chronicles in Canterbury after 1066 may have encouraged a view of the common ground, if not unity, across these texts; a historiographical perspective which at this time and place might override the separate chronicling developments of the tenth and eleventh centuries.

iii)  New Chronicle, New Story, New Audience? The manuscript of Chronicle F gives a precious insight into the scribe/author’s working practices. It encourages wariness, whilst also making clear that choices for inclusion were constantly being made and remade. Some were so deliberate and conscious that they required the addition of new pages, or a change of layout. Others appear mechanical, though even when most so, they represent a choice to include new material. Availability of material shapes them, though there may also be deliberate searching out. Taken together they may not simply reveal the scribe/author’s intentions, which show every sign of shifting. Cumulatively they produced a new vernacular chronicle, and one suited to a new audience. F’s scribe was an author. That is never clearer than in his insertion of documents concerned with the Kentish churches, specifically Christ Church, and their landholding. Chronicle F is thus the first identifiable example of that combination of wider historical narrative and community history which will be found again in

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Chronicle F and Canterbury Post-1066  291 Chronicle E as produced at Peterborough.81 Such a history is en route to being a ‘house history’ in the more familiar twelfth-century vein, focused on the story of a religious institution albeit in a wider context. En route, but far from arrived. Chronicle F still sits within the vernacular chronicle tradition; and, in that trad­ ition, its primary theme is still a wider history stretching back to the arrival of the English (Angelcynn) and to the origins of Christian history, not only in these islands but more widely. It is based on the fullest account of that history, derived from the Northern Recension via Chronicle /E. Its author/scribe made deliberate attempts to fill out the story for the tenth century where it was thinnest in the Northern Recension from Chronicle A, if not Chronicle D or /D.82 In his use of vernacular chronicles in this way his work is akin to that which produced the bulk of Chronicle D or /D itself. Writing a generation or so after 1066, his chron­icle tells the whole of the pre-1066 English past, at least as available in vernacular chronicles. The whole, but edited: Chronicle F’s scribe/author was a more thoroughgoing editor of his material than any earlier vernacular chronicler ‘after Alfred’. In his hands, the vernacular text was often abbreviated, especially to reduce the details of military exploits which had featured so centrally in the annals for the reign of Alfred, Edward the Elder, and Æthelred.83 The story of kings and their succession remains; the story of bishops and especially archbishops of Canterbury was amplified, but the details of many individuals, ealdormen for example, is abbreviated. There is similar treatment in the early-twelfth-century Latin Annals of Waverley which, like F, were based for the eleventh century on Chronicle /E.84 Chronicle F’s scribe was far from systematic and ruthless here, but these details were clearly of less importance to him. Unlike the makers of either Chronicle C or D, he did not automatically copy out the earlier chronicle he was using in its entirety. Unlike them, too, he was ready to add. His—often additional—details of archbishops show the same Canterbury concerns which were evident in the additions to Chronicles A and B. Dunstan in his hands is a ‘saint’, and, at his death under 988 his name was capitalized in the text. Like the makers of the Northern Recension, he added to the Alfred Chronicle itself. There are more details on Kent 81 Well studied by J.  Paxton, ‘Forging Communities: Memory and Identity in Post-Conquest England’, HSJ, 10 (2001), pp. 95–109 and M.  Home, The Peterborough Version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Rewriting Post-Conquest History (Woodbridge, 2015). 82 F used D or /D, not John of Worcester or John’s source here, perhaps the lost Worcester Chronicle. There are four additions under 948, 955, 957, and 965. 948 and 957 could come from D or John’s source. 955 is from D; John is different. 965, on the marriage to Ælfthryth, is placed by F and D under 965, by John under 964. 83  Cf. the comments of A.  Jorgensen, ‘Rewriting the Æthelredian Chronicle: Narrative Style and Identity in Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS F’, in Jorgensen, Reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, especially pp. 119–23. 84  H. R. Luard (ed.), ‘Annals of Waverley’, in Annales Monastici, ii, Rolls Series (London, 1865). A number were edited by F.  Liebermann, Ungedruckte anglo-normannische Geschichtsquellen (Strassburg, 1879).

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292  After Alfred and its kings, for example.85 It is surely no accident that his limited use of the York Annals included taking details of the mutilation of Eadberht Præn, the last independent king of Kent (F 796). He was, however, no simple Kentish patriot. He shows some interest in West Saxon kings. Under 924 he added, from Chronicle A, the acceptance of Edward the Elder as father and lord by other kings—though he had not chosen to add any of Chronicle A’s other detail of Edward’s military campaigns. He adds, perhaps simply as an identifier, that Edward was ‘son of Alfred’, though his interest in Alfred is shown elsewhere. Unlike all other vernacular chronicles, he is explicit on the papal blessing of Alfred as king.86 His encounter with D did not, however, result in the restoration of the genealogy of Alfred’s father, Æthelwulf, to his annal 856. Perhaps that encounter was too brief; perhaps the legitimizing genealogy—so important to ninth- and early-tenth-century ­readers and authors—was of little interest to him. Alfred’s Kentish ancestry, however, was. In F alone Ealhmund, king of Kent, was ‘father of Egbert, father of Aðulf ’ (Æthelwulf, i.e. Alfred’s father).87 The detail of Alfred’s papal blessing would, of course, have paralleled Alfred and Charlemagne. Whether or not that was F’s scribe’s intention, his concern with mainland Europe, especially the papacy and Normandy but including the Carolingians, is another new departure—and provides many of his additions to Alfred’s original core chronicle. Most of these are derived from the ‘Norman Annals’ which he inserted into his chronicle. He took from these sources details of many popes, inserted into the early annals;88 and since he is probably re­spon­ sible for the papal details found only in Chronicle E and derived from this same source, that tally should be far greater.89 Some of Chronicle A’s material on Gregory the Great was added to it by the F scribe.90 The papacy figures much more prominently in F and in E, a chronicle which had been amended by the F scribe, than in earlier vernacular chronicles. Developments in papal authority in the eleventh century are the obvious context of all this. In his inclusion of the Norman annals, the scribe/author of Chronicle F also wrote the Normans into English history before 1066. He followed the succession 85  See e.g. under 552 and 784. 86  856, one of the additions which Baker attributes to the scribe/author’s ‘overheated imagination’ (see Baker, Chronicle F, p. lxii) or a ‘wild surmise’ (p. xl). 87  F 784, Ealhmund, king in Kent, was an addition to Chronicle A, perhaps not by the F scribe: see Bately, Chronicle A, p. xl and cf. Baker, Chronicle F, p. xxi. 88  In Chronicle F see Linus, 68, 72; Clement, 72, 99; Anacletus, 68, 99; Evaristus, 104; Alexander I, 114; Sixtus I, 124; Telesphorus, 134; Hyginus, 145; Pius I, 158—all are among the later insertions made by a small hand in the manuscript. 89  In Chronicle E see Eleutherius, 202; Victor I, 202; Cornelius, 254; Silvester I, 311; Damasus I, 379(2); Innocent I, 403; Leo I, 439; John IV, 625; Boniface V, 627; Honorius I, 627, 633; Vitalian, 668; Sergius, 688. Vitalian and Sergius are in both E and F but no other chronicles. Peterborough insertions in E contain some other papal references. 90  See A 565, 592, and 595.

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Chronicle F and Canterbury Post-1066  293 of Norman count/dukes, but also added details which address their importance now in England. In the vernacular chronicles in general the name of King Æthelred’s Norman wife is her adopted English one, Ælfgifu; in Chronicle F alone it is fairly consistently glossed with her Norman name, Ymma.91 In these respects, too, he could be compared to the makers of the Northern Recension, widening the English story to include others. Similar attention to these new circumstances, or a new audience, was also the case in his new prefatory material. He added the story of Brutus, of Trojan origin, derived from the Historia Brittonum, in a space apparently left to take it. Chronicle F is the only vernacular chronicler to use this. His major source, Chronicle /E, had the preface taken from Bede, one which /E and D shared and which derived from the Northern Recension. The F scribe too has this. But he added the myth of Brutus’ Trojan origins to it. His preface taken from /E is in Latin and Old English. He made the Trojan origins addition in Latin alone. The space would barely have accommodated an Old English version, though elsewhere F’s scribe readily spilled into the margins to insert material. Faced with a choice, it was the Latin he preferred. Prefaces are not neutral, and c.1100 this one especially not so. Trojan ancestry was a British origin myth. It was also an origin myth of many continental European groups, including the Normans.92 In pre-1066 English court culture Trojans were elements of political discourse, but Trojan descent was rejected in respect of the English, becoming rather an element in the critique of the Welsh if not the Normans. By contrast, from the mid eleventh century in France, including in Normandy, such origins were increasingly prominent and prestigious in lay circles.93 Does the F scribe’s choice of preface here speak to this latter development? Does his choice of the Latin language underline that this was for all his audience, non-English speakers included? His mixed audience at Christ Church would have included Old English and French/Romance speakers. All would be united in their command of Latin. The novelty of placing Trojan origins as part of the orienting prefaces which included the arrival of the peoples of Britain made a 91  F 1002, 1013, 1037, 1040, and 1051. Usually the name Ymma appears alone in the Latin, though see Ælfgiva Ymma in 1037; usually both names are given in the Old English—though see 1037, where Ælfgive appears alone. The Norman name is also found in E 1051, perhaps added by F. It is an addition over an erasure in C 1051 and found in the long section on the translation of the bones of Archbishop Ælfheah in D, part of the later replaced section. 92  His is the British version, later popular in Anglo-Norman England, not the version found in the Norman chronicle of Dudo, who traces the Normans to Antenor, Aeneas’s compatriot. See E. Albu, The Normans in their Histories: Propaganda, Myth and Subversion (Woodbridge, 2001), pp. 13–15, and cf. pp. 62–3 and 237–9. On Dudo, and William of Jumièges see The Gesta Normannorum Ducum of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis and Robert of Torigni, i, ed and tr. E. van Houts (Oxford, 1992), p. xxxvi. 93  See E. M. Tyler, ‘Trojans in Anglo-Saxon England: Precedent without Descent’, Review of English Studies, 64 (2013), pp. 1–20 and J.-Y. Tilliette, ‘Troiae ab oris: Aspects de la révolution poétique de la seconde moitié du XIe siècle’, Latomus, 58 (1999), pp. 405–31.

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294  After Alfred point, and one which did not chime with earlier English court culture. Does this signal the distance of the scribe/author of F from that context and the ending of Anglo-Saxon court culture itself? In the creation of a bilingual chronicle within the vernacular tradition it was a linguistically mixed audience this scribe/author had in view. Martin Brett identified a band of early twelfth-century Latin historians committed to interpreting Anglo-Saxon England’s history ‘to a generation ever less able to handle the vernacular records in which it was chiefly preserved’.94 Chronicle F’s scribe/author should be numbered among this band of Old English readers and Latin writers. More than any of them he represents ‘a link between the native annals and the Latin Chronicles which supplanted them’.95 Some of his decisions show him consciously reaching out to a wider audience. His conception of the audience he addresses was both as an English one interested in a Norman past, and a Norman one for whom the English past should be retold. The introduction of Latin translation into the vernacular annalistic tradition was critical. The use of his chronicle by the Northern French Lambert of St Omer in the writing of the Liber Floridus is one measure of his success.96 There must, however, be a question over how easily the Latin story in his manuscript could be read. Even after the introduction of a paragraphus sign to mark the beginning of the Latin at 955, the Latin story is not visually obvious on the page. A fairer copy may well have been envisaged. If it was ever made, it has not survived. * * * * * * * * * * * * Chronicle F’s is a complex story, its scribe/author worthy of far more attention. He remained throughout an annalist, and his working autograph is a precious example of an annalist at work, showing graphically the cumulative process through which such texts can grow. He is, like almost all annalists, anonymous. Yet he occasionally reveals himself. It was surely a Kentishman, or at least someone with local sympathies, who added to /E’s account of (the Northern French) Eustace’s fingering of the men of Dover to the king in the 1050 annal, noting that Eustace retailed it ‘worse than it was’ (wyrs ðonne hit wære). It was probably such a man, too, who knew the added detail, given in F alone, that Wulfnoth cild, whose ‘betrayal’ of the military effort is recorded under 1009, was the father of Earl Godwine. Whoever added that was also aware of current concerns and his audience; Earl Godwine still mattered c. ad 1100 in Kent and more widely. Godwine was, as appeared above, one of the few people added into the eleventh-century

94 Baker, Chronicle F, p. lxxxi; Brett, English Church, p. 11. 95 Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, p. xliv. 96  R. Derolez, ‘An Epitome of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in Lambert of St Omer’s Liber Floridus’, English Studies, 48 (1967), pp. 226–31.

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Chronicle F and Canterbury Post-1066  295 annals of Chronicle A at post-Conquest Canterbury. He had special significance in Kent, though he did not always provoke unalloyed admiration.97 The F scribe was an Englishman, apparently able not only to copy but to compose in Old English: an Englishman, but one aware of non-English-reading audiences and willing and anxious to accommodate them. Are there signs that he was less passionate in awareness and assertion of his ethnic identity than some of the last scribes of Chronicle D? He explicitly gives Ælfgifu/Emma’s names on englisc and on frencisce (s.a. 1002), whereas the D scribe of annal 1067 translates St Paul’s Latin as Þæt is on uran geþeode (‘our people/language’). In 1066 D’s scribe identified strongly with Harold as ure cyng (‘our king’). ‘We-fullness’ is an important marker of self-identification. We do not have F’s account of 1066 itself, but his additions and insertions perhaps point to a less exclusive or passionate ethnic self-identification. Writing within the vernacular chronicle tradition may have had an impact on such an identification, but did not entirely determine it. D’s scribe/authors, immersed in the English diaspora, spoke with different voices, inflected, perhaps, with the sentiments of Northumbrians, and had long been ambiguously placed in the southern English project. The F scribe tells English history to an audience of mixed ethnic identity, to the community of Christ Church, if not a wider Canterbury audience. In his insertions of Normans into it he reveals a generous re­inter­pret­ ation of that history. The scribe/author of Chronicle F was a man of his day. He was also preeminently a Christ Church Canterbury monk of his day. His story is still one of kings, indeed even more so as a result of his editing. It is also a more markedly ec­cle­si­as­tic­al one, a more papal one, but especially a more Canterbury, Christ Church and archiepiscopal one. In these respects he parallels the concerns which transformed the reading of Chronicle B and especially A at Canterbury after 1066. He himself was altering his base chronicle /E, though chiefly with ecclesiastical and Norman annals. He is one of a group of writers and rewriters of the pre1066 past at Canterbury, though a pre-eminent one. Work on Chronicle A and additions to both B and to Chronicle /E point to a group of scribes active in these chronicles in Canterbury around 1100. They were writers whose relationship to the court and its politics had not necessarily been severed, but was changing. They were addressing an audience who were increasingly focused on the archbishops, but still within a wider context of pre-1066 history—for the most part Anglophone.

97 See p. 225 and p. 226 on the years 1051–1052 in Chronicle /E.  Details like this in F raise ­ uestions about how much Kentish detail he may have added to /E. On balance the amount of detail q in E’s account of these years and the passion it displays make it very unlikely that this was added long after 1066. It is more likely that F was reacting to a Kentish perspective already present in /E.  The problems of handling these annals numbered pre-1066 in E is underlined.

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296  After Alfred In the work of F’s scribe and that of his fellow scribes Canterbury c.1100 appears as hugely significant in the transmission and transformation of English history. Canterbury has so far meant Christ Church, the cathedral community. That city had a second great religious house, St Augustine’s. Chronicle B ended up there. Many scholars have made it the home of Chronicle /E, at least for the mid-eleventh-century stages of composition.98 Yet that chronicle, the predecessor of Chronicle E, was at Christ Church c.1100, in the active interventionist hands of the F scribe. It is time to take up and follow E’s story, one which will lead from Canterbury and Kent to the Fenland house of Peterborough.

98  Dumville, ‘Some Aspects’, pp. 28–31; Irvine, Chronicle E, pp. lxxvi and lxxviii–lxxix; Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, p. l; Whitelock, Peterborough Chronicle, p. 30.

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14

Chronicles E, /E, and H: The End of the Tradition? Chronicle E is in many respects the least problematic of the vernacular chron­icles, and one of the best studied.1 It was produced at Peterborough in c.1121, and continued there into the mid twelfth century. It is the last surviving vernacular chronicle, extending beyond any other. As a result it was chosen as one of the two which Earle and, following him, Plummer printed in its entirety, and thus features in one of the best, cheapest, and most easily accessible modern translations.2 Peterborough abbey’s history is written seamlessly into its annals. It also contains Latin annals taken from ‘Norman’ sources. In these respects it parallels Chronicle F. It is in large part a copy of an earlier chronicle, /E, whose influence is found in other historical texts. /E was the base chronicle for Chronicle F. Discussion must thus extend to /E, the chronicle developing in the later eleventh and early twelfth centuries which was copied to form E. Both /E and E provoke further questions about the circulation of material among vernacular chronicles and the mechanisms of this. The fragment of another lost vernacular text, Chronicle H, provides important evidence here, as do Latin chroniclers such as John of Worcester. Chronicle E and /E, like F, are close in date to some of the great post-Conquest Latin historians. The place of this last surviving vernacular chronicle in the earlytwelfth-century historiographical world is the end of a story begun c. ad 900.

Palaeography Chronicle E forms the major part of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 636, folios 1–91.3 There is no indication that any other works were originally 1 Whitelock, Peterborough Chronicle; Irvine, Chronicle E. See C. Clark, The Peterborough Chronicle, 1070–1154, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1970) on the post-1070 annals. The introductions all contain important discussion. See also J. Paxton, ‘Forging Communities’ and M. Home, The Peterborough Version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, plus three unpublished theses by A.  M.  Morris, Jennifer Paxton, and Colin Peterson. 2  That of G. N. Garmonsway, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, rev. edn (London, 1960). 3 Ker, Catalogue, no. 346, pp. 424–6. See also descriptions in Whitelock, Peterborough Chronicle and Irvine, Chronicle E, plus O. Da Rold, ‘Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc 636’, in M. Swan and E.  Treharne, The Production and Use of English Manuscripts 1060–1220 (University of Leicester, 2010–13), https://www.le.ac.uk/english/em1060to1220/mss/EM.Ox.Laud.Misc.636.htm, accessed 12 Dec. 2018. The description here is largely based on these. After Alfred: Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and Chroniclers, 900–1150. Pauline Stafford, Oxford University Press 2020. © Pauline Stafford. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198859642.001.0001

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298  After Alfred attached to it: the dorse of the last folio is badly worn and, especially at the end, barely legible. The rest of the manuscript is an additional early-modern quire on which transcripts of Chronicle A and notes concerning Parker manuscripts were added. The twelfth-century text itself is extensively annotated in early-modern hands with additions from Chronicles A and G. Such annotation was facilitated by the generous layout and margins of this fine manuscript. In the later thirteenth century these margins were used to insert the Anglo-Norman French Brut, another vernacular work concerning remote historical origins. This begins on folio 86v alongside the annal for 1128. The chronicle manuscript was produced at Peterborough c. ad 1121, and continued there: first regularly, then with final additions in mid century. It was still at Peterborough in the sixteenth century. It was the chronicle in the hands of William Cecil referred to by Joscelyn as ‘Chronica Saxonica petroburgensis’. It would later pass to Archbishop Laud and from him to the Bodleian Library. Its Peterborough location in the 1500s is, in this case, a guide to its earlier history. The marginalia in the manuscript indicate its presence there throughout the Middle Ages.4 That Chronicle E was made and continued at Peterborough is beyond any doubt.5 Chronicle E was written by two scribes, the first using a mix of caroline and insular forms of letters, the second mainly caroline.6 The first scribe wrote the whole of the original chronicle text and first continuations; the second made the mid-twelfth-century additions. Scribe 1, who wrote most of the vernacular chronicle, closely resembles the scribe of London, BL, MS Harley 3667 and BL, MS Cotton Tiberius C. i, folios 2–42.7 These are now separated, but were once a single manuscript,8 containing a computistical text from Peterborough. Harley 3667, folios 1–2v has an Easter table to which have been added a handful of Peterborough abbatial obits and events, especially for the years 1087–1135.9 The second scribe’s hand is closely similar to the corrector of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 134, a Peterborough manuscript of Berengaudus’ Commentary

4  See Whitelock, Peterborough Chronicle, pp. 21–2. Oddly, it is not found in medieval Peterborough booklists: see Irvine, Chronicle E, pp. xiii–xiv and n. 6. 5 Ker, Catalogue, pp. 424–6; Irvine, Chronicle E, p. xiii; C.  Clark, ‘Notes on MS Laud Misc 636’, Medium Ævum, 23 (1954), pp. 71–5. 6 Irvine, Chronicle E, pp. xix–xxiii following Ker, Catalogue, pp. 425–6 and cf. Clark, Peterborough Chronicle, pp. xvi–xvii. On the possible attempts of the second scribe to maintain a uniformity of appearance with the first see Whitelock, Peterborough Chronicle, p. 17 and Irvine, Chronicle E, pp. xxii–xxiii. 7  See Da Rold, ‘Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc 636’. 8  See Ker, Catalogue, no. 196, pp. 259–60. 9  Printed in F. Liebermann, Ungedruckte anglo-normannische Geschichtsquellen, pp. 13–14. It also has the election of Abbot Benedict in 1177. Entries from 1132 are in a different hand. 1122, reporting the death of Archbishop Ralph, is the last entry in the first hand.

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Chronicles E, /E, and H: The End of the Tradition?  299 on the Apocalypse,10 and to that of the scribe of London, Society of Antiquaries, MS 60, folios 6–71. The latter is the Liber Niger, or Black Book of Peterborough, the abbey’s earliest cartulary. Both scribes wrote an English vernacular which is in transition from Old to Middle English. There are, however, differences between them. Scribe 1’s work up to the 1121 annal is predominantly Late West Saxon. It can be presumed that he was influenced here by the language of his exemplar, /E.  In the Peterborough interpolations, most likely his own composition or translation, he is closer to Early Middle English, with East Midlands features, though there are signs of Middle English developments elsewhere in his work.11 This is also the case in his First Continuations. The second scribe, of the mid-century continuations, is even further along this linguistic journey.12 There are signs that the first scribe’s English was similar in some respects to that of the F scribe, and perhaps thus, again, of their common exemplar.13 The first scribe wrote the entire chronicle to annal 1121 at one time. The layout was generous, with wide margins, plus a line—or in the early folios half a line— for every blank number.14 Numbers to 1123 precede the text of their annal. From 1124 they vary: now usually but not invariably at the end of the previous annal in the work of Scribe 1; more erratically in the work of Scribe 2. The work is a very fair copy to annal 1121. Thereafter the first scribe added annals at different times. He continued the chronicle through to the annal for 1131. The changes of ink argue for a series of additions, not a single stint of writing: 1122; 1123; 1124; 1125–1126 line 11; 1126 line 12–1127; 1128–1131.15 The bulk of Chronicle E is the work of a single scribe. There was then a break in activity, until the work of Scribe 2. He was responsible for the annals 1132–1154. Their appearance suggests they were entered as a single block; internal evidence also suggests they were also composed as one. Although numbered as annals, the year-by-year stories spill out from that framework, drawing on later events to tell their story, the arrangement more thematic than chronological.16

10  See https://parker.stanford.edu/parker/catalog/cq531ww5470. 11  See e.g. Chronicle E, s.a. 1110: Ðises geares me began ærost to weorcenne on þam niwan mynstre on Ceortesæge. This same construction, in which OE ‘man’ has become ‘me’ in the formation of the passive is also found in Chronicle I, s.a. 1093 and 1130 (see p. 277n38). This occurrence in Chronicle E cannot, however, thus be taken as evidence of a Canterbury origin for the 1110 annal. The same construction is also found in the Peterborough continuations s.a. 1126 and 1137. I am very grateful to Thomas O’Donnell for discussion of the language here. 12  Following Irvine, Chronicle E, pp. ciii–clxvi, especially discussion at pp. cxxxix–clvii. 13  See especially Irvine, Chronicle E, pp. clvii–clxiii 14  Compare the run-ons in B and C and later parts of D. 15  Thus Clark, Peterborough Chronicle, pp. xvi and xxv, following Ker, Catalogue, p. 425; Whitelock, Peterborough Chronicle, p. 14; Irvine, Chronicle E, p. xix. 16 Irvine, Chronicle E, p. xix and especially Clark, Peterborough Chronicle, pp. xxv–xxvi.

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300  After Alfred

Chronicle E and Peterborough c.1121 Chronicle E was produced at Peterborough c.1121 and continued there. The con­ tinu­ations are Peterborough products. The chronicle text to 1121 is closely related to that now found in F, and in some sections of D, though it continues beyond both. This is chronicle /E in its final stage. However, Chronicle E, a very fair copy, already contains some twenty additions of Peterborough material, seamlessly copied as part of the text. These additions are related to other texts found in Peterborough archives. They inserted a Peterborough story into the wider one contained in Chronicle /E, thus forming Chronicle E. Of the twenty annals consisting in part or in whole of Peterborough material, eleven are in the annals numbered up to 1066, nine in those thereafter.17 The interest in Peterborough continues and intensifies in the continuations.18 Some are lengthy additions, like those in annals 656, 675, 777, and 963. They are for the most part copied in such a way that they are visually indistinguishable from the surrounding text, ‘smuggled in’;19 they are not identifiable as additions on the page. (See illustration 10, where the notice of the foundation of Peterborough is indistinguishable in the 654 annal from information about kings like Peada son of Penda, peada . . . pending.) A couple which were added at the end of the annals spill out into the margin, though even these are in the same ink and hand as the main text.20 The most recent editor prints them in small type for ease of identification.21 The Peterborough scribe/author made no such demarcation. He intended them to be read as part of the vernacular chronicle and to appear as part of it. These insertions parallel those found in Chronicle F, but in contrast to F they do not appear as insertions in this fine manuscript. The scribe of E must have had them to hand whilst he worked. The smoothness of his copying might raise questions about an exemplar into which they had already been inserted. In annals 1041 and 1052, however, the Peterborough material extends into the margins at the side and bottom of the page. This could argue that the scribe was in general a very careful worker incorporating new material as he went along, but in these cases he either received the new matter later, or initially overlooked it.

17  Annals 654, 656, 675, 686, 777, 852, 870, 963, 1013, 1041, 1052, 1066, 1069, 1070, 1102, 1103, 1107, 1114, 1115, and 1116. 18  See e.g. 1125, 1127, 1128, 1130, 1131, 1132, 1135, 1137, and 1154. 19  S. Irvine, ‘The Production of the Peterborough Chronicle’, in Jorgensen, Reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, pp. 49–66 at p. 53 and Home, The Peterborough Version, p. 103. 20  s.a.1041, 1052, and 1115. 21  Thus Irvine, Chronicle E. Plummer prints them in the same typeface as the bulk of the chronicle and Garmonsway’s edition follows this. Dorothy Whitelock in EHD, i does not print any of the early ones, referring to their existence in notes. EHD, ii does print Susie Tucker’s translation of the Peterborough material in annals 1042 (E 1041), 1052, 1066, 1069, 1070, 1102, 1103, 1107, 1114, 1115, and 1116.

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Chronicles E, /E, and H: The End of the Tradition?  301

Illustration 10.  Chronicle E. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 636, fo 14r: a seamless insertion in annal 654 of a note on Peterborough’s foundation.

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302  After Alfred Much of this new material is also found in other Peterborough documents. Three charters, prefaced by the so-called Relatio Heddae, a narrative account of the abbey’s foundation, are found as a group in the mid-twelfth-century Liber Niger.22 Annals 656, 675, and 963 are closely linked to these. Together they provide an account of the abbey’s origins and refoundation, and a basis of its claims to lands and privileges. The charters are twelfth-century products. Other Peterborough charters and leases form the basis of annals in Chronicle E, for example E 777 and 852.23 In his use of the abbey’s archive the work of the scribe parallels that of the F scribe. That extends in both cases to the use of charters recently forged or largely amended. From E 1013 onwards, the Peterborough additions consist of notices of the abbots—deaths, accessions, and their contribution to the wealth of the abbey—and of the losses to and attacks on the abbey’s property, the two themes often linked. These include the lengthy annal on events at Peterborough in 1070 involving the retired bishop of Durham, already encountered in chapter 12. They laud Abbot Leofric (1052–1066), nephew of the Earl of Mercia, in whose day Peterborough was the ‘Golden Borough’ (1066). Annal 1114 has a long account of the appointment of Abbot Ernulf to the see of Rochester, his reluctance to leave, and the sadness of the monks at his departure. A lost history of the abbots may lie behind these. The later ‘house history’ of Peterborough by Hugh Candidus had access to earlier documents independent of his probable use of the E Chronicle itself.24 The story of Peterborough abbots continued to engross the first scribe through his own continuations in the 1020s annals, which contain an increasingly impassioned and negative account of the abbacy of the royally appointed Poitevin Henry of St Jean d’Angely.25 This is presumably his own work. Chronicle E is thus part of a wider historical enterprise in early-twelfth-century Peterborough. That involved the production of charters and an origin legend, which are themselves closely linked to Chronicle E. The Liber Niger, the abbey’s earliest cartulary, may have been written by the last scribe of E, thus mid century. But its compilation is probably earlier, and may itself derive from even earlier stages of documentary collection at the abbey.26 There is room for debate about which documents were used, including, for example, whether Chronicle E’s scribe used the Relatio Heddae or vice versa.27 What is beyond doubt is the place of

22 Kelly, Charters of Peterborough Abbey, nos 1, 2, and 16 and pp. 359–60. 23  Cf. Kelly, Charters of Peterborough Abbey, nos 6, 7, and 9. The account of the abbey’s destruction by Danes (E 870), may be linked to Kelly, Charters of Peterborough Abbey, no. 16. 24  On Hugh see Home, The Peterborough Version, pp. 146–71. 25  On whom see C. Clark, ‘ “This ecclesiastical adventurer”: Henry of Saint-Jean d’Angely’, EHR, 84 (1969), pp. 548–60. 26  See Kelly, Charters of Peterborough Abbey, pp. 86–8. 27  See e.g. Colin Peterson, ‘Studies in the Early History of Peterborough Abbey, c. 650–c. 1066’, Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Birmingham, 1995, p. 147.

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Chronicles E, /E, and H: The End of the Tradition?  303 Chronicle E and its making at Peterborough in the context of this historical ferment, which was carefully writing the abbey’s past and, where necessary, forging documentation to do that.28 This forgery included the critical ‘origin’ charter of King Wihtred, the papal privilege in the name of Pope Agatho, and the charter of King Edgar.29 The Agatho privilege has close links to one produced at St Augustine’s Canterbury.30 These links extend to Wihtred’s charter.31 They point to a Canterbury connection for this historiographical work at Peterborough. It was Canterbury, too, where we left Chronicle /E, known at Peterborough by c.1121, in the hands of the F scribe/ author c. ad 1100. But whereas the scribe/author of F would place /E at Christ Church, this new connection for Peterborough’s scribe/historians is apparently St Augustine’s. Abbot Ernulf is the obvious Canterbury linkman, but his connection is, at first sight, straightforwardly with Christ Church. Invited from Bec by Lanfranc in the 1070s, he came to Christ Church Canterbury, where Archbishop Anselm made him prior c.1096. In 1107 he was appointed abbot of Peterborough after a fouryear vacancy. His abbacy was fondly remembered, including for his new building work. Chronicle E’s annal for 1114 records the extreme sadness of the monks at his—as here presented, reluctant—move to the bishopric of Rochester. At the latter see he was responsible for the making of a famous manuscript of Old English laws, the Textus Roffensis, and was active in the building up of the library. In this he demonstrated a lively interest in the pre-1066 past, and in history more generally. Copies of Nennius’s Historia Brittonum, a composite text, dating in some part from the ninth century though with later rewriting, and lives of the archbishop and saints Ælfheah and Dunstan were among works acquired under his aegis.32 His career and his interests are the obvious link between historiographical ferment at Canterbury and Peterborough.33 Ernulf had left Peterborough before 1121, but continuing connections with his former abbey are likely.34 Peterborough’s access to a vernacular chronicle found at Christ Church c.1100 (i.e. /E) is readily explicable via Ernulf.

