User:Skipper87/History of William Marshal

History of William Marshal otherwise known as L'Histoire de Guillaume le Mareschal, is the near contemporary biography of the English nobleman, William Marshal (died 1219). In terms of genre it is therefore something of a rarity for its period, as it fits all the characteristics of a true biography, being William's story from cradle to grave, and moreover it examines the life of a lay person. It is a substantial work composed in 19,214 octosyllabic lines of plain verse in the French dialect of the Touraine. It shows little trace in its composition of the contemporary world of the schools, where there are a modest number of Latin vitae or biographies, almost all of them of clergymen, though its author was not entirely divorced from Latin scholarship.

Authorship
Its author names himself in a closing colophon to the work as John (Johans) 'who wrote this book' (lines 19195-6). Attempts have been made to identify this John with the other John mentioned in the colophon as having a hand in the composition: this was John of Earley (died 1229), one of the old Marshal's wards as a youth, and later his household knight and banneret. That he was one and the same as the John who was the author was a throw away suggestion of the discoverer and first editor of the text, Paul Meyer (1840-1917). His suggestion was adopted by several historians as fact. One of Marshal's better modern biographers, Sidney Painter (1902-60), referred to Earley as his late lord's 'biographer'. It was an identification still being championed in 1998. This has not been sustainable since the publication between 2002 and 2007 of the modern analytical edition by a team headed by Professor Tony Holden (1925-2009). It found the History was composed in a French dialect of the Loire valley, not the Anglo-Norman dialect that John of Earley, who came from the English West Country, would have spoken. In his treatment of events the author showed an ignorance of English political life John of Earley would not have exhibited. The author tells us further that he relied for much of his basic material on written memoirs sent him by the Marshal's friends concerning what they witnessed which again John of Earley would not have required. The conclusion from the details he revealed is that John the author was probably a young poet commissioned by the Marshal's friends and relatives from the former Angevin lands along the Loire, well acquainted with the cities and castles of Anjou and Normandy.

Manuscript
There is a single manuscript of the work, which the young Paul Meyer noticed in 1861 browsing the sale room of Sotheby's during the disposal of the manuscripts of Saville collection, compiled by the justice and antiquary Sir John Savile in the late 16th century. It was swept up by the bibliophile Sir Thomas Phillipps at the time and did not resurface till Meyer tracked it down amongst the remnants of Phillipps estate in 1880 and was able to study and identify it for what it was. In 1958 it was acquired by the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, where it remains as manuscript M. 888. It is a book of 127 folios in a mid 13th century hand. It is not the author's original manuscript but a copy of one of his drafts by an English copyist who modified the original language towards his own Anglo-Norman dialect. Three other copies are once know to have existed from medieval library catalogues.