SOURCE: “The Britains as Trojans: The Legendary World of Geoffrey of Monmouth,” in Racial Myth in English History: Trojans, Teutons, and Anglo-Saxons, Harvest House Ltd., 1982, pp. 7-27.

[In the following excerpt, MacDougall discusses the significance of The History of the Kings of Britain, the controversy surrounding its authenticity, and its reception.]

In the history of myths of national origin few have been as influential and have had such a curious development as those popularized by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his History of the Kings of Britain. His writing, appearing about 1136, was destined to become “the most famous work of nationalistic historiography in the Middle Ages.”¹ It had a marked influence in subduing the social animosities of the Bretons, Anglo-Saxons, and Normans and drawing them together into a single nation. Geoffrey's fanciful account was used by early Plantagenet monarchs to support their regal claims and for both Tudors and Stuarts it came to constitute a useful prop to their dynastic ones. Though confidence in its historical reliability had almost evaporated by the eighteenth century, as the chief source of the Arthurian legend its influence carried on into the nineteenth century and as a spur to Celtic imagination continues into our own day.

The author of the famous History was a Welsh cleric, probably of Breton descent, who a few years before his death became Bishop of St. Asaph. At the outset of his book Geoffrey acknowledged his debt to Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, who had provided him with “a very ancient book written in the British language” which related the actions of the British kings “from Brutus, the first king of the Britons, down to Cadwallader” the last.² At Archdeacon Walter's request, so writes Geoffrey, a Latin translation of the ancient book is offered the reader.

Since no corrobarating evidence for the existence of Walter's “vetustissimus liber” has ever come to light, one may credit Geoffrey's colorful History to a fertile imagination fed by contemporary oral traditions and accounts by earlier scribes like Gildas and Nennius.³ Geoffrey's motivation in writing his book no doubt was a desire to provide an heroic epic on the origin and exploits of a people subdued successively by Romans, Saxons, Danes, and Normans. By portraying the British as a once great people with extensive dominions he could at once raise their status in the eyes of their new Norman overlords and suggest a precedent to the Norman kings in their imperialistic ambitions. Geoffrey's success can be measured by the gradual acceptance of his account as a great national myth supporting a developing people moving toward nationhood.

In locating the origin of British history in ancient Troy Geoffrey was following an accepted tradition. The dignifying of one's own history by associating its beginnings with an earlier civilization or even with the gods was a practice well known to classical writers. Rome provided a model ready at hand. Its patriotic writers, admiring Greek civilization though disliking the Greeks, chose as their mythical hero Aeneas, son of Venus, a chief defender of Troy. Vergil in his great Latin epic, the Aeneid, portrayed him after various heroic exploits as the founder of Lavinium, the parent city of Rome. The Gallo-Romans as well as the Franks in Gaul drew on the tradition of Trojan origins, as, in time, did the Normans. Geoffrey in his History simply exploited an existing myth which was guaranteed to sit well with the Norman masters of England.⁴

The History begins with an account of the birth and upbringing of Brutus, grandson of Aeneas of Troy, son of Venus. Held responsible for his mother's death in childbirth and the accidental killing of his father, the fifteen-year-old boy was banished from his country. After many wanderings and heroic exploits, Brutus arrived with his faithful followers in the land Albion, to which he gave his own name, Britain. The land had fine rivers and forests and was inhabited only by a few giants. The giants were conquered, the land occupied and a city called New Troy (Trinoventum) founded. After their leader, the new inhabitants were called Britons and their language British.

Twenty years following his arrival on the island Brutus died, leaving Britain divided among his three sons—the eldest holding England, the second son Scotland, and the youngest Wales. Upon the death of the younger sons the entire land reverted to the eldest, Locrinus. The History continues with the heroic exploits of a long line of kings including the famous account of King Leir and his three daughters—a romantic tale subsequently retold by at least fifty writers before Shakespeare immortalized it.

Among some of the more notable British kings descended from the original Trojans were Belinus and Brennius who shared a divided kingdom and together conquered Gaul. Brennius occupied Rome and exercised there an unheard of tyranny, such was his might. Another, King Lud, rebuilt the walls of New Troy and gave it his name, which through the corruption of language became known as London. During the reign of Lud's successor, King Cassivelaunus, Julius Caesar turned his gaze on Britain. Caesar recognized the common descent from the Trojans of both Romans and Britons but the latter he judged degenerate, knowing nothing of the art of war and separated from the rest of the world. He accordingly demanded tribute and submission to Rome, a demand stoutly resisted by the Britons.

The next king, Arviragus, was reconciled with the Romans and married the daughter of the Emperor Claudius. The reign of his grandson, Lucius, was notable for the conversion of his kingdom, making Britain the first of all nations publicly to profess Christianity. He was buried in Gloucester Cathedral in a.d. 156—the first precise date given by Geoffrey.

Constantine I was another luminary in the ranks of the British kings. With the support of Roman exiles he captured Rome, overthrew the tyrant Maxentius and was made overlord of the whole world. Upon Constantine's death the treacherous Vortigern became king. Instead of resisting the incursions of the infidel Saxons he accepted their offer of service. Infatuated by Renwein, the beautiful daughter of the Saxon leader Hengist, he came to love the Saxons above all other peoples. The influx of Saxons became so great that the Britons overthrew Vortigern in favor of his son Vortimer who forced the Saxon warriors back to Germany. But following the death of Vortimer, his father once more became king and invited the Saxons to return. Hengist landed with an army of 300,000 men and a great massacre of Britons ensued.

