About the Chronicle

The Chronicle of Melrose: a brief introduction

Melrose AbbeyMelrose Abbey (image source)


The Chronicle of Melrose is the principal chronicle source for Scotland in the 12th and 13th centuries. It was created at Melrose Abbey, a Cistercian monastery founded by King David I in 1136 in southern Scotland (read more here). The text is entirely in Latin. The manuscript is a remarkable survival of an ‘active’ chronicle, with multiple generations of scribal additions while the manuscript was at the abbey. The digital edition highlights the Chronicle text’s piecemeal growth as a result of these layers of scribal contributions.

At some point in the late 13th or first half of the 14th century, the Chronicle was taken south to a monastery in England (there is evidence it was at the priory of Deeping St James in Lincolnshire for a period: see the lower margin of Julius B XIII, f. 2r).

In the mid-16th century, the Chronicle was acquired by the antiquarian John Leland (d. 1552). Leland likely split the manuscript into two separate units. He was also probably responsible for associating these two parts with other works, thus creating two ‘composite’ manuscripts (read more here).

Both composite manuscripts were then acquired by Sir Robert Cotton for his illustrious library (d. 1631) where they were given the shelf-marks Julius B XIII and Faustina B IX.

The two manuscripts live today in the British Library in London. Only in the early 21st century was it shown that both were part of the same original entity (see Broun, The Chronicle of Melrose Abbey, chapter 4).


As a physical object, then, the ‘Chronicle of Melrose’ is 120 folios currently divided between two separate bound volumes:

  • London, BL Cotton MS Julius B XIII, ff. 2–47
  • London, BL Cotton MS Faustina B IX, ff. 2–75

Chronicle of Melrose, outer covers

 


Textually, the surviving portions can be summarised as:

  • Julius B XIII, ff. 2–40: Hugh of St Victor’s Chronicle, aka De tribus maximis circumstantis gestorum, ‘On the three best memory-aids for learning history’.
  • Julius B XIII, ff. 41–47: annals for AD 1–249 (finishing mid-sentence).
  • Faustina B IX, ff. 2–75: a brief introduction quoting Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People from AD 731, followed by annals of varying length for AD 734–1270 (finishing mid-sentence), with a smattering of other annals in the 1270s and 1280s, plus some other incorporated texts such as letters, king-lists, lists of burials at the abbey, verses on Scottish kings, and a ‘little work’ on Simon de Montfort (d. 1265).

Sections of the chronicle

 

The Andersons (The Chronicle of Melrose, p. xi – see information about that volume here) proposed three stages in the chronicle‘s life (they were only aware of Faustina B IX):

  1. ff. 2r–21r: the initial creation, with an introduction picking up from the end of Bede’s history, and new beginnings at 1017 and 1066, running through to 1171.
  2. ff. 21r–60v and f. 63r: a continuation of the annals, with occasional interruptions, down to 1263 (‘the Chronicle to 1263’, as they call it). Two folios (ff. 61 and 62) were slotted in during the next section of work.

ff. 61–62 and 64–75: ‘The Continuation’, as they call it, with annals for 1260, 1261 and 1263–1270. This begins (f. 61r) with a scribe asserting ‘the task of composing chronicles was assigned to me’ and he had chosen to add ‘accounts of subsequent times that had been omitted’. There are then descriptions of miracles performed at Melrose, followed by annals for the 1260s, morphing into a ‘little work’ on Simon de Montfort and his miracles. The later annals include a flattering account of Edward I on crusade, finishing mid-sentence. The Andersons dated this continuation using a reference to Thomas Stonegrave as abbot of Rievaulx (who became abbot sometime between 14 April and 24 May 1286), and they assume that it was likely composed before Edward I searched the chronicles for evidence of English overlordship in 1291.


The Chronicle has possibly suffered losses of folios over the years. There are various ‘lacunae’ (absences) in the text as it stands which might suggest this:

  • At Julius B XIII, f. 47v: the annal for AD 249 finishes mid-sentence and the gathering’s final folio has probably been cut away at some point, which all suggests some text has been lost.
  • Annals for AD 250–730: it is not clear whether annals for AD 250–730 were ever written. One scribe working probably in the early 13th century noted the absence of these years (Scribal profile 18, Julius B XIII, f. 30v), so if they ever existed they were already lost by then (read more here).
  • At Faustina B IX, f. 75v: the annal for AD 1270 finishes mid-sentence at the end of a gathering, which suggests some text has been lost.


As for its creators, there are many dozens of scribes evidently writing the Chronicle over a long period of time. Almost all of these are assumed to be members of the community at Melrose in the late 12th and 13th centuries, though we do not know their precise identities. This edition, building on the work of previous editors, brings to the fore the individual contributions of these many ‘scribal profiles’ (see more discussion of the scribal profiles here).


The digital edition can be thought of as:

  • Digital images of the manuscripts from the British Library, with editorial annotations of the ‘scribal profiles’.
  • A representation of some of the text in the Chronicle as a transcription and accompanying English translation. Texts have been marked-up in a common web-compatible format (TEI-XML) to allow display on screen. The selection process for editing the text is explained under Editorial principals 1: scribal profiles (for example, Hugh of St Victor’s Chronicle is summarised rather than edited).
  • The accompanying editorial guides and documentation.

The digital edition.png

 

 

Author: Jo Tucker
Last updated: 06/08/2026