Abstract:

London Chronicles were historical sources penned by anonymous authors influential in the social life of fifteenth-century London. This study will primarily give some information about historical development of the London Chronicles. It is going to touch upon some basic problems such as how a city-centred historiographical consciousness appeared and why the London Chronicles tradition emerged in the first half of the fifteenth century. In the following parts of the article, the main intention is to display the place of London Chronicles in understanding and writing the political history of the period through the use of historical documents. In this respect, it would be helpful to look at BL Cotton Julius B II Manuscript of the London Chronicles which was published by C.L. Kingsford in 1905 since almost half of the manuscript is composed of documentary records. For this reason, the study will sometimes necessarily focus on the analysis of some documentary evidence. This article will essentially argue that Medieval Chronicle writers were very historically-minded compilers revealing the historical reality of the society in which they lived, selecting and shaping the historical documents and information according to their objectives beyond simple registering of the events and facts. When viewed from this aspect, it will be showed that they did not fundamentally follow a much different methodology from modern historians with their approach to historical sources

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