Eadmer, died about 1124: history of his own time, (Historia Novorum, sive sui seculi.)
Giraldus Cambrensis, born 1146, known as Girald Barry: numerous histories, including Topographia Hiberniæ, and the Norman conquest of Ireland; also several theological works.
Henry of Huntingdon, first half of the twelfth century: History of England.
Alured of Rievaux, 1109-66: The Battle of the Standard.
Roger de Hoveden, end of twelfth century: Annales, from the end of Bede's history to 1202.
Matthew Paris, monk of St. Alban's, died 1259: Historia Major, from the Norman conquest to 1259, continued by William Rishanger to 1322.
Ralph Higden, fourteenth century: Polychronicon, or Chronicle of Many Things; translated in the fifteenth century, by John de Trevisa; printed by Caxton in 1482, and by Wynken de Worde in 1485.
The Anglo-Norman Poets and Chroniclers.—Norman literature had already made itself a name before William conquered England. Short jingling tales in verse, in ballad style, were popular under the name of fabliaux, and fuller epics, tender, fanciful, and spirited, called Romans, or Romaunts, were sung to the lute, in courts and camps. Of these latter, Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, and Roland were the principal heroes.
Strange as it may seem, this langue d'oil, in which they were composed, made more rapid progress in its poetical literature, in the period immediately after the conquest, in England than at home: it flourished by the transplantation. Its advent was with an act of heroism. Taillefer, the standard-bearer of William at Seulac, marched in advance of the army, struck the first blow, and met his death while chanting the song of Roland:
Of Charlemagne and Roland,