Confronted with a ravaged kingdom, Vortigern sought counsel from magicians. Geoffrey relates at length the king's association with the magician Merlin and the seer's predictions concerning the future history of Britain. The prophecies are filled with imagery of dragons in conflict—the white dragon (Saxons) is initially victorious, but ultimately vanquished by the red dragon (Britons) through the assistance of a people dressed in wood and in iron corselets (Normans in their ships and coats of mail).

As foretold by Merlin, a champion of British and Roman ancestry, Aurelius Ambrosius, appeared to overthrow Vortigern and reduce the Saxons. Upon his death the work of restoration was continued by his brother, Utherpendragon, until he was poisoned by the Saxons. The climax of Geoffrey's entire History is reached with the ascendancy of Utherpendragon's illegitimate son, Arthur. King Arthur is clearly Geoffrey's hero. The remarkable success and continuing influence of his British History is due in no small measure to his brilliant portrayal of a British king with qualities well beyond the ordinary human—the stuff of which great myths are born.

Crowned king at the age of fifteen, Arthur was a youth of unparalleled courage and generosity. In time he subdued the Saxons—in one battle killing 470 with his own hand—forced the Scots and Picts to make peace, conquered Ireland, Iceland, the Orkneys, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Aquitaine, and Normandy. The fame of his valor spread over the whole world. The splendor of his court was unrivaled and he eventually ruled over a kingdom that led the entire world in civilization.

In the meantime Rome grew alarmed at Arthur's growing power and his refusal to pay tribute. The Roman Procurator, Lucius Tiberius, demanded that Arthur report to Rome under the threat of his bringing the sword to Britain. Arthur refused and after consultation with his allies prepared for war. Lucius called upon the eastern kings for support. A host of kings with their generals and nobles—up to the number of forty thousand one hundred and sixty—pledged him support. Arthur then led his great army to Gaul to confront the Romans, leaving the government of his kingdom to his nephew Modred. In a great battle Lucius Tiberius was killed and the Britons were victorious. Many Romans subsequently offered themselves as slaves. Arthur then made preparations to march on Rome. As he approached the Alps news came that Modred had treacherously seized the Crown and taken Queen Guinevere as his wife. Arthur returned to Britain and in a resulting civil war Modred was killed. Arthur in the final battle was mortally wounded and carried to the magical isle of Avalon to be healed. He surrendered his crown to his kinsman Constantine, son of the duke of Cornwall, and passed out of the story. Geoffrey notes that the year was 542.

The reign of Constantine and his successors was beset with dissension and vice and the Saxons, aided by Gormund, King of the Africans, again overran the country. There was a brief revival of the hope of the Britons under the rule of the last British king, Cadwallader, but pestilence and famine forced them to leave the island altogether and take refuge in Brittany. Britain was now destitute of its ancient inhabitants except for a remnant in Wales. The Angles and Saxons had finally triumphed.

Cadwallader made plans to revive his kingdom, but was commanded by an angel to desist. He was instructed to go to Rome where, after penance, he would be enrolled among the saints. The Britons, so spoke the heavenly voice, would not recover their land until the time foretold by Merlin and decreed by God was come. Cadwallader, the last of the British kings, died in Rome on 12 May 689.

Geoffrey shrewdly ended his History with a warning to others to be silent concerning the British kings since they were not privy to the ancient book from Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford.

As a work of creative imagination Geoffrey's History was a superb achievement. Its heroic account of great deeds and dramatic failures salted with romantic intrigue and supernatural intervention was well designed to capture the medieval reader. By the time of his death in 1154 his account had been related so often that to be unfamiliar with it was, in the words of a contemporary, “to incur a mark of rusticity.”⁵ Paraphrases and translations abounded, among the most noteworthy of the early versions being Geste des Bretons (1155) by the poet Maistre Wace, dedicated to Eleanor, the wife of Henry II, and the Brut (c. 1200) by the English priest Layamon. Even Welsh writers, who possessed an Arthurian tradition predating Geoffrey, came to borrow much from him. Gradually his History became the foundation of a great historical myth which supported racial and dynastic aspirations for over five hundred years.

Still, several of the earliest critics were sceptical of the History's authenticity. Alfred of Beverly (fl. 1143), a chronicler who was initially drawn to history through reading Geoffrey and had borrowed heavily from him in his own writings, was puzzled by the lack of corroboration for the History in writers outside of Britain.⁶ Giraldus Cambrensis, a contentious Welsh historian, treated Geoffrey's account with disdain.⁷ He told the tale of a Welshman who was beset by unclean spirits. When the spirits oppressed him the gospel of St. John was placed on his tormented breast, and they departed; but when Geoffrey's History was substituted for the gospel, the evil spirits returned to torment him in greater numbers than ever. The most categorical rejection, however, was made by William of Newburgh. In a preface to his Historium Rerum Anglicarum he dismissed Geoffrey's History as made up of “the most ridiculous fictions.” “Whatever Geoffrey has written,” he acidly comments, “is a fiction invented either by himself or by others, and promulgated either through an unchecked propensity to falsehood, or a desire to please the Britons, of whom vast numbers are said to be so stupid as to assert that Arthur is yet to come, and cannot bear to hear of his death.” Newburgh noted that ancient historians were silent on the alleged Arthurian exploits: “It is plain that whatever this man published of Arthur and Merlin are mendacious fictions, invented to gratify the curiosity of the undiscerning.” There was no doubt in William of Newburgh's mind how Geoffrey and his History should be treated: “Let this fabler, with his fictions, be instantly rejected by all.”⁸

