The Construction of Vernacular History in the Anglo-Norman Prose Brut Chronicle: The Manuscript Culture of Late Medieval England (5) (Writing History in the Middle Ages) 1903153743, 9781903153741

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he prose Brut chronicle was the most popular secular vernacular work of the late Middle Ages in England, setting a standard for vernacular historical writing well into the age of print, but until recently it has attracted little scholarly attention. This book combines study of the chronicle’s sources, content, and methods of composition, together with its manuscript contexts. Using the the Anglo-Norman Oldest Version as a touchstone, it investigates the chronicle’s social ideals, its representation of women, and its distinctive versions of such elements of British history as the Trojan foundation myth, the ruin of the Britons, the Norman Conquest, and Arthur and Merlin, arguing that its humane, populist vision demands reassessment of medieval popular understandings of British history, and of the presumed dominance of imperialism, next-worldly piety, misogyny, and a taste for violence in late-medieval culture. The book also analyses evidence for the production of the Anglo-Norman Brut, and examines the ways in which its makers and users reconstructed British history through manuscript context, ordinatio and apparatus, annotation, and illustration.

T

JULIA MARVIN is a Fellow of the Medieval Institute and Associate Professor in the Program of Liberal Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Front cover: Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 78, fol. 7v, detail (Anglo-Norman prose Brut). The prophesied fates of the mother and father of Brut, the founder of Britain: his mother dying in childbirth, his father struck by an arrow that Brut means for a stag. Reproduced by permission of the President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

An imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge IP12 3DF (GB) and 668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620–2731 (US)

JUL IA MAR VIN

YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS

THE CONSTRUCTION OF VERNACULAR HISTORY IN THE ANGLO-NORMAN PROSE BR UT CHRONICLE

WRITING HISTORY IN THE MIDDLE AGES

THE CONSTRUCTION OF VERNACULAR HISTORY IN THE ANGLO-NORMAN PROSE BRUT CHRONICLE The Manuscript Culture of Late Medieval England

YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS

JULIA MARVIN

Writing History in the Middle Ages Volume 5

The Construction of Vernacular History in the Anglo-Norman Prose Brut Chronicle

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YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS York Medieval Press is published by the University of York’s Centre for Medieval Studies in association with Boydell & Brewer Limited. Our objective is the promotion of innovative scholarship and fresh criticism on medieval culture. We have a special commitment to interdisciplinary study, in line with the Centre’s belief that the future of Medieval Studies lies in those areas in which its major constituent disciplines at once inform and challenge each other. Editorial Board (2017) Professor Peter Biller (Dept of History): General Editor Professor T. Ayers (Dept of History of Art) Dr Henry Bainton (Dept of English and Related Literature): Secretary Dr J. W. Binns (Dept of English and Related Literature) Dr K. P. Clarke (Dept of English and Related Literature) Dr K. F. Giles (Dept of Archaeology) Professor W. Mark Ormrod (Dept of History) Dr L. J. Sackville (Dept of History) Dr Hanna Vorholt (Dept of History of Art) Professor J. G. Wogan-Browne (English Faculty, Fordham University) Consultant on Manuscript Publications Professor Linne Mooney (Dept of English and Related Literature) All enquiries of an editorial kind, including suggestions for monographs and essay collections, should be addressed to: The Academic Editor, York Medieval Press, Department of History, University of York, Heslington, York, YO10 5DD (E-mail: [email protected]) Details of other York Medieval Press volumes are available from Boydell & Brewer Ltd.

Writing History in the Middle Ages ISSN 2057-0252 Series editors Dr Henry Bainton, University of York Professor Lars Boje Mortensen, University of Southern Denmark History-writing was a vital form of expression throughout the European Middle Ages, and is fundamental to our understanding of medieval societies, politics, modes of expression, cultural memory, and social identity. This series publishes innovative work on history-writing from across the medieval world; monographs, collections of essays, and editions of texts are all welcome. Other volumes in the series are listed at the back of this book.

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The Construction of Vernacular History in the Anglo-Norman Prose Brut Chronicle The Manuscript Culture of Late Medieval England

Julia Marvin

Y ORK MEDIEVA L PRE S S

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© Julia Marvin 2017 All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of Julia Marvin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 First published 2017 A York Medieval Press publication in association with The Boydell Press an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com and with the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York ISBN 978 1 903153 74 1 A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate This publication is printed on acid-free paper

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for Lisa, Maria, and Melissa

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Contents



List of Plates

Acknowledgments Abbreviations

viii xi xiii



A Note on Proper Names, Transcriptions, and Translations

xv



Introduction: Recognizing the Prose Brut Tradition



Part I: Construction

1

A New New Troy: Brut, Rome, and the Foundations of British History 21

2

The Community of the Realm: King, Baron, Brother, Stranger

57

3

Women with Voices

73

4

Social Arthur

93

5

The Continuity of the Realm

113



Part II: Reconstruction and Response

129

6

Evidence of Production

131

7

The Company That Prose Bruts Keep

163

8

Ordinatio, Apparatus, and Annotation

177

9

History Illustrated

205



Conclusion: Merlin’s Power

231

1 19

Bibliography

261



General Index

277



Index of Manuscripts Cited

295

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Plates

Plate 1: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson D.329, fol. 4r. Latin genealogical verses on the kings of England. Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Library.

140

Plate 2: London, Inner Temple Library, MS Petyt 511, vol. 19, fol. 4r. Latin genealogical verses on the kings of England. Reproduced by permission of the Masters of the Bench of the Inner Temple.

141

Plate 3: London, Inner Temple Library, MS Petyt 511, vol. 19, fol. 6r. Latin genealogical verses. Reproduced by permission of the Masters of the Bench of the Inner Temple.

142

Plate 4: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson D.329, fol. 6r. Latin genealogical verses. Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Library. 143 Plate 5: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson D.329, fol. 6v. Latin genealogical verses. Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Library. 144 Plate 6: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson D.329, fol. 7r. Latin genealogical verses. Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Library. 145 Plate 7: London, Inner Temple Library, MS Petyt 511, vol. 19, fol. 6v. Latin genealogical verses. Reproduced by permission of the Masters of the Bench of the Inner Temple.

146

Plate 8: London, Inner Temple Library, MS Petyt 511, vol. 19, fol. 7v (detail). Short Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut. Reproduced by permission of the Masters of the Bench of the Inner Temple.

155

Plate 9: London, British Library, Additional MS 35092, fol. 61r. Oldest Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. © British Library Board, all rights reserved.

178

Plate 10: London, Inner Temple Library, MS Petyt 511, vol. 19, fol. 12v. Short Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut. Reproduced by permission of the Masters of the Bench of the Inner Temple.

182

Plate 11: London, Inner Temple Library, MS Petyt 511, vol. 19, fol. 65r. Short Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut. Reproduced by permission of the Masters of the Bench of the Inner Temple.

183

Plate 12: London, British Library, MS Cotton Cleopatra D.III, fol. 74r. Long Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. © British Library Board, all rights reserved. 184 viii

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Plates Plate 13: London, British Library, MS Cotton Cleopatra D.III, fol. 75r. Long Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. © British Library Board, all rights reserved. 185 Plate 14: London, British Library, MS Harley 6359, fol. 27r. Short Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. © British Library Board, all rights reserved.

191

Plate 15: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Wood empt. 8, fol. 24v. Oldest Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut. Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Library.

194

Plate 16: Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS 5028C, fol. 183r. Image du Monde. By permission of Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / The National Library of Wales.

197

Plate 17: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS e Mus. 108, fol. 5r. Short Version of Anglo-Norman prose Brut. Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Library.

208

Plate 18: Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 78, fol. 7v. AngloNorman prose Brut, unusual version related to Short Version. Reproduced by permission of the President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

209

Plate 19: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS f.f. 12155, fol. 10r (detail). Long Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut. Reproduced by permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

214

Plate 20: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS f.f. 12155, fol. 67r (detail). Long Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut. Reproduced by permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

215

Plate 21: London, British Library, Royal MS 19 C.IX, fol. 8r (detail). Long Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. © British Library Board, all rights reserved. 216 Plate 22: Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, MS 935, fol. 9r (detail). Long Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut. © Bibliothèque SainteGeneviève, Paris, image IRHT. Used with permission.

217

Plate 23: Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, MS 935, fol. 27r (detail). Long Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut. © Bibliothèque SainteGeneviève, Paris, image IRHT. Used with permission.

220

Plate 24: Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, MS 935, fol. 109v (detail). Long Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut. © Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Paris, image IRHT. Used with permission.

221

Plate 25: Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, MS 935, fol. 113r ix

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Plates (detail). Long Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut. © Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Paris, image IRHT. Used with permission.

223

Plate 26: Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, MS 935, fol. 56r (detail). Long Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut. © Bibliothèque SainteGeneviève, Paris, image IRHT. Used with permission.

224

Plate 27: London, British Library, Royal MS 20 A.III, fol. 152v. Long Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. © British Library Board, all rights reserved.

248

Plate 28: Dublin, Trinity College, MS 501, fol. 41r. Long Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut. Reproduced by permission of the Board of Trinity College Dublin.

249

x

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Acknowledgments

I am very grateful to the staffs of the library of the University of Notre Dame and all the libraries housing the manuscripts mentioned in this book, who have been exemplary in their support of my research. Special thanks are due to the libraries that have provided and allowed me to reproduce images from their manuscripts: the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, the Bodleian Library, the British Library, Corpus Christi College (Oxford), the Library of the Inner Temple (London), Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / The National Library of Wales, and Trinity College (Dublin). Joanna Snelling of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, was particularly generous in arranging photography and permissions for the cover image. For research support, I thank the Program of Liberal Studies, the Medieval Institute, the Nanovic Institute, and the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts at Notre Dame. My thanks go to the presses that have granted permission for portions of previously published material to appear in this book. In the Introduction appears material from ‘The English Brut Tradition’, in A Companion to Arthurian Literature, ed. H. Fulton, 221–34 (Oxford, 2009), reprinted by permission of Wiley-Blackwell, © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. In Chapter 5 appears material from ‘Narrative, Lineage, and Succession in the AngloNorman Prose Brut Chronicle’, in Broken Lines: Genealogical Literature in Medieval Britain and France, ed. E. D. Kennedy and R. Radulescu, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe 16, 205–20 (Turnhout, 2009), reprinted by permission of Brepols Publishers, Turnhout, Belgium. In Chapter 8 appears material from ‘Latinity and Vernacularity in the Tradition of Geoffrey of Monmouth: Text, Apparatus, and Readership’, The Medieval Chronicle 8 (2013): 1–41, reprinted by permission of Brill. In Chapter 8 appears material from ‘“It is to harde for my lernyng”: Making Sense of Annotations in Brut Manuscripts’, copyright © 2014 Johns Hopkins University Press; this article was first published in Digital Philology 3.2 (2014), 304–22, and is reprinted by permission of Johns Hopkins University Press. In Chapters 8 and 9 appears material from ‘The Vitality of Anglo-Norman in Late-Medieval England: The Case of the Prose Brut Chronicle’, in Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England, c. 1100–c. 1500, ed. J. Wogan-Browne et al., 303–19 (York, 2009), reprinted by permission of Boydell and Brewer. In Chapter 9 appears material from ‘Anglo-Norman Narrative as History or Fable: Judging by Appearances’, The Medieval Chronicle 3 (2004), 116–34, reprinted by permission of Brill. xi

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Acknowledgments Pete Biller, Caroline Palmer, Raluca Radulescu, and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne have patiently encouraged this project since its inception. For good conversation, inspiration, and support of all kinds, I thank my colleagues and students at Notre Dame, the members of the Chronicle Society, the Early Book Society, and DISTAFF (Discussion, Interpretation, and Study of Textile Arts, Fabrics, and Fashion), and especially Adrian Ailes, Marianne Ailes, Jane Baun, Jean Blacker, Maureen Boulton, Jessica Brantley, Eileen Brown, Elizabeth J. Bryan, Janet Burton, Mary Carlson, Steen Clemmensen, Aidan Conti, Francis Eaves, Caroline D. Eckhardt, Nicole Eddy, Maj-Britt Frenze, Thomas Fulton, Edmund Goehring, Marjorie Harrington, Georgia Henley, Peregrine Horden, Ian Jones, Edward Donald Kennedy, Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Andy King, Erik Kooper, Maria LoCicero, William Marx, Timothy Nelson, Lisa Ortiz, Heather Pagan, Michael Powers, Jaclyn Rajsic, Margaret Reeves, Julio Rivera, Lisa Ruch, John Spence, and Michelle R. Warren. The late Lister M. Matheson and M. B. Parkes set examples of joy, rigor, and generosity in scholarship and teaching that continue to sustain my own work and that of many others.

xii

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Abbreviations

Add. London, British Library, Additional manuscripts AN Anglo-Norman Anonimalle The Anonimalle Chronicle, 1307–1334, ed. W. R. Childs and J. Taylor, Yorkshire Archaeological Society 147 (Leeds, 1991). ANPB Anglo-Norman prose Brut Arsenal Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal Arundel London, College of Arms, Arundel manuscripts Beinecke New Haven, Beinecke Library BL London, British Library BNF Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France Bodleian Oxford, Bodleian Library Brie, Brut The Brut; or, the Chronicles of England, ed. F. W. D. Brie, 2 vols., EETS OS 131 and 136 (London, 1906, 1908). BSG Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève CCCC Cambridge, Corpus Christi College CCCO Oxford, Corpus Christi College CD3 London, British Library, MS Cotton Cleopatra D.III CD7 London, British Library, MS Cotton Cleopatra D.VII Cotton London, British Library, Cotton manuscripts CUL Cambridge, Cambridge University Library Dean R. Dean, with the collaboration of M. B. M. Boulton, Anglo-Norman Literature: A Guide to Texts and Manuscripts, Anglo-Norman Text Society Occasional Publications Series 3 (London, 1999). Dur Durham Cathedral Library MS C.IV.27 D120 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 120 EE Geffrei Gaimar, Estoire des Engleis: History of the English, ed. and trans. I. Short (Oxford, 2009). EETS Early English Text Society EUL Edinburgh University Library f.f. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fonds français GG Des Grantz Geanz: An Anglo-Norman Poem, ed. G. E. Brereton, Medium Aevum Monographs 2 (Oxford, 1937). Harley London, British Library, Harley manuscripts HRB Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain: An Edition and Translation of De gestis Britonum (Historia xiii

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Abbreviations Regum Britanniae), ed. M. D. Reeve, trans. N. Wright (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2007). HRBVV Geoffrey of Monmouth, The Historia Regum Britannie, II, The First Variant Version: A Critical Edition, ed. N. Wright (Cambridge, 1988). Lambeth London, Lambeth Palace Laȝamon Laȝamon: Brut or Hystoria Brutonum, ed. and trans. W. R. J. Barron and S. C. Weinberg (Harlow, 1995). Lin Lincoln Cathedral Library MS 104 LV Anglo-Norman prose Brut, Long Version Mannyng Robert Mannyng, The Chronicle, ed. I. Sullens, MRTS 153 (Binghamton, 1996). Matheson, PB L. M. Matheson, The Prose Brut: The Development of a Middle English Chronicle, MRTS 180 (Tempe AZ, 1998). Mazarine Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine ME Middle English MEPB Middle English prose Brut MMBL N. R. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1969–92). MRTS Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies M199 Oxford, Magdalen College, MS lat. 199 n.a.f. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, nouvelles acquisitions françaises NLW Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales Oldest The Oldest Anglo-Norman Prose Brut Chronicle: An Edition and Translation, ed. and trans. J. Marvin, Medieval Chronicles 4 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2006). OV Anglo-Norman prose Brut, Oldest Version PB prose Brut P511/19 London, Inner Temple Library, MS Petyt 511, vol. 19 RB Wace, Wace’s Roman de Brut: A History of the English, ed. and trans. J. Weiss (Exeter, 1999). RD329 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson D.329 Royal London, British Library, Royal manuscripts SV Anglo-Norman prose Brut, Short Version TCD Dublin, Trinity College Westminster London, Westminster Abbey We8 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Wood empt. 8

xiv

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A Note on Proper Names, Transcriptions, and Translations

As F. W. Maitland observed of Anglo-Norman, ‘No word was so short that it could not be spelt in at least two ways.’1 Across and within works and manuscripts in the Brut tradition, proper names appear in a bewildering variety of spellings, and trying to reproduce that variety here would be counterproductive. In an attempt to reach some degree of uniformity, when discussing a given figure, I have used the most common version of his or her name as represented in the translation or index of the printed edition of the text under consideration. When discussing more than one work at the same time, I generally use the spelling dominant in the printed version of the Oldest Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut. However, when discussing figures with well-known historical analogues who have fairly standardized names in English, I may use the anglicized version that will be most familiar to most readers. This approach yields ‘Augustine’ rather than ‘Austin’, but ‘Gunnore’ rather than ‘Guinevere’. Figures of both types appear together, especially in the later portions of the chronicle, and the results can be awkward. In transcriptions and translations from manuscript, I have followed the standards set out in my edition of the Oldest Version.2 In general, I leave spelling as it is in manuscript and silently expand straightforward abbreviations while leaving uncertain expansions in italics, and I provide modern punctuation as needed to mark sense units, with some resultant adjustments in capitalization. Translations come from printed editions when available; when I substitute my own translation for clarity or preservation of the literal sense of the text, I make note of it.

1 The

Year Books of Edward II, I, 1 and 2 Edward II, 1307–1309, ed. F. W. Maitland, Selden Society 17 (London, 1903), p. xlii. 2 See J. Marvin, ed. and trans., The Oldest Anglo-Norman Prose Brut Chronicle: An Edition and Translation (hereafter Oldest), Medieval Chronicles 4 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2006), pp. 67–71, and Marvin, ‘The Unassuming Reader: F. W. Maitland and the Editing of Anglo-Norman’, in The Book Unbound: Editing and Reading Medieval Manuscripts and Texts, ed. S. Echard and S. Partridge (Toronto, 2004), pp. 14–36 (pp. 24–9).

xv

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Introduction Recognizing the Prose Brut Tradition

It seems that sometime during the reign of Edward I, perhaps in the north of England, early enough that the king was still in his prime, but late enough that it was worth emphasizing his lordship over Scotland, a secular patron asked a cleric to compose a succinct history of Britain in French for a lay audience.1 The cleric was well suited to the task. He had access to a good library – one of institutional, probably monastic, quality.2 He was comfortable reading both Latin and French and was acquainted with some historical matter in English, whether in oral or written form. Whatever his position, he could write with understanding of and sympathy for the life of a secular household. Rendering verse and prose sources in a range of styles and languages into plain, accessible prose, he wrote more to communicate than to impress. If the oldest surviving version of his work represents something close to what he wrote, he provided it with no title, no dedication to a patron, no selfidentification as author, no prologue describing how hard he worked, how many sources he used, and why his book was worth reading, and no request for a reward, position, or even the prayers of his audience in return for his effort. All that is known about him and the origins of the book comes from its content.3 His reserve should not be taken as a sign of lack of interest in the job. If he had wanted just to fulfill a commission, he could have taken his three major sources, abridged them, and been on his way. Instead, as will become apparent, he did much more than that. Self-effacing and given to supererogatory effort, he was clearly not destined to get ahead in the world. But the book he wrote was an extraordinary success. It became the core of the 1 On

the 1290 Scottish succession crisis, and English exploitation of chronicle material to support Edward’s claim of overlordship, see R. J. Goldstein, The Matter of Scotland: Historical Narrative in Medieval Scotland (Lincoln, 1993), pp. 79–103; and E. L. G. Stones and G. G. Simpson, Edward I and the Throne of Scotland, 1290-1296, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1978), esp. I, 137–62, 222–4. 2 There is no concrete evidence that the writer could not have been a woman: in the absence of a singular gender-neutral English pronoun adequate for formal writing, and for the sake of concision, I will use masculine pronouns in reference to this person. 3 For a fuller account of the evidence on dating and authorship of the Oldest Version (hereafter OV in notes), see Oldest, pp. 40–7.

1

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The Construction of Vernacular History most popular secular vernacular work of the late Middle Ages in England: the prose Brut chronicle. In what is now known as the Oldest Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut, the chronicle offered its audiences unprecedented access to a complete history of the land, from the story of Britain’s Trojan founder Brut to the death of Henry III in 1272. The prose Brut was repeatedly expanded, revised, and translated into both English and Latin; it survives in some 250 manuscripts (more than any other vernacular work aside from the versions of Wycliffite Bible in English); its version of the reign of King Arthur overshadows all other medieval vernacular Arthurian texts in its popularity and wide diffusion; its continuations became the medium in which secular Middle English historiography developed. Printed by William Caxton in 1480, it was the first published life of Arthur and the first published history of England, and it appeared in thirteen different printed editions before 1528; its matter was still influential into the seventeenth century.4 For centuries, the prose Brut set the context, form, and matter for vernacular historical writing in England, and it may have played a significant role in the establishment and growth of commercial book production for a vernacular readership whose formation it encouraged.5 4 L.

M. Matheson’s The Prose Brut: The Development of a Middle English Chronicle (hereafter Matheson, PB), Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (hereafter MRTS) 180 (Tempe AZ, 1998) offers an indispensable account of the tradition as a whole and a classification of Middle English prose Brut (hereafter MEPB in notes) manuscripts (see esp. pp. 1–49). On the Anglo-Norman prose Brut (hereafter ANPB in notes) tradition, see Oldest, pp. 1–57, which updates some of Matheson’s findings, and for lists of manuscripts (subject to some correction and updating), see R. Dean, with the collaboration of M. B. M. Boulton, Anglo-Norman Literature: A Guide to Texts and Manuscripts (hereafter Dean), Anglo-Norman Text Society Occasional Publications Series 3 (London, 1999) nos. 36, 42, 44–6, 48–9, pp. 24–7, 30–4). On the MEPB, see also E. D. Kennedy’s discussion, list, and extensive bibliography (which define the Brut by slightly different criteria) in A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050–1500, VIII, Chronicles and Other Historical Writing (New Haven, 1989), pp. 2629–37, 2818–33. On the Latin Bruts, see C. L. Kingsford, English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century (Oxford, 1913), pp. 310–12, updated and refined by Matheson, PB, above and pp. 37–47, and in ‘Historical Prose’, in Middle English Prose: A Critical Guide to Major Authors and Genres, ed. A. S. G. Edwards (New Brunswick, 1984), pp. 209–48 (pp. 212–13); and E. D. Kennedy, Chronicles, pp. 2638–40, as well as ‘Glastonbury’, in The Arthur of Medieval Latin Literature: The Development and Dissemination of the Arthurian Legend in Medieval Latin, ed. S. Echard (Cardiff, 2011), pp. 109–31 (pp. 119–22). On the issues surrounding the definition of a prose Brut, see E. Kooper, ‘Longleat House MS 55: An Unacknowledged Brut Manuscript?’ in The Prose Brut and Other Late Medieval Chronicles: Books Have Their Histories, Essays in Honour of Lister M. Matheson, ed. J. Rajsic, E. Kooper, and D. Hoche (York, 2016), pp. 75–93 (pp. 88–9). 5 See L. R. Mooney and L. M. Matheson, ‘The Beryn Scribe and His Texts: Evidence for Multiple-Copy Production of Manuscripts in Fifteenth-Century England’, The Library 7th s. 4 (2003), 347–70; J. Marvin, ‘Latinity and Vernacularity in the Tradition

2

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Recognizing the Prose Brut Tradition In the canon-forming culture of nineteenth-century scholarship, however, the prose Brut suffered from just about every liability imaginable. It was not only anonymous but lacked a standard title (to this day, it is listed under a number of labels and is often misidentified entirely in catalogues, bibliographic databases, and Library of Congress entries).6 It originated not in learned Latin, ‘good’ Continental French, or ‘authentic’ English, but in the insular dialect of Anglo-Norman, a language to be belittled rather than studied – as the literary historian Hippolyte Taine characterized it, ‘un français colonial, avarié, prononcé les dents serrées, avec une contorsion de gosier’ (‘a colonial, spoiled French, pronounced with clenched teeth and convulsed throat’), ‘à la mode, non de Paris, mais de Stratford-atte-Bowe’.7 It was in prose, at a time when verse was considered a hallmark of the literary. It offered a synthesis of largely legendary history, at a time when historians were looking for accurate, contemporary sources. It seemed neither high enough to be a product of elite intellectual culture nor low enough to represent an authentic folk tradition. It presented the obstacle of multiple versions in multiple languages, at a time when the author’s ‘original’ text was an object of desire, and revision was often dismissed as corruption. Scholars working in history, English, and French could all safely consider the prose Brut outside their bailiwick. A fair representative of these attitudes was the Middle English prose Brut’s own editor, F. W. D. Brie, who in the brief preface to his 1906–8 EETS edition says, ‘As literature, the Chronicle is as worthless – except a few inserted poems – as a mediaeval Chronicle possibly can be. But nobody will expect to stop a wedding-guest by reciting mediaeval history.’8 of Geoffrey of Monmouth: Text, Apparatus, and Readership’, The Medieval Chronicle 8 (2013), 1–41 (pp. 20–4). 6 A descriptor for the prose Brut on work concerning it may appear not at all or as ‘Brut d’Angleterre’ or ‘the Brute chronicle’ (nineteenth-century appellations long out of use), ‘Brut, AN prose work’, ‘Brut, ME chronicle’, ‘Brut, French prose chronicle’, ‘Brut, chronique anglaise’, or just ‘Brut’, along with variations on ‘chronicles of England’. The MLA bibliographic descriptors seem to lack anything resembling the terms ‘Middle English’ or ‘Anglo-Norman prose Brut chronicle’. Misidentifications of it as the Brut of Wace or Laȝamon are also common. For analysis of a case of persistent misidentification, see A. King and J. Marvin, ‘A Warning to the Incurious: M. R. James, the Scalacronica and the Anglo-Norman Prose Brut Chronicle’, The Medieval Chronicle 5 (2008), 129–45. 7 Histoire de la littérature anglaise, 5 vols., 6th edn (Paris, 1885), I, 103, referring of course to Chaucer’s Prioress, who has for generations of readers emblematized the use of Anglo-Norman as middlebrow pretension. See the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, ll. 124–6, in The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd edn, ed. L. D. Benson (Boston MA, 1987). All subsequent citations of Chaucer will use this edition. 8 The Brut; or, the Chronicles of England (hereafter Brie, Brut), 2 vols., EETS OS 131 and 136 (London, 1906, 1908), I, ix–x. This edition contains the Common Version to 1333 as well as almost all of the known continuations. See also W. Marx, ed., An English Chronicle, 1377–1461: A New Edition, Medieval Chronicles 3 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2003).

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The Construction of Vernacular History Neglect breeds neglect, of course, and in the absence of an interpretive tradition for it, the chronicle has continued to be overlooked or casually mischaracterized. It is not that the prose Brut has been unavailable: although a full scholarly edition and translation of the oldest Anglo-Norman version has been in print for only a decade at this writing, Brie’s century-old edition of the common Middle English text and all its major continuations is quite usable, although lacking introduction and notes, and as an EETS volume, it has not been hard to find. Like the Christian ideal according to G. K. Chesterton, it may be not so much that the prose Brut has been tried and found wanting, as that it has been found difficult – or at least demanding – and left untried.9 Such disregard is endemic to medieval vernacular historiography. As Caroline D. Eckhardt notes, ‘Modern critics have tended to neglect the relatively few vernacular chronicles of this period, which are often so closely based upon earlier sources that they seem to invite dismissal as derivative works or mere translations.’10 The prose Brut chronicle’s multiplicity of versions and languages – its testimony to the vitality of late medieval vernacular culture – can now be seen as something to be celebrated, but it places as many practical demands as ever on researchers. Scholarly abhorrence of the vacuum of anonymity persists. Electronic cataloguing has made the problem of accurate labeling all the more acute, since miscataloguing of a primary or secondary text can effectively constitute an act of oblivion. And challenges to dominant schemes of thought are not always as welcome in fact as might be hoped in theory. In 1974, in the first volume of her monumental Historical Writing in England, Antonia Gransden invoked ‘romance historians’ like Wace only in contradistinction to ‘genuine historians’ like Jordan Fantosme, who provide ‘real information about contemporary events, some from personal observation’.11 Little seems to have changed by 2008, when the volume of the Cambridge History of the Book in Britain covering the years 1100–1400 was published. In it, the existence of the prose Brut is acknowledged only in the chapter on ‘History

9 G.

K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World (New York, 1912), p. 48.

10 ‘The Presence of Rome in the Middle English Chronicles of the Fourteenth Century’,

JEGP 90 (1991), 187–207 (p. 193). Gransden, Historical Writing in England, 2 vols. (London, 1974, 1982), I, 236. Her somewhat muddled account of the prose Brut tradition, based solely on the content of the Middle English (hereafter ME in notes) text, was for many years the starting (and likely ending) point for anyone’s inquiry (II, 73–7). The 1957 essay by J. Taylor that she cites is by now obsolete, but his can still often be the only scholarship cited by non-specialists making reference to the ANPB (‘The French Brut and the Reign of Edward II’, EHR 72 (1957), 423–37). Confusion over basic information and reliance on dated scholarship persist, even in some specialist publications, despite the appearance of Matheson’s vastly more comprehensive and accurate account in 1998, the edition and translation of the OV in 2006, and G. Dunphy, gen. ed., Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, 2 vols. (Leiden, 2010).

11 A.

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Recognizing the Prose Brut Tradition and History Books’, and then in terms like these: it ‘perpetuated Geoffrey of Monmouth’s romance’, its use by later writers ‘reveals what we would think of as an uncritical blurring between “history” and “romance”’, and in the fifteenth century, with the decline of monastic historiography, ‘there was as yet no wide market for historical works per se’.12 A happy exception to the rule of continuing mis- or non-representation is Raluca Radulescu’s chapter on Middle English historical narrative in the 2009 Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Middle English Literature and Culture, in which she calls the prose Brut the appropriate ‘central focus of any study of historical writing in the later medieval period’ in England; in the book’s index, however, her pages on the prose Brut appear under the entry ‘Brut chronicle (LaZamon)’ [sic], alongside pages that really do concern the much earlier and better-known English verse Brut of Laȝamon.13 The chronicle has vanished again. Everyone makes mistakes, especially in surveys outside one’s field of special expertise – and I commit my full share of absurdities and errors every day – but it is discouraging and far from unusual to see that even when it has been recognized, the prose Brut has been rendered unrecognizable through stubbornly persistent labels, outdated scholarly narratives, and preconceptions of genre and value. Naturally, this is not to assert that contemporary popularity is the measure of a work or a meaningful indicator of historical reliability or literary artistry. The sheer number of surviving manuscripts does make the prose Brut tradition an unsurpassed resource for the study of habits of reading and writing, the growth of literacy and the book trade, the continuing role of Anglo-Norman, and the development of Middle English prose in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Its popularity also means that its representations of the plot and meaning of British history were the ones mostly widely accessible to and promulgated among late-medieval audiences. Beyond that, as I will argue, the Oldest Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut manifests attitudes that test standing notions of normative contemporary views on matters from the function of the Trojan foundation story to the consequences 12 G. Martin and R. M. Thomson, ‘History and History Books’, in The Cambridge History

of the Book in Britain, II, 1100–1400, ed. N. Morgan and R. M. Thomson (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 397–415 (pp. 407, 413, 412). The volume for 1400–1557, published in 1999, which has no chapter on historical writing, also refers to the Brut tradition only in passing, on its ownership by women and on its supposed displacement by ‘printed, comprehensive chronicle writings, by Robert Fabyan, Richard Grafton, John Stow, and others’, a claim that overlooks both the extensive print history of the prose Brut itself and the fact that the prose Brut was a major source for the authors and editors mentioned (C. M. Meale and J. Boffey, ‘Gentlewomen’s Reading’, III, 526–40 (p. 531), and J. Boffey and A. S. G. Edwards, ‘Literary Texts’, III, 555–75 (p. 570), in L. Hellinga and J. B. Trapp, eds., The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, III, 1400–1557 (Cambridge, 1999)). See Matheson, PB, pp. xxxiii–xxxvi, 23–26. 13 ‘Writing Nation: Shaping Identity in Medieval Historical Narratives’, in A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture, c. 1350–c. 1500, ed. P. Brown (Chichester, 2009), pp. 358–73 (pp. 359–61 (361 quoted), 651).

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The Construction of Vernacular History of rape. It calls into question the stability and range of available meanings of such cultural markers as Rome, King Arthur, and the Norman Conquest. If a truly popular vision of society, governance, and the shape of history is to be found in any vernacular work, it is in the prose Brut – and that vision is not what other works, even ones in the tradition of Geoffrey of Monmouth, might lead one to expect. How the writer of the Oldest Version constructs and promotes a distinctive understanding of British history will be the first subject of this book. The second subject will be how the makers and users of the manuscripts of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut build on the foundation that the Oldest Version provides.

The Development of the Brut Tradition To offer a brief overview: what is now known as the Brut tradition was of course well established long before the Oldest Version appeared.14 The term ‘Brut’ derives from the name of Brutus, a close descendant of Aeneas and founder of the realm of Britain, whose story was given full form by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Latin Historia Regum Britanniae, composed in the 1130s. Working from some known sources such as Bede and Gildas, claiming to be using ‘quendam Britannici sermonis librum uetustissimum’ (‘a very old book in the British tongue’) lent by a Walter of Oxford, and almost certainly drawing extensively on his own imagination, Geoffrey provided a king-byking account of the British from their origins to their ruination at the hands of invading Saxons.15 Arthur’s life takes up about a fifth of the entire text: it is the heart of Geoffrey’s work and the root from which all subsequent Arthurian literature grows. The Historia was immediately both popular and controversial, dismissed as a pack of lies by other twelfth-century Latin historiographers such as William of Newburgh and Gerald of Wales, but eagerly embraced by English and Continental audiences: over 200 manuscripts of Geoffrey’s history survive, and it was still being copied in the fifteenth century.16 Within a few years of its appearance, Geoffrey Gaimar was composing a now-lost French Galfridian 14 For

a fuller but still introductory account of the broader Brut tradition, see J. Marvin, ‘The English Brut Tradition’, in A Companion to Arthurian Literature, ed. H. Fulton (Chichester, 2009), pp. 221–34. 15 The History of the Kings of Britain: An Edition and Translation of De gestis Britonum (Historia Regum Britanniae), ed. M. D. Reeve, trans. N. Wright (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2007), § 2, pp. 5, 4 (hereafter HRB, cited by section as well as page number to aid in reference to other editions). 16 J. Crick, The Historia Regum Britannie, III, A Summary Catalogue of the Manuscripts (Cambridge, 1989). For William’s indignant preface to the Historia rerum Anglicarum see The History of English Affairs, ed. and trans. P. G. Walsh and M. J. Kennedy, 2 vols.

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Recognizing the Prose Brut Tradition history of the Britons, and by the 1150s Wace, a cleric from Jersey who sometimes had the patronage of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, made the Historia the basis of his French verse Roman de Brut.17 A Brut, then, is a narrative based in, though not necessarily sedulously imitative of or limited to, the Galfridian version of British history: contemporary booklists and wills show that this was a widely used term for such works in both Latin and vernacular languages.18 The writer of the Oldest Version of the prose Brut bases the first part of his narrative on Wace while also integrating material directly from the Vulgate Version of Geoffrey of Monmouth. Thereafter, he adapts Gaimar’s Estoire des Engleis (all surviving manuscripts of which accompany texts of Wace), a close analogue of the Latin Praemonstratensian chronicle of Barlings, and, intermittently, other historiographic, hagiographic, and narrative materials, including a life of Edward the Confessor and Havelok material probably in both French and English.19 The Oldest Version launched a quickly developing tradition of its own. In all the Anglo-Norman prose Brut survives in over fifty manuscripts, more than any other work in the French of England.20 A full classification of all of (Warminster, 1988, 2007), I, 28–36. For Gerald, see The Journey through Wales and The Description of Wales, trans. L. Thorpe (London, 1978), pp. 117–18. 17 Wace’s Roman de Brut: A History of the English, trans. and ed. J. Weiss (Exeter, 1999) (hereafter RB). Laȝamon’s English verse Brut is based largely on Wace (Laȝamon: Brut or Hystoria Brutonum, ed. and trans. W. R. J. Barron and S. C. Weinberg (Harlow, 1995); hereafter Laȝamon). 18 Oldest, pp. 3–4; Matheson, PB, pp. 9–11. 19 Geffrei Gaimar, Estoire des Engleis: History of the English, ed. and trans. I. Short (Oxford, 2009) (hereafter EE).The text of Wace and Gaimar used by the writer of the OV was related to the group now represented by Durham Cathedral Library C.IV.27 (hereafter Dur) and Lincoln Cathedral Library 104 (hereafter Lin). The Barlings chronicle, which is related to the Hagneby chronicle and the betterknown annals of Waverley (Annales Monasterii de Waverleia, in Annales Monastici, ed. H. R. Luard, 5 vols., Rolls Series 36 (London, 1865), II, 129–412), survives in Oxford, Magdalen College, lat. 199 (hereafter M199), and Oxford, Bodleian Library (hereafter Bodleian), Rawlinson B.414, Thomas Hearne’s 1729–30 transcription from a now-lost manuscript. For a detailed account of the OV’s sources and analogues, see Oldest, pp. 20–40, 297–346. See also J. Marvin, ‘Havelok in the Prose Brut Tradition’, Studies in Philology 102 (2005), 280–306. Heather Pagan takes issue with my identification of a close analogue to the Barlings chronicle as the main source for the latter part of the OV without offering grounds as to why (Oldest, pp. 25–36; Prose Brut to 1332, Anglo-Norman Text Society 69 (Manchester, 2011), pp. 16–17); the claim can be evaluated by comparative reading of a representative stretch of the relevant text and explanatory notes in both editions (e.g., the reign of Henry II, in Oldest, ll. 3463–558 and pp. 337–9; 1332, ll. 4469–575 and p. 234). 20 The current count ranges from fifty-two to fifty-seven, depending on how one considers short extracts, composite manuscripts, and manuscripts that draw only on Brut prologues or continuations. See Oldest, p. 1 n. 1, and pp. 47–52, for more detail, bibliography, and refinements to Dean’s lists. Since the publication of the OV,

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The Construction of Vernacular History these manuscripts and detailed study of these texts have yet to be made.21 The versions of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut that expand on the Oldest Version fall into two broad surviving groups, known as the Short and Long Versions, so called because of the relative length of their continuations.22 The Short Version runs into the early 1330s, extending in its fullest form to the sack of Haddington in 1333, and many of its manuscripts also have a verse prologue, an adaptation of the poem Des Grantz Geanz, which accounts for the presence of giants on the island when Brut arrives – and provides the island not just with progenitors for the giants, but with a female founder, the princess Albine, exiled with her many sisters after they plot to kill their husbands and take sovereignty for themselves.23

John Spence has identified as ANPB texts Cambridge University Library (hereafter CUL) Dd.10.32, fols. 63r–82v (Dean no. 25) and Exeter Cathedral Library 3514, p. 450 (a brief extract) (Reimagining History in Anglo-Norman Prose Chronicles (York, 2013), p. 15 n. 74). The Brut text in CUL Dd.10.32 has now been edited as H. Pagan and G. De Wilde, ed. and trans., ‘The Anglo-Norman Prose Chronicle of Early British Kings or the Abbreviated Prose Brut: Text and Translation’, The Medieval Chronicle 10 (2015), 225–319. This count does not include the Continental texts derived from the ANPB that have been recently identified by Marigold Norbye, Lisa Fagin Davis, and Jaclyn Rajsic, which are opening up new territories for study of the reach and use of the prose Brut (hereafter PB in notes) (see below, pp. 226–8). 21 Although Dean’s catalogue is invaluable, it spreads PB texts across seven non-consecutive entries for the main text (nos. 36, 42, 44–6, 48–9; see also nos. 25, 37–9, 41, 47) while it labels some of them in terms that no PB scholars use, and its categorization of the manuscripts is eccentric (and at times misleading or simply incorrect, very understandably, given the gargantuan scale of her project and the immature state of the field where the PB is concerned). Errors in Dean will be noted and corrected as needed below. 22 The only published edition yet of a Short Version (hereafter SV in notes) text is Pagan’s edition (with prologue omitted) of London, British Library (hereafter BL), Harley (hereafter Harley) 200, one of a group of three manuscripts that appear together with the Latin chronicle of Robert of Avesbury (1332); the text edited is a seemingly abridged version represented in late manuscripts, which despite its intrinsic interest cannot be considered representative of the main stream of the SV. This edition’s introduction and notes are of somewhat limited use because of their reliance on dated scholarship, with resulting confusion in the presentation of the content and development of the tradition. Pagan’s labeling of the OV as the ‘Common Text’ is idiosyncratic (possibly derived from Matheson’s characterization of it (PB, p. 4)): although this name has its virtues (and the name ‘Oldest Version’ its deficiencies), it may encourage underestimation of the changes to the core text in the Long Version (hereafter LV in notes) (1332, p. 2). The LV has not yet been published; Marcia Maxwell has edited one of the manuscripts from the group that appears to have been the source for the MEPB in ‘The Anglo-Norman Prose Brut: An Edition of British Library MS Cotton Cleopatra D.iii’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Michigan State University, 1995). I have gratefully consulted these editions in making transcriptions. 23 Des Grantz Geanz: An Anglo-Norman Poem, ed. G. E. Brereton, Medium Aevum Monographs 2 (Oxford, 1937) (hereafter GG). See also L. Johnson, ‘Return to Albion’,

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Recognizing the Prose Brut Tradition The Long Version contains more or less the same continuation as the Short Version up to 1307 and thereafter diverges from it with a continuation of its own, one less stridently critical of Edward II than the Short Continuation can be, typically concluding with the Battle of Halidon Hill in 1333. No source or analogue for this continuation has yet been identified, and it may be original. Almost all of the manuscripts of the Long Version also contain a prose version of the prologue, with a significantly altered plot in which Albine and her sisters become actual rather than would-be regicides.24 Unlike the Short Version, which leaves the existing body of the Oldest Version’s text nearly intact throughout, the Long Version represents a thorough, if light, revision of the whole, with mildly altered wording and some additions and elaborations to the core text: it provides an apparatus of chapter numbers and what become fairly standardized headings; it supplies lengths of reigns and burial places for kings lacking them in the Oldest Version; it introduces a full set of prophecies of Merlin; and in its continuation, it vividly describes the murder of Edward II (whose death the Short Continuation attributes to sudden illness).25 Because of the common continuation to 1307, a lost version of the prose Brut that runs only to that year has sometimes been hypothesized, but the balance of the evidence suggests that the Long Version is likely to represent a wholesale revision of the Short Version, with its account of Edward II replacing that of the Short Continuation.26

Arthurian Literature XIII (1995), 19–40. The only known additional source for the SV (for 1272–1307) is Redaction I of the chronicle of Peter Langtoft (Edition critique et commentée de Pierre de Langtoft: le règne d’Édouard Ier, ed. J. C. Thiolier (Paris, 1989)). The fullest known version of the Short Continuation from 1307 to 1334 is found in University of Leeds Brotherton 29, the Anonimalle chronicle, where it follows a different Anglo-Norman prose history from Noah to 1307 (The Anonimalle Chronicle, 1307–1334, ed. W. R. Childs and J. Taylor, Yorkshire Archaeological Society 147 (Leeds, 1991) (hereafter Anonimalle)). 24 For comparison of the prologues and continuations, and an edition of the LV prologue, see J. Marvin, ‘Albine and Isabelle: Regicidal Queens and the Historical Imagination of the Anglo-Norman Prose Brut Chronicles’, Arthurian Literature XVIII (2001), 143–91. The matter of Albine has begun to attract scholarly attention in its own right: the most comprehensive treatment to date, with extensive bibliography, is L. Ruch, Albina and Her Sisters: The Foundation of Albion (Amherst, NY, 2013). 25 For more on the ordinatio characteristic of each version, see below, pp. 177–9, 188–90. Many SV manuscripts do contain a considerably longer account of the reign of Richard I than found in the OV or LV, resembling the Livere de Reis de Engleterre (e.g., Edinburgh University Library (hereafter EUL) 181, fol. 149r; BL, Cotton (hereafter Cotton) Cleopatra D.VII, (hereafter CD7) fols. 86v–7r; and Bodleian Rawlinson D.329 (hereafter RD329), fols. 144v–5r). For a side-by-side transcription of the relevant portion, using CD7 and RD329, see C. Foltys, Kritische Ausgabe der anglonormannischen Chroniken Brutus, Li Rei de Engleterre, Le Livere de Reis de Engleterre [Ph.D. dissertation, Freien Universität Berlin] (Berlin, 1962), pp. 188–208. 26 See Marvin, ‘Albine’, pp. 153–64, 175–6; of course, the LV could have been based on an incomplete copy of the SV, with a new continuation supplied out of necessity

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The Construction of Vernacular History The Anglo-Norman Long Version formed the basis for the anonymous translation into Middle English now known as the Common Version to 1333 of the Middle English prose Brut, made sometime in the later fourteenth century, as well as the 1435 translation by John Mandeville.27 The Common Version is a labored calque of the Anglo-Norman Long Version, one consequence of which is that one of the first widely disseminated monuments of English prose, which may have played a role in the subsequent development of the language in general as it did on historical writing in particular, mirrors the syntax, as well as the content, of its source. In his 1998 study, Matheson found the Middle English prose Brut to survive in 181 manuscripts, many of which ‘contain recognizably composite texts cobbled together from texts of different types’, representing some 215 texts in all, a number that has increased by at least one since then and seems likely to continue to rise with the identification of other manuscripts, especially known manuscripts that have gone missing.28 The Common Version became the seedbed for Middle English historiography, first in the form of many different continuations, which eventually ran as late as 1461, and second as a source (sometimes at a remove) for later writers, from fourteenth-century London civic chroniclers, through the writers of Holinshed, to John Milton, who as the matter of the Brut is fading into disrepute still engages critically with it, famously concluding, Of British Affairs, from the first peopling of the Iland to the coming of Julius Caesar, nothing certain, either by Tradition, History, or Ancient Fame hath hitherto bin left us. That which we have of oldest seeming, hath by the greater part of judicious Antiquaries bin long rejected for a Modern Fable. Nevertheless there being others besides the first suppos’d Author, men not unread, not unlearned in Antiquitie, who admitt that for approved Story, which the former explode for Fiction, and seeing that oft-times Relations heretofore accounted Fabulous, have bin after found to contain in them many footsteps, and reliques of somthing true, … I have therefore determin’d to bestow the telling over ev’n of these reputed Tales; be it for

rather than choice. On the classification of LV manuscripts, see Matheson, PB, pp. 36–7, who provides a useful summary of Brie’s dated and imperfect but still meaningful findings in Geschichte und Quellen der mittelenglischen Prosachronik: The Brute of England oder The Chronicles of England (Marburg, 1905), pp. 26–32. 27 See Matheson, PB, pp. 47–9. The Mandeville translation survives in only two manuscripts, Harley 4690 and London, College of Arms, Arundel (hereafter Arundel) 58; for an argument that the version of the MEPB represented in these manuscripts should not be attributed to Mandeville, see R. Moll, ‘The Enigma of the Twenty-Four Knights: A Puzzle in Arthurian Seating Arrangements’, Bulletin bibliographique de la Société Internationale Arthurienne 60 (2008), 431–42. 28 Matheson, PB, p. 6. For supplementary material, see Matheson, ‘Contextualizing the Dartmouth Brut: From Professional Manuscripts to “the Worst Little Scribbler in Surrey”’, Digital Philology 3 (2014), 215–39 (Apps. A–C, pp. 232–6).

