All communities tend to develop an account of their own origins. Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People has this advantage, that all but twenty-two chapters at the beginning of the first book deal with matters in his own lifetime or so near it that he could collect testimonies from eyewitnesses or from those who had seen and heard them, as well as from written materials. His history has therefore held its place as a source, despite some criticism of his selection of evidence. It remained in English libraries through the critical years of the Reformation, and was printed in the seventeenth century in England as well as on the continent, in Latin and in King Alfred’s and in another English version. This contributed something to the Anglican view of the origin of the Church of England, in tales of conflict and reconciliation between Celtic and Roman missions. On the question of Easter Bede’s details were relevant to disputes about the change in the Roman calendar in the sixteenth century. He also said that an Archbishop of Canterbury supplemented what was lacking in an ordination by bishops whose status was in doubt.

What came to be called The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was put into shape more than a century after the death of Bede, in the days of King Alfred. It was copied and continued at Peterborough until the end of the reign of Stephen, but it did not find favour with the Norman ruling class who occupied the important positions in church and state after 1066.