inly the old
historical form. At Durham Turgot and Simeon threw into Latin shape the
national annals to the time of Henry the First with an especial regard to
northern affairs, while the earlier events of Stephen's reign were noted
down by two Priors of Hexham in the wild border-land between England and
the Scots.

These however were the colourless jottings of mere annalists; it was in
the Scriptorium of Canterbury, in Osbern's lives of the English saints or
in Eadmer's record of the struggle of Anselm against the Red King and his
successor, that we see the first indications of a distinctively English
feeling telling on the new literature. The national impulse is yet more
conspicuous in the two historians that followed. The war-songs of the
English conquerors of Britain were preserved by Henry, an Archdeacon of
Huntingdon, who wove them into annals compiled from Baeda, and the
Chronicle; while William, the librarian of Malmesbury, as industriously
collected the lighter ballads which embodied the popular traditions of
the English kings. It is in William above all others that we see the new
tendency of English literature. In himself, as in his work, he marks the
fusion of the conquerors and the conquered, for he was of both English
and Norman parentage and his sympathies were as divided as his blood. The
form and style of his writings show the influence of those classical
studies which were now reviving throughout Christendom. Monk as he is,
William discards the older ecclesiastical models and the annalistic form.
Events are grouped together with no strict reference to time, while the
lively narrative flows rapidly and loosely along with constant breaks of
digression over the general history of Europe and the Church. It is in
this change of historic spirit that William takes his place as first of
the more statesmanlike and philosophic school of historians who began to
arise in direct connexion with the Court, and among whom the author of
the chronicle which commonly bears the name of "Benedict of Peterborough"
with his continuator Roger of Howden are the most conspicuous. Both held
judicial offices under Henry the Second, and it is to their position at
Court that they owe the fulness and accuracy of their information as to
affairs at home and abroad, as well as their copious supply of official
documents. What is noteworthy in these writers is the purely political
temper with which they regard the conflict of Church and Sta