Sæwulf is known only from his fascinating autobiographical account of his pilgrimage to the Holy Land around the year 1100 at the time of the First Crusade, which can be compared with such works as Adomnán’s book on the Holy Places and Hugeburc’s account of Willibald’s journey to the Holy Land, both excerpted in Volume One. The excerpt here recounts a storm and Sæwulf’s visit to Bethlehem.

This section contains examples of four wills made by members of the laity, both men and women, at the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth centuries. This is a genre of which many examples survive in local records and in episcopal registers. Here one can see the kind of things that people would leave to their relatives or to the poor, from domestic articles, often associated with their profession, and clothes, to sums of money.

Jocelin of Brakelond was a monk at Bury St Edmunds monastery at the time of the famous Abbot Samson, whose election and abbacy Jocelin describes. Jocelin writes his account of the monastery in a Latin that contains references to both the Bible and classical writers, as well as words drawn from Greek, or based on contemporary French and English.

The famous story of the sinking of the White Ship in 1120 and the death of king Henry I’s heir, prince William, and many members of the royal family and aristocracy was recorded by many contemporary historians. Here excerpts from sixwriters are included, passages that vary in length and style. The writers are Eadmer, William of Malmesbury, Orderic Vitalis, Symeon of Durham, Hugh the Chanter and Henry of Huntingdon. The accounts by William of Malmesbury and Orderic Vitalis are literary masterpieces, providing historical detail and an overall depiction that has elements of epic andtragedy.

From Geoffrey of Monmouth’s hugely popular History of the kings of Britain, which influenced a great deal of medieval literature in various languages, are taken two excerpts. The first records a meeting, supposedly in the fifth century, between the Celtic leader Vortigern and the Saxon leader Hengist with his daughter Renwein (Rowen) who offers Vortigern a drink using the English greeting Wassail. The second is an account of king Arthur’s battle against the Saxons at Badon Hill.

Gervase of Canterbury gives a detailed account of the fire that ravaged Canterbury Cathedral in the 1170s, after which an excerpt from the fire regulations published in 1212 in London after another major fire in the city is included. Building and repairs are exemplified by documents recording work done at WIndsor Castle and Westminster Abbey, as well as the accounts of payment made for repair to the clock on Westminster Palace, now replaced by Big Ben. Finally a contract is included between a builder and the authorities at St. Paul’s regarding the building of a large merchant’s house in the City of London, with details as to the plan of the house and the sourcing of the materials.

Owain Glyndwr (died c. 1416) was the last Welshman to hold the title of Prince of Wales. In 1400 he led a rebellion against king Henry IV and English rule in Wales. In 1406 he addressed a letter, now known as the Pennal Letter, to king Charles VI of France asking for support in persuading the schismatic pope Benedict XIII to help Wales to exist as an independent state with a Church and universities of its own.

The Domesday book, surviving now in the National Archives in London, was the great land survey of 1086 instigated by William the Conqueror to enable him to tax the land correctly. It summarises in a largely formulaic format in Latin the holdings of each of the royal tenants and the population and property across most of the country. The huge work contains amazing detail about named individuals. Here short excerpts are also included from Henry of Huntingdon’s History of the English and from the work called the Dialogue of the Exchequer which describes the DOmesday book and its inception.

The letter from king Edward I to Pope Boniface VIII, dated 1301, is preserved among the Close Rolls in the National Archives. In it Edward gives his version of the history of relations between England and Scotland during a period when this was a thorny issue. Edward believed that the king of England had rights over Scotland while the Pope thought he had jurisdiction over Scotland and repudiated English involvement. The letter gives an account of the early history of Britain reminiscent of that found in Geoffrey of Monmouth.

William Fitzstephen wrote a vivid description of London in the 1170s, as the prologue to his biography of Thomas Becket. He describes the churches, the schools and above all the life of the people in the city, such as their festivities and sports, including skating.

Two short writs granting land to the Church show how in the early years of William the Conqueror’s reign the use of Latin was gradually adopted where Old English had been used in pre-Conquest times for royal writs, though Latin was used for charters.

Edmund of Abingdon who became archbishop of Canterbury in 1233 was famed for his asceticism, his learning (he studies in Paris) and for his clash with king Henry III.His spiritual writing takes the form of the Speculum Religiosorum, a Latin work then translated into Anglo-Norman French and then back into Latin with the title, Speculum Ecclesie. This Latin text, and the French version were then translated intoEnglish in the fifteenth century.

The section on Thomas Becket includes a letter from Becket to the Empress Matilda (daughter of king Henry I) who was based in Rouen at the time, and one from the Empress in response, reprimanding Becket for his behaviour towards her son, Henry II. The second part contains two parallel excerpts from the accounts, by Edward Grim and William Fitzstephen, of the murder of Becket in Canterbury cathedral in 1170.

William de Longchamp was notorious at the end of the twelfth century as a hugely powerful man, chancellor of England, but one who was hated by many for having abused his power. The account of his downfall and ludicrous humiliation on Dover Beach as he tried to escape to France is recorded by a number of contemporaries. Here the version recorded by Hugh Nonant, bishop of Coventry, is given. The writing is of a high quality and the text provides both humour and historical detail.

In the early fifteenth century it was still the norm for local witnesses to be called to swear to the age of a young person to prove that they were old enough to inherit property. The sworn statements of these witnesses, given orally in ENglish but recorded in Latin translation provide interesting and often amusing details about the lives of ordinary people.

Various miracles were recorded as having taken place around Beverley minster where the body of the saint, John of Beverley (died 721) was buried. One of these records an incident when a boy, keen to watch a drama about Christ’s passion being performed in the churchyard, climbed up high inside the minster to get a good view, but fell to the paving beneath and was apparently dead, but then returned to life. The account is vivid, and ends with an allegorical coda drawing parallels with Christ’s death and resurrection.

Accounts of the battles of Bannockburn,by the anonymous writer of the Chronicle of Lanercost, of Henry V’s battles at Harfleur and Agincourt, by Thomas Elmham or Ps.-Elmham and by Titus Livius, and of Richard III’s death at the battle of Bosworth Field by Polydore Vergil are given here as examples of military historiography of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.A section of a metric poem on Henry V, in elegiac couplets, is also included. The reader must decide as to whether the writers on Henry V and Richard III can be regarded as writing ‘humanist’ Latin.