[97] I.e., go to the Danish camp in East Anglia.
[98] Here we have to understand two distinct kings of the name of Guthrum.
[99] Coote, “The Romans of Britain,” p. 397.
[100] “Documents Illustrative of English History,” p. 60.
[101] “Ancient Law,” chap. x. init.
[102] Palgrave, “Anglo-Saxon Commonwealth;” Stubbs, “Constitutional History;” Heinrich Brunner, “Die Entstehung der Schwurgerichte,” Berlin, 1872.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE CHRONICLES.
Of the historical writings that remain from the Anglian period—namely, those of Æddi and Bede, we have already spoken; the subject of the present chapter will be the Saxon Chronicles and the Latin histories which are more or less related to these Chronicles.
The habit of putting together annals began to be formed very early. In our Chronicles there are some entries that may perhaps be older than the conversion of our people. The contributors to Bede’s “History” would appear to have sent in their parts more or less in the annalistic form. That form is even now but slightly veiled in the grouped arrangement into which the venerable historian has, with little reconstruction but considerable skill, cast his materials. Annal-writing, we may venture to say, had by his time become a recognised habit in literature, and there is extant a brief Northumbrian Chronicle which ends soon after Bede’s death.[103] Continuous with this we have a series of annals which were produced in the north, and which are now imbedded in the West Saxon Chronicles; but the traces of their birth are not obliterated. Such vernacular annals were probably at first designed as little more than notes and memoranda to serve for a Latin history to be written another day; but the Danish wars broke the tradition of Latin learning, and made a wide opening which gave opportunity for the elevation of a vernacular literature. There is no part of Anglo-Saxon literature more characterised by spontaneity than are the Saxon Chronicles. Nowhere can we better see how the mother-tongue received the devolution of the literary office in an unexpected way when the learned literature was suddenly and violently displaced.