In this manner the early history of Europe was written; the more ancient part was stuffed with fables; and when it might have become useful in recording passages and persons of the writer’s own times, we have a one-sided tale, wherein, while half is suppressed, the other is disguised by flattery or by satire. Such causes are well known to have corrupted these first origins of modern history, a history in which the commons and the people at large had very little concern, till the day arrived, in the progress of society, when chronicles were written by laymen in the vernacular idiom for their nation.
[1] Archbishop Plegmund superintended the Saxon Annals to the year 891. The first Chronicles, those of Kent or Wessex, were regularly continued by the Archbishops of Canterbury, or by their directions, as far as 1000, or even 1070.—“The Rev. Dr. Ingram’s preface to the Saxon Chronicle.”
These were our earliest Chronicles; the Britons possibly never wrote any.
[2] We have a remarkable instance among the Italian historians of this period. Giovanni Villani wrote about 1330; Muratori discovered that Villani had wholly transcribed the ancient portion of his history from an old Chronicle of Malespini, who wrote about 1230, without any acknowledgment whatever. Doubtless Villani imagined that an insulated manuscript, during a century’s oblivion, had little chance of ever being classed among the most ancient records of Italian history. Malespini’s “Chronicle,” like its brothers, was stuffed with fables; Villani was honest enough not to add to them, though not sufficiently so not silently to appropriate the whole chronicle—the only one Dante read.—“Tiraboschi,” v. 410, part 2nd.
[3] We have an elegant modern version of this monk’s history by the Rev. J. Sharpe.
ARNOLDE’S CHRONICLE.
Very early in the sixteenth century appeared a volume which seems to have perplexed our literary historians by its mutable and undefinable character. It is a book without a title, and miscalled by the deceptive one of “Arnolde’s Chronicle, or the Customs of London;” but “the Customs” are not the manners of the people, but rather “the Customs” of the Custom-House, and it in no shape resembles, or pretends to be “a chronicle.” This erroneous title seems to have been injudiciously annexed to it by Hearne the antiquary, and should never have been retained. This anomalous work, of which there are three ancient editions, had the odd fate of all three being sent forth without a title and without a date; and our bibliographers cannot with any certainty ascertain the order or precedence of these editions. One edition was issued from the press of a Flemish printer at Antwerp, and possibly may be the earliest. The first printer, whether English or Flemish, was evidently at a loss to christen this monstrous miscellaneous babe, and ridiculously took up the title and subjects of the first articles which offered themselves, to designate more than a hundred of the most discrepant variety. The ancient editions appeared as “The names of the Baylyfs, Custos, Mayres, and Sherefs of the Cyte of London, with the Chartour and Lybartyes of the same Cyte, &c. &c., with other dyvers matters good and necessary for every Cytezen to understand and know;”—a humble title equally fallacious with the higher one of a “Chronicle,” for it has described many objects of considerable curiosity, more interesting than “mayors and sheriffs,” and even “the charter and liberties” of “the cyte.”