Scalacronica

The Scalacronica (1066–1363) is a chronicle written in Anglo-Norman French by Sir Thomas Grey of Heaton near Norham in Northumberland. It was started whilst he was imprisoned by the Scots in Edinburgh Castle, after being captured in an ambush in October 1355, and completed in England after his release. The chronicle documents the history of Britain until 1363, and is one of the few early chronicles written by a layman.

==Overview== The only extant medieval manuscript of the Scalacronica is MS 133 held by Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where it originally formed part of the bequest of Archbishop Matthew Parker, a former Master of the college and a collector of manuscripts. During the reign of King Henry VIII the antiquary John Leland prepared an abstract of the Scalacronica which he included in his Collectanea. This abstract has proven useful as the original manuscript currently lacks part of the material for the years 1339 and 1356, and all the material from 1340 to 1355, the years in which the author himself had direct experience of events. In addition, at some time before 1567, Nicholas Wotton, Dean of Canterbury, made numerous extracts from the Salacronica (BL MS Harley 902). No complete edition of the original manuscript of the Salacronica has been published, although an edition published in Edinburgh in 1836 (edited by Joseph Stevenson for the Maitland Club) contains the text dealing with the period after the Norman Conquest.