Pagina:Annales monastici Vol IV.djvu/23

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PREFACE. XV year to year till 1277. For the earlier portion of his history I believe Wykes to have made use of the Osney MS., and then to have abandoned it and continued the history in his own style, when he had other opportunities of gaining information. From 1278 to 1284 I believe Wykes to have returned to the annals of Osney, and made them the sole source of his work, abridging them very much, omitting most of what was peculiar to the monastery, and inserting the few notices of himself and his relations ; writing in all probability in the monas- tery itself, where, as we have seen, he took the habit in 1282, and introducing the events of each year by his own peculiar phraseology. After 1285 I think there can be little doubt that Wykes himself became the chro- nicler of the monastery, and himself continued the two chronicles — carrying on the chronicle which bears his own name as far as 1289, and the annals of Osney till 1293. This seems to me the best, if not the only expla- nation of the facts, that the chronicles are certainly dependent one on the other in the earlier portions, cer- iainly different in the middle, and that the continuation beginning in 1289 which is not in the Wykes MS., must have been written by the same author as wrote much that has gone before which is not in the Osney annals. In order, however, that the reader may have the fullest Manner in opportunities of testing the correctness of this supposi- ^wo chr - tion, I have printed the two chronicles together in the nicies are upper and lower portions of each page, so that their |he"present connexion when they are derived from the same source edition. can be easily seen ; indeed, this is the only way in which the two could be printed, as so much of the latter por- tion of the two MSS. is identical, without giving a con- siderable amount of matter twice over. The MS. of the Osney annals (Cotton, Tiberius A. 9) ^escrip- is a folio, on parchment, in double columns, and occupies mss. ff. 52-98 of the volume. It is written in the same 2?^^^-' liberius b 2 A. 9.