J. H. Todd's edition is cited by page and paragraph/chapter number, and pages and lines of the diplomatic edition of the Book of Leinster version, the readings of which are often better, are cited. Asterisks mark raids not included in Lucas's schedule (‘Plundering and burning’, pp. 215–28). As far as possible, an approximate date range for the unique items is proposed, by reference to items in each paragraph or short chapter that correspond to items in the other annals. Place-name identifications from Hogan, Onomasticon, are sometimes cited, without implying acceptance. Where the location of a church is not certainly identified, the Irish form is given.

Around a century after Cnut would have put the Scyldings into the service of his empire, the name ‘Skjǫldr’ was copied into manuscripts in Iceland, either by or for Sæmundr Sigfússon the Wise (1056–1133), priest and goði (‘chieftain’) of Oddi. This was because the families of other Icelandic chieftains and bishops were then claiming descent from kings in Sweden and Norway. In 1120, when Sæmundr's son Loptr married Þóra, the illegitimate daughter of King Magnús Barefoot of Norway (1093–1103), Sæmundr fashioned a genealogy that made him a distant cousin of Cnut the Great. His list, the Langfeðgatal (‘tally of forefathers’), has not survived in its original form, but its later reflexes show that Sæmundr traced his family back to Skjǫldr, son of Óðinn, and further back to a form of Scealdwa. In the first stage, Sæmundr's lineage from Skjǫldr aligned his family with two rival Norwegian pedigrees in the Skaldic dynastic poems Ynglingatal (c. 890) and Háleygjatal (c. 985).

Unlike the gods Freyr and Óðinn, who are respectively progenitors in the latter two poems, ‘Skjǫldr’ had no Skaldic genealogy of his own, Danish or otherwise. Nonetheless, the royal Danish ‘Skjǫldungar’ were still a name to play with, as we see in a work of Sæmundr's colleague in government, the Lawspeaker Markús Skeggjason (1084–1106). Markús alludes to Icelandic Scyldings twice in his Eiríksdrápa (1104 x 1106), which he composed for King Niels (1104–34) of Denmark in memory of his brother King Erik Ejegod (‘ever good’) (1095–1103).

I grew up in a small place called Tre-Mostyn in rural Flintshire, in a home which formed part of a crescent of eight houses, built by the Mostyn family in the 1930s to house employees of their estate. The large ‘M’ inscribed on these houses signified the Mostyn connection (and, disappointingly, not Ronald McDonald of ‘Happy Meals’ fame, as I liked to believe when I was a boy!). My dad worked as a forester on the estate. Growing up, the presence of nearby Mostyn Hall was strongly felt. Most of the farms and farmland in the locality formed – and still form – part of the estate (Berth-y-Maen, Bryn Coch, Bryn Digrif, Coed Isa, Garreg, Hen Dyfrydd, Mynydd Mostyn, Pentreffynnon, Plas Uchaf, Trelogan Isaf, Wern etc.) and many of our neighbours were tenants or worked for the estate. On Sundays, Lord and Lady Mostyn entered Whitford parish church through their own door and sat in their own pew amidst the memorials of their ancestors; Lady Mostyn sent around boxes of chocolates at Christmas; into his final years Lord Mostyn could be seen driving around the locality, inspecting his estate in his golf buggy; and I well remember the estate hosting the International Sheepdog Trials in the 1990s.

Just up the road from Tre-Mostyn, near the farm and former tollgate of Plas Uchaf, there was a tree standing in the middle of the road: a stumpy old chestnut positioned at the intersection of four roads and lanes which lead to the village of Whitford, through parkland to Pentreffynnon Hall and up the hill to Penrallt and the venerable stone cross of Maen Achwyfan.