In spite of initial criticism, the History went on to triumph and came to be generally accepted until the Renaissance. Apart from the inherent attraction of a well-told tale dealing with origins, Geoffrey's History held special political appeal. A history presenting the extraordinary achievements of past British kings was calculated to please Norman conquerors (in Geoffrey's account also descended from Trojan exiles) who could now see themselves as inheritors of a kingdom with a proud past and notable achievements. Lacking any historical figure of heroic stature comparable to Charlemagne, the Norman and Angevin kings were in an inferior position to their continental French rivals. In Arthur, Geoffrey provided such a figure. Arthur in time served an additional function: more than Brutus or Cadwallader, he came to be seen as a hero of a composite people, uniting Britons, Saxons and Normans.⁹

From its beginnings Geoffrey's History was closely associated with the monarchy. One of the original manuscripts carried a dedication to Stephen who succeeded to the throne in 1135. Most of the manuscripts also included a dedication to Robert, Earl of Gloucester, a natural son of Henry I, who was to contribute much to the success of Henry II. The latter king was closely associated with the “discovery” of Arthur's body at the famous Benedictine monastery at Glastonbury. This renowned religious center, probably through the efforts of zealous monks who wished to increase its prestige, came to be identified as the mysterious isle of Avalon. King Henry, the chroniclers report, initiated the investigation which resulted in the discovery of the tomb and a subsequent magnificent reinterment.¹⁰ Henry's motive in “arranging” the discovery need not have gone beyond his desire to put an end to the legend that Arthur was still alive and would return, a belief kept current by rebellious Welsh who dreamed of recovering national leadership. In 1187 King Henry had his grandson christened Arthur, the intended identification being obvious.

It was Edward I more than any of his predecessors who turned the History to his own advantage. He liked to cast himself in the role of “Arthurus redivivus.”¹¹ In 1278, along with Queen Eleanor, he visited Glastonbury and ordered the opening of Arthur's tomb. A contemporary account tells of the extraordinary occasion: “The lord Edward … with his consort, the Lady Eleanor, came to Glastonbury … to celebrate Easter. … The following Tuesday … at dusk, the lord king had the tomb of the famous King Arthur opened. Wherein, in two caskets painted with their pictures and arms, were found separately, the bones of the said king, which were of great size, and those of Queen Guinevere, which were of marvellous beauty. … On the following day … the lord king replaced the bones of the king, and the queen those of the queen, each in their own casket, having wrapped them in costly silk. When they had been sealed they ordered the tomb to be placed forthwith in front of the high altar, after the removal of the skulls for the veneration of the people.”¹²

Thus Edward succeeded magnificently in linking his own royal house with the most renowned of the ancient British kings and at the same time helped promote Glastonbury as a religious center to rival the fame of French abbeys like Cluny. Another Arthurian-Glastonbury association brought even further prestige and was appropriately exploited. The incorporation of St. Joseph of Arimathea through the Grail legend as the founder of a church in Glastonbury in a.d. 63 sanctioned the claim of an English church established in Apostolic times, a claim useful in the promotion of a national church less subject to the control of Rome.¹³

The advantage to Edward of the British connection was further demonstrated in 1301 in a jurisdictional dispute which the Scots brought to the court of Rome. In a letter to Boniface VIII, countersigned by a hundred English barons, Edward presented evidence to support the rights of the English crown over Scotland. Most of the evidence was drawn from Geoffrey's History.¹⁴

The young Edward III was no less enthusiastic for his British heritage. He contemplated reestablishing the Round Table and around 1348 founded the illustrious Order of the Garter, reviving the tradition of Arthurian knighthood.¹⁵ He heavily patronized Glastonbury Abbey. Accompanied by his queen, he paid it a state visit in 1331. It has been suggested that his attempts to conquer France were influenced by the accounts of Arthur's continental conquests related in the History.¹⁶ The reign of his namesake, Edward IV, a hundred years later, showed the enduring quality of the British legend. Genealogical authorities of his time traced his descent back to Cadwallader, the last of the British kings, and he was hailed by his supporters as the British Messiah, the Red Dragon foretold by Merlin who would once again rule England, Scotland and Wales.¹⁷

In the ninth year of Edward IV's reign (1469), Thomas Malory completed his epic work on Arthur. Derived more from twelfth-century French prose romances and a fourteenth-century English poem than from Geoffrey's History itself, it was published by William Caxton with considerable editorial liberty. Under the title Morte d'Arthur it became the best-known Arthurian account in English.¹⁸ Interestingly, Caxton in his preface felt compelled to level sharp criticism at those who “holde oppynon that there was no suche Arthur and that alle suche bookes as bein maad of hym ben but fayned and fables.”¹⁹ Caxton had no time for Renaissance scepticism which led men like John Whethamstede, Abbot of St. Albans, to consider “the whole discourse of Brutus” to be “rather poeticall than historicall.”²⁰ It is worth noting that the first printed book in the English tongue was The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, a translation from the French of Raoul Le Fèvrè's work. In 1480 Caxton printed the popular medieval account based on Geoffrey's History, Chronicle of the Brut, under the title The Chronicles of England. By the end of the century this work alone had appeared in six editions. Caxton, as well, printed Ranulf Higden's Polychronicon, a “universal history” containing much material on British history derived from Geoffrey. The Polychronicon and the Brut came to be by far the most widely read history books in fifteenth-century England.

