Henry was a facile writer, but a
perfunctory
historian.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v01
Much of the activity of the twelfth
century historians was palpably due to the favour shown to men of
letters by the two Henrys, and to the personal encouragement of
princely nobles like earl Robert of Gloucester, and courtly eccle-
siastics like Alexander, bishop of Lincoln. Some of the monastic
writers enjoyed no such direct patronage; but they were none the
less responsive to the demands of the time. They not only felt the
impulse of the new learning—they were conscious of living in a
great age, and of witnessing the gradual establishment in England
## p. 157 (#177) ############################################
England and Normandy 157
of a new and powerful kingdom. Nothing is more significant than
the way in which the Anglo-Norman chroniclers, whether native
Englishmen or Normans domiciled in England, reflect the united
patriotic sentiment which it was the design of Norman statesman-
ship to foster. Though composed in a foreign tongue, these
chronicles are histories of England, and are written from a
national English standpoint. It was under Henry I, whose marriage
with Matilda seemed to symbolise the permanent union of the two
peoples, that a new sense of national self-consciousness began to
grow out of the Norman settlement. A shrewd observer of the next
generation, Walter Map, tells us that it was Henry who effectually
“united both peoples in a steadfast concord ? . " It was Henry's reign
also that witnessed the transfer of the central seat of Norman power
from Normandy to England. William of Malmesbury, himself half-
Norman, half-English, in his account of the battle of Tinchebray,
reminds his readers that it was fought “on the same day on which,
about forty years before, William had first landed at Hastings”-a
fact which the chronicler characteristically takes to prove "the
wise dispensation of God that Normandy should be subjected
to England on the same day that the Norman power had
formerly arrived to conquer that kingdom. ” In other words,
England now became the predominant partner in the Anglo-
Norman kingdom, and the twelfth century chroniclers are
fully alive to the meaning of the change. As the dreams of a
great Anglo-Norman empire began to take shape in the minds of
the new rulers of England, and came to be temporarily realised
under Henry II, the English historiographers rose to the height of
their opportunities with patriotic ardour. No other country pro-
duced, during the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries, anything
to be compared with the English chronicles in variety of interest,
wealth of information and amplitude of range. So wide is their
outlook, and so authoritative is their record of events, that, as
Stubbs observes, “it is from the English chroniclers of this period
that much of the German history of the time has to be written. ” The
new England had become conscious of her power, and of her growing
importance in the international economy of Europe.
In literature the most signal expression of that consciousness
is the work of our Latin chroniclers. Thus, however unattractive
much of this chronicle literature may be to the ordinary reader,
there belongs to all of it the human interest of having been
· De Nugis Curialium, Dist. v, Cap. v.
3 Gesta Regum Anglorum, Bk. v.
: Lectures on Medieval and Modern History, p. 125.
## p. 158 (#178) ############################################
158
Latin Chroniclers
written under the pressure of great events and the stimulus of a
glowing national feeling.
Even apart from patriotic incentives, there were other in-
fuences at work during the twelfth century which made for the
study and the writing of history. The Norman settlement in
England synchronised with a movement which shook all western
Christendom to its foundations. The crusades not only profoundly
stirred the feelings of Europe-they served indirectly to quicken
the imagination and stimulate the curiosity of the western races
as nothing had done for centuries. Intercourse with the east, and
the mingling together of different tribes in the crusading armies,
brought about a “renascence of wonder” as far-reaching in some
of its effects as the great renascence itself. The twelfth century
is, above all, the age of the birth of modern romance. The insti-
tutions of chivalry, the mystic symbolism of the church, the
international currency of popular fabliaux, the importation of
oriental stories of magic and wizardry-all contributed to the
fashioning of the fantastic creations of the medieval romances.
And of the romantic cycles none came to have so speedy and
triumphant a vogue as that which was named, originally in France,
"the matter of Britain. " This “matter of Britain" had its beginning,
as a formative influence in European literature, in the work of an
Anglo-Norman writer, who, while professing to draw his information
from a suspiciously cryptic source and frequently giving obvious
rein to his own imagination, assumes none the less the gravity and
the deliberate manner of an authentic chronicler. Geoffrey of
Monmouth, ambitious of supplying what previous writers had
failed to tell about the kings of Britain before the coming of the
English, wrote a chronicle which had all the charm and novelty of
a romance of adventure. King Arthur, as a romantic hero, is
Geoffrey's creation. Hence, the most readable Latin chronicle
of the twelfth century is one that has the least real claim to that
title. But the History of the Kings of Britain is no more to be
ruled out of a place in the chronicle literature of England than it
is to be ousted from its assured pre-eminence as the fountain-head of
Arthurian romance. For Geoffrey's legends not only wrought their
spell upon innumerable poets and imaginative writers, but con-
tinued for generations to disturb the waters of history, and to
mystify a long line of honest and laborious chroniclers.
Geoffrey's History, whatever opinion may be held as to its
author's methods and motives, well illustrates in its general style
and manner the ambitious designs of the greater Anglo-Norman
## p. 159 (#179) ############################################
Characteristics of the Chroniclers 159
chroniclers. Those of them who aspire to write history, as distin-
guished from mere contemporary annals, are studious both of
literary ornament and of the symmetry and proportion of their
narrative. Compiling and borrowing, as Geoffrey professes to do,
from previous chroniclers, they all endeavour to impart some new
life and colour to their materials. They take the great Bede as-
their native master in the art of historical writing. But, for their
literary models, they look beyond him, and seek, like William of -
Malmesbury, to "season their crude materials with Roman art? . "
Even minor chroniclers, like Richard of Devizes, who confine them-
selves to the events of their own time, are fond of adorning their
pages with classical allusions or quotations. Henry of Huntingdon
is even more adventurous, and enlivens his narrative with frequent
metrical effusions of his own. Most of them endeavour, according
to their ability, to be readable, arming themselves, as Roger of
Wendover does, against both “the listless hearer and the fastidious
reader" by “presenting something which each may relish," and so
providing for the joint "profit and entertainment of all. ”
But, far more than their embellishments of style, their fulness
and accuracy of detail and their patriotic motives, what gives life
and permanent interest to the Anglo-Norman chronicles is the
sense which they convey of intimate relationship with great men
and great affairs. Even those chroniclers who do not pretend to
write history on the larger scale, and only provide us with what
Ralph of Diceto, in describing his own work, calls “outlines of
histories,” imagines historiarum, for the use of some future philo-
sophic historian—even they succeed in conveying to us something,
at least, of the animation of the stirring age in which they lived.
They describe events of which they themselves were eye-witnesses;
they preserve documents to which they had special privilege of
access; they record impressions derived from direct contact with
great statesmen, warriors and ecclesiastics; they retail anecdotes
gathered from the cloister, the market-place and the court. For
even the monastic chroniclers were not the mere recluses of the
popular imagination. They were, in their way, men of the world,
who, though themselves taking no active part in public affairs,
lived in close intercourse with public men. The great abbeys, such
as those of Malmesbury and of St Albans, were open houses,
constantly visited by the mighty ones of the land. William of
Malmesbury tells us how bis own monastery was distinguished
for its “delightful hospitality,” where "guests, arriving every
1 Preface to Gesta Regum Anglorum. * Preface to Flowers of History.
## p. 160 (#180) ############################################
160
Latin Chroniclers
and chronnalpb to
hour, consume more than the inmates themselves ? . " Even the
most remote of monastic writers, such as William of New-
burgh in his secluded Yorkshire priory, kept in such close touch
with contemporary affairs as fully to realise their dramatic sig.
nificance. “For in our times,” he writes in the preface to his
English History, “such great and memorable events have hap-
pened that the negligence of us moderns were justly to be
reprehended, should they fail to be handed down to eternal
memory in literary monuments. ” Other monkish writers, like
Matthew Paris in a later generation, enjoyed the royal confidence,
and occasionally wrote under royal command. Moreover, not all
the chroniclers were monks. Henry of Huntingdon, Roger of
Hoveden, Ralph of Diceto and the author of the chronicle often
wrongly ascribed to Benedict of Peterborough-not to mention
writers like Giraldus Cambrensis and Walter Map, who have left
behind them records scarcely distinguishable from contemporary
chronicles—were all men who lived in intimate association with
the court. So much store, indeed, came, in time, to be set upon
the records of the chroniclers that they became standard authori.
ties to which kings and statesmen appealed for confirmation of
titles and the determination of constitutional claims. The con-
ditions under which they were composed, and the importance
which they once had as documents of state, are alone more than
sufficient sanction for the provision made by " the Treasury, under
the direction of the Master of the Rolls," for the publication of those
editions in which they can best be studied by the modern reader.
“Of the several schools of English medieval history," writes
Stubbs”, “the most ancient, the most fertile, the longest lived and
the most widely spread was the Northumbrian. " At its head stands
the great name of Bede, the primary authority and the pattern of
most of the Latin historians of our period. The first conspicuous
representative of the northern school of chroniclers in the twelfth
century is Simeon, precentor of the monastery of Durham, and
he, like many historiographers after him, makes Bede the founda-
tion of the early part of his history. His second source of
information, covering the period from the death of Bede down
to the beginning of the ninth century, was the lost Northumbrian
annals known to us through Simeon alone. From the middle
of the ninth century down to 1121 he borrows his matter
almost entirely from the chronicle of Florence of Worcester and the
clers that came, in cate associ
Gesta Regum Anglorum, Bk. v.
3 Preface to Roger of Hoveden's Chronicle, Rolls Series.
## p. 161 (#181) ############################################
The Northern School
161
first continuator of the latter. The rest of Simeon's narrative, ex-
tending to the year 1129, probably represents his own independent
work. Little is known of Simeon's life, and it is impossible to deter-
mine whether he was the actual compiler, or merely the editor, of the
chronicle which bears his name. His work, however, had a high
repute throughout the Middle Ages, and his fame was second only
to that of Bede among the writers of the Northumbrian school.
Simeon's chronicle was continued down to the close of the reign of
Stephen by two priors of Hexham. The elder of the two, Richard,
wrote an account of the Acts of King Stephen, and the Battle of
the Standard, which contains much original information. His son,
John, brought the narrative down to the year 1154, and is an
independent authority of considerable value. Another north-
countryman, the canonised Ailred or Ethelred, a Cistercian monk
of Rievaulx, claims a place among the many chroniclers who wrote
of the battle of the Standard. His account is neither so full nor so
trustworthy as that of Richard of Hexham, but is somewhat more
ambitious, in that it professes to give, after the manner of the
classical historians, the speeches of the rival leaders before the
encounter. For a brief period about the middle of the twelfth
century there was, in Northumbria as elsewhere, a curious break
in the activity of the chroniclers. But, in the next generation, two
writers who worthily uphold the traditions of the northern school
appear in William of Newburgh and Roger of Hoveden. William
confines himself to his own times; but Roger attempts a compre-
hensive history of several centuries, and, gathering his materials
from the best available authorities, gives us what Stubbs calls
" the full harvest of the labours of the Northumbrian historians. ”
The first Latin chronicler of any importance who belongs to
southern England is Florence of Worcester, already mentioned as
one of Simeon of Durham's main sources. Florence's work is notable
as being the first attempt in England at a universal history beginning
with the Creation and embracing within its compass all the nations
of the known world. But, as the title of his chronicle-Chronicon
ex Chronicis-frankly indicates, Florence is not much more than a
laborious compiler from the works of others; and he took as the basis
of the early portions of his narrative the universal chronicle of
Marianus Scotus, an Irish monk of the eleventh century. Marianus,
in his turn, is, so far as English history is concerned, only a com-
piler from Bede and the Old English Chronicle. He brings his
record of events down to the year 1082, but it is so fragmentary
and perfunctory in its treatment of English affairs as to give
E. L, I. CH. IX.
11
## p. 162 (#182) ############################################
162
Latin Chroniclers
Florence abundant opportunities for interpolation and addition.
Florence's account of his own times, which closes with the year
1117, possesses much independent value, and was largely drawn
upon by subsequent chroniclers. It is less valuable, however, than
its continuation by John, another monk of Worcester, from 1117
to 1141. A second continuation, down to 1152, was based mainly
upon the work of Henry of Huntingdon. The task of still further
extending Florence's chronicle seems to have become a special
concern of the monks of St Edmundsbury, for it is to two inmates
of that house that we owe two other additions to it which continue
the record, without a break, down to the very end of the thirteenth
century.
