In the monasteries, the great literary occupation consists in the compiling of chronicles. Historians of Latin tongue abounded in mediaeval England, nearly every abbey had its own. A register was prepared, with a loose leaf at the end, "scedula," on which the daily events were inscribed in pencil, "cum plumbo." At the end of the year the appointed chronicler, "non quicumque voluerit, sed cui injunctum fuerit," shaped these notes into a continued narrative, adding his remarks and comments, and inserting the entire text of the official documents sent by authority for the monastery to keep, according to the custom of the time.[307] In other cases, of rarer occurrence, a chronicle was compiled by some monk who, finding the life in cloister very dull, the offices very long, and the prayers somewhat monotonous, used writing as a means of resisting temptations and ridding himself of vain thoughts and the remembrance of a former worldly life.[308] Thus there exists an almost uninterrupted series of English chronicles, written in Latin, from the Conquest to the Renaissance. The most remarkable of these series is that of the great abbey of St. Albans, founded by Offa, a contemporary of Charlemagne, and rebuilt by Paul, a monk of Caen, who was abbot in 1077. Most of these chronicles are singularly impartial; the authors freely judge the English and the French, the king and the people, the Pope, Harold and William. They belong to that Latin country and that religious world which had no frontiers. The cleverest among them are remarkable for their knowledge of the ancients, for the high idea they conceive, from the twelfth century on, of the historical art, and for the pains they take to describe manners and customs, to draw portraits and to preserve the memory of curious incidents. Thus shone, in the twelfth century, Orderic Vital, author of an "Ecclesiastical History" of England[309]; Eadmer, St. Anselm's biographer[310]; Gerald de Barry, otherwise Geraldus Cambrensis; a fiery, bragging Welshman, who exhibited both in his life and works the temperament of a Gascon[311]; William of Malmesbury,[312] Henry of Huntingdon,[313] &c.