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Home  »  Volume II: English THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES  »  § 12. Arnold’s Chronicle

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume II. The End of the Middle Ages.

XIII. The Introduction of Printing into England and the Early Work of the Press

§ 12. Arnold’s Chronicle

About 1503, another Antwerp printer, Adraien van Berghen, printed a book for sale in England, which goes under the name of Arnold’s Chronicle. Richard Arnold, the compiler, was a merchant trading with the Low Countries and his work is a miscellaneous collection of stray facts relating to the city of London, copies of charters, examples of business letters, lists of mayors and bailiffs, of London churches and quaint recipes; it is, in fact, the commonplace book of a man with antiquarian tastes. Its chief fame is derived from its including, inserted between a list of the tolls of Antwerp and the difference between English and Flemish coinage, the famous ballad of The Nut Brown Maid. A second edition of the Chronicle was issued in which the lists were brought down to 1520.