The accession of Henry Tudor in 1485 was interpreted by many as the long awaited return of a British king in fulfillment of the ancient promise. It was under the banner of the Red Dragon that he had overthrown Richard III. In a welcoming pageant planned, but never actually held, for the new king at Worcester in 1486 an actor was to speak the following lines:

Cadwalader Blodde lynyally descending,
Long hath bee towlde of such a Prince comyng,
Wherfor Frends, if that I shal not lye,
This same is the Fulfiller of the Profesye.(21)

The Welsh were particularly enthusiastic, for their bards had frequently written of the coming of a great Welsh leader who would restore their ancient position.²² But the most impressive testimony of Henry VII's special lineage came from the pen of Bernardus Andreas, the official historian of the new king. Andreas was an Augustinian friar from Toulouse who had come to England at the beginning of Henry's reign. He became the king's poet-laureate and historiographer, a useful combination from the regal point of view. In his History of Henry VII Andreas underlined Henry's British origins, tracing his royal descent from Cadwallader and portraying him as the fulfillment in his person of the ancient prophecy.²³ It appeared highly appropriate for the new king in 1486 to have named his first-born son after the great Arthur and thus heighten the promise of a new golden age. In 1548 the chronicler Edward Hall expressed what was still a popular sentiment when he wrote of Prince Arthur's christening at Winchester, a place noted for its Arthurian associations: “of whiche name Englishemen no more rejoysed than outwarde nacions and foreyne prynces trymbled and quaked, so muche was the name to all nacions terrible and formidable.”²⁴ Writing in 1622, Francis Bacon noted the naming of Arthur, “according to the Name of that ancient worthy King of the Brittaines.”²⁵

In Tudor days belief in Trojan origins and reverence of King Arthur was by no means restricted to those who might justly claim British descent. Englishmen in general were heartened by tales of the legendary achievements of past British kings and, as T. D. Kendrick has written, “often extremely unwilling to acknowledge the barbaric Saxons as their ancestors, saw in the heroes and conquests of the Brut an obvious source of their country's pride and valiant heart.”²⁶

Henry VII's successor, Henry VIII, was at first far too concerned with establishing himself as a great monarch in his own right to be preoccupied with ancient tales of heroic achievements whose historicity his humanist friends were coming to question. (Humanists brought a more self-conscious approach to the study of political institutions, and the state gradually came to be seen as a formal structure distinct from any particular ruler.) Still the pageantry which Henry carried to the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520 spoke vividly of Arthur, the intrepid warrior of world renown.²⁷ Later in his reign when the great question of the divorce arose, a deliberate attempt was made to exploit Geoffrey's History to the King's advantage. In seeking to convince Charles V's ambassador of the justice of the king's plan for divorce, the duke of Norfolk, Henry's diplomatic spokesman, argued that his king held supreme imperial jurisdiction in his realm, a jurisdiction derived from ancient beginnings. The incredulous Chapuys was informed that Brennius, an Englishman, had conquered Rome, that Constantine had reigned in England and that, as well, his mother was English. In addition, an English monarch, Arthur (of whom Chapuys had never heard), had been Emperor of Britain, Gaul and Germany.²⁸ The ambassador's sardonic response that he regretted Arthur was not also called Emperor of Asia is understandable. The bold language in the preamble to the famous Act in Restraint of Appeals (1533), asserting that England was an empire “governed by one Supreme Head and King having dignity and royal estate of the imperial Crown,” was dependent upon the tradition that Henry through the British kings was descended from the Emperor Constantine who was himself of half British origin and “had united British kinship with Roman emperorship.”²⁹

Ironically, the historian Polydore Vergil, whose work ultimately led to the destruction of the credibility of Geoffrey's entire history, undertook to write his history under the patronage of the first Tudor king and completed it under the second. Polydore Vergil was born at Urbino in the Romagna. He entered papal service and by the time he came to England in 1502 as a collector of Peter's Pence, he already had a reputation as a scholar. A friend of Erasmus, his world was that of the Renaissance, a movement barely beginning to make itself felt in England. He was not long there when, on the king's request, he began to work on a history of England. Henry VII, desirous of gaining European recognition of his dynasty, saw a new history designed for a continental readership and written in the best humanistic style as an asset which would enhance the king's reputation.³⁰

From the beginning of his study, Vergil showed a complete disdain for Geoffrey's History. Though dutifully presenting a brief account of it for the sake of sensitive English readers (“They seem to be in heaven,” he wrote, “where with good will I leave them,”), he approvingly cited William of Newburgh's characterization of it as “impudent lyeing.”³¹ He summarily dismissed the vaunted Trojan descent of the British through Brutus, the cornerstone of Geoffrey's History: “But yet neither Livie, neither Dionisius Halicarnaseus, who writt diligentlie of the Roman antiquities, nor divers other writers, did ever once make rehersall of this Brutus. …”³² On the invasion of Rome by Brennius he noted that if the reference in the History was to the actual historical attack then in Geoffrey's version Brennius “lived 310 years before the battayle was taken in hande.”³³ He devoted a single barbed paragraph to Arthur, presenting him as a mysterious man of romance and legend akin to Roland, a presentation certain to outrage Arthurian enthusiasts. He lightly rejected the claim that Arthur was buried in Glastonbury Abbey: “whereas in the dayse of Arthure this abbaye was not builded.”³⁴

Vergil's Anglica Historia was completed in 1513, but, despite the customary dedication to the king, twenty years were to elapse before it was published. (In the meantime in 1525 he had published an account of British history written in Anglo-Saxon times by Gildas in which King Arthur was not even mentioned.) Vergil's rejection of the British tradition could not help but displease the King. Henry's annoyance, it has been plausibly suggested, explains the long delay in its publication.³⁵ Its appearance in 1534 may be attributed to Henry's new situation. Having broken with Rome over the divorce issue Henry found it more important than ever to establish the imperial (and thus independent) nature of his crown in the eyes of continental rivals. The Anglica Historia in Renaissance fashion stressed the imperial nature of kingship and thus its appearance in 1534 served the king's purposes well. Significantly, Vergil's published version had a revised dedication and ending, both emphasizing, more than the original manuscript, Henry's imperial status.