Neither Simeon of Durham nor Florence of Worcester can be
called a historian in any high sense. Both are, at best, but
conscientious annalists, making no effort either to present events
in their wider relations of cause and effect, or to adorn their
narrative with any studied literary graces. The earlier portions
of the chronicle which bears Simeon's name are, indeed, embellished
with frequent poetical quotations, but the work, as a whole, is as
barren of literary ornament as that of Florence. Literature of a
somewhat richer colour, and history of a higher order, are found in
the writings of two of their contemporaries, one, like them, a pure
Englishman, the other a Norman born on English soil-Eadmer
and Ordericus Vitalis. Eadmer, the follower and intimate friend
of Anselm, wrote in six books a history of his own times down to the
year 1122—Historia Novorum in Anglia—which is full of fresh
and vivid detail. In his preface Eadmer justifies the historian who
confines himself to a narrative of contemporary events; the difficulty
of obtaining an accurate knowledge of the past had convinced
him that none deserved better of posterity than he who wrote
a faithful record of the happenings of his own lifetime. His
immediate purpose, he tells us, is to give an account of the relations
of his master Anselm with William II and Henry I, and especially
of the dispute about the investiture. But, as he anticipates, bis
task will oblige him to illustrate at many points the history of
England before, during and after the investiture quarrel. While
the main interest of Eadmer's work is ecclesiastical, and, in the last
two books, turns largely upon the affairs of the see of Canterbury,
it throws much valuable light upon the general political and social
conditions of the time. Written with what William of Malmesbury
calls “a chastened elegance of style",” Eadmer's History is
i Preface to Gesta Regum Anglorum.
## p. 163 (#183) ############################################
Eadmer and Orderic
163
distinguished most of all by its design and sense of proportion. "
Eadmer is almost modern in his deliberate limitation of himself to a
period and a special subject upon which he could speak as a first-
hand authority. His example in this respect was not without
its effect upon more than one historiographer of the next gene-
ration. Richard of Devizes and the author of the Acts of
Stephen are chroniclers who make up for the brevity of their
narratives by the graphic force which belongs only to a contem-
porary record. In addition to his History, Eadmer wrote a Latin
life of Anselm, and upon all that concerns the character and the
work of that great prelate there is no more trustworthy authority.
Ordericus Vitalis, the son of Norman parents but born in
Shropshire in 1075, was a writer of much more ambitious scope
than Eadmer. His voluminous Ecclesiastical History, borrowing
its title from Bede's great work, extends from the beginning of the
Christian era down to the year 1141. It is in thirteen books, and
represents the labour and observation of some twenty years of the
writer's life. It is a characteristic product of the cloister. The
church, and all that concerns it, are, throughout, uppermost in
Orderic's mind, and determine his standpoint and design as a
historian. But he had sufficient curiosity and knowledge of the
world to gather and place on record a vast amount of information
about mundane affairs. Taken over to Normandy to be educated
at the early age of ten, he spent his life as a monk of St Evroul;
but he was not without opportunities of travel, and he paid at least
one visit to England for the express purpose of collecting material
for his History. Although he is often inaccurate in his chronology,
and confusing in the arrangement of his matter, Orderic is one of
our standard historical authorities for the Norman period. He is
especially valuable for the information he gives as to the condition
of Normandy itself during the eleventh, and part of the twelfth,
century, and his History deals even more with continental than with
English affairs. Yet he always prided himself upon his English
birth; he even called himself an Englishman, and could, in
Freeman's words, “at once admire the greatness of the Conqueror
and sympathise with the wrongs of his victims. ” Orderic's very
defects of arrangement and order as a chronicler were the result
of a curiosity and a range of interest which add much to the value
of his work as a minute and varied contemporary record. He tells
us much that is not found elsewhere about the social conditions of
his time, about property, about the monastic profession and even
about the occupations, tastes, pastimes and personal appearance
11-2
## p. 164 (#184) ############################################
164
Latin Chroniclers
of prominent men. His style is, in many places, highly rhetorical.
Of it, as a whole, “an English reader," writes dean Church, “may
best form an idea by combining the Biblical pedantry and doggerel
of a Fifth-monarchy pamphlet of the seventeenth century with the
classical pedantry of the most extravagant burlesque of Dr Johnson's
English ? . "
Contemporary with Eadmer and Orderic, William of Malmes-
bury is a much greater historian, and, to the literary student, a far
more attractive writer, than either. Milton's opinion, that “both
for style and judgment " William is “ by far the best writer of all”
the twelfth century chroniclers', still holds good. William, as many
incidental confessions in his History show, had high ambitions as
an author, and aspired to restore to the historian's art the dignity
and the splendour with which it had been invested by the illus-
trious Bede. His design is to tell, artistically yet critically, all
that is known about his country's history from the first coming of
the English, and, especially, as he informs us in his preface, to
“fill up the chasm of two hundred and twenty-three years" after
Bede, which Eadmer had left altogether unnoticed in his Historia
Novorum. William's chronicle is in two parts. The first, divided
into five books, is called a History of the Kings of England, and
extends from A. D. 449 to 1127. The second part, entitled Historia
Novella or Modern History, is in three books, and brings the
narrative down to the year 1142. These histories represent but a
small portion of William's entire literary work, for he was one of
the most prolific writers of his time; his other productions
include a history of the prelates of England, a life of St Wulfstan
and a history of the church of Glastonbury. William of Malmesbury
possessed many of the highest qualifications of a historian; he had
learning, industry, judgment and a wide knowledge of the world
He was, for his day, a considerable traveller, and was, both by
temperament and training, a discriminating, as well as an inquisitive,
student of life and character. He is thus singularly free from the
prejudices and the narrow standards of the cloister. Although he
himself claims that his mixed blood' is a guarantee of his im-
partiality, he has not escaped the suspicion, among modern critics,
of having been something of a time-server. He had, however,
a thoroughly disinterested love of history as a study and as an
1 St Anselm, p. 140.
? History of England, Bk. rv, p. 172 (1st ed. 1670).
3 In the preface to the third book of his History William says that "the blood of
the two peoples flows in [his) veins," and that he is therefore qualified to "stear a middle
course” between racial partisans.
## p. 165 (#185) ############################################
165
William of Malmesbury
art; and the task of writing the history of England presented
itself to him as a patriotic duty, all the more clearly incumbent
upon him because of the “criminal indolence” of those who might
have continued the work of Bede? .
Bede, then, is William's great exemplar, and the fount of his
inspiration-Bede, with whom “was buried almost all knowledge of
history down to our own times," and whose praises William protests
that he has "neither the abilities nor the eloquence” adequately
to blazon? For the materials of the earlier portions of his
History William states that he searched far and wide; and,
while he borrowed from nearly every known work of his time,
he evidently draws upon other sources which have not been
identified. But he by no means borrows indiscriminately. He
sifts and selects his material, and cautions his readers against
accepting the testimony of his authorities too implicitly. That he was
not, however, so very much in advance of his time is shown by the
fact that he, in company with more credulous chroniclers, gravely
records marvels and seemingly supernatural occurrences as
authentic historical events. The evidence of a respectable eye-
witness is, in most of these cases, sufficient warrant for unques-
tioning belief. Anecdotes, also, of every kind, seem to have had -
a peculiar charm for William, and, at the end of his third book,
he quaintly excuses his fondness for including them in his History
by saying that, “if I am not too partial to myself, a variety of
anecdote cannot be displeasing to any one, unless he be morose
enough to rival the superciliousness of Cato. ” To the modern
reader, who looks for literary entertainment as much as for
authentic history, William's ingenuous habits of reminiscence,
of quotation, of anecdotal digression and of sententious comment
add much to the personal charm and vivacity of his narrative.
He is at his best, however, when he brings all his powers of
rhetoric and his faculty of pictorial writing to bear upon the
description of some great event or stirring public movement.
His graphic account of the first crusade, for example, has about
it a spaciousness and a wealth of colour which all but rival the
glowing periods of Gibbon.
This ardent love not only inspired the continental provinces, but even all
who had heard the name of Christ, whether in the most distant islands or
savage countries. The Welshman left his hunting, the Scot his fellowship
with vermin, the Dane his drinking-party, the Norwegian his raw fish. Lands
were deserted of their husbandmen; houses of their inhabitants; even whole
* Bk. 1, ch. 3.
* Bk. 11, prol.
## p. 166 (#186) ############################################
166
Latin Chroniclers
cities migrated. There was no regard to relationship; affection to their
country was held in little esteem; God alone was placed before their eyes.
Whatever was stored in granaries, or hoarded in chambers, to answer the
hopes of the avaricious husbandmen or the covetousness of the miser, all, all
was deserted; they hungered and thirsted after Jerusalem alone.
Even this brief passage serves to show that William was a writer
who could make the dry bones of history live, and who had an
artist's instinct for the salient and significant features of the
panorama of events which the historian has to depict upon his
canvas. The muse of history needs, for her highest service, the
aid of the imagination ; and William of Malmesbury's pre-
eminence among the twelfth century chroniclers is due to the
art which enabled him to give a picturesque setting to his
narrative without any sacrifice of accuracy in circumstantial
detail. For he still holds his place among historians as a high
authority, not quite so impartial, perhaps, as he professes to be
in his judgments of individuals, but singularly clear and trust-
worthy in his presentment of events. William, after all, wrote
under the direct patronage of a great noble, and it was only
natural that he should have paid some deference to the wishes
and interests of earl Robert of Gloucester. Yet, even in Historia
Novella, written at Robert's request to describe the struggle
between king Stephen and the empress Maud, in which Robert
himself played a prominent part, the substantial truth of William's
narrative remains unassailed
Of the early twelfth century chroniclers, Henry of Huntingdon
enjoyed, for generations, a popular repute second only to that of
William of Malmesbury. Modern criticism, however, has largely
destroyed Henry's claims to rank as a first-rate historical authority,
and in neither style, accuracy, nor fulness of detail is be worthy of
any serious comparison with William. Henry himself appears to
have rated his powers at quite as high a value as William's; for he
prefaces his chronicle with a floridly rhetorical and ambitious
disquisition upon the "prerogatives” of history. But he possessed
neither the learning nor the patient industry of William, and
his studied endeavours after rhetorical ornament only serve to
accentuate his pretentiousness by the side of his great monastic
compeer. Henry was a secular clerk, who lived under the
patronage, first of Robert Bloet, bishop of Lincoln, and after-
wards of his successor, Alexander of Blois. It was, as he tells
us, by command of Alexander that he wrote his History of the
English, and he probably compiled the greater part of it between
## p. 167 (#187) ############################################
Henry of Huntingdon 167
1125 and 1130. The work was dedicated to Alexander; and the
prefatory letter ends, characteristically, with an invocation in
verse both of the Divine blessing and of the approbation of his
episcopal patron. The entire History, frequently revised and
extended, ends with the year 1154. Its earlier portions are
borrowed, with many embellishments, from Bede and the Old
English Chronicle. In many places Henry simply translates from
the old English annals, and among his translations is a metrical
version, though much curtailed, of the famous song on The Battle
of Brunanburh. Henry prided himself on his accomplishments in
verse, and his History is decorated with many poetical passages.
Of his work, as a whole, the best that can be said is that it
shows some sense of design, and of proportion in its execution ;
he treats of the history of England up to his time as dividing
itself naturally into the four periods of the Roman, the Saxon, the
Danish and the Norman occupations. It is when he comes to deal
with the Norman dominion, and especially with the events of his
own time, that he is most disappointing. At the beginning of
the seventh book he states that, after having so far relied upon
either "ancient writers or common report,” he is about to “deal
with events which have passed under” his “own observation, or have
been told to” him “by eye-witnesses. ” Neither in the seventh nor
in the eighth book do we find much to justify the expectation thus
raised.
Henry was a facile writer, but a perfunctory historian.
"He was ambitious, but not laborious; literary, but not exact;
intelligent, but not penetrating. He formed large projects, but
was too indolent to execute them satisfactorily? " Henry's
rhetorical pages are brought to an appropriate close with a
glowing peroration, in verse, celebrating the accession of king
Henry II. What appears to have been at one time intended
to stand as the eighth book of the History is a treatise on the
Contempt of the World a letter, addressed to a friend named
Walter, upon the fortunes of "the bishops and the illustrious men
of his age. ” This work, both the title and the motive of which
remind us of more imposing literary achievements by greater men,
contains many vivid portraits of Henry of Huntingdon's famous
contemporaries.
