Prior to the boom in historical writing in the High Middle Ages, the number and quality of works from England's earlier period is often lacking, with some notable and bright exceptions.
Later historians lamented the gaps in this period and usually explained it by way of Viking invasions; in the twelfth century William of Malmesbury said: "in many places in England that knowledge of the deeds of the saints has been wiped out, in my opinion by the violence of enemies".
It was a realm for educated men in monasteries and the courts of kings, bishops and barons, who had the time and position and particular talents to pursue it.
Most of them endeavoured to be readable, arming themselves, as Roger of Wendover does, against both "the listless hearer and the fastidious reader" by "presenting something which each may relish", and so providing for the joint "profit and entertainment of all.
For example, Henry of Huntingdon's History of the English is only one quarter original, relying in many places on Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica.
William of Malmesbury said of Bede "after him you will not easily find men who turned their minds to the composition of Latin histories of their own people".
[11] For writing contemporary history, historians could draw on their own eye-witness accounts, reports from those they met and primary source documents such as letters.
Although some monks, such as William of Newburgh, never left their monastery, yet he was able to obtain considerable information through the network of story-telling and gossip which existed in the theoretical seclusion and silence of monastic life.
William of Newburgh devotes an extended section of the preface of Historia to discredit Geoffrey, saying at one point "only a person ignorant of ancient history would have any doubt about how shamelessly and impudently he lies in almost everything".