The manuscripts of which the texts are here printed are —
A. A small folio on vellum, belonging to the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, marked clxxiii. (formerly S. xi.), containing the Annals of England from the invasion of Julius Cæsar to A.D. 1070. Prefixed to this manuscript is a Genealogy of the West Saxon Kings, from the landing of Cerdic and his son Cynric, to the accession of Ælfred. "It is written in double columns to the year 417, at fol. 9, but afterwards in single columns. The first original hand ends at page 33, with the year 891, whence it is continued in a variety of hands. Between A.D. 1 and A.D. 891, it contains many interlineary additions, apparently of the twelfth century. They are, for the greater part, written on erasures of the original text, mostly taken from Beda, through the medium, as it would seem, of a copy resembling D. or E., and were apparently intended to supply deficiencies in the original narrative. The narrative of this copy to A.D. 806, relates chiefly to transactions south of the Thames, its notices of Northern matters being generally brief and taken from Beda; but from that year it becomes general to A.D. 925. Afterwards its notices are few, and only at intervals."[1]
B. "The Cottonian Manuscript, Tiberius A. vi., originally a small folio, but now much shrunk by fire. It extends from the Incarnation to A.D. 977, and is written in one uniform hand, apparently of the latter part of the tenth century; but it may be doubted whether the transcript was completed, as the dates after A.D. 552 are only occasionally marked. To A.D. 918, the text varies but little from that of Wheloc, or Manuscript G.; but the compiler of this, or a similar copy, having found the Annals of Mercia,
- ↑ Monumenta Historica Britannica, Preface, p. 75.
