14 - Writing the Biography of Roger of Howden, King's Clerk and Chronicler

Summary

THE DIFFICULTIES faced when writing biographically do not need rehearsing and are an important theme of this book, especially when the subject is neither a king, queen nor major ecclesiastic. In the case of an author who wrote over a longish period we should, however, at least be able to trace some aspects of the development of an individual mind over time. The fact that Roger of Howden chronicled contemporary events from 1170 to 1201, and in enough detail to fill five Rolls Series volumes, raises these hopes. Moreover the fact that he dealt with the years between 1170 and 1192 twice over, once more or less contemporaneously in the work known as the Gesta regis, and once when he revised his narrative of those years in the Chronica that he began to compose after 1192, means that we are given a further opportunity to see how his ideas and values had, or had not, changed in the intervening years.

But what do we know about his life? If we know very little about that, then we cannot write any sort of biography in the sense of relating his words to his life. William Stubbs, the great editor of his works, wrote: ‘Of the life of the compiler, editor or author of this work, Roger of Hoveden, but few facts are known, and to these I am sorry to confess that I cannot add a single one.’