The Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical history of England / [translated by J. Stevens] Also the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. With illustrative notes, a map of Anglo-Saxon England and a general index. Edited by J.A. Giles.

  • Bede, the Venerable, Saint, 673-735.
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Venerable Bede's Ecclesiastical history of England / [translated by J. Stevens] Also the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. With illustrative notes, a map of Anglo-Saxon England and a general index. Edited by J.A. Giles. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The first point which suggests itself to the inquirer, con- cerns the foim in which so valuable a national monument has come down to us. I shall not deem it necessary to delay the reader’s attention by an account of the mode in which our large public and private collections of manuscripts have been fonned. It is sufficient to observe that in all our col- lections of MSS. there are now only six ancient copies of the Saxon Chronicle known to be in existence. We will proceed to enumerate and describe them in order. I. The first copy of this Chronicle is generally known by the name of the Benet or Plegmund MS., so called because it is preserved in Benet [now Corpus Christi] College, Cam- bridge, and because Plegmund, archbishop of Canterbury, in the reign of king Alfred, is thought to have had some hand in compUing the first part of it. “ From internal evidence of an indirect nature,” says Dr. Ingram, “ there is great reason to presume that archbishop Plegmund transcribed or superintended this very copy of the Saxon Annals to the year 891, the year in which he came to the see. Wanley ob-serves it is written in one and the same hand to this year, and in hands equally ancient to the year 924, after which it is continued in different hands to the end. “ At the end of the year 890 is added, in a neat but imita- tive hand, the following Interpolation, which is betrayed by the faintness of the ink, as well as by the Norman cast of the dialect and orthography : “Her waes Plegemund gecoron of gode and of eallen liis halechen. “There are many other interpolations in this MS.;* a par- ticular account of which, however curious, would necessarily become tedious. A few only are here selected, with a view to illu.strate the critical apparatus of this work, and the pro- gressive accumulation of historical facts. They are generally very short, except where an erasure has been made to find room for them. The notice of the birth of St. Dunstan, as of every tiling else relating to him, appears to be a monastic interpolation. His death is mentioned in the margin, in a very minute hand, in Latin. There seems to be nothing of any great value in this MS. beyond the time of Alfric, whose * The death of Plegmund for instance.