After the end of the common stock annals c.892 we can more accurately refer to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles in the plural, as the work of many authors, revisers and scribes working in many different places across the following two-and-a-half centuries. The evidence of the surviving OE versions and other witnesses points to a pattern of dispersal, divergence and at times neglect of the annals across the following century, beside recurrent contact between the developing Chronicle texts. In various places, especially in relation to annals across the second half of the tenth century, points of contact provide evidence for the retrospective work of eleventh-century chronicle making.

This chapter explores the authoring and compilation the Chronicles across the tenth century, beginning with the annals of the so-called ‘First Continuation’ (893–96). This group of annals, authored c.900, takes up the story of the viking army that appeared in Wessex in 892 and is shared by ABC, but is also found in D as the result of a collation of a Northern Recension text with a *BC-type Chronicle. Other witnesses – the E Chronicle, the Mercian Register, Æthelweard's Chronicon and St Neots – present varying patterns of convergence and difference at this point, signalling a dispersal of copies of the common stock annals from the 890s. A, B and C continue to share annals as far as 914, after which A and *BC part company. A continues the annals of the reign of Edward the Elder as far as 920, after which this manuscript was neglected for some decades, until a revival of interest at Winchester in the middle of the tenth century.

Three consecutive texts in Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS Brogyntyn ii.1, all copied by the scribe who has been identified as the chief organizer of the manuscript, form a sophisticated memento mori sequence dedicated to guiding the gentry owners of the manuscript to prepare their souls for the inexorable coming of death: item 24, The Father of Pity (DIMEV 5256, fols. 63v–79r); item 25, ‘Lo Worldly Folks’ (DIMEV 3160, fol. 79v); and item 26, ‘Earth upon Earth’ (DIMEV 1170, fols. 79v–81v). The Father of Pity is a unique Middle English rhyme royal translation of a popular Latin verse debate between the body and soul known as the Visio Philiberti. Prefacing the translation is a translator's prologue, explaining his purpose and methods in translating the Visio Philiberti. The poem concludes with a homiletic address to readers, reminding them of the inevitability of death and instructing them in right behavior while alive. ‘Lo Worldly Folks’, also unique to Brogyntyn ii.1, is a transitional piece between The Father of Pity and ‘Earth upon Earth’. Written in rhyme royal, like The Father of Pity, it recapitulates the moral lessons of the preceding text and instructs readers to ‘thynke uppon youre end’ (l. 14). Finally, ‘Earth upon Earth’ is part of a popular tradition of poems punning on the multiple possible interpretations of the word ‘earth’, including (but not limited to) humanity, worldly goods and the literal soil. Its central theme is admonishing readers about the futility of amassing riches in the world when they are destined to return to dust.

Deep inside State Papers, among a gathering of obscure and barely legible manuscripts, lies an extensive ‘relation’ by W. M., dated 19 May 1630. It presents an anxious argument, with stressful moral consequences, about a subject's lawful duty, career anxiety, faith, altruism, and readiness to die so that another might live. It introduces a forgotten life of thwarted clerical ambition, lived in the shadow of the religious troubles of the age. It opens a chain of letters and papers, up to the eve of the civil war, involving a network of associates who considered themselves ‘the well-affected people of God’. Never previously published, the Morton materials are worth close scrutiny. Any glossing necessary to identify named individuals is indicated here in square brackets.

The W. M. who agonized at length on paper in 1630 was William Morton, a member, perhaps a young fellow, of Sidney Sussex College. The biographical register Alumni Cantabrigienses appears to have confused him with another William Morton, appending the one's academic degrees to the legal and political career of another. This misidentification persists in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and The History of Parliament, though the online Clergy Database notes the ordination as deacon on 20 September 1628 of William Morton, M.A., by the bishop of Coventry and Lichfield Thomas Morton, a possible relation. There is no record of his subsequent ordination as priest, though gaps in such records are not unusual.

Special Sundays became common in the Church of England during the early twentieth century. These are particular Sundays each year on which the sermon and prayers during church services might be directed towards a specific ecclesiastical, moral or social cause, and in most but not all cases a financial collection made to assist the organization or organizations that promoted this cause. These special church collections have often provided a substantial part of the annual income of the sponsoring charitable association or church society. Special Sundays are distinct from the Church of England's annual round of religious festivals and commemorations, given in the calendars of the BCP and the church's later service books. They are not prescribed, but are approved or commended by the archbishops, church assemblies or collectively by the bishops: decisions on whether to observe them in particular dioceses and places of worship are a matter for individual bishops, cathedrals and parishes. Although these occasions came to be known generically as ‘special Sundays’, because most were initially or eventually observed on a Sunday, a number of anniversary appeals were or are observed on weekdays or for a whole week or octave (from one Sunday to the next).

