Who was Brother Osbert?

The earliest surviving manuscript of the history known as De Laude Proelia Anglici (In Praise of the Battles of the English) is currently housed in the library of Trinity College Dublin, and is supposed to be in the hand of the original author; slightly later copies, though in better condition, are in the collections of the Bodleian Library and British Library. 

A loose sheaf from the original Trinity College owned copy.

It details the events of the years immediately preceding the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, as observed by a monk of an abbey dedicated to a now obscure early British saint, Gurnard of Aldestow. It is a favourite among medievalists for the informal and gossipy tone of its text, and the many incidental and characterful details it supplies about the major players in the events leading up to the conquest.  

Its author is anonymous, although tradition ascribes it to a monk named Osbert who narrates his history largely in the first person, although he never names himself in the text. Similarly, the location of the abbey itself has proved difficult to pin down - the abbey does not appear in the Domesday Book of 1086, which suggests that it was dissolved in the two decades following the Norman invasion, or perhaps destroyed in its immediate aftermath as William the Conqueror sought to crush any English resistance to his rule. 

A recent exhibition of Trinity College's medieval treasures
which included the Osbert manuscript

The narrative of the text ends abruptly soon after the Battle of Hastings, when the English earl of the lands surrounding the abbey is replaced by a Norman adventurer named Guian de Caudebec. Interestingly, we know from the Gesta Francorum that an exiled Anglo-Norman knight called Amis de Caudebec was in the retinue of Bohemond of Taranto during the First Crusade, and died in the assault on Jerusalem in 1099. The family's connection with the holy land did not end there, as a Lanfranc de Caudebec was one of the nine founders of the Knights Templar, but was excommunicated in 1121 and is supposed to have then returned to his family's lands in England.

I first encountered Osbert's history while researching my MA in Dublin where the Trinity College copy is on display in the main library. There's an appealing incongruity between the scratchy, impatient Latin text and the fine binding it has acquired at some point in its history. 

The ornate, probably early Victorian, binding of the manuscript

Some years later, as a miniature wargamer, my interest in the content of the work was rekindled as a way to add some context to the Anglo-Saxon army I had begun collecting. Now, having gotten hold of the lovely old Penguin translation (sadly OOP at the time of writing) the plan is to use the Abbey of St Gurnard as the locus of a miniature recreation of England just prior to the fateful events of 1066....