Vergil's Anglica Historia was a work of impressive scholarship and could not be ignored. But his irreverent chiding of Englishmen on their view of the past evoked bitter hostility and mistrust among many scholars. His opponents tended to see him as an alien enemy set on furthering Rome's interests. The most impassioned attack came from the pen of the antiquarian John Leland.³⁶ He denounced “Polydorus the Italian” for his sceptical interpretation of Geoffrey's History, which he noted was “filled with Italian bitterness.”³⁷ Especially worthy of reprobation was Vergil's presentation of Arthur who for Leland was “the chiefest ornament of Brittayne.”³⁸ While admitting some absurdities had crept into the Arthurian account, he saw no reason why the presence of a few flaws weakened its overall credibility. So complete was Leland's commitment to the general line of Geoffrey's History that he offered a stout defense of Merlin—“a man even miraculously learned in knowledge of thinges naturall”—against the criticism “of any cowled or loytering grosseheaded Moncke” (a reference to William of Newburgh, whose authority Vergil had cited).³⁹ In concluding his defense Leland anticipated that “most mighty enemies will affaulte my doings,” but he was confident that in the end, “the light of Brittish Antiquitie shall shine forth.”⁴⁰ Another leading antiquarian and friend of Leland, Bishop John Bale, believed even more passionately in the authority of Geoffrey's History. Once a member of the Carmelite monastic order, he had joined the Protestant reformers and became violently anti-Roman. Bale charged Vergil with “polluting our English Chronicles most shamefully with his Romish lies and other Italian beggarys.”⁴¹ A more sober criticism came from Sir John Price, a Welsh lawyer, in his Historiae Brytannicae Defensio.⁴² While recognizing Vergil's learning, he did not believe that the humanist had shaken Geoffrey's account. Other Welsh antiquarians like Humphrey Lhuyd and David Powel were far less restrained in their condemnation of Vergil.⁴³

By the last quarter of the century the popular image of Vergil was that of a scheming Italian papist who had insinuated himself into England by devious means and had proceeded to attack her most venerable traditions. “Polydore Vergil that most rascall dogge knave in the worlde,” one angry commentator summed him up.⁴⁴ But the serious scholarship underlying Vergil's Anglicana Historia could not but impress conscientious readers. His scholarly method was in advance of any previous English historian. A scepticism born of the Renaissance prompted him to weigh authorities far more carefully than any contemporary English historical writer. The stimulus he provided for a more critical approach to sources was immense. His influence on the work of men like Edward Hall, Francis Bacon, and a whole range of later historians was considerable.⁴⁵

Despite the vociferous defense of the British tradition by most English antiquarians there were a growing number of doubters. Five years before Vergil's history appeared, John Rastell, the antiquarian brother-in-law of Thomas More, commented that for some men of his day the story of Brutus was but “feyned fable.”⁴⁶ For Rastell it was highly significant that Bede “spekyth nothyng of Arthur.”⁴⁷ Though he went on to present in The Pastyme of People a brief version of Geoffrey's History, he would not vouch for its truth. Neither the antiquarians, John Twyne and George Lily, contemporaries of Leland, accepted the Trojan origin of the British, and the chronicler Thomas Lanquet was of the opinion that Geoffrey's History was full of errors.⁴⁸ There is no evidence that English humanists like Colet and More gave it credence.

During the Elizabethan age it was common to relate the English monarch to British antiquity, and pageantry and drama were filled with Arthurian imagery.⁴⁹ Spenser's Faerie Queene, linking Elizabeth to Arthur and heralding the advent of a new Golden Age, was an outstanding example of the continuing attraction the ancient British legend held for literate Englishmen.

It was the great Elizabethan and Jacobean antiquarian, William Camden, who did more than any other native English writer to weaken the authority of Geoffrey's History. His Britannia, the first comprehensive topographical survey of Britain, appeared in 1586. It immediately established his reputation as an outstanding scholar and came to be recognized “as the crowning achievement of Tudor and early Stuart antiquarianism.”⁵⁰ Within his lifetime six London editions of his history were published. In beginning his discussion of the origin of the British people, Camden dealt delicately with Geoffrey's History. He assured his readers that he did not seek “to discredit that history,” but on the contrary sought to maintain it: “I have often strained my invention to the utmost to support it. Absolutely to reject it, would be to wage war against time, and to fight against a received opinion.” But the cautious Camden went on at length to give reasons why so many “very learned and judicious men” rejected it.⁵¹ His gentle attempt to appease the admirers of Geoffrey's History ill-concealed his scepticism. Since for Camden the origins of the name of Britain and its first inhabitants were so uncertain, and despite the efforts of scholars would probably remain so, he concluded he might justly treat Geoffrey's version as irrelevant.⁵² Drawing on linguistic similarities, he was inclined to the opinion that the ancient Britons were of the same stock as the Gauls.⁵³ Yet he was not prepared to jettison Arthur, that “mighty bulwark of the British Government,” and lamented that the age had not afforded “a panegyrist equal to his virtues.”⁵⁴

The latter years of Elizabeth's reign were marked by a growing anxiety over the question of succession. As it became apparent that Elizabeth would produce no heir, hopes for an orderly succession turned more and more on James VI of Scotland. His pedigree had much to offer Arthurian enthusiasts eager to herald a new Golden Age. It could be shown that he was of the line Brut, first through his grandmother, Margaret Tudor, but also through the male Stuart line reaching back to Llywelyn, the last native Prince of Wales. James, well acquainted with ancient British lore, accepted his role as fulfiller of Merlin's prophecy. He saw himself as a second Arthur who would restore the ancient unity of England and Scotland established by Brutus. James's accession was greeted with tumultuous joy in England and pageants joyously proclaimed his Arthurian ancestry.⁵⁵ Significantly, without the consent of parliament, he assumed the title of King of Great Britain—no mention being made of the separate kingdoms of Scotland and England.