Special Sundays and other church anniversaries differ in two respects from the national anniversary and particular acts of special worship that are the main focus of this edition.

On Friday 4 May 1638 Thomas Harrison (1595–1649), rector of the country parish of Crick, Northamptonshire, pushed his way through the crowds at the Court of Common Pleas in Westminster Hall on an urgent but foolhardy mission. He was accompanied by his servant John Bodington and his curate Nathaniel Harrison (both apparently kinsmen), who later explained that they had no idea what was about to happen. Unconcerned by the disputes of property and debt that brought petitioners by the hundred to Westminster, the rector had more consequential matters in mind. Approaching the bench where Justice Sir Richard Hutton was presiding, Harrison was stopped at the bar where officers ‘bade him forebear; if he has anything to move the court in, it must be done by his counsel’. Undeterred, he planted himself before the judge and declared ‘in a rude and uncivil manner … with a loud or high voice [other sources say ‘falsely and ambitiously… furiously, boldly, audaciously, and maliciously… in undue and boisterous manner’], I do accuse Mr. Justice Hutton of High Treason’.

This was sensational, scandalous, and disruptive. It undercut the dignity of the court, violated the solemnity of proceedings, and defamed one of the king's most senior judges. The Court of Common Pleas, like other high courts of law, dealt justice with gravity and decorum, but Harrison's outburst caused confusion.

30 November: 1555–8 (England & Wales)

Mary Tudor, proclaimed queen of England on 19 July 1553, was determined to overturn the break of the English church from Rome made by her father, Henry VIII, and the protestant reformation undertaken during the reign of her half-brother, Edward VI. Her marriage on 25 July 1554 to Philip of Spain, son of the emperor Charles V and titular king of Naples and Sicily, cemented the international alliances needed to consolidate the restoration of relations with the papacy, and on 24 November of that year the queen and king received the papal legate, Reginald, Cardinal Pole. On the 28th, Pole addressed both houses of parliament in the presence of Mary and Philip on the terms of reconciliation; afterwards, the lord chancellor, Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, on behalf of the queen and king, exhorted the two houses to accept reunion with the Church of Rome and to repeal the laws directed against the papacy and catholicism. On the 29th, the two houses prepared a joint petition expressing repentance for the schism, their renewed submission to papal authority and their readiness to abrogate the offending legislation. After this supplication had been presented to the queen and king and then to Pole at Whitehall on 30 November, St Andrew's day, Pole, by authority of Pope Julius III, with the lords and MPs on their knees, absolved them and the kingdom of their sins of disobedience towards the papacy, and formally announced the reconciliation of England and Wales with the catholic church.

Je ne parle allemand qu’a mes chevaux: ‘I only speak German to my horses.’ This frequently quoted bon mot, attributed to King Frederick II of Prussia, is likely apocryphal, but the fact that the king had poor written and spoken German is well documented: his personal correspondence, notably with his sister Anna Amalia, was in French, and he only read books in that language. Voltaire, one of the King's favourite guests at Sanssouci, famously digressed about the Francophile atmosphere at the Prussian court that allowed him to hear Frederick's siblings, Anna Amalia and Prince Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig, declaiming French theatre ‘without any accent and with much grace. […] I find myself here in France. Only our language is spoken. German is for soldiers and horses; it is only necessary on the road.’

Such anecdotes highlight the disdain the eighteenth-century Germanspeaking cultural elite had for their own language and its literature. A prestigious equivalence equated French with the language of philosophy, literature, and theatre, making it the idiom of the German Hof-Kultur, the courtly culture. And yet, by the 1800s, there would barely be any reason left for the Germans to deride their own language. During the 1770s, the long-awaited re-evaluation of German was finally underway, prepared by the renewed interest for its historical origins that culminated with the works of the philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, who himself owed much to the Swiss philologist Johann Jakob Bodmer, one of the founding fathers of medieval literary studies through his pioneering exploration of the Minnesang.

It was in this climate, driven by a resistance against French cultural supremacy, that poetic recitation emerged.

