Page:The Chronicle of Henry of Huntingdon.djvu/17

 which one of the MSS., apparently revised by the author himself, concludes—"The accession of a new king demands a new Book;"—that he had formed the intention of adding a further continuation to the History, relating the transactions of the reign of Henry II. His death probably frustrated this design, for he speaks of himself as an old man in his "Letter to Walter," published many years before, and it is supposed that he did not long survive the accession of Henry II., being at that time, it may be calculated, seventy years of age or upwards. The precise date of his death is unknown, nor can anything further be added to the slight notices which have been now given of his personal history.

Henry of Huntingdon's other works—besides the History of England, and the epigrams, satires, hymns and other poems, already mentioned—consist of:

1. An Epistle to Henry I. "On the Succession of the Jewish, Assyrian, Persian, Macedonian, and Roman kings and emperors to his own time;" which is supposed to have been written m the year 1130.

2. An Epistle to Warin, the Briton, containing an account of the ancient British kings, from Brute to Cadwaller. The author accounts for his having commenced the History of England from the invasion of Julius Cæsar by his having been unable at that time to discover any records of an earlier period. He then tells his friend, that while at the abbey of Bec, in Normandy, on his way to Rome, he met Robert Del Mont (called also De Torigny), a monk of that monastery, and a great antiquarian, who, conversing with him on the subject of his History lately published, showed him, to his great surprise, the British History of Geoffrey of Monmouth, recently written, from which he extracted the accounts of the British kings given in his letter. The year 1139 is fixed as the date of this Epistle, on the authority of Pertz, who quotes a passage from it to the effect that it was written in that year during the author's journey to Rome in company with Archbishop Theobald, who was, or had been, Abbot of Bec. The editor of the " Monumenta Britannica," who does not