[In the following essay, Taufer surveys both the 1577 and 1587 editions of the Chronicles, demonstrating how the relatively objective tone of Holinshed's edition shifts to a more polemical and strident tone in Abraham Fleming's edition.]

Tudor historians tended to evaluate the past in terms of its lessons for the present. Edward Hall's Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre and Yorke, which related the history of the War of the Roses, was a warning to those who wished to avoid civil chaos and preserve political stability, while Bale's and Foxe's histories of the English church proved the purity of the English ecclesiastical tradition as well as Rome's ancient and continuing threat to its existence. At the same time, the Tudor dynasty sponsored its own myths of ancient origin through the officially patronized writings of Hall and Polydore Vergil's Anglica Historia to validate its somewhat shaky claim to the throne. While Tudor Histories such as these were written to promote specific agendas, Holinshed's Chronicles' “Historie of England” was written with a different purpose in mind. As Annabel Patterson has pointed out, the authors of the Chronicles strove to provide their readers with the means to interpret and evaluate the past for themselves by including as much documentary evidence as possible, thus enabling their readers to draw their own lessons from history (Patterson 1994, 7-8). This is not to say that these authors refrained from suggesting or overtly stating their own points of view, for they often did so. Nevertheless, they incorporated numerous and occasionally differing perspectives into their text, whether they agreed with them or not.

To accomplish their goal, the authors had to collect as many sources as possible and present them within the history. As evidenced by the 180 references listed in the introductory pages of the narrative, the authors of Holinshed's “Historie of England” strove to create the most comprehensive historical chronicle of its time. The English history not only draws on existing classical, medieval, and contemporary histories, but it also includes “Records and rolles diverse” as well as such ephemera as pamphlets, proclamations, and official edicts. The authors incorporated primary texts whenever possible, including numerous eyewitness accounts. They often included two or three sources, even if they conflicted, for the same event. Some sources were paraphrased, others copied almost verbatim. Some sections of the history were formed from the composite work of a number of source authors; others, such as the history of the later Plantagenets and the early Tudors, drew primarily on one source, in this case, Edward Hall's Union. Despite the fact that they worked with such a large number of texts, the authors were very careful to document their work. In addition to the list at the beginning of the history, they included extensive marginal notes indicating their sources.

The “Historie of England” is certainly the best-known portion of Holinshed's Chronicles, primarily because of its role as a resource for Shakespeare and other English authors. The history is divided into two parts: the creation of the world through the Norman Conquest, and the reign of William the Conqueror through the reign of Elizabeth I. In length, the “Historie of England” forms the greatest part of the Chronicles, comprising two-thirds of both editions. Approximately half of the 1587 English history is devoted to the Tudor century from 1485 to 1587. Obviously, the history's emphasis is on current events, specifically those historical occurrences that shaped the world in which the contributors and their audience lived. Although the “Historie of England” notably emphasized contemporary affairs over earlier events, it still provided a sense of historical perspective and made England's medieval past available to a wider audience than ever before.

THE 1577 “HISTORIE OF ENGLAND”

Raphael Holinshed dedicated his 1577 “Historie of England” to William Cecil, Lord Burghley, then lord treasurer and member of the Privy Council. In his dedication, Holinshed states his historical methodology, which is to provide the reader with as comprehensive a text as possible. He admits that he “was loth to omit anie thing that might increase the readers knowledge” and excuses himself for not having “so orderlie disposed” his materials as “otherwise I ought; choosing rather to want order, than to defraud the reader of that which for his further understanding might seeme to satisfie his expectation.”

Despite the occasionally haphazard ordering of his materials, Holinshed's history is characterized by the clarity and directness of its narrative. Holinshed often eschews the descriptive or discursive elements of his sources and instead focuses on the action. He lets the text speak for itself, refraining, for the most part, from judgmental evaluation. He is a master of objectivity and understatement, and as he mentions in his “Preface to the Reader,” his mission is to present his readers with all available information so that they may draw their own conclusions: “First concerning the historie of England, as I have collected the same out of manie and sundrie authors, in whome what contrarietie, negligence, and rashnesse sometime is found in their reports; I leave to the discretion of those that have perused their works: for my part, I have in things doubtfull rather chosen to shew the diversitie of their writings, than by over-ruling them, and using a peremptorie censure, to frame them to agree to my liking: leaving it neverthelesse to each mans judgement, to controll them as he seeth cause.” At the same time, Holinshed clearly notes which of his sources can be trusted and which cannot, thus leading readers toward or away from a particular interpretation of history or at least suggesting that they evaluate certain information with some skepticism. Holinshed was not a credulous and indiscriminating gatherer of material, nor does he leave his readers entirely to their own judgment.

This quality is particularly apparent in Holinshed's depiction of England's earliest inhabitants. Drawn primarily from the work of John Bale and Geoffrey of Monmouth, the first section of the English history includes such fantastical figures as Samothes, Noah's grandson and the first human to arrive in England; the giant Albion, after whom England was originally named; Aeneas's grandson Brute, who with his Trojans conquered Albion's race of giants and created the kingdom of Britain; and Brennius and Belinus, who, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth, invaded imperial Rome. Holinshed often articulates his discomfort with these tales, opening his history with the warning that “sith the originall in maner of all nations is doubtfull, and even the same for the more part fabulous (that alwaies excepted which we find in the holie scriptures) I wish not any man to leane to that which shall be here set downe as to an infallible truth, sith I doo but onlie shew other mens conjectures, grounded neverthelesse upon likelie reasons, concerning that matter whereof there is now left but little other certeintie, or rather none at all” (Chronicles, 1:427). Later he notes of these fabulous accounts, “I leave it to the consideration of the reader, to thinke thereof as reason shall move him sith I see not how either in this, or in other things of such antiquitie, we cannot have sufficient warrant otherwise than by likelie conjectures” (1:436). Although he diligently includes all the myths and legends of ancient Britain in his history, Holinshed implies that the intelligent reader will dismiss most of these stories as false. One can almost hear his sigh of relief when he turns to the Roman invasion under Julius Caesar and states, “[N]ow are we come to the time in the which what actes were atchived, there remaineth more certeine record, and therefore may we the more boldlie proceed in this our historie” (1:464).

Despite his access to “more certeine record,” Holinshed continues to express suspicions about his sources' veracity well beyond the section dealing with the Roman occupation. He dismisses King Arthur, “of whom the trifling tales of the Britains even to this day fantasicallie doo descant and report woonders,” although in pointing out those few elements of the legend that appear to be true, he admits, “[W]oorthie was he doubtlesse, of whom feined fables should not have so dreamed, but rather that true histories might have set foorth his woorthie praises, as he that did for a long season susteine and hold up his countrie that was readie to go to utter ruine and decaie” (Chronicles, 1:579). Holinshed's inclusion of this material does not mean that he believed it to be true, and his numerous comments on its dubious veracity reveal his critical stance. He appears to have regarded the histories of the early kings as cultural knowledge and perhaps moral instruction, but not factual information. In citing various and often contradictory authorities and including such obviously false and ridiculous material, Holinshed provided his readers with an understanding of England's cultural legacy. Whether true or false, these stories ultimately defined the society in which his audience lived and the way in which it viewed the world.

Although Holinshed clearly doubts the historical truth concerning many of ancient England's monarchs, he draws examples from their reigns to illustrate a number of moral and political lessons. Of primary concern was the social and political chaos caused by civil discord and the importance of avoiding internecine war. From the legendary period of the first kings of Britain through the final days of the Plantagenets, a pattern appears in which familial struggles over the throne lead to wider dissension and the ultimate ruin of the country. Leir's grandsons Cunedag and Margan capture and imprison their aunt Cordelia in order to seize the monarchy from her and then fall to quarreling themselves (Chronicles, 1:448). On the eve of the Danish invasions, the Mercian king Offa kills his new son-in-law, Ethelbert of the Eastangles (1:649). Princess Quendred has her seven-year-old brother, Kenelm, assassinated because of her jealousy over his accession to the crown of Mercia (1:659). Queen Alfred murders her stepson, King Edward of England, so that her own son, Egelred, might reign (1:699). Even under the Norman and Plantagenet kings this pattern continues. Henry II's later years are characterized by civil discord as his sons band together in rebellion against him. The Plantagenet dynasty self-destructs as the Houses of Lancaster and York battle for supremacy.

