It covers the history of Britain, extending from its invasion by Julius Caesar in 55 BC[clarification needed] to the establishment of Normandy in AD 914.
The Annals of St Neots are to a large extent 'a patchwork of quotations from the [Anglo-Saxon] Chronicle, Asser, Bede, and other sources.
It owes its present title to antiquary John Leland discovered the sole surviving manuscript at St Neots Priory in the 1540s around the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
According to Dumville, the evidence thus suggests the manuscript was compiled at Bury St Edmunds Abbey in Suffolk sometime between or around the years 1120 to 1140.
[1] After Leland's discovery, the manuscript passed into the possession of Matthew Parker (d. 1575), archbishop of Canterbury, who supplied various annotations.