[Polychronicon].

English incunable leaf from the press of William Caxton

An English incunable leaf from the press of William Caxton comprising the opening of book five, chapter twenty-two from the first edition of Ranulf Higden's Polychronicon in English translation by John Trevisa.

Higden began compiling his chronicle, a universal history of world events from Creation to the reign of Edward III, with a focus on the British Isles, after joining the Abbey of St Werburgh's in Chester in 1299, where he lived until his death in 1363/4. The Latin text survives in a short, intermediate, and a long edition, reflecting the various iterations and continuations the work went through in Higden's lifetime, before it was translated into English by the Cornish priest John Trevisa in the 1380s.

The Polychronicon 'offered to the educated and learned audience of fourteenth-century England a clear and original picture of world history based upon medieval tradition, but with a new interest in antiquity, and with the early history of Britain related as part of the whole' (ODNB). Its popularity is attested by the fact the Latin text survives in over 118 manuscripts, and in fragments in 9 more, with Trevisa's English edition preserved in another 14. This edition by William Caxton marks the first appearance of the text in print, in either Latin or English form.

Our leaf contains the end of chapter twenty-one and the opening of chapter twenty-two of book five, charting the years after the arrival of the Danes in England. The chapter opens with the restoration to the throne of Justinian II (668/9-711), the last Byzantine Emperor of the Heraclian dynasty, and the pilgrimage of the Mercian King Coenred (d.709) to Rome, who abdicated his throne in favour of his nephew Coelred.

First edition; single leaf; folio (26 x 18 cm); text in English, rubricated in red, with MS chapter initial, contemporary marginalia, further annotations to margins in pen in an early hand, a little soiled, with extremities a little frayed with slight loss to corners; loose in a mount, with accompanying printed transcription and with modern English rendering, and the original printed catalogue 'William Caxton and the 1482 Polychronicon' by George D. Painter.

cf. ESTC S106586; STC 9991; Blades p.22; Pforzheimer 489; Duff & Hellinga 173.