Holinshed also depicts how England's internal dissension not only weakened it from within but left it vulnerable to foreign attack. The country's early history is characterized by waves of succeeding invaders. The pattern of invasion, conquest, and decay applies to Britons, Romans, Saxons, Danes, and Normans. Holinshed demonstrates how as each kingdom became corrupted, civil dissension broke out, weakening it from within. Unable to withstand foreign attack, the beleaguered nation was vanquished by a new, stronger, and often morally superior invader who then established a new regime. In turn, that kingdom became weak, corrupt and marred by civil turmoil and with the passing of time was in turn invaded itself. Holinshed compares this pattern to the growth and decline of an aging body in his narrative of the Normans' invasion of England during the rule of Ethelred the Unready:

This Egelred or Etheldred was the 30 in number from Cerdicus the first king of the Westsaxons: through his negligent government, the state of the commonwealth fell into such decaie … that under him it may be saide, how the kingdome was come to the uttermost point or period of old and feeble age … For whereas, whilest the realme was divided at the first by the Saxons into sundrie dominions, it grew at length (as it were increasing from youthfull yeeres) to one absolute monarchie, which passed under the late remembred princes, Egbert, Adelstane, Edgar, and others, so that in their daies it might be said, how it was growne to mans state, but now under this Egelred, through famine, pestilence, and warres, the state thereof was so shaken, turned upside downe, and weakened on ech part, that rightlie might the season be likened unto the old broken yeeres of mans life, which through feeblenesse is not able to helpe it selfe.

(Chronicles, 1:703)

Holinshed continuously depicts England's cycle of invasions as the result of internal dissension and corruption. In his “Preface to the Reader,” he notes that the Romans easily conquered Britain “by reason of the factions amongst the princes of the land, which the Romans (through their accustomed skill) could turne verie well to their most advantage.” The Saxon invasion of Britain occurred because of “the wicked sins and unthankefulnesse of the inhabitants towards God, the cheefe occasions and causes of the transmutations of kingdoms.” The Danes were able to invade because the Saxons “fell at division among themselves, and oftentimes with warre pursued ech other, so as no perfect order of government could be framed.” Finally, the Normans succeeded due to the fact that “by the insolent dealings of the governours, a division was made betwixt the king and his people, through just punishment decreed by the providence of the Almightie, determining for their sinnes and contempt of his lawes, to deliver them into the hands of a stranger; and therueupon when spite and envie had brought the title in doubt, to whom the right in succession apperteined, the Conqueror entred.” The threat of foreign invasion does not disappear with the establishment of the Norman kingdom, for as Holinshed reveals, the civil discord of John I's reign opened the door to French and papal interference.

In the “Historie of England,” civil turmoil is the worst evil that can befall the land, and the examples Holinshed draws from the reigns of English monarchs illustrate this lesson repeatedly. Family violence is not the only source of civil strife. As the history proceeds, Holinshed clearly demonstrates that both the monarch and his people have a mutual responsibility to preserve peace and accord through the keeping of their respective obligations. The failure of one party or the other to do so results in political chaos. Even when depicting the reigns of such completely disastrous monarchs as Ethelred II, Holinshed notes that both king and subject are responsible for the country's problems: “But what is a king if his subjects be not loiall? What is a realme, if the common wealth be divided? By peace & concord, of small beginnings great and famous kingdomes have oft times proceeded; whereas by discord the greatest kingdoms have oftner bene brought to ruine” (Chronicles, 1:708). This lesson becomes one of the major themes of the narrative concerning John I's reign. Holinshed's account preserves the traditional sixteenth-century presentation of John as a kind of proto-Reformer and precursor to Henry VIII in his struggles with Rome, but there is a distinct emphasis on the mutual responsibility of John and his subjects for his calamitous reign. Holinshed notes how John was “bountifull and liberall unto strangers, but of his owne people (for their dailie treasons practised towards him) a great oppressour, so that he trusted more to forreners than to them, and therfore in the end he was of them utterlie forsaken” (2:339).

The reigns of Edward II and Richard II also depict the dangers of civil unrest, and as in his narrative of John I's reign, Holinshed faults the barons and the commoners as much as the king for the disasters that ensue from a disunited realm. Both Edward and Richard are portrayed negatively, but their vices are blamed on the influence of evil counselors and youthful folly. While Holinshed presents the barons' complaints against the two monarchs sympathetically, at the same time he notes that when “the barons and great lords agreed not in manie points among themselves, and so being not of one mind … some danger might grow to the state of the whole realme” (Chronicles, 2:773).

Holinshed's narrative repeatedly reveals a firm belief that ruler and ruled were bound in a symbiotic relationship of mutual obligations; the failure of the ruler as well as his subjects to honor this bond was one of the primary sources of civil strife. Holinshed seems particularly interested in those elements of feudalism that impacted the development of English constitutionalism, specifically the contractual rights and obligations between lord and vassal. He often criticizes kings who abused their power, particularly those who encroached on their subjects' rights. Holinshed does not present this lesson only by negative example, however. An anecdote that he offers concerning Edward I proves that such conflicts could be resolved peaceably.

Holinshed relates how in attempting to implement a scheme designed to raise money, Edward I declared that all who held land and tenements from him had to demonstrate by what title they held their properties. If they could not do so, the king planned to confiscate the lands to be sold or redeemed again. Edward did this knowing full well that over the course of time and because of the many civil wars that had racked England, many charters, deeds, copies, and other written documents had been lost, destroyed, or stolen. As the narrative notes, “Men in everie place made complaint and shewed themselves greevouslie offended, so that the king by meanes thereof came in great hatred of his people,” yet since they had no evidence of title, no one dared complain. Only one man had the courage to remind the king of his feudal obligations:

At length the lord John Warren earle of Surrie, a man greatlie beloved of the people, perceiving the king to have cast his net for a preie, and that there was not one which spake against him, determined to stand against those so bitter and cruell proceedings. And therefore being called afore the justices about this matter, he appeared, and being asked, “by what right he held his lands?” suddenlie drawing foorth an old rustie sword; “By this instrument (said he) doo I hold my lands, and by the same I intend to defend them. Our ancestors comming into this realme with William the Conquerour, conquered their lands with the sword, and with the same will I defend me from all those that should be about to take them from me; he did not make a conquest of this realme alone, our progenitors were with him as participants and helpers.”

The king understanding into what hatred of his people by this meanes he was fallen, and therfore desirous to avoid civill dissention and war that might thereby insue, he left off his begun practise: so that the thing which generallie should have touched and beene hurtfull to all men, was now suddenlie staied by the manhood and couragious stoutnesse onelie of one man.

(Chronicles, 2:483-84)

The preceding anecdote never states, but certainly suggests, that the king's authority was not absolute but was held from the people, and that the land in dispute was not merely land but a symbol of the pledge between monarch and subject. Edward, in his attempt to seize his vassals' land, risked losing his authority through the destruction of that pledge. In feudalism, public rights and duties were tied to the tenure of the land, and Edward clearly transgressed the limitations of his power in unilaterally seizing land held in vassalage without justifiable cause, as the Earl of Surrey asserted in his impassioned response. In transgressing the limit, the king nullified the feudal tie and therefore released his subjects of any obligation to him. Although the earl was within his rights to rebel, he first chose to remind the king of his obligations before doing so, and Edward, to his credit, recognized the importance of his subjects' happiness to his own political security. Placing the good of the commonwealth above his own personal interests and aware of the “civill dissention and war that might thereby insue” if he continued seizing land, he ceased his practice. Unlike the numerous other examples of conflict between king and subject that appear in the “Historie of England,” the anecdote provides a paradigm for the proper relationship between ruler and ruled.

Throughout the “Historie of England,” Holinshed manages to present an impartial and unprejudiced narration of events, and in presenting conflicting opinions, he often includes both sides, even if it puts him in the position of devil's advocate. In the case of Richard II, Holinshed provides an objective recital of all of Richard's vices, noting that he was “prodigall, ambitious, and much given to the pleasure of the bodie” and that the extravagant living that characterized his court spread to “the townes and Countreys … to the greate hynderaunce and decay of the commonwealth.” He also points to the corruption of the clergy during his reign and how “there reigned abundantly the filthie sinne of lecherie and fornication, with abominable adulterie, specially in the king, but most chieflie in the prelacie.” He presents Henry Bolingbroke's complaints against the king sympathetically, and his depiction of Henry and the other barons' rebellion, Parliament's role in the deposition of Richard, and Richard's handing over of the crown to Bolingbroke objectively and factually. He concludes his narrative with his own view of Richard's reign: “Thus have ye heard what wryters do report touching the state of the time and the doings of this king. But if I may boldly say what I think: he was a Prince the most unthankfully used of his subjects, of any one of whome ye shall lightly read.” Holinshed goes on to point out that through youthful frailty and bad counselors Richard “demeaned himself more dissolutely than seemed convenient for his royall estate,” but “yet in no kings days were the commons in greater wealth,” nor “were the Nobles and Gentlemen more cherished nor the Churchmen lesse wronged.” After noting the lack of gratitude and appreciation in Richard's subjects, Holinshed then criticizes Bolingbroke for being “chiefe instrument of this mischief” and for his “ambicious cruelty” in taking from Richard “his guiltlesse life” (Chronicles, 2:969). Holinshed's seeming sympathy for Richard at this point seems confusing. Does it point to a providential view of history since Holinshed mentions later that Bolingbroke and his line were punished later for their rebellion, or was it merely a prudent move on Holinshed's part to avoid the censors?¹ It could be argued that Holinshed's concern is not necessarily with the deposition of Richard itself but with the manner in which it was carried out and the refusal of both king and subjects to place the good of the commonwealth over personal interests. In fact, one of Holinshed's critiques of the open rebellion against Richard II is that the nobles “by strong hand, than by gentle and courteous means” attempted to control the king, “which stirred such malice betwixt him and them, till at length it could not be asswaged without perill of destruction to them both” (2:969). Holinshed's articulation of a perspective at odds with the traditional understanding of Richard II would enable readers to see both sides of the issue. Whatever the point of view, Holinshed's emphasis on the mutual destruction and ruin brought about by internal strife and his insistence on the importance of avoiding civil dissension create a cyclic pattern in the “Historie of England,” reminding the reader that those who do not learn from the past are destined to repeat it. Although Holinshed usually refrains from overt commentary in his depiction of events, his arrangement of his narrative clearly presents this lesson to the reader.