28  On this Kelly, Charters of Peterborough Abbey, commentary on charters 1, 2, and 16 and e.g. pp. 99–100. 29 Kelly, Charters of Peterborough Abbey, nos 1, 2, and 16, and E 656, 675, and 963. 30  As first noted by W. Levison, England and the Continent in the Eighth Century (Oxford, 1946), pp. 219–20. 31  Thus Levison and cf. Kelly, Charters of Peterborough Abbey, p. 100. 32  See M.  P.  Richards, Texts and their Traditions in the Medieval Library of Rochester Cathedral Priory, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 78.3 (Philadelphia, 1988) and P. Cramer (2004, September 23). Ernulf [Arnulf] (1039/40–1124), bishop of Rochester. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. Retrieved 11 Dec. 2018, from https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-8841. 33  Thus J. Paxton, ‘Forging Communities’ and cf. Home, The Peterborough Version, pp. 111–13. 34  Paxton, ‘Forging Communities’ at pp. 107–8.

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304  After Alfred But the Peterborough forgeries link the abbey to St Augustine’s, not Christ Church. Ernulf may still be the key. Rivalries between Christ Church and St Augustine’s are often stressed.35 But these may have been overplayed, and in any case should not be generalized as a constant antagonism which precluded intellectual interchange and exchange.36 These two houses—and Rochester—were knit into a triangle of mutual influence by the late eleventh century.37 Ernulf ’s library acquisitions for Rochester are just one example of this, using exemplars from both the Christ Church cathedral priory and St Augustine’s abbey. If an earl­ ier version of Chronicle E existed at Peterborough, of which the surviving E is a fair copy, Ernulf, with his historical interest and Canterbury connections, would be a prime candidate for its patronage and encouragement.38 Chronicle E fits snugly into the historiographical context of early-twelfth-century Peterborough. It was, however, still for the most part a vernacular chronicle within the tradition of those texts stretching back to Alfred. The bulk of its content was provided by Chronicle /E, the exemplar copied at Peterborough now. If Chronicle E is to be fully understood, Chronicle /E together with its later–eleventh-/earlytwelfth-century development and annals must be further considered.

35 Kelly, Charters of St Augustine’s Abbey, p. xiv. Sandwich, which featured in Christ Church additions to Chronicle A and F, was a particular point of dispute with St Augustine’s: N. Brooks, Early History of the Church of Canterbury, p. 293 and e.g. Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church Canterbury, pp. 1088–9. A revolt by the monks of St Augustine’s and their total replacement from Christ Church by Lanfranc is a drama told in detail in the Acta Lanfranci added to Chronicle A. 36  The significance of the revolt and replacement of monks and the bitterness pictured in the Acta Lanfranci may be a particular reflection of deteriorating relations c.1100: see P. A. Hayward, ‘Some Reflections on the Historical Value of the So-called Acta Lanfranci’, Historical Research, 77 (2004), pp 141–60. The intellectual and artistic links between the two were, at some points at least during the eleventh century, very close: see e.g. J. J. G. Alexander,‘The Illumination of the Gospels’, in N. Barker (ed.), The York Gospels, Roxburghe Club (London, 1986), pp. 65–79 at p. 76: the decorative and figurative style points to Canterbury, where it is impossible to choose between Christ Church and St Augustine’s, ‘which seem anyway to have been so closely connected in this period’ (i.e. in the earlier eleventh century). 37  Whereas Richard Gameson saw a sharp difference between Christ Church and St Augustine’s manuscripts under Lanfranc, the former house paralleling Bec, the latter a repository of Anglo-Saxon values and traditions’ (see his ‘English Manuscript Art in the Late Eleventh Century: Canterbury and its Context’, in Eales and Sharp (eds), Canterbury and the Norman Conquest, pp. 95–144 at pp. 140–1), Heslop has emphasized the influence between the two, and included Gundulf ’s Rochester as a third element in this Kentish triangle: T. A. Heslop, ‘The Canterbury Calendars and the Norman Conquest’, in Eales and Sharpe (eds), Canterbury and the Norman Conquest, pp. 53–85. M. Brett, ‘Gundulf and the Cathedral Communities of Canterbury and Rochester’, in Eales and Sharpe (eds), Canterbury and the Norman Conquest, pp. 15–25 stressed the close links between Christ Church, St Augustine’s, and Rochester under Lanfranc. See also Paxton, ‘Forging Communities’ and E.  Carson Pastan, ‘ “Quid faciat . . . Scollandus”. The Abbey Church of St Augustine’s c. 1073–1100’, in E.  Carson Pastan, S. D. White, and K. Gilbert (eds), The Bayeux Tapestry and its Contexts: A Reassessment (Woodbridge, 2014), pp. 260–87. 38  J.  Paxton, ‘Forging Communities’ argues strongly and persuasively for Ernulf ’s importance in the production of E.  See also A.  M.  Morris, ‘Forging Links with the Past: The Twelfth-Century Reconstruction of Anglo-Saxon Peterborough’, Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Leicester, 2006, pp. 53–62 on Ernulf ’s provision of the Canterbury models and pp. 73–7 on his possible involvement in the compilation of an earlier version of Chronicle E.

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Chronicles E, /E, and H: The End of the Tradition?  305

Chronicle /E Whereas identifying the place, date, and sources of Chronicle E is straightforward, this is by no means the case with its predecessor /E. At first sight the story appears simple. Chronicle /E was a Canterbury chronicle, linked to its arch­bishops and the cathedral community of Christ Church. That story has, however, been questioned, especially for the annals numbered after c.1060, but also for earlier ones. St Augustine’s has been seen as the mid-eleventh-century home of /E. There is no consensus over the home(s) of its later-eleventh-century annals.39 Some of these have been labelled as ‘court annals’ in a much stricter sense of that term than that used in this book. A number of different scenarios are possible. Were /E’s later-eleventh-century annals simply continuations of an existing chronicle at a single centre, Canterbury? Even if they were copied there, were they authored elsewhere? Are we dealing with a succession of different authors at one location? A combination of sources, of annals written elsewhere, for instance, combined into /E’s development? Chronicle E itself gives little or no palaeographical guidance to the answers. Chronicle E is a late fair copy. /E is an earlier stage. Behind both lies a long history of development, where even the last stages are masked in the current manuscript. We are thrown back, as with Chronicle D, on content; on localizable detail, on the tone, subject, and structure of annals, all of which may suggest groupings of annals and give hints of different authors, times, or places of composition. No simple answer may be possible. But pursuit of the questions illuminates historical writing beyond E and /E themselves, especially at the turn of the eleventh century.

i)  /E and Canterbury: Christ Church or St Augustine’s? Chronicle E had a long history before /E became available to a Peterborough monk c.1121. Much of that has been covered in earlier chapters. It started with a copy of the Northern Recension and its continuations, a reflection perhaps of the Northern Recension’s archiepiscopal nature and connections. It contained mideleventh-century annals written at Canterbury, arguably connected to the arch­ bishops, perhaps already at Christ Church. In c.1100 the resulting chronicle /E was available to a Christ Church monk who used it in the production of F.  A straightforward tale: c.1100 a Christ Church Canterbury chronicle was used and worked on by a Christ Church monk, prior to its copying by an early-twelfthcentury monk at a house, Peterborough, whose recent and revered abbot had been prior of Christ Church. From the mid eleventh century, if not before, /E would be 39  See Clark, Peterborough Chronicle, pp. xxii–xxiv; S. Irvine, ‘The Production of the Peterborough Chronicle’ at p. 52; Cf. Dumville, ‘Some Aspects’, pp. 30–1.

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306  After Alfred a Christ Church Canterbury chronicle, with additions and con­tinu­ations made there through to 1121. That simple narrative leaves many questions. Most commentators have argued that up to annal 1061 the mid-century /E was at Canterbury, but at St Augustine’s, not Christ Church.40 In the middle of the eleventh century, Canterbury was the home of a chronicle which was part of Chronicle E’s recent history (see chapters  10 and  11). The chronicling connection between Abingdon and Canterbury, articulated around an auxiliary archbishop of Canterbury, pointed to an archiepiscopal milieu, most likely Christ Church. The continuing interest in archbishops, and especially the engagement with questions surrounding Stigand and the pallium, underlined this. Hints of an apologetic presentation of Stigand fitted this scenario. Whether these latter entries were pre-1066, as is likely, or later, as is possible, they suggest writers close to the archbishop. The chronicle which contained all this was in the hands of the Christ Church monk who compiled Chronicle F c. ad 1100. He felt licensed not only to make use of it, but also to annotate it with Latin annals. All this points to Christ Church as the Canterbury home of the mid-century annals now found in E, and once in chronicle /E. That latter chronicle was already more or less as Chronicle E now is, to annal 1058. The work of the F chronicler who can be used as a check to this point is testimony to that. Yet most scholars who have attributed a home to chronicle /E place its mideleventh-century annals at St Augustine’s. Four references in Chronicle E to St Augustine’s are the grounds for this: the appointment of Abbot Wulfric because of the illness of Abbot Ælfstan (E 1043(2)); the death of Abbot Ælfstan (E 1044); the sending of abbot Wulfric, with others, to the synod of Rheims (E 1046(2)); and Wulfric’s death—precisely dated—in E 1061. Attention to abbots was not a prior feature of any of the earlier stages of Chronicle /E.  This flurry of interest is a strong argument. The question is real: Christ Church or St Augustine’s as an earl­ ier home of /E? There are, however, plausible reasons why the St Augustine’s references might be found in a Christ Church chronicle. As was clear in chapter 11, the author of these mid-century annals was a Kentish patriot, or at least a man determined to put the most flattering construction on the actions of local people in the crises of these years. Even were he based at Christ Church, it would be in character for him to be interested in local ecclesiastical events in Canterbury beyond his own house. The appointment of a bishop, Siward, to help Archbishop Eadsige ‘because of his illness’ might have prompted comment on a comparable appointment at St Augustine’s, again as a result of ‘great illness’ (E 1043(1) and 1043(2)). Such

40 Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, pp. xlviii–l; Whitelock, Peterborough Chronicle, p. 30; Dumville, ‘Some Aspects’, pp. 28, 30–1; Levison, England and the Continent, p. 201.

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Chronicles E, /E, and H: The End of the Tradition?  307 appointments were irregular; was one such irregularity—in the archbishopric, bolstered textually by reference to another—at St Augustine’s?41 Under 1061 /E’s annal had noted not only the death of Abbot Wulfric, but also that of Godwine, bishop of St Martin’s Canterbury. St Martin’s was a church where Archbishop Eadsige and perhaps Siward were based during their legally dubious co-archiepiscopacies in the 1040s.42 That same annal notes the appointment of the monk Æthelsige to succeed Wulfric at St Augustine’s, a monk of Old Minster (Winchester). Archbishop Stigand was still bishop of Winchester in plurality with Canterbury; the appointment of a monk from his own community there extended his influence over St Augustine’s. E’s annal links Stigand and the appointment.43 Abbot Wulfric himself remained of interest to Christ Church monks. He is the only abbot mentioned in the decidedly archiepiscopal Christ Church annals identified as ‘Chronicle I’.44 The ecclesiastical politics of mid-eleventh-century Canterbury were complex. The brief references in Chronicle /E may allude to them, but with little clear indication now of the author’s stance or perspective. Are such bald annals simple statements of local ecclesiastical succession, or loaded comment in struggles for independence or power? And to whose advantage, in whose interest, from whose perspective? Neither St Augustine’s nor Christ Church is clearly indicated. St Augustine’s cannot be ruled out as the home of Chronicle /E in the mid eleventh century. The balance of evidence, however, tips in favour of Christ Church and the archbishops.

ii)  Content of Annals from the 1060s Canterbury, whichever house, looks like /E’s home to the early 1060s at least. How long did it continue to be the place where annals were added to /E? Lanfranc’s death is recorded in annal 1089, in a monastic voice and a personal one—a warm one, unless a heavy irony is writ into it: ‘In this year the venerable father and comforter of monks Archbishop Lanfranc left this life, and we hope that he went to the heavenly kingdom’. Is this a Canterbury, Christ Church annal? Should we take it as proof that /E was at Canterbury, and its annals authored there, throughout the intervening decades? But there is little special attention to that city or its 41 Brooks, Early History of the Church of Canterbury, p. 300 for the ‘grossly uncanonical’ nature of Siward’s appointment. 42  Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church Canterbury, p. 25 and especially the commentary on no. 153. 43  It reads folgode þa Stigande. If the king is still the subject of folgode this may be read as ‘followed Stigand then’, i.e. as Garmonsway reads it ‘complied with Stigand’s wishes’. If the new abbot is the subject it would be his following—in the sense of discipleship or loyalty—of Stigand which is being noted. In either case the connection with the archbishop is stressed. 44  s.a. 1061: Her forðferde Godwine biscop 7 Wulfric abbod, an annal clearly linked to E 1061.

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308  After Alfred clerics after the 1061 annal.45 The fall of Stigand and the accession of Archbishop Lanfranc go unremarked. There is a possible ‘Canterbury’ reference: the burning of Christ Church noted as one of the litany of horrors in E 1067, alongside William’s taking of hostages and cash and his distribution of men’s land. This is also in Chronicle D. It is part of the group of annals found in both E and D. But Canterbury does not feature otherwise in the annals linked to Chronicle D, discussed in chapter  12. E now shows the same concern with the story of English survivors, in Peterborough and in ex-Durham bishops, in East Anglian revolt and in Scotland; it displays the same lack of concern with the fate of English bishops and/or ecclesiastical appointments. Such appointments had been significant in /E’s mid-century annals. Signs of a new place of composition; of the impact of traumatic new subject matter? Witness certainly to continued contact with D or its source, and not the fleeting contact with D itself which Canterbury’s F’s scribe seems to have had. The abrupt ending of Chronicle D makes it impossible to determine whether this group of annals linked to /E continued—and with it their home or author. E’s annals for 1083 to 1088 can look like another potential group. They centre on three long annals, 1085–1087. They cover the events of William the Conqueror’s final years. They include the making of the survey now known as Domesday, the death of the king with a very full assessment of his reign, and the violence surrounding the succession, disputed within William’s family and resulting in the rule of William II (Rufus).46 On the basis of tone, content, and personal voice annal 1083 may belong with this group; the drama of a violent attack by Frenchmen on Glastonbury, on the monks standing at the altar, with arrows shot into the cross itself, and the blood of the monks streaming down the steps from the altar onto the floor. These annals are remarkable for their length, their personal voice, and their passion—and for a readiness to comment openly and fully on the rule of a king in ways which are far from uniformly complimentary. They contain the last lengthy poetic material incorporated in a vernacular annal, the famous poem about William’s oppressions. The repetition of an annal number in 1085 is not an indication of a new source being taken up in the midst of this group.47 These annals appear to belong together. If annals are to be assessed according to the ‘human noise’ they voice, it is loud in these, and, in E 1086, deafening. These annals are often impassioned and emotional. The personal voice of the annalist intrudes over and over again. ‘I’ (ic) and ‘we’ recur, regarding the shameful 45 Clark, Peterborough Chronicle, p. xxii. 46  On these annals and their style see Clark, Peterborough Chronicle, pp. xxiii and lxxiv–lxxix. 47  Annal 1085 begins with the Christmas meeting of 1085. The 1086 annal began with the Easter and Pentecost meetings. The scribe of chronicle E, perhaps accustomed to a structure in which all three meetings in a single year would be noted, repeated annal number 1085 before the Easter meeting of 1086.

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Chronicles E, /E, and H: The End of the Tradition?  309 enquiry of Domesday, the death of William ‘who had acted wretchedly, and whom a more wretched fate now overtook’, and especially in the personal testimony of the eye-witness who had ‘looked upon the king’ and lived at his court. That was a testimony cast in terms which arguably show some evidence of intertextuality with earlier sections of the vernacular chronicles back to the annals of Æthelred, with the mid-century annals, and most especially with those annals as they are found in Chronicle D.48 If this is not mere parallel expression evoked by parallel dramatic circumstances, it argues an annalist familiar with the idiom of recent vernacular chronicling and particularly with that found in Chronicle  D. Were these a continuation of the annals already identified as common to D and E, surviving now in E alone but written as a continuation of /D? Whatever is the case, there is still no hint of the place of composition, and no clear sign that they should be treated as a separate group assigned a sep­ar­ate home or author. If their intertextuality points, inevitably, backwards, their structure has hints of annals to come. The annal for 1085 pays particular attention to the first of the three great royal meetings of this year: at midwinter at Gloucester, where the king was ‘with his witan and held his hired (court) for five days’. The annal for 1086, numbered in E 1085(2), has his crown-wearing and hired at Winchester at Easter, and at Westminster at Pentecost, where his son Henry was dubbed as a knight (dubbade his sunu . . . to ridere). This structuring of the year around the meetings of the court became an important feature of the annals found in E—and elsewhere—from annals numbered c.1090 onwards (see below, pp. 310–11, 312–14) It has been noted as a feature setting annals from around 1090 apart. Yet it is already clear in these earlier annals, and prob­ably led the copyist later at Peterborough to number this annal twice (above, p. 308n47) If this is an important diagnostic feature of annals for the 1090s onwards, it is already present here. * * * * * * * * * * * * There are continuities as well as differences across the annals found in E numbered from the early 1060s onwards. Changes of person, emotional involvement with the events described, contemporaneity, and retrospect—all these may have affected style and content. Over such a long period there was likely more than one annalist at work. Different annalists working sequentially at the same centre; different centres of production. It is difficult if not impossible to decide between scenarios. The home of some or all of these annals could be Canterbury. Someone close to an—earlier English—archbishop might well have ‘looked upon the king’ and

48 See sceame to tellanne concerning Domesday in E 1085(1) and compare D 1050 concerning Ulf, but also C 1056 and D 1059. E 1085(2), aa hit wyrsode mid mannan swiðor 7 swiðor . . . gebete hit God elmehtiga þonne his willa sy, recalls D 1066 mentioning castles and other oppressions, 7 a syððan hit yflade swiðe. Wurðe \god/ se ende þonne God wylle, itself in D’s case a direct reference back to annal D 975.

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310  After Alfred lived at his court. Might that apply also to men once close to Ealdred of York? The connection between these two ‘archiepiscopal’ chronicles, D and /E after 1066 is worth emphasis. Should Peterborough be seen as the textual meeting place, and already in /E’s development before 1121? Whichever, their content shows less and less knowledge of or concern with the sort of ecclesiastical events which featured in pre-1066 annals. Eyewitness at court one of their authors may have been, but the stance is increasingly that of a commentator, and a critical one, rather than an involved participant. What is clear is that in the authors of some annals in /E we are dealing with monks, and monks whose monastic self-identity is writ ever more clearly. Lanfranc as ‘father and comforter of monks’ recalls descriptions of Æthelwold of Winchester (D and E 984). But a remark such as ‘little wisdom (rihtwisnesse) except among monks’ (E 1085) shows a novel partisanship, one which will be re­iter­ated with emphasis and elaboration in E’s Peterborough continuation annal for 1123, where questions of the appropriateness of a clerk ruling over monks were hotly contested. They recall the F’s scribe’s insertions in annals 870 and 995, underlain by views of the superiority of monks over clerks. These monastic interjections set /E and F apart from D, whose passionate, intensely personal tone betrays little if any of this perspective. The differences here have a bearing on assessments of D’s final home(s). Wherever they were written, some of these annals in /E had a monastic home and author. Monastic authors probably applied to /E pre-1066. But their voice and agenda were now more explicitly monastic than in almost any of the annals written before the Norman Conquest.

Chronicle H, /E, and the Latin Chroniclers A monastic voice, yet from c.1090, if not already in 1085, the annals in /E have structural features which have seen them dubbed as the nearest to ‘court annals’ of all the vernacular chronicles.49 The hired/court becomes a major theme and structuring element. The hired and its oppression are one among the many disasters—gelds, plagues, bad weather—which made these years as described in these annals often ‘heavy’. This theme and structure continues in annals beyond 1121, but much more widely than merely in Chronicle E. It is found more widely than in /E before 1121, too. Increasingly longer, increasingly well-informed or at least more concerned with political events, /E’s annals from the 1090s are of particular interest. Parallels to them, and important comparators, are found in the final vernacular chronicle, the fragment of Chronicle H, and in the Latin chroniclers of the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. Paradoxically, these ‘court’ annals are

49  Thus Dumville, ‘Some Aspects’, p. 31.

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Chronicles E, /E, and H: The End of the Tradition?  311 not inconsistent with monastic environments, nor with chroniclers whose pos­ition vis-à-vis the court had changed since before 1066.

i)  Chronicle H and /E Chronicle H is no more than a fragment, a single leaf of a vernacular chronicle, now bound in to London, BL, MS Cotton Domitian A. ix, a manuscript made up of such fragments. It contains annals in the vernacular. It is the solitary survivor of what must once have been a longer text. Its annals cover the years 1113–1114.50 They begin in mid annal and appear to end in the same way. Ker dated the hand to the early twelfth century. He noted the changes in ‘manner of writing’ and ­colour of ink between the two years, and a change of ink within 1114. His ‘impression’ was thus of ‘contemporary entries written up at short intervals’.51 As we have frequently had cause for reminder, such a pattern need not indicate year-by-year or contemporary addition of annals. There is no annal number; but the page appears to have been subject to trimming; much of where the margin would have been has gone. Annal 1114 begins with a large red ‘O’. The fragment most likely once belonged to a more complete, rubricated vernacular annalistic chronicle. H is thus within the vernacular chronicling tradition. It is important con­firm­ ation that vernacular chronicling continued at more than one centre into the twelfth century. It is sobering proof of what may have been lost. The most recent editor of Chronicle E stresses that the material of Chronicle H ‘is completely independent of that found in E’.52 That is true in the sense that one is not derived from the other. They are both, however, witness to comparable patterns of annalmaking, similar themes, and common matter. These same elements are found in Latin chronicles of the early twelfth century. Together they illuminate the wider context of /E’s annals from the 1090s to early 1120s. They confirm that what has been lost is unlikely to have been fundamentally different from what has survived. H’s annal for 1113 begins with what is clearly the end of a comment or narrative: ‘so that they might speak with difficulty’. The death of Abbot Peter of Gloucester then follows (with precise date, 17 July) and the king’s appointment in his place of William, who was a monk of the same monastery,53 on 5 October. More of the 1114 annal has survived. It begins with the king (Henry I) wearing his crown at Windsor at midwinter. There follows a list of Henry’s ecclesiastical appointments—all beginning ‘he gave’—Worcester to Theobald his ‘cleric’; the

50 Plummer, Two Chronicles, ii, p. xxxvii, printed in Two Chronicles, i, pp. 243–5. 51 Ker, Catalogue, no. 150, p. 188. 52 Irvine, Chronicle E, p. lxxv. 53  Note as below, ylcon mynstre—meaning Gloucester? Or had the annal had an earlier mention of a monastery, which is here referred back to, as with Caen in 1114?

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312  After Alfred abbacy of Ramsey to Rainald, a monk of Caen; York to Richard, a monk of that same monastery (munuc on þam ylcon mynstre); the abbacy of Thorney to Robert, a monk of St Evroul—plus the earldom of Northamptonshire given to David, who was the queen’s brother. ‘After this Thomas Archbishop of York died on 17 February. After this he gave the abbacy of Cerne to William who was a monk of Caen.’ At Easter the king was at Thorpe near Northampton. ‘After that he gave the Archbishopric of Canterbury to Ralph, bishop of Rochester, who succeeded (feng to) on 24 February. After this Nigel, abbot of Burton, died on 3 May. After that Chichester was burnt down, including the minster/monastery there on 5 May’. At Pentecost the king was at St Albans. (The ink changes at this point.) After that he went with his army to Wales at midsummer, and built castles there. And the Welsh kings came to him and became his men and swore oaths of loyalty to him. After that he came to Winchester and there gave the archbishopric of York to Thurstan his ‘cleric’ and he gave that abbacy at St Edmund (Bury) to Albold, who was a monk of Bec, on 16 August. After that he gave the abbacy of Muchelney to Ealdulf, who was a monk at that same monastery on the day of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (i.e. 14 September). He also gave the abbacy of Burton to Geoffrey, who was a monk at Old Minster. At the same time (or, on the same occasion: æt þam ylcon sæle) Archbishop Ralph gave the bishopric of Rochester . . . The text here ends. Chronicle H’s annals follow the king’s courts at the great feasts: Christmas at Windsor, Easter at Thorpe near Northampton, Pentecost at St Albans. This parallels the practice of Chronicle E, or rather /E. The first reference to the king’s court and its location at the outset of an annal comes in E 1086: Easter. From the 1091 annal this kind of reference is more regular in /E.54 Chronicle E or /E was also tracking the king’s movements at the great feasts, including but not exclusively those specified as crown wearings (E 1111). H is in line with this, and specifies that the 1114 Christmas was a crown wearing and at Windsor. It does not so

54  1091: Christmas, Westminster; 1094: Christmas, Gloucester; 1095: Christmas, Wissant, Easter, Winchester, Pentecost, i.e. Whitsun, Windsor; 1096: Christmas, Windsor; 1097: Christmas, Normandy, Easter, Windsor (though Winchester had been planned); 1098: Christmas, Normandy (note in this year as in 1096 this is followed by a list of clerics who died); 1099: Christmas, Normandy, returned Easter, Pentecost, first court in a new building at Westminster; 1100: Christmas, Gloucester, Easter, Winchester, Pentecost, Westminster; 1101: Christmas, Westminster, Easter, Winchester (note also that in this and some other years, Michaelmas appears as a significant date); 1102: Christmas, Westminster, Easter, Winchester, (Michaelmas, Westminster); 1103: Christmas, Westminster, Easter, Winchester; 1104: Christmas, Westminster, Easter, Winchester, Pentecost, Westminster; 1105: Christmas, Windsor, spring to Normandy; 1106: Christmas, Westminster, later in annal, Easter, Bath, Pentecost, Salisbury; 1107: Christmas, Normandy, Easter, Windsor, Pentecost, Westminster (lots of ecclesiastical positions were filled—‘never so many’—but no details are given); 1108: Christmas, Westminster, Easter, Winchester, Pentecost, Westminster; 1109: Christmas and Easter, Normandy, Pentecost, Westminster; 1110: Christmas, Westminster, Easter, Marlborough, Pentecost, New Windsor for first time; 1111: for first time Henry did not wear his crown at Christmas, Easter, or Pentecost and he went overseas in August; 1112: E says Henry stayed in Normandy; 1113: Henry was in Normandy for the festivals; 1114 E: Christmas, Windsor, but then he ne heold hired nan oftar (‘he held no court after’).

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Chronicles E, /E, and H: The End of the Tradition?  313 specify the other meetings it records that year. H is also in line with some of E’s earlier content from the end of the 1090s in giving ecclesiastical appointments, though this is fuller in H than in /E, if Chronicle E is a simple witness to /E’s content. Even E 1107, which looks like a possible parallel to H 1114 does not match H’s coverage. The writer of E 1107 knows there were many appointments, but does not give them in detail. Under 1114, E has a lengthy description of natural phenomena and disasters, details typical of Chronicle /E but not found in H, plus a detailed account of the Rochester episcopal appointment, which involved the moving of the abbot of Peterborough and the monks’ sad reaction to their loss. E also notes the appointment of the new abbot, a monk of St John’s, and his journey to Rome with the new archbishop. Some of this may have followed in the rest of H’s annal, now lost, though its specific interest in Peterborough makes this material a candidate for E’s later elaboration, possibly displacing material originally in /E. Although there is different detail in E and H, both share a common structure for these two annals, around the crown wearings, court meetings, and royal movements. Both share common material, including an expedition to Wales, the building of castles, and making peace (see ‘made peace’, griðedon E; ‘the Welsh kings came to him and became his men and swore firm oaths’, ða wyliscan kingas coman to him 7 becoman his menn 7 him held aðas sworan H). Far from being independent, E (or /E) and H are variants on a common pattern, one which had established itself since the 1090s annals, at least on the basis of the evidence of E.

ii)  H, /E, E, and Latin Chroniclers The ghost of this same structure appears in John of Worcester, though his greater readiness to rearrange and combine material and his undoubted use of Eadmer’s Historia Novorum for these years have overlain and obscured it to some extent.55 Henry of Huntingdon, too, had a source which had regular mentions of crown

55  John of Worcester notes a meeting in 1096 on 1 January at Windsor, where the bishop of Durham died; in 1099, after an account of Urban’s Rome council, John has William return and hold his Pentecost, i.e. Whitsun, court at London, where ecclesiastical preferments were given out. He refers to a meeting on St Michael’s feast day in 1102 at Westminster with investitures there and depositions. In Easter 1103 the court was at Winchester; in Pentecost 1104 it was at Westminster. In 1109 Henry returned to England and held his court at Westminster at Pentecost. 1113 and 1114 do not have any specific references to courts, though John notes s.a. 1113 the appointment of Teolfus to Worcester on 5 kal. January (28 December) at Windsor. (For 1114 John has the appointments also found in E, but with more specific detail: thus 24 February as the date of the death of Thomas of York and 26 April for the election of Ralph as archbishop of Canterbury. He notes that Ernulf of Peterborough was chosen as the bishop of Rochester. A low tide and people crossing Thames on foot is mentioned. John has less detail on ecclesiastical appointments than H, but some of the same. H lacks the Peterborough and Rochester appointments, perhaps because it ends before they would have been mentioned.)

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314  After Alfred wearings and meetings at the great feasts.56 In both John and even more in Henry, the bones of a structure which included meetings of the court/curia with or without reference to crown wearings, plus some major events especially ecclesiastical appointments is still there. All this is common with Chronicles H and /E.  The authorial and compilation practices of these Latin chroniclers have obscured the parallels, but they are undoubtedly there. In both John and Henry’s chronicles this structuring of annals continues after the making of Chronicle E at Peterborough c.1121. In Henry’s case, it lasts into the early 1130s, and his last annals on the reign of Henry I. The parallels are even clearer in the Latin Annals of Waverley, which follow E closely.57 For annal 1114, for example, they are very close to E—from Christmas at Windsor ‘and that year he did not hold his court after’,58 but lacking E’s material on the Peterborough appointment. The Annals of Waverley have instead the cre­ ation of the bishopric of Ely and the implications of this for Lincoln. They do not have the fuller account of 1114, as given in H.59 Chronicle /E, or something very like it, in its pre-Peterborough stage was the source of the Annals of Waverley.60 Although Susan Irvine is right to stress that Chronicle H is not E’s source, the fragment of annals in H is part of the same chronicling world as that of /E, one also inhabited by the Latin chroniclers. All reflect an annalistic structure which 56  1097: return to England, festive diadematus esset ad Pentecosten apud Winleshores (Henry of Huntingdon, p. 444); 1099: primum curiam suam in nova aula apud Westmuster (Henry of Huntingdon, pp. 444–6). Henry notes that William (Rufus) held his court (curiam tenuisset) gloriose et patrio honore in 1100: Christmas at Gloucester, Easter at Winchester, Pentecost in London (Henry of Huntingdon, p. 446); he states that in 1101 Henry held his court at Christmas at Westminster, at Winchester at Easter (Henry of Huntingdon, p. 448); in 1107 at Easter it was at Windsor (Henry of Huntingdon, p. 454); in 1108 at Pentecost the court was held at New Windsor which he (King Henry) himself had built (Henry of Huntingdon, p. 456). There are no courts noted in the year 1114. 57  See e.g. 1091: Christmas, Westminster; 1094: Christmas, Gloucester; 1095: Christmas, Wissant, Pentecost, Windsor; 1096: Christmas, Windsor (and like John details of the Durham bishopric); 1097: Christmas, Normandy, Easter, Winchester, Pentecost, Windsor; 1098: Normandy; 1099: Christmas, Normandy, Easter in England, the Pentecost curia at Westminster; 1100: Christmas, Gloucester, Easter, Winchester, Pentecost, Westminster; 1101: Christmas, Westminster, Easter, Winchester; 1102: Christmas, Westminster, Easter, Winchester, Michaelmas fuit apud (not tenuit curiam as above) Westminster; 1103: Christmas, Westminster, Easter, Winchester (note that Chronicle E does recite both at outset of annal—but has events in between); 1104: Christmas, Westminster, Easter, Winchester, Pentecost, Westminster; 1105: Christmas, Windsor; 1106: Christmas, Westminster, Easter Bath, Pentecost, Salisbury (as in Chronicle E, the arrangement of the annal separates the Christmas court from the other two); 1107: Easter, Windsor (mid annal—and unlike in Chronicle E separated from) Pentecost, Westminster; 1108: Christmas in Westminster, Easter, Winchester, Pentecost, Westminster; 1109: Christmas and Easter in Normandy, Pentecost back in England in London (Chronicle E has Westminster); 1110: Christmas, Westminster, Easter, Marlborough, Pentecost, the first at New Windsor; 1111: Hoc anno non fuit coronatus, cf. Chronicle E: On þison geare ne bær se king Henri his coronan to Cristesmæssan ne to Eastron ne to Pentecosten; 1112: all year in Normandy, as E; 1113: king in Normandy (Chronicle E explicitly refers to three feasts he spent there). 58  et non tenuit amplius curiam suam anno ille, AW; 7 þæs geares syððan he ne heold hired nan oftar, E. 59  Note that by 1121 E and Annals of Waverley have parted company to some extent: AW has all the feasts, E lacks Easter. The Annals of Waverley give a much fuller account of the Adeliza marriage. 60  See Irvine, Chronicle E, p. lxxxv with full references to earlier work.

