Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal

In terms of genre it is therefore something of a rarity for its period, as it fits all the characteristics of a true biography, being William's story from cradle to grave, and moreover it examines the life of a lay person.

The author tells us further that he relied for much of his basic material on written memoirs sent him by the Marshal's friends concerning what they witnessed which again John of Earley would not have required.

The conclusion from the details he revealed is that John the author was probably a young poet commissioned by the Marshal's friends and relatives from the former Angevin lands along the river Loire, well acquainted with the cities and castles of Anjou and Normandy.

He deployed a range of items he found in the Marshal family archive for the early period of the Marshal's life, many of them generated by his tournament career: lists of ransoms, a French language history of the exploits of his master Young King Henry between 1176 and 1182, and a great roll of the French royal tournament of Lagny-sur-Marne in 1179.

The author counted for much of the colour of his work on family anecdotes passed on to him by Marshal's sons and his knight and executor, John of Earley.

[9] John W. Baldwin has commented that 'much of the modern understanding of twelfth-century chivalry is simply the life of William the Marshal writ large'.

David Crouch presented in 1990 a different, more intelligent and accomplished Marshal, a skilful courtier trading on his military talents and masterfully charting a course through the dangerous waters of European royal and princely courts.