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Recognizing the Prose Brut Tradition nothing else but in favour of our English Poets, and Rhetoricians, who by thir Art will know, how to use them judiciously.29

Latin prose Bruts represent back-translations of vernacular material, and study of them has advanced very little since Kingsford’s 1913 account of them. The relation of Welsh Galfridian material (which is abundant) to the prose Brut tradition is awaiting an investigator.30 Hard evidence for the early provenance of Anglo-Norman prose Brut manuscripts, and thus for their earliest owners, is scanty. Inscriptions of ownership are very rare before the later fifteenth century. Wills and inventories of books are the main source for information on early owners – but since the chronicle had no named author or fixed title, and entries in inventories are often curt and cryptic, it can be a matter of speculation as to whether a prose Brut is the work described in any given case. A description like that of the ‘veille livre de Cronicles Dengleterre’ valued at 12d in the inventory made after the murder of Thomas of Woodstock in 1397 comes as close to clarity as one is likely to get.31 More common is something like the entry from the 1494/95 inventory of the books of the lawyer Sir Roger Townshend: ‘a rede boke of cronycles of kyng Edward le fyrste with bredes’ (that is, bound with boards).32 Since this whole list is in English, sometimes specifying the language of the works in question, sometimes not (‘boke with bredes called liber pastorialis sancti gregorii’), and sometimes only describing the physical appearance of the volume (‘a whyth boke with bredes with dyuerse quayres’), it is not even clear what language these chronicles are in, although mention of Edward ‘le fyrste’ hints at the possibility of French.33 Reading that the accounts of Bolton Abbey for 1312–13 record payment of two shillings ‘Pro Croniclis apud Eboracum scribendis’, and recognizing how frequently York and Yorkshire are associated with the early history of the prose Brut, one can

29 The

History of Britain, 2nd edn (London, 1677), facsimile, ed. G. Parry (Stamford CT, 1991), p. 7. On later use see Matheson, PB, pp. 8–29, 47–9. The PB continues to be identified as a source for or influence on other works: see, e.g., E. Kooper and J. Marvin, ‘A Source for the Middle English Poem Arthur’, Arthuriana 22 (2012), 25–45. 30 See above, p. 2 n. 4. 31 Quoted from S. H. Cavanaugh, ‘A Study of Books Privately Owned in England, 1300–1450’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1980), p. 847; see pp. 844–5 on the inventory. Thomas’s grandmother Queen Isabelle left a Brut in French (by its description, not likely to be the same book as in the inventory) to her son Edward III (Matheson, PB, p. 10). 32 As edited by C. E. Moreton, ‘The “Library” of a Late-Fifteenth-Century Lawyer’, The Library 6th s. 13 (1991), 338–46 (p. 342), with abbreviations expanded. 33 Or mistranscription. Moreton, ‘The “Library”’, p. 342, with abbreviations expanded. Displaying the common tendency to favor works with named authors, Moreton suggests in the body of the text that this may be a copy of Nicholas Trevet’s Annales, while mentioning only in a footnote – but at least mentioning – that ‘it may have been a portion of the Brut’ (p. 342 n. 24).

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The Construction of Vernacular History only wonder.34 Although it is often impossible to identify the works listed in inventories, and the mere fact of having enough books to merit an inventory probably makes a collection atypical, they do provide information not reliant on the survival of manuscripts to the present. Scholarly understanding of the breadth of the matter of and audience for Anglo-Norman literature has expanded greatly since it was taken to be little more than a language for lawyers, bureaucrats, and pious ladies who could not manage Latin.35 The contributions of women to Anglo-Norman literature should of course not be underestimated: they seem to have been not only authors and readers, but collectors and patrons from early on, if Gaimar’s twelfth-century description of Lady Constance both commissioning his history and providing him with his source materials is at all representative.36 Not just a language of administration and translation from Latin, and itself serving to encourage the development of Middle English literature and literacy, Anglo-Norman had consumers across a wide swath of literate society in the fourteenth century and beyond. Historical writing was evidently valued by clerical and secular audiences alike. Institutions and individuals with the means might own multiple histories; the inventory of Thomas of Woodstock, for instance, is crammed with historical works, and of the twenty-three manuscripts identified as coming from Battle Abbey, at least nine might be considered historical in nature, and they include vernacular texts.37 Later and across the Channel, the library of Duke Philip III (the Good) of Burgundy as inventoried in 1469 34 F.

Wormald, ‘The Monastic Library’, in Wormald and C. E. Wright, eds., The English Library before 1700 (London, 1958), pp. 15–31 (p. 31 n. 37, citing Chatsworth, Collection of the Duke of Devonshire, Bolton Abbey Accounts, fol. 294v). On Northern associations, see Oldest, p. 42, and Anonimalle, pp. 18–23. 35 On past attitudes, see, e.g., K. Busby, ‘“Neither Flesh nor Fish, nor Good Red Herring”: The Case of Anglo-Norman Literature’, in Studies in Honor of Hans-Erich Keller, ed. R. T. Pickens (Kalamazoo, 1993), pp. 399–417; Marvin, ‘Unassuming’, pp. 14–36; and W. Rothwell, ‘Language and Government in Medieval England’, Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur 93 (1983), 258–70. For recent developments, see J. Wogan-Browne et al., eds., Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England, c. 1100–c. 1500 (York, 2009). 36 EE, ll. 6435–507. On factors (mildly) suggesting possible involvement in the composition of the ANPB by the Longespée and de Lacy families, in particular Margaret and Alice de Lacy, see Oldest, pp. 44–7. 37 See Cavanaugh, ‘Study’, pp. 844–51, for the inventory of Thomas’s books; see also R. Hanna, Introducing English Medieval Book History: Manuscripts, Their Producers and Their Readers (Liverpool, 2013), pp. 199–208. The Battle Abbey manuscripts include the chronicle of Battle Abbey, two manuscripts with annals, a Historia Jerusalem, Bede along with a history of the Norman Conquest, some now-lost Historiae Britannie, Matthew Paris’s Flores Historiarum, a MEPB, and a copy of Lydgate’s Fall of Princes. These last three contain inscriptions from John Newton, a mid-fifteenth century abbot. See M. Connolly, ‘Books Connected with Battle Abbey before the Dissolution: Some New Discoveries’, The Library 7th s. 1 (2000), 119–32 (esp. pp.

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Recognizing the Prose Brut Tradition falls into three major groups: in order of number of texts, the didactic, the historiographic, and then the literary; in the 1445 list, historiography takes first place.38 The identifiable audience for the prose Brut bears out, and indeed serves as one of the major sources of evidence for, the wide geographical and social reach of Anglo-Norman texts. Matheson has analyzed the ownership of the versions of the prose Brut, and in a comprehensive essay, Spence has marshalled the evidence provided by catalogues for the ownership, geographical distribution, and manuscript context for Anglo-Norman prose chronicles, including the prose Brut.39 Spence finds that Anglo-Norman prose chronicles were held in religious houses all over England, from London to Yorkshire to the Welsh borders to Devon: he concludes that even more notable than their spread is the fact that ‘in almost every area where AngloNorman historiography was produced and circulated, the religious and laity were both involved in this process as producers and readers, and often in collaboration with one another’.40 Although the prose Brut chronicle’s secular tone and focus suggest that it was first designed for a lay audience, over the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it spread to the full range of religious institutions, prelates, universities, the English royal family, nobility, gentry, household and civic officials, lawyers, and families who have left their names in Bruts without leaving other traces on the historical record.41 Many of the answers as to why the Oldest Version presents the past as it does are surely to be found in its own present, and it would seem a logical procedure to put this highly social text into the context of its own social reality. However, the text’s own history makes it only sometimes possible to do so in a disciplined and productive fashion. Too little is often known about either the writing or context of medieval works (other than blatantly

120–1); C. Nall, Reading and War in Fifteenth-Century England: From Lydgate to Malory (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 23–4; Matheson, PB, pp. 131–2. 38 H. W. Wijsman, Luxury Bound: Illustrated Manuscript Production and Noble and Princely Book Ownership in the Burgundian Netherlands (1400–1550) (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 233–4. At least three works in the collection before 1748 were in the ANPB tradition: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France (hereafter BNF), fonds français (hereafter f.f.) 12155 (LV) and f.f. 12156 (SV), and Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale 10233–66, one of the Continental genealogical rolls with Brut-derived material (J. Rajsic, ‘“Cestuy roy dit que la couronne de Ffraunce luy appartenoit”: Reshaping the Prose Brut Chronicle in Fifteenth-Century France’, in The Plantagenet Empire, 1259–1453, Proceedings of the 2014 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. P. Crooks, D. Green, and W. M. Ormrod, Harlaxton Medieval Studies 26 (Donington, 2016), pp. 126–47 (p. 130 n. 21). 39 Matheson, PB, pp. 8–29; J. Spence, ‘Anglo-Norman Prose Chronicles and Their Audiences’, English Manuscript Studies, 1100–1700 14 (2008), 27–59; see also Oldest, pp. 52–3. 40 ‘Anglo-Norman Prose Chronicles’, p. 37. 41 See Oldest, pp. 57–65, for the known ownership of manuscripts of the OV.

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The Construction of Vernacular History occasional ones) to make the attempt to connect their details to contemporary particulars convincing or fruitful. Difficult enough with the well-documented life and works of a writer such as Chaucer, in the case of the prose Brut the problem of contextualization is acute, since its authorship and provenance remain unclear, and the dating of the Oldest Version is ultimately restrictable only to between 1272, when the narrative concludes, and 1338, the date of an inscription in one manuscript.42 Whatever is to be learned about the origins of the Brut or the circumstances of its production will be learned from the manuscripts themselves and the few other documents, such as wills, that may mention it. Since the audience of the prose Brut is a scholarly construct based on the textual evidence itself (some of it, such as names of owners, fairly specific, but not indicative of the work’s origins), and explanations of the text based on its projected audience will tend to be circular, here I will generally use the surviving texts as the concrete basis of speculation about the audience, instead of the audience as the basis of speculation about the texts. The enduring popularity of the prose Brut over three languages and two centuries indicates that its interest was far from merely topical – or at least that its topics were ones with legs. Fear of the consequences of war, worries about succession or sedition, anxiety over and desire for good law and governance, and a sense that one’s taxes could be lower are not the property of any one time or place, or even a highly specifiable social group. Much of the power of the prose Brut seems to have come from its generality: far from addressing only the timely interests of the gentry of the early years of Edward I, it speaks to the concerns of stakeholders in a general way. For example, the prose Brut’s concern with baronial advisorial privilege, illustrated as a benefit to the realm at every turn, and the right of rebellion, illustrated as an occasional unpleasant necessity, makes excellent sense in the context of the years immediately following Henry III and the chronic conflict that had led to what is now called the Barons’ War. It is likely that these recent events influenced the writer of the Oldest Version, and that the original audience read the stories of the distant past with satisfying reference to the recent past. However, if the prose Brut were thought to have been composed in the 1320s, Edward II and the Ordainers could provide an equally compelling context – and probably did so for audiences of the 1320s and 1330s. In the 1390s, readers might as easily and justly think of Richard II and the Lords Appellant.43 The enduring appeal of the prose Brut’s version of British history may lie exactly

42 BNF

nouvelles acquisitions françaises (hereafter n.a.f.) 4267, fol. 14r; see Oldest, pp. 40–1, 60–1. 43 Margaret Lamont notes that the Anglo-Norman (hereafter AN in notes) continuations and ME Common Version were likely to have been composed near or during times of ‘civil unrest’ (‘Becoming English: Ronwenne’s Wassail, Language, and National Identity in the Middle English Prose Brut’, Studies in Philology 107 (2010), 283–309 (p. 306)).

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Recognizing the Prose Brut Tradition in its flexibility and wide applicability to the conditions of late medieval life, and not in any genesis from specific and identifiable social circumstances. Any given manuscript stands on its own, but also as part of a complex of production, transmission, ownership, and readership. Each prose Brut manuscript in its own way, large or small, constitutes a reconceptualization of the chronicle. Each one comes out of a series of texts and influences, and may give rise to further versions and revisions. These processes of preservation and transformation are of course at work throughout medieval narrative culture, both oral and written. The prose Brut’s enormous body of manuscripts and variety of versions provide the opportunity to observe and track the continuous cycle of transmission, reception, and revision, both through the evidence of manuscripts as physical objects, and through the words of and around the texts themselves. Among scholars of late medieval historiography, the prose Brut tradition has come to command more attention, with its value as a resource and the implications of its ubiquity beginning to gain recognition, especially in relation to the Middle English versions.44 As traditional disciplinary boundaries continue to break down, however slowly, a work that has been dismissed as derivative and middlebrow can be recognized as polysemous, multilingual, genre-bending, and popular. The same qualities of the prose Brut that most repelled nineteenth-century scholars may be among its most intriguing and appealing now.

Plan of the Book The text represented by the Oldest Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut will be the touchstone for this book. This is partly a pragmatic choice – the Oldest Version is the part of the tradition that I know best, through my previous work on its manuscripts and sources, and through making an edition and translation of it, whereas the later stages of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut have yet to receive the kind of study that will support valid observations in the middle ground between the broadly general and the highly specific. (Although I will be taking up the manuscripts of the Short and Long Versions, my discussions of their textual content should be understood more as the examination of particular, if representative, manifestations of the chronicle 44 See

the work of the scholars already cited, as well as, e.g., that of Christopher Baswell, Elizabeth J. Bryan, Alan MacColl, Daniel Mosser, Stephen Partridge, and Diana Tyson (see the Bibliography for further details of these works); also the essays in W. Marx and R. Radulescu, eds., ‘Readers and Writers of the Brut’, special issue, Trivium 36 (2006); R. Radulescu and E. D. Kennedy, eds., Broken Lines: Genealogical Literature in Late-Medieval Britain and France, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe 16 (Turnhout, 2008); M. R. Warren, ed., ‘Situating the Middle English Prose Brut’, special issue, Digital Philology 3 (2014); and Rajsic, Kooper, and Hoche, eds., The Prose Brut and Other Late Medieval Chronicles.

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The Construction of Vernacular History than as general assessments.) The Oldest Version also merits special attention because it marks a key moment in the larger Brut tradition. Encompassing not just the ancient past but the recent one, it outshone and outlasted other efforts along the same lines, such as those of Langtoft, Nicholas Trevet, and Sir Thomas Gray (in French) and ‘Robert of Gloucester’, Robert Mannyng, and the writer of ‘Castleford’s Chronicle’ (in English).45 The Oldest Version’s own expansion of content and perspective invited newer perspectives and further expansion, so that it became the catalyst for a renovated tradition of vernacular historiography in England while providing a core text whose content remained fairly constant through its Anglo-Norman and English instantiations. In Part I, I will be considering the content of the Oldest Version to illuminate its concerns and narrative methods, and to argue that, by means of a secularized typology, developed through meticulous editing of its sources, it refashions its materials, from the foundation of the realm to the Norman Conquest and beyond, to support and promote a distinctly humane, secular, and populist vision of governance and society, transforming the relentless Galfridian cycle of conquest and loss into a new British history in which all can consider themselves the literal as well as figurative descendants of Brut’s and Arthur’s people. The Oldest Version’s vision of history, combined with the enduring popularity of the text, challenges common presumptions about popular understandings of the events and figures of British history, and more broadly, presumptions about the dominance of imperialism, next-worldly piety, misogyny, a taste for violence, and nationalism based on the exclusion of out-groups in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century popular culture. In discussing the Oldest Version and its analogues, I make claims about ‘works’ based on printed editions of them, approximations of them never seen or imagined by the medieval Bruts’ own makers and readers. At the same time I want to honor the medieval reality and individuality of these texts in manuscript, whatever they may become for us now with our own ideals and technologies of reading. I do try to substantiate and qualify as much as possible my comparative readings of the Oldest Version and its sources: hence my recurrent comparison to the Vulgate and First Variant Versions of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and to the manuscript traditions of Wace, Gaimar, and the Barlings chronicle.46 But (as Max Weber said) human 45 Basic

information on all of these can be found in Dunphy, ed., Encyclopedia. appears to have relied primarily on the First Variant Version of Geoffrey, while also consulting the Vulgate at times; the OV introduces other material from the Vulgate. On Wace’s sources, editorial habits, and the Vulgate versus the First Variant, see F. H. M. Le Saux, A Companion to Wace (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2005), pp. 85–107; RB, pp. xviii–xxiv; The Historia Regum Britannie, II, The First Variant Version: A Critical Edition (henceforth HRBVV), ed. N. Wright (Cambridge, 1988) pp. xi–cxvi; R. A. Caldwell, ‘Wace’s Roman de Brut and the Variant Version of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae’, Speculum 31 (1956), 675–82. Future

46 Wace

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Recognizing the Prose Brut Tradition powers of work are restricted,47 and the endurance of readers for painstaking comparison in service of cautious conclusions is limited too, though not as limited as the patience of institutional administrators who want to see ever more widgets coming faster and faster down the academic assembly line. So although I am not blithely or naively relying on modern editions, I am relying on them nonetheless, and at times probably slipping into unconsidered reliance as well. I am scarcely the first scholar to face the issue of reproducing the problem that I seek to address, but I still want to acknowledge it. Impure as such a methodology is, I hope that lumping and splitting will allow me to reap the insights that each approach does provide, and that neither approach can provide in isolation. In Part II, after examining and discussing the implications of some evidence of the production process for Anglo-Norman prose Brut manuscripts, I turn to the different versions and manuscripts of the chronicle as artifacts representing a range of individual responses and reconstructions. My focus is less on variations in the main text of the chronicle – which cannot be fully addressed until the manuscripts have been adequately classified – than on the ways in which its makers and users presented and reacted to it, through manuscript context, ordinatio and apparatus, annotation, and illustration.48 The corpus of manuscripts provides the opportunity to investigate just how much what is labeled as one work can be affected by elements beyond the kind of content typically transmitted and transmittable in a printed edition – elements that some medievalists following the lead of print historians have taken to calling ‘paratext’. Any one of the manuscripts considered here could lead the inquirer down any number of rabbit-holes. While I offer a few detailed case-studies of individual manuscripts (although even those leave much room for further inquiry), in general, rather than attempting to reach a comprehensive view, I will be providing a kaleidoscopic one, juxtaposing specific aspects in different combinations. In an ideal world, I would be considering Middle English and Latin prose Brut manuscripts as well, but again, human powers of work (and publishers’ word counts, however generous) are restricted, and since the continuing strength of Anglo-Norman written culture in late-medieval England has been so little acknowledged or studied until recently, intensive study of Anglo-Norman works is both the more urgently needed and the less impeded by existing scholarly narratives.

findings on the HRB may clarify or complicate matters; the question of which of these versions of Geoffrey is older remains controverted but is not germane to this discussion. 47 M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. T. Parsons (New York, 1958), p. 30. 48 For focused studies of the ongoing transformation of historiographic content by scribes, with some cases from the Brut tradition, see M. Fisher, Scribal Authorship and the Writing of History in Medieval England (Columbus OH, 2012).

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The Construction of Vernacular History In my concluding chapter, I bring together the approaches of the first two parts – source study, thematic analysis, close reading and comparison of versions of the text, and investigation of individual manuscripts – in a study of the changing presentation of Merlin, a figure who exerts particular fascination and power across different manifestations of the chronicle. Ludwig Wittgenstein noted the pernicious effects of what he termed ‘the craving for generality’, which as far as he was concerned helped lead ‘the philosopher into complete darkness’.49 I neither can nor want to mine the treasure trove represented by the Anglo-Norman prose Brut and its manuscripts to substitute a new overarching narrative of the ‘popular’ view of any given subject. Rather, I seek to show that at the very least there was more than one viable ‘popular’ view available, and that disregard of the prose Brut tradition has distorted our collective understandings of the range of ideas, attitudes, and content not just available to, but widely disseminated among, the vernacular audiences of late-medieval England. Likewise, the manuscripts reveal that even with big bodies of evidence, it is extraordinarily difficult to identify stable patterns of intentionality where manuscript compilation and annotation are concerned. I cannot argue for a preeminent way, but rather a variety of ways, in which the prose Brut was made, used, and understood – a variety at least as significant and instructive in itself as any broad generalization might be. Study of the prose Brut tradition fosters respect for the particular, and especially respect for the makers and users of these books, who aside from the consequences of their generally poorer health were no more stupid and certainly no lazier than we, and who within the canons of credibility and evidence of their time were struggling, as we do, to find a history from which something can profitably be learned. The manuscripts will tell us not what a given figure or text or event ‘really’ meant in late-medieval culture, but how malleable such things could be, even in a culture that seems to us vastly more homogeneous than our own, and when relatively little of what might change about the content of a text is easily reproducible in a modern published edition. Through these investigations of acts of medieval reading and writing, and rereading and rewriting, I hope to uncover some of the conceptions and reconceptions of history and historical narrative that they demonstrate, and to help form a picture of the lives of one work – itself a couple of stages of the life of a very long-lived matter – as it was variously shaped by its composers and revisers, scribes and bookmakers, and readers and book-users.

49 L.

Wittgenstein, The Blue Book, in The Blue and Brown Books (New York, 1958), p. 18.

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PART I CONSTRUCTION

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1 A New New Troy: Brut, Rome, and the Foundations of British History

The narrative of the Oldest Version of the prose Brut chronicle is built of kings’ reigns laid end to end. With over a hundred rulers to cover, it goes into detail only on the most prominent and most recent. Aside from a handful of notables, the earlier kings generally make do with a few sentences, brief descriptions stripped down even from Wace, who in turn generally condenses Geoffrey. A typical stretch on the lives of some lesser-known British kings in the years between Brut and Arthur: [Del Roy Guentholen, homme bien entecche. Apres la mort cest Goryn Batruz regna sun fyz Guentholen, bien entecche, e bien gouerna la tere e sagement. E regna taunt cum deu voleyt e pus morust. Del Roy Seysyl, home de bon manere. Apres cesti Guentholon regna sun fyz Seysyl. Bien e noblement gouerna la tere e sagement, cum sun pere auoyt fet deuaunt ly, e donke regna taunt cum deu voleyt e pus morut. Del Roy Kymor. [A]pres cesty Seysyl regna sun fyz Kymor, home de bone manere, mes il ne regna mye logement. Del Roy Hohan, coment il gouerna sa tere noblement. Apres cesti Kymor regna sun fyz Hohan bien e noblement.] Coment le Roi Morwith morut sudeinement. Apres la mort cesti [Hohan] regna son fiz Morwith, e deuint si cruel homme e si maluois qe graunt mescheaunce li auenist au darein. Qar sicome il ala vn iour prede la cost de la mer, il encountrast vne beste grant, noir, e hidous, e quida qil vst este vne cete de la mer. E tendi son alblast e le voleit auer tue dun quarel, mes il nel poeit ferir. E quant il auoit tret tuz ses quareus e pur nent, la beste vint a li graunt espleite e li deuora tut vif si li emporta. E issint morust cesti roi par vengeaunce deu pur sa mauueiste. (‘Of King Guentholen, a worthy man. After the death of this Gorin Batruz reigned his worthy son Guentholen,

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The Construction of Vernacular History and he governed the land well and wisely. And he reigned as long as God willed, and then he died. Of King Seysyl, a man of good conduct. After this Guentholen reigned his son Seysyl. He governed the land well and nobly and wisely, as his father had done before him, and so he reigned as long as God willed, and then he died. Of King Kymor. After this Seysyl reigned his son Kymor, a man of good conduct, but he did not reign long at all. How King Hohan governed his land nobly. After this Kymor reigned his son Hohan, well and nobly. How King Morwith died suddenly. After the death of this Hohan reigned his son Morwith, and he became so cruel and wicked a man that great misfortune befell him in the end. For one day as he went along by the seacoast, he met with a great, black, hideous beast, and he took it to be a sea-whale. And he bent his bow and wanted to kill it with an arrow, but he could not hit it. And when he had shot all his arrows in vain, the beast came up to him in a great rush and ate him alive and carried him off. And so this king died by the vengeance of God for his wickedness.’)1

Evidently, a good king reigns well and nobly. This idea is news to no reader in any century, but it remains important enough to be repeated dozens of times in the text, and it can, as here with Hohan, constitute the whole description of a reign. Such undifferentiated goodness tends to be literally forgettable: of the four manuscripts of the Oldest Version that contain this section of the text, one omits Kymor, while another skips straight from Gorin Batruz to Morwith.2 In Wace, the account of the reign of Guentholen’s analogue Guincelin is given entirely over to the accomplishments of his queen Marcie, a welllettered woman who writes the ‘Marcïene’ law later translated into English as the Mercian Law.3 When the king dies, his son Sisillus is only seven years old, and the queen rules – well and peacefully – until he is old enough to reign.4 The next two kings pass by in two lines of verse, and Morpidus (an illegitimate son) comes to the throne:

1 Oldest,

ll. 573–93. Douce 120 (hereafter D120) omits Kymor; BL Additional (hereafter Add.) 35092, the printed edition’s base text, makes the larger and for it uncharacteristic skip (it is on the whole a carefully prepared manuscript). Only the last six folios of n.a.f. 4267 survive. See Oldest, p. 355. 3 RB, l. 3343. 4 This itself represents a change from Geoffrey, whose Marcia reigns until her death (HRB, § 47, p. 61). 2 Bodleian

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A New New Troy Morpidus out non, mult fu fiers E hardiz e fort chevaliers. Alosez fu de grant bunté, Mais trop ert de grant cruelté; A demesure ert de grant ire; Sempres voleit un home ocirre. (‘His name was Morpidus; he was very fierce and bold and a strong knight. He was praised for his great prowess, but he was much too cruel. His anger was immoderate: at once he would want to kill someone.’)5

Morpidus enthusiastically slaughters invaders, butchering prisoners singlehandedly until he is exhausted and then ordering the rest skinned alive. A different challenge arrives in the form of a ‘monstre marin, orible beste, / D’orrible cors, d’orrible teste’ (‘a sea monster, a horrible animal with a horrible body and horrible head’), who terrorizes the coasts, devouring men, women, and beasts.6 The king sets off to do single combat with the beast, which devours him so that he dies ‘par s’estultie’ (‘through his arrogance’), but not before he fatally wounds it.7 The people are sad that Morpidus is dead, but very happy that the sea-beast is. His good son Gorgonian becomes a just and upright king.8 The Oldest Version of the prose Brut makes several telling changes to this material. Most notably, the regnant queen Marcie vanishes, and her wisdom and good governance are displaced onto her husband and son. Seysyl is even explicitly said to rule as his father had; this formulation occurs nowhere else in the Oldest Version and has the look of an attempt to overwrite the importance of his mother. The distinctive elements are obliterated, even at the expense of the eponymic explanation of the Mercian Law, the sort of item that the writer is ordinarily happy to retain, in service to a completely unvexed picture of successful male kingship. The writer similarly permits no ambiguity to remain in the account of Morwith. His better points – such as prowess, generosity, and good looks – are omitted entirely. But beyond that, even negative points that might complicate the picture are elided: for instance, Morwith’s illegitimacy and the savagery against his enemies that helps him defend the realm. The story of the whale is altered point for point. Morwith does not seek the whale out in his arrogance (and for the good of his people): he happens to be at the seaside, and it, as the agent of God, comes after him, its only victim. He does not hurt, much less kill it: his people have nothing to thank him for or to grieve at in his

5 RB,

ll. 3369–74. ll. 3421–2. 7 RB, l. 3451. 8 RB, ll. 3335–480. 6 RB,

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The Construction of Vernacular History loss. Wace’s strong king flawed by an uncontrolled temper and overweening arrogance becomes a straightforward cautionary figure. In taking this approach with Morwith, the writer of the Oldest Version is actually doing something more complex than throwing out the parts of his source that he does not like, though that does seem to be just what he does by dropping Queen Marcie from the line of rulers. He is also choosing among the elements of the story available to him in his different sources, for the Oldest Version’s Morwith comes closer to the Morvidus of Geoffrey of Monmouth, in plot as well as name. Although Geoffrey’s cruel Morvidus is strong, handsome, and generous, and the monster is attacking his people when he comes up against it, he is no match for it: ‘At cum omnia tela sua in illa in uanum consumpsisset, accelerauit monstrum illud et apertis faucibus ipsum uelut pisciculum deuorauit’ (‘but when he had used up all his missiles on it without effect, the monster rushed up and swallowed him in its open jaws like a little fish’).9 For the Oldest Version to make the sea monster the tool of God’s punishment is only an extension of what Geoffrey has already done in highlighting the king’s powerlessness against the beast as compared to his inexorability against others. The writer of the Oldest Version works diligently, comparing his sources, picking and choosing what to retain, revising delicately and largely by omission (which is his favored technique). So far it may seem as if he makes all this effort in order to take stories that modern readers may already find fairly flat and flatten them out even more, stylistically and morally, into a patriarchal fairytale of smooth, legitimate male succession in which virtue is rewarded and vice punished, designed to assure stakeholders in society that things always have been and always will be more or less gratifyingly the same. It is not difficult to see how, especially in the absence of editions, the scholarly tendency arose to dismiss the parts of the prose Brut tradition apart from its continuations as ignorable, simplistic synopses of better and betterknown works. The writer of the Oldest Version of the prose Brut does set out to provide many unambiguous exemplars, positive and negative. He does generate a set of standard phrases in a fairly narrow vocabulary to describe and explain standard situations, verbal formulas that result from careful editorial manipulation of the just as deliberately varied phraseology of Wace, a poet who takes great pleasure in sound play. The Oldest Version’s pattern of storytelling is basically repetitive, as is its fundamental material, since good and bad kings, ambitious siblings and barons, internal crises and external threats all have a way of recurring in historical fact as well as in the written sources available to its writer.10 9 HRB,

§ 48, pp. 63, 62. R. W. Hanning, The Vision of History in Early Britain: From Gildas to Geoffrey of Monmouth (New York, 1966), p. 141, for Geoffrey’s narrative as constructed of

10 See

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A New New Troy But the Oldest Version is far more than a bald précis of the legendary past or a historical timeline without the dates. And although it does offer a carefully constructed series of exemplary stories, what those stories exemplify, and the ideals and values embedded in them, pose a challenge to longstanding views of what the audience for secular historiography might have wanted to find, and in fact did find, in the books that gave them a version of their own past to contemplate. The fact that the chronicle became so overwhelmingly popular in comparison to other contemporary vernacular historiographic works suggests that its conception and presentation of history made for a powerful combination. As Hanning points out, the idea that history has exemplary value is a commonplace, but ‘the fact that Livy and Bede, in the prefaces to their histories, declare in practically identical words that history provides good and bad . . . exempla in no way means that Livy and Bede share similar views on the meaning of history’.11 A close study of the opening of the chronicle will show just how distinctive the historical vision of the writer of the Oldest Version is, and how broad the ramifications of his constant editorial work can be.12

The Character of Brut Brut, or Brutus, is of course the descendant of Aeneas who is exiled from Italy at the age of fifteen after he has completed the fulfillment of a prenatal prophecy that he will kill his parents: his mother dies giving birth to him, his father when Brut hits him with an arrow meant for a stag. He joins other Trojans in Greece, liberates them from servitude there, leads them on a long, eventful journey to find a new land of their own, and eventually settles the island that he will name after himself, once he and his men have established themselves both as the first human inhabitants and as conquerors by exterminating the giants present when they arrive. Thus Book 1 of the Vulgate Historia and about the first 1200 lines of Wace, both of which the writer of the Oldest Version read closely in constructing his version of the life of Brut.13 The Oldest Version follows the broad outlines of its sources’ plot, and its Brut shares many of the heroic traits of theirs: he is a man of the highest ‘variants of several basic situations’. He remains essential reading on Geoffrey and his predecessors. 11 Hanning, Vision, p. 125. 12 As Spence notes, since the early portions of Anglo-Norman histories often rely on a few known sources, ‘alterations to these sections can provide the clearest insights into the intentions and historical methods of their authors’ (Spence, Reimagining, p. 23). 13 For details, see Oldest, explanatory notes to ll. 22–89, pp. 298–300. The writer chooses Geoffrey’s details over Wace’s especially often in these early passages.

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The Construction of Vernacular History lineage who must earn his place, who displays fortitude in hardship and prowess and intelligence in battle, and who generously rewards loyal service. But from the chronicle’s start, another set of qualities and actions also comes to the foreground. As does another set of characters. Whereas in Geoffrey and Wace, Brutus’s relatives exile him after his father’s death, in the Oldest Version, it is the people: ‘les genz de la terre furent si dolenz e si corucez qil enchacerent Brut hors de la terre e nel voleient suffrir entre eux’ (‘the people of the land were so grieved and outraged that they drove Brut out of the country and would not allow him among them’).14 In Wace and Geoffrey, Brutus gains the backing of Assaracus, a disaffected youth of mixed Greek and Trojan blood, whose castles and resources provide the means for the Trojan rebellion.15 In the Oldest Version, Brut attracts the patronage of King Pandras himself once he arrives in Greece, and the Trojans have far less to offer a would-be rebel: when he takes up the cause of his people, who are ‘tenuz trestutz en cheitiuisoun e en seruage’ (‘all held in captivity and servitude’), he is throwing away an opportunity for advancement instead of exploiting one.16 The Oldest Version’s first substantial addition to the matter provided by its sources also constitutes its first direct speech: Ceux de Troie . . . se pleindront a Brut de lour anguise e del seruage, e des plusurs hountes qe le roi lor fist. E disoient a Brut vnefoiz, ‘Vous estes sire de nostre linag, fort homme e pussaunt: soiez nostre voue, nostre seignur e nostre guide, e nous deuendroms voz hommes e from vostre volunte e vostre comandement en tutes choses par tut. Et deliuerez nous de ceste cheitiuisoun e seruage ou nous sumes, e combatoms nous au roi, qar par la grace de deu nous li vencroms. E vous ferroms roi de la terre, e nous vous ferroms homage, e tendroms de vous, e issint freez honur a vous e a tute vostre linage de Troie.’ (‘The Trojans . . . complained to Brut of their suffering and servitude, and of the many humiliations that the king visited on them. And once they said to Brut, “You are a lord of our lineage, a strong and powerful man: be our sworn protector, our lord and our leader, and we will become your men and will do your will and your command to the utmost in everything. And you will deliver us from our captivity and servitude, and we will fight the king, for by the grace of God we will defeat him. And we will make you king of the land, and we will do you homage, and we will hold our land from you, and thus you will do honor to yourself and to your whole Trojan lineage.”’)17

14 HRB,

§ 7, p. 9; RB, ll. 147–8; Oldest, ll. 35–7. § 7, p. 9; RB, ll. 186–212. 16 Oldest, ll. 39–60, 39 quoted. 17 Oldest, ll. 45–54. Cf. RB, ll. 165–85, in which in indirect speech the Trojans entice Brutus with gifts, promise him resources for the fight, and say that ‘se il les vuleit 15 HRB,

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A New New Troy This declaration replaces what in the sources is Brutus’s letter to the king seeking freedom on behalf of the Trojans. That is, instead of the speech of one leader to another, the Oldest Version offers the speech of the people to its prospective leader, laying out the model of kingship that will be espoused throughout the chronicle: grounded in shared lineage, but also in a chosen, sworn relationship, and in continuing mutual service and duty, with the recognition of the people serving as its origin and their needs as its impetus. Again, these people are not nobles or warriors, but slaves – not, as in Geoffrey and Wace, in a position to give Brut gifts or castles. They offer him their fealty, but he must earn their identification with him: the people are called Trojans (‘ceux de Troie’) twice more, before they have left Greece; otherwise, they are now called Brut’s people or men (‘ses genz’, ‘ses gentz’, ‘sa gente’, ‘ses hommes’), and finally, but only after he has safely settled his new land and established his capital city, Britons (‘Brutouns’, ‘Brutons’).18 The writer’s narrative choices continue to emphasize the centrality of the people’s support – and counsel – to Brut’s success. The war whereby the Trojans get the upper hand and take King Pandras captive merits no more than a couple of clauses in the Oldest Version, as opposed to about three printed pages of strategy and carnage in Geoffrey and about 230 lines in Wace.19 What gains attention instead is the scene of the council, seemingly of the whole, in which Brut and his people pristrent le roi e li tindrent en prison e conseillerent entre eux quei il voleient de li fere. Les vns disoient qil dust estre mis ala mort, e Brut dust auer la terre. Les autres disoient qil dust estre exile de la terre. Les vns disoient qil dust estre ars. Donqe parla vn sages homme qe auoit anoun Memprice, e dist a Brut e a tuz ceux de Troie, ‘Si le Roi Pandras vodra sa vie render e auoir, ieo lo qil doine a Brut nostre duc Imiogen sa fille a femme e en mariage ouesqe li, cent nefs ben attirez e tut son tresor or e argent, char, vines, e blez, e quanqe nous mester est dune chose e dautre. E aloms hors de sa terre e purchacoms nous terres aillours, qar nous ne nul de nostre linage qe vendrount apres nous iames ne auerount pes en ceste terre de Grece. Nous auoms occis taunz de lour parenz e de lour amis qe tuz iours guere e contek serroit entre eux e nous.’ Brut e tuz ses hommes se tindrent a cest conseil e mustrerent au roi ceste chose, e il pur sa vie auer graunta a Brut quanqe fu demande.

guier, / A duc le fereient lever, / Kar mult suffereient grant fais / Pur vivre senz servage en pais’ (‘if he wished to lead them, they would raise him to a duke, for they would willingly suffer great distress in order to live in the land free from servitude’). 18 See Oldest, ll. 55–191. 19 Oldest, ll. 59–62; HRB, § 9–13, pp. 11–15; RB, ll. 259–422.