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Chronicles E, /E, and H: The End of the Tradition?  315 had become common in /E from the 1090s annals onwards, with constant reference to the king’s crown wearings and the major feasts. References to activity in Normandy sometimes appear to be recorded apropos this structure; i.e. the king was not in England to hold these courts. It was a structure which also involved attention to ecclesiastical appointments—for these years given in more detail in H than in E—often with very precise dating. This latter practice arguably follows a tradition established already in eleventh-century vernacular annals in D and E, abandoned in the later decades. These early-twelfth-century annals, however, are fuller and sometimes give details of the appointments and, as in E 1123, the arguments which surrounded them. What does that structure imply about the sources of material for these annals, and about links between them? Given the attention to the court and its meetings, and appointments made there, are the early-twelfth-century annals an argument for official circulation? The page of Chronicle H is not such a circulated note; it is a rubricated fragment of a lost chronicle. But did such notes circulate? The content of these annals, and, in Chronicle E their tone, does not argue for an official origin. E’s constant lament over disasters, its critique of taxation, including that for the marriage of the king’s daughter, the recurring references to the oppressions of the king’s own court (hired), the weary retailing of agreements and promises made and broken all make strange reading in an official or quasi-official text.61 In many ways these annals continue to read as ones composed within the vernacular tradition as developed in the mid to later eleventh century: the annal for 1104, bewailing the court’s oppressiveness even ends with a brief rhyming section which recalls that tradition’s use of poetic form to articulate criticism and overt judgement. If the argument of this book is correct, the court and its circle has been a source for material in these chronicles, by some mechanism or other, throughout their history. But this is not the same as official circulation. Yet the constant explicit reference to the royal court and its meetings is a new phenomenon. Does it reflect the new oppressiveness of that court? Or the significance of it and its meetings in the display and exercise of royal power? 62 Failure to attend or to answer a summons to attend might bring serious consequence, as in the annal for 1095, when ‘all who held land of the king, all who would be ­worthy of his peace’ were summoned to be on hirede to tide, to be at court on the appointed day.63 E 1095 could record a one-off oppression; E1097 shows the 61  See e.g. annals 1097 and 1104 on the oppressions of the court. For gelds, plague, and weather— usually in some combination of disaster—see 1090, 1095, 1096, 1097, 1098, 1099, 1100, 1103, 1104, 1105, 1110, 1111, 1112, 1114, 1115, 1116, 1117, 1118, 1119, 1121, 1122, 1124, and 1125. 62  On crown wearings and their function, see J.  Green, Henry I (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 289–90; C. W. Hollister, Henry I (New Haven and London, 2001), pp. 113–14 and C. Norton, ‘Bernard, Suger and Henry I’s Crown Jewels’, Gesta, 45.1 (2006), pp. 1–14. 63  Compare also John of Worcester, s.a. 1126: a Christmas court at Windsor to which all the nobility were summoned.

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316  After Alfred chronicler’s attention to such oppression, of the hired and William II’s building works. But John of Worcester under 1126 notes that all the nobility were summoned to the Christmas court at Windsor. Given the significance of court meetings and their (costly) function in the performance of royal power, should we not assume written summonses to attend, which might in turn have become the structure on which a year’s annal would be hung? The annals’ insistence on years when the king was absent abroad and courts were not held may be especially revealing. The novel structure of annals would not necessarily be a sign that the mechanisms of annal production had changed; more that the meetings, which had long been intrinsic to those mechanisms, had done so. Or rather, that those meetings were now perceived as part of an awesome and oppressive technology of royal power. Mention of the meetings of the court is part of an impulse to record events more fully. The early-twelfth-century annals in E and H are among the most detailed examples of contemporary or near contemporary chronicling in any vernacular chronicle. Like all detail, its precise composition demands explanation. But the overall context is one where chroniclers were now, or perceived themselves as being, at the receiving end of royal power rather than participants in its exercise. Old English vernacular annals rarely tell us so much about con­tem­por­ ary events. Yet ironically their authors may rarely have been so distanced from the decisions of the powerful which set those events in motion.

The Peterborough Continuations Chronicle E was made c.1121. Its first scribe continued it, on more than one occasion, up to annal 1131. His practice did not change suddenly and remarkably. The record of meetings of the royal court continued, the tracking of the king’s movements to Normandy, the strong admixture of ecclesiastical events. The first scribe, and also the first continuator, had a ‘strong gift for story telling’.64 Peterborough events bulk larger, but the first continuator was not outside the mechanisms of exchange which were still influencing if not determining the content of the Latin chronicles. The close link between the Annals of Waverley and Chronicle /E was clear in annals to 1121; from annal numbered 1121 onwards that link does not continue. The Annals of Waverley’s connection was with /E, not E. But there is still some link between E and John of Worcester, though not for Peterborough detail; some link, too, with Henry of Huntingdon’s continuing structuring of annals around courts and royal movements through to the end of Henry I’s reign.65 Among the Latin chroniclers, it is these two in particular where 64  Thus Clark, Peterborough Chronicle, p. lxxix. 65  See Whitelock, Peterborough Chronicle, p. 32 and Irvine, ‘The Production of the Peterborough Chronicle’, pp. 60–5.

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Chronicles E, /E, and H: The End of the Tradition?  317 these annalistic structures link them to Chronicle E, before and after 1121.66 These three are not, however, identical. The structure of annals in Henry of Huntingdon, for example, continues the pattern into the 1130s; his last annals of Henry I’s reign consist of little more than brief records of royal courts and movements.67 John shows signs of that same structure to annal numbered 1131, little after.68 In these first continuations, Chronicle E was becoming more of a Peterborough chronicle, but its sources of information continued to stretch beyond that house. Are we now in the world of the Latin chroniclers, with its ‘active traffic’ in his­tor­ic­al materials encompassing Canterbury, Malmesbury, Worcester—and Peterborough?69 Is Canterbury an especially significant link?70 Does a shared vernacular chronicle source lie behind all this, a continued /E?71 The differences as well as the similarities argue caution about any single source. The mechanisms of exchange and annal-writing which had underlain earlier vernacular chronicle writing, and explained—and complicated—the resulting picture of their connections, may still apply as we move into the period of AngloNorman Latin historiography. The final continuation was the work of the second scribe. It is retrospective. It ostensibly covers the years 1132 to 1154, but not numbered year by year and with a narrative structure which overrides that of year-by-year annals. The organization is as much thematic as chronological.72 In some ways it seems to stands apart. But in its interweaving of the larger political story and Peterborough, in its emphasis on horror and disaster, it is placed within the earlier tradition as that had been developing in the eleventh century. In this final narrative, however, the end looks to a better future—on the wider stage, as at Peterborough itself. The final continuation is (in)famous for its description of the ‘Anarchy’ of Stephen’s reign, with its lurid details of the tortures and horrors of that time. The history of Peterborough abbatial succession is—somewhat briefly—threaded through it. The annals do not, however, break off in mid annal or mid story. These annals end with the accessions of Henry II and Abbot William in 1154. The first half of the annal deals with the death of King Stephen and Henry’s arrival ‘and 66  Henry of Huntingdon, p. xcii; John of Worcester, iii, p. xxiii. 67  Henry of Huntingdon, pp. 486–90. 68  His annal 1133 (John of Worcester, iii, p. 210) has Henry cross the sea to Normandy and never return. On the links between John and E for the 1120s annals see S. Irvine, ‘The Production of the Peterborough Chronicle’, especially pp. 56–65. 69  Irvine, ‘The Production of the Peterborough Chronicle’, p. 66 and for this world, M. Brett, ‘John of Worcester and his Contemporaries’, in R.  H.  C.  Davis et al. (eds), The Writing of History in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1981), pp. 101–26. 70  Irvine, ‘The Production of the Peterborough Chronicle’, p. 66 n. 59 referring to Ernulf and also to Prior Nicholas of Worcester’s links with Canterbury. 71  Thus Irvine, ‘The Production of the Peterborough Chronicle’, pp. 65–6. 72  Best full recent discussion in M. Home, The Peterborough Version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, pp. 86–99.

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318  After Alfred durst no man do other than good for great fear of him’. He was consecrated in London on the Sunday before midwinter’s day. On that same day Abbot Martin should have gone there, but he was taken sick and died on 2 January. And within a day the monks chose one of themselves, William, ‘a good man . . . loved by all good men’. The annal ends with his reception at Peterborough with great ceremony, and an optimistic look to the future from a promising present: ‘and he is now abbot, and has begun well. Christ grant him that he end thus.’ The block of annals has a retrospective narrative unity, with closure—and hope—in the accessions of Henry II and of the new abbot. The picture in these annals is a very emotive if not personal one, but not isolated. Although the first continuation is not closely paralleled in other chron­icles, other chroniclers commented on the horrors of the anarchy, though only Symeon of Durham in such lurid terms. It has been suggested that William of Malmesbury’s account may be in some sense connected.73 The author was certainly not narrowly focused on local Peterborough affairs; they take up relatively little room in his account. In all these respects he was still weaving Peterborough’s story into the wider, English one. * * * * * * * * * * * * Chronicle E is the last surviving English vernacular chronicle written or added to during the tenth to mid twelfth century. It was written at Peterborough by English speakers presumably for an English-reading audience. At about the same date, the makings of a history of the abbey were being assembled, in stages which included the first cartulary, the Liber Niger. These documents influenced some of the content of Chronicle E. But the creator(s) of E used them to insert a Peterborough story into the larger one of the English past. Chronicle E never became a ‘house history’, even in its last stages. The obvious parallel is Chronicle F, though there are significant differences. The scribe of F also inserted his history of Christ Church and the archbishops within a wider English story. But his chronicle was bilingual, and he added a Norman tale—and into Chronicle E’s predecessor, too. The F scribe was prepared to edit as well as translate the Old English text he found. By comparison, the scribe of E worked more in the older tradition. He copied the vernacular chron­ icle he used in its entirety—just as his predecessors who produced chronicles B, G, C, and D had done. Does that betoken a reverence for the past it contained and constructed? Yet Chronicle E told a new story, too. Into that past, Chronicle E’s first scribe seamlessly inserted Peterborough history. That weaving of the abbey’s story into the national one continued through to the very deliberate narrative clos­ure of the last continuation. 73  See E. King, The Anarchy of King Stephen’s Reign (Oxford, 1994), p. 2 and William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella, ed., E. King and K. R. Potter (Oxford, 1998), pp. xcv–xcvi.

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Chronicles E, /E, and H: The End of the Tradition?  319 Chronicle E’s immediate predecessor was /E.  Discussion produced little certainty about this text. Was it a St Augustine’s chronicle? Or, more likely, a Christ Church Canterbury one? Its history between the mid eleventh century and 1121 remains opaque. The Annals of Waverley, which copied its annals from c.1000 to 1121, are testimony to the text of /E before it received Peterborough additions. The final Peterborough stages which produced E consisted of the addition of abbey material, which is not found in the Waverley Annals. /E’s development in the later eleventh and early twelfth century remains unclear—where it occurred, in what stages, and by what processes. Did that involve groups of annals, written not just at different times in one place, but in different places and then brought together? And continued? The problems are most acute for annals numbered from c.1060 to c.1090. There is an argument for a text behind D and E from annal 1070 onwards, and from annal 1070 a relatively distinctive one with themes of its own. Is that the same text which still lies behind /E for the late 1080s annals? Is Peterborough itself, with its links to pre-1066 York archbishops, a possible home? Or might we see continued contact between sur­ vivors of the late Anglo-Saxon archbishops’ households or communities behind these links and exchanges? Such suggestions are and must remain speculative. Much sets the annals from c.1090 to 1121 apart, beyond that year in the surviving Latin chronicles. Their content and structure connect somehow to the royal court, though not necessarily by anything more than the regular summons of members of that court. Does the context of production here differ from that of earlier vernacular annals of contemporary history? No, in the sense that the court in some way was always implicated. Yes, in the sense that likely authors, patrons, and audiences no longer played the same roles in the politics of that court. Even here there is continuity. The critical distance between annals and politics is already observable in the annals of Æthelred’s reign. It has arguably widened by the early twelfth century. The context of production of early twelfth-century vernacular annals was one of interchange, of which John of Worcester and Henry of Huntingdon, at least, were part. A new world, of the great twelfth-century Latin chroniclers? Or the continuation of the interactions which had been producing vernacular annals from the mid eleventh century onwards? The perplexing picture of D, E, and C from the mid eleventh century was, it has been argued, the result of intermittent contacts among chronicles and chroniclers. They were sometimes close and in dialogue, sometimes contact was irregular and among more remote participants. Chroniclers were sometimes responding to one another, sometimes catching up and updating. There were bouts of activity at different chronicling centres at the hands of different chroniclers. And some annals were written, then rewritten. The networks to which all this is witness built on earlier contact, forged anew in  the political crisis of the mid eleventh century. Some probably survived across 1066.

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320  After Alfred That interchange has complicated all discussion of the vernacular chronicles in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries. Was it one of the contexts and mech­an­ isms which fostered the flowering of Latin historiography, in itself dependent on earlier vernacular chronicles? The last Old English vernacular chronicles can appear to stand outside that flowering. We should rather acknowledge how far that efflorescence may have grown along the networks which Old English historiography had already established. Chronicle E is an ending. The 1154 annal closes a story. No later English vernacular chronicles survive. But in the mid 1130s the clerk, Gaimar, was already taking an Old English vernacular chronicle of the Northern Recension type which lay behind E and translating it in language and genre into an Anglo-Norman French, vernacular, romance chronicle.74 Chronicle E itself continued to be read, as the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century marginalia indicate. It was also added to. In the late thirteenth century, the Anglo-Norman French vernacular Brut was written in its margins. Another historical text, another text of origins and identity— to be read, literally, alongside E. Gaimar’s own text probably once began with a story of Trojan origins.75 The scribe of Chronicle F added such an origins story to his prefaces. As Chronicle E shows, the Old English chronicles continued to be read after 1066, and in some circumstances to develop—and to construct and reflect new identities. The story which began at Alfred’s court may in that sense go on. But in another it had finished. The voices are increasingly monastic; the relationship to the court had changed. The southern English—especially ecclesiastical—elite had been the primary patrons if not audience of that tradition. Their demise after 1066 was the beginning of its end.

74  On Gaimar, his date, and his sources see introduction to Gaimar. 75  Manuscripts of Gaimar now have Wace’s Brut preceding the text: see Gaimar, pp. xvii–xx. But his epilogue suggests that this has replaced Gaimar’s own version of this story: p. ix.

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15

Conclusion This book has followed the vernacular chronicles from their ultimate origin at the late-ninth-century court of King Alfred through to mid-twelfth-century Peterborough. It has often been a hesitant journey, its pathways sometimes petering out into uncertainty. These anonymous, undated, developing chronicles do not readily give up their secrets. It is nonetheless a necessary journey if we are to begin to understand and read these texts which have formed the narrative basis of early English history. The book has considered all the surviving vernacular chronicles, including two—H and I—which are mere fragments or only debatably part of the corpus. They may now be summarized: Chronicle A, first produced in the decades around 900, most likely after that date, though continuing much later; Chronicle B, stretching to an annal numbered 977, made in the final decades of the tenth century and then largely ignored; Chronicle G, a copy of A from the first decades of the new millennium; Chronicle C, made in the 1040s; Chronicle D, difficult to date but possibly first from the 1040s, with substantial post-1066 addition and reworking; Chronicle F, a bilingual text produced c.1100, the rough date also for I; Chronicle E written at Peterborough c.1121, the fragment H being from around that same time. These dates attempt to pinpoint the first work on the surviving manuscripts. All these chronicles are the result of complex processes of development, and some continued to grow after their first making. It has been necessary to excavate their textual archaeology, uncovering earlier layers and stages of their evolution. Lost chronicles as well as surviving ones have featured prominently, chronicles whose prior existence can be inferred with more or less certainty, beginning with Alfred’s own, from which all in their different ways grew. The surviving texts bear witness to other chronicles, and/or stages of development, which lie behind their final form. Three major lost chronicles were identified, all probably dating from the middle decades of the tenth century: BC, the Northern Recension, and the Worcester Chronicle. All were fossilized within the surviving texts. Excavation revealed yet more stages. Behind Chronicle B lies After Alfred: Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and Chroniclers, 900–1150. Pauline Stafford, Oxford University Press 2020. © Pauline Stafford. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198859642.001.0001

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322  After Alfred BC—of which B is a copy—and which thus extended as far as the 970s annals, though it was possibly made earlier. BC was in turn arguably a copy with continuations of a mid-tenth-century /BC. The early tenth century saw the production of Chronicle A, which still survives, but also of at least two other chronicles. All three, like A itself, continued that of Alfred. One, like A, was close to the court of Edward the Elder; a third continued Alfred’s Chronicle with a focus on his daughter Æthelflæd, that continuation sometimes known as ‘The Annals of Æthelflæd’ or ‘Mercian Register’. Chronicles C and D provided evidence for an important Mercian/West Midlands chronicle, active in the mid eleventh century, just pos­ sibly itself continuing that which I have placed at Worcester in the tenth century. C, D, and E all have the detailed annals for the reign of Æthelred and early years of Cnut. Those annals were once part of a vernacular chronicle, possibly a copy of the Northern Recension, perhaps even /D, one of the predecessors of Chronicle D which was in existence, if not made, in the early eleventh century. Chronicle E is late, but an earlier /E lies behind it, added to if not made in the mid eleventh century, and continuing after. The ultimate source of all these texts, surviving and lost, was the chronicle produced at the court of King Alfred. Over the next two and a half centuries different copies of that text acquired new annals, and were in turn copied and recopied. Some copies were collated with other texts, including other vernacular chronicles; some were annotated or selectively modified. Some were bound with or copied alongside other material, including material other than vernacular annals. In every case the resulting narrative, or the context in which it was read, was changed. Major collations of material changed the story significantly, most notably in the production of the Northern Recension, which involved the reworking of Alfred’s Chronicle to incorporate more from Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica, the York Annals, and other northern material. Every continuation in every separate chronicle gave the tale a new ending, reorientating the whole. In those chronicles which acquired the Annals of Æthelred and Cnut, for example, the story was moved sharply in a direction more overtly critical of contemporary politics. Post-Conquest, a set of Norman annals was woven into Chronicles F and /E. Most of these were in Latin. But overwhelmingly the chronicles which are the subject of this book remained vernacular and annalistic. Some were copied alongside other non-annalistic texts, or other texts were added to them in the manuscript, some of which were in Latin. Thus episcopal lists were appended to Chronicle A in the late tenth century, the Acta Lanfranci to that same chronicle after 1066. Chronicle A had already acquired the Laws of Alfred and Ine by the 930s. The genealogical regnal list of West Saxon kings, which was used as a  preface in Chronicle A and its copy G, was updated and appended to Chronicle  B.  Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica was collated into the Northern

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Conclusion  323 Recension. It was added to the manuscript of Chronicle G, along with other legal and historical texts. Chronicle C was carefully made to fit with a pre-existing copy of Orosius. Both the Bede and the Orosius were Old English translations. A papal list was added to Chronicle A at the end of the tenth century, and like the episcopal lists was copied in G. After 1066 at Canterbury papal material was added to several chronicles, including lists of archbishops who collected the pallium. Again after 1066 charters and papal privileges—largely forged—were included for the first time in some of these chronicles. They were translated and woven seamlessly into E. Chronicle F, a precious working manuscript, revealed the messier business of their incorporation. The places where all this activity took place remain elusive, as do the likely patrons and audiences. Winchester, Worcester, Dorchester, York/Worcester, Canterbury were all strongly canvassed—the latter especially prominent after 1066. The connection in each case was episcopal or archiepiscopal, though in some cases the strongly monastic nature of the Old English episcopate from the late tenth century onwards blurs any easy separation of a community and the bishop and his household. The monastery at Abingdon was linked to mid-eleventhcentury developments in Chronicle C, and may have had a vernacular chronicle earlier. The connection may still be episcopal. Abingdon is geo­graph­ic­al­ly very close to Dorchester and in the mid eleventh century one of its abbots acted as adjutant bishop at Canterbury. Peterborough, undisputed home of E, also had Canterbury links. Its early-twelfth-century abbot was brought from Christ Church Canterbury and went on to be bishop of Rochester. Lay patrons cannot be ruled out, and laymen were certainly among the audience of some chronicles. The court was important, sometimes as the potential audience or as a physical space where chroniclers and chronicles could come into contact. In the early tenth century two courts, those of Wessex and Mercia, may be linked to chronicling activity. The long development of individual chronicles implies the need to allow for a number of locations for their earlier stages. Chronicle D’s long history encompasses York, perhaps York/Worcester. After 1066 Chronicle D’s homes may have been as shifting as the human survivors of Anglo-Saxon England, whose fate it often follows. Its final home was in northern Britain, the only active vernacular chronicle we can place there. This overall picture requires caution. It was impossible to paint it without ‘maybe’s’ and ‘probably’s’, without ‘perhaps’ and ‘likely’. The need for caution is underlined by the fact that chronicles have certainly been lost, as the picture itself acknowledges. Anyone proposing conclusions must squarely face that fact and its implications. How representative are the survivors? There is a check of sorts on this in the form of the twelfth-century Latin chron­ icles. The authors of these worked hard to assemble a picture of the lost pre-1066 past. The result corresponds very closely with the picture derived from the

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324  After Alfred surviving or identifiable vernacular chronicles. What was available to William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, and John of Worcester was in many respects similar to what is available now. The works these men produced are witness to at least one major loss. John certainly had a chronicle, or chronicles, identified here as the ‘Lost Worcester Chronicle’ and the ‘Mercian/West Midlands Chronicle’. Beyond that his coverage is remarkably similar to that in the sum of surviving chronicles. Their gaps—for much of the tenth century and for the reign of Cnut— are mirrored in the gaps in these later Latin chroniclers. The twelfth-century authors give some confidence that what once existed was not fundamentally different in content from what has survived, especially for annals numbered up to c.1066. These same twelfth-century authors give some confirmation, too, that all major chronicles and chronicle developments have been identified. The lost chronicle(s) identified among John of Worcester’s sources, the Northern Recension, which formed the basis of both Henry of Huntingdon and Geoffrey Gaimar: both are clear or strongly hinted at in the surviving vernacular chronicles. There is no indication of other major new chronicles known to the assiduous chroniclers after 1066 but now unknown to us. But as far as lost copies or chronicles representing earlier stages of development are concerned those same Anglo-Norman chroniclers can provide no such reassurance. Copies like Chronicle B or G could have disappeared in any number. Discussion of individual surviving chronicles revealed their growth from earlier chronicles whose content they built on or collated, but which have now disappeared. Consideration of transmission and development can pinpoint some of these and draw attention to some clear losses. Attempts have been made to do that, in for example the case of BC and /BC. But that part of the picture can never be complete. As is so often the case in early and central medieval studies, absence of evidence cannot be taken as evidence of absence. The potential loss of many copies is of some concern, especially since the story of vernacular chronicling is one both of writing contemporary history and of making new chronicles and copies of chronicles. The making of vernacular chronicles can be distinguished as three separate historiographical activities: the writing of (near) contemporary history, the making of new chronicles which in some ways rewrite the earlier history by bringing sources together, and the copying of an existing chronicle with little change. Analytically the distinction is useful but should not be pushed too far. New copies could spark a period of adding or writing contemporary annals, as in Chronicle C. A major new chronicle like /BC might similarly have led to the production of new annals. At least one major development, the Northern Recension, appears to have been almost entirely aimed at a rewriting of the more distant past; its first continuations dealing with recent events look to be dated some time after

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Conclusion  325 its creation. It rewrote the past by reshaping Alfred’s Chronicle. But all new annals continuing an older chronicle provided a new ending and thus in some sense rewrote its history. A copy may involve little or no change, and some copies remained just that, copies to which nothing further was added. That was the case in G, a copy of A, and largely so in B, a copy of BC untouched until we find it at Canterbury post-1066. But a copy might be coupled with other texts in a manuscript, thus providing a reading context which affected its reception and meaning, as was potentially the case with G. Historians’ attention has often focused on the new annals, thus on the contemporary history these chronicles contain, and understandably so. But the rewriting of a longer past in the Northern Recension or the bringing together of so many earlier chronicles at some stage(s) in the history of Chronicle D are equally significant. ‘Mere’ copies of existing chronicles merit their own study: like B and G, one coupling a vernacular chronicle and an updated legitimizing genealogical kinglist, the other embedding such a chronicle as a continuation of Bede and a companion to legal and historical texts. Every chronicle, every copy, every continuation and stage is a fact in itself, telling and changing the story available for reception, indicating the desire of someone to have a chronicle. The likely loss of possibly many copies is thus a real loss. One way in which chronicles developed was through the addition of annals, of the raw material as it were of this genre of chronicling. Among that new material a remarkable grouping stands out, namely the poems and poetic prose entries. They are found across these centuries, in all surviving chronicles, though not identically. In the sparse coverage of the tenth century, they bulk large. They continue to be found in eleventh-century chronicling work, including in annals added after 1066. It is tempting to treat them as a single body of material, and the fact that such poems feature in all surviving chronicles encourages that. But different ones link different chronicles; no single chronicle contains them all. They merit more consideration. They are varied in nature. There are quasi-heroic praise poems, like the Battle of Brunanburh or the Relief of the Five Burhs/Boroughs. The poems on King Edgar in the 970s annals in A, G, B, and C should be added to these, though they have a more overtly clerical flavour. Others are as critical as they are eulogistic, as in the assessment of Edgar found in annal 959 in Chronicles D and E. Some function as straightforward and overt critical comment: those in D and E for the mid 970s, in C and D for the 1030s. Many if not most elaborate on what might be classified as brief historical facts—a death, a battle, a campaign—in poetic form. Occasionally, as in those for the 970s—respectively in AGBC and DE—the bones of earlier prose annals can be discerned behind them. The practice of including them, or writing in such a form continued beyond 1066: the long poem at the death of Edward the Confessor in D and C forms part of these chronicles’ account of the

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326  After Alfred years of conquest. The extended eulogy on Margaret of Scotland in Chronicle D 1067 includes material couched in loosely alliterative verse. The sharp critique in /E of William I at his death is in poetic form. No single explanation covers all these entries. Literary scholars have paid them more attention than historians. Their origins are probably diverse. The writing and/or inclusion of poetic annals had parallels, at least in the mid tenth century. Equally strange alliterative charter forms were found then. Not all poems included in the chronicles were necessarily composed with an eye to their place in a ver­ nacu­lar chronicle. There are particular questions around the Brunanburh poem. But some were apparently written for such inclusion, and all were placed in that textual context. And one function unites them all: they act as explicit commentary and judgement. Although the prose annals contained in these chronicles became increasingly overt in their judgements, especially in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the annalistic genre continues to the end of all vernacular chronicles. Its narrative continued to work primarily by parataxis, that is the juxta­pos­ition of material rather than overt connection and explanation. The poems stand outside this. The poetic material is unusual. Its presence across all the chronicles is a first sign of a vernacular chronicling tradition, by which I mean a perceived way of writing history shared across a range of chronicles and chroniclers, of which they are all in some sense a part. Its presence is a sign of the function of poetry or poetic prose within that. At the same time, the differing patterns of poems found in some chronicles, not others, underlines the distinct individual developments within that tradition. This book set out to answer simple questions. Where and when were ver­nacu­ lar chronicles produced, by whom, for what patrons and audiences? Deceptively simple, yet after fourteen chapters still defying easy answers. The first conclusion is of a far from continuous history. There were long ­periods when little or no contemporary vernacular chronicling seems to have taken place, anywhere. Adding in the making of new chronicles and of copies fills in some of the chronological gaps. But gaps remain, especially in the writing of new annals. By the later eleventh century the annals found in chronicle /E look like products of a more established tradition of chronicling, recording contemporary events on a more regular basis. This was an attitude apparently shared elsewhere at this date, at least on the evidence of the fragment of Chronicle H, and especially of texts used by John of Worcester and Henry of Huntingdon. That regularity was the exception, not the rule, in English vernacular chronicling of the tenth and earlier eleventh centuries. Much of the tenth century, the reigns of Æthelstan and to a large extent of Edgar, and in the eleventh century of Cnut are not covered in any detail in any surviving chronicle or in any identifiable lost one. The ‘When?’ of vernacular chronicling, here in the production of new annals, was spasmodic and discontinuous.

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Conclusion  327 Crises sparked production, most notably the retrospect on the reign of Æthelred produced in response to the conquest by Swegn and Cnut in 1013–1016, though the resulting detailed account is found in only some chronicles. That crisis did not provoke activity in several chronicles known to have been in existence at that date. Succession to the throne and the accompanying questions of le­git­im­ ation had been a recurring spur to write from the early tenth century onwards, including not only the continuations produced in early-tenth-century Wessex and Mercia, but also perhaps the production of B. The return and accession of Edward (the Confessor) in 1041/1042 produced a revival at a number of centres, of both chronicle production and contemporary writing. The extent to which that revival was an unusual phenomenon, and the likelihood that the annals for the following decades not only resulted from it but are also closely connected in a contemporary dialogue, are matters that should be borne in mind in any reading of the chronicle accounts of that reign. The link with the return of the old dynasty after a period of exile and conquest underlines the link, in some minds at least, between vernacular chronicling and that dynasty, though again it may be specific in time and in the chronicles involved. As with the poetic material there is again a sense of a tradition, in this case of issues such as succession and legitimacy and of a dynasty’s story, which prompted vernacular chronicling. But again, as with poetic entries, there are differing, though connected, developments across a range of chronicles; and some known chronicles were unaffected by these events. No attempt was made to add to A, B, or G now. The ‘Where?’ leads to an initially startling conclusion. For much of the tenth and on into the eleventh century the vernacular chronicles were produced— whether that means new chronicles made or new annals written—north of the Thames, if not the Trent and Humber. By the mid eleventh century Canterbury had become significant. The yawning gap after the early tenth century would be Wessex itself, the home of Alfred’s original chronicle out of which all these later ones in some sense grew. That stark pattern requires immediate qualification. Chronicle G was made in the early eleventh century at Winchester, a copy of Chronicle A, itself added to around the year AD 1000; though in neither case was there much addition of new annals as opposed to other manuscript material. A more serious caveat is the loss of copies, some of which may have been made in old Wessex. It is nonetheless worth noting that the area where Alfred’s Chronicle was itself produced and where significant early-tenth-century continuations of it were made does not appear to be at the forefront of any major vernacular chronicle development over the next two centuries. Was this in part because traditions of vernacular chron­ic­ ling in the tenth century were established in the context of questions over the rule of Mercia and Northumbria by West Saxon kings? Is it connected to the apparent role of bishops, and especially archbishops, in the politics of this and in the story of vernacular chronicling?

