Manuscripts of The Anglosaxon Chronicle

25
Manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

SIMON KEYNES
The systematic analysis of manuscripts containing versions of the text known

as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle originated during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I,
as part of an attempt to assemble and organise information about the available
sources for English history. In 1565 (or thereabouts) John Joscelyn, chaplain
and Latin secretary to Matthew Parker, archbishop of Canterbury, constructed
a list of six manuscripts each designated ‘Chronica Saxonica’. He arranged his
list in an order determined by the point at which each chronicle ended (977,
[1001], 1006, 1066, 1080, 1148), numbering them accordingly (1–6), indicat-
ing in each but one case the manuscript’s apparent or supposed place of origin,
and identifying its current owner. All six of the manuscripts listed by Joscelyn
survive to the present day, though one must add to his list one manuscript
which he had overlooked, and a twelfth-century leaf from a manuscript now
lost. The seven manuscripts, and one fragment, have been known since 1848
by letters of the alphabet (A–H), symbolising the continued recognition of
their collective identity as a group of related texts. (Further details of each
manuscript are given in the appendix at the end of this chapter, pp. 551–2.)
The fact that these manuscripts are known collectively as the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle creates the impression (for the unwary) that they constitute a sin-
gle continuous narrative: official in status, consistent in nature and uniform
in authority. It is an impression which might be compounded by a cursory
reading of the annals themselves: laconic, impersonal, seemingly objective,
driven only by the changing pace of events, with little sense of direction or
deeper purpose. Of course the truth was quite different. The compilation of
the original ‘common stock’ lies clearly enough in the reign of King Alfred
the Great (871–99), though scholars differ in their views of the precise extent
of the original work (whether it continued to 890, 891 or 892). The common
stock must itself be distinguished from the work of a multiplicity of later
chroniclers, writing at different times and places, for purposes of their own,
and between them covering the years from the Alfredian point of departure
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SIMON KEYNES
to the middle of the twelfth century. Each of the extant manuscripts began its
life as the end-product of a particular process of transmission, with distinctive
features peculiar to itself, and thus its own story to tell. Four of them show
further scribal activity after the initial act of copying, representing the pro-
cess of continuation in the tenth and eleventh centuries (manuscript A), in the
second half of the eleventh century (manuscripts C and D), or in the twelfth
century (manuscript E). One has to bear in mind, however, that physical evi-
dence of precisely this kind was lost each time the process, at any earlier stage,
had involved an act of copying, concealing much from our view. Nor can one
assume that the manuscripts which have chanced to survive necessarily pro-
vide an adequate basis upon which to reconstruct the process of transmission
across a period of 250 years. The difficulty resides in penetrating the complex-
ities which lie behind the transmitted text in each manuscript, in working out
the relationships between all of the manuscripts, in taking account of manu-
scripts now lost, and in distinguishing between the separate elements which in
various combinations make up the ‘whole’. There are bound to be differences
of opinion in all matters of detail, and only the general pattern is clear.
On its first appearance, in the early 890s, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle repre-
sented a most significant development in Anglo-Saxon perceptions of the past.
From his vantage point at Jarrow in Northumbria, Bede had responded to what
he regarded as the abuses prevalent in his own day, to the intended advantage
of posterity. In his Historia abbatum, written in the 720s, he presented an ideal-
ised account of the history of his own house; and in his Historia ecclesiastica gen-
tis Anglorum, completed in 731, he took up his cause on a larger stage, affirming
the need to respect the authority of the church of Canterbury and indeed of
the church of Rome. In the late 740s, south of the Humber, Æthelbald, king of
the Mercians, and Cuthbert, archbishop of Canterbury, responded to the same
abuses in a rather different way, by circulating a collection of improving texts,
comprising some admonitory letters, the canons of the Council of Clofesho
(747), a charter, and a digest of Pope Gregory’s Pastoral Care. There could be no
question that Bede’s approach was the more compelling. At one level, he wrote
of ‘East Angles’, ‘West Saxons’, ‘Mercians’, ‘Northumbrians’, and all the rest,
acknowledging the differences between them; and at another level he wrote
of the ‘English people’, as if he were conscious at the same time of their larger
collective identity. Yet the first word in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History is Brittania;
and it was ‘Britain’, as a concept inherited from the Roman past, which pro-
vided the political context in which his kings and their peoples moved. The
wide range of Bede’s terminology remained part of common usage in the later
eighth and ninth centuries, and finds reflection, for example, in charters, in
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the letters of Boniface and Alcuin, and in an early ninth-century compendium

