The Winchcombe and Coventry Chronicles: Hitherto Unnoticed Witnesses to the Work of John of Worcester (review)

The two volumes reveal major chronicles from Winchcombe Abbey, from Coventry Cathedral, and from John of Worcester – his Chronica Chronicarum and its abbreviated Chronicula – that are important for English historians. Added to these for their shared items are the Annales Prioratus de Wigornia, from Worcester, and the C-text of Annales Cambriae. In each case, an English version faces the Latin original, and in all four cases (excluding John of Worcester) their commentaries are added separately.

After a preface, and a list of tables and plates, an unusual bibliography is included, with letters for abbreviations and for any scholarly work in it. The books under CBMLC (Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, with seventeen volumes) and EEA (English Episcopal Acta, with twenty-nine volumes), would be better listed separately, and while abbreviations like AD, AM, ASC, BC, BL, CC, CSL, EETS, MGH, MS, OMT, SH, SU, and UL might appear on an early page – although there is no need for those like ad and bc – a normal list of books and articles at the end of Volume ii would be more helpful for readers.

For the rest of the first volume, there are six chapters, covering pages 11–196. The first is ‘towards a better understanding of annalistic chronicles’ (pp. 11–61), the second, ‘John of Worcester and the common root’ (pp. 63–98), the third, ‘the Winchcombe chronicle’ (pp. 99–146), the fourth, ‘the Coventry chronicle’ (pp. 147–68), the fifth, ‘Other descendants of the common root’ (pp. 169–82), and finally, ‘Editorial policies’ (pp. 183–89). Six excellent colour photographs follow (pp. 191–96), showing an Easter table from John of Worcester’s Chronica chronicarum, three pages from the Winchcombe chronicle (Cotton Tiberius), the opening page from the Coventry chronicle, and the annals for 1185–1188, on a folio of the Coventry chronicle. The opening page appears on the books’ covers.

This is a major and original work on two very interesting chronicles, copied at Winchcombe Abbey and Coventry Cathedral late in the twelfth century, covering nearly 800 pages, yet free of any other discernible faults. Its scholarship and detective work are most impressive. Besides proving their links with the Chronica Chronicarum of John of Worcester – one of the major sources for historians working on England around 1100 – Paul Hayward has shown how informative these two chronicles are concerning the royal families, the cathedrals and churches, and the various regions of England.

Both texts have been transcribed, edited, and translated into English for the first time, with the Latin facing the English throughout the last 500 or so pages, a great help for scholars extracting historical information from the chronicles. The left-hand margin shows the years, from Christ’s conception in 1 to 1180, for the Winchcombe chronicle, all of them rubricated, and the right-hand margin shows the first seven letters in the alphabet, dominical letters, with an uncial script. On the first folio of the Winchcombe chronicle, they read ‘fdecbafgedcabgfecdbadefdcbcde’. These were used, Hayward points out, to help the cantor to work out the cycle of Sunday services and the cycle of the feasts with fixed dates, taking into account any leap years. For the reckoning of Easter, Columban’s letter to Pope Gregory the Great is of interest, although the Pope’s reply has not survived, as is the Easter cycle in the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville, taught by Gregory’s closest friend, Leander, Archbishop of Seville.

Several other annals and chronicles are discussed by Hayward, some echoing items in the Winchcombe and Coventry chronicles, some seen as having very little in common. For the Church in North Africa and the East, for 444 to 566, the chronicle...