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328  After Alfred The ‘Who?’ has pointed increasingly to such episcopal circles and patrons, to the court, and to archbishops and the religious houses connected to them. Dorchester, York, Worcester, and Canterbury recurred, so too Peterborough, and indirectly Ramsey—the latter two linked in some way to the York archbishopric, though not as closely as Christ Church was to the Canterbury see. Abingdon featured, but not in the more familiar context of its refoundation by the great tenthcentury bishop Æthelwold of Winchester; rather via its connection with Canterbury, if not Dorchester. The influence of bishops, and especially arch­ bishops, explained much about these chronicles and encouraged the loosely political reading. They should not, however, engross the picture. The bissextile (leap year) numbers found briefly in a section of Chronicle A, in Chronicle C’s source for the Æthelred annals, and throughout Chronicle F are a reminder of other contexts for the production, reading, and use of these chronicles. Such bissextile indicators point to liturgical, computistical, or educational uses. It reminds one again of the problem of loss. Is it just such copies which may have disappeared without trace? Even where bishops and archbishops were most certainly their patrons or instigators, none of the vernacular chronicles ever became ‘Gesta Episcoporum’—texts centred on the bishop, his deeds, and the identity of himself and his see. Attention to Bishop/Archbishop Ealdred, especially in the lost Mercian/West Midlands Chronicle, comes closest to this. That interest was followed through into what is almost incipient post-1066 hagiography in Chronicle D. But the central focus on wider political events was never lost in either D or the lost text.1 Eleventh-century vernacular chronicling did, however, become increasingly concerned with the record of episcopal and archiepiscopal succession. The papacy, papal succession, and the receipt from the pope of the pallium, the symbol of archiepiscopal office, also featured more. There are local and specific explanations for many of these developments, but they are surely also part of wider European movements. The combination of increasing attention to bishops and especially archbishops in the context of continued close concern with political events places these chron­ icles in an England where the king and his court were a magnet for high-ranking clerics, and where such men were central to royal counsels. Yet there is increasing evidence of critical distance alongside the close involvement which that position at court fostered. Are these later chronicle developments a sign of what Steffen Patzold has characterized as ‘episcopacy beside kingdom and nobility, between God and people’?2 An archbishop like Wulfstan II of York was close to the 1  Excellent comment on Gesta Episcoporum in T.  Riches, ‘Changing Political Horizons of Gesta Episcoporum from the Ninth to Eleventh Centuries’, in L.  Körntgen and D.  Wassenhoven (eds), Patterns of Episcopal Power: Bishops in Tenth and Eleventh Century Western Europe (Berlin, 2011), pp. 51–62. 2 S.  Patzold, Episcopus: Wissen über Bischöfe im Frankenreich des späten 8 bis frühen 10. Jahrhunderts (Ostfildern, 2008), quoted in D. Wassenhoven, ‘Swaying Bishops and the Succession of Kings’, in Körntgen and Wassenhoven (eds) Patterns of Episcopal Power, pp. 89–109 at p. 108.

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Conclusion  329 pol­it­ical centre but had a strong sense of an episcopal office, one which gave bishops both an obligation to counsel and, where necessary, an authority to do that crit­ic­al­ly and fearlessly. The coming and going of archbishops, their deaths, appointments, and their pluralism increasingly fed into the rhythms of vernacular chronicling. The Norman Conquest may have ruptured the close links between bishops/arch­ bishops and the vernacular chronicles. After 1066, bishops and archbishops who read the English vernacular began to disappear—quite soon at Canterbury and York, already important in vernacular chronicling. Was that disappearance as significant in its own way as the change of dynasty in these chronicles’ story? In the short term, Norman criticisms of the English church and its bishops may have been a factor in the rewriting of pre-1066 annals in Chronicles /E and D after 1066. Some reworking of the account of a pre-1066 bishop/archbishop like Stigand may have been part of that; perhaps some hagiographical development, too, as in the case of Ealdred. At some point a writ of Æthelnoth of Canterbury taken from a precious Canterbury book was attached to Chronicle D. Was this a tidying up by an early modern antiquarian, manuscript housekeeping? Or a postConquest response of an English survivor, joining a vernacular chronicle to a relic of one of the holy archbishops of late pre-Conquest England? Certainly the vernacular chronicles are one more indication of the need to draw England into any discussion of an eleventh-century ‘Europe of Bishops’.3 Annalistic chronicles are—or can be—the products of many people over long periods. Their default position is anonymity. The frequency with which the voices of scribe/authors broke in was thus worthy of remark. This was most obvious in the overtly engaged annals of the eleventh century now found in chronicles C, D, and E—probably found also in the Mercian/West Midlands Chronicle. It was obvious, too, in the judgemental poems, and in the rewriting of the years of Conquest in Chronicle D. The ‘human noise’ in the Annals of Æthelred and Cnut was overwhelmingly loud. Yet the personal voice is also apparent in the laconic 960s annals added by Scribe 4 to Chronicle A, revealing his/her Winchester assumptions, if not location. It was apparent in the most mechanical processes of collation by which the Northern Recension was made, where Northern voices spoke indirectly through their assembly and choice of material as well as directly—as ‘us’—in their self-identification as Northumbrian. Strong personal involvement breaking through as first-person comment was found as early as the records of campaigns in the first continuations of Alfred’s Chronicle, again in annals for Æthelred’s reign, and in, for example, Chronicle D’s comments on the ill-fated return of the nephew of Edward the Confessor in 1057. In Chronicle /E a

3  On which see T.  Reuter, ‘A Europe of Bishops. The Age of Wulfstan of York and Burchard of Worms’, first published in German in 2000, repr. in Körntgen and D. Wassenhoven (eds), Patterns of Episcopal Power, pp. 17–38.

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330  After Alfred local Kentish patriot added his own perspective to earlier annals. In the early eleventh century an archbishop of York inserted his own critical comments into his own chronicle. The anonymity of these vernacular chronicles too readily masks their scribe/authors. But their voices are there to be heard. The recent fuller editions have made them easier to identify. That voice was loud in the work of the scribe of Chronicle D who wrote, or rather rewrote the account of the Norman Conquest. That writing or rewriting was informed and shaped by his own reading of earlier sections of the chronicle before him, especially the annals numbered from the 970s onwards. That serves as another warning that the story and message of a chronicle could and did change: the Æthelred annals reorientated chronicles to which they were added. But it is also a reminder that scribe/authors were one audience, one set of readers of these chronicles. Audience let alone reception are among the most difficult problems these chronicles pose. Does the Old English vernacular mean that they were designed for a wider audience, to be read by them or listened to? Potentially, the answer is yes. Alfred’s Chronicle was part of a larger vernacular project which addressed not merely a clerical audience but also the education of young lay nobles at court. At least one lay noble can be shown to have read a vernacular chronicle: Æthelweard, an ealdorman and King Æthelred II’s kinsman, who translated such a chronicle into Latin around the year 1000. An earl of Mercia, Leofric, was a candidate for patron of the lost Mercian/West Midlands chronicle. If content is any guide to an anticipated audience, the lists of the noble dead—in Alfred’s continuations, and again in the early-tenth-century annals—might argue for a lay audience with whom these names would have resonated. In general, however, the lay nobility features very little as the subject matter of the tenth-century chronicles. It is the obits and accession of bishops, not of ealdormen or lay nobles, which these chronicles tend to give. In the ‘Æthelred annals’, however, some lay nobles become part of the story, and in some cases the object of sustained criticism. There is little sign of heroic presentation of contemporary noble actors. There is, for example, a significant difference between the treatment of the military encounter which occurred at Maldon in 991 in the vernacular annals and in the poem of the battle, a historical poem but not one found in these chronicles. The ‘Æthelred annals’ simply couple mention of the battle with payment of tribute. Even the less negative and more strictly contemporary annal in Chronicle A has no detail of the encounter. The poem by contrast puts words into the mouths of noble participants, gives them a heroic context, and names them. In the mid-eleventh-century annals chroniclers and annalists were close to dramatic events, identified great noble participants in them, and gave a fuller but still often critical account. Even here, if we take content and treatment as our guides, Chronicle /E’s audience was assumed to be equally if not more interested in the fate of a Norman archbishop, Robert—who was /E’s villain of the piece.

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Conclusion  331 Content is, however, a guide to be used with care in the search for audience and audiences. Annals and chronicles concerned with royal legitimation were as relevant to a lay as to a clerical audience. Clerics were as likely as lay people to be interested in the noble dead, who may well have been their kin. It would be unwise to rule out a wider reach for these chronicles. But the audiences of whom we can be most certain are the patrons and makers of these texts. Inward-turning history, a confirmatory telling of the past to ourselves, is not unusual in the early middle ages, or at any date. If a wider audience cannot be ruled out, we need not assume it, and certainly not for all vernacular chronicles and annal-writing across these centuries. In the quest for that wider audience we should not miss the voices of the certain receivers of these texts, the scribe/authors who made them. In the case of the Northern Recension they gave precious witness to the reception of a vernacular chronicle and the polysemic messages it could transmit. The vernacular chronicles which were the subject of this book have often been collectively labelled as The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. How far has such a de­nom­in­ ation, or even its plural The Anglo-Saxon ChronicleS, survived detailed scrutiny of their history? Certainly not the singular; the multiplicity of chronicles, their divergences and differences have become clear. But the plural captures what has also been underlined, namely their similarities, their common ground, the sense—though intermittent and spasmodic—of a tradition. That common ground was obvious in annals shared across chronicles, though never after annal 890 shared across all; obvious too in the writing or insertion of poetic annals, though never the same poems in all chronicles. It is clear in the recurring attention to vernacular chronicling: the writing of new annals in the vernacular, the making of new vernacular chronicles, but new annals never found in all surviving chron­icles, new chronicles with varying content. At post-Norman Conquest Canterbury so many of these chronicles were consulted, worked on, added to, and at least one new one produced. It is ironic that this sense of a common tradition is so clear after 1066. But the sense of a tradition—albeit a faltering one—was not the invention of post-1066 attempts to hold on to the pre-1066 past. The practice of ver­nacu­lar chronicling had already exhibited such a sense in the preceding centuries. How are these similarities and differences to be explained? A simple story of transmission from a few common exemplars obviously lies at its heart. All our surviving chronicles descend in some way from Alfred’s. Major developments in tenth-century chronicle making—/BC and the Northern Recension—were copied in Chronicles B and C, and D, E, and F respectively. Chronicle G was a faithful copy of A as the latter existed c. AD 1000. Chronicle manuscripts must have been exchanged and compared and collated. That can be seen most clearly in Chronicle A’s addition of an early annal, originally omitted, in the hand of a mid-tenth-century scribe. It must lie behind, for example, the making of Chronicle C, where the bissextile markings of the Annals of Æthelred strongly suggest a different chronicle source from that used for annals up to and after that group. There were times when

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332  After Alfred a chronicle’s annals pointed to a dialogue with another—and thus another available and known—version: as in what appears to be Chronicle A’s rewriting of the early annals of Edward the Elder’s reign. The mid-eleventh-century annals pointed to near-contemporary exchanges and reactions. The 970s annals vary, AGBC against DEF, John of Worcester different again. But the subject matter was closely similar; reaction and rewriting one vis-à-vis another the likely explanation. Official circulation is not the answer to all this. Neither the tone, nor the varying inclusion and subject matter, nor the intermittent attention to chronicling point in this direction. Even the annals for the early 940s, which are almost identical in Chronicle A, G, B, C, and D, are not found in the same form in E; and the common ground can be explained just as readily by the making of /BC—from which B, C, and D here derive, and the renewal of activity in Chronicle A in reaction. The circulation of Alfred’s own chronicle may be explained by copies made at slightly different stages rather than any official act. It would be difficult to see the Annals of Æthelred and Cnut or those of the mid eleventh century as a result of any such central orchestration. The mechanisms which explain similarity and difference are important, but in many ways they beg the question. Why recurrently, but intermittently, return to vernacular chronicling, either to write annals or to make new chronicles? It is worth recalling that there was a different Latin historiographical tradition within England at this date in the North: first in the York Annals, and then in the group of texts which transmitted them. Sometimes named ‘Byrthferth’s Miscellany’ that group was used in the making of the Northern Recension and eventually circulated widely in northern England and what is now southern Scotland. It was found at Durham in Symeon’s day, as the Historia post Bedam in Roger of Howden, in the Melrose Chronicle, and in Roger of Wendover, who had access to northern material. Vernacular chronicling and the making of vernacular chron­ icles was not inevitable in tenth- to early-twelfth-century England. Yet for some people, at some places, and at some times vernacular chronicling was the way to write history. The people, the places, the times, this book has argued, point to southern England, to southern English elites, increasingly to their clerical especially archiepiscopal members. Vernacular chronicling articulated their political ideology. The making of a major new chronicle for an archbishop of York is the apparent exception which in fact proves the rule; a vernacular chronicle in the hands of a southern appointee to a northern see. The reading of vernacular chronicles here has been unashamedly ‘political’, in the sense that all aspects of their production have been seen as potentially ‘engaged’ historiography. The ‘court’, and especially its episcopal members, has been repeatedly invoked as the explanation of the interconnections between chronicles and their writing and making. Yet these are annalistic texts, often the products of the quasi-mechanical processes of copying and collating material. The working premise of this book has, however, been that no writing or making is

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Conclusion  333 neutral. At some level unconscious or half-conscious decisions were always being made. The least conscious decisions may be nonetheless instructive. A ‘mere copy’ like B appears neither engaged nor political. But the decision to have a ver­ nacu­lar chronicle, largely consisting of Alfred’s own story, in itself articulated the ideological environment in which a chronicle like B was copied. How should we understand that ‘court’ which has been so often invoked? First as a physical, embodied meeting place—where chronicles could be exchanged and contacts made, where arguments took place, cases were made and where dialogue could occur. In the early tenth century debates and arguments over le­git­im­acy both within a court, and between the courts of West Saxons and Mercians are reflected in chronicling developments. Close contact between people who knew the arguments at court explained mid-eleventh-century development too. The changing pattern of chronicling in C with its faltering contact with a source of new annals for the 1050s may graphically exemplify what happened when a chronicling centre became less immediately involved with that political hub. From Alfred’s Chronicle produced in a court context to the last vernacular chron­icles, whose writers were at the receiving end of the court’s decisions, that pol­it­ical grouping and assembly played a varying but recurring role in vernacular chronicling. ‘Court’ should, however, also be understood in a wider sense. The court can be both a narrow group of those immediately and daily surrounding the king, but also a broader community, of those who came regularly, whose mindsets, values, ideals, and aspirations were at least in part formed there; an ideological community drawing its strength and identity sometimes from shared upbringing, but also from frequent attendance.4 As both an ideological and a physical centre, the ‘court’ of southern English kings exerted a powerful pull throughout these cen­tur­ies. The bishops and archbishops who were patrons for so much of this chronicling activity were regularly found if not formed there. Closely connected to the king yet with space for critical distance, the court and its members provide many answers to the complex development of vernacular chronicles during the tenth and eleventh centuries. For some people, at some times, vernacular chron­ic­ling in the tradition of Alfred seemed the appropriate historiographical response, especially in reaction to political circumstances and events central to that court. How ‘Alfredian’ that response was by c.1000 and beyond must be a question. The chronicler of Æthelred almost certainly had that earlier king and the ver­ nacu­lar chronicle account of his reign as points of reference. The transmission of 4  See S. Airlie, ‘The Palace of Memory: the Carolingian Court as Political Centre’, first published in 2000, repr. in S. Airlie, Power and its Problems in Carolingian Europe (Farnham, 2012), and S. Airlie, ‘Bonds of Power and Bonds of Association in the Court Circle of Louis the Pious’, first published in 1990, repr. in ibid. Also S. Maclean, ‘Palaces, Itineraries and Political Order in the Post-Carolingian Kingdoms’, in J. Hudson and A. Rodriguez (eds), Diverging Paths: The Shape of Power and Institutions in Medieval Christendom and Islam (Leiden, 2014), pp. 291–320.

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334  After Alfred Alfred’s chronicle always carried with it a potent combination of dynastic and Christian history. Its messages were changed if not diluted by chronicling developments throughout these centuries, most fully in the rewriting of them in the Northern Recension. The addition of the Annals of Æthelred and the early years of Cnut rewrote the story dramatically; every addition had reoriented it. But Alfred’s messages were nonetheless still embedded. Their combination of Christian and dynastic history facilitated the insertion of a royally-connected ‘house’ history at both Christ Church Canterbury and Peterborough. Post-1066 a scribe/author of Chronicle D wrote and rewrote a long and strongly dynastic annal on Margaret of Scotland, one of the last direct survivors of Alfred’s line. It was the longest vernacular annal on a single person since the annal in Alfred’s own chronicle covering his father Æthelwulf. Coincidence? Each just a product of its own situation, leading to parallel but unconnected expression? Or, at the very least, a recognition that the way to articulate a dynastic position, if not to claim it, was through historical writing in the annalistic vernacular genre? Was the end of the tradition of vernacular chronicling inevitable after 1066? Could a tradition forged in particular circumstances, maintained around particular kinds of people and their shared ideology, used especially to address particular sorts of questions survive the demise of the pre-1066 elites and their sudden replacement by others, largely Francophone? Chronicles F and E suggest its flexibility. There was no shortage of Old English readers in the twelfth century.5 Charters and Latin historians would continue to invoke a pre-1066 past for post1066 purposes. But as the bilingual Chronicle F itself attests, the ethnically mixed communities of post-1066 England contained Old English speakers, but Latin was their lingua franca. House histories more sharply focused on an abbey itself fulfilled the local need for a usable past. Hugh Candidus’s history of Peterborough abbey had more relevance than a vernacular chronicle. Few historical developments are inevitable. The end of vernacular chronicling is, however, understandable. The aim of this book was to instate the vernacular chronicles and vernacular chronicling as questions in themselves. Some of its conclusions will be contentious, many are tentative. It will have succeeded if it provokes debate, but one which accepts its basic premise; namely that the story of the making of the ver­ nacu­lar chronicles is as significant as the story they can collectively be made to tell. These chronicles were made and written by people between c.900 and c.1150. However mechanical the processes of their making, those people constructed narratives and often had agendas, albeit sometimes unconscious or half-conscious. They are sources of far more than a chronology of facts. This book will have succeeded if it has given voices to these chronicles and to the people who wrote, produced, and wanted them, as they spoke in their own 5  See the important work of the project headed by M. Swan and E. Traherne, The Production and Use of English Manuscripts 1060–1220, https://www.le.ac.uk/english/em1060to1220/.

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Conclusion  335 day and as they can speak now to us. It will have succeeded if it has convinced its readers that these chronicles articulate voices in contemporary debates and discussions, voices which must be part of the dialogue through which we access and understand the past of which they are part. Historical truth is pursued through such a dialogue; by recognizing its presence among the voices of the past, and by engaging with those voices from our perspective in the present. Accessing historical truth means paying close attention to our sources, and asking old but still centrally relevant questions about who, when, where and for what audience they were produced. But it also means entering into conversation with them, giving them their voice, acknowledging that that voice is one of many; listening, interrogating—and respecting. These chronicles, the people who wrote, produced, and wanted them and the tradition of which they were part demand and merit their own seat around the seminar table. Only then will they reveal all they have to tell of the centuries which made England.

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APPENDIX 1

Weblinks and Definitions 1.  The manuscripts of all the vernacular chronicles discussed in this book—in the case of G the preface only—can be consulted on the web. The following list of manuscripts and weblinks enables the reader to access them directly. Chronicle A: Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 173, fos 1–56, https://parker.stanford.edu/parker/catalog/wp146tq7625, accessed 16 Dec. 2019 Chronicle B: London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius A. vi, fos 1–35, http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=cotton_ms_tiberius_a_vi_f001r, accessed 16 Dec. 2019, + London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius A. iii, fo 178, http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer. aspx?ref=cotton_ms_tiberius_a_iii_f178r, accessed 16 Dec. 2019 Chronicle C: London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius  B.  i, fos 112–164 (including prefatory material), http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=cotton_ms_tiberius_b_i_ f112r, accessed 16 Dec. 2019 Chronicle D: London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius B. iv, fos 3–86, http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=cotton_ms_tiberius_b_iv_f003r, accessed 16 Dec. 2019 Chronicle E: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 636, https://digital.bodleian. ox.ac.uk/inquire/p/ec9ae7f7-302c-46a6-ae10-9c18d42428a0, accessed 16 Dec. 2019 Chronicle F: London, BL, MS Cotton Domitian  A.  viii, fos 30–70, http://www.bl.uk/ manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=cotton_ms_domitian_a_viii_f03, accessed 16 Dec. 2019 Chronicle G: London, BL, MS Cotton Otho B. xi, fos 39–47, fragments, no weblink; preface only in London, BL, Add. MS 34652, fo 2, http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer. aspx?ref=add_ms_34652_f002r, accessed 16 Dec. 2019 Chronicle H: London, BL, MS Cotton Domitian A. ix, fo 9, http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/ Viewer.aspx?ref=cotton_ms_domitian_a_ix_f00, accessed 16 Dec. 2019 Chronicle I: London, BL, Cotton Caligula  A.  xv, fos 132v–139r, http://www.bl.uk/ manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=cotton_ms_caligula_a_xv_f132v, accessed 16 Dec. 2019 2.  This book refers to a number of lost chronicles and annalistic texts other than the surviving vernacular chronicles. The following is a brief guide to some possibly unfamiliar ones. Acta Lanfranci. A short set of Latin annals entered under the year 1070 in Chronicle A, after the Old English text for that year; probably dating from the early twelfth century, c.1110. Numbered internally by the years of Lanfranc’s pontificate, it was a text apparently designed to support Canterbury’s claims against York for primacy and the archbishop's lordship over St Augustine’s abbey. See P. Hayward, ‘Some Reflections on the Historical Value of the So-Called Acta Lanfranci’, Historical Research, 77 (2004), pp. 141–60. Annals of Rouen/Norman annals. Collective names for a group of inter­related sets of Norman annals, compiled and extended at various times and places between the mid eleventh and early twelfth centuries. The base text may be a Rouen compilation, but

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338  After Alfred they exist in several versions. Texts of this type circulated widely in Norman England, and one or more appear to have been used by the F Chronicler. See discussions in Baker, Chronicle F, pp. l–liv and The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, xvii: The Annals of St Neots and the Vita Prima Sancti Neoti, ed. D.  Dumville and M. Lapidge (Cambridge, 1984) pp. xliii–xlvii. Language: Latin. Annals of Waverley. Annals from the Cistercian abbey of Waverley, near Farnham, Surrey, written in twelfth- and thirteenth-century hands. Early sections were compiled from a number of sources, which included from annal 999 to 1121 a vernacular chronicle which appears to be /E or a text very similar to /E. Language: Latin. Bede, Recapitulatio. A digest in annalistic form of some events covered in the Historia Ecclesiastica, which Bede himself provided in Book V, cap. 24 of that Historia. It follows the conclusion of the Historia in Book V, cap. 23 and precedes Bede’s own autobiography with which his whole work ended. Language: Latin. Byrhtferth’s Miscellany. The name given to a compilation of historical texts apparently made by or known to Byrhtferth, a monk of Ramsey Abbey c. AD 1000. It now survives as the first part of Symeon of Durham’s Historia de Regibus Anglorum et Dacorum. It included the so-called York Annals (see below), Northumbrian regnal lists, material from Bede especially from the Historia Abbatum, an annalistic account from 849 to 887 based closely on Asser and accounts of two Kentish martyrs, Æthelberht and Æthelred. Language: Latin. Historia post Bedam. See York Annals. Winchester Annals. A lost set of Winchester annals, identified by Felix Liebermann via their use by twelfth-century annalists working at St Augustine’s, Chichester, and an unlocalized centre. As a result of obvious editing by such later annalists the reconstruction cannot be perfect. They appear to have been used by the F Chronicler, though their relationship to the vernacular chronicles more widely is unclear. See Baker, Chronicle F, pp. xlvi–xlix. Language: Latin. York Annals (also known as Alcuin Annals, Old Northumbrian annals/Gesta Veterum Northanhumbrorum). Latin annals covering much of the eighth century from 732 and, as now identifiable, ending in the early years of the ninth. Largely concerned with events in Northumbria, including York and its archbishops. Surviving now only in post-1066 works, such as Symeon of Durham’s Historia de Regibus Anglorum et Dacorum  and Roger of Howden’s Chronicle. In the latter they appear as the Historia Anglorum sive Saxonum post Venerabilem Bedam (Historia post Bedam) and are here again attached to a Northumbrian regnal list. See also Byrhtferth’s Miscellany. 3.  Lost vernacular chronicles as they are referred to in this book. Alfred’s Chronicle. The vernacular chronicle made in the late ninth century at the court of King Alfred, lost in its original form. BC. A tenth-century chronicle which ran to annal number 977 and which is copied in its entirety into Chronicles B and C, though not necessarily from the same exemplar. See also /BC. /BC. A putative earlier form of Chronicle BC which extended no further than the annals for the middle decades of the tenth century. /D. Denotes the earlier form(s) of Chronicle  D.  It is used especially to describe the chronicle which was arguably in the hands of Archbishop Wulfstan II of York in the

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Weblinks and Definitions  339 early eleventh century. However, given the uncertainties about the date of all the work on the palaeography of D it is also used in discussion of what may have been earlier stages of Chronicle D in the mid eleventh century. /E. Denotes earlier form(s) of Chronicle E. It is used especially to describe the putative chronicle as it was evolving, probably at Canterbury, in the mid eleventh century. It is also used to denote all the subsequent stages of that evolution before it was copied to form Chronicle E c.1121. Mercian/West Midlands Chronicle. A chronicle containing annals at least for the 1030s to 1060s, perhaps continuing something like the lost Worcester Chronicle. It is reconstructed via the use of its annals in the evolution of Chronicles C and D and by comparison with John of Worcester’s Chronicle. Its content points to a home somewhere in Mercia, most likely in the West Midlands. Northern Recension. A chronicle which combined a text of Alfred’s Chronicle with a return to the text of Bede’s Historia, the York Annals, and other Northern sources. It ran certainly to annal 890, and possibly beyond. It was continued at one or more points with annals numbered to the tenth if not early eleventh century. It is a major source behind Chronicles D and E. Worcester Chronicle. A chronicle in existence by the last decade of the tenth century whose content can in part be recovered from John of Worcester and Byrhtferth’s Miscellany. That content and John’s use suggest Worcester as its home. It probably continued into early-eleventh-century annals. It may or may not be continued in the Mercian/ West Midlands Chronicle. 4.  In the course of this book a number of groups of annals have been given names. Some are long-standing ways of describing these groups, others have been adopted to facilitate argument. Annals of Æthelflæd. See also Mercian Register. Names widely used for a group of annals numbered from the early 900s to the mid 920s. Now found in Chronicles B and C.  Arguably once a continuation of a copy of Alfred’s Chronicle. Their content is largely, though far from exclusively, concerned with Æthelflæd, daughter of Alfred, and has a geographical focus on events in Mercia. Likely provenance: Mercia if not the Mercian court. Æthelred annals, sometimes also known as ‘Annals of Æthelred and (early years of) Cnut’. Name used here to denote annals numbered from c. 983/990 to the early 1020s. Now found in Chronicles C, D, and E. A retrospective group composed, or rewritten, late in that date range. Original home—text­ual or geographical—is unclear. Edward annals. Name used here to denote two sets of annals, the first set numbered from c.900 to 914, the second from 915–920. The first set is now found in Chronicles A (and thus G) and B and C; the second set is found in Chronicles A (and thus G) only. Their content is largely concerned with Edward the Elder, son of Alfred. Likely provenance: in or close to the court of Edward the Elder. Mercian Register. See Annals of Æthelflæd.

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APPENDIX 2

Annals 983–1017: Agreements DE:C and CD:E 1.  D and E agree against C Major 984. D and E elaborate Æthelwold’s death with ‘monks’ father, holy’; 999. C has seo scypfyrding ne seo landfyrding, D lacks all this; E lacks seo landfyrding; 1001. D and E have the same word order against C. D and E omit the second folces in the phrase concerning the people of Devon and Somerset. Both have ænglisce fyrd where C has folc (note that the normal word for what we would see as ‘England’, ‘English’ in these annals is Angelcynn); 1006. D and E have of earde (hi) (ge)bringan sceolde, C has of earde adrifan sceolde; 1007. D and E have unfriðhere C here; 1008. Here C looks to have the correct reading, D misreads as 300 ships, not a ship from 300 hides, and E also has this misreading; 1009. D and E have ‘the South Saxon’ which C lacks; D and E have unfriðhere to C’s ungemætlice here; DE omit þe we heton Ðurkilles here (plus other minor differences in DE as against C); 1010. D and E have, and C lacks, the sentence concerning getting horses and then taking East Anglia: eye-skip in C from geweald to geweald; 1011. D and E place numbers in the shire list in the same place (though E omits Northamptonshire); D and E both lack C’s oþþe with gefeohtan; 1012. D and E lack C’s hine þær þa bysmorlice acwylmdon; 1013. D and E lack Æthelred’s name, which is in C; 1014. D and E lack C’s þe on Engla lande wæron (an odd and unusual use of ‘England’: usually Angelcynn in these annals, cf. above 1001); 1016. D and E lack C’s ðuruh eadrices ræd ealdormannes; D and E have different wording on death of Æthelred to C (slightly different wording on Eadric also links D and E against C); D and E lack the sentence about movement north of the Thames through Clæighangran which is in C; D and E have ealle Engle þeode to C’s ealle his fyrde concerning Brentford; D and E lack on Lindsey concerning Godwine; D and E lack C’s þar [sic] wearð fordon; 1017. D and E have ceorla cyning here, C has under 1020; D and E lack specification of killing of Eadwig Ætheling, which is in C.

Minor (selective) 992. D and E have of East Englum, C has on; D and E have togædere cumon, C has fon; 999. C has Meowægan, D and E Medewægan; D and E have ilkede/elkede man fram dæge to dæge, C has ylcodan þa deman fram dæge to dæge; D and E have ferdan forð against C’s foron;

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Annals 983–1017: Agreements DE:C and CD:E  341 1002. D and E agree on the St Brice massacre wording; 1003. D and E have abrocen to C’s tobrocen, plus minor word order differences; 1004. D and E have fæstlice fengon where C has fon sceoldon; 1005. D and E have earde, C has gearde; 1006. D nd E have in[n]here, C has inghere; 1013. D and E have butan þæm, C has for eallon þam.

2.  C and D agree against E Major 988. C and D agree in combining Watchet and Goda under 988, E separates under 987 and 988; 990 (991 and 995).Treatment of Archbishop Sigeric: C and D place his consecration under 990, E has under 989; C and D spell as ‘Sigeric’, E as ‘Siric’. Under 991 all three have a shortened form, C and D ‘Syric’, E ‘Siric’; see also 995, where C and D have Sigeric. Also under 991 only C and D note that he was the ‘first’ to counsel gafol, i.e. tribute; 992. C and D have an elaboration of Archbishop Oswald’s death, with wording which E uses of Archbishop Dunstan’s death under 988; 1004. E lacks the last sentence on ‘never worse handplay . . . ’, which is in C and D; 1006. E lacks a sentence on Cwicelmeshlæwe—eye-skip/saut de même en même; 1007. C and D have 36,000 (xxxvi þusend), E 30,000 (xxx þusend); C and D have geond Myrcna rice, E has on Myrcna rice; 1011. C and D have Leofrune abbatissa (abbreviated as abbt) to E’s Leofwine abb; 1012. C and D have 48,000 (ehta 7 feowertig þusend); E 8,000 (viii þusend); 1016. C and D have ealle Engla þeode, E has eall Englaland \vel þeode/; CD have þær he ofahsade þæt se cyning wæs Eadmund, E has þaer he geherde secgan . . . .

Minor (selective) 994. C and D have feos before the 16,000 pound, E lacks; 1006. C and D have micla flota, E has denisca flota; C and D have hi a dydon heora ealdan gewunan, E has hy dydan heora gewuna; C and D have hiora herebeacen/beacna, E has heora beacna; 1009. C and D have swa hiora gewuna is, E has . . . wæs. . . ; C and D have se sige, E has se ege; 1010. C and D have Denan, E has deniscan; 1011. C and D have ræpling, E has ræwling; 1015. C and D have Ealdelmesbyrig, E has Mealdelmesbyrig.

