The Chronicles of England, from Brute unto this Present Year of Christ

The Chronicles of England, from Brute unto this Present Year of Christ FV: Stow Author John Stow Editor Karen Sawyer Marsalek Conversion and Remediation LEMDO Team Queen’s Men Editions QME

The Queen’s Men Editions anthology is led by Helen Ostovich, General Editor; Peter Cockett, General Editor (Performance); Andrew Griffin, General Editor (Text; until 2026); and Janelle Jenstad, General Editor (Text; 2026–)

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada McMaster University Poculi Ludique Societas University of Waterloo University of Toronto Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies University of Victoria Friends of the ISE

Released with Queen’s Men Editions 2.0

University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform

Intellectual copyright in this edition is held by the editor, Karen Sawyer Marsalek. The critical paratexts, including these Chronicles of England, from Brute unto this Present Year of Christ, are licensed under a CC BY-NC_ND 4.0 license, which means that they are freely downloadable without permission under the following conditions: (1) credit must be given to the editor, QME, and LEMDO in any subsequent use of the files and/or data; (2) the content cannot be adapted or repurposed (except for quotations for the purposes of academic review and citation); and (3) commercial uses are not permitted without the knowledge and consent of QME, the editor, and LEMDO. This license allows for pedagogical use of the critical paratexts in the classroom.

Production photographs and videos on this site may not be downloaded. They appear freely on this site with the permission of the actors and the ACTRA union. They may be used within the context of university courses, within the classroom, and for reference within research contexts, including conferences, when credit is given to the producing company and to the actors. Commercial use of videos and photographs is forbidden.

Queen’s Men Editions

Born-digital, peer-reviewed document written by Karen Sawyer Marsalek. First published in the QME 1.0 anthology on the ISE platform. Converted to TEI-XML and remediated by the LEMDO Team for republication in the QME 2.0 anthology on the LEMDO platform.

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Document Types All documents in LEMDO are either born-digital documents or primary documents. Within those two general categories, LEMDO offers additional ways to categorize a file. Primary Source Primary source documents. Use this top-level category only for supplementary texts, usually in combination with the editorial treatment letmixed. Editorial Treatments Distinct approaches to textual editing used by LEMDO editors Mixed Texts in which a variety of possibly incongruous editorial approaches have been mixed. Use this category in combination with ldtPrimary. Responsibilities Responsibilities Author MARC Code List for Relators definition: A person, family, or organization responsible for creating a work that is primarily textual in content, regardless of media type (e.g., printed text, spoken word, electronic text, tactile text) or genre (e.g., poems, novels, screenplays, blogs). Use also for persons, etc., creating a new work by paraphrasing, rewriting, or adapting works by another creator such that the modification has substantially changed the nature and content of the original or changed the medium of expression. LEMDO uses the term author in two contexts: (1) to indicate the author of a primary work or document (such as Hamlet), and (2) to indicate the author of a secondary text (such as the Critical Introduction to <title level="m">Hamlet, by David Bevington). Editor MARC Code List for Relators definition: A person, family, or organization contributing to a resource by revising or elucidating the content, e.g., adding an introduction, notes, or other critical matter. An editor may also prepare a resource for production, publication, or distribution. For major revisions, adaptations, etc., that substantially change the nature and content of the original work, resulting in a new work, see author. LEMDO uses the general term editor only in edition metadata and only to indicate when a person is responsible for editing all parts of an edition. Otherwise, use the more granular terms to describe the precise nature of the editorial role. Markup Editor MARC Code List for Relators definition: A person or organization performing the coding of SGML, HTML, or XML markup of metadata, text, etc. LEMDO uses this term for someone who encodes a file, remediates a converted text, or reviews the XML markup of a file. Published file. Updated metadata Changed file name from emdStowChronicles to emdFV_StowChronicles. Added licence. Added respStmt for LEMD1. Updated encodingDesc. Added QME anthology type. Published file Remediated document. Created document by splitting a single file of supplementary texts into separate files. Original peer-reviewed content added to XWiki by a member of the QME team or a member of the ISE team acting on behalf of QME. The earlier history of this content was not captured in metadata. Peer review arranged by QME Editorial Board Peter Cockett Peter Cockett