of useful information which incorporates a collection of Anglo-Saxon royal
genealogies and episcopal lists. Learned men would have been conscious of
the notion of the ‘English’ people (gens Anglorum or Angelcynn); but distinc-
tions between ‘Angles’, ‘Saxons’ and other peoples were still respected.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle took shape as a conversion of Bede’s Ecclesiastical
History into a different literary form (suggested by his chronological summary,
in Book V, chapter 24), and as an extension of his story into the eighth and
ninth centuries. Yet while Bede’s concern had been with the abuses which pre-
vailed in his own day, the Alfredian chronicler was more concerned with the
struggle against the Viking invaders. There can have been nothing like a com-
mon enemy, or threat, to make people conscious more of the similarities than
of the differences between them, and to make their leaders more inclined to
exploit such feelings to a political or military advantage. The arrival of a ‘great
heathen army’ in 865 led to the conquest of the ancient Anglian kingdoms
of East Anglia, Mercia and Northumbria, and in Wessex to a struggle which
lasted throughout the 870s. King Alfred rose to the challenge; and in the years
following his victory at the battle of Edington, in 878, he embarked upon the
extraordinary programme of reform and regeneration which lends such dis-
tinction to the latter part of his reign, and which determined his legacy to
the English people. Among his initiatives was the provision of translations of
several ‘improving’ texts, notably Pope Gregory’s Pastoral Care, St Augustine’s
Soliloquies, Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy and the psalter. The Old English
translations of Orosius’ World History, and of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the
English People, seem to have formed part of the same plan. The ‘common stock’
of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was once regarded as a ‘private’ compilation, by an
ealdorman in the south-west; but the more natural presumption, not least in
view of the scale of the undertaking, is that Alfred’s plan extended also to the
production of a chronicle, which in complementing the works of Orosius and
Bede would serve to provide the English not only with a sense of their com-
mon past, but also with a clear indication of their shared interest in putting
aside former differences in order to withstand the threat which faced them
all. The compilers of the Chronicle worked hard under difficult circumstances
to bring together material drawn from a variety of written sources, including
Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, a collection of royal genealogies and episcopal lists,
and (one assumes) whatever earlier sets of annals had come to hand; no doubt
they also made use of material which had to be processed from oral into writ-
ten form, and assigned its appropriate or approximate place in the annalistic
framework. In so doing, the compilers were reflecting the aspirations of those
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SIMON KEYNES
in King Alfred’s circle who in the 880s saw themselves as part of an emerging
political order, in which Alfred himself was cast not simply or exclusively as
‘king of the West Saxons’ but, in a formulation calculated to be inclusive of a
wider combination of peoples, as ‘king of the Anglo-Saxons’.
In no way had the victory at Edington secured peace in Alfred’s time, let
alone for the more distant future. In 880 an army which had assembled at
Fulham, on the Thames, decided to turn its attention towards the Continent.
We need not doubt that Alfred and his advisors remained keenly interested
in the activities of this army throughout the 880s; and it seems likely that it
was the return of the ‘great Danish army’ to England in 892 that precipitated
a sense of renewed crisis in Alfred’s reign and prompted the decision to ‘pub-
lish’. Although there is no hard evidence that multiple copies of the Chronicle
were distributed in the early 890s, there is reason to think that such was the
case. The king is known to have had a network of scribes whom he could call
his own. The evidence of the Old English Pastoral Care shows how copies of
that work were multiplied and distributed. There are indications of a signifi-
cant break in the text of the Chronicle after the annal for 892. Moreover, the
copies of the Chronicle which lie behind the so-called ‘Annals of St Neots’, and
behind Æthelweard’s Latin Chronicon, were closer to the lost original than
the copies used by Asser, writing his Life of King Alfred in 893, and by the first
scribe in the ‘Parker Chronicle’ (manuscript A), who was active c. 900. It seems
likely, therefore, that copies of the Chronicle were multiplied and distributed in
892–3, in much the same way as copies of the Old English Pastoral Care.
The multiplication of copies of the Chronicle in the late ninth century implies
that the Alfredian common stock was distributed in order to meet a demand,
or to suit a particular purpose. Whether this had any useful effect is another
matter; but Asser moved fast to use it as a basis for his own portrayal of the
king, probably for the intended benefit of a readership in Wales, and it is strik-
ing how he elevates the narrative to a struggle of ‘Christians’ against ‘pagans’,
and how he projects Alfred as ‘King of the Anglo-Saxons’, yet does not shrink
from criticism, exposing certain matters which the West Saxon chronicler
had left well hidden. The question is what became of the multiple copies of
the Chronicle in the late ninth century and thereafter. A chronicle of this kind
was not a closed book, whose textual integrity had to be respected. Its voice
was seemingly impersonal, and its scope was ‘national’, conveying no overt
signs of association with a particular author or religious house. Moreover, the
annalistic format gave it an instantly recognisable structure, which had a nat-
ural beginning but which had no inevitable or natural end. In other words, a
chronicle of this nature extended an open invitation to be improved, whether
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by making additions or alterations in the existing body of text, or by act of

