The systematic analysis of manuscripts containing versions of the text known as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle originated during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, as part of an attempt to assemble and organise information about the available sources for English history. The seven manuscripts, and one fragment, have been known since 1848 by letters of the alphabet (A-H), symbolising the continued recognition of their collective identity as a group of related texts. The oldest extant manuscript of the Chronicle, was written in the late ninth or early tenth century. The Old English translations of Orosius' World History, and of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, seem to have formed part of King Alfred's reform and regeneration plan. The two earliest editions of the vernacular text were published in the seventeenth century: Abraham Whelock's edition of manuscript G, and Edmund Gibson's edition of manuscript E, both furnished with translations into Latin.