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The Construction of Vernacular History (‘took the king and held him in prison and took counsel among themselves as to what they wished to do with him. Some said that he should be put to death, and Brut should have the land. Others said that he should be exiled from the land. Some said he should be burned. Then a wise man named Memprice spoke, and he said to Brut and all the Trojans, “If King Pandras wishes to win back and keep his life, I advise that he give his daughter Imiogen to our leader Brut as wife in marriage with him, one hundred ships well fitted out, all his treasure in silver and gold, flesh, wine, and grain, and whatever else we need of one thing or another. And let us leave his land and seek ourselves other lands, for neither we nor anyone of our lineage who will come after us will ever have peace in this land of Greece. We have killed so many of their kinsmen and friends that there would always be war and strife between us and them.” Brut and all his men agreed to this advice and related this matter to the king, and to save his life he granted to Brut whatever was asked.’)20

In Wace, even seeking advice is a canny move on Brutus’s part: he privately consults the wisest (‘les plus sages priveement’) so that afterwards they cannot fault him (‘que ne l’en puissent puis blasmer’).21 Here, while the counsel is not all prudent – no one in the known sources suggests burning the king alive – the decision-making is shown as genuinely collaborative, and the focus is not on the king’s heroism but on the wisdom of his advisor Memprice (whose lengthy speech is the second act of direct speech in the text), and on what decisions will lead to the desired outcome of lasting peace. It is not until the third act of direct speech in the Oldest Version that Brut himself finally speaks, in his prayer after the Trojans have begun their journey and he has made sacrifice at ‘vn auncien temple de vne bele dame qe auoit anoun Deane la dewesse’ (‘an ancient temple of a beautiful lady who was called Diane the goddess’).22 Geoffrey’s material is expanded modestly but tellingly. His Brutus asks Diane to tell ‘quas terras nos habitare uelis’ (‘in which lands you wish us to dwell’).23 Going beyond Geoffrey’s simple plural pronoun, the Oldest Version’s Brut prays that she tell ‘ou e en quele manere ieo auerai couenable recet pur moy e pur mes gentz’ (‘where and how I will have safe haven for myself and for my people’).24 Diane replies directly, not in a dream, as in the sources – but as in the sources, she lies about the continuing presence of the giants on the island destined to be the Trojans’ home.25 The Oldest Version omits most of the epic adventures and marvels that Brutus and his comrades encounter along their way in Geoffrey and Wace: 20 Oldest,

ll. 62–76. ll. 494, 500. 22 Oldest, ll. 83–4. This is another instance in which the OV follows Geoffrey more closely than Wace, who only briefly mentions the fact of Brut’s prayer (RB, ll. 662–6). 23 HRB, § 16, pp. 21, 20. 24 Oldest, ll. 91–2. 25 Oldest, ll. 94–9. 21 RB,

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A New New Troy hero and narrative alike pause only to pick up another band of Trojans headed by Corin, who will become Brut’s right-hand man, and then to rest and repair their ships and gear in the estuary of the Loire. The local king, Goffar, attacks the foreigners who have entered his land without leave, and a war begins, in which the Trojans build the castle of Tours, take immense amounts of plunder, prevail although vastly outnumbered, and in the end decide to leave.26 Although in broad outline the Oldest Version follows its sources’ plot here, the emphases again differ. There are no enthusiastic descriptions of combat and Brutus’s pleasure in battle and victory, as for instance in Wace: ‘Brutus fu liez de la victorie / E del gaain e de la glorie’ (‘Brutus was delighted with the victory, the booty, and the glory’).27 Instead, even in a very terse account, a more realistic picture of fighting against the odds emerges, and when Brut’s nephew is killed in battle, early rather than late (as the sources have it), it becomes an occasion for discouragement rather than the spur for a last frenzy of revenge: Quant Goffar sauoit e entendi qe Turtin fu mort, il reuint autrefoiz oue sa gente e rendi fort bataille a Brut, mes Brut e sa gente furent si las de combatre qil nel poeit plus endurer, mes maugre le soen il senfui en son chastel oue touz ses hommes e fermerent les portes pur eux sauuer. (‘When Goffar learned and understood that Turtin was dead, he came again with his men and gave strong battle to Brut, but Brut and his men were so weary from fighting that they could bear no more, but against his will he fled into his castle with all his men and shut the doors in order to save them.’)28

This is one of very few times in which the Oldest Version elaborates on a battle scene. Brut’s considerations for leaving the Continent after his final victory are similarly fleshed out in the Oldest Version. Wace offers no explicit motive at all for why the Trojans should leave when they have just won. His Brutus calls back his men after they put the fleeing French to the sword: ‘Conseil pristrent qu’il s’en ireient / E cele terre guerpireient’ (‘they decided they would go away and leave this land’), and they take their booty and go.29 Geoffrey’s Brutus is more calculating: Brutus itaque, licet tantus triumphus illi maximum intulisset gaudium, dolore tamen angebatur quia numerus suorum cotidie minuebatur, Gallorum autem semper multiplicabatur. In dubio tandem existens utrum diutius eos oppugnaret, praeelegit naues suas salua adhuc maiori parte 26 See

HRB, § 17–20, pp. 21–7; RB, ll. 703–1050; Oldest, ll. 100–54. ll. 931–2. 28 Oldest, ll. 132–5; cf. HRB, § 20, p. 27, and RB, l. 979. 29 RB, ll. 1041–50, 1045–6 quoted. 27 RB,

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The Construction of Vernacular History sociorum nec non et reuerentia uictoriae adire atque insulam quam ei diuinus praedixerat monitus exigere. Nec plura, petiuit suorum assensu classem suam et repleuit eam ex uniuersis diuiciis quas acquisiuerat et ipsam ingressus est. (‘Brutus was most satisfied with his triumph, but anxious because his numbers were diminishing every day, whilst those of the Gauls grew continually. At last, doubting the wisdom of a protracted struggle, he decided to board ship while the majority of his companions were unharmed and his victory still unsullied, and to sail for the island vouchsafed to him by divine prophecy. With his comrades’ agreement, he returned to his fleet, loaded it with all the riches he had acquired and then went on board.’)30

The writer of the Oldest Version is looking closely at Geoffrey as he writes his analogous passage: E issint demora la victorie oue Brut e oue ses hommes. Mes nepurquant Brut fu mult dolent pur son neueu Turtin qe fust occis, e pur autres de ses hommes qil auoit auxint perdu – cest assauoir vii cent e xv – les queux il fist noblement enterrer en le chastel de Tours ou il auoit enterre Turtin son neueu. Quant tut ceo fust fet, Brut ne voleit iloqes plus longement demorer pur combatre ne plus perdre de ses genz, qar les hommes Goffar soun enemy poeit chesqun iour acrestre de plus en plus e les soens amenuser. E pur ceo il prist tute sa gente e se mist en mer. (‘And so victory rested with Brut and his men. But nevertheless Brut was very sorrowful for his nephew Turtin who was killed, and for the others of his men whom he had also lost – seven hundred and fifteen in number – whom he had nobly buried in the castle of Tours, where he had buried his nephew Turtin. When all this was done, Brut wished to remain there no longer to fight and lose more of his men, for the men of his enemy Goffar could grow greater and greater in number every day while his own grew fewer. And therefore he took all his people and set out to sea.’)31

Subtracted here are joy in victory and considerations of reputation, reminders of the booty acquired in the war, and consultation – the responsibility appears to be Brut’s alone. Added or emphasized is Brut’s sorrow for the dead, not just for his nephew, but for all the others, to whom the writer gives a number when he cannot give them a name, and to whom Brut gives a burial to equal that of his own kinsman.32 Brut’s people are the treasure with which he loads his ships.

30 HRB,

§ 20, pp. 27, 26. ll. 147–55. 32 The number is not found in the sources and appears to be the writer’s invention, 31 Oldest,

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A New New Troy Just as the prose Brut’s Trojans fight King Pandras only after he will not let them leave in peace, and King Goffar only when he attacks them, they begin to settle the new island ignorant of the giants’ continued presence and kill them off only after the giants make an unprovoked assault on them one day while they are eating. Yet again, this marks a change from the sources, in which the settlers discover the giants immediately and fight them for some time before the feast that both precipitates and proleptically celebrates the giants’ final defeat.33 With the giants out of the way, Brut can at last do what he has sought to do all along: provide for his people and give them a home. Note the reiteration (italicized in the translation) in the passage during which Brut makes the crucial transition from warrior and castle-builder to king and city-builder: Brut e ses hommes passerent auaunt e encercherent la terre ou il poient trouer vn leu bon e couenable a fere vne noble ville pur li e pur sa gente, tanqe il vint passant prede vne bele riuere quore est appele Tamise. E la comenca il de fere vne bele cite, e lapella Noue Troie en remembraunce de la graunt Troie dount li e tut son linage estoient venuz. E fist abatree bois e waner terres a sustenaunce de li et de sa gente. E departi la terre entre ses gentz. (‘Brut and his men went on and searched for land where they might find a good, suitable place to build a noble city for him and for his people, until they came upon a beautiful river, which is now called the Thames. And there he began to build a beautiful city, and he called it New Troy in memory of great Troy from which he and all his lineage had come. And he had trees cut down and lands cultivated for sustenance for himself and his people. And he divided the land among his people.’)34

Only after Brut has done all this does he call the land Britain and its people Britons.35 All this reorders and reemphasizes the equivalent moment from Wace, who first describes the general settlement of the land by the Trojans, and then Brutus’s naming of Britain, an act that triggers reflection on the changing names and possessors of the land all the way up to the ruin of the and the sources mention only Turnus’s burial in the castle (which then takes its name from him). See HRB, § 20, p. 27; RB, ll. 1023–6. 33 See HRB, § 21, pp. 27–9; RB, ll. 1063–168; Oldest, ll. 157–74. 34 Oldest, ll. 179–85. See John Gillingham on this moment in HRB and Geoffrey’s emphasis on the civilization of the British (J. Gillingham, The English in the Twelfth Century: Imperialism, National Identity, and Political Values (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2000), p. 30); and Colette Beaune on a shift, which she regards as moving from romances to chronicles in the thirteenth century, in the portrayal of Trojan forebears as warriors to that as cultivators of civilization (C. Beaune, The Birth of an Ideology: Myths and Symbols of Nation in Late-Medieval France (Berkeley, 1991), p. 241). 35 Oldest, ll. 185–6.

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The Construction of Vernacular History Britons.36 Seeing that all is going well and admiring all the delightful aspects of the land (in an eight-line catalogue), Brutus ‘Pensa sei que cité fereit / E que Troie renovelereit / . . . / Pur ses anceisors remembrer’ (‘he thought he would found a city and rebuild Troy . . . in memory of his ancestors’).37 As in Geoffrey, Brutus’s building of the city is briefly told, entirely in the singular. It prompts still further reflection on the shifting names of the town and plusurs granz destruiemenz Que unt fait alienes genz Ki la terre unt sovent eüe, Sovent prise, sovent perdue. (‘many great acts of destruction wrought by foreigners, who have often possessed the land, often seized it, often lost it.’)38

The Oldest Version offers no such bleak reminders at the moment when Brut and his people are secure at last. By now it should be amply clear that the writer of the Oldest Version offers a populism that is not sporadic or accidental, but thoroughgoing and deliberate; that he displays constant awareness of the pain and cost of war while showing little desire to glamorize it, preferring self-defense and liberation as justifications for it; and that his ideal king is first and foremost devoted to the wellbeing of his people, whose wisdom he respects. The revisions that the writer of the Oldest Version makes to his sources are substantive and consistent, and as later chapters will show, they continue throughout the text and amount to much more than substituting the word ‘people’ for ‘nobles’ while essentially continuing to represent elite interests (an all-too-familiar gambit in pseudo-populist discourse). A second look now at Brut’s rise will expose another such major change in emphasis and a broader perspective on British history.

The Character of Rome In Geoffrey and Wace, when Brutus and his people arrive on the coast of France, the local king’s wrath is understandably provoked after Corin kills his messenger, who has come to ask who they are and to tell them not to hunt in the royal forest.39 The omission of this detail in the Oldest Version fits in with its program of presenting Trojan violence as either justified self-liberation

36 RB,

ll. 1174–200. ll. 1217–18, 1223. 38 RB, ll. 1239–42; cf. HRB, § 22, pp. 29–31 (its account of the city’s names does not raise the issue of conquest). 39 HRB, § 18, p. 23; RB, ll. 793–852. 37 RB,

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A New New Troy or justified self-defense. But it also fits into another, less obvious, program undertaken by the writer of the Oldest Version: a shift in the relationship of Britain to Rome that flouts the expectations generated by typical scholarly readings of Galfridian tradition. If the critical tradition on Geoffrey of Monmouth teaches anything consistently, it is that the Historia is susceptible of many mutually resistant interpretations. Over the past fifty years or so, since Hanning’s fundamental The Vision of History in Early Britain, Geoffrey has been seen as a writer of parody and tragedy, as deeply Virgilian, as an opponent of classical models of authority and eloquence, as a protofeminist, and as both partisan and critic of Normans, Anglo-Saxons, Bretons, and Welsh.40 A strain common to many understandings of Geoffrey is that he celebrates the impulse to empire: the Historia manifests ‘militarist values of prowess and conquest’, and promotes ‘the legitimacy of . . . expansionist aspirations’.41 The incident with the messenger in Geoffrey and Wace is clearly modeled on Book 7 of the Aeneid, when Ascanius’s killing of the tame stag sets off the war between the Trojans and the Latins. The parallel can seem too much. What, after all, can Brut be but another Aeneas, a Trojan exile and leader of heroic parentage, wandering the seas in search of a new home for his people? And what, therefore, can Britain be but another Rome? Generating a Roman connection would seem to be the entire point of the exercise, so much so that it can be hard to imagine any other point. Endowing Britain with Trojan heritage, and descent from Aeneas in particular, could provide grounds for both identification and rivalry with Rome on the part of whoever held the throne of England.42 This competitive desire to present 40 Some

representative works: as parody, C. Brooke, ‘Geoffrey of Monmouth as a Historian’, in Church and Government in the Middle Ages, ed. C. Brooke et al. (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 77–91; V. I. J. Flint, ‘The Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth: Parody and Purpose’, Speculum 65 (1979), 447–68; as tragedy, S. Echard, Arthurian Narrative in the Latin Tradition (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 31–67; as Virgilian, F. Ingledew, ‘The Book of Troy and the Genealogical Construction of History: The Case of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae’, Speculum 69 (1994), 665–704; as anti-classical, K. Robertson, ‘Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Translation of Insular Historiography’, Arthuriana 8 (1998), 42–57; as feminist, F. Tolhurst, Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Feminist Origins of the Arthurian Legend (New York, 2012). On the neverending efforts to align Geoffrey with one or another ethnic or political group, see the overview in Gillingham, English, pp. 20–5. For further general bibliography, see H. Fulton, ‘History and Myth: Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae’, in Fulton, ed., Companion, pp. 44–57 (p. 57). 41 A. Lynch, ‘“Peace Is Good after War”: The Narrative Seasons of English Arthurian Tradition’, in Writing War: Medieval Literary Responses to Warfare, ed. C. Saunders, F. Le Saux, and N. Thomas (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 127–46 (p. 128); J. Zatta, ‘Translating the Historia: The Ideological Transformation of the Historia Regum Britannie in Twelfth-Century Vernacular Chronicles’, Arthuriana 8 (1998), 148–61 (p. 148). 42 On the vexed nature of the British relationship to Rome in Galfridian narratives, see,

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The Construction of Vernacular History Britain as a realm at least as ancient and grounded in heroic ancestry as Rome has generally been taken for granted in modern scholarship. The link has also often been taken to have served as a justification for violence or imperialism.43 There is good reason to see links among Troy, Rome, and Britain: they are present from the first surviving text to name Brutus as founder, the Historia Brittonum attributed to Nennius, from the early ninth century.44 As far as Nennius is concerned, Brutus is Roman: ‘the island of Britain is so called from one Brutus, a Roman consul’ descended from Aeneas.45 Geoffrey of Monmouth builds on Nennius’s account of Brutus’s birth and exile.46 At the end of the thirteenth century, when the Oldest Version of the prose Brut was being composed, the basic Latin Troy stories in circulation were Virgil, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and the non-Homeric account in the Dares and Dictys tradition of Guido delle Colonne. (Guido’s Historia Destructione Troiae e.g., C. Baswell, ‘Troy, Arthur, and the Languages of “Brutis Albyoun”’, in Reading Medieval Culture: Essays in Honor of Robert W. Hanning, ed. R. M. Stein and S. P. Prior (Notre Dame, 2005), pp. 170–97; Eckhardt, ‘Presence’, esp. pp. 194–5; L. MatheyMaille, ‘Mythe Troyen et Histoire Romaine: De Geoffrey de Monmouth au Brut de Wace’, in Entre Fiction et Histoire: Troie et Rome au Moyen Age, ed. E. Baumgartner and L. Harf-Lancner (Paris, 1997), pp. 113–25 (esp. p. 118); Robertson, ‘Geoffrey’, esp. p. 44; R. Waswo, The Founding Legend of Western Civilization: From Virgil to Vietnam (Hanover NH, 1997), pp. 49–52. 43 See, e.g., Ingledew, ‘Book’, pp. 684–8; Mathey-Maille, ‘Mythe’, esp. pp. 117–21; J. Simpson, Reform and Cultural Revolution, Oxford English Literary History, II: 1350–1547 (Oxford, 2002), pp. 75–7, in a chapter, ‘The Tragic’, based on his earlier essay ‘The Other Book of Troy: Guido delle Colonne’s Historia destructionis Troiae in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century England’, Speculum 73 (1998), 397–423; and Waswo, Founding, pp. 55–63. For thoroughgoing efforts to scutinize Galfridian tradition through the lenses of colonialism and imperialism, see M. R. Warren, History on the Edge: Excalibur and the Borders of Britain, 1100–1300 (Minneapolis, 2000) esp. pp. 25–59, 254–5; and S. Federico, New Troy: Fantasies of Empire in the Late Middle Ages (Minneapolis, 2003), concerned exclusively with late fourteenth century material. 44 Thoughts about its date vary: I am here following Dunphy, ed., Encyclopedia, s.v. ‘Historia Brittonum’, which reviews the issues of dating and authorship. M.-F. Alamichel offers a helpful, efficient descriptive survey of the many versions of the Brut legend in Europe from its origins up to the seventeenth century (‘Brutus et les Troyens: Une Histoire Européene’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 84 (2006), 77–106). Ingledew, Waswo, and Susan Reynolds (especially thoughtful) provide overviews of myths of Trojan origin cultivated elsewhere in Europe (‘Book’, pp. 682–6; Founding, pp. 60–1; S. Reynolds, ‘Medieval origines gentium and the Community of the Realm’, History 68 (1983), 375–90). Beaune considers the political use of the Trojan myth in late-medieval France (Birth, pp. 226–44, 388–91). 45 ‘Brittania insula a quodam Bruto, consule Romano, dicta’ (British History and the Welsh Annals, ed. and trans. J. Morris (London, 1980), § 7, pp. 18, 59). See Alamichel, ‘Brutus’, pp. 79–80, for discussion of the variants of the account of Brutus in different manuscripts of Nennius. 46 Cf. Nennius, British History, § 10, pp. 19, 60; HRB, § 6–23, pp. 7–31. Nennius also offers an alternate Biblical genealogy for Brutus (§ 17, p. 22, 17).

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A New New Troy dates from 1287 and is far less likely to have been available to the composer of the Oldest Version than to later fourteenth century vernacular writers.)47 The basic versions in French were those of Benoît de Sainte-Maure (Guido’s major source) and Wace, along with the Roman d’Eneas. Aside from Wace, these vernacular analogues were not necessarily widely available in England.48 The matter of Troy would come into its own in Middle English in the later fourteenth century, with the Laud Troy Book, the alliterative Destruction of Troy, and works by Lydgate, Chaucer, and Gower. Thirteenth- and earlier fourteenth century vernacular histories, like those of Laȝamon, Langtoft, ‘Robert of Gloucester’, and Mannyng, included Trojan origin stories based on Geoffrey’s plot.49 But over the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Anglo-Norman and Middle English prose Brut chronicles offered by far the most widely accessible vernacular versions of the Brut story. The initial audience for the prose Brut certainly included readers of Virgil and Geoffrey of Monmouth, the other Trojan texts most likely to come someone’s way, but in a household context it would also have extended to the completely unlettered, who could listen to the book read aloud, possibly sight-translated into English from Anglo-Norman versions, whose straightforward vocabulary and syntax would have made such translation entirely feasible. That is, a substantial part of the audience for the prose Brut even before its written translation into English was likely to have consisted of people with relatively little immediate access to, knowledge or memory of, or investment in previous versions of the matter of Troy.50

47 For

a summary, see J. Simpson, Reform, pp. 79–81. Virgil and his Aeneas himself of course display a far more ambivalent attitude towards war and empire than is sometimes recalled in discussions of the Virgilian tradition. 48 Wace survives in at least thirty manuscripts, and Dean considers seventeen manuscripts to be of AN origin: RB, pp. xxvii–xxix; Dean no. 2, pp. 2–3; see Le Saux, Companion, pp. 85–6, for a characterization of the manuscripts. Dean notes the existence of fragments from four AN manuscripts of Benoît’s Roman de Troie (all now on the Continent, interestingly) (under no. 2.2, pp. 4–5); four or five of the nine extant manuscripts of the Roman d’Eneas date from before the fourteenth century, and the only Anglo-Norman copy dates from the second half of the fourteenth century (R. J. Cormier, ‘Gleanings on the Manuscript Tradition of the Roman d’Eneas’, Manuscripta 18 (1974), 42–7). 49 Laȝamon, ll. 44–1053; Langtoft, The Chronicle of Pierre de Langtoft, ed. T. Wright, 2 vols., Rolls Series 47 (London, 1866–8), pp. 2–24; W. A. Wright, ed., The Metrical Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, 2 vols., Rolls Series 86 (London, 1887), ll. 206–539; and Mannyng, The Chronicle, ed. I. Sullens, MRTS 153 (Binghamton, 1996), ll. 363–1946 (hereafter Mannyng). 50 As Baswell notes, ‘broadscale histories like the Brut and the Middle English Polychronicon moved away from their more learned points of origin and into the hands of users less acquainted with notions of archival documentation or even the historiographical debates around characters like Aeneas and Arthur’ (‘Troy’, pp. 173–4). He makes fruitful comparison between Ranulph Higden’s Latin text

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The Construction of Vernacular History What would an audience without much of a preexisting idea of the matter of Troy learn from the Oldest Version of the prose Brut? This: En la noble cite de graunt Troie ili auoit vn noble chiualer, fort e pussaunt de cors, qe auoit anoun Eneas. E quant la cite de Troie fu prise e destrute par ceux de Grece, cesti Eneas oue tute sa mesne senfui de iloqe e vint en Lumbardie, vne terre qe fu en le poer e la seignurie le Roi Latinie. Vn autre roi qe auoit anoun Tourn Rotelin guerra durement sur le Roi Latinie e li fist souent graunz maus. Latinie le roi receust o grant honur Eneas e le retint ouesqe lui, pur ceo qil auoit oi e ben sauoit quil estoit noble chiualer e vaillaunt de cors. Cesti Eneas aida le Roi Latinie en sa guere, e breuement a dire, tan fist e taunt se pena de ben fere qil occist Turn Rotelin e desconfist tutes ses genz. Latinie le roi, quant ceo fu fet, seisit tuste la terre qe fu a Tourn Rotelin en sa main e la dona a Eneas en mariage oue Lauiane sa fille, la plus bele creature qe homme sauoit, e vesquirent ensemble en grant ioie au tute lour vie. Auint issi qe Eneas morust, quant deu le voleit, e apres sa mort Asqanius son fiz, qe vint oue li de Troie, receust la terre e la tint a volunte au tute sa vie. Il espusa vne femme e engendra de li vn fiz qe auoit anoun Silueyn. (‘In the noble city of great Troy there was a noble knight, strong and powerful of body, who was named Eneas. And when the city of Troy was taken and destroyed by the Greeks, this Eneas fled from there with all his followers and came to Lombardy, a land that was under the power and lordship of King Latinie. Another king named Tourn Rotelin was fiercely making war on King Latinie and often did him great harm. Latinie the king received Eneas with great honor and took him into his service, because he had heard and knew well that he was a noble knight and stalwart of body. This Eneas helped King Latinie in his war and, to tell it briefly, did so much and took such pains to do well that he killed Tourn Rotelin and defeated all his people. When this was accomplished, Latinie the king took into his hand all the land that had belonged to Tourn Rotelin and gave it to Eneas in marriage with Laviane his daughter, the most beautiful creature known to man, and they lived together in great happiness throughout their lives. It came to pass that, when God willed it, Eneas died, and after his death, Ascanius his son, who came with him from Troy, received the land and held it at will all his life. He married a woman and fathered by her a son named Silvein.’)51

This is the Brut chronicle’s entire Troy story: it remains virtually unchanged through all the Anglo-Norman versions of the text and the Common Middle English translation.52 and John Trevisa’s English translation, especially on Trevisa’s efforts to protect the heroic and historical Arthur called into question by Higden (‘Troy’, pp. 176–84). 51 Oldest, ll. 1–20. 52 Cf. Brie, Brut, I, 5, which aside from shifts in the proper names corresponds almost word for word to the OV.

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A New New Troy To a reader of the Aeneid, this account can seem a travesty, with Turnus become Latinus’s enemy, Aeneas Latinus’s henchman, and Lavinia a standardissue romance prize. As the opening of the main text of the Middle English Brut, following the Albine prologue with its demon-spawn giants, it may have done its part in deterring serious interest from scholars taking a first glance at a manuscript or Brie’s edition. What kind of Troy story does not so much as mention the rape of Helen? This kind: Aeneas post Troianum bellum excidium urbis cum Ascanio filio diffugiens Italiam nauigio adiuit. Ibi cum a Latino rege honorifice receptus esset, inuidit Turnus rex Rutulorum et cum illo congressus est. Dimicantibus ergo illis, praeualuit Aeneas peremptoque Turno regnum Italiae et Lauiniam filiam Latini adeptus est. Denique, suprema die ipsius superueniente, Ascanius, regia potestate sublimatus, condidit Albam super Tyberim genuitque filium cui nomen erat Siluius. (‘After the Trojan war, Aeneas fled the devastated city with his son Ascanius and sailed to Italy. He was received with honor by King Latinus, but this attracted the envy of Turnus, king of the Rutulians, who attacked him. Aeneas emerged victorious from their struggle, killed Turnus and was rewarded with the kingdom of Italy and the hand of Lavinia, Latinus’ daughter. After Aeneas had breathed his last, Ascanius succeeded him, built Alba by the Tiber and had a son named Silvius.’)53

When the opening lines of the Oldest Version are read directly against the Vulgate Historia, even its war of Tourn Rotelin against Latinie reads like a translator’s rational (if tendentious or ill-informed) construal of an ambiguous pronoun. Geoffrey may be able to bank on his Latin-literate audience’s familiarity with Virgil. He need rehearse no more of the plot of the Aeneid than is necessary for his own purposes, and as is noted above, he summons Virgilian echoes when it suits him. Wace, however, makes sure to provide his audience with plenty of reminders that both refresh their memory of the Aeneid (if they have one) and demonstrate that he knows his Virgil.54 Wace’s expansiveness is telling, even if it necessitates quoting at some length. He expands one sentence of Galfridian material into twenty-seven lines of verse, elaborated

53 HRB,

§ 6, pp. 7, 6.

54 Wace is working here not from HRB but probably a lost version of HRBVV, which as

edited offers an even terser account: ‘Eneas post Troianum excidium cum Ascanio filio fugiens Ytaliam nauigio deuenit ibique a Latino susceptus cum Turno Dauni Tuscorum regis filio dimicans eum interemit. Regnumque Ytalie et Lauiniam filiam Latini adeptus est’ (HRBVV, § 6, p. 2; see pp. xciv–ci on the lost version that may account for Wace’s two characters named ‘Silvius’). See also RB, p. 3 n. 1, and Oldest, p. 298.

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The Construction of Vernacular History partly with Virgilian plot points and partly with evocations of Rome to come (here italicized in the translation): Quant Greu ourent Troie conquise E eissillié tut le païs Pur la venjance de Paris Ki de Grece out ravi Eleine, Dux Eneas a quelque peinne De la grant ocise eschapa. Un fiz aveit k’il en mena Ki aveit nun Ascanius;55 N’aveit ne fiz ne fille plus. Ke de parenz, ke de maisnees, Ke d’aveir out vint nés chargiees. Par mer folead lungement; Maint grant peril, maint grant turment E maint travail li estut traire. Emprés lung tens vint en Itaire: Itaire esteit dunc apelee La terre u Rome fu fundee. N’ert de Rome encor nule chose, Ne fu il puis de bien grant pose. Eneas out mult travaillied, Mult out siglé, mult out nagied, Mainte grant mer out trespassee E mainte tere avironee. En Itare est venue a rive En une terre plenteïve, Bien pruef d’illuec u Rome siet, La u li Tievres en mer chiet. (‘As the book relates, when the Greeks had conquered Troy and laid the whole land waste to take revenge on Paris, who had stolen Helen from Greece, duke Aeneas escaped, with much difficulty, from the great slaughter. He had a son, called Ascanius, whom he took with him; he had no other sons or daughters. What with family, followers and possessions, he filled twenty ships. For a long time he drifted on the sea, forced to endure great danger, great hardship, and great suffering. After a long time he came to Italy: that was then the name of the land where Rome was founded. As yet Rome did not exist, nor did it for a long while thereafter. Aeneas had travelled much, rowed and sailed far, crossed many great seas

55 In

another clear use of Virgilian material, Wace finds occasion slightly later to explain who Ascanius’s mother is: ‘Creüsa out esté sa mere / Ki fille fu Priant le rei, / Mais al tomulte e al desrei / Kant Eneas de Troie eissi, / En la grant presse la perdi’ (‘his own mother had been Creusa, daughter of king Priam, but during the tumult and chaos of Aeneas’s escape from Troy, he lost her in the huge throng’) (RB, ll. 84–8). See also HRBVV, § 6, p. 2, which mentions Creusa, but not the circumstances of her death.

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A New New Troy and passed many lands. He arrived on the shores of Italy, a fertile country, and came very close to where Rome now stands, where the Tiber flows into the sea.’)56

Wace goes on to describe how the old and rich King Latin welcomes Eneas and incurs the wrath of Turnus, lord of Tuscany: ‘estre la gré la reïne / Li pramist sa fille a duner / E de sun regne enheriter’ (‘against the queen’s wishes, [he] promised to give him his daughter and bequeath him his kingdom’).57 Turnus A Eneam grant guerre en fist, Cors contre cors bataille en prist; Chevaliers ert hardiz e forz, Mais il en fu vencuz e morz. Dunc out Eneas la meschine, Reis fu e ele fu reïne. (‘made war on Aeneas and took up arms against him in single combat. He was a bold and strong knight, but he was vanquished and killed. Then Aeneas received the girl; he became king and she queen.’)58

Privileging the Aeneas of Virgil over the figure in the tradition of Benoît, the Aeneas who betrays Troy, Wace clearly considers these admiring additions and reminders an enhancement. So do others among his translators and adapters over the centuries: Laȝamon and Robert Mannyng both follow Wace closely here.59 But although the writer of the Oldest Version cannot presume his audience’s familiarity with the entire Troy story or the plot of the Aeneid, he does not retain Wace’s amplifications, aside perhaps from the passing mentions of Eneas’s prowess and Laviane’s beauty. He follows Geoffrey far more closely at the outset of the text (not only in the first few sentences, but in the next few, until he begins to depart from either source with the variations noted above in the account of Brut).60 It is of course possible that he does so because he has either not yet picked up Wace or because his copy of Wace is defective at the beginning.61 But the patterns of the text, here and elsewhere, suggest that he is neglecting to include – or even actively avoiding – such Virgilian details

56 RB,

ll. 10–36. ll. 44–6. As Weiss notes, the Tuscan detail is found in HRBVV, § 6, p. 2. 58 RB, ll. 59–64. 59 See Laȝamon, ll. 38–94, Mannyng, ll. 727–84. 60 Cf. HRB, § 6–7, pp. 7–9; Oldest, ll. 20–34; RB, ll. 89–146. 61 The first point at which the OV appears to follow Wace more closely than Geoffrey is in having Ascanius dead at the time that Brut kills his father, but this comes in the midst of Wace’s extremely confusing account, not taken up in the PB, of the two Silviuses (one Ascanius’s half-brother and heir and one his short-lived son and Brutus’s father), so whether it is a certain use of Wace or an independent simplification of the narrative is not obvious. Cf. HRB, § 7, p. 9; RB, ll. 107–14; Oldest, ll. 31–2. 57 RB,

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The Construction of Vernacular History (itself an indication that he recognizes them), resisting rather than indulging the urge to intertextuality that is often claimed in medieval texts to enhance the status of text and writer alike. At the same time he is omitting the kind of ‘romanticizing’ details that scholars have often considered geared to the taste of wider audiences and therefore characteristic of vernacularization.62 To refuse such supposedly easy ploys for prestige and popular appeal, already present in the source text, would require a writer who was either a dolt – a possibility that Brie was more than happy to entertain and encourage – or who had other, incommensurate purposes in mind. Further comparison of the Oldest Version and its sources reveals three trends in relation to Rome. First, the Oldest Version avoids or postpones mention of ‘Rome’ as such. This tendency is already visible in the opening sentences quoted above, which name ‘Lombardy’ rather than mentioning Italy, Rome, or the Tiber as the sources do.63 It omits the founding of Rome by Romulus and Remus, mentioned by Geoffrey and slightly elaborated by Wace.64 In fact, it does not actually name Rome at all until the British brothers Brenne and Belin, united after resolving their own fraternal conflicts, conquer it. Rome becomes the prize of the younger brother, while the older returns home to Britain. Thus, if a member of the prose Brut’s audience does not already know that Aeneas is the forefather of the Roman empire as well as the realm of Britain, the Oldest Version will not enlighten him or her on the matter. Rome first appears in the Brut not as a model of any kind but as an object of British conquest, and any shared lineage between Rome and Britain derives from the British side. When it comes to the eventual Roman occupation of Britain, the prose Brut takes the minimizing editorial strategies of Geoffrey of Monmouth even further.65 Second, praise of Rome found in the sources is omitted in the Oldest Version. For instance, its King Koil simply ben gouerna la terre e auoit pes des tutes genz. Il ne auoit vnqes en son temps contek ne descord ne guere en Bretaine, mes regna ben et en pes a tute sa vie. 62 See,

e.g., A. R. Press, ‘The Precocious Courtesy of Geffrei Gaimar’, in Court and Poet, ed. G. S. Burgess (Liverpool, 1980), 267–76. 63 The placename remains Lombardy all the way through to the common MEPB, as represented by Brie, Brut, I, 5 and John Mandeville’s 1435 English translation of the LV, as represented by Harley 4690, fol. 5r. See below, p. 225, for discussion of the relevant moment in some Continental manuscripts. 64 Cf. HRB, § 32, p. 45; RB, ll. 2107–10; Oldest, l. 2120; RB manuscripts Dur and Lin (the extant representatives of the version used by the writer of the OV) omit ll. 2107–20, so the writer of the OV may not have been exposed to Wace’s version of the episode. Spence notes that Gray takes the opposite tack by identifying Romulus and Remus as the half-brothers of Ascanius (Reimagining, p. 65, citing Cambridge, Corpus Christi College (hereafter CCCC) 133, fols. 26v–8r). 65 See below, pp. 114–15.

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A New New Troy (‘governed the land well and had peace from all people. In his time there was never strife or discord or war in Britain, but he reigned well and in peace his whole life.’)66

Geoffrey explains that this peace stems from the fact that ‘since he had been brought up since infancy in Rome, Coillus understood the ways of the Romans and had become very well disposed towards them’ while also realizing ‘that they ruled the whole world and that their might could conquer any region or province’.67 Wace also mentions his Roman upbringing.68 But all this background material is passed over in the Oldest Version. Likewise, King Kimbelin’s knighting by Caesar and friendship with Rome – so close that he pays tribute even though it would not be demanded of him – found in both Wace and Geoffrey, is completely omitted in the Oldest Version, which briefly tells that he ‘durement fu prodom en tutes choses e ben gouerna la terre en grant ioie e en graunt pes a tute sa vie’ (‘was a most worthy man in all things and governed the land well in great happiness and great peace for his whole life’).69 Third, when Rome is mentioned in the Oldest Version, it is put in a negative light. In the case of Christian martyrdom, the editorial tendency becomes one of expansion rather than abridgment: the account of St Peter is supplemented to include his martyrdom by the Emperor Nero.70 And the coming of Constantine, the second Briton to conquer Rome and significantly the last emperor named in the prose Brut until the time of Arthur, is portrayed as a response to the Emperor Maxence’s persecution of Christians in particular rather than his tyranny in general, as in the sources. Constantine more or less goes on crusade to liberate a holy city from misbelievers: Auint issint en cel temps qil auoit vn emperur a Rome – vn sarazin, vn tiran – qe auoit anoun Maxence, qe mist ala mort tuz ceux qe creerent en deu. E destrute Seinte Eglise oue son poer e occist crestiens par tute ou il les poeit trouer, entre les queux il fist martirizer Seinte Katerine. Et plusors crestiens qe auoient pour de la mort senfuirent e vindrent en ceste terre au Roi Constantin. E li counterent de la dolur qe Maxence fesoit ala crestienite, paront Constantin auoit grant pite e dolur a quoer.

66 Oldest,

ll. 791–3. ab infantia Romae nutritus fuerat moresque Romanorum edoctus in maximam ipsorum amiciciam inciderat’, ‘totum mundum subditum illis eorumque potestatem quosque pagos, quamque prouinciam superare’ (HRB, § 71, pp. 86, 87). 68 Wace elaborates on Coïl’s Roman loyalties and the benefits of a Roman education, but these lines are not present in manuscripts Dur and Lin. See RB, ll. 5199–208, with 5203–6 omitted in Dur and Lin. 69 Oldest, ll. 694–5. 70 Cf. Oldest, ll. 748–50 and p. 305; HRB, § 68, p. 85; RB, ll. 5093–8 (relevant lines not present in manuscripts Dur and Lin). 67 ‘Hic

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The Construction of Vernacular History E assembla durement grant ost e grant poer e passat outre a Rome, e prist la ville e occist trestuz les mescreaunz qil poeit trouuer. E donqe fust il fet emperour, e fu si prodom e se contint si noblement qe tutes terres auoient ioie de estre entendant a li e estre adesuz sa seignurie. (‘It so happened in that time that there was an emperor in Rome – a pagan, a tyrant – who was named Maxence, who put to death all those who believed in God. And he ravaged Holy Church with all his might and killed Christians wherever he could find them, among whom he had Saint Catherine martyred. And many Christians who were afraid of dying fled and came into this land to King Constantine. And they told him of the suffering that Maxence was inflicting on Christendom, at which Constantine felt great pity and anguish of heart. And he mustered an exceedingly great army and a great force and crossed over to Rome, and he captured the city and killed all the misbelievers he could find. And then he was made emperor, and he was such a worthy man and conducted himself so nobly that all lands rejoiced to be subject to him and to be under his lordship.’)71

Establishment of a British lineage in Rome equates to the protection rather than persecution of Christianity. When Rome resurfaces later in the Oldest Version, with the mission of St Augustine, it is as the home of the papacy.72 Most telling in all these respects is the Oldest Version’s handling of the Roman invasion of Britain. In Geoffrey of Monmouth, Julius Caesar glimpses Britain from the shore of newly-conquered Gaul and exclaims, ‘Hercle ex eadem prosapia nos Romani et Britones orti sumus, quia ex Troiana gente processimus. Nobis Aeneas post destructionem Troiae primus pater fuit, illis autem Brutus, quem Siluius Ascanii filii Aeneae filius progenuit. Sed nisi fallor ualde degenerati sunt a nobis.’ (‘“By Hercules, we Romans and the Britons share a common ancestry, being both descended from the Trojans. After the sack of Troy, our first ancestor was Aeneas, theirs Brutus, whose father was Silvius, son of Aeneas’s son Ascanius. But, unless I am mistaken, they are no longer our equals.”’)73

Out of reluctance to shed kindred blood, he decides first to demand tribute rather than simply invade and take the island by force. The rhetoric of the 71 Oldest,

ll. 859–69 (see also p. 307); cf. HRB, § 79, p. 97; RB, ll. 5692–718. The St Catherine material does not come from Geoffrey or Wace. 72 See Oldest, ll. 2165–85 and p. 320. For more on the role of religion in the OV, see below, pp. 66–72. Eckhardt notes Rome’s status as the center of Christianity as one of the three ways in which Rome is an important presence in fourteenth-century vernacular chronicles, the others being events from Roman times and the Latin language itself (‘Presence’, esp. p. 193). 73 HRB, § 54, pp. 69, 68.

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A New New Troy British letter of reply is just as thoroughly grounded in the idea of common, and glorious, kinship: ‘Opprobrium itaque tibi petiuisti, Caesar, cum communis nobilitatis uena Britonibus et Romanis ab Aenea defluat et eiusdem cognationis una et eadem catena praefulgeat, qua in firmam amicitiam coniungi deberent.’ (‘“Your request disgraces you, Caesar, since Briton and Roman share the same blood-line from Aeneas, a shining chain of common ancestry which ought to bind us in lasting friendship.”’)74

Wace includes all this Galfridian material while also adding some ten lines praising Julius Caesar as a wise, generous world conqueror, and also providing a reminder of Brenne and Belin’s sometime conquest of Rome, now to be reversed since Rome is rising and Britain, as far as Julius Caesar is concerned, is falling.75 Although Wace does not mention Caesar’s respect for kindred blood as a consideration, the British king Cassibelan cites their common origin repeatedly in his long and indignant reply.76 To quote only a bit of it: Sire Cesar, tu nus assaies, Treü requers ke de nus aies, E faire nus vuels tributaires; Mais tu nen espleiteras guaires. Nus avum tuz tens franc vescu E franchement avum tenu, E vivre devum franchement Com li Romain dreitement, Kar nus sumes d’une racine E d’une gent e d’une orine. (‘Lord Caesar, you are testing us: you demand that we give you tribute and want to make us your tributaries. But you will never succeed. We have always lived at liberty and freely controlled our land, and we should live at liberty, just like the Romans, because we are from one root, one race and one origin.’)77

Cassibelan’s response alone takes up fifty-eight lines in the current edition of Wace, forty-three in the surviving group of manuscripts closest to that used by the writer of the Oldest Version, and it epitomizes the sense of both identification and competition with Rome that has been thought to give the myth of Trojan origins its vigor. 74 HRB,

§ 55, pp. 69, 68; in HRBVV, the order and phrasing differ but the gist is similar (§ 55, pp. 48–9). 75 RB, ll. 3827–94, with no lines missing in Dur and Lin that materially affect the sense of the passage. 76 RB, ll. 3889–960, with ll. 3933–48 (which contain some but not all of the discussion of British kinship and equality with the Romans) absent from Dur and Lin. 77 RB, ll. 3919–28.