The most eloquent champion of British antiquity and its continuity in the Stuart dynasty was the poet Michael Drayton. In his ardent work, Poly-olbion (1613), he defended “the long traduced Brute,” as well as the seer Merlin and other notable figures out of the British tradition.⁵⁶ Geoffrey of Monmouth's stories, he protested, were not “idle tales … nor fabulous, like those devised by the Greeks.”⁵⁷ Drayton took his stand as a fierce supporter of their literal truth: “I would restore Antiquity to Britain, and Britain to his Antiquity.”⁵⁸ Though Drayton had the historian John Speed add historical notes to the Poly-olbion, the scepticism of the latter about much of Geoffrey's History did little to strengthen the poet's advocacy.

In spite of the new life given the History by James I and his supporters, doubts continued to be raised by antiquarians. Writing in 1607, Edward Ayscu discussed the origins of the first inhabitants of Britain and passed over Brutus and the Trojans as a fabrication “coyned in some Monkish mint about foure hundred years agone.”⁵⁹ Drawing on Caesar and Tacitus he asserted “that the Britaines tooke beginning from their next neighbours the Gaules.”⁶⁰ Ayscu's doubts about the History were more than matched by Peter Scriverius of Haarlem, who fervently pronounced it: “a great, heavy, long, thick, palpable and most impudent lie, and that so manifest as to need no refutation.”⁶¹

In 1614 John Speed dedicated his History of Great Britaine to the new king as “Inlarger and Uniter of the British Empire. Restorer of the British name.” Yet, after a careful assessment of the arguments for and against the theory of Trojan origins, he concluded with a call to Britons to, “disclaime their Brute, that bringeth no honour to so renowned a Nation, but rather cloudeth their glorie in the murder of his parents, and imbaseth their descents, as sprung from Venus, that lascivious adulteress.”⁶² If, Speed continues, “we will needs have our descents from the Trojans, may we not then more truly derive our blood from them through the Romans, who for the space of four hundred three score and six years were planted amongst us?” On Arthur he was more cautious, being prepared to “let Monmouth the Writer, Newberry the Resister and Leland the Retainer” speak for him.⁶³ But he believed Geoffrey's exaggerations deprived Arthur of “truly deserved honours.”⁶⁴

Sir Walter Raleigh, who brought out The History of the World in the same year as Speed's History, dealt more radically with early British history. Wishing to start where the facts were certain he began his outline with the Norman Conquest.⁶⁵

In 1615 a stout defense of the Brut and Geoffrey's History was presented in John Stow's The Annales. In Stow's mind those who cast doubts on the History had much to answer for: “And the impugners of this ancient Historie must not with so light a breath, as they doe, seeme to blow away the authoritie of so many grave testimonies, the succession of so many Princes, the founders of so many monuments, and Lawes, and the ancient honors of the nation, that first with publike authoritie received Christianitie.”⁶⁶ The chief villain for Stow was Polydore Vergil, who, “with one dash at a pen cashireth threescore Princes together, with all their histories and historians, yea and some ancient Lawes also.”⁶⁷ Edmund Bolton in his Hypercritica (1618) was even more concerned about the consequences of sweeping away the History: “Nevertheless out of that very Story (let it be what it will) have Titles been framed in open Parliament, both in England, and Ireland, for the Rights of the Crown of England, even to entire Kingdoms. … If that Work be quite abolished there is a vast Blanck upon the Times of our Country, from the Creation of the World till the coming of Julius Caesar.”⁶⁸ Bolton went on to calculate the positive support for the History against the opposition and concluded, “if the cause were to be try'd, or carried by Voices, the affirmative would have the fuller Cry.”⁶⁹ His criteria for historical authenticity were broad indeed: “For my part I incline very strongly to have so much of every Historical Monument, or Historical Tradition maintain'd, as may well be holden without open absurdity.”⁷⁰

The concerns of men like Stow and Bolton that a challenge to traditional accounts of one's past represented a threat to the English system of government reflected the growing conflict between crown and parliament which was to reach its climax in the Civil War. In the main, Geoffrian enthusiasts sided with the King, while those who were cool to the ancient British accounts stressed parliamentary privileges. The latter turned more to Germanic sources for the fount of their traditional freedoms. Still, in spite of the emerging Saxon challenge, the vitality of the Geoffrian legend was far from spent and was to receive new life with the Restoration.

