William of Malmesbury, born probably between 1090 and 1096, devoted himself from early life to the study of history, seemingly attracted to it, as he tells us himself, by the pleasure which the record of the past gave him and by its ethical value as a collection of practical examples of virtues and vices. This confession gives the key to the character of his work. He prided himself on his Latin style, and with some justice. He regarded himself not as a mere chronicler, but as a historian of a higher rank, the disciple and first continuator of Bede. The accurate telling of facts in their chronological order was to him less important than a well-written and philosophical account of events selected for their importance or interest and narrated in such a way as to bring out the character of the actors or the meaning of the history. That he succeeded in these objects cannot be questioned. His work is of a higher literary and philosophical character than any written since his master Bede, or for some time after himself. On this account, however, it gives less direct information as to the events of the time in which he lived than we could wish, though it is a contemporary authority of considerable value on the reign of Henry I, and of even more value on the first years of Stephen.
His political history is contained in two works, the Gesta Regum, which closes with the year 1128, and the Historia Novella, which continues the narrative to December, 1142 (W. Stubbs, Rolls Series, 1887-89). A third work, the Gesta Pontificum (N.E.S.A. Hamilton, Rolls Series, 1870), also contains some notices of value for the political history. William boasted a friendship with Robert, Earl of Gloucester, who was his patron, and his sympathies were with the Empress's party in the civil war, but he had also personal relations with Roger of Salisbury and Henry of Winchester, and was no blind partisan.
EADMER, a monk of Canterbury, stands with William of Malmesbury in the forefront of the historians of the twelfth century. His work, less pretentious than William's, is simpler and more straightforward. Eadmer was of Saxon birth and was brought up from childhood in Christ Church, Canterbury. Affectionately attached to Anselm from an early time, he became his chaplain on his appointment as archbishop and was with him almost constantly in his visits to court, in his troubled dealings with his sovereigns, and in his exile abroad. With Anselm's successor, Archbishop Ralph, he stood in equally close relations, and he was honoured and respected in the ecclesiastical world of his time. He writes throughout the greater part of his history, calmly and soberly, of the things that he had seen and in which he had taken part. His chief work, the Historia Novorum (M. Rule, Rolls Series, 1884), begins with the Conquest, but his main interest before the days of Anselm is in the personality and doings of Lanfranc. In the more detailed portion of his work his point of view is always the ecclesiastical. This is the interest which he desires to set forth most fully, but the policy of the Church involved itself so closely in his day with that of the State that the history of the one is almost of necessity that of the other, and in the Historia Novarum we have a contemporary history of English affairs, as they came into touch with the Church, of the greatest value from the accession of Henry I to 1121, and one which preserves a larger proportion of the important formal documents of the time than was usual with twelfth century historians. He wrote also in the latter part of this period a Vita Anselmi in which the religious was even more the leading interest than in his history, but it adds something to our knowledge of the time.
One of the best authorities for the period from the Conquest to 1141 is the Historia Ecclesiastica of ORDERIC VITALIS (A. le Prevost, Societe de l'Histoire de France, 1838-55). Born in England in 1075, of a Norman father, a clerk, and an English mother, he was sent by his father at the age of ten to the monastery of St. Evroul, and there he spent his life. The atmosphere in this monastery was favourable to study. It had an extensive library, and Orderic had at his command good sources of information, though he himself took no part in the events he describes. He paid some visits to England in which he obtained information, and as he always looked upon himself as an Englishman, his history naturally includes England as well as Normandy. He began to write about 1123, and from that date on he may be regarded as a contemporary authority, but from the Conquest the book has in many places the value of an original account. It is an exasperating book to use because of the extreme confusion in which the facts are arranged, or left without arrangement, the account of a single incident being often in two widely separated places. But the book rises much above the level of mere annals, and while perhaps not reaching that of the philosophical historian, gives the reader more of the feeling that a living man is writing about living men than is usual in medieval books. It reveals in the writer a lively imagination, which, while it does not affect the historical value of the narrative, gives it a pictorial setting. Orderic's interest in the minuter details of life and in the personality of the men of his time imparts a strong human element to the book; nor is the least useful feature of the work the writer's critical judgment on men and events, generally on moral grounds, but often assisting our knowledge of character and the causes of events.
HENRY, ARCHDEACON OF HUNTINGDON's Historia Anglorum (T. Arnold, Rolls Series, 1879) becomes original, to our present knowledge at least, with the closing of the manuscript of the Saxon chronicle which he had been following, probably in 1121, and his narrative is contemporary from the last years of that decade to the coronation of Henry II. He adds, however, surprisingly little to our knowledge of the twenty-five years during which he was writing the history of his own time. He had an active imagination and loved to embellish the facts which he had learned with little details that he thought likely to be true. The main value of the original portion of his history lies in its confirmation of what we learn from other sources.
