Sage, Salter The chronicles of Thomas Sprott, Kingston, 1916. fur Aefoumtaigtf a College u 'ft s Colony" Gift cf Professor Max Farrand 19^-° Bulletin of Ihe depM^jents of history political and economic science in quee: university, kingston, ontario; canada. NO. 19, APRIL, 1916. . THE . JP: • • ,' CHRONIgli| OF THOMAS SPROTT BY WALTER SAGE The Jctckson Press, Kingston BULLETIN Of THE DEPARTMENTS OF HISTORY AND POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC SCIENCE IN QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY, KINGSTON, ONTARIO, CANADA. No. 1, The Colonial Policy of Chatham, by W. L«; Grant. No. 2, Canada and the' Most Favored Nation Treaties, by O. D. Skelton. No. 3. The Status of Women in New England and New France, by James Douglas. No. 4, Sir Charles Bagot: An Incident in Canadian Parlia mentary History, by J. L. Morison. No. 5, Canadian Bank Inspection, by W. W. Swanson. No. 6, Should Canadian Cities Adopt Commission Govern ment, by William Bennett Munro.. No. 7, An Early Canadian Impeachment, by D. A. McArthur. No. 8, A Puritan at the Court of Louis XIV, by W. L. Grant. No. 9, British Supremacy and Canadian Autonomy: An Ex amination of Early Victorian Opinion Concerning Canadian Self-government, by J. L. Morison. No. 10, The Problem of Agricultural Credit in Canada, by H. Michell. No. 11, St. Alban in History and Legend: A Critical Examina tion; The King and His Councillors: Prolegomena to a History of the House of Lords, by L. F. Rushbrook Williams. No. 12, Life of the Settler in Western Canada Before the War of 1812, by Adam Shortt. No. 13, The Grange in Canada, by H. Michell. No, 14, The Financial Power of the Empire, by W. W« Swanson. No. 15, Modern British Foreign Policy, by J. L. Morison. No. 16, Federal Finance, by O. D. Skelton. No. 17, Craft-Gilds of the Thirteenth Century in Paris, by F. B. Millett. No. 18, The Co-operative Store in Canada, by H. Michell. No. 19, The Chronicles of Thomas Sprout, by Walter Sage. THE CHRONICLE OF THOMAS SPROTT. VISITORS to Canterbury, after they have explored the Cathedral, strolled along the crooked streets, inspected the museum at the city gate and have perhaps even journeyed to find St. Martin's Church the first home of English Chris tianity, are satisfied to take the train back to London think ing they have done a good day's work. One need not question the strenuousness of the outing, for who can see even a portion of- Canterbury Cathedral in a day and remember what he has seen? There we see the Black Prince's armour and picture to ourselves once more the great drama of Thomas a Becket. The French Chapel in the Crypt brings home to us the fall of the Huguenots and we look about in vain for the house of Betsy Trotwood and David Copperefild. A few of us perhaps are attracted by the massive gateway of St. Augustine's col lege and pass within it to roam around the college and even to inspect the ruins behind. It is those old ruins, only partly excavated, with their crumbling walls, and total sense of desolation, which should form the background for the study of the Chronicle of Thomas Sprott. In the old cloister of that ruined monastery some time in the late thirteenth century Thomas Sprott or Spotte, a monk of the Benedictine Order, worked at his chronicle. Of his life little is known except that he was a monk celebrated alike for his religion and his- excellent learning. Pitseus in his work "De illustribus Angliae Scriptoribus" states that he was an "inhabitant and nursling of the city of Canterbury, and not an ungrateful one either," (incola et alumnus civitatis Can- tuariensis sane non ingratus) . Thomas Hearne, his eighteenth century editor, puts forth a wild theory that Sprott studied at Canterbury Hall in Oxford and passed much of his life there, but there is not much evidence for this. Hearne himself states that if Sprott studied in Oxford he probably lived at a later date than is usually accepted. Leland, Bale, Pitseus and Sir Edward Dering all maintain that Sprott flourished during the reign of Edward I. The general consensus of opinion is there fore that Sprott lived and wrote about 1270, during the reigns of Henry III and Edward I, and that he was a monk of St. Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury. That he belonged to Canterbury is evident from the numerous references in the two parts of the Chronicle and especially from the Fragmenta Sprottiana which Hearne pub lishes in his edition at the conclusion of the Chronicle. The Fragmenta chiefly deal with the affairs of the Abbey of St. Augustine and record a list of papal bulls and other documents relating to the monastery. A statement of William the Conqueror concerning the liberty of the monastery is even included. From, all these references, which would be available chiefly to an inmate of the Abbey, we can conclude that Thomas Sprott belonged to the Abbey' of St. Augustine and spent his life there. Of his life in the* Abbey we know nothing at all. He was not a second Jocelyn of Brakelond who possessed ..the gift of writing down the everyday doings of the monastery in which he lived. In fact, he goes to the other extreme, and mentions nothing at all about himself or the ordinary life of his companions. He is possessed of that impersonality which marks mediaeval scholarship and especially mediaeval chroni clers. The names of Abelard, Duns Scotus, Peter Lombard, Roger Bacon and of Thomas Acquinas, as well as scores of others, stand out in mediaeval history, but we hear nothing of nameless men who wrote the chronicles or even had their part in the completion and perfection of the Trivium and Quadrivium. In fact, were it not for his name at the head of the MS. which Hearne discovered in the Library of Sir Edward Dering, and the few references in Leland Bale, Pitseus and others, which Hearne has so laboriously collected, we would hardly know whose work it was that we were reading. In a sense there would be but little loss. Except to the initiated all mediaeval chronicles are the same mediaeval chronicle, dry as dust records to be eschewed entirely in favour of some more "up-to-date study." Even the learnedjscholar picks out the "two grains of wheat from the bushel of chaff."' How deadly the chaff can be may be judged by the following entries picked at random from the first part of Sprott's Chronicle and done into English : "|By7. 5"3'C "Year 676. Donus made Pope and in the following year Agatho. Year 681. Leo II is made Pope and he ordered that the "Pax" be given after "Agnus Dei." Year 683. Benedict II is made Pope and sits for ten months. In the following year John V is made Pope and Leodegardus suf fered." Yet even this very extract shows the bent of Thomas Sprott. He record's Popes and Archbishops but his entries are short. In his Chronicle, Part I, he covers the whole history of mankind from the Creation until 185 A.D. The entries from 1274 to 1385 are. by Sprott's continuator, probably William Thorn,1 but the same coneise style is followed throughoutr This brevity has of course obvious disadvantages since the • Chronicle becomes in places merely a list of patriarchs, kings, popes and archbishops, but it allows Thomas Sprott to cover in sixty double column pages a period which is covered in two hundred and forty pages in the Rolls' Series by Capgrave's, Chronicle of England. The other great English Chroniclers are far longer. Not to mention the enormous length of Mat thew Paris and Giraldus Cambreusis, Radulph de Coggeshall takes about eighty MSS. pages to cover the period from the Norman Conquest to the end of the Third Crusade. Sprott's Chronicle is therefore very brief. But brevity as a virtue must c6me second to accuracy. Is Spott's chronicle both brief and accurate? Unfortunately it is" not always accurate, at least its dates do not always agree with our accepted Chronology.- For example, Charlemagne's death is recorded as happening in 816 instead of 814. But after all this/ may be only a clerical error since XIV and XVI are easily interchanged and Sprott always writes according to a curious Roman system of numbering, ^possibly his own, e.g. 816 reads, VIIIC; XVI.2 There is also a curious error in Part II over the date of the Norman Conquest. There we are told that William the Conqueror was crowned on .Christmas ' 1So Pitseus — Harum historiarum postea Guilhelmus- Thornus ejus dem ordinis monasterii religions collegit et eis aliquoifum annorum additiones fecit. 2According to this system eighty becomes four i's with two x's over it and numbers from 80 to lOOi are counted along the French system, e.g. 95 is 804-15 or xx/iiii xv). Day, 1077. There are other dates which do not agree with the usually accepted chronology. Some of them* as for example the dates of the 0. T. Patriarchs, may be disregarded^ but it is noteworthy that the dates for- both the death of Charlemagne and- the Norman Conquest are given wrong. About affairs around Canterbury, Sprott is probably ac curate enough. He tells of an arrangement made in 1258 between the Archbishop and the- Prior of St. Augustine whereby the Prior and Chapter secured the return- of writs and were to have all amercements and powers of justice which the Archbishop enjoyed through his Seneschal. But when not dealing with Abbey affairs he is credulous and accepts stories of the Seven Sleepers and records Sylvester II as a "necromancer who at last