127-551: The Abingdon Chronicle may refer to: Manuscripts B and C of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Historia Ecclesie Abbendonensis , a 12th-century Latin chronicle written at Abingdon Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Abingdon Chronicle . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change
254-467: A koine or spoken lingua franca. When Danish rule ended, and particularly after the Norman Conquest , the status of the minority Norse language presumably declined relative to that of English, and its remaining speakers assimilated to English in a process involving language shift and language death . The widespread bilingualism that must have existed during the process possibly contributed to
381-700: A battle fought by Cenwealh in 652; this battle is mentioned in [A], [B] and [C], but not in [E]. He does mention a battle fought by Cenwealh at Wirtgernesburg , which is not in any of the extant manuscripts, so it is possible he had a copy now lost. One early edition of the Chronicle was Abraham Whelock's 1644 Venerabilis Bedae Historia Ecclesiastica , printed in Cambridge and based on manuscript G. An important edition appeared in 1692, by Edmund Gibson , an English jurist and divine who later (1716) became Bishop of Lincoln . Titled Chronicon Saxonicum , it printed
508-426: A canonical narrative of early English history; but its unreliability was exposed in the 1980s. The earliest non-Bedan material here seems to be based primarily on royal genealogies and lists of bishops that were perhaps first being put into writing around 600, as English kings converted to Christianity, and more certainly by the end of the reign of Ine of Wessex (r. 689–726). Such sources are best represented by
635-424: A conflation of the old accusative and dative cases, as well as of the genitive case after prepositions, while her also includes the genitive case. This conflated form is called the oblique case or the object (objective) case , because it is used for objects of verbs (direct, indirect, or oblique) as well as for objects of prepositions. See object pronoun . The information formerly conveyed by distinct case forms
762-424: A copy of the Chronicle , which they adapted for their own purposes. Symeon of Durham also had a copy of the Chronicle . Some later medieval historians also used the Chronicle , and others took their material from those who had used it, and so the Chronicle became "central to the mainstream of English historical tradition". Henry of Huntingdon used a copy of the Chronicle that was very similar to [E]. There
889-418: A different picture, however: "When Egbert had obtained all the southern kingdoms, he led a large army into Northumbria, and laid waste that province with severe pillaging, and made King Eanred pay tribute." Similar divergences are apparent in how different manuscripts copy post-Common Stock continuations of the Chronicle . For example, Ælfgar , earl of East Anglia , and son of Leofric , the earl of Mercia,
1016-429: A genealogy, as does [A], but extends it to the late 10th century. [B] was at Abingdon in the mid-11th century, because it was used in the composition of [C]. Shortly after this it went to Canterbury, where interpolations and corrections were made. As with [A], it ends with a list of popes and the archbishops of Canterbury to whom they sent the pallium. C includes additional material from local annals at Abingdon, where it
1143-623: A group of Ingvaeonic languages which were spoken by the settlers in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages , displacing the Celtic languages , and, possibly, British Latin , that had previously been dominant. Old English reflected the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms established in different parts of Britain. The Late West Saxon dialect eventually became dominant. A significant subsequent influence upon
1270-533: A living language. Official documents began to be produced regularly in English during the 15th century. Geoffrey Chaucer , who lived in the late 14th century, is the most famous writer from the Middle English period, and The Canterbury Tales is his best-known work. The English language changed enormously during the Middle English period, in vocabulary, in pronunciation, and in grammar. While Old English
1397-436: A manuscript that was similar to [E], though it appears that it did not contain the entries focused on Peterborough. The manuscript of the chronicle translated by Geoffrey Gaimar cannot be identified accurately, though according to historian Dorothy Whitelock it was "a rather better text than 'E' or 'F'". Gaimar implies that there was a copy at Winchester in his day (the middle of the 12th century); Whitelock suggests that there
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#17327732648661524-401: A northern recension was to be found at Worcester. By the 16th century, parts of the manuscript were lost; eighteen pages were inserted containing substitute entries from other sources, including [A], [B], [C] and [E]. These pages were written by John Joscelyn , who was secretary to Matthew Parker. The Peterborough Chronicle : In 1116, a fire at the monastery at Peterborough destroyed most of
1651-462: A number of other linguists. Some scholars have also put forward hypotheses that Middle English was a kind of creole language resulting from contact between Old English and either Old Norse or Anglo-Norman. English literature began to reappear after 1200, when a changing political climate and the decline in Anglo-Norman made it more respectable. The Provisions of Oxford , released in 1258,
1778-400: A raiding ship-army from Norway ; it is tedious to tell how it all happened." In this case other sources exist to clarify the picture: a major Norwegian attempt was made on England, but [E] says nothing at all, and [D] scarcely mentions it. It has sometimes been argued that when the Chronicle is silent, other sources that report major events must be mistaken, but this example demonstrates that
1905-422: A result, the language acquired self-conscious terms such as "accent" and "dialect". As most early presses came from continental Europe, a few native English letters such as þ and ð died out. For some time þe (modern "the") was written as ye. By the time of William Shakespeare (mid 16th – early 17th century), the language had become clearly recognizable as Modern English. In 1604, the first English dictionary
2032-598: A second language for many other groups. Global variation among different English dialects and accents remains significant today. English has its roots in the languages of the Germanic peoples of northern Europe. During the Roman Empire , most of the Germanic-inhabited area, Germania , remained independent from Rome, although some southwestern parts were within the empire. Some Germanics served in
2159-488: A secular household outside the court), and Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge commented that we should "resist the temptation to regard it as a form of West Saxon dynastic propaganda ". Yet there is no doubt that the Common Stock systematically promotes Alfred's dynasty and rule, and was consistent with his enthusiasm for learning and the use of English as a written language . It seems partly to have been inspired by
