Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 61.djvu/359

 and have not been traced to any extant source. For the reign of William Rufus and the early years of Henry I, contained in book iv., William is practically a contemporary authority, and from the opening of book v. he is strictly a contemporary writer. Yet throughout these two books his narrative is curiously incomplete and ill-arranged. The chief value of this part of his work lies in the illustrations of character and of the foreign relations of the Norman kings with which the narrative is interspersed. Much of the interest and importance which attaches to the ‘Gesta Regum’ as a whole is literary rather than historical. In the earlier books, especially the second, William makes considerable use of the older ballad literature of England, which in its original shape is entirely lost. In the same portion of his work more particularly, but to some extent also throughout its whole course, he frequently breaks the sequence of events to entertain his readers with a string of miscellaneous tales, some utterly frivolous, some curious as illustrations of mediæval manners and habits of thought, many of a character which has justly brought upon their narrator the reproach of being ‘a greedy swallower of every wonder that he could rake up from every quarter,’ most of them totally irrelevant to his main subject, but all of them related with the facility of a master of the art of story-telling. These stories doubtless helped in no small degree to win for the ‘Gesta Regum’ the place which it held, from its first appearance down to the close of the middle ages, as ‘a popular and standard history’ which other writers used as a foundation for their work, as William had used Beda for the same purpose. But the ‘Gesta Regum’ is entitled to its fame upon higher grounds. In it William ‘deliberately set himself forward as the successor of the venerable Bede; and it is seldom that an aspirant of the sort comes so near as he did to the realisation of his pretensions.’ ‘We may fairly claim for him the credit of being the first writer after Bede who attempted to give to his details of dates and events such a systematic connection, in the way of cause and consequence, as entitles them to the name of history.’ Whatever be the worth of the ‘Gesta Regum’ as original material, ‘as a step in the working out of historiography it has a monumental value’ (, l. c. pp. ix, x).

In the ‘Historia Novella,’ which takes up the thread of the narrative where it was dropped at the conclusion of the ‘Gesta Regum,’ the last ten years of Henry's reign are rapidly run over, and the period from December 1135 to December 1142 is dealt with at greater length, but in a desultory way which shows that the book is little more than a collection of notes, or first draft, which the author did not live to put into shape. Imperfect as it is, however, it holds a foremost place among our materials for the history of Stephen's reign. The printed editions of the ‘Gesta Regum’ and ‘Historia Novella’ are by Savile (Scriptores post Bedam, London, 1596, Frankfort, 1601) Hardy (Engl. Hist. Soc. 1840; reprinted in Patrologia, vol. clxxix.), and Stubbs (Rolls Ser. 1887–9).

William's other extant works, original and compiled, are: 1. ‘Gesta Pontificum Anglorum’ (see above), ‘the foundation of the early ecclesiastical history of England on which all writers have chiefly built’ (, pref. p. x). The first four books are printed in Savile's ‘Scriptores post Bedam,’ the fifth book (‘Vita S. Aldhelmi’) in Gale's ‘Scriptores Rerum Anglicarum,’ vol. iii., and Wharton's ‘Anglia Sacra,’ vol. ii.; all five books are reprinted in Migne, vol. clxxix., and the complete work has been edited from William's autograph manuscript by Mr. N. E. S. A. Hamilton (Rolls Ser. 1870). 2. ‘Vita S. Dunstani,’ printed in Stubbs's ‘Memorials of St. Dunstan’ (Rolls Ser. 1874). 3. ‘Vita S. Wulfstani;’ Wharton, vol. ii.; Migne, vol. clxxix. 4. ‘De Antiquitate Glastoniensis Ecclesiæ;’ Gale, vol. iii.; Wharton, vol. ii.; Hearne's ‘Adam of Domerham,’ vol. i. 5. ‘Fragment of a Letter on John Scotus;’ Gale's preface to ‘Scotus de Divisione Naturæ’ (1681); Migne, vol. cxxii.; Stubbs's preface to ‘Gesta Regum,’ vol. i. 6. ‘Abbreviatio Librorum Amalarii de Ecclesiasticis Officiis;’ Lambeth MS. 380; All Souls College MS. 28; prologue and epilogue printed in P. Allix's edition of the ‘Determinatio Joannis Parisiensis de Corpore Christi’ (1686); Migne, vol. clxxix.; and Stubbs's preface to ‘Gesta Regum,’ vol. i. 7. ‘Liber de Miraculis S. Mariæ;’ Cotton MS. Cleopatra C. 10; extracts in Stubbs's preface to ‘Gesta Regum,’ vol. i. 8. ‘Explanatio Lamentationum Hieremiæ;’ Cotton MS. Tiberius A. xii.; Bodleian MS. 868; extracts in Birch's ‘Life and Writings of William of Malmesbury,’ and Stubbs, as above. 9. The great historical and legal collection already mentioned; Bodleian MS. Selden B. 16. 10. A similar collection of small treatises on various subjects, Harleian MS. 3969.

The following are also ascribed to William: 11. ‘Liber de Miraculis Beati Andreæ;’ Cotton MS. Nero E. 1, Arundel 222, Harleian 2; extracts in Birch and Stubbs, as