Where was Mercia?

And I'm sure we'll

come

on to that.

Well, let's do that now.

What do you mean by revolution? Because we're talking about a kind of gap of 150 years, which is four or five lifetimes, which is a substantial period in history.

There's missing or possibly missing or absent documentation compared to other places that Is that all linked in some way? Is there a reason for that? Was there some kind of, not cataclysm, but, or is it just, do you think it's an accident of history? I think there

are two possibilities and I haven't made up my mind which they are.

One is the merchant kings or their great ecclesiasts, the literate Latin writing bishops and abbots and abbotses.

Yeah.

Let's say they kept a chronicle like the Northumbrians did, like the kings of Wessex did.

And let's say that chronicle was in a form of a manuscript in about the year 800.

And let's say that every possible copy of that manuscript was destroyed by Vikings at one period or another in the late 9th century.

If that's true, it's still amazing that we don't get any sight of it.

You could have destroyed half a dozen copies of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and we'd still have several.

Well, we do still have several.

Bede was copied very widely in the early medieval period.

Lots of copies of Bede.

Not a single copy of the Mersham Chronicle, if it existed, except fragments of right at the end of that period, which appear in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

So the supposition must, I think, be that they didn't keep one.

Why did they not keep one? Possibly because Mercian kings still believed in oral history being transmitted.

It's very odd because they were very keen that their judgments, their charters, were copied down and written in Latin, which is why their charters survive.

So why didn't they keep a chronicle? We really don't know.

So it's a great mystery and we haven't solved

it.

Yeah.

And I'm sure we'll

come

on to that.

Well, let's do that now.

What do you mean by revolution? Because we're talking about a kind of gap of 150 years, which is four or five lifetimes, which is a substantial period in history.

There's missing or possibly missing or absent documentation compared to other places that Is that all linked in some way? Is there a reason for that? Was there some kind of, not cataclysm, but, or is it just, do you think it's an accident of history? I think there

are two possibilities and I haven't made up my mind which they are.

One is the merchant kings or their great ecclesiasts, the literate Latin writing bishops and abbots and abbotses.

Yeah.

Let's say they kept a chronicle like the Northumbrians did, like the kings of Wessex did.

And let's say that chronicle was in a form of a manuscript in about the year 800.

And let's say that every possible copy of that manuscript was destroyed by Vikings at one period or another in the late 9th century.

If that's true, it's still amazing that we don't get any sight of it.

You could have destroyed half a dozen copies of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and we'd still have several.

Well, we do still have several.

Bede was copied very widely in the early medieval period.

Lots of copies of Bede.

Not a single copy of the Mersham Chronicle, if it existed, except fragments of right at the end of that period, which appear in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

So the supposition must, I think, be that they didn't keep one.

Why did they not keep one? Possibly because Mercian kings still believed in oral history being transmitted.

It's very odd because they were very keen that their judgments, their charters, were copied down and written in Latin, which is why their charters survive.

So why didn't they keep a chronicle? We really don't know.

So it's a great mystery and we haven't solved

it.

Yeah.