 The Anglo @-@ Saxon Chronicle is the single most important source for the history of England in Anglo @-@ Saxon times . Without the Chronicle and Bede 's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum ( the Ecclesiastical History of the English People ) , it would be impossible to write the history of the English from the Romans to the Norman conquest ; Nicholas Howe called them " the two great Anglo @-@ Saxon works of history " . It is clear that records and annals of some kind began to be kept in England at the time of the earliest spread of Christianity , but no such records survive in their original form . Instead they were incorporated in later works , and it is thought likely that the Chronicle contains many of these . The history it tells is not only that witnessed by its compilers , but also that recorded by earlier annalists , whose work is in many cases preserved nowhere else . 