2286-557: A set of 8th-century Northumbrian annals. It is thought that some of the entries may have been composed by Archbishop Wulfstan . [D] contains more information than other manuscripts on northern and Scottish affairs, and it has been speculated that it was a copy intended for the Anglicised Scottish court. From 972 to 1016, the sees of York and Worcester were both held by the same person— Oswald from 972, Ealdwulf from 992, and Wulfstan from 1003, and this may explain why
2413-438: A single leaf, containing annals for 1113 and 1114. In the entry for 1113 it includes the phrase "he came to Winchester"; hence it is thought likely that the manuscript was written at Winchester. There is not enough of this manuscript for reliable relationships to other manuscripts to be established. Ker notes that the entries may have been written contemporarily. Easter Table Chronicle : A list of Chronicle entries accompanies
2540-468: A table of years, found on folios 133–37 in a badly burned manuscript containing miscellaneous notes on charms, the calculation of dates for church services, and annals pertaining to Christ Church, Canterbury. Most of the Chronicle' s entries pertain to Christ Church, Canterbury. Until 1109 (the death of Anselm of Canterbury ) they are in English; all but one of the following entries are in Latin. Part of [I]
2667-589: A time, by Anglo-Norman , also known as Anglo-Norman French, as the language of the upper classes. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English or Anglo-Saxon era, as during this period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into a phase known now as Middle English. The conquering Normans spoke a Romance langue d'oïl called Old Norman , which in Britain developed into Anglo-Norman. Many Norman and French loanwords entered
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#17327732648662794-405: A transcript of the manuscript. Previous owners include William Camden and William L'Isle ; the latter probably passed the manuscript on to Laud. The Canterbury Bilingual Epitome (London, British Library, Cotton Domitian A.viii, folios 30-70): In about 1100, a copy of the Chronicle was written at Christ Church, Canterbury , probably by one of the scribes who made notes in [A]. This version
2921-804: A translation of the [E] text in The Peterborough Chronicle (New York, 1951). Beginning in the 1980s, a set of scholarly editions of the text in Old English have been printed under the series title "The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition". They are published by D. S. Brewer under the general editorship of David Dumville and Simon Keynes . As of 2021, the volumes published are: The Collaborative Edition did not include MS G because an edition by Angelika Lutz, described by Pauline Stafford as "excellent", had recently been published. Other modern scholarly editions of different Chronicle manuscripts are as follows. The [C] manuscript has been edited by H. A. Rositzke as "The C-Text of
3048-477: A variety of Old Norman , originating from a northern langue d'oïl dialect. Merchants and lower-ranked nobles were often bilingual in Anglo-Norman and English, whilst English continued to be the language of the common people. Middle English was influenced by both Anglo-Norman, and later Anglo-French. See characteristics of the Anglo-Norman language . Until the 14th century, Anglo-Norman and then French were
3175-539: A version of the manuscript from which [E] descends. The last entry in the vernacular is for 1070. After this comes the Latin Acta Lanfranci , which covers church events from 1070 to 1093. This is followed by a list of popes and the Archbishops of Canterbury to whom they sent the pallium . The manuscript was acquired by Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury (1559–1575) and is in the collection of
3302-534: Is a Germanic language, it has a deep connection to Romance languages . The roots of this connection trace back to the Conquest of England by the Normans in 1066. The Normans spoke a dialect of Old French, and the comingling of Norman French and Old English resulted in Middle English, a language that reflects aspects of both Germanic and Romance languages and evolved into the English we speak today, where nearly 60% of
3429-820: Is a collection of annals in Old English , chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons . The original manuscript of the Chronicle was created late in the ninth century, probably in Wessex , during the reign of Alfred the Great (r. 871–899). Its content, which incorporated sources now otherwise lost dating from as early as the seventh century, is known as the "Common Stock" of the Chronicle . Multiple copies were made of that one original and then distributed to monasteries across England, where they were updated, partly independently. These manuscripts collectively are known as
3556-430: Is a heavily inflected language ( synthetic ), the use of grammatical endings diminished in Middle English ( analytic ). Grammar distinctions were lost as many noun and adjective endings were levelled to -e . The older plural noun marker -en , retained in a few cases such as children and oxen , largely gave way to -s . Grammatical gender was discarded. Definite article þe appears around 1200, later spelled as
3683-461: Is a single morphological form, contrasting with nominative who and genitive whose . Many grammarians use the labels "subjective", "objective", and "possessive" for nominative, oblique, and genitive pronouns. Modern English nouns exhibit only one inflection of the reference form: the possessive case , which some linguists argue is not a case at all, but a clitic . See the entry for genitive case for more information. – In some dialects "who"
3810-497: Is also sometimes known as [W], after Wheelocke. Nowell's transcript copied the genealogical introduction detached from [B] (the page now British Library MS. Cotton Tiberius Aiii, f. 178), rather than that originally part of this document. The original [A ] introduction would later be removed prior to the fire and survives as British Library Add MS 34652, f. 2. The appellations [A], [A ] and [G] derive from Plummer, Smith and Thorpe, respectively. The Cottonian Fragment [H] consists of
3937-474: Is evidence that a manuscript that has not survived to the present day was at Winchester in the mid-tenth century. If it survived to Gaimar's time that would explain why [A] was not kept up to date, and why [A] could be given to the monastery at Canterbury. John of Worcester's Chronicon ex chronicis appears to have had a manuscript that was either [A] or similar to it; he makes use of annals that do not appear in other versions, such as entries concerning Edward
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4064-525: Is largely still in use today. Later changes in pronunciation, combined with the adoption of various foreign spellings, mean that the spelling of modern English words appears highly irregular. Early Modern English – the language used by William Shakespeare – is dated from around 1500. It incorporated many Renaissance -era loans from Latin and Ancient Greek , as well as borrowings from other European languages, including French , German and Dutch . Significant pronunciation changes in this period included