continuation. We can but guess what might have prompted anyone to pull a
copy of the Chronicle from the shelf and to start making changes: perhaps when
another set of annals, or indeed another copy of the Chronicle, came to hand;
perhaps when an event took place which was of local or personal interest,
and which was deemed worthy of remembrance; or perhaps when the turn of
events gave cause for reflection, in order to explain what had come to pass. The
fact is that there were no rules, nor even any conventions. The ‘continuation’
of the Chronicle in the late ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries was a matter left
to private or personal initiative, and thus in effect to chance; and the challenge
is to identify, by subject matter, outlook, literary style, or textual history, those
annals, or sets of annals, which might be regarded as constituting its separate
parts. The accompanying diagram (Fig. 25.1) necessarily involves the simplifi-
cation of complex evidence, but is intended to convey at least some sense of
the development from the Alfredian common stock, by way of various inter-
mediate stages, to each of the extant manuscripts.
While some manuscripts of the common stock were doubtless left
untouched, others began sooner or later to ‘grow’, whether by the addition of
original entries, or by the addition of particular blocks of annals received from
elsewhere. The oldest extant manuscript of the Chronicle (manuscript A), was
written in the late ninth or early tenth century. The chronicle is preceded in
this manuscript by a genealogical regnal list, establishing the ‘West Saxon’ and
specifically Alfredian context of all that follows, although it need not have been
part of the original conception. The common stock is taken in one hand to the
end of the annal for 891, at the bottom of a page; and it seems to have been
some time before any continuations were added. The first three of the identi-
fiable continuations of the common stock were generated by further stages in
the struggle against the Danes. The annals for 893–6 are clearly distinct from
what precedes or follows them, and read like an account of the activities of the
Viking army during the three years from 892 to 895, prompted by the relief
occasioned by its dispersal in the summer of 896, although not written until
after some further engagements with elements of the dispersed army later
in the same year. They were composed by someone singularly well informed
about the campaigns of these years, whose view of events was more obviously
from the centre than from a particular locality. The next identifiable continu-
ation, comprising a set of annals from 897 to 914, covers Alfred’s death and the
early stages of Edward the Elder’s campaign against the Danes who had previ-
ously settled in the east midlands, reaching a climax with the submission of Earl
Thurcetel to Edward at Buckingham. A third set of annals takes the narrative
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use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.
The Alfredian The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

‘common stock’ Copy of common stock
showing stages of its development from the
with chronological Copy of common stock Alfredian ‘common stock’ (c.892) to each
dislocation (756–845) with accidental omission of the extant manuscripts (A–H).
of a sentence in annal 885
Continuations
Asser (893) Copy of common stock
The wars of Alfred (893–6)
(from the king’s circle?) with additional material
The ‘Northern Recension’
in annal 883
A An edited and augmented version of

Edward the Elder (897–914) the Chronicle, compiled probably at
Archetype of BC
(from Winchester?) York in the early eleventh century.
?Abingdon
with ‘local’ additions
Edward the Elder (915–20) Continuations
(from Winchester?)
Scandinavian conquest
(983–1018, with extension)
The ‘Mercian Register’
Archetype of DEF
(from Gloucester?) B ?Worcester or York The ‘English’ annals
with ‘local’ additions (1035–66)
© Cambridge University Press, 2012
The unification of England

542
(from Winchester?)
The ‘Anglo-Danish’ annals
(1035–66,with extension)
Each of the extant manuscripts has ‘local’
additions peculiar to itself.
G Archetype of EF Anglo-Norman England
Æthelweard (c. 985) ?Canterbury (? Westminster / London)
C D (c.1080–1121)
with ‘local’ additions
‘Annals of St Neots’ (1120s)

The ‘Annals of Rouen’
Manuscripts of the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’

A. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College,173 Worcester Latin Chronicle
B. London, BL, Cotton Tiberius A.vi F
C. London, BL, Cotton Tiberius B.i
D. London, BL, Cotton Tiberius B.iv William of Malmesbury
E H
E. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud. Misc. 636
F. London, BL, Cotton Domitian viii
G. London, BL, Cotton Otho B.xi
H. London, BL, Cotton Domitian xi, fol. 9 Henry of Huntingdon Gaimar Waverley Annals Hugh Candidus
25.1 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

