The famous story of the sinking of the White Ship in 1120 and the death of king Henry I’s heir, prince William, and many members of the royal family and aristocracy was recorded by many contemporary historians. Here excerpts from sixwriters are included, passages that vary in length and style. The writers are Eadmer, William of Malmesbury, Orderic Vitalis, Symeon of Durham, Hugh the Chanter and Henry of Huntingdon. The accounts by William of Malmesbury and Orderic Vitalis are literary masterpieces, providing historical detail and an overall depiction that has elements of epic andtragedy.

In the section on the Battle of Hastings of 1066, the first event in the Norman Conquest of Britain, an excerpt is given of the Latin text accompanying the embroidered pictures on the Bayeux tapestry. Then excerpts are given from the early twelfth-century accounts by William of Malmesbury of the Battle itself, and by Orderic Vitalis of the aftermath of the battle, in the following years of violence against the population in the rest of the country, including Northumbria and Cumbria.

This Section provides examples of saints’ lives from around the millennium, in the works of Ælfric and Wulfstan of Winchester on the life of Æthelwold, in the work of the author known as ‘B.’ on the life of St. Dunstan (an excerpt describing a miracle involving Dunstan’s harp in the house of a woman where Dunstan was designing an embroidery) with excerpts from the biographies of DUnstan written by post-Conquest writers, namely Osbern of Canterbury, Eadmer and William of Malmesbury, for the sake of comparison. Finally an excerpt is given from Byrhtferth’s life of bishop Oswald, describing his role at the coronation in Bath of king Edgar in 973.

This chapter seeks to provide an explanation for the earliest Insular cult of St Katherine of Alexandria, which grew in popularity despite the absence of primary relics or an Insular pilgrimage site. Knowledge of St Katherine likely arrived in England prior to 1066, but her cult achieved widespread appeal following the Norman Conquest. This chapter proposes that this appeal was rooted in the congruencies between aspects of St Katherine’s character, which can be conceived of as generally ‘civilised’, and descriptions of ‘Englishness’ that rested on a conception of a cultural, rather than biological, national community. These depictions are evident in the circulating historical chronicles written during the twelfth century, which amalgamated English and Norman identities and differentiated the ‘English’ nation from its ‘barbarous’ neighbours. These same characteristics find expression in the vita of St Katherine and were highlighted liturgically, through music and text, testifying to their valence.

Anglo-Norman sources often ignore what we call the economy, or only make very quick allusions to it, thus leaving in the shadows the most dynamic moment of economic growth that this space has ever known. The narrative texts nevertheless make it possible to approach the representations that the clerics of the twelfth century had of the concrete problems of the satisfaction of needs and of the socially useful and morally virtuous use of natural wealth. The theme of hunger, common in the sources of the Rhenish regions, does not appear very frequently, and most often in connection with war. But the reading of texts by William of Malmesbury relating to the reign of William Rufus and the life of Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester also shows that the value of rulers, whether king or bishop, was measured by the subsistence of the inhabitants, especially the poorest. The question of the relationship between resources and needs, and more generally that of livelihood, thus appears to be a major political problem.

This chapter explores how classical ideas of the gift were utilised by medieval writers. The chapter focuses on three particularly influential writers from medieval England active across a range of genres: John of Salisbury, William of Malmesbury and Matthew Paris. The chapter shows that these writers were highly familiar with classical ideas of the gift and drew extensively upon them in shaping their own writings.