The history of England, from the earliest times to the Norman Conquest

by Thomas Hodgkin

We ought to have been greatly helped at this period by the work of Ethelweard the historian (Monumenta Historica Britannica, Petrie, 1848), who was of royal descent, was apparently for a time Ealdorman of Wessex, and wrote near the end of the tenth century. Unfortunately the basis of his work seems to have been the Chronicle itself, and when he has any additional facts to communicate, his style is so pompously obscure that it is difficult to make out what he means. In default, therefore, of adequate contemporary authorities, the historian is obliged to lean more than he has yet done on the compiling historians who wrote in the century which followed the Norman Conquest. Of these, happily, there is a goodly number, and they are on the whole very favourable specimens of their class.

(1) Florence of Worcester (edited by B. Thorpe, English Historical Society, 1848–49), a monk of whom we know nothing save that he died in 1118, having earned a high reputation for acuteness and industry, took as the staple of his narrative the work of an Irish monk named Marianus Scotus, who was settled at Mainz and composed a World-Chronicle reaching down to the year 1082. With the material thus furnished him Florence interwove extracts specially relating to English history from Bede, Asser and the Chroniclers, bringing down his recital to 1117, the year preceding his death. His work was almost entirely that of a compiler, but it was conscientiously and thoroughly done, and its chief value for us is that though his story approaches most nearly to that told in the Worcester Chronicle (D), it is not a mere transcript of that work, and he evidently had access to some manuscript of the Chronicle which is now lost. The important position which he holds in relation to Asser has already been described.

(2) Some important facts concerning Northumbrian history may be gleaned from the ill-arranged pages of Symeon of Durham (edited by T. Arnold, Rolls Series, 2 vols., 1882–85). This author, who was born a few years before the Conquest, became a monk at Durham about the year 1085, and spent probably the rest of his life by the tomb of St. Cuthbert. Soon after 1104 he wrote a History of the Church of Durham, which supplies some valuable information not to be found elsewhere, as to the history of events in the north of England during the thirty years following the Danish invasion of 875. In his old age Symeon began, but apparently did not finish, a History of the Kings, which in its present state is a piece of patchwork put together from various sources, and in its chaotic condition corresponds only too closely with the reality of Northumbrian history during that dismal period. Its chief value for the historian is that it incorporates an old Northumbrian Chronicle by an anonymous writer (perhaps called Gesta veterum Northanhymbrorum) describing the chief events which happened in that part of the country from the end of Bede’s history to the accession of Egbert (731–802). For a full discussion of the materials used by Symeon in this work the reader is referred to Mr. Arnold’s preface and to Stubbs’s preface to Roger Hoveden. It cannot be said that even his explanations make the matter very clear. An interesting tract, De Obsessione Dunelmi, which has been attributed on insufficient evidence to this author, is bound up with his works.

(3) Henry of Huntingdon (edited by T. Arnold, Rolls Series, 1879) was born about eighteen years after the Conquest and died soon after the accession of Henry II. He was an archdeacon in the diocese of Lincoln, and composed at the request of his bishop a History of the English, of which various editions were published in his lifetime, the first probably about 1130, and the last soon after 1154. Henry relies chiefly on the Peterborough Chronicle, but he seems also to have possessed some other manuscript, of which he occasionally gives indications. Unfortunately he relies not only on manuscripts and Chronicles, but also to a large extent on his own imagination. From materials not much ampler than those which we possess, he is fond of constructing a rhetorical narrative with many details, for which it is almost certain that he had no authority. Occasionally there seems reason to believe that he is repeating popular traditions or fragments of popular songs, but upon the whole it is safer not to rely greatly on his facts, where these are not corroborated by other historians.

(4) A much greater historian than Henry was his slightly younger contemporary, William of Malmesbury (edited by Stubbs, Rolls Series, 2 vols., 1887–89), who was probably born about 1095 and died, or at any rate discontinued his literary labours, soon after 1142. For an elaborate discussion of these dates see Bishop Stubbs’s preface. As he remarks, William “deliberately set himself forward as the successor of the Venerable Bede: and it is seldom that an aspirant of this sort came so near as he did to the realisation of his pretensions”. His most important work for our purpose is the Gesta Regum, but from his Gesta Pontificum (Hamilton, Rolls Series, 1870) some facts relating to civil history may be gleaned. He is especially minute in all points connected with his own monastery of Malmesbury and with that of Glastonbury, in which he seems to have been for some time a guest. He has a wide outlook over continental affairs, and though he has been convicted of many inaccuracies and is unfortunately not sufficiently careful as to the authenticity of the documents quoted by him, we must admit his claim to be considered a really great historian. The Gesta Regum became at once a popular and standard history, and was the source from which a crowd of followers made abundant quotations.

