The Anglo Saxon Chronicle: A Revised Translation PDF
Preview The Anglo Saxon Chronicle: A Revised Translation
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle The Anglo -Saxon Chronicle A REVISED TRANSLATION EDITED BY DOROTHY WHITELOCK LITT.D., F.B.A. Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, University of Cambridge WITH DAVID C. DOUGLAS m.a., f.b.a., Professor of History, University of Bristol AND SUSIE I. TUCKER m.a.. Senior Lecturer in English, University of Bristol INTRODUCTION BY DOROTHY WHITELOCK LONDON EYRE AND SPOTTISWOODE 22 HENRIETTA STREET WC2 This edition first published 1961 Copyright (g) 1961 by Dorothy Whitelock and David Douglas Printed in Great Britain by Jarrold & Sons Ltd, Norwich Cat. No. 6/2391 Contents FOREWORD page ix INTRODUCTION xi SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY XXV PLAN OF THE PRESENT EDITION xxxi THE ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE i GENEALOGICAL TABLES 205 INDEX 224 Foreword Many persons have expressed appreciation of the system of arrangement of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle adopted in English Historical Documents (vol. i, 1955, edited by D. Whitclock; vol. 11, 1954, edited by D. C. Douglas and G. W. Greenaway, with translation by S. I. Tucker), since this enables the reader easily to compare the various versions and to assess the degree of authority of the individual entries. It seems, therefore, that a separate edition, combining the two parts of this record hitherto divided between volume 1 and volume 11, will meet a need. Moreover, Chronicle studies have not stood still since 1955. The introduction in the present work incorporates new material; and, in order to support and illustrate the conclusions there drawn, the practice previously confined to volume 1, of including in the footnotes relevant material from Latin authors, has been extended to the rest of the Chronicle. The translation has been revised and alterations have been made in the interests of a consistent treatment throughout. The bibliography has been brought up to date, and an index of proper names has been added, together with some new genealogical tables. It is hoped that the material here presented will give scholars an opportunity for considering some unsolved problems concerning the transmission of this important source. Introduction The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the most important source for the political history of the period, has come down to us in seven manuscripts (one known mainly from a sixteenth-century transcript) and two fragments. For long stretches these manuscripts are versions of the same work, but some entries are confined to a group of manuscripts while others are peculiar to a single manuscript. The arrangement adopted in the present translation is intended to make it easy for the reader to distinguish the common stock of the Chronicle from the individual additions, and is explained in detail in the note before the commencement of the translation.1 The versions of the Chronicle The extant manuscripts1 2 are as follows: Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS. 173, cited as ‘A’, which is often called the Parker MS. after its donor, Matthew Parker, archbishop of Canterbury, 1559- 1575. It is the oldest manuscript, being written up to almost the end of 891 in one hand of the late ninth or very early tenth century. After that it is continued in a series of hands, and the scribe who added annals 925-955,3 probably not long after the latter year, was certainly writing at Winchester. He enters some events of purely local interest. In annal 964 the word ceastert ‘the city*, means Winchester. It is possible that the manuscript was from the first written at the Old Minster, Winchester.4 This manuscript gives a detailed account of events up to 920, and, apart from a copy of it, ‘G\5 contains the only record of the later wars of Edward the Elder. Then it shares in the general decay in historical writing and is the scantiest of our texts, for it uses neither the Mercian Register nor the northern annals. It contains tenth-century poems and royal obits which are in other versions, and some local entries of its own, but it did not receive the excellent record of the reign of Ethelred the Unready found in 4 C ’, ‘ D *, and 4 E ’. 1 The most commonly used edition, that of J. Earle and hand is very close to that of the Tollcmache Orosius (Brit. Mus. C. Plummer (Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, 2nd ed., Addit. MS. 47967). The next scribe, who wrote annals 925-955, 1952), gives the complete text of only two manuscripts, ‘A’ also inserted annal 710. He wrote also Bald's Leechbook (Brit. and ‘E’. In the introduction to vol. n, however, Plummer Mus. Royal MS. 12 D. xvii) and probably most of the Old discussed the whole problem of the relationship of the various English version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History in Brit. Mus. versions and of the transmission of the Chronicle. Though Cott. Otho B. xi. A late-tenth-century scribe added annals the account in this present work differs in some respects from 958-967, and another scribe annals 975-1001. Only a few short that of Plummer, his monumental work forms the basis of all annals were added after the manuscript was moved to Canter Chronicle study. bury, except for a longer one at 1070 in a late-eleventh-century 2 For a fuller description, sec N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manu hand; but many alterations and additions were made to the scripts containing Anglo-Saxon, Oxford, 1957, on which the existing text, mainly by the scribe who wrote version ‘F’ of palaeographical information given below is based. the Chronicle. 