Peter Cockett is an associate professor in the iArts (Integrated Arts) program at McMaster University. He is the co-editor, with Melinda Gough, of Engendering the Stage in the Age of Shakespeare and Beyond (University of Toronto Press, 2025) which publishes the findings of their 2018 Performance as Research (PaR) workshop at the Stratford Festival Lab. He is the general editor (performance), and technical co-ordinating editor of Queen’s Men Editions. His PaR directing credits include King Leir, The Famous Victories of Henry V, and Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (2006), Clyomon and Clamydes (2010), and Three Ladies of London (2015) for the Shakespeare and the Queen’s Men project (SQM). The process behind the 2006 productions is documented in depth on the project website Performing the Queen’s Men. For the PLS, the University of Toronto’s Medieval and Renaissance Players, he has directed the Digby Mary Magdalene (2003) and the double bill of George Peele’s The Old Wives Tale and the Chester Antichrist (2004). He also directed An Experiment in Elizabethan Comedy (2005) for the SQM project and Inside Out: The Persistence of Allegory (2008) in collaboration with Alan Dessen. Peter is a professional actor and director with numerous stage and screen credits. He can be contacted at cockett@mcmaster.ca.

Tracey El Hajj Tracey El Hajj

Junior Programmer 2019–2020. Research Associate 2020–2021. Tracey received her PhD from the Department of English at the University of Victoria in the field of Science and Technology Studies. Her research focuses on the algorhythmics of networked communications. She was a 2019–2020 President’s Fellow in Research-Enriched Teaching at UVic, where she taught an advanced course on Artificial Intelligence and Everyday Life. Tracey was also a member of the Map of Early Modern London team, between 2018 and 2021. Between 2020 and 2021, she was a fellow in residence at the Praxis Studio for Comparative Media Studies, where she investigated the relationships between artificial intelligence, creativity, health, and justice. As of July 2021, Tracey has moved into the alt-ac world for a term position, while also teaching in the English Department at the University of Victoria.

Mahayla Galliford Mahayla Galliford

Project Manager, 2025-present; Assistant Project Manager, 2024-2025; Research Assistant, 2021-present. Mahayla Galliford (she/her) graduated from the University of Victoria with a BA (honours with distinction) in 2024, and an MA English in 2026. Mahayla’s undergraduate research explored early modern stage directions and civic water pageantry. Her SSHRC-funded MA thesis project focuses on transcribing, editing, and encoding early modern girls’ manuscripts, specifically Lady Rachel Fane’s May Masque in collaboration with LEMDO.

Andrew Griffin Andrew Griffin

Andrew Griffin is an associate professor in the department of English and an affiliate professor in the department of Theater and Dance at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is general editor (text) of Queen’s Men Editions. He studies early modern drama and early modern historiography while serving as the lead editor at the EMC Imprint. He has co-edited with Helen Ostovich and Holger Schott Syme Locating the Queen’s Men (2009) and has co-edited The Making of a Broadside Ballad (2016) with Patricia Fumerton and Carl Stahmer. His monograph, Untimely Deaths in Renaissance Drama: Biography, History, Catastrophe, was published with the University of Toronto Press in 2019. He is editor of the anonymous The Chronicle History of King Leir (Queen’s Men Editions, 2011). He can be contacted at griffin@english.ucsb.edu.

Martin Holmes Martin Holmes

Martin Holmes has worked as a developer in the UVic’s Humanities Computing and Media Centre for over two decades, and has been involved with dozens of Digital Humanities projects. He has served on the TEI Technical Council and as Managing Editor of the Journal of the TEI. He took over from Joey Takeda as lead developer on LEMDO in 2020. He is a collaborator on the SSHRC Partnership Grant led by Janelle Jenstad.

Navarra Houldin Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

Janelle Jenstad Janelle Jenstad

Janelle Jenstad is a Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director of The Map of Early Modern London, and Director of Linked Early Modern Drama Online. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Beatrice Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media: Old Words, New Tools (Routledge). She has edited John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice (with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Elizabethan Theatre, Early Modern Literary Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, Renaissance and Reformation, and The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. She contributed chapters to Approaches to Teaching Othello (MLA); Teaching Early Modern Literature from the Archives (MLA); Institutional Culture in Early Modern England (Brill); Shakespeare, Language, and the Stage (Arden); Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate); New Directions in the Geohumanities (Routledge); Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter); Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana); Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota); Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (Routledge); and Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London (Routledge). For more details, see janellejenstad.com.

Kate LeBere Kate LeBere KL

Project Manager, 2020–2021. Assistant Project Manager, 2019–2020. Textual Remediator and Encoder, 2019–2021. Kate LeBere completed her BA (Hons.) in History and English at the University of Victoria in 2020. During her degree she published papers in The Corvette (2018), The Albatross (2019), and PLVS VLTRA (2020) and presented at the English Undergraduate Conference (2019), Qualicum History Conference (2020), and the Digital Humanities Summer Institute’s Project Management in the Humanities Conference (2021). While her primary research focus was sixteenth and seventeenth century England, she completed her honours thesis on Soviet ballet during the Russian Cultural Revolution. She is currently a student at the University of British Columbia’s iSchool, working on her masters in library and information science.

