Henry was the archdeacon of Huntingdon who, at
the request of Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, composed a history of the English people from early
Anglo-Saxon times through the accession of King
HENRY II in 1154. His Historia Anglorum (History
of the English People) first ran up to the year 1129,
but its popularity was such that Henry revised the
text three more times before his death, ending his
final version with the end of Stephen’s reign in
1154. He seems to have died about 1155, when a
new archdeacon was appointed.
Henry was probably born near Ramsey in Huntingdonshire sometime before 1085. His father,
Nicholas, was himself archdeacon of Huntingdon.
Henry may have been educated in the household of
Robert Bloet, bishop of Lincoln from 1093–1123.
Upon the death of Nicholas in 1110, Bishop Bloet
appointed Henry to his father’s post as archdeacon,
a fact that suggests Henry was already a priest by this
time. It should be noted that clerical celibacy was
not enforced in England prior to the early 12th century, so that Henry’s inheriting his father’s position
as archdeacon was not particularly unusual. Henry
was apparently married himself, and his son Aristotle also became a cleric. In his Historia, Henry derides the English church councils of his time that
sought to ban clerical marriage.
It was Bishop Bloet’s successor, after 1123, who
asked Henry to write his Historia. The only other
recorded fact of Henry’s life concerns his trip to
Rome with Archbishop Theobald, undertaken in
1139. Stopping at the Abbey of Bec en route to the
papal city, Henry became acquainted with the Norman historian Robert of Torigni, who at the time
was in charge of the abbey’s large manuscript collection. Robert apparently showed Henry a new
Latin history by GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH, the HISTORIA REGUM BRITANNIAE (History of the Kings of
Britain), with its elaborate treatment of the King
ARTHUR legend as “history.” In a letter written to a
Briton friend named Warinus, Henry summarizes
Geoffrey’s text, and includes in his summary a
number of details about Arthur’s last battle that
are not in any extant manuscripts of Geoffrey’s
Historia. Henry adds, as well, a note about how the
Bretons claim that Arthur is not dead, and are
waiting for his return.
In his own Historia, Henry relied particularly
on BEDE and the ANGLO–SAXON CHRONICLE for the
earlier sections, and seems also to have been familiar with the work of WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY. Thus
Henry’s history, up until the year 1126, is of little independent value. However, the material after that
date, for the last part of the reign of King Henry I
and for all of King Stephen’s reign, in Henry’s Historia is a valuable contemporary account. There are,
however, some difficulties with the text. For one
thing, Henry had a tendency to change his opinions of people as he wrote subsequent revisions of
his text, so that in his earliest characterization of
Henry I, for instance, he condemns the king for cruelty, lust, and avarice, but in a later revision, he
omits his criticism, except to say that the king
needed money in order to govern effectively. Another difficulty is that Henry’s often entertaining
anecdotes are generally untrustworthy as historical
fact, even though many of them are quite memorable, such as the story of how Henry I died when
he refused to listen to his doctor’s warning against
eating lampreys. A third aspect of the Historia that
might affect its reliability is Henry’s tendency to
use events as opportunities to moralize, particularly
about the downfall of the rich and powerful as examples of the vanity of worldly success.
Henry is the author of a number of other
works, including the gloomy and moralistic Epistola ad Walterum de contemptu mundi (Letter to
Walter on contempt for the world) and eight volumes of epigrams in Latin. But by far his most important work is his English history.
Bibliography
Henry of Huntingdon. Epistola ad Warinum, in
Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and
Richard I, edited by Richard Howlett. London:
Longman, 1885.
———. Historia Anglorum: The History of the English
People. Edited and translated by Diana Greenway.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.
———. The History of the English People, 1000–1154.
Translated from the Latin, with an introduction
and notes by Diana Greenway. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2002.
Partner, Nancy F. Serious Entertainments: The Writing of History in Twelfth-Century England.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977.