Abraham Wheelocke, ed., Historiæ ecclesiasticæ gentis Anglorum libri V. a Venerabili Beda presbytero scripti; tribus præcipue MSS. Latinis, a mendis haud paucis repurgati: Ab augustissimo veterum Anglo-Saxonum rege Aluredo (sive Alfredo) examinati; ejusque paraphrasi Saxonica eleganter explicati; tribus nunc etiam MSS. Saxonicis collati: Una cum annotationibus, & analectis e publicis veteris Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ homiliis aliisque MSS. Saxonicis, hinc inde excerptis, nec antea Latine datis: Quibus in calce operis Saxonicam Chronologiam seriem hujus inprimis Historiæ complectentem, nunquam antea in lucem editam, nunc quoq. primo Latine versam contexuimus: Opera hæc fere omnia Saxonica hactenus in archivis recondita, nunc demum in reipublicæ literariæ usum deprompta e bibliotheca publica Cantabrigiensi. Quibus accesserunt Anglo-Sasonicæ leges: et ultimo, Leges Henrici I.nunc primum editæ. (Cambridge, 1644).
The first edition of this book was published in 1643, while this volume, published in the next year, is a reissue of the same book with the addition of William Lambarde's Archaionomia (1568), a pioneering collection of Anglo-Saxon laws and treatises with Latin translation, including the laws of Edward the Confessor and William I.
Among many texts included in this volume, the most notable are the editiones principes of the Old English Bede (as Douglas writes 'Wheloc's work on Bede was to an especial degree important' (p. 62)) and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The text of the Old English Bede is based on three manuscripts, while that of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is chiefly based on the manuscript, BL Cotton Otho B.xi, which was largely destroyed in the fire at the Cotton Library in 1731. The Old English Bede is accompanied by its Latin original, while the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is presented with a Latin translation.
The editor, Abraham Wheelocke (or Wheloc, c. 1593-1653), was a linguist and librarian. By 1632, he was appointed as the first Adams Professor of Arabic at the University of Cambridge, which was the first professorship in Arabic in England. In the 1630s, he got acquainted with Sir Henry Spelman, and as a librarian, he began to assist Spelman in his research in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. In the course of time, Wheelocke himself started to engage in Anglo-Saxon studies with Spelman's encouragement. In 1638, Spelman agreed to finance a chair of the Old English language and the history of early English church at the University of Cambridge, and Wheelocke was appointed lecturer (approved by the university in 1640).
In his article on Wheelocke in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Alastair Hamilton writes that 'Wheelocke's own contribution to Anglo-Saxon studies was immense', which is chiefly because of this volume. He was also preparing a dictionary and grammar of Old English, but passed away before completing the project.
A new set of Anglo-Saxon type was cast for this book and this is the first Anglo-Saxon type used by a university press.
My copy in a modern buckram bindnig by the University of Birmingham Library Bindery used to belong to the late Eric G. Stanley, former Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford.
For Wheelocke's career, see Alastair Hamilton, 'Wheelocke, Abraham', in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. See also David C. Douglas, English Schlars 1660-1730, 2nd ed. (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1951), pp. 61-62.