Note 429 — Chapter VI

The authorities for this chapter take in such French and Cenomannian records as we have. Suger’s Life of Lewis the Sixth, in the fourth volume of the French Duchèsne, gives us but few facts as to the French war, but he draws a vivid general picture. For Maine we have the Lives of Bishops Howel and Hildebert in the History of the Bishops of Le Mans in Mabillon’s Vetera Analecta. The accounts there given have to be compared throughout with the narrative of the French and Cenomannian wars in Orderic. The strictly English writers tell us nothing about France, next to nothing about Maine. Something may be gleaned from the writers in French rime, as Wace and Geoffrey Gaimar; but Wace has by no means the same value now which he had during the actual time of the Conquest.