The cyclic nature of Holinshed's history is more sophisticated than that of his medieval predecessors in that the repetition of events is obviously designed to do more than teach moral values or to demonstrate the workings of Providence in this world. The 1577 “Historie of England” is not particularly providential in its outlook, although Fleming's 1587 revisions later give the history a markedly providential tone in certain sections. The cycles of Holinshed's history teach a political lesson in that they demonstrate which behaviors should be avoided and which embraced to insure England's well-being. Holinshed focuses on the causes of civil dissension, its effects on the commonwealth, and the importance to a country's stability of avoiding dissension whenever possible. Human causation plays an important role in Holinshed's earlier text, and the morals that he draws from events, such as the reigns of Edward I, or even John I and Richard II, fully implicate human behavior in the workings of history. John's and Richard's falls are clearly caused by their own lack of good leadership as well as their subjects' intransigence. Although bad kings may deserve their fates, Holinshed suggests that the civil unrest that ensues is sometimes worse than poor leadership and that the health of the commonwealth is the primary responsibility of both the prince and the people.²

The appearance of omens, portents, and other supernatural wonders plays a role in the 1577 “Historie of England,” though a less significant one than in the 1587 text. These phenomena are usually associated with national disasters, although they occasionally herald joyous occasions as well. Such portents and wonders foreshadow foreign attacks, as in the case of the Danish invasion where “there fell upon mens garments, as they walked abroad, crosses of bloudie colour, and bloud fell from heaven as drops of raine” (Chronicles, 1:653). They also accompany famines, regicides, wars, and civil unrest. The growing animosity that finally erupts into civil war between the Norman king William Rufus and his brother Robert is heralded by “manie grisely and uncouth sights … as hostes of men fighting in the skie with fierie beames flashing out, stars falling from heaven, and such other wonders” (Holin. 1577, 2:325r.). The reign of Stephen of Boulogne, noteworthy for its 17 years of civil war, also brings forth omens of chaos: “The same day in the which he arived in Englande, there chanced a mightie great tempest of thunder, with lightning marvelous, horrible to heare and to behold. And bycause this happened in the winter time, it seemed agaynst nature, and therefore it was the more noted as a foreshadowing of some trouble and calamity to come” (2:3656r). The linking of blazing stars, earthquakes, and other disturbances of nature with political disasters in the 1577 “Historie of England” creates a narrative pattern that highlights the repetitive nature of England's history.

Such natural wonders appeared in most of Holinshed's sources as manifestations of divine interference in human affairs, but Holinshed's portents serve more as narrative links highlighting the similarities between historical events than as manifestations of historical causation. Omens and portents typically demonstrated how God foreshadowed human events with natural wonders, often as a warning of dangers to come. Unlike many historians of his time, including Fleming, who later glossed many of Holinshed's omens and portents to give them a moral significance, Holinshed rarely draws on overt connection between these phenomena and the events that they precede. When Holinshed supplies a moral explanation for a wonder preceding an historic event, he usually accompanies it with such qualifying phrases as “it seems” or “as hath been reported” rather than claiming such an explanation himself. In the 1577 “Historie of England” the emphasis is on the similarities of the wonders accompanying related historical events rather than on any particular moral significance they may have.

Holinshed's presentation of English history as cyclical is also developed by the formulaic nature of the numerous illustrations that adorn the pages of the 1577 “Historie of England.” All three of the 1577 histories are distinguished by the inclusion of elaborate and detailed woodcuts used over and over again, often anachronistically, to portray significant events. Occasionally the wood prints, such as the one depicting Boadica addressing her troops before their last rebellion against the Romans, refer to a specific historical moment. The vast majority are vague enough in reference to illustrate a variety of different occasions, although they tend to focus on calamities or on displays of power, whether in acts of violence or courtly rituals. In the first part of the English history, small woodcut depictions of Britain's kings serve as chapter divisions, marking the reigns of succeeding monarchs. The illustrations are obviously not based on any realistic concept of portraiture, since the same pictures are continually repeated for different monarchs and can also be found in the Scottish history. The woodcuts' removal from the 1587 edition exemplifies the later editor's decision to redesign the “Historie of England” as a teleological rather than cyclical narrative, culminating in Elizabeth's triumphant reign.³

England's political history is the primary focus of the 1577 “Historie of England,” but its ecclesiastical history is touched on as well. Holinshed does not give religious issues the importance that they receive in the 1587 version, but he does frame his history within a Protestant perspective. His church history focuses on those events proving the ancient establishment of a native religious tradition, such as Joseph of Arimathea's arrival in England to preach the gospel and baptize the native population, the struggles between the native British church and Augustine of Canterbury, the evangelizer of the Anglo-Saxons, Pope Honorius's decree permitting the archbishops of York and Canterbury to choose each others' successors without consulting Rome, and Bede's translation of the gospel of Saint John into English. Other incidents, such as Henry II's quarrel with Thomas à Becket and John I's, Henry III's, and Henry VIII's struggles with the papacy, appear, but they are treated factually and with restraint.

While the 1577 “Historie of England” lacks the religious histrionics that are one of the defining features of the 1587 edition, Holinshed includes his share of attacks on the Catholic clergy, but they are of a far more subtle nature. Holinshed seems particularly interested in examples of clerical corruption, and his choice and placement of material reveal this concern. When gathering material for his early English history, Holinshed drew his information from medieval sources, most of which were monastic and all of which were written from a Catholic perspective. Had Holinshed been a Reformist historian along the lines of John Bale, John Foxe, or even his own successor, Abraham Fleming, he would have either co-opted these sources, turning their evidence against itself to present an anti-Catholic bias and a revisionist view of church history, or he would have reframed the information in a scathing rhetorical display of antipapist sentiment, but this was not his method. This is not to say that Holinshed refrains from all religious commentary. In a manner similar to that in his asides cautioning his readers to consider the veracity of the sources he presents to them, Holinshed unobtrusively directs his audience toward a Protestant view of ecclesiastical history, primarily through his depiction of clerical vices.

Holinshed tends to criticize through marginal asides or anecdote rather than through the overt and distracting commentary that Fleming later employed, much to the 1587 narrative's disadvantage. In a story concerning Dunstan, abbot of Glastonbury, Holinshed incorporates the original medieval account into the main body of his text without remark on the supposed miracle that occurred. When the dying Anglo-Saxon king Edred issued a proclamation that all who had any of his treasure in keeping return it to him immediately so that he could dispose of it as he saw appropriate, Dunstan gathered what treasure he had and hurried to deliver it to the king, “but as he was upon the waie, a voice spake to him from heaven, saieng; Behold king Edred is now departed in peace. At the hearing of this voice, the horsse whereon Dunstane rode felle downe and died, being not able to abide the presence of the angell that thus spake to Dunstane. And when he came to the court, he understood that the king died the same houre in which it was told him by the angell” (Chronicles, 1:692). In the margin, Holinshed cynically notes, “But was not this a devise thereby to deteine the treasure? for I doo not read that he delivered it out of his hands.” Although the main text includes nothing derogatory in its account of Dunstan, Holinshed's marginalia clearly implies that the abbot's alleged miracle was an excuse to cover his greed.

In an anecdote from the reign of Henry III, Holinshed includes a trenchant critique of clerical corruption and a denial of the Pope's supremacy without adding one comment of his own. He relates how a Carthusian monk, “of honest conversation and sober,” refused to attend divine service and was consequently imprisoned. When examined by a papal legate as to the reasons for his refusal, the monk “openlie protested, that Gregorie was not the true pope, nor head of the church, but that there was another head of the church, and that the church was defiled, so that no service ought to be said therein, except the same were newlie dedicated, and the vessels and vestments againe hallowed and consecreated; the divell (said he) is lose, & the pope is an heretike, for Gregorie, which nameth himselfe pope hath polluted the church.” In response the legate asked him, “Is not power granted to our sovereigne lord the pope from above, both to lose and bind soules, sith he executeth the roome of S. Peter upon earth.” The narrative succinctly presents the tense expectation surrounding the monk's reply as it describes how “all men looked to heare what answer he would make, beleeving his jugement to depend upon the same.” The monk posed the counter-question, “How can I beleeve, that unto a person spotted with simonie and usurie, and haplie wrapt in more greevous sins, such power should be granted as was granted unto holie Peter, who immediatlie followed the lord, as soone as he was made his apostle, and followed him not onelie in bodilie footsteps, but in cleerenesse of vertues.” In response, “the legat blushed, & said to some of the standers by; ‘A man ought not to chide with a foole, nor gape over an oven’” (Chronicles, 2:389). While the papal legate and “diverse other worshipfull personages” dismissed the monk as an imbecile, the story makes very clear who the true fools are in not recognizing that the monk is referring to Christ as the other “head of the church.” Furthermore, the narrative suggests that the legate's blush of shame, his inability to respond to the monk's query, and his choice not to condemn the monk for heresy but to dismiss him as a fool reveal that at some level, he realizes the truth of his adversary's utterances. Through the careful choice and inclusion of such anticlerical anecdotes, Holinshed presents England's religious history through a Protestant perspective while maintaining the objective tone that is the hallmark of his narrative.

