In 1586, a thirty-five-year-old schoolmaster named William Camden published an historical and geographical description of the British Isles entitled Britannia. The book was to be immensely successful: six editions in Latin, each one larger than the previous, were published in England during the author's lifetime; and there were continental editions as well. An English translation, made with the help of the author, appeared in 1610, and was reprinted in 1637; a new edition was published in 1695, and was reprinted several times during the eighteenth century; and still another edition appeared in 1789, with a reprint at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Each generation of antiquaries, it would seem, summed up their work in a new and enlarged Britannia.¹ That such a book as Camden's should be popular in England is not, on the whole, too surprising. Yet the highest praises of all came from the continent, from scholars such as Justus Lipsius and J.J. Scaliger: “the British Strabo”, they named Camden, and in an age which prized its classics, there could be no greater eulogy.

That first edition, which in this essay is the only one which concerns us, was a modest book. A small and rather ugly octavo of around 550 pages, unillustrated, and with the type closely packed on the pages, the little volume was emphatically not one of the triumphs of Elizabethan book-making. It was only when the revolutionary nature of the book became apparent, and when that novelty led to popularity, that the outward appearance of the Britannia began to take on a kind of dignity.

Wherein lay the novelty? It may be argued that Camden's Britannia was the first book to introduce into England the latest continental methods of scholarship; and this is true. Yet this fact serves best to explain the acclamation of the scholars, English and continental. The average Englishman—and a good many thousands of these bought copies—was more affected by Camden's alterations in the history of Britain, by Camden's comments on his predecessors, by what he deemed worthy of inclusion and what he damned by exclusion.

The generally accepted history of England was composed of two traditions, that of the British History of Geoffrey of Monmouth and that derived from a whole range of chroniclers beginning with the Romans and continuing through the middle ages. In recent years, there has been a good deal of discussion concerning Geoffrey's version of history: this has concentrated on two points, the story of Brutus and his descendants (that is, the pre-Roman history of the island), and the story of King Arthur. The Tudor “Battle of the Books” revolved around those two very debatable figures.² The defenders of Brutus and of Arthur generally held that if Geoffrey were right in one place, then there was a good case for his being right in others. But while these may have been the crucial centers for argumentation, they were not the only ones. Geoffrey had written a history of the island which included the events of the Roman Conquest as well. Surely here, if anywhere, the methods of historical criticism could prevail. It is at this place, then, that Camden attacked Geoffrey. The Britannia had been begun as an attempt to elucidate Roman names in the island; the very title of the book is the name of the Roman province. It was patently necessary for Camden to reconstruct the history of Roman Britain.

Such a reconstruction of the main lines of the history of Roman Britain, drawn from the works of Camden's immediate predecessors, would begin with Julius Caesar's invasions. This is not to say that the Britons had not earlier influenced the Romans. Brennus, the early Gaulish spoliator of the republic, was a Briton; and the old chronicles identified this Brennus with the one who invaded Greece. Robert Fabyan, the London citizen turned chronicler, had already cast doubt on this at the beginning of the century: Geoffrey's story did not jibe well with that of Livy. Despite Fabyan and Polydore Vergil—an Italian resident in England who did his best to overthrow a whole army of legends—Brennus lived on.³ Julius Caesar, it seems hardly necessary to add, had not done well on his trips to Britain. Both times (or, as Hardyng has it, on all three), the Britons were more than his match, though on his second voyage he was able to patch up a peace whereby the Britons paid a tribute for the privillege of being left alone.⁴ Everyone who has read Caesar's Commentaries knows that the Roman had his share of difficulties with the unpredictable weather of the Channel; it is not until one reads the chronicles that one learns that Cassibelaunus, the British king, destroyed his fleet.

It is, however, true that Caesar never conquered the island, and that it was not until the reign of Claudius that a serious attempt was made. Claudius and his commanders went a fair way to the conquest of Britain; but, according to the English story, Arviragus, the king of the Britons, was not defeated but was received in amity by the Roman emperor, and the latter sealed the friendship by marrying his daughter, Genissa, to the Briton. Raphael Holinshed, in his rather cautions way, tells us that the Galfridian part of the story is suspect, but repeats it anyway, though he gives another, parallel, account drawn from Roman sources. Such caution was already a little tardy: Fabyan, long before, had pointed out discrepancies, attributing them to Geoffrey's habit of aggrandizing his countrymen: “for he was a Bryton, he shewed the beste for Brytons.” And Polydore Vergil had launched a full-scale attack on the story:

But trulie, whereas Claudius, accordinge to Suetonius, of three wives had these doughters, Claudia, Octavia, and Antonia, commaundinge Claudia, not begotten bie him, to be caste beefore the dores of her mother Herculanilla, whome hee had devorced, mareinge Antonia to Cneius Pompeius the Great and successivelie to Faustus Silla, two noble yong menn, and his other doughter Octavia to his sonne in lawe Nero, surelie it is as unlikelie to bee beeleeved as unsemelie to bee saide that Claudius showld geeve his doughter Genissa in mariage to Arviragus.⁵

It was not long after these events had taken place that Christianity was first introduced to England, and that by no less a figure than St. Joseph of Arimathea. That Vespasian would have encouraged such a development is hard to believe, but the chroniclers insist that such was the case. In fairness, it ought to be noted that this legend cannot be traced to Geoffrey: it was the product of the monks of Glastonbury who insisted that the saint was the founder of their house.⁶ On this point, at any rate, there was little doubt: no one in Tudor England ever thought to try to discredit the story, and the proofs for it (since exact documentation was obviously lacking) were frequently both ingenious and learned. Moreover, such an early advent of Christianity to the island had its uses in religious controvery and so the legend remained inviolable.

The only difficulty seems to have been that it was necessary to reconcile the story of St. Joseph with another tale equally well beloved, the bringing of Christianity to King Lucius. This time there is Galfridian authority for Lucius' sending to Rome for enlightenment, and Pope Eleutherius' sending of two missioners, Faganus and Damianus, who converted the already eager king and who also established three archbishoprics in England. At a later date, the story had been embellished with a letter from the Pope to the king which seemed to imply that the English church had privileges independent of those of the Papacy. That this story, too, should be popular with Protestant controversialists is hardly a surprise; and again the usefulness of the legend protected it from attack. It was not until the nineteenth century that Lucius and Eleutherius were finally driven from the stage of history.

It would, of course, be possible to extend this account of the rather peculiar version of the history of Roman Britain even further. Geoffrey listed a great many kings of the island who were unknown to the Roman historians, and in the case of each of them, a conflict might develop between the British History and the Roman one. This is precisely what occurred, especially for that time when the Roman Empire was in decline and confusion was rampant. Carausius was a case in point; so was Asclepiodotus; the former was a real Emperor whose story was embellished, the latter was pure invention.

Two points, it would seem, have become reasonably clear from this brief description of the distortions suffered by the history of the Roman province. The first is the obvious one that straightening the fabric of history was to be a task of major proportions. The second is that the task had already been undertaken long before Camden ever began to write, indeed before he was born. The Italian Polydore Vergil was the most diligent as well as the most perspicacious of the critics of Geoffrey and all his works, but he was a foreigner whose love for his adopted country was open to doubt. There is no need, at this point, to recall the many attacks on the memory of the Italian. Suffice it to say that, just because Polydore attacked all of Geoffrey, he was in his own turn the subject of abuse. Men had no wish to save Geoffrey's handling of the Romans, except insofar as his veracity had to be defended generally. Their motives were much more clear when the subject of the attack was a personage such as King Arthur, whose cult was intertwined with the cult of the Tudor dynasty itself.

Even leaving Polydore to one side, it is still noteworthy how many Tudor historians found that Geoffrey could not be swallowed entire. Some merely pointed out the inconsistencies, printed both stories, and then allowed the reader to decide for himself. Others went further. It is interesting to notice that John Stow, in the edition of his Summarie of Englyshe Chronicles dated 1565, gave his readers most of the old story; when the book was reissued in 1570, many more classical sources had been used, most of the British material had been cut away, and even the story of Arthur had been reduced in bulk. Later still, Stow went out to investigate matters for himself rather than trust to chroniclers who anyway disagreed among themselves; but perhaps it is indicative that what he sought to elucidate was the exact location of the hill near Bath at which Arthur fought his last battle.⁷ In short, because Geoffrey's history of Roman Britain was his weakest point, it was here that his defences were first penetrated; because Camden's own interests led him to the study of Roman Britain, it was at this point that his attack on the old legends centered. But the weakness had been visible to all for a long while, and in this matter at least Camden had numerous predecessors.