4191-457: Is likely he had either the original from which [E] was copied, or a copy of that original. He mentions that the chronicles do not give any information on the murder of Alfred Aetheling , but since this is covered in both [C] and [D] it is apparent he had no access to those manuscripts. On occasion he appears to show some knowledge of [D], but it is possible that his information was taken from John of Worcester's account. He also omits any reference to
4318-552: Is likely that significant numbers of Norse speakers settled in the Danelaw during the period of Scandinavian control. Many place-names in those areas are of Scandinavian provenance, those ending in -by , for example. It is believed that the settlers often established new communities in places that had not previously been developed by the Anglo-Saxons. The extensive contact between Old English and Old Norse speakers, including
4445-414: Is no evidence in his work of any of the entries in [E] after 1121, so although his manuscript may actually have been [E], it may also have been a copy—either one taken of [E] prior to the entries he makes no use of, or a manuscript from which [E] was copied, with the copying taking place prior to the date of the last annal he uses. Henry also made use of the [C] manuscript. The Waverley Annals made use of
4572-617: Is not clear to what extent Norse influenced the forms of the language spoken in eastern and northern England at that time. Later texts from the Middle English era, now based on an eastern Midland rather than a Wessex standard, reflect the significant impact that Norse had on the language. In all, English borrowed about 2,000 words from Old Norse , several hundred surviving in Modern English . Norse borrowings include many very common words, such as anger , bag , both , hit , law , leg , same , skill , sky , take , window , and even
4699-512: Is now mostly provided by prepositions and word order. In Old English as well as modern German and Icelandic as further examples, these cases had distinct forms. Although some grammarians continue to use the traditional terms "accusative" and "dative", these are functions rather than morphological cases in Modern English. That is, the form whom may play accusative or dative roles, as well as instrumental or prepositional roles, but it
4826-486: Is of especial historical interest. From the first annal, for 60BC, down to 449, the Common Stock mostly presents key events from beyond Britain, a body of material known as the "world history annals". These drew on Jerome 's De Viris Illustribus , the Liber Pontificalis , the translation of Eusebius 's Ecclesiastical History by Rufinus, and Isidore of Seville 's Chronicon. Alongside these, down to
4953-446: Is said to have been fought "at Easter", a precision which implies a contemporary record. Similar but separate sources would explain the dates and genealogies for Northumbrian and Mercian kings. The entry for 755, describing how Cynewulf took the kingship of Wessex from Sigeberht , is far longer than the surrounding entries, and includes direct speech quotations from the participants in those events. It seems likely that this
5080-568: Is used where formal English only allows "whom", though variation among dialects must be taken into account. – An explanation may be found in the last paragraph of this section of Instrumental case . – Usually replaced by of what (postpositioned). – Old English also had a separate dual , wit ("we two") etcetera; however, no later forms derive from it. – Note that the ye/you distinction still existed, at least optionally, in Early Modern English: "Ye shall know
5207-517: Is variable, the risk of mispronunciation is high, but remnants of the older forms remain in a few regional dialects, most notably in the West Country . During the period, loan words were borrowed from Italian, German, and Yiddish. British acceptance of and resistance to Americanisms began during this period. The first authoritative and full-featured English dictionary, the Dictionary of
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5334-512: Is written in Old English until 1070, then Latin to 1075. Six of the manuscripts were printed in an 1861 edition for the Rolls Series by Benjamin Thorpe with the text laid out in columns labelled A to F. He also included the few readable remnants of a burned seventh manuscript, which he referred to as [G], partially destroyed in a fire at Ashburnham House in 1731. Following this convention,
5461-552: Is written in both Old English and Latin; each entry in Old English was followed by the Latin version. The version the scribe copied (on folios 30–70 ) is similar to the version used by the scribe in Peterborough who wrote [E], though it seems to have been abridged. It includes the same introductory material as [D] and, along with [E], is one of the two chronicles that does not include the "Battle of Brunanburh" poem. The manuscript has many annotations and interlineations, some made by
5588-571: The Anglian King-list and the probably derived West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List . Detailed comparison of these sources with the Common Stock has helped to show the degree of invention in the Common Stock's vision of the fifth and sixth centuries. For example, perhaps due to edits in intermediary annals, the beginning of the reign of Cerdic , supposedly the founder of the West-Saxon dynasty, seems to have been pushed back from 538AD in
5715-550: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle . Almost all of the material in the Chronicle is in the form of annals, by year; the earliest is dated at 60 BC (the annals' date for Caesar's invasions of Britain ). In one case, the Chronicle was still being actively updated in 1154. Nine manuscripts of the Chronicle , none of which is the original, survive in whole or in part. Seven are held in the British Library , one in
5842-557: The Battle of Stamford Bridge . In the 12th century a few lines were added to complete the account. The Worcester Chronicle appears to have been written in the middle of the 11th century. After 1033 it includes some records from Worcester , so it is generally thought to have been composed there. Five different scribes can be identified for the entries up to 1054, after which it appears to have been worked on at intervals. The text includes material from Bede's Ecclesiastical History and from
5969-692: The Bilingual Canterbury Epitome , is in Old English with a translation of each annal into Latin . Another, the Peterborough Chronicle , is in Old English except for the last entry, which is in early Middle English . The oldest (Corp. Chris. MS 173) is known as the Winchester Chronicle or the Parker Chronicle (after Matthew Parker , an Archbishop of Canterbury , who once owned it), and