repented and dying cut off his members and cast them to the Devil." He also accepts current stories about great events and records that at the capture of Jerusalem by the Christians, "In Solomon's Porch so many Pagans were killed that they rode in blood to the knees of the horses." Now the anonymous author of the Gesta Francorum who was an eyewitness of the slaughter in Jerusalem records that the Crusaders "waded up to their ankles in blood." But Sprott, writing about two centuries after the event, has- in creased the effects of the slaughter. He is probably following the popular tradition which was possibly based on the less accurate accounts of Raymond of Agile® and Fulcher of Chartres. None the less, in spite of his credulity and his occasional inaccuracies about dates, the Chronicle of Thomas Sprott must have served as an interesting compendium of universal history for the monks of Canterbury. It recorded the Arch bishops and, the Popes and it gave some few references to more general history. In the second part there were more lengthy and continuous accounts of the chief events in English history. To us Sprott's Chronicle is interesting not only as a sample of mediaeval industry, but even more * a mirror, however slight and unimportant, of the mind of the mediaeval scholar. We find portrayed there the mediaeval, uncritical desire for knowledge. The monk in his monastery was always in touch with the past as with the infinite future. He was not only a "religious" but religion was his life. He was brought up in the tradition of the Church, into him was instilled the discipline /of his order and he lived his day according to the canonical hours. To him "prime," "terce," "sext" and "none" were not meaningless terms but represented the cold of the early morning or the subdued hour of prayer of the middle of the day when he had left his work in the field or his manu script in the cloister to come to offer with his fellows his pray ers to Almighty God. Thus in his Chronicle we find recorded as a matter of. unusual importance that in the "year 381 Ambrosius (St. Ambrose of Milan) "composed Hymns and the Antephonal" or that in "687 Pope Sergius ordered that the Agnus Dei be said twice during the celebration of Mass." We pass these things over with a shrug as historical details oi only relative importance but to him they were vital as ex planations of his everyday life. - s The Chronicle itself is divided into two parts to which has been added the Fragmenta Sprottiana. The first part is mere chronicle, a line or so placed after a date. The second is made up of connected narrative. The Fragmenta are, as ihe name implies, fragments or notes inscribed in the MS. after the, two parts of the Chronicle. The whole MS. goes by the name of Thomas Sprott, but as has been noted the end of each part is not his. It is almost impossible to separate the pontinuation from the original text, but as the outside sources claim the date of 1272 as the dividing line this may be accepted as the traditional if not the accurate line _ of division. The Fragmenta may be Sprott's own notes or may be merely transcripts from the Abbey records. Pars Prima. The first part deals with the history of the world from the Creation to 1385 A.D. The traditional division of the history of the world into six ages is followed, as it is in other chroni cles of the period.3 The first age stretches from Adam to Noah and follows the Biblical record. To that record mediaeval and other. glosses have been added. The first part of the Chronicle begins thus: "Adam, the first man, was made of clay of the re.g. CapgraVe's Chronicle of England and Chronicon Johannis de Oxenees. earth in the field of Damascus and translated to Paradise. . On the seventh hour of the same day sin having been committed he was cast after midday in the valley of Josephat. * Cain we are told committed the seven sins and his descendants were cut off by the flood. The second age lasted from Noah to Abraham and the third from Abraham to David. Occasional references to Greek history or legend occur, but in the main.