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The Chronicles of the Kings of Man and the Isles

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Kings, Usurpers, and Concubines in the 'Chronicles of the Kings of Man and the Isles'

Abstract

The Chronicles of the Kings of Man and the Isles is a thirteenth-century collaborative work compiled by several anonymous authors, most likely at Rushen Abbey in the Isle of Man, and based upon a variety of sources, that serves as our main source for the history of the medieval Kingdom of Man and the Isles between the eleventh and early fourteenth centuries. It is not, however, an easy text to use, and must be sifted carefully to determine the value of the evidence that it provides.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    G. Broderick, “Introduction,” in G. Broderick (ed.), Cronica Regum Mannie & Insularum. Chronicles of the Kings of Man and the Isles BL Cotton Julius A vii, 2nd ed. (Douglas, 1995; repr. 1996), vii [hereafter CRMI]. The manuscript contains a number of separate items that were apparently bound together for the English scholar and bibliophile Sir Robert Cotton (d. 1631): see http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Cotton_MS_Julius_A_VII

  2. 2.

    See D.M. Wilson, Manx Crosses. A Handbook of Stone Sculpture 500–1040 in the Isle of Man (Oxford, 2018); K. Holman, Scandinavian Runic Inscriptions in the British Isles: Their Historical Context (Trondheim, 1996), 86–172. The classic work on the subject is P.M.C. Kermode, Manx Crosses, with an introduction by David M. Wilson (Balgavies, 1994).

  3. 3.

    C.W. Airne, The Story of the Isle of Man, Volume 1. The Earliest Times to 1406 (Douglas, 1949), 27, where it is also observed that, “Unhappily, this record is in the possession, not of the Manx Museum, but of the British Museum” [now the British Library].

  4. 4.

    http://www.elginism.com/similar-cases/call-return-chronicles-man-british-library/20141205/7617/

  5. 5.

    Folios are different from pages: A folio is an individual leaf of paper or parchment, usually numbered only on the front (recto) face. Each folio has a front and a back, recto, and verso. In the case of the Manx chronicle the numbering of folios is not contemporary.

  6. 6.

    Broderick, “Introduction,” CRMI, ix–x; B. Williams, “The Chronicles of the Kings of Man and the Isles,” in S. Duffy and H. Mytum (eds.), New History of the Isle of Man, Volume III: The Medieval Period 1000–1406 (Liverpool, 2015), 305–328. For more on palaeography and codicology see, for example, M.B. Parkes, Their Hands Before Our Eyes: A Closer Look at Scribes. The Lyell Lectures Delivered in the University of Oxford 1999 (Aldershot and Burlington, VT, 2008).

  7. 7.

    CRMI, f. 49v.

  8. 8.

    A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England c. 550–c. 1307 (Ithaca, 1974), 439 n.3.

  9. 9.

    CRMI, f. 49r, f. 49v (“home”); f. 34v (beauty).

  10. 10.

    CRMI, f. 32v, f. 33r, f. 40r; see also Williams, “Chronicles of the Kings of Man and the Isles,” 310.

  11. 11.

    J. Harrison, “Cistercian Chronicling in the British Isles,” in D. Broun and J. Harrison (eds.), The Chronicle of Melrose Abbey a Stratigraphic Edition Volume 1: Introduction and Facsimile Edition (Woodbridge, 2007), 14–18.

  12. 12.

    Harrison, “Cistercian Chronicling,” 28.

  13. 13.

    See the excellent discussion on the motives for the production of chronicles in A. Gransden, “The Chronicles of Medieval England and Scotland,” In A. Gransden (ed.), Legends, Traditions and History in Medieval England (London and Rio Grande, 1992), 208–218.

  14. 14.

    Williams, “Chronicles of the Kings of Man and the Isles,” 310.

  15. 15.

    Harrison, “Cistercian Chronicling,” 24.

  16. 16.

    CRMI, f. 35v–36r.

  17. 17.

    Compare B.T. Hudson, Viking Pirates and Christian Princes: Dynasty, Religion, and Empire in the North Atlantic (Oxford, 2005), 200 and Sir F.M. Powicke and E.B. Fryde, Handbook of British Chronology, 2nd ed. (London, 1961), 61.

  18. 18.

    CRMI, f. 50v.

  19. 19.

    Broderick, “Introduction,” CRMI, xii–xiiv.

