William of Malmesbury: Historia Novella

The Historia Novella (‘Recent History’) is William of Malmesbury’s last work, dedicated to Robert, earl of Gloucester. In the prologue William recalls that he had recorded many deeds of Robert’s father, King Henry I, in the fifth book of his history of the kings and in three short books of chronicles, and that Robert now wished him to record the extraordinary recent events in England. Its three books narrate the end of Henry’s reign, the oath to the Empress Matilda, the accession of Stephen and the civil war, down to 1142. The sample describes the fall of Roger, bishop of Salisbury, arrested with his nephews by Stephen.

The work is a principal contemporary source for the early years of the civil war, known as the Anarchy, written by a historian close to the Angevin party but often fair to Stephen. It records councils, oaths, sieges and battles, including Lincoln in 1141, with an eyewitness’s sense of the moral confusion of the time. It breaks off unfinished, presumably at William’s death.