PREFACE
It is deeply to be regretted that an historic monument so important, and of such great interest to all students of our early times, not only in Britain, but throughout all Germanic lands, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, should afford us no information with regard to its several writers,[1] or to the mode in which it gradually grew into the form in which we now possess it. Equally devoid are we of all indirect or collateral evidence, tending to cast a glimmering of light on these points. Conjecture, therefore, and that founded only on probability, is all we can have recourse to, in an attempt to account for the phenomenon. One point, however, seems indisputable, viz., that the several manuscripts, whether West Saxon or Mercian, are derived from a common original; whence the question naturally arises, how and by whom was such original issued to the several monasteries, which, from their rank, or the reputation of one or other of their inmates, for learning or superior penmanship, were deemed qualified for the proposed object of multiplying copies; and where it received such additional matter as, on account of local
- ↑ Under the year 1087 (p. 354; Transl. p. 188), the writer of that part of the Laudian manuscript (E.) speaks in the first person, both singular and plural, and informs us that he was not only a contemporary of, and personally acquainted with, the Conqueror, but that he had lived in his court; in his own words: þonne wille we be him awritan swa swa we hine ageaton • be him onlocodan • 7 oðre hwile on his hirede wunedon: then we will write concerning him as we understood him, who have looked on him and, at another time, sojourned in his court. From the above, however, we can only form the probable conjecture, that the writer, after his withdrawal from court, joined the brotherhood in the abbey of Peterborough.