Introduction

As a scholar, Fiona Tolhurst was an astonishingly careful and discerning close reader; her attention to detail in a passage under consideration and her explication of said passage – its wording, nuance, inflection, pacing – calls to mind the skill of a surgeon in combination with the perception of a poet. Indeed, she often shared with friends the story about how her entire career as a medievalist began because of a single word in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Brittanie that caught her attention because she suspected that it was a mistranslation from the Latin. (Spoiler: she was right.) Even more impressive than her rigorous and judicious skills as a close reader, however, is the ability – repeatedly on display in her research – to shift her focus from the carefully specific to the importantly general. In her scholarship, she is able to speak confidently about large swathes of medieval literary tradition with discernment that is precise – never vague – and which insight is also illuminating, revelatory, and original.

For example, in an article from 2004 Tolhurst notes that: ‘Historiographers … tend to assume that judging the historicity of medieval sources is a relatively straightforward process. [Antonia] Gransden, for example, distinguishes between “reliable” and “unreliable” literary sources. However, she identifies a third term – “romance history” – that acknowledges the existence of hybrid texts that perform both literary and historical functions’.

The starting point of this chapter came from a scene in the Bayeux Tapestry which has long troubled the author. The Bayeux Tapestry is an embroidered narrative frieze, believed to date to the 1070s or 1080s, which depicts events, or alleged events, from about 1064 to October 1066. At Scene 14 (Fig. 3.1), Harold, Earl of Wessex, is depicted in vehement conversation with William, Duke of Normandy, at William's palace. Scholarly attention on this scene has chiefly taken the form of speculation about the subject of their conversation. Here we bypass that matter, and indeed the veracity of Harold's journey which is not mentioned in any English source, to consider one simple issue: the plausibility of this international dialogue. We must question if it is possible that Harold, a literate Anglo-Scandinavian, could have conversed face to face with William, a Norman, in the mid-eleventh century. An attempt to answer this question requires consideration of evidence for multilingualism and international communication in the ruling classes of England and Normandy.

Multilingualism in England

In the introduction to her recent discussion of multilingualism in early medieval Britain Lindy Brady asserts that

Early medieval Britain was a multilingual space: a place where multiple languages were in use simultaneously. Britain's various tongues did not merely coexist alongside one another, but also frequently overlapped within the same spheres: religious, intellectual, political, economic, and visually, whether on the pages of manuscripts or inscribed on stone monuments for passers-by to see.

In the National Archives there is a huge roll of stiff cream paper which contains the accounts of the Cranbrook Commissioners appointed to be responsible for the sales of French prizes before the declaration of war. The Treasury was determined that everything was done by the book, although it took until 1769 before finalising their accounts from the war.

Disposing of the captures made before war was declared took place without delay, the announcement taking place in November 1756 that Commissioners had sent ‘proper persons’ to Gibraltar, Barbados, the Leeward Islands, Jamaica and South Carolina to begin the sales in January, so that ‘all merchants inclined to become purchasers, may have time to give orders to their correspondents accordingly’.

First refusal of the prize ship together with its tackle was given to his Majesty's Navy, and guns, arms and ordnance stores were offered to the Board of Ordnance. If accepted at a fair and reasonable valuation, these were paid for by bills or debentures. If rejected, the certificate of the refusal was given to the agent of the captor within six weeks, this certificate entitled the vessel to be considered as British built. The importance of this was that British trade could only be carried in British vessels, so these vessels could cheaply become part of the merchant fleet. The Navy or Victualling Boards were entitled to buy any naval stores without waiting for the condemnation of the vessel.

Most South African readers will be members of a medical aid scheme providing access to private healthcare. There are a wide range of schemes available offering different levels of benefits which are paid for by members’ monthly contributions. “Day-to-day” medication and treatment benefits smooth what would otherwise be payments made by the member directly. Schemes also provide cover for more serious health problems requiring hospitalisation, operations, or other major expenses. Having medical aid means not having to use South Africa's public healthcare system characterised by long queues, rundown facilities, limited treatment, and indifferent service.

Medical aid membership is not cheap, even for the most basic schemes. Under 20 per cent of the population can afford the comfort and convenience that private health cover provides. The rise of an African middle class in postapartheid South Africa has diversified the racial profile of scheme membership. However, there are township residents who have medical aid despite their salaries not being close to professional levels. This is because they work for private or public organisations that require membership as a condition of service. In public sector organisations there has been significant growth in medical aid membership, even as the percentage of the population with membership has changed little over the last twenty years.

