There are, it has been estimated, in England and on the Continent, in all about 140 manuscripts of the "Ecclesiastical History." Of these, four date from the eighth century: the Moore MS. (Cambridge), so called, because, after being sold by auction in the reign of William III, it came into the possession of Bishop Moore, who bequeathed it to the University of Cambridge; Cotton, Tiberius A, xiv; Cotton, Tiberius C, ii; and the Namur MS. A detailed account of these, as well as of a great number of other manuscripts, will be found in Mr. Plummer's Introduction to his edition of Bede's Historical Works. He has been the first to collate the four oldest MSS., besides examining numerous others and collating them in certain passages. He has pointed out that two of the MSS. dating from the eighth century (the century in which Bede died), the Moore MS. and Cotton, Tiberius A, xiv, point to a common original which cannot be far removed from Bede's autograph. We are thus brought very near to our author, and may have more than in most cases the assurance that we have before us what he actually meant to say.
The earliest editions were printed on the Continent; the "editio princeps" is believed to date from 1475. A number of editions followed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the first in England was published by Abraham Whelock at Cambridge in 1643-4. Smith's edition in 1722 marked a new era in the history of the book. It was the first critical edition, the text being based on the Moore MS. collated with three others, of which two were eighth century MSS.; and succeeding editors, Stevenson (1841), Giles (1842), Hussey (1846), the editor in the "Monumenta Historica Britannica" (1848), Moberly (1869), Holder (1882), base their work mainly on Smith's. Mr. Mayor and Mr. Lumby together edited Books III and IV with excellent notes in 1878. Their text "reproduces exactly the Moore MS." which they collated with some other Cambridge MSS. (cf. Mayor and Lumby, Excursus II). In 1896 the Rev. C. Plummer published his edition of Bede's Historical Works, the first critical edition since Smith's, and "the very first which exhibits in an _apparatus criticus_ the various readings of the MSS. on which the text is based." For the student of Bede this admirable book is of the highest value, and the labours of all succeeding editors are made comparatively light. Besides the most minute and accurate work on the text, it contains a copious and interesting commentary and the fullest references to the various sources upon which the editor has drawn.