1. The First Sources
Woolpit is a village in East Anglia in the county of Suffolk. By 1821 it was recorded that there were 801 inhabitants living in 116 houses in the quaint village.
It has, for the longest time, been a majorly agricultural settlement, with horse and cow fairs being held annually in September; it is even recalled that Pope Alexander III in the 12th century owned a bull in the village.
During the Middle Ages the village was a densely populated area and was home to two men; Ralph of Coggeshall and William of Newburgh. Both men were part of the religious community, with Ralph being a monastery abbot and William being a canon at an Augustinian Priory.
Ralph and William are regarded as the first people to write about the account with The Green Children and their published work can be found in Williams Historia Rerum Anglicarum, which translates from Latin to The History of English Affairs (1189) and Ralph’s Chronicon Anglicanum, translating to English Chronicle released sometime in the 1220s.
There have been comments that suggest that Ralph’s account is more credible than Williams because it was compiled over a number of decades, but his account hasn’t managed to verify the existence of the two children.
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