Life

He was probably born at North Elmham

North Elmham

North Elmham is a village and civil parish in the English county of Norfolk.It covers an area of and had a population of 1,428 in 624 households as of the 2001 census. For the purposes of local government, it falls within the district of Breckland....

 in Norfolk

Norfolk

Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...

. He may have been the Thomas Elmham who was a scholar at King's Hall, Cambridge

King's Hall, Cambridge

King's Hall was once one of the constituent colleges of Cambridge, founded in 1317, the second after Peterhouse. King's Hall was established by King Edward II to provide chancery clerks for his administration, and was very rich compared to Michaelhouse, which occupied the southern area of what is...

 from 1389 to 1394. He became a Benedictine

Benedictine

Benedictine refers to the spirituality and consecrated life in accordance with the Rule of St Benedict, written by Benedict of Nursia in the sixth century for the cenobitic communities he founded in central Italy. The most notable of these is Monte Cassino, the first monastery founded by Benedict...

 monk at Canterbury

Canterbury

Canterbury is a historic English cathedral city, which lies at the heart of the City of Canterbury, a district of Kent in South East England. It lies on the River Stour....

, and then joining the Cluniacs, was prior of Lenton Priory

Lenton Priory

Lenton Priory was a Cluniac house founded by William Peverel in the early 12th century. The exact date of foundation is unknown but 1102 is frequently quoted.-Cluniac Priory:...

, near Nottingham

Nottingham

Nottingham is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England. It is located in the ceremonial county of Nottinghamshire and represents one of eight members of the English Core Cities Group...

; he was chaplain to Henry V

Henry V of England

Henry V was King of England from 1413 until his death at the age of 35 in 1422. He was the second monarch belonging to the House of Lancaster....

, whom he accompanied to France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 in 1415, being present at the Battle of Agincourt

Battle of Agincourt

The Battle of Agincourt was a major English victory against a numerically superior French army in the Hundred Years' War. The battle occurred on Friday, 25 October 1415 , near modern-day Azincourt, in northern France...

.

Works

Elmham wrote a history of the monastery

Monastery

Monastery denotes the building, or complex of buildings, that houses a room reserved for prayer as well as the domestic quarters and workplace of monastics, whether monks or nuns, and whether living in community or alone .Monasteries may vary greatly in size – a small dwelling accommodating only...

 of St. Augustine

St Augustine's Abbey

St Augustine's Abbey was a Benedictine abbey in Canterbury, Kent, England.-Early history:In 597 Saint Augustine arrived in England, having been sent by Pope Gregory I, on what might nowadays be called a revival mission. The King of Kent at this time was Æthelberht, who happened to be married to a...

 at Canterbury, which was edited by Charles Hardwick

Charles Hardwick

Charles Hardwick was an English clergyman and historian who became archdeacon of Ely.-Life:He was born at Slingsby, North Yorkshire, on 22 September 1821, son of Charles Hardwick, a joiner. After receiving some instruction at Slingsby, Malton, and Sheffield, he acted for a short time as usher in...

 for the Rolls Series

Rolls Series

The Rolls Series, official title The Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages, is a major collection of British and Irish historical materials and primary sources, published in the second half of the 19th century. Some 255 volumes, representing 99 separate...

(1858); and a Liber metricus de Henrico V, edited by C. A. Cole in the Memorials of Henry V (1858). As well as this verse life of Henry V, Elmham himself says he wrote a prose biography of the king. The eighteenth-century editor of the Vita et Gesta Henrici V, Thomas Hearne

Thomas Hearne

Thomas Hearne or Hearn , English antiquary, was born at Littlefield Green in the parish of White Waltham, Berkshire.-Life:...

, made a claim for Elmham's authorship of that biography but, in fact, it was written in the mid-1430s, long after Elmham's death. The attribution was rejected by the early twentieth century and the Vita et Gesta since then has gone by the designation of 'Pseudo-Elmham' (this biography was the main source of the Vita Henrici Quinti by Tito Livio Frulovisi

Tito Livio Frulovisi

Tito Livio Frulovisi was a humanist from Ferrara and grew up in Venice. It was there that he wrote his first works, a set of comedies which were performed by schoolboys. They were some of the first examples of this genre in Renaissance Italy. In the early 1430s, Frulovisi travelled to Naples and...

). In the early twentieth century, it was suggested instead that Elmham's prose life could be equated with the Gesta Henrici Quinti, which is the best authority for the life of Henry V from his accession to 1416. This work, sometimes referred to as the chaplain's life, and thought by some to have been written by Jean de Bordin, was first for the English Historical Society by B. Williams (1850). However, the modern editors of the Gesta convincingly rejected this attribution to Elmham. In short, the prose life by Thomas Elmham is not known to survive.

Literature

• C. L. Kingsford, ‘The Early Biographies of Henry V’, English Historical Review, xxv (1910), pp. 58 – 92.
• F. Taylor & J. S. Roskell ed., Gesta Henrici Quinti (Oxford, 1975), pp. xviii – xxiii and iid., ‘The Authorship and *Purpose of the Gesta Henrici Quinti: I’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, liii (1970 – 71), pp. 428 – 464.

External links

• The Text of the Liber Metricus De Henrico V http://books.google.com/books?id=hLeUGlUjqoAC