Karen Sawyer Marsalek Karen Marsalek

Karen Sawyer Marsalek (Famous Victories of Henry V, early modern text) is an associate professor of English at St. Olaf College. She has edited, directed and performed in several early English plays. Her publications include essays on true resurrections in medieval drama and The Winter’s Tale, false resurrections in the Chester Antichrist and 1 Henry IV, and theatrical properties of skulls and severed heads. Her current research is on remains and revenants in the King’s Men’s repertory. She can be contacted at marsalek@stolaf.edu.

Mathew Martin Mathew Martin

Dr. Mathew R. Martin is Full Professor at Brock University, Canada. He is the author of Between Theatre and Philosophy (2001), Tragedy and Trauma in the Plays of Christopher Marlowe (2015) and Psychoanalysis and Literary Theory (2023), and co-editor, with his colleague James Allard, of Staging Pain, 1500–1800: Violence and Trauma in British Theatre (2009). For Broadview Press he has edited Christopher Marlowe’s Edward the Second (2010), Jew of Malta (2012), Doctor Faustus: The B-Text (2013) and Tamburlaine the Great Part One and Part Two (2014), and Robert Greene’s Selimus (2022). For Revels Editions he has edited George Peele’s David and Bathsheba (2018) and Marlowe’s The Massacre at Paris (2021). For Queen’s Men Editions he has edited The Famous Victories of Henry V (2016). He has published two articles of textual criticism on the printed texts of Marlowe’s plays: Inferior Readings: The Transmigration of Material in <title level="m">Tamburlaine the Great (Early Theatre 17.2 [December 2014]), and (on the political inflections of the shifts in punctuation in the early editions of the play) Accidents Happen: Roger Barnes’s 1612 Edition of Marlowe’s <title level="m">Edward the Second (Early Theatre 16.1 [June 2013]). His latest editing projects are a double-play Revels edition of Robert Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay and John of Bordeaux and a Digital Renaissance Editions edition of Dido, Queen of Carthage.

Scott Matthews Scott Matthews Helen Ostovich Helen Ostovich

Helen Ostovich, professor emerita of English at McMaster University, is the founder and general editor of Queen’s Men Editions. She is a general editor of The Revels Plays (Manchester University Press); Series Editor of Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama (Ashgate, now Routledge), and series co-editor of Late Tudor and Stuart Drama (MIP); play-editor of several works by Ben Jonson, in Four Comedies: Ben Jonson (1997); Every Man Out of his Humour (Revels 2001); and The Magnetic Lady (Cambridge 2012). She has also edited the Norton Shakespeare 3 The Merry Wives of Windsor Q1602 and F1623 (2015); The Late Lancashire Witches and A Jovial Crew for Richard Brome Online, revised for a 4-volume set from OUP 2021; The Ball, for the Oxford Complete Works of James Shirley (2021); The Merry Wives of Windsor for Internet Shakespeare Editions, and The Dutch Courtesan (with Erin Julian) for the Complete Works of John Marston, OUP 2022. She has published many articles and book chapters on Jonson, Shakespeare, and others, and several book collections, most recently Magical Transformations of the Early Modern English Stage with Lisa Hopkins (2014), and the equivalent to book website, Performance as Research in Early English Theatre Studies: The Three Ladies of London in Context containing scripts, glossary, almost fifty conference papers edited and updated to essays; video; link to Queen’s Mens Ediitons and YouTube: http://threeladiesoflondon.mcmaster.ca/contexts/index.htm, 2015. Recently, she was guest editor of Strangers and Aliens in London ca 1605, Special Issue on Marston, Early Theatre 23.1 (June 2020). She can be contacted at ostovich@mcmaster.ca.

Joey Takeda Joey Takeda

Joey Takeda is LEMDO’s Consulting Programmer and Designer, a role he assumed in 2020 after three years as the Lead Developer on LEMDO.

Anonymous John Stow John Stow LEMDO Team The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors. University of Victoria https://www.uvic.ca/ QME Editorial Board

The QME Editorial Board consists of Helen Ostovich, General Editor; Peter Cockett, General Editor (Performance); Andrew Griffin, General Editor (Text); and Janelle Jenstad General Editor (Text).

