INGULPHUS, abbot of Croyland, and author of the history of that abbey, was born in London about the year 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 Elgitha. That amiable and learned princess took a pleasure in examining our young scholar on his progress in grammar, and in disputing with him in logic; nor did she ever dismiss him without some present as a mark of her approbation. From Westminster he went to Oxford, where he applied to the study of rhetoric, and the Aristotelian philosophy, in which he made greater proficiency than many of his contemporaries. When he was about twenty-one years of age, he was introduced to William Duke of Normandy, who visited the court of England in the year 1051, and made himself so agreeable to that prince, that he appointed him his secretary, and carried him with him into his own dominions. In a little time he became the prime favourite of his prince, and the dispenser of all preferments, humbling some, and exalting others, at his pleasure; a station in which he confessed he did not behave with a proper degree of modesty and prudence. This excited the envy and hatred of many of the courtiers; to avoid the effects of which, he obtained leave from the duke to undertake a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. With a company of thirty horsemen he joined Sigfrid Duke of Mentz, who, with many German nobles, bishops, clergy, and others, was preparing for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. When they were all united, they formed a company of no fewer than seven thousand pilgrims. In their way they spent some time at Constantinople, performing their devotions in the several churches. In their passage through Lycia, they were attacked by a tribe of Arabs, who killed and wounded many' of them, and plundered them of a prodigious amount of money. Those who escaped from this disaster at length reached Jerusalem, visited all the holy places, and bedewed the ruins of many churches with their tears, giving money for their reparation. They intended to have bathed in Jordan; but being prevented by the roving Arabs, they embarked on board a Genoese fleet at Joppa, and landed at Brundusium, whence they travelled through Apulia to Rome. Having gone through a long course of devotions in this city, at the several places distinguished for sanctity, they separated, and every one made the best of his way to his own country. When Ingulph and his company reached Normandy, they were reduced to twenty half-starved wretches, without money, clothes, or horses; the ordinary result of the disastrous journeys into the Holy Land, so common in those times. Ingulph was now so much disgusted with the world, that he resolved to forsake it, and became a monk in the abbey of Fontenelle in Normandy; in which, after some years, he was advanced to the office of prior. When his old master was preparing for his expedition into England in 1066, he was sent by his abbot a hundred merks in money, and twelve young men, nobly mounted and completely armed, as a present from the abbey. Ingulph having found a favourable opportunity, presented his men and money to his prince, who received him very graciously. In consequence of this, the Conqueror raised him, in 1076, to the government of the rich abbey of Croyland in Lincolnshire, where he 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. The lovers of English history and antiquities are much indebted to this learned abbot, for his excellent history of the abbey of Croyland, from its foundation in 664 till 1091, into which he has introduced much of the general history of the kingdom, with a variety of curious anecdotes which are nowhere else to be found. Ingulph died of the gout, at his abbey, in 1109, in the seventy-ninth year of his age. His history is printed in Gale’s Collection of early English Historians. A separate edition was published at Oxford in the year 1684.