Table of Medieval Irish Classical Adaptations

Medieval Biblical exegesis and commentary on poets both ancient and modern have long sustained a complicated, and often fraught, interrelationship. The Benedictine schoolmaster Conrad of Hirsau (c.1070–c.1150?) wondered, ‘Why should the young recruit in Christ's army subject his impressionable mind to the writing of Ovid, in which even though gold may be found among the dung, yet the foulness that clings to the gold defiles the seeker, even though it is the gold he is after?’ Evidently it is better to restrict oneself to reading Holy Writ; commentary on the sacred text can uncover only gold. However, no less an authority than St Augustine of Hippo (d. 430) had compared animal stories in Horace and Aesop with similar kinds of ‘feigning’ in the Bible, as for example at Judges 9:8ff., where we find an account of the trees of the forest going forth to anoint their king. Here, Augustine declares reassuringly, we have ‘a narrative which is indeed fictitious but not mendacious since it has a truthful signification’. In the twelfth century, a kind of introductory prologue (sometimes termed an accessus), which had its origins in late-antique Greek commentaries on philosophical works, featured initially in commentaries on secular texts and very soon moved, with due emendation, into Biblical exegesis.

This chapter will consider the Old English fortunes of the Latin illuminated herbal tradition, and the texts on animal medicine transmitted with it. The Latin illustrated herbal and animal texts were by far the most commonly copied texts of the Latin medical textual tradition in early medieval Europe. They seem to have been directly translated into Old English in the tenth century, a translation which survives in three eleventh-century manuscripts and a twelfth-century alphabetical redaction, but the texts also seem to have been used in the compilation of the earlier Leechbook and Lacnunga recipe collections. This complex form of reception, with a single Latin source influencing multiple separate Old English recipe collections, helps to illustrate some of the various forms of translation and compilation which characterise early medieval medical texts. The features of compilation and transmission which are considered here include the transmission of clusters of recipes in Old English, and the errors and variations which can accumulate between versions. These include not only unconscious errors but also the deliberate improvement of texts through the comparison of two or more witnesses or versions – a vital part of the process of reception and compilation and the differences which emerge when the same Latin text is translated by at least two different translators. By comparing recipes from the Old English Herbal with recipes from Bald's Leechbook and the Lacnunga, we will see that the Latin Herbal complex must have circulated in at least two different versions in England.

Sunday Collections By Year: 1500/1–70/1

Sir,

I am very much obliged to you and Mr. Dallone for your kind concern for me. The gentleman you mention seems to be in very friendly terms with me, and I have no reason to think that he means otherwise. As for the others, I see little appearance of my being in their way or going so far off, though if I should, you may be sure my endeavours would not be wanting where the public good of all Europe and the welfare of the Protestant religion are so much concerned; however I must always own this caution of yours as an effect of your great friendship which I shall study to improve on all occasions, being truly

Sir your most faithful and humble servant M.

The above letter, written to the Whig soldier and diplomat (and MP) James Stanhope in 1704, makes clear that the duke of Marlborough was supportive of attempts to improve public life in Europe and promote the Protestant religion. But could this letter be concerned with the movement of poor Protestants from the continent to the New World? Written four years before the Kocherthal party set out for London, relieving the plight of poor people burdened by high taxes, quartering of troops, and the misery of life in a war zone must have seemed desirable. After all, Marlborough's camp was close to where the Neckar meets the Rhine, an area from which many Palatine migrants were drawn. Furthermore, Marlborough relied on troops provided by the Elector Palatine, at least 3,000 of whom were paid from the British public purse.

For such a notable first – that is, the first full-scale theatrical biography in English to focus on the art rather than the misdeeds of its subject – it seems surprising that for 249 years no one paid much attention to Charles Gildon's The Life of Mr Thomas Betterton. Betterton (1635–1710) was, after all, the foremost English actor for half a century, and is often described as part of the tradition that links Richard Burbage to David Garrick and beyond.

Published in 1710 by Robert Gosling, in association with the infamous Edmund Curll, only months after the actor's death, Gildon's book was reprinted ten years later by Robert Jeeb, who described himself as ‘Bookseller, on the Pavement in YORK’. Extracts from it re-surfaced in The History of the English Stage, published by Curll in 1741 as Betterton's work, but which in reality was assembled by William Oldys. That book was reprinted in 1814. In 1749 the bookseller John Robinson published An Account of the Life of that Celebrated Tragedian, Mr. Thomas Betterton which incorporated passages from Gildon's book and inserted a passage about the actor's financial affairs missing from it. Further recycling of extracts and unedited paper and electronic editions apart, that is where the publishing history of The Life of Mr Thomas Betterton ended, until now.