Historians of the Norman Conquest

There is no satisfactory contemporary narrative of the Norman Conquest and settlement.¹ The historians of the time fall into two groups, the English and the continental. In the English group are the authors of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. In the continental group are William of Jumièges, the author of the Carmen de Hastingae Proelio (Song of the Battle of Hastings), and William of Poitiers. Each group is probably entirely independent of the other, telling a slightly different story, and each has serious faults: the English historians are too brief and unanalytical, and the continental too biased in favour of the Normans.