HISTORY

Pre-Reformation history

The version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle known as E is preserved in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Laud Misc. 636, and consists of annals for 60 BC to AD 1154. It is the only extant version of the Chronicle which extends into the twelfth century (indeed it covers over seventy years more than any other version), and it therefore offers important evidence for the continuation of writing in English in the century after the Norman Conquest.

The medieval origin of the manuscript is Peterborough. The most compelling reason for assigning it to Peterborough is its content. The E-text includes a number of whole annals and parts of annals which recount information relating to Peterborough. These annals are both interspersed amongst earlier annals otherwise shared with other versions of the Chronicle, and also added as later entries. The evidence provided by the manuscript's contents is supported by its handwriting. The hand of the first scribe has been shown to resemble closely a hand found in London, British Library, MS. Harley 3667, and in London, British Library, MS. Cotton Tiberius C. I, fols 2–42 (originally both parts of one larger manuscript). The second and last hand resembles closely a hand found in two other Peterborough manuscripts: the correcting hand in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS. 134, and Society of Antiquaries, MS. 60 (known as the Liber Niger or Black Book of Peterborough), fols 6–71. The E-text, all the evidence would suggest, is a copy of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle made at Peterborough in about 1121, perhaps as part of an effort to replenish library stocks after the disastrous fire of 1116, and continued thereafter up to 1154.

It is curious that the manuscript is not included in medieval Peterborough catalogues, since the attention paid to it in the later medieval period would suggest that it remained at Peterborough after its composition. The marginalia in late thirteenth- or fourteenth-century hands predominantly show an interest in Peterborough affairs. An inscription written in the fourteenth century recording ownership of the manuscript has been erased and partly cut away; the remaining words read ‘alienauerit … sit … et a celesti consolacione alienatus’.