Besides these two chronicles, we have a Worecaster, an Abingdon, another Canterbury Chronicle, and a fourth, which appears to have written at Peterborough. It has been inferred (chiefly for remona connected with the handwriting) that these were compiled respectively In the years 1016, 1018, 1058, and 1125. We have also divers transcripts and collations made by Lambarde, Junius Josselyn, and other antiquaries of the 16th and 17th centuries, some of which were evidently taken from manuscript authorities no longer extant. Josselyn appears to have had in his possession a second Peterborough Chronicle; and Lambarde's transcript in Trinity College, Dublin, is thought to have been made from an ancient manuscript which perished in the fatal fire that destroyed so many of our Cotto nian treasures. The Plegmund, the Dunstan, the Abingdon, and the ancient chronicle transcribed by Lambarde, all began with Cresar'm invasion. The Worcester, Peterborough, and latest Canterbury manu scripts begin with a description of Britain, extracted chiefly from Bede and Orosius.
The antiquaries of the 16th and 17th centuries seem to have assumed that the Anglo-Saxon monasteries kept a regular record of contemporary events; and there are certainly grounds for believing that registers of a certain kind were really kept by them. Bale's 'History' (iv. 14) has been referred to in proof of this. He tells us, that in the year 681 a boy, who was an inmate of Selsey Abbey, was seized with the plague, which was then desolating the country. As the poor lad was lying ou his bed, he was accosted by two angel visitants, who bade him tell the frightened monks that the plague would spread no farther, that it been stayed by the prayers of Oswald, of whose death that very day was the anniversary. " Let them," said Saint Peter, for no less a person is the speaker, " search in their books (in suis codicibus) in which are recorded the deaths of deceased persons (defunctorum depoaitio), and they will find that on this day ho was taken," &e. The abbot, we are told, believed the boy's words, and straightway went and searched in his chronicle (in Annali suo), and found that on that very day King Oswald had been slain, &c. Here reference seems to be made to some public register of the convent ; and this register, or the earlier manuscript it was copied from, seems to have furnished materials for the Peterborough Chronicle.
"An. 642. Now was Oswald, king of the Northhymbre, slain," &c., "upon the Maser-field, on the day called the naves of August," Arc.
The mention of the day on which an event occurred, is rare in our chronicles; it is therefore probable that we have here the very passage which the worthy monk was sent in search of.
That there were also public (or perhaps we might say national) registers, in which were recorded the accessions, &e. of the kings, we
also gather from the same venerable historian. We are told (' Hist.' iii. 4), such was the horror excited by the cruelties of the Welshman Ceadwalla, and the apostasy of the Northumbrian kings, that " it was resolved upon by all who had to reckon the chronology of the kings (regum tempos computantibus) that the memory of the faithless kings should be blotted out, and the year assigned to the reign of the the king next following," &c.; and he elsewhere adds, with studied phraseology, " unanimo otrinium consensu firmatum est," 'Hist.; iii. 9. In the Chronicles we have the entry : " An. 634.—And Oswald also took to the kingdom of the North hymbre, and he reigned ix. winters. They assigned him the tibia, on account of the heathenism which they practised who reigned the one year between him and Eadwine." Here we find, within a century after Ida landed at Bamborcugh, a register kept of the Northumbrian kings, and general interest excited as to the entries made in it. From details mentioned by Bede, and which coldd only have been supplied by written documents, it is clear that these historical notices reached to the times of paganism. They must have been originally written in English, and with Runes, those ancient characters which were only partially given up when Chris tianity introduced the literature of Rome, and which occasionally make their appearance in our manuscripts to the end of the 11th century. [Rom.] A too literal translation of these venerable documents, no doubt, introduced the many Anglicisms to be found in the works of Bede, and even of the Welshmen Nennius and Asscr. On this ground only can we account for the intrusion into the pages of scholars like the first and last of these writers, of such phrases as " victoriam sumpsere" (slgo Damon, An.-Sax.), " loco futteris dotninati aunt" (ahton wrelstowe geweald, An.-Sax.), &c.
With these materials at hand, we may readily understand the course followed in the compilation of our early chronicles, Who were the parties that continued and interpolated these chronicles, is a question very difficult to answer satisfactorily. Archbishop Elfric, Saint Wulf atm, Hugh White the monk of Peterborough, and others, have been named, with more or less of confidence, by different critics. For our own parts, we could never resist a feeling, ahnost amounting to conviction, that the character of William was the work of the venerable Wulfstan. It begins thus :— " An. 1087.-1f any wish to know what manner of man he was, or what state be held, or of how many lands he was lord, then will we of him write, as we him knew, we that have waited on him (the him onloeodon), and otherwhilcs in his court, have wormed," &c.