EDITOR'S PREFACE. ORDERICUS VITALIS, in his personal and literary history, as well as in the annals which compose the most valuable part of his voluminous work, forms a connecting link between the English and Norman writers of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Born in England, and having received the first rudiments of learning at Shrewsbury, he was removed at an early age to a monastery in Normandy, in which he completed his education, and passed the rest of his life in the duties of his monastic profession and in literary labours. These, as M. Guizot has remarked were especially devoted to the glory of Normandy;"* and, doubtless, that was the field on which all his immediate associations led him to dwell with the greatest freedom, and to cultivate in its minutest details. But Ordericus did not forget his native country; he so gloried in the name of "Englishman" that it is added to his Norman designation of "monk of St. Evroult" in his autograph manuscript; and the accounts he gives of English affairs generally, during the reigns of the three first Norman kings, interspersed with local and personal matters of considerable interest, exhibit the same careful research, if they are not so diffuse, as the portion of his work devoted to * Notice sur Orderic Vital, prefixed to the French translation of our author's History. |