[Manuscript title:] Cahier qui contient l'abrégé des événements qui se sont passés depuis la descente de Jules Cesar en Angleterre...

Bookseller Notes

An interesting mid eighteenth-century French manuscript recording the earliest rulers of England, which is an excerpt and abridgement of John Barrow's New and impartial History of England, From the Invasion of Julius Caesar, to the signing of the Preliminaries of Peace, in the Year 1762. Published in 1763, Barrow's ambitious work runs to ten volumes and is packed with anecdote and incident, but here the translator - presumably the Pierre Lanat of the title page - provides a tabulated version of the principal rulers of England in roughly the first millennium following Caesar's invasion in 54 BCE (Ethelred, Cnut, Harold etc.). This reads as more than a translation exercise; the notebook has obviously been formatted for ease of reference; headlines and notes in the margin serve as useful markers to the various monarchs - their regnal numbers and length in years of their reigns - and the work ends with a chart showing the various 'races' and families that ruled England in the period.