-. the Chronicle follows the Old Testament. The fourth age lasted David to Daniel and the fifth from Daniel to John the Baptist. The sixth began at the birth of Christ. During the early centuries of the Christian era we find little recorded but the names of the popes from St. Peter on, and such miracles ' as the "Invention of the Cross" by St. .Helena. Occasionally there is a reference which shows how the early centuries were used by the later chroniclers as hunting grounds for ecclesias tical and papal claims. . We read that in the year 312 Pope Sylvester ordained that no layman could bring charge against a clerk. In the same way the Donation of Constantine is re corded in full and the Emperor is represented as dowering the Roman Church with special liberties, estates and possessions, and we read that he "gave his imperial seat to St. Peter and his successors." And with absolutely unconscious humour Sprott adds "and at that time the Devil flying in the air ex claimed, 'This day is poison poured out on the churches.' " • One striking feature of the Chronicle is the way in which important historical happenings in England are omitted in the first part and are mentioned in the second part. Thus in the first part the year 1066 is> passed over without notice, al though there is a record in 1069 of the less known and less important attempted invasion of the "sons of Sweyn from Dacia to capture England and take or drive from England William the King," But if we turn to the second part of the Chronicle we find that the Norman Conquest is mentioned. Here we are told that Harold was killed in battle and William 4Cf. Capgrave, Rolls' Series, p. 5. "Anno Mundi. 1. The first Man Adam was made on a Friday, without modir, without fader, in the feld of Damask; and fro that place led into Paradise to dwell there, after dryven oute for syne." was victorious,* ahd at Christmas in the year 1077 he was crowned King at Westminster. A long account is then in serted which deals with William's claim to the throne and tells of Harold's oath to William. In the first part also there is no mention of Magna Carta, : although the removal ofthe Inter dict has been recorded in 1213, and in 1215 we read of the execution at Sandwich of a certain monk Stacius "who came . with many Frenchmen and six ships and eighty 'cogges.' " ' But in the second part there is a record of Magna Carta being signed at "Romningmede" and a short summary of its main provisions is given. The battles of Lewes and Evesham are recorded in the second part but not in the first part. The battle of Crecy, on the other hand, is mentioned in both, as are also the siege of Calais and the battle of Poictiers. The inclusion of these last three is possibly due to the fact that they occur in that portion of the Chronicle written by the con- tinuator. These discrepancies are perhaps due to the fact that the second part of the Chronicle is more definitely confined to - English history while the first part is more of the nature of a compendium of universal history. Pars Secunda. i The Second Part of the Chronicle opens with a long story of the thirty daughters of Cecrops who landed in England and of their adventures with the demons there. Brutus the Trojan appears and founds New Troy or London. More interesting is the account of King Leyr "who made Leicester." The pas sage is worth quoting in full, although part of' it is untranslat able since the- Latin is bad. "This Leyr had three daughters but no son, whose names are Conorilla, Ragan, and Cordinilla. The two first he gave with a third part of the Kingdom to the Dukes of Cornwall and Albany, but the youngest sister he presented to Aganyp- pusr King of France, without part of the Kingdom as marriage portion. After Leyr became sluggish with age* the afore- 5p. 112. Tandem Haroldo occiso Willelmo cessit victoria. Et in proximo natali sub anno Domini M LXXVII Westmonasterii in Regem Coronatus est. 8 A small vessel. V "cenio torpere" is the text, which is not translatable. 8 mentioned dukes took away the kingdom and the royal power from him. Which done, the King of France came to Britain and conquered the dukes in war and handed back the whole land to King Leyr. But within three years Leyr and Aganyp- pus the Kings having died, Cordinilla was expelled by Mega- rius and Cunagund her relations and they divided the kingdom between them." From such chronicle accounts as this did Shakespeare get the story of his great drama. The Roman occupation is touched on and a/lso the intro duction of Christianity. Legend and fact are mixed together in vague confusion. Old King Cole appears as the founder of Colchester and is succeeded by Constantine the father of Constantine the Great who married Helena, King Cole or Coole's daughter. After the Donation of Constantine has been hinted at in the gifts of estates and large possession to the Church of God, we find ourselves tracing the fortunes of the would-be emperor Maximus. Soon after Vortigern appears and with him Hengist and Horsa. Vortigern is stated to have given,, contrary to the wishes of his,nobles, the county of Kent to Hengist as a result of his love for Hengist's daughter Ttowen (or Rbwena?) , who had greeted him at her father's court with the loving cup and the welcome "Wasseyl." To which the King replied "DrynkhayL" 8 King Arthur receives his mention as having under his control the Kings of the Danes, of Norway, Scotland, and three Kings of Ireland, the Duke of Neustria, and all the Dukes of Greater and Lesser Britain." He also ia stated to have slain the kings of Libya and Syria with his own hands, and to have held the Round Table in France where there were "nine kings, eighteen dukes, barons and knights without number, nineteen archbishops and fifty bishops." Alfred the Great receives credit for the founding of Ox ford University and for making peace with the Danes. Edgar is praised for recalling Dunstan and the story is told how that he was rowed by the Kings of Scotland, Cumberland and the Isles and five subkings at Caerleon. The troubles of Ethelred the Unready and the institution of Danegeld are recounted and Edmund Ironsides, as Hearne points out in his introduc tion, is stated to be Ethelred's legitimate and not his natural "Both words are in English in the Latin text. Son. The strife between Canute and Edmund Ironsides is touched upon and it is related how the war was abandoned as useless and peace was made. "Then Canute said to Edmund, 'You will reign with me in Daneland and I shall reign jointly with you in England,' and so it was." The Norman Conquest follows next, and short sketches are given of the reigns of the early Norman kings. The terms of the Domesday inquest are given. "He made all England to be described, how much land each baron had, and what fiefs and knights, how many carucates and villeins and what eccle siastic dignities." The anarchy of Stephen and the reforms of Henry II receive alike, but short treatment. About a page is given to each. The Crusade of Richard I is dismissed in a few lines. All that Sprott records is the capture of Acre and the seizure of the King by the Duke of Austria. John fares better since we are told of the loss of Normandy, the Interdict, -Magna Carta, and the invasion of Louis of France.' A fairly long account is given of Henry Ill's relations with France. The Baron's war is mentioned but there is no reference to Simon de Montfort. Edward l's parliament in 1272 and the Second Statutes of Westminster receive a mention. His conquest of Wales and attempted conquest of Scotland are touched upon, as is also his Mortmain Statute. The remainder of Part II is devoted to the reigns of Edward II and Edward III. Nothing of particular inetrest is to be found in the account. The claim of Edward III to the French throne is recorded and mention is made of the battles of the Hundred Years War. The second part concludes with the death of Edward III in 1377. Its general characteristics are those of Part I, conciseness and lack of critical powers. It is more interesting reading on the whole since there is more continuous narrative than in Part I, but as history the two must rank about equal. Fragmenta Sprottiana. These fragments' contain some of the most interesting facts which can be gleaned from the Chronicle of Thomas Sprott. The first fragment is a list of the Abbots of St. Augustine, Canterbury, and states the place of their consecra tion. It is interesting to trace, in it echoes of the Investiture 10 Struggle of the eleventh and early twelfth centuries:. ^ The first entry is as follows : "From the death of Abbot John I to Abbot Hugo Ftory for 480 years the Abbots of the place were consecrated in the nearby church9 by the Archbishops of Canterbury without exaction of homage (sine exactione professions) . But this Hugo was the first to be consecrated in the King's chapel at Westminster which was the cause of the whole trouble." , The date of this consecration is not given but the next two abbots who assumed office in 1074 and 1151 were not con secrated in the royal chapel. One would of course like to con nect the election and consecration of the Abbot Hugh I with the clause in the Constitution of Clarendon,10 which directs that the electioh of the abbot be held in the King's chapel, but this is impossible, since the abbots seem to be in chronological . list and two abbots occur in that list between Hugh I and 1164, the date of the Constitution of Clarendon. The next seven abbots were consecrated in the Roman curia during the period 1176-1272 and were mitred' abbots. Then comes one abbot, Thomas Fyndone, "who was consecrated at London by the . Archbishop of Durham."11 Five abbots are then given as conse crated at the papal court at Avignon and the list ends abruptly with the consecration of the Abbot Michael by the Bishop of Winchester in 1375. Apparently the Abbot Michael was the reigning abbot when the continuator of Thomas Sprott made the last additions to his manuscript. The remaining fragments deal chiefly with the temporali ties of the Archbishop and the Priory of Canterbury and with the privileges of the Abbey of St. Augustine. A list of papal bulls affecting the Abbey is also given. Then the revenues of the Bishop of Rochester and the taxes of the temporalities of the Prior of Rochester, are recorded. What the connection of these facts with the Abbey of St. Augustine is is not stated. The fragments Hearne claims he found in the original MS. 9ista. Canterbury Cathedral. 