There can be little doubt that the British History needed revision, or even, perhaps, supersession. It is now time to examine the various influences operating on William Camden, influences which would push him to undertake such a revision. It is, however, necessary as a preliminary to decide just what kind of a book the Britannia was. To begin with, its author was convinced that he was not writing a history:

How, in the course of this war, Titus rescu'd his father Vespasian from imminent danger, when he was closely besieg'd by the Britains; and how a snake twisted round him at that time, without doing him any harm, which he interpreted an omen of being afterwards Emperor; these things you may learn from Dio and Forcatulus.

I, confining myself to my own Province, shall begin with the west-side of this Country; and, having first survey'd the sea-coasts, and the rivers that fall into the Ocean, shall then pass to the inland parts.⁸

A contemporary definition of history will indicate that Camden was certainly correct in his view:

Hystories bee made of deedes done by a publique weale, or agaynst a publique weale, and such deedes, be eyther deedes of warre, of peace, or else of sedition and conspiracie. Agayne, euery deede, be it priuate, or publique must needs be done by some person, for some occasion, in sometyme, and place, with meanes & order, and with instruments, all which circumstaunces are not to be forgotten of the writer, and specially those that haue accompanyed and brought the deede to effect.⁹

History, in short, must be a kind of web, in which effects follow causes, and in which the whole development of a situation—a political situation—is readily visible. The Britannia is not that. It is, instead, a geographical and historical description or, to use the contemporary term, a chorography. The idea itself dates back to the ancients, and a concise definition can be found in the Geography of Ptolemy:

Chorography is most concerned with what kinds of places those are which it describes, not how large they are in extent. Its concern is to paint a true likeness, and not merely to give exact position and size. Geography looks at the position rather than the quality, noting the relation of distances everywhere, and emulating the art of painting only in some of its major descriptions. Chorography needs an artist, and no one presents it rightly unless he is an artist.¹⁰

Ptolemy is concerned to differentiate chorography from geography; we wish to differentiate it from history. Painting a true likeness of a locality is to be done by description, but it is also to be done by giving the history of the area. A proper picture of a town gives us its history as well at its lineaments; but this local history need not be connected to national history and, indeed, the canvas would become too large to be manageable were the painter to try to make such connections. Chorography, in brief, is a new genre, partaking of aspects of the older ones of geography and history, but not identical with either.

As was the case with most such innovations, modern chorography was born in Italy. The first of the works in the new method was Flavio Biondo's Italia Illustrata, written some time around the middle of the fifteenth century and first published in 1474. Biondo, a little earlier, had written a chorography of Rome, but it was the book about Italy that proved the most influential. In the guise of an antiquarian tour, Italia Illustrata described northern Italy, dividing the country up into its fourteen ancient regions. First, the travelers journeyed up the coasts, then they went up the various rivers. In each place, Biondo mentions the history, the famous people, the nobles. Prefaced to the whole was a discussion of the various ancient views of the origins of the Italians and a general description of the country with an investigation of the various changes and divisions which had occurred. For Biondo—who wrote a history of Italy from the fall of the Roman Empire—there was no such thing as a long sleep: he used whatever medieval material came to hand.¹¹

Biondo had something of a reputation as a difficult writer: his style was not as classical as the times might have wished. While this did not prevent contemporaries from reading him—and from borrowing wholesale from his works—nevertheless the burgeoning popularity of the new genre must be attributed to the writings of Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, Pope Pius II, Biondo's friend and patron, whose own geographical works, based in form on those of Biondo, achieved high popularity. Before the fifteenth century was over, Conrad Celtis had tried to write, or at least to organize the writing of, a Germania Illustrata; that work was never finished in the form which Celtis had intended, but fragments were published. Lesser German writers produced chorographies of specific “provinces” of Germany, and these were eagerly read even outside the country. To explain all this, it is perhaps necessary to add that this is a period of growing patriotism; a writer in the form not only found himself in the forefront of the new humanism but also could pride himself on doing honor to his native land.¹² Both of these motives were to be operative in England as well.

Thus, the form of Camden's Britannia was a borrowing from the continent: he had certainly read Biondo and he knew the owrk of the various Germans.¹³ Some of the techniques used in the writing were borrowed as well. Antiquarianism, which, following Professor Momigliano, we may define as a topical arrangement of historical data rather than a chronological one, had developed at the same time and frequently among the same men as chorography.¹⁴ The first collections of inscriptions were formed and published; scholars such as Beatus Rhenanus—again widely read in England—made use of them to illustrate the history of the Romans in north Europe. The influence of Guillaume Budé's work on classical coinage too was immense: by working out the relative values of the various Greek and Roman coins—frequently by weighing actual examplars—Budé had set the study of the economics of the Empire on a firm basis. His use of literary and archaeological evidence in combination was to serve as a useful example to the scholars of the later sixteenth century, especially in Italy, but in the north as well.¹⁵

Such ideas, essentially derived from the Italian Quattrocento, were circulating all over Europe. Certain native influences were felt by Camden as well. The “Discovery of England” which was going on throughout the Tudor period was, in a sense, almost over by the time that Camden wrote: his own treatise, it might be said, was almost the last work of the old order as well as the first of the new.¹⁶ The names of John Leland, William Harrison, William Lambarde and the rest at once come to mind as predecessors whose work was absorbed in Camden's The patriotism already rampant in sixteenth century Europe caught up these men and swept them along, and the already strong tide was made stronger still by the coming of the Reformation. A national church constituted strong encouragement to a nascent feeling of nationalism—and vice-versa.

The motives of the early explorers of Tudor England are not open to much question. It is rather more difficult to decide just what it was that they intended to accomplish. Setting aside Harrison, whose description of England (written for Holinshed), delightful though it is, is for the most part derivative—he seems to have worked it up from Leland's notes and from some rudimentary maps, though he did use some classical sources—it would seem that the early topographers were, on the whole, all attempting the same thing. John Leland's purpose was, until relatively recently, a matter of conjecture, but the problem seems to have been solved by the discovery that the list of projected works, printed by his friend John Bale, is full of ghosts.¹⁷ An analysis of his intentions seems to indicate that, besides wishing to save what he could of monastic culture and besides working on a map of England, his projects were five in number: a book on the topography of Britain, another identifying the English place names in classical authors, a third on the chorography of Britain (county by county) “whereof each one, seuerally shall containe the beginninges, encreases, and memorable actes of the chieve Townes and Castles of the Prouince allotted to it”, a fourth describing the various islands around Britain, and a fifth on the royal and noble families of Britain. An examination of the Britannia will show at once that Camden's work was to contain all that Leland wished to do. Leland himself did no more than collect notes, afterwards published as his Itinerary and Collectanea; before he could make any use of them, he sank into madness. The notes were, however, used by all the antiquaries of the century (except, I think, Humphrey Lhuyd), and the material in them was fairly well known even though they were not published until the eighteenth century.

William Lambarde is best known today as the author of the first English county history, The Perambulation of Kent; he was also one of the first Anglo-Saxon scholars in the country, as well as the author of a number of legal manuals well-known to his contemporaries. But we ought to remember that the history and description of the county of Kent was originally intended to be only the first of a series which was, in the end, to cover all the counties of England. One substantial volume—and that of his home county—decided Lambarde that the task was too great for any one man to accomplish, at least on the scale he had projected. The decision to abandon the whole series was not, however, made until after Lambarde had accumulated a mountain of geographical and historical notes. That collection was not published until 1730, but it is clear that Camden had access to it.¹⁸ How he obtained that access remains mysterious: the famous letter from Lambarde to Camden, in which the older man praises the younger by saying that “I seem to my self not to have known Kent, till I knew Camden”, and in which he invites Camden down to Kent to look at his papers, is dated 1585, and was not written until the Britannia was all but finished.¹⁹ Camden had seen some of Lambarde's notes long before that. Lambarde's descriptions of most of the towns are drawn from Leland; since Camden had his own access to Leland's manuscripts through the London chronicler John Stow, this was not of much help. Lambarde also made some attempt to identify Roman names; the accuracy of the attempt is not notable, and again Camden had access to more careful investigations. But Lambarde included too the Saxon names, and here he was on better ground: there was, at the time, probably no man in England better qualified in matters relating to the Anglo-Saxons than the pupil of the pioneer Saxonist Laurence Nowell, and the editor of the Anglo-Saxon laws.

