THE

CHRONICLE

OF

HENRY OF HUNTINGDON.

COMPRISING

THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND, FROM THE INVASION
JULIUS CESAR TO THE ACCESSION OF HENRY II.

ALSO,

THE ACTS OF STEPHEN,

KING OF ENGLAND AND DUKE OF NORMANDY.

TRANSLATED AND EDITED

BY THOMAS FORESTER, A.M.,

66

AUTHOR OF 'NORWAY IN 1848 AND 1849," ETC., ETC.

OF

LONDON:

HENRY G. BOHN, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.

MDCCCLIII.

THE LETTER TO WALTER ON THE ILLUSTRIOUS MEN OF HIS AGE

THE ACTS OF KING STEPHEN, BY AN ANONYMOUS AUTHOR
GENERAL INDEX

INDEX TO HUNTINGDON'S POEMS

442

DESCRIPTION OF THE FRONTISPIECE.

The plate is copied from a pen-and-ink drawing in the margin of a
MS. of Huntingdon's History, in the British Museum, of the fourteenth
century. One of King Stephen's barons, Baldwin Fitz-Gilbert, appears in
the act of addressing the royal army before the battle of Lincoln, the issue of
which was so disastrous to Stephen's fortunes, he having been taken priso-
ner on the field. Baldwin is standing on a hillock, according to the his-
tory, and leaning on his battle-axe. The army is represented by its leaders—
knights in chain armour-among whom we discover, by the device on his
shield, one of the powerful family of De Clare, to which Baldwin belonged.
Stephen himself, distinguished by the diadem encircling his helmet, stands
in front of the group, listening to the address which, we are told, he deputed
Baldwin to make, because his own voice was not sufficiently powerful. An
attendant has dismounted, and is holding his horse.

PREFACE BY THE EDITOR.

THE credit to be attached to an historical writer depends so much on his individual character, and his opportunities of acquiring information, that the student must naturally wish to know something of the personal history of an author to whose works his attention is invited. Such memoirs are frequently compiled from scanty materials, but it may be reasonably expected that their details, however defective, be at least correct as far as they extend. The author, one of our earliest national historians, the most valuable of whose works is now presented for the first time to the English reader, happily supplies the means of satisfying a natural curiosity, in the incidental references of a personal nature which may be collected from them. It is, therefore, somewhat singular, that most of the writers who have supplied biographical notices of one so well known as Henry of Huntingdon, should be at variance with each other, while they have been led into some inaccuracies. A careful examination, however, of his own works will serve to place the few facts of his personal and literary history, to be gleaned from them, on a correct footing.

There appears little doubt that our author was a native of Lincoln, or of some part of that formerly very extensive and important diocese; and that he was born towards the close of the eleventh century, probably between the years 1080 and 1090. His father's name was Nicholas, and that he was an ecclesiastic of some distinction in the church of Lincoln, we learn from an affectionate tribute to his