House of Mercia

The Anglian collection is a collection of Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies and regnal lists. These survive in four manuscripts; two of which now reside in the British Library. The remaining two belong to the libraries of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and Rochester Cathedral, the latter now deposited with the Medway Archives.

All manuscripts appear to derive for a common source, now lost. Based on content and the pattern of divergence, Dumville dates its composition to 796 in Mercia. Both the genealogies and the episcopal lists were part of this original compilation, and have passed in tandem, with the surviving manuscripts all several steps removed from this original. All the manuscripts include genealogies for the kingdoms of Deira, Bernicia, Mercia, Lindsey, Kent and East Anglia. Three of them (C, T and R) also contain a West Saxon genealogy, and regnal lists for Northumbria and Mercia. This may represent material omitted or lost from the fourth (V) rather than addition to the other three. The genealogies are presented in reverse order, beginning with a ruler at the time it was composed and naming each successive generation back to Wodin, and in the Lindsey and Wessex pedigrees, beyond. The papal and episcopal lists, to a greater or lesser extent, have been updated during the course of transmission of the individual copies, but with the exception of the Wessex pedigree, the genealogies have largely remained unchanged except for error. Dumville suggests that a Northumbrian precursor to the genealogical portion of the Anglian collection served as a source for the genealogical section of Historia Brittonum, and provisionally dates its compilation to the 760s or 770s.

The surviving manuscripts are listed below, in what is currently thought to be the chronological order of their composition.

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