forward from 915 to 920, culminating this time with the submission to Edward
of the Scots, Northumbrians and Strathclyde Welsh. The second and third sets
of annals have much in common, and it seems likely that both represent the
view of an observer from the centre of King Edward’s operations; but of course
they tell only part of the story. All three of these sets of annals were copied into
manuscript A, probably by a single scribe in more than one stint, probably in
the second quarter of the tenth century, probably at Winchester; and at about
the same time a copy of the law-code of King Alfred (with the appended laws
of Ine) was added to the manuscript, suggesting that it was intended to be seen
as a consolidated record of the achievements of Alfred and Edward, father and
son. The first and second sets of annals, but not the third, found their way into
the archetype of manuscripts BC. Elsewhere, another chronicler kept a brief
record of the activities of Æthelflæd, lady of the Mercians, during the first quar-
ter of the tenth century, which has come to be known to modern scholarship as
the ‘Mercian Register’. This found its way, as a separate block of annals retain-
ing its own identity, into the archetype of manuscripts BC, and goes some way
towards redressing the bias of the more obviously West Saxon record.
Given what is known of the major political, social, ecclesiastical and adminis-
trative developments which took place in the tenth century, between the acces-
sion of King Æthelstan (924) and the death of King Edgar (975), it has to be
admitted that the entries in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the central decades of
the tenth century are somewhat disappointing. The evidence of charters, law-
codes and coins, of hagiography, book production, and much else besides, takes
us a long way beyond the bare record of events supplied in the Chronicle; and
one can see that various aspects of the period were simply not well suited to
the conventions of the genre, and could not have been reduced to the require-
ments of an annalistic framework. Annals for the years between 934 and 975,
recording events which could in retrospect be recognised as forming part of
the political unification of England, were copied (in more than one stage)
into manuscript A, at Winchester, and (perhaps as a set) into the archetype of
manuscripts BC, probably at Abingdon. The triumphantly jingoistic poem on
the battle of Brunanburh, marking King Æthelstan’s victory over a confeder-
ation of the Hiberno-Norse and the Scots, formed the annal for 937, and was
complemented by a shorter poem, on King Edmund’s redemption of the ‘Five
Boroughs’ (Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham, Stamford and Derby) from Norse
control, which formed the annal for 942. More restrained attention was given to
further stages of Edmund and Eadred’s dealings with the Northumbrians and
the Scots, in the annals for the 940s. For the reign of Eadwig no attention was
paid to the division of the kingdom in 957; and, for Edgar, the annals start with
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SIMON KEYNES
his accession in 959, leave aside the 960s, and fasten thereafter on the death of
the ætheling Edmund in 971. As if to match the beginning, the set of annals cul-
minates with two more poetical entries, covering the coronation of King Edgar
in 973, and his death in 975, ending with an allusion to the troubles during the
reign of Edward the Martyr, the appearance of a comet, and a manifestation
of divine punishment, in the form of a mercifully short-lived famine (976). In
manuscript A, at Winchester, these annals were combined with some strictly
‘local’ annals for the 960s, and in the archetype of manuscripts BC, probably
at Abingdon, they were combined in much the same way with other material,
including a text of the ‘Mercian Register’ (entered after the annal for 914) and
‘local’ annals of a different kind (including an acknowledgement of the div-
ision of the kingdom in 957). In the late 970s, during the reign of Edward the
Martyr (975–8), a new manuscript of the Chronicle was produced at Abingdon,
perhaps reflecting a wish to consolidate the record at what might have seemed
to be a reasonably propitious moment. Interestingly, the scribe of manuscript
B chose to end his work with a copy of the genealogical regnal list for the West
Saxon dynasty, found also in manuscript A, extending it by the addition of the
names of Alfred’s successors in the tenth century, and in this process providing
important information on the exact lengths of their reigns.
The reign of King Æthelred the Unready (978–1016) witnessed the renewal
of Viking raids in England, escalating to invasions in the early eleventh century.
Learned and religious men seem to have begun to search for inspiration in the
struggles of the past, and to seek divine assistance by cultivating a new gener-
ation of saints; certainly, there was much activity in these times of trouble. In
the mid-980s, manuscript A of the Chronicle was enhanced by the addition of
a set of papal and episcopal lists. At about the same time, Æthelweard, ealdor-
man of the western provinces, used a manuscript of the common stock, to 892,
as the basis for his own Latin Chronicle, in which he sought to inform his dis-
tant cousin Matilda of Essen about the deeds of their common ancestors. The
impact of renewed Viking activity began to be felt more severely in the 990s,
and finds due reflection in Ælfric’s Lives of the Saints. It may be no coincidence
that the earliest Lives of Dunstan, Æthelwold and Oswald were written during
the same period, and that Byrhtferth of Ramsey, author of the Vita S. Oswaldi,
produced other historical works, including his ‘Historical Miscellany’, and (it
seems) a set of ‘local’ annals covering the early history of Ramsey Abbey. In the
early years of the eleventh century, a new manuscript of the Chronicle was pro-
duced at Winchester, as part of another significant exercise. In a natural exten-
sion of what had been done before, a scribe seems to have taken from the shelf
a mid-tenth-century manuscript of the Old English Bede, and appended to it
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a fair copy of manuscript A (with continuations to 1001), including the epis-