For medical aid to be affordable for non-professional workers, the employer must subsidise monthly contributions. Yet, even with subsidisation and when employees are on cheaper schemes, contributions nevertheless represent a significant deduction from pay packets.

Contributions cover a capped day-to-day set of benefits as well as possible major expenses, including the statutorily required prescribed minimum benefits that must be offered by medical aids, as well as the administrative costs of the scheme.

In December 1808, Joseph Atkinson published verses in the Cyclopaedian Magazine to mark the season of ‘Private Theatricals’ held in Kilkenny during the previous October. Atkinson duly acknowledged both the participation of Thomas Moore in these theatricals and the nascent fame of Moore's Irish Melodies, the first volume of which had appeared in April that year:

The girls and the boys of Kilkenny have long Tun’d Erin's sweet harp and enraptur’d her song… Then Moore came the lyre of Apollo to string, And give us pure draughts of the Helicon spring; And the banks of the Nore shall long echo the lays That his melodies breathe to record Erin's praise.

Atkinson's poetic vein may have been slight (not to say ephemeral and metrically cumbrous), but the compound of classical and Irish metaphors engaged in these lines to celebrate Moore is striking nevertheless: the ‘sweet harp’ of Erin and the ‘lyre of Apollo’ are in close apposition, and so too (by extension) are the ‘banks of the Nore’ (in Kilkenny) and the slopes and springs of Mount Helicon (in Greece). Although the Melodies had only recently begun to appear (their serial publication would continue until 1834), Moore in these lines is all but the Bard of Erin already, at least to judge by the enthusiastic tone of Atkinson's encomium and the fame it predicts for the songs themselves.

The items in this concert of 21 March were Mozart's Symphony no. 40 in G minor (K.550), two movements from Mendelssohn's oratorio Saint Paul, a concertino by Vogt for oboe and orchestra, played by Verroust, the ‘Dies irae’ from Cherubini's Requiem in C minor and Beethoven's Second Symphony.

Mozart's Symphony in G minor, as usual, gave the greatest pleasure, and the minuet was encored. The excerpts from Mendelssohn's oratorio Saint Paul were as yet unknown to me, and I’m at a loss to understand why there's been such a delay in bringing this fine work to Paris when England, Germany, and even some cities in regional France have given complete performances of it some time ago. Whatever the reason, the two extracts brought to us last Sunday are admirable compositions. The first chorus in E-flat, accompanied by a repeated pattern on the first violins, is couched in a calm and a purity that are truly angelic; if this is not religious music, then such a thing has never existed. The harmony is silky, the style of the melody, tender and suave, lends a further charm to the timbre of the cellos, and the incessant accompaniment of the first violins decorates the ensemble, without disturbing its gentle gravity. The form of the work is also highly distinguished: the orchestra and choir are not always combined, sometimes the orchestra is silent, allowing the voices to sing unaccompanied, and sometimes on the contrary it's the orchestra that's heard on its own. Then there are those effects of half-tint and pianissimo which only the greatest composers know how to obtain from such large forces. In a word, this choral work is, in my view, a true masterpiece, a product of inspiration and technique, beautiful, irreproachable, complete.

Irish traditional music is performed by people of all genders, ethnicities, sexualities, and abilities, but a quick perusal of a festival lineup, an array of CDs, or a few live instrumental music sessions would imply that the craft is primarily the preserve of white heterosexual cisgender men. This book will correct that error in perception. In any study of a contemporary music scene, readers deserve the authority of one whose status is that of long-time participant-observer. Joanne Cusack, a gifted performer on the button accordion and long-time participant in multiple Irish music scenes, has used her skills in observation, description, and analysis to understand the multiple approaches that women have taken to be heard and to connect with other musicians.

Women in Irish Traditional Music is very much of-the-moment in terms of its analysis. It does so with compelling, effective language that clearly grasps the specific policies and social mechanisms holding women in an uneasy in-between position regardless of their playing abilities or their status within the community. Everyone who has been to an instrumental music session has observed or experienced some of what Joanne Cusack describes, but few know the specifics of how the professional Irish traditional music world works from an educated insider viewpoint.

What sets this book apart from others is its focus on specific case studies concerning women, its direct engagement of the reader, and its refreshing look at some of the unique challenges faced by women.