  20. 20.

    CRMI, f. 48r.

  21. 21.

    CRMI, f. 36v–f. 37r; see H. Birkett, The Saints’ Lives of Jocelin of Furness: Hagiography, Patronage and Ecclesiastical Politics (Woodbridge, 2010), chapter 4 quote at 119.

  22. 22.

    Harrison, “Cistercian Chronicling,” 27.

  23. 23.

    Harrison, “Cistercian Chronicling,” 21–28.

  24. 24.

    “Introduction,” in G. Broderick and B. Stowell (ed. and trans.), Chronicle of the Kings of Mann and the Isles: Recortys Reeaghyn Vannin as ny h Ellanyn (Edinburgh, 1973), vii–ix; see also A.G. Little, “The Authorship of the Lanercost Chronicle,” English Historical Review 31 (1916), 269–279; and Williams, “Chronicles of the Kings of Man and the Isles,” 315–317.

  25. 25.

    CRMI, f. 32v; Williams, “Chronicles of the Kings of Man and the Isles,” 309–310.

  26. 26.

    Harrison, “Cistercian Chronicling,” 25; see also A.A.M. Duncan, “Sources and Uses of the Chronicle of Melrose, 1165–1297,” in S. Taylor (ed.), Kings, Clerics and Chronicles in Scotland 500–1297: Essays in Honour of Marjorie Ogilvie Anderson on the Occasion of her Ninetieth Birthday (Dublin, 2000), 146–186.

  27. 27.

    CRMI, f. 46r.

  28. 28.

    CRMI, f. 49r.

  29. 29.

    It is worth noting that belief in the existence of these documents, based upon the references in the Chronicles, is well-established in Norwegian historical scholarship: see for example Regesta Norvegica I 822–1263, ed. E. Gunnes (Oslo 1989).

  30. 30.

    Harrison, “Cistercian Chronicling,” 22.

  31. 31.

    CRMI, f. 48v (1250); f. 42v (1223); f. 46v (1248).

  32. 32.

    R. Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 950–1350 (Princeton, 1993), 283–287, quotation at 285; see also K.J. Stringer, “Reform Monasticism and Celtic Scotland: Galloway, c.1140–c.1240,” in E.J. Cowan and R.A. McDonald (eds.), Alba: Celtic Scotland in the Medieval Era (East Linton, 2000), 158.

  33. 33.

    R.A. McDonald, Manx Kingship in Its Irish Sea Setting 1187–1229: King Rognvaldr and the Crovan Dynasty (Dublin, 2007), 201–204.

  34. 34.

    Hudson, Viking Pirates, 9; E.J. Cowan, “The Last Kings of Man, 1229–1265,” in S. Duffy and H. Mytum (eds.), New History of the Isle of Man, Volume III: The Medieval Period 1000–1406 (Liverpool, 2015), 98.

  35. 35.

    CRMI, f. 41v.

  36. 36.

    B.E. Crawford, The Northern Earldoms: Orkney and Caithness from AD 870 to 1470 (Edinburgh, 2013), 39–50.

  37. 37.

    M. Chesnutt, “Haralds saga Maddaðarsonar,” in U. Dronke et al. (eds.), Speculum Norroenum. Norse Studies in Memory of Gabriel Turville-Petre (Odense, 1981), 33–55; Crawford, Northern Earldoms, 43.

  38. 38.

    See Birkett, The Saints’ Lives of Jocelin of Furness, 42–44; M.T. Flanagan, “Jocelin of Furness and the Cult of St Patrick in Twelfth-Century Ulster,” in C. Downham (ed.), Jocelin of Furness Proceedings of the 2011 Conference (Donington, 2013), 45–66 at 63 n 87.

  39. 39.

    S. Duffy, “Man and the Irish Sea World in the Eleventh Century,” in S. Duffy and H. Mytum (eds.), New History of the Isle of Man, Volume III: The Medieval Period 1000–1406 (Liverpool, 2015), 9.

  40. 40.

    Broderick, CRMI, xiv.

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  1. Department of History, Brock University, St Catharines, ON, Canada

    R. Andrew McDonald

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McDonald, R.A. (2019). The Chronicles of the Kings of Man and the Isles. In: Kings, Usurpers, and Concubines in the 'Chronicles of the Kings of Man and the Isles'. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22026-6_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22026-6_2

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