copal lists, and the law-code of King Alfred, in what thus became manuscript
G. Henceforth manuscript G remained at Winchester, and a few years later,
c. 1012, its episcopal lists were updated. For its part, manuscript A seems to
have been taken to Canterbury, conceivably by Ælfheah, bishop of Winchester
since 984, on his appointment as archbishop in 1006, although it was some
time before any more annals were added.
Perhaps the most ambitious work produced during this period was the
so-called ‘Northern Recension’ of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. It would appear
that a manuscript of the Alfredian common stock, without any of the later
continuations, was taken north at some indeterminate point in the tenth or
early eleventh century, where it served as the basis for the production of a
more ambitious version of the Chronicle, in which (among other modifications)
the rather limited amount of information about northern England, found in
the original, was augmented by the addition of material drawn from at least
two sets of ‘northern’ annals, providing coverage of events in the eighth, late
ninth and tenth centuries. For the purposes of the ‘Northern Recension’, these
annals were rendered into the vernacular. The most striking feature of the
compilation is the occurrence of an extended reflection on the reign of King
Edgar in the annal for 959, and of a shorter one on the troubles occasioned by
Edgar’s death under 975. As has long been recognised, both passages are writ-
ten in the distinctive style of Wulfstan, archbishop of York 1002–23. It would
seem to follow that Wulfstan himself was at work on the ‘Northern Recension’
in the early eleventh century, at a time when the Vikings were oppressing the
English as never before; and it may be that he was looking to the past not only
for inspiration but also for an explanation of the present difficulties.
The ‘main’ account of King Æthelred’s struggle against the Viking invad-
ers, and of the conquest of England by Sven Forkbeard and Cnut, reflects the
dismay and desperation of a defeated people, and was evidently put together
soon after the end of Æthelred’s reign. The annals extended probably into the
early 1020s, and may or may not have received further additions, into the early
1030s, before finding their way as a set into the archetype of manuscript C,
probably at Abingdon, and into the archetype of manuscript DEF, at Worcester
or York. It remains uncertain where the annals originated. They were long
regarded as the work of an ‘Abingdon’ chronicler; but it is unlikely that the
‘Abingdon’ elements are integral to the narrative. Other suggestions include
Canterbury, Ramsey and London. In producing this record of a long and trou-
bled period, the chronicler must have been able to draw on earlier material,
supplying miscellaneous information (including obits and appointments) as
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SIMON KEYNES
well as information about the Viking raids and invasions. The fact remains,
however, that he would appear to have constructed his own narrative with a
view to a particular end, holding it together with recurrent turns of phrase
and spicing it up with expressions of his own views and feelings. Famously,
the chronicler was not afraid to criticise the conduct of affairs, or indeed to
apportion blame; but whether it is good history is a different matter. The
account can be set beside some ‘local’ annals for the early 980s, incorporated
in the archetype of manuscript C, and beside ‘local’ annals for the years 991
and 1001, entered in manuscript A. The comparison serves as an object lesson
in some of the basic principles of source criticism, which can be taken much
further if the comparison is extended to include other forms of evidence.
The annals which cover the reign of Cnut offer little more than a register of
the king’s absences abroad on other business, and, as in the cases of Æthelstan
and Edgar, one feels that Cnut’s activities in England were of a kind which
escaped or defied reduction to annalistic form. Yet the political faction which
had originated with the rise of Earl Godwine, in the early 1020s, broke surface
immediately after Cnut’s death in 1035, and became still more acute after the
accession of Edward the Confessor in 1042. Domestic affairs were animated
as never before, and there was fresh cause for taking the Chronicle down from
the shelf. A new manuscript, known to modern scholarship as manuscript C,
was produced apparently at Abingdon in the mid-1040s. The scribe began his
book with a text of the Old English calendar-poem, or Menologium, and a series
of gnomic verses, and then set about the construction of a chronicle from the
material to hand. His main source was the manuscript containing the com-
mon stock, with various tenth-century continuations, which in the late 970s
had been used by the compiler of manuscript B; to which (it seems) had been
added some more ‘local’ annals, a copy of the separate set of annals describ-
ing the Scandinavian conquest of England (extending into the 1020s or early
1030s), and perhaps the beginnings of a new set of annals for the later 1030s
and early 1040s. As entered in manuscript C, the annals express horror at Earl
Godwine’s treatment of the ætheling Alfred in 1036, disapproval of the Anglo-
Danish regime, and (in 1042) pointed recognition of Edward’s right to the
throne. Further annals were added from 1045 in short stints, apparently still
at Abingdon. Although this chronicle is regarded as hostile to Earl Godwine,
there is little sense of triumph at his fall from power in 1051, or indeed of
dismay on his restoration in 1052; and one suspects that many were wary of
a turn of events which had briefly favoured Edward’s Norman friends, and
relieved when it all came to nought. There are no annals for 1057–64, though
coverage is provided for 1065–6, as if to record the inglorious ending to a once
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glorious tale. Unfortunately the last leaf of the manuscript was removed or
lost; and, as a result, the annal for 1066 breaks off mid-sentence at the foot of
a page, just before reaching the events of October.
Another new manuscript of the Chronicle was produced apparently at
Worcester or York in the mid or later 1040s. It was based on a copy of the
‘Northern Recension’ which had been augmented during the second quarter
of the eleventh century with more ‘local’ material, and into which had also
been entered a copy of the account of the Scandinavian conquest of England.
The new manuscript, known to modern scholarship as manuscript D, certainly
extended beyond the end of Æthelred’s reign, and might have reached into the
1030s or 1040s; but the part of the manuscript covering this period was rewrit-
ten at a later stage, possibly in the 1050s or perhaps as late as the 1070s, presum-
ably to tidy up the text or to make particular changes. One can imagine that the
sensitivity of certain issues, and the rapidly changing course of events, would
have complicated any chronicler’s task in the central decades of the eleventh
century; and that whenever new information came to hand, it might well have
been necessary to make certain alterations. At the risk of over-simplification,
annals for a period from 1035 onwards, which we can read in manuscript C in
what would appear to be their ‘original’ form, occur in an edited form in manu-
script D, combined with information drawn from other sources and with ‘local’
additions. Some of C’s antagonism towards Earl Godwine was toned down, as
if to avoid giving offence. Yet in the annal for 1051, the D-chronicler provides
