Ingulph

Ingulph, abbot of Crowland, long considered the author of the Historia Monasterii Croylandensis, according to Ordericus Vitalis, was secretary to Duke William of Normandy, and was by him in 1086 made abbot of Crowland, where he died, 16th November 1109. The Historia Monasterii Croylandensis was printed by Sir Henry Savile in his Scriptores Rerum Anglicarum post Bedam (1596), and in a more complete edition, with the continuation by Peter of Blois, in vol. i. of the Rerum Anglicarum scriptores veteres (Oxford, 1684). There is a translation by H. T. Riley in Bohn's Antiquarian Library (1854). Some writers even of the 18th century questioned the entire genuineness of the book; but their scepticism did not proceed further than the hypothesis of interpolations by a later writer. But in 1826, in the Quarterly Review, Sir Francis Palgrave endeavoured to prove that the whole so-called History was little better than a novel, and was probably the composition of a monk in the 13th or 14th century. This has been conclusively proved, as the student will find, by Mr Riley in the Archæological Journal (vols. i. and ii.), and by Sir T. D. Hardy in the Descriptive Catalogue (vol. ii.).