[2] He became a Benedictine monk at Canterbury, and then joining the Cluniacs, was prior of Lenton Priory, near Nottingham; he was chaplain to Henry V, whom he may have accompanied to France in 1415, and may have been present at the Battle of Agincourt.
[3][4] Elmham wrote a history of the monastery of St. Augustine at Canterbury, which was edited by Charles Hardwick for the Rolls Series (1858); and a Liber metricus de Henrico V, edited by C. A. Cole in the Memorials of Henry V (1858).
[3] As well as this verse life of Henry V, Elmham himself says he wrote a prose biography of the king.
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).
[citation needed] This work, sometimes referred to as the chaplain's life, and thought by some to have been written by Jean de Bordin, was first published for the English Historical Society by B. Williams (1850).