Ingulphus

, abbot of Croyland, and author of the history of that abbey, was born in London about 1030. He received the first part of his education at Westminster, and when he visited his father, who belonged to the court of Edward the Confessor, he was so fortunate as to engage the attention of queen Edgitha, who took a pleasure in the progress of his education, and in disputing with him in logic, and seldom dismissed him without some present as a mark of her approbation. From Westminster he went to Oxford, where he applied to the study of the Aristotelian philosophy, in which he made greater proficiency than many of his contemporaries, and, as be says, “clothed himself down to the heel in the first and second rhetoric of Tully.” When he was about twenty-one years of age, ho was iotroduced to> William duke of Normandy (who visited the court of England in 105 l) y and made himself so agreeable to that prince, that be appointed him his secretary, and carried him with him into his. Owt dominions. In a little time he became the prime favourite of his prince, and the dispenser of all preferments; but he himself confesses that he did not behave in this station with sufficient modesty and prudence, and that he incurred the envy and hatred of the courtiers, to avoid which he obtained leave from the duke to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. In the course of this journey, his attendant pilgrims at one time amounted to seven thousand, but either from being attacked and killed by the Arabs, or other disasters, twenty only of this goodly company were able to return home, and those half-starved, and almost naked. Ingulph now resolved to forsake the world, and became a monk in the abbey of Fontanelle in Normandy, of which he was in a few years made prior. When his old master William of Normandy was preparing for his memorable expedition into England, in 1066 r lagulphus was sent by hiw abbot with one hundred: marks in money, and twelve young men, nobly mounted and completely armed, as a present | their abbey. In consequence of this, William raised him afterwards to the government of the rich abbey of Croyland in Lincolnshire, in 107S. Here Ingulphus spent the last thirty-four years of his life, governing that society with great prudence, and protecting their possessions from the rapacity of the neighbouring barons by the favour of his royal master; and here he died Dec. 1, 1109. He wrote, but in a homely Latin style, a very curious and valuable history of Croyland abbey from its foundation, in the year 664 to 1091. It was printed by sir H. Saville,' London, 1596, and is among Gale’s “Scriptores.” There is also an edition of Francfort in 1601, and one of Oxford, 1684, which last is thought the most complete. ¹