The ''Annals of St Neots'' is a Latin chronicle compiled and written at

Bury St Edmunds Bury St Edmunds (), commonly referred to locally as Bury, is a historic market town, market, cathedral town and civil parish in Suffolk, England.OS Explorer map 211: Bury St.Edmunds and Stowmarket Scale: 1:25 000. Publisher:Ordnance Survey – ...

in the English county of

Suffolk Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include Lowes ...

between '' c''. 1120 and ''c''. 1140. It covers the history of Britain, extending from its invasion by

Julius Caesar Gaius Julius Caesar (; ; 12 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC), was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war, and ...

(55 B.C.) to the making of Normandy in 914. Like the ''

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle The ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' 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 9th century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alf ...

'', it is chiefly concerned with Anglo-Saxon history, but it differs from it in adopting a distinct

East Anglia East Anglia is an area in the East of England, often defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, a people whose name originated in Anglia, in ...

n perspective on certain events and weaving a significant amount of Frankish history into its narrative.

Manuscript

Contrary to what the modern title may suggest, the work was not compiled at

St Neots St NeotsPronunciation of the town name: Most commonly, but variations that ''saint'' is said as in most English non-georeferencing speech, the ''t'' is by a small minority of the British pronounced and higher traces of in the final syllable ...

(Huntingdonshire). It owes its present title to antiquary John Leland, who in the 1540s – at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries – discovered the sole surviving manuscript at

St Neots Priory St Neots Priory was a Benedictine monastery beside the town of St Neots in the historic county of Huntingdonshire, now a non-metropolitan district in the English county of Cambridgeshire. Anglo-Saxon monastery A monastery was first founded here ...

.Leland, ''Commentarii de Scriptoribus Britannicis'', ed. Hall, vol 1, p. 152. Palaeographical analysis has shown that two hands using Late Caroline script were at work, Scribe A for the first quire (pp. 1–18) and Scribe B for the remaining part. The script is typical of the first half of the 12th century and both hands have been detected in other manuscripts from Bury St Edmunds. According to Dumville, the evidence suggests then that the manuscript was compiled at

between ''c''. 1120 and ''c''. 1140.Dumville, ''Annals of St Neots'', p. xvi After Leland's discovery, the manuscript passed into the possession of

Matthew Parker Matthew Parker (6 August 1504 – 17 May 1575) was an English bishop. He was the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Church of England from 1559 until his death in 1575. He was also an influential theologian and arguably the co-founder (with a p ...

(d. 1575), Archbishop of Canterbury, who supplied various annotations. Later, the dean of the college, Thomas Neville, donated the manuscript to

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by Henry VIII, King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge ...

, where it is preserved up to this day, under the

shelfmark A shelfmark is a mark in a book or manuscript that denotes the cupboard or bookcase where it is kept as well as the shelf and possibly even its location on the shelf. The closely related term pressmark (from press, meaning cupboard) denotes only th ...

R.7.28. It is bound together with several unrelated documents, forming the first 74 leaves of the compilation.Dumville, ''Annals of St Neots'', p. xv

Notes

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Manuscript

Notes

References

Further reading