Holinshed is far more reticent in his portrait of the Tudor period than he is in his depiction of ancient and medieval history. He draws no obvious lessons from the reigns of England's Renaissance monarchs and minimizes to an even greater degree the occasional moral commentary that occurs in the earlier portion of the history. Simple prudence would dictate such caution in approaching recent history, but even Mary Tudor, so often demonized in contemporary histories of the period, is treated with restraint and objectivity. Conversely, Elizabeth's reign, which the 1587 edition heralds as the triumphant manifestation of God's divine favor (although events included in the text would seem to indicate otherwise), appears simply as another step in the march of history.

The Chronicles' treatment of Henry VIII's tumultuous regime is a particularly cogent example of how Holinshed, even while avoiding political commentary or criticism, creates a sense of the tensions or dangers that characterized a particular ruler's reign. Based on Hall's text, the narrative of Henry VIII's reign is represented by three distinct stages. The first, which records the first 18 years of his government, depicts Henry as gracious and courtly, skilled in arms and games, well educated, a lover of courtly pastimes and entertainments, and a favorite of his people; Henry is the ideal Renaissance prince. This changes dramatically in the 18th year of his reign (1527), when the first questions are raised as to the legitimacy of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Henry is portrayed as concerned over the possibility that he has sinned and haunted by the fear that his lack of a male heir may be due to this sin. He finally, and very reluctantly, agrees to a divorce after consulting various experts about the legitimacy of his marriage. Anne Boleyn is not mentioned until after he has decided to divorce and therefore is not portrayed as one of the causes of the divorce. The last years of his reign, after the death of Catherine and the execution of Anne Boleyn, are characterized by numerous executions for heresy and treason. Although the text remains curiously silent on the details of these executions or the charges brought against the accused (information supplied in the accounts of all other reigns), the reader is struck by their number and frequency. In fact, the executions of the later years of Henry's reign offer a bleak counterpoint to the celebrations of the early years. The excessive violence of Henry's later rule is never commented on, only recited. When the narrative presents the traditional summary of the monarch's life and government at Henry's death, little is said, and instead of providing his own conclusion, Holinshed supplies John Leland's praise of Henry's largesse, all in Latin. The closing commentary on Henry's reign is notably shorter than that of his son, Edward, who ruled less than six years. Henry may be portrayed as the great religious reformer and Protestant champion in the Chronicles, but nonetheless, the most striking elements of his last years are the unrest, the rebellions, the executions, and the bloodshed. While the history may praise Henry as a “tresnoble and trespuissant” monarch, its narrative provides a less than ideal portrait of the king.

Holinshed relies on eyewitness accounts and anecdotes to supply color and interest to his Tudor narratives, and as Henry VIII's reign demonstrates, these become the reader's cue as to how a particular monarch should be evaluated. Holinshed's treatment of Mary Tudor's reign is notable for its impartiality, yet even here, in his typically understated way, he directs his readers' interpretation of events. In describing the general pardon that was proclaimed at the time of Mary's coronation, he notes that it was “interlaced with so manie exceptions as they that needed the same most, tooke smallest benefit thereby,” thus pointing out the emptiness of the gesture while hinting at Mary's subsequent persecution of her many enemies (Chronicles, 4:7). Holinshed's efforts to maintain an impartial presentation of his material can best be appreciated through comparing his portrayal of events to Fleming's report of the same. When relating the story of Mary Tudor's hysterical pregnancy, Holinshed makes no comments of his own as to the controversies surrounding the event nor does he draw any conclusions himself, but he includes the various conclusions drawn by others:

And the sayde rumor continued so long that at the last, reporte was made, that shee was delyvered of a Prince and for joye thereof, Belles were roong, and Bonfires made, not only in the Citie of London, but also in sundrie places of the Realme, but in the ende, all proved cleane contrarie, and the joy and expectation of the people utterly frustrate: for shortly it was fully certified (almost to all men) that the Queene was as then neyther delivered of a childe, nor after was in hope to have any.

Of this people spake diversly.

Some sayde, that the rumor of the Queenes conception was spread for a policie.

Some affirmed that she was with childe, but it miscarried.

Some other sayd that shee was deceived by a Timpany, or other lyke disease; whereby shee thought shee was with childe, and was not. But what the troth was, I referre the reporte thereof to other that know more.

(Holin. 1577, 2:1765r)

Fleming, whose hostility toward Mary is one of the hallmarks of his history of her reign, adds to Holinshed's list of possibilities an eyewitness account lifted directly from Foxe's Acts and Monuments (Foxe 7:126):

There came to me, whome I did both heare and see, one Isabel Malt, a woman dwelling in Aldersgate street in Horne allie, not farre from the house where this present booke was printed, who before witnesse made this declaration unto us, that she being delivered of a man-child upon Whitsundaie in the morning [the supposed time of Mary's delivery], which was the eleventh day of June Anno 1555, there came to hir the lord North, and another lord to hir unknowne, dwelling then about old Fish-street, demanding of hir if she would part with hir child, and would sweare that she never knew nor had no such child. Which if she would, hir sonne (they saide) should be well provided for, she should take no care for it, with manie faire offers if she would part with the child.

After that came other women also, of whome one (she saide) should have been the rocker: but she in no wise would let go hir sonne, who at the writing hereof being alive and called Timothie Malt, was of the age of thirteene yeares and upward. Thus much (I saie) I heard of the woman hir self. What credit is to be given to her relation, I deale not withall, but leave it to the libertie of the reader, to beleeve it they that list: to them that list not, I have no futher warrant to assure them.

(Chronicles, 4:82-83)

Foxe's anecdote is not unique in its claims that Mary's pregnancy was a hoax and that a substitution was plotted. Alice Perwick of London was indicated for claiming that “[t]he Queen's Grace is not with child, and another lady should be with child and that lady's child when she is brought in bed should be named the Queen's child.”⁴ Fleming's decision to include this scurrilous story functions on both a literal and a symbolic level. Not only does it contribute to his unflattering portrait of Mary, it also illustrates the sterility and death associated with Mary's reign. The failed promise of Mary's pregnancy evokes the failures, both political and religious, of her government, and the attempts to substitute another child for the royal heir suggests her substitution of the Roman church for England's true one.

The transition between Mary's and Elizabeth's reigns also offers a telling example of the two authors' different approaches to their subject matter. In the 1577 edition, Holinshed concludes his narrative of Mary's monarchy and begins that of Elizabeth's without comment on either queen. Such potentially explosive subject matter as the execution of the Oxford martyrs for heresy is presented factually and impartially among the lives and deaths of notable Catholics and Protestants who lived during Mary's reign. After depicting Mary Tudor's illness and death and summarizing her reign, Holinshed passes directly to Elizabeth's accession. The 1587 edition presents this transition quite differently. Fleming expands Holinshed's original four paragraphs concluding Mary's reign to 18 and adds such comments as “More English bloud spilled in queene Marie's time, than ever was in anie king's reigne before hir,” and “Queene Marie never had good successe in anie thing she went about” (Chronicles, 4:138). In the 1587 edition, the chapter ends with a declaration in large italic type: “Thus farre the troublesome reigne of Queene Marie the first of that name (God grant she may be the last of hir religion) eldest daughter to king Henrie the eight” (4:159). The new chapter heralds Elizabeth's reign with even larger type, “The peaceable and prosperous regiment of blessed Queene Elisabeth, second daughter to king Henrie the eight,” and adds the following paragraph before returning to the original 1577 text: “After all the stormie, tempestuous, and blustering windie weather of queene Marie was overblowne, the darkesome clouds, of discomfort dispersed, the palpable fogs and mists of most intollerable miserie consumed, and the dashing showers of persecution overpast: it pleased God to send England a calme and quiet season, a cleare and lovelie sunshine, a quitset from former broiles, of a turbulent estate, and a world of blessings by good queene Elisabeth: into whose gratious reigne we are now to make an happie entrance as followeth” (4:155). Holinshed's factual record is displaced by Fleming's vociferous rhetoric in the 1587 edition, and the emphasis moves from the actual events to their political implications for England.