A chronicler who is as great an authority, for the reign of
which he treats, as either William of Malmesbury or Henry of
Huntingdon, is the anonymous author of the Acts of Stephen
(Gesta Stephani). Not even William himself surpasses this writer
Thomas Arnold, preface to Rolls edition.
## p. 168 (#188) ############################################
168
Latin Chroniclers
in accuracy and vividness of detail. He is a palpable partisan of
Stephen, and has been supposed by some to have been the king's
confessor. Nothing, however, better illustrates the general trust-
worthiness and impartiality of the twelfth century chroniclers
than a comparison of the narrative of this historian with those
of William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon. Gesta
Stephani covers much the same ground as the Historia Novella of
William; yet, though the two works were composed from opposite
standpoints, they differ little in their presentment of the essential
facts of the history of the time.
William of Malmesbury claimed, as we have seen, the patronage
of Robert, earl of Gloucester; Henry of Huntingdon that of
Alexander, bishop of Lincoln. The favour of both these magnates,
and, if we are to trust the evidence of a MS preserved at Berne,
that of king Stephen himself, was invoked by the chronicler who
enjoys the dubious distinction of having been among British writers
the greatest disturber of the waters of history. Could he have
foreseen the influence which he was destined to exercise over the
poets of England, Geoffrey of Monmouth would doubtless have
been quite content with the prospect of forfeiting the confidence
of critical historians. Indeed, it is difficult to believe, on any
supposition, that the History of the Kings of Britain was written
as a serious contribution to authentic history. Geoffrey's manner
only too obviously betrays him. Just as William of Malmesbury
is anxious to "fill up the chasm” between Bede and Eadmer, so
Geoffrey professes to explore and map out a still more obscure
period, namely that of "the kings who dwelt in Britain before the
incarnation of Christ," and especially of "Arthur and the many
others who succeeded him after the incarnation. ” It so happened
that a document was placed in his hands which “set forth the
doings of them all in due succession and order from Brute, the
first king of the Britons, onward to Cadwaladr, the son of
Cadwallo, all told in stories of exceeding beauty. ” This docu-
ment was a certain "most ancient book in the British tongue,"
which was supplied to him by Walter, archdeacon of Oxford. No
other contemporary chronicler seems to have had access to this
mysterious book, and no amount of subsequent research has been
able to discover it. Geoffrey himself evidently looked upon its
contents as his own exclusive secret; for, in the epilogue to his
History, he expressly warns William of Malmesbury and Henry of
Huntingdon, who could write competently enough about the kings
of the English, not to meddle with the kings of the Britons,
## p. 169 (#189) ############################################
Geoffrey of Monmouth 169
"inasmuch as they have not the book in the British speech which
Walter brought over from Britanny. "
All this affectation of mystery, however, does not prevent Geoffrey
from openly commending his work to the favourable notice of the
two great men whose confidence and encouragement William and
Henry respectively enjoyed. The main body of his History is
dedicated to earl Robert of Gloucester, while the seventh book,
consisting of the famous prophecies of Merlin, is prefaced by an
almost fulsomely laudatory letter addressed to Alexander of
Lincoln. Geoffrey was thus determined to lose nothing of the
prestige and credit to be derived from aristocratic patronage;
and his dedications only confirm the assumption that he imitates
the practices and assumes the pose of an authentic chronicler with
the deliberate purpose of mystifying his readers. For Geoffrey's
History is, on the last analysis, a prose romance, and, in its
Arthurian portions in particular, a palpable excursion in fiction.
One need not believe that the entire work is, in the words of
William of Newburgh, a tissue of “impudent and shameless lies. ” u
Even the reference to "the British book” cannot altogether be
regarded as a ruse for the deception of the ingenuous reader.
Geoffrey doubtless drew upon some documents, possibly Welsh,
which have since been lost. He borrowed all he could from
Bede and Nennius; he probably borrowed more from floating
British traditions. What is even more certain is that he in-
vented a great deal It is impossible to read the later books of
the History without feeling that Geoffrey, when he had em-
barked upon the history of Merlin and of Arthur, was fully
conscious of his opportunities of romantic dilatation. Arthur
was a British prince capable of being exalted into a heroic figure
who should overshadow both Alexander and Charlemagne. These
two potentates were already the titular heroes of profitably worked
romantic cycles. Why should Britain not have its romantic
“matter," as well as Rome and France? Read in the light of the
general literary history of its time, and of its immediate and
immense popularity, Geoffrey's History can be adequately
explained only as the response of a British writer, keenly
observant of the literary tendencies of the day, to the growing
demand for romance. How well he succeeded in his design
appears from William of Newburgh's complaint that he had
"made the little finger of his Arthur stouter than the back of
Alexander the Great. "
The History of the Kings of Britain was complete in the
## p. 170 (#190) ############################################
170
Latin Chroniclers
form now known to us by 1148 at the latest; but there is evidence
that it existed in some form as early as 1139. A letter from
Henry of Huntingdon, addressed to one Warinus, otherwise un-
known, and prefixed to the Chronicle of Robert de Monte', gives
an abstract of "a big book” by “Geoffrey Arthur," which Henry
discovered in 1139 at the abbey of Bec in Normandy. Henry
himself had long been anxious to know something about the
kings of the Britons; and “to his amazement he found” at Bec
"a written record” of their deeds, including the history of
Arthur, “whose death the Britons deny, and still continue to
look for his return. " Henry's letter contains no mention of
Merlin; but, whether then incorporated in the History or not,
the Prophecies must have been written before 1139, for Ordericus
Vitalis quotes from them in the twelfth book (ch. 47) of his
History, which was composed in 1136 or 1137. By the year 1152
Geoffrey's work seems to have been well known, and to have won
him favour in high places, as he was then consecrated bishop of
St Asaph. He died in 1155. The fame of his History had
spread even before his death; for Wace, and, probably, Geoffrey
Gaimar, had begun to translate it into Anglo-Norman verse before
1155.
In England a long line of chroniclers, in both prose and verse,
from Layamon and Robert of Gloucester down to Grafton and
Holinshed, accepted Geoffrey in all good faith as a revealer of
“the marvellous current of forgotten things”; while a host of
poets, great and small, have been constantly haunted by his fables.
Two hundred years after his death his repute was such that, on the
strength of his use of the Brutus legend, Chaucer gave him a high
place in his Hous of Fame. With Homer and Statius, Dares
and Dictys and Guido delle Colonne, “English Gaufride” stands on
an iron pedestal,
besy for to bere up Troye.
In a later age both Spenser and Drayton sang his praises; while
even Wordsworth could not withhold a tribute to “the British
record long concealed,” where
We read of Spenser's fairy themes,
And those that Milton loved in youthful years;
The sage enchanter Merlin's subtle schemes,
The feats of Arthur and his knightly peers 4.
1 Chronicles of Stephen (Rolls Series), iv, 65.
Artegal and Elidure.
## p. 171 (#191) ############################################
Geoffrey's Fame
171
But Geoffrey has exacted still greater homage from the poets.
Lear and Cymbeline and Sabrina, “virgin daughter of Locrine,"
are names that link his memory for ever with the two supreme
poetical geniuses of England. Here, indeed, is a distinction which
the greatest of the chroniclers might have coveted; and it is enough
to mark the History of the Kings of Britain as the most significant
literary product of the twelfth century.
Geoffrey, however, succeeded in deluding so many honest
chroniclers who followed him that, in modern times, he has been
altogether proscribed from the company of sober historians.
Even before the twelfth century was out, his credit had come
to be gravely questioned. Giraldus Cambrensis, who had him- -
self no mean gift for the artistic manipulation of the legendary
and the marvellous, is one of Geoffrey's severest detractors.
According to Gerald, a certain Welshman named Meilyr was
reported to have an extraordinary familiarity with unclean
spirits, and they never responded to his call in greater numbers
than when Geoffrey's book was placed on his bosom. Gerald,
as is well known, had a strong sense of humour, and, probably
all he means to imply is that Geoffrey had over-reached himself
in the art of romance. It is otherwise with William of Newburgh.
He regarded Geoffrey as one who had deliberately and flagrantly
profaned the sacred functions of the historian, and devotes the
entire preface of his chronicle to a vehement denunciation of
Geoffrey's motives and to an exposure of his fabrications.
This severe preface has contributed as much as anything to the
high repute in which William of Newburgh is held as a critical his-
torian. Freeman's description of him as “the father of historical
criticism? ” has often been repeated, but scarcely seems deserved when
we compare his actual achievement with that of his greater namesake
of Malmesbury. For William of Newburgh belongs to that group
of modest chroniclers who are content with treating a limited period,
and describe, mainly, the events of their own lifetime. His History
extends from the Conquest to the year 1198; but the narrative
down to the time of Stephen is so compressed as to make the work,
in effect, an account of the reigns of Stephen and Henry II. For
the latter reign there are few better authorities. His work, as a
whole, forms the best single commentary upon the history of the
twelfth century left us by any writer of his day. For William's
chronicle is no mere bare record of events, but an ordered and
critical presentment of the affairs of his time, with due regard to
* Contemporary Review, Vol. XXXIII (1878), p. 216.
VOUS.
## p. 172 (#192) ############################################
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Latin Chroniclers
their cause and effect. His remoteness from the court and the
metropolis doubtless enabled William of Newburgh to maintain
an attitude of impartiality impossible to chroniclers thrown
into close contact with the greater actors in the drama of con-
temporary events. At any rate, the work of no twelfth-century
chronicler is marked by a more transparent honesty of purpose,
by greater independence of judgment, or by more acute estimates
of men and their motives. William writes in a clear, straight-
forward style; less studious of artistic effect and literary ornament
than his namesake of Malmesbury, he is inspired by a similar, if
not a greater, desire for accuracy. Like his predecessor, he venerates
the memory and the example of Bede, “whose wisdom and integrity
none can doubt ”; and, following that historian's pious motives, he
hopes that his own labours will form some “contribution, however
scanty, to the treasure-house of the Lord. ”
William of Newburgh was a contemporary of the brilliant
galaxy of scholars who flourished in the full light of the encourage-
ment given to learning and letters at the court of Henry II. But,
living in the comparative seclusion of his monastery, he is not quite
of them, and may be regarded rather as a continuator of the
honourable traditions of the historical school of the north. In
particular, he is one of the most trustworthy authorities for a
period of some twenty years, after the turn of the twelfth century,
of which we have scarcely any contemporary record'. For the
English history of the years 1153–4, and especially for the
foreign policy of the early years of Henry II's reign, our best
contemporary authority is a chronicler who lived and wrote in
Normandy, Robert de Monte or, as he calls himself, Robert of
Torigni. He compiled a comprehensive record of events from
the close of the first Christian century down to 1186, and is in-
debted for much of his account of purely English affairs to Eadmer
and Henry of Huntingdon. The troubles of king Stephen's reign
appear to have had a paralysing effect upon the chroniclers in
England; and it is not until the height of Henry Il's power that
they begin once more to give us a full and vivid account of con-
temporary affairs. The historian's art flourished anew in the
warmth of the general enthusiasm for learning which made the
England of Henry's time the paradise of scholars. In palace and
abbey, in the full glare and bustle of the court no less than in the
bookish atmosphere of the monastic cell, men were infected by a
common ardour of intellectual enterprise and literary achievement.
* See Stubbs, Preface to Roger of Hoveden, Rolls Series, p. sh.
## p. 173 (#193) ############################################
Benedict of Peterborough 173
In close touch with the court were men like Gilbert Foliot and
Richard Fitz-Neale; Ralph of Diceto, who was dean of St Paul's
during Fitz-Neale's episcopate, and Ranulf de Glanville, whose
name is associated with one of the earliest and most valuable
treatises on the laws and customs of England, though the real
author of it was, more probably, his nephew, Hubert Walter ;
Giraldus Cambrensis and Walter Map, Gervase of Tilbury and
Peter of Blois. In remoter haunts, though having frequent oppor-
tunities of intercourse with men of action and of affairs, were
Gervase of Canterbury and Nigel Wireker, John of Salisbury and
Richard of Devizes, Benedict of Peterborough and William of
Newburgh and Roger of Hoveden. Altogether, there was in the
country, as Stubbs says, “such a supply of writers and readers as
would be found nowhere else in Europe, except in the University
of Paris itself. ”
Several of these names are of the first importance in the list of
our Latin chroniclers. That of Benedict of Peterborough is
associated with the most authoritative chronicle of the reign of
Henry II, but only (as is now known) on the strength of the fact
that one of the extant MSS of the work was transcribed under
his order. Benedict, however, was by no means a mere director
of other men's literary labours, for he is known to have either
written or edited accounts of the passion and the miracles of Becket.