a compelling analysis of Godwine’s fall from power, ending with a crucial ref-
erence to Duke William’s visit to England soon afterwards. It is manuscript
D which goes on to provide the fullest coverage of the events of 1066, shar-
ing some material with manuscript C and some with the archetype of manu-
script E; and since manuscript D was clearly ‘interested’ in Ealdred, bishop of
Worcester 1046–62 and archbishop of York 1061–9, it is appropriately this
manuscript which explains Ealdred’s role in the submission to Duke William at
Berkhamsted and in the coronation of William at Westminster. The peroration
in manuscript D recalls Archbishop Wulfstan’s turn of phrase in the annal for
975, and the tenor of the account of the Scandinavian conquest: ‘And always
after that it grew much worse. May the end be good when God wills!’
Another copy of the ‘Northern Recension’, with additional material, was
brought south apparently in the second quarter of the eleventh century.
It found its way to St Augustine’s, Canterbury, and served later, at Christ
Church, as the archetype of manuscripts EF. Those responsible for keeping
up the chronicle at Canterbury seem to have been in touch with their coun-
terparts elsewhere, at least to judge from the occurrence of material for the
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SIMON KEYNES
1040s shared with manuscript C, and from the occurrence of material for the
1050s, 1060s and 1070s shared with manuscript D. Of course the ‘Canterbury’
chronicle also developed a line of its own. It became, in a sense, a chronicle
of the Anglo-Danish political establishment: instinctively defensive of Earl
Godwine’s actions in 1035; deafeningly silent on the treatment of the æthe-
ling Alfred in 1036; optimistic for Edward in the early 1040s; dismayed by the
turn of events in 1051; delighted by Godwine’s restoration, and by the expul-
sion of the Normans, in 1052; unmoved by the return of Edward the Exile in
1057; and firmly committed to the notion of Harold, as Edward’s intended
successor, in 1066. There is no wailing, however, about the lot of the English:
the Conquest happened, and after William’s consecration ‘people paid taxes to
him, and gave him hostages, and afterwards bought their lands’.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle survived the Norman Conquest, and indeed con-
tinued to flourish. The annals in manuscript D extend to 1079, persisting in
their ‘northern’ interests and in their instinctive commitment to the ‘English’
cause, with particular attention paid to Edgar the Ætheling, and to his sis-
ter Margaret of Scotland, as surviving members of the English royal dynasty.
From 1068 to 1076, manuscript D also shares material with the archetype of
manuscripts EF, some of which seems ‘English’ and some ‘Norman’ in out-
look; but after 1079 manuscript D came to an end. The annals in the archetype
of manuscripts EF continued, covering the years from 1080 to 1121, providing
a major source of information for the reigns of William I, William Rufus and
Henry I. It is surprisingly difficult to discern a particular local interest; and
as well as the famous passages – for example, the slaughter of the monks at
Glastonbury (1083), the inception of the Domesday survey (1085) and the por-
trayal of King William (1087) – one finds interest taken in the king’s itinerary,
in royal appointments, and in all kinds of natural phenomena. In his account
of King William, the chronicler remarks that he had ‘once lived at his court’;
and the overall impression is of a set of annals maintained with remarkable
steadiness over a period of about forty years, never far from centres of royal
power. The archetype was used at Canterbury, c. 1100, in the production of
manuscript F, in which each annal is followed directly by a version in Latin.
Thereafter, in the early 1120s, the archetype was made available for copying by
a Peterborough scribe. It is interesting to see how in this process a ‘national’
chronicle was converted into a ‘local’ or ‘house’ chronicle, by the addition of
material on matters of local interest at particular points throughout the narra-
tive. The new manuscript (E) was maintained at Peterborough initially by the
original scribe, making entries in short stints from 1122 to 1131. His succes-
sor provided a retrospective account of the reign of King Stephen (1135–54),
548
when it was said that ‘Christ and his saints were asleep’. The account is cast in
the form of annals, but was probably given that form in the mid 1150s, when it
was copied into the manuscript. The single leaf designated manuscript H con-
tains the closing words of an annal for 1113, followed by the greater part of an
annal for 1114, written in short stints, reporting on the king’s movements and
also providing a detailed register of mainly ecclesiastical appointments. It is by
no means certain that the leaf ever formed part of a once complete manuscript
of the Chronicle; for, given the nature of its content, it may have originated as a
form of bulletin, intended to serve as a source of basic information.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was a living and developing text for over 250 years,
from the 890s to the 1150s. In the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, it also
helped to ensure that the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ view of the Anglo-Saxon past would
survive the Norman Conquest, and would contribute to the formation of an
English historical tradition. For many reasons it was found expedient, after the
Conquest, not to break with the past, but instead to respect and even to culti-
vate it. Attention was directed towards a community’s accumulation of char-
ters, relics, treasures, lands and sources of revenue; and, as members of religious
houses realised how much they had to gain from the assertion of royal foun-
dation, or from the investigation of ancient rights, the need was also felt for
more accessible forms of historical writing in which to set down a particular or
coherent view of the past. Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester 1062–95, is known
to have instructed his monk Hemming to put the Worcester muniments in
order, and at much the same time he instigated work on the construction of
the Latin chronicle formerly known as the chronicle of Florence of Worcester
(who had worked on it before his death in 1118), but now as that of John of
Worcester (who was working on it in the early 1120s). As might be expected, the
Worcester monks had access to a manuscript closely related to manuscript D (if
not necessarily to D itself); more remarkably, they also had access to the annals
for 915–20, found only in manuscript A, to some of the later tenth-century
annals found only in manuscript C, and, for the eleventh century, to material in
manuscripts C and D, and even to the late eleventh- and twelfth-century annals
in manuscript E. Perhaps they had at least one chronicle from each of the three
main branches of the textual tradition; or perhaps they had collected material
for their purposes from various religious houses. At Christ Church, Canterbury,
the monks had manuscripts A and B, as well as the archetype of manuscripts EF,
and much else besides; and it was there, in the first decade of the twelfth cen-
tury, that a member of the community, well known from his interventions in
manuscript A, set about the production of manuscript F as a bilingual exercise,
for a particular purpose, with a strongly local dimension. For his Gesta regum
549
SIMON KEYNES
Anglorum, William of Malmesbury (d. 1142) used a copy of a chronicle related to