As a history, Holinshed's 1577 “Historie of England” is far more sophisticated a narrative than it has been given credit for being. Although at times the sheer bulk of information overwhelms its purpose, the text has a clear focus and point of view. Holinshed states a distinct reason for including the numerous sources, and his accumulation of material is not the result of carelessness or naïveté but a conscious effort to preserve and pass on all of England's historical heritage. While he presents parallel and occasionally contradictory sources, he does not leave his readers entirely to their own devices to interpret and evaluate these materials but often attempts to shape their response through commentary or asides. Throughout his text he draws political lessons from history, demonstrating the importance of a unified and strong England in which both monarch and subject, adhering to their duties and responsibilities, preserve the health of the commonwealth. Unfortunately, very few scholars will ever read Raphael Holinshed's “Historie of England” because it has never been reprinted in a modern edition. It is Fleming's and not Holinshed's history that we read now, although Holinshed bears the dubious privilege of having his name attached to the text.

THE 1587 “HISTORIE OF ENGLAND”

Holinshed has borne much of the blame for the weaknesses of the “Historie of England,” such as its virulent Protestant polemics, poor organization, and inclusion of extraneous material, but these elements can all be credited to Abraham Fleming's revisions and characterize the 1587, not the 1577, edition. The textual revisions that appear in the 1587 “Historie of England” are extensive, including not only the addition of material but also the deletion and rewriting of the existing contents. Some of these changes were smoothly incorporated into the history without detracting from its narrative continuity, but more often than not, moral commentary, extensive tangential digressions, catalogues, and ephemera were inserted into the history with no particular attention paid to textual transitions or organization.

Not all of Fleming's revisions detracted from the “Historie of England.” Fleming incorporated a number of editorial changes that actually made the history easier to read. The only organizing principle that Holinshed had used in the 1577 English history was the arrangement of material by the reigns of monarchs. Fleming preserved Holinshed's chronological sequence for the English history before 1066 but divided the immense amount of material into eight books, subdivided the books into chapters, and then introduced each chapter with an extensive title summarizing the contents. Editorial revisions found throughout the entire history include headings that list both the chronological year and the year of each monarch's reign, extensive indexes, cross-references within the text, expanded marginalia acknowledging sources, quotation marks to indicate direct speech, and paragraph markers. The paragraph markers serve a variety of functions: to indicate a change in topic, a digression, an aside, or a commentary on the narrative; to indicate a change of author; and to indicate an insertion by Fleming, although he does not mark all his revisions in this manner. Other minor editorial changes include the use of Gothic rather than italic print for the marginalia, minor spelling revisions, and the setting off of longer speeches through quotations or subheadings.

The “Historie of England” before the Norman Conquest remained essentially unchanged in content. From the time of the Norman Conquest through Elizabeth's reign, Fleming added extensive material, including more information and lengthy digressions. He also expanded the history that he inherited from Holinshed with copious marginal notes, Latin aphorisms and poems, extensive references to and commentary on natural wonders such as eclipses, floods, earthquakes, and comets, and numerous anecdotes borrowed from Hall's Union, Foxe's Acts and Monuments, John Stow's Historie of England, and other sources.

Fleming's outspoken commentary is probably the one element most responsible for the English history's change in tone from objective to polemical. These comments are primarily, but not solely, religious in nature. Some of them are additions to the main body of the text, such as the condemnation of Thomas à Becket's life after the narrative of his murder. Anti-Catholic comments also occur in the marginalia criticizing the Catholic viewpoint of the history's many monastic sources. For example, in the marginalia accompanying the depiction of Henry II's reconciliation with the Church after Thomas à Becket's murder, Fleming states, “O vile subjection unbeseeming a king!” (Chronicles, 2:143), and in the narrative of John I's struggles with Rome he sets off the papal legate's speech to John with the subtitle “The sawcie speech of proud Pandulph the popes lewd legat, to king John, in the presumptuous popes behalfe” (2:306). Fleming advises the reader to “Note the ungodlie life of these catholikes” (4:136) and refers to the pope as “their hellish … father” (2:147).

A number of Fleming's moralizing comments accompany reports of calamity or death and warn of fortune's transitory nature, such as the following meditation that he includes after his account of the Duke of Norfolk's death:

This was the ende of the Duke of Northfolke, a man whose life God had limited, as also the estate wherein he sometimes flourished: both which (as all things else) in a short time vanished. Let all degrees therefore learne, both by precept and example to know God principallie, secondlie their sovereigne Gods annointed, and finallie themselves to be subjects: forgetting their owne honour, which puffeth men up manie times with the wind of vainglorie, even to their owne overthrow, whilest they become insolent, and dreame that the transitorie advancements of this world will make them princes; princes peeres, naie (O monstrous madnesse) gods, whereas all things are mutable and momentarie, and the higher that a man dooth clime, the greater is his fall.

(Chronicles, 4:269-70)

Other passages, attached to accounts of rebellion or treason, warn of the consequences of such acts, for both the individual and the community. In a moralizing insert added to the account of the War of the Roses during Henry VI's reign, Fleming notes:

Thus you see what fruits the tree of civill discord dooth bring foorth; that evill tree, which whilest some have taken paine to plant, and some to proine and nourish, for others confusion (to whome they have given a taste of those apples which it bare, far more bitter than coloquintida) themselves have beene forced to take such share as befell them by lot. For as it is not possible that a comon fier, whose heat & flame is universallie spread, should spare any particular place (for so should it not be generall) no more is it likelie that in civill commotions, rebellions, insurrections, and partakings in conflicts and pitched feelds (speciallie under ringleaders of great countenance and personage, such as be the peeres and states of kingdoms) anie one should, though perhaps his life, yet (a thousand to one) not save his bloud unspilt, nor his goods unspoiled.

(Chronicles, 3:261)

In his condemnation of civil discord, Fleming follows Holinshed but adds even more detailed moralizing to his depiction of events.

Fleming also includes numerous accounts of omens, dreams, and portents along with extended commentary explaining their significance. Holinshed had included these elements in the 1577 edition but not to the same degree, and his presentation of such phenomena was not moralized. Fleming's additions usually carry a moralizing gloss overtly explaining the significance of such wonders. Throughout the narrative, he asserts their importance and defends their inclusion: “[P]rodigious woonders, and other rare and unaccustomed accidents are significations of some notable event insuing, either to some great personage, to the common-wealth, or to the state of the church. And therfore it is a matter woorth the marking, to compare effects following with signes and woonders before going; since they have a doctrine in them of no small importance” (Chronicles, 2:178). Fleming also elaborates upon preexisting narratives concerning bizarre phenomena. For example, to Holinshed's straightforward anecdote of “a fish like to a man,” which was brought up in a net during the reign of John I, Fleming adds, “Which report of theirs in respect to the strangenesse thereof might seeme incredible, speciallie to such as be hard of beleefe, and refuse to give faith and credit to anything but what their owne eies have sealed to their consciences, so that the reading of such woonders as these, is no more beneficiall to them, than to carrie a candle before a blind man, or to sing a song to him that is starke deafe. Neverthelesse, of all uncouth and rare sights, speciallie of monstruous appearances we ought to be so farre from having little regard; that we should rather in them and by them observe the event and falling out of some future thing, no lesse miraculous in the issue, than they be woonderfull at the sudden sight” (2:290-91). Not all of the 1587 additions concerning portents and other wonders can be attributed to Fleming, for John Stow, who also contributed to the later English history, was fascinated by such events and included a number of them in his additions to the text. Stow, unlike Fleming, refrained from moralizing on their significance, and so his contributions in this area can usually be distinguished from Fleming's.

While Fleming's contributions form the bulk of the material added to the 1587 “Historie of England,” writers whose major work appeared in other parts of the Chronicles supplied material as well. John Hooker, who revised and continued the “Historie of Ireland,” contributed the “Description of the Citie of Excester” and a history of Exeter cathedral. Francis Thynne, who revised and continued the “Historie of Scotland,” contributed several unpublished antiquarian essays, all of which were later censored. John Stow's exact role in the 1587 “Historie of England” is difficult to ascertain. Stow had provided Holinshed with manuscripts and other sources for the 1577 history and contributed material such as the Earl of Leicester's activities in the Netherlands, accounts of the city of London, and a number of the bizarre events and portents mentioned previously, but the extent of his direct contributions remains unclear, as does his role in the “Continuation of the Historie of England,” which extended the English history from 1577 to 1586 (Parry, 1987, 637-38; Dodson, 58).

The 1587 “Historie of England” employs ecclesiastical history as part of the teleological focus of its narrative, beginning with its depiction of the conflict between the native English church and the Roman church introduced by Augustine of Canterbury and continuing through various monarchs' quarrels with the clergy. Fleming's inclusions become far more prevalent from the time of the Norman kings, and as the history progresses, the struggle between church and state metamorphoses into one between king and clergy, and ultimately between England and Rome. Thus the entire English history becomes a precursor to Henry VIII's break with Rome and the English Reformation. Fleming incorporates this greater emphasis on ecclesiastical history into the existing 1577 narrative through the inclusion of marginalia, anecdote, and commentary. Most of the material for these revisions came from John Foxe's Acts and Monuments, which is heavily cited in the margins of the text.