The author of the chronicle long ascribed to him still remains
undiscovered. Begun about 1172, the work bears in the main
all the marks of a contemporary narrative, and includes several
important documents. Stubbs holds that the internal evidence is
sufficient to prove not only that the chronicle was not by Benedict,
but that it is not the work of a monastic writer at all.
It has not even in its most disjointed portion the disorderly form, the dis-
proportionate details, the unimportant memoranda, the generally undigested
character, of monastic annals. It displays no propension to monastic institu-
tions, or to those principles and persons that were especially favoured by
monks. The author did not even trouble himself to compose an original
account of Becket's martyrdom. Whatever positive indications are to be
found point to a member of the king's court rather than to a monk, or even a
secular churchman? .
Stubbs's conjecture that the chronicle may have been the work
of Richard Fitz-Neale, and is a transcript of that writer's lost Trico
lumnis,“ merely altered from its inconvenient tripartite shape,” has
not found much acceptance among scholars. Fitz-Neale, who was
* Preface to edition in Rolls Series, p. lvi.
## p. 174 (#194) ############################################
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Latin Chroniclers
treasurer of England from 1168—98, and bishop of London from
1189—98, is best known as the author of the famous Dialogus de
Scaccario, or Dialogue of the Exchequer. That work, written in
the form of a dialogue, in two books, between master and pupil, is
one of the chief sources of our knowledge of constitutional prin-
ciples and practice in England before the Great Charter; it "stands
out as an unique book in the history of medieval England, perhaps
in the history of medieval Europe? . ”
The chronicle ascribed to Benedict forms, with some slight
alterations and additions, one of the most substantial portions
of the ambitious historical compilation attempted by Roger of
Hoveden. The chroniclers generally had little scruple about thus
transcribing, and embodying in their own works, the writings of
their predecessors; it was, indeed, held among the monastic
annalists to be a perfectly legitimate, not to say a necessary,
practice. Thus, Matthew Paris, the greatest monastic historian
of the thirteenth century, makes the compilations of two of his
predecessors at St Albans the nucleus of those parts of his
Chronica Majora which deal with events before his own time.
Roger of Hoveden not only borrowed the so-called Benedict
chronicle almost in its entirety, but made use of everything that
he could find from the hands of the northern chroniclers. In the
first part of his work, extending from 732 to 1148, he copies from
a Durham compilation, based upon the narratives of Simeon and
of Henry of Huntingdon, which is known as Historia post Bedam.
His main source from 1148 down to 1169 is the chronicle of Melrose.
The third part, extending to the year 1192, is substantially
“Benedict of Peterborough," illustrated by several new docu-
ments; the final portion, ending with the year 1201, is Roger's
own work. Roger was a man of affairs, and had exceptional
opportunities for watching the development of public events. He
was at one time in attendance upon Henry II in France; he sub-
sequently held public office, as justice itinerant of the forests. It
is disappointing, however, to find in Roger's Chronicle few of the
intimate personal revelations which might be expected in the narra-
tive of one who had such opportunities of intercourse with the
leading men of his time. Roger makes up to some extent for this
reticence by the compass of his narrative; for the later portions of
his chronicle include not only a survey of English affairs during
the reigns of Henry II and Richard I, but a fairly comprehensive
history of Europe during the same period.
· Pollock and Maitland's History of English Law, Vol. I, 2nd ed. p. 161.
## p. 175 (#195) ############################################
Ralph of Diceto
175
“Well illustrated as the reigns of Henry II and Richard are,”
says Stubbs”, “one side of their character would be imperfectly
known, and some of the crises of their policies would be almost inex-
plicable,” without Ralph of Diceto. Ralph was another chronicler
whose public life and position brought him into close contact with
the great men of his time, and gave him access to the best sources of
information. He was for many years archdeacon of Middlesex, and,
from the year 1180 until his death, about 1202, held the deanery of
St Paul's. “Diceto" appears to have been an artificial Latin name
adopted by Ralph to signify his association with some place,
probably French, which had no proper Latin name of its own.
His chief work is entitled Imagines Historiarum, or Outlines
of Histories, extending from the year 1148 down to 1202. Robert
de Monte's chronicle forms the basis of his narrative down to
1172; from that year begin his own original memoranda, which
are of especial value as contemporary records from 1183 onwards.
Ralph is one of the most sober and straightforward of the
chroniclers, and is little given to gossip or rhetorical decoration.
His work is somewhat deficient in orderly arrangement, and its
chronology is not always to be relied upon. Ralph, however,
had much of the insight of the historian who seeks to analyse
and to account for, as well as to record, public events and move-
ments, and he was a shrewd judge of character and motive. His
chronicle is illustrated by many important contemporary documents,
to which his position gave him special means of access.
Of several of the other chroniclers who wrote during the latter
part of the twelfth, and the opening years of the thirteenth, century,
only a passing mention need be made. Gervase of Canterbury, who
died about 1210, is chiefly remembered as an ecclesiastical historian,
and as one of the standard authorities on the contemporary history
of the see to which he belonged. One of his works, entitled Gesta
Regum, which is of some value as illustrating the reign of John,
perpetuates the Brutus legend to which Geoffrey of Monmouth
had given a startling currency. A more important authority for
king John's reign is Ralph, abbot of the Cistercian abbey of
Coggeshall, whose Chronicon Anglicanum (1066—1223) contains,
among other things, a full and well-informed account of
Richard I's crusade. That crusade has been described by several
chroniclers, but by none more graphically than by a monkish
writer whose History of King Richard I is one of the briefest
of the many contemporary narratives penned in the twelfth
1 Preface to Vol. of edition of Ralph de Diceto in Rolls Series,
## p. 176 (#196) ############################################
176
Latin Chroniclers
century. Its author, Richard of Devizes, has, however, stamped
upon his modest essay in history the impress of a personality
which is altogether absent from many more ambitious productions.
His work has a real literary interest, on account both of the
author's fondness for classical quotations and rhetorical ornament
and of the vivid and picturesque force of his narrative. In a
flowery letter of dedication, addressed to Robert, prior of the
church of Winchester, Richard states that he has deliberately
chosen a limited period for himself, leaving a more comprehensive
survey of events to those "who produce greater works. " "My
narrative," he says, “is for the living"; and he writes with a
dramatic instinct and an eye to pictorial effect not unworthy of
a modern journalist. No chronicle gives us a more vivid picture
of the general social condition of England in Coeur de Lion's time,
or of the pageant of events in which the king took paramount part.
The persecutions of the Jews, in particular, are described with a
terrible faithfulness which reflects the author's own avowed hatred
of the race.
Social life in England at the end of the twelfth century, and
especially the internal life and economy of the monasteries, are
portrayed with intimate knowledge in the celebrated chronicle of
Jocelin of Brakelond. Jocelin has had the good fortune, denied to
the more ambitious chroniclers of great affairs of state, to engage
the attention of a brilliant modern writer, and will continue to
be known through Carlyle's Past and Present to thousands of
readers who will never have the curiosity to read his actual
Latin record. Quite apart, however, from the adventitious im-
portance it has thus gained, Jocelin's account of the deeds of
Abbot Sampson and his community at St Edmundsbury is of unique
historical value for the light it throws upon the organisation of
monastic institutions and of their relations to the social and
industrial life of the common people.
The life and habits of a different section of society have been
illustrated, in an almost equally vivid way, by several of the
scholars who flourished in and around the court of Henry II.
John of Salisbury and Peter of Blois, Gervase of Tilbury
and Nigel Wireker, and, above all, Walter Map and Gerald of
Wales, have left behind them documents which bear, in some
respects, even more of the very “form and pressure” of the time
than the chronicles themselves. The Policraticus of John of
Salisbury, the letters of Peter of Blois, the Otia Imperialia of
Gervase and the poems of Nigel Wireker, throw a flood of light
## p. 177 (#197) ############################################
Giraldus and Map
177
upon the studies and the pastimes, the intrigues and the scandals,
the humours and the passions of those who dwelt in the high
places of both state and church. Of all these writers none
has contrived to blend information and entertainment more
successfully than Giraldus Cambrensis. A scholar trained
at Paris, an insatiably curious student of men and books and
every form of odd lore, a fighter and an intriguer to his
finger-tips, an inveterate gossip, yet a man capable of high
ideals and far-reaching schemes of public policy, the intimate
friend of kings and statesmen, popes and prelates, yet withal
a passionate lover of his own native little Wales-Gerald is
one of the most romantic figures in all medieval literature.
The most stirring episode in his life was the struggle in which
he engaged, "for the honour of Wales? "; and he is still deservedly
beloved among his countrymen as the devoted champion of one
of the most creditable of lost causes and impossible loyalties,
But his enduring title to fame rests upon the writings which,
alike for brilliancy of style and for variety of interest, remain
unsurpassed among the Anglo-Norman literature of the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries.
A greater renown, however, in literary history generally has
been enjoyed by Gerald's friend, and, probably, fellow-countryman,
Walter Map? Were it possible to prove to demonstration Map's
authorship of the great Arthurian romances commonly associated
with his name, there could be no question about his claim to
rank as the greatest literary genius who appeared in England
before Chaucer. But the claim made on behalf of Map to
the authorship of these imaginative works rests on very slender
evidence. Even the authenticity of his equally celebrated
Goliardic poems is open to grave question. The De Nugis -
Curialium, or book Of Courtiers' Trifles, is, undoubtedly, his.
It was probably composed by instalments, and forms a sort
of common-place book in which Map seems to have jotted down,
from time to time, both shrewd reflections upon men and things,
and pleasant anecdotes to divert the vacant mind. Of the strictly
historical portions of the work, the most valuable are the accounts, in
the first book, of some of the heretical sects which had sprung up in
the twelfth century, and the reflections, which take up the whole of
the fifth book, upon the character and achievements of the Anglo-
Norman kings. The fourth book includes, in company with some
lively tales, the celebrated letter, well known to the Wife of Bath's
fifth husband, from Valerius to Rufinus, upon the folly of marrying
1 Op. (Rolle Series), 1,129. See also post, chap. 2, p. 196. See post, chap. 2, pp. 188 ff.
E. L. I. CH. IX.
12
## p. 178 (#198) ############################################
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Latin Chroniclers
a wife. The whole work is a medley of such diverse and curious
ingredients—satire, gossip, fairy-lore, folk-tales and snatches of
serious history—as to make us easily believe that its author was,
as Gerald hints, one of the most versatile and witty talkers in
the court circles of that eager and inquisitive age.
The thirteenth century is, emphatically, the golden age of the
monastic historians. At their head stands Matthew Paris, the
greatest of all our medieval chroniclers; but his work only repre-
sents the crowning literary achievement of an enthusiasm and an
industry that inspired every considerable monastery in the land.
The apnals, most of them nameless, of Burton, of Winchester,
of Waverley, of Dunstable, of Osney, of Worcester-all testify to
the assiduity of monkish scribes in compiling, revising and adding
to the stores of historical material accumulated in their respective
houses. Invaluable, however, as these chronicles are to the student
of political and social history, they possess little interest as
literature.
