In writing history, beginning at the beginning preempts in media res, which is more common in literature, especially the epic. The earliest attempt in English, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, provides a beginning for English history. The earliest manuscript is now lost, but it survives in copies distributed to various monasteries where it was updated sporadically for another two hundred years. A handwriting change in the earliest extant copy, the Winchester Chronicle, suggests the original composition no later than 892 CE. The earliest entry refers to biblical times: “Sixty years before Christ was born, [when] Julius Caesar, emperor [sic] of the Romans, came to Britain.” Following a brief account of battles, the chronicler moves to the visit of the “astrologers” and the return of the Christ child from Egypt from the Gospel of Matthew but also the age of the world in Year 6 as five thousand two hundred years (Garmonsway 1965, 5–6). The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is thus not a “chronicle” updated year by year. Entries beginning nine hundred years before the time of composition indicate this is an invented history using whatever records, or what passed for records, to construct a prologue to the writer's own time.

While additions to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle continued in various monasteries until the mid-twelfth century, literary praise accumulated around a legendary King Arthur who does not appear in any of these. Since the Chronicle and other early records from England make no mention of him, it appears he was unknown when it was first composed in the ninth century. Yet today he is the best known and virtually the only known king alleged to have ruled at the dawn of English history. But while he is heroic with supernatural overtones, he was eventually eclipsed by the exploits of his Knights of the Round Table. Over several centuries they became the focus of a fictional empire of the distant past, conferring power on the British comparable to that of the Franks and Romans.

The “chronicles” of the English were uneventful and not surprisingly took second place with the appearance of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain composed around the year 1136 CE where a new and compelling version of the past emerged. Geoffrey's title suggests it may be history, but this impression is short lived.