William of Malmesbury

William of Malmesbury

William of Malmesbury (c. 1095 or '96 – c. 1143), English historian of the 12th century, was born about the year 1095 or '96, in Wiltshire. His father was Norman and mother English. He spent his whole life in England with his best working years as a monk at Malmesbury Abbey.

Quotes

• That fatal day for England, the sad destruction of our dear country [dulcis patrie].
  • On the Battle of Hastings, quoted in M. T. Clanchy, England and Its Rulers: 1066-1272 (Blackwell, 1998), p. 24

Gesta Regum Anglorum (c. 1125)

• Nullus diues nisi nummularius, nullus clericus nisi causidicus, nullus presbiter nisi, ut uerbo parum Latino utar, firmarius.
  • None became rich unless he was a moneychanger, none a clerk unless he was a lawyer, none a priest unless he was—to use a somewhat foreign word—a rentier.
  • Bk. iv, sec. 314 (tr. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom, 1998)

• We have experienced the truth of this prophecy, for England has become the habitation of outsiders and the dominion of foreigners. Today, no Englishman is earl, bishop, or abbott, and newcomers gnaw away at the riches and very innards of England; nor is there any hope for an end of this misery.
  • Quoted in Hugh M. Thomas, The English and the Normans: Ethnic Hostility, Assimilation and Identity 1066–c.1220 (Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 56

• This Arthur is the hero of many wild tales among the Britons even in our own day, but assuredly deserves to be the object of reliable history rather than of false and dreaming fable.
  • Quoted in M. J. Cohen and John Major (eds.), History in Quotations (Cassell, 2004), p. 160

Quotes about William of Malmesbury

• I must confess that I have never read W. Malmsb. de Pont. His Kings are enough to make me thoroughly despise him as a lying affected French scoundrel.
  • Edward Augustus Freeman to William Stubbs (26 April 1858), quoted in W. R. W. Stepens, The Life and Letters of Edward A. Freeman, Vol. 1 (1895), p. 241