he can of ‘the memorable things of our time,’ not to exclude them from his pages.
The crowning marvel of William's book is the fact that it was written by a man whose whole life was passed in a remote little Yorkshire monastery. Save for one visit to Godric [q. v.] at Finchale, there is nothing to indicate that William ever, from the day when he entered Newburgh priory as a child, travelled further from it than to the neighbouring monasteries of Byland and Rievaux. With their abbots he was in close communication; and they, again, were in constant intercourse with the whole Cistercian order, which, throughout almost the entire period covered by William's work, played a foremost part in the ecclesiastical, political, and social history of England and of all western Europe. Through them, therefore, as well as through the relations which were doubtless aintained between Newburgh and the other Augustinian houses, William could obtain, as he evidently did, chronicles, letters, and copies of state documents, and also the oral information which in many cases he expressly says he received from men who had travelled in far lands, or who had themselves helped in the making of history. But he could have no more personal experience of the outside world, and, save in this indirect way, hardly more opportunities of contact with that world, than Baeda himself. The man who in such circumstances could compose such a work as the 'Historia Rerum Anglicarum 'must have been indeed, as Mr. Hewlett says, 'a man of unusual moral elevation, mental power, and eloquence,' and he must have been, too, a born historian.
Leland (Collectanea, iv. 19) saw in the library of Queens' College, Cambridge, an ‘Explanation of the Song of Songs,’ to which was appended a note stating that ‘William, who was born at Bridlington and became a canon at Newburgh, wrote and brought it out within one year, at the desire of Roger, abbot of Byland.’ According to Bale and Pits, William wrote also a ‘Book of Commentaries;’ of this nothing is known. Bale's and Pits's attribution to him of a work ‘on the kings of the English’ is erroneous; and so is Ussher's mention (Hearne, p. 810) of ‘William of Newburgh's book, “De Rebus Terræ Sanctæ,”’ the book referred to being really the ‘Itinerarium Regis Ricardi.’
The only complete printed edition of William's extant works, consisting of the ‘Historia Rerum Anglicarum’ and three sermons, is by T. Hearne (3 vols. Oxford, 1719). The history has been edited by Mr. H. C. Hamilton for the English Historical Society (2 vols. 1856), and by Mr. R. Howlett for the Rolls Series (‘Chronicles of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I,’ vols. i. and ii. 1884–5).
[In the preface to his first volume of William's History Mr. Hewlett has collected the available information about William—for which the sole original source is the History itself—discussed the composition of the work, and given an account of the manuscripts.]
WILLIAM de Leicester, or WILLIAM du Mont (d. 1213), theologian, studied at Oxford, and afterwards proceeded to Paris, where he taught on the Mount St. Geneviève between 1170 and 1180; he seems to have taken his name of du Mont from this fact. He afterwards became chancellor of Lincoln, an office which he held in 1192 and 1200 (Le Neve, Fasti, ii. 91). Here he continued his lessons with great success, numbering among his pupils Giraldus Cambrensis, whom he had previously met in Paris (Gir. Cambs. De Rebus a se Gestis, iii. 3). He died soon after Easter 1213.
Alexander Neckham has some verses in his honour in his ‘De Laude Sapientiæ.’
His works are: 1. ‘Similitudines’ (MSS. in Balliol ccxxii. and Merton cclvii. Colleges, Oxford, and Peterhouse, Cambridge). 2. ‘Summa de officio sacerdotis’ (MSS. in Caius College, Cambridge, Bodleian Library, New College xciv. f. 28, cxlv. f. 94, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, ccclx. f. 100). 3. ‘Numerale’ (MSS. Balliol College ccxxii. f. 48 b., Merton College, cclvii. f. 4, and New College, Oxford, xcviii.). 4. ‘Concordantiæ.’ 5. ‘Collecta super psalterium cum scholiis’ (MS. Pembroke College, Cambridge). 6. ‘Homeliæ’ (MS. in Cambridge University Library). 7. ‘Sermones de tempore ab adventu ad Dominicam Trinitatis.’ 8. ‘Expositiones evangeliorum.’ 9. ‘Speculum pœnitentiæ’ (MS. in Pembroke College, Cambridge). 10. ‘Speculum pœnitentis’ (MS. in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge). 11. ‘De Sacramentis Ecclesiæ.’ 12. ‘Flores sapientiæ.’ 13. ‘Proverbia et alia verba ædificatoria in ordine disposita’ (MS. in New College, Oxford, xcviii. 56 b). 14. ‘Carmen alphabetum glossatum.’ 15. ‘De adventu Domini.’ 16. ‘Expositiones epistolarum.’ 17. ‘De bonitate mulierum.’ 18. ‘Ad quasdam moniales lib. i.’ 19. ‘Introductio ad artem concionandi.’ 20. ‘De miraculis Sanctorum.’ 21. ‘De eliminatione errorum de quibusdam quæ in ecclesia cantantur et leguntur’ (MS. in Bodleian Library, Oxford). 22. ‘Distinctiones theologicæ’ (MS. in Corpus Christi College, Oxford, xliii. 1). 23. ‘De tropis liber’
