Bibliographic information

Language: Latin

Covers years: A.M. 1–A.D. 1289

Manuscript: London, British Library, Cotton Domitian A. i, ff. 138r–155r (s. xiiiex).
London, British Library, Harley 838, ff. 96–117 (s. xv2) [copy of Cotton Domitian A. i]

The Cottonian Chronicle

C-text of the Annales Cambriae

The Cottonian chronicle occurs on folios 138r–155r of London, British Library, Cotton Domitian A. i. This is a composite manuscript, part of which, including the Cottonian chronicle, was written at St David’s in the second half of the thirteenth century. The chronicle as originally written by the scribe began with a history of the world from its creation and proceeded to the year 1286. Additions were then added by the same scribe for the years 1286–8. The chronicle had evidently been maintained in St David’s for many years, and was effectively a continuation of the St David’s chronicle of the mid-tenth century, as witnessed by the Harleian chronicle.

In 1848 Henry Petrie edited the sections of the Harleian, Breviate, and Cottonian chronicles that pertained to the years up to 1066. For this period, the same source text underlies all three of these chronicles; this source text was the St David’s chronicle that was in existence no later than 954, when the exemplar of the Harleian chronicle was created, and was continued in St David’s thereafter. Petrie was thus justified, for his purposes, in labelling the three chronicles respectively as the A-, B-, and C-texts of a single chronicle, which he loosely named Annales Cambriae, ‘The Annals of Wales’. The same nomenclature was then taken from its original context and applied to the three chronicles as a whole by John Williams ab Ithel, who has been subsequently followed by many other scholars. However, since in their later sections the Breviate and Cottonian chronicles derive from separate sources, it is better to use the labels ‘Harleian’, ‘Breviate’, and ‘Cottonian’ chronicles.

Ben Guy

Editions & Translation

  • David N. Dumville, Annales Cambriae, A.D. 682-954: Texts A-C in Parallel (Cambridge: Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, 2002). [parallel with the Harleian and Cottonian chronicles, 682–954]
  • Henry Gough-Cooper, ‘Annales Cambriae, from Saint Patrick to AD 682: Texts A, B & C in Parallel’, The Heroic Age: A Journal of Early Medieval Northwest Europe, 15 (October, 2012) [accessed 19 November 2014]. [parallel with the Breviate and Cottonian chronicles, <682]
  • Henry Gough-Cooper, Annales Cambriae: the C Text, from London, British Library, Cotton MS Domitian A. i, ff. 138r–155r, with an appended concordance of intercalated notices (2015)
  • J. E. Lloyd, ‘The Text of MSS. B and C, of “Annales Cambriae” for the Period 1035–1093, in Parallel Columns’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1899–1900), 165–9. [parallel with the Cottonian Chronicle, 1035–93]
  • Henry Petrie, with John Sharpe, Monumenta Historica Britannica, or Materials for the History of Britain, from the Earliest Period: Volume 1, ed. Thomas Duffus Hardy(London: G.E. Eyre & W. Spottiswoode, 1848), 830–40. [confl. with the Harleian and Cottonian chronicles, ‘444’–1066]
  • P. M. Remfry, Annales Cambriae: a Translation of Harleian 3859; PRO E. 164/1; Cottonian Domitian, A1; Exeter Cathedral Library MS.3514 and MS Exchequer DB Neath, PRO E. 164/1 (Shrewsbury: Castle Studies Research, 2007), pp. 163–201. [transl.]
  • John Williams ab Ithel, Annales Cambriae (London:  Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1860). [confl. with the Harleian and Cottonian chronicles]

Secondary Scholarship

Secondary Scholarship - Specific to this version

  • Caroline Brett, ‘The Prefaces of Two Late Thirteenth-Century Welsh Latin Chronicles’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies,35 (1988), 63–73.
  • Julian Harrison, ‘A Note on Gerald of Wales and Annales Cambriae’, Welsh History Review, 17 (1994), 252–55.
  • Neil R. Ker, ‘Sir John Prise’, The Library, 5th ser., 10 (1955), 1–24.
  • David Stephenson, ‘Gerald of Wales and Annales Cambriae’, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, 60 (2010), 23–37.

Secondary Scholarship: Annales Cambriae more generally

  • T. M. Charles-Edwards, Wales and the Britons 350–1064 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 346–59.
  • David N. Dumville, review of Kathleen Hughes, The Welsh Latin Chronicles: Annales Cambriae and Related Texts (1973), Studia Celtica,12/13 (1977–78), 461–67.
  • David N. Dumville, ‘When was the “Clonmacnoise Chronicle” Created? The Evidence of the Welsh Annals’, in Kathryn Grabowski and David N. Dumville, Chronicles and Annals of Medieval Ireland and Wales (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1984), pp. 209–26.
  • Nicholas Evans, ‘The Irish Chronicles and the British to Anglo-Saxon Transition in Seventh-Century Northumbria’, in The Medieval Chronicle VII, ed. by Juliana Dresvina and Nicholas Sparks (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011), pp. 15–43.
  • Erik Grigg, ‘“Mole Rain” and other Natural Phenomena in the Welsh Annals: Can Mirablia unravel the Textual History of the Annales Cambriae?’, Welsh History Review,24 (2009), 1–40.
  • Kathleen Hughes, ‘The Welsh Latin Chronicles: Annales Cambriae and Related Texts’, Proceedings of the British Academy,59 (1973), 233–58; repr. in her Celtic Britain in the Early Middle Ages, ed. by David N. Dumville (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1980), pp. 67–85.
  • J. E. Lloyd, ‘The Welsh Chronicles’, Proceedings of the British Academy,14 (1928), 369–91.
  • Howard Wiseman, ‘The Derivation of the Badon entry in the Annales Cambriae from Bede and Gildas’, Parergon, 17 (2000), 1–10.