Thomas Elmham

Thomas Elmham (1364 – in or after 1427) was an English chronicler. He wrote a history of the monastery of St. Augustine at Canterbury and a verse life of Henry V.

Misattributed

We who were the remnant of the people...raised our hearts and eyes to heaven, crying...for God to have compassion upon us, and...to turn away from us the power of the French.

• Et dum transivimus per villam de Peronne muratam, quam propè relinquimus à sinistris nostris, comperimus equites Gallicani exercitûs se offerentes de villâ versùs nostros, ut nos fortè ad infra jactus hostiles et nocumenta traxissent; sed oppugnantibus equitibus nostris citò terga verterunt, oppidum repetentes. Et postquam pertransivimus villam, quasi ad milliare, invenimus vias mirabiliter tritas per Gallicanum exercitum quasi nos in multis millibus præcessissent. Et tunc nos qui fuimus residuus populus, ut de potestatibus taceam, timentes prælium imminens, corda et oculos in cælum levavimus, clamantes intimæ considerationis vocibus, ut compateretur nostri Deus, et à nobis de suâ ineffabili pietate Gallorum violentias declinaret.
  • Passing by the walled town of Peron on our left, we found the horsemen of the French army setting out from the town towards us, with the view of drawing us within the shot and missiles of the enemy, but our horsemen making a stand, they quickly fled into the town. After we had passed the town about a mile, we found the roads strangely trodden by the French army, as if they had gone before us in many thousands; and then we who were the remnant of the people, not to say of the more powerful, dreading the impending battle, raised our hearts and eyes to heaven, crying with voices of the deepest earnestness, for God to have compassion upon us, and of his unspeakable goodness to turn away from us the power of the French.
  • Henry V marches north after crossing the Somme, 21 October 1415. Henrici Quinti Angliae Regis Gesta, BL Cotton MS. Julius E. IV (ed. Benjamin Williams, 1850; tr. Harris Nicolas, 1832). This work, often referred to as the "chaplain's life", was once thought to have been written by the King's personal chaplain—either Elmham or Jean de Bordin

External links

• Sir Harris Nicolas, History of the Battle of Agincourt, 2nd ed. (London: Johnson & Co, 1832) pp. 236–7
• Benjamin Williams, Henrici Quinti, Angliæ Regis, Gesta, &c. (London, 1850) p. 45