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The History of William Marshal was commissioned by his son shortly after William’s death in 1219 to celebrate the Marshal’s remarkable life; it is an authentic, contemporary voice. The manuscript was discovered in 1861 by French historian Paul Meyer. Meyer published the manuscript in its original Anglo-French in 1891 in two books. This book is a line by line translation of the first of Meyer’s books; lines 1-10152. Book 1 of the History begins in 1139 and ends in 1194. It describes the events of the Anarchy, the role of William’s father John, John’s marriages, William’s childhood, his role as a hostage at the siege of Newbury, his injury and imprisonment in Poitou where he met Eleanor of Aquitaine and his life as a knight errant. It continues with the accusation against him of an improper relationship with Margaret, wife of Henry the Young King, his exile, and return, the death of Henry the Young King, the rebellion of Richard, the future King Richard I, war with France, the death of King Henry II, and the capture of King Richard, and the rebellion of John, the future King John. It ends with the release of King Richard and the death of John Marshal.
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Strype Ecclesiastical Memorials is in Georgian Books.
The authors he is beholden to for assisting him with the materials of his history, are four especially: the first is, Patten's Account of the Expedition into Scotland, by the Duke of Somerset, in the first year of the king (which author is transcribed into Hollingshed, whence, I suppose, he had it), and that is the reason he is so large and particular in that affair: but that author assists him no farther than where that expedition ended. His second assistant is HoUingshed's History, which he often transcribes, and sometimes mends the speeches which he meets with there, by his own fancy and additions. His third author is King Edward himself, in his excellent Journal, which, it seems, he had the perusal of by the favour of Sir Robert Cotton; and so he acknowledges: but this Journal containing but short and imperfect notices of things that fell out, our author hath taken too much liberty sometimes, to fill up and add unto them by his own mere conjectures, confidently related as matters of truth, which yet sometimes prove mistakes; and where the Journal is at an end (for it concludes in November, 1552) his history is well near ended too, though there were eight months between that and the king's death. The fourth author he makes use of, is Nicolas Sanders, "De Schism. Anglicano;" a most profligate fellow, a very slave to the Roman see, and a sworn enemy to his own country, caring not what he writ, if it might but throw reproach and dirt enough upon the reforming kings and princes, the reformers and the reformation. From this man he ventures to take some things that he sets down in his book, scurrilous and false: but as for records, registers, manuscript letters, to improve or justify his history, and to present his readers with some new things, and unknown before, he offers nothing else.