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The Construction of Vernacular History Wace’s English translators and adaptors Laȝamon and Mannyng also make the most of the moment. Laȝamon’s Cassibellane offers all of Wace’s indignation and more, with the rejoinder that on account of Brenne and Belin’s conquest, he should be the one exacting tribute.78 Mannyng translates the letter at full length.79 Both make sure to reiterate the claim of common British and Roman origin: ‘For ure ældere ut of Troye fluȝen / and of anne kunne we beoð icumen; / þine aldren and ure at Troye wuren ifeire’ (‘For our common ancestors escaped from Troy and we are descended from the same stock; at Troy your ancestors and ours were one and the same’); ‘ȝe & we ere alle a kynde, / comen of a rute & a rynde.’80 The Oldest Version of the prose Brut, however, distils some two-and-a-half printed pages of Geoffrey of Monmouth and 400 lines of Wace down to this version of Julius Caesar’s first invasion: En temps cesti Roi Cassibelaun vint Iulius Cesar emperour de Rome en ceste terre oue graunt poer des Romains, e voleit auer eu la terre oue force. Mes Cassibelaun le desconfist en plein bataille par aide de ses Brutouns e lenchaca de ceste terre. (‘In the time of this King Cassibelaun, Julius Caesar, emperor of Rome, came into this land with a great force of Romans, and he wanted to take the land by force. But by the aid of his Britons Cassibelaun defeated him in open battle and drove him out of this land.’)81

That is, in the first mention of Rome since Brenne and Belin’s conquest, no acknowledgment of its Trojan origins, its common kinship with Britain, or even its greatness remains. Rome is represented as nothing but a repelled invader, soon to return, only to succeed on the third try because of British infighting (as in the sources).82 Later in all three narratives comes a second exchange of communications between a Roman emperor and a British king: the emperor demanding resumption of tribute, and King Arthur making a hostile reply. Here, too, the writer of the Oldest Version abridges and rearranges his material, but, very unusually, he draws on the matter provided by Geoffrey and Wace to create a complete text for a letter from Arthur to the emperor (which is only mentioned in the sources):83 78 See

Laȝamon, ll. 3648–77, esp. 3671–7. ll. 4223–78. 80 Laȝamon, ll. 3666–7, Mannyng, ll. 4249–50. 81 Oldest, ll. 655–8. Some matter from the first invasion does appear in the sevenline account of the second invasion (ll. 559–65). See Oldest, pp. 304–5, for detailed comparison to the sources. 82 See Oldest, ll. 549–85 and p. 304. 83 See Oldest, ll. 1806–50, for the scene and texts of both letters, and p. 316 on relations to the sources. 79 Mannyng,

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A New New Troy ‘Arthur, roi de Bretaine e de Fraunce, respount al emperour e a les Romains par ceste lettre: sachez par entre vous qe ieo su roi de Bretaine, e Fraunce tink e tendrai, e la defenderai des Romains. E a Rome procheinement serrai, ne mie pur trewes rendre, mes pur trewes prendre. Qar Constantin fiz Seinte Eleine estoit emperour de Rome e de tut lonur qili apent, Maximian roi de Bretaine conquist tute Fraunce e Alemaine, Mountioie passa e conquist Lumbardie, e ces deux furent mes auncestres. E ceo qil tindrent e auoient, ieo tendrai e auera si deu plest.’ (‘“Arthur, king of Britain and of France, replies to the emperor and to the Romans with this letter: know among you that I am king of Britain, and I hold and will hold France, and I will defend it against the Romans. And I will soon be in Rome, not at all to make tribute, but to take tribute. For Constantine son of Saint Eleine was emperor of Rome and of the whole domain appertaining to it, Maximian king of Britain conquered all France and Germany, he crossed Mont Joux and conquered Lombardy, and these two were my ancestors. And what they had and held, I will have and hold if God wills.”’)84

That is, when occasion arises, the history of opposition between Rome and Britain and British conquest of Rome is put into the foreground, and even elaborated, while no mention of shared Trojan heritage is made. When one is working from an incompletely known manuscript tradition, making arguments partly grounded on what a writer appears to be omitting from his sources is an even more hazardous business than usual. Still, given the presence of these Roman elements in both of the Oldest Version’s apparent major sources here, a consistent pattern does emerge in its treatment of Rome, with its silences and retentions unlikely to be inadvertent. Over the course of the chronicle, it becomes clear not only that Troy does not gain meaning in the prose Brut by connection to Rome, but that the significance of Rome is generally downplayed, and imperial Rome itself is not shown in a positive light. But if setting up an analogy between Britain and Rome, and Brut and Aeneas, is not the point or payoff of the Trojan origin story here, what is? Brut and what he is made to stand for in the text itself: a founder detached from Roman associations and instead imbued with his own set of exemplary qualities, brought out by a distinctive version of the story. The prose Brut’s Troy story is not an externalized reference to classical culture, nor a case of intertextuality in which the reader is meant to import or test an understanding based on other texts. The Oldest Version is not so much competing with as overwriting the exemplars offered by the Aeneid and

84 Oldest,

ll. 1838–45. This is a moment of editorial slippage, since the OV makes no mention of Maximian’s conquests beyond Armorica, saying only that ‘Maximian sen ala a Rome e demora iloqes’ (‘Maximian went off to Rome and remained there’) (Oldest, ll. 923–4).

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The Construction of Vernacular History Rome in general and its own immediate sources in particular.85 Brut matters here not because of his relation back to authorized, antique texts and history, but because of his relation as both forefather and exemplar to the audience of the chronicle, who can look to a past in which they were not proto-aristocrats but slaves who chose their own king and liberator. Troy gains value because of Brut, not vice versa.86 The Oldest Version thus harnesses the genealogical power of Galfridian narrative while severing, or at the very least obscuring, the initial genealogical link to Rome.87 Instead of an emphasis on marching out, there is in fact a remarkable emphasis on gathering in. The descendants of the exile Brut welcome and aid other refugees like those who will become the Irish and the Scots. Arthur’s Round Table is a veritable European Union.88 As will be discussed below, the Oldest Version works throughout to assimilate the changing population of Britain into a single, continuous identity.89 Alamichel characterizes the Brut legend as creating a melting pot for Celts, Saxons, and Normans by providing them a ‘common history and roots’.90 This, the aspiration to community, is the aspect of the myth of Trojan origins that the prose Brut takes up and develops to the greatest effect. What the Oldest Version does here is typical of its general aversion to referentiality or explicit self-justification. Here, as elsewhere, it aims to be a book that does not need to be measured against other books, and it provides a Britain that does not need to be measured against Rome.

Britain and Beyond Although in this discussion I have set many passages from the Oldest Version and its sources side by side to illuminate its composer’s interests and working methods, this is not one of those cases in which it is necessary to read the analogue against its sources in order to experience the effect of

85 Eckhardt

notes lessening reliance on the Aeneid among fourteenth-century ME chronicles generally (‘Presence’, p. 203). 86 After the renaming of New Troy for Lud (by popular custom, not decree), Troy is not mentioned again in the OV (Oldest, ll. 637–40). 87 On the Galfridian genealogical mode, see Ingledew, who argues for it as a successful secular competitor with an Augustinian mode (‘Book’, esp. pp. 674–81). See also J. Simpson, who contrasts genealogical with exemplarist or analogical models, and associates the former with imperialism (Reform, esp. pp. 68–77). 88 See below, pp. 51–2. 89 See below, pp. 118–21. See also Lamont’s fine investigation of the role of language in forming identity in the MEPB (‘Becoming’). 90 ‘Le Brut a fourni . . . une histoire et des racines communes, un creuset de civilisation où les differences pouvaient se fondre’ (‘Brutus’, p. 101). See also Beaune, Birth, pp. 226, 243–4, for the legend’s function in creating group identity in France.

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A New New Troy its revisions. On the contrary, the challenge for modern readers is to set aside the expectations generated by Galfridian and Virgilian tradition, however interpreted. Members of the prose Brut’s audiences with a Galfridian/ Virgilian filter already in place may always have been prone to see what they expect in the narrative, while others are in a position to see something different. For, whatever one makes of the Historia, the ideal of successful kingship presented in the Oldest Version is not only non-imperial but even antiimperial. From the time that a sad Brut turns his back on the Continent, where victory is not worth the cost in lives, British efforts at Continental expansion are repeatedly shown as ill-advised. It is war of self-defense or to protect an existing right that is promoted as justified, provided it is unavoidable. Brut has the advantage over Aeneas of not bearing the burden of empire. The pattern is set from the outset, when the Oldest Version adjusts elements from its sources to make clear that Scotland and Wales are integral parts of the realm, eternally subject to the ruler of New Troy. Well aware of historical writing as a valuable source for precedent, King Edward I had chronicles consulted in his efforts to resolve the Scottish succession crisis that followed the death of the Maid of Norway in 1290.91 If Edward’s clerks read the Oldest Version, they would have found nothing to help them decide among the three claimants to the Scottish throne, but they would have found proof after proof of England’s rights over Scotland. Brut assigns the three main parts of the island to his sons Locrin, Albanac, and Kambor, with the eldest to be lord over all: after Brut’s death, ‘feu Locrin le fiz Brut corone oue grant solempnite de tute la terre de Bretaine’ ‘(with great ceremony, Locrin the son of Brut was crowned king of all the land of Britain’).92 The Oldest Version alone makes Albanac Brut’s second son rather than his youngest, a move that increases Scotland’s importance relative to Wales. (In Wace, following Geoffrey, Brut’s sons divide the land among themselves only after his death.)93 This initial subordination of Scotland and Wales defines all subsequent conflict involving them as the restoration or protection of existing right; it is easy to see the immediate significance of these issues to the chronicle’s original audiences, among whom would have been many affected by the Scottish and Welsh wars of Edward I and his son. Indeed, the first war in Britain comes in the form of an invasion of Scotland by Humbar and his Huns, which requires Albanac’s brothers to come to the rescue after he is killed: this is only the first of many occasions for the 91 On

Edward I and the search for chronicle evidence to support his claim to Scotland, as well as Scottish responses to him, see Goldstein, Matter, pp. 79–103; and Stones and G. G. Simpson, Edward, esp. I, 137–62, 222–4. 92 Oldest, ll. 199–200. 93 See RB, ll. 1261–92; HRB, § 23, p. 31.

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The Construction of Vernacular History Oldest Version to point out the dominance of the south and Scotland’s need of its aid.94 Ireland comes into the net when King Gorin Batruz takes pity on thirty shiploads of refugees from Spain, who offer perpetual fealty in exchange for land: ‘il deuendrount ses hommes lige e li ferroient homage e feaute a tute sa vie, e ses heirs apres li, e tendroit de li e de ses heirs cele terre’ (‘they would become his sworn men and do homage and fealty to him for his whole life, and to his heirs after him, and they would hold this land from him and his heirs’).95 The refugees’ declaration, and their subsequent act of homage, are not found in the sources.96 Gorin Batruz gives them ‘vne ilde waste ou nul homme fu demorant fors bestes sauuages’ (‘a deserted island where no one was living but only wild animals’) that will become known as Ireland.97 In the prose Brut only, the refugees’ leader is named Irlamal, a much better eponym for the island than the variations on ‘Partholoim’ found in the sources: the name of Ireland itself becomes a reminder of the terms of its foundation.98 Perhaps in consequence of Northern origins, the Oldest Version pays far less attention to Wales and Ireland than to Scotland; it makes no mention at all of Ireland between the reigns of Cadwalein and King John. With Scotland, Wales, and Ireland construed as being under the lordship of England from their first human habitation, any action can be represented as recovery, not conquest. The fact that the writer of the Oldest Version takes such pains to make these claims itself indicates uneasiness with the notion of outright conquest. However unpersuasive such a rhetorical solution to the problem may be for those without a stake in asserting England’s aboriginal overlordship, the Oldest Version distinctly outlines the boundaries of what is to be considered and defended as the natural territory of Britain. The Continent lies outside those boundaries. Within a few generations of Brut, King Ebranc is raiding France, returning with the gold and silver that will enable him to found the great city of ‘Euerwyk’, or York; the Oldest Version avoids mentioning a British foothold on the Continent by omitting the sources’ mention of the marriage of his twenty-three daughters to Trojans in Lombardy and the twenty sons’ takeover of Germany, saying only that they ‘deuindrent vailaunz chiualers en plusurs pais’ (‘became worthy knights in several countries’).99 When French forces

94 See

also, e.g., ll. 452–64, 762–77 (which provide an origin for the name of ‘Scots’ that overwrites the Scota legend), 1680–95, and 3173–8. 95 Oldest, ll. 563–5. 96 See RB, ll. 3268–334; HRB, § 46, p. 61. 97 Oldest, l. 567. 98 See Oldest, p. 303. 99 Oldest, ll. 270–85, 284–5 quoted, and see p. 300; cf. RB, ll. 1493–590 (which expands the scope of Ebrauc’s pillaging) and HRB, § 27, pp. 35–7, to which the OV is closer.

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A New New Troy first come to Britain, it is not to seek revenge, to pillage, or to seize territory, but to restore Leir to the throne: this kind of involvement from across the Channel for the benefit of the realm will repeat itself throughout the Oldest Version, from Constantin of Little Britain stopping a pagan invasion, to Hoel helping Arthur, to a William who has every right to the throne displacing the usurper Harold (as the Oldest Version presents it), to Louis of France helping the beleaguered barons of England against John (though the French prove difficult to dislodge after John’s death). The idea of powers joining in mutual aid seems to hold much more appeal than the idea of conquest. Rome and the other Continental holdings gained by Brenne and Belin remain the business of the younger brother, something of a consolation prize, since he cannot have Britain: ‘repaira outre mer en sa seignurie demene e la demora a tute sa vie. E Belyn demora en Noue Troie’ (‘he went back overseas to his own domain and remained there for the rest of his life. And Belin remained in New Troy’).100 During the brief period when Roman overlordship in Britain is acknowledged, King Coel (a different figure from the Koil discussed above) is praised as a ‘mult durement m e mult ame des Brutouns’ (‘a most exceedingly worthy man and greatly loved by the Britons’).101 When the Romans send Constans to demand tribute, le roi respundi ben e sagement e dit qil rendroit volunters a Rome et de bone volunte quanqe resoun e dreiture voudroit. E issint se acorderent ensemble sanz contek e sanz descord, e demorerent ensemble en ioie e en amiste e en aliaunce de greindre amour. Le roi dona sa fille Eleyne a Constans a femme, qe fu durement beale e sage e tresben lettre. (‘the king replied well and wisely and said that he would gladly and of his own free will give to Rome whatever reason and justice required. And so they came to terms together without conflict and without dispute, and they remained together in joy and in friendship and in a bond of greatest love. The king gave to Constans as wife his daughter Eleine, who was exceedingly beautiful and wise and very learned.’)102

In the sources, the figure analogous to Constans marries Eleine only after Coel’s death, as part of seizing power. As Wace bluntly puts it, ‘Constainz prist sa fille Eleine / Si tint la terre en sun demeine’ (‘Constant took his 100 Oldest,

ll. 545–7. For a detailed examination of the OV’s editorial technique in relation to Wace in the Brenne and Belin episode, see A. MacColl, ‘Rhetoric, Narrative, and Conceptions of History in the French Prose Brut’, Medium Aevum 74 (2005), 288–310 (pp. 293–5). 101 Oldest, ll. 835–6. 102 Oldest, ll. 841–6; see p. 306 and cf. RB, ll. 5615–67; HRB, § 78, pp. 95–7. In HRB, they exchange hostages rather than become friends.

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The Construction of Vernacular History daughter Eleine for his wife and took possession of her land’).103 By legitimizing the passage of power and noting the friendship between the two men, the Oldest Version emphasizes the propriety and Britishness of the marriage, and thus the British heritage of their son Constantine, who will become emperor himself at the request of the persecuted Christian Romans. His mother is the finder of the True Cross, and the Oldest Version celebrates her as such.104 For a time the relationship of Britain and Rome will become one of mutual support, thanks to Coel’s prudence. Attempts to put the Continent under British lordship are shown as ill-considered and destructive. When Maximian (himself a Roman cousin of the Emperor Constantine) decides to conquer Armorica ‘pur la grant richesce qil oi parler de cele terre’ (‘for the great wealth that he had heard of in that land’), the Oldest Version becomes openly condemnatory: E assembla grant ost de ceste terre, issint qil ne lessa homme vaillaunt, chiualer ne esquier, qil ne les prist tretuz oue li, a grant damage de la terre, qar nul homme ne demora pur la terre garder. (‘And he mustered a great army from this land, so that he left no worthy man, knight or squire, but he took them all with him, to the great harm of the land, for no man remained to guard the land.’)105

It is not enough to win the war: the effort to colonize what is now called Little Britain leads to disaster, first in the form of the martyrdom of the 11,000 British virgins sent to marry the colonists, and then in the form of an invasion by the pagan Gowan, who runs amok in Britain ‘pur ceo qil ne auoit nul homme demore en la terre qe les poeit defendre ne meintenir, qar le Roi Maximian les auoit pris tretuz oue li quant il alast conquere la Petite Bretaine’ (‘for there was no man left in the land who could defend or protect them, because King Maximian had taken them all with him when he went to conquer Little Britain’).106 These events also occur in the sources, but the Oldest Version expands on them while omitting other events, such as Maximian’s eventual conquest of Rome itself, keeping the focus on the consequences for Britain of adventuring abroad. The British lineage of Little Britain will have a restorative role to play, when Constantin, grandfather of Arthur (again, a figure other than the emperor of that name) brings an army to make an end of Gowan after the Romans have refused further aid: ‘les Romains disoient qil auoient este greuez si souentfoiz par enuoier genz en Bretaine qil ne voleient plus fere’ (‘the Romans said that they had been so

103 RB,

ll. 5653–4. Oldest, ll. 857–9, 1842. 105 Oldest, ll. 907–10. 106 Oldest, ll. 911–75, 973–5 quoted; see p. 307. Cf. RB, ll. 5887–6116; HRB, § 84–8, pp. 105–11. 104 See

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A New New Troy often burdened with sending men to Britain that they would not do so any more’).107 Arthur, of course, is the sticking point in all discussions of British conquest and relations with Rome. He is both a great king and a conqueror on the verge of taking Rome, having already done in its emperor, when he must return to Britain to deal with the treacherous Modred. Can a work embrace Arthur without embracing empire? Arthur begins his career defending Britain against invaders. When he has finished reasserting British overlordship of Scotland and Ireland, he moves on to Gotland and Iceland, perhaps representative of the Scandinavian lands from which the invaders come. That seems to be enough: whereas Wace describes the kings of still other lands submitting to him out of fear, the Oldest Version’s Arthur simply returns home to enjoy the peace.108 A long quotation is in order here: E pus passa Arthur auant e conquist Gutland e Islaunde e prist homages de les hommes de la terre, e fist appariller sa nauie e reuint en ceste terre. E donqe demora duzze aunz en pes e regna en grant ioie e en pesiblite, qil ne guerra nul homme ne nul homme li. E deuint si trescurteis, si larges, e si sages, e se mena a si grant honur, qe la court lemperour de Rome, ne autre qe homme sauoit par mi le mund, ne fu taunt preise ne si noble come la sue. E pur ceo les meillours chiualers des plusors terres de cea la mer e de la vindrent espessement demorer oue li, e il les resceut trestuz fraunchement e de bone volunte [a grant honur. E furent trestuz si bons, si vaylauns, ke home ne saueyt lur per, e pur ceo fyt Arthur la Rounde Table, ke kuant il deueynt seer a manger trestuz serreynt owelement haut assys a la table, e trestuz owelement serrunt seruyz, issi ke nul se poeyt auaunter ke il fu plus haut de autre.] Ili auoient en cele Table Rounde Brutons, Fraunceis, Normanz, Flemyngs, Burgonnins, Manseis, Loherins, e des tutes les terres de cea la Mountioie e de la, e de sa terre demene, Bretaine la Grande, de Cornewaille, de Gales, Dirlaunde, e Descoce. E breuement a dire, des tutes les terres qe vodrount honur e cheualerie quere vindrent ala court Arthur. (‘And then Arthur moved on and conquered Gotland and Iceland and took homage from the men of the land, and he had his fleet readied and came back to this land. And then he remained in peace for twelve years and reigned in great joy and tranquility, so that he made war on no one and no one on him. And he became so very courteous, so generous, and so wise, and he conducted himself with such great honor, that not even the court of 107 Oldest,

ll. 1009–10; see p. 308 for a detailed comparison to the sources, RB, ll. 6141–442, and HRB, § 89–93, pp. 111–19. This moment marks the end of the Roman presence in Britain in all three works. 108 See Spence on the treatment of Arthur’s military career in a range of AN chronicles (Reimagining, pp. 61–62 and esp. pp. 64–72, 94–97, on Gray’s reintroduction of battle scenes and celebration of knightly prowess in the Scalacronica).

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The Construction of Vernacular History the emperor of Rome, nor any other known throughout the world, was as esteemed or as noble as his. And therefore the best knights of many lands, on this side and that of the sea, came in great numbers to dwell with him, and he received them all freely and willingly with great honor. And they were all so good and so worthy that no one knew their equal, and therefore Arthur founded the Round Table, so that when they were to be seated to eat they would all be seated equally high at the table, and all would be equally served, so that no one could boast that he was higher than another. In this Round Table there were men of Brittany, Frenchmen, Normans, Flemings, Burgundians, men of Maine, of Lorraine, and of all the lands on this side and that of Mont Joux, and of his own land, Great Britain, from Cornwall, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. And to tell it briefly, from all lands, whoever desired to seek honor and chivalry came to the court of Arthur.’)109

In the sources, Arthur chooses the finest knights to serve him, and other kings live in dread of him – in Geoffrey, this fear only whets his appetite for conquest. A different tone is set by the emphasis here on Arthur as a magnet for the knights, his willing reception of them all, and their genuine equality in status and treatment. Still, ‘par conseil de son barnage’ (‘by the counsel of his baronage’), he does go to conquer all of France when he is not provoked by some wrong.110 Frolle, the dutiful Roman keeper of Paris, is ‘vn tresnoble chiualer, fort e vaillaunt de cors’ (‘a very noble knight, strong and stalwart of body’), who goes out to face Arthur in single combat when the besieged city of Paris is reduced to starvation and the people threaten to surrender.111 When they meet, ‘si ben le ferirent qe homme ne sauoit choiser le meillour’ (‘they fought so well that no one could tell who was the better’), and Frolle draws first blood, provoking Arthur to split his head in half.112 Described in very much the same terms as a Brut or an Arthur, Frolle goes to his death for the sake of his people. Arthur is here, in a way, reversing Brut’s choice to disengage on the Continent. Arthur achieves another round of conquests and stays on the Continent for nine more peaceful years ‘pur meintenir la terre e sauuement establier’ (‘to protect the land and safely set it in order’), during which he rewards the men who have served him with territories of their own.113 Once again he appears to have attained stability, but the death of Frolle will have consequences, in the form of the Roman legates arriving at the great Pentecost feast with a letter invoking Frolle’s name. Once again at the urging of ‘trestut son barnage . . . communement dun acord’ (‘his whole baronage . . . together with

109 Oldest,

ll. 1714–30; see p. 315. Cf. RB, ll. 9703–98; HRB, § 153–4, pp. 205–7. l. 1735. 111 Oldest, ll. 1737–8. 112 Oldest, ll. 1754–5; see pp. 315–16; cf. RB, ll. 9887–10092; HRB, § 155, pp. 207–9. 113 Oldest, ll. 1772–3. 110 Oldest,

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A New New Troy one accord’), Arthur embarks on the war that will prove his undoing – not because of the forces of Rome, but because, like Maximian sending his men to Armorica, he has presumed on the security of home.114 Family betrayal and civil war – for which the preceding history of Britain provides ample warning and precedent – will accomplish what foreign enemies cannot. While the Oldest Version spares a great deal of sympathetic attention for Frolle and the starving Parisians, it rushes over most details of Arthur’s Continental expeditions. The Parisians’ story runs to about half the length of the entire campaign to conquer Rome.115 Wace’s version of the Roman campaign takes up over 1400 lines of octosyllabic verse, around 9.5 percent of the total, and Geoffrey’s a little over ten printed pages, around 7 percent of the total.116 The sixty-one lines in the Oldest Version represent about 1.5 percent of the book, and over a quarter of them are given over to loss and sorrow: at the climactic battle ‘tanz i auoient occis dune parte e dautre qe dolur i fust del veoir e del penser’ (‘so many were killed there on one side and the other that it was a sorrow to see it and think of it’).117 No such extension of pity is found in the sources.118 The battle itself is brief, but the names and burial places of Arthur’s greatest knights are told in detail, along with Arthur’s honorable treatment of the emperor’s body.119 Later users of the prose Brut were certainly free to take the sheer fact of Arthur’s Continental ventures as a positive precedent, and it is not difficult to see the appeal of such an interpretation once the Hundred Years War was underway.120 But the Oldest Version suggests the conquest of France to be unwarranted overreaching, enthusiastically encouraged by the baronage rather than imposed on it, and the imperial impulse as one that triggers the destruction of everything Arthur has built up, including the peaceful commerce of sometime enemies at the Round Table.121

114 Oldest,

ll. 1831–2. about thirty lines versus about sixty lines (Oldest, ll. 1735–64, 1906–66). 116 RB, ll. 11609–3015; HRB, § 166–76, pp. 229–49. 117 Oldest, ll. 1937–8. See below, pp. 105–7, for the OV’s effort to legitimize Arthur’s war on Rome by representing it as a crusade. 118 The closest we get is a couple of references in HRB to ‘miseranda caedes’ and ‘caedes abhorrenda’ (‘terrible slaughter’ and ‘appalling slaughter’) (§ 171, 174, pp. 241, 247, 240, 246), while Arthur urges his men on until they are exhausted from killing. 119 Oldest, ll. 1948–62; the OV of course has considerably more material to cover in all, and Arthur comes about halfway through rather than close to the end of the whole work. As Eckhardt notes, the PB exercises narrative compression throughout, and caution is necessary in attributing significance to any given omission or inclusion, but I find the patterns particularly telling here (‘Presence’, p. 201). 120 See below, p. 241, on relevant adaptations to the text in the LV. 121 Cf. J. Simpson, who characterizes as exclusive to the ‘literary’ Troy tradition a sense of causation driven by ‘poor decisions and the cumulative weight of events’ (Reform, p. 77). 115 I.e.,

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The Construction of Vernacular History Two of the royal deaths that the Oldest Version recounts in notable detail, for which the writer appears to have gone beyond his main source for material, are those of William the Conqueror and Richard I. William responds to an insult by the king of France by ravaging the north of France: his own choler is his undoing, when the heat of the flames of Mantes throws him into a fatal illness.122 After coming unscathed through crusade, imprisonment, and his brother John’s rebellion, Richard heads for Normandy ‘pur mouer guere a roi de France e conquere les chastels qe le roi li auoit tollet’ (‘to make war on the king of France and regain the castles that the king had taken from him’); he puts him to flight with ease but is mortally wounded when he rides around ‘folement’ without his armor at the besieged castle of Châlus.123 Little good is shown to come from pursuing even just claims on the Continent.

Troy Renovated The opening episodes of the Oldest Version thus display a double impulse: to create particular exemplary figures and episodes that promote a distinctively populist and peaceable outlook, and simultaneously to reconstruct British history on a larger scale. Eliminating the sources’ allusions to the Aeneid, the Oldest Version detaches the meaning and value of Britain’s Trojan origins from the idea of Rome. Through the figure of Brut, it instead creates an insular model of heroic kingship and an insular lineage that does not need a connection to Rome. Imperial Rome becomes an entirely negative exemplar, while ecclesiastical Rome survives and flourishes only because a Briton comes to its aid at the right time. Promoting cooperation among those of different lands, the Oldest Version offers repeated reminders of the cost of conquest to both those who fight and those who stay behind. The reign of Arthur marks the high point of such endeavor, with the Round Table and its long years of peace; it also testifies to the frailty of such peace. The vernacular diffusion of the prose Brut’s version of Trojan origins may have helped create the conditions for the rise of other and varied vernacular Troy stories in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, ones that, as scholars such as Eckhardt and James Simpson have noted, more explicitly challenge a simple analogy between Britain and Rome.124 Nevertheless, the prose Brut tradition has been ignored or travestied in nearly all scholarship on the role of the Troy story in late medieval English culture, even scholarship that looks 122 Oldest,

ll. 3183–209; see p. 333 on the sources and analogues, and see also below, pp. 219–21. 123 Oldest, ll. 3604–29, ll. 3599–600, 3605 quoted; see p. 339 on the sources and analogues. 124 Eckhardt, ‘Presence’; J. Simpson, Reform.

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A New New Troy beyond the tradition of literary verse narrative,125 while verse works often surviving in only one or two manuscripts (but often with a named author) are plumbed for insight on contemporary views: Wace’s and Laȝamon’s Bruts, the alliterative Morte Arthure, and Malory.126 In his influential essay on the Troy story in late medieval England, James Simpson acknowledges the popularity and reach of the prose Brut, only to characterize it as ‘an uncritical reproduction and continuation of an Anglo-Norman translation of Geoffrey’s Latin text’.127 Works like Lydgate’s Troy Book, the Laud Troy Book, and the alliterative Destruction of Troy – which Simpson reads as noteworthy in their opposition to a monolithic imperialist Galfridian tradition that he identifies as ‘the principal lens through which English readers perceived British history’ – should perhaps instead be considered participants in a tradition well established by the time of their composition.128 If England’s most widely read chronicle in fact anticipates these other works’ unease with the quest for empire, and may well influence them, the broad distinction between the tempers of the ‘chronicle’ and ‘literary’ versions of the Troy story collapses, as do claims based on the reification of that divide, such as that of a gulf between the ‘aristocratic’ and ‘clerical’ perspectives thought to be demonstrated in them.129 Mostly through shifts of emphasis rather than outright alterations to plot, what Eckhardt aptly terms ‘narrative effect’ versus ‘narrative ingredients’, the composer of the Oldest Version creates a British history that suits his purposes.130 He renovates the Trojan origin story so that it yields a usable past, while dropping its imperial baggage along the way. Remedying the omission of the prose Brut from recognized narrative tradition, or the presumption that it merely duplicates the message or

125 Eckhardt’s

thoughtful reading of Geoffrey and a set of fourteenth-century Middle English chronicles including the MEPB is a notable exception (‘Presence‘). 126 See, e.g., Lynch, ‘“Peace”’, which draws sweeping conclusions about the ‘traditional and militarist’ attitudes towards war manifested in Arthurian tradition over some 300 years on the basis of these works and Mannyng (p. 144 quoted). 127 J. Simpson, Reform, p. 76. See also Ingledew, who deems the PB and other vernacular histories to be simple transmissions of Galfridian material that helped ensure the grip of Galfridian history on late-medieval ‘historical consciousness’ in England (‘Book’, pp. 701–3 (p. 703)). 128 J. Simpson, Reform, p. 76. 129 See, e.g., J. Simpson, Reform, pp. 98–9, 103, 110, 119. The PB’s relatively well-known passage on King Arthur’s triumphs, added in the AN Long Continuation and translated into ME in the Common Version, appears as part of a condemnation of the pretensions of Roger Mortimer’s son Geoffrey in holding a Round Table (thus holding himself up for comparison with Arthur) early in the reign of Edward III, not as part of any ‘description of Edward II’s Continental failures’, as J. Simpson describes it in his only direct citation of the PB (Reform, p. 70). See also Ingledew, ‘Book’. 130 ‘Presence’, p. 201.

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The Construction of Vernacular History purpose of Geoffrey of Monmouth (however he is interpreted), means that there is a lot of rethinking to do about late medieval conceptions of England’s relationship to Troy and to Rome, and about what those places mean in later English culture broadly conceived. We cannot put chronicle and romance tradition into binary opposition; we cannot attribute a novel perspective to later fourteenth century works that call militaristic values into question; and we cannot presume that such questioning is a peculiarly clerical, or even a minority, phenomenon. And we cannot assume without further evidence that any invocation of Troy effectively constitutes an evocation of Rome and empire. What is true for the Troy story in the Oldest Version is true for other aspects as well. It is not a work that responds well to skimming or glances at episodes in isolation, or (as should go without saying) to being set up as a straw man. But, as I hope to show in the chapters following, attentive reading of it compels reconsideration of a wide range of issues.

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2 The Community of the Realm: King, Baron, Brother, Stranger

In my analysis of its depiction of Brut and Rome, I have tried to demonstrate both how the Oldest Version works from its sources and what some of the effects of that work are, in order to articulate both its narrative techniques and the ideals that emerge from its presentation of the history of Britain. To continue throughout with the painstaking close reading of text against multiple sources entailed by that sort of analysis would be taxing on all parties concerned. I will now try to step back for a wider perspective, and to move along more quickly, while reserving the right to stop and focus on particulars from time to time. When understood in context, even the Oldest Version’s greatest departures from its sources become comprehensible as part of a program promoting the ideal of a cohesive community of the realm that extends across time and population. In this chapter, I will discuss some major concerns of the Oldest Version, considering episodes throughout the text, offering longer readings of specific incidents, and showing how it links its separate stories to create a typology of secular history.1

King and Baronage Following the model set by Brut, the prose Brut’s good rulers are worthy and wise. They contribute to the general welfare by establishing laws and by building cities, roads, temples, and eventually Christian houses of religion. They respect the powerful and help the weak. They are beloved by their people. These traits recur in the brief characterizations that serve to describe obscure kings and introduce famous ones. Most frequently mentioned in these lists are good and noble rule, the love of the people, and courtesy. In the adjectival forms curtois or deboner, this word seems to have little to do 1 As

MacColl puts it in a broad-ranging essay on what he calls the French Prose Brut, ‘The internal connections that make the Prose Brut a stylistically and ideologically coherent account of English history are such that the meanings to be drawn from any one part are a function of its relation to the work as a whole’ (‘Rhetoric’, p. 290).

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The Construction of Vernacular History with the finer things in life; instead courtesy serves as a mark of decorum towards others, an opposite to the pride evinced by the Brut’s tyrants. Somewhat less frequently mentioned are marks of individual heroism, when the king is explicitly associated with knighthood and is ‘beau’, ‘vaillaunt de corps’, ‘fort’, and ‘large’ (‘handsome’, ‘powerful of body’, ‘strong’, and ‘generous’). Saintliness and mercifulness dominate the characterization of a few kings, mostly but not exclusively Anglo-Saxon ones informed by a pious historiographical tradition. Verbal bean-counting may be an inelegant way to approach a text, but it does correspond to the writer’s own methods of composition and so offers concrete indications of what matters to him.2 That the bad king is a mirror-image of the good one is shown clearly in the figure of Artogalle, who as king becomes ‘si malueis, si cruel, e si feloun qe les Brutons ne li voleient plus suffrir estre roi, mes le lesserent e coronerent Esidur son frere’ (‘so wicked, so cruel, and so vicious that the Britons were unwilling to let him be king any longer, but they abandoned him and crowned Esidur his brother’).3 When Esidur restores the crown to him, the humbled king becomes ‘si ben entecche qil fu durement ame de tute la terre, qar il deuint fraunk, deboner, e pesible, e fist dreiture as tutes genz’ (‘so worthy that he was loved dearly by the whole land, for he became gracious, kind, and peaceable, and he did right to all people’).4 The Oldest Version has less to say about wicked kings than good ones, and there are fewer of them. They are uniformly ‘mauueis’ and ‘cruel’, and although any number of people are called ‘mauueis’ in the text, the word ‘cruel’ is reserved for tyrants and seems to relate specifically to the ruthless use of power. The only time the word appears in relation to a good king, it describes Arthur’s sternness towards the proud: ‘as orguillous estoit il estut, cruel, e fers’ (‘to the proud he was unbending, harsh, and haughty’).5 The other thing that wicked kings have in common is that, unless they reform like Artogalle (and they rarely do), they meet bad ends, eaten by beasts, burnt alive, or less spectacularly killed by their own people. The cause-and-effect relationship is verbally explicit in the text, brought home with nearly every vicious king, who is so wicked that something bad happens to him: Mempriz par tresoun fist tuer soun frere puisne. E il memes tint issint tute la terre, e se fist corouner roi e regna. E pus deuint si mauueis homme qil destrut a poi tuz les hommes de sa terre, e au darein deuint si malueis qil lessa sa femme e haunta le pecche de sodomie, paront Nostre Seignur se coruca e prist dure vengeaunce 2 Hanning

discusses Geoffrey’s own patterned depiction of kingship in Vision, pp. 144–56. 3 Oldest, ll. 603–5. 4 Oldest, ll. 609–11. 5 Oldest, l. 1616.

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The Community of the Realm de li. Qar vn iour sicome il alast en le bois a sa chace, il perdi sa gente e demora tut sous, alant sus e ius huchaunt ses hommes. Vindrent lups e li desakerent en peces, e quant ses genz sauoient de sa mortz il furent mult leez. (‘Mempriz treacherously had his younger brother killed. And thus he held all the land himself, and had himself crowned king and ruled. And then he became such an evil man that he ruined nearly all the men of his land, and finally he became so wicked that he abandoned his wife and took up the sin of sodomy, for which Our Lord grew angry and took harsh vengeance on him. For one day as he went hunting in the woods, he lost his men and was left all alone, going up and down shouting for his men. Wolves came and tore him into pieces, and when his people knew of his death they were very glad.’)6 Cesti Roi Gracian quant il comenca de regner, il deuint si cruel e si outraious, e fist tanz de damages e anguises as Brutons, qil li occirent entre eux. (‘When this King Gracian began to reign, he became so cruel and so extreme, and he caused so much harm and suffering to the Britons, that among them they killed him.’)7 Apres cesti Eddred regna Edwyn, fiz Edmund le roi, e si estoit vn hom mult contrarious a deu e al siecle. Il hai les hommes de la terre e honura les enemis. Il ne fist force de Seinte Eglise. Il rauist de Seinte Eglise tut le tresor qil poeit trouer, a grant hounte de li mesmes, e a peril de sa alme, e pur ceo ne voleit deu qil regna longement. Il ne regna qe quatre aunz e gist a Wincestre. (‘After this Eadred reigned Edwin, son of King Edmund, and indeed he was a man turned against God and the world. He hated the men of the land and honored its enemies. He cared nothing for Holy Church. He plundered from Holy Church all the riches he could find, to his own great shame, and to the peril of his soul, and therefore God did not wish him to reign long. He reigned for only four years, and he lies buried at Winchester.’)8

The notion of contrariety is central to the understanding of bad kingship: it goes against nature, and the unnatural political behavior of a king who is proud rather than courteous and puts his own will before the good of his people is reflected in personal behavior presented as unnatural, such as Mempriz’s turn to sodomy. This formulation is most explicit in the description of William Rufus, who is repeatedly characterized as opposed to God and the world, until ‘au darein deuint si cruel e si contrarious qe quanqe deplust a deu plust a li e a tuz ceux qe lamerent’ (‘at last he became so cruel 6 Oldest,

ll. 261–8. ll. 999–1001. 8 Oldest, ll. 2569–74. 7 Oldest,

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The Construction of Vernacular History and recalcitrant that whatever was displeasing to God was pleasing to him and all those who loved him’).9 The passages quoted above already demonstrate the role of the Britons in unmaking their own kings. Ideally, the question of whether lineage or accomplishment matters more will not arise, for the most direct heir will also be unquestionably fitted by his virtues to be king.10 But when the king is unfit, the people are entitled – and able – to do something about it rather than suffer the consequences for the realm. The right of rebellion is presumed and enacted throughout the Oldest Version.11 Not until the time of Vortiger is the word ‘barouns’ used to identify the powerful of the land.12 In the first days of civilization on the island, in the small world of Brut and his few shiploads of men, every Briton is effectively a baron. The idea of and word for a parliament as such does not appear until the time of the Anglo-Saxon kings (over halfway through the Oldest Version), and in that first appearance it is not an idealized assembly but a piece of manipulation practiced by King Edgar, who is creating the opportunity to send a baron to his death à la David and Uriah.13 The formalization of baronial counsel seems to go hand in hand with its potential exploitation. As Hanna notes, in the fourteenth century leading citizens of London used the term ‘baron’ to identify themselves.14 Like them, the composer of the Oldest Version clings to an ideal of ‘baronage’ as broadly and informally construed as possible. As the writer of the Vita Edwardi Secundi later puts it, the barons ‘are a chief constituent of monarchy, and without them the king cannot attempt or accomplish anything of importance’.15

9 Oldest,

ll. 3231–2; for an examination of the contrasting accounts of Richard I, John, and Henry III, see J. Marvin, ‘John and Henry III in the Anglo-Norman Prose Brut’, Thirteenth Century England 14 (2013), 169–82. 10 The writer of the OV takes pains to show, whenever possible, that the holder of the throne does have a claim based on lineage: for a study of this issue, see J. Marvin, ‘Narrative, Lineage, and Succession in the Anglo-Norman Prose Brut Chronicle’, in Radulescu and E. D. Kennedy, eds., Broken Lines, pp. 205–20 (esp. pp. 212–14, on its treatment of the ancestry of Henry II). 11 For a (somewhat tendentious) overview of late-medieval views on resistance and rebellion, see C. Valente, The Theory and Practice of Revolt in Medieval England (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 12–48. 12 Oldest, l. 1087. Wace uses the word as early as the reign of Ebrauc (l. 1611). The OV uses the term to describe people on the Continent in the Brenne and Belin episode (Oldest, l. 542). 13 Oldest, ll. 2633–67. 14 R. Hanna, London Literature, 1300–1380 (Cambridge, 2005), p. 59. 15 ‘Sunt . . . membrum regis principale, sine quo nil grande poterit rex aggredi uel consummare’ (Vita Edwardi Secundi, ed. and trans. N. Denholm-Young (London, 1957), p. 28).

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The Community of the Realm

Making War and Peace One of the Oldest Version’s most thoroughgoing revisions to its source material is the elimination of almost all description of warfare. When Wace puts Geoffrey into the vernacular, he expands the already lengthy and detailed battle scenes, but the composer of the Oldest Version revises by omission and abridgment: what interests him is not memorable deeds, but the outcome. This approach is of a piece with the text’s greater emphasis on good kings as governors than as warlords. In the Oldest Version’s compressed accounts of battle, the combatants assemble their respective great forces and the better man wins, unless the worse man has sought help from non-Britons, generally pagans, in which case he may by force of numbers win a temporary victory that leads to calamity for the whole country. Just as the lack of specificity in the descriptions of kings makes the promulgation of an ideal of rulership more clearcut, the perfunctory accounts of battle emphasize an understanding of war not as a skilled, strategic enterprise but as a large-scale trial by ordeal. Peaceful alternatives to battle are often described and praised in a way that war is not. The activity of war most often depicted in detail is not battle itself but hostage-taking, a pattern established with King Pandras and carried throughout the text. Hostage-taking constitutes an effort towards peace, since hostages serve as guarantors of good conduct and a means of avoiding bloodshed. When the other side does not honor its word, it is shown as legitimate, even imperative, to kill the hostages and deal mercilessly with the oathbreakers, as in many manuscripts both Arthur and Alfred the Great do, in virtually identical language.16 The Oldest Version wholeheartedly endorses negotiation and compromise as well as the reconciliation of even the bitterest of enemies, in a sort of ethos of pragmatic mercifulness. Its account of the reconciliation of Edward the Confessor with the exiled Earl Godwine, carefully adapted from that of Gaimar, epitomizes this tendency.17 Edward is a saint, and it is exactly his reputation for mercifulness that encourages Godwine, who is responsible for the horrific murder of the king’s older brother Alured (Alfred), to seek the king’s grace: he ‘auoit ben oi de la grant bunte le Roi Edward, e qil estoit plein de merci e de pite’ (‘had well heard of the great goodness of King Edward, and that he was full of mercy and compassion’).18 Accompanied by his friends and relatives, he returns from abroad and comes to the king’s general parliament, whereupon Edward charges him with treason and the murder

16 See

Oldest, ll. 1653, 2477, pp. 314, 324, 370, 385. differs substantially from the modern understanding of events (EE, ll. 4867–5034, and see also pp. 422–5). For more detail, see Oldest, pp. 329–31. 18 Oldest, ll. 2962–3. 17 Gaimar

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The Construction of Vernacular History of his brother.19 Godwine denies the charge and throws himself on the court, the king asks the assembled barons to serve as judges of the appeal, and they confer in a scene reminiscent of that of Brut’s men debating in Greece over the fate of the defeated king Pandras. Some consider the technicalities: Godwine was not Edward’s man when Alfred was killed (since Edward was not yet king), nor had he killed Alfred with his own hands, so neither the charge of treason nor that of murder can stick. Others consider the conflict that would arise by judging against the king and urge asking for his mercy. Finally Earl Leverich (Leofric) plays the moderating role of Memprice: ‘Le Counte Godwyn’, fet il, ‘est le meuz emparentez homme Dengleterre apres le roi, e ne peut estre dedit qe par son conseil ne fu Alured son frere enginne e mis ala mort. Par quei ieo agarde endreit de moy qil mesmes, e son fiz, e chesqun de nous duzze countes qe sumes ses amys e ses parentz aloms deuant le roi, chargez dor e de argent tant come nous porroms entre noz mains porter, e qe le roi le pregne e pardoine sa mal volunte au Counte Godwyn, e resceiue son homage, e li rende sa terre.’ (‘“Earl Godwine”, he said, “is the best connected man in England after the king, and it cannot be maintained that Alfred his brother was not deceived and put to death by his counsel. Wherefore, as for myself, I judge that he himself, and his son, and each of us twelve earls who are his friends and his kinsmen should go before the king, bearing as much gold and silver as we can carry in our hands, so that the king may accept it and pardon Earl Godwine his evil will, and receive his homage, and give him his land.”’)20

Leverich acknowledges two realities: Godwine’s important place in the kin networks of the English baronage, and his responsibility for the murder. His suggestion of seeking the king’s pardon by means of submission and gifts (gifts that of course demonstrate the power and wealth of those asking the favor) may sound to a modern ear like a practical if unprincipled way to avoid the conflict no one wants. The text, however, portrays this resolution as both honorable and beneficial. It signals its approval of Leverich’s proposal by introducing him as ‘prudhom a deu e al siecle’ (‘a man righteous towards God and towards the world’), it shows the king accepting the offer because he does not want to gainsay what the barons have duly decided, and most pointedly, it portrays Godwine as a reformed man after his restoration: E pus se contint si ben e si sagement qe le roi lama durement e tint en grant especialte, e tant fu lamour entre eux si parfit qe par le conseil de tut son barnage, il espusa sa fille e la fist reine. 19 Oldest, 20 Oldest,

l. 2973, with the technical phrase, ‘ieo vous appel’. ll. 2988–95.