6096-565: The Bodleian Library at Oxford, and the oldest in the Parker Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge . The oldest seems to have been started towards the end of Alfred's reign, while the most recent was copied at Peterborough Abbey after a fire at that monastery in 1116. Some later medieval chronicles deriving from lost manuscripts contribute occasional further hints concerning Chronicle material. Both because much of
6223-405: The Chronicle does omit important events. The process of manual copying introduced accidental errors in dates; such errors were sometimes compounded in the chain of transmission. The whole of the Common Stock has a chronological dislocation of two years for the period 756–845 due to two years being missed out in the archetype. In the [D] manuscript, the scribe omits the year 1044 from the list on
6350-528: The Danelaw , under Scandinavian control. Most of these areas were retaken by the English under Edward the Elder in the early 10th century, although York and Northumbria were not permanently regained until the death of Eric Bloodaxe in 954. Scandinavian raids resumed in the late 10th century during the reign of Æthelred the Unready . Sweyn Forkbeard was briefly declared king of England in 1013, followed by
6477-732: The Great Vowel Shift , which affected the qualities of most long vowels . Modern English proper, similar in most respects to that spoken today, was in place by the late 17th century. English as we know it today was exported to other parts of the world through British colonisation , and is now the dominant language in Britain and Ireland , the United States and Canada , Australia , New Zealand and many smaller former colonies, as well as being widely spoken in India , parts of Africa , and elsewhere. Partially due to influence of
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#17327732648666604-722: The Industrial Revolution and technologies that created a need for new words, as well as international development of the language. The British Empire at its height covered one quarter of the Earth's land surface, and the English language adopted foreign words from many countries. British English and North American English, the two major varieties of the language, are together spoken by 400 million people. The total number of English speakers worldwide may exceed one billion. There have been attempts to predict future English evolution, though they have been met with skepticism. Over
6731-647: The Middle English period some time after the Norman conquest of 1066, when the language came to be influenced significantly by the new ruling class's language, Old Norman . Vikings from modern-day Norway and Denmark began to raid parts of Britain from the late 8th century onward. In 865, a major invasion was launched by what the Anglo-Saxons called the Great Heathen Army , which eventually brought large parts of northern and eastern England,
6858-461: The Netherlands . Due to specific similarities between early English and Old Frisian , an Anglo-Frisian grouping is also identified, although it does not necessarily represent a node in the family tree. These dialects had most of the typical West Germanic features, including a significant amount of grammatical inflection . Vocabulary came largely from the core Germanic stock, although due to
6985-400: The Parker Library, Corpus Christi College . The Abingdon Chronicle I was written by a single scribe in the second half of the 10th century. The Chronicle takes up folios 1–34. It begins with an entry for 60 BC and ends with the entry for 977. A manuscript that is now separate (British Library MS. Cotton Tiberius Aiii, f. 178) was originally the introduction to this chronicle; it contains
7112-704: The Roman military , and troops from Germanic tribes such as the Tungri , Batavi , Menapii and Frisii served in Britain ( Britannia ) under Roman command. Germanic settlement and power expanded during the Migration Period , which saw the fall of the Western Roman Empire . A Germanic settlement of Britain took place from the 5th to the 7th century, following the end of Roman rule on the island. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle relates that around
7239-485: The Royal Frankish Annals , and its wide distribution is also consistent with Alfredian policies. Its publication was perhaps prompted by renewed Scandinavian attacks on Wessex. The Common Stock incorporates material from multiple sources, including annals relating to Kentish, South Saxon , Mercian and, particularly, West Saxon history. It is unclear how far this material was first drawn together by
7366-475: The history of the English language ; in particular, in annals from 1131 onwards, the later Peterborough text provides key evidence for the transition from the standard Old English literary language to early Middle English , containing some of the earliest known Middle English text. Historians agree that the Common Stock of the Chronicle (sometimes also known as the Early English Annals )
7493-629: The , first appearing in East and North England as a substitute for Old English se and seo , nominative forms of "that." English spelling was also influenced by Norman in this period, with the /θ/ and /ð/ sounds being spelled th , rather than with the Old English letters þ (thorn) and ð (eth) , which did not exist in Norman. These letters remain in the modern Icelandic and Faroese alphabets , having been borrowed from Old English via Old West Norse . English underwent extensive sound changes during
7620-407: The 15th century, while its spelling conventions remained largely constant. Modern English is often dated from the Great Vowel Shift , which took place mainly during the 15th century. The language was further transformed by the spread of a standardized London-based dialect in government and administration and by the standardizing effect of printing, which also tended to regularize capitalization . As
7747-648: The Common Stock in the course of copying reflect the agendas of the copyists, providing valuable alternative perspectives. These colour both the description of interactions between Wessex and other kingdoms, and the descriptions of the Vikings' depredations. For example, the Common Stock's annal for 829 describes Egbert 's invasion of Northumbria with the comment that the Northumbrians offered him "submission and peace". The Northumbrian chronicles incorporated into Roger of Wendover 's thirteenth-century history give
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#17327732648667874-466: The Elder 's campaigns and information about Winchester towards the end of the chronicle. His account is often similar to that of [D], though there is less attention paid to Margaret of Scotland , an identifying characteristic of [D]. He had the Mercian register, which appears only in [C] and [D]; and he includes material from annals 979–982 which only appears in [C]. It is possible he had a manuscript that
8001-514: The English Language , was published by Samuel Johnson in 1755. To a high degree, the dictionary standardized both English spelling and word usage. Meanwhile, grammar texts by Lowth , Murray , Priestly , and others attempted to prescribe standard usage even further. Early Modern English and Late Modern English, also called Present-Day English (PDE), differ essentially in vocabulary. Late Modern English has many more words, arising from