the archetype of manuscripts EF, as the basis for his own rather more discursive
account of the Anglo-Saxon past. At about the same time Henry, archdeacon
of Huntingdon, was at work on his Historia Anglorum. He would have been able
to rummage through the libraries of several of the ancient religious houses of
eastern England; and as well as a chronicle related to the archetype of manu-
scripts EF, he seems also to have made use of something akin to manuscript C.
Symeon of Durham derived much of the material for his Historia regum from his
Latin sources, and there is little that reflects direct use of a manuscript of the
Chronicle; the fact remains, however, that the mid-twelfth-century catalogue of
the library at Durham Cathedral registers the existence, among a group of nine
Libri Anglici, of ‘Cronica duo Anglica’, suggesting that at least two such chroni-
cles had found their way to the far north of England, and may lie somewhere
behind his work. Another item in the same group of Libri Anglici, identified as
‘Elfledes Boc’, has been regarded as a copy of the ‘Mercian Register’, which is
a pleasant but entirely wishful thought. At Bury St Edmunds, in the 1120s or
1130s, a manuscript of the Chronicle, apparently without the chronological dis-
location in annals 756–845, and seemingly not extending beyond 912, was used
as a basis for a Latin chronicle which has come to be known as the ‘Annals of St
Neots’. In the late 1130s, the clerk Geffrei Gaimar used a ‘Northern Recension’
of the Chronicle for his Estoire des Engleis; interestingly, he seems to have regarded
the Chronicle as a work associated in some way with Winchester and King Alfred.
Manuscript E of the Chronicle was used at Peterborough, probably in the 1160s,
as the basis for a Latin house-chronicle by Hugh Candidus; and a manuscript
closely related to its archetype lies behind the annals for the period from 1000 to
1118 found in a Latin chronicle compiled at Waverley, a Cistercian house near
Farnham in Surrey, in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century.
It is a truism to say that we should think in terms of the ‘Anglo-Saxon
Chronicles’ in the plural, rather than in terms of a single chronicle; and we
should do so not simply because the extant manuscripts provide so much
variation from the original common stock, but because there must once have
been so many more copies of the text, in various stages of its transmission,
dispersed quite widely among religious houses throughout England. In add-
ition to the extant manuscripts, their respective archetypes, and whatever
lies behind the various works in Latin, we can but wonder whether there
were other copies of the Chronicle which have left no trace, at houses such as
Shaftesbury, Glastonbury, Ely, St Albans, Burton and Eynsham. Its wide dis-
tribution ensured that the Chronicle helped to maintain an awareness of the
Anglo-Saxon past, in ways which might have informed the house-histories,
550
house-chronicles and chronicle-cartularies which began to proliferate in the