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The Community of the Realm (‘And then he conducted himself so well and so wisely that the king loved him dearly and held him in particular esteem, and the love between them was so perfect that by the counsel of his whole baronage, he married his daughter and made her queen.’)21

The chronicle does not paper over the pragmatic considerations driving these tactics and alliances: instead, it portrays them as compatible with moral behavior and good kingship, with good outcomes for the individuals concerned and the realm.22 The Oldest Version uses the past as a source of exempla, stories valuable for the general principles of governance and behavior that they illustrate. But the past also serves as a warehouse of useful information in the form of accounts or explanations of custom and precedent, especially in the area of law.

Law and Lawlessness The Oldest Version places law at the origins of the British nation. Brut establishes both city and law, and the text brings the two together: Brut porta corone en la cite de Noue Troie xx anz e plus apres qe la cite fu fete, e la dona il ses leis qe les Brutouns tindrent. E Brut fust mult ame de touz durement. (‘Brut wore the crown in the city of New Troy for twenty years and more after the city was built, and there he gave out his laws, which the Britons kept. And Brut was very greatly loved by all.’)23

King Alured (Alfred the Great) is shown as responsible for the book now called the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which is characterized as a repository of law as well as a record of events: ‘il estoit bon clerc e fist escriure vn liure Engleis des auentures e des leis e des batailles de la terre’ (‘he was a good clerk and had an English book written concerning the happenings and laws and battles of the land’).24 The doomed Prince Alfred’s promise that as king he will establish ‘teles leis dount deu e tutes genz se apaieront’ (‘such laws as will satisfy God and all people’) seems to be Godwine’s immediate spur to murder, with the virtuous, God-fearing man as the agent of law and the

21 Oldest,

ll. 2987–3005, ll. 2987–8, 3001–5 quoted.

22 Godwine returned in 1052; Edward had in fact married his daughter in 1045, but the

OV is not necessarily whitewashing that detail, since it follows Gaimar’s lead (EE, ll. 5027–30) in placing the marriage after the reconciliation. 23 Oldest, ll. 188–90. 24 Oldest, ll. 2528–9.

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The Construction of Vernacular History would-be tyrant as agent only of his own destructive will.25 The Oldest Version describes Edward the Confessor as a maker of good and enduring laws: ‘cesti bon Roi Edward fist tutes les bones leis en Engleterre qe vnquore sunt tutes les plus tenues’ (‘this good King Edward made all the good laws in England that still are for the most part retained’).26 This insistence on the importance and continuing validity of Edward’s law is as close as the Oldest Version comes to acknowledging the great shifts in law and governance brought on by the Norman Conquest, with its emphasis on continuity of line and development of government rather than disjunction and revolution. In the complaint against King John that will lead to Magna Carta, the barons of England hearken back to Edward’s laws and his personal example: Vn grant descord se leua entre le roi e les barouns par la resoun qil ne voleit graunter les bones leis estre tenues, les queux le bon roi Seint Edward le Confessour auoit establi en son temps e furent tenuz iesqes a cel temps qil les auoit corumpu e enfreint. Qar il ne voleit nule lei tenir, mes fist sa volunte demene en tutes choses qe li vindrent au quoer. (‘A great discord arose between the king and the barons because he would not allow the good laws to be kept, those which the good king Saint Edward the Confessor had established in his time and had been kept until that time when he had corrupted and violated them. For he wished to keep no law, but did his own will in everything that came to his heart.’)27

The characterization of John’s unprincipled acts illustrates what the writer of the Oldest Version understands law to be: a restraint on the individual will of the ruler, established by good kings for the benefit of all, and maintained by use. As Bracton puts it, ‘The king must not be under man but under God and under the law, because law makes the king, . . . for there is no rex where will rules rather than lex.’28 These moments constitute almost all of the Oldest Version’s explicit discussion of written law. But virtually every page of the text shows the workings of customary law and agreements based on the individual word, as kings accept new men as vassals, the Britons choose and acclaim their new kings, and traitors break their oaths. Positive law in the Oldest Version is an 25 Oldest,

l. 2922. ll. 2959–60. This description elaborates Gaimar’s simple statement that Edward ‘asist ses lais’ (‘laid down his laws’) and ‘Peis amat mult, dreit e justise’ (‘He greatly loved peace, right, and justice’) (EE, ll. 4861, 4863, translations mine). 27 Oldest, ll. 3963–8. 28 ‘Ipse autem rex non debet esse sub homine sed sub deo et sub lege, quia lex facit regem. . . . Non est enim rex ubi dominatur voluntas et non lex’ (On the Laws and Customs of England, ed. G. E. Woodbine, trans. S. E. Thorne, 2 vols. (Cambridge MA, 1968), II, 33). Bracton also declares that God’s punishment is the only reckoning that an unjust king can face (II, 33), a point on which the writer of the OV, and much of the baronage of England, would differ. 26 Oldest¸

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The Community of the Realm adjunct to the personal bonds of fealty and honor that maintain civilization at its fundamental level, which serve to control the impulses of individual will – for people of good will. People of evil will can sometimes gain a temporary advantage in this sort of world, which values or even assumes the correspondence between appearance and reality. The transparency of the lawful puts them at the mercy of the lawless, those who cheat, those who make promises they do not mean to keep, and especially those who pretend to be something other than what they are. No fewer than four times in the course of the Oldest Version do assassins reach their target by means of disguise, whether as an allied soldier, a messenger, a doctor, or a poor man.29 Personal lawlessness, usually in the form of vice, is analogous to anarchy within the realm, and can lead to it, as in the case of William Rufus: Cesti roi fist la Noue Foreste e destrute xxv villes e quatre mesouns de religion pur enlarger cele foreste. E deuint si gelus de bois e de foreste e des bestes sauuages, e si dures leis establi por meffesors de bois e de venesoun, qe hom lapella ‘gardein de bois’ e ‘pastur des bestes’. E come plus regna, plus deuint contrarius a deu e a Seinte Eglise e as genz de sa terre. (‘This king made the New Forest and destroyed twenty-five towns and four houses of religion in order to enlarge this forest. And he became so covetous of woodland and forest and wild beasts, and he established such harsh laws for offenders against vert and venison, that he was called “wood-warden” and “shepherd of beasts”. And the longer he reigned, the more he turned against God and Holy Church and the people of his land.’)30

The passage sets up a series of inversions. First William Rufus appears as a destroyer of towns and monasteries, then as an abuser of the law for his own advantage in extending his personal hunting grounds. The fact that the king can create bad laws suggests some of the problems of written legislation as opposed to custom and personal loyalty; the Oldest Version shows institutionalization here as problematic, just as it does the formalization of parliamentary assemblies. The reverse of the good king who builds cities and makes law for all, William Rufus literally tears down civilization, his behavior not only wrong but unnatural, as is made explicit at the end of the passage. Exploiting the power of law for his own purposes, he creates a state akin to that of lawlessness. Two tropes dominate the Oldest Version’s portrayal of lawlessness. One, which accompanies descriptions of the state of affairs when there is no single

29 See

Oldest, ll. 710–18, 1043–8, 1451–64, 1599–1608. ll. 3222–7, and see p. 334.

30 Oldest,

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The Construction of Vernacular History recognized king of England, is that the bonds that secure the strong and weak break, and the relationship becomes predatory rather than mutually constructive: E pus apres auint issint qe les rois sentreguererent plusors foiz, e tuz iours le plus fort tolli terre au plus feble e son regne. E issint demorerent longement, qil nauoient roi corone ne crestienite tindrent. (‘And then afterwards it so happened that the kings often warred against one another, and always the stronger took land and dominion from the weaker. And so they remained a long while, so that they had no crowned king and did not keep the Christian faith.’)31

The second image, seen already in William Rufus’s afforestation, and in King Gowan’s invasion, is that of the destruction of property and innocent people, generally by pagans such as the forces of Gurmund the African: Comencerent Sessouns e Affricans a destrure par tut, robber, e arder villes e mesouns. E occirent communement quanqe il trouerent e ren ne esparnirent homme ne femme ne enfant, clerk ne prestre ne homme de religion, qe tretuz ne occirent. E abatirent chastels, tours, e eglises, e issint mistrent tute la terre en destruccioun e en exil. (‘The Saxons and Africans began to wage destruction everywhere, to pillage, and to burn cities and houses. And they killed alike whomever they found and spared no man or woman or child, cleric or priest or man of religion, but killed them all. And they tore down castles, towers, and churches, and so they put the whole land into ruin and exile.’)32

The loss of a king, the loss of order, and the loss of Christianity seem to go together. Although the Oldest Version is most consistently and explicitly concerned with affairs of state – the maintenance of right relations between kings and barons, the conduct of war and peace, and the function of law – the chronicle does offer in the course of its narrative glimpses of an attitude towards the rest of the social world.

Religion The Oldest Version was written by someone with access to a range of materials who could read Latin comfortably and abridge, revise, and translate it into easily consumable French prose: in other words, some sort of cleric. 31 Oldest, 32 Oldest,

ll. 2163–6, describing the time of the Heptarchy, and cf. ll. 436–40. ll. 2113–7.

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The Community of the Realm Its outlook on religious matters is not, however, notably pious. Although it stresses the worldly wages of sin, only occasionally does it show interest in devotional matters or theology or portray personal piety. These occasions are the stories of Anglo-Saxon kings, and even with them, the devotional is inextricably bound to the social and political. The Oldest Version portrays religion in fundamentally practical and social terms, as a source of group identity and power. From the time that Brut visits the temple of Diane, the practice of religion is associated with kingship and legitimacy in the prose Brut. Good pagan kings (such as Grandobodian) build temples, while good Christian kings establish churches and monasteries. The Oldest Version recounts Donebaud’s establishment of the law of sanctuary long before Christian times and so provides a continuous tradition of justice tempered with mercy – and of a form of independent clerical jurisdiction.33 The text interpolates the birth of Christ during the reign of Kimbelin, the martyrdom of Peter and the beginning of the spread of the Gospel during the reign of his brother Arvirager, and the conversion of the Britons in the year AD 156 (the first dated event in the Oldest Version) under Arvirager’s greatgrandson Lucy. Even in conversion the British are proactive: Lucy writes to Pope Elencherie wishing to become a Christian, so that the papal legates come to baptize the people at his request.34 The story of the self-propelled conversion of Britain is a favorite of historians well before the prose Brut: it is transmitted in Bede, William of Malmesbury, Geoffrey, and of course Wace. It gives Britain a very early conversion, it demonstrates that the Britons recognize and seek the faith before missionaries arrive to bring it to them, and it firmly connects the king and the church, with Lucy playing the crucial role in bringing Christianity to the island and promoting it there.35 Christianity in Britain comes under recurrent threat from pagan invaders, who demolish the religious houses that good kings build and rebuild. After the second Constantin comes from Little Britain to destroy the invading forces of King Gowan and kill all who refuse to convert, he becomes king: Il alerent tretuz a Loundres e coronerent iloqe Constantin e li fesoient roi de ceste terre. E Leuesqe Goscelin de Loundres i mist la corone en le chef e loint come affert a roi, e donqe recomenca la crestienite. (‘They all went to London and there crowned Constantin and made him king of this land. And Bishop Goscelyn of London placed the crown on

33 Oldest,

ll. 465–9. ll. 796–8. Pope Eleutherus served from AD 175 to 189; the date of AD 156 appears in the earlier accounts, though it is assigned variously to the accession of the Roman emperor Marcus Antonius or the death of Lucius (the OV’s Lucy). 35 When Constantine saves Rome from the tyrant Maxence, Britain also becomes responsible for saving the faith (Oldest, ll. 859–69). See above, pp. 41–2. 34 Oldest,

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The Construction of Vernacular History his head and anointed him as befits a king, and then Christianity began anew.’)36

Two elements are noteworthy here: first, the Britons collectively make Constantin king, and second, they now do so by means of consecration. The inseparability of the crown and the Church is made literal. Christianity begins again in Britain when and because a Christian king is crowned in Christian fashion. Nowhere is God’s partisanship made clearer than in the account of Edward the Confessor. Drawing on one of the saint’s lives of the king, the Oldest Version describes at length his personal virtues and miracles.37 It praises his married celibacy and goes into great detail and more complicated narrative technique than usual in telling the famous story of the ring that Edward gives to a poor man who turns out to be St John.38 But the Host miracles granted to Edward dispel any idea that his piety is of only individual concern or merit, for even God’s special favor is socially inflected: Auint issint vn iour de la Pentecoste, sicome il estut e oi sa messe en la grant eglise de Westmonster, dreit al leuacioun del cors Nostre Seignur Ihesu Crist – e tutes genz qe leinz furent se assemblerent en reuerence pur le Seint Sacrement honurer – le roi mesmes tendi ses mains en haut e comenca a susrire ioiusement, dount les chiualers qe ceo virent enauoient grant merueille. E li demanderont apres la messe la resoun pur qei il rioit e fesoit tel ioie. ‘Beaus seignurs’, fet il, ‘le roi de Denemarz, Sweyn le puisne, vint o tresgrant nauie e oue tresgrant poer de Daneis, e voleit estre ariue en Engleterre pur auer eu guere e conquis tute la terre sil poeit. E dreit come il dust terre prendre e issir de nef, il chei en lewe e se neia, e tretuz ses genz returnerent meintenant en Denmarz oue grant dolur. E ceste chose vei ieo apertement en le corps Nostre Seignur al leuacioun entre les mains le chaplein ala messe ore endreit, e ieo mercia Nostre Seignur de bon quoer qil nous ad si curtoisement deliuere de noz enemis qe nous voleient auer destrut, e pur ceo fesoie ieo cel ioie.’ (‘It so happened one Pentecost, as he stood and heard his mass in the great church of Westminster, right at the elevation of the body of Our Lord Jesus Christ – and everyone who was there gathered in reverence to honor the Holy Sacrament – that the king himself stretched his hands on high and began to smile joyfully, at which the knights who saw it were greatly astonished. And after the mass they asked him the reason why he smiled and made such cheer. 36 Oldest,

ll. 1034–7; cf. ll. 2202–3. material comes from the hagiographic tradition of Osbert of Clare (1138), continued by Aelred of Rievaulx (1163) and then translated in Anglo-Norman versions: see Oldest, pp. 330–1. 38 See Oldest, ll. 3036–72 and p. 331. 37 This

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The Community of the Realm “Fair lords”, he said, “the king of Denmark, Swein the younger, came with a very great fleet and with a very great force of Danes, and he meant to arrive in England to make war and conquer the whole land if he could. And just as he was about to make land and leave the ship, he fell in the water and drowned, and all his men at once turned back to Denmark with great sorrow. And this thing I saw clearly in the body of Our Lord between the hands of the chaplain at the elevation in the mass just now, and I thanked Our Lord gladly that he had so graciously delivered us from our enemies who wished to destroy us, and therefore I made such cheer.”’)39

This vision turns the Host into a kind of divine spyglass on current events, rather than the far more typical perception of the Real Presence of God in the Host through a vision of flesh or of the living child Jesus.40 On the day of Pentecost itself, the Consecration becomes a testimony to God’s salvation of the realm of England through the destruction of its enemies. A second, more conventional miracle follows: Vne autrefoiz auint issi come il estut e oi sa messe, e le Counte Leuerich estoit prede li, dreit al leuacioun del corps Nostre Seignur le conte vist apertement qe la forme del pain se chaunga en forme dun enfaunt e leua la main destre si dona primes sa benizoun au roi e pus au counte. E le counte tantost se returna vers le roy pur fere le veoir cele seint sacrement, e donqe dit le roi: ‘Sire Counte’, fet il, ‘ieo vei ben la, deu merci, ceo qe vous veez, e ieo ahoure visiblement Ihesu Crist mon sauueour en forme de homme, qi noun soit beneit perdurablement en tuz siecles. Amen.’ (‘Another time it so happened as he was standing and hearing his mass, and Earl Leverich was near him, that right at the elevation of the body of Our Lord the earl saw clearly that the form of the bread changed into the form of a child and raised his right hand and gave his blessing first to the king and then to the earl. And the earl at once turned back towards the king for him to see this holy mystery, and then the king spoke: “Lord Earl”, he said, “I see well there what you see, God be thanked, and I adore Jesus Christ my savior manifest in human form, whose name be blessed eternally in all ages. Amen.”’)41

Even this vision has its social edge: the Earl Leverich who witnesses the Christ Child blessing the king is the same man who counsels clemency towards the murderous Earl Godwine a few sentences earlier. God’s grace towards

39 Oldest,

ll. 3013–27. versions of this incident do not represent it as a Host miracle. Swein Estrithson of Denmark was an ally of Edward, alive and well long after Edward’s death; medieval and modern historians have been puzzled by this representation of him. See Oldest, p. 331. 41 Oldest, ll. 3028–35. 40 Other

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The Construction of Vernacular History him here puts a divine stamp of approval on his advice. Both Host miracles reinforce the text’s emphasis on the avoidance of conflict as an outcome at least as gratifying as outright victory. With Swein’s abortive invasion, God grants the English a triumph without a battle; his favor gives them a concrete, worldly advantage. But even when religion cannot offer victory to the Britons, it can still offer a means of reading defeat positively, in the form of martyrdom. The stories of famous martyrs like Ursula and Alban are told, but also those of crowds of nameless Christians – women, the poor, and clerics. One of the most striking exploitations of the pathetic potential of a crowd of helpless intercessors comes at a delicate moment, the discussion of the conflict between the British and Saxon churches after the second conversion of Britain. The Britons have been temporarily driven into Wales, maintaining their Christian faith while England reverts to paganism until the coming of St Austin (Augustine). The story provides a useful contrast to that of King Lucy and the Britons: St Gregory sends missionaries to the invaders, whereas the Britons have asked for baptism.42 King Athelbert (Aethelberht I of Kent), who receives Gregory’s missionaries, is significantly said to be of the lineage of Engist, first of the Saxon usurpers; by the grace of God, he converts after giving Augustine permission to preach in Kent.43 When Augustine insists that the British bishops submit to the authority of the English church, they indignantly refuse: ‘Qar les Engleis’, font il, ‘sunt noz aduersaries e nous ount enchace de nostre terre. E nous sumes crestiens e tuz iours auoms este, e les Engleis ount tuz iours este paeins, iesqes ore tart quil sunt conuertuz.’ (‘“For the English”, they said, “are our enemies and have driven us from our land. And we are Christians and always have been, and the English have always been pagans, until just now when they have been converted.”’)44

King Athelbert responds wrathfully to this slight. He and his ally Elfrid destroy one British army on the way to Wales, so that the Britons auoient grant pour de ces deux rois. E choiserent bones genz – hermites, moines, prestres, clers, e poures genz a graunt plente – e enuoierent a nuz pez e en langage quere merci de ces deux rois. Mes il furent si cruels e si felouns qe onqes ne voleient o eux parler, [mes les ocystrent trestuz. Deu, quel dolour e quele pite la fut, kar il ne les esparnyreynt vnke pus ke lup berbys,] mes couperent les testes trestuz. E issint furent il martirizez qe la vindrent, cest assauer plus de v cent xl. 42 The

text offers a version of the famous Angle/angel story with some attempt to preserve the pun (Oldest, ll. 2165–75; see p. 320). 43 Oldest, ll. 2180–90. 44 Oldest, ll. 2212–14 (closely following Wace); see p. 320.

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The Community of the Realm (‘were greatly afraid of these two kings. And they chose good people – hermits, monks, priests, clerks, and poor people in great number – and they sent them barefoot and in rags to seek mercy from these two kings. But they were so cruel and so vicious that they would not even speak with them, but killed them all. God, what a sorrow and what a pity it was there, for they spared them no more than a wolf spares sheep, but cut off all their heads. And so those who came there were martyred, that is, more than 540.’)45

This merciless response to ritual submission shows the English kings to be Christian in name only, and so demonstrates the truth of the bishops’ argument to St Augustine.46 The poor intercessors gain the crown of martyrdom, and the Britons, who now have no choice but to defend themselves, not only defeat the English in battle but then – by means of a compromise that avoids further bloodshed – regain England south of the Humber.47 Once again, spiritual rewards are backed up with tangible worldly gain. And the process by which the British church does submit to Rome goes untold. The Oldest Version does sometimes invoke the will of God to acknowledge that events do not always turn out as hoped. Robert Curthose’s lifetime imprisonment, for instance: Ceo fu dreit la vengeaunce Nostre Seignur. Qar quant il fu en la Terre Seinte, deu li dona cel honur, qil estoit eslu de auer este roi de Ierusalem, e il ne voleit estre, mes refusa le graunt honur. E pur ceo auoit il la prisoun a grant deshonur. (‘That was truly the vengeance of Our Lord. For when he was in the Holy Land, God gave him the honor of being chosen king of Jerusalem, and he did not wish to be, but refused the great honor. And because of that he had prison with great dishonor.’)48

The phrase ‘come deu le voleit’ (‘as God willed’) occurs mainly as a concessive to explain that which should not have happened; it arises especially often in the description of the violent incursions of the ninth century, and it also frequently marks the death of good kings.49

45 Oldest,

ll. 2232–9. clerics continue to appear in the OV, as when bishops weeping and on their knees approach King John to beseech him to accept Stephen Langton as archbishop of Canterbury. He of course gives the classic wicked response (Oldest, ll. 3663–7). Intercessory ritual is also a well-documented part of English public life in the fourteenth century; for an examination of one aspect, see P. Strohm, Hochon’s Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton, 1992), ch. 5, ‘Queens as Intercessors’, pp. 95–120. 47 Oldest, ll. 2241–60. 48 Oldest, ll. 3299–302; see p. 335. 49 Oldest, l. 2499 quoted. 46 Intercessory

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The Construction of Vernacular History The role of individual clerics and of the institutional church changes through the course of the Oldest Version, away from a vague picture of nameless houses of religion and the occasional bishop appearing to perform a consecration towards a precise understanding of the jurisdictions of church and king and increasing emphasis on the power of the officers of the church. Some of this shift may be the result of the move to monastic source material in later portions. Some of it may also stem from recognition of the Church as a check on the power of kings who are not as respectful of their baronage – or as easily overthrown – as the legendary kings of Britain: much of the reign of King John is given over to his disputes with the Church and his humiliations at the hands of the papal legate Pandulf.50 The practice of religion and the exercise of power are always connected in the Oldest Version, but in not quite as overdetermined a fashion as in its exempla of kingship or warfare. As an examination of its representation of women will show, issues of public life were not the only ones to engage its composer.

50 The

OV translates the entire charter of 1213 confirming John’s submission to the Church as presented in the Barlings chronicle, but like it, it mentions Magna Carta only as ‘vne chartre des plusures fraunchises’ (‘a charter of many liberties’) that the king immediately violates (Oldest, ll. 3866–910, 3978–9 (quoted) and see p. 342; M199, fol. 16r).

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3 Women with Voices

The Oldest Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut chronicle offers figures who tend to act according to recognizable types or conventions. Blustering tyrants, saintly bishops, and wicked pagan invaders take their turns. Just as the men do, the women of the chronicle appear in traditional, often overlapping, roles: mother and stepmother, saint and martyr, seductress, queen, servant, and victim of rape.1 Even female saints are portrayed primarily in relation to men – St Eleine is noted first as Constantine’s mother, and then as the finder of the True Cross, and Ursula wins her martyr’s crown in the defense of her virginity – but the socially determined and gendered nature of women’s roles in the Oldest Version is nothing unusual. Social and familial relationship is the basis of individual identity in the chronicle. Men, too, appear in a set of socially determined roles, as good or bad kings and vassals, husbands, fathers, sons, holy men, servants, lovers, rapists, and assassins. But the women of the chronicle do not necessarily conform to stereotypical expectations of what their roles mean and what they demonstrate about women. The Oldest Version does not have much to say about gender or gender roles: what it manifests about them is all the more interesting and potentially significant for the fact that it is not explicit.

Mediators, Fighters, Mothers The composer of the Oldest Version does not make the same effort to provide consistent morals to stories of feminine heroism or transgression as he does with, for example, would-be usurpers. He does not attempt to

1 For

a brisk and largely genealogical consideration of female characters in the MEPB tradition up to Caxton’s version of the text, see L. M. Matheson, ‘Genealogy and Women in the Prose Brut, Especially the Middle English Common Version and Its Continuations’, in Radulescu and E. D. Kennedy, eds., Broken Lines, pp. 221–58. He classifies women in the Brut as ‘founders of nations; alliance-builders (through marriage or diplomacy); carriers of the royal line (either as mothers or heiresses); caretaker rulers (while a son grows up or in the absence of a husband and heir); participants in sex-driven events; potential breeding-stock; and (occasionally) advisors to men’ (pp. 226–7). See esp. his table of female characters, pp. 239–58.

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The Construction of Vernacular History teach and reinforce lessons about proper womanhood as he does about kingship. Thus, although he may efface the regnant Queen Marcie to show his good kings to better effect, he does not hesitate early in the text, when her story has compelling lessons to offer, to portray a queen who does more than rule. Locrin, Brut’s eldest son, makes a good start to his reign by defeating the invader Humbar and his men, but he then falls into disastrous error: Il troua en vne nef vne bele pucele, qe fu la fille le Roi Humbar et auoit anoun Estrild. Locrin quant il la vist, il fu taunt suppris del amour de li pur sa beaute qil la amenast ouesqe li a Noue Troie, e la voleit auer espuse. Ceste nouele vint a Corine, e se pensa venger de Locrin, pur ceo qe Locrin auoit leaument en couenant de auer espuse la fille Corin – Guentholen auoit anoun. (‘In one boat he found a beautiful maiden, who was the daughter of King Humbar and was named Estrild. When Locrin saw her, he was so gripped with love for her because of her beauty that he took her with him to New Troy, and he wanted to marry her. This news came to Corin, and he thought to avenge himself on Locrin, for Locrin had lawfully promised to marry Corin’s daughter – Guentholen was her name.’)2

Infatuation provokes Locrin to abandon an agreement made with his father’s most important and beloved baron, the man who kills the giant Gogmagog, in order to marry a foreign woman who is essentially without a social context or value, since the Britons have just killed her father and all his men.3 Corin’s reaction bespeaks a sense of mutual obligation violated: E Corin vint a li a Noue Troie. Si li dit: ‘Locrin’, fet il, ‘vous moi rendez malueis guerdoun de tutes les peines qe ieo suffri pur Brut vostre per, e pur ceo ie me vengerai ore de vous.’ E launca enhaut son fauchoun e voleit auer tue Locrin. (‘And Corin came to him in New Troy. And so he spoke: “Locrin”, he said, “you give me an evil reward for all the pains I suffered for your father Brut, and for that I will now take my revenge on you.” And he flung up his spear and meant to kill Locrin.’)4

In his indignation, Corin prepares to attack the king singlehandedly (just as he did the giant) rather than with an assembled army. His Britain is as yet a small world, without formal trappings of state and law, in which everyone knows 2 Oldest,

ll. 226–32. the sources, Estrild is Humbar’s captive rather than his daughter. See Oldest, p. 300. 4 Oldest, ll. 232–5. 3 In

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Women with Voices and directly responds to everyone else – except the foreign princess whose arrival has provoked the conflict, and who as an outsider steps in to take the role of mediator, seemingly restoring the proper order of things: ‘mes la damoisele Estrild ala parentre e les acorda en ceste manere: qe Locrin deueroit espuser Guentholen la fille Corin’ (‘but the lady Estrild came between them and reconciled them on this understanding: that Locrin should marry Corin’s daughter Guentholen’).5 In Wace friends persuade Locrin to keep his covenant; the Oldest Version’s switch to Estrild as mediator makes the agreement look like a canny maneuver, an idea borne out by the fact that Locrin ‘haunta priuement Estrild e engendra de li vne fille qauoit anoun Habran’ (‘secretly kept Estrild and fathered by her a daughter named Habran’).6 As soon as his father-in-law dies, Locrin puts Guentholen aside and makes Estrild queen.7 A considerably more complex social world now blossoms into being, for Locrin has not only violated his agreement with Corin and his marriage vow but also put the succession into question: he has a son by Guentholen but as yet only a daughter by Estrild. The Oldest Version goes into unusual detail on Guentholen’s response, a more elaborate and more elaborately justified version of her father’s: Guentholen sen ala tut coruce en Cornewaille e seisist tute la terre en sa mayne, pur ceo qe ele fu dreit heir soun per. Et receust homages e feautez de tuz les hommes de la terre, e pus assembla grant ost e grant poer pur estre venge de Locrin soun seignur. E vint ali, si li dona dure bataille, e la fust il occis e ses genz desconfiz. (‘Guentholen went away enraged to Cornwall and took the whole land into her hand, for she was her father’s rightful heir. And she received homage and fealty from all the men of the land, and then she mustered a great army and great force in order to be avenged on her lord Locrin. And she came to him, and she gave him strong battle, and there he was killed and his men defeated.’)8

The rejected queen is shown to be the independent heiress to her lands in Cornwall, who follows due process in establishing fealty with her own men; leading her own forces, she goes to war against a lord who has broken both personal and feudal covenants with her. The Oldest Version describes her army as composed of her own men, without the additional ‘estranges genz’ that Wace includes.9 In the prose Brut, calling in strangers without a stake in 5 Oldest,

ll. 235–7. ll. 238–9, and see p. 300; RB, ll. 1373–96; HRB, § 24, p. 33. The OV omits the extravagant detail of the underground chamber where Locrin hides her and visits under pretext of making sacrifice. 7 Oldest, ll. 240–1. 8 Oldest, ll. 241–6. 9 RB, ll. 1419–21. 6 Oldest,

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The Construction of Vernacular History one’s own cause to fight is one of the marks of a bad leader and almost always leads to catastrophe: hence the elimination of this detail.10 After resolving any issues of succession by having Estrild and her daughter drowned, Guentholen se fist corouner reyne de ceste terre, e gouerna la terre ben e sagement tanqe Madhan, son fiz qe ele auoit de Locrin, fu de age quil poeit regner. E donqe le fist il corouner, e il regna e gouerna la terre ben e honurablement, e ele sen ala en Cornewaille e la demora a tute sa vie. (‘Guentholen had herself crowned queen of this land, and she governed the land well and wisely until Madhan, her son whom she had by Locrin, was of an age to reign. And then she had him crowned, and he reigned and governed the land well and honorably, and she went away to Cornwall and remained there for the rest of her life.’)11

A queen who has killed her lord can not only reign but reign well and wisely, provided that she makes way for her male heir at the earliest opportunity. Thus the episode ends with the continuation of the male Trojan line, with the grandchild of the two great founding heroes of Britain taking the throne: the moment of female rebellion is successfully put into the service of the larger progression of British history. Guentholen’s main role is that of an injured baron entitled to assert her rights, even by force, against a lord who shamelessly violates them.12 The women of this episode provoke, respond to, and resolve disruptions in the course of events: in a history consisting largely of affairs of state, the very appearance of a woman as something more than a genealogical signpost tends to signal trouble. Conewenne, the mother of Brenne and Belin, acts as a genuine mediator who saves Britain by reconciling her warring sons. In Wace, the scene of her intervention is lengthy and bathetic: she runs onto the battlefield, bares her breasts, ‘flaistres de vieillesce e pelues’ (‘withered and hairy with age’), and tearfully appeals to Brenne on the basis of the body that bore them both.13 The Oldest Version says only that she ‘ala par entre ses fiz et les acorda, mes 10 Similarly,

at the end of the story of Leir and his three daughters, Cordeille the widowed regnant queen is overthrown by her nephews: whereas in Wace and Geoffrey she commits suicide (RB, ll. 206–66; HRB, § 32, p. 45), the OV omits this disquieting detail and simply says that she was held in prison so long that she died (Oldest, ll. 403–4). 11 Oldest, ll. 251–5. 12 Just as Guentholen fights in her son’s interest, about fifty lines later, Cordeille (who merits more discussion than space affords here) will fight in her father’s interest. As Matheson notes, Guentholen also usefully prefigures the Empress Maude (Matilda), who fights for her son, and whose daring escape from Oxford is described in the text (‘Genealogy’, p. 228; Oldest, ll. 3415–18). 13 RB, l. 2724.

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Women with Voices ceo fu a grant peine’ (‘went between her sons and with great difficulty reconciled them’).14 Conewenne’s virtue becomes all the clearer in context, for she follows in only the third generation after her precise opposite, the vengeful mother Idon. Her younger son Porrez, who ‘out le quoer feloun’(‘had an evil heart’), has killed his older brother Ferrez: Quant Idon lor mere sauoit qe Ferrez fu mort, ele fu tresdolent, pur ceo qe ele lauoit plus ame qe lautre. E le pensa occire. E vint vn nut priuement en sa chambre a son lit ou il gisoit, e ses damoiseles ouesqe li o coteux trenchaunz, si li ount trenche la gargat e le corps tut en peces. (‘When their mother Idon knew that Ferrez was dead, she was griefstricken, for she had loved him more than the other. And she thought to kill him. And she came secretly one night into his room, to his bed where he was lying, her ladies with her with sharp knives, and they slit his throat and chopped his body all to pieces.’)15

The episode provokes a rare moment of explicit moral commentary, stronger even than its source in Wace: Qi oi vnqes mes de si felonesse mer, qe occist de sa maine demene son vn fiz pur lautre? Longement apres fu la reprouaunce de ceste mere malure, qe pur lun fiz murdri lautre, e pur lun perdi ambedeux. Quant ces deux freres furent issi mortz, il nauoit remis fiz ne fille ne autre del linage qe poeit cele heritage auer. E pur ceo les riches hommes de la terre sentregerrerent, e les plus forz enchacerent les plus febles e purpristrent lour terres, issint qil auoit par tut en chesqune pais grant guere. (‘Who ever before heard of a mother so vicious that with her own hand she killed her one son for the sake of the other? Long endured the infamy of this depraved mother, who for the one son murdered the other, and for the one lost both. When these two brothers had thus died, no son nor daughter nor anyone else of the lineage remained who could have this inheritance. And therefore the rich men of the land warred among themselves, and the stronger drove off the weaker and took over their lands, so that everywhere in each region there was great war.’)16

The combination of stealth and butchery make her crime all the more horrendous, but the text’s reproof is not for the savagery of the act, or even explicitly for the unnatural behavior of a mother who kills her own son. Instead, it is pragmatic. Idon has deprived herself of a heritage and protector, and the scenario immediately replays itself on a national scale: without

14 Oldest,

ll. 534–5; see p. 303. ll. 426, 430–3. 16 Oldest, ll. 434–40; see RB, ll. 2175–90. 15 Oldest,

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The Construction of Vernacular History a proper heir, the land falls into anarchy and warfare.17 Idon’s behavior is wrong not only because it is wicked, but because it is self-indulgently stupid and shortsighted. She appears in contrast to both Conewenne and Guentholen, who by reconciliation on the one hand and conquest on the other preserve the realm and its ruling line rather than destroying it. In none of these cases does the chronicle represent the actor’s behavior as notably gendered, characteristically feminine, or explained or caused by something particular to the female condition. The kind of modest but pointed compression and elaboration of sources found here is typical of the Oldest Version’s editorial technique in general: the chronicle’s interests and emphases emerge even when its matter does not substantively depart from its sources. At times, though, it does take more liberties, even as its protagonists continue to play traditional female roles.

Seduction and Its Aftermath As figures of sexual intrigue, the women of the Oldest Version may be unwilling objects of male desire or seductresses knowingly exploiting it for political or territorial gain. The chronicle displays no sympathy for ‘romantic’, sexual love, just as it takes no interest in the depiction of war: if vernacular audiences craved these elements in their books, their absence does not seem to have impaired the popularity of the Brut. In the Oldest Version, carnal desire compromises men’s judgment and leads them into individual and collective ruin. Its repeated scenes of seduction teach the lesson as variations on a theme.18 As soon as Locrin sees Estrild, he is gripped with love, ‘suppris del amour’, because of her beauty.19 This exact phrase, describing love’s attack through the eye in terms familiar to any reader of Chaucer, will recur in each major scene of infatuation in the Oldest Version.20 In the case of Locrin and Estrild, the object of desire is largely passive: much worse befalls when the object is part of a political plot, as with Vortiger and Ronewenne, daughter of the Saxon Engist.21

17 For

a fuller discussion of these two episodes in relation to the OV’s dynastic concerns, see Marvin, ‘Narrative’, pp. 207–10. 18 The series of incidents has already been established by Geoffrey, although the writer of the OV carries the pattern chronologically beyond his matter; see Hanning’s discussion of the passions of Locrinus, Vortegirnus, and Uther in the Historia (Vision, pp. 150–3). 19 Oldest, l. 228. 20 See Oldest, ll. 1170–2, for Vortiger and Ronewenne, ll. 1525–8 for Uter and Igern, and ll. 2620–6, for Edgar and Estrild. 21 Lamont offers a nuanced reading of this episode in the MEPB in relation to issues of language and identity, with attention to the Brut’s telling differences from other works in the tradition, in ‘Becoming’.

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Women with Voices As the Oldest Version tells it, Vortiger has usurped the throne from Constans and is facing the forces of his brothers Aurilambros and Uter when the pagan Engist and his men arrive from ‘Germanie’ and offer their services in exchange for land. When Vortiger pays a visit to Engist, he and his daughter are ready: E quant vint au seir qe le roi entra sa chambre e deueroit cucher, Ronewenne, la fille Engist, vint oue vne coupe dor en sa main e se mist deuant le roi a genulz e dit, ‘Sire Roi, wessail.’ E le roi ne sauoit qei il fust a dire, ne quei il deueroit respoundre, pur ceo qil ne nul de ses Brutons ne sauoient vnquore entender ne parler engleis, mes parlerent mesmes tele langage come les Brutons parlent vnquore. Mes vn latimer dit au roi lentendement de ‘wessail’, e qil deueroit respoundre, ‘Drinkheil.’ E la fu la primerefoiz qe wessail et drinkheil vindrent primes en ceste terre, e pus ad este tresben vse. (‘And when evening came so that the king entered his chamber and was about to go to bed, Engist’s daughter Ronewenne came with a golden cup in her hand and went down on her knees before the king and said, “Lord King, wassail.” And the king did not know what it meant, or how he was supposed to answer, for neither he nor any of his Britons knew yet how to understand or speak English, but they spoke the same language that the Britons still speak. But an interpreter told the king the meaning of “wassail”, and that he should reply, “Drinkhail.” And that was the first time that wassail and drinkhail came into this land, and since then it has been very well practiced.’)22

What happens next parallels the course of events with Locrin and Estrild, except that this time an enemy father-in-law is in the picture. Worse than marrying a landless woman is giving land away for her; worse than marrying an isolated outsider is marrying the daughter of a land-hungry, powerful, pagan newcomer. Here, instead of alienating a single baron, the king alienates his entire people. Ronewenne’s loyalty is always to her father and the people of her birth: she sees to the assassination of Vortiger’s British son Vortumer after the Britons make him king and drive the Saxons away, and she communicates privately by letter with her father to let him know when the time is ripe for

22 Oldest,

ll. 1161–9. In Wace, the king’s attendant offers an explanation of the phrase and the ceremony (RB, ll. 6957–70), which is elided here, so that Vortiger is willingly participating in a ritual and uttering words that he does not understand. The OV has provided a precedent for this scene with its inclusion of the joke about the name of the Scots coming from their lack of a shared language with their Irish wives: ‘parlerent ensemble come sortz’ (‘they spoke together as if they were deaf’), or ‘sotz’ (‘like sots’) in some manuscripts (Oldest, l. 774; see pp. 305, 357).