8128-602: The English People "the two great Anglo-Saxon works of history". The Chronicle 's accounts tend to be highly politicised, with the Common Stock intended primarily to legitimise the dynasty and reign of Alfred the Great. Comparison between Chronicle manuscripts and with other medieval sources demonstrates that the scribes who copied or added to them omitted events or told one-sided versions of them, often providing useful insights into early medieval English politics. The Chronicle manuscripts are also important sources for
8255-489: The English language English is a West Germanic language that originated from Ingvaeonic languages brought to Britain in the mid-5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon migrants from what is now northwest Germany , southern Denmark and the Netherlands . The Anglo-Saxons settled in the British Isles from the mid-5th century and came to dominate the bulk of southern Great Britain. Their language originated as
8382-604: The Germanic peoples' extensive contacts with the Roman world, the settlers' languages already included a number of loanwords from Latin . For instance, the predecessor of Modern English wine had been borrowed into early Germanic from the Latin vinum . The Germanic settlers in the British Isles initially spoke a number of different dialects, which developed into a language that came to be called Anglo-Saxon. It displaced
8509-599: The Great 's time, or the Late West Saxon, regarded as the "classical" form of Old English, of the Winchester school, inspired by Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester , and followed by such writers as the prolific Ælfric of Eynsham , "the Grammarian". The most famous surviving work from the Old English period is the epic poem Beowulf , composed by an unknown poet. The introduction of Christianity from around
8636-463: The Middle English syntax being much more akin to Norse than Old English. Other scholars reject this claim. Middle English is the form of English spoken roughly from the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066 until the end of the 15th century. For centuries after the Conquest, the Norman kings and high-ranking nobles in England and to some extent elsewhere in the British Isles spoke Anglo-Norman ,
8763-990: The Old English Chronicles", in Beiträge zur Englischen Philologie , XXXIV, Bochum-Langendreer, 1940. A scholarly edition of the [D] manuscript is in An Anglo-Saxon Chronicle from British Museum Cotton MS., Tiberius B. iv , edited by E. Classen and F. E. Harmer, Manchester, 1926. The [F] text was printed in F. P. Magoun, Jr., Annales Domitiani Latini: an Edition in "Mediaeval Studies of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies", IX, 1947, pp. 235–295. An earlier facsimile edition of [A], The Parker Chronicle and Laws , appeared in 1941 from Oxford University Press , edited by Robin Flower and Hugh Smith . History of
8890-522: The Old English text in parallel columns with Gibson's own Latin version and became the standard edition until the 19th century. Gibson used three manuscripts of which the chief was the Peterborough Chronicle . It was superseded in 1861 by Benjamin Thorpe 's Rolls Series edition, which printed six versions in columns, labelled A to F, thus giving the manuscripts the letters which are now used to refer to them. John Earle edited Two of
9017-535: The Saxon Chronicles Parallel (1865). Charles Plummer revised this edition, providing notes, appendices, and glossary in two volumes in 1892 and 1899. This edition of the A and E texts, with material from other versions, was widely used; it was reprinted in 1952. The standard modern English translations are by Dorothy Whitelock , who produced a translation showing all the main manuscript variants, and Michael Swanton . Rositzke published
9144-661: The United States and its globalized efforts of commerce and technology, English took on the status of a global lingua franca in the second half of the 20th century. This is especially true in Europe, where English has largely taken over the former roles of French and, much earlier, Latin as a common language used to conduct business and diplomacy, share scientific and technological information, and otherwise communicate across national boundaries. The efforts of English-speaking Christian missionaries have resulted in English becoming
9271-466: The basis for the literary standard of the later Old English period. The dominant forms of Middle and Modern English developed mainly from Mercian. Old English was first written using a runic script called the futhorc . This was replaced by a version of the Latin alphabet introduced by Irish missionaries in the 8th century. Most literary output was in either the Early West Saxon of Alfred
9398-463: The buildings. The copy of the Chronicle kept there may have been lost at that time or later, but in either case shortly thereafter a fresh copy was made, apparently copied from a Kentish version—most likely to have been from Canterbury. The manuscript was written at one time and by a single scribe, down to the annal for 1121. The scribe added material relating to Peterborough Abbey which is not in other versions. The Canterbury original which he copied
9525-444: The case endings occurred earliest in the north, and latest in the southwest. The spread of phrasal verbs in English is another grammatical development to which Norse may have contributed, although here a possible Celtic influence is also noted. Some scholars have claimed that Old English died out entirely and was replaced by Norse towards the end of the Old English period and as part of the transition to Middle English, by virtue of
9652-481: The copy was made by 1013. This manuscript was almost completely destroyed in the 1731 fire at Ashburnham House , where the Cotton Library was housed. Of the original 34 leaves, seven remain, ff. 39–47 in the manuscript. However, a transcript had been made by Laurence Nowell , a 16th-century antiquary, which was used by Abraham Wheelocke in an edition of the Chronicle printed in 1643. Because of this, it
9779-452: The dative). The dual number was distinguished from the singular and plural. Declension was greatly simplified during the Middle English period, when the accusative and dative cases of the pronouns merged into a single oblique case , that also replaced the genitive case after prepositions. Nouns in Modern English no longer decline for case, except for the genitive . Pronouns such as whom and him , contrasted with who and he , are
9906-482: The development of rhotic and non-rhotic accents (i.e. "r-dropping") and the trap-bath split in many dialects of British English . The following table shows the principal developments in the stressed vowels, from Old English through Modern English. C indicates any consonant: The following chart shows the primary developments of English vowels in the last 600 years, in more detail, since Late Middle English of Chaucer 's time. The Great Vowel Shift can be seen in