(5) A great patron of learned men, and especially of historians, was Robert, Earl of Gloucester, natural son of Henry I. To him William of Malmesbury dedicated his chief historical works, and it was from materials contained in his library that Geoffrey Gaimar (edited by Hardy and Martin, Rolls Series, 2 vols., 1888–89) wrote his Estorie des Engles. Scarcely anything is known about the author, except that he wrote before 1147, the date of the Earl of Gloucester’s death, and that he was probably an ecclesiastic and a Norman. His history is a rhymed chronicle in early French, and is to a large extent based on the English Chronicle; a proof that he understood Anglo-Saxon, though it was not his native tongue. He evidently, however, had access to other sources of information now closed to us, and this gives his Estorie a certain value, notwithstanding the author’s occasional tendency to glide off into unhistorical romance, as for instance in the long and legendary story which he tells about Edgar’s marriage with Elgiva. His geographical indications are sometimes worthy of special notice.

For sixty years after 982 the fortunes of England were so closely intertwined with those of Denmark and Norway that it is impossible wholly to overlook the contributions which Scandinavian authors have made to our national history. These consist chiefly of the great collection of Icelandic Sagas popularly known as the Heimskringla, and formerly made accessible to the English reader only by Laing’s Sea-Kings of Norway, now in much completer form in the Saga Library of Morris and Magnusson. Three volumes of the Heimskringla have been published: the fourth is still to appear. For a full and exhaustive account, however, of the rich Dano-Icelandic literature of which the so-called Heimskringla is only a portion, we must turn to the noble work of Vigfusson and Powell, the Corpus Poeticum Boreale (two vols., Oxford, 1883), and to Vigfusson’s Prolegomena to the Sturlunga Saga (Oxford, 1879). It is shown by these authors that while the name of Snorri Sturlason is rightly venerated as that of the chief literary preserver of these sagas, an earlier Icelandic scholar named Ari, born in the year after the Norman Conquest, was the first to bring them into some sort of relation with exact chronological history. The narratives seem to be wonderfully true in feeling but often false in fact. Probably a good deal of rather tedious critical work has yet to be done before the Heimskringla can be definitely and safely correlated with the Saxon Chronicle, but we may safely go to that collection of sagas and to the literature of which it forms part, the true Iliad and Odyssey of the Scandinavian peoples, for a picture of the manner of life, the characters and the ideals of those Danish and Norwegian sea-rovers who were the terror of Angle and Saxon, but from whom we ourselves are largely descended.

For the reign of Canute and his sons we are sometimes placed under obligation by the author of the Encomium Emmæ (Monumenta Germaniæ Historica, vol. xix., 1866), a panegyric on the widow of Ethelred and Canute, written apparently by an ecclesiastic of Bruges, who had shared her bounty when she was living in exile. The author sometimes deviates in the most extraordinary way from historic truth, but he seems to have been well acquainted with the facts, though he dishonestly concealed them to please his patroness.

With the extinction of the Danish dynasty and the revival of West Saxon royalty we enter upon a new period, in which our historical literature assumes a controversial character which it has not hitherto possessed. In previous centuries there has been no practical danger in speaking of The Chronicle, the amount of matter common to the various copies being so large and the divergencies between them so comparatively unimportant. Now, however, it is necessary to speak of The Chronicles in the plural, since they often give us absolutely different versions of the same event. The Abingdon Chronicle, as before remarked, is hostile to Godwine, while Worcester (or Evesham) and Peterborough generally favour his cause. Winchester is almost silent for this period. There is a nearly contemporary Life of Edward the Confessor in Latin by an unknown author (printed at the end of the volume, Lives of Edward the Confessor, in the Rolls Series, 1858), from which some noteworthy facts may be collected, but the value of the work is lessened by the writer’s evident determination to praise to the uttermost Godwine and all his family, in order to recommend himself to Edward’s widow Edith, daughter of Godwine, to whom this Vita Edwardi Regis is dedicated. In comparison with his wife’s family the king himself comes off rather poorly.

The life of the Confessor was soon caught up into the region of hagiological romance, and loses historical value accordingly. It does not seem possible to build any solid conclusions on the Vita Edwardi Regis by Aelred, itself borrowed from the twelfth-century biographer Osbert, still less on the curious and interesting Estoire de Seint Ædward le Rei, a French poem written about 1245 and dedicated to Eleanor, queen of Henry III. (Lives of Edward the Confessor).