L'Histoire de Guillaume le Marechal is the verse biography of William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke (d. 1219), written shortly after his death at the request of his son. The biography is comprised of 19,214 lines, in rhyming octosyllabic couplets, and was written in the Anglo-Norman language. It is the major extant text documenting Marshal's life. It was written based on the surviving account of his squire John D'Erlay. It can be used to provide insight into Richard and John (kings of England) The single surviving manuscript of the work, dating perhaps from the second quarter of the thirteenth century, was once in the collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps, and is now housed at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, under the catalog number M888. The manuscript was published by Paul Meyer in three volumes from 1891 to 1901.
