CHAP. II. Professor BRIGHT'S Early English Church History is a careful and valuable study of events from the mission of Augustine to the death of Wilfrid in 709. MILMAN'S Professor Latin Christianity (bk. iv. c. 4; bk. v. c. 10) supplies Milman, Bright, many interesting facts from the latter date to the death and Dean of Alfred. Dean CHURCH'S Beginning of the Middle Ages furnishes a very useful outline which serves to illustrate the affinities of English history to that of the Continent up to the tenth century. Church. The Dictionary of Christian Biography, now in Dictionary of Chriscourse of publication, includes many excellent and care- tian Bioful biographies of the chief characters both in the graphy. political and ecclesiastical world in England down to the ninth century. To this may be added, for the tenth and eleventh centuries, the Biographia Britannica Litter- Wright's Biographia, aria (Anglo-Saxon Period, 1846) by THOMAS WRIGHT. etc. Select The Select Charters and other Illustrations of English Stubbs's Constitutional History from the earliest Times to the Charters. Reign of Edward I., edited by professor Stubbs (Clarendon Press, 1870), form a volume best described in the editor's own words as 'an easily handled repertory of the Origines of English Constitutional History,' 'containing every constitutional document of importance during the period it covers.' Portions of the Introductory Sketch and interspersed criticism have since been given more fully in the same author's Constitutional History, but the volume still retains most of its original value. Monas The standard work of reference for the history of Dugdale's English and Welsh monastic foundations, from their first ticon. institution to their dissolution in the sixteenth century, is Dugdale's Monasticon.2 A Dictionary of Christian Biography, Literature, Sects, and Doctrines. Edited by William Smith, D.C.L., and Henry Wace, M.A., vol. i. A-D; vol. ii. E-HER. 1877-79. 2 Monasticon Anglicanum. By Sir William Dugdale. Caley, Bandinel, and Elis. 6 vols. in eight parts. S 1817-30. Edited by CHAF Dudo of St. Quen tin. CHAPTER III. FROM THE NORMAN CONQUEST TO THE ACCESSION (A.) Authorities for Norman History. The study of Norman history, so far as necessary to elucidate our own, should be commenced with the reign of Edward the Confessor. The sources of information are not numerous, almost the only authority for the tenth century being the de Gestis Ducum Normanniae by DUDO, dean of St. Quentin in the first quarter of the eleventh century, -one of the earliest,' says Mr. Freeman,' of a very bad class of writers, those who were employed, on account of their supposed eloquence, to write histories which were intended only as panegyrics of their patrons.' Although the work is almost wholly untrustworthy, it was the William of source from whence WILLIAM OF JUMIEGES, surnamed Junieges. Calculus, derived much of the material for his Historiae Normannorum. William himself, whom Palgrave styles 'the perplexed and perplexing,' becomes a contemporary authority with the Conquest. Although obscure and involved as a writer, he is free from prejudice, and Mr. Freeman pronounces his work to be one of great value. It was from the work of William, that Wace, a canon of Bayeux in the twelfth century, compiled his poetical The Roman history of the Conquest, known as the Roman de Rou. A yet more important work is the Gesta Willelmi of WILLIAM OF POITIERS; it narrates the career of the de Rou. III. Poitiers. d. circ. Conqueror from the year 1036 to 1067, and is the chief СНАР. source of information on the subject. William was chaplain to the Conqueror, and his work is conceived in William of a spirit of determined vindication of his hero and of de- b. 1020. preciation of the English. For the events immediately 1089. succeeding the Battle of Hastings the narrative is of especial value. Both William of Jumièges and William of Poitiers have been printed by Maseres in his selection from Duchesne's Historiae Normannorum Scriptores, published in 1808. 1 The Bayeux Tapestry and the metrical composition The Bayeux of Guy, bishop of Amiens,2 are specially to be consulted Tapestry. by those who wish to study all the circumstances of the Guy of great battle. Amiens. Saxon (B.) Contemporary Writers on English History.