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Chronicles of England

The chronicle in metre, from the begynning of Englande, unto ye reigne of Edward ye fourth ... with a continuacion of the storie in prose to this our tyme [by Richard Grafton] The chronicle in metre, from the begynning of Englande, unto ye reigne of Edward ye fourth ... with a continuacion of the storie in prose to this our tyme [by Richard Grafton] The chronicle in metre, from the begynning of Englande, unto ye reigne of Edward ye fourth ... with a continuacion of the storie in prose to this our tyme [by Richard Grafton]

John Hardyng, The chronicle in metre, from the  first begynnyng of Englande,  unto ye reigne of Edward ye fourth… a continuacion of the storie in prose to this our tyme (London, 1543)

The chronicle in metre, from the begynning of Englande, unto ye reigne of Edward ye fourth ... with a continuacion of the storie in prose to this our tyme [by Richard Grafton]

John Hardyng’s 15th-century verse chronicle of England, in part an imperial recitation of English claims to Scottish dominion, was based on various spurious and forged sources that he “recovered” during his travels around the kingdom. By the 1590s, Hardyng’s original had itself been augmented and “improved” with content and commentary.

This edition updated the medieval narrative to the 1540s, but it also contains the copious manuscript annotations of the amateur, but industrious antiquary and principal librarian of the British Library, Sir Henry Ellis (d. 1869), who composed his own edition of Hardyng centuries later, in 1812. Ellis’s reverent antiquarianism prevented him from condemning Hardyng as an outright forger.