But, at the powerful monastery of St Albans, there arose
a school of historians as brilliant as that which had, in the
north, closed with Roger of Hoveden. This school produced in
Matthew Paris a writer who, both in his conception of the
historian's art and in the force and picturesqueness of his
style, surpasses all the chroniclers of the twelfth century. The
historians of St Albans possessed exceptional advantages. The
wealth of the abbey, its accommodation and equipment as an
ideal home of learning, its position on Watling Street and its
proximity to the capital, marked it out as the chief centre of
monastic culture in the thirteenth century; and its inmates
kept up a constant intercourse with the great men of the day
as they passed through it on their way to and from London and
the provinces. Nowhere else, perhaps, in the kingdom could
a historian of contemporary events pursue his task at that
time under more favourable conditions. Moreover, in no other
abbey does the writing of history appear to have been so care-
fully organised as at St Albans. Abbot Simon, who died in
1183, established in the monastery a regular office of historio-
grapher. The first occupant of this office whose complete work
has come down to us was Roger of Wendover; but his chronicle
is based upon materials of which an ample wealth already
existed in the abbey. The actual nucleus of the early part
of Roger's Flowers of History is supposed to have been the
compilation of John de Cella, who was abbot of St Albans from
## p. 179 (#199) ############################################
Matthew Paris
179
1195 to 1214. John's work extended down to the year 1188, and
was revised and continued by Roger down to 1235, the year before
his death.
century historians was palpably due to the favour shown to men of
letters by the two Henrys, and to the personal encouragement of
princely nobles like earl Robert of Gloucester, and courtly eccle-
siastics like Alexander, bishop of Lincoln. Some of the monastic
writers enjoyed no such direct patronage; but they were none the
less responsive to the demands of the time. They not only felt the
impulse of the new learning—they were conscious of living in a
great age, and of witnessing the gradual establishment in England
## p. 157 (#177) ############################################
England and Normandy 157
of a new and powerful kingdom. Nothing is more significant than
the way in which the Anglo-Norman chroniclers, whether native
Englishmen or Normans domiciled in England, reflect the united
patriotic sentiment which it was the design of Norman statesman-
ship to foster. Though composed in a foreign tongue, these
chronicles are histories of England, and are written from a
national English standpoint. It was under Henry I, whose marriage
with Matilda seemed to symbolise the permanent union of the two
peoples, that a new sense of national self-consciousness began to
grow out of the Norman settlement. A shrewd observer of the next
generation, Walter Map, tells us that it was Henry who effectually
“united both peoples in a steadfast concord ? . " It was Henry's reign
also that witnessed the transfer of the central seat of Norman power
from Normandy to England. William of Malmesbury, himself half-
Norman, half-English, in his account of the battle of Tinchebray,
reminds his readers that it was fought “on the same day on which,
about forty years before, William had first landed at Hastings”-a
fact which the chronicler characteristically takes to prove "the
wise dispensation of God that Normandy should be subjected
to England on the same day that the Norman power had
formerly arrived to conquer that kingdom. ” In other words,
England now became the predominant partner in the Anglo-
Norman kingdom, and the twelfth century chroniclers are
fully alive to the meaning of the change. As the dreams of a
great Anglo-Norman empire began to take shape in the minds of
the new rulers of England, and came to be temporarily realised
under Henry II, the English historiographers rose to the height of
their opportunities with patriotic ardour. No other country pro-
duced, during the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries, anything
to be compared with the English chronicles in variety of interest,
wealth of information and amplitude of range. So wide is their
outlook, and so authoritative is their record of events, that, as
Stubbs observes, “it is from the English chroniclers of this period
that much of the German history of the time has to be written. ” The
new England had become conscious of her power, and of her growing
importance in the international economy of Europe.
In literature the most signal expression of that consciousness
is the work of our Latin chroniclers. Thus, however unattractive
much of this chronicle literature may be to the ordinary reader,
there belongs to all of it the human interest of having been
· De Nugis Curialium, Dist. v, Cap. v.
3 Gesta Regum Anglorum, Bk. v.
: Lectures on Medieval and Modern History, p. 125.
## p. 158 (#178) ############################################
158
Latin Chroniclers
written under the pressure of great events and the stimulus of a
glowing national feeling.
Even apart from patriotic incentives, there were other in-
fuences at work during the twelfth century which made for the
study and the writing of history. The Norman settlement in
England synchronised with a movement which shook all western
Christendom to its foundations. The crusades not only profoundly
stirred the feelings of Europe-they served indirectly to quicken
the imagination and stimulate the curiosity of the western races
as nothing had done for centuries. Intercourse with the east, and
the mingling together of different tribes in the crusading armies,
brought about a “renascence of wonder” as far-reaching in some
of its effects as the great renascence itself. The twelfth century
is, above all, the age of the birth of modern romance. The insti-
tutions of chivalry, the mystic symbolism of the church, the
international currency of popular fabliaux, the importation of
oriental stories of magic and wizardry-all contributed to the
fashioning of the fantastic creations of the medieval romances.
And of the romantic cycles none came to have so speedy and
triumphant a vogue as that which was named, originally in France,
"the matter of Britain. " This “matter of Britain" had its beginning,
as a formative influence in European literature, in the work of an
Anglo-Norman writer, who, while professing to draw his information
from a suspiciously cryptic source and frequently giving obvious
rein to his own imagination, assumes none the less the gravity and
the deliberate manner of an authentic chronicler. Geoffrey of
Monmouth, ambitious of supplying what previous writers had
failed to tell about the kings of Britain before the coming of the
English, wrote a chronicle which had all the charm and novelty of
a romance of adventure. King Arthur, as a romantic hero, is
Geoffrey's creation. Hence, the most readable Latin chronicle
of the twelfth century is one that has the least real claim to that
title. But the History of the Kings of Britain is no more to be
ruled out of a place in the chronicle literature of England than it
is to be ousted from its assured pre-eminence as the fountain-head of
Arthurian romance. For Geoffrey's legends not only wrought their
spell upon innumerable poets and imaginative writers, but con-
tinued for generations to disturb the waters of history, and to
mystify a long line of honest and laborious chroniclers.
Geoffrey's History, whatever opinion may be held as to its
author's methods and motives, well illustrates in its general style
and manner the ambitious designs of the greater Anglo-Norman
## p. 159 (#179) ############################################
Characteristics of the Chroniclers 159
chroniclers. Those of them who aspire to write history, as distin-
guished from mere contemporary annals, are studious both of
literary ornament and of the symmetry and proportion of their
narrative. Compiling and borrowing, as Geoffrey professes to do,
from previous chroniclers, they all endeavour to impart some new
life and colour to their materials. They take the great Bede as-
their native master in the art of historical writing. But, for their
literary models, they look beyond him, and seek, like William of -
Malmesbury, to "season their crude materials with Roman art? . "
Even minor chroniclers, like Richard of Devizes, who confine them-
selves to the events of their own time, are fond of adorning their
pages with classical allusions or quotations. Henry of Huntingdon
is even more adventurous, and enlivens his narrative with frequent
metrical effusions of his own. Most of them endeavour, according
to their ability, to be readable, arming themselves, as Roger of
Wendover does, against both “the listless hearer and the fastidious
reader" by “presenting something which each may relish," and so
providing for the joint "profit and entertainment of all. ”
But, far more than their embellishments of style, their fulness
and accuracy of detail and their patriotic motives, what gives life
and permanent interest to the Anglo-Norman chronicles is the
sense which they convey of intimate relationship with great men
and great affairs. Even those chroniclers who do not pretend to
write history on the larger scale, and only provide us with what
Ralph of Diceto, in describing his own work, calls “outlines of
histories,” imagines historiarum, for the use of some future philo-
sophic historian—even they succeed in conveying to us something,
at least, of the animation of the stirring age in which they lived.
They describe events of which they themselves were eye-witnesses;
they preserve documents to which they had special privilege of
access; they record impressions derived from direct contact with
great statesmen, warriors and ecclesiastics; they retail anecdotes
gathered from the cloister, the market-place and the court. For
even the monastic chroniclers were not the mere recluses of the
popular imagination. They were, in their way, men of the world,
who, though themselves taking no active part in public affairs,
lived in close intercourse with public men. The great abbeys, such
as those of Malmesbury and of St Albans, were open houses,
constantly visited by the mighty ones of the land. William of
Malmesbury tells us how bis own monastery was distinguished
for its “delightful hospitality,” where "guests, arriving every
1 Preface to Gesta Regum Anglorum. * Preface to Flowers of History.
## p. 160 (#180) ############################################
160
Latin Chroniclers
and chronnalpb to
hour, consume more than the inmates themselves ? . " Even the
most remote of monastic writers, such as William of New-
burgh in his secluded Yorkshire priory, kept in such close touch
with contemporary affairs as fully to realise their dramatic sig.
nificance. “For in our times,” he writes in the preface to his
English History, “such great and memorable events have hap-
pened that the negligence of us moderns were justly to be
reprehended, should they fail to be handed down to eternal
memory in literary monuments. ” Other monkish writers, like
Matthew Paris in a later generation, enjoyed the royal confidence,
and occasionally wrote under royal command. Moreover, not all
the chroniclers were monks. Henry of Huntingdon, Roger of
Hoveden, Ralph of Diceto and the author of the chronicle often
wrongly ascribed to Benedict of Peterborough-not to mention
writers like Giraldus Cambrensis and Walter Map, who have left
behind them records scarcely distinguishable from contemporary
chronicles—were all men who lived in intimate association with
the court. So much store, indeed, came, in time, to be set upon
the records of the chroniclers that they became standard authori.
ties to which kings and statesmen appealed for confirmation of
titles and the determination of constitutional claims. The con-
ditions under which they were composed, and the importance
which they once had as documents of state, are alone more than
sufficient sanction for the provision made by " the Treasury, under
the direction of the Master of the Rolls," for the publication of those
editions in which they can best be studied by the modern reader.
“Of the several schools of English medieval history," writes
Stubbs”, “the most ancient, the most fertile, the longest lived and
the most widely spread was the Northumbrian. " At its head stands
the great name of Bede, the primary authority and the pattern of
most of the Latin historians of our period. The first conspicuous
representative of the northern school of chroniclers in the twelfth
century is Simeon, precentor of the monastery of Durham, and
he, like many historiographers after him, makes Bede the founda-
tion of the early part of his history. His second source of
information, covering the period from the death of Bede down
to the beginning of the ninth century, was the lost Northumbrian
annals known to us through Simeon alone. From the middle
of the ninth century down to 1121 he borrows his matter
almost entirely from the chronicle of Florence of Worcester and the
clers that came, in cate associ
Gesta Regum Anglorum, Bk. v.
3 Preface to Roger of Hoveden's Chronicle, Rolls Series.
## p. 161 (#181) ############################################
The Northern School
161
first continuator of the latter. The rest of Simeon's narrative, ex-
tending to the year 1129, probably represents his own independent
work. Little is known of Simeon's life, and it is impossible to deter-
mine whether he was the actual compiler, or merely the editor, of the
chronicle which bears his name. His work, however, had a high
repute throughout the Middle Ages, and his fame was second only
to that of Bede among the writers of the Northumbrian school.
Simeon's chronicle was continued down to the close of the reign of
Stephen by two priors of Hexham. The elder of the two, Richard,
wrote an account of the Acts of King Stephen, and the Battle of
the Standard, which contains much original information. His son,
John, brought the narrative down to the year 1154, and is an
independent authority of considerable value. Another north-
countryman, the canonised Ailred or Ethelred, a Cistercian monk
of Rievaulx, claims a place among the many chroniclers who wrote
of the battle of the Standard. His account is neither so full nor so
trustworthy as that of Richard of Hexham, but is somewhat more
ambitious, in that it professes to give, after the manner of the
classical historians, the speeches of the rival leaders before the
encounter. For a brief period about the middle of the twelfth
century there was, in Northumbria as elsewhere, a curious break
in the activity of the chroniclers. But, in the next generation, two
writers who worthily uphold the traditions of the northern school
appear in William of Newburgh and Roger of Hoveden. William
confines himself to his own times; but Roger attempts a compre-
hensive history of several centuries, and, gathering his materials
from the best available authorities, gives us what Stubbs calls
" the full harvest of the labours of the Northumbrian historians. ”
The first Latin chronicler of any importance who belongs to
southern England is Florence of Worcester, already mentioned as
one of Simeon of Durham's main sources. Florence's work is notable
as being the first attempt in England at a universal history beginning
with the Creation and embracing within its compass all the nations
of the known world. But, as the title of his chronicle-Chronicon
ex Chronicis-frankly indicates, Florence is not much more than a
laborious compiler from the works of others; and he took as the basis
of the early portions of his narrative the universal chronicle of
Marianus Scotus, an Irish monk of the eleventh century. Marianus,
in his turn, is, so far as English history is concerned, only a com-
piler from Bede and the Old English Chronicle. He brings his
record of events down to the year 1082, but it is so fragmentary
and perfunctory in its treatment of English affairs as to give
E. L, I. CH. IX.
11
## p. 162 (#182) ############################################
162
Latin Chroniclers
Florence abundant opportunities for interpolation and addition.
Florence's account of his own times, which closes with the year
1117, possesses much independent value, and was largely drawn
upon by subsequent chroniclers. It is less valuable, however, than
its continuation by John, another monk of Worcester, from 1117
to 1141. A second continuation, down to 1152, was based mainly
upon the work of Henry of Huntingdon. The task of still further
extending Florence's chronicle seems to have become a special
concern of the monks of St Edmundsbury, for it is to two inmates
of that house that we owe two other additions to it which continue
the record, without a break, down to the very end of the thirteenth
century.