An examination of The Perambulation of Kent and the work which later was called the Dictionarium Angliae Topographicum & Historicum makes it certain that Lambarde originally intended to do much the same sort of thing that had been in the mind of Leland earlier. In both cases, the scope of the enterprise was too large, and it remained unfinished. The Breuiary of Britayne by Humphrey Lhuyd went too far in the other direction. Written originally at the request of the Flemish geographer Ortelius, the work ended by being a brief apologia for Geoffrey of Monmouth. In any event, Lhuyd, a Welsh Catholic, had left the matter too late: by the time that he was ready to write, he was already dying, and there is no way of knowing whether the finished product is all that he intended to do, or whether it is the hurried writing of a man who feels his end impending. Lhuyd's letters to Ortelius imply the latter, and some knowledge of what the Fleming hoped for in a chorography goes further in bolstering such a view.²⁰ The Breuiary consisted of a brief tour of the island, very little of which seems to have been drawn from personal experience; whenever the occasion called for it, the author took advantage to plead the cause of Brutus and of Arthur, and to attack the lying Polydore and the slanderous Scots who had impugned his precious Britons.²¹ To a Welshman, the British History was much more sacred than it was to an Englishman, let alone an Italian or a Scotsman. Lhuyd did, however, try to identify Roman towns; more relevantly, he frequently gave the British—that is, the Welsh—name of the towns. In this, he had a distinct advantage over the Englishmen who had no acquaintance with any of the Celtic languages still spoken in the islands, and when one recollects that much of the identification of place-names was through a kind of matching game in which Roman names and English or British names were the counters, this matter becomes one of importance.

The explorers of England were but one of the native influences working upon Camden and his immediate contemporaries. The English Reformation had repercussions on the writing of history which also were felt by the generation that grew to maturity after 1558. The English Church, following the lead of the Lutherans, took the view that the Reformation was quite literally a return to the practices of the primitive church, with the corollary that all that had been done since the days of the first four councils had moved the Catholic Church more and more deeply into toils of Satan. The result was that the history of the church in the middle ages had to be rewritten. The relevant materials were collected by Matthias Flacius Illyricus and his collaborators in the Magdeburg Centuries; they were aided by the Englishman John Bale and, later, by Archbishop Parker. It was Flacius Illyricus too who advised Parker to write an English church history of his own, a task which Parker fulfilled in his lives of the archbishops, but which was done with more lasting effect by Parker's friend John Foxe in his Acts and Monuments, better known as the Book of Martyrs. The increasing degradation of the Catholic Church was, however, only one prong of the English attack: proving that point gave the English an excuse for reformation but not for schism. It was necessary as well to prove that the English Church had always been a national church, that it had always had some sort of independence of the Papacy, even if that independence was sometimes a little difficult to demonstrate. Parker and the other apologists ended by stating that the first churches in England had been independent—hence their insistance on King Lucius (or even on Joseph of Arimathea, who, whatever else his credentials, certainly had not been sent by the Pope)—and that that independence had gradually disappeared as a part of that corruption which had undermined the fabric of Roman Christianity generally. The part that St. Augustine played in the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons was minimized; and even when it had to be granted that the Anglo-Saxon church had some connections with the Papacy, its independence was stressed. The great days of the original Ecclesia Anglicana ended with the Norman Conquest, partially because of the Conqueror's debt to Rome (though his resistance to Roman encroachments was pointed out with pride), more especially because the arch-fiend Gregory VII enforced his will on the entire body of organized Christendom. Gregory's sins had been two-fold: he had humbled the Emperor, thus forcing the church into the secular sphere; and he had enforced celibacy of the clergy (or, rather, he had invented that doctrine), thus leading to scandal. Those two steps put the Catholic Church irrevocably in the power of the Devil; and there it had remained until the reformers of the sixteenth century had rescued it.²²

The effects of all this on historical scholarship in England were two. In the first place, the revision of English church history required documentation. The relevant chronicles were still in manuscript, and Parker decided that they had to be made available in print. Finding the manuscripts proved to be more difficult than anticipated, but a determined search by the archbishop—aided by the Privy Council—located a goodly number. Those dating from the later middle ages could be published without more ado, but as our sketch of the revised history shows, these are also the least important. Late manuscripts do little more than demonstrate the ever-growing depravity of the Roman church. The crucial point needing proof was that of early independence. Here, manuscripts were not only scarce but were in an unknown tongue. It was due to Parker and to his assistants that Anglo-Saxon was revived in any effective way. Taught by Laurence Nowell, a cleric with close connections to Lord Burghley, Parker and his secretary, John Joscelyn, learned the strange tongue of their ancestors and published a series of crucial documents on the early English church. It will be remembered that it was this same Nowell who taught William Lambarde and then made him his literary executor, leaving him all his manuscripts. One result, then, of the new church history was the dissemination of a new language and the publication for the first time of a sizeable number of hitherto little-known chroniclers.²³

The second result was less direct, and it may be argued that it was as much cause as effect. The establishment of an independent English church was a part of a general European “nationalistic” movement. “This realm of England is an empire”, said one of the crucial acts of Henry VIII's Reformation Parliament, and the same act had adduced as proof for the statement “divers sundry old authentic histories and chronicles”. The direct point of the act was, of course, that Englishmen's loyalties should not be divided between King and Pope. The tradition involved here is considerably more complicated. It had been argued—and that long before the Reformation—that on the fall of the Roman Empire, the powers of the emperor had passed to the various kings of Europe. All of them were equal. This equality of the rulers was, in fact, one of the reasons for the popularity of the myth of the Trojans: the Romans had claimed descent from Aeneas, the rulers of the north then in their turn claimed descent from the children of Aeneas—in that way, all were equally noble in their heritage. The movement in favor of the translatio imperii was naturally strongest in Germany, where a visible emperor still reigned; and an excuse was found for the doctrine in the saying Die Deutschen sind also edel wie die Römer. Such a feeling need not be localized. The King of England felt himself to be the equal of the Emperor: each of them was equally an heir of the Roman Empire.²⁴

The Reformation was only one stage of the battle for imperial rights, though it was probably the most important. It can readily be seen that this theory fits in well with Parker's revised church history, a history which emphasizes the uniqueness of the English church in the same way as the translatio imperii (or its sixteenth century equivalent) emphasizes the uniqueness of the English state. What is perhaps more relevant to us here is that the theory focuses attention on the Roman Empire, and it is this fact that lies behind the rash of chorographies each entitled with the name of one of the former Roman provinces. One such is the Britannia.

Certain general movements of thought in Tudor England were bound to affect the growing Camden. Finding an explanation for Camden's interest in antiquities is rather more of a puzzle. His autobiography consists of a page of dates; it is helpful in fixing chronology but not in determining motives.²⁵ The introduction to the Britannia and the Ad Lectorem appended to the fifth edition (1600) are both vague. Camden tells us that he had been love with antiquities since boyhood. One wonders why the son of the painter-stainer Sampson Camden should have been. That love grew throughout the years at school and at Oxford, but it is not until his last years at the university that we have any indication of an influence that would explain such a frenzy for the past. Thomas Cooper, later a bishop, was the author of a chronicle and of a Latin dictionary; he was in no sense a critical historian, but at least his interests and those of his pupil were similar. But by the time that Camden came within Cooper's orbit, there is every sign that the young student had already decided on his life's work, and it was probably this fact which explains why Cooper took him up. The fundamental question of how Camden came to be an antiquary must remain unsettled.²⁶

At the conclusion of his Oxford career, Camden was nominated for a fellowship at All Souls' College; the honour was denied him because of the Catholic sympathies of the fellows. In 1571, he left Oxford, and it was not until 1575 that he took up his duties as undermaster at Westminster School. What he did in the intervening four years remains a mystery. He tells us that he traveled over much of England, but details are lacking: the autobiography, which later records his itineraries, is silent here. Only one letter survives from these years, a letter from John Dee to Camden, answering a series of questions, and mentioning that John Stow acted as an intermediary between the two.²⁷ It is perfectly clear that Camden had some sort of historical or geographical work in mind even at this early date; but it is impossible even to surmise its nature. In the later editions of the Britannia he quotes from a history of England, in Latin, which, he tells us, he had worked on in his youth; it does not appear in the first edition, and there is no way of knowing when it was actually written.²⁸ Notes for such a history exist in manuscript; but the same notes could also have been used for the introductory sections of the Britannia.²⁹ It would occasion some surprise for us to think that Camden had been preparing to write a Britannia from his earliest youth; nonetheless, it seems just possible that this is so.

There is no question that, if such were his intent, he made the right friends for it. Sir Philip Sidney had encouraged him when both were at Oxford;³⁰ one wonders if it was through Sidney that Camden later obtained such easy access to the house and collections of Lord Burghley. Richard Carew of Antony, who helped Camden with his account of Cornwall and who later wrote his own chorography of that county, was a contemporary of both Sidney and Camden at Oxford; so was Richard Hakluyt the Younger. There is at least the possibility that he met Henry Ferrars of Badsley, the Warwickshire antiquary who later helped him with Coventry, and Nicholas Roscarrock, a Catholic from Cornwall, at Oxford as well. Camden thus established the nucleus of a group of friends who were to prove invaluable when local details were needed for the work which was in progress.