Charles II, a Stuart, who with as much right as his predecessors might claim to be a second Arthur, had learned to tread cautiously in asserting ancient prerogatives. Yet there were those who throughout his reign showed no reticence in trumpeting the cause of British antiquity. The antiquary Silas Taylor, in the course of establishing that, “Our English Laws are for the most part those that were used by the Antient Brytains,” went out of his way to attack the “vulgar opinions” begun by Polydore Vergil that Geoffrey's History was fictitious. Geoffrey, Taylor triumphantly observed, “was the translator only of such a Language as Polydore did not understand.”⁷¹ That the Geoffrian account had popular appeal is suggested by the presentation of the play The Destruction of Troy. The author, the prolific dramatist John Bankes, anticipated that the specators, who were addressed as “London Trojans,” would identify with events surrounding the fall of Troy. In the prologue it was noted that when Troy fell “its Remnant here did plant. And built this Place call'd it Troy-novant.”⁷²

It was the figure of Arthur that specially attracted Restoration writers. Perhaps the most spirited defense of his historicity was presented in Nathaniel Crouch's The History of the Nine Worthies of the World (1687). Arthur, it was recalled, was the seventh worthy in a line which included Hector of Troy, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Joshua, David, Judas Maccabeus, Charlemagne and Godfrey of Bouillon. Of his many heroic deeds his most noteworthy was his conquering of the Saxons for Christianity. Crouch scornfully dismissed those who expressed disbelief in Arthur: “As it may be judged folly to affirm there never was any Alexander, Julius Caesar, Godfrey of Bullen, or Charlemagne, so may we be thought guilty of incredulity and ingratitude to deny or doubt the honourable Acts of our Victorious Arthur.”⁷³ Crouch's work was well received and ran to three further editions by 1700.

The most significant writer to show an interest in Arthurian history as it related to the Stuart monarchy was John Dryden. (On Milton, see pp. 67-68.) He had the ambition to write a supreme epic poem. His theme would center on Arthur and as a poem of triumph would celebrate the descent of Charles II from Arthur, the greatest of the British kings. Other demands on his time prevented him from ever realizing his goal, but in conjunction with Henry Purcell he completed the dramatic opera, King Arthur, in 1684. However, it was not produced until 1691 and in the interval dramatic political changes had occurred that could be ignored at an author's peril. With the Stuarts deposed, Dryden was compelled to alter his text radically, dropping anything that might be interpreted as political allegory bearing on contemporary events. As he wrote to the Marquis of Halifax: “Not to offend the present time, nor a government which has hitherto protected me, I have been obliged so much to alter the first design, and to take away so many beauties from the writing, that it is now no more what it was formerly than the present ship of the Royal Sovereign, after so often taking down and altering, is the vessel it was at the first building.”⁷⁴

A bizarre adaptation of the Arthurian legend came at the end of the century in Sir R. D. Blackmore's epic poems Prince Arthur (1695) and King Arthur (1700). Hardly ever was political allegory made more obvious than in Blackmore's attempt to cast the events of the Glorious Revolution in an heroic mold. William of Orange, portrayed as the Christian Arthur, emerged as the bold champion of political freedom and true religion (Protestantism) against heathen Saxons (Catholics!). The Arthurian legend was suitably altered to accommodate all the major achievements of the Prince of Orange from his early career in the Netherlands, to his victory in England and his championing of the Protestant cause against Louis XIV.

Blackmore's poems represented a final effort by an English writer to make the ancient British legend serve a political purpose. Though interest in it continued well into the Augustan age—Alexander Pope toward the end of his life contemplated writing an epic on Brutus as the Trojan hero who established a great empire in Britain—the ancient myth had spent itself.⁷⁵ The seventeenth century had seen England moving from a monarchically based society with a Crown claiming an absolute authority derived from ancient prerogatives to a self-conscious nation dominated by landed and rising commercial interests with parliament seen as the principal center of political power. Old myths of origin stressing achievements of kings no longer served the interests of dominant groups and were pushed more and more into the realm of poetic fancy. The series of events which in the first half of the century culminated in the Civil War and in the second half in the Glorious Revolution amply demonstrated that a myth of origin more rooted in historical reality was required. There was one ready to hand that had taken form in the latter decades of the sixteenth century. The freedoms of Englishmen and past achievements in which they all might glory came more and more to be seen as proceeding along a path that led back not to Brutus, Troy, and the British kings, but rather to Saxon England and the forests of Germany. Anglo-Saxonism, born in the sixteenth century in response to a need to demonstrate an historical continuity for the national church, and nourished in the seventeenth in debates over royal supremacy, finally triumphed and became the dominant myth that fired the national imagination. The social utility of the legendary history of Geoffrey of Monmouth had expired.

Geoffrey's remarkable account of the Trojan origins of the British nation served Englishmen well for over five hundred years. Though finally rejected by an historically-conscious people, its influence carried into the nineteenth century in the writings of Wordsworth and Tennyson. The founding in our own century of the International Arthurian Society, with membership in thirty-three countries, attests to its continuing fascination for the modern reader.

Notes

1. Halvdan Koht, “The Dawn of Nationalism in Europe,” American Historical Review, 52 (Jan., 1947), p. 271.

2. The History of the British Kings, trans., Lewis Thorpe (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1966), p. 51.

3. Gildas in his De Excidio et Conquesta Britanniae (c. 550) presented a condensed and sometimes incoherent reconstruction of the Roman and Anglo-Saxon conquests. The Historia Brittonum (c. 900), generally assigned to Nennius, is a very brief, semi-legendary account of the Britons. Both works are cited by Geoffrey. The far more reliable Historia Ecclesiastica Gentes Anglorum (731) by Bede was used by Geoffrey but it has little on the Britons. In a recent article in Speculum, Geoffrey Ashe argues with some cogency that “an unknown source of some kind remains possible.” (“A Certain Very Ancient Book,” April, 1981), p. 301.

4. Bede makes no mention of Trojan origins, suggesting that the tradition was not accepted in Britain in his time.

5. Aluredi Beverlacensis Annales, ed., Thomas Hearne (Oxford, 1716), p. 2.

6. Annales, p. 76.

7. Itinerarium Cambrensis, VI Rolls Series, Book I, Ch. v, ed., J. F. Dimock (1868), 58-59.

8. The History of William of Newburgh, trans., J. Stevenson, The Church Historians of England, IV, part I, Preface (1856).