As Patterson notes, Holinshed and his successors turned to Foxe's Acts and Monuments for a source of material as well as for certain historiographical practices such as the salvage and preservation in print of early documents and the use of anecdote and eyewitness accounts (Patterson 1994, 37). While it is true, as Patterson claims, that Holinshed avoided Foxe's Protestant polemic for a more objective stance on religion and focused on political rather than church history, this is not the case in Fleming's 1587 revision. A number of critics have called Fleming's own Protestant polemics one of the defining features of the 1587 English history.⁵ The influence of Foxe's Acts and Monuments on the 1587 “Historie of England” cannot be overemphasized. It provided not only a substantial amount of the new textual material and a historiographical method, but also an entire shift in tone and in focus. Fleming's modifications of the “Historie of England” exemplify Richard Helgerson's observation that “in early modern England the language of politics was most often the language of religion.”⁶ In the 1587 history the separation of the English church from the church of Rome becomes a major theme of the text, and much of the material borrowed from Foxe contributes to this reordering of focus.

Fleming includes numerous anecdotes from Foxe's Acts and Monuments throughout his history, but nowhere are they so evident as in his account of Mary Tudor's reign. Borrowed directly from Foxe, Fleming's accounts of the Duchess of Suffolk and Dr. Edwin Sands have an almost hagiographic quality. Both the duchess and Sands are persecuted by Mary for their religion, flee the authorities, suffer greatly, are almost captured, escape to the Continent through the kindness of others, and return to their friends and loved ones under Elizabeth's reign (Chronicles, 4:104-17). Fleming also follows Foxe in portraying Mary's imprisonment of Elizabeth as due to the princess's religious beliefs rather than for political reasons and Elizabeth's preservation from execution as witness to God's providential power (4:121). Fleming heightens the emotional impact of the Protestant persecutions by making them personal and immediate through the stories of these three and other individuals. Furthermore, by including Foxe's interpretation of Elizabeth's imprisonment, Fleming links the political and ecclesiastical histories of England by placing the lives of political figures within a religious context.

Elizabeth, identified with those who suffered for their faith, becomes one of those persecuted for Christ and therefore an exception to the usual portrait of monarchs as persecutors of the godly, since Elizabeth's imprisonment for religious beliefs revealed her to be one of the godly herself. In Foxe's Acts and Monuments religious persecution is a sign of the Antichrist, and any regime that exercises institutional violence in matters of religion is anti-Christian. Foxe always equated persecutors with the Antichrist and the persecuted with Christ (Helgerson, 259-61). Fleming's debt to Foxe in the 1587 “Historie of England” reveals why he strongly emphasizes in the later history of Elizabeth's reign that Edmund Campion and others were executed for treason, not religion. For Elizabeth and her government to engage in religious persecution would immediately identify her with the very practices that he had so soundly condemned in the reign of her predecessor, Mary. Fleming, in following Foxe's lead of presenting Elizabeth among those godly individuals persecuted for their faith and her reign as a period of Christian peace, had to claim that she did not engage in religious persecution.

The result of this emphasis on ecclesiastical as well as political history resulted in the transformation of the 1587 “Historie of England” from a chronicle depicting English history as a cyclical series of events to one that is teleological in character. The 1587 English history draws on Foxe's apocalyptic vision of history as a continuing struggle between the forces of God and Satan, of Christ and Antichrist, concluding in a triumphant final victory for Christ and his Church. In the 1577 history, Elizabeth's reign is treated as one in a series of reigns, and although the narrative of her regime may be longer than that of the preceding ones, this is only natural given the Chronicles' emphasis on contemporary affairs and eyewitness accounts. Although the importance of the English church's history is not emphasized in the 1577 edition, Fleming brings the church's history to the forefront through his additions to the text in the 1587 edition, many of which are religious in nature. Fleming turns the English history into a struggle between good and evil, one in which England's secular and religious histories are closely intertwined. England's struggle to free itself from foreign intervention is often presented within a religious context, with Rome portrayed as the most serious threat to English sovereignty, both secular and religious. In Fleming's 1587 revision, all England's history is a precursor to Elizabeth's monarchy, which then becomes the triumphant realization of England's secular and religious autonomy. Mary Tudor's reign in particular emphasizes this struggle, and Fleming portrays these years as the dark night of England's collective soul before the glorious sunshine of Elizabeth's reign.⁷

Fleming, like Foxe, depicts Elizabeth as a godly ruler who ends the persecution of the elect and institutes a period of peace and prosperity (Helgerson, 260). Her role as God's chosen one is emphasized from the very beginning. On Elizabeth's birth, Fleming claims, “From that time forward (God himselfe undertaking the tuition of this yoong princesse, having predestinated hir to the accomplishment of his divine purpose) she prospered under the Lords hand, as a chosen plant of his watering” (Chronicles, 3:787). In comparing Mary's and Elizabeth's reigns, he states, “[I]t is hard to saie, whether the realme of England felt more of Gods wrath in queene Maries time, or of Gods favour and mercie in these so blessed and peaceable daies of queene Elisabeth” (4:138). In Fleming's history, Elizabeth is providentially appointed as the restorer of the true faith in England, and her reign is blessed by God.

Although the narrative of Elizabeth's reign is the longest in the “Historie of England,” it is the most incoherent and the weakest narratively. Most of the accounts of preceding monarchs, such as those of the Plantagenets and the early Tudors, were adapted from Hall. For Elizabeth's reign as well as for those of Edward VI and Mary, there is no master narrative, and therefore the accounts of their reigns are more chronicle-like, fragmented, and disorganized. Though this is not a serious problem in the narratives of Edward's and Mary's reigns, primarily because they are both so short, it does make the narrative almost incomprehensible in the parts of the history that deal with Elizabeth's reign.

Holinshed often compressed and streamlined the material that he gathered from his sources, focusing on action and often deleting extended description or dialogue. Fleming, who seems exceedingly interested in the details of pageants, processions, and other diversions, often reinserted this information in his 1587 revision. He seems particularly fascinated with descriptions of clothing and pomp, and many of his additions to the Tudor history focus on the lavish displays and pageants of the various monarchs' reigns. With the exception of Elizabeth's coronation ceremony, Holinshed tends to present brief relations of such events. For example, Holinshed summarizes Anne Boleyn's coronation in three paragraphs. Fleming, drawing from Hall, expands it with extravagant descriptions of her arrival at Westminster, the pageants presented in her honor, the clothing worn by all the participants in the event, the dinners, and the actual coronation ceremony. In the 1577 edition, Elizabeth's birth consists of one paragraph giving the date and time of her birth, the date of the christening, and the names of her godparents. Again drawing from Hall, Fleming gives a detailed description of the christening ceremony, the decorations in the church, the procession to the font, Elizabeth's christening clothes, and the various lavish gifts given her by her godparents.

Fleming's taste for the sensational and the shocking, to which he later gave full reign in the “Continuation” of the English history, is another noteworthy element of his 1587 revision. Again, his approach is strikingly different from that of Holinshed. In his account of Henry IV's reign, Holinshed refers to the Welshwomen's postbattle mutilation of dead enemies: “The shamefull villanie used by the Welshwomen towards the dead carcasses, was such, as honest eares would be ashamed to heare, and continent toongs to speake therof” (Chronicles, 3:20). Fleming obviously doesn't share Holinshed's delicacy concerning such tales, since a few pages later he includes an explicit account of the Welsh mutilation of corpses, defending his inclusion of the material by stating, “This was a verie ignominious deed, and a woorsse not committed among the barbarous: which though it make the reader to read it, and the hearer to heare it, ashamed: yet bicause it was a thing doone in open sight, and left testified in historie; I see little reason whie it should not be imparted in our mother toong to the knowledge of our owne countrimen, as well as unto strangers in a language unknown” (3:34). As in his defenses of his inclusion of portents, omens, and other examples of the bizarre or sensational, Fleming seems to anticipate censure for the material that he chose to include in the “Historie of England.” Here and elsewhere, his insistence on his readers' right to information, no matter what its character, suggests that Fleming, even more so than Holinshed, was dedicated to creating as inclusive and multivocal a text as possible.

“The Continuation of the Historie of England,” the 1587 update of the English history from 1577 to 1586, concerns those events of Elizabeth's reign that occurred after the publication of the 1577 Chronicles. Though it covers only half the time period (1576-1586) that the earlier narrative of Elizabeth's monarchy does (1558-1576), it is more than three times its length. The size of this section is due not so much to its wealth of historical information, but rather to the extensive inclusion of extraneous material such as Thynne's and Hooker's catalogues and the entire texts of royal grants, proclamations, confessions, pamphlets, speeches, entertainments, and masques. Consequently, the narrative is even more fragmented and disconnected than the earlier history of Elizabeth's regime.

