At the time of the Norman Conquest (1066), the invaders possessed a literature in their own language, poems on the adventures of Charlemagne, and of Roland and the other peers and paladins. But perhaps none of the French poems on Charlemagne, or only one, the "Song of Roland," now exists in a form as early as the date of the Conquest, and they did not then reach the English people.
On the other hand the Norman clergy, many of whom obtained bishoprics and abbeys in England, were much more learned than they of England; and Lanfranc, the Conqueror's Archbishop of Canterbury, threatened to depose Wulfstan, the English Bishop of Worcester, for his ignorance of philosophy and literature. Yet Wulfstan excelled "in miracles and the gift of prophecy". Many new monasteries were founded by the Norman kings, homes of learning, each with its scriptorium (writers' room), in which new books were written, and old books were copied, almost all of them in Latin. St. Albans became a specially learned monastery and home of historians, while Roman law, medicine, and theology were closely studied, and books were lent out to students from the monastic libraries, a pledge of value being deposited by the borrower.
Latin Literature.
The books of the age which most interest us are the histories written in Latin, by various authors of known names, who often were not cloistered monks, but clergymen who lived much at court, and knew the men who were making history, kings and great nobles.
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Of all of these authors the most important in the interests of literature, not of history, is Geoffrey of Monmouth, a Welshman, whose "History of the Kings of Britain" is really no veracious chronicle, but a romance pretending to be a history of Britain, especially of King Arthur. The name of Arthur spells romance, and Geoffrey's book is almost the first written source of all the poems and tales of Arthur which fill the literature of England and the Continent. But it is more convenient to discuss Geoffrey when we reach the age of the Arthurian romance.
It is not necessary to speak here of all the writers of Latin histories in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the North were Simeon of Durham, and Richard, Prior of Hexham, who wrote "The Deeds of King Stephen," and Ailred, whose account of the defeat of David I of Scotland at the Battle of the Standard (1138) is very well told and full of spirit. In reading Ailred we find ourselves, as it were, among modern men: he speaks as a good English patriot, yet as a friend and admirer, in private life, of the invading Scottish king and prince. Florence of Worcester attempted a history of the world, compiled out of other books, called "Chronicon ex chronicis". The habit of "beginning at the beginning," namely with the creation, took hold of some of these historians, whose books are of little use till they reach their own times (if they live to do so), and speak of men and events known to themselves.
Eadmer, on the other hand, wrote of what he himself knew, a "History of Recent Times in England," down to 1122, and especially about the Archbishop of Canterbury, Anselm, and his dealings with William Rufus and Henry I (Henry Fairclerk, a patron of learning).
William of Malmesbury (1095?-1143?) like Geoffrey of Monmouth, was patronized by Robert, Earl of Gloucester, to whom they dedicated books. William understood, and said that there were two Arthurs, one a warrior of about 500-516 (?) the other a hero of fairy-land; but, as time went on, people began to confuse them, and to believe as historical the stories of Arthur which Geoffrey had written as a romance. William wrote the "History of the Kings of England," with several lives of saints and books[Pg 37] on theology. The "History of the Kings" begins with the coming of the Anglo-Saxons, and ends in 1127, the reign of Henry; towards the close of its sequel, the "Historia Novella," his patron, Robert of Gloucester, an enemy of Stephen, is his hero. The book contains a history of the First Crusade.
William sometimes treats history in almost a modern way, he quotes his sources of information, chiefly Bede and the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle". He refuses to vouch for the exact truth of events before his own time: he throws the responsibility on earlier authors, his authorities. Later, he speaks of what he has seen, or learned from trustworthy witnesses. When he reaches the time of the British resistance to the Anglo-Saxons, he mentions "warlike Arthur, of whom the Bretons fondly tell so many fables, even to the present day, a man worthy to be celebrated, not by idle tales, but by authentic history".