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The Construction of Vernacular History an invasion.23 (That she seems to be literate occasions no comment in the text and may suggest something regarding the writer’s assumptions about the women in his original audience.) The resulting betrayals and wars lead to a state of affairs that gives the land a new name, no longer ‘Bretaine’ for Brut the Trojan forefather, but ‘Engistlonde’ for Ronewenne’s father.24 But the Oldest Version never blames Ronewenne as it does Idon: first as a seductress and later as an ambitious stepmother with a stake in subverting the succession, she is shown intelligently pursuing her own ends – ends inimical to the Britons but sensible enough for her and her father’s people. She disappears without further comment once she has summoned Engist back to Britain, where his forces slaughter the Britons at the famous love-day on Salisbury Plain, in a second and less subtle instance of the Saxons using the canons of hospitality and honor against the guileless Britons and the feckless Vortiger.25 Vortiger, not Ronewenne, gets the chronicle’s condemnation, and he only continues to degenerate: he quitclaims the entire land to avoid a death by torture, and, willing to commit human sacrifice for his own benefit (in the story of Merlin and the castle’s foundation), ends burnt alive in a besieged castle by the true British heirs Aurilambros and Uter. ‘E issint morust oue grant dolour’ (‘and so [he] died in great torment’), the text concludes with a bit of extra detail that may indicate satisfaction at the outcome.26

The Second Estrild Women continue to play a prominent role beyond the material provided by Geoffrey and Wace, and the chronicle extends its patterned narrative into its accounts of later events. The Oldest Version’s most complex woman may be Queen Estrild, the second character of that name in the prose Brut. She makes an unusually lengthy appearance, one extending over three men’s reigns, and over the course of her life she is shown negotiating a variety of circumstances and taking on a range of roles. The Oldest Version bases Estrild’s story on Gaimar’s accounts of events of the 960s and 970s, during the reigns of Edgar, Edward the Martyr, and Aethelred the Unready, here called Eldred. This episode in Gaimar has been 23 Oldest,

ll. 1208–15; see pp. 309–10. l. 1240. 25 In the OV and its tradition, Engist makes the signal to begin the slaughter the phrase, ‘Beaus seignurs, ore est temps de parler de amour’ (‘Fair lords, now is the time to speak of love’) rather than telling them to take out their knives with some version of ‘Nimet oure saxas’ (Oldest, ll. 1226–7; see p. 310; cf. Brie, Brut, I, 54). Lamont points out that this shift in language creates a shift in the nature of Engist’s deceit (‘Becoming’, p. 294). 26 Oldest, l. 1370; for the earlier incidents, see ll. 1231–5 (where the technical term ‘clama quite’ appears) and 1265–71. 24 Oldest,

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Women with Voices taken to verge on courtly romance, but there is nothing gracious or sentimental about it in the prose Brut: it is a tale of greed, deceit, and the ruinous effects of lust.27 The first telling alteration is that of the name of the woman in question, who is called ‘Alftrued’, ‘Estrueth’, or ‘Estruet’ in Gaimar but ‘Estrild’ in the prose Brut: her very name becomes a warning.28 This Estrild is the sole heiress of the wealthy baron Orgar, with a reputation for great beauty, and after King Edgar is widowed, he sends his trusted knight Edelwold to inspect her as a royal marriage prospect. As the Oldest Version puts it, when Edelwold ‘la vist si bele, il pensa qil mesmes la voudroit auer’ (‘saw how beautiful she was, he thought that he would like to have her himself’).29 He returns to the king, tells him that ‘ele estoit assez bele de vis, mes de cors ele fu treslede a demesure’ (‘she had a beautiful enough face, but an exceedingly ugly body’), and he asks permission to marry her himself, for the most pragmatic of reasons: ‘Sire’, fet Edelwold, ‘ele est heir son per, e ieo su poure chiualer, si ne ai terre ne fez. Si vous plest grauntez la moi, e donqes enferrai ieo assez riche.’ (‘“Lord”, said Edelwold, “she is her father’s heir, and I am a poor knight, and I have neither land nor fees. If you please, grant her to me, and then I will be rich enough.”’)30

Up to this point, Estrild has been seen only through the eyes of others. The first glimpse from her perspective comes (as in Gaimar) when Edelwold reveals the trick to her: ‘quant ele le sauoit, vnqes pus ne ama son seignur come deuant’ (‘when she knew it, she never afterwards loved her lord as she had done before’).31 For further insurance, Edelwold makes the king godfather and foster-father to his son, because he knows the king to be a ‘iolifs homme e amerous’ (‘a merry and amorous man’).32 Eventually the rumors of Estrild’s beauty become too much for Edgar: he arranges a hunting trip that will bring him to Edelwold’s manor at dusk and force the knight to let him see Estrild. The scene plays out as another version of the encounter between Vortiger and Ronewenne: La dame welcoma le roi, e ila beissa doucement. Le roi prist la dame par la mayn, si lasist prede li, e soperent ensemble. E la custume si estoit donqe tel qe quant vn beueroit au autre il dirroit, ‘Wessail’, e lautre respunderoit,

27 See

Press, ‘Precocious’, pp. 270–4, and also Short’s extensive notes on the episode, EE, pp. 401–12. 28 See EE, ll. 3611, 3637, 3655–4094; Oldest, l. 2583. She is known to modern historians as Aelfthryth. 29 Oldest, l. 2589. 30 Oldest, ll. 2294–5, 2296–8. 31 Oldest, l. 2603, drawing on EE, ll. 3729–30. 32 Oldest, l. 2607.

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The Construction of Vernacular History ‘Drinkheil’, e donqe se entrebeiserent – souent ensemble le roi e la dame. E apres soper quant temps fu, le roi se cocha, e pensa cel nut durement de la beaute la dame, e taunt estoit suppris de samur qe sil ne la eust, il moruroit. (‘The lady welcomed the king, and he kissed her tenderly. The king took the lady by the hand and seated her beside him, and they ate together. And the custom then was such that when one drank to another he would say, “Wassail”, and the other would answer, “Drinkhail”, and then they would kiss each other – often the king and the lady did so together. And after the meal when it was time, the king went to bed, and that night he dwelt on the beauty of the lady, and he was so gripped with love for her that if he did not have her, he would die.’)33

The standard signals of infatuation serve as signals of the dishonor and crisis attendant upon it. Edgar has Edelwold sent to the North, where he is killed by unknown men, and the king immediately marries the widow.34 In neither Gaimar nor the historical record does crisis follow this transgression. Edgar is now remembered as an agent of monastic reform rather than an amorous man. But the writer of the Oldest Version fits the material available into the now-familiar mold, creating a parallel course to earlier incidents as best he can. St Dunstan visits the couple in their marriage bed to remind them that Edgar’s status as godfather bars him from sleeping with Estrild. They nevertheless have a son, Eldred (Aethelred). Here, the violation of fealty is not against a vassal (since the king’s crime against his knight is secret and subtle) but against God.35 The king’s public offense is to break precisely the law that Edelwold had exploited in order to secure his marriage. Both men try to manipulate the system to their own advantage, Edelwold by fostering his son to the king, and the king by making Edelwold guardian of the North; this is a more sophisticated world than that of Corin’s straightforward death threats against his unfaithful king, but the principles it illustrates are much the same. Upon Edgar’s death, Edward, his son from his first marriage, assumes the throne and rules well. When he happens to be hunting nearby and comes 33 Oldest,

ll. 2620–6. The OV’s description builds, using the language of its earlier passage, on the wassail as mentioned in Gaimar: ‘Fu le wesheil e le drinchail / desci kë Edgar prist summeil. / E quant la dame od lui beveit, / si la baisot cum custome estait’ (‘There was wassailing and drinkhailing until Edgar became sleepy. And when the lady drank with him, he kissed her, as was custom’) (EE, ll. 3809–11, translation mine). Edgar and Estrild’s frequent toasts to one another also echo the feast at which Uter and Igern meet (Oldest, ll. 1523–8). 34 While condoning the king’s actions, Gaimar repeatedly faults the knight for playing false with his king and considers him to die a deserved death (EE, e.g., ll. 3715–23, 3734, 3851–4). 35 ‘Grant tort e encountre la volunte deu’ (‘great wrongdoing and against the will of God’) (Oldest, l. 2643). This scene constitutes the entire account of Edgar’s reign after the marriage and is longer than the entire reigns of some other kings, such as Edgar’s own father, Edwin.

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Women with Voices alone to visit his half-brother, Estrild seizes the opportunity to have him killed so that her own son may reign.36 In a murderous recollection of the wassail that brought Edgar and Estrild together, Estrild arranges for her henchman to stab Edward just as he takes a drink that she has offered him. The Oldest Version takes pains to emphasize the queen’s agency here: it describes the plan for the attack down to the payment of the assassin, whereas Gaimar, after blandly recounting the queen’s offers of hospitality, only says that ‘ne sai quel adversier’ (‘I don’t know what enemy’) stabbed the king while he drank, and that the queen fled the king’s retainers when they came in search of him: ‘pur ço est dit / Que la reïne [le] murdrit’ (‘therefore it is said that the queen murdered him’).37 The analogous moment in the prose Brut may not be a sympathetic one, but it is a powerful one, in which the pawn in the game turns out to be a player after all. As with Ronewenne, the Oldest Version is straightforward in its representation of Estrild’s pursuit of her own dynastic interests. It faces a considerable narrative complication, however. Ronewenne’s lineage comes to a bad end, but it is not so easy to construct the story of Edgar and Estrild as a straightforward exemplum of sin and its consequences for sinner and nation. Just as nothing worse than Dunstan’s displeasure befalls Edgar himself, Queen Estrild is not punished, her son does become king (albeit a weak one), and both are identifiable ancestors of the rulers of the time of the Oldest Version’s composition (by way of the Empress Matilda). One might have expected the writer prudently to soft-pedal Estrild’s villainy rather than emphasize it. Instead, he copes by recasting Estrild’s character a third time. The Oldest Version once again elaborates on Gaimar, taking the queen’s eventual reconciliation with St Dunstan and her entry into a convent and transforming them into repentance and forgiveness for the murder: Apres cesti Edward le martir regna Eldred son frere, e Seint Dunstan le corona e morust tost apres qili auoit corone. Mes auant qil morust, il auoit pardone ala Reine Estrild son trespas e li auoit assouz de son pecche, e enioint penaunce. E ele vesqi pus en chastite e morust seintement. (‘After this Edward the martyr reigned his brother Aethelred, and Saint Dunstan crowned him and died soon after he had crowned him. But before he died, he had pardoned Queen Estrild for her transgression and absolved her of her sin, and he imposed penance. And afterwards she lived in chastity and died a holy death.’)38 36 In

Gaimar, the king comes to Estrild’s house in pursuit of a tumbling dwarf who will not perform for him; the OV makes his motives much nobler and generates a parallel to the hunting trip that brings Edgar to Estrild. See EE, ll. 3991–4014. 37 EE, ll. 4036, 4053–4, translation mine. 38 Oldest, ll. 2687–90; cf. EE, ll. 4082–8. In Gaimar, the absolution is for ‘la grant ire’ (‘the great wrath’) (l. 4084), namely, the conflict between queen and bishop after he condemns the marriage, and her reformation is portrayed more ambiguously.

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The Construction of Vernacular History This extension of a single story over the accounts of three reigns, though it follows Gaimar’s own structure, is extremely unusual in the Oldest Version, which generally compartmentalizes each reign and refers explicitly to past or future events as little as possible. But by describing Estrild’s reformation, the writer can reconcile all the events of the episode: in effect, her repentance removes the curse on the realm that King Edgar incurs. Estrild can thus serve as an occasion of temptation, whose story illustrates the wages of sin, and as a woman of holy life and a worthy ancestor, whose story illustrates the grace of repentance. When the king who has sinned is dead, the queen who has sinned finally becomes a protagonist in her own right; her moral state can serve as the index by which to measure the state of the land. Her position is oddly similar to that of the widowed queens Guentholen and Cordeille, briefly important to the history of Britain because there is no man around to serve their function. The writer of the Oldest Version may simply be deploying her in a number of different roles as his narrative circumstances require and his sources indicate. But the fact that she is not limited to or defined by a single role has a striking effect. She is not only an heiress, or an object of passion, or a mother, or a murderess, or a penitent, but all of these things, and she is equal to all the occasions she encounters. In her multiple roles, Estrild demonstrates the good and the bad contained in individual women as in men, and the awkward fact that one may become both a victim and a perpetrator. She traces the familiar path of maid, mother, widow, and woman of holy life – but in her case the path is a bumpy one, and its very bumpiness may have made it more meaningful to the people who heard or read about it. These stories of seduction vividly illustrate the ways in which the writer of the Oldest Version finds and reiterates certain basic elements to work out his subplots and to make lessons clear without explicit moralization. Within its particular context, an act as apparently meaningless as the wassail gathers associations of sexual transgression and risk to the whole land. From these stories emerges a sense of desire itself as dangerous and destructive, an impediment to the governance of self or country. As elsewhere in the chronicle, the morality is consequentialist rather than abstract, and women are not blamed as the occasions of temptation. It is the men who cannot govern themselves who are at fault.

The Representation of Rape This view is expressed especially in the Oldest Version’s treatment of rape. Medieval narrative traditions tend to represent rape either as a joke (when shepherdesses or miller’s daughters are concerned), or as an ultimate, and generally only potential, abomination (when the victims are noblewomen or martyrs in the making). The saints of hagiographic tradition die in the defense of their virginity, the shepherdesses of pastourelle tradition often outwit their 84

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Women with Voices would-be rapists, and the helpless maidens of romance are rescued at the last second. When the worst happens, the usual options are death (as for a Lucretia) or disappearance from the text (as for the maiden of the Wife of Bath’s Tale). It is characteristic of the humane and practical perspective of the Oldest Version that it offers quite different depictions and understandings of sexual violence and its aftermath. It treats rape as another of the grim realities of a world in which people betray their religious and social creeds, a crime by men for which the women assaulted are not responsible. The basic legend of St Ursula is a familiar one. She and her band of 11,000 virgins, sent off from Britain to be wives for the conquerors and settlers of Little Britain, are shipwrecked, assaulted, and killed by depraved pagans instead. The episode is briefly included in Geoffrey of Monmouth and elaborated by Wace. The Oldest Version elaborates further still, perhaps influenced by an additional hagiographic source.39 Wace emphasizes the pitiful picture of the women lost in the tempest: Ki dunc oïst crier meschines E exhalcier voiz feminines, Palmes batre, chevuls tirer, Peres e meres regreter, E geter granz criz e granz plainz E reclamer Deu e ses sainz, ... Ja n’eüst le quer tant felun, Qu’il n’en eüst compassiun. (‘Whoever could have heard the girls’ cries, the women’s raised voices, the wringing of hands, the tearing of hair, the laments for fathers and mothers, and the loud weeping and wailing and calling upon God and His saints, . . . he would have felt pity, no matter how wicked his heart.’)40

He mentions only in passing that the pagans kill the surviving women who will not sleep with them. In the Oldest Version, Ursula has taken a secret vow of chastity before her father sends her to be married, and the shipwreck essentially gives her the opportunity to keep that vow. The story becomes one of female fortitude rather than pathos: Mes Vrsula la pucele pria, precha, e amonesta ses compaignons, les autres puceles, qe eux se deussent defendre e countreester a tute lor force, e suffrir la mort plus tost pur deu qe estre hony de corps e perdre lour virginite, issint 39 See

Oldest, ll. 928–75, and p. 307. The account changes between the SV and the LV (probably in part because of eyeskip), so the ME account differs somewhat from that of the OV (cf. RD329, fol. 32r–v (SV); Cotton Cleopatra D.III (hereafter CD3), fol. 89v (LV); Brie, Brut, I, 43–4). 40 RB, ll. 6055–60, 6063–4.

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The Construction of Vernacular History qe tutes les puceles deuindrent si fermes e si estables en deu qe eles se defendirent si noblement par la grace de deu a lor poer qe nul de les genz malurez ne auoient poer defere hountage a nul de les puceles auantdites, paront le Roi Gowan se coruca si deblement qil les fist tuer tretuz meintenaunt. E issint furent tretuz celes puceles martirizez pur le deu amour e gisent en Coloine. (‘The maiden Ursula entreated, exhorted, and urged her companions, the other maidens, to defend themselves and resist with all their strength, and sooner suffer death for God than be bodily defiled and lose their virginity, so that all the maidens became so resolute and so steadfast in God that they defended themselves with all their might, by the grace of God, so nobly that none of the evil men were able to do shame to any of these maidens, at which King Gowan became so fiendishly enraged that he at once had them all killed. And so all these maidens were martyred for the love of God, and they lie buried in Cologne.’)41

In plot, this is a typical virgin martyrdom, and unlike Laȝamon, the Oldest Version’s composer has taken an orthodox stand on the miraculous preservation of virginity.42 As in Wace, the failed assault on the British women is followed by the successful violation of the defenseless island of Britain itself, a connection that the prose Brut makes pretty explicit.43 For all that, the Oldest Version takes Wace’s story of female weakness and suffering and recasts it as one of female strength and a species of triumph, so that the audience’s admiration is called for, not its pity. As the chronicle progresses, the fact that not all rapes are thwarted is increasingly recognized. Telling for its very unobtrusiveness is its version of the conception of Merlin.44 In Wace, Merlin’s nameless mother (who has become a nun), explains to Vortigern that something repeatedly came to her in such a manner that it could not be seen, and a sage of the court confirms that she has described an incubus.45 In the Oldest Version, she has a name, Adhan. A secular high-ranking gentlewoman, she has not retreated to a convent, and her story, while mysterious, is largely rationalized: La dame respoundi tendrement e dit qe vnqes nauoit companie de homme terrien. ‘Mes, Sire Roi’, fet ele, ‘tant come ieo estoi ioesne pucele en la 41 Oldest,

ll. 959–66. a study of this episode in Laȝamon and the MEPB, see E. J. Bryan, ‘Amazons and Ursulines’, in Mindful Spirit in Late Medieval Literature: Essays in Honor of Elizabeth D. Kirk, ed. B. Wheeler (New York, 2006), pp. 21–30. 43 Oldest, ll. 967–75. The OV inserts St Alban here, as if establishing the correct genealogy of British martyrdom has become a concern to the writer, especially since he takes the time (and an unusual look forward) to explain that Alban is called Britain’s proto-martyr because he precedes King Edmund in date (rather than worth or rank) (Oldest, ll. 976–83). 44 Oldest, ll. 1292–302; see pp. 310–11. 45 See RB, ll. 7412–56. 42 For

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Women with Voices chaumbre mon per, e autres de grant linage estoient en ma companie, qe souent aloient en este temps iuer e solacer, ieo demorai tut soul en la chaumbre mon per, e ne volei issir pur bruler du solail. Vint vnefoiz vne tresbeau bacheler e entra la chaumbre ou ieo estoi tut soul, mes coment il entra e ou, ieo ne sauoi, qar le hus furent forment barrez. E il me fist le ieu de amour, qar ieo ne auoi force ne poer ali pur moy defendre. E souent vint il a moy en la manere issint qil engendra cel enfaunt de moy.’ (‘The lady answered softly and said that she had never known the company of an earthly man. “But, Lord King”, she said, “when I was a young maiden in my father’s household, and in my company were others of great lineage who often went in summertime to play games and enjoy themselves, I remained all alone in my father’s chamber, and I did not want to go out for fear of sunburn. One time a very handsome young man came and entered the chamber where I was all alone, but how or where he entered, I did not know, for the doors were strongly barred. And he played the game of love with me, for I did not have the strength or power against him to defend myself. And he often came to me in this way so that he fathered this child by me.”’)46

Although Adhan does not consider her visitor to be a terrestrial man, he is perfectly visible and prevails not by words and kisses but by force.47 The tale is made all the more homely and concrete by the ironic detail of the fifteenyear-old who foregoes the company of her friends and stays inside to keep from spoiling her skin, in order to maintain her beauty (and presumably her marriageability). She sacrifices one kind of game but ends up playing another against her will. Through this shift towards the secular and the social, the writer of the Oldest Version recognizes rape – even of a gentlewoman in her own home – as something all too easy to believe, not to be explained away by magic. He not only acknowledges but introduces something that in other traditions remains more or less literally unsayable. The perpetrators of rape are not always outsiders. What may be one of the chronicle’s most moving episodes, based on an incident in Gaimar, is

46 Oldest,

ll. 1293–301. Geoffrey of Monmouth, the incubus is sometimes visible ‘in specie pulcerrimi iuuenis’ (‘resembling a handsome young man’) (HRB, § 107, pp. 139, 138). Charlotte Wulf notes that in HRBVV (§ 107, p. 99), Merlin’s mother is ‘in thalamo parentum’ (‘in her parents’ chamber’) when the child is conceived (C. Wulf, ‘Merlin’s Mother in the Chronicles’, in On Arthurian Women: Essays in Memory of Maureen Fries, ed. B. Wheeler and F. Tolhurst (Dallas, 2001), pp. 259–70 (p. 262, see also pp. 265–7)). The version in RB manuscript Dur, which replaces a significant part of the narrative as well as introducing prophecies of Merlin, also makes the incubus intermittently visible ‘en la semblance d’un bel juvencel’ (‘in the shape of a fine youth’) and places events in ‘en la chambre ma mere’ (‘in my mother’s chamber’) (J. Blacker, ed. and trans., Anglo-Norman Verse Prophecies of Merlin (Dallas, 2005), p. 30, ll. 87–120, ll. 92, 90 quoted).

47 In

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The Construction of Vernacular History the rape of the wife of the baron Buern Bocard by their own king, Osbright (Osberht) of Northumbria. Although the story is built of the same elements as the Brut’s standard seduction scene, the differences are sharp, at least as far as the woman is concerned.48 Buern Bocard is away from home, faithfully guarding the coast, when King Osbright arrives at his manor after a day of hunting. The Oldest Version tells the story of violated hospitality with effective terseness: La dame sa femme, qe mult estoit bele a merueille, receust le roi curtoisement e oue grant honur, e le serui assez richement. Quant le roi auoit mange tant come il voleit, il prist la dame par la main e la mena en sa chaumbre, e dit qil parleroit oue li en conseil. E fist voider la chambre de tuz, fors de ceux qe garderent les hus, qe furent les plus priuez le roi e ben sauoient sa volunte. Mes la dame ne se aparceust mie pur quei il le fesoit, tanqe le roi eust fet sa volunte de li. E quant il auoit fet ceo qil voleit, il senparti e returna a Euerwik. E la dame demora plorant, e enfist grant doel, e deuint pale e murne e tute descolure. (‘The lady his wife, who was marvelously beautiful, received the king courteously and with great honor, and she served him very richly. When the king had eaten as much as he wanted, he took the lady by the hand and led her into her chamber, and said that he would speak with her in counsel. And he had the room emptied of everyone except those who guarded the doors, who were the king’s closest intimates and well knew his will. But the lady did not at all understand why he did it, until the king had had his will of her. And when he had done what he wanted, he left and returned to York. And the lady remained weeping, and she mourned greatly over it, and she became pale and dejected and wan.’)49

As one could by now predict, more trouble follows. Buern Bocard renounces fealty to Osbright and calls in the very outsiders against whom he has been guarding the coasts, and they lay waste the country. First, however, there is a domestic scene, when Buern Bocard comes home and finds his wife: Il demaunda quei ele auoit. ‘Certes, sire’, fet ele, ‘ieo su honi, tut issint me ad le roi vergunde maugre le mien.’ E li counta tute la verite coment le roi lauoit purieu aforce, paront ele voudroit meuz estre mort qe vif. ‘Bele amie’, fet il, ‘teissez vous. Encountre force ne vaut feblesce, e pur ceo ne serres vous ia mains ben de moy, pus qe vous moi auez dit la verite. Mes ieo serrai venge de vous si deu moi lest viure.’

48 Oldest, ll. 2335–80; see p. 323. This episode precedes that of Edgar and Estrild, which

it closely parallels, by five folios. See also MacColl’s discussion of the episode (‘Rhetoric’, pp. 301–4). 49 Oldest, ll. 2340–50.

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Women with Voices (‘He asked what was the matter with her. “Indeed, lord”, she said, ‘I am disgraced, for the king has dishonored me against my will.” And she told him the whole truth about how the king had raped her by force, so that she would rather be dead than alive. “My fair love”, he said, “hush yourself. Against force weakness does not avail, and so you will never be less dear to me, since you have told me the truth. But I will avenge you if God lets me live.”’)50

Here the nameless wife offers a Lucretian reading of her rape: if not death before dishonor, then death afterwards. Her husband takes a far more loving and practical position, reassuring her with the only endearment – ‘bele amie’ – preserved in the Oldest Version. The text here follows Gaimar’s plot and borrows a few lines closely, but Gaimar makes the lady more obviously vengeful (telling her husband that the king deserves to die) and also even more self-recriminatory: ‘Jo mëïsmes m’encuserai, puis fetes de moi [tel] juïse cum[e] fusse a lar[e]cin prise.’ (‘“I will accuse myself, then you do justice to me as if I had been apprehended in theft.”’)51

Gaimar makes more of Buern Bocard’s generosity in forgiving his wife, and he also makes that forgiveness more explicitly conditional. The baron tells his wife that had she kept the rape secret, ‘jameis mis quers ne vus amast / ne ma buche ne vus beisast’ (‘my heart would have never again loved you, nor my mouth kissed yours’): his forgiving the lady for having been raped sounds a different note from that of the husband of the Oldest Version.52 Buern Bocard himself sees no alternative to seeking revenge, though he brings disaster on the country and will die in battle, just as William the Conqueror will die in his effort to answer the insult of the king of France. But his kindly pragmatism towards his wife offers a humane alternative to her own despair. Gaimar invokes shame, or ‘hunte’, repeatedly; in the Oldest Version, the word comes up only once, when the wife calls herself ‘honi’ (‘disgraced’) in a characterization that her husband disputes.53 In this episode, rape again serves an exemplifying function: as about the worst thing a king can personally do to his own subjects, it can stand for a variety of oppressions and exactions. It conclusively demonstrates Osbright’s

50 Oldest,

ll. 1251–7. ll. 2652–4, translation mine. See also l. 2661, ‘mielz voil murrir ke vivre plus’ (‘I would rather die than live on’), and l. 2664, ‘encontre force ne pout feblesce’ (‘against force weakness has no power’), translations mine. 52 EE, ll. 2671–2, translation mine. 53 EE, ll. 2603, 2636, 2689; Oldest, l. 2353. 51 EE,

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The Construction of Vernacular History character and the consequences of his crime, and thus teaches the lesson about kingship that the chronicle reiterates constantly in a variety of forms. But here it is also possible to see rape as more than a convenient emblem. The Oldest Version is nothing if not concise. Its writer is sparing in his descriptions, and he reports direct speech only very intermittently. It would not have been out of keeping with his common practice or vitiated his point about kingship to have given only a summarizing sentence or two to the cause of Buern Bocard’s rebellion. The episode seems to have interested the Brut chronicler for its own sake, and its effect as developed from Gaimar is to offer a reading of rape decidedly different from that of better-known narrative traditions, another response to a situation found considerably more often in life than in art. Buern’s wife is not dead, nor silent, nor, for him, damaged goods after the rape. She is not wholly redefined as a victim, but remains a wife and ‘bele amie’. This incident brings rape even closer to home than do the previous incidents in the Oldest Version, for both perpetrator and victim are familiar, even mundane, characters. For the Brut to remind its audience that rape can really happen to the woman next door is startling enough, but the admission that the rapist might be the man next door may be more startling still. The Oldest Version’s final rapist is King John: he brings the issue right into the chronicle’s own century and royal house. Like Osbright’s act of rape, King John’s demonstrates just how bad a king he is, and it plays a role in his downfall: his proclivity for rape is shown as precipitating Magna Carta and the subsequent war between John and his barons. John le bon Counte Randulf de Cestre voleit auer desherite, pur ceo qili reprist souent de sa malice, e nomement pur ceo qili blama e dist qil fesoit grant hounte a deu e a Seinte Eglise quil haunta la femme son frere demene, e qil purieust plusors autres femmes e filles de bones genz de la terre – qar il nesparnia nul de qi il auoit talent – paront les barouns se corucerent malement. E le voleient guerrer si se mistrent communement a Loundres e pristrent la ville. (‘wished to disinherit the good Earl Ranulf of Chester, because he often reproved him for his wickedness, and particularly because he reproached him and said that he did great shame to God and to Holy Church because he frequented the wife of his own brother, and because he raped many other wives and daughters of good family of the land – for he spared no one whom he desired – because of which the barons were terribly angered. And they wished to make war on him and set off together to London and captured the city.’)54

The matter-of-factness of this account of John as rapist and women ‘of good family’ as his victims becomes all the more notable when one considers the

54 Oldest,

ll. 3969–75.

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Women with Voices likely identity of the sister-in-law mentioned here. In the closest known analogue known for this portion of the prose Brut, the Barlings chronicle, she is described as the wife of the earl of Salisbury.55 This detail identifies the woman as Ela Fitzpatrick, and her husband as John’s half-brother William Longespée. Ela and William’s descendants were the patrons of Barlings Abbey, and it is possible that they were also the force behind the writing of the Oldest Version itself, in which case these rapes would constitute a part of not only English but also immediate family history.

A Book for Dorigen In sum, the Oldest Version does not deny, hide, or displace the reality of rape. Its victims do not vanish from the scene. Its perpetrators are not always strangers. Ursula, Adhan, and Buern Bocard’s wife all speak for themselves and characterize their own experience. The unusual level of detail maintained in these accounts suggests that the writer of the Oldest Version may be deliberately expressing and not just evincing a demystifying attitude towards rape. But it is also significant that he uses rape to signify more than one kind of thing. It illustrates the infamy of the assailants, but also the qualities of the people victimized, in their resistance to, endurance in the face of, or acceptance of what happens to them. The Oldest Version seems to be an exceptional written record of this kind of attitude towards rape – but it may represent a viewpoint that was, or became, more common in its day than other textual evidence may indicate. The prose Brut’s audience, both women and men, may have found in the women of the Oldest Version figures far more sympathetic, plausible, and pertinent to their own experience than those found elsewhere. Think of the Franklin’s Tale, when Dorigen is racking her brains to think of a woman who has not chosen death before dishonor.56 Literary tradition cannot provide her with a single one, and it is only the benevolence of the men in her life that saves her. What she needs is a prose Brut. The Oldest Version straightforwardly depicts as significant actors grown women who are themselves childless but not vowed to celibacy, women with experience and motivations not grounded in the embrace of fertility or the rejection of sexuality, those traditional constituents of female identity.57 Its women are not the Other; they are not wholly defined by what happens to their bodies; they are not repositories for whatever is to be disassociated from male; they are not notably more weak, fleshly, irrational, virtuous, or vicious 55 M199,

fol. 16r. See Oldest, pp. 45, 342; OV manuscript Bodleian Wood empt. 8 (hereafter We8) also makes this identification (Oldest, p. 407). 56 In Riverside, ed. Benson, ll. 1355–456. 57 See Lamont, ‘Becoming’, p. 303.

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The Construction of Vernacular History than men.58 Given a literary tradition in which women are often effectively constituted by their passions, and represented largely through an appeal to the reader’s passions, the prose Brut’s straightforward depiction of women as human beings, plain and simple, becomes something extraordinary in and of itself.

58 Matheson

even considers the PB to make ‘a striking suspension of moral judgement on women characters’ compared to its habitual judgment of men (‘Genealogy’, pp. 224 (quoted), 233–4).

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4 Social Arthur

At times, King Arthur has seemed to scholars to be notably underrepresented in the literature of late-medieval England, particularly in light of the chivalric pageantry of the court of Edward III.1 Christopher Dean, for example, declared in 1987 that Arthur ‘is not the major character of medieval English fiction that manuals of Middle English literature with their inevitable chapter on Arthurian romance might suggest’.2 If this is so, it does not mean that Arthur was unpopular or unimportant in late-medieval written culture: it means that ‘fiction’ is not the best place to find him. The prose Brut chronicle made the literally prosaic Arthur more popular than ever before.3 Arthur is the central figure of the Oldest Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut, and his reign constitutes its single longest episode. At 418 lines, it is about a tenth of the whole Oldest Version, or as much space as all the kings from Aethelred the Unready to Edward the Confessor, and it is twice as long as the life of Brut.4 In the later Anglo-Norman and Middle English Bruts,

1 See

J. Vale, Edward III and Chivalry: Chivalric Society and Its Context, 1270–1350 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1982) pp. 42–91, for a comprehensive treatment of Edward’s chivalric activities and Arthurian imitation. 2 C. Dean, Arthur of England: English Attitudes to King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Toronto, 1987), p. 90. Dean argues that Arthur’s importance during the Middle Ages and Renaissance has been overrated; his book includes an appendix listing Middle English texts without Arthurian references (pp. x, 171). R. Moll, Before Malory: Reading Arthur in Later Medieval England (Toronto, 2003) is a salutary corrective, offering readings of a variety of later-medieval Arthurian texts now considered literary or historiographic (with brief consideration of the PB tradition) and arguing for a lively relationship among them. 3 See D. B. Tyson, ‘Patronage of French Vernacular History Writers in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, Romania 100 (1979), 180–222, 584 (pp. 186–7); G. M. Spiegel, Romancing the Past: The Rise of Vernacular Prose Historiography in Thirteenth-Century France (Berkeley, 1993), pp. 55–60; and E. Kennedy, ‘The Knight as Reader of Arthurian Romance’, in Culture and the King: The Social Implications of the Arthurian Legend, ed. M. B. Shichtman and J. P. Carley (Albany, 1994), pp. 70–90 (pp. 86–7), for thirteenth-century Continental critiques of verse as an innately untruthful –or fabulous – medium, inappropriate for the writing of history. 4 This count does not include Arthur’s conception. The recent and eventful reign of King John commands just over 400 lines in the OV. As continuations focused on

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The Construction of Vernacular History Arthur’s story remains largely unchanged except for the eventual addition of prophecies of Merlin. The audiences of the Oldest Version knew a very different Arthurian story from the one most familiar to audiences after Malory. Gunnore (Guinevere) appears in two sentences, to marry Arthur and to retire to a convent; there is no Grail quest, no Morgan le Fay, no Galahad, and no Lancelot. Here as elsewhere the Brut’s account follows the Galfridian plot, conventionally labeled the ‘chronicle’, or English, tradition. The other branch of Arthurian literature, the so-called ‘romance’, or French, tradition epitomized in the poetry of Chrétien de Troyes, offers the erotic intrigues, tournaments, adventures in trackless forests, women in distress, and mystical quests associated with Arthur’s court, as well as the adultery of Lancelot and Guinevere.5 Chrétien’s romances and the later French prose Vulgate Cycle were both known in England, but aside from the account of Arthur’s fall in the stanzaic Morte Arthur, relatively little of their plots entered the English language until Malory assimilated the matter of both traditions into his massive work.6 The Arthur of the Oldest Version represents another strain of Arthurian matter, dominant in late medieval England if less well recognized today. Geoffrey celebrates Arthur’s military prowess and focuses on his victories over the Saxons, his conquests on the Continent, and his campaign against the Roman Empire, and Wace follows his lead, while expanding the scenes of battle: his Arthur is the sort of man who can kill four hundred men singlehandedly, ‘plus que tute sa gent ne fist’ (‘more than were killed by his whole army’).7 The Oldest Version, however, makes Arthur a governor first, a warrior second, and a lover not at all, kind to the poor and helpless, but above all just and attentive to his loyal baronage. Distant from the romance tradition but also distinct from his chronicle antecedents, he is an Arthur who epitomizes the social virtues that the text constantly promotes. The Oldest Version recasts Arthur to exemplify its ideals of kingship and governance; other works written in England deal with Arthur’s multiplicity fourteenth- and fifteenth-century events are added, the overall proportions shift, of course. 5 Chrétien’s poetry dates from the 1170s and early 1180s; related Welsh material complicates the question of ultimate origins. The English word ‘romance’ itself first meant only a work in the French language, but during the late Middle Ages, according to Strohm, it may have acquired associations with this characteristically French kind of narrative, whatever its language (‘The Origin and Meaning of Middle English Romaunce’, Genre 10 (1977), 1–28). 6 Some early exceptions are Artour and Merlin (1250–1300, with material from the Vulgate Cycle), Ywain and Gawain (1300–1350, a Northern condensation of Chrétien’s Yvain), and Sir Perceval of Galles (1300–1340, a Grail story). Moll makes a fascinating study of the introduction of such material into three idiosyncratic late fifteenth century MEPB manuscripts (Before, pp. 210–16). 7 RB, ll. 9355–6, 9356 quoted; cf. HRB, § 147, p. 199. For full consideration of Wace’s approach to Arthur, see Le Saux, Companion, pp. 125–44.

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Social Arthur in a variety of ways. The alliterative and stanzaic Middle English poems on the death of Arthur each adhere to a single tradition. After an introductory prayer, the alliterative Morte Arthure announces its subject as Arthur’s war against the emperor Lucius, ‘craftes of armes’: it then embarks on a long list of the lands the king has already won.8 The stanzaic poem, which follows French style in its rhyming octosyllabic lines, opens with Arthur and Guinevere in bed, mentions the Holy Grail and Lancelot, and uses the word ‘aunter’, adventure, no fewer than four times in the first twenty-eight lines: ‘In Arthur dayes, that noble king, / Befell aunters ferly fele’.9 Chaucer will countenance neither tradition. The Nun’s Priest mocks French matter on two counts when he claims that his talking chicken tale is also trewe, I undertake, As is the book of Launcelot de Lake, That wommen holde in ful greet reverence.10

Chaucer acknowledges Galfridian tradition only in the ‘Complaint to His Purse’. Appealing to Henry IV for support after the deposition of his old patron Richard II, he addresses the new king as conqueror of Brutes Albyon, Which that by lyne and free eleccion Been verray kyng.11

At the most obsequious moment of his entire corpus, Chaucer exploits precedent as a means of currying favor, a way of flattering and legitimizing authority (on the triple basis of conquest, lineage, and election) by connecting it to the heroic past – just as Geoffrey of Monmouth himself does. Chaucer writes his masterwork about a Troy that is about to fall, not one whose fortunate fall will occasion the founding of Britain.12 8 Alliterative

Morte Arthure, in L. D. Benson, ed., E. E. Foster, rev., King Arthur’s Death (Kalamazoo, 1994), pp. 131–261 (l. 24); see ll. 12–47. 9 Stanzaic Morte Arthur, in Benson and Foster, eds., King Arthur’s Death, pp. 11–123 (ll. 5–6). 10 In Riverside, ed. Benson, VII.3211–13. As E. Kennedy points out, the tendency to regard Arthurian romance as ‘escapist . . . . primarily written for women, in contrast with the “manly” epic’, persists to this day (‘Knight’, p. 70). Chaucer of course presents a vexed and similarly feminized Arthurian world in the Wife of Bath’s Tale, where rape is reality and feminine ‘maistrye’ requires magic. Susan Crane offers an extended reading of the relation of sexuality and sovereignty in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale in Gender and Romance in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (Princeton, 1994), pp. 118–31. 11 In Riverside, ed. Benson, ll. 22–4. 12 When in The House of Fame, ‘Englyssh Gaufride’ appears with Homer, Dares and Dictys, Lollius, and Guido delle Colonne on the iron pillar supporting the matter of Troy (l. 1466), it is not clear whether the writer in question is Geoffrey of Monmouth or Chaucer himself (although The House of Fame is usually dated to 1379–80, a few years before Troilus and Criseyde).

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The Construction of Vernacular History A century later, Caxton will coyly invoke Paul to question whether or not it matters if Malory’s stories of Arthur are true: ‘For to gyve fayth and byleve that al is trewe that is conteyned herin, ye be at your lyberté. But all is wryton for our doctryne.’13 The mere fact that these writers bother to joke about the truth of Arthurian matter demonstrates that the issue is not dead yet. The distinction between chronicle and romance was not the only one to exercise English readers and writers of the matter of Britain. The discrimination of history from fable, historia from fabula, played a vital role in Arthur’s latemedieval career.14 A more representative fourteenth-century reader than Chaucer may be John Trevisa, who in his Middle English translation of Ranulph Higden’s Polychronicon mounts a desperate defense of Geoffrey of Monmouth and his Arthur. Higden has offered a devastating critique of Geoffrey’s inconsistencies with the rest of the known historical record and added insult to injury by pointedly calling Arthur not a king but a warrior (‘belliger’), whose documented victories against the Saxons make him praiseworthy by means of true history and not the false fable that Geoffrey concocts, ‘non fallaces fabulae sed veraces historiae’.15 Trevisa inserts his well-known rebuttal within the text of the translation: Ranulpus his resouns, þat he meveth aȝenst Gaufridus and Arthur, schulde non clerke moove þat can knowe an argument, for it followeþ it nouȝt. Seint Iohn in his gospel telleþ meny þinges and doynges þat Mark, Luk, and Matheu spekeþ nouȝt of in here gospelles, ergo, Iohn is nouȝt to trowynge in his gospel. He were of false byleve þat trowede þat þat argument were worþ a bene.16

By equating unbelief in Geoffrey with unbelief in the Gospel, Trevisa lays the matter bare: belief in the Galfridian Arthur is an act of faith. And loss of faith in Geoffrey’s history would entail the renunciation not just of Arthur but of an entire past, with nothing as complete or satisfying to replace it.

13 The

citation is of Romans 15. 4 (‘Caxton’s Preface’, in Thomas Malory, Works, ed. E. Vinaver, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1971), pp. xiii–xv (p. xv)). 14 See B. N. Sargent-Baur, ‘Veraces Historiae aut Fallaces Fabulae?’ in Text and Intertext in Medieval Arthurian Literature, ed. N. J. Lacy (New York, 1996), pp. 25–39, and Spiegel, Romancing, p. 340 n. 34, for the development of the distinction. Ad Putter argues that far from being liberated from the claims of history, romancers are so dominated by the Galfridian account that they insert their stories into ‘chronicle periods of unused story-time’, namely, the times when Arthur is at peace (‘Finding Time for Romance: Mediaeval Arthurian Literary History’, Medium Aevum 63 (1994), 1–16 (pp. 1–3). 15 Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden, ed. C. Babington and J. R. Lumby, 9 vols., Rolls Series 41 (London, 1865–86), V, 328, V, 330. 16 Polychronicon, ed. Babington and Lumby, V, 337. See Baswell, ‘Troy’, pp. 176–86, for comparison of Higden’s and Trevisa’s approaches and discussion of this moment.

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Social Arthur The Oldest Version dodges the historical criticism offered by Higden and other earlier Arthurian iconoclasts by simply admitting of no sources. With no references to check, and indeed as little acknowledgment as possible of the human agency behind the chronicle’s making, its writer need not worry about defending the reliability of his sources, nor is he constrained in adapting them, as he assiduously does, to recreate Arthur.

Arthur and His Barons From the start Arthur is shown as another Brut: like Brut, he is conceived under irregular circumstances and begins his career at age fifteen.17 The formulas introducing him echo those describing the young Brut at the beginning of the chronicle.18 The chronicle’s social orientation becomes all the clearer in comparison to the description in Wace (left-hand column below) on which the passage is based:19 Quant Arthur fu fet roi de la terre, il estoit iuuencel de xv aunz, mes il estoit fort e vigerous e tresuaillaunt de corps,

Juvencels esteit de quinze anz, De sun eage fors e granz. Les thecches Artur vus dirrai, Neient ne vus en mentirai; Chevaliers fu mult vertuus, Mult fu preisanz, mult glorius; Cuntre orguillus fu orguillus E cuntre humles dulz e pitus;

e douce e deboner e pitous as vmbles, e as orguillous estoit il estut, cruel, e fers.

Forz e hardiz e conqueranz, Large dunere e despendanz; E se busuinnus le requist,

E si fust il curtois larges e despendant ia homme qe busoinus fust e li demanda de aide e de sucur qil nel aideroit.

S’aidier li pout, ne l’escundist. Mult ama preis, mult ama gloire, Mult volt ses faiz mettre en memoire,19 Servir se fist curteisement Si se cuntint mult noblement.

17 See

below, pp. 235–6, for a discussion of the account of his conception. ll. 41–2: ‘Brut estoit durement fort e beaus e grant de son age, e amiable as tutes genz, e pruz e vaillaunt de corps, e se fist amer de touz’ (‘Brut was very strong and handsome, and well-grown for his age, and friendly to everyone, and worthy and stalwart of body, and he made himself beloved by all’). 19 These two lines (9025–6) are not present in Dur and Lin so may not have been available to the writer of the OV. 18 Oldest,

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The Construction of Vernacular History (‘When Arthur was made king of the land, he was a youth of fifteen years, but he was strong and robust and very stalwart of body,

(‘He was a young man of fifteen, tall and strong for his age. I will tell you what Arthur was like and not lie to you. He was a most mighty knight, admirable and renowned, proud to the haughty and gentle and compassionate   to the humble.

and gentle and kind and compassionate to the humble, and to the proud he was unbending, harsh, and haughty.