Although the “Continuation” lists “John Stow and others” as the authors, textual evidence strongly suggests that Abraham Fleming was the primary author, and although Stow probably contributed substantially to the text, the actual extent of his participation is almost impossible to determine. It is fairly clear that the revision of the existing “Historie of England” was done by Fleming, since he tended to identify information that he obtained from other sources with such marginal notes as “Abraham Fleming from Edward Hall,” “Abraham Fleming from John Foxe,” or “Abraham Fleming from John Stow.” Nearly all the new references to Stow in the 1587 history appear in this form. In the “Continuation,” however, Stow's name rarely appears in the margin and never in this particular format (Dodson, 58). Fleming's claim to primary authorship is supported by the fact that he wrote and initialed the epistle at the beginning as well as the conclusion at the end of the history. The text's heavy moralizing and its focus on pageantry and entertainment as well as bizarre phenomena continue Fleming's inclusion of these elements in the revision of the 1577 history. Furthermore, the marginal notes are essentially the same in tone and sentiment as those that Fleming contributed to the revision of the existing “Historie of England.” Fleming's contributions tend to be more thoroughly developed narratively and include a significant amount of analysis, whereas those contributions of Stow's that can be positively identified are characterized by their clearness of presentation and lack of moralizing. Stow's contributions also tend to follow the chronicle format more closely in that unrelated events appear in chronological order, without attention to their relative significance to the history as a whole. Because of this, the “Continuation” is the most typical example of the chronicle genre in the later English history (Dodson, 58).

The discretion and sober responsibility of Raphael Holinshed's narrative can be fully appreciated only when one contrasts the “Continuation” to the “Historie of England” as it appeared in 1577, or even as it appeared before 1576 in the 1587 edition, which, although expanded and revised, was still shaped by Holinshed's original format. The “Continuation” gives full reign to the sensationalist accounts of portents, disturbances of nature, murders, freak accidents, and violent executions that are scattered throughout, but do not dominate, the preceding portion of the English history. Deaths caused by catastrophes such as the collapse of a scaffold at the Bear Garden or the explosion of a gunpowder house in Fetter Lane occur with notable regularity throughout the text (Chronicles, 4:504-5). Castles and ships appear in the clouds; hailstorms rain stones shaped like frogs, mattocks, swords, and skulls; the ubiquitous blazing stars stream through the skies; and, as Fleming moralizes, a rash of monstrous births “signifieth our monstrous life, which God for his mercie give us grace to amend” (4:430-32). Despite Fleming's “Epistle's” reference to this period as “the golden reigne of blessed queene Elisabeth, the sweet floure of amiable virginitie,” the ominousness of these incidents colors the historical events that are laid out in the text.

A steady parade of treason trials and executions balances Fleming's almost hysterical insistence on the intense adoration of Elizabeth's subjects for their monarch. Despite the detailed descriptions of the “Triumph of the Four Foster Children of Desire,” presented in 1581 in Elizabeth's honor; of the 1582 festivities in honor of the departure of Elizabeth's final suitor, the Duke of Alençon; and of the queen's 1578 reception in Norwich, complete with an account of the citizens' communal melancholy “proceeding from the departure of hir highnes roiall person,” the even more detailed descriptions of the trials and executions of Edmund Campion, Francis Throckmorton, William Parry, and the Babington conspirators are the defining feature of the “Continuation.” As Annabel Patterson has noted, the contrast between official celebration and official violence becomes even more ironic given the absence of truly significant matters of national concern, such as the vocal opposition of Elizabeth's marriage to the Duke of Alençon or the anti-Whitgift campaign in the 1584 and 1586 Parliaments (Patterson 1994, 70).

The realization that his choice of topics might invite critical comment did not escape Abraham Fleming, who seems well aware that much of his material is better suited to the ballad sheet or pamphlet than to a serious history. He argues, “It were better to record the receiving of the queenes maiestie into Suffolke and Norffolke, than making no commemoration therof at all, to let it perish in three halfepenie pamphlets, and so die in oblivion” (Chronicles, 4:375). A similar defense, in which Fleming justifies the moral value of his material to later generations of readers, accompanies the account of two people's suffocation by fire: “Of this lamentable accident people talked diverslie, and pamphlets were published to make the same more knowne, howbeit, to leave the certeine meanes of the event to his knowledge that understandeth and seeth all things, let it be a warning to all ages so to live, as that an honest report may attend their death, and shame flie from them as a cloud before the wind” (4:504). The “Continuation” includes not only typical pamphlet material, but often the entire texts of the original pamphlets, as in the case of the Campion trial's narrative. Fleming's desire to conserve such historical trivia is certainly in keeping with the Chronicles' contributors' efforts to provide the most comprehensive history possible, yet at times it appears that the real reason for their inclusion, and indeed the inclusion of most events in the “Continuation,” is their spectacular or sensationalist content.

The depiction of the various conspiracies, both real and imagined, against Elizabeth that constitute such a significant portion of the “Continuation” develop the underlying argument of the entire “Historie of England,” that “[t]his little Iland, God having so bountifullie bestowed his blessings upon it, that except it proove false within it selfe, no treason whatsoever can prevaile against it” (Chronicles, 4:449). The “discovery” of these various conspiracies before they could be implemented and the presentation of the general population's joy over the conspirators' arrest, as in the case of the Babington plot, illustrate this declaration of providential care and civic unity. As in the earlier history, civil unrest and internal strife are portrayed as the greatest threats to England's well-being, and Fleming's presentation of an England united behind its queen suggests that these cases of treason were an anomaly, did not reflect popular opinion against Elizabeth, and were doomed to failure. Nevertheless, the sheer number of trials in this later portion of Elizabeth's reign create a certain ambiguity within the text. The “Historie of England” includes material presenting both the government's and the defendants' point of view in these trials' accounts, and authorial sympathy appears to lie with the forces of law and order, yet the inclusion of all voices relating to the trials as well as the steady stream of violence creates a narrative that undercuts and even contradicts the textual commentary.

Such is the case in the “Continuation's” account of Edmund Campion's trial, in which Elizabeth's government maintained that Campion had died a traitor's and not a martyr's death. Was Campion executed for treason or for his religion? As in the case of Matthew Hamont, a ploughwright who was executed in 1579 “for that he denied Christ our saviour” and “bicause he spake words of blasphemie (not to be recited) against the queenes majestie and others of hir councell,” the distinction was not always clear (Chronicles, 4:405-6). Patterson has noted the interrelationship of political and religious repression during the latter half of Elizabeth's reign (Patterson 1994, 129). Under Elizabeth's “Act to Retain the Queen's Majesty's Subjects in their Due Obedience” (March 1581), which extended the treason law to cover anyone who withdrew subjects from their obedience either to the queen or to the Church of England, or who converted them “for that intent” to Roman Catholicism, treason and religious dissension would seem to be the same. Yet paradoxically, Campion's execution provoked a propaganda war in which Elizabeth's government seemed determined to prove they were not. In response to Catholic accusations both at home and abroad that Campion's only crime was his religion, Lord Burghley himself circulated two pamphlets, “The Execution of Justice in England for Maintenance of Publicke and Christian Peace, Against Certeine Stirrers of Sedition, and Adherents to the Traitors and Enemies of the Realme, without Anie Persecution of Them for Questions of Religion, As is Falslie Reported and Published by the Authors and Fosterers of Their Treason” and “A Declaration of the Favourable Dealing of Hir Majesties Commissioners Appointed for the Examination of Certeine Traitors, and of Tortures Unjustlie Reported to be Done Upon Them for Matters of Religion.” “The Execution of Justice” appeared in December 1583 and “A Declaration” soon after. The entire texts of both pamphlets are included in the 1587 account of Campion's trial, as is the text of an official pamphlet read to Campion and his confederates at the place of execution, “An Advertisment and defence for truth against all backbiters and speciallie against the whispering favourers and colorers of Campions and the rest of his confederats treason.” The inclusion of these texts would certainly imply that the chronicler's sympathies lay with the official version of the execution.

As Cyndia Clegg has noted, the Chronicles' report of Campion's trial exposed both sides of the issue to public scrutiny (Clegg 1997, 141). Not only official and officially sanctioned accounts, but also the accused men's pleas of innocence, including Campion's entire defense, as well as Catholic outcries against English justice, originally appeared in the Chronicles' account, although Fleming condemns these outcries as “libels” and “lying reports.” His accounts of the miracles that supposedly occurred after Campion's execution are also framed by accusations of falsehood: “It was bruted abroad not by men, but brute beasts, that on the selfe same daie whereon Campion was executed, the river of Thams did neither eb nor flow, but stood still. O miracle! Whether this were a lie or not, as all the world may sweare it was no truth” (Chronicles, 4:460).

