England under the Angevin Kings, Volumes I and II

CHAPTER I. (Part 5 of 5)

In 1122, two years after the White Ship disaster, Godric settled at Finchale, where he lived sixty years as a bridge between pre- and post-Conquest English religious life and the last of the old English saints. This revival was inseparable from a national one: the Norman conquest had failed to erase the English Church’s national character, and the Church was beginning to absorb its conquerors. Normans and English alike venerated native saints; at the Confessor’s grave they put aside differences, Lanfranc acknowledged Ælfheah’s sanctity, and Dunstan’s memory eclipsed Lanfranc’s and Anselm’s. Norman prelates elevated older English saints: Earl Hugh of Chester placed Benedictines at S. Werburg’s (paving the way for Anselm); Roger of Shrewsbury built Wenlock Abbey for Milburg; Bishop Richard of London founded Austin canons at Chiche over S. Osyth’s shrine; Bishop Roger of Salisbury did the same at Oxford over S. Frideswide’s; the new Ely bishopric amplified S. Etheldreda’s glory; and Durham Cathedral, lavishly built by William of S. Calais and Ralf Flambard, honored S. Cuthbert.

Consolidation of Norman rule in the west and north adapted to local geography and ecclesiastical tradition: the western realm stretched from the Welsh Marches to the Severn Valley toward the Bristol Channel, while the northern border adjoined Scotland, with Yorkshire moors and Carlisle marking the kingdom’s edge; the northwestern palatinate of Chester served as the linchpin of royal authority, its earl wielding both secular and ecclesiastical power to secure the frontier against Welsh incursions, especially after Henry I settled Flemish colonists and appointed a Saxon bishop to St. David’s. Episcopal administration evolved likewise: the northern province, centered on York and the cults of Wilfrid and Oswald, was integrated through Norman prelates to Durham, where the cathedral monument to S. Cuthbert bound Norman rulers to local English devotion; in the west, Earl Hugh’s see of Chester oversaw Benedictine colonization of S. Werburg’s, paving the way for Anselm, and Ely amplified S. Etheldreda across the midlands.

Literary activity revived alongside this impulse: Canterbury precentors Osbern and Eadmer expanded Dunstan memorials into biographies, Eadmer’s finest work a contemporary Anselm-centered history sympathetic even to York’s Wilfrid and Oswald. At Durham, Simeon and his monks wrote a Cuthbert history; Abingdon Abbot Faricius wrote a life of Ealdhelm; nearly every major church opened its archives to William of Malmesbury. Worcester’s scriptorium held the sole contemporary English Chronicle copy for over a century, the only site recording national history in English until Henry I’s early reign. After an 1116 fire, Peterborough monks borrowed the text, added local material, and extended the annals ten years past the White Ship in English; their notes alone illuminate the dark “nineteen winters” between Henry I and Henry II. But English had ceased to be a written language outside Peterborough, so the national story required Latin.

Florence of Worcester produced an early-Henry-I Latin Chronicle: narrow, partisan, full of interpolations, yet spreading the national literary tradition. Simeon of Durham used it as the base for his history from Ælfred’s 848 birth to Florence’s 1118 death, passing to Roger of Howden; Henry of Huntingdon, commissioned by Bishop Alexander of Lincoln after 1125, drew on both Florence and Peterborough. At Malmesbury, half-Norman, half-English William of Malmesbury—born three or four years before the Conqueror’s death—was destined for letters. Malmesbury, founded by 7th-century Irish scholar Maidulf and shaped by West-Saxon Ealdhelm, still carried earlier glories when William entered its school under reforming Jumièges monk Abbot Godfrey. William became Godfrey’s chief library-builder before turning to England’s past. The house was steeped in Wessex royal memory: Ealdhelm’s shrine (where William watched a vagabond cured of frenzy after three days chained before the altar); Ealdhelm’s sunbeam legend; his Bible bought at Dover; charters from Ceadwalla to Eadgar; Æthelstan’s relics; John Scotus’s tomb; the vineyard planted by the mysterious Greek archbishop Constantine. Finding no worthy English historians after Bede—Æthelweard’s Latin translation was ruined by style, Eadmer covered only from Eadgar’s accession—William declared: “So, as I could not be satisfied with what I found written of old, I began to scribble myself.”

His Gesta Regum Anglorum appeared in 1120, followed by a companion volume on bishops. He founded a new historical school prioritizing entertainment, grouping content by theme over chronology and filling gaps with legends. Impartial, philosophical, artistic, he excelled at character sketches whose Norman kings and Angevin counts remained vivid centuries later. Malmesbury’s guest hall hosted kings, bishops, nobles, pilgrims, and merchants; William traveled widely—to Glastonbury, S. Eadmund’s martyrdom site, Carlisle’s Roman walls, Yorkshire moors (Waltheof echoes), and the Severn valley, “that vale of Severn which he paints in such glowing colours.” The west and north’s urban and commercial landscape reflected regional strategic and agricultural importance: Carlisle remained a key fortified administrative and market center on the Scottish border, Chester dominated the northwest as its castle drew merchants and pilgrims from across the Marches and Irish Sea. Market towns lined the Severn valley and northern roads, their growth spurred by Henry I’s “good peace,” allowing safe travel; foreign wares at Malmesbury matched northern and western trade in wool, livestock, and metals exchanged for continental luxuries and Scottish goods. The Severn Valley, the prosperous western midlands heart with alluvial soils supporting abundant harvests, served as a transport artery carrying agricultural goods and wares between the Marches, the midlands, and Bristol Channel ports. William’s glowing descriptions reflect its reputation as one of the most fertile and commercially vibrant regions, its prosperity underpinning religious houses like Wenlock Abbey and Worcester Cathedral, which drew on the valley’s agricultural surplus.

William moved in the highest court circles: Henry I’s love of learning (“an unlettered king is but a crowned ass”) was shared by Queen Maude, educated at Romsey, whose court drew scholars; her stepson Earl Robert of Gloucester was William’s patron. Secular scholars also competed: Bishop Alexander pushed Henry of Huntingdon to write; Adelard of Bath traveled to Salerno, Greece, and Baghdad, brought back an Arabic Euclid that became standard math text for centuries, and argued for free inquiry into nature over blind adherence to old authorities. All this rested on Henry I’s “good peace,” unbroken save for Welsh border skirmishes, with Scotland loyal. But by 1110, Norman politics were stirring, drawing England toward a new rising power in Anjou. To trace that story, Norgate writes, we must leave England and travel west into Gaul, returning to the dim dawn of the 9th century.