From the start the fourteenth century was filled with crisis and change, from plague to rebellion, amid political conflict and increasing literacy. Historical writing changed accordingly, although new stable forms appeared in the Prose Brut and Higden’s Polychronicon. Elsewhere, more innovative chronicles in French and Latin jostled with new kinds of English ones, for and by secular as well as clerical readers and writers. This chapter focuses on three from the century’s first half: Robert Mannyng’s Chronicle, Geoffrey le Baker’s Chronica, and Thomas Gray’s Scalachronica. Some historical writing, however, clung to antiquated forms and outlooks down to the century’s end, when both the century’s social conflicts and historiographical diversities came to a head in the 1381 Rebellion. That revolt can best be appreciated against the earlier decades rather than as an abrupt start of major change, and it was with long familiarity with the rebels’ fundamental (and already partly successful) challenges that Thomas Walsingham denounced them using the most traditional monastic genres he could muster.

This concluding chapter ‘History in Print from Caxton to 1543’ examines the various forms in which historical writing was represented in early print. It begins by considering William Caxton’s various contributions and their places in his larger publishing strategies. It examines those works that he published that reflect earlier, manuscript traditions of historical writing, including the prose Brut and the Polychronicon, and the ways in which these were modified as they developed a new print tradition. The chapter goes on to assess the emergence of new forms of history that began to be developed by print in the early sixteenth century, including the emergence of print as a means for swift response to contemporary events and finally the appearance, in 1543, the first appearance in print of John Hardyng’s fifteenth-century verse chronicle, the publication of which was combined with contemporary prose historical writings.