It may, however, be argued that the friendships Camden made in London proved even more valuable. Dean Goodman of Westminster seems to have helped him financially: the salary of an undermaster was trifling. Perhaps more important were the friendships with most of the prominent antiquaries of the day. John Stow provided an introduction to Dr. Dee; it was also Stow who had in his possession the manuscripts of Leland. Camden, one is inclined to think, looked down on Stow a little: the London antiquary and historian was self-taught and never had at his command the technical training of which the university-trained Camden was master.³¹ Moreover, Stow was basically an annalist, though a careful one; and there is some slight evidence that the increasing sophistication of his work was due to the younger man. Dr. John Dee, for all his notoriety as a magician, was also a first-rate mathematician; more to the point, he was an enthusiastic “imperialist”, with a superb collection of manuscripts to prove his points. Access to Dee's library would, in itself, constitute a useful achievement; but Dee was also the acquaintance of half the scholars of Europe, and it was probably through him that Camden met Ortelius when the Fleming visited England in 1577. Moreover, Dee was an acquaintance of Sidney's, and had his connections at Court: we see the circle of friends closing once more.³²

There were other men in London whom it was useful to know. Robert Glover, Somerset herald, had, in his visitations, accumulated a vast amount of genealogical information, as well as information of a more general sort. Camden certainly had access to it. Thomas Talbot not only collected notes but was in a position to be of much help to a young antiquary who prided himself on his use of records: he was clerk of the records in the Tower, then one of the great depositories of government papers. Camden seems to have used his papers as well as his influence: he refers to the assistance he received from Talbot in compiling the lists of high nobles which end each chapter of the Britannia.³³ With the exception of Archbishop Parker's circle—no evidence of direct contact can be found here, though Dee recommended Parker's work on the archbishops to Camden—Camden seems to have known everyone in London in a position to help him in his task.

Some time around 1580, Camden made contact with another group most of whose members were a few years younger than he and most of whom had some connection with Oxford. It is possible that he had met Henry Savile when both of them were at Oxford; but the central person in this new group of friends was Henry's younger brother, Thomas. We know all too little about Thomas Savile. A fellow of Merton College and later of Eton—here he followed in Henry's footsteps—his interests, as far as they can be reconstructed, were unusually wide. He corresponded with John Rainolds, a Greek scholar and later one of James' translators of the Bible, on religious matters; a letter from Tycho Brahe on astronomical subjects is extant; so too are stray letters from other continental scholars, most of them concerned with scientific and literary matters; and finally, there is a series of letters to and from Camden, and to and from the French jurist Jean Hotman.³⁴ Hotman, the son of the legal antiquary and propagandist François Hotman, was another of the group of friends. He had begun his career as tutor to the children of the English ambassador in Paris; then he had come to England, and eventually went into the service of the Earl of Leicester as secretary.³⁵ Still another of the group was Henry Cuffe, best known today as one of the Earl of Essex's evil advisors, but previously highly respected as professor of Greek at Oxford.³⁶ The whole group had certain interests in common: the study of Greek was one (it will be remembered that Camden composed the standard Greek grammar of the period); the study of Tacitus was another. There was frequent talk of politics: Jean Hotman, as a member of the Leicester circle since 1581, shared his patron's dislike of the possible marriage of the Duke of Alençon with Queen Elizabeth—a view which Sir Philip Sidney, who probably procured Hotman the position with Leicester in the first place, shared. On this last matter, at least, Camden was less certain: it may be that his connections with Lord Burghley, who favored the marriage, stopped him from whole-hearted agreement with his friends.³⁷

Through this group of friends, Camden became more aware of what was being done outside England. He himself never left the country of his birth; but Hotman was well-known in France and, later, in the Low Countries; Thomas Savile traveled widely on the continent; and Alberico Gentile, who taught civil law at Oxford, another friend of the whole group, was an Italian.³⁸ More especially, Camden and Thomas Savile shared an interest in English antiquities. For a time, one almost has the feeling that the Britannia was to be a joint labor. Perhaps Savile's interests were too wide to allow him to devote himself unreservedly to one task; in any event, he gave Camden as much aid as he could. They exchanged books and manuscripts: Savile had a copy of Lambarde's notes which he forwarded to Camden (who may, indeed, have seen it earlier); Camden had a copy of Robert Talbot's tentative identifications of some of the towns of the Antonine Itineraries and sent it to Savile.³⁹ Together they tried to improve the identifications: Savile gave advice concerning Cataractonium and Camulodunum, concerning the location of the Iceni and the Cangi (this last in an attempt to clear up a passage in Tacitus).⁴⁰ And it was the Savile family which invited Camden to visit them at their home near Halifax in 1582, when Camden made a journey he describes as “Iter Eboracense per Suffolciam, et reditus per Lancastriam Aprili”.⁴¹ Savile lived on until 1593, though for some reason the correspondence stopped well before that date; so did the correspondence with Hotman, though that was taken up again many years later. What, if anything, happened to bring it to a halt I do not know; Camden remained on good terms with Savile's brothers. For a few years, however, he had found a group of friends whose interests were similar to his own, who were fascinated by antiquities but who were scholars in the classics as well.

Whether one should include Camden in the circle of men around Sir Philip Sidney remains a question. He was obviously not a member of the “Areopagus”; equally obviously he did not move in the same social circles. Yet the two men had a number of friends in common. Alberico Gentili, who had connections with the group around Savile, had also been an acquaintance of Sidney; Jean Hotman, who had received his Oxford degree on the same day as Gentili, knew Sidney as well. Daniel Rogers, the diplomat and antiquary whose papers Camden used, and who had himself once projected a history of the Roman province in Britain, had known Sidney in his diplomatic work and shared a number of other interests with him. Rogers, like Sidney, was known to Dr. Dee. Finally, we know that Sidney helped Camden at an early date—how is not specified—and that Camden contributed an elegy to the volume that Oxford issued on the death of Sidney.⁴²

Sidney's acquaintanceship is usually underestimated. There is a tendency to think of him as a poet and a patron of poets; in fact, his interests were considerably wider. He patronized the English Ramists as well as the new poets; he introduced Italian critical ideas into circulation; he was vitally interested in the political ideas of George Buchanan. Whatever was interesting to Sidney soon led to friendships with others who were like-minded. We know that Daniel Rogers shared some of these interests with him; we know that Sidney expressed some interest in the theories of Humphrey Lhuyd, although in the end he found them laughable;⁴³ finally we know that Sidney thought deeply about the relation of history to poetry and of history to life, more deeply than any of the professed historians. It would thus not be surprising to find that he was a patron to historians in the same way that he was a patron to poets: that is, he read them and encouraged them in whatever way he could.

Daniel Rogers leads us to the continent once again. Rogers himself had been born across the channel, though he grew up in England; when his father became the first of the Marian martyrs, Rogers went to Wittenberg for his education. On the accession of Queen Elizabeth, he returned to England and took a degree at Oxford; then he gradually worked his way into the diplomatic service where his numerous contacts with foreign scholars proved very useful. Rogers had the reputation of being one of the best Latin poets of the day, but he was also interested in British antiquities. His increasing employment in diplomacy, which led him eventually to the clerkship of the Privy Council, prevented him from ever completing his history of Roman Britain, but he collected a large body of notes for the book, and these eventually found their way into Camden's hands. That Rogers' own work was useful to Camden is beyond doubt; what is interesting here, however, is the fact that he was related to Ortelius through his mother, a cousin of the geographer. Rogers served as a link between the Fleming and the English, and as a link too between the English and Flemish branches of the geographer's family. Whether Camden met Rogers before he met Ortelius, or the other way about, there is no way of knowing. It is certain, however, that his friendship with Ortelius was the turning-point in the making of the Britannia.