twelfth century. Of course the Chronicle continues to exert its influence, still
to some extent through the eyes of the Anglo-Norman historians and their
successors, but also more directly. It is well understood by modern scholar-
ship that the annals speak with many voices, from different places, reflecting
a variety of interests; and that they have to be approached by historians with
all due circumspection. In the late 1830s, John Mitchell Kemble discovered
the ‘chronological dislocation’ in a long section of the common stock, and
chose instead to put his faith in charters. Since then, it has come to be more
widely recognised that historians of Anglo-Saxon England must deconstruct
the text, look beneath the surface of recorded events, and take account of a
wider range of evidence if they are ever to escape from the pervasive influence
of what will always remain, nonetheless, by far their most important source.
Appendix: Manuscripts, facsimiles and editions

Understanding of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, whether as a work of Old English
literature or as a primary source for our knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon past,
is obscured by the difficulty of distinguishing between the component parts
of the extant versions of an imaginary whole. The two earliest editions of the
vernacular text were published in the seventeenth century: Abraham Whelock’s
edition of manuscript G (1644), and Edmund Gibson’s edition of manuscript
E (1692), both furnished with translations into Latin. All five of the editions
of the Chronicle published in the nineteenth century took better advantage of
the surviving manuscripts, in ways satisfying some purposes but not others. In
1823 James Ingram created a composite text which could be read as a continu-
ous narrative, furnishing it with a translation into modern English. Richard
Price aimed for much the same effect in a more disciplined way; and the pub-
lication of his edition in Henry Petrie’s Monumenta Historica Britannica (1848)
lent grandeur as well as authority to the text. In 1861 Benjamin Thorpe pro-
duced an edition, for the Rolls Series, in which the several versions were set
out in parallel columns, to the reader’s advantage. In 1865 John Earle pub-
lished an edition, prepared in the 1850s, in which he accorded precedence on
facing pages to the earliest and latest manuscripts (A and E), with material
from other manuscripts displayed in a subordinate position. Charles Plummer
adopted the same principle for his edition, published in 1892, complemented
by a second volume with an introduction and detailed notes (1899).
For all this scholarly endeavour, it cannot be said that the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle has yet been ‘edited’. In recent years several volumes of a collaborative
551
SIMON KEYNES
work have appeared, comprising semi-diplomatic editions of the texts trans-

mitted in each of the surviving manuscripts, as listed below. This represented
the necessary first stage; and the next will be to establish a clean text of the
original (Alfredian) ‘Common Stock’, comprising annals from the Roman con-
quest of Britain to 892, so that it can be read as its compilers had intended, and
judged on terms of its own. The serious complications arise thereafter; and it
remains an even greater editorial challenge to distinguish between the separ-
ate annals, or sets of annals, which make up the various continuations from
893 onwards, to identify the circumstances which from time to time prompted
the production of a new copy or recension of the extended whole, whether
at Glastonbury, Abingdon, Canterbury or elsewhere, and to understand the
processes whereby particular sets of annals were written, taken or sent from
one place to another, edited, and augmented (Fig. 25.1). The replacement
of Plummer’s introduction and notes would be a further challenge, equally
necessary and no less worthwhile.
The most authoritative and accessible translation of the ‘Common Stock’,
and of its various continuations to 1042, is to be found in Whitelock’s English
Historical Documents (1979). The annals for the last years of the Anglo-Saxon
period, and thereafter, are to be found in the second volume of the same series.
Manuscript A (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 173). Description: Ker

1957, no. 39. Facsimile: Flower and Smith 1941. Edition: Bately 1986.
Manuscript B (London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A.vi). Description:
Ker 1957, no. 188. Edition: Taylor 1983.
Manuscript C (London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B.i). Description:
Ker 1957, no. 191. Edition: O’Brien O’Keeffe 2001.
Manuscript D (London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B.iv). Description:
Ker 1957, no. 192. Edition: Cubbin 1996.
Manuscript E (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 636). Description: Ker
1957, no. 346. Facsimile: Whitelock 1954. Edition: Irvine 2004.
Manuscript F (London, British Library, Cotton Domitian viii). Description:
Ker 1957, no. 148. Facsimile: Dumville 1995c. Edition: Baker 2000.
Manuscript G (London, British Library, Cotton Otho B.xi). Description:
Ker 1957, no. 180. Edition: Lutz 1981.
Manuscript H (London, British Library, Cotton Domitian ix, fol. 9).
Description: Ker 1957, no. 150. Edition: Plummer and Earle 1892–9,
pp. 244–5.
552

Manuscripts of The Anglosaxon Chronicle

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25

Manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

The systematic analysis of manuscripts containing versions of the text known

the letters of Boniface and Alcuin, and in an early ninth-century compendium

by making additions or alterations in the existing body of text, or by act of

The Alfredian The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

A An edited and augmented version of

The unification of England

‘Annals of St Neots’ (1120s)

Manuscripts of the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’

25.1 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

a fair copy of manuscript A (with continuations to 1001), including the epis-

Anglorum, William of Malmesbury (d. 1142) used a copy of a chronicle related to

house-chronicles and chronicle-cartularies which began to proliferate in the

Appendix: Manuscripts, facsimiles and editions

work have appeared, comprising semi-diplomatic editions of the texts trans-

Manuscript A (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 173). Description: Ker

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