Neither Simeon of Durham nor Florence of Worcester can be
called a historian in any high sense. Both are, at best, but
conscientious annalists, making no effort either to present events
in their wider relations of cause and effect, or to adorn their
narrative with any studied literary graces. The earlier portions
of the chronicle which bears Simeon's name are, indeed, embellished
with frequent poetical quotations, but the work, as a whole, is as
barren of literary ornament as that of Florence. Literature of a
somewhat richer colour, and history of a higher order, are found in
the writings of two of their contemporaries, one, like them, a pure
Englishman, the other a Norman born on English soil-Eadmer
and Ordericus Vitalis. Eadmer, the follower and intimate friend
of Anselm, wrote in six books a history of his own times down to the
year 1122—Historia Novorum in Anglia—which is full of fresh
and vivid detail. In his preface Eadmer justifies the historian who
confines himself to a narrative of contemporary events; the difficulty
of obtaining an accurate knowledge of the past had convinced
him that none deserved better of posterity than he who wrote
a faithful record of the happenings of his own lifetime. His
immediate purpose, he tells us, is to give an account of the relations
of his master Anselm with William II and Henry I, and especially
of the dispute about the investiture. But, as he anticipates, bis
task will oblige him to illustrate at many points the history of
England before, during and after the investiture quarrel. While
the main interest of Eadmer's work is ecclesiastical, and, in the last
two books, turns largely upon the affairs of the see of Canterbury,
it throws much valuable light upon the general political and social
conditions of the time. Written with what William of Malmesbury
calls “a chastened elegance of style",” Eadmer's History is
i Preface to Gesta Regum Anglorum.
## p. 163 (#183) ############################################
Eadmer and Orderic
163
distinguished most of all by its design and sense of proportion. "
Eadmer is almost modern in his deliberate limitation of himself to a
period and a special subject upon which he could speak as a first-
hand authority. His example in this respect was not without
its effect upon more than one historiographer of the next gene-
ration. Richard of Devizes and the author of the Acts of
Stephen are chroniclers who make up for the brevity of their
narratives by the graphic force which belongs only to a contem-
porary record. In addition to his History, Eadmer wrote a Latin
life of Anselm, and upon all that concerns the character and the
work of that great prelate there is no more trustworthy authority.
Ordericus Vitalis, the son of Norman parents but born in
Shropshire in 1075, was a writer of much more ambitious scope
than Eadmer. His voluminous Ecclesiastical History, borrowing
its title from Bede's great work, extends from the beginning of the
Christian era down to the year 1141. It is in thirteen books, and
represents the labour and observation of some twenty years of the
writer's life. It is a characteristic product of the cloister. The
church, and all that concerns it, are, throughout, uppermost in
Orderic's mind, and determine his standpoint and design as a
historian. But he had sufficient curiosity and knowledge of the
world to gather and place on record a vast amount of information
about mundane affairs. Taken over to Normandy to be educated
at the early age of ten, he spent his life as a monk of St Evroul;
but he was not without opportunities of travel, and he paid at least
one visit to England for the express purpose of collecting material
for his History. Although he is often inaccurate in his chronology,
and confusing in the arrangement of his matter, Orderic is one of
our standard historical authorities for the Norman period. He is
especially valuable for the information he gives as to the condition
of Normandy itself during the eleventh, and part of the twelfth,
century, and his History deals even more with continental than with
English affairs. Yet he always prided himself upon his English
birth; he even called himself an Englishman, and could, in
Freeman's words, “at once admire the greatness of the Conqueror
and sympathise with the wrongs of his victims. ” Orderic's very
defects of arrangement and order as a chronicler were the result
of a curiosity and a range of interest which add much to the value
of his work as a minute and varied contemporary record. He tells
us much that is not found elsewhere about the social conditions of
his time, about property, about the monastic profession and even
about the occupations, tastes, pastimes and personal appearance
11-2
## p. 164 (#184) ############################################
164
Latin Chroniclers
of prominent men. His style is, in many places, highly rhetorical.
Of it, as a whole, “an English reader," writes dean Church, “may
best form an idea by combining the Biblical pedantry and doggerel
of a Fifth-monarchy pamphlet of the seventeenth century with the
classical pedantry of the most extravagant burlesque of Dr Johnson's
English ? . "
Contemporary with Eadmer and Orderic, William of Malmes-
bury is a much greater historian, and, to the literary student, a far
more attractive writer, than either. Milton's opinion, that “both
for style and judgment " William is “ by far the best writer of all”
the twelfth century chroniclers', still holds good. William, as many
incidental confessions in his History show, had high ambitions as
an author, and aspired to restore to the historian's art the dignity
and the splendour with which it had been invested by the illus-
trious Bede. His design is to tell, artistically yet critically, all
that is known about his country's history from the first coming of
the English, and, especially, as he informs us in his preface, to
“fill up the chasm of two hundred and twenty-three years" after
Bede, which Eadmer had left altogether unnoticed in his Historia
Novorum. William's chronicle is in two parts. The first, divided
into five books, is called a History of the Kings of England, and
extends from A. D. 449 to 1127. The second part, entitled Historia
Novella or Modern History, is in three books, and brings the
narrative down to the year 1142. These histories represent but a
small portion of William's entire literary work, for he was one of
the most prolific writers of his time; his other productions
include a history of the prelates of England, a life of St Wulfstan
and a history of the church of Glastonbury. William of Malmesbury
possessed many of the highest qualifications of a historian; he had
learning, industry, judgment and a wide knowledge of the world
He was, for his day, a considerable traveller, and was, both by
temperament and training, a discriminating, as well as an inquisitive,
student of life and character. He is thus singularly free from the
prejudices and the narrow standards of the cloister. Although he
himself claims that his mixed blood' is a guarantee of his im-
partiality, he has not escaped the suspicion, among modern critics,
of having been something of a time-server. He had, however,
a thoroughly disinterested love of history as a study and as an
1 St Anselm, p. 140.
? History of England, Bk. rv, p. 172 (1st ed. 1670).
3 In the preface to the third book of his History William says that "the blood of
the two peoples flows in [his) veins," and that he is therefore qualified to "stear a middle
course” between racial partisans.
## p. 165 (#185) ############################################
165
William of Malmesbury
art; and the task of writing the history of England presented
itself to him as a patriotic duty, all the more clearly incumbent
upon him because of the “criminal indolence” of those who might
have continued the work of Bede? .
Bede, then, is William's great exemplar, and the fount of his
inspiration-Bede, with whom “was buried almost all knowledge of
history down to our own times," and whose praises William protests
that he has "neither the abilities nor the eloquence” adequately
to blazon? For the materials of the earlier portions of his
History William states that he searched far and wide; and,
while he borrowed from nearly every known work of his time,
he evidently draws upon other sources which have not been
identified. But he by no means borrows indiscriminately. He
sifts and selects his material, and cautions his readers against
accepting the testimony of his authorities too implicitly. That he was
not, however, so very much in advance of his time is shown by the
fact that he, in company with more credulous chroniclers, gravely
records marvels and seemingly supernatural occurrences as
authentic historical events. The evidence of a respectable eye-
witness is, in most of these cases, sufficient warrant for unques-
tioning belief. Anecdotes, also, of every kind, seem to have had -
a peculiar charm for William, and, at the end of his third book,
he quaintly excuses his fondness for including them in his History
by saying that, “if I am not too partial to myself, a variety of
anecdote cannot be displeasing to any one, unless he be morose
enough to rival the superciliousness of Cato. ” To the modern
reader, who looks for literary entertainment as much as for
authentic history, William's ingenuous habits of reminiscence,
of quotation, of anecdotal digression and of sententious comment
add much to the personal charm and vivacity of his narrative.
He is at his best, however, when he brings all his powers of
rhetoric and his faculty of pictorial writing to bear upon the
description of some great event or stirring public movement.
His graphic account of the first crusade, for example, has about
it a spaciousness and a wealth of colour which all but rival the
glowing periods of Gibbon.
This ardent love not only inspired the continental provinces, but even all
who had heard the name of Christ, whether in the most distant islands or
savage countries. The Welshman left his hunting, the Scot his fellowship
with vermin, the Dane his drinking-party, the Norwegian his raw fish. Lands
were deserted of their husbandmen; houses of their inhabitants; even whole
* Bk. 1, ch. 3.
* Bk. 11, prol.
## p. 166 (#186) ############################################
166
Latin Chroniclers
cities migrated. There was no regard to relationship; affection to their
country was held in little esteem; God alone was placed before their eyes.
Whatever was stored in granaries, or hoarded in chambers, to answer the
hopes of the avaricious husbandmen or the covetousness of the miser, all, all
was deserted; they hungered and thirsted after Jerusalem alone.
Even this brief passage serves to show that William was a writer
who could make the dry bones of history live, and who had an
artist's instinct for the salient and significant features of the
panorama of events which the historian has to depict upon his
canvas. The muse of history needs, for her highest service, the
aid of the imagination ; and William of Malmesbury's pre-
eminence among the twelfth century chroniclers is due to the
art which enabled him to give a picturesque setting to his
narrative without any sacrifice of accuracy in circumstantial
detail. For he still holds his place among historians as a high
authority, not quite so impartial, perhaps, as he professes to be
in his judgments of individuals, but singularly clear and trust-
worthy in his presentment of events. William, after all, wrote
under the direct patronage of a great noble, and it was only
natural that he should have paid some deference to the wishes
and interests of earl Robert of Gloucester. Yet, even in Historia
Novella, written at Robert's request to describe the struggle
between king Stephen and the empress Maud, in which Robert
himself played a prominent part, the substantial truth of William's
narrative remains unassailed
Of the early twelfth century chroniclers, Henry of Huntingdon
enjoyed, for generations, a popular repute second only to that of
William of Malmesbury. Modern criticism, however, has largely
destroyed Henry's claims to rank as a first-rate historical authority,
and in neither style, accuracy, nor fulness of detail is be worthy of
any serious comparison with William. Henry himself appears to
have rated his powers at quite as high a value as William's; for he
prefaces his chronicle with a floridly rhetorical and ambitious
disquisition upon the "prerogatives” of history. But he possessed
neither the learning nor the patient industry of William, and
his studied endeavours after rhetorical ornament only serve to
accentuate his pretentiousness by the side of his great monastic
compeer. Henry was a secular clerk, who lived under the
patronage, first of Robert Bloet, bishop of Lincoln, and after-
wards of his successor, Alexander of Blois. It was, as he tells
us, by command of Alexander that he wrote his History of the
English, and he probably compiled the greater part of it between
## p. 167 (#187) ############################################
Henry of Huntingdon 167
1125 and 1130. The work was dedicated to Alexander; and the
prefatory letter ends, characteristically, with an invocation in
verse both of the Divine blessing and of the approbation of his
episcopal patron. The entire History, frequently revised and
extended, ends with the year 1154. Its earlier portions are
borrowed, with many embellishments, from Bede and the Old
English Chronicle. In many places Henry simply translates from
the old English annals, and among his translations is a metrical
version, though much curtailed, of the famous song on The Battle
of Brunanburh. Henry prided himself on his accomplishments in
verse, and his History is decorated with many poetical passages.
Of his work, as a whole, the best that can be said is that it
shows some sense of design, and of proportion in its execution ;
he treats of the history of England up to his time as dividing
itself naturally into the four periods of the Roman, the Saxon, the
Danish and the Norman occupations. It is when he comes to deal
with the Norman dominion, and especially with the events of his
own time, that he is most disappointing. At the beginning of
the seventh book he states that, after having so far relied upon
either "ancient writers or common report,” he is about to “deal
with events which have passed under” his “own observation, or have
been told to” him “by eye-witnesses. ” Neither in the seventh nor
in the eighth book do we find much to justify the expectation thus
raised.
Henry was a facile writer, but a perfunctory historian.
"He was ambitious, but not laborious; literary, but not exact;
intelligent, but not penetrating. He formed large projects, but
was too indolent to execute them satisfactorily? " Henry's
rhetorical pages are brought to an appropriate close with a
glowing peroration, in verse, celebrating the accession of king
Henry II. What appears to have been at one time intended
to stand as the eighth book of the History is a treatise on the
Contempt of the World a letter, addressed to a friend named
Walter, upon the fortunes of "the bishops and the illustrious men
of his age. ” This work, both the title and the motive of which
remind us of more imposing literary achievements by greater men,
contains many vivid portraits of Henry of Huntingdon's famous
contemporaries.
A chronicler who is as great an authority, for the reign of
which he treats, as either William of Malmesbury or Henry of
Huntingdon, is the anonymous author of the Acts of Stephen
(Gesta Stephani). Not even William himself surpasses this writer
Thomas Arnold, preface to Rolls edition.