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APPENDIX 3

The Cult of St Olaf and the Dating of Chronicle C, Annal 1030 It is, unfortunately, difficult to date very precisely the cult of Olaf and knowledge of it in England, and thus assess the significance of any reference to his ‘sanctity’. Peter Sawyer states that he was ‘soon, and widely, recognized as a saint, and his cult was vigorously encouraged, not least by Magnus’ (his son, who became king in 1034): P. Sawyer, ‘Cnut’s Scandinavian Empire’, in A. R. Rumble (ed.), The Reign of Cnut (London, 1994), pp. 10–22 at p. 22. As witness to this see coins of Magnus, which are argued to show St Olaf, connected to a victory over the Slavs in 1043: C. J. Becker, ‘Magnus den Godes Hedeby-mønter. De første danske erindringsmønter’, Nordisk Numismatisk Unions Medlemsblad (1983), pp. 42–7 at pp. 45–6. (I am very grateful to Rory Naismith for access to this article.) John Lindow would date skaldic celebration of Olaf ’s sanctity very early, perhaps before Swegn and his mother Ælfgifu were driven out of Norway in 1035. The translation of his bones by Bishop Grimkell is dated in later sources to 3 August 1031: see J. Lindow, ‘St. Olaf and the Skalds’, in T.  A.  DuBois (ed.), Sanctity in the North: Saints, Lives and Cults in Medieval Scandinavia (Toronto, 2008), pp. 103–127. Adam of Bremen, Magistri Adam Bremensis Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum, ed. B.  Schmeidler, MGH SS rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum (Hanover and Leipzig, 1917), p. 118, mentions English priests whom Olaf took with him to Norway, among them a ‘Grimkil’ and a ‘Rodulf ’: see M.  Lapidge, The Cult of St Swithun (Oxford, 2003), pp. 55–6. Suggestions of an English connection via Bishop Grimketel, bishop of Selsey (1039 to 1047), should probably be discounted (though his death is noted in C 1047 and E 1045). L. Abrams, ‘The Anglo-Saxons and the Christianization of Scandinavia’, ASE, 24 (1995), pp. 213–49 at p. 223 notes that the name, Grimkil/Grimketel is not English. At pp. 223–4 she raises the possibility that Rodulf, who became abbot of Abingdon in 1050 (C 1050, E 1048), was one of those who had gone to Norway with Olaf, citing Stenton’s suggestion that this mæg (‘kinsman’) of Edward the Confessor’s was a relative of Emma. On all evidence, however, this annal in C was written before Rodulf ’s appointment. There is an office for Olaf, the first evidence of a liturgical cult, in the Leofric Collectar (London, BL, MS Harley 2961); Earl Siward dedicated his church in York to him (see D 1055); see also B. Dickins, ‘The Cult of S. Olave in the British Isles’ Saga-Book of the Viking Society, 12 (1937–45) (published 1945), pp. 53–80. The Leofric Collectar, which was written at Exeter, contains two unusual feasts, those of St Lambert and St Olaf, associated perhaps with Gytha, Earl Godwine’s wife; on the basis of S 1037 there was a church dedicated to St Olaf in Exeter by 1063. Lambert was Cnut’s baptismal name: see R. W. Pfaff, The Liturgy in Medieval England: A History (Cambridge, 2009) at pp. 132–4. The office for Olaf in the Leofric book is linked to that for Lambert in the Wulfstan Portiforium, a Worcester (and Wells?) connection argued by Pfaff.

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Select Bibliography Primary Sources Aelred, Vita S. Edwardi Regis, in Patrologia Latina, 195 (Paris, 1855) Anglo-Saxon Wills, ed. and tr. D. Whitelock (Cambridge, 1930) ‘Annals of Waverley’, in Annales Monastici, ii, ed. H. R. Luard, Rolls Series (London, 1865) Chronica Magistri Rogeri de Houeden, i, ed. W. Stubbs, Rolls Series (London, 1868) Correspondence of Matthew Parker  D.D., Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. J.  Bruce and T. Thomason Perowne (Cambridge, 1853) Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus, ed. A. diPaolo Healey, J. P. Wilkin and X. Xiang, https://www.doe.utoronto.ca/pages/index.html English and Norse Documents relating to the Reign of Ethelred the Unready, ed. M. Ashdown (Cambridge, 1930) Facsimiles of English Royal Writs to A.D.  1100 presented to V.  H.  Galbraith, ed. T. A. M. Bishop and P. Chaplais (Oxford, 1957) Frithegodi Monachi Breviloquium Vitae Beati Wilfredi, ed. A. Campbell (Zurich, 1950) Historians of the Church of York and its Archbishops, ed. J.  Raine, Rolls Series, 3 vols (London, 1879–94) History and Politics in late Carolingian and Ottonian Europe: The Chronicle of Regino of Prüm and Adalbert of Magdeburg, tr. S. Maclean, (Manchester, 2009) Magistri Adam Bremensis Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum, ed. B. Schmeidler, MGH SS rerum Germanicarum (Hanover and Leipzig, 1917) Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I (1066–1087), ed. D.  Bates (Oxford, 1998) Scottish Episcopal Acta, i: The Twelfth Century, ed. N. F. Shead, Scottish History Society, 6th ser., 10 (Woodbridge, 2016) Select English Historical Documents of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries, ed. F.  E.  Harmer (Cambridge, 1914) Symeonis Dunelmensis Opera et Collectanea, i, ed. I. Hodgson Hinde, Surtees Society, 51 (Durham, London, and Edinburgh, 1868) Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, ed. T. Arnold, Rolls Series (London, 1882–5) The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, tr. G. N. Garmonsway (London, 1953, rev. edn, 1960) The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, i: Facsimile of MS. F: The Domitian Bilingual, ed. D. Dumville (Cambridge, 1995) The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative edition, xvii: The Annals of St Neots and the Vita Prima Sancti Neoti, ed. D. Dumville and M. Lapidge (Cambridge, 1984) The Battle of Brunanburh, ed. A. Campbell (London, 1938) The Earliest Life of Gregory the Great, ed. and tr. B. Colgrave (Kansas, 1968; Cambridge, 1985) The Early Lives of St Dunstan, ed. and tr. M. Lapidge and M. Winterbottom (Oxford, 2011) The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and tr. M. Chibnall, iv (Oxford, 1973) The Gesta Guillelmi of William of Poitiers, ed. and tr. R.  H.  C.  Davis and M.  Chibnall (Oxford, 1998)

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344  Select Bibliography The Gesta Normannorum Ducum of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis and Robert of Torigni, ed. and tr. E. van Houts, i (Oxford, 1992) The Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. D. Bethurum (Oxford, 1957) The Leofric Missal as used in the Cathedral of Exeter during the Episcopate of its First Bishop A.D. 1050–1072, ed. F. E. Warren (Oxford, 1883) The Liber Vitae of the New Minster and Hyde Abbey Winchester, ed. S. Keynes, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, 26 (Copenhagen, 1996) The Life of King Edward Who Rests at Westminster, ed. and tr. F. Barlow, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1992) The Old English Orosius, ed. J. Bately, Early English Text Society, S.S. 6 (Oxford, 1980) The Parker Chronicle and Laws, Corpus Christi College Cambridge, MS.173: A Facsimile, ed. R. Flower and H. Smith (London, 1941) The Peterborough Chronicle, 1070–1154, ed. C. Clark, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1970) The Tanner Bede: The Old English Version of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica, Oxford Bodleian Library Tanner 10, ed. J. Bately, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, 24 (Copenhagen, 1992) Ungedruckte anglo-normannische Geschichtsquellen, ed. F. Liebermann (Strassburg, 1879) William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, ed. and tr. M.  Winterbottom with R. M. Thomson, i (Oxford, 2007) William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella, ed. and tr. E.  King and K.  R.  Potter (Oxford, 1998)

Secondary Sources References to the online Oxford Dictionary of National Biography follow the style of cit­ation recommended by that publication, except that the author’s initial follows the surname. Abrams, L., ‘The Anglo-Saxons and the Christianization of Scandinavia’, ASE, 24 (1995), pp. 213–49 Abrams, L., Anglo-Saxon Glastonbury (Woodbridge, 1996) Aird, W., St Cuthbert and the Normans (Woodbridge, 1998) Airlie, S., ‘Bonds of Power and Bonds of Association in the Court Circle of Louis the Pious’, first published 1990, repr. in S.  Airlie, Power and its Problems in Carolingian Europe (Farnham, 2012) Airlie, S., ‘The Palace of Memory: the Carolingian Court as Political Centre’, first published 2000; repr. in S. Airlie, Power and its Problems in Carolingian Europe (Farnham, 2012) Albu, E., The Normans in their Histories: Propaganda, Myth and Subversion (Woodbridge, 2001) Alexander, J. J. G., ‘The Illumination of the Gospels’, in N. Barker (ed.), The York Gospels, Roxburghe Club (London, 1986), pp. 65–79 Angus, W. S., ‘The Annals for the Tenth Century in Symeon of Durham’s Historia Regum’, Durham University Journal, 32 (1940), pp. 213–29 Atkins, I., ‘The Origins of the Later Part of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle known as D’, EHR, 55 (1940), pp. 8–26 Bagge, S., ‘Warrior, King and Saint: The Medieval Histories about St Olaf Haroldsson’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 109 (2010), pp. 281–321 Bainton, H., ‘Translating the “English” Past: Cultural Identity in the Estoire des Engleis’, in J. Wogan-Browne with C. Collette et al. (eds) Language and Culture in Medieval Britain (Woodbridge, 2009), pp. 179–87

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Select Bibliography  345 Barker, N. (ed.), The York Gospels, Roxburghe Club (London, 1986) Barlow, F., The English Church, 1000–1066: A Constitutional History (London, 1963) Barlow, F., Edward the Confessor (London, 1970) Barrow, G.  W.  S., ‘The Kings of Scotland and Durham’, in D.  Rollason, M.  Harvey, and M. Prestwich (eds.), Anglo-Norman Durham 1093–1193 (Woodbridge, 1994), pp. 311–23 Barrow, G. W. S., ‘Scots in the Durham Liber Vitae’, in D. Rollason, A. J. Piper, M. Harvey, and L.  Rollason (eds), The Durham Liber Vitae and its Context (Woodbridge, 2004), pp. 109–16 Barrow, J. (2004, September 23). Oscytel [Oskytel] (d. 971), archbishop of York. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved 19 Oct. 2018, from https://www.oxforddnb. com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-20897 Barrow, J., ‘Developing Definitions of Reform in the Church in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries’, in R. Balzaretti, J. Barrow and P. Skinner (eds), Italy in Early Medieval Europe: Papers for Chris Wickham (Oxford, 2018), pp. 501–11 Barthes, R., ‘From Work to Text’, first published Revue d’esthétique, 1971, tr. R. Howard, in R. Barthes, The Rustle of Language (New York, 1986), pp. 56–64 Barthes, R., ‘The Death of the Author’, tr. R. Howard, in R. Barthes, The Rustle of Language (New York, 1986), pp. 49–55 Bately, J., ‘The Compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 60 B.C. to A.D. 890: Vocabulary as Evidence’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 64 (1978), pp. 93–129 Bately, J., ‘World History in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Its Sources and its Separateness from the Old English Orosius’, ASE, 8 (1979), pp. 177–94 Bately, J., ‘The Compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Once More’, Leeds Studies in English, NS, 16 (1985), pp. 7–26 Bately, J., ‘Manuscript Layout and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 70 (1988), pp. 21–43 Bately, J., ‘Old English Prose Before and After the Reign of Alfred’, ASE, 17 (1988), pp. 93–138 Bately, J., ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, in D.  Scragg (ed.), The Battle of Maldon, AD 991 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 37–50 Bately, J., review of P.W. Conner, ed. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 10: The Abingdon Chronicle AD 956–1066 (MS C with ref. to BDE), in The Medieval Review, 1996, Online publication, https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/tmr/article/view/14426 Bates, D. William the Conqueror (New Haven and London, 2016) Baxter, S., ‘MS C of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Politics of Mid Eleventh-Century England’, EHR, 122 (2007), pp. 1189–227 Baxter, S., ‘Edward the Confessor and the Succession Question’, in R.  Mortimer (ed.), Edward the Confessor: The Man and the Legend (Woodbridge, 2009), pp. 77–118 Beaven, M. L. R., ‘King Edmund I and the Danes of York’, EHR, 33 (1918), pp. 1–9 Becker, C.  J., ‘Magnus den Godes Hedeby-mønter. De første danske erindringsmønter’, Nordisk Numismatisk Unions Medlemsblad (1983), pp. 42–7 Bell, A. (ed.), L’Estoire des Engleis by Geoffroy Gaimar, Anglo-Norman Text Society, 14–16, 3 vols (Oxford, 1960) Bethurum, D., ‘A Letter of Protest from the English Bishops to the Pope’, in T.  A.  Kirby and  H.  Woolf (eds), Philologica: The Malone Anniversary Studies (Baltimore, 1949), pp. 97–104 Bishop, T. A. M., ‘An Early Example of the Square Minuscule’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 4 (1964–8), pp. 246–52 Blunt, C.  E., ‘The Coinage of Athelstan, King of England 924–39’, British Numismatic Journal, 42 (1974), pp. 35–160

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346  Select Bibliography Blunt, C.  E., ‘The Cabinet of the Marquess of Aylesbury and the Penny of Hywel Dda’, British Numismatic Journal, 52 (1982), pp. 117–22 Blunt, C. E., I. Stewart and C. S. S. Lyon, Coinage in Tenth-Century England: From Edward the Elder to Edgar’s Reform (Oxford, 1989) Boyle, L. E., ‘ “Epistolae venerunt parum dulces”: the Place of Codicology in the Editing of Medieval Latin Texts’, in R. Landon (ed.), Editing and Editors: A Retrospect (New York, 1985), pp. 29–46 Bredehoft, T., Review of Sheppard, Families of the King, in Notes and Queries, NS, 53.4 (2006), pp. 546–7 Bredehoft, T., ‘Malcolm and Margaret: The Poem in Annal 1067D’, in A. Jorgensen (ed.), Reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 31–48 Brett, M., The English Church under Henry I (Oxford, 1975) Brett, M., ‘John of Worcester and his Contemporaries’, in R. H. C. Davis et al. (eds), The Writing of History in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1981), pp. 101–26 Brett, M., ‘Gundulf and the Cathedral Communities of Canterbury and Rochester’, in R. Eales and R. Sharpe (eds), Canterbury and the Norman Conquest (London and Rio Grande, OH, 1995), pp. 15–25 Brewer, C., ‘Words and Dictionaries: OED, MED and Chaucer’, in C.  Brewer and B A Windeatt (eds), Traditions and Innovations in the Study of Medieval English Literature: The Influence of Derek Brewer (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 215–61 Brookman, H. (2016, October 06). Gurney, Anna (1795–1857), Old English scholar. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved 28 Nov. 2019, from https://www. oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128e-11759 Brooks, N., The Early History of the Church at Canterbury (Leicester, 1984) Brooks, N., Bede and the English, Jarrow Lecture (Jarrow, 1999) Brooks, N., ‘Why are the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles about Kings?’, ASE, 39 (2010), pp. 43–70 Brooks, N., ‘ “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle(s)” or “Old English Royal Annals”?’, in J L. Nelson, S.  Reynolds, and S.  M.  Johns (eds), Gender and Historiography: Studies in the Earlier Middle Ages in Honour of Pauline Stafford (London, 2012), pp. 35–48 Brooks, N., and C. Cubitt (eds), St Oswald of Worcester: Life and Influence (London, 1996) Broun, D., ‘The Melrose Chronicle and Becoming Scottish’, in B. Balin Smith, S. Taylor, and G.  Williams (eds), West over Sea: Studies in Scandinavian Sea-Borne Expansion and Settlement (Leiden, 2007), pp. 19–32 Brown, G., ‘Introduction: the Carolingian Renaissance’, in R. McKitterick (ed.), Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 1–51 Bullough, D., ‘St Oswald: Monk, Bishop and Archbishop’, in N. Brooks and C. Cubitt (eds), St Oswald of Worcester: Life and Influence (London, 1996), pp. 1–22 Burgess, R.  W., and M.  Kulikowski, ‘The History and Origins of the Latin Chronicle Tradition’, in E. Kooper (ed.), The Medieval Chronicle, VI (Amsterdam, 2009), pp. 153–77 Burke, P., ‘The History and Theory of Reception’, in H.  A.  Lloyd (ed.), The Reception of Bodin (Leiden, 2013), pp. 21–37 Campbell, J., ‘Some Twelfth-Century Views of the Anglo-Saxon Past’, Peritia, 3 (1984), pp. 131–50 Campbell, J., ‘What is Not Known about the Reign of Edward the Elder’, in N. J. Higham and D. H. Hill (eds), Edward the Elder (London, 2001), pp. 12–24 Clanchy, M. T., England and its Rulers, 1066–1272 (Glasgow, 1983) Clanchy, M.  T., From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1993)

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Select Bibliography  347 Clark, C., ‘Notes on MS Laud Misc 636’, Medium Ævum, 23 (1954), pp. 71–5 Clark, C., ‘ “This Ecclesiastical Adventurer”: Henry of Saint-Jean d’Angely’, EHR, 84 (1969), pp. 548–60 Clark, C., ‘The Narrative Mode of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle before the Conquest’, in P.  Clemoes and K.  Hughes (eds), England before the Conquest (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 215–35 Classen, E., and F. E. Harmer (eds), An Anglo-Saxon Chronicle from British Museum Cotton MS. Tiberius B.IV (Manchester, 1926) Collins, R., ‘The Reviser Revisited: Another Look at the Alternative Version of the Annales regni francorum’, in A.  Murray (ed.), After Rome’s Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History (Toronto, 1998), pp. 191–213 Collins, R., ‘Charlemagne’s Imperial Coronation and the Annals of Lorsch’, in J. Story (ed.), Charlemagne, Empire and Society (Manchester, 2005), pp. 52–70 Cooper, J. M., The Last Four Anglo-Saxon Archbishops of York, Borthwick Papers, 38 (York, 1970) Cole, M., Old Northumbrian Verbal Morphosyntax and the (Northern) Subject Rule (Amsterdam and Philadelphia, 2014) Conner, P., ‘Editing the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 103 (2004), pp. 269–380 Connerton, P., How Societies Remember (Cambridge, 1989) Corradini, R., ‘Die Annales Fuldenses—Identitätskonstruktionen im ostfränkischen Raum am Ende der Karolingerzeit’, in R.  Corradini, R.  Meens, C.  Pössel, and P.  Shaw (eds), Texts and Identities in the Early Middle Ages (Vienna, 2006), pp. 121–36 Coupland, S., ‘Trading Places: Quentovic and Dorestad Reassessed’, Early Medieval Europe, 11 (2002), pp. 209–32 Cowdrey, H. E. J., Lanfranc: Scholar, Monk, and Archbishop (Oxford, 2003) Cramer, P. (2004, September 23). Ernulf [Arnulf] (1039/40–1124), bishop of Rochester. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved 11 Dec. 2018, from https://www. oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128e-8841 Crick, J., ‘Edgar, Albion and Insular Dominion’, in D.  Scragg (ed.), Edgar, King of the English, 959–975 (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 158–70 Cubitt, C., Anglo-Saxon Church Councils, c. 650–c. 850 (London, 1995) Cubitt, C., and Costambeys, M. (2004, September 23). Oda [St Oda, Odo] (d. 958), archbishop of Canterbury. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved 19 Oct. 2018, from https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/ odnb-9780198614128-e-20541 Cuesta, J.  F., and S.  Pons Sanz (eds), The Old English Glosses to the Lindisfarne Gospels (Berlin, 2016) Cumberledge, N., ‘Reading between the Lines: the Place of Mercia within an Expanding Wessex’, Midland History, 27 (2002), pp. 1–15 Da Rold, O., ‘Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc 636’, in M.  Swan, E.  Treharne et al. (eds), The Production and Use of English Manuscripts 1060–1220 (University of Leicester, 2010), online publication, https://www.le.ac.uk/english/em1060to1220/mss/EM.Ox. Laud.Misc.636.htm Darlington, R. R., and P. McGurk, ‘The “Chronicon ex chronicis” of “Florence” of Worcester and its Use of Sources for English History before 1066’, ANS, 5 (1982), pp. 185–96 Davidson, M. R., ‘The (Non)Submission of the Northern Kings in 920’, in N. J. Higham and D. H. Hill (eds), Edward the Elder (London, 2001), pp. 200–11

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348  Select Bibliography Davies, J. R., ‘The Archbishopric of St. Davids and the Bishops of Clas Cynidr’, in J. W. Evans and J.  M.  Wooding (eds), St David of Wales: Cult, Church and Nation (Woodbridge, 2007), pp. 296–304 Davies, R., The Matter of Britain and the Matter of England (Oxford, 1996) Davis, R. H. C., ‘Alfred the Great, Propaganda and Truth’, History, 56 (1971), pp. 169–82 De Jong, M., ‘Emperor Lothar and his Bibliotheca Historiarum’, in R. I. A. Nip et al. (eds), Media Latinitas (Turnhout, 1996), pp. 229–35 De Jong, M., ‘The Empire as Ecclesia: Hrabanus Maurus and Biblical Historia for Rulers’, in Y. Hen and M. Innes (eds), Uses of the Past (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 191–226 De Jong, M., R.  McKitterick, W.  Pohl, and I.  Wood, ‘Introduction’, in R.  Corradini, R.  Meens, C.  Pössel, and P.  Shaw (eds), Texts and Identities in the Early Middle Ages (Vienna, 2006) Derolez, R., ‘An Epitome of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in Lambert of St Omer’s Liber Floridus’, English Studies, 48 (1967), pp. 226–31 Dhondt, J., ‘Les problèmes de Quentovic’, in A. Guiffré (ed.), Studi in onore di Amintore Fanfani, i (Milan, 1962), pp. 183–248 Dickins, B., ‘The Cult of S. Olave in the British Isles’, Saga-Book of the Viking Society, 12 (1937–45), pp. 53–80 Dodgson, J. McN., ‘The Background to Brunanburh’, Saga Book of the Viking Society, 14.4 (1957), pp. 303–16 Downham, C., ‘The Chronology of the Last Scandinavian Kings of York’, Northern History, 40 (2003), pp. 25–51 Downham, Clare, Viking Kings of Britain and Ireland: The Dynasty of Ívarr to A.D. 1014 (Edinburgh, 2007) Dumville, D., ‘The West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List and the Chronology of Early Wessex’, Peritia, 4 (1985), pp. 21–66 Dumville, D., ‘The West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List: Manuscripts and Texts’, Anglia, 104 (1986), pp. 1–32 Dumville, D., ‘Textual Archaeology and Northumbrian History Subsequent to Bede’, in D.  M.  Metcalf (ed.), Coinage in Ninth-Century Northumbria: The Tenth Oxford Symposium on Coinage and Monetary History, BAR, British Series, 180 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 43–55 Dumville, D., ‘Editing Old English Texts for Historians and Other Trouble Makers’, in D. C. Scragg and P. E. Szarmach (eds), The Editing of Old English (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 45–52 Dumville, D., ‘What is a Chronicle?’, in E.  Kooper (ed.), The Medieval Chronicle, II (Amsterdam, 2002), pp. 1–27 Dumville, D., ‘The Death of King Edward the Martyr—18 March, 979?’, in D. Dumville, Anglo-Saxon Essays, 2001–2007 (Aberdeen, 2008), pp. 251–65 Duncan, A. A. M., Medieval Scotland: The Making of the Kingdom (Edinburgh, 1975) Duncan, A. A. M., ‘Yes, the Earliest Scottish Charters’, Scottish Historical Review, 78 (1999), pp. 1–38 Dutton, P. E., The Politics of Dreaming in the Carolingian Empire (Lincoln, NB, 1994) Eales, R., and R. Sharpe, Canterbury and the Norman Conquest (London and Rio Grande, OH, 1995) Earle, J., Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, with Supplementary Extracts from the Others (Oxford, 1865) Eggert, W., and B.  Pätzold, Wir-Gefühl und regnum Saxonum bei frühmittelalterlichen Geschichtsschreibern (Berlin, 1984)

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Select Bibliography  349 Fanning, S., ‘Bede, Imperium and the Bretwaldas’, Speculum, 66 (1991), pp. 1–26 Foot, S., ‘The Making of Angelcynn: English Identity before the Norman Conquest’, TRHS, 6th ser., 6 (1996), pp. 25–49 Foot, S., Veiled Women, 2 vols (Aldershot, 2000) Foot, S., ‘The Historiography of the Anglo-Saxon “Nation-State” ’, in L.  Scales and O.  Zimmer (eds), Power and the Nation in European History (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 125–42 Foot, S., Æthelstan: The First King of England (New Haven, 2011) Forsyth, K., ‘Evidence for a Lost Pictish Source in the HRA of Symeon of Durham’, in S.  Taylor (ed.), Kings, Clerics and Chronicles in Scotland, 500–1297 (Dublin, 2000), pp. 19–24 Foucault, M., ‘Technologies of the Self ’, in L.  H.  Martin, H.  Gutman, and P.  H.  Hutton (eds), Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault (Amherst, MA, 1988), pp. 16–49 Frantzen, A., Desire for Origins: New Language, Old English, and Teaching the Tradition (New Brunswick, NJ, and London, 1990) Frantzen, A., ‘The Living and the Dead: Responses to Papers on the Politics of Editing Medieval Texts’, in R.  Frank (ed.), The Politics of Editing Medieval Texts (New York, 1993), pp. 159–81 Fryde, E. B., D. E. Greenway, S. Porter, and I. Roy (eds), Handbook of British Chronology, 3rd edn (Cambridge, 1986) Gameson, R., ‘The Decoration of the Tanner Bede’, ASE, 21 (1992), pp. 115–59 Gameson, R., ‘The Fabric of the Tanner Bede’, Bodleian Library Record, 14 (1992), pp. 176–206 Gameson, R., ‘English Manuscript Art in the Late Eleventh Century: Canterbury and its Context’, in R. Eales and R. Sharpe (eds), Canterbury and the Norman Conquest (London and Rio Grande, OH, 1995), pp. 95–144 Gameson, R., ‘St Wulfstan, the Library of Worcester and the Spirituality of the Medieval Book’, in J.  S.  Barrow and N.  P.  Brooks (eds), St Wulfstan and his World (Aldershot, 2005), pp. 59–104 Gannon, A., The Iconography of Early Anglo-Saxon Coinage, Sixth to Eighth Centuries (Oxford, 2003) Geary, P., Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton, 1995) Geertz, C., ‘Centers, Kings and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power’, in J.  Ben-David et al. (eds), Culture and its Creators: Essays in Honor of Edward Shils (Chicago, 1977), pp. 150–71; also at http://hypergeertz.jku.at/GeertzTexts/Centers_ Kings_Charisma.htm Georgi, W., ‘Koenwald von Worcester und die Heirat Ottos  I.  mit Edgitha’, Historisches Jahrbuch, 115 (1995), pp. 1–40 Gibson, E., Chronicon Saxonicum, seu Annales rerum in Anglia præcipue gestarum, a Christo nato ad annum usque 1154 deducti, ac jam demum Latinitate donati . . . accedunt regulæ ad investigandas nominum locorum origines; et nominum locorum ac virorum in chronico memoratorum explicatio. Opera et studio E. Gibson (Oxford, 1692) Gillingham, J., ‘Henry of Huntingdon and the Twelfth-Century Revival of the English Nation’, in S. Forde, L. Johnson, and A. V. Murray (eds), Concepts of National Identity in the Middle Ages, Leeds Texts and Monographs, NS, 14 (Leeds, 1995), pp. 75–101, repr. in J.  Gillingham, The English in the Twelfth Century: Imperialism, National Identity and Political Values (Woodbridge, 2000)

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350  Select Bibliography Gillingham, J., The English in the Twelfth Century: Imperialism, National Identity and Political Values (Woodbridge, 2000) Gneuss, H., and M.  Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100 (Toronto, 2014) Godden, M., ‘The Relations of Wulfstan and Ælfric, a Reassessment’, in M. Townend (ed.), Wulfstan, Archbishop of York: The Proceedings of the Second Alcuin Conference (Turnhout, 2004), pp. 353–74 Goffart, W., The Narrators of Barbarian History, AD 550–800 (Princeton, 1988) Graham, T., ‘The Beginnings of Old English Studies: Evidence from the Manuscripts of Matthew Parker’, in S. Sato (ed.), Back to the Manuscripts: Papers from the Symposium ‘The Integrated Approach to Manuscript Studies: A New Horizon’ held at the Eighth Meeting of the Japan Society for Medieval English Studies, Tokyo, December, 1992 (Tokyo 1997), pp. 29–50 Graham, T., ‘Anglo-Saxon Studies: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries’, in P. Pulsiano and E. Treharne (eds), A Companion to Anglo-Saxon Literature (Oxford, 2001), pp. 415–33 Graham, T., ‘Glosses and Notes in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts’, in G.  R.  Owen-Crocker (ed.), Working with Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts (Exeter, 2009), pp. 159–203 Green, J., Henry I, King of England and Duke of Normandy (Cambridge, 2006) Greenfield, S. B., and R. Evert, ‘Maxims II: Gnome and Poem’, in L. Nicholson and D. Frese (eds), Anglo-Saxon Poetry: Essays in Appreciation (Notre Dame, IN, 1975), pp. 337–354 Gretsch, M., Ælfric and the Cult of Saints in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, 2005) Guimon, T.  V., ‘The Writing of Annals in Eleventh-Century England: Palaeography and Textual History’, in A.  R.  Rumble (ed.), Writing Texts in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 137–45 Gurney, A., A Literal Translation of the Saxon Chronicle, by Miss Anna Gurney, For private circulation (Norwich, 1819) Hamilton, A. (2004, September 23). Wheelocke, Abraham (c.1593–1653), linguist and librarian. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved 28 Nov. 2019, from https:// www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128e-29191 Hare, M., The Two Anglo-Saxon Minsters at Gloucester, Deerhurst Lecture, 1992 (Deerhurst, 1993) Harrison, K., The Framework of Anglo-Saxon History (Cambridge, 1976) Hart, C., ‘The Ramsey Computus’, EHR, 85 (1970), pp. 29–44 Hart, C., ‘The B Text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, Journal of Medieval History, 8 (1982), pp. 241–99 Hart, C.,‘Byrhtferth’s Northumbrian Chronicle’, EHR, 97 (1982), pp. 558–82 Hart, C., ‘The Early Sections of the Worcester Chronicle’, Journal of Medieval History, 9 (1983), pp. 251–315 Hart, C., ‘Eadnoth I of Ramsey and Dorchester’, first published 1964, repr. in C. Hart, The Danelaw (London and Rio Grande, OH, 1992), pp. 613–23 Hayward, P. A., ‘Some Reflections on the Historical Value of the So-called Acta Lanfranci’, Historical Research, 77 (2004), pp. 141–60 Hayward, P. A., The Winchcombe and Coventry Chronicles: Hitherto Unnoticed Witnesses to the Work of John of Worcester, 2 vols (Tempe, AZ, 2010) Hen, Y., ‘The Annals of Metz and the Merovingian Past’, in Y. Hen and M. Innes (eds), Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2000) pp. 175–90 Hen, Y., ‘Religious Culture and the Power of Tradition in the Early Medieval West’, in C.  Lansing and E.  D.  English (eds), A Companion to the Medieval World (Chichester, 2009), pp. 67–85