Queen’s Men Editions QME

From John Stow, The Chronicles of England, from Brute unto this Present Year of Christ

Upon the eve of St. John Baptist, the King’s son being in Eastcheap at supper after midnight, betwixt two or three of the clock a great debate happened between his men and men of the Court, lasting an hour till the Mayor and Sheriffs with other citizens ceased the same, for the which the said Mayor, Sheriffs, and twelve Aldermen were sent after by writ to appear before the King there for to answer; at which the King with his sons, and divers other lords, were highly moved against the city. William Gascoigne, Chief Justice, inquired of the Mayor and the Aldermen, for the citizens, whether they would put them in the King’s grace. Whereunto they answered, they had not offended the King nor his sons, but according to law staunched the debates. Then the King, seeing it would be none otherwise, forgave altogether, and they departed.

King Henry IV was taken with sickness, of the which he languished till his appointed hour, during which sickness some evilly disposed people labored to make dissension between the King and the Prince his son. By reason whereof, and by the act of youth, which he exercised more than meanly, and for the great recourse of people unto him, of whom his court was at all times more abundant than that of the King his father, the King suspected that he would presume to usurp the crown, he being alive. Which suspicious jealousy was occasion that he in part withdrew his affection and singular love from the Prince. But when this noble Prince was advertised of his father’s jealousy, he disguised himself in a gown of blue satin, made full of small eyelets, and at every eyelet the needle wherewith it was made hanging still by a thread of silk Thus appareled, with a great company of lords and other noblemen of his court, he came to the King his father, who at that time lay at Westminster, where at his coming (by his own commandment) not one of his company advanced himself further than the fire in the hall, notwithstanding that they were greatly and oft desired to the contrary by the lords and great estates of the King’s court. And that the Prince had commanded, to give the less occasion of mistrust to the King his father, but he himself, only accompanied by the King’s house, passed forth to the King his father, to whom after due salutation he desired to show the intent of his mind in secret manner. Then the King caused himself to be borne in his chair into his secret chamber (because he was desired and might not go), where in the presence of there or four persons in whom the King had most confidence, he commanded the Prince to show the effect of his mind. Then the Prince, kneeling down before his father, said to him these words: Most redoubted Lord and father, I am this time come to your presence as your liegeman, and as your natural son, in all things to obey your Grace as my sovereign Lord and father. And whereas I understand you have me suspect of my behavior against your Grace, and that you fear I would usurp your crown against the pleasure of your Highness, from my conversation your Grace knoweth that if you were in fear of any man, of what estate soever he were, my duty were to the endangering of my life to punish that person, thereby to raze that sore from your heart. And then how much rather ought I to suffer death to bring your Grace from the fear that you have of me that am your natural son and your liegeman. And to that intent I have this day by confession and receiving the sacrament, prepared myself, and therefore most redoubted Lord and father, I beseech you in the honor of God, for the easing of your heart, here before your knees to slay me with this dagger. And at that word with all reverence he delivered to the King his dagger, saying, My Lord and father, my life is not so desirous to me that I would live one day that should be to your displeasure, nor I covet so much my life as I do your pleasure and welfare, and in your thus doing, here in the presence of these lords and before God at the day of judgement, I clearly forgive you my death. At these words of the Prince, the King, taken with compassion of heart, cast from him the dagger, and embracing the prince, kissed him, and with effusion of tears said unto him, My right dear and heartily beloved son, it is true that I had you partly suspect, and as I now perceive, undeserved on your part. But seeing this your humility and faithfulness, I shall neither slay you, nor from henceforth have you any more in mistrust, for no report that shall be made to me, and thereof I assure you upon mine honor. Thus by his great wisdom was the wrongful imagination of his father’s hate utterly avoided, and himself restored to the King’s former grace and favor.

Henry the Fifth delighted in songs and musical instruments, insomuch that in his chapel amongst other his private papers, he used certain Psalms of David translated into heroical English meter by John Lydgate, Monk of Bury.

Whilst his father lived, being accompanied with some of his young lords and gentlemen, he would wait in disguised array for his own receivers, and distress them of their money. And sometimes at such enterprises both he and is company were surely beaten. And when his receivers made to him their complaints, how they were robbed in their coming unto him, he would give them discharge of so much money as they had lost. And besides that they should not depart from him without great rewards for their trouble and vexation, especially he should be rewarded that had best resisted him and his company, and of whom he had received the greatest and most strokes. But after the decease of his father there was never any youth or wildness that might have place in him, but all his acts were suddenly changed into gravity and discretion.

The night before this cruel battle, by the advice and counsel (as it is said) of the Duke of York, the King had given commandment through his host, that every man should purvey him a stake sharp at both ends, which the Englishmen fixed in the ground before them in the field, to defend them from the oppression of the horsemen.