Appendix I - The Date of William's Birth

Summary

William's date of birth is a vexing but important issue. At first sight it would seem easy to arrive at a reasonably precise date. The argument is as follows: In the prologue to Comm. Lam. William says ‘Quadrigenarius sum hodie, admouique pedem medietatem metae quam diuinus psalmista ponit hominum uitae, dicens “dies annorum nostrorum in ipsis septuaginta anni, si autem in potentatibus octoginta anni et amplius eorum labor et dolor” ’, which must mean that he was writing (and indeed completing the work) on his very birthday. Now Comm. Lam. refers to the reign of Henry I in the past, and was therefore presumably written after the king's death on 1 December 1135. This is supported by William's reference to ‘olim, cum historias lusi, uiridioribus annis rerumque laetitiae congruebat rerum iocunditas’, which would fit a date of a decade or so after the completion of GR and GP. Comm. Lam. is mentioned approvingly by Robert of Cricklade in a work in which he also says that he has just heard of the death of Godfrey abbot of Winchcombe, which occurred in March 1137. From all of this we might conclude that Comm. Lam. was written in 1136, and that William was consequently born in 1096. However, as William Stubbs saw, there are considerable difficulties in allowing William to have been born at so late a date. These difficulties are:

1. (a) As a boy William witnessed a miracle involving the local landowner Ernulf of Hesdin, who died at Antioch during the First Crusade (21 October 1097 × 3 June 1098). On the assumption that Ernulf went on Crusade as part of the contingent led by Duke Robert of Normandy, the miracle must have taken place before their departure in September–October 1096.199

2. (b) William had spoken with elderly monks who remembered Abbot Wulfsige (d. c.1033/4). We might reasonably suppose these monks to have been no more than seventy to eighty years of age when William heard them. If we imagine that they were young men who had known Wulfsige only for the last five years of his life, then they would have been born c.1010. In that case William must have heard their stories no later than c.1080–90.