Of Camden's early interest in British antiquity, we have already spoken. When, however, he was forced to schoolmastering as a vocation, the chances of ever completing anything gradually became dim. The vacations were short, the days of labor very long. Camden unquestionably became discouraged and did his best to forget that he had ever shown any interest in such matters. It was Ortelius who drove him on.⁴⁴ In 1577, the Flemish geographer came to England for a visit. His relative, the merchant and historian Emmanuel van Meteren had been resident in London for some considerable time. John Dee had visited Ortelius in Antwerp some years before, and the community of interest between the two men had led to a friendship. Through one or both of these men, or through Rogers, Ortelius was introduced to Richard Hakluyt, whose uncle had corresponded with Ortelius some years before, again with Rogers as intermediary. In any event, it was not difficult for Ortelius and Camden to meet; and the Fleming rapidly discovered that Camden was already engaged, although in a fashion more and more desultory, in a task which Ortelius had been trying to promote for some considerable time.⁴⁵

The Ortelius correspondence indicates clearly that he had been trying to convince someone to write a chorography of Britain and, moreover, that he wished that chorography to concentrate on the matter of identifying British place-names, not only of contemporary Britain, but of Roman and Anglo-Saxon Britain as well. The reasons for Ortelius' interest are not far to seek: he was not only producing maps of Europe, contemporary and historical, but was also engaged in a glossary of European place-names. Britain constituted a large gap in his knowledge, and in the knowledge of every other scholar with an interest in antiquities (and Ortelius knew them all). It is a safe guess that Ortelius encouraged Daniel Rogers in his work; Rogers' letters are full of his plans. Through a number of Welshmen in Antwerp, he encouraged Humphrey Lhuyd as well (there is a possibility that Lhuyd visited Ortelius in Antwerp besides). Lhuyd's Breuiary of Britayne was written for Ortelius; so were shorter treatises; and Lhuyd gave Ortelius much valuable information which was incorporated in the great atlas then under way.⁴⁶ But Lhuyd died early, and it became clear that Rogers was unlikely to finish the task he had begun. Another hand was clearly called for, and Camden was chosen.

Ortelius did more than give Camden encouragement. If Camden were to identify the towns of the Antonine Itineraries—and there was more information about the geography of Roman Britain in that document than anywhere else—he would need a great deal of assistance. The Itineraries had been published as early as 1512, but the editions were notoriously corrupt. In his earliest letter to Ortelius, Camden asked the Fleming for a copy of any manuscript of the Itineraries that might be in his possession.⁴⁷ A few years later he asked Mercator as well, presumably at the instance of Ortelius. Both men made arrangements for copies of their manuscripts to be sent.⁴⁸ Ortelius and Camden together commissioned Daniel Rogers (who was in Germany on a diplomatic mission) to have a copy of the Peutingerian Table made—that document might have shed some light on the Antonine Itineraries and it was not to be published until the end of the century. Whether Rogers succeeded in doing this amid the press of business is unknown.⁴⁹ Ortelius also passed along the theories of his friend Hubert Goltzius concerning the number of provinces in Britannia; he sent a plan of a Roman fortress found on the shores of the Low Countries which contained an inscription mentioning Britain; best of all, he sent a copy of his maps, and of his Synonymia or dictionary of Roman place-names.⁵⁰ Camden returned the courtesies by sending English books, such as John Stow's histories; by sending a few Roman coins he had unearthed in East Anglia; and by giving what news he could of the progress of English exploration in the New World, information for which Ortelius was very eager.⁵¹ The exchange of courtesies was obviously profitable to them both; and it is a fitting climax to Ortelius' encouragement of the younger man that he was at last able to offer to make arrangements for the finished Britannia to be published by Plantin in Antwerp.⁵²

Two things are then evident. The Britannia did not spring full-blown from the head of its author but instead was the product of many years and of many men's minds. Moreover, Camden in the years before 1586 was not an intellectually isolated poor schoolmaster of the wrong social class. The number of men capable of helping Camden who did, in fact, assist him is staggering. Long before his first book was published, and thus long before his great European reputation, Camden was an intimate of at least three circles of scholars: that of Ortelius, that which revolved, however distantly, about Sir Philip Sidney, and that which found its center in Thomas Savile, Jean Hotman and probably Camden himself. He was an acquaintance, besides, of such men as Richard Carew, Henry Ferrars, Thomas Talbot, John Stow and John Dee: some of these, he, too, later drew into a group around himself, a group which we now know as the first Society of Antiquaries, and which was founded, it is now thought, in the same year which saw the publication of the Britannia.⁵³

It was in this way, then, that the Britannia was born. Its author's purpose in writing the book was to trace out the Roman names in the island, but the going was often difficult. Then he had been encouraged, so he tells us, by Ortelius and by “the honour of my native country”.⁵⁴ The patriotism involved is evident: the whole volume is a monument to England. By becoming so it came gradually to include a great deal more than an explanation of Roman names. Some contemporary material it had always been Camden's intention to include, but in his first draft—dated 1579-80, a mere two years after Ortelius' visit—the history of the Roman province preponderates to a very great extent. A later draft adds many things of post-Roman date; the first edition adds still more; and it is a commonplace that such additions increased from edition to edition throughout the author's lifetime.⁵⁵ The Roman material was never entirely submerged: as the author's opportunities to learn more increased—and, once his fame was established, they increased radically—more and more inscriptions were added to the text until, in 1607, it came to resemble a Corpus Inscriptionum. Patriotism, then, altered the original plan somewhat, and one wonders whether the imperial idea of England did not work in the same direction. There was, perhaps, more to proving England an empire than showing that it had once belonged to the empire of Rome; tracing the development of the former province to the present was really more relevant. So the two purposes, of explicating the Roman names and of showing how the Roman province grew to an imperial nation were amalgamated. There was one other purpose: Ortelius had begged Camden “to acquaint the World with the ancient State of Britain”.⁵⁶ The Britannia was intended to alleviate continental ignorance on the subject of Britain, past and present; and it was also intended to demonstrate that Britain was now taking part in the world of scholarship.

It was in pursuit of these aims that the method of the Britannia was evolved. Scholars on the continent had long ago dismissed the old legends: in the north of Europe, this meant that the Trojans disappeared. Camden was not the first Englishman to oppose the legend of Brutus; he was the first to show that it was totally irrelevant and hence not worth even the effort of opposition. After mentioning Divitiacus, king of Soissons, who ruled Britain just before Caesar's invasions, Camden tells his readers

Here then our Historian (whoever he be) must begin his history, and not higher: duly weighing what the learned Varro hath said, and I have already hinted; Namely, That there are three distinct Periods of time; the first from man's creation to the deluge, which (by reason we know nothing of it) is called Αδηλον. The second, from the deluge to the first Olympiad, in the year of the world 3189, which (because much of that History is false and fabulous) is called Μύθιkόν. The third, from the first Olympiad to our own times, called Ιsοριkόν, because the transactions of that Period are related by very good Historians. But though no Nation, how learned soever, except the Jews only, had any true historical relations before that age; yet I know very well that the British history of Geoffrey begins three hundred and thirty years before the first Olympiad, that rude and ignorant Period, especially as to those parts, which Varro calls fabulous. Hence therefore (lest I lay a bad foundation, and the whole Building be accordingly weak) I will begin the history of the Romans in Britain; (which seems to be requisite in this place, and may give great light to that which is to follow) Not collecting it from Fables, which would argue the Author's vanity in writing, as well as his folly in believing; but from the genuine monuments of Antiquity …⁵⁷

Once the British History had been abandoned, rational methods of historical criticism could be used to solve the problems that remained. So far as the history of Roman Britain went—and it is this that shall most concern us—Camden's method is best summed up by an historian of the generation following his. Thomas Fuller tells us that

It is most worthy observation with what diligence he inquired after ancient places, making Hue and Crie after many a City which was run away, and by certain marks and tokens pursuing to find it; as by the situation on the Romane high-wayes, by just distance from other ancient cities, by some affinity of name, by tradition of the inhabitants, by Romane coyns digged up, and by some appearance of ruines. A broken urn is a whole evidence, or an old gate still surviving, out of which the city is run out. Besides, commonly some new spruce town, not farre off, is grown out of the ashes thereof, which yet hath so much naturall affection, as dutifully to own those reverend ruines for her Mother.⁵⁸

All this is in contrast to the older method of investigation, which relied principally on a close reading and collation of the classic authors. Clearly, the classics had to be read and used: they constituted evidence quite as much as ruins. What the new generation of historians, with Camden among them, realized was that the classics themselves required explanation and interpretation. There was no attempt to supersede the classics: in the sixteenth century that would have been a major heresy. But the classics were often obscure, especially in the matter of place-names; here interpretation was necessary. Moreover, the classics were not much help in studying the British province: the mentions of it were isolated, few and far between. The classics needed not only explaining but supplementing as well.