10033-403: The dramatic developments from c. 1400 to 1600. [REDACTED] Neither of the above tables covers the history of Middle English diphthongs , the changes before /r/, or various special cases and exceptions. For details, see phonological history of English as well as the articles on Old English phonology and Middle English phonology . The vowel changes over time can be seen in
10160-510: The earliest reconstructable version of the List to 500AD in the Common Stock. At times, invention, usually through folk-etymological origin-myths based on place-names , is even more obvious. For example, between 514 and 544 the Chronicle makes reference to Wihtgar, who was supposedly buried on the Isle of Wight at Wihtgaræsbyrg ("Wihtgar's stronghold") and gave his name to the island. However,
10287-463: The early eighth century, the Common Stock makes extensive use of the chronological summary from the end of Bede 's Ecclesiastical History (and perhaps occasionally the History itself). Scholars have read these annals as functioning to present England as part of the Roman and Christian world and its history. From 449, coverage of non-British history largely vanishes and extensive material about
10414-419: The editor(s) of the Common Stock and how far it had already been combined before the late ninth century: there are no obvious shifts in language features in the Common Stock that could help indicate different sources. Where the Common Stock draws on other known sources its main value to modern historians is as an index of the works and themes that were important to its compilers; where it offers unique material it
10541-408: The end of Alfred's reign. The manuscript begins with a genealogy of Alfred, and the first chronicle entry is for the year 60 BC. The section containing the Chronicle takes up folios 1–32. Unlike the other manuscripts, [A] is of early enough composition to show entries dating back to the late 9th century in the hands of different scribes as the entries were made. The first scribe's hand is dateable to
10668-465: The entry for 1048. [B] and [C] are identical between 491 and 652, but differences thereafter make it clear that the second scribe was also using another copy of the Chronicle . This scribe also inserted, after the annal for 915, the Mercian Register , which covers the years 902–924, and which focuses on Æthelflæd . The manuscript continues to 1066 and stops in the middle of the description of
10795-460: The following example words, showing the changes in their form over the last 2,000 years: The English language once had an extensive declension system similar to Latin , Greek , modern German and Icelandic . Old English distinguished among the nominative , accusative , dative , and genitive cases, and for strongly declined adjectives and some pronouns also a separate instrumental case (which otherwise and later completely coincided with
10922-653: The indigenous Brittonic Celtic, and the Latin of the former Roman rulers , in parts of the areas of Britain that later formed the Kingdom of England . Celtic languages remained in most of Scotland , Wales and Cornwall , and many compound Celtic-Germanic place names survive, hinting at early language mixing. Old English continued to exhibit local variation, the remnants of which continue to be found in dialects of Modern English. The four main dialects were Mercian , Northumbrian , Kentish and West Saxon . West Saxon formed
11049-402: The information given in the Chronicle is not recorded elsewhere and because of the relatively clear chronological framework it provides for understanding events, the Chronicle is among the most influential historical sources for England between the collapse of Roman authority and the decades following the Norman Conquest ; Nicholas Howe called it and Bede 's Ecclesiastical History of
11176-410: The language of the courts and government. Even after the decline of Norman, standard French retained the status of a formal or prestige language . About 10,000 French and Norman loan words entered Middle English, particularly terms associated with government, church, law, the military, fashion, and food. See English language word origins and List of English words of French origin . Although English
11303-484: The last 1,200 years or so, English has undergone extensive changes in its vowel system, but many fewer changes to its consonants. In the Old English period, a number of umlaut processes affected vowels in complex ways. Unstressed vowels were gradually eroded, eventually leading to a loss of grammatical case and grammatical gender in the Early Middle English period. The most important umlaut process
11430-422: The late 9th or very early 10th century; his entries cease in late 891, and the following entries were made at intervals throughout the 10th century by several scribes. The eighth scribe wrote the annals for the years 925–955, and was clearly at Winchester when he wrote them since he adds some material related to events there; he also uses ceaster , or "city", to mean Winchester. The manuscript becomes independent of
11557-400: The left hand side. The annals copied down are therefore incorrect from 1045 to 1052, which has two entries. A more difficult problem is the question of the date at which a new year began, since the modern custom of starting the year on 1 January was not universal at that time. The entry for 1091 in [E] begins at Christmas and continues throughout the year; it is clear that this entry follows
11684-438: The library of Durham; they are described as cronica duo Anglica . In addition, Parker included a manuscript called Hist. Angliae Saxonica in his gifts but the manuscript that included this, now Cambridge University Library MS. Hh.1.10, has lost 52 of its leaves, including all of this copy of the chronicle. The three main Anglo-Norman historians, John of Worcester , William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon , each had
11811-408: The link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Abingdon_Chronicle&oldid=932670562 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Anglo-Saxon Chronicle The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
11938-421: The local language in this period, especially in vocabulary related to the church, the court system and the government. As Normans are descendants of Vikings who invaded France , Norman French was influenced by Old Norse , and many Norse loanwords in English came directly from French. Middle English was spoken to the late 15th century. The system of orthography that was established during the Middle English period
12065-399: The long vowels in child , mind , climb , etc.; pre-cluster shortening , which resulted in the vowel alternations in child vs. children , keep vs. kept , meet vs. met ; and trisyllabic laxing , which is responsible for alternations such as grateful vs. gratitude , divine vs. divinity , sole vs. solitary . Among the more significant recent changes to the language have been