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Select Bibliography  351 Heslop, T.  A., ‘The Canterbury Calendars and the Norman Conquest’, in R.  Eales and R. Sharpe (eds), Canterbury and the Norman Conquest (London and Rio Grande, OH, 1995), pp. 53–85 Heslop, T.  A., ‘Art and the Man: Archbishop Wulfstan and the York Gospelbook’, in M. Townend (ed.), Wulfstan, Archbishop of York: The Proceedings of the Second Alcuin Conference (Turnhout, 2004), pp. 279–308 Higham, N. J., and D. H. Hill, Edward the Elder, 899–924 (London, 2001) Hill, D., An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1981) Hill, D., D. Barrett, K. Maude, and J. Warburton, ‘Quentovic Defined’, Antiquity, 64 (1990), pp. 51–8 Hollis, S., ‘ “The Protection of God and the King”: Wulfstan’s Legislation on Widows’, in M. Townend (ed.), Wulfstan, Archbishop of York: The Proceedings of the Second Alcuin Conference (Turnhout, 2004), pp. 443–60 Hollister, C. W., Henry I (New Haven and London, 2001) Home, M., The Peterborough Version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Rewriting Post-Conquest History (Woodbridge, 2015) Howe, N., ‘What We Talk about When We Talk about Style’, in C.  E.  Karkov and G. H. Brown (eds), Anglo-Saxon Styles (Ann Arbor, 2003), pp. 169–78 Howorth, H., ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Its Origins and History, Part III’, Archaeological Journal, 69 (1912), pp. 312–70 Hunt, W., & M.  Smith (2004 September 23). Ealdwulf [Aldulf] (d. 1002), archbishop of York. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved 9 Feb. 2018, from https://www. oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128e-317 Hunter Blair, P., ‘Some Observations on the Historia Regum attributed to Symeon of Durham’, in K.  Jackson et al., Celt and Saxon: Studies in the Early British Border (Cambridge, 1963), pp. 63–118 Ingram, J., The Saxon Chronicle with an English Translation and Notes, Critical and Explanatory. To which are added Chronological, Topographical, and Glossarial Indices, a Short Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon Language, etc. (London, 1823) Innes, M. ‘Introduction: Using the Past, Interpreting the Present, Influencing the Future’, in Y. Hen and M. Innes (eds), Uses of the Past (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 1–8 Innes, M., and R. McKitterick, ‘The Writing of History’, in R. McKitterick (ed.), Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 193–220 Irvine, M., ‘Medieval Textuality and the Archaeology of Textual Culture’, in A. J. Frantzen (ed.), Speaking Two Languages: Traditional Disciplines and Contemporary Theory in Medieval Studies (New York, 1991), pp. 181–210 Irvine, M., The Making of Textual Culture, ‘Grammatica’ and Literary Theory, 350–1100 (Cambridge, 1994) Irvine, S., ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Idea of Rome in Alfredian Literature’, in T.  Reuter (ed.), Alfred the Great: Papers from the Eleventh-Centenary Conferences (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 63–77 Irvine, S., ‘Beginnings and Transitions: Old English’, in L. Mugglestone (ed.), The Oxford History of English (Oxford, 2006), pp. 32–60 Irvine, S., ‘The Production of the Peterborough Chronicle’, in A Jorgensen (ed.), Reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 49–66 Irvine, S, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, in N.  G.  Discenza and P.  E.  Szarmach , (eds), A Companion to Alfred the Great (Leiden, 2014), pp. 344–67 James, M. R., A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Corpus Christi College Cambridge (Cambridge, 1912)

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352  Select Bibliography Jorgensen, A., ‘Introduction’, in A Jorgensen (ed.), Reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 1–28 Jorgensen, A., ‘Rewriting the Æthelredian Chronicle: Narrative Style and Identity in Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS F’, in A Jorgensen (ed.), Reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 113–38 Jost, K., ‘Wulfstan und die Angelsächsiche Chronik’, Anglia, 47 (1923), pp. 105–23 Joyce, P., and C.  Kelly, ‘History and Post-Modernism’, Past and Present, 133 (1991), pp. 204–13 Keller, W., Die litterarischen Bestrebungen von Worcester in angelsächsicher Zeit (Strasbourg, 1900) Kennedy, A. G., ‘Cnut’s Law Code of 1018’, ASE, 11 (1983), pp. 57–81 Ker, N. (ed.), Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books, 2nd edn, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks, no 3 (London, 1964) Ker, N., English Manuscripts after the Norman Conquest (Oxford, 1968) Ker, N., ‘The Handwriting of Archbishop Wulfstan’, in P.  Clemoes and K.  Hughes (eds), England Before the Conquest: Studies in Primary Sources presented to Dorothy Whitelock (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 315–31 Keynes, S., ‘The Declining Reputation of King Æthelred the Unready’, in D.  Hill (ed.), Ethelred the Unready, BAR, British Ser., 59 (Oxford,1978), pp. 227–53 Keynes, S., The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘the Unready’, 978–1016: A Study in their Use as Historical Evidence (Cambridge, 1980) Keynes, S., ‘King Athelstan’s Books’, in M.  Lapidge and H.  Gneuss (eds), Learning and Literature in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 143–99 Keynes, S., ‘A Tale of Two Kings: Alfred the Great and Æthelred the Unready’, TRHS, 5th ser., 36 (1986), pp. 195–217 Keynes, S., ‘The Additions in Old English’, in N. Barker (ed), The York Gospels, Roxburghe Club (London, 1986), pp. 81–99 Keynes, S., ‘Regenbald the Chancellor (sic)’, ANS, 10 (1988), pp. 185–222 Keynes, S., ‘Cnut’s Earls’, in A. Rumble (ed.), The Reign of Cnut (London, 1994), pp. 43–88 Keynes, S., The Councils of Clofesho, Brixworth Lecture 1993, Vaughan Papers, no. 38 (Leicester, 1994) Keynes, S., ‘Giso, Bishop of Wells’, ANS, 19 (Woodbridge, 1997), pp. 203–71 Keynes, S., ‘King Alfred and the Mercians’, in M. A. S. Blackburn and D. N. Dumville (eds), Kings, Currency and Alliances (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 1–45 Keynes, S., ‘Koenwald’, in M.  Lapidge, J.  Blair, S.  Keynes, and D.  Scragg (eds), Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1999), pp. 273–5 Keynes, S., ‘Between Bede and the Chronicle: London BL Cotton Vespasian B vi fols 104–9’, in K. O’Brien O’Keeffe and A. Orchard (eds), Latin Learning and English Lore, i (Toronto, 2005), pp. 47–67 Keynes, S., ‘Manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, in R.  Gameson (ed.), The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, i: c. 400–1100 (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 537–52 Keynes, S., ‘The Cult of Edward the Martyr during the Reign of King Æthelred the Unready’, in J. L. Nelson, S. Reynolds, and S. M. Johns (eds), Gender and Historiography: Studies in the Earlier Middle Ages in Honour of Pauline Stafford (London, 2012), pp. 115–25 King, E., The Anarchy of King Stephen’s Reign (Oxford, 1994) King, V., ‘Ealdred, Archbishop of York: the Worcester Years’, ANS, 18 (1995), pp. 123–37 Knowles, D. M., ‘Great Historical Enterprises, IV. The Rolls Series’, TRHS, 5th ser., 11 (1961), pp. 137–59 Körner, S., The Battle of Hastings: England and Europe 1035–1066 (Lund, 1964) Körntgen, L. ‘Introduction’, in L. Körntgen and D. Wassenhoven (eds), Patterns of Episcopal Power: Bishops in Tenth and Eleventh Century Western Europe (Berlin, 2011), pp. 11–15

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Select Bibliography  353 Körntgen, L., and D. Wassenhoven (eds), Patterns of Episcopal Power: Bishops in Tenth and Eleventh Century Western Europe (Berlin, 2011) Lapidge, M., ‘Byrhtferth of Ramsey and the Early Sections of the Historia Regum attributed to Symeon of Durham’. ASE, 10 (1981), pp. 97–122, repr. in M.  Lapidge, Anglo-Latin Literature 900–1066 (London and Rio Grande, OH, 1993), pp. 317–42 Lapidge, M., ‘Ealdred of York and MS Cotton Vitellius  E.XII’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 55 (1983), pp. 11–25 Lapidge, M., ‘The Edition, Emendation and Reconstruction of Anglo-Saxon Texts’, in R. Frank (ed.), The Politics of Editing Medieval Texts (New York, 1993), pp. 131–57 Lapidge, M., ‘On the Emendation of Old English Texts’, in D. C. Scragg and P. E. Szarmach (eds), The Editing of Old English (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 53–67 Lapidge, M., ‘Byrhtferth and Oswald’, in N.  Brooks and C.  Cubitt (eds), St Oswald of Worcester: Life and Influence (London, 1996), pp. 64–83 Lapidge, M., The Cult of St Swithun, Winchester Studies, 4.ii (Oxford, 2003) Lavelle, R., ‘The Politics of Rebellion: The Ætheling Æthelwold and West Saxon Royal Succession, 899–902’, in P. Skinner (ed.), Challenging the Boundaries of Medieval History: The Legacy of Timothy Reuter (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 51–80 Levison, W., England and the Continent in the Eighth Century (Oxford, 1946) Leyser, K., ‘The Ottonians and Wessex’, first published in 1983, repr. in T.  Reuter (ed.), Communications and Power in Medieval Europe: The Carolingian and Ottonian Centuries (London and Rio Grande, OH, 1994), pp. 73–104 Lifshitz, F., ‘The Vicissitudes of Political Identity. Historical Narrative in the Barbarian Successor States’, in S.  Foot and C.  Robinson (eds), The Oxford History of Historical Writing, 400–1100 (Oxford, 2012), pp. 368–90 Lindow, J., ‘St. Olaf and the Skalds’, in T. A. DuBois (ed.), Sanctity in the North: Saints, Lives and Cults in Medieval Scandinavia (Toronto, 2008), pp. 103–27 Lutz, A., ‘The Study of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in the Seventeenth Century and the Establishment of Old English Studies in the Universities’, in T.  Graham (ed.), The Recovery of Old English: Anglo-Saxon Studies in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Kalamazoo, MI, 2000), pp. 1–82 Maclean, S., ‘Palaces, Itineraries and Political Order in the Post-Carolingian kingdoms’, in J. Hudson and A. Rodriguez (eds), Diverging Paths: The Shape of Power and Institutions in Medieval Christendom and Islam (Leiden, 2014), pp. 291–320 Magoun, F.  P., ‘Annales Domitiani Latini: An Edition’, Mediaeval Studies, 9 (1947), pp. 235–95 Mann, G., ‘The Development of Wulfstan’s Alcuin Manuscript’, in M. Townend (ed.), Wulfstan, Archbishop of York: The Proceedings of the Second Alcuin Conference (Turnhout, 2004), pp. 235–78 McIntosh, A., ‘Wulfstan’s Prose’, in E. G. Stanley (ed.), British Academy Papers on AngloSaxon England (Oxford, 1990), pp. 111–44 McKitterick, R., ‘Constructing the Past in the Early Middle Ages: The Case of the Royal Frankish Annals’, TRHS, 6th ser., 7 (1997), pp. 101–29 McKitterick, R, ‘Political Ideology in Carolingian Historiography’, in Y. Hen and M. Innes (eds), Uses of the Past (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 162–74 McKitterick, R., ‘The Illusion of Royal Power in the Carolingian Annals’, EHR, 115 (2000), pp. 1–20 McKitterick, R., History and Memory in the Carolingian World (Cambridge, 2004) McKitterick, R., ‘History, Law and Communication with the Past in the Carolingian Period’, in Comunicare e significare nell’alto medioevo, Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 52 (Spoleto, 2005), pp. 941–82 McKitterick, R., Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity (Cambridge, 2008)

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354  Select Bibliography Meens, R., ‘The Use of the Old Testament in Early Medieval Canon Law’, in Y. Hen and M. Innes (eds), Uses of the Past (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 67–77 Mitchell, B., Old English Syntax (Oxford, 1985) Molyneaux, G., ‘Why were Some Tenth-Century English Kings presented as Rulers of Britain?’ TRHS, 6th ser., 21 (2011), pp. 59–91 Naismith, R., Medieval European Coinage, viii: Britain and Ireland c. 400–1066 (Cambridge, 2017) Nelson, J. L., ‘Public Histories and Private History in the Work of Nithard’, Speculum, 60 (1985), pp. 251–93 Nelson, J.  L., ‘A King across Sea: Alfred in Continental Perspective’, TRHS, 5th ser., 36 (1986), pp. 45–68 Nelson, J. L., ‘Reconstructing a Royal Family: Reflections on Alfred from Asser, Chapter 2’, in N.  Lund and I.  Wood (eds), People and Places in Northern Europe, 500–1600 (Woodbridge, 1991), pp. 47–66 Nelson, J. L., The Annals of St Bertin (Manchester, 1991) Nelson, J. L., ‘History-Writing at the Courts of Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald’, in A. Scharer and G. Scheibelreiter (eds), Historiographie im frűhen Mittelalter (Munich, 1994), pp. 435–42 Neville, J., ‘Making Their Own Sweet Time: The Scribes of Anglo-Saxon Chronicle A’, in E. Kooper (ed.), The Medieval Chronicle, II (Amsterdam, 2002), pp. 166–77 Niedorf, L., ‘Archbishop Wulfstan’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People’, English Studies, 97 (2016), pp. 207–25 Norton, C., ‘York Minster in the Time of Wulfstan’, in M.  Townend (ed.), Wulfstan, Archbishop of York: The Proceedings of the Second Alcuin Conference (Turnhout, 2004), pp. 207–34 Norton, C., ‘Bernard, Suger and Henry I’s Crown Jewels’, Gesta, 45.1 (2006), pp. 1–14 O’Brien O’Keeffe, K., ‘Reading the C-Text: the After-Lives of London, BL Tiberius B i’, in P.  Pulsiano and E.  M.  Treharne (eds), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts and their Heritage (Aldershot, 1998), pp. 137–60 O’Brien O’Keeffe, K., ‘Goscelin, the Liber confortatorius and the Library of Peterborough’, in C. E. Karkov (ed.), Poetry, Place and Gender: Studies in Medieval History in Honor of Helen Damico (Kalamazoo, MI, 2009), pp. 151–70 Offler, H.  S., ‘Hexham and the Historia Regum’, Transactions of the Architectural and Archaeological Society of Durham and Northumberland, NS, 2 (1970), pp. 51–62, repr. in H.  S.  Offler, North of the Tees: Studies in Medieval British History, ed. A.  J.  Piper and A. I. Doyle (Aldershot, 1996) Opland, J., Anglo-Saxon Oral Poetry: A Study of the Traditions (New Haven, 1980) Orchard, A., ‘Maxims I and II’, in P.  Szarmach, T.  Tavormina, and J.  Rosenthal (eds), Medieval England: An Encyclopedia (New York, 1998), pp. 503–4 Orchard, A., ‘The Literary Background to the Encomium Emmae Reginae’, Journal of Medieval Latin, 11 (2001), pp. 156–83 Page, R. I., Matthew Parker and his Books (Kalamazoo, MI, 1993) Partner, N. F., Serious Entertainments: The Writing of History in Twelfth-Century England (Chicago, 1977) Partner, N., Writing Medieval History (London, 2005) Pastan, E.  Carson, ‘ “Quid faciat . . . Scollandus”. The Abbey Church of St Augustine’s c. 1073–1100’, in E.  Carson Pastan, S.  D.  White, and K.  Gilbert (eds), The Bayeux Tapestry and its Contexts: A Reassessment (Woodbridge, 2014), pp. 260–87 Patzold, S., Episcopus: Wissen über Bischöfe im Frankenreich des späten 8. bis frühen 10. Jahrhunderts (Ostfildern, 2008)

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Select Bibliography  355 Paxton, J., ‘Forging Communities: Memory and Identity in Post Conquest England’, HSJ, 10 (2001), pp. 95–109 Petrie, H., and J.  Sharpe (eds), Monumenta Historica Britannica, or, Materials for the History of Britain from the Earliest Period (London, 1848) Pfaff, R. W., The Liturgy in Medieval England: A History (Cambridge, 2009) Pickles, T., Kingship, Society and the Church in Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire (Oxford, 2018) Piper, A. J., ‘The Historical Interests of the Monks of Durham’, in D. Rollason (ed.), Symeon of Durham: Historian of Durham and the North (Stamford, 1998), pp. 301–32 Pohl, W., ‘Memory, Identity and Power in Lombard Italy’, in Y. Hen and M. Innes (eds), Uses of the Past (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 9–28 Pohl, W., ‘The Construction of Communities and the Persistence of Paradox: An Introduction’, in R. Corradini, M. Diesenberger, and H. Reimitz (eds), The Construction of Communities in the Early Middle Ages: Texts, Resources and Artefacts (Leiden, 2003), pp. 1–15 Pons-Sanz, S.  M., ‘A Paw in Every Pie: Wulfstan and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Again’, Leeds Studies in English, NS, 38 (2007), pp. 31–52 Pons-Sanz, S.  M., ‘Norse-Derived Vocabulary in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, in A. Jorgensen (ed.), Reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 275–304 Rabin, A., ‘Wulfstan at London: Episcopal Politics in the Reign of Æthelred’, English Studies, 97 (2016), pp. 186–206 Reimitz, H., ‘The Art of Truth: Historiography and Identity in the Frankish World’, in R. Corradini, R. Meens, C. Pössel, and P. Shaw (eds), Texts and Identities in the Early Middle Ages (Vienna, 2006), pp. 88–103 Reimitz, H., History, Frankish Identity and the Framing of Western Ethnicity, 550–850 (Cambridge, 2015) Reuter, T., The Annals of Fulda (Manchester, 1992) Reuter, T., ‘A Europe of Bishops. The Age of Wulfstan of York and Burchard of Worms’, first published in German in 2000, repr. in L. Körntgen and D. Wassenhoven (eds), Patterns of Episcopal Power: Bishops in Tenth and Eleventh Century Western Europe (Berlin, 2011), pp. 17–38 Richards, M. P., Texts and their Traditions in the Medieval Library of Rochester Cathedral Priory, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 78.3 (Philadelphia, 1988) Riches, T., ‘Changing Political Horizons of gesta episcoporum from the Ninth to Eleventh Centuries’, in L.  Körntgen and D.  Wassenhoven (eds), Patterns of Episcopal Power: Bishops in Tenth and Eleventh Century Western Europe (Berlin, 2011), pp. 51–62 Richter, M., ‘Bede’s Angli: Angles or English?’, Peritia, 3 (1984), pp. 99–114 Ricoeur, P., ‘The Narrative Function’, in J. B. Thompson (ed. and tr.), Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation (Cambridge and Paris, 1981), pp. 274–96 Ricoeur, P., ‘Life in Quest of Narrative’, in D. Wood (ed.), On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and Interpretation (London, 1991) Roach, L., Æthelred the Unready (New Haven and London, 2016) Robinson, F. C., ‘Old English Literature in its Most Immediate Context’, in J. D. Niles (ed.), Old English Literature in Context (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 11–29 Rollason, D., Northumbria, 500–1100: Creation and Destruction of a Kingdom (Cambridge, 2003) Rollason, D. W., D. Gore, and G. Fellows Jensen, Sources for York History to AD 1100 (York, 1998) Rollason, D., ‘Symeon of Durham’s Historia de Regibus Anglorum et Dacorum as a Product of Twelfth-Century Historical Workshops’, in M. Brett and D. A. Woodman (eds), The Long Twelfth-Century View of the Anglo-Saxon Past (Farnham, 2015), pp. 95–111

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356  Select Bibliography Rositzke, H. (ed.), The C-Text of the Old English Chronicles, Beiträge zur englischen Philologie. Hft. 34 (Bochum, 1940) Rositzke, H. [Obituary, 2002], The Independent, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/ obituaries/harry-rositzke-603791.html Rositzke, H. [Obituary, 2002], The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/08/ us/harry-rositzke-91-linguist-and-american-spymaster.html?src=pm Rowley, S. M., ‘Bede in Later Anglo-Saxon England’, in S. De Gregorio (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Bede (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 216–28 Rowley, S. M., The Old English Version of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica (Cambridge, 2011) Rubenstein, J., ‘Liturgy against History: The Competing Visions of Lanfranc and Eadmer of Canterbury’, Speculum, 74 (1999), pp. 271–301 Rubenstein, J., ‘The Life and Writings of Osbern of Canterbury’, in R. Eales and R. Sharpe (eds), Canterbury and the Norman Conquest (London and Rio Grande, OH, 1995), pp. 27–40 Rubenstein, J. (2004, September 23). Eadmer (Edmer) of Canterbury (b. c. 1060, d. in or after 1126), Benedictine monk and historian. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved 21 Aug. 2018, from https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/ 9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-8383 Salvador Bello, M., ‘The Edgar Panegyrics in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, in D.  Scragg (ed.), Edgar, King of the English (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 252–72 Sawyer, P., Age of the Vikings, 2nd edn (London, 1971) Sawyer, P., ‘The Charters of Burton Abbey and the Unification of England’, Northern History, 10 (1975), pp. 28–39 Sawyer, P., ‘Cnut’s Scandinavian Empire’, in A. Rumble (ed.), Reign of Cnut, King of England, Denmark and Norway (London, 1994), pp. 10–22 Scharer, A., ‘The Writing of History at King Alfred’s Court’, Early Medieval Europe, 5 (1996), pp. 177–206 Scharer, A., Herrschaft und Repräsentation: Studien zur Hofkultur König Alfreds des Grossen (Vienna and Munich, 2000) Seccombe, T. & Haigh, J. (2004, September 23), ‘Thorpe, Benjamin (1781/2–1870), Old English scholar’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Retrieved 8 Aug. 2018, from https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb9780198614128-e-27375 Sharpe, R., ‘The Setting of St Augustine’s Translation, 1091’, in R. Eales and R. Sharpe (eds), Canterbury and the Norman Conquest (London and Rio Grande, OH, 1995), pp. 1–13 Shead, N. F., ‘The Origins of the Medieval Diocese of Glasgow’, Scottish Historical Review, 48 (1969), pp. 220–5 Sheppard, A., Families of the King: Writing Identity in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Toronto, 2004) Shippey, T., ‘A Missing Army: Some Doubts about the Alfredian Chronicle’, In Geardagum, 4 (1982), pp. 41–55 (rev. and repr. in Anglo-Saxon, 1 (2007), pp. 219–38) Short, I., ‘Gaimar’s Epilogue and Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Liber vetustissimus’, Speculum, 69 (1994), pp. 323–43 Sisam, K., ‘Anglo-Saxon Royal Genealogies’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 39 (1953), pp. 287–348 Small, I., ‘The Editor as Annotator as Ideal Reader’, in I. Small and M. Walsh (eds), The Theory and Practice of Text-Editing (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 186–209 Smalley, B., Historians in the Middle Ages (London, 1974) Smith, M., ‘Archbishop Stigand and the Eye of the Needle’, ANS, 16 (1993), pp. 199–219

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Select Bibliography  357 Snook, B., ‘When Aldhelm met the Vikings. Advanced Latinity in Four Mercian Charters of the Ninth Century’, Mediaevistik, 26 (2013), pp. 111–47 Snook, B., The Anglo-Saxon Chancery: The History, Language and Production of AngloSaxon Charters from Alfred to Edgar, Anglo-Saxon Studies, 28 (Woodbridge and Rochester, NY, 2015) Sot, M., Un historien et son église au Xe siècle: Flodoard de Reims (Paris, 1993) Southern, R., Saint Anselm and his Biographer (Cambridge, 1963) Southern, R., ‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing, 4: The Sense of the Past’, TRHS, 5th ser., 23 (1973), pp. 243–63 Southern, R., Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge, 1990) Sparks, N., ‘The “Parker Chronicle” Chronology Gone Awry’, in J. Dresvina and N. Sparks (eds), The Medieval Chronicle, VII (Amsterdam, 2011), pp. 63–84 Spiegel, G., ‘Theory into Practice: Reading Medieval Chronicles’, in E. Kooper (ed.), The Medieval Chronicle, I (Amsterdam, 1999), pp. 1–12 Spiegel, G., L.  Stone, and P.  Joyce, [Debate on Post Modernism and History], Past and Present, nos 131, pp. 217–8, 133, pp. 204–13, and 135, pp. 189–208 Stafford, P., ‘The Reign of Æthelred II, a Study in the Limitations on Royal Policy and Action’, in D. Hill (ed.), Ethelred the Unready, BAR, British Ser., 59 (Oxford, 1978), pp. 15–46 Stafford, P., Queens, Concubines and Dowagers: The King’s Wife in the Early Middle Ages (London, 1983) Stafford, P., Unification and Conquest: A Political and Social History of England in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (London, 1989) Stafford, P., Queen Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and Women’s Power in EleventhCentury England (Oxford, 1997) Stafford, P., ‘Political Ideas in Late Tenth-Century England: Charters as Evidence’, in P. Stafford, J. L. Nelson, and J. Martindale (eds), Law, Laity and Solidarities: Essays in Honour of Susan Reynolds (Manchester, 2001), pp. 68–82 Stafford, P., ‘Political Women in Mercia, Eighth to Early Tenth Centuries’, in M. P. Brown and C.  A.  Farr (eds), Mercia: An Anglo-Saxon Kingdom in Europe (London, 2001), pp. 35–49 Stafford, P., ‘Succession and Inheritance: a Gendered Perspective on Alfred’s Family History’, in T.  Reuter (ed.), Alfred the Great: Papers from the Eleventh-Centenary Conferences (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 251–64 Stafford, P., ‘Chronicle D, 1067 and Women: Gendering Conquest in Eleventh-Century England’, in S. Keynes and A. P. Smyth (eds), Anglo-Saxons: Studies presented to Cyril Roy Hart (Dublin, 2006), pp. 208–23 Stafford, P., ‘Reading Women in Annals: Eadburg, Cuthburg, Cwenburg and the AngloSaxon Chronicles’, in C. La Rocca (ed.), Agire da Donna: Modelli e pratiche di rappresentazione (secoli VI–X) (Turnhout, 2007), pp. 269–88 Stafford, P., ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, Identity and the Making of England’, HSJ, 19 (2007), pp. 28–50 Stafford, P.,‘ “The Annals of Æthelflæd”: Annals, History and Politics in Early TenthCentury England’, in J.  Barrow and A.  Wareham (eds), Myth, Rulership, Church and Charters: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Brooks (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 101–16 Stafford, P., ‘Edith, Edward’s Wife and Queen’, in R. Mortimer (ed.), Edward the Confessor. The Man and the Legend (Woodbridge, 2009), pp. 119–38 Stafford, P., ‘Archbishop Ealdred and the D Chronicle’, in D.  Crouch and K.  Thompson (eds), Normandy and its Neighbours, 900–1250: Essays for David Bates (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 135–56

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358  Select Bibliography Stafford, P., ‘Royal Women and Transitions: Emma and Ælfgifu in 1035–1042/3’, in L. Körntgen and D. Wassenhoven (eds), Patterns of Episcopal Power: Bishops in Tenth and Eleventh Century Western Europe (Berlin, 2011), pp. 127–44 Stafford, P., ‘Noting Relations and Tracking Relationships in English Vernacular Chronicles, Late Ninth to Early Twelfth Century’, in I.  Afanasyev, J.  Dresvina, and E. Kooper (eds), The Medieval Chronicle, X (Amsterdam, 2015), pp. 23–48 Stafford, P., ‘The Making of Chronicles and the Making of England: the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles after Alfred’, TRHS, 6th ser., 27 (2017), pp. 65–86 Stafford, P., ‘Fathers and Daughters: The Case of Æthelred II’, in R.  Naismith and D. A. Woodman (eds), Writing, Kingship and Power in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, 2018), pp. 139–61 Stafford, P., ‘Gender and the Gift: The Giving and Receiving of Women in Early Medieval England’, in R.  Balzaretti, J.  Barrow, and P.  Skinner (eds), Italy and Early Medieval Europe: Papers for Chris Wickham (Oxford, 2018), pp. 73–86 Stafford, P., ‘Women in the D Chronicle: Writing and Rewriting the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles’, in E. Winkler and C. Lewis (eds), Rewriting the Anglo-Saxon Past (forthcoming). Stenton, F. M. ‘The South-Western Element in the Old English Chronicle’, first published in 1925, repr. in D. M. Stenton (ed.), Preparatory to Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1970), pp. 106–15 Stenton, F. M., Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd edn (Oxford, 1989) Stevenson, J., The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The Chronicle of Florence of Worcester (London, 1853) Stodnick, J., ‘Second-Rate Stories? Changing Approaches to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, Literature Compass, 3/6 (2006), pp. 1253–65, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741–4113.2006. 00380.x Stodnick, J., ‘Sentence to Story: Reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as Formulary’, in A. Jorgensen (ed.), Reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 91–111 Stone, L, ‘History and Post-Modernism’, Past and Present, 131 (1991), pp. 217–18 Story, J., ‘Symeon as Annalist’, in D.  Rollason (ed.), Symeon of Durham: Historian of the North (Stamford, 1998), pp. 202–13 Story, J., Carolingian Connections: Anglo-Saxon England and Carolingian Francia, c. 750–870 (Aldershot, 2003) Story, J., ‘The Frankish Annals of Lindisfarne and Kent’, ASE, 34 (2005), pp. 59–109 Story, J., ‘After Bede: Continuing the Ecclesiastical History’, in S.  Baxter, C.  Karkov, J. L. Nelson, and D. Pelteret (eds), Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald (Farnham, 2009), pp. 165–84 Sutherland, K., ‘Being Critical: Paper-Based Editing and the Digital Environment’, in M.  Deegan and K.  Sutherland (eds), Text and Editing, Print and the Digital World (Farnham, 2009), pp. 13–25 Swan, M., E. Treharne et al. (eds), The Production and Use of English Manuscripts 1060–1220, https://www.le.ac.uk/english/em1060to1220/index.html Szarmach, P., ‘Æthelflæd of Mercia: Mise en Page’, in P. S. Baker and N. Howe (eds), Words and Works: Studies in Medieval English Language and Literature in Honour of Fred C. Robinson (Toronto, 1998), pp. 105–26 Tanselle, G.  T., ‘Classical, Biblical and Medieval Textual Criticism and Modern Editing’, first published in 1983, repr. in G. T. Tanselle, Textual Criticism and Scholarly Editing (Charlottesville, VA, and London, 1990), pp. 274–321 Taylor, J., Medieval Historical Writing in Yorkshire, Borthwick Papers (York, 1961) Thacker, A. T., ‘Chester and Gloucester: Early Ecclesiastical Organization in Two Midland Burhs’, Northern History, 18 (1982), pp. 199–211

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Select Bibliography  359 Thomson, R., ‘William of Malmesbury’s Diatribe against the Normans’, in M.  Brett and D.  A.  Woodman (eds), The Long Twelfth-Century View of the Anglo-Saxon Past (Farnham, 2015), pp. 113–21 Thormann, J., ‘The Battle of Brunanburh and the Matter of History’, Medievalia, 17 (1994 for 1991), pp. 5–13 Thormann, J., ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Poems and the Making of the English Nation’, in A.  J.  Frantzen and J.  D.  Niles (ed.), Anglo-Saxonism and the Construction of Social Identity (Gainesville, FL, 1997), pp. 60–85 Thorpe, B., The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, According to the Several Original Authorities (London, 1861) Thune, E., Image and Relic: Mediating the Sacred in Early Medieval Rome (Rome, 2003) Tilliette, Jean-Yves, ‘Troiae ab oris: Aspects de la révolution poétique de la seconde moitié du XIe siècle’, Latomus, 58 (1999), pp. 405–31 Tinti, F., ‘ “Si litterali memorię commendaretur”: Memory and Cartularies in EleventhCentury Worcester’, in S.  Baxter, C.  Karkov, J.  L.  Nelson, and D.  Pelteret (eds), Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald (Farnham, 2009), pp. 475–97 Tinti, F., Sustaining Belief: The Church of Worcester from c. 870 to c. 1100 (Farnham, 2010) Tinti, F., ‘The Archiepiscopal Pallium in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, in F.  Tinti (ed.), England and Rome in the Early Middle Ages: Pilgrimage, Art and Politics (Turnhout, 2014), pp. 307–42 Torkar, R., Eine altenglische Übersetzung von Alcuins De Virtutibus et Vitiis, Kap. 20 (Liebermanns Judex): Untersuchungen und Textausgabe, Texte und Untersuchungen zur englischen Philologie, 7 (Munich, 1981) Townend, M., ‘Pre-Cnut Praise-Poetry in Viking Age England’, Review of English Studies, NS, 51 (2000), pp. 249–70 Townend, M., ‘Contextualising the Knútsdrápur: Skaldic Praise Poetry at the Court of Cnut’, ASE, 30 (2001), pp. 145–79 Townend, M. (ed.), Wulfstan, Archbishop of York: The Proceedings of the Second Alcuin Conference (Turnhout, 2004) Townsend, D., ‘Alcuin’s Willibrord, Wilhelm Levison and the MGH’, in R. Frank (ed.), The Politics of Editing Medieval Texts (New York, 1993), pp. 107–30 Treharne, E., Living Through Conquest: The Politics of Early English, 1020–1220 (Oxford, 2012) Trotter, D., ‘ “Stuffed Latin”: Vernacular Evidence in Latin Documents’, in J. Wogan-Browne with C.  Collette et al. (eds), Language and Culture in Medieval Britain (Woodbridge, 2009), pp. 153–63 Tyler, E.  M., ‘Trojans in Anglo-Saxon England: Precedent without Descent’, Review of English Studies, 64 (2013), pp. 1–20 Tyler, E. M., England in Europe: English Royal Women and Literary Patronage, c. 1000–c. 1150 (Toronto, 2017) Tyler, E. M., ‘Writing Universal History in Eleventh-Century England: Cotton Tiberius B i, German Imperial History and Vernacular Lay Literacy’, in M.  Campopiano and H. Bainton (eds), The Life of the Universal Chronicle in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2017), pp. 84–120 Wainwright, F., ‘The Chronology of the Mercian Register’, EHR, 60 (1945), pp. 385–92 Wainwright, F., ‘Cledemutha’, EHR, 65 (1950), pp. 203–212 Walker, S., ‘A Context for “Brunanburh” ’, in T. Reuter (ed.), Warriors and Churchmen in the High Middle Ages (London and Rio Grande, OH, 1992), pp. 21–40 Wallace-Hadrill, J., ‘The Franks and the English in the Ninth Century: Some Common Historical Interests’, History, 35 (1950), pp. 202–18

