Chronicle of the Realm

Undated

1. Date unknown Crime & case · Unknown Black Spittle Road A cluster of road-crime rumours on the Black Spittle Road, tied to Hobb Morrow, called Split-Mouth Hob, and to intimidation by threat of curse contagion.
2. Date unknown Crime & case · Religious · London Breaking of the Open-Eye Cell The suppression of the Open-Eye Cell, followers of the preacher Elias Thorn who marked doors with an open eye, refused baptism and permits, and turned to knife attacks on London's ward officers. Its breaking did not end the doctrine; later preachers only spoke more carefully.
3. Date unknown Religious · Unknown Marsh Lantern Baptism Seven cursed children were baptised by lamplight, unofficially, after a parish church refused them entry. Afflicted memory keeps it more tenderly than its other case histories.
4. Date unknown Religious · Britannia Midsummer Fires Kept each year on 24 June, the Midsummer Fires bring bonfires, vigils and hard sermons on right light and wrong fire, often with a stronger monster watch in exposed districts. Older notes also tie the name to clustered urban-fire memory.
5. Date unknown Rising & riot · Plague & sickness · London Milk Panic of Highgate Steps A London contagion panic after shared milk and suspected scale marks, in which neighbours threatened to break into a washerwoman's room. Reformers later tied it to bad-water evidence; the case name can still call for a physician, a priest and a strong guard.
6. Date unknown Crime & case · The High South Oxford North Gate Hanging A man was irregularly hanged at Oxford's North Gate after a rain-damaged custody letter failed; it was not the chapter's doing, nor prevented by its officers. A homily against cursed passage followed. Travelling afflicted families learned that a lost seal can kill.
7. Date unknown Religious · Flood & weather · Trade & industry · Britannia Summer Rising Not an event but the onset of summer in the seasonal reckoning, which counts only winter and summer as true seasons. The Opening of Roads, when outer roads, fair circuits and convoy routes reopen under blessing and warrant, is associated with it.
8. Date unknown Era · Religious · Britannia The Age of Antichrist The age southern British teaching places in the late centuries before 2666 A.C.: the ascendancy of a real adversarial ruler, joined to splendour, inversion, false certainty and proud dominion. It stands first in the common ladder of ages, before the Apocalypse.
9. Date unknown Crime & case · Unknown The Ashford Kiss A charge that a curse had passed by a kiss, later shown to hide chemical burns and a relationship others disapproved of. In London it stands for proving that a curse accusation conceals ordinary cruelty.
10. Date unknown War · Britannia The Baron Wars The seasons of sieges, burnt stores and river tolls held by private force, remembered as the First and Second Baron Wars. They taught London to fear house retainers, and across them the Crown built its requisition apparatus, still resented in the High South. ▸ 2 episodes · 6 in all
11. Date unknown Crime & case · London The Bellweather Child The case of a child whose pale extra eye is said to open in storms, and of his mother's flight with him toward London ahead of Cambridge custody. Family agents and traffickers are also said to be seeking them.
12. Date unknown Religious · Reclamation & expedition · The High South The Candle Marches Oxford chronicles’ name for a looser century of outward work after the Marsh Campaigns: road clergy, grave readers and mounted households reopening routes and correcting burials. The city remembers roads relit; the valleys remember forms imposed.
13. Date unknown Plague & sickness · The High South The Chalk Souring Perhaps twice a generation a whole district's springs turn cloudy, bitter and undrinkable within a season, with livestock sickening and children worst affected. The Chalk Wold Water Court hears every case and has never named a cause; a soured district is marked for a generation.
14. Date unknown Disaster · Famine & dearth · Over the Horizon The Hollow Cistern Year An undated year at Caldria when a station’s water failed. It settled the question for the whole coast: a station dies of water faster than of any enemy, and every agent treats the water arrangement as his whole position.
15. Date unknown Reclamation & expedition · London The Long Return The slow, uneven recovery of London after the ruin: a district-by-district sorting in which quarters were retaken, sealed, sanctified, taxed or left below, by military, ritual, legal and logistical means together. The Ash Scouring is counted part of it. ▸ 4 episodes · 5 in all
16. Date unknown Battle · The Northern Marches The Losing of Crowdyke Gate The gate at Crowdyke in the northern march was held, then lost, and never rebuilt. The loss is why the Crown work at Thurwell stands where it does and faces the way it faces.
17. Date unknown Trade & industry · Politics & diplomacy · The High South The Machine-Stone Dependency A standing condition rather than an event: Cambridge's monopoly of judgement rests on stone from the lower Deepcut beds, which lie in Hartfell's country and travel Hartfell's roads. Cambridge prefers not to notice; Sarrum never quite lets it forget.
18. Date unknown Law & ruling · Religious · The High South The Machine-Stone Tithe The belt's live quarrel: Cambridge certifies the machine-stone apparatus in the valleys' tithe barns, Oxford blesses the barns and tithes their contents, and neither will say who owns the saved yield. Twice adjourned before the Lords, it has become a war of inspections and delayed consignments.
19. Date unknown Trade & industry · Law & ruling · Kent and the Narrow Sea The Market Fall An undated episode in which Kent once lost a year out of its own borough minutes. The county’s habit of posting figures publicly, from bridge surveys to almshouse lists and tide boards, follows from it.
20. Date unknown Haunting & wonder · Law & ruling · The Northern Marches The Redham Ford Night A garrison in the northern march heard a party outside in the dark, held the ford and did not cross to them, and found them in the morning. Every serjeant defends the standing order that came of it; none calls it comfortable.
21. Date unknown Plague & sickness · The High South The Reed Sickness A recurring blight of the marsh and wet valley edges: reed beds blacken from the root, the water sours, the fish go, and cutting stops for three to fifteen years. The Reed Cross can usually foretell which beds go next but cannot stop it.
22. Date unknown Flood & weather · Law & ruling · The Northern Marches The Rigg Head Escort An escort went up onto the high tops of the northern march in December, and eleven of fourteen came down. It is why nothing is carried across the high ground between Martinmas and Candlemas at any price.
23. Date unknown Siege · The Northern Marches The Stang Head Sitting A siege of the Crown work at Stang Head in the northern march, of unrecorded length. It is why that work keeps its well inside the wall, and the days counted on the gatepost can still be read.
24. Date unknown Religious · Flood & weather · Britannia Winter Rising Not an event but the onset of winter in the seasonal reckoning, which counts only winter and summer as true seasons. The Blessing of Stores, when granaries, coal yards, lamp stores and parish reserves are blessed and counted, follows it.