Happily for his readers, William is not above telling anecdotes like the romance of the statue at Rome, with an inscription on the head, "Strike here". How this was misunderstood, how at last a wise man marked the place where the shadow of the fore-finger of the statue fell at noon, and what wonderful adventures followed when men dug there, and found a golden palace lighted up by a blazing carbuncle stone, is narrated in a captivating way, but is not scientific history. (Bk. II, Ch. X.) William mingles real letters and other documents with miracles and ghost stories: indeed, he is determined to amuse as well as to instruct, and he succeeds. In describing the enthusiasm stirred by the preaching of the First Crusade, he falls into the very manner of Macaulay. "The Welshman left his hunting, the Scot his fellowship with lice, the Dane his drinking-party, the Norwegian his raw fish."
Certainly William was not a wholly scientific historian. He is never uninteresting. If he finds any set of events tedious, he says so plainly, and passes onwards. He is very fair, is learned in the manner of his age, and his love of digressions and good stories reminds us of the Greek Herodotus, "the Father of History," and the most entertaining of historians.
Among the names of other Latin chroniclers is that of Henry[Pg 38] of Huntingdon (writing in 1125-1154). The author of the "Deeds of King Stephen" is unknown: the work of William of Newburgh in the reigns of Henry II and Richard C?ur de Lion, is well remembered for his attack on the "lies" of Geoffrey of Monmouth. The assault on Geoffrey's truthfulness was not so superfluous as it seems, because his romance won the belief of many generations.
Richard Fitz Neale, who was Treasurer of England and for nine years Bishop of London (1189-1198), wrote the Dialogue "De Scaccario," "concerning the Exchequer," which is still studied as the best authority on mediaeval national finance in England, and on our early constitutional history.
Jocelin de Brakelond left a "Chronicle" (1173-1202) much concerned with life in his own monastery at St. Edmundsbury, and with the wise rule of Abbot Sampson. This book forms the text on which Carlyle preaches in his "Past and Present": it proves sufficiently that the monks were not the lazy drones of popular tradition and abounds in vivid pictures of men and of society.
Gerald of Wales (Girald de Barri, called Cambrensis, "the Welshman," 1147-1217?) was of royal Welsh and noble Norman birth, his family, the de Barris, were among the foremost Norman knights who took part in the invasion (it can hardly be called the conquest) of Ireland, under Strongbow; and he himself was a great fighter in the disputes of churchmen. There was not much schooling to be had in wild Wales, then very rebellious, but he probably learned Latin from the chaplains of his uncle, a Bishop, before he went to the University of Paris, to study law and science. Gerald was more like a modern literary man than a mediaeval chronicler. He never ceased from travelling, now following the Court, now rushing to Paris, now to Rome. When Archdeacon of St. David's, which the Welsh wanted to make a Canterbury of their own, with their own Archbishop, he stood up against the Bishop of St. Asaph; when the Bishop threatened to excommunicate him, he had bell, book, and candle ready to excommunicate the Bishop, whom he frightened away.
But Henry II would not permit Gerald to be Bishop of St. David's, thinking him certain to stand up for Wales against England.[Pg 39] In 1184, Gerald went to Ireland with Henry's son, Prince John, who cannot be better described, as an insolent ribald young man, than he is in Scott's "Ivanhoe".
Gerald wrote a "Topography of Ireland," which is really "A Little Tour in Ireland". His chapters on the "Marvels of Ireland" lead us to suppose that the natives hoaxed him with strange stories, for example the tale of a church bell that wandered about the country of its own will: the innumerable fleas at St. Nannan's in Connaught is more credible, but the tale of the wolves who asked to receive the Holy Communion was not believed in England. One miracle was only a beautifully illuminated manuscript of the kind decorated by Irish artists 400 years earlier. The art had been lost, and the artist was supposed to have copied the designs of an angel.
Gerald found the Irish very ignorant, lazy, dirty, and ferocious. Every man used a battle-axe in place of a walking stick, and man-slayings were frequent. The Irish clergy were devout and chaste, but drank too much. On the wild beasts and birds of Ireland Gerald wrote like a naturalist and a sportsman, though he supposed that salmon, before leaping a fall, put their tails in their mouths, and letting go, fly upward by the spring thus obtained.
His "History of the Invasion of Ireland" is valuable, but he introduced, in the manner of some Greek and many Roman historians, long speeches which were never made. He also, after an energetic wandering life, always fighting to be made Bishop of St. David's, wrote his own autobiography, an amusing conceited book, full of adventures of travel. He wrote, too, on the natural history and the inhabitants of Wales, a book very valuable to this day. He died after reaching the age of 70.
