HENRY OF

See also:

• HUNTINGDON
• HUNTINGDON, EARLS OF
• HUNTINGDON, SELINA HASTINGS, COUNTESS OF (1707—1791)

HUNTINGDON  , English chronicler of the 12th century, was born, apparently, between the years 1o8o and 1090 . His father, by name Nicholas, was a clerk, who became archdeacon of Cambridge, Hertford and Huntingdon, in the time of Remigius, bishop of Lincoln (d . 1092) . The celibacy of the clergy was not strictly enforced in England before 1102 . Hence the chronicler makes no secret of his antecedents, nor did they interfere with his career . At an early age Henry entered the household of Bishop Robert Bloet, who appointed him, immediately after the death of Nicholas (r sus), archdeacon of Hertford and Huntingdon . Henry was on familiar terms with his patron;and also, it would, seem, with Bloet's successor, by whom he was encouraged to undertake the writing of an English history from the time of Julius Caesar . This work, undertaken before 1130, was first published in that year; the author subsequently published in succession four more editions, of which the last ends in 1154 with the accession of Henry II . The only recorded fact of the chronicler's later life is that he went with Archbishop Theobald to Rome in 1139 . On the way Henry halted at Bee, and there made the acquaintance of Robert de Torigni, who mentions their encounter in the preface to his Chronicle . The Historia Anglorum was first printed in Savile, Rerum Anglicarum scriptores post Bedam (London, 1596) . The first six books, excepting the third, which is almost entirely taken from Bede, are given in Monumenta historica Britannica, vol. i .

(ed . H .

Petrie and J . Sharpe, London, 1848) . The standard edition is that of T . Arnold in the Rolls Series (London, 1879) . There is a translation by T . Forester in Bohn's Antiquarian Library (London, 1853) . The Historia is of little independent value before 1126 . Up to that point the author compiles from Eutropius, Aurelius Victor, Nennius, Bede and the English chronicles, particularly that of Peterborough ; in some cases he professes to supplement these sources from oral tradition; but most of his amplifications are pure rhetoric (see F . Liebermann in Forschungen zur deutschen Geschichte for 1878, pp . 265 seq.) .

Arnold prints, in an appendix, a

minor work from Henry's pen, the Epistola ad Walterum de contemptu mundi, which was written in 1135 . It is a moralizing tract, but contains some interesting anecdotes about contemporaries . Henry also wrote epistles to Henry I . (on the succession of kings and emperors in the great monarchies of the world) and to " Warinus, a Briton " (on the early British kings, after Geoffrey of Monmouth) . A book, De miraculis, composed of extracts from Bede, was appended along with these three epistles to the later recensions of the Historia . Henry composed eight books of Latin epigrams; two books survive in the Lambeth MS., No . 118 . His value as a historian, formerly much overrated, is discussed at length by Liebermann and in T . Arnold's introduction to the Rolls edition of the Historia: (H . W .