The Peterborough Continuation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Summary

Although, as its title implies, the major part of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle contains records from the centuries before the Norman Conquest, when England was ruled by Anglo-Saxon and Danish kings, some regional continuations of the Chronicle were maintained well into the Anglo-Norman period. One of these was at Peterborough Abbey, which continued to record yearly entries during the first part of the twelfth century. This extract from the entries for the years 1127–28 is notable in that it uses the motif of the Wild Hunt of ghostly figures for purposes of what in a later age might have been regarded as political comment or even satire. To the twelfth-century chronicler and his fellow monks, the monstrous hunters who were seen stalking around their abbey deerfold would have signified the disruption of the natural order caused by what they evidently regarded as an inappropriate royal appointment to the position of abbot of Peterborough. The preface to this entry gives a disparaging description of the abbot in question, Henry of Poitou, and summarises his career as one of avarice and exploitative association with remunerative abbeys and monasteries in France and England.

The Dark Hunters of Peterborough

An. MCXXVII

Then Henry of Poitou thought that, if he could be established in England, he might have everything he wanted. He went to the king [Henry I] and said to him that, because he was old and helpless, he could not endure the great injustice and dissension in the land [France]. In his own name and that of all his friends, of whom he provided a list, he beseeched the king to give him the abbacy of Peterborough. The king granted it to him, both because he was his own relation, and because he had been of use as a sworn witness when the marriage of the son of the Duke of Normandy to the daughter of the Count of Anjou was ended on account of their consanguinity. In this disgraceful manner the abbacy was disposed of at London between Christmas and Candlemas. And so the new abbot went with the king as far as Winchester, and afterwards arrived at Peterborough. There he lived like a drone in a beehive: all that the bees in the hive are able to gather in, the drones devour and draw from them.