Sæwulf is known only from his fascinating autobiographical account of his pilgrimage to the Holy Land around the year 1100 at the time of the First Crusade, which can be compared with such works as Adomnán’s book on the Holy Places and Hugeburc’s account of Willibald’s journey to the Holy Land, both excerpted in Volume One. The excerpt here recounts a storm and Sæwulf’s visit to Bethlehem.

Cuthbert of Wearmouth-Jarrow wrote the wonderful letter giving a moving eye-witness account of the calm death of Bede in 735. He later became abbot of Wearmouth-Jarrow for many years, during which time he corresponded with Anglo-Saxon missionaries working in Germany. Here are included the complete work on the death of Bede and a letter from Cuthbert to Lul, written some thirty years later, in which he notes that he is sending Lul Bede’s prose and verse works on Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, and he asks for a skilled glassmaker as well as a cithara player to come to Northumbria to teach him to play.

This section contains examples of four wills made by members of the laity, both men and women, at the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth centuries. This is a genre of which many examples survive in local records and in episcopal registers. Here one can see the kind of things that people would leave to their relatives or to the poor, from domestic articles, often associated with their profession, and clothes, to sums of money.

Hugeburc, an Anglo-Saxon nun who moved to Germany and became abbess of Heidenheim, undertook a biography of Willibald, who with his brother Wynnebald had travelled from England with his father on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Willibald eventually became bishop of Eichstätt in Bavaria. The heart of Hugeburc’s biography is concerned with Willibald’s experiences in the Holy Land, where he visited many sites mentioned in the Bible: he told Hugeburc of his adventures and she recorded them in a kind of diary form, which contrasts with the more elaborate style of the Latin she uses in the non-dictated sections.

Jocelin of Brakelond was a monk at Bury St Edmunds monastery at the time of the famous Abbot Samson, whose election and abbacy Jocelin describes. Jocelin writes his account of the monastery in a Latin that contains references to both the Bible and classical writers, as well as words drawn from Greek, or based on contemporary French and English.

This charter from Æthelbald of Mercia to abbess Eadburg of Thanet in Kent shows the high regard in which the abbess was held. She is granted remission on the tax due for a ship she has bought, perhaps indicating that she was involved in trade with the Frankish regions across the English Channel.

The Life of Gregory the Great, who died in 604 just a few years after sending Augustine to Canterbury to reintroduce Christianity among the Anglo-Saxons, was written around 705 by an anonymous writer apparently associated with the monastery of Whitby which was an important cultural centre in the seventh century. The work also provides some information about life in Britain. The Latin displays certain syntactical and orthographic idiosyncrasies which may be due to the author or the later scribe.

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.

From Geoffrey of Monmouth’s hugely popular History of the kings of Britain, which influenced a great deal of medieval literature in various languages, are taken two excerpts. The first records a meeting, supposedly in the fifth century, between the Celtic leader Vortigern and the Saxon leader Hengist with his daughter Renwein (Rowen) who offers Vortigern a drink using the English greeting Wassail. The second is an account of king Arthur’s battle against the Saxons at Badon Hill.

Gervase of Canterbury gives a detailed account of the fire that ravaged Canterbury Cathedral in the 1170s, after which an excerpt from the fire regulations published in 1212 in London after another major fire in the city is included. Building and repairs are exemplified by documents recording work done at WIndsor Castle and Westminster Abbey, as well as the accounts of payment made for repair to the clock on Westminster Palace, now replaced by Big Ben. Finally a contract is included between a builder and the authorities at St. Paul’s regarding the building of a large merchant’s house in the City of London, with details as to the plan of the house and the sourcing of the materials.

Owain Glyndwr (died c. 1416) was the last Welshman to hold the title of Prince of Wales. In 1400 he led a rebellion against king Henry IV and English rule in Wales. In 1406 he addressed a letter, now known as the Pennal Letter, to king Charles VI of France asking for support in persuading the schismatic pope Benedict XIII to help Wales to exist as an independent state with a Church and universities of its own.

The Domesday book, surviving now in the National Archives in London, was the great land survey of 1086 instigated by William the Conqueror to enable him to tax the land correctly. It summarises in a largely formulaic format in Latin the holdings of each of the royal tenants and the population and property across most of the country. The huge work contains amazing detail about named individuals. Here short excerpts are also included from Henry of Huntingdon’s History of the English and from the work called the Dialogue of the Exchequer which describes the DOmesday book and its inception.

The letter from king Edward I to Pope Boniface VIII, dated 1301, is preserved among the Close Rolls in the National Archives. In it Edward gives his version of the history of relations between England and Scotland during a period when this was a thorny issue. Edward believed that the king of England had rights over Scotland while the Pope thought he had jurisdiction over Scotland and repudiated English involvement. The letter gives an account of the early history of Britain reminiscent of that found in Geoffrey of Monmouth.

William Fitzstephen wrote a vivid description of London in the 1170s, as the prologue to his biography of Thomas Becket. He describes the churches, the schools and above all the life of the people in the city, such as their festivities and sports, including skating.

In this excerpt from St. Patrick’s Confession, the author writes in the first person, telling of his early years in Britain and his coming to Ireland. The work is of linguistic interest as being influenced by Biblical Latin but with possible influence from the spoken Latin of the fifth century.

Two short writs granting land to the Church show how in the early years of William the Conqueror’s reign the use of Latin was gradually adopted where Old English had been used in pre-Conquest times for royal writs, though Latin was used for charters.