The place names of the Roman province were the obvious problem to solve, and the greatest aid in that solution was the late imperial document known as the Antonine Itineraries. Camden took a great deal of trouble to get good manuscripts, and then sought wherever he could for help in solving the Itineraries themselves. There had been, even before 1586, a surprising number of attempts to work out the riddle of the old Roman road-book. Leland had made a few conjectures, though he had not worked systematically. George Lyly, who had helped Paulus Jovius in compiling a book about England, had also hazarded some conjectures.⁵⁹ The most serious attempt to solve the puzzle, however, was that of Robert Talbot, a friend and contemporary of Leland's. Talbot made no attempt to work out everything; but so far as he went, his work, especially on the shorter routes, was good.⁶⁰ It does not seem that he used any aid but that of logic, though it is possible that Leland may have passed on some archaeological information. Though it was not published until the eighteenth century, Talbot's work seems to have been known to everyone with an interest in the subject. Ortelius used a manuscript of Talbot in compiling his Synonymia; and it is almost certain that Camden had access to a manuscript as well.⁶¹

If Talbot's work was the most useful, because the most accurate, of the work done on the Itineraries before the appearance of the Britannia, it was not the last. William Harrison printed a text of the Itineraries at the end of his Description of England and even made some attempts at identification; the guesses are not very accurate. Even earlier, Camden's former tutor, Thomas Cooper, had tried his hand at the identification of Roman names in his Thesaurus; his conjectures are, if anything, even less happy than Harrison's. Ortelius' work was preceded by the Nomenclator of Hadrian Junius, a volume which covered a much wider ground than geography, but which did attempt to explain geographical terms as well. Ortelius, whose Synonymia geographica was concerned with the whole Roman Empire, used not only Talbot but also Leland and Humphrey Lhuyd. It will be remembered that Lhuyd had written his work especially for the Fleming, and copies of the other manuscripts were procured for Ortelius by his English friends. William Lambarde too made some attempt to identify the towns of the Itineraries, though his main interest was in matters Anglo-Saxon. In short, at least seven men had tried their hand at solving the mystery before Camden began to work out his own solutions.⁶²

There is no question that Camden knew the work of most of his predecessors. One set of early notes in drawn from Lyly and Lhuyd; another is drawn from Talbot; Leland's manuscripts were available to him, and he was in correspondence with Ortelius who had, in his turn, been a friend of Hadrian Junius. There is evidence that Camden saw Lambarde's manuscript as well, and that he knew Lhuyd's book.⁶³ We can only assume that he was familiar with Cooper and Harrison, but the probabilities are that he knew the works of both. Yet this long tale of indebtedness will leave precisely the wrong impression. Taken all together, Camden's predecessors had identified no more than half the towns mentioned in the Itineraries; in the half that remained, he often disagreed with all of them and, except when he ignores Talbot, it is Camden who is usually correct. The question then arises as to why Camden had more success in his endeavor than the others.⁶⁴

Some hint as to the answer can be seen in the quotation from Fuller. But Fuller does not tell the entire story. Camden certainly sought out the towns of the Itineraries in person, but mere walking was not sufficient. The Roman document does no more than list the stages on the road between one major city and another, with the distances between them—and these were often corrupt. How was Camden to identify the site when he arrived at it? The answer lies in a careful study of coins, inscriptions, and any other remains that might still be visible. In a few cases he could follow the actual roads, but such luck was too infrequent to be of much use. In most cases, the carefully collected information which collated all the Roman finds of which Camden knew, plus his estimate of the distance from some town which could be easily identified (such as London, or York, or Bath) was all that he had available, but it was a great deal more than had been available to any before him. The method can be watched in his attempt to find a home for the tribe of the Cangi somewhere near Ochie Hole, Somerset:

Not far from hence, in the reign of Henry VIII, was ploughed up an oblong plate of lead, formerly a trophy, thus inscribed:

TI. CLAVDIVS CAESAR AVG. P.M.

TRIB. P. VIIII. IMP. XVI. DE BRITAN.

This ninth tribunate of Claudius fell in the year of Rome 802, in the consulship of Antistius and M. Suillius, when Ostorius propraetor in Britain had great disturbances to quell. From the circumstances of this time I beg leave to form some conjectures. A coin of Claudius incontestibly proves that emperor to have erected this year two trophies over the Britans. On one side of the coin is TI. CLAVD. CAESAR, AVG. P.M. TR. P. VIIII. IMP. XVI. P.P. on the reverse, DE BRITAN. with a triumphal arch, on which is an equestrian figure galloping, and two trophies. Who were these Britans thus subdued Tacitus informs us when he says that Claudius by Ostorius reduced two British nations the Iceni and Cangi. But as the Iceni lye wide of this place may we not refer this trophy to the Cangi a small nation among our Belgae, and place them hereabouts. The sea facing Ireland is not far from hence, on which Tacitus places the Cangi, and traces of their name seem to exist still in some places hereabouts, as in the hundreds of Cannington and Cannings, in Wincaunton by some called Cangton, and in Kaingsham, q.d. the residence of the Cangi. But of this let the reader judge: I do no more than conjecture, and only endeavour to trace out the Cangi, whom I trust I shall find elsewhere.⁶⁵

It is a combination of various authorities, only some of them literary, which enabled Camden to work out a problem in the interpretation of Tacitus.

Even the use of coins and inscriptions—let alone place-names—was not original with Camden, not even in England. Daniel Rogers, years before, had understood the importance of that kind of evidence and had begun to collect it, chiefly, it must be admitted, from books.⁶⁶ Camden's most original contribution to the study of Roman Britain was tirelessness in seeking out the very places mentioned in the Itineraries and elsewhere. Our best evidence comes from the last edition of the Britannia rather than the first, but it applies to them all:

The Roman road [in Leicestershire], whose ridge in other places is worn down, shews itself here very plainly, running in a straight line north along the west side of this country. Its course I have carefully followed from the Thames into Wales to trace the antient towns. The reader will perhaps laugh at this expensive diligence, or at least curious for the expence. Nor could I have trusted to a more faithful guide [for the finding out the towns specified by Antoninus in his Itinerary].⁶⁷

When he came to a spot suspected of hiding a Roman town, he looked for walls, for fragments of pavements, for coins, even for cropmarks. He spoke to the inhabitants, to learn what they had discovered, and to find any old legends still hanging over the town. As later scholars have discovered since, old place names frequently are a more useful guide than new. All of this information was sifted—on the spot, presumably, since the next identification would depend on the one then under investigation—and a decision as to the name made. Under the circumstances, the miracle is that no more mistakes were made.

How many such trips Camden made prior to 1586 it is impossible to judge: the “missing” years between 1571 and 1575 effectively preclude any decision on the point and there is, in any event, the question of whether Camden sought the same things in those years that he sought later. Of two trips there is definite evidence: in 1578 he toured the country of the Iceni (East Anglia) and in 1582 he journeyed to York by way of Suffolk and returned by way of Lancaster. The second is mentioned only briefly in his correspondence, but the first is described in detail in a letter to Ortelius:

Last summer I surveyed the whole maritime coast of the Iceni (Ptolemy calls them wrongly Simeni), namely Norfolk and Suffolk, to trace some ancient cities buried under their ruins. I found a large quantity of ancient coins, and send you two of them, not of gold, but of brass, which appear to me to be more rare and valuable. One bears the image of Constantinople, the other that of Rome; not like the one you showed me of the consular coins, for I believe these to be of the later emperors. The “Urbs Roma” coin was found near Norwich, in a place called Caster, where extensive ruins of walls, and many evidences of ancient times are to be seen, and which I think is “Venta Icenorum”, namely the city which Ptolemy calls “Venta Simenorum” (for you must not suppose that Winchester is “Venta Simenorum”, as it was undoubtedly “Venta Belgarum”). You know that we give the name “Venta Icenorum” to Norwich, but with the same right with which others call Basilia, “Augusta” and Baldach “Babilonia”, as you notice yourself. The “Constantinopolis” coin was dug up at Colchester, which I would regard as the Colonia of Antoninus, but not, with Leland, as Camalodunum, as certain circumstances have led me to look upon the latter place as Colonia Victricensis and the palace of the king Cunobelin, now called Maldon …⁶⁸

It was by means such as this that the puzzle of the Roman names was gradually solved.