10Stubbs, Charters, 8th Ed., p. 140; Constitution of Clarendon, cap. XII, in capella ipsius domini regis debet fieri electio. 11 which he discovered in the library of Sir Edward Dering of Surrenden Dering in the county of Kent. No account of the Chronicle of Thomas Sprott woulef be complete without more lengthy reference to his eighteenth century editor, Thomas Hearne. Hearne was an eighteenth century Oxford scholar, who by his industry and love of ancient MSS. tried to stimulate the study of historical records. His' exhaustive researches give the lie to the theory that in the early eighteenth century Oxford was a hive of drones where "Lecturers ceased to lecture" and "readers did not read."12 Hearne is himself scornful of the historians who "study to speak fairly and ornately and bring nothing to the light of day sought out from the archives and far antiquity of libraries." 13 Hearne, on the contrary, was a true antiquarian and sought out MSS. wherever he could find them. Through a friend of his he obtained acce'ss to the MS. of Thomas Sprott which had "lain in goodness knows what corners" until it came into the possession of Sir Edward Dering, who flourished^ during the reign of Charles I. This worthy baronet was an eager collector of MSS. and had planned a history of his native county of Kent, but was prevented from writing it by the outbreak of the Civil War and his own untimely death. From ja, descendant of his, also a Sir Edward Dering, Thomas Hearne obtained the MS. of the Chronicle of Thomas Sprott. He laboured at it and in 1719 gave his labours to the world. Hearne's" edition is the only edition of the Chronicle men- tioned in that learned and exhaustive work, A Descriptive Catalogue of Material Relating to the History of Great Britain and Ireland, which was published in London in 1862. It may therefore be taken as the only printed edition of the Chronicle and so it is to him that we owe our knowledge of Thomas Sprott., The 1719 edition is a small octavo volume bound in leather printed at the Clarendon Press, and dated from the Sheldonian Theatre. It contains in addition to the Chronicle of Thomas Sprott certain other documents which Hearne had collected in MSS. The chief of these are "A Tract relating to ¦,... v^HeadJam, Oxford (Mediaeval Towns Series), p. 402. 13Hearne's Introduction, p. IX. 12 Peterborough and Ramsey Abbies: Transcribed from a strange old defaced parchment MS. in the hands of Mr. John Murray of London, Gent.", and also the 14 "Brief History of the Antiquity and Origin of the University of Cambridge by Nicholas Cantaleysus. But since these documents, interesting- enough in their own way, have no part in the Chronicle of Thomas Sprott, they can have no place in this essay. They remain none the less a monument to the antiquarian learning of Thomas Hearne. Of what value then is the Chronicle of Thomas Sprott? ' It cannot be said to be one of the greatest of English Chronicles and can never hope to rank, for example, with Bede, the Anglo- j Saxon Chronicle, or Matthew Paris. It contains little first hand information except when it treats of the affairs of the Abbey of St. Augustine at Canterbury. But it is none the less noteworthy as an example of the lesser chronicles of England made up by the monks in their scriptoria, and recording the events of universal history which they thought important. It is a link with the past and allows us to glean some stray straws from the great storehouse of mediaeval learning and learned- ness. Walter Sage. Bibliography. 1. Thomae Sprotti Chronica. Ed. Hearne; Oxoniis, 1719, containing, i. Tho Hearnus Hearnus Lectori+appendix. ii. Thomae Sprotti Chronicae Pars prima. iii. Thomas Sprotti Chronicae Pars Secunda. iv. Fragmenta Sprottiana. 2. Bede's Ecclesiastical History. Giles' edition (Bohn's Library). 3. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Giles' edition (Bohn's Library). 4. Capgrave's Chronicle of England (Rolls' Series). 5. R. de Coggeshall: Chronicon Anglrcanum, (Rolls' Series). 6. Chronica Johannis de Oxonedes, (Rolls' Series). C^Nbr^tes£antalUPi HiStri°la d6 ^^^ 6t 0ri*ine ^iversitati* YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 9002 08561 0096