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360  Select Bibliography Wassenhoven, D., ‘Swaying Bishops and the Succession of Kings’, in L.  Körntgen and D. Wassenhoven (eds), Patterns of Episcopal Power: Bishops in Tenth and Eleventh Century Western Europe (Berlin, 2011), pp. 89–109 Webber, T., ‘Script and Manuscript Production at Christ Church, Canterbury after the Norman Conquest’, in R.  Eales and R.  Sharpe (eds), Canterbury and the Norman Conquest (London and Rio Grande, OH, 1995), pp. 145–58 West, C., ‘Dynastic Historical Writing’, in S.  Foot and C.  Robinson (eds), The Oxford History of Historical Writing, 400–1100 (Oxford, 2012), pp. 496–516 Wheelocke, A., Historiae ecclesiasticae gentis Anglorum libri V (Cambridge 1643) White, H., The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore, 1987) Whitelock, D., Appendix to Introduction of Plummer, Two Chronicles, II, ‘On the Commencement of the Year in the Saxon Chronicles’ (Oxford, 1952), pp. cxxxix–cxliid Whitelock, D., ‘Dealings of the Kings of England with the Northumbrians in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries’, in P.  Clemoes (ed.), The Anglo-Saxons: Studies presented to Bruce Dickins (London, 1959), pp. 70–88 Whitelock, D. (ed.), with D.  C.  Douglas, and S.  I.  Tucker, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Revised Translation (London, 1961) Whitelock, D. (tr. and examined), The Will of Æthelgifu (Oxford, 1968) Whitelock, D., ‘The Importance of the Battle of Edington, AD 878’, in D. Whitelock, From Bede to Alfred: Studies in Early Anglo-Saxon Literature and History (Farnham, 1980) Wickham, C., and J. Fentress, Social Memory (Oxford, 1992) Wilcox, J., ‘Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi ad Anglos as Political Performance: 16 February 1014 and Beyond’, in M. Townend (ed.), Wulfstan, Archbishop of York: The Proceedings of the Second Alcuin Conference (Turnhout, 2004), pp. 375–96 Williams, A., The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge, 1995) Williams, A., ‘The Spoliation of Worcester’, ANS, 19 (1996), pp. 383–408 Wormald, P., ‘Bede, the Bretwaldas and the Origin of the gens Anglorum’, in P. Wormald, D. Bullough, and R. Collins (eds), Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society: Studies presented to J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford, 1983), pp. 99–129 Wormald, P., How do we Know so Much about Anglo-Saxon Deerhurst?, Deerhurst Lecture, 1991 (Deerhurst, 1992) Wormald, P., ‘The Venerable Bede and the Church of the English’, in G. Rowell (ed.), The English Religious Tradition and the Genius of Anglicanism (Oxford, 1992), pp. 13–32 Wormald, P., ‘Englalond, the Making of an Allegiance’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 7.1 (1994), pp. 1–24 Wormald, P., ‘British Library, Cotton MS Otho B xi: A Supplementary Note’, in D.  Hill and  A.  Rumble (eds.), The Defence of Wessex: The Burghal Hidage and Anglo-Saxon Fortifications (Manchester, 1996), pp. 59–68 Wormald, P., The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century, i: Legislation and its Limits (Oxford, 1999) Wright, C. E., ‘The Dispersal of the Monastic Libraries and the Beginnings of Anglo-Saxon Studies’. Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 1 (1949–53), pp. 208–37 Yorke, B., ‘Edward as Ætheling’, in N.  J.  Higham and D.  H.  Hill (eds), Edward the Elder (London, 2001), pp. 25–39 Yorke, B., ‘The Representation of Early West Saxon History in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’, in A. Jorgensen (ed.), Reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 141–59 Zacher, S., ‘Multilingualism at the Court of King Æthelstan: Latin Praise Poetry and The Battle of Brunanburh’, in E. M. Tyler (ed.), Conceptualizing Multilingualism in England, c.800–c.1250 (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 77–103

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Select Bibliography  361

Unpublished Theses Morris, A.  M., ‘Forging Links with the Past, the Twelfth-Century Reconstruction of Anglo-Saxon Peterborough’, Unpub. PhD thesis, University of Leicester, 2006 Paxton, J. A., ‘Charter and Chronicle in Twelfth-Century England: The House Histories of the Fenland Abbeys’, Unpub. PhD thesis, Harvard University, 1999 Peterson, C.  M., ‘Studies in the Early History of Peterborough Abbey, c. 650–c. 1066’, Unpub. PhD thesis, University of Birmingham, 1995

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Index For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. abbess of Essen  160 abbess of Leominster (Eadgifu)  218, 220, 227–8 abbesses  285n.70, 342 obits of  142 abbots 285n.70 Abingdon  101, 179–81, 186, 194–7, 199, 214–15, 224, 231, 323, 343 Bedford 100–1 Burton 312 Bury St Edmunds  312 Cerne 311–12 Chertsey 150 Evesham  218n.25, 253–4 Ghent 142 Glastonbury  142, 229n.50, 273 Gloucester 311 Milton 150 Muchelney 312 Peterborough  125–6, 147, 298–9, 302–3, 305–6, 313–14, 313n.55, 317–18, 323 Ramsey 245 St Augustine’s  215, 230, 240n.24, 252n.42, 253, 278, 306–7 Thorney  223n.37, 311–12 Westminster 223n.37 Winchcombe  218n.25, 229n.50 York 311–12 Abingdon Chronicle?  7, 101–3, 181, 193, 197, 230–1 see also Chronicle C Abingdon, Oxfordshire  85–6, 100–1, 246, 323 Aclea, synod  114n.40 Acta Lanfranci  30–2, 87, 270n.9, 273n.23, 274, 304nn.35–36, 322–3, 337 Adeliza, queen  314n.59 Æfic, dean of Evesham  199, 217n.22 Ælfgar, bishop of Elmham  182 Ælfgar, ealdorman of Essex  164 Ælfgar, ealdorman of Mercia  217n.22, 229n.48 Ælfgar, king’s relative  150 Ælfgifu [Emma], queen  194–5, 199–200, 202, 205–6, 223n.39, 266 Imme/Ymma  222n.36, 292–3, 295

Ælfgifu [of Northampton}, wife of King Cnut 343 Ælfgifu, St and queen  164–5, 284 Ælfgifu, wife of King Eadwig  144, 164–5 Ælfheah, bishop of Winchester, Archbishop of Canterbury  170, 179, 277 ‘other name Godwine’  152–3 accession to Winchester  152–3 accession to Canterbury  185, 185n.30 additions on at Canterbury  153–4, 273 journey to Rome for pallium  182–3, 185 murder of  185–6, 277 translation of body of  176–7, 182, 257–8, 277 Life 303 Ælfhere ealdorman of Mercia  136, 141, 152–3, 156–7, 160–1 Ælfric, abbot of Cerne and Eynsham  123, 141n.28 Ælfric, archbishop of York  185, 212n.13, 223n.39, 231, 254–5, 257–8 Ælfric, bishop of Ramsbury ‘Wiltonshire’, archbishop of Canterbury  152–3, 185, 185n.30, 286 Ælfric, brother of Odda  218n.25 Ælfstan, abbot of St Augustine’s  306 Ælfthryth, wife of Edgar, queen  141, 144, 158–9, 160n.24, 163–5, 284, 291n.82 Ælfweard, bishop of London  218n.26 Ælfweard, son of Edward the Elder  74 Ælfwig, bishop of London  182–3, 186 Ælfwine, bishop of Winchester  195–6, 212n.13, 215–16 Ælfwyn, daughter of Æthelflæd and Æthelred of Mercia  64, 74–5 Ælle, king of Deira  109, 111n.26 Ælle/Ælfwine, bishop of Lichfield  93–4, 97 Æscwine, king of West Saxons  111n.26, 112n.30 Æthelbald, archbishop of York  124n.68 Æthelbald, king, brother of King Alfred 111n.28 Æthelbald, king of Mercians  111, 111n.26 Æthelberht I, King of Kent  80, 270, 274 Æthelberht, king, brother of King Alfred  111n.28

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364 Index Æthelflæd of Damerham, queen  140, 164 Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians  52, 64, 67–70, 73–6, 104 see also Annals of Æthelflæd Æthelfrith, king of Bernicia  109n.18, 112n.30 Æthelgar, archbishop of Canterbury  137n.18, 142n.32, 185 Æthelheard, archbishop of Canterbury  286 Æthelhelm, ealdorman  48 ætheling  62–3, 71, 85–6, 90–1, 96, 98–9, 100n.67, 118n.56, 152–3, 158, 160–1, 181–2, 200, 341 see also Æthelwold, Edward the Exile, Edgar Æthelnoth, archbishop of Canterbury  181–3, 185–7, 238, 257–8, 266, 273n.23, 275–6 Æthelnoth, ealdorman  48 Æthelred, archbishop of Canterbury  185n.30 Æthelred I, king of West Saxons  81n.9 Æthelred II, king of English  125–6, 141–2, 149, 158–9 see also Annals of Æthelred Æthelred, king of Northumbrians  120n.57 Æthelred, Lord of Mercia  48–9, 58–9, 61–2, 64, 69–70, 75–6 ‘King’ 48 Æthelric/ Ægelric, bishop of Durham  245–8 consecrated to York?  245–8 Æthelsige, abbot of St Augustine’s  252n.42, 307 Æthelstan, bishop of Hereford  212 Æthelstan, king of English  52, 64, 70, 90–1, 99 king of Mercians  69, 74 king of Northumbrians  74–5, 93 consecration of  140n.23 court(s) of  57–8, 93–4, 95n.54, 99–100 sisters of  64–5, 67–70 see also Eadgyth see also Annals of Æthelflaed Æthelstan, king of Kent, brother of King Alfred 116–17 Æthelswith, queen of Mercians  117 Æthelweard, son of King Alfred  139n.20 Æthelweard, ealdorman  47–9, 147–8, 160 Chronicle of  44–5, 47–51, 84n.18, 90n.36, 147–8, 167–8 Æthelwig, abbot of Evesham  253–4 Æthelwine /Ægelwine, bishop of Durham  245–8 Æthelwine, deacon  277 Æthelwold, ætheling, nephew of King Alfred  59, 61–3, 71–3, 81n.9, 139 Æthelwold, bishop of Winchester  136, 142n.32, 150, 152–3, 176n.3, 310 Æthelwulf, king of West Saxons  59, 116–17 genealogy of, and 855 annal  41, 62, 72, 85n.22, 111–12, 115–16, 271, 291–2, 334 Ætheric, bishop of Dorchester  176n.1

Agatho, pope  303 Albion 94n.46 Albold, abbot of Bury St Edmunds  312 Alcuin  113n.37, 116n.49, 338 see also York Annals Aldfrith, king of Northumbrians  108n.10 Alfred’s Chronicle  39–51, 338 story and themes  39–42 an evolving chronicle  42–4 ‘First Continuations’  46–51 Northern sources of  120 circulation of?  39, 42, 44–6, 50 and vernacular  330 and court  42, 333 and Northern Recension  107, 122, 129 and Annals of Æthelred  178 and Chronicle F  279, 288 intertextuality with  137 Amounderness, Lancashire  124–5 Angelcynn  50, 75–6, 104, 123n.65, 133, 141–2, 157, 160–1, 173, 177, 187–9, 271n.13, 281, 290–1, 341 Ongelcynn 59 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, The  1–2, 9, 19–20, 22–3, 28, 33, 36–8, 331 Angus of Moray  263–4 Anlaf Cuaran, king at York  90n.36, 140, 166–8 Anlaf Guthfrithson  95 Annales Domitiani see Chronicle F annals, as a genre  2–4, 10–13 see also chronicles, vernacular, annals, official circulation annal for 855 see Æthelwulf annals for mid 890s  46–51 annals for 934–46  90–3 annals for 971–975  155–8 annals for c 983–c 1022/23  175–7, 341 see also Annals of Æthelred annals for 1040s   214–20 annals for 1049–52  220–8 annals for 1053–1065  226 annals from 1060s on  307–10 annals for late 1050s–1079  252–5 Annals of Æthelflæd/Mercian Register  64–70, 73–6 Gesta Æthælflædae 64–8 see also Chronicle /BC, Chronicle BC, Chronicle D, John of Worcester Annals of Æthelred and Cnut - see Annals of Æthelred Annals of Æthelred  339, 341 themes, tone and stance of  175–6, 184–5, 188–9 end date for writing  176–7

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Index  365 near-contemporary writing  176–7 possible beginning or shift c annal 991  177n.7 home of  177, 188–9 author of, self identity  177 retrospective 177 rewriting of earlier annals  176–7 inspired by Alfred’s annals  178 John of Worcester’s differences from  177n.14 archbishops in  184–9 role of Archbishop Wulfstan II in?  183–4, 186–8 reception of  189 source of these annals in Chronicle C  197 influence on Chronicle D’s author[s]  263 see also annals, c 983–c1022/23 Annals of Alcuin - see York Annals Annals of Rouen  283, 285, 288, 337–8 see also Norman Annals Annals of St Neots  44n.14, 46n.26, 47n.29, 84n.18 Annals of Waverley  217n.20, 291, 314, 316, 319, 338 Annals of Winchester see Winchester Annals annals on Scottish matters  60, 74–5, 85, 90–3, 141, 166–7, 214, 237–8, 243, 249–50, 256, 263–4 annals, structure of and meetings of court  308n.47, 309–17, 319 annals, official circulation of?  92–3, 103, 159, 315, 332 see also Alfred’s Chronicle Annunciation dating  194n.19, 204, 211–14, 218n.24, 221–2, 228–9 anonymous texts  2–3, 9–11, 14, 17, 19–20, 294–5 Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury  249–50, 270, 277, 303 arce/aerce = pallium, a Canterbury coinage?  283 archbishops in chronicles  41, 103, 108n.11, 110, 115n.45, 120–1, 141–4, 154–5, 184–9, 194–5, 214–16, 220–2, 224–6, 247, 269–74, 276–8, 283, 285–6, 291–2, 295–6, 306, 318, 322–3 and chronicles  102–3, 106, 124–34, 160–3, 172, 175, 179–80, 184–9, 196, 203–4, 231–2, 247–8, 254–68, 305–6, 319, 327–9, 333 see also Ælfheah, Æthelnoth, Christ Church, Dunstan, Ealdred, Eadsige, Lanfranc, Oscytel, Oswald, Robert, Siward, Stigand, Thomas, Wulfstan I, Wulfstan II. Ashingdon, church at  182

Asser, biographer of King Alfred  43–4, 45n.22, 49–50, 72, 115n.45, 119, 122, 338 astronomical events  44–5, 46n.26, 67n.46, 81, 100, 156–8, 273n.19 Athelmod, priest  150 audience  9–10, 13, 16–19, 21n.70, 37–8, 42, 49–50, 69–70, 73–4, 103, 110–11, 128–32, 150, 161–2, 204, 255–6, 263–4, 279, 288–9, 294–6, 318–20, 323, 330–1 see also reception Augustine of Canterbury  270 author/authorial voice  8–11, 13–17, 19–20, 36–7 see also scribes Bakewell, Derbyshire  60 Bald’s Leechbook  89–90 Baldwin of Flanders  205–6, 223n.37 Bamburgh, Northumberland.  27n.25, 74–5, 109, 111 Bardney, Lincolnshire  67n.46 Barthes, Roland  13n.37 Bately, Janet  35 Bath, Somerset  59, 312n.54, 314n.57 consecration of Edgar at  85–6, 98–9, 144, 155–7, 173 Bec Abbey, Normandy  316 see also Lanfranc, Ernulf, Anselm Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica  22, 24–5, 31, 37–8, 119–20, 172, 274, 285, 293, 322–3, 325 and Northern Recension  107–12, 116, 121, 172 recapitulatio/epitome  39, 41, 108, 112n.33, 338 continuations of  112, 120n.57 Old English translation of  89–90, 123 - and Chronicle G  170–1, 191–2 De Temporum Ratione 285 Bedford, Bedfordshire  100–1 Bedwyn, Wiltshire  57–8 Benedict, pope  225–6, 252n.42, 257–8, 274n.25, 277 Benedict, St  288 Benedictine Reform  149 see also Monastic Reform, reform Beorhtric, king of West Saxons  117 Beorn, earl  222, 223n.37 Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire  249, 258–9, 263n.65 Beverley, Yorkshire  124–5 see also John of Beverley bilingual  268–9, 279, 294 bishops in chronicles  41, 108, 149–50, 154–5, 170, 185n.30, 195–6, 199, 211–12, 226, 231–2, 240n.24, 245–8, 252n42, 253, 256–7, 274, 285, 291, 308, 327–9

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366 Index bishops (cont.) and chronicles  69–70, 78, 97–8, 101–4, 144–7, 169–74, 262 see also Ælle/Ælfwine, Cenwald, Dorchester, Oscytel, Wærferth, Winchester, Worcester bissextile  150–2, 180–1, 197, 201, 282, 328, 331–2 Boniface IV, pope  80, 269–70 Boniface, missionary  112n.35, 116n.49 Bosham, Sussex  223n.37 Brentford, Middlesex, battle at  177n.14, 341 Brihtwold, bishop of Ramsbury  179–80, 186, 194n.19, 195–6, 204n.34 Britannia  94, 94n.46 see also royal titles, coinage British rulers  52, 60, 67–8, 74–5, 85, 93–4, 95n.53, 132 see also Cumbrians, Griffin/Griffith, Strathclyde, Welsh Bruges, Flanders  199–200, 218n.27 Brunanburh, battle  85, 90–3 poem  86, 92, 96, 105, 241, 326 Brut, The  297–8, 320 Brutus 293 Burghal Hidage  171 Burgred, king of Mercians  117 burhs  60–2, 69, 73, 75 Burton, Staffordshire, abbey  164 charters  94n.48, 95n.53 abbots of  312 Bury St Edmunds abbey, Suffolk  312 Byrhtferth, monk of Ramsey  119, 135–8 Byrhtferth’s Miscellany  115n.45, 116n.49, 122, 135–8, 143, 145, 147, 156–7, 165, 167, 284n.64 see also Symeon of Durham Byrhtnoth, ealdorman of Essex  152–3 Caen, Normandy monks of  311–12 Calne, Wiltshire  160–1 Camden, William  279–81 Canterbury, Kent  224–5, 230, 268 ecclesiastical politics in, see Christ Church, St Augustine’s Ceadwalla, king of West Saxons  111n.26 Ceastre Winchester  150, 170 York  115n.46, 132 Ceawlin, king of West Saxons  117n.54 Cecil, Robert  24–5 Cenwald, bishop of Worcester  69–70, 95–7, 96n.57, 144, 146 Old High German name form  95n.54 Cenwalh, king of West Saxons  84–5

Ceolnoth, archbishop of Canterbury  185, 286 Ceolred, king of Mercians  84–5 Ceolwulf, king of Mercians ‘foolish king’s thegn’ 84 Ceolwulf, king of West Saxons  111n.26 Cerdic, West Saxon founding father  56, 72, 275n.27 Cerne, Dorset, abbey  123, 311–12 Charlemagne 292 charters ‘Æthelstan A’  93–4 alliterative  95–7, 97n.61, 326 hermeneutic Latin in  94n.47, 95n.54 northern  131, 162n.28 royal title in  93–6, 105 see also Christ Church, Peterborough, York Chertsey, Surrey, abbey  150 Chester, Cheshire  48, 67n.46, 100, 110n.23, 121n.61, 139n.21, 141–2, 144, 160–1, 173, 312, 338 Chichester, Sussex  312, 337 Christ Church, Canterbury  215–16, 232, 269–70, 272–3, 277–8, 283n.56, 288, 295–6 charters of  272, 285–7 expulsion of clerics from  286 rivalries with St Augustine’s  304 see also Chronicle A, Chronicle B, Chronicle D, Chronicle /E, Chronicle F, Chronicle I, Ernulf, Maelbright MacDurnan Gospels Chronicle /BC  78–84, 90–8, 139–40, 321–2, 338 Chronicle /C  176n.2, 194, 196–7, 201 Chronicle /D  182–4, 190–1, 216–32, 241–2, 244, 247–8, 259–62, 264, 284, 290–1, 308–9, 322, 338–9 shape of c 1000  163–9 see also Chronicle D, John of Worcester, Mercian/West Midlands Chronicle, Northern Recension, Wulfstan II Chronicle /E  99, 111, 176n.2, 179–81, 187, 190–1, 222–7, 231–2, 268, 272–3, 278, 300, 305–10, 319 and Canterbury  179–80, 305–7 Kentish sympathies in  203, 215, 225–7, 231–2, 295–6, 296n.98 see also Stigand work on by F scribe  272, 275, 279, 283–4, 288–90, 295–6 annals for 1040s  214–17 annals for 1049–52  221–2 annals for late 1050s to 1070s  252–5 see also Annals of Æthelred, Christ Church, Chronicle E, Northern Recension, St Augustine’s

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Index  367 Chronicle A  3–8, 8n.19, 24–5, 321, 337 making of  52–8 palaeography, layout and content  58–60 context 70–7 work on in mid–tenth–century  86–90 annals 934–946  90–3 work on c 1000 AD  149–55 annals 971–975  155–60 work on at Canterbury post 1066  185n.30, 271–6 see also Alfred’s Chronicle, Edward annals, episcopal lists, Genealogical Preface, Laws of Alfred and Ine, pallium list, Sedulius Chronicle B  3–7, 321, 337 making of  79–82 context 97–105 work on at Canterbury after 1066  269–71 see also Christ Church, Chronicle BC, Chronicle /BC, Oscytel, pallium list Chronicle BC  78–9, 82–6, 197, 201, 241, 244, 321–2, 338 context 93–8 annals 934–46  90–3 annals 971–75  155–60, 173 last annals  97–105 see also Chronicle B, Chronicle /BC, Chronicle C, Chronicle D Chronicle C  3–4, 6–8, 321, 337 making of  180–1, 191–202 context of  202–6 continuations of  207–14 annals for 1040s  194–202, 216–20 annals for 1049–52  221–8 annals for 1053–1065  228–32 see also Chronicle BC, Chronicle /C, Eadsige, John of Worcester, Leofric earl, Mercian/ West Midlands Chronicle, Siward, abbot of Abingdon Chronicle D  3–8, 321, 338–9 making of  240–3 content of  243–5 possible rewritings after 1066  248–52 see also William, count/duke of Normandy, visit of in 1051 annals late 1050s–1079  252–5 and Durham  254–7 - see also Æthelric/ Ægelric, Æthelwine/Ægelwine and Scottish court  254–7 and York archbishops  257–67 see also Ealdred, Wulfstan II and Peterborough  251, 253, 256–8 see also Æthelric/Ægelric, Æthelwine/Ægelwine and Canterbury  252–3, 258, 266–7, 284 dialogue with Norman sources  261, 265–6 see also Chronicle /D

Chronicle E  3–8, 24–5, 320–1, 337 making of  297–300 context 299–305 Peterborough continuations  316–20 connections with Latin chroniclers 316–20 see also Christ Church, Chronicle /E, Ernulf, Northern Recension, St Augustine’s Chronicle F  3–9, 8n.19, 278–96, 321, 337 making of  216–17, 279–90 context 290–6 F scribe  111, 217n.20, 274–6, 283–90, 294–6 audience 290–6 see also Christ Church, Chronicle A, Chronicle /E Chronicle G  3–9, 8n.19, 169–74, 321, 337 see also Ælfheah, archbishop, Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, Chronicle A, episcopal lists, Genealogical Preface, Laws of Alfred and Ine, Winchester Chronicle H  3–4, 310–16, 321, 337 Chronicle I  276–9, 299n.11, 321, 337 Chronicle of Roger of Howden  113n.37, 116n.49, 122, 332, 338 Chronicle of Roger of Wendover  113n.37, 115n.45, 116n.49, 162n.27, 332 chronicles, vernacular judgements on  8, 22–3, 27–9, 34 study of  24–38 see also editing, editions, vernacular churls’ king [ceorla kyning]  181–2, 341 cild  258–9, 294–5 Cledemutha  64, 65n.41, 69 Clofesho, synod  285–6 Cnut, king of English  149, 184, 187–8, 190, 198, 200, 202, 204–6, 221, 223n.37, 231, 249, 256, 273n.23, 275–6, 323–4, 326 baptismal name Lambert  343 coins  71n.56, 73–4, 93, 95, 103 royal titles on  93–4 St Peter coinage, York  124 Cologne, Germany  258–60 Cona/Conrad, emperor  260n.61 consecration, royal  114n.40, 141–5, 152–3, 155–6, 194–5, 199–201, 203–5, 229n.51, 230, 258–9, 261, 264 of queens  249–50 sites  114n.40, 194–5, 200–1 see also Bath, Kingston Constantine, king of Scots  74–5 Constantinople 227 contemporary history writing  1–2, 39–40, 52, 60, 70, 76–8, 174–5, 202, 205–6, 208, 222, 230, 283, 319, 324–5

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368 Index conversion, story of  40–1, 108n.11, 110, 110n.23, 120–1, 269–70 Cotton, Robert  4–5, 25, 238n.22, 266, 279–81 counsel/counsellors  164, 218–20, 263 bishops as counsellors  97, 101, 169, 179–80, 182–3, 225–6, 228 see also unræd court, royal  39–40, 42–4, 49–51, 57–8, 64, 69–77, 91–4, 95n.54, 97–8, 102–4, 117, 120, 124–7, 146–7, 158–64, 173–4, 187–9, 199–200, 202–5, 228, 231–2, 235, 262, 293–6, 305, 308–17, 319, 321–3, 328–30, 332–3 Scottish  255–6, 262–4 see also counsel/counsellors Crayke, Yorkshire  162n.28 Crediton, Devon, bishops of  78, 85–6, 100 Creoda, West Saxon founding father  72 crown-wearings   309, 311–14, 314n.56 Cumbria  68–9, 74–5 Cumbrians, king of  141 Cuthred, king of West Saxons  81n.9, 111n.26 Cynegils, king of West Saxons  111n.26 Cynesige, archbishop of York  226, 253–8, 258n.56 Cynesige, bishop of Lichfield  97, 97n.61, 102n.74 Cyneweard, bishop of Wells  156–7 Cynric, West Saxon founding father  72, 111n.26, 275n.27 Cynulf (Cenwulf), king of Mercians  84–5 Dægsanstan  109, 121n.60 Damasus, pope  154 Damerham, Hampshire  140, 164 David I, king of Scots  263–4, 311–12 Dee, river  100 Deerhurst, Gloucestershire  218n.25 Derby, Derbyshire  73, 95–6, 218n.25 Dionysius, St  271n.13 Dorchester [-on-Thames], Oxfordshire  95–6, 100–4, 131–2, 147, 159, 186, 223n.37 bishopric of  85–6, 97, 100–2, 323, 328 see also Cynesige, Eadnoth, Oscytel Dover, Kent  224–7, 294–5 Drihthelm, visionary  110n.23 Droitwich, Worcestershire  218n.25, 220n.30 Duduc, bishop of Somerset/Wells  253 Dunstan, St, archbishop of Canterbury  97n.61, 100–1, 137n.18, 143–4, 154, 176n.3, 179–80, 185, 342 as ‘holy’  142n.32, 160–1 B Life of  136, 164–5 Life 303 material on added to Chronicle A at Canterbury  185n.30, 273, 275n.30, 284n.61

in Chronicle I  277 in Chronicle F  291–2 Durham, Co Durham  130n.93, 131, 162n.28, 245–8, 254, 256, 265, 274, 302 see also Symeon of Durham, Æthelric and Æthelwine bishops of Durham dynastic history  39–41, 50, 58–9, 121–2, 129, 172, 191–2, 202, 205, 333–4 see also genealogies, Genealogical Preface, legitimation, founding fathers Eadberht king of Northumbrians  120n.57 Eadburg, St, translation of  277 Eadburh, queen, daughter of Offa  117 Eadgyth, sister of King Æthelstan, wife of Otto I  68–70, 143–4, 160 Eadmer, Historia Novorum/ History of Recent Events  268, 313–14 Eadnoth, abbot of Ramsey, Bishop of Dorchester 147 Eadred, king of English  87n.25, 89–91, 89nn.26–27, 93, 95–9, 100n.67, 101–2, 126–8, 140, 168, 250 Eadric, ealdorman  176n.4, 341 Eadsige, archbishop of Canterbury  194–6, 200–1, 204, 212n.13, 214–15, 217n.20, 238, 274n.25, 276n.36, 277–8, 306–7 Ead(w)ulf ruler in Northumbria  60 Eadwig ætheling, son of Æthelred II  181–2, 341 Eadwig Basan, scribe  187n.33 Eadwig, king of English  85, 87n.25, 89nn.26–27 90n.36, 98–9, 100n.67, 101–2, 143–5, 150, 161, 164–5 Ealdred, bishop of Worcester, archbishop of York  134, 177n.14, 217n.21, 218nn.25–26, 223n.37, 231, 240, 242–3, 250, 253, 255, 255n.49, 257–67, 264n.67, 309–10, 328–9 Ealdred, son of Ead(w)ulf of Bamburgh 74–5 Ealdulf, abbot of Muchelney  312 Ealdwulf, archbishop of York  125–7, 147, 185 Ealhswith, wife of King Alfred  58, 67–8 Eamont Bridge, on boundary of Cumberland and Westmorland  64, 67–9, 74–5, 97, 139, 166–7 Earle, John  7–8, 30–3, 297 Easter Table  65n.42, 276, 284, 298–9 see also Paschal table Ecgberht, archbishop of York  112, 120n.57 Ecgberht, king of West Saxons  116–17 Ecgfrith, king of Northumbrians  109 Ecwils, Scandinavian king  62 Edgar the ætheling  248–52, 255, 258–9, 261, 265