3 ln J. Earle and C. Plummer, op. cit., n, p. xxv.he is called the 4 The accession of Bishop Frithustan to Winchester in 909 is eighth scribe, but I agree with Mr Ker that older palaeographers specially marked (see p. 61, n. 2). His name occurs at the head distinguished too many changes of hand, and that the second of the first folio of the Epistula Sedulii which is bound up with scribe, who begins with the last paragraph of 891, continues this manuscript. until 924 (excluding two and a half lines on f. 23 v and four on 6 See below, p. xii. f. 24, which arc in different and inferior hands). This second XI xii The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Instead, it has an independent entry of some length at 1001, but otherwise only a few scrappy entries after 975. At some time in the eleventh century it was removed to Christ Church, Canterbury, certainly being there by c. 1075. Here the scribe of *F\ who had before him the archetype of ‘E\ made many interpolations, some from this source, and a few entries were made by other scribes. To make room for these interpolations certain passages in ‘A* were erased, but fortunately a copy of ‘A* had been made before it left Winchester. Only fragments of this copy survived the Cottonian fire of 1731,1 but it had previously been transcribed by Laurence Nowell, dean of Lichfield, a friend of Archbishop Parker and, like him, a collector of manuscripts.2 This copy of4 A\ which I shall call ‘G’,3 is chiefly important as evidence for the state of ‘A* before it was tampered with at Canterbury. ‘A* is shown to have remained at Christ Church by the mention of it in later catalogues of the library of that house. It is the only surviving manuscript old enough for us to be able to distinguish palaeographically the stages of growth, and to separate the original text from later interpolations. It should warn us to be on our guard when examining versions which survive only in eleventh- or twelfth-century copies, where such accretions are hidden from our sight. In spite of its importance as our oldest manuscript, the value of ‘A’, even for the period in which it is a full record, must not be overstressed, for it is rather carelessly written, and is at least two removes from the original work. The support of Latin writers who had access to early versions of the Chronicle which have since been lost sometimes proves the superiority of readings in the manuscripts later than ‘A*. Manuscripts Brit. Mus. Cott. Tiber. A. vi, cited as ‘B’, and Cott. Tiber. B. i, cited as ‘C\ are very closely connected, having many features in common which separate them from other versions. Their annal for 977 shows a connexion with Abingdon, and the events of 971 would be known at that house. But there is no trace of a special interest in Abingdon previous to this annal. Neither manuscript mentions the refoundation of the monastery nor the consecration of Æthelwold, its first abbot, as bishop of Winchester in 963. It seems unlikely, therefore, that the version of the Chronicle which lies behind these two manuscripts was originally an Abingdon production, nor, in fact, is it probable that Abingdon would possess a copy of the Chronicle before the mid-tenth-century refoundation of the abbey. ‘B’ ends in 977. A detached leaf, Brit. Mus. Cott. Tiber. A. iii, f. 178, in the same handwriting, has been shown by Mr Ker to have originally followed the Chronicle in this manuscript. It contains the West Saxon genealogy and regnal list which forms the preface of‘A*, and it continues the regnal list up to the accession of Edward the Martyr. As it breaks off with the words ‘and he held*, as if the 1 Brit. Mus. Cott. Otho B. xi, ff. 39-47+Addit. MS. 34652, dated early eleventh century. Nowell’s transcript is Brit. Mus. f. 2. In this manuscript the Chronicle was preceded by the Addit. MS. 43703. Old English version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History (Otho B. 2 On him, see R. Flower, ‘Laurence Nowell and the Dis xi-f Otho B. x, ff. 55, 58, 62), mainly written by the scribe covery of England in Tudor Times’, Proc. Brit. Acad., xxi, responsible for annals 925-955 in ‘A’. The Chronicle portion, PP- 47-73. including Addit. MS. 34652, f. 2 (a detached leaf containing the 2 Thorpe calls it ‘G’, but Plummer, who uses a special form West Saxon genealogy and regnal list which forms the preface of ‘A’ to denote the Parker MS., refers to the Otho MS. as in ‘A’), is in the hand of the scribe who wrote Bede’s auto- ‘A’. He objects to ‘G’ as implying a date later than *F’; but graphical note at the end of the Ecclesiastical History, and can be ‘ F ’ is itself earlier than ‘ E ’.
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