## p. 168 (#188) ############################################
168
Latin Chroniclers
in accuracy and vividness of detail. He is a palpable partisan of
Stephen, and has been supposed by some to have been the king's
confessor. Nothing, however, better illustrates the general trust-
worthiness and impartiality of the twelfth century chroniclers
than a comparison of the narrative of this historian with those
of William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon. Gesta
Stephani covers much the same ground as the Historia Novella of
William; yet, though the two works were composed from opposite
standpoints, they differ little in their presentment of the essential
facts of the history of the time.
William of Malmesbury claimed, as we have seen, the patronage
of Robert, earl of Gloucester; Henry of Huntingdon that of
Alexander, bishop of Lincoln. The favour of both these magnates,
and, if we are to trust the evidence of a MS preserved at Berne,
that of king Stephen himself, was invoked by the chronicler who
enjoys the dubious distinction of having been among British writers
the greatest disturber of the waters of history. Could he have
foreseen the influence which he was destined to exercise over the
poets of England, Geoffrey of Monmouth would doubtless have
been quite content with the prospect of forfeiting the confidence
of critical historians. Indeed, it is difficult to believe, on any
supposition, that the History of the Kings of Britain was written
as a serious contribution to authentic history. Geoffrey's manner
only too obviously betrays him. Just as William of Malmesbury
is anxious to "fill up the chasm” between Bede and Eadmer, so
Geoffrey professes to explore and map out a still more obscure
period, namely that of "the kings who dwelt in Britain before the
incarnation of Christ," and especially of "Arthur and the many
others who succeeded him after the incarnation. ” It so happened
that a document was placed in his hands which “set forth the
doings of them all in due succession and order from Brute, the
first king of the Britons, onward to Cadwaladr, the son of
Cadwallo, all told in stories of exceeding beauty. ” This docu-
ment was a certain "most ancient book in the British tongue,"
which was supplied to him by Walter, archdeacon of Oxford. No
other contemporary chronicler seems to have had access to this
mysterious book, and no amount of subsequent research has been
able to discover it. Geoffrey himself evidently looked upon its
contents as his own exclusive secret; for, in the epilogue to his
History, he expressly warns William of Malmesbury and Henry of
Huntingdon, who could write competently enough about the kings
of the English, not to meddle with the kings of the Britons,
## p. 169 (#189) ############################################
Geoffrey of Monmouth 169
"inasmuch as they have not the book in the British speech which
Walter brought over from Britanny. "
All this affectation of mystery, however, does not prevent Geoffrey
from openly commending his work to the favourable notice of the
two great men whose confidence and encouragement William and
Henry respectively enjoyed. The main body of his History is
dedicated to earl Robert of Gloucester, while the seventh book,
consisting of the famous prophecies of Merlin, is prefaced by an
almost fulsomely laudatory letter addressed to Alexander of
Lincoln. Geoffrey was thus determined to lose nothing of the
prestige and credit to be derived from aristocratic patronage;
and his dedications only confirm the assumption that he imitates
the practices and assumes the pose of an authentic chronicler with
the deliberate purpose of mystifying his readers. For Geoffrey's
History is, on the last analysis, a prose romance, and, in its
Arthurian portions in particular, a palpable excursion in fiction.
One need not believe that the entire work is, in the words of
William of Newburgh, a tissue of “impudent and shameless lies. ” u
Even the reference to "the British book” cannot altogether be
regarded as a ruse for the deception of the ingenuous reader.
Geoffrey doubtless drew upon some documents, possibly Welsh,
which have since been lost. He borrowed all he could from
Bede and Nennius; he probably borrowed more from floating
British traditions. What is even more certain is that he in-
vented a great deal It is impossible to read the later books of
the History without feeling that Geoffrey, when he had em-
barked upon the history of Merlin and of Arthur, was fully
conscious of his opportunities of romantic dilatation. Arthur
was a British prince capable of being exalted into a heroic figure
who should overshadow both Alexander and Charlemagne. These
two potentates were already the titular heroes of profitably worked
romantic cycles. Why should Britain not have its romantic
“matter," as well as Rome and France? Read in the light of the
general literary history of its time, and of its immediate and
immense popularity, Geoffrey's History can be adequately
explained only as the response of a British writer, keenly
observant of the literary tendencies of the day, to the growing
demand for romance. How well he succeeded in his design
appears from William of Newburgh's complaint that he had
"made the little finger of his Arthur stouter than the back of
Alexander the Great. "
The History of the Kings of Britain was complete in the
## p. 170 (#190) ############################################
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Latin Chroniclers
form now known to us by 1148 at the latest; but there is evidence
that it existed in some form as early as 1139. A letter from
Henry of Huntingdon, addressed to one Warinus, otherwise un-
known, and prefixed to the Chronicle of Robert de Monte', gives
an abstract of "a big book” by “Geoffrey Arthur," which Henry
discovered in 1139 at the abbey of Bec in Normandy. Henry
himself had long been anxious to know something about the
kings of the Britons; and “to his amazement he found” at Bec
"a written record” of their deeds, including the history of
Arthur, “whose death the Britons deny, and still continue to
look for his return. " Henry's letter contains no mention of
Merlin; but, whether then incorporated in the History or not,
the Prophecies must have been written before 1139, for Ordericus
Vitalis quotes from them in the twelfth book (ch. 47) of his
History, which was composed in 1136 or 1137. By the year 1152
Geoffrey's work seems to have been well known, and to have won
him favour in high places, as he was then consecrated bishop of
St Asaph. He died in 1155. The fame of his History had
spread even before his death; for Wace, and, probably, Geoffrey
Gaimar, had begun to translate it into Anglo-Norman verse before
1155.
In England a long line of chroniclers, in both prose and verse,
from Layamon and Robert of Gloucester down to Grafton and
Holinshed, accepted Geoffrey in all good faith as a revealer of
“the marvellous current of forgotten things”; while a host of
poets, great and small, have been constantly haunted by his fables.
Two hundred years after his death his repute was such that, on the
strength of his use of the Brutus legend, Chaucer gave him a high
place in his Hous of Fame. With Homer and Statius, Dares
and Dictys and Guido delle Colonne, “English Gaufride” stands on
an iron pedestal,
besy for to bere up Troye.
In a later age both Spenser and Drayton sang his praises; while
even Wordsworth could not withhold a tribute to “the British
record long concealed,” where
We read of Spenser's fairy themes,
And those that Milton loved in youthful years;
The sage enchanter Merlin's subtle schemes,
The feats of Arthur and his knightly peers 4.
1 Chronicles of Stephen (Rolls Series), iv, 65.
Artegal and Elidure.
## p. 171 (#191) ############################################
Geoffrey's Fame
171
But Geoffrey has exacted still greater homage from the poets.
Lear and Cymbeline and Sabrina, “virgin daughter of Locrine,"
are names that link his memory for ever with the two supreme
poetical geniuses of England. Here, indeed, is a distinction which
the greatest of the chroniclers might have coveted; and it is enough
to mark the History of the Kings of Britain as the most significant
literary product of the twelfth century.
Geoffrey, however, succeeded in deluding so many honest
chroniclers who followed him that, in modern times, he has been
altogether proscribed from the company of sober historians.
Even before the twelfth century was out, his credit had come
to be gravely questioned. Giraldus Cambrensis, who had him- -
self no mean gift for the artistic manipulation of the legendary
and the marvellous, is one of Geoffrey's severest detractors.
According to Gerald, a certain Welshman named Meilyr was
reported to have an extraordinary familiarity with unclean
spirits, and they never responded to his call in greater numbers
than when Geoffrey's book was placed on his bosom. Gerald,
as is well known, had a strong sense of humour, and, probably
all he means to imply is that Geoffrey had over-reached himself
in the art of romance. It is otherwise with William of Newburgh.
He regarded Geoffrey as one who had deliberately and flagrantly
profaned the sacred functions of the historian, and devotes the
entire preface of his chronicle to a vehement denunciation of
Geoffrey's motives and to an exposure of his fabrications.
This severe preface has contributed as much as anything to the
high repute in which William of Newburgh is held as a critical his-
torian. Freeman's description of him as “the father of historical
criticism? ” has often been repeated, but scarcely seems deserved when
we compare his actual achievement with that of his greater namesake
of Malmesbury. For William of Newburgh belongs to that group
of modest chroniclers who are content with treating a limited period,
and describe, mainly, the events of their own lifetime. His History
extends from the Conquest to the year 1198; but the narrative
down to the time of Stephen is so compressed as to make the work,
in effect, an account of the reigns of Stephen and Henry II. For
the latter reign there are few better authorities. His work, as a
whole, forms the best single commentary upon the history of the
twelfth century left us by any writer of his day. For William's
chronicle is no mere bare record of events, but an ordered and
critical presentment of the affairs of his time, with due regard to
* Contemporary Review, Vol. XXXIII (1878), p. 216.
VOUS.
## p. 172 (#192) ############################################
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their cause and effect. His remoteness from the court and the
metropolis doubtless enabled William of Newburgh to maintain
an attitude of impartiality impossible to chroniclers thrown
into close contact with the greater actors in the drama of con-
temporary events. At any rate, the work of no twelfth-century
chronicler is marked by a more transparent honesty of purpose,
by greater independence of judgment, or by more acute estimates
of men and their motives. William writes in a clear, straight-
forward style; less studious of artistic effect and literary ornament
than his namesake of Malmesbury, he is inspired by a similar, if
not a greater, desire for accuracy. Like his predecessor, he venerates
the memory and the example of Bede, “whose wisdom and integrity
none can doubt ”; and, following that historian's pious motives, he
hopes that his own labours will form some “contribution, however
scanty, to the treasure-house of the Lord. ”
William of Newburgh was a contemporary of the brilliant
galaxy of scholars who flourished in the full light of the encourage-
ment given to learning and letters at the court of Henry II. But,
living in the comparative seclusion of his monastery, he is not quite
of them, and may be regarded rather as a continuator of the
honourable traditions of the historical school of the north. In
particular, he is one of the most trustworthy authorities for a
period of some twenty years, after the turn of the twelfth century,
of which we have scarcely any contemporary record'. For the
English history of the years 1153–4, and especially for the
foreign policy of the early years of Henry II's reign, our best
contemporary authority is a chronicler who lived and wrote in
Normandy, Robert de Monte or, as he calls himself, Robert of
Torigni. He compiled a comprehensive record of events from
the close of the first Christian century down to 1186, and is in-
debted for much of his account of purely English affairs to Eadmer
and Henry of Huntingdon. The troubles of king Stephen's reign
appear to have had a paralysing effect upon the chroniclers in
England; and it is not until the height of Henry Il's power that
they begin once more to give us a full and vivid account of con-
temporary affairs. The historian's art flourished anew in the
warmth of the general enthusiasm for learning which made the
England of Henry's time the paradise of scholars. In palace and
abbey, in the full glare and bustle of the court no less than in the
bookish atmosphere of the monastic cell, men were infected by a
common ardour of intellectual enterprise and literary achievement.
* See Stubbs, Preface to Roger of Hoveden, Rolls Series, p. sh.
## p. 173 (#193) ############################################
Benedict of Peterborough 173
In close touch with the court were men like Gilbert Foliot and
Richard Fitz-Neale; Ralph of Diceto, who was dean of St Paul's
during Fitz-Neale's episcopate, and Ranulf de Glanville, whose
name is associated with one of the earliest and most valuable
treatises on the laws and customs of England, though the real
author of it was, more probably, his nephew, Hubert Walter ;
Giraldus Cambrensis and Walter Map, Gervase of Tilbury and
Peter of Blois. In remoter haunts, though having frequent oppor-
tunities of intercourse with men of action and of affairs, were
Gervase of Canterbury and Nigel Wireker, John of Salisbury and
Richard of Devizes, Benedict of Peterborough and William of
Newburgh and Roger of Hoveden. Altogether, there was in the
country, as Stubbs says, “such a supply of writers and readers as
would be found nowhere else in Europe, except in the University
of Paris itself. ”
Several of these names are of the first importance in the list of
our Latin chroniclers. That of Benedict of Peterborough is
associated with the most authoritative chronicle of the reign of
Henry II, but only (as is now known) on the strength of the fact
that one of the extant MSS of the work was transcribed under
his order. Benedict, however, was by no means a mere director
of other men's literary labours, for he is known to have either
written or edited accounts of the passion and the miracles of Becket.
