ABSTRACT
The period from 1307 to 1485 has advantages for the scholar over the earlier period of medieval British history – sources are more common and include many more written at a ‘local’ level. Notably there is a noticeable shift in the C14th to the C15th in the language used by many chroniclers, as opposed to that of administrative record, from Latin or French to the demotic in everyday usage – the medieval ancestor of modern English. The literary traditions of earlier romantic and ‘nationalist’ ‘histories’ like those of Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 1130s also played a major role, and the long tradition of tracing English/British history back to the legend of the supposed British founding king ‘Brutus’ from Troy continued to produce a series of chronicles known as Bruts. The major chronicles for the C14th include the Anonimalle Chronicle, compiled at St Mary’s Abbey in York.
