Chronicles of colonies written by a Catholic (8)
I believe the answer is:
archives
'chronicles' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'colonies written by a catholic' is the wordplay.
'colonies' becomes 'hives' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'written by' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'catholic' becomes 'RC' (Roman Catholic).
'a'+'rc'='arc'
'hives' put after 'arc' is 'ARCHIVES'.
'of' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for archives that I've seen before include "Official records" , "Collections of records of organisations or institutions" , "Collections of old documents" , "Stored records of organisations" , "Collection of records of organisation" .)