[1] Archbishop Plegmund superintended the Saxon Annals to the year
891. The first Chronicles, those of Kent or Wessex, were regularly
continued by the Archbishops of Canterbury, or by their directions,
as far as 1000, or even 1070.--"The Rev. Dr. Ingram's preface to the
Saxon Chronicle."
These were our earliest Chronicles; the Britons possibly never wrote
any.
[2] We have a remarkable instance among the Italian historians of
this period. Giovanni Villani wrote about 1330; Muratori discovered
that Villani had wholly transcribed the ancient portion of his
history from an old Chronicle of Malespini, who wrote about 1230,
without any acknowledgment whatever. Doubtless Villani imagined that
an insulated manuscript, during a century's oblivion, had little
chance of ever being classed among the most ancient records of
Italian history. Malespini's "Chronicle," like its brothers, was
stuffed with fables; Villani was honest enough not to add to them,
though not sufficiently so not silently to appropriate the whole
chronicle--the only one Dante read.--"Tiraboschi," v. 410, part 2nd.
[3] We have an elegant modern version of this monk's history by the
Rev. J. Sharpe.