He Had
Lived In The Paris Of St. Louis And Philip Augustus, And Was Never
Tired Of Exalting The House Of Capet Over The Tyrannical And
Bloodthirsty House Of Anjou.
He had no love of England, for her
Plantagenet kings or her Saxon serfs.
During the French invasion in
the time of King John his sympathies were openly with the Dauphin as
against the "brood of vipers," who were equally alien to English
soil. For the Saxon, indeed, he felt the twofold hatred of Welshman
and Norman. One of his opponents is denounced to the Pope as an
"untriwe Sax," and the Saxons are described as the slaves of the
Normans, the mere hewers of wood and drawers of water for their
conquerors. He met Innocent III., the greatest of Popes, in
familiar converse, he jested and gossiped with him in slippered
ease, he made him laugh at his endless stories of the glory of
Wales, the iniquities of the Angevins, and the bad Latin of
Archbishop Walter. He knew Richard Coeur-de-Lion, the flower of
chivalry, and saw him as he was and "not through a glass darkly."
He knew John, the cleverest and basest of his house. He knew and
loved Stephen Langton, the precursor of a long line of statesmen who
have made English liberty broad - based upon the people's will. He
was a friend of St. Hugh of Lincoln, the sweetest and purest spirit
in the Anglican Church of the Middle Ages, the one man who could
disarm the wrath of the fierce king with a smile; and he was the
friend and patron of Robert Grosstete, afterwards the great Bishop
of Lincoln. He lived much in company with Ranulph de Glanville, the
first English jurist, and he has "Boswellised" some of his
conversations with him. He was intimate with Archbishop Baldwin,
the saintly prelate who laid down his life in the Third Crusade on
the burning plains of Palestine, heart-broken at the unbridled
wickedness of the soldiers of the Cross. He was the near kinsman
and confidant of the Cambro-Normans, who, landing in Leinster in
1165, effected what may be described as the first conquest of
Ireland. There was scarcely a man of note in his day whom he had
not seen and conversed with, or of whom he does not relate some
piquant story. He had travelled much, and had observed closely.
Probably the most valuable of all his works, from the strictly
historical point of view, are the "Itinerary" and "Description of
Wales," which are reprinted in the present volume. {10} Here he is
impartial in his evidence, and judicial in his decisions. If he
errs at all, it is not through racial prejudice. "I am sprung," he
once told the Pope in a letter, "from the princes of Wales and from
the barons of the Marches, and when I see injustice in either race,
I hate it."
The text is that of Sir Richard Colt Hoare, who published an English
translation, chiefly from the texts of Camden and Wharton, in 1806.
The valuable historical notes have been curtailed, as being too
elaborate for such a volume as this, and a few notes have been added
by the present editor.
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