Pagina:Annales monastici Vol IV.djvu/20

Xll PREFACE. and thougli on the whole Wykes is much the fuller and more diffuse of the two, this is hy no means always the case. This jjartial similarity continues till the year 1258, when the history of the provisions of Oxford and the barons' war is begun ; and here the two are per- fectly distinct, the wi'iters taking opposite sides in that great struggle. They may be said to be entirely dis- tinct till the year 1 278, when the ]ISS. became identical, or at least so far so, as to admit of collation. They again differ from 1280 to 1284, Wykes being apparently an abridgment of Osney, and are again identical from 1285 to the middle of 1289, when Wykes comes to an end, and the other MS. is continued, Avith the heading " Con- " tinuatio histori?e et eventuum in regno Anglite, anno " Domini mcclxxxix. ; *' the style, however, being exactly the same as the latter portion of the MS. which goes under AVykes's name — a somewhat ambitious style, each year beginning with a rhetorical opening, which this latter chronicle had adopted since the year 1263. Is then Wykes copied from Osney, or Osney from AVykes ? Or is the one chronicle a mere re-issue or new edition of the other ? From many circumstances the last of these alternatives would liave seemed the most probable, were it not that in the history of the barons' war diametrically opposite views are entertained by the two chroniclers, — Wykes being a strong royalist, and Osney equally strong on the barons' side. Nor do I think that either of the , former suppositions can be adopted in its simplicity. In the earlier portion of the annals, where there can be no doubt that one was derived from the other, if not both from a common soui'ce, Wykes is usually the fuller, and to my mind gives rather the impression of being enlarged from Osney, than of Osney being abridged from Wykes,' From 1 See for a slight, though good, I " Translatio Sanctae Fi-ideswidae ; " instance of this. p. 39. Osney has, | Wykes, " Translat33 sunt reliquiae