12192-532: The longer reign of his son Cnut from 1016 to 1035, and Cnut's sons Harold Harefoot and Harthacnut , until 1042. The Scandinavians, or Norsemen , spoke dialects of a North Germanic language known as Old Norse . The Anglo-Saxons and the Scandinavians thus spoke related languages from different branches (West and North) of the Germanic family. Many of their lexical roots were the same or similar, although their grammatical systems were more divergent. It
12319-484: The manuscripts. The following is a summary of the relationships that are known. All the manuscripts described above share a chronological error between the years 756 and 845, but it is apparent that the composer of the Annals of St Neots was using a copy that did not have this error and which must have preceded them. Æthelweard's copy did have the chronological error but it had not lost a whole sentence from annal 885; all
12446-431: The most commonly used words in Modern English have Old English roots. The grammar of Old English was much more inflected than modern English, combined with freer word order , and was grammatically quite similar in some respects to modern German . The language had demonstrative pronouns, equivalent to this and that , but did not have the definite article the . The Old English period is considered to have evolved into
12573-607: The name of the Isle of Wight derives from the Latin Vectis , not from Wihtgar . The actual name of the fortress was probably Wihtwarabyrg ("the stronghold of the inhabitants of Wight"), and either the Common Stock editor(s) or an earlier source misinterpreted this as referring to Wihtgar. In addition to the sources listed above, it is thought that the Common Stock draws on contemporary annals that began to be kept in Wessex during
12700-565: The old custom of starting the year at Christmas. Some other entries appear to begin the year on 25 March, such as the year 1044 in the [C] manuscript, which ends with Edward the Confessor 's marriage on 23 January, while the entry for 22 April is recorded under 1045. There are also years which appear to start in September. Of the nine surviving manuscripts, seven are written entirely in Old English (also known as Anglo-Saxon). One, known as
12827-406: The original Chronicle was compiled, copies were made and distributed to various monasteries. Additional copies were made, for further distribution or to replace lost manuscripts, and some copies were updated independently of each other. It is copies of this sort that constitute our surviving Chronicle manuscripts. The manuscripts were produced in different places, and at times adaptations made to
12954-399: The original scribe and some by later scribes, including Robert Talbot . Copy of the Winchester Chronicle : [A ] was copied from [A] at Winchester in the eleventh century and follows a 10th-century copy of an Old English translation of Bede's Ecclesiastical History . The last annal copied was 1001, so the copy was made no earlier than that; an episcopal list appended to [A ] suggests that
13081-496: The other recensions after the entry for 975. The book, which also had a copy of the Laws of Alfred and Ine bound in after the entry for 924, was transferred to Canterbury some time in the early 11th century, as evidenced by a list of books that Archbishop Parker gave to Corpus Christi. While at Canterbury, some interpolations were made; this required some erasures in the manuscript. The additional entries appear to have been taken from
13208-413: The parts of England which by the ninth century were in Wessex, often unique to the Chronicle , appears. The Chronicle offers an ostensibly coherent account of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of southern Britain by seafarers who, through a series of battles, establish the kingdoms of Kent, Sussex, and Wessex. This material was once supposed by many historians to be reliable evidence, and formed the backbone of
13335-647: The possibility of intermarriage that resulted from the acceptance of Christianity by the Danes in 878, undoubtedly influenced the varieties of those languages spoken in the areas of contact. During the rule of Cnut and other Danish kings in the first half of the 11th century, a kind of diglossia may have come about, with the West Saxon literary language existing alongside the Norse-influenced Midland dialect of English, which could have served as
13462-658: The precise nature of the invasion and settlement and the contributions made by these particular groups are the subject of much dispute among historians. The languages spoken by the Germanic peoples who initially settled in Britain were part of the West Germanic branch of the Germanic language family. They consisted of dialects from the Ingvaeonic grouping, spoken mainly around the North Sea coast, in regions that lie within modern Denmark , north-west Germany and
13589-454: The pronoun they . Norse influence is also believed to have reinforced the adoption of the plural copular verb form are rather, than alternative Old English forms like sind . It is considered to have stimulated and accelerated the morphological simplification found in Middle English, such as the loss of grammatical gender and explicitly marked case , except in pronouns. That is possibly confirmed by observations that simplification of
13716-519: The rate of borrowings from Norse into English. Only about 100 or 150 Norse words, mainly connected with government and administration, are found in Old English writing. The borrowing of words of this type was stimulated by Scandinavian rule in the Danelaw and during the later reign of Cnut. Most surviving Old English texts are based on the West Saxon standard that developed outside the Danelaw. It
13843-417: The seventh century, perhaps as annotations of Easter Tables, drawn up to help clergy determine the dates of upcoming Christian feasts, which might be annotated with short notes of memorable events to distinguish one year from another. The annal for 648 may mark the point after which entries that were written as a contemporary record begin to appear, and the annal for 661 records a battle fought by Cenwalh that
13970-538: The shaping of Old English came from contact with the North Germanic languages spoken by the Scandinavian Vikings who conquered and colonized parts of Britain during the 8th and 9th centuries , which led to much lexical borrowing and grammatical simplification. The Anglian dialects had a greater influence on Middle English . After the Norman conquest in 1066, Old English was replaced, for
14097-403: The surviving manuscripts have lost this sentence. Hence the error and the missing sentence must have been introduced in separate copying steps, implying that none of the surviving manuscripts are closer than two removes from the original version. The Winchester (or Parker ) Chronicle is the oldest manuscript of the Chronicle that survives. It was begun at Old Minster, Winchester , towards
14224-417: The two additional manuscripts are often called [H] and [I]. The surviving manuscripts are listed below; though manuscript G was burned in a fire in 1731, and only a few leaves remain. The manuscripts are all thought to derive from a common original, but the connections between the texts are more complex than simple inheritance via copying. The diagram at right gives an overview of the relationships between
