Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/William the Trouvère

by Mary Bateson

WILLIAM the Trouvère (fl. 1220?), poet, was first called Adgar. Working at the instance of one Gregory, he translated some forty or forty-one tales into octosyllabic Anglo-Norman verse, from the Latin collection of ‘Miracles of the Virgin’ which he found in the ‘almarie’ or bookcase of St. Paul's. His work in the Egerton MS. 612 has been printed by Neuhaus in Förster's ‘Altfranzösische Bibliothek,’ 1886.

[Ward's Cat. of Romances, ii. 592; Mussafia's Studien zu mittelalterlichen Marienlegenden in Kaiserliche Academie der Wissenschaften, Sitzungsbericht (Phil. Hist. Classe), bd. cxiii. Heft 2, p. 917, and Bd. cxv. cxix. cxxiii.; Die Adgarlegenden in K. Vollmöller's Romane-Forschungen, i. 183. ]

M. B.