It was started whilst he was imprisoned by the Scots in Edinburgh Castle, after being captured in an ambush in October 1355, and completed in England after his release.
During the reign of King Henry VIII the antiquary John Leland prepared an abstract of the Scalacronica which he included in his Collectanea.
In addition, at some time before 1567, Nicholas Wotton, Dean of Canterbury, made numerous extracts from the Salacronica (BL MS Harley 902).
[2] The title of the Scalacronica is not only an allusion to one of its principal sources, the Polychronicon of Ranulf Higden, but also a pun on Grey's surname, as the Norman French word gree meant "step" or "stair", as did the Latin scala, and the title could thus be translated as the "Scaling-Ladder Chronicle", the ladder being a Grey family badge.
[2] In the allegorical prologue to the Scalacronica, Grey relates a dream in which Thomas of Otterbourne holds a five-runged ladder, the symbolism of which is explained by a sibyl.