9. See G. H. Gerould, “King Arthur and Politics,” Speculum, II (Jan., 1927), 33-51.

10. See R. H. Fletcher, The Arthurian Material in the Chronicles (New York, 1966), pp. 191ff., 279ff.

11. R. S. Loomis, “Edward I, Arthurian Enthusiast,” Speculum, XXVIII (Jan., 1953), 114-27.

12. The Annals of Waverly, cited in G. Ashe, The Quest for Arthur's Britain (1968), pp. 99-100.

13. See V. M. Lagorio, “The Evolving Legend of St. Joseph of Glastonbury,” Speculum, XLVI, 1971.

14. Loomis, pp. 121-22.

15. See Arthur Jocelyn, Awards of Honour (1956), p. 17.

16. Ashe, Arthur's Britain, p. 12.

17. See Sydney Anglo, “The British History in Early Tudor Propaganda,” Bulletin of the Johns Rylands Library, 44 (1961-62), 21-44.

18. See Eugene Vinaver, “Sir Thomas Malory,” Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, ed. R. S. Loomis (Oxford, 1959).

19. The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, ed. E. Vinaver (1954), Preface, p. xvi.

20. Cited in John Speed, The History of Great Britain (1614), p. 164.

21. Cited in John Leland, De Rebus Britannicis Collectanea, ed., T. Hearne (1770), p. 196.

22. See Howell T. Evans, Wales and the War of the Roses (1915), p. 7.

23. Historia Regis Henrici Septimi, ed., James Gairdner, Memorials of King Henry VII (1858), pp. 9-11.

24. Chronicles (1809), p. 428.

25. The Historie of the Raigne of King Henry the Seventh, (1622), p. 18.

26. T. D. Kendrick, British Antiquity (1970), p. 38.

27. See E. A. Greenlaw, Studies in Spenser's Historical Allegories (1932), p. 40.

28. R. Koebner, “‘The Imperial Crown of this Realm’: Henry VIII, Constantine The Great and Polydore Vergil,” Bulletin of the Institute for Historical Research, XXVI (1953), 40.

29. Koebner, p. 31.

30. See Denys Hay, Polydore Vergil (Oxford, 1952), p. 9.

31. Polydore Vergil's English History, from an early 16th century translation, ed., Sir Henry Ellis (1846), pp. 29, 33.

32. Vergil, p. 30.

33. Vergil, p. 38.

34. Vergil, p. 122.

35. Koebner, p. 36.

36. In 1536 Leland wrote a brief response entitled Antiquarii Codrus, Sive Laus et Defensio Gallofridi Arturii Monumetensus contra Polydorum Virgilium. This was expanded in 1544 in Assertio Inclytissmii Arturii, Regis Britanniae.

37. The Assertion of K. Arthure, a sixteenth century translation by Richard Robinson, ed., Christopher Middleton, in The Famous Historie of Chinon of England (1925), p. 53.

38. Leland, p. 17.

39. Leland, p. 86.

40. Leland, pp. 89-90.

41. Select Works of John Bale (Parker Society, 1849), p. 8.

42. The Defensio was written c. 1553 but not published until 1573.

43. See Kendrick, pp. 87-89.

44. Cited in Hay, p. 159.

45. See Hay, Ch. V; McKisack, Medieval History in the Tudor Age (Oxford, 1971), pp. 98-102. For his general influence see C. L. Kingsford, English Historical Literature in the 15th Century (1913).

46. The Pastyme of People (1811), p. 7.

47. Rastell, p. 106.

48. Kendrick, p. 41.

49. See Greenlaw, pp. 42-50.

50. McKisack, p. 152.

51. Britannia, trans., Edmund Gibson (1722), pp. 4-6.

52. See F. J. Levy, “The Making of Camden's Britannia,” Bibliotheque d'humanisme et Renaissance XXVI (1964).

53. Britannia, p. 15.

54. Britannia, p. 183.

55. See R. F. Brinkley, Arthurian Legend in the Seventeenth Century (1932), Ch. 1; A. E. Parsons, “The Trojan Legend in England,” Modern Language Review, XXIV (July, 1929), 402ff.

56. Works, ed., J. Hebel, IV, song X (1903), 206.

57. Works, p. 207.

58. Cited in Oliver Elton, Michael Drayton (New York, 1966), p. 112.

59. A Historie of the Warres (1607), p. 3.

60. Ayscu, p. 4.

61. Cited in George S. Gordon, The Discipline of Letters (Oxford, 1946).

62. The History of Great Britaine under the Conquests of Ye Romans, Saxons, Danes and Normans (1614), p. 166. Venus, as mother of Aeneas, was accordingly great-grandmother of Brutus.

63. Speed, p. 316.

64. Speed, p. 317.

65. The History of the World (1614).

66. The Annales or General Chronicle of England (1615), p. 6.

67. Cited in C. H. Firth, Essays Historical and Literary (Oxford, 1938), p. 70.

68. Hypercritica: or a rule of Judgement, for Writing or Reading our History (1722), pp. 205-06.

69. Bolton, p. 206.

70. Bolton, p. 212.

71. Silas, Taylor, The History of Gavel-kind (1663), p. 83.

72. The Destruction of Troy, “Prologue,” (1679).

73. The History of the Nine Worthies of the World (1687), pp. 146-47.

74. Cited in C. E. Ward, The Life of John Dryden (1961), p. 250.

75. See Ian R. Jack, Augustan Satire (Oxford, 1942), p. 5.

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