Walter Map.
Among his friends was a native of the Welsh border, Walter Map, Archdeacon of Oxford. "You write much, Master Gerald," said Map to him, "and you will write more; and I deliver many discourses. Your books are better than my speeches, and will be remembered longer; but I am much more popular, for you write in Latin, and I speak in the vulgar tongue," meaning French.[Pg 40] Poor Gerald confesses that he made nothing by his books, and looked for his reward, not in vain, to the applause of future ages.
But Map has had his own share of praise, more than he should get, if, as he said, he wrote little. He was born about 1137, studied at Paris, was one of the king's judges who rode on circuit, and, in 1197, was made Archdeacon of Oxford. One book which he certainly wrote, "On Courtly Trifles" ("De Nugis Curialium," in Latin) is a collection of anecdotes clumsily told, and of reflections, with stories of the Welsh, historical jottings, folk-lore, tales, and attacks on the clergy of the Cistercian Order. As a judge he said that he was fair, except to Jews and Cistercians, "who did not deserve justice, for they gave none". Satirical Latin poems against Golias, a type of a noisy licentious Bishop, are also attributed to him. In the confession of this Bishop occur the famous lines, thus translated by Leigh Hunt,
I devise to end my days—in a tavern drinking;
May some Christian hold for me—the glass when I am shrinking;
That the Cherubim may cry—when they see me sinking,
God be merciful to a soul—of this gentleman's way of thinking.
The lines, in rhyming Latin, became a drinking catch, conceivably they were that before, and were merely put into the Bishop's mouth as a proof of his bad character. The word "Golias" as a nickname for a ribald "Philistine" priest was hundreds of years older than Map's time. A long romance in French, on Launcelot, the Holy Grail, and the death of Arthur, is attributed to Map in some manuscripts, and as a contemporary romancer says that Map "could lie as well as himself"—that is, like himself wrote romances of love and tournaments—he may possibly have been the author of "the great book in Latin which treats openly of the history of the Holy Grail". But no copy of that Latin book is known to exist, nor is it certain that it ever existed, while Map, as we know, said that he did not write much of any sort, especially not in Latin.
Changes Since the Conquest.
It is plain that, within a century from the battle of Hastings, new influences of many kinds were working in England, and[Pg 41] changing the national character and intellect. There was the learning from Paris University, and from the Continent in general; there was the clearer intellect and energy of the Normans; the vivacity of such Welshmen or men from the Welsh marches as Geoffrey of Monmouth, Gerald, and Map. Anglo-Saxon literature had never been vivacious.
There were the new topics, "the matter of Britain," the Celtic legends of Arthur, whether derived from Wales or from Brittany—matter most romantic, and suited to the coming poets who, unlike the Anglo-Saxons, were to glorify love. There was, too, the constant excitement and variety that came from travel, whether in the Crusades, in pilgrimages, or to France and Rome on public or private business, or in search of books and teachers. In various ways knowledge of Saracen science and learning, translations of Aristotle from the Arabic into the Latin, and romantic ideas derived from the fables and tales of far-off India, filtered into England.
These things were for priests and book-loving lords and courtiers. Their wits were sharpened by knowledge of several tongues. All educated men knew Latin; "all men of this land," said Robert of Gloucester (about 1270) "who are of Norman blood, hold to French, and low men hold to English," but high men of English blood would talk in English to their farmers and servants. All who learned Latin learned it through French books, but country priests would preach in English.
The Anglo-Saxon language and grammar were slowly changing, though very few new words from French or Latin had yet come into common use. Cow, sheep, calf, and swine were Anglo-Saxon words, as Gurth the swineherd says in "Ivanhoe". Englishmen herded the animals, but the meat of them was called by French names derived from Latin, like beef, mutton, veal, and pork. From the Conquest (1066) to 1200, learning, Latin, and knowledge of French books would filter slowly into the native English mind, partly through sermons; and rich Franklins, and Englishmen in the service of the conquering race, and English priests would be Anglicizing French words.