One other technique was used as well. Conjecture and the similarity of the current name with the Roman name were also tools for unlocking the secret of the Itineraries. In this case, his success was rather less. It was not for want of trying. Convinced that the Romans frequently altered the original British names only a little, and that a knowledge of the original British tongue would enable him to discover that original name and thus the name of the town in his own day, Camden set out to learn Welsh. Humphrey Lhuyd had given some guidance in these matters, and Camden followed his lead. The principle involved is not, in fact, incorrect, but the application was a great deal more complex than Camden ever guessed. A good many of his errors can be traced to just this, and it is interesting that Camden himself had some misgivings. In his preface, he found it necessary to write a defence of Conjecture:

Many, perhaps, will fall upon me, for daring to trace the original of ancient Names by Conjecture only; who, if they will utterly exclude conjecture, I fear will exclude the greatest part of polite Learning, and in that, of human Knowledge: the mind of man being so shallow, that we are forc'd to trace many things in all Sciences, by conjecture …⁶⁹

Such, then, were the techniques by which the names of Roman Britain were elucidated, and the groundwork laid for a history of the province. The methods that Camden used for working out the history of post-Roman Britain were much the same although, since there was much more literary evidence, that is used proportionately more. Anglo-Saxon names were treated in much the same way as Roman names; and Camden learned the Anglo-Saxon language to help him with his conjectures. Finally, in all this, it would not do to omit one last method of dealing with the past: destructive logic and the humor that often goes with it. In Camden's search for an explanation for the name of Hercules' Promontory in Devon, we see a good example:

The name of the foresaid Promontory has given credit to a very formal story, that Hercules came into Britain, and kill'd I know not what Giants. Whether that be true, which the Mythologists affirm, that there was no such man as Hercules, but that it is a meer fiction to denote the strength of human prudence, whereby we subdue pride, lust, envy, and such like monsters; or whether by Hercules be meant the Sun, according to the Gentile Theology, and those twelve labours undergone by him be an emblem only of the Zodiack and it's twelve signs, which the sun runs thro' yearly; as to these, let them that have asserted them, look to the truth of them. For my part, I readily believe there was a Hercules, nay, if you please, that there were 43 of them, as Varro does; all whose Actions were ascrib'd to that one, the son of Alcmena. Yet I cannot imagin, that ever Hercules was here, unless he was wafted over in that cup which Nereus gave him, and of which Athenaeus makes mention. But you'll object that Franciscus Philelphus in his Epistles, and Lilius Geraldus in his Hercules, affirm this very thing. With submission, these later writers may move me, but they will not convince me; when Diodorus Siculus, who has writ the history of Greece from the first known ages of it, expressly tells us, that neither Hercules nor Bacchus ever went into Britain. And therefore I take it for granted, that the name of Hercules was given this place, either by some Greeks out of vanity, or some Britains upon a Religious account. These, being a warlike People, had brave men in great admiration; such especially as had destroy'd monsters: the Greeks, on the other hand, dedicated every thing they found magnificent in any place, to the glory of Hercules; and because he was a great traveller, they who travell'd, were wont to offer sacrifices, and consecrate the places where they arriv'd, to him. Hence comes Hercules's Rock in Campania, Hercules's Havin in Liguria, Hercules's Grove in Germany, and Hercules's Promontories in Mauritania, Galatia, and Britain.⁷⁰

So we see Camden's scepticism working in two ways: to the sophisticated, he pointed out that he did not really believe in Hercules at all; to the more naive, he demonstrated, with a wealth of allusion, that, whatever might be the truth about Hercules, he certainly never came to England, and that there was a logical explanation of the name of the promontory. One is only left wondering whether the final conjecture, the logical explanation, is itself true.

The Britannia, then, is the ultimate product of a long chain of causes. In form, it follows an Italian pattern which is, itself, based on the classics. It is not, in any strict sense, a history at all, but a form of antiquarianism. Since the book is concerned with the classical past, it virtually had to be antiquarian in tendency if there was to be anything new in it at all. Professor Momigliano has shown that in the sixteenth century, historians felt that the history of classical Rome could not be rewritten: it had been written once and for all by the great writers that Rome herself produced.⁷¹ All that was left to scholars was to correct, emend and expand the writings left by Livy, Tacitus and the rest. With a new connected, chronological history impossible, all that remained was to draw the facts together by subject, and Roman Britain was just such a subject. Naturally, this is not the only reason for the form of the book, nor does it account for the book's being written at all. Patriotism and the idea of imperial England have a good deal to do with that, and so, too, does the idea of restoring England to the world of European scholarship.

In the end, however, the significance of the Britannia is greater than that. It was this book that, for the first time, introduced Englishmen to the new continental scholarship. The work of Biondo, of Budé, of the later Italian antiquaries, and of the north Europeans such as Ortelius was brought across the channel and acclimated to Britain. That Camden was in the continental tradition is proven by his later correspondence: that correspondence, and the fact that the Britannia was received joyfully abroad from the very first, show conclusively that the scholars of Europe recognized Camden as one of their own.

Notes

1. It is of interest to note that F. J. Haverfield, the Camden Professor of Ancient History at Oxford from 1907 to 1919, one of the founders of modern archaeology in Britain, proposed to re-edit the Britannia once again. See H. Stuart Jones, The Foundation and History of the Camden Chair, in Oxoniensia, VIII-IX (1943-4) p. 191.

2. See Edwin Greenlaw, Studies in Spenser's Historical Allegory (Baltimore 1932) and C. B. Millican, Spenser and the Table Round (Cambridge, Mass., 1932); the best analysis of the literature is in Sir Thomas Kendrick's British Antiquity (London, 1950).

3. Robert Fabyan, The New Chronicles of England and France, ed. Sir Henry Ellis (London, 1811), p. 23-4; Polydore Vergil's English History, ed. Sir Henry Ellis (Camden Society: London, 1846), p. 37-8.

4. The Chronicle of Ihon Hardyng in metre (London: Richard Grafton, 1543), f. 37.

5. Polydore Vergil, op. cit., p. 63; the other references are to “The Historie of England” in Raphael Holinshed, … Chronicles. … (London, 1577), p. 51, and to Fabyan, op. cit., p. 36.

6. Glastonbury and St. Joseph are discussed by Kendrick, op. cit., p. 15-17, and by J. Armitage Robinson, Two Glastonbury Legends (Cambridge, 1926); Kendrick also discusses King Lucius.

7. John Stow, The Annales of England (London, 1592), p. 59.

8. Britannia (London, 1586), p. 123; translation in Britannia (London, 1722), I, p. 133.

9. Hugh G. Dick, Thomas Blundeville's The True Order and Methode of wryting and reading Hystories (1574), in Huntington Library Quarterly, III, no. 2 (Jan. 1940), p. 156.

10. The Geography of Claudius Ptolemy, ed. and trans. Edward L. Stevenson (New York, 1932), p. 26. The matter is discussed in Gerald Strauss, Topographical-Historical Method in Sixteenth-century German Scholarship, in Studies in the Renaissance, V (1958) p. 87-101.

11. See, besides Flavio Biondo, Italia Illustrata (Basle, 1531), J. C. Husslein, Flavio Biondo als Geograph des Frühhumanismus (Würzburg, 1901) and Denys Hay, Flavio Biondo and the Middle Ages, British Academy Italian Lecture, 1959, in Proceedings of the British Academy, XLV, p. 97-128.

12. Gerald Strauss, Sixteenth Century Germany, Its Topography and Topographers (Madison, Wisc., 1959).

13. On Biondo, British Museum, Cotton MS. Cleopatra A. iv., f. 70a; on Beatus Rhenanus, ibid., f. 52b, and Britannia (London, 1789), I, p. 259 etc.; on Crantzius, B. M., Cotton MS. Julius F. x., f. 157a.

14. Arnaldo Momigliano, Ancient History and the Antiquarian, in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, XIII, nos. 3 & 4 (July-Dec. 1950), p. 286-7.

15. Camden refers to Budé, B. M., Cotton MS. Julius F. vi., f. 200b.

16. Robin Flower, Laurence Nowell and the Discovery of England in Tudor Times, in Proceedings of the British Academy, XXI (1935), p. 47-73; and A. L. Rowse, The England of Elizabeth (New York, 1951), ch. II.

17. T. C. Skeat, Two ‘Lost’ Works by John Leland, in English Historical Review, XLV, (1950), p. 505-8; Leland's list, from his “New Yeeres Gyft,” is printed in R. Brooke, A Discoverie of certaine Errours … (London, 1723).

18. Thomas Savile refers to it in a letter to Camden of 1580, in which he asks whether Camden wishes it sent: V. Cl. Gulielmi Camdeni … Epistolae, ed. T. Smith (Oxford, 1691), p. 3; and there is a reference to it in B.M., Cotton MS. Cleo. A. iv, ff. 140a-143b, dated 3 January 1579.

19. Camdeni … Epistolae, p. 28-30.

20. Ecclesiae Londino-Batavae Archivum I [Ortelius letters], ed. J.H. Hessels (Cambridge, 1887), p. 63-4 (from Lhuyd, saying it will be sent, 3 August 1568), p. 77-8, p. 100-3.

21. Humphrey Lhuyd, The Breuiary of Britayne, trans. Thomas Twyne (London, 1573).

22. All this appears most lucidly in John Foxe, Acts and Monuments (many editions), passim.

23. On Parker, C. E. Wright, The Dispersal of the Monastic Libraries and the Beginnings of Anglo-Saxon Studies, in Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, I, iii (1951), p. 208-37; W. W. Greg, Books and Bookmen in the Correspondence of Archbishop Parker, in The Library, 4th series, XVI, no. 3 (Dec. 1935), p. 243-79; and Eleanor N. Adams, Old English Scholarship in England from 1566-1800, in Yale Studies in English, LV (New Haven, 1917). On Nowell, see the essay by Flower, op. cit.

