England: From the Fall of Rome to the Norman Conquest. Streaming Video. Vol. 30140. The Great Courses. Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Company, LLC, 2022. https://www.thegreatcourses.com/england-from-the-fall-of-rome-to-the-norman-conquest. https://www.wondrium.com/england-from-the-fall-of-rome-to-the-norman-conquest.

Paxton, Jennifer. England: From the Fall of Rome to the Norman Conquest. The Great Courses: Books. First. The Great Courses 30140. Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Company, 2022.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silva_rerum

Presumably these are the same sylvae mentioned by Earle Havens on page 10 of his book Commonplace Books (Yale, 2001).

Where do these fit into a historical commonplace tradition? From a timing and logical perspective they certainly could be a transplant from other parts of Europe in modified forms.

I'll note that some of the pattern is similar to printed bibles in the 1900's (and perhaps going back earlier) in the United States which held pre-printed pages for adding this sort of historical personal family data that would likely be handed down from generation to generation.

Compare and contrast this form to the idea of the Relatio chronicle in Jennifer Paxton's essay Forging Communities: Memory and Identity in Post-Conquest England.