INTRODUCTION I. THE MANUSCRIPTS OF THE LIBER ELIENSIS The chronicle, known since 1848, when part of it was published by D. J. StewartJ under the title Liber Eliensis, survives in Trinity College, Cambridge, MS. O.2.1 (E), and in a manuscript in the possession of the Dean and Chapter of Ely (F) 2. E is a manuscript of the late twelfth century 3; on vellum; 228 x 165 mm.; 256 folios (plus two fly-leaves) 4; 30 gatherings of three, four or five leaves 5; 29 lines (to fo. 8ov) and from 30 to 35 lines (from fo. 81 to the end) to the page; single column; initials coloured in red and green. The handwriting is of the same general character throughout and the work of different scribes difficult to distinguish. Three main hands can be singled out 6. Hand A wrote all Book I and Book II to the second line of ch. 90 ', including the rubrics as far as ch. 84 8. Hand B begins in Book II, ch. 90, and continues to the end of Book III, ch. 43 9. Cc. 44-50 seem to be written in several different hands, perhaps including a rough version of B, and B more certainly resumes towards the end of ch. 50 and continues to the middle of ch. 92 10. From Book III, ch. 44, to the middle of ch. 92 the manuscript is very roughly written, and cc. 69-92 n in particular are in an increasingly untidy hand. There are many erasures and marginal additions, which seem to reveal traces of the process of composition. This suggests that scribe B was himself the compiler of this section of the work. Hand B also wrote the rubrics of Book II, cc. 85-103, and most of the rubrics after ch. 90 overflow into the margin or are written on erasure. The rest of the manuscript is written in a neat hand, C 12, and the same hand has written 1 Published in 1848 by the Anglia Christiana Society. * Stewart's edition probably owes its title to this MS., which is familiarly styled Liber Eliensis. For a general introduction to the MSS. of the L.E. see Miller, Ely, pp. 4-7; Harmer, Writs, p. 464; T. D. Hardy, Desc. Cat., i, 278-80, 590-91; ii, 104-07, 309, 508, 553; C. Gross, Sources and Literature of English History, 2nd edn., no. 1372; N. R. Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain (1941), pp. 42-43; G. R. C. Davis, Medieval Cartularies of Great Britain (1958), pp. 41-44, and especially W. Holtzmann, Papsturkunden in England, i, 67, 75, 86, 96-97, 103 05, 108, 171; ii, 75-93- 3 Described by M. R. James, The Western Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge (1900-1904), iii, 79-82. 4 Including the kalendar occupying the first fourteen folios, which are not numbered. 5 Fos. 229 and 230 are from a fourteenth-century music book and form a separate gathering of two leaves. * But cf. M. R. James, loc. cit., who distinguished between only two. 7 The end of fo. 76. 8 A number of insertions in the text and margin are written in hands of the same period which cannot be conclusively identified with each other or with other hands in the manuscript. See fos. 14, 15-15V, 43. 44. 45- * Fo. 125V. 10 Fos. 125V—51V. xl Fos. 144—51V. 12 The handwriting of marginal additions in this part of the L.E. can only rarely be identified with any degree of certainty (C on fos. 107-09V, 116V-17, 160, 164, 169V, 171V; B on fos. 113V-14, 145, 145V with marginal additions by C). Marginalia on fos. 100 and IOIV may be in the hand of O. xxiii Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.14, on 28 Sep 2021 at 07:02:17, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2042171000000571 xxiv INTRODUCTION the rest of the rubrics. The first fourteen folios, which contain an Ely kalendar * and lists of the abbots and bishops of Ely, are not numbered, and according to the existing foliation the Liber Eliensis occupies fos. 1-177. It is followed by the Inquisitio Eliensis, a record of the plea of 1071 X 75 2 and short Lives of Sexburga, ^Ermenilda, JLrcongota, Werburga, ^Edelberga and Wihtburga. F is a manuscript of the early thirteenth century; on vellum; 267 x 185 mm.; 190 folios (numbered in pencil 1-188, but the numbers 78 and 84 have been used twice 3); 22 gatherings, 13 of four leaves, 8 of five leaves 4; the fifth gathering is of two leaves plus one folio; mainly with catchwords; 30 lines to the page; double column; initials