The chronicle of FLORENCE OF WORCESTER (B. Thorpe, Engl. Hist. Soc., 1848-49) is continued by John of Worcester as a source of primary importance to 1141 and by others afterwards. Florence himself died in 1118, but at what point before this his own work breaks off it does not seem possible to determine. There is at no point any real change in the character of the chronicle. The continental chronicle which Florence had been using as the groundwork of his account, that of Marianus Scotus, ends with 1082, but his manuscript of the Saxon chronicle probably went on for some distance further, and about the time of Florence's death much use is made of Eadmer. The account is annalistic throughout, even in the full treatment of Stephen's reign; but in its original portions, or what seem to us original, it has the value of a contemporary record, giving us further insight into the feelings of the English in William's reign and the feelings and sufferings of the people of the south-west in Stephen's time.
An interesting chronicle of Stephen's reign is that by an unknown author known as the Gesta Stephani (R. Hewlett, Rolls Series, Chronicles of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, iii, 1866), which existed at the beginning of the seventeenth century in a single manuscript since lost. It has been conjectured with some probability that it was written by a chaplain of the king's brother, Henry, Bishop of Winchester. Certainly the author had very good sources of information, writes often from personal knowledge, and though a strong partisan of Stephen's, is not blind to his weaknesses and faults. While the first part of the narrative was not written precisely at the date, the work has all the value of a contemporary account from 1135, and from 1142 to 1147 it is almost our only authority. The manuscript from which it was first printed in 1619 had been injured, and the book as it now exists breaks off in the middle of a sentence in 1147.
ROBERT OF TORIGNI (R. Hewlett, Rolls Series. Chronicles of Stephen, etc., iv, 1889) spent his life as a monk in Normandy, in the abbey of Bec till 1154 and afterwards as abbot of the monastery of Mont Saint Michel. He made apparently but two visits to England, of which we know no particulars, but as a monk of Normandy, living in two of its most famous monasteries, he was interested in the doings of the English kings, particularly in their continental policy, and more especially in the deeds of the two great Henries. He began to write as a young man, and by 1139, about the time he reached the age of thirty, he seems to have completed his account of the reign of Henry I, which he wrote as an additional, an eighth? book to the History of the Normans of William of Jumieges. His more extended chronicle he had begun before leaving Bec, and he carried the work with him to Mont-Saint-Michel. Down to 1100 this is the chronicle of Sigebert of Gemblours with additions, and it becomes a wholly original chronicle only with 1147. Though of great value for the knowledge of facts, especially between 1154 and 1170, the chronicle never rises above the character of annals and was carelessly constructed, especially as to chronology; it was perhaps worked up by monks of his house from a somewhat rough first draft of memoranda by the abbot. The book closes at the end of 1185, shortly before the death of Robert.
The writer of the twelfth century who comes the nearest to looking upon the task of the historian as a modern writer would is WILLIAM OF NEWBURGH (R. Hewlett, Rolls Series, Chronicles of Stephen, etc., i, and ii, 1884-85). His purpose is not merely to record what happened, with a rather clear conception of the duty of the historian to be accurate and to use the best sources, but to make a selection of the facts, using the more important and those that will show the drift and meaning of the age, and combining them into something like an explanatory account of the period; and this he does with constant critical judgment of men and measures and great breadth of historical view. His Historia Rerum Anglicarum, which may be said to begin with the reign of Stephen, after a brief introduction on the three preceding reigns, appears to have been composed as a whole within two or three years at the close of the twelfth century. The probability is that no part of it is original, in the sense that it was written solely from first-hand knowledge; but the sources from which he derived his material for the period from 1154 to 1173, and at later dates, have not come down to us, and he must have drawn from some personal knowledge in the last portion of his work. It is throughout, however, a critical commentary of great value on the history, and an interpretation of it by a man of clear, impartial, and broad judgment, and one not too far removed from the time of which he wrote to be out of sympathy with it.
For the last half of the reign of Henry II we have the advantage of a valuable and in some respects very interesting and attractive chronicle. This is the Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi, associated with the name of BENEDICT OF PETERBOROUGH (Rolls Series, 2 vols.). Benedict, however, was not the author, and no certain evidence as to who he was can be derived from any source, nor does the chronicle itself supply many of those incidental indications from which it is often possible to learn much regarding the author of an anonymous book. The tentative suggestion of Bishop Stubbs that it may have been written by Richard Fitz Neal, the author of the Dialogus de Scaccario, is now generally regarded as inadmissible. The work begins in 1170, and from a date a year or two later is evidently contemporaneous to its close in 1192, with perhaps a slight interruption at 1177. It is written in a simple and straightforward way, and with a sure touch, unusual accuracy of statement, and a clear understanding of constitutional details; it suggests an interesting personality in its author, with whom we constantly desire a closer acquaintance. Whoever he was, he possessed good sources of information, though apparently too great consideration for king or court keeps him sometimes from saying all he knows or believes, and he has inserted in his work many letters and important documents.