Sometime in the early fifteenth century, an unknown reader, sitting in the choir of the abbey of St Albans in Hertfordshire, was so anxious about a particular entry in the chronicle manuscript he was reading that he defaced the page with the following jotting:

It is a carefully crafted expression of fear, written in dactylic hexameter, scribbled at the foot of the historical narrative for the year 1403 in a chronicle attributed to Thomas Walsingham (d. c.1422), a monk of the same abbey. The prompt for this expression of anxiety was not a direct physical threat to the abbey. Rather, the scribbler was engaging directly with the chronicle narrative; it was a reaction, expressed in the margins of the text, to a narrative entry concerning harsh clerical taxation imposed by the English King Henry IV in order to fund his ventures in Wales to supress the rebellion of Owain Glyndŵr. According to Walsingham, Henry IV ‘expected aid to be provided to him by churchmen on the grounds that he had been toiling to subdue enemies and rebels, not without danger to life and limb, while they were enjoying peace at home’. In response, the abbot of St Albans lent the king the astoundingly large sum of 100 marks. Such an engagement with a chronicle narrative is a privileged moment for the modern scholar; the entry prompts a strong response in the scribbler, who directs to God his hopes for peace, and seeks the destruction of Owain Glyndŵr.

This study is an analysis of chronicle narrative through an examination of how one episode, the revolt of Owain Glyndŵr in Wales, was represented in sixteen English chronicles of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Chronicle narratives are multilayered and sophisticated productions that contain a multiplicity of voices, although these are commonly not as obviously distinct as a marginal jotting. Narratives detailing the revolt of Owain Glyndŵr in the chronicles are rich and detailed, and offer diverse interpretations.