coloured red, green and sometimes blue. Four main hands can be distinguished: A, from fo. 2 to 21 (except for an insertion in another thirteenth- century hand on fo. 13, col. b); B, from fo. 2iv to io8v (excepting the indices of chapter headings to Book II on fos. 36-38V and to Book III on fos. 107-08V); C, from fo. 109 to mv; D, to the end of the Liber Eliensis. There are important additions in a hand of the late thirteenth or fourteenth century, perhaps that of O B, and in a hand of the thirteenth century, as on fos. 59V and 61. The Liber Eliensis occupies fos. 2-i88v. It is preceded by notes in various hands, especially one on the ' confessors ' buried at Ely 6 and another on the convent's rights of jurisdiction in the isle of Ely, and it is followed by a charter of Prior Hugh (fi. 1200) and a scarcely legible memorandum in a hand of the fifteenth century '. The versions of the Liber Eliensis found in E and F, while not identical, share the same form and most of the same contents. The work is there divided into three books. Book I, after a prologue and a brief chapter De situ Eliensis Insule, takes the history of the monastery at Ely from its first foundation by St Etheldreda to its destruction by the Danes in 870. Book II covers the time of the abbots from the restoration of the abbey during the reign of Edgar to the death of the last abbot in 1107, and Book III treats of the first two bishops of Ely, Hervey the Breton (1109-31) and Nigel (1133-69). The whole is prefaced by a general prologue and ends with a passio of St Thomas Becket. It has no title, but is referred to in the rubrics as historia Eliensis insule 8. Only one other manuscript, Bodl., Laud. Misc. 647 (0), retains something of this form. It is a more impressive production than either E or F; on vellum; 363 X 225 mm.; 188 folios (according to a pencil foliation which numbers all except blank folios—with the exception of the first fly-leaf); regular gatherings of six, the 1 Printed by F. Wormald, Benedictine Kalendars after izoo, vol. ii. Cf. also B. Dickins, Leeds Studies in English and Kindred Languages, vi, p. 15. 2 Both edited by N. E. S. A. Hamilton as part of his I.C.C. See infra, p. 426. 3 The pencil foliation has been used in this edition and the duplicate folios are here numbered 78a and 84a. An older foliation excludes fo. 1 and numbers the remainder 1-189. 4 This includes the index of chapter headings to Book II which was added later. The end of this index was written on a separate folio which was originally bound to precede fo. 39, but when the manuscript was re-bound in 1930 it was misplaced and is now fo. 36. 8 E.g. on fos. 47 and 92. 6 Infra, p. xxxviii. ' For a brief description see Historical Manuscripts Commission, 12th report, appendix, part ix, p. 393. 8 Infra, pp. i, 62, 63, 245. Although this would be a more correct title for the chronicle, the conventional title has been retained to avoid confusion. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.14, on 28 Sep 2021 at 07:02:17, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S2042171000000571 INTRODUCTION xxv last two of seven, leaves; with catchwords; double column; 44 lines to the page; written in a well-formed book-hand of the early fourteenth century, with initials coloured alternately red and blue and with an elaborate pen-style decoration of initials and margins. The Liber Eliensis occupies fos. 3-177V. Books I and II remain, with some exceptions, unaltered. Book III lacks most of the miracle stories found in E and F, but has many more charters, and in all three books O frequently adds additional information from other chronicles. Book III is con- tinued beyond 1169 and takes on increasingly the pattern of a cartulary, interspersed with notices of the elections and deaths of English kings and bishops of Ely. The continuation ends after recording the accession of Bishop William of Louth in 1290 and was presumably finished before he died in 1298 x. Another group of manuscripts preserves versions, not of all the Liber Eliensis, but of one or two books only. Brit. Mus., MS. Cotton, Titus A.i (G), written in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century 2, has on fos. 3-23V a shorter version of Book II.