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)

• The Anglo-Saxons had, long before the arrival of the Normans, neglected the study of letters and of religion. The priests were content with a hurried education, could scarcely stammer out the words of the sacraments, and were all astonished if any one of them were acquainted with grammar. They all drank together; and this was the study to which they vowed their days and nights. They consumed their revenues in the joys of the table, in small, wretched houses; very different from the French and the Normans, who, dwelling in vast and superb buildings, go to very little expense in living. Hence, they had all the vices which attend drunkenness, and which enervate men's hearts. And thus, after having fought William with more rashness and blind fury than military skill, they were easily conquered by a single battle, and they and their country submitted to a hard slavery. — At this period, the dress of the English fell to the middle of the knee. They wore their hair short, their beard shaven, golden bracelets on their arms, and their complexion heightened by paint and colored pigments. They were gluttonous to corpulence, and drunken to brutishness. They inoculated their conquerors with these two vices: in other respects, they adopted the customs of the Normans. On their side the Normans were, and are still, careful in dress, even to fastidiousness, delicate in their food, though temperate; accustomed to warfare, and unable to live without it: though impetuous in attack, they Know how to make use of stratagem and corruption when force is powerless. As I have said, they build fine buildings, and lay out little on their table. They are envious of their equals, would wish to outvie their superiors, and while despoiling their inferiors, will protect them against strangers. Faithful to their lords; yet the least offence will make them unfaithful. They can weigh perfidy against fortune, and sell their oath. Lastly, they are of all people the most susceptible of friendly sentiments: they will honor strangers equally with their own countrymen, and do not disdain to intermarry with their subjects.
  • Bk. 3 (Scriptores rerum Francicarum, vol. 11, p. 185), as quoted in Michelet's History of France, tr. G. H. Smith, vol. 1 (New York, 1882), p. 200

• 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. 3, 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