— Of the Anglodifferent versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Cot- Chronicle. tonian (Tib. A. vi.) has already ended with the year 975, the Cottonian (Domit. A. viii. 2) with the year 1056, the Abingdon, with the battle of Stamford Bridge; the Benet (or Corpus Christi) Chronicle terminates with the year 1070; the Cottonian (Tib. B. iv.) with the year 1079; the Bodleian or Peterborough Chronicle carries us to the end of the reign of Stephen. As, however, the literary influences of the court of Henry Beauclerc began to spread through the kingdom, the Chronicle disappeared amid the change that came over the monastic foundations; it died out before Norman learning and the modified conditions which now surrounded alike the monk, the ecclesiastic, and the scholar. The Historia Novorum by EADMER,3 a monk of Eadmer, Christchurch, Canterbury, is the best authority in rela For a full criticism on the authority of the Bayeux Tapestry, see Freeman's Norman Conquest, vol. iii. Append. A. 2 Carmen de Bello Hastingensi. Printed in M. H. B.; and also in Giles, Scriptores Rerum Gestarum Willelmi Conquestoris. Printed in Migne, P. L. clix. d. 1134 CHAP. Geoffrey Ordericus b. 1075, tion to the public careers of Lanfranc and Anselm, and the controversy respecting investitures; it also gives other important facts in the reign of William Rufus. About the year 1140, GEOFFREY GAIMAR composed in French verse his Histoire des Angles. The work commences with the arrival of Cerdic, but prior to the Norman Conquest is little more than a very incomplete and faulty narrative strung together from the AngloSaxon Chronicles. After the invasion, Gaimar appears to have drawn from some source common to himself and Florence of Worcester. His account of the death of William Rufus, with which particularly circumstantial. event the History ends, is ORDERICUS VITALIS, an Englishman by birth, but educated as a monk in Normandy, compiled, between d.circ.1144. the years 1130 and 1141, an Ecclesiastical History William of bury. extending to the latter year. With the Conquest, the work becomes one of primary importance, especially in connection with events in Normandy. The spirit in which Orderic writes is highly to be commended, although his style and method are vicious and faulty in the extreme. A good criticism of his merits as an historian will be found in the fifth chapter of dean Church's Life of Anselm (1870). The best edition is that published by Le Prevost, 1838-40. The work of WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY already referred to, the Historia Novella, or 'New History,' was compiled by him at the request of Robert, Earl of Gloucester, a natural son of Henry I., and Stephen's chief antagonist. It deals with the period 1126–1142, and, as might be anticipated, is altogether favourable to the party of Matilda. The Gesta Stephani, on the other hand, written in all probability by one of Stephen's own Edited for E. H. S. by Dr. R. C. Sewell, 1845. The Gesta Stephani and the Historia Novella illustrate each other in a remarkable manner, and clerks, is a spirited narrative conceived as a vindication of Stephen. It terminates with the arrival of Henry of Anjou in England in 1152, and though the single existing manuscript has reached us in a defective condition, some parts being altogether wanting, while the end is lost, the work is valuable from its graphic description of many of the incidents of the civil war, and the picture it supplies of the prevalent anarchy and suffering. Amid the confusion that prevailed and the vacillation of the contending parties, it is not difficult to discern that principles as well as the interests of rival houses were at stake. The influence of archbishop Theobald, the patron of Thomas Beket, was honourably exerted in the the main to enlist the efforts of the Church in the cause of peace. CHAP, III. Chronicles. RICHARD and JOHN, both priors of the monastery at The HEXHAM,' are other authorities for the same reign, in connexion with which the work of the former gives us important information. Richard's narrative concludes with the Battle of the Standard, of which he supplies an excellent account. Another account of the battle is that of Aethelred or Ailred,2 abbat of the Cistercian monastery at Rievaulx, in Yorkshire. Aethelred gives fewer Aethelred details, but professes to report the actual speeches of the of Rieleaders on either side before the engagement. vaulx. and Laner The Chronica of Melrose, is, in the earlier part, a Chronicles somewhat dry epitome of the foregoing northern writers, of Melrose but for the period 1140 to 1270 it assumes considerable cost. value as an independent authority. The numerous and progressive variations in the handwriting,' says the should be read together page by page. A good outline of the contents of the former will be found in Gairdner's Early Chronicles of England, pp. 88-98. 1 Both in the Decem Scriptores, see supra, p. 216. De Bello Standardii; in Migne, P. L. cxcv. 702-12. Bann. C. 1835. |