Ironically, Fleming's eagerness to refute the various claims of both injustice and miraculous events resulted in the censorship of not only those claims but of his refutations as well. For although the account of the three executions remains the same, including the accused men's protestations of innocence, in the censored 1587 Chronicles, Fleming's discussion of the aftermath of the executions was completely deleted. As both Anne Castanien and Clegg have pointed out, Fleming, in seeking to refute the claims of injustice and miracles associated with Campion's death, circulated the very information that Elizabeth's government wanted the public, both at home and abroad, to forget.⁸

Both the anecdote that opens the “Continuation” and the prayer that closes it are emblematic of the violence and internal strife that permeate the “Historie of England” and thus form a suitable conclusion to the whole. The opening narrative, provided by John Stow, evokes the story of the primal murder in its depiction of a man who treacherously killed his own sibling, thinking that his crime would remain hidden: “The tenth day of November, in the citie of Worcester, a cruell and unnaturall brother (as an other Cain) murdered his owne naturall and loving brother, first smiting his braines out of his head with an ax, and after cutting his throte to make him sure, and then buried him under the earth of a chimneie … but not long after this secret murder comming to light, the murderer was rewarded according to his deserts, and to the terror of such unnaturall murthering brethren” (Chronicles, 4:343). The unnaturalness of the act, its discovery and punishment, and the warning to all other “murthering brethren” become the paradigm for the events that follow in the “Conclusion.” Fittingly, the last major incident to be recorded in its pages involves Parliament's petitions to execute Mary, Queen of Scots, for treason, Elizabeth's resistance, and her final sentence given against the Scottish queen. Abraham Fleming's concluding remarks to the “Continuation” draw one last link between treachery and family: “O Lord in vengeance give [them] the judgement of Judas, as they have beene partakers of his sinne; let them be intangled and taken in the traps of their trecheries, and swallowed up in the seas of deserved confusion, that they be no more a familie” (4:952). On 8 February, less than a month after the 1587 publication of Holinshed's Chronicles, Mary was executed for plotting the assassination of her cousin Elizabeth.

On 1 February 1587, about two weeks after its printing, the later edition of Holinshed's Chronicles was called in by the Privy Council concerning “matters of later yeers that concern the State.” The Council directed John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury, to halt further sale until the contents had been reviewed and reformed. The archbishop was to be assisted in the examination of the text by a committee composed of Thomas Randolph, Master of the Posts, a diplomat and trusted agent of the queen and Burghley; Henry Killigrew, also a diplomat and an advisor to the Earl of Leicester; and Dr. John Hammond, a member of the Court of High Commission, as well as any others he might think appropriate.⁹

The resulting corrections in the “Historie of England” excised Francis Thynne's “A Discourse of the Earls of Leicester,” “A treatise of the Lords Cobham,” “The Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury,” “A Catalogue of the Lord Wardens of the Cinque Ports,” and a biography of all Scottish kings named James. Accounts of the execution of Edmund Campion; the departure of the Duke of Alençon for the Netherlands; Francis Drake's return from the Caribbean; the deaths of Henry, Mary, and Philip Sidney; the Earl of Leicester's first visit to the Netherlands; and the discovery, trial, and execution of the Babington conspirators were also severely revised and condensed.

One of the more noteworthy elements of the Chronicles' censorship is the lack of public records concerning any incidents of search, seizure, or punishment. No records exist of interviews with the transgressing publishers or authors or of the imposition of any penalties (Castanien, 12). Apparently, the expurgation took place without any incident, and the revisions appear to have been completed quickly.

Because of the lack of public records, the reasons behind the castration of the Chronicles remain unknown, although a number of theories have been advanced. Patterson believes that the Privy Council's fear that the uncensored text could produce the wrong sort of reaction among sections of the public led to the Chronicles' censorship (Patterson 1994, 234). Elizabeth Story Donno has argued that those passages relating to the Sidneys were excised because of the queen's hostility toward Sir Philip, stemming from his activities in the Netherlands, while those relating to the Earl of Leicester may have been motivated by the earl's own concern for his public reputation (Donno 1987, 239, 242-44). Castanien believes that a number of reasons existed for the various expurgations, depending on the particular site of censorship. Regarding the censorship of Campion's trial, she argues that Fleming, in seeking to refute the claims of injustice and miracles associated with Campion's death, circulated the very information that Elizabeth's government wanted the public to forget. The timing of this was particularly crucial, for although Campion had died five years earlier, at the time of the publication of the 1587 Chronicles, England was faced with a similarly awkward situation in the case of Mary, Queen of Scots (Castanien, 275-78). She notes that those excisions relating to the Earl of Leicester's activities may have been ordered in response to the earl's own desire to reduce the emphasis on entertainment and make him seem more efficient and responsible as a military commander (271-72). On the other hand, G. J. R. Parry argues that the Earl of Leicester's 1586 campaign in the Netherlands may merely have been a casualty of the Privy Council's censorship of Francis Thynne's catalogue of the earls of Leicester, which indiscreetly emphasized their royal descent and political importance. Parry notes that most of John Stow's narrative concerning Leicester was reprinted and even expanded in his 1592 Annals and that it remained uncensored in that format. The removal of Thynne's catalogue involved a major revision of Stow's contribution, which Stow complained of later as being “left out through the evil dealing of some” (Parry, 1987b, 637-38). Clegg argues that the expurgations reveal a unifying theme in that they address the representation of English justice and law, and of England's respect for the sovereign rights of other countries. Clegg has also pointed out that the 1587 Chronicles was printed under royal privilege, suggesting that it enjoyed a status different from that of other texts censored by Elizabeth's government, and that its censorship and revision reflected the government's efforts to construct a favorable domestic and international image. Materials judged to jeopardize England's international image were ordered deleted or revised (Clegg 1997, 138).

For some excisions, no explanation seems possible except that they may have been casualties of the revision process, as Parry has argued in reference to Stow's account of the Earl of Leicester. The reviser's practice of removing whole sheets of paper rather than individual leaves may explain their removal. The revising editor appears to have compressed and modified the existing text to fit whatever sheets were reprinted, and some items may have been sacrificed in the process. Castanien has noted some of the material deleted from the Chronicles consists of apparently innocuous anecdotes that seem to pose no political problems, although these narratives may have had a contemporary significance lost to modern readers (Castanien, 138-39). As with the more politically volatile material that was censored, the continually shifting political climate that characterized Elizabeth's reign may have made unacceptable material that the Chronicles' authors had included in good faith.

The “Historie of England” held up to its English audience a mirror in which they could view themselves in terms of not only their contemporary situation but their historical past as well. It incorporated into a single narrative the traditions, legends, and facts that both molded and defined them as Englishmen. It gave them a sense of what it was to be English by depicting the common history that united them despite the divided religious and political loyalties that were driving them apart. As Richard Helgerson has stated, “Chronicle was the Ur-genre of national self-representation. More than any other discursive form, chronicle gave Tudor Englishmen a sense of their national identity” (Helgerson, 11). By supplying the means to interpret and evaluate their past, the “Historie of England” enabled its readers to discover for themselves the essence of that identity.

Notes

1. For varying arguments concerning Holinshed's portrait of Richard II, see H. A. Kelly, Divine Providence in the England of Shakespeare's Histories (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), 139-42, and Patterson [Annabel Patterson, Reading Holinshed's Chronicles (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994)], 112-17.

2. I disagree with F. J. Levy's assertion that Holinshed's sole purpose was to supply a moral lesson. In fact, the “Historie of England” contains important elements of what Levy terms the “politic history.” See Levy [F. J. Levy, Tudor Historical Thought (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library Press, 1967)], 184, 237-85.

3. Both Annabel Patterson's Reading Holinshed's Chronicles and Liam Miller and Eileen Power's introduction to Holinshed's Irish Chronicle provide detailed discussions of the 1577 woodcuts. See Patterson, 1994, 56-57; and Miller and Power [Liam Miller and Eileen Power, Holinshed's Irish Chronicle (Atlantic Highlands, N. J.: Humanities Press, 1979)], xvii-xviii.

4. John Guy, Tudor England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 247; hereafter cited in text.

5. See R. Mark Benbow, “The Providential Theory of Historical Causation in Holinshed's Chronicles: 1577 and 1587,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 1 (1959): 264-76; as well as Dodson [Sarah Dodson, “Abraham Fleming, Writer and Editor,” University of Texas Studies in English 34 (1955): 51-60], and Donno [Elizabeth Story Donno, “Abraham Fleming: A Learned Corrector in 1586-87,” Studies in Bibliography 42 (1989): 200-11], 1989.

6. Richard Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 252; hereafter cited in text.

7. Although I do not agree with all of Benbow's analysis, I do believe that he is correct in pointing out the teleological nature of the 1587 “Historie of England.”

8. See Anne Castanien, “Censorship and Historiography in Elizabethan England: The Expurgation of Holinshed's Chronicles,” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Davis, 1970), 277-78. See also Clegg [Cyndia Susan Clegg, “The Review and Reform of Holinshed's Chronicles: ‘Reporte of matters of later years that concern the State’,” in Press Censorship in Elizabethan England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)], 143-45.

9. Acts of the Privy Council, 1586-1587, ed. J. R. Dasent (London, 1890-1907), vol. xiv, 311-12; hereafter cited in text as APC, followed by volume and page numbers.