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THE LETTER TO WALTER ON THE ILLUSTRIOUS MEN OF HIS AGE
THE ACTS OF KING STEPHEN, BY AN ANONYMOUS AUTHOR
GENERAL INDEX

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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-
her 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 exa

mination, 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

memory in the eighth Book of his History. It woul ́appear from this avowal of his parentage, that the ci cumstance of his being the son of a priest was cons dered no blemish on Henry's origin; the struggles of th papal court to enforce the celibacy of the secular clerg not having at that time been successful in England. Stil however, our historian seems to betray some personal fee ing in his remarks on the act of the synod held at Londo A.D. 1102, which prohibited the clergy from living wit wives, a thing," he observes, "not before forbidden," whil he cautiously adds, that some saw danger in a strictnes which, requiring a continence above their strength, migh lead them to disgrace their Christian profession." Thi feeling further appears in the evident satisfaction wit which, "despite of any Roman, though he be a prelate, he tells the story of the incontinence of the cardinal wh inveighed so bitterly against the married clergy in tha synod1.

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Some passages in our author's "Letter to Walter,” trans lated in the present volume, have led to a conjecture that hi father Nicholas held the archdeaconry of Huntingdon, t which Henry was afterwards preferred; for in enumeratin the dignitaries of the church of Lincoln, he mention Nicholas as the Archdeacon of Huntingdon to whom h himself succeeded; though he does not call him his father probably because he was writing to a friend familiar wit his family history. The terms "Star of the church," &c. which he applies to his father in the poetical epitapl composed on his death3, seem to imply that he held a hig ecclesiastical position; and he again takes occasion to pay tribute of filial duty in the "Letter to Walter," in which h speaks of the deceased archdeacon as distinguished n less by the graces of his person than by those of his mind. He then proceeds to give an account of his own appoint ment, relating that "about the time of the death of Nicholas who was Archdeacon of Cambridge, as well as of Hunt ingdon and Hertford, when Cambridgeshire was detached from the see of Lincoln and attached to a new bishopric he himself succeeded to the archdeaconry of the two re 1 History, pp. 241. 252. 2 Letter to Walter, p. 305.

3 History, p. 244.

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