Mid-century public libraries legislation in Britain was directed mostly at the use of modern books, but some of the larger libraries also built up substantial collections of early books. Specialefforts were made by some to collect local literature of all kinds, as awareness grew also of the importance of the mass of published ephemera that underpinned social activity.

A concern for provenance, details of those who, whether individuals or institutions, had owned books formerly, was no new phenomenon. Classical and antiquarian scholars valued books not just for their associations, but also for their annotations.Other names, written inside books, were noted much more rarely. The period saw a much wider interest in earlier ownership and use.

The trials on 17-27 April, sentences on 28 April, and executions on Monday, 1 May counted among the greatest public sensations of the era. Adolphus’s brilliant defence rested on the conspiracy’s absurdity and the crown’s dependence on the evidence of the unreliable turncoat, Adams.Chief justice Abbott, an unlovely enemy of radicals, advised the jury to deliver guilty verdicts, which they did.Abbott then ordered eleven conspirators to be executed as traitors.Five, however, were shown ‘mercy’ and transported, and one had his sentence respited.Adolphus asked them all to write in their own hands memento passages for him to distribute to his cabinet friend in facsimile.

Flodoard’s Annals are a crucial source for the history of the post-Carolingian kingdoms in the first half of the tenth century. Yet in spite of the text’s importance, it has seldom been studied as a piece of historiography. Flodoard’s highly reticent prose has often been noted, but the work presents several puzzles that have yet to be resolved. Building on the findings of Chapter 1 concerning Flodoard’s political activities, this chapter considers the Annals in the context of his deep knowledge of history and the different ways it could be represented. It examines aspects of the text that were highly traditional as well as those that were exceedingly novel. While the Annals have often been interpreted as a gloomy but accurate account of tenth-century political decline, this chapter argues that this narrative of failure was a more deliberate authorial construction than has been supposed. Disillusioned by political calamities and personal disappointments, I suggest that Flodoard found in the chronicle form a vehicle for a subtle but pointed critique of the ills of his day.