The most fundamental task of any chronicler, as the word suggests, is establishing a chronology. Something, however, is seriously wrong with the chronology of the OE annals from the middle of the eighth century to the middle of the ninth. All seven versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that survived into the modern period include a two-year dislocation for the annals dated 754–828 in all versions (correctly 756–830), and a three-year dislocation for the annals dated 829–c.851 (correctly 832–51). The dislocation was also present in the lost OE source of Æthelweard's Chronicon. A version of the Chronicle was among the sources used by the compiler of the Annals of St Neots (1120x1140). In St Neots, unlike all other witnesses, these eighth- and ninth-century annals do not show the chronological dislocation. Plummer argued that their correct dating in St Neots provided evidence of an original version of the common stock to c.892 with all entries correctly dated. This hypothesized OE source of St Neots was given a place in the Chronicle's family tree earlier than all other witnesses. In his interpretation, all the surviving OE versions and other witnesses descended from an archetype which had later and inadvertently introduced this error.

David Dumville has dismantled the entire basis of the belief that St Neots can tell us anything about the earliest phase of the making of the Chronicle.