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Index  369 Edgar, king of English  79–80, 81n.8, 85–6, 98–103, 150, 155–9 consecration of, see consecrations, royal, Bath panegyrics of  142–3, 152–3, 167, 173 assessments of  100, 104–5, 136, 138, 140–1, 145–6, 160–2, 173–4 see also marriage Edgar’s law, agreement between Danes and English on  182–3 Edith [Eadgyth] queen, wife of Edward the Confessor  194–5, 213–14, 221 Edith/Mathilda, queen, daughter of Margaret and Malcolm  249–50 editing  18–19, 36–7 editions  10, 18–19 of vernacular chronicles  25–33 collaborative edition  34–6 see also English Historical Documents editors, of vernacular chronicles, see Earle, Garmonsway, Gibson, Gurney, Ingram, Petrie, Plummer, Price, Thorpe, Wheelocke, Whitelock Edmund Ironside, king  177n.14, 244, 248–52, 259–61 ‘Ironside’ 251n.40 Edmund, ætheling, son of King Edgar  85–6, 98–9, 152–3, 158–9, 161 Edmund, king of English  85, 91, 93, 96–7, 100n.67, 101–2, 140, 144–5, 164–7 Edwald, archbishop of York  126–7 Edward ‘the exile’, son of Edmund Ironside  217n.21, 248–52 Edward Annals  52–70, 85, 87n.25, 137, 139, 154, 241, 339 Edward son of Siward, descendant of Æthelred II 263–4 Edward the Confessor, king of English  200, 202, 229n.51, 249, 325–6, 329–30 see also marriage, consecration, royal, annals for 1040s, annals for 1049–52, annals for 1053–1065 Edward the Elder, king of West Saxons and Mercians  52, 54, 58, 61–4, 74, 139, 142, 291–2, 321–2 see also Edward Annals, Eadgyth Edward, king of English ‘the Martyr’  80n 2, 99, 104, 136, 152–3, 157, 159 Edwin, ætheling  118n.56 Edwin, Northumbrian king  109, 109n.19, 121nn.58,60, 133 Edwin, earl of Mercia  258–9 Edwin, military leader  199, 218n25, 222–3, 226n. 45 Elizabeth I, queen  24–5 Emma, queen - see Ælfgifu (Emma)

emperor  223n.37, 249–51, 258–60 see also Cona, Eadgyth, Otto I, Otto II Engla  99–100, 187, 342 Engla lande/ Englalande Ænglalande 123, 188–9, 337 England inevitability of?  21, 126–7 making of  37–8, 105 national story  2, 23, 232, 318 national chronicle  23, 27–8, 33, 36–7 national identity  13 national definition  27–8 nationalism  9, 23, 27, 34–5 see also Angelcynn, chronicles, vernacular, vernacular Englisce, ænglisce  60, 341 Englishness  23–4, 28–9, 32–3, 37–8, 133 English church  29, 102, 188–9, 222 pre–1066, views of  215–16, 221, 225–6, 228–9, 252n.42 see also Stigand English Historical Documents 22–3 English voices, in Chronicle D  265 see also identity Eohric, Scandinavian king  62–3 episcopal lists  31–2, 31n.47, 56–7, 113–14, 154, 322–3 see also Chronicle A, Chronicle G episcopal successions  114, 140, 142, 152–3, 167n.48, 185n.29, 195–6, 213–15, 223–4, 230, 253–4, 259–60, 310–16, 328 Ernulf, prior of Christ Church Canterbury, abbot of Peterborough and bishop of Rochester  302, 304, 313n.55, 317n.70 Eustace of Boulogne  224–7, 294–5 Evesham, Worcestershire  7n.16, 194n.18, 218n.25 see also Æfic, Æthelwig Farndon, Cheshire, on R Dee  64, 69 female rule, legitimation of  73–4 see also Annals of Æthelflæd Finan, bishop of Lindisfarne  110n.23 Five Boroughs  166 Relief of the Five Boroughs, poem  86, 90n.36, 166 see also Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham, Stamford Flanders, see Baldwin, Bruges Flatholme, island in Bristol Channel  62n.36 formulaic elements in annals  91, 137–8 Foucault, Michel  14n.44 founding fathers  40–1, 72–3 see also Cerdic, Cynric, Creoda, Hengest and Horsa

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 11/04/20, SPi

370 Index Francia  29–30, 116–17, 121, 288 see also Alcuin, Charlemagne, Quentovic, Willibrord Frithestan, bishop of Winchester  57–8 Gaimar, Geffrei  24, 44–5, 47, 107n.3, 117n.52, 118n.56, 320 Gandersheim Gospels  57–8 Garmonsway, George Norman  7, 31–3, 37, 307n.43 Genealogical Preface/regnal list/kinglist  56, 58–9, 72, 79–81, 99, 159, 173, 191–2, 271, 322–3, 332–3 see also Chronicle A, Chronicle B, Chronicle G genealogies  40–1, 56, 110–12, 120–2 see also Æthelwulf Geoffrey, abbot of Burton  312 Gesta Episcoporum 328 Gibbon, Edward  28 Gibson, Edmund  6–7, 26–7, 31n.47, 33 Gildas 22 Giso, bishop of Somerset/Wells  253 Glasgow, bishops of - and archbishops of York 256–7 Glastonbury abbey, Somerset  142, 164, 229n.50, 273, 308 Gloucester, Gloucestershire  69n.51, 212, 258, 260, 309, 311, 312n.54, 314nn.56–57 Goda, thegn, military leader  136n.15, 137, 342 Godric the deacon  274n.25 Godwine, see Ælfheah, archbishop Godwine, bishop of St Martin’s Canterbury  230, 307 Godwine, earl  194–5, 202–3, 207, 213–14, 216–28, 231–2, 272–3, 277–8, 294–5 Goscelin of St Bertin  268 Gregory the Great, pope  41n.5, 84–5, 110n.24, 132–3, 270 Grimcytel/ Grim, bishop of South Saxons [Selsey} (Grimkell, Grimkil?)  212n.13, 215–16, 343 Griffin/Griffith - Gruffudd, king of Gwynedd  199, 218n.25, 258 Gunner, Northumbrian noble  125, 162n.28, 169 Gunnhild, relative of Cnut, wife of Hakon 218nn.27–28 Gurney, Anna  27, 29 Guthfrith, king at York  48 Guthrum, king of East Angles  44–5 Gyric, priest  150 Gyrth, son of Godwine  222n.36 Gytha, wife of Godwine  250, 343

Hadrian, pope  41n.5, 116n.49, 120n.57, 132 Hakon, earl  198–9, 219n.28 Harold Harefoot, king of English  216n.19, 217n.20, 275–7, 286 Harold, earl and king of English  211, 218n.26, 221–2, 223n.37, 225–6, 229n.48, 229n.51, 230, 250, 264, 295 Harold, king of Norway  218n.27 Harthacnut, king of English  199–200, 217n.22, 222n.36 Hastings, battle at  230, 249 Helena, St  73 Hengest and Horsa  112n.30, 249–50, 281n.48, 284, 311–12 Henry I, king of English  249–50, 311–12, 314 Henry II, king of English  317–18 Henry of Huntingdon  24, 46n.26, 107n.3, 117n.52, 251n.40, 313–17 Henry of St Jean d’Angely, abbot of Peterborough 302 Hereford, Herefordshire  217n.22, 218n.26 bishops of  212, 231–2, 258, 260–1 Hereman, bishop of Ramsbury, Sherborne  195–6, 223n.37 Hering son of Hussa  109 hermeneutic Latin  94n.47, 95n.54 Hexham, Northumberland  113n.37, 167n.48 Historia Brittonum  22, 285, 293, 303 see also Nennius Historia post Bedam  113n.37, 114n.40, 122, 332, 338 history-writing 9–21 see also annals, contemporary history writing, chronicles, vernacular, dynastic history, legitimation Holme, East Anglia battle at  59, 67–8, 71 house history  232, 290–1, 302, 318, 334 household, episcopal/archiepiscopal  130, 183–4, 196, 255, 255n.49, 259–62, 264n.67, 319, 323 Howel, king of Welsh  74–5 Hrothweard, archbishop of York  124–5, 127 Hugh Candidus, chronicler of Peterborough 302 human noise/style  176–7, 207, 264, 308–9, 329–30 Humber, river  21, 93–4, 119, 124–30, 132, 161–2, 223n.37, 252–3, 260, 327 see also Southumbrians, Northumbria, Northumbrians Ida, king of Bernicia  109, 111 identity/identities  13–14, 50, 105, 110–11, 117 past as a source of  10, 15 of texts  18–19

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Index  371 of scribe/authors  132–4, 150, 155, 170, 177, 188–9, 203, 215, 225, 291–2, 294–5, 306–7, 310, 320 see also English, Englishness ideology  1–2, 78–9, 104–5, 131, 175, 201, 232, 332–4 see also court, royal idolatry, renunciation of  137 Ine, king of West Saxons  111n.27 see also Laws of Alfred and Ine Ingram, James  26–30 intertextuality  91–2, 253, 263–4, 308–9 see also unræd Ireland  218n.25, 222n.36 Irish, at court of Alfred  44–5 Jerusalem  222, 258 John of Beverley, bishop of York  112n.31, 114n.40, 121n.62 John of Worcester  321, 326, 332 and lost Worcester Chronicle  135–45, 156–7, 160, 162–3, 174, 181n.23 and lost Mercian/West Midlands Chronicle  198–9, 201, 217n.21, 226–7, 259–60 and Æthelred annals  177n.14 early twelfth-century annals  313–14, 316–17, 319 on women  163–9, 290–6 on Edmund Ironside  250–1 see also Leofric, earl, Worcester Chronicle, Mercian/West Midlands Chronicle Joscelyn, John  2, 5, 7, 24–7, 308–9 Kent, kings of, added to Chronicle A  274–6 Kenwulf, bishop of Winchester  59, 153–4, 189 Kingston, Surrey, consecration site  140–4 Kirtlington, Oxfordshire  100–1 L’Isle, William  26 Lambarde, and reconstruction of Chronicle G 169 Lambert of St Omer  286n.72, 294 Lambert, St  343 Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury  259, 270, 272–3, 275–7, 279–81, 303, 304n.37, 307–8 see also Acta Lanfranci Latin historiographical tradition in the North  129–30, 332 see also York Annals, Byrhtferth’s Miscellany Laud, Archbishop  4–7, 24–5, 298 Laws of Alfred and Ine  56–7, 87, 154, 171, 272, 322–3 see also Chronicle A, Chronicle G

lay nobles and chronicles  330 see also Æthelweard, ealdorman, Leofric, earl legitimation, and history writing  15, 58–9, 71, 73–5, 99–100, 104, 115–17, 121–2, 159, 173, 261, 327, 331, 333 see also Æthelwulf, dynastic history, founding fathers, female rule Leicester, Leicestershire  73, 96, 101, 140, 166–8 Leo IV, pope  41n.5, 116–17 Leo IX, pope  223n.37 Leofric Missal  176n.3 Leofric, abbot of Peterborough  302 Leofric, earl of Mercia  202–3, 218–19, 231–2, 330 eulogy of in John of Worcester  217n.21, 251 apologia in John of Worcester?  220 see also Mercian/West Midlands chronicle Leofrune abbess  342 Leofwine, son of Godwine  222n.36 Leominster, Herefordshire  222–3 abbess of (Eadgifu)  218, 220 Liber Niger, earliest cartulary of Peterborough  298–9, 302–3, 318 Lichfield, Staffordshire, bishops of  69–70, 93–7, 125n.71, 199, 229n.50 see also Ælle/Ælfwine, Cynesige Lincoln, Lincolnshire  96 bishop and diocese of  101, 314 Lindisfarne, Northumberland  110n.23, 114, 274 Lindisfarne Gospels, glosses  265 Liudolf, son of Eadgyth and Otto I  143 lost chronicles  60–70, 78, 324 see also Annals of Æthelflæd, Chronicles BC, /BC, /C, /D, /E, H, Mercian/West Midlands Chronicle, Northern Recension, Worcester Chronicle Lyfing, archbishop of Canterbury (Ælfstan)  182–3, 185–7 Lyfing, bishop of Worcester  195–6, 212n.13, 218n.25 Macbeth, king of Scots  256 Maelbright MacDurnan Gospels  238, 266–7, 276n.36 Mælslæhtan’s mother  255–6 Magnus, king of Norway  218n.27, 343 Malcolm, king of Scots  255–6, 277 Maldon, Essex, battle of  136, 137n.18, 152–3, 330 Malmesbury, Wiltshire  317, 342 Margaret, daughter of Edward ‘the Exile’, queen of Scots  166–7, 242–3, 248–53, 255–6, 259, 261, 264n.67, 325–6, 334 Marinus, pope  41n.5, 273n.24 Marlborough, Wiltshire  312n.54

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372 Index marriage 265n.68 royal  64, 68–70, 85, 117, 136, 140–4, 147–8, 160, 160n.24, 163–5, 194–5, 203–5, 213–14, 249–51, 264, 284, 291n.82, 314n.59, 320 Martin, abbot of Peterborough  317–18 Maxims II  30–1, 191–2, 203 medievalism 27 Melrose Chronicle  112n.35, 113n.37, 116n.49, 332 see also York Annals Menologium  30–1, 191–2, 203 Mercia  41, 48–9, 52, 59–62, 64, 69, 69n.51, 73–6, 78–9, 84–5, 92–101, 103–5, 110, 117, 136, 156, 167–8, 198–9, 302, 323, 327, 330 see also Æthelflæd, Æthelred of Mercia, Angelcynn, Leofric, Lichfield, Worcester Chronicle, Mercian/West Midlands Chronicle Mercian Register  30–1, 61, 64–70, 73, 85, 105, 241 see also Annals of Æthelflæd Mercian schools  94n.47, 95–6 Mercian/West Midlands chronicle  198–9, 201–2, 205–6, 213–14, 224–6, 230–2, 244–5, 251–3, 259–60, 263, 321–4, 328–30 see also John of Worcester, Worcester Chronicle Milton, Dorset, abbey  150 Monastic Reform - see Benedictine, reform Monumenta Germaniae Historica  9–10, 28 Monumenta Historica Brittanica /British Historical Monuments  7–8, 28, 30n.38 Morcar, earl  258–9 Muchelney, Somerset, abbey  312 names, of chronicles  3–4, 6–9, 18n.63, 24–5, 33 see also Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, The, Northern Recension narrative  10, 12–15, 16n.51, 20–1 national chronicle, national story see England national identity, see England, English, Englishness nationalism, see England, English natural disasters and phenomena  205, 217–18, 220, 310–11, 313, 315 Nennius  109n.19, 285 see also Historia Brittonum network, of chronicling  230–2, 254–5, 262, 319–20 New Minster, Winchester  84–5, 150, 171 Newbald, Yorkshire  162n.28 Nigel, abbot of Burton  312 Nijmegen, Netherlands  223n.37 Norman Annals  81n.9, 285, 288–9, 292–3, 322–3 see also Annals of Rouen

Norman Conquest, and historical writing  23–4, 178–9, 190–1, 207, 220–8, 245–55, 262–3, 269–71, 274–6, 279–96, 307–16 Northampton, Northamptonshire  167, 253, 312, 342 earl of  311–12 Northern historical writing, see Latin historiographical tradition in the North, York Annals Northern Recension  24, 45–7, 51, 62, 77–8, 89–90, 105, 139–42, 144, 149, 168, 172, 182–8, 231, 241, 244, 262, 271n.13, 272, 275, 279, 284–5, 288, 290–3, 305–6, 320–5, 329–34, 339 and Archbishops of York  124–8 date of  123–4 northern? 119–24 patrons, authors and reception  128–34 reconstruction 107–119 Northumbria/Northumbrians  41, 48, 59–60, 62–3, 71–2, 85, 90–1, 93, 95–100, 105, 110–11, 120, 124–34, 140, 145–6, 167–9, 295, 328 see also Durham, Northern Recension, Wulfstan I, York Annals Nottingham, Nottinghamshire  96 Nowell, Lawrence  26 and reconstruction of Chronicle G  169, 171n.66 Nunnaminster, Winchester  57–8, 171 Oda, archbishop of Canterbury  102–3, 128, 135–6, 140, 143–5, 147, 164, 167, 185n.30, 273 Odda, earl  212, 218n.25 Offa, king of Mercians  40–1, 111, 115n.43, 117 see also Eadburh Olaf Tryggvason, king of Norway 153n.10 Olaf, St, king of Norway  198–9, 343 Old Minster, Winchester  84–5, 222n.36, 228–9, 252n.42, 307, 312 Ongelcynn, see Angelcynn Ordgar, ealdorman  163–4, 284 Orosius  191–2, 203, 322–3 Osbern, hagiographer  268 Osbern, son of earl Siward  256 Oscytel, bishop of Dorchester, Archbishop of York  85–6, 97–105, 125–8 Osgod Clapa  214–15, 223n.37, 227–8 Oslac, ealdorman at York  100, 125, 145–6, 156–7, 160–2 Osred, king of Northumbrians  108n.10, 113n.39 Osric, king of Northumbrians  111 Osric, ealdorman  84–5

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Index  373 Osthryth, queen  108n.12, 110 Oswald, ætheling  111n.25, 111n.27 Oswald Memorandum  125–6, 162n.28 Oswald, king of Northumbrians  111 Oswald, bishop of Worcester, archbishop of York  123–8, 135–6, 144–5, 147, 168–9, 179–80, 185 see also Ramsey, Byrhtferth of Ramsey Oswald, St, king of Northumbrians 109nn.18–19 Oswiu, king of Northumbrians  111n.26 Otford, Kent  177n.14 Otto I, Emperor  136, 140–1, 143, 160 see also Eadgyth Otto II, Emperor  144 Owen, king of Gwent  74–5 Oxford, Oxfordshire  182–3 Pallig  153, 155 pallium  41n.5, 126–7, 181–3, 185–6, 222n.36, 224–6, 240, 242–3, 252n.42, 257–60, 274, 277, 281–3, 286, 306 pallium list  154, 269–70, 273–4, 322–3, 328 Parker, Matthew, archbishop of Canterbury  4–7, 24–5 see also Joscelyn Paschal II, pope  273–4 Paschal/Easter Table  3–4, 34, 65n.42, 176n.3, 253–4, 276–9, 284, 298–9 patrons  9–10, 16–17, 20–1, 39–40, 50, 69–70, 73–4, 102–3, 128–34, 159, 173–4, 187, 199, 231–2, 263–5, 304, 319–20, 323, 328, 330–1, 333 see also royal court Paulinus, bishop of York  110–12, 110n.23, 121n.62 Peada, son of Penda  300 Penda, king of Mercians  111n.26, 121n.59, 300 Penenden dispute  276n.36 Pershore, Worcestershire  218n.25 Peter, abbot of Gloucester  311 Peterborough, Cambridgeshire  1, 6–7, 107, 240n.25, 251, 253, 323, 328, 334 abbots of  125–6, 147, 302–3 burials of York archbishops at  253–5 charters of  30n.40, 302–3 historical work at in the twelfth century  160n.24, 255, 299–305 see also Æthelric/ Ægelric, Æthelwine/ Ægelwine, Chronicle E, Chronicle /E Petrie, Henry  28–30, 33 Pevensey, Sussex  223n.37 Picts  108n.10, 123n.65, 281n.48 Plegmund, archbishop of Canterbury  115n.47, 185n.30, 273–4

Plummer, Charles  7–9, 11, 23, 27–8, 30–3, 36 pluralism, episcopal  125, 231, 252n.42, 258, 260–1, 329 see also Ealdred, Ealdwulf, Oscytel, Oswald, Stigand, Wulfstan II poem/ poetic annals  78, 86, 89–92, 96n.59, 99, 105, 141, 145–6, 155–8, 160–4, 166, 171, 173, 200, 214, 241, 249, 250n.39, 251, 253–4, 265, 308, 315, 325–7, 331 see also charters alliterative popes  41, 149–50, 154, 289, 292 see also pallium portents  114, 141–2 see also astronomical events, natural disasters prefaces/prefatory material  80–1, 108–10, 269–70, 276, 278, 322–3 treatment of in editions  30–1 Genealogical preface  56, 72–3, 79–80, 99 in D and E  108–9, 120–1, 293 Bede as preface  172 in C  194 see also Maxims II, Menologium, Orosius in F  285, 293–4, 320 see also Trojan origins Price, Richard  28–30 primacy dispute  271–4, 337 see also Lanfranc, Acta Lanfranci propaganda  17–18, 20–1, 50–1, 129–30, 205 Quellenkritik  9–10, 18 Quentovic, near mouth of Canche river, Pas de Calais 116 Ragnald [Raegenald/Regnald/Raegnold], Guthfrithson, claimant to York and Dublin  90n.36, 166 Ragnald, grandson of Ivar the Boneless, king at York 60 Rainald, abbot of Ramsey  311–12 Ralph, bishop of Rochester, archbishop of Canterbury  270n.10, 273–4, 298n.9, 312, 313n.55 Ramsbury, bishops of  149–50, 154, 180n.21 see also Brihtwold Ramsey, abbey, Cambridgeshire  123–8, 131–2, 147, 177, 262, 328 abbots of  245 see also Rainald see also Byrhtferth, Eadnoth, Oswald Raven banner  47n.30, 61, 84n.17, 115n.46 readers/reception  2, 10, 13–20, 33, 37, 93, 112, 128–34, 188–9, 204, 324–5, 330–1 scribes as readers  19, 115n.47, 131–4 see also identity, of scribes, intertextuality see also audience Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France 28

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374 Index ‘reform’  149, 156, 173 fillip to use of vernacular  173 and court  173 Reformation, English  5–6, 24–5 Relatio Heddae, Peterborough foundation narrative 302–3 relic, folio of gospel book as  267 Renaissance, twelfth-century  24 Rhys, Welsh king’s brother  212, 217n.22, 218n.24, 223n.38 Richard, abbot of York  311–12 Ricoeur, Paul  14n.42 Ripon, Yorkshire  102, 124–5, 128 Risborough, Buckinghamshire  69n.51 Robert of Jumièges, archbishop of Canterbury  221, 222n.36, 224–6, 229n.49, 252n.42, 257–8, 274n.25, 277, 330 Rochester, Kent  116n.50 bishops of  41n.5, 154, 302–4, 312–13, 313n.55, 323 see also Ernulf Rodulf  199, 343 Roger of Wendover, chronicle of  113n.37, 115n.45, 116n.49, 162n.27, 332 Rolls Series  28–30, 33 see also Thorpe, Benjamin Rome  44–5, 61, 116–17, 144, 150, 181–3, 185, 203, 223n.37, 224, 240, 242–4, 253, 257–61, 275–8, 281n.48, 286, 313, 313n.55 see also pallium, popes Romsey, Hampshire, abbey  152–3, 158 Rothulf, abbot of Abingdon  195 Rodulf/Rothulf  199, 343 royal assemblies  93–6, 103, 125 see also court, royal royal titles, see coins, charters, alliterative Salisbury, Wiltshire  312n.54, 314n.57 Saltwich, Worcestershire  69n.51 Sandwich, Kent  194–5, 214–15, 223n.37 dispute over  273n.23, 275–8, 276n.36, 286, 304n.35 Scergeat, burh  73 Scotland  85, 90–3, 113, 214, 249–50, 253–7, 263–6, 308, 332 see also Glasgow bishops of, Margaret, Scots kings of Scots, kings of  60, 74–5, 85, 141, 256 claims to the English throne  250 see also Constantine, David, Macbeth, Malcolm Scots, Lowland, language  265

Scottish charters  256 scribes  11–12, 16–19, 34, 310–11, 329–31 gender of  20–1 personal voice of  226n.46, 308–9 self revelation  36–7 see also identity, of scribes, intertextuality, readers/reception, human noise Scriptum Lanfranci de Primatu 272–3 Sedulius Caelius, letters and Carmen Paschale 56–7 Selsey, Sussex bishops of  199, 343 separatism  75–6, 122, 128–34 Sergius, pope, in Chronicle B  270 Shaftesbury, Dorset abbey  160–1 Sherborne, Dorset, bishops of  41n.5, 149–50 Sherburn [-in-Elmet], Yorkshire  162n.28 Shrewsbury, Salop  69n.51 Sideman, bishop of Crediton  85–6, 98–101 Sigeric (Siric), bishop of Ramsbury, archbishop of Canterbury  152–4, 176n.3, 177n.10, 179–80, 185, 273, 342 Sigferth, king  150 Siward, abbot of Abingdon, auxiliary to Archbishop Eadsige  194–6, 198, 204, 215 Siward, earl at York  214, 256–7, 264n.66 skaldic praise poems  91–2, 343 Smeaton, Yorkshire  162n.28 social memory  15–18 Southampton, Hampshire  160–1 Southumbrians  108n.12, 110, 112n.30, 127–8, 132–3 Southwell, Nottinghamshire  125 Southwick, Hampshire  6 spymaster 34–5 St Albans, Hertfordshire  312–13 St Augustine’s abbey, Kent abbots of  215, 230 relations of with Christ Church  274, 304, 337 see also Acta Lanfranci, Lanfranc, Sandwich forged charters and letters  303 see also Sandwich and Chronicle B  268–9 and Chronicle /E  305–7, 319 St Benet’s College  6–7 St Evroul, Normandy, abbey  311–12 St Paul’s, London, burning of  150 Stamford Bridge, Yorkshire, battle  208–10, 230, 264 Stamford, Lincolnshire  48, 96 Steepleholme, island in Bristol Channel  62n.36 Stephen, king of English  317–18

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Index  375 Stigand, bishop of Elmham, Winchester, archbishop of Canterbury  194–5, 212n.13, 215–16, 221, 224–6, 229n.49, 252n.42, 257–8, 273–4, 277, 306–8, 329 Strathclyde, king of  60 Stremwold, military leader  137n.18 submissions to southern kings  60, 64, 90–1, 96–8, 167–8, 256 see also Bakewell, Eamont Bridge succession, royal  49, 52, 58–9, 75, 98–102, 104, 158–60, 173, 190, 200, 202–6, 221–2, 231, 249, 288, 290–3, 308, 327 see also Æthelwold, founding fathers, legitimation survivors, English after 1066  242–3, 247–8, 254–5, 261–5, 267, 308, 319, 323, 334 see also Æthelric/Ægelric, Æthelwine/ Ægelwine, Edgar, Margaret Swegn, earl, son of Godwine  218–20, 222, 223n.37, 227–8, 258 Swegn, king, father of Cnut  149, 175, 327 Swegn, king of Danes  218n.27 Swegn, son of Cnut  343 Symeon of Durham  45n.22, 113nn.36–37, 116n.49, 127n.85, 167–9, 318, 338 see also Byrhtferth’s Miscellany Talbot, Robert  279–81 Tamworth, Staffordshire  73, 93, 140, 164, 166–8 Tatwine, archbishop of Canterbury  185 Tettenhall, Staffordshire, battle at  62, 139 texts, soft, and malleability of the past  10, 15–16 Textus Roffensis 303 Thame, Oxfordshire  100–1 Thames, River  21, 100–2, 127, 146–7, 149–50, 154, 224n.40, 304n.36, 327, 341 Thanet, Kent  142, 160–2, 215 Theobald, bishop of Worcester  311–12 Theophanu, empress  144 Theulf/Teolfus bishop of Worcester  313n.55 Thomas, archbishop of York  259, 274–6, 311–12, 313n.55 Thored, Gunner’s son  118n.56, 125–6, 163n.36 Thorney, Cambridgeshire, abbot of  223n.37 Thorpe, Benjamin  8n.19, 28, 30, 31n.47, 32n.51, 33–5 Thorpe, Northamptonshire  312–13 Thurcytel, abbot of Bedford  100–1 Thurkell/Thorkell [the Tall]  182 Thurstan, archbishop of York  222n.36, 312 titles, royal - see royal titles Tostig, earl  222

Trent, river  21, 92–5, 101, 119, 126–8, 147 Trojan origins  293–4, 320 Turgot, monk of Durham  256 Ulf, king’s priest, bishop  223n.37, 224–5 unræd  184, 187, 218n.27, 219n.29, 263n.65 Urban II, pope  270, 313n.55 urtext   9–10, 14, 18–19 vernacular Old English  28–9, 32–3 value judgements concerning  8, 23–5, 28–30 see also national story Late West Saxon  89n.28, 132n.95, 173, 265, 283, 299 Northumbrian  132n.95, 265 Norse-related  132n.95, 265 Middle English  277n.38, 283, 299 Scots, Lowland  265 vernacular chronicles, see chronicles, vernacular vernacular chronicling tradition  122, 173, 175, 177–8, 184–5, 196–7, 202, 205, 263–5, 271n.13, 276, 278–9, 288, 294, 311, 315, 326, 334 Victor II, pope  274n.25 Vita Oswaldi 135–8 Wærferth, bishop of Worcester  49–50, 66n.44, 69–70, 146 Waltheof, earl  240, 242–3, 253–4, 277 Wanley, Humphrey  5 Watchet, Somerset  137n.18, 342 Wednesfield, Staffordshire, see Tettenhall Welsh  60, 74–5, 95n.53, 199, 214, 218n.25, 223–4, 229n.50, 263n.65, 293–4 kings  74–5, 212, 260, 312–13 see also Griffin/ Griffith, Howel, Owen, Rhys Wessex-cum-Mercia 76 see also Angelcynn Wessex  48–50, 52, 71, 74–6, 104–5, 109–10, 117, 121, 129, 133, 153–4, 171, 271–2, 275n.27, 323, 327 West Saxon  1, 31, 39–42, 44–5, 48–50, 52, 56, 58–60, 62, 72–6, 89, 92, 96–100, 103–5, 109, 114–15, 116n.51, 120–1, 133, 146, 149–52, 154–5, 157, 160, 172–3, 265, 291–2, 322–3, 327, 333 Westminster  223n.37, 245–7, 256, 309, 312n.54, 313n.55, 314n.57 Westmorland 160–2 Wheelocke, Abraham  5–7, 25–7, 30–1, 33–5, 169 Whitelock, Dorothy  7, 32–5, 37

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376 Index Wihtred, king of Kent  108, 111, 281–2, 285–6, 303 Wilfrid, St, relics of  102, 128 see also Ripon Vita Wilfridi  102, 128 William of Malmesbury  11–12, 14, 24, 28–9, 221n.34, 252n.42, 318, 323–4 William of Poitiers  261, 265–6 William, abbot of Cerne  311–12 William, abbot of Gloucester  311 William, abbot of Peterborough  317–18 William, count/duke of Normandy, king of English  245–6, 249–50, 253–4, 255n.49, 272, 277–8, 288, 290, 309 visit of in 1051  221–2, 226–7, 235 ‘the Bastard’  261, 265 assessment in Chronicle E  308, 325–6 consecration  258–61, 263, 277 William II, Rufus, king of English  259, 277, 308, 313–16 Wilton, Wiltshire  150 Wiltun, see Ramsbury Wimborne, Dorset  150 Winchcombe, Gloucestershire  218n.25, 229n.50 Winchester Annals  285, 288–9, 338 Winchester  58, 84–5, 194–5, 199–200, 222, 223n.37, 229n.48, 288–9, 309, 312 312n.54, 313nn.55–56, 314n.57 bishops of  57–9, 61–4, 85, 87, 89–90, 90n.35, 97, 140, 146, 150, 153–4, 170, 185n.30, 186, 212n.13, 215–16, 273, 307, 310 see also Ælfheah, Ælfwine, Æthelwold, Frithestan, Stigand and chronicles  42n.6, 57–8, 64, 90, 100, 150–3, 155, 170–2, 185n.30, 271–2, 323, 327–30 as Ceastre 170 see also New Minster, Nunnaminster, Old Minster Windsor, Berkshire  311–12, 312n.54, 313nn.55–56, 314n.57, 315–16 Wirral, Cheshire  48 Wissant, Pas de Calais  312n.54, 314n.57 Woden  112n.30, 121n.59, 132 Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, community 164

women, in Chronicle D  163–9 see also Margaret Worcester, Worcestershire bishops of  75–6, 95–6, 144 see also Ælfric, archbishop of York, Cenwald, Ealdred, Ealdwulf, Lyfing, Oswald, Wærferth, Wulfstan II Worcester Chronicle, lost  77, 149, 162–3, 165, 181n.23, 231, 244, 291n.82, 321–4, 339 reconstruction 135–45 context 145–8 see also John of Worcester Wulfheard, ealdorman  84–5 Wulfhelm, archbishop of Canterbury  185n.30, 275–6 Wulfhere, archbishop of York  186 Wulfnoth, cild, father of Earl Godwine 294–5, 341 Wulfric Spott, founder of Burton abbey  164 Wulfric, abbot of St Augustine’s  240n.24, 252n.42, 276, 278, 306 Wulfrun, Mercian noblewoman  140, 164, 166–7 Wulfstan I, archbishop of York  102, 105, 124–8, 130, 134, 138, 140, 141n.29, 144–6, 165–9, 174, 186, 258 Wulfstan II, bishop of London, archbishop of York and bishop of Worcester  125–7, 231, 266, 328–9, 338–9 and chronicles  123–4, 134, 149, 157, 160–9, 173–4, 182–9, 231, 241, 244, 253, 257–8, 266 Wulfstan, deacon  150 York Annals (Annals of Alcuin, Gesta Veterum Northanhumbrorum, Annales Northumbrensis, Old Northumbrian Annals)  22–3, 107, 112–16, 119–21, 130, 132, 284–5, 291–2, 322, 332, 338 see also Byrhtferth’s Miscellany York Gospels  186–7 York, Yorkshire  48–9, 60, 93, 95–6, 104, 114n.40, 121, 124–8, 130–2, 139, 161–2, 166–7, 167n.48, 182–3, 186, 249, 253–4, 256–7, 261, 265–6 York, charters  125–6, 131, 162n.28 York, coinage  71n.56, 94n.49

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OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 11/04/20, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 11/04/20, SPi

OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 11/04/20, SPi