The author of the chronicle long ascribed to him still remains
undiscovered. Begun about 1172, the work bears in the main
all the marks of a contemporary narrative, and includes several
important documents. Stubbs holds that the internal evidence is
sufficient to prove not only that the chronicle was not by Benedict,
but that it is not the work of a monastic writer at all.
It has not even in its most disjointed portion the disorderly form, the dis-
proportionate details, the unimportant memoranda, the generally undigested
character, of monastic annals. It displays no propension to monastic institu-
tions, or to those principles and persons that were especially favoured by
monks. The author did not even trouble himself to compose an original
account of Becket's martyrdom. Whatever positive indications are to be
found point to a member of the king's court rather than to a monk, or even a
secular churchman? .
Stubbs's conjecture that the chronicle may have been the work
of Richard Fitz-Neale, and is a transcript of that writer's lost Trico
lumnis,“ merely altered from its inconvenient tripartite shape,” has
not found much acceptance among scholars. Fitz-Neale, who was
* Preface to edition in Rolls Series, p. lvi.
## p. 174 (#194) ############################################
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Latin Chroniclers
treasurer of England from 1168—98, and bishop of London from
1189—98, is best known as the author of the famous Dialogus de
Scaccario, or Dialogue of the Exchequer. That work, written in
the form of a dialogue, in two books, between master and pupil, is
one of the chief sources of our knowledge of constitutional prin-
ciples and practice in England before the Great Charter; it "stands
out as an unique book in the history of medieval England, perhaps
in the history of medieval Europe? . ”
The chronicle ascribed to Benedict forms, with some slight
alterations and additions, one of the most substantial portions
of the ambitious historical compilation attempted by Roger of
Hoveden. The chroniclers generally had little scruple about thus
transcribing, and embodying in their own works, the writings of
their predecessors; it was, indeed, held among the monastic
annalists to be a perfectly legitimate, not to say a necessary,
practice. Thus, Matthew Paris, the greatest monastic historian
of the thirteenth century, makes the compilations of two of his
predecessors at St Albans the nucleus of those parts of his
Chronica Majora which deal with events before his own time.
Roger of Hoveden not only borrowed the so-called Benedict
chronicle almost in its entirety, but made use of everything that
he could find from the hands of the northern chroniclers. In the
first part of his work, extending from 732 to 1148, he copies from
a Durham compilation, based upon the narratives of Simeon and
of Henry of Huntingdon, which is known as Historia post Bedam.
His main source from 1148 down to 1169 is the chronicle of Melrose.
The third part, extending to the year 1192, is substantially
“Benedict of Peterborough," illustrated by several new docu-
ments; the final portion, ending with the year 1201, is Roger's
own work. Roger was a man of affairs, and had exceptional
opportunities for watching the development of public events. He
was at one time in attendance upon Henry II in France; he sub-
sequently held public office, as justice itinerant of the forests. It
is disappointing, however, to find in Roger's Chronicle few of the
intimate personal revelations which might be expected in the narra-
tive of one who had such opportunities of intercourse with the
leading men of his time. Roger makes up to some extent for this
reticence by the compass of his narrative; for the later portions of
his chronicle include not only a survey of English affairs during
the reigns of Henry II and Richard I, but a fairly comprehensive
history of Europe during the same period.
· Pollock and Maitland's History of English Law, Vol. I, 2nd ed. p. 161.
## p. 175 (#195) ############################################
Ralph of Diceto
175
“Well illustrated as the reigns of Henry II and Richard are,”
says Stubbs”, “one side of their character would be imperfectly
known, and some of the crises of their policies would be almost inex-
plicable,” without Ralph of Diceto. Ralph was another chronicler
whose public life and position brought him into close contact with
the great men of his time, and gave him access to the best sources of
information. He was for many years archdeacon of Middlesex, and,
from the year 1180 until his death, about 1202, held the deanery of
St Paul's. “Diceto" appears to have been an artificial Latin name
adopted by Ralph to signify his association with some place,
probably French, which had no proper Latin name of its own.
His chief work is entitled Imagines Historiarum, or Outlines
of Histories, extending from the year 1148 down to 1202. Robert
de Monte's chronicle forms the basis of his narrative down to
1172; from that year begin his own original memoranda, which
are of especial value as contemporary records from 1183 onwards.
Ralph is one of the most sober and straightforward of the
chroniclers, and is little given to gossip or rhetorical decoration.
His work is somewhat deficient in orderly arrangement, and its
chronology is not always to be relied upon. Ralph, however,
had much of the insight of the historian who seeks to analyse
and to account for, as well as to record, public events and move-
ments, and he was a shrewd judge of character and motive. His
chronicle is illustrated by many important contemporary documents,
to which his position gave him special means of access.
Of several of the other chroniclers who wrote during the latter
part of the twelfth, and the opening years of the thirteenth, century,
only a passing mention need be made. Gervase of Canterbury, who
died about 1210, is chiefly remembered as an ecclesiastical historian,
and as one of the standard authorities on the contemporary history
of the see to which he belonged. One of his works, entitled Gesta
Regum, which is of some value as illustrating the reign of John,
perpetuates the Brutus legend to which Geoffrey of Monmouth
had given a startling currency. A more important authority for
king John's reign is Ralph, abbot of the Cistercian abbey of
Coggeshall, whose Chronicon Anglicanum (1066—1223) contains,
among other things, a full and well-informed account of
Richard I's crusade. That crusade has been described by several
chroniclers, but by none more graphically than by a monkish
writer whose History of King Richard I is one of the briefest
of the many contemporary narratives penned in the twelfth
1 Preface to Vol. of edition of Ralph de Diceto in Rolls Series,
## p. 176 (#196) ############################################
176
Latin Chroniclers
century. Its author, Richard of Devizes, has, however, stamped
upon his modest essay in history the impress of a personality
which is altogether absent from many more ambitious productions.
His work has a real literary interest, on account both of the
author's fondness for classical quotations and rhetorical ornament
and of the vivid and picturesque force of his narrative. In a
flowery letter of dedication, addressed to Robert, prior of the
church of Winchester, Richard states that he has deliberately
chosen a limited period for himself, leaving a more comprehensive
survey of events to those "who produce greater works. " "My
narrative," he says, “is for the living"; and he writes with a
dramatic instinct and an eye to pictorial effect not unworthy of
a modern journalist. No chronicle gives us a more vivid picture
of the general social condition of England in Coeur de Lion's time,
or of the pageant of events in which the king took paramount part.
The persecutions of the Jews, in particular, are described with a
terrible faithfulness which reflects the author's own avowed hatred
of the race.
Social life in England at the end of the twelfth century, and
especially the internal life and economy of the monasteries, are
portrayed with intimate knowledge in the celebrated chronicle of
Jocelin of Brakelond. Jocelin has had the good fortune, denied to
the more ambitious chroniclers of great affairs of state, to engage
the attention of a brilliant modern writer, and will continue to
be known through Carlyle's Past and Present to thousands of
readers who will never have the curiosity to read his actual
Latin record. Quite apart, however, from the adventitious im-
portance it has thus gained, Jocelin's account of the deeds of
Abbot Sampson and his community at St Edmundsbury is of unique
historical value for the light it throws upon the organisation of
monastic institutions and of their relations to the social and
industrial life of the common people.
The life and habits of a different section of society have been
illustrated, in an almost equally vivid way, by several of the
scholars who flourished in and around the court of Henry II.
John of Salisbury and Peter of Blois, Gervase of Tilbury
and Nigel Wireker, and, above all, Walter Map and Gerald of
Wales, have left behind them documents which bear, in some
respects, even more of the very “form and pressure” of the time
than the chronicles themselves. The Policraticus of John of
Salisbury, the letters of Peter of Blois, the Otia Imperialia of
Gervase and the poems of Nigel Wireker, throw a flood of light
## p. 177 (#197) ############################################
Giraldus and Map
177
upon the studies and the pastimes, the intrigues and the scandals,
the humours and the passions of those who dwelt in the high
places of both state and church. Of all these writers none
has contrived to blend information and entertainment more
successfully than Giraldus Cambrensis. A scholar trained
at Paris, an insatiably curious student of men and books and
every form of odd lore, a fighter and an intriguer to his
finger-tips, an inveterate gossip, yet a man capable of high
ideals and far-reaching schemes of public policy, the intimate
friend of kings and statesmen, popes and prelates, yet withal
a passionate lover of his own native little Wales-Gerald is
one of the most romantic figures in all medieval literature.
The most stirring episode in his life was the struggle in which
he engaged, "for the honour of Wales? "; and he is still deservedly
beloved among his countrymen as the devoted champion of one
of the most creditable of lost causes and impossible loyalties,
But his enduring title to fame rests upon the writings which,
alike for brilliancy of style and for variety of interest, remain
unsurpassed among the Anglo-Norman literature of the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries.
A greater renown, however, in literary history generally has
been enjoyed by Gerald's friend, and, probably, fellow-countryman,
Walter Map? Were it possible to prove to demonstration Map's
authorship of the great Arthurian romances commonly associated
with his name, there could be no question about his claim to
rank as the greatest literary genius who appeared in England
before Chaucer. But the claim made on behalf of Map to
the authorship of these imaginative works rests on very slender
evidence. Even the authenticity of his equally celebrated
Goliardic poems is open to grave question. The De Nugis -
Curialium, or book Of Courtiers' Trifles, is, undoubtedly, his.
It was probably composed by instalments, and forms a sort
of common-place book in which Map seems to have jotted down,
from time to time, both shrewd reflections upon men and things,
and pleasant anecdotes to divert the vacant mind. Of the strictly
historical portions of the work, the most valuable are the accounts, in
the first book, of some of the heretical sects which had sprung up in
the twelfth century, and the reflections, which take up the whole of
the fifth book, upon the character and achievements of the Anglo-
Norman kings. The fourth book includes, in company with some
lively tales, the celebrated letter, well known to the Wife of Bath's
fifth husband, from Valerius to Rufinus, upon the folly of marrying
1 Op. (Rolle Series), 1,129. See also post, chap. 2, p. 196. See post, chap. 2, pp. 188 ff.
E. L. I. CH. IX.
12
## p. 178 (#198) ############################################
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Latin Chroniclers
a wife. The whole work is a medley of such diverse and curious
ingredients—satire, gossip, fairy-lore, folk-tales and snatches of
serious history—as to make us easily believe that its author was,
as Gerald hints, one of the most versatile and witty talkers in
the court circles of that eager and inquisitive age.
The thirteenth century is, emphatically, the golden age of the
monastic historians. At their head stands Matthew Paris, the
greatest of all our medieval chroniclers; but his work only repre-
sents the crowning literary achievement of an enthusiasm and an
industry that inspired every considerable monastery in the land.
The apnals, most of them nameless, of Burton, of Winchester,
of Waverley, of Dunstable, of Osney, of Worcester-all testify to
the assiduity of monkish scribes in compiling, revising and adding
to the stores of historical material accumulated in their respective
houses. Invaluable, however, as these chronicles are to the student
of political and social history, they possess little interest as
literature.
But, at the powerful monastery of St Albans, there arose
a school of historians as brilliant as that which had, in the
north, closed with Roger of Hoveden. This school produced in
Matthew Paris a writer who, both in his conception of the
historian's art and in the force and picturesqueness of his
style, surpasses all the chroniclers of the twelfth century. The
historians of St Albans possessed exceptional advantages. The
wealth of the abbey, its accommodation and equipment as an
ideal home of learning, its position on Watling Street and its
proximity to the capital, marked it out as the chief centre of
monastic culture in the thirteenth century; and its inmates
kept up a constant intercourse with the great men of the day
as they passed through it on their way to and from London and
the provinces. Nowhere else, perhaps, in the kingdom could
a historian of contemporary events pursue his task at that
time under more favourable conditions. Moreover, in no other
abbey does the writing of history appear to have been so care-
fully organised as at St Albans. Abbot Simon, who died in
1183, established in the monastery a regular office of historio-
grapher. The first occupant of this office whose complete work
has come down to us was Roger of Wendover; but his chronicle
is based upon materials of which an ample wealth already
existed in the abbey. The actual nucleus of the early part
of Roger's Flowers of History is supposed to have been the
compilation of John de Cella, who was abbot of St Albans from
## p. 179 (#199) ############################################
Matthew Paris
179
1195 to 1214. John's work extended down to the year 1188, and
was revised and continued by Roger down to 1235, the year before
his death.
