C has added to the common stock one or two Abingdon entries, with which place the history of C is closely connected; while D and E have a second group of northern annals 901-966, E being however much more fragmentary than D, omitting, or not having access to, much both of the common and of the northern material which is found in D. From 983 to 1018 C, D and E are practically identical, and give a connected history of the Danish struggles under Æthelred II. This section was probably composed at Canterbury. From 1018 the relations of C, D, E become too complicated to be expressed by any formula; sometimes all three agree together, sometimes all three are independent; in other places each pair in turn agree against the third. It may be noted that C is strongly anti-Godwinist, while E is equallypro-Godwinist, D occupying an intermediate position. C extends to 1066, where it ends abruptly, and probably mutilated. D ends at 1079 and is certainly mutilated. In its later history D is associated with some place in the diocese of Worcester, probably Evesham. In its present form D is a comparatively late MS., none of it probably much earlier, and some of it later, than 1100. In the case of entries in the earlier part of the chronicles, which are peculiar to D, we cannot exclude the possibility that they may be late interpolations. E is continued to 1154. In its present form it is unquestionably a Peterborough book. The earlier part is full of Peterborough interpolations, to which place many of the later entries also refer. But (apart from the interpolations) it is only the entries after 11 21, where the first hand in the MS. ends, which were actually composed at Peterborough. The section 1023 - I 06 7 certainly, and possibly also the section 1068-11 21, was composed at St Augustine's, Canterbury; and the former is of extreme interest and value, the writer being in close contact with the events which he describes. The later parts of E show a great degeneration in language, and a querulous tone due to the sufferings of the native population under the harsh Norman rule; " but our debt to it is inestimable; and we can hardly measure what the loss to English history would have been, if it had not been written; or if, having been written, it had, like so many another English chronicle, been lost."
Continued on page three.
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