24. P. Joachimsohn, Die humanistische Geschichtsschreibung in Deutschland, I (all published) (Bonn, 1895), p. 15-16.

25. In Camdeni … Epistolae, App. p. 85-6.

26. Britannia (London, 1600), Ad Lectorem, p. 1.

27. There are two drafts of the letter, which is dated August 7, 1574, in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin: MS. E.5.9 (first draft) and MS. D.2.11 (final).

28. Britannia (London, 1789), I, cxxii.

29. B.M., Cotton MS. Julius F. vii., ff. 121b-122b; and Harleian MS. 530, ff. 81a-95b (probably written for John Stow).

30. Sidney and Camden shared two successive tutors, Thomas Thornton and Thomas Cooper. Much of the remainder of the following derives from Thomas Smith's Life, prefaced to Camdeni … Epistolae, and translated in Britannia (London, 1695; 1722 etc.).

31. See the letter in Camdeni … Epistolae, p. 12.

32. Charlotte Fell Smith, John Dee (London, 1909), p. 38, 49.

33. On Glover, inter alia, Britannia (London, 1586), p. 145; on Talbot, Britannia (London, 1586), 65.

34. Rainolds: Corpus Christi College, Oxford, MS. 318, f. 141; Brahe: B.M., Harleian MS. 6995, ff. 21a-22a; others: B. M., Harleian MS. 6994, ff. 1, 166, 167; Harleian MS. 6995, ff. 23, 184; Harleian MS. 7011, ff. 1, 3. The correspondence with Camden is in Camdeni … Epistolae and in B.M., Add. MS. 36,294, ff. 3b, 4a, 6b-7b; that with Hotman is in Francisci et Joannis Hotomanorum … Epistolae (Amsterdam, 1700).

35. Camden's early correspondence with Hotman is in Camdeni … Epistolae, in B.M., Add. MS. 36,294, f. 5a, 5b, and in the Hotman letters.

36. Cuffe appears in the Hotman correspondence.

37. The politics of the Sidney circle are discussed by J. E. Phillips, George Buchanan and the Sidney Circle, in Huntington Library Quarterly, XII, no. 1 (Nov. 1948), p. 23-55. On Hotman and Sidney, Albert W. Osborn, Sir Philip Sidney en France (Paris 1932), p. 30. Alençon is in Hotomanorum … Epistolae, Ep. xviii.

38. On Gentile and Camden, Camdeni … Epistolae, p. 8, 17; B.M., Add. MS. 36,294, f. 5b. Sidney's connection with him appears in Eleanor Rosenberg, Leicester, Patron of Letters (New York 1955), p. 289, and in J. Buxton, Sir Philip Sidney and the English Renaissance (London 1954), p. 156-7.

39. Camdeni … Epistolae, p. 3, mentions the Lambarde and asks for the Talbot; he makes use of Talbot (ibid., p. 9).

40. Ibid., p. 9, 23-6.

41. B.M., Add. MS. 36,294, f. 3; Camdeni … Epistolae, App., p. 85.

42. Rogers' connections with Sidney are discussed by J. E. Phillips, op. cit.; that Camden and Rogers were acquainted is evident from the Ortelius correspondence (Hessels, Archivum), and there are notes by Camden in Rogers' manuscript collections: B.M., Cotton MS. Titus F. x., ff. 72b-73. Camden admitted his debt to Sidney in Britannia (London 1600), Ad Lectorem, p. 1; the poem is in Exeqviae … D. Philippi Sidnaei … (Oxford 1587), B2b-B3a.

43. The Correspondence of Sir Philip Sidney and Hubert Languet, ed. Steuart A. Pears (London 1845), p. 31-3, 34-6.

44. Britannia (London 1600), Ad Lectorem, p. 1; and Britannia (London 1586), A2a.

45. On all this, see E. G. R. Taylor, Tudor Geography (London 1930), esp. p. 87-8, p. 102, and also Miss Taylor's edition of The Original Writings and Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts (Hakluyt Society, 1935), I, p. 81-3.

46. On Lhuyd, Th. M. Chotzen, Some Sidelights on Cambro-Dutch Relations, in Transactions of the Cymmrodorion Society for 1937 (1938), p. 101-44.

47. Hessels, Archivum, p. 168-9.

48. Camdeni … Epistolae, p. 1-2; cf. Correspondance Mercatorienne, ed. M. Van Durme (Antwerp 1959), p. 154-5.

49. Hessels, Archivum, p. 171.

50. Camdeni … Epistolae, p. 2-3; Hessels, Archivum, p. 181-3.

51. Camdeni … Epistolae, p. 12-3; Hessels, Archivum, p. 181-3, p. 334-5.

52. Camdeni … Epistolae, p. 27.

53. Linda van Norden, Sir Henry Spelman on the Chronology of the Elizabethan College of Antiquaries, in Huntington Library Quarterly, XIII, no. 2 (Feb. 1950), p. 131-60.

54. Britannia (London 1586), A2b; translation in Britannia (London 1722), I, pref.

55. The earliest draft is B.M., Cotton MS. Titus F. vii-viii; the later one is Titus F. ix. The development of the book is treated in Kendrick, op. cit., ch. VIII; by Stuart Piggott, William Camden and the Britannia, Reckitt Archaeological Lecture (1951), British Academy, in Proceedings of the British Academy, XXXVII, p. 199-217; and by R. B. Gottfried, The Early Development of the Section on Ireland in Camden's Britannia, in English Literary History, X, no. 2 (June 1943), p. 117-30.

56. Britannia (London, 1586), A2a; translation in Britannia (London, 1722), I, pref..

57. Britannia (London, 1722), I, p. xlvii. The corresponding passage in Britannia (London, 1586), p. 25, has the same point without the reference to Varro.

58. Thomas Fuller, The Holy State and the Profane State, ed. Maximilian G. Walten (New York 1938), II, p. 146-147.

59. Paulus Jovius, Descriptio Britannie, Scotiae, Hyberniae, et ochadvm … (Venice, 1548), ff. 42b-43b.

60. Talbot's work was first published by Hearne as an Appendix to volume III of The Itinerary of John Leland (Oxford 1710-12); it is discussed by Kendrick, op. cit., p. 135-6.

61. Camden cites Talbot in Britannia (London 1586), p. 254, 270; in 1580, moreover, Savile asked Camden to send a copy (Camdeni … Epistolae, p. 4), and both men discussed his identifications. In 1599, however, Camden claimed to have seen the notes “lately”: Letters addressed to Thomas James …, ed. G.W. Wheeler (Oxford 1933), p. 18-19. Either Camden's original set was incomplete or his memory slipped. For Ortelius, Synonymia geographica … (Antwerp 1578), s.v., inter alia, CAESAROMAGVS, CAMBORICVM, CATARACTONVM, etc.

62. William Harrison, Description of Britaine, in R. Holinshed, … Chronicles … (London 1577), f. 126; Thomas Cooper, Thesaurus … (London 1573), passim; Hadrian Junius, Nomenclator, 2nd ed. (Antwerp 1577), appendix; Ortelius, Synonymia geographica (Antwerp 1578), passim; William Lambarde, Dictionarium Angliae Topographicum & Historicum (London 1730), passim.

63. B.M., Cotton MS. Julius F. xi., ff. 164b-165a (Lyly and Lhuyd); ibid., f. 164a and Cleo. A. iv., f. 152a (Talbot); Leland's MSS. were in Stow's possession: there are notes in Cotton MS. Julius F.x. and elsewhere; Lambarde is cited in Cotton MS. Cleo. A. iv., ff. 140a-143b; and Lhuyd is mentioned not only in Julius F. xi. (above), but in Britannia (London 1586), p. 527.

64. The proof for this derives from a collation of all the identifications, which were then checked against modern ones. It is too long to print here.

65. Britannia (London 1586), p. 104-5; translated in Britannia (London 1789), I, p. 60. The example is, unfortunately, good only for Camden's reasoning process: the Cangi were almost certainly in northern Wales. The error derives from Camden's use of place-names: this has been criticized sharply by F. J. Haverfield, The Roman Occupation of Britain (Oxford 1924), p. 70, who however, overstates the case.

66. Hessels, Archivum, p. 100-103.

67. Only the beginning of the statement occurs in the first edition: Britannia (London 1586), p. 290; the explanation first occurs in Britannia (London 1607), p. 386 (translated in Britannia [London 1789], II, p. 193), and the final bracket was added by Camden's first translator, Philemon Holland, who, however, had Camden's assistance.

68. Hessels, Archivum, p. 181-3 (the summary translation is Hessels'); the 1582 trip is in Camdeni … Epistolae, App., p. 85.

69. Britannia (London 1586), A4b; translation in Britannia (London 1722), I, pref.

70. Britannia (London 1586), 86-7; translation in Britannia (London 1722), I, p. 44-5.

71. Momigliano, op. cit.