‘The Translator’

Abstract

The first English biography of King Henry V was written about 1513, by a Tudor scholar who refers to himself as ‘The Translator’. In the ‘proem’ he states that his sources were mainly two works which he had translated, ‘the one of Titus Livius [Forojuliensis] out of fecund Latin; the other of Enguerrant de Monstrelet out of the common language of France’. These were prime sources for a life of the popular hero-King. Livio’s Vita Henrici Quinti was the official biography written at the request of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, brother of Henry V and Protector for the young Henry VI. The Duke brought the Italian humanist to England, in 1430, and placed all the official records and documents at his command. The importance of Monstrelet’s Chronique lies in his vivid descriptions of the French campaigns of Henry V.