He was strong, bold and invincible,

And he was so courteous, generous, and liberal that there was never anyone who was in need and sought help and aid from him whom he did not help.’)21

a generous giver and spender, and if he could help someone in need, he would not refuse him. He greatly loved renown and glory, he greatly wished his deeds   to be remembered. He behaved most nobly and saw to it that he was served   with courtesy.’)20

After a cursory personal description (Brut at least is said to be handsome), the Oldest Version eliminates or condenses Wace’s references to prowess and reputation while slightly elaborating the account of his relations with the poor and the proud, providing weight and structure to the prose with its sets of tripled adjectives. In Wace, Arthur’s courtesy is invoked in relation to those who serve him; in the prose Brut, it is presented in relation to the humble to whom he manifests it.2021 Arthur’s military success stems less from his individual prowess than from his ability to create and sustain the bonds of common support that unite and strengthen the realm. His first act as king is to assemble his men into a fighting force that can – and immediately does – drive the Saxons out of the land, to the benefit of all.22 Arthur will maintain these mutually beneficial relations 20 RB,

ll. 9013–28; see HRB, § 143, p. 193. ll. 1614–18. 22 The OV takes around eighty lines of print (ll. 1613–96) to cover just over 600 lines of Wace’s verse (RB, ll. 9005–640). In this integration of personal strength and social responsibility, Arthur resembles the protagonists of what Crane calls ‘insular romances’ of land and lineage: ‘National interests must be sustained above all. . . . self-advancement is in consonance with defense of the community’ (S. Crane, Insular Romance: Politics, Faith and Culture in Anglo-Norman and Middle English Literature (Berkeley, 1986), p. 12). 21 Oldest,

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Social Arthur throughout his reign, and the Brut savors in unusual detail his treatment of the baronage, as he distributes gifts and land to his men within Britain and after his Continental conquest, establishes the Round Table, and takes counsel with his barons at crucial moments, particularly at his great Pentecost feast, interrupted by the legates of Rome demanding tribute and submission to the emperor.23 The Pentecost feast, a central moment in Arthurian literature through the centuries, becomes a literal celebration of the baronage in the prose Brut. Geoffrey of Monmouth uses the feast to paint a portrait of the Arthurian court at peace – the happy state to which war is in theory intended to lead, but one problematic for a warrior culture. Hence the famous speech of Cador of Cornwall, in both Geoffrey and Wace (but not the prose Brut), rejoicing that cause for war has arisen and given the king’s men something more to live for than dice and women.24 The scene of peaceful court festivity interrupted by a threat or challenge certainly does not originate in Geoffrey (think of Beowulf), but within the matter of Britain it is a point of departure for Arthurian adventure, the space into which Chrétien de Troyes, the writers of the Vulgate Cycle, and the Gawain-poet fit their stories.25 In both Geoffrey and Wace the feast is the text’s most lavishly described spectacle, a set-piece with long descriptions of food, people, costume, games, rewards, and religious ritual. Wace devotes over 400 lines to the description of the feast before the Romans read their letter; the Oldest Version gives it fewer than 350 words, more than half of which comprise a list of those in attendance.26 Jousts, love-games, gambling, ceremonial, finery, menus, and gift-giving come down to this: ‘Meint bele feste auoit Arthur souent tenu, mes ceo fu la plus bele e la plus solempne, e dura trois iours continuement oue grant ioie e oue grant honur’ (‘Arthur had often held many a fine feast, but this was the finest and the most solemn, and it lasted for three full days with great joy and with great honor’).27 The focus of the feast in the Oldest Version is not its details but its participants: the baronage itself is the object whose description will bring satisfaction to the audience. Reading or hearing the long lists, they could could connect themselves directly to Arthur’s court through the invocation of a familiar-sounding realm, with the epic but homely catalogue of the earls of Bath, Chester, Salisbury, Canterbury, Chichester, and Leicester, as well as the E. Kennedy discusses the sober understanding of Arthur manifested by several knights writing in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (‘Knight’). 23 See above, pp. 51–3. 24 HRB, § 158, p. 217. 25 Putter argues that after Wace, romances came to be situated in two specific times of peace, the twelve years after Arthur has pacified Britain and the nine years after he takes France (‘Finding Time’, pp. 3–4). The Pentecost feast marks the end of the nine years’ peace. 26 See RB, ll. 10197–638; Oldest, ll. 1784–812. 27 Oldest, ll. 1806–8.

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The Construction of Vernacular History counts of Flanders, Poitou, Anjou, and Normandy, among others.28 When the challenge from the emperor comes, everyone agrees – ‘communement dun acord’ (‘together with one accord’), as the chronicle emphatically puts it – to make the fateful assault on Rome.29 The story of Arthur has as much to say about the failure of baronial loyalty and unity as it does about their success: his nephew Modred epitomizes treachery as Arthur does kingship. The Oldest Version describes the terms of Modred’s regency precisely and legalistically, and with an unusual anticipatory comment: Arthur bailla sa terre e son regne a vn son neueu, chiualer pruz e hardi, Modred auoit anun. Mes il nestoit mie de bone fei, come ben serra dit apres. A cesti Modred bailla le roi tut en garde fors tauntsoulement la corone. (‘Arthur entrusted his land and his realm to a nephew of his, a bold and daring knight named Modred. But he was not at all of good faith, as will indeed be told later. To this Modred the king gave all in keeping except only the crown.’)30

Modred soon becomes a would-be usurper, taking homage from the remaining inhabitants of Britain and seizing and supplying castles. He betrays his lord as vassal, as family member, and as his official. Like other bad kings and usurpers, he is against nature, this time not by sodomy but by incestuous adultery with Queen Gunnore, and he allies himself with pagans, the same Saxons whom Arthur had expelled from Britain to begin his reign.31 These tactics bring him enough strength to bring Arthur down, but his own death and the succession of another surviving nephew, Constantin, ensure a moral if tragic outcome. The Oldest Version pays Gunnore little attention: she appears only at her marriage to Arthur and in her flight to a convent after Arthur’s return. This latter scene briefly displays her character and motivations. Wace takes a sentimental approach to the queen’s dilemma once Modred’s campaign has failed: En pensé fud e en tristur; ... Lu bon rei aveit vergundé E sun nevou Modred amé; Cuntre lei l’aveit espusee Si en esteit mult avilee; Mielz volsist morte estre que vive. Mult fud triste, mult fud pensive. 28 The

OV’s list is an abridged and more organized version of the one in Wace, with less emphasis on attendees from distant lands and on princes of the Church (cf. RB, ll. 10249–322). 29 Oldest, l. 1832. 30 Oldest, ll. 1862–5. 31 Oldest, ll. 1967–81.

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Social Arthur (‘She was thoughtful and sad; . . . she had shamed the good king and loved his nephew Modred; she had married him against the law and was greatly disgraced by it; she would rather have been dead than alive. She was sad and pensive.’)32

Vividly aware of what the text later calls her ‘pechié’ (sin), she enters the convent a penitent.33 Although in Wace, Modred and Gunnore are explicitly said to have married, in the Oldest Version it is only clear that Modred has slept with the queen: ‘encountre la lei crestien il prist a son lit la femme son vncle, son seignur, a guise de traitre’ (‘against Christian law he took to his bed the wife of his uncle, his lord, in traitorous fashion’).34 This Gunnore has no luxury to indulge the sentiment of remorse. She is frankly afraid for her life and seeks sanctuary in order to save it: Se dota durement e auoit grant pour, e ne sauoit quei fere, qar ben entendist qe soun seinur ne aueroit ia merci de li pur le graunt hounte e le despit qe fet li auoit. E prist son chimin priuement oue quatre hommes saunz plus, e vint a Caerlioun e prist la vesture de noneyne, e la demora a tute sa vie, qe vnqes pus ne fu veu entre genz a tute sa vie. (‘She was bitterly afraid and feared greatly, and she did not know what to do, for she understood well that her lord would never have mercy on her because of the great shame and offense she had done him. And she made her way secretly with four men, no more, and she came to Caerleon and took the habit of a nun, and she remained there for the rest of her life, so that she was never again seen among people for as long as she lived.’)35

The Oldest Version offers no excuses for the queen, but her practicality and the text’s silence on the subject of love afford her the same independent agency as the other powerful women of the Brut, who use whatever resources they command to promote their own interests and survive. It does not condemn or condescend to Gunnore any more than it does the Estrilds or Ronewenne.

Arthur and the Prose Brut’s Present Some elements in the representation of Arthur do point towards particular (if also enduring) concerns of the English baronage of the turn of the fourteenth

32 RB,

ll. 13206, 13209–13, following the contents of Dur and Lin, translation mine. l. 13222. 34 Oldest, ll. 1971–2. 35 Oldest, ll. 2002–7; even the characterization of her taking on the clothing of a nun has a stronger whiff of skepticism than Wace’s ‘Nune devint iloc velee’ (‘She became a veiled nun there’) (RB, l. 13217, translation mine). 33 RB,

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The Construction of Vernacular History century. Arthur’s reign marks the Oldest Version’s most strenuous efforts to link the distant and recent past. One such connection is the issue of Scottish submission to England – or the lack thereof – for open war in the North prevailed during much of the reign of Edward I.36 At the outset of his reign, after defeating the Saxons who have taken Scotland and England and driving off Irish invaders, Arthur goes to deal with the hapless Scots themselves: as the text bluntly says, he les voleit auer occis tretuz. Mes euesqes, abbez, priours, e autres gez du pais e les dames esche­ ueillez vindrent deuant Arthur e il crierent merci. E disoient, ‘Sire gentil roi pussaunt, eiez merci e pite de nous. Ia sumes nous crestiens sicome vous estes, e tenoms mesmes la lei qe vous tenez, e grant deshonur serroit a vous occir ceux qe creent en deu come vous creez – pur deu eiez merci e pite de nous e nous suffrez viure. Assez cher auoms eu peine qe les Sessouns sunt maintefoiz passez parmi nostre terre, mes ceo ne fust vnqes a nostre gre, qar il nous ount souent fet grant damage. Noz chateux ont pris e noz bestes mangez. Grant damage nous ont il fet, mes vous nous volez ore fere greinur si tuer nous volez, e ceo nest mie honur du roi tuer ceux qe merci crient. Assez nous auez vous vencu – pur deu suffrez nous viure. Eiez merci de crestiens qe creent en mesmes le deu com vous creez.’ Arthur oi cest dolur e cest pleinte, e pite li emprist de eux, e lor graunta vie e membre. E se rendirent tuz a ses pez e deuindrent ses hommes, e il receust lor homages. (‘wanted to kill them all. But bishops, abbots, priors, other people of the land, and bareheaded ladies came before Arthur and begged for mercy. And they said, “Lord king, noble and powerful, have mercy and pity on us. Indeed we are Christians just as you are, and we keep the same faith that you keep, and it would be a great dishonor to you to kill those who believe in God as you believe – for God’s sake have mercy and pity on us and let us live. We have suffered dearly enough, for the Saxons have passed throughout our land many times, but that was never at our will, for they have often done us great harm. They have seized our belongings and eaten our beasts. They have done us great harm, but now you mean to do worse to us if you mean to kill us, and it is no honor at all to a king to kill those who beg for mercy. You have overcome us indeed – for God’s sake let us live. Have mercy on Christians who believe in the same God as you do.”

36 Conflict

in Wales was of course also chronic, and for English readers the story of Arthur’s emergence from Wales to reclaim England from the Saxons has a disturbing trajectory. The OV rarely acknowledges the existence of Wales as such (although the kings of North and South Wales attend the Pentecost feast). It downplays distinction other than the geographical between Wales and England, just as it consistently effaces difference between British and English ethnicity. See above, pp. 47–8, on the OV’s efforts to promote English sovereignty.

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Social Arthur Arthur heard this grieving and lamentation, and he was gripped with pity for them, and he granted them life and limb. And they all fell at his feet and became his men, and he received their homage.’)37

The submissive clerics and women recall the scene of King Westmere’s original feoffment of Scotland to the defeated forces of Rodrik of Aquitaine.38 With its appeal to religious solidarity, the passage also provides a contrast to the later Saxon slaughter of suppliant British monks in Augustine’s day, while the horror of life under the pillaging Saxons immediately compares with Arthur’s prompt reestablishment of legal relations with his men through homage and fealty.39 The episode’s portrait of the Scottish people imploring their natural (and undefeatable) overlord for mercy certainly serves as both contemporary wish-fulfillment for an English audience and yet another reinforcement of England’s claim over Scotland.40 But it does more. In Wace, the wretched petitioners appear only after Arthur has slaughtered and starved out the rebellious Scots, and they have died ‘a vinz, a cenz e a milliers’ (‘in their twenties, their hundreds and thousands’).41 In the Oldest Version, no such siege occurs: the crowd comes to him as soon as he returns to Scotland, and his clemency extends to all. Arthur is shown as a king who forgoes vengeance on his rebellious subjects and who, just as Brut listens to the Trojan slaves, responds to a plea from the powerless. Rather than demonize the Scots, the Oldest Version makes them sympathetic representatives of those who, caught up in conflicts in which they have no stake, suffer no matter whose army is riding through. And it presents a model for dealing with internal conflict by reconciliation and reintegration, rather than mass execution and exile.42 It need hardly be said that at the end of the thirteenth century the need for viable approaches to civil conflict was keenly felt. Dispute and outright war between baronage and king loom large in the Oldest Version’s accounts of the reigns of John and Henry III, and although the Oldest Version vehemently condemns John (whose attempted usurpation à la Modred forces Richard I to return from crusade), it is fairly evenhanded on the 37 Oldest,

ll. 1679–95. ll. 762–5. 39 For the slaughter, see Oldest, ll. 2232–40. 40 The PB was hardly alone in seeking this sort of Arthurian precedent. In their quest for the English throne, the Mortimer family, for instance, had a genealogy prepared that demonstrated their descent from Arthur (by way of his sister Anna), as well as Brut and Cadwallader (in University of Chicago 224); see M. E. Giffin, ‘Cadwalader, Arthur, and Brutus in the Wigmore Manuscript’, Speculum 16 (1941), 109–21 (p. 111). 41 RB, l. 9453; likewise HRB, § 149, p. 201. 42 In what may be another indication of the inclination to see Arthur as a clement king, the manuscript tradition differs as to whether, after the Saxons break their pledge to leave, Arthur seizes (‘fist prendre’) or hangs (‘fist pendre’) the Saxon hostages. See Oldest, l. 1653, pp. 314, 370. 38 Oldest,

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The Construction of Vernacular History relations of the baronage and Henry III, emphasizing the king’s failure to keep to the Provisions of Oxford (because of bad advice), but acknowledging harms done by both sides.43 It describes in familiar terms the ravages of the Disinherited in the last throes of the Barons’ War: ‘fesoient graunz mauz en plusors leus par mi la terre. Arderent mesouns e maners de lour enemis, e lour bens robberent e emporterent’ (‘they did great harm in many places throughout the land. They burned the houses and manors of their enemies, and they plundered their goods and carried them off’).44 The Oldest Version also provides an account of the making of the final peace that is not found in its known analogues: Fust ordene e purueu par le legat Octobon, e par autres graunz seignurs des plus sages de la terre, qe tuz ceux qe auoient este encontre le roi et feurent desheritez eussent arere lour terres par greue raunzon solom ceo qil fust ordene. E issint furent trestuz acordez au roi, e donqe fu la pes crie par mi tut Engleterre, e issint fu la guere finie. (‘It was ordained and decreed by the legate Octobon, and by other great lords out of the wisest of the land, that all those who had opposed the king and been disinherited should have their lands back by means of a heavy ransom as was ordered. And so they all were reconciled with the king, and then peace was proclaimed throughout all England, and so the war was ended.’)45

Like the Scots, these rebels can be reintegrated (with tangible and intangible profit to the crown) rather than destroyed, and such is the counsel of the ‘wisest of the land’. This resolution is the next-to-last event described in the Oldest Version, aside from the death and burial of Henry III. The last event, which follows immediately on the passage just quoted, is this: Le cinquantime quint an del regne le Roi Henri, Edward son fiz, Iohan de Bretaine, Iohan de Vescy, Thomas de Clare, Roger de Clifford, Othes de Grandson, Robert de Brus, Iohan de Verdoun, e multz des autres granz seignurs de cea la mer e de la pristrent le chimin oue grant companie e oue grant poer des genz en la Terre Seinte. (‘The fifty-fifth year of the reign of King Henry, Edward his son, John of Brittany, John de Vescy, Thomas de Clare, Roger Clifford, Otto de Grandson, Robert Bruce, John de Verdun, and many other great lords from this side and that of the sea made their way with a great company and a great force of men to the Holy Land.’)46

43 See

Oldest, ll. 3577–80, 4102–206. ll. 4185–7. 45 Oldest, ll. 4202–6; see p. 346. 46 Oldest, ll. 4207–11. 44 Oldest,

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Social Arthur This vision of the English at last united, together with knights from abroad, turning their aggression away from each other and towards a common and distant enemy, makes a pointed contrast to the Barons’ War. This moment too has its analogue in Arthur’s reign. Just before his battle against the Roman emperor, the Oldest Version has Arthur deliver a speech to his army. The Oldest Version tends to omit Wace’s pieties,47 but here, setting aside the claims of legal precedent carefully established before Arthur crosses the Channel, Arthur presents defeating the Roman forces as a religious duty: ‘Aloms’, fet il, ‘hardement en le noun de deu, e assembloms hui as Romains qe ount amene ouesqe eux sarazins e paeins qe ne ount en deu affiaunce, mes se affient en lour pussaunce demene. Aloms si les enquerroms asprement en noun de deu, e occioms paeins e crestiens qe sunt venuz oue eux pur destrure crestiens, e deu nous aidera, qar nostre est le dreit. Eoms en deu bone esperaunce, e fesoms issint qe les enemis de la crestienite soient confunduz, morz, e destruz, al honur de deu, e qomme pusse dire granz bens de nostre chiualerie.’ Quant Arthur auoit issint dit, tretuz i crierent a haute voice, ‘Deu, Per Omnipotent, soit beneit, loe, e glorifie en tuz siecles, amen, [e nous doyne grace a bien fere e bien feryr e destrure les enemys de la crestiente,] en noun del Pier e del Fiz e del Seint Espirit. E ia deu ne li doint grace ne honur en le siecle ne eyt merci de li qe se feindra de ben fere.’ (‘“Let us go”, he said, “boldly in the name of God, and join battle today with the Romans who have brought with them Saracens and pagans who do not have trust in God, but trust in their own strength. Let us go and seek them out keenly in the name of God, and let us kill pagans and Christians who have come with them to destroy Christians, and God will help us, for we are in the right. Let us have good hope in God, and let us act so that the enemies of Christendom may be undone, dead, and destroyed, to the honor of God, and so that great deeds may be told of our knighthood.” When Arthur had thus spoken, they all cried in a loud voice, “May God, Father Almighty, be blessed, praised, and glorified forever, amen, and may He give us grace to do well and fight well and destroy the enemies of Christendom, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And may God indeed give no favor nor honor in the world nor have mercy on him who only feigns to do well.”’)48

This passage uniquely elaborates Wace’s material, carefully synthesizing two moments. One is the equivalent speech in Wace, in which Arthur assures his men of their superiority: 47 For

instance, in Wace, Arthur takes pity on the Scots partly out of reverence for the relics carried by the clerics in the crowd (RB, l. 9524), which are not mentioned in the OV. The OV also retains mention of Arthur’s strength and his great sword but not his devotion to the Virgin as demonstrated by her image on his shield (cf. Oldest, ll. 1656–7, and RB, ll. 9267–360). 48 Oldest, ll. 1919–31.

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The Construction of Vernacular History ‘Tel gent quiderent ici trover Cum il ameinent d’orient; Mais un de nus valt de ces cent. Nes alez vus neent dutant, Kar femmes valent altretant. Bien nus devum en Deu fier; Ne devum pas desesperer, Od un petit de hardement, Que nus veintrum legierement.’ (‘“They will expect to find here the sort of men they are bringing from the East, but one of us is worth a hundred of theirs. Don’t be afraid of them, for women are worth as much. We must trust in God and not lose the hope that, with a little daring, we shall easily defeat them.”’)49

The other is a later episode in the thick of the battle, when, after hacking a pagan king to pieces, the warrior Hyrelgas urges on his companions: ‘Venez, dist il, fiz a baruns! Alum ocire ces Romeins, Ces paltentiers, fiz a puteins; La gent ki en Deu n’ad creance Ne ki en Deu nen ad fiance Unt amené en cest païs Pur nus ocire noz amis; Alum ocire les paens E ensement les cristïens Ki as paens se sunt justé Pur destruire cristïenté. Venez asaier voz vertuz!’ (‘“Come on, you barons’ sons! Let’s go and kill these Romans, these bastards and sons of whores. They have brought into this land people with no faith or trust in God, to kill us and our friends. Let’s go and kill the heathen, and the Christians likewise, who have united with the heathen to destroy Christianity. Come and test your strength!”’)50

The temper of Hyrelgas’s exhortation, with its scatological insults and its final challenge to British knighthood, is quite different from that of Arthur’s, with its moralizing on the folly of those who trust in their own strength before the power of God, and with its emphasis on the honor of God before that of the British army. The army’s reply makes it all the clearer that Arthur’s war has become a crusade.

49 RB, 50 RB,

ll. 12426–34; Arthur’s whole speech is ll. 12397–440. ll. 12710–21.

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Social Arthur The writer of the Oldest Version thus particularizes Arthur not just as an exemplar of good kingship but as a model for or forerunner of Edward I. The reflection works both ways: the more the writer makes Arthur resemble an idealized Edward, a king who deals handily with infidels and Scottish rebels and brings unity, order, and peace to his realm, the more Edward can resemble Arthur, and the more encouraging the historical precedent seems. Unlike Arthur, Edward did not make short work of the pacification of Scotland. His outnumbered crusading forces were not meeting with success, and the prince himself was already starting home, when the news of Henry’s death arrived.51 Some of the first audience for the prose Brut were crusaders themselves, as well as those who knew them as friends, fathers, brothers, and husbands. As Christopher Tyerman has shown, the idea of the crusade – either against pagans generally or for the recovery of the Holy Land – was by no means moribund in fourteenth- and even fifteenth-century England. Not a hazy memory or a recognizably lost cause to the writer and audience of the Oldest Version, the crusade was a recent phenomenon, imbued with high purpose if not great success. Representing Arthur as a version of Edward I makes it easier for the current king to measure up to his great forbear, although – or perhaps because – none of Edward’s acts as king are mentioned in the Oldest Version, which concludes with Henry’s death. Any specific, conscious analogies between Arthur and Edward are to be drawn by the audience of the Brut in consideration of their own experience. The writer of the Oldest Version provides the first half of the analogy by reconstructing Arthur and so encourages his audience to do the rest.52 The gesture is more than a pleasantry: it is implicit rather than overt political prophecy, and because of its delicacy, Arthur’s successes may serve as models for the future, while his downfall may be laid aside or taken as a cautionary tale that leaves room for Edward to surpass his exemplar.

51 C.

Tyerman, England and the Crusades (Chicago, 1988), p. 131. fourteenth-century historians writing in French do explicitly invoke Arthur as an exemplar, as Tyson discusses (D. B. Tyson, ‘King Arthur as a Literary Device in French Vernacular History Writing of the Fourteenth Century’, Bulletin bibliographique de la Société Internationale Arthurienne 33 (1981), 237–57). Maurice Powicke notes the way another chronicle connects Arthur and Edward I: the account of Edward’s wedding festivities in Rishanger’s Annales Angliae et Scotiae ‘is copied verbatim, with a few omissions and slight variations, from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s description of King Arthur’s coronation feast’ (M. Powicke, The Thirteenth Century, 1216–1307, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1962) p. 515 n., citing William Rishanger, Willelmi Rishanger Chronica et Annales, ed. H. T. Riley, Rolls Series 28, pt. 2 (London, 1865), pp. 395–7; see HRB, § 157, pp. 213–15). See Spence on the varied ways in which AN chroniclers deploy or suppress the figure of Arthur (Reimagining, pp. 41–54).

52 Some

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The Construction of Vernacular History

Arthurian Anti-Romance Arthur meets with only a single knightly adventure in the prose Brut, supplied by Geoffrey of Monmouth: that of the giant of Mont-Saint-Michel, who abducts King Arthur’s kinswoman Eleine and her nurse. With its distressed women, monstrous antagonist, and single combat, this episode could be considered an epitome of the heroic knightly encounter to be found throughout romance tradition, as well as another opportunity to connect Arthur to Brut as giant-killer.53 But whereas Wace retains Geoffrey’s detailed account of the battle, dwelling on the giant’s hideous appearance and grisly habits, the details of the fight, and Arthur’s heroic determination to face his opponent alone, the Oldest Version compresses it just as it does the other battles in the text: vint lendemain al geant e se combatist oue li, e oue grant peine le conquist e loccist. E donqe fist il Bedewer couper sa teste e porter le en le ost pur mustrer la merueille, tant est le geaunt grant e huge. E trestuz se esioierent de li vaillaunt seignur. [Hoel fu dolent de sa nece ke ele fu issi perdue, e pus kuant il aueyt leyser il fyt fere vne bele chapele de Nostre Dame outre la toumbe, ke ore est apele le Toumbe Eleyne.] (‘he came the next day to the giant and fought with him, and with great effort he defeated him and killed him. And then he had Bedewer cut off his head and carry it to the army to show the marvel, the giant was so great and huge. And all rejoiced at their worthy lord. Hoel mourned for his niece, that she had thus been lost, and then when he had occasion he had a beautiful chapel of Our Lady built over the tomb, which is now called Eleine’s Tomb.’)54

Arthur’s bravery is praised, but the episode concludes with Hoel’s grief for the loss the king cannot prevent. What the writer of the Oldest Version does retain at considerable length is the untriumphal tale of what happens before the hero arrives, as told by the aged nurse, who, captive to the giant, mourns beside Eleine’s tomb. Through the nurse’s account, the chronicle displays its typical sympathy for the victims of rape—and a stark sense of rape’s violence as well. Whereas Geoffrey’s Helena is a gentlewoman so refined that she dies of fear before any violation can occur, and Wace implies that Eleine’s soul is crushed out of her by the giant’s sheer weight, the Oldest Version’s phrasing permits a graphic reading of events while retaining much of Wace’s language. The nurse reports,

53 Rupert

Pickens compares the versions of Geoffrey and Wace, with emphasis on corteisie in Wace (‘Arthur’s Channel Crossing: Courtesy and the Demonic in Geoffrey of Monmouth and Wace’s Brut’, Arthuriana 7 (1997), 3–19). 54 Oldest, ll. 1900–5; the equivalent in Wace is over 150 lines long (RB, ll. 11450–608).

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Social Arthur ‘Vint vn deable, vn geant, e la rauist e moi ensement, e ci nous amena. Il vout purgisir la pucele qe fu si ioesne e tendre, mes ele nel poeit suffrir, tant est le geaunt grant e huge. E issint morust ele, e gist en ceste tumbe.’ (‘“A devil came, a giant, and he abducted her and me as well, and he brought us here. He wanted to rape the maiden who was so young and delicate, but she could not endure it, the giant is so great and huge. And so she died, and she lies in this tomb.”’)55

The nurse is a common woman: her commonness is signaled by the fact that she can survive repeated rape by the giant, but her anguish is also recognized. As she explains, ‘Ne faut gueres qil moi ad mis ala mort, taunt ai ieo peine quant il moi purieust’ (‘He has almost killed me, I suffer so when he rapes me’).56 Wace repeatedly uses the word ‘hunte’ (‘shame‘) in this episode; the Oldest Version does not.57 The old nurse makes a longer appearance and a longer speech than almost any other non-royal character in the entire Oldest Version: she serves to contextualize Arthur’s adventure. She propels the episode beyond the demonstration of prowess and even beyond Arthur’s desire to protect or avenge his own. Her presence shows that while doing these things, Arthur also serves the common good. The giant Dinabus is not merely a monster on an isolated peak: if anything, the Oldest Version humanizes him by omitting the gruesome details – such as gobbets of flesh stuck in his beard – that Wace provides. Dinabus is the figure of the tyrant taken to its monstrous extreme. He knows no law, he seizes whatever he wants, and the fact that he victimizes noble and commoner alike implies the extent of his threat. When Arthur fights him, he is not only killing an individual monster but defeating the lawless abuse that the giant epitomizes. The kinswoman whose rape prompts Arthur to action cannot be saved, but the nurse can: the passage’s dominant image of Arthur is that of the king as helper of the poor and weak rather than as great warrior.58 As always, the chronicle gives more prominence to the social context and consequences of conflict than to the conflict itself, and in so doing it takes the most glamorous episode of Arthur’s Galfridian career and fits it into an understanding of 55 Oldest,

ll. 1887–90; see also p. 317. In Wace, the nurse says, ‘“Uns gaianz mei e li ravi / E mei e li aporta ci. / La pucele volt purgesir, / Mais tendre fu, nel pout suffrir; / Trop fu ahueges, trop fu granz, / Trop laiz, trop gros e trop pesanz; / L’aume li fist del cors partir, / Nel pout Eleine sustenir”’ (RB, ll. 11405–12). See HRB, § 165, p. 225. Matheson notes the ambiguity of this phrasing (‘Genealogy’, p. 230). 56 Oldest, ll. 1894–5. This explanation is again briefer but more explicit than the one in Wace (RB, ll. 11425–44); the nurse in Geoffrey merely mentions the fact of her rape (HRB, § 165, p. 225). 57 See RB, ll. 11415, 11424, 11601. 58 The OV eliminates entirely Arthur’s reminiscences about his own prowess in single combat against the giant Rithon (RB, ll. 11561–92).

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The Construction of Vernacular History Arthur’s duty to his people as king and lord. Here rape is a reminder of troubles that cannot always be prevented but must be confronted. The story of the giant of Mont-Saint-Michel may have received such judicious editing exactly because it is an adventure: it may smack of the fabulous kind of Arthurian tale whose existence the Oldest Version never openly acknowledges. Whatever works in the romance tradition the writer of the Oldest Version may have known, it is certain that he knew of the varieties of Arthurian tradition and the debate over their believability, because he faced the task of rendering the now-famous passage in which Wace himself teasingly brings up the issue, after describing the establishment of the Round Table. Evoking a babel of competing, ever-changing Arthurian stories, Wace contemplates the process by which legends grow: En cele grant pais ke jo di, Ne sai si vus l’avez oï, Furent les merveilles pruvees E les aventures truvees Ki d’Artur sunt tant recuntees Ke a fable sunt aturnees. ... Ne tut mençunge, ne tut veir, Tut folie ne tut saveir. Tant unt li cunteür cunté E li fableür tant flablé Pur lur cuntes enbeleter, Que tut unt fait fable sembler. (‘In this time of great peace I speak of – I do not know if you have heard of it – the wondrous events appeared and the adventures were sought out which . . . are so often told about Arthur that they have become the stuff of fiction: not all lies, not all truth, neither total folly nor total wisdom. The raconteurs have told so many yarns, the story-tellers so many stories, to embellish their tales that they have made it all appear fiction.’)59

The threat of art to truth is lightly acknowledged: storytellers and fabulists, instead of preserving a secure narrative tradition, improve their stories of Arthur’s marvels and adventures until none of them (including perhaps Wace’s own) can be relied upon. Wace, who knows perfectly well that he himself has been embellishing, is also well aware that the distinction between a fabulator and historian lies very much in the eyes of the beholder. He raises

59 RB,

ll. 9787–92, 9795–8 (ll. 9793–4 omitted in manuscripts Dur and Lin). Putter considers this moment a scornful dismissal of fable, by which Wace establishes ‘his credentials as a judicious historian’ (‘Finding Time’, p. 3). See also Sargent-Baur, ‘Veraces’, pp. 28–33.

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Social Arthur the issue of discernment but does not propose a solution: the audience’s discretion is advised. The writer of the Oldest Version boils this passage down to something considerably less indeterminate and unsettling: ‘En mesmes cel temps qil regna issint en pes furent les merueilles prouez e les auentures trouez dont homme ad souent counte e oi’ (‘In this same time when he thus reigned in peace the marvels were manifested and the adventures encountered of which one has often told and heard’).60 By consigning the stories of marvel and adventure wholly to the realm of the oral and ephemeral, he is allowing for their existence while neither actively countenancing nor explicitly rejecting them, but distancing his own work from them. To acknowledge the existence of craft in writing and representation, the possible embellishment of stories, would bring into question the prose Brut’s governing fiction, which is also its governing truth-claim, that its words constitute unmediated truth. The existence of Arthurian fable – and Wace’s invitation to critical or playful reading – are more or less figuratively erased. (A later reviser, probably the maker of the Long Version, takes the next step and removes the sentence entirely, so that adventure is not so much as mentioned.)61 The writer of the Oldest Version will not attempt to argue the superiority of his Arthur to that of romance. He will simply recognize no other kind. In this, his goal is the opposite of Malory’s some two hundred years later: he does not wish to stir the various ingredients of Arthurian narrative into one pot, but to distil a version that celebrates Arthur’s excellence as he understands it.62 The medieval audience for Arthurian texts, or vernacular narrative in general, has often been imagined as hungry for glamour, sex, and violence, and the more the better. Martin and Thomson, for instance, claim that Geoffrey’s ‘ingredients of magic, battle and romance appealed to a lay audience, and specifically to the knightly aristocracy and its numerous clients’, and that through vernacular retellings including those of the prose Brut, ‘Geoffrey’s work, and the view of British history which it promoted, became deeply rooted in the English conciousness.’63 It cannot be emphasized enough how completely the prose Brut chronicle discredits this model of Arthurian appeal. Such elements are precisely the ones that the composer of the Oldest Version eliminates from his text: the depiction of pageantry and joy in combat virtually vanish, and magic and individual prowess appear primarily as means to socially beneficial ends. The wish that the prose Brut

60 Oldest,

ll. 1730–2. RD329, fol. 49r (which has the sentence); CD3, fol. 103r; Brie, Brut, I, 78. The LV and its descendants also omit the name of Arthur’s sword Caliburn; see Oldest, pp. 314–15. 62 See below, pp. 252–5, on the OV’s handling of the myth of Arthur’s return. 63 Martin and Thomson, ‘History’, II, 403. 61 Cf.

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The Construction of Vernacular History fulfills is the wish for order, not for adventure. The chronicle portrays a world in which the greatest of kings is a statesman, respectful of his baronage, seeking peace, stability, and prosperity for his people. For all that, its Arthur ends as a king who has failed to get an heir, brought down by a scheming kinsman whose children will carry the conflict into the next generation. He ultimately no more escapes the trials of governing his realm and household than do other kings of Britain. This Arthur may well have been the best and most widely known Arthur of the late Middle Ages in England, and he cannot be assimilated tidily into the modern paradigms of chronicle or romance. The prose Brut offers his story as serious, socially responsible, politically inflected truth. He becomes a figure who can offer to an English audience – an audience that seems to have welcomed him warmly – not a fantastic escape from, but an apparent answer, however idealized, to the demands of real life. As with the matter of Troy, recognition of this Arthur and his ubiquity in the libraries of late medieval readers invites reconsideration of the nature and function of the matter of Arthur throughout late medieval English culture.

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5 The Continuity of the Realm

For all its modesty and pragmatism, for all its promotion of peace, prosperity, and order over combat, magnificence, and adventure, and for all its acknow­ ledgment of the disappointments of even the greatest rulers, the Oldest Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut does display a larger triumphalist impulse within its survey of one king after another. The chronicle’s structure unites narrative and lineage, representing them as not only coherent, but nearly synonymous: continuous story and continuous succession.1 For one of the Oldest Version’s main, if unstated, goals is to give its readers a sense of essentially unbroken lineage from the time of Brut straight through to that of the Plantagenets in power when the chronicle was composed. The writer faces a substantial task, given the island’s long record of conquest and displacement – a record emphasized in the chronicle’s sources. While manifesting awareness of the horrors and constant risk of dynastic breakdown and deploying as cautionary tales the stories of vexed succession provided by his sources, he nevertheless provides an account of British history that offers a reassuring sense of continuous heritage on a grand scale. Over and over in the opening chapters of the prose Brut, families quarrel, the realm is divided, war results, and unity is achieved again only at great cost. Contested and broken succession leads to a generation or more of misery, while restoration achieved by a deserving and rightful heir who seeks alliance with others, or by the last-second aversion of civil war, leads to generation after generation of stability.2 Order is the element that linear genealogy and smooth succession provide, and from which all stand to benefit. Only when lineage and succession hold can the land remain united and sound. And order is shown as something to be cultivated, not presumed or undermined. Up to a point, the writer of the Oldest Version is working with extremely tractable materials, ones that show the full range of possibilities but always bring back 1 See

Spiegel’s discussion of genealogy (conceived very broadly) as a foundation for both form and meaning, as well as a linear but not calendrical sense of time, in thirteenth-century French historical literature: in a number of ways, the PB fits her model of genealogy deploying ‘history as a series of biographies linked by the principle of hereditary succession’(G. M. Spiegel, The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography (Baltimore, 1997), p. 106). 2 See Marvin, ‘Narrative’, pp. 207–9, for a more detailed discussion.

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The Construction of Vernacular History the rightful line. The Roman occupation of Britain poses a greater challenge and marks a larger-scale editorial effort.

The Romans in Britain When Julius Caesar first invades, he is driven off by Cassibelaun.3 The emperor’s next attempt is even more humiliating: he must flee with ‘tresgrant hunte, vencu e desconfist, oue vn poi de ses Romains qe li furent demorez en vie’ (‘with very great shame, vanquished and defeated, with the few of his Romans left alive to him’).4 Only on the third try, when the earl of London, an alienated and ambitious nephew of the king, invites Caesar back, can the emperor meet with enough success to demand tribute from King Cassibelaun: as usual in the Oldest Version, foreign conquest results from internal conflict or betrayal and an ill-judged invitation from a British malcontent. After six months, Caesar leaves along with the treacherous nephew: ‘lemperour returna a Rome e le conte de Loundres oue li, qar il nosa point demorer en ceste terre’ (‘the emperor returned to Rome, and the earl of London with him, for he did not at all dare remain in this land’).5 The Oldest Version is not very fastidious about its pronouns, but here the writer may be exploiting the ambiguity as to who dares not remain. It is not much of a victory when any of the victors feel obliged to flee for their lives. This sort of tweaking is typical of the writer’s approach: he does not exactly do violence to the Galfridian plot (which already minimizes the Roman occupation) but shifts its emphases when he can. Similarly, King Arvirager’s subsequent resubmission to Rome and marriage to a Roman princess become a triumph. In Geoffrey and Wace, Arvirager is besieged and desperate in Winchester when the emperor offers peace. In the Oldest Version, the story is simply reversed: E pus ala Aruirager a Wyncestre pur quere Claudius Cesar lemperour, e la le prist il. Mes par conseil de ses Romains qe la furent demorez oue li en vie, fist pes oue Aruirager en ceste forme: qil li durrast a femme sa fille Ienewenne la bele, issi qe ceste terre serroit desouz le poeste lemperur de Rome de cel iour en auaunt, issi qe nul emperour iames en temps qe fut auenir apres cel mariage ne prendroit autre truage de ceste terre fors tantsoulement feaute. E issint acorderent. (‘And then Arvirager went to Winchester to seek Claudius Caesar the emperor, and there he captured him. But by the counsel of those of his Romans who had survived with him, he made peace with Arvirager on these terms: he would give him as wife his daughter Genewenne the fair,

3 Oldest,

ll. 655–8. ll. 666–7, and see p. 304 on the sources. 5 Oldest, ll. 683–4, and see p. 304, notes for l. 645, on the proper names in this section. 4 Oldest,

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The Continuity of the Realm on condition that this land would be under the dominion of the emperor of Rome from this day forward, and on condition that after this marriage from henceforth no emperor would ever take any other tribute from this land except fealty alone. And so they were reconciled.’)6

The rest of the Roman occupation works out similarly.7 In glossing over the Roman conquest of Britain, the writer of the Oldest Version is only taking Geoffrey of Monmouth a few steps further. For later events he is on his own.

The Fate of the Britons Geoffrey and Wace both conclude with the events surrounding what in received historical tradition was treated as the ruin of the Britons, their irretrievable loss of land and power when the Saxons overran and renamed England. This culmination makes the entire history of the Britons a negative exemplum for readers, whether they identify more with the British line or with conquerors who may themselves one day be displaced.8 For Geoffrey, the focus of the whole history becomes the downfall of a people plagued by vice, pride, and internal conflict, defeated not by their enemies but by the righteous wrath of God. Wace does not repeat Geoffrey’s moral denunciations, but at the end of his poem that the Britons are unquestionably finished: Unc puis ne furent del poeir Qu’il peüssent Logres aveir; Tuit sunt mué e tuit changié, Tuit sunt divers e forslignié De noblesce, d’onur, de murs E de la vie as anceisurs. (‘They were never again powerful enough to take Logres. They are all altered and all changed, they are all different and far from the nobility, honor, ways, and life of their ancestors.’)9

6 Oldest,

ll. 731–7; see Eckhardt, ‘Presence’, p. 201, for discussion of the equivalent scene in the MEPB. 7 See Oldest, pp. 304–8. 8 See Hanning, Vision, pp. 121–72. For a well-grounded and very dark reading of Geoffrey, see Echard, Arthurian Narrative, pp. 31–67, esp. pp. 63–7. Emmanuèle Baumgartner offers a sensitive reading of Wace’s development of Geoffrey’s lineage-based narrative: she notes that in his closing lines Wace makes the end of the ‘geste des Bretuns’ and of the ‘lignee des baruns / Ki del lignage Bruti vindrent’ into one and the same thing. See E. Baumgartner, ‘Le Brut de Wace: Préhistoire Arthurienne et écriture de l’histoire’, in Maistre Wace: A Celebration, ed. G. S. Burgess and J. Weiss (St Helier, 2006), pp. 17–30 (p. 24, citing RB, ll. 14859–61). 9 RB, ll. 14849–54, translation mine; see Le Saux, Companion, pp. 125–50, for discussion of Wace’s treatment of the passage of dominion.

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The Construction of Vernacular History The fall of the Britons is a lengthy and complicated tale even in Geoffrey’s version, and tracing the ways in which the writer of the Oldest Version alters his sources is a necessarily painstaking task. To summarize the version of events in Geoffrey and Wace: after Gormundus the African and his Saxon allies conquer and ravage the island, the Britons flee to Cornwall, Wales, and Little Britain. Galvanized by the slaughter of their clerics, the Britons win a battle against the Saxons and elect Caduanus their king. As the next battle is about to begin, the two sides reach a peaceful agreement in which the Saxon Edelfridus is to have Britain above the Humber and the Briton Caduanus the land below it. The two kings become close friends and foster their sons and heirs, Edwinus and Caduallo, together. When the sons come to power, they continue their friendship, and Edwinus asks Caduallo for the right to be crowned king of his lands. Caduallo’s nephew, the British patriot Brianus, convinces the king to refuse. War breaks out. After defeat and flight from the island, Caduallo returns and triumphs (largely because of the heroic exploits of Brianus), slaughters many of the Saxons, and leaves the surviving Saxon rulers (Peanda and the devout Oswi) to fight each other. Peanda becomes Caduallo’s vassal and brother-in-law. Caduallo rules well and successfully for forty-eight years, but calamity follows. His successor Cadualadrus (hereafter anglicized as Cadwallader) falls ill after twelve years of rule; civil war breaks out, then famine, then plague; the Britons flee to Little Britain; the island lies almost deserted for eleven years, nearly reverting to its savage pre-British state. When the plague ends, the surviving Saxons invite hordes of their fellows, who overrun the land without encountering any resistance by which to earn their place. The Saxon settlement is thus a debased version of Brut’s conquest but a version nonetheless. Whereas Diane urges Brut forward to the island, an angelic voice forbids Cadwallader to return. His son and nephew lead a tiny remnant of the Britons back to the island, but they cannot reconquer their home and hold only an inhospitable and mountainous part of the land. They become known as the Welsh (‘Gualenses’), and the story ends with England firmly in the grasp of its new Saxon masters.10 The destruction and exile of the Britons controvert much of what the writer of the Oldest Version tries to demonstrate about the workings of history. The visitation of God’s wrath on an entire sinful people is a favorite explanatory device of monastic chronicles, perhaps more often in their prefaces than in their actual narratives, but one that the writer of the Oldest Version avoids, portraying vice and its punishment in relation to individual rulers and preferring to show the masses as innocent and well-meaning. Still, the greatest challenges presented by Cadwallader’s story are the fact of the

10 HRB,

§ 184–208, pp. 257–81; RB, ll. 13376–4866. See Lamont, ‘Becoming’, pp. 288–94, for a brief account of the representation of the coming of the Saxons prior to the PB.

