Describing the forces that William, duke of Normandy gathered for his invasion of England, Wace, writing a hundred years after the event, declares that he will not attempt to set down their numbers. He adds:

There were also many smaller craft carrying arms and equipment. He then cites written evidence that there were 3,000 sail, concluding that there must have been a large number of nlen to fill so many vessels. Wace considered himself to be a serious historian, critical of his sources. For example, he gives two reasons for Harold's trip to Normandy, saying:

It is perhaps as a conveyer of oral'tradition about the events of the Conquest, that Wace has been considered of most value. Freeman used him extensively, especially for his glorious description of the Battle of Hastings. Indeed, he preferred ‘honest Wace’ (as he calls him) to other source. The pointed, but often destructive, criticism of Wace as a late and unreliable source by J. H. Round, did much to reduce his influence. Then, nearly forty years ago, in an article called ‘The Companions of the Conqueror', D. C. Douglas dealt the death blow to using Wace as Freeman had once done. He pointed out that of the 117 Norman lords named as fighting at Hastings, only 32 men could be shown by ‘express evidence’ from earlier sources to have taken part in the battle. There the matter has rested. The ‘Roman de Rou’ has been considered as, on the whole, totally unsuitable for historical study.

My concern then, is to attempt to rescue Wace for the historian, to see if there is anything he can tell us, to try and understand his motives and gauge his intended audience. In order to do this we need first to study the author and the circumstances of his life. In fact, we know very little of him - only what he himself tells us.

Wace was born in Jersey, apparently in the first decade of the twelfth century, and ‘put to his letters’ at Caen. He then studied at a school in Paris, he does not say where, and returned to Caen as ‘clerc lisant', or teacher.