These annals being all anonymous, every indication of the date of writing excites interest. Under 643 the chronicler of B added a single word to what he had before him (as we may presume) in his copy. That copy said that the church at Winchester was built by order of King Cenwalh. The chronicler of B says that the “old” church was built by Cenwalh. This harmonises excellently with other indications of this Chronicle, by which it is made probable that it was compiled in or about 977, when Bishop Æthelwold had built a new church at Winchester.
In the Peterborough Chronicle, under 1041, the accession of Eadward is accompanied by a benediction which indicates that the writer wrote near the time, or at least before 1065. He says:—Healde tha hwile the him God unne = May he continue so long as God may be pleased to grant to him! And the half legible closing sentence of this Chronicle, in 1154, is a prayer of the same kind for a new abbot of Peterborough, of whom it is said that “he hath made a fair beginning.”
The Saxon Chronicles offer one of the best examples of history which has grown proximately near to the events, of history written while the impression made by the events was still fresh. It would be difficult to point to any texts through which the taste for living history—history in immediate contact with the events—can better be cultivated.
The Chronicles stretch over a long period of time. As to their contents, they extend as a body of history from A.D. 449 to 1154—that is, exclusive of the book-made annals that form a long avenue at the beginning, and start from Julius Cæsar. The period covered by the age of the extant manuscripts is hardly less than 300 years, from about A.D. 900 to about A.D. 1200. A large number of hands must have wrought from time to time at their production, and, as the work is wholly anonymous and void of all external marks of authorship, the various and several contributions can only be determined by internal evidence, and this offers a fine arena for the exercise and culture of the critical faculty.
It is no small addition to the charm and value of these Chronicles that they are in the mother tongue at several stages of its growth, and for the most part in the best Anglo-Saxon diction. We have, moreover, the very soil of the history under our feet, and this study would tend to invest our native land with all the charm of classic ground.
The Chronicle form is the foundation of the structure of historical literature. We are no longer content to study history now in one or two admirable specimens of mature perfection, but rather we seek to know history as a subject. All who have this aim must study Chronicles, and nowhere can this kind of documentary record be found in a form preferable to that of the Saxon Chronicles.
The Saxon Chronicles are sometimes said to be meagre; indeed, it has almost become usual to speak of them as meagre. When such a term is used, it makes all the difference whether it is made vaguely and at random, or with meaning and discrimination. The Saxon Chronicles stretch over seven centuries, from the middle of the fifth to the middle of the twelfth; and it would indeed be wonderful if in such a series of annals there were not some arid tracts. Certainly, there are meagre places, and it makes all the difference whether a writer uses this epithet wisely or as a mere echo. In the following quotation it is justly used:—“For the history of England in the latter half of the tenth century we have, except the very meagre notices of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, no contemporary materials, unless we admit the Lives of the Saints of the Benedictine revival.”[105] In the latter half of the tenth century the Chronicles really are meagre, and it is a remarkable fact, seeing that the period was one of revived literary activity.
This account of the Chronicles would be incomplete without the mention of a small number of Latin histories which are naturally linked with them. The Latin book of most mark in this connexion is Asser’s “Life of Alfred”—a book that has long lain under a cloud of doubt, from which, however, it seems to be gradually emerging. (A foolish interpolation about Oxford which marred the second edition—that by Camden—has left a stigma on the name.) It is not easy to answer all the adverse criticism of Mr. T. Wright; but still I venture to think that the internal evidence corresponds to the author’s name, that it was written at the time of, and by such a person as, Alfred’s Welsh bishop. The evident acquaintance with people and with localities, the bits of Welsh, the calling of the English uniformly “Saxons,” all mark the Welshman who was at home in England. In the course of this biography, which seems to have been left in an unfinished state, there is a considerable extract from the Winchester Chronicles translated into Latin.
But the earliest Latin Chronicle which was founded on the Saxon Chronicles is that of Æthelweard. He is apparently the “ealdorman Æthelwerd,” to whom Ælfric addressed certain of his works; and he may be the “Æthelwerd Dux” who signs charters, 976-998. His Chronicle closes with the last year of Eadgar’s reign. He took much of his material from a Saxon Chronicle, like that of Winchester, but he has also matter peculiar to himself; and this raises a question whether he took such matter from a Saxon Chronicle now lost. He is grandiloquent and turgid to an extent which often obscures his meaning. In him we perceive all the word-eloquence of Saxon poetry, striving to utter itself through the medium of a Latinity at once crude and ambitious.[106]
The Chronicle of Florence of Worcester terminates with 1117; but a continuator carried it on to 1141, making use of the Peterborough Chronicle (E). The work of Florence is often identifiable with the Saxon Chronicles, especially with that of Worcester (D). But he has good original insertions of his own, as in his description of the election and coronation of Harold, on which Mr. Freeman has dwelt, as a record intended to correct Norman misrepresentation.