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Chronicle of the Kings of England; From the Earliest Period to the Reign of King Stephen
Chronicle of the Kings of England From the Earliest Period to the Reign of King Stephen Author:William General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1847 Original Publisher: Henry G. Bohn Subjects: Great Britain History / Europe / Great Britain History / Medieval Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books ... more »edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: PREFACE. The history of the English, from their arrival in Britain to his own times, has been written by Bede, a man of singular learning and modesty, in a elear and eaptivating style. After him you will not, in my opinion, easily find any person who bus attempted to eompose in Latin the history of this people. Let others deelare whether their researehes in this respeet have been, or are likely to be, more fortunate; my own labour, though diligent in the extreme, has, down to this period, been without its reward. There, are, indeed, some notiees of antiquity, written in the vernaeular tongue after the manner of u ehroniele, nnd arranged aeeording to the years of our Lord. By means of these alone, the times sueeeeding this man have been reseued from oblivion : for of Elward, f a noble and illustrious man, who attempted to arrange these ehronieles in Latin, and whose intention I eould applaud if his language did not disgust me, it is better to be silent. Nor has it eseaped my knowledge, that there is also a work of my Lord Eadmer, J written with a ehastened eleganee of style, in whieh, beginning from King Edgar, he has but hastily glaneed at the times down to William the First : and thenee, taking a freer range, gives n narrative, eopious, and of great utility to the studious, until the death of Arehbishop Ralph.§ Thus from the time of Bede there is a period of two hundred and twenty-three years left unnotieed in his history ; so that the regular series of time, unsupported by a eonneeted rela...« less