14351-439: The words are loanworded from Latin & romance languages like French. The strong influence of Old Norse on English becomes apparent during this period. The impact of the native British Celtic languages that English continued to displace is generally held to be very small, although a few scholars have attributed some grammatical forms, such as periphrastic "do", to Celtic influence. These theories have been criticized by
14478-672: The year 449 Vortigern , king of the Britons , invited the "Angle kin", Angles allegedly led by the Germanic brothers Hengist and Horsa , to help repel invading Picts , in return for lands in the southeast of Britain. This led to waves of settlers who eventually established seven kingdoms, known as the heptarchy . The Chronicle was not a contemporaneous work, however, and cannot be regarded as an accurate record of such early events. Bede , who wrote his Ecclesiastical History in AD 731, writes of invasion by Angles , Saxons and Jutes , although
14605-483: The year 600 encouraged the addition of over 400 Latin loan words into Old English, such as the predecessors of the modern priest , paper , and school , and a smaller number of Greek loan words. The speech of eastern and northern parts of England was also subject to strong Old Norse influence due to Scandinavian rule and settlement beginning in the 9th century (see below). Most native English speakers today find Old English unintelligible, even though about half of
14732-547: The years 1132–1154, though his dating is known to be unreliable. This last entry is in Middle English, rather than Old English. [E] was once owned by William Laud , Archbishop of Canterbury 1633–1645, so is also known as the Laud Chronicle . The manuscript contains occasional glosses in Latin, and is referred to (as "the Saxon storye of Peterborowe church") in an antiquarian book from 1566. According to Joscelyn, Nowell had
14859-792: Was * i-mutation , c. 500 CE, which led to pervasive alternations of all sorts, many of which survive in the modern language: e.g. in noun paradigms ( foot vs. feet , mouse vs. mice , brother vs. brethren ); in verb paradigms ( sold vs. sell ); nominal derivatives from adjectives ("strong" vs. "strength", broad vs. breadth , foul vs. filth ) and from other nouns ( fox vs. "vixen"); verbal derivatives ("food" vs. "to feed"); and comparative adjectives ("old" vs. "elder"). Consonants were more stable, although velar consonants were significantly modified by palatalization , which produced alternations such as speak vs. speech , drink vs. drench , wake vs. watch , bake vs. batch . The Middle English period saw further vowel changes. Most significant
14986-451: Was an ancestor of [D]. He also had sources which have not been identified, and some of his statements have no earlier surviving source. A manuscript similar to [E] was available to William of Malmesbury , though it is unlikely to have been [E] as that manuscript is known to have still been in Peterborough after the time William was working, and he does not make use of any of the entries in [E] that are specifically related to Peterborough. It
15113-404: Was composed. The section containing the Chronicle (folios 115–64) is preceded by King Alfred's Old English translation of Orosius 's world history, followed by a menologium and some gnomic verses of the laws of the natural world and of humanity. Then follows a copy of the chronicle, beginning with 60 BC; the first scribe copied up to the entry for 490, and a second scribe took over up to
15240-504: Was edited into its present form between 890 and 892 (ahead of Bishop Asser 's use of a version of the Common Stock in his 893 Life of King Alfred ), but there is debate about precisely which year, and when subsequent continuations began to be added. It is not known for certain where the Common Stock was compiled, not least because the archetype is lost, but it is agreed to have been in Wessex. The patron might have been King Alfred himself ( Frank Stenton , for example, argued for
15367-405: Was exiled briefly in 1055. The [C], [D] and [E] manuscripts say the following: Scribes might also omit material, sometimes accidentally, but also for ideological reasons. Ælfgar was Earl of Mercia by 1058, and in that year was exiled again. This time only [D] has anything to say: "Here Earl Ælfgar was expelled, but he soon came back again, with violence, through the help of Gruffydd. And here came
15494-416: Was published, A Table Alphabeticall . Increased literacy and travel facilitated the adoption of many foreign words, especially borrowings from Latin and Greek , often terms for abstract concepts not available in English. In the 17th century, Latin words were often used with their original inflections, but these eventually disappeared. As there are many words from different languages and English spelling
15621-485: Was similar, but not identical, to [D]: the Mercian Register does not appear, and a poem about the Battle of Brunanburh in 937, which appears in most of the other surviving copies of the Chronicle , is not recorded. The same scribe then continued the annals through to 1131; these entries were made at intervals, and thus are presumably contemporary records. Finally, a second scribe, in 1154, wrote an account of
15748-478: Was taken by the scribe from existing saga material. From the late eighth century onwards, a period coinciding in the text with the beginning of Scandinavian raids on England, the Chronicle gathers momentum. As the Chronicle proceeds, it loses its list-like appearance, and annals become longer and more narrative in content. Many later entries contain a great deal of historical narrative in each annal. After
15875-412: Was the Great Vowel Shift , c. 1500 CE, which transformed the pronunciation of all long vowels. This occurred after the spelling system was fixed, and accounts for the drastic differences in pronunciation between "short" mat, met, bit, cot vs. "long" mate, mete/meet, bite, coat . Other changes that left echoes in the modern language were homorganic lengthening before ld , mb , nd , which accounts for
16002-623: Was the first English government document to be published in the English language after the Norman Conquest. In 1362, Edward III became the first king to address Parliament in English. The Pleading in English Act 1362 made English the only language in which court proceedings could be held, though the official record remained in Latin. By the end of the century, the royal court had switched to English. Anglo-Norman remained in use in limited circles somewhat longer, but it had ceased to be
16129-581: Was written by a scribe soon after 1073, in the same hand and ink as the rest of the Caligula MS. After 1085, the annals are in various contemporary hands. The original annalist's entry for the Norman conquest is limited to "Her forðferde eadward kyng"; a later hand added the coming of William the Conqueror , "7 her com willelm." At one point this manuscript was at St Augustine's Abbey , Canterbury. Two manuscripts are recorded in an old catalogue of
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