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The Continuity of the Realm catastrophic dynastic break itself and the acknowledgment of the crushing, permanent defeat of the descendants of Brut. There could be no more drastic breach in the ongoing history of the people of the island than for it to lose one population, lie vacant, and then gain another one, with the Welsh the only remaining descendants of Brut. The episode is virtually unassimilable into the historical understanding of the Oldest Version. Just before the introduction of Gurmund the African, the writer of the Oldest Version nevertheless seems to announce that he will tell exactly this story: Apres cesti Malgo regna vn son parent qe auoit anun Certik, qe fu hainus a tute gente e nent ame. Il perdi tute Bretaine par guere. En soun temps auint la grant mescheance en ceste terre qe tute la crestienite fu destrute, e trestuz les Brutons enchacez, e perdirent la terre sanz iames plus recouerir, mes tuz iours pus demora as Sessouns. E si vous dirrai ieo coment, sicome est ore troue en le dreit estorie. (‘After this Malgo reigned a kinsman of his who was named Certik, who was hateful to all people and not at all loved. He lost all Britain through war. In his time befell the great misfortune in this land that all Christianity was destroyed, and all the Britons driven off, and they lost the land, never to recover it again, but it always thereafter remained to the Saxons. And indeed I will tell you how, as it is now found in the true history.’)11

But what follows in the chronicle does not correspond. The first notable editorial tendency the Oldest Version displays in this section is a certain caginess about the changing names of the island and its inhabitants. For Wace, the loss of the name of Britain is practically synonymous with the loss of the land itself. He introduces Gurmund as the agent of ‘la destructiun / Dunt Bretaine perdi sun nun’ (‘the destruction through which Britain lost its name’), and he constructs the loss of the old name and the acquisition of new inhabitants and overlords as an exchange: Britain ‘par Gurmund sun nun perdi / Si ot novels abiteürs, / Novels reis e novels seignurs’ (through Gurmunt it lost its name and acquired new inhabitants, new kings and new lords’).12 Geoffrey of Monmouth does not discuss the name of England or the Heptarchy: he uses the terms ‘Saxones’ and ‘Angli’ interchangeably and nowhere explains the origins of the words. The emphasis on the loss of the name of Britain as an index of the dissolution of the British people appears to be Wace’s innovation, and one that the Oldest Version does not adopt.13 11 Oldest,

ll. 2084–9. This passage is even more extreme than the equivalent in Wace (RB, ll. 13375–83), which does not dwell on the destruction of Christianity or the irrevocability of the loss. It is also highly unusual in possessing a first-person narrator and reference to a putative ‘droit estorie’. 12 RB, ll. 13383–4, 13656–8. 13 See above, pp. 31–2, on their approaches to the renaming of New Troy.

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The Construction of Vernacular History The Oldest Version first acknowledges the shift in the realm’s name with a comment during the account of Engist that makes its persistence sound almost accidental: Engist ‘fyt changer le noun de la tere issint qe nul homme des soens ne fu si hardi de appeller de cel iour enauant Bretaine, mes Engistlonde, qe ore est appele Engleterre communement’ (‘had the name of the land changed, so that from that day forward no man of his was so bold as to call it Britain, but Engistland, which is now commonly called England’).14 At the next mention, the Oldest Version displays less interest in the social implications of linguistic change than in the demonstration of just how terrible Gurmund is, and how little credit the Saxons can take for their triumph: Quaunt Gurmund auoit gaste, robbe, e destrute la terre, e les villes artz, chasteux destruz, tours e eglises abatuz, e le regne ad tretut done as Sessouns, e il le ount resceu oue bon quoer, qar il auoient longement desire. E pur ceo qil furent del linage Engist qe primes auoit terre en Bretaine, il se firent appeler Engleis par le noun Engist remembrer. E la terre appelerent en lor langage Englond, quore est appelle Engleterre en fraunceis. (‘When Gurmund had laid waste, pillaged, and ruined the land, and the cities were burnt, castles destroyed, and towers and churches torn down, he then gave the whole realm to the Saxons, and they received it gladly, for they had long desired it. And because they were of the lineage of Engist who first held land in Britain, they had themselves called English in order to commemorate the name of Engist. And in their language they called the land England, which is now called “Engleterre” in French.’)15

The Oldest Version is extremely meticulous in its vocabulary; after this point, the name ‘Engleterre’ entirely replaces ‘Bretaine’, and the word ‘Sessoun’ is not used again. The people of the island are now called ‘Engleis’. The word ‘Bretoun’ last occurs two folios later, at the election of Cadwan as king. Soon, a process of blurring the distinction between English and British begins, as the writer refrains from offering ethnic identification of individual rulers, and their personal moral qualities start to serve as the dominant predictor of success or failure. When Cadwan makes peace with Elfrid, the writer of the Oldest Version signals his approval with a simile of his own, an extraordinarily rare move on his part: ‘deuindrent pus si bons amis a tute lour vie qil sentreamerent taunt come sil vssent este freres dun ventre’ (‘they then became such good friends for their whole lives that they loved each other as much as if they

14 Oldest,

ll. 1238–40, italics mine, and see p. 310. ll. 2139–44, and see pp. 319–20. The OV here negotiates the contemporary coexistence of the French and English languages without explaining it, just as it does not acknowledge any kind of linguistic shift at the time of the Norman Conquest. See below.

15 Oldest,

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The Continuity of the Realm had been brothers from a single womb’).16 This fraternal image of shared heritage, nurturance, and blood effaces the difference between peoples that has dominated the history of the island since the time of Engist and Vortiger. The kings’ sons Edwin and Cadwalein continue in this happy state: when they succeed their fathers, they too love each other like brothers. But after only two years, ‘surdit vn descord entre eux, par vn maluois, felon, enuoius neueu Cadwaleyn, qe out anoun Briens’ (‘a conflict arose between them, through a wicked, vicious, envious nephew of Cadwalein, who was named Briens’).17 In Geoffrey and Wace, Briens is a hero so devoted to Cadwalein that he cooks a piece of his own flesh when the king is ill and craves meat.18 Here, the literally self-sacrificing nephew is recast as the Brut’s stock figure of the scheming relative, envious of the two kings’ peaceful friendship. The origin of the conflict in the older versions – the desire of the Saxon king to be crowned in his own right and in the manner of his own people – is not addressed. To mention it would be to recall the separate nations represented here, and to bypass it casts Briens’s cause as that of petty jealousy, not British honor. And, since this cause is unjust, it comes as less of a shock when Edwin defeats Cadwalein, who must flee to Ireland. Now the Oldest Version begins to run through events at an even more breakneck pace than usual. Cadwalein returns from Ireland with a huge force and kills Edwin, his relatives, and his heirs in a fratricidal reversal of their previous relations. At this point, ethnic identifications break down entirely, and Cadwalein goes after a new enemy: Vn gentil ber crestien qe mult ama deu auoit le regne de Northumberlande par heritage, qe auoit anoun Oswald, et fu roi de tute cele terre. Mes pur ceo qil fu parente Edwyn e tint vne grant partie de la terre Cadwaleyn, il le guerra e le chaca vers Escoce. (‘A noble Christian man named Oswald, who greatly loved God, had the realm of Northumberland by inheritance, and he was king of that whole land. But because he was a kinsman of Edwin and held a great portion of Cadwalein’s land, he made war on him and drove him towards Scotland.’)19

Religion displaces nation as the essential identification, the nature of the heritage that makes Oswald a rightful king is not specified, and Cadwalein puts himself into the wrong by pursuing Oswald to the death even when it is clear that he does not wish to fight:

16 Oldest,

ll. 2258–60. Wace describes their great friendship but does not represent them as brothers (RB, ll. 14000–10). 17 Oldest, ll. 2266–8. 18 HRB, § 193, p. 267; RB, ll. 14194–222. 19 Oldest, ll. 2280–3.

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The Construction of Vernacular History E quant Cadwaleyn vist qil senfui e ne voleit attendre, il ne li voleit plus lunge chacer. Mes bailla vne partie de sa gente a Peanda, qi soer il auoit a femme, e li priast qil chacast Oswald tanqe le eust pris e occis. (‘And when Cadwalein saw that he fled and would not remain, he did not wish to pursue him any longer. But he assigned a portion of his men to Peanda, whose sister he had married, and he asked him to pursue Oswald until he had captured and killed him.’)20

In Geoffrey and Wace, Peanda is the Saxon king of the Mercians, vassal to Caduallo after a crushing defeat: here he is merely Cadwalein’s brother-inlaw and henchman. After Cadwalein and Peanda manage to kill Oswald, the Oldest Version adds that at Oswald’s tomb ‘deus ad fet multz des miracles pur lamur de li, e en autres leus ensement’ (‘God has done many miracles for love of him, and in other places as well’).21 The side that Wace would identify as British has gone morally bankrupt, and God shows his favor to the Saxons, but since the writer of the Oldest Version has hidden the ethnicities of his characters, the reader sees only white hats and black hats. Cadwalein now vanishes from the text. The evil Peanda allies himself with the treasonous relatives of Oswald’s heir Oswy. He has taken up the role of outsider brought into an internal conflict, and he furthermore refuses a peaceful settlement: Oswy estoit homme deboner, e mult ama pes e charite, si pria e manda a Peanda e le offri or e argent a grant plente pur pes auer e amour. Mes Peanda fu si orguillous qil ne voleit en nule manere la pes graunter, mes tuz iours voleit oue li combatre. (‘Oswy was a mild man, and he greatly loved peace and charity, and so he besought and sent word to Peanda and offered him gold and silver in great plenty in order to have peace and love. But Peanda was so prideful that he would in no way grant peace, but still wanted to fight with him.’)22

Within a few lines, Oswy and Peanda are recreating the roles of Arthur and the Roman emperor before their climactic battle: Oswy auoit en deu grant affiaunce e ferme esperaunce, e Peanda sen orguilla mult e se affia durement en le grant poer qil auoit des genz. E sentreferirent irrousement, mes Peanda fu tost desconfist e occis. 20 Oldest,

ll. 2283–6. l. 2296. 22 Oldest, ll. 2306–9. Most of these events can be found in Geoffrey and Wace (see Oldest, pp. 321–2), but the writer of the OV selects and reemphasizes them to particular effect; see, e.g., RB, ll. 14609–24. 21 Oldest,

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The Continuity of the Realm (‘Oswy had great trust and steadfast hope in God, and Peanda became very arrogant and trusted greatly in the large force of men he had. And they attacked each other wrathfully, but Peanda was soon defeated and killed.’)23

Now, at the climax of Geoffrey and Wace’s accounts, the British loss of the island to the Saxon scourge, the writer of the Oldest Version simply abandons his earlier sources, omits Cadwalein’s son Cadwallader, and moves on to material drawn from Gaimar, with the Heptarchy a given and the lineage of St Oswald providing a link, in a bumpy but effective enough transition.24 The writer has prepared for this moment, modestly but thoroughly altering the narrative to create an impression of dynastic continuity. He has eliminated ethnic labels, steered his losing side into the position of wicked usurpers, and placed the mantle of righteous succession on the shoulders of Oswald and his heirs. Instead of describing or justifying the ruin of Britain, the writer disguises and suppresses it, editing what he can of this troubling piece of British history and eliding the rest.25

William and His Descendants The chronicle also handles the Norman Conquest to minimize the appearance of a dynastic shift, taking pains to delegitimize Harold while legitimizing William as much as possible.26 It carefully notes William’s relationship to Edward the Confessor and his brother Alfred: ‘Alured estoit fiz Emme la reine, qe fu soer Richard le duc de Normandie, son predecessour e son ael’ (‘Alfred was the son of Queen Emma, who was the sister of Richard duke of Normandy, his predecessor and his grandfather’).27 It also emphasizes

23 Oldest,

ll. 2310–12. ll. 2308–24. Cf. RB, ll. 13959–4866; HRB, § 190–207, pp. 261–81. See Oldest, pp. 321–3, for a detailed comparison of this section of the text with its sources and analogues. For further discussion of the omission of Cadwallader and the OV’s transition from Wace and Geoffrey to Gaimar, see W. Marx, ‘Middle English Manuscripts of the Brut in the National Library of Wales’, The National Library of Wales Journal / Cylchgrawn Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru 27 (1991–2), 361–82 (pp. 377–80); and MacColl, ‘Rhetoric’, pp. 297–301, 304–5. 25 Argument from silence is always speculative, but given his access to both Wace and Geoffrey, it seems very unlikely to me that the writer of the OV mistakenly left out Cadwallader. 26 Spence considers the representation of the Conquest and William’s reign in a number of AN chronicles, including the OV, and finds a general tendency to legitimize it and a variety of ways of approaching the issue; as he notes, these works may help enable ‘a fuller, more accurate assessment’ of popular late medieval views than ME texts alone can provide (Reimagining, pp. 105–40, with helpful bibliography). 27 Oldest, ll. 3110–11; see also p. 332. 24 Oldest,

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The Construction of Vernacular History Harold’s unfitness, as a greedy and prideful oathbreaker, to rule.28 The Oldest Version reports that even at Hastings William offers Harold the choices of marrying his daughter as he has sworn, holding the land from William by tribute, or deciding the matter by battle. Harold chooses battle, for (like Peanda and others of his ilk who have gone before) he is ‘orguillous e estut, e se affia durement en sa force demene’ (‘prideful and arrogant, and he trusted exceedingly in his own strength’).29 William’s victory becomes a triumph of right as much as might. Aside from mentioning that William ‘regna noblement e dona les terres des Engleis a ses chiualers’ (‘reigned nobly and gave the lands of the English to his knights’), the Oldest Version says nothing about the political and social upheaval of the Conquest.30 It recounts the submission of Malcolm of Scotland but passes over the English rebellions against William, the Domesday survey, and the introduction of the French language, so that the language of the chronicle itself goes unacknowledged and unexplained.31 The Oldest Version makes another, more subtle move, in relation to Edgar Aetheling, grandson of Edmund Ironside. Historically, Edgar Aetheling was quite young, about fourteen or fifteen, at the time of the Conquest. He was proclaimed king ‘by Archbishop Aldred, the citizens of London and earls Edwin and Morkere’ only after the battle of Hastings and had already submitted to William by Christmas of 1066.32 The conflict between Edgar and William is reported in the Barlings chronicle, the prose Brut’s closest analogue here.33 It puts the writer of the Oldest Version into a predicament: to omit Edgar’s claim to the throne would be to omit evidence of Henry Fitzempress’s heritage.34 But to include William’s quashing of the claim would raise other uncomfortable issues. In the event, the writer handles the problem with an act of displacement. He simply works Edgar into his account of Harold’s usurpation of the throne: Quant Seint Edward estoit a deu ale e richement enterre come conuenoit au tel roi estre, les barouns de la terre voleient auer eu Edgar Hethelyng, fiz 28 Oldest,

ll. 3112–59; see also p. 332. ll. 3155–6. 30 Oldest, l. 3169; in a moment of possibly unintentional revisionism, f.f. 14640 says William gave lands ‘as Engleys e’ his knights (see Oldest, p. 395). 31 Oldest, ll. 3170–209. 32 E. B. Fryde, D. E. Greenway, S. Porter, and I. Roy, eds., Handbook of British Chronology, 3rd edn (Cambridge, 1986), q.v. ‘Edgar II the Atheling’. 33 The Barlings chronicle also describes William’s subjugation of the North (see M199, fols. 1r–3r). See Oldest, pp. 332–3, for a more detailed comparison of the OV and its analogues on the Conquest and William’s reign. 34 Just after Edmund’s death, the OV offers an unusual genealogical digression tracing the descent of Henry II from Edmund and William (Oldest¸ ll. 2798–805 and p. 328). Spence notes the presence of such a passage in a number of genealogical rolls (Reimagining, p. 110). 29 Oldest,

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The Continuity of the Realm Edward le Exile, qe fu fiz Edmund Ireneside, pur ceo qil estoit de naturel sanc real. Mais Harald le fiz Godwyn le counte, par aide e force de son per e des autres graunz seignurs de la terre, qe li furent parenz e amis, [seysyt] tute Engleterre en sa main e fu roi. (‘When Saint Edward had gone to God and been richly buried as befitted such a king, the barons of the land wished to have Edgar Aetheling, son of Edward the Exile, who was son of Edmund Ironside, because he was of rightful royal blood. But Harold son of Earl Godwine, by the help and strength of his father and of other great lords of the land, who were his kinsmen and friends, took all England into his hand and was king.’)35

Thus, an episode that might call William’s claim into question is made to serve as further evidence against Harold.36 In its final portions, then, the writer of the Oldest Version is eager to demonstrate the genealogical credentials of the house of Plantagenet. The account of Matilda and Henry’s war against Stephen is presented in terms quite analogous to, though naturally far more detailed than, the chronic civil conflict that characterizes the legendary beginnings of the prose Brut. This tendency may account for one peculiar detail in the text’s account of the end of the war: Mes au darein il feurent acordez par Lerceuesqe Thebaud de Canterburi e par autres bones genz de la terre en ceste forme: qil departiroient le roialme Dengleterre entre eux, issint qe Henri Fiz Lemperice aueroit la moite par mi e par tute ala vie le Roi Esteuen, e apres sa mort, enioieroit tut enterment le regne e la corone. E issint finist la guere entre eux, e pes fu crie par mi tute la terre. (‘But at last they were reconciled by Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury and by other good men of the land on these terms: that they would divide the realm of England between them, so that Henry Fitzempress would have fully half during the life of King Stephen, and after his death, he would completely command the realm and the crown. And so the war between them ended, and peace was proclaimed throughout the whole land.’)37

The unwarranted notion of the literal division of the land (which drives Stephen into his grave with grief) may stem from the similar divisions repeatedly described earlier in the chronicle, and it makes Henry’s ascent to the throne a reunification of the land as well as a restoration of the proper royal line.38 35 Oldest,

ll. 3096–101; see also p. 332. Spence, Reimagining, pp. 109–14, on the OV’s and other chronicles’ treatment of Edgar Aetheling. 37 Oldest, ll. 3451–6. 38 See Oldest, pp. 336–7. 36 See

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The Construction of Vernacular History

‘La Dreit Foi’ Just after the moment when the story of Cadwallader would appear, and (as has been discussed above) the reader’s sympathy and identification have been shifted away from the wicked Peanda to the literally saintly Oswald and Oswy, the woes of a divided realm are described, in a passage reworked from Gaimar: Auint issint en cel temps qe tretuz les rois qe furent en la terre – come celi de Westsexe, Merceneriche, Est Angle, de Kent, e de Sussexe, e de toutz les autres – chesqun guerra autre, e le plus fort tolli terre e regne au plus feble . . . E si graunt fu la guere entre les rois en chesqune pais, qe nul homme poeit sauer coment la terre alast. (‘It so happened in that time that all the kings there were in the land – such as those of Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia, Kent, Sussex, and all the others – warred on one another, and the stronger took land and dominion from the weaker . . . And in every region there was such great war among the kings that no one could know how the land fared.’)39

This time, however, rescue comes in another form. The text continues: Mes abbez, moines, chanoins escritrent les vies e les afferes des rois, pur mustrer la dreit foi come ben chesqun roi regna, e en quele pais e coment il morust, e des euesqes ausi. E fesoient vn grant liure si le appelerent les croniks. Le bon Roi Alured en son temps auoit cel liure en son poer, e le fist mettre en Wincestre en la graunte eglise. E le fist attacher ferme dun chene, qe nul homme nel poeit diloqe remuer ne emporter, mes qe chesqun homme i put regarder e lire ceo qil voudroit. Qar iloqe est la dreit estorie e la vie e les gestes de tuz les rois qe ount este en Engleterre. (‘But abbots, monks, and canons wrote down the lives and conduct of kings, and of bishops as well, in order to set out the proper truth of how long each king reigned and in what country and how he died. And they made a great book and called it the chronicles. The good King Alfred in his time had this book in his keeping, and he had it placed at Winchester in the great church. And he had it attached firmly with a chain, so that no man could remove it from there or carry it away, but so that each man could look at it and read whatever he wanted. For there is the 39 Oldest,

ll. 2318–24, following EE, ll. 2279–319; see Oldest, pp. 322–3. The anarchy after the death of Lucy is also vividly presented, but in somewhat different terms (Oldest, ll. 809–11). Discussing this passage in isolation, MacColl argues that ‘the writer almost certainly took his warring kings from the brief thirteenth-century prose history Li Rei de Engleterre’, which as he shows, is quite close in language here (‘Rhetoric’, p. 298, citing Foltys, Kritische Ausgabe, p. 63). But when the passage is read against other analogous ones in the PB itself, as well as in its known sources, the similarity becomes less apparently distinctive.

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The Continuity of the Realm correct history and the life and deeds of all the kings who have been in England.’)40

This celebration of what is now known as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is the closest the writer of the Oldest Version ever comes to celebrating his own book and acknowledging, however slightly, human agency in the writing of history. The work of the chronicler is represented as a matter of simply recording ‘la dreit foi’, emblematized and stabilized in the form of the chained book that everyone can share and no one can seize for himself. But the very reification of the common past in the form of a book – a made object that must be protected – marks a quiet recognition of that past as a construct: in judging what is true and putting it into narrative form, the chronicler is not only preserving but creating order and stability.41 In the case of the Oldest Version of the prose Brut, by imbuing history with what aspires to be self-evident meaning, the writer strives not only to generate a past but to lay the groundwork for a future to which the past can provide both encouragement and caution. It may be no fluke that what immediately follows his silent elimination of Cadwallader and his comforting picture of the completeness and stability of the chronicles of Winchester – the life and deeds of all the kings of England – is one of the prose Brut’s few moments of acknowledged selectivity: ‘Ne mie pur ceo homme countera ici vn des rois qe donqe furent, par qi pecche e surfet graunz damages e destrucciouns auindrent en ceste terre’ (‘Here, however, will be told of one of the kings who lived then, by whose sin and excess great damage and destruction befell this land’).42 (The king is the rapist Osbright.) The writer goes on to select one king at a time for representation, selecting and streamlining elements from Gaimar’s complex account to generate a linear narrative and seemingly linear succession. He must choose which stories are worth telling, and readers must choose what to make of the stories they receive. The whole process is considerably more active than it may first seem. A shared narrative of history can, of course, not only present but become a species of shared lineage, a common inheritance. In its enormous popularity and longevity, the prose Brut chronicle appears to have come closer to being just that than any other historical narrative of medieval England. At the same time, the history of the prose Brut tradition is itself a reminder that the writer could not chain up his own book. It lasted because it was both gratifying and 40 Oldest,

ll. 2325–32, following EE, ll. 2319–67; see also Oldest, p. 323. discusses the ME version of this passage in similar terms (‘Becoming’, pp. 305–6). 42 Oldest, ll. 2333–4. With an emphasis on exempla of governance and what he considers Gaimar’s ‘symbolic association of the book and the kingdom itself’, MacColl offers a somewhat different reading of this transitional section (‘Rhetoric’, pp. 299–301). 41 Lamont

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The Construction of Vernacular History adaptable, easily subject to expansion, translation, continuation, and revision, as later readers and writers sought to make it serve their own purposes. Whoever added a version of the poem Des Grantz Geanz to the beginning of the Short Version of the chronicle provided an alternate foundation story for the island, one that foregrounds rather than minimizes the killing and displacement of one people by another, by telling of the murderous princess Albine and her sisters, who give birth to the giants who are to be exterminated by Brut when he comes.43 The reviser who created the Long Version of the Anglo-Norman Brut not only supplemented but overwrote some of the chronicle, apparently providing a new version of the Albine story and a new continuation from the beginning of the reign of Edward II, and reinforcing the connection between Arthur and the kings of the day by supernatural means, with the introduction of prophecies of Merlin.44 This reviser also may have noticed the omission of the famous figure of Cadwallader and reinstated him by the simple expedient of replacing his name for that of the less wellknown Cadwan (Cadwallader’s grandfather in Geoffrey’s version), gaining the appearance of greater comprehensiveness with no substantive revision required.45 Some of these changes cohere with the Oldest Version’s vision; some are in tension with it. What may have led to the undoing of prose Brut’s scheme of continuity was its very success in functioning as the kind of repository for ‘la dreit foi’ that it itself idealizes. For eventually, the mere name of Cadwallader was not enough to satisfy some reader of the Middle English translation who was familiar with the Galfridian version of events, and who reintroduced the Cadwallader episode at the appropriate spot, just after the story of Peanda, Oswald, and Oswy.46 According to Bryan, this version occurs in 112 of the 203 Middle English Brut texts found in the 181 manuscripts catalogued by Matheson: the tradition itself becomes divided on this critical episode.47 Someone now looking at a genealogical chart running from Henry II to Edward I may see only an unbroken line: father to son to brother to son to son. But the lived and recorded experience of the times suggests lineage at the constant edge of collapse. The Oldest Version records in detail the wreck of the White Ship and the death of the only legitimate son of Henry I, the event that laid the foundation for the calamities of the next generation.48 It reports 43 See

GG; Johnson, ‘Return’; Marvin, ‘Albine’; and Ruch, Albina. Marvin, ‘Albine’, pp. 153–64, 168–91; and Marvin, ‘Arthur Authorized: The Prophecies of the Prose Brut Chronicle’, Arthurian Literature XXII (2005), 84–99. 45 See Oldest, pp. 8–9. 46 For discussion and a text of the Middle English Cadwallader episode, see Matheson, PB, pp. 57–61. See also Marx, ‘Middle English Manuscripts’, pp. 377–80. 47 E. J. Bryan, ‘The Afterlife of Armoriche’, in Laȝamon: Contexts, Language, and Interpretation, ed. R. Allen, L. Perry, and J. Roberts (London, 2002), pp. 118–55 (p. 152 n. 47). 48 Oldest, ll. 3329–39. 44 See

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The Continuity of the Realm that upon learning that all three of his sons had sought his overthrow, Henry II ‘maudit le temps qe onqes engendra fiz’ (‘cursed the day that he had ever fathered sons’).49 It shows the barons rebelling against John, with ample cause, ‘issint qe par entre les genz le roi e les aliens dune parte, e les barons dautre parte, tute la terre fu destrut e maumise’ (‘so that between the king’s men and the aliens on the one hand, and the barons on the other, the whole land was ruined and abused’); John’s young son Henry III comes to the throne in the midst of an invasion.50 And its original audience would see the first three legitimate sons of Edward I die in childhood. Continuity of lineage was not something that could be taken for granted for the future. But it was something with which the prose Brut could endow the past, not only for the Plantagenets, but for all of its English audience, which only grew wider over time. The genealogy of the Oldest Version does not delineate the pedigree of an entitled and distinctive few, separable from the rest by lines that connect them while barring off others. Along with its single-file procession of kings, the chronicle provides the people of England with essentially a single lineage, grounded in antiquity, one that can incorporate British, Roman, Saxon, or Norman identity. This lineage is made to serve the interests of the audience as a whole rather than those of only a particular family or group.51 All of the chronicle’s insular readers are given grounds to consider themselves descendants of Brut.52 Although the original writer’s efforts did not go unnoticed or unemended by critical revisers or ones with other purposes in mind, and the shape of his narrative became blurred or compromised over the course of revision, continuation, and translation, he seems to have achieved his goal of generating a common heritage for his audience. His book became a foundation

49 Oldest,

ll. 3534–5. ll. 3994–4102, ll. 3992–3 quoted. 51 In this respect, the PB’s genealogy is less politically driven, and less geared to the reinforcement and perpetuation of hierarchy and patriarchy, than that imagined by Spiegel (Past, pp. 108–9). Spiegel does note, however, that ‘genealogy, even when largely mythical, asserts the temporal durability of a people’, with ‘rulers as the expression of social continuity’ (Past, p. 96). 52 Radulescu’s study of genealogical material appearing in MEPB manuscripts suggests that the gentry audience for the MEPB may have taken a particularly active interest in genealogy as a way of situating itself within the history: she finds families inserting their own lineage into the text, as well as genealogical marginalia and interpolations, and separate genealogical works alongside the Brut in some manuscripts. As she notes, ‘the medieval English gentry’s interest in adding comments or their own family line to royal genealogies can be seen as an example of their belief in contributing to the durability of their nation’ (R. Radulescu, ‘Gentry Readers of the Brut and Genealogical Material’, Trivium 36 (2006), 189–202 (p. 200)). MacColl says that the Brut’s promulgation of legendary history ‘must surely be connected with the fashion among fifteenth-century kings for the construction of elaborate Welsh and “British” genealogies’ (‘Rhetoric’, p. 289). 50 Oldest,

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The Construction of Vernacular History for a common understanding of history and used the lineage of kings to undergird a broad sense of enduring identity. The prose Brut could serve as a collective, inclusive genealogy for the many, all of whom could lay claim to heroic ancestry and brotherhood, and so had a role to play in preventing the return of the anarchy that could come from fraternal strife, and the ruthless predation of the strong upon the weak that the chronicle repeatedly represents as the worst of all possible worlds.

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PART II RECONSTRUCTION AND RESPONSE

In the first part of this book, I examined the text of the Oldest Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut (as established in an edition) against sources and analogues (generally also as established in editions) and attempted to identify (through the filters set by editions) patterns of composition and adaptation that reveal something of its maker’s intentions, in order to articulate what dominates the understanding and presentation of history that the Oldest Version provides, what sets it apart from its ancestral texts, and how it challenges received opinion about the range of views commonly available and held in late medieval England. The meanings with which a writer seeks to imbue a text are one thing: the meanings that arise from it over time are another. Trying to recover intention is of course not at all equivalent to trying to declare the true meaning of a work. It may, however, help elucidate what subsequent audiences could have found there as they began the process of generating meanings of their own. Having considered what went into the Oldest Version, I will now turn to what came of it. In this part of the book, I will consider the production of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut, the manuscript context in which it appears, the evidence of ordinatio, apparatus, and annotation, and the illustrations that a few manuscripts incorporate, all of which reveal aspects of reception and interpretation that fall by the wayside in almost any printed edition. The most heavily used manuscripts may be the least prone to survive, and manuscripts held by the highly educated, whose habits of use may well differ from those of the less educated, may have been more likely to make it into institutional libraries and the hands of early collectors. However representative a sample the surviving manuscripts may or may not be, they do provide concrete, contemporary evidence as to what the creators and audiences of the AngloNorman prose Brut made of it, as well as their broader approaches to making sense of history and historical narrative.

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6 Evidence of Production

Produced in Britain from the early fourteenth to the late fifteenth centuries, and on the Continent during the later fifteenth century, the surviving corpus of more than fifty Anglo-Norman prose Brut manuscripts clearly served a variety of audiences, both before and after its Long Version was translated into English. Extant manuscripts range widely in script, context, and size: the smallest, Add. 35092, a nicely produced later fourteenth century copy of the Oldest Version, could fit in a pocket, while the largest, Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève (hereafter BSG) 935, a lavish fifteenth-century Continental text with a program of illustrations, would require a support of some sort to be read.1 Some manuscripts are the work of many hands; some seem likely to have been written entirely by one person, in some haste, perhaps for personal use. It would do violence to the tradition to try to identify one kind of AngloNorman prose Brut, or one course of production, as normative.2 The manuscripts themselves provide little information as to their origin and early provenance – another factor that may have contributed to neglect of the corpus, since manuscripts with identifiable origins often attract more scholarly attention. When present at all, the earliest inscriptions of ownership tend to begin with very late fifteenth century and sixteenth century owners. Especially in the earlier manuscripts, less formal, more documentary scripts are common: the Anglo-Norman prose Brut bears witness to the rise of highly current scripts, as well as other economizing measures, in fourteenth-century bookwriting.3 How, by whom, where, and in how organized a way the AngloNorman texts were produced remains an open question. Mooney and Matheson have found evidence for the existence of a fifteenthcentury secular work-group responsible for the production of multiple

1 Add.

35092 has pages of about 118 x 77 mm, BSG 935 pages of about 380 x 270 mm. its wide, long-lasting popularity and variety in production and use, the PB resembles the book of hours: see E. Duffy, Marking the Hours: English People and Their Prayers, 1240–1570 (New Haven, 2011). 3 See E. Kwakkel, ‘Commercial Organization and Economic Innovation’, in The Production of Books in England, 1350–1500, ed. A. Gillespie and D. Wakelin (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 173–91 (pp. 183–91), on various methods used to save on production costs, such as current scripts, use of lower-quality parchment or paper, and limp or no binding. 2 In

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The Construction of Vernacular History copies of the Middle English prose Brut from a single exemplar, possibly mass-producing an extremely popular text on spec rather than awaiting a commission.4 Although their findings so far apply to only a handful of the extant manuscripts of the English Brut, they are a reminder of just how much stands to be learned through deeper study of the corpus. The wide variety of physical presentations suggests that the production of Anglo-Norman prose Bruts may not have gained even the same level of standardization as that of the Middle English prose Brut, that Anglo-Norman prose Brut manuscripts were copied (as well as read) under varied circumstances and for a varied clientele, and that a great many manuscripts, ones that might provide links between the surviving copies, have been lost over time. This is certainly the case with the Oldest Version: of the five manuscripts that I consulted in making an edition, none could have been a direct exclusive ancestor or descendant of any of the others, for each one is missing text found in all of the others.5 Anglo-Norman prose Bruts also appear in a variety of scripts and ordinatio.6 Early manuscripts in classic legal documentary hands, such as D120 and We8 (see Plate 15), suggest the involvement of the legal community, for whom the use of Anglo-Norman prose would naturally pose no difficulty, in the production of prose Brut manuscripts – although the Oldest Version itself displays minimal interest in such aspects of law as judgment and procedure, whether legislative or judicial.7 Little is yet known of the lay market for Anglo-Norman texts in England at any time. Until fairly recently, the existence of such a market was not given much consideration, but as the continuing demand for Anglo-Norman works

4 Mooney

and Matheson, ‘Beryn’, pp. 347–70; for further findings, see D. W. Mosser and L. M. Mooney, ‘More Manuscripts by the Beryn Scribe and His Cohort’, Chaucer Review 49 (2014), 39–76; and D. W. Mosser, ‘The Paper Stocks of the Beryn Scribe’, Journal of the Early Book Society 13 (2010), 63–93. 5 See Oldest, pp. 65–6. I did not use Cotton Tiberius A.VI, a fifteenth-century text with selections deriving from both the OV and LV (see Oldest, pp. 57–8). Pagan and De Wilde find the PB text in CUL Dd. 10.32 running from Osberht to 1272, which serves as a continuation to the HRB (fols. 63r–82r, corresponding to Oldest, ll. 2334–4218, along with a few additional lines covering the reign of Edward I), to be an abbreviated version related to the text found in We8 (‘Prose Chronicle’, 226–32). 6 For a comparative discussion, see J. Marvin, ‘The Vitality of Anglo-Norman in Late Medieval England: The Case of the Prose Brut Chronicle’, in Wogan-Browne et al., eds., Language and Culture, 303–19 (pp. 304–9). 7 For a script much like that of We8, see, A. G. Watson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts c. 435–1600, in Oxford Libraries, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1984), I, 111–12 and plates 161 and 171, for examples from Bodleian Rawlinson C.292 (fol. 123r, c. 1321) and Rawlinson C.666 (fol. 140v, after 1327). D120’s variable script is reminiscent (in a general sense) of that of the less formally written parts of Harley 2253 (see, e.g., M. B. Parkes, English Cursive Book Hands, 1250–1500 (London, 1979), plate 1.ii). For more on the expansion of legal script into literary copying, see Hanna, London, p. 50.

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Evidence of Production has become better recognized, the question of how that demand was met has become more pressing.8 What evidence can the body of Anglo-Norman prose Bruts add to the picture? Except for the case discussed below, I have yet confidently to identify the work of the same scribe in more than one Anglo-Norman prose Brut manuscript. This may testify not merely to my own diffidence but to the sheer number of people involved in the making of prose Bruts. With more sustained scrutiny than the current study affords, the involvement of the same scribe or limner in multiple manuscripts may well be identified in the future. There are certainly cases of very similar hands. Many Anglo-Norman prose Brut manuscripts were written by a single scribe. Many also never received their colored initials or other matter, such as paraph marks, requiring another pass through the manuscript and/or different colors of ink. And the condition of the outer leaves of some indicates that they spent considerable time in no or minimal binding. It appears that many of the surviving copies were produced with something resembling the ad hoc approach now commonly proposed for Middle English texts of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with responsibility for decoration and binding not overseen by a single, central supervisor, and often devolving on the buyer.9 There are also signs of the involvement of multiple scribes in AngloNorman prose Brut manuscripts, in an indication of some kind of organized and collaborative production of text (not, of course, inconsistent with the idea that different stages of bookmaking might result from completely independent transactions on the buyer’s part). Here are some representative cases. The Long Version manuscript CUL Ii.6.8, for example, contains the work of several scribes, with varying degrees of secretary influence and breaking in their anglicana formata, and text inks that now range from nearly 8 A.

G. Taylor sets out evidence for lay readership and commercial production of Anglo-Norman texts (mostly devotional) in the thirteenth century and suggests that Oxford scriveners may have been a particularly important source (‘Manual to Miscellany: Stages in the Commercial Copying of Vernacular Literature in England’, Yearbook of English Studies 33 (2003), 1–17 (esp. pp. 4, 8–11)). Michael Bennett offers a helpful overview of the mid-fourteenth century audience in the upper reaches of English society for works in French, noting the centrality of the court of Edward III in the Francophone world (‘France in England: Anglo-French Culture in the Reign of Edward III’, in Wogan-Browne et al., eds., Language and Culture, pp. 320–33). 9 For a brief overview of changing thought on Middle English manuscript production, with helpful bibliography, see L. R. Mooney and E. Stubbs, Scribes and the City: London Guildhall Clerks and the Dissemination of Middle English Literature, 1375–1425 (York, 2013), pp. 2–3. For a full discussion and even more bibliography, see P. Christianson, ‘Evidence for the Study of London’s Late Medieval Manuscript-Book Trade’, in Book Production and Publishing in Britain, 1375–1475, ed. J. Griffiths and D. Pearsall (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 87–108, as well as Kwakkel, ‘Commercial’, pp. 192–211.

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The Construction of Vernacular History black to nearly yellow; the changes in scribal stint, however, do not correspond neatly to signature breaks.10 Short Version manuscript Add. 35113, a manuscript on thick, blotchy, and irregular parchment, never received its initials and was written by multiple scribes who seem to have made different choices in formatting the text.11 In the first two gatherings, the scribes have left only a bit of extra space within the text block for a slightly larger, colored initial to mark section breaks, rather than making a line break and providing a space for an initial of at least two lines, as is generally found in the Short Version. If this approach was designed to save parchment, it worked too well: at the end of the second gathering, a page and a half of blank space comes between the end of one scribe’s stint and the beginning of another’s at the start of the next gathering, with no break in the text.12 Thereafter, the text follows the more usual format of line break and space for two-line initial between sections. Although not all changes of scribe occur at signature breaks, it appears that the book was at least in part farmed out quire by quire.13 The final surviving leaves consist of three singletons, and the text ends in mid-sentence partway down the page, in a possible indication that parchment and exemplar were both lacking at the end.14 The presence of multiple scribes here is by no means a sign of a smoothly coordinated work plan. Like Add. 35113, Short Version manuscript EUL 181 is far from a luxury production: it is written on box-ruled parchment of rough quality and somewhat irregular page size by one (or perhaps two) scribes using a highly current anglicana with some secretary influence. The writing does not stay within the box, and the manuscript as a whole gives a crowded, ungainly impression.15 It is a mostly finished product, with embellished initials throughout, rubric paraph marks and underlining of proper names found in

10 Cf.,

for example, fols. 3r, 33r, 88r, 99r, 106–8, and 149r. It has also received its full program of embellishment, with paraph marks and flourished initials; an indication that the exemplar was not consulted at the time of decoration is the blank space left on fol. 51r for a diagram of the Round Table. On incomplete finishing and what it may indicate about the organization of manuscript production, see S. Partridge, ‘Designing the Page’, in Gillespie and Wakelin, eds., Production of Books, pp. 79–103 (pp. 85–90). For more on this manuscript, see below, pp. 246–7, 250. 11 One crude initial is present at the very beginning. 12 Fols. 17v–18r. 13 For a change of hand at mid-page, see fol. 4r. 14 Fols. 90–2. 15 On the scribes, see C. R. Borland, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Western Medieval Manuscripts in Edinburgh University Library (Edinburgh, 1916), p. 267. Because of the fragility of the parchment, the library has not microfilmed the manuscript, and it has not reached the head of the line for digital reproduction, so these observations are based only on an unfortunately brief examination of the manuscript itself. If it is written by one scribe, that scribe has not maintained a completely consistent script throughout.

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Evidence of Production much but not all of the text, and damage to beginning and end that suggests a manuscript used unbound for some time.16 The finishing touches could well have been made by someone not really trained as a flourisher. On the whole, the manuscript’s untidiness and cheapness, and the possibility of its having been produced entirely by one person, make it tempting to consider it an amateurish job done by someone who had gotten hold of a manuscript and wanted a copy. At the same time, EUL 181 provides unmistakable signs of having been produced in booklet form, and by the quire.17 It contains more than the Short Version of the prose Brut. Its first booklet consists of the Distichs of Cato and a Latin work on the contempt of the world attributed to Pope Damasius.18 The second consists of the Latin prophecies attributed to John of Bridlington, the material of which overlaps somewhat with that of the Brut and can be seen as a natural companion to the chronicle.19 The third consists of the Brut chronicle.20 There are evident signs of a scribal struggle to match the exemplar quire for quire. The quire consisting of fols. 166–77 veers from being crammed with text, as if the scribe is worried about fitting it all in, to having room to spare, the text on its last page ending well above the bottom.21 More dramatically, in an earlier quire, the scribe has missed an entire folio of material in copying. When the problem was noticed, the solution (by the same scribe) was to write the missing material on a singleton and insert it at the appropriate spot, leaving blank the final folio of the quire – except for the catchword for the next quire.22 Departing from the physical structure of the exemplar seems not to have been an option, in all likelihood because it was only made available a bit at a time. Someone other than the scribe had control of the exemplar, and the manuscript is as likely to represent the market for relatively inexpensive manuscripts as to be a personal copy.

16 The

red underlining and paraph marks are absent on fols. 110v–30r and from 138v to the end of the manuscript; the stints do not correspond to signature breaks. The current binding is modern. See Borland, Catalogue, pp. 266–8. 17 On booklets – as used here the term can designate units spanning more than one quire – see P. R. Robinson, ‘The “Booklet”: A Self-Contained Unit in Composite Manuscripts’, Codicologica 3 (1980), 46–69; R. Hanna, ‘Booklets in Medieval Manuscripts: Further Considerations’, in Pursuing History: Middle English Manuscripts and Their Texts (Stanford, 1996), pp. 21–34, 284–7. 18 Fols. 1–32, four quires of eight with a singleton at the beginning numbered ‘i’. 19 Fols. 33–46, one quire of ten and one of four; the structure has been tailored to the length of the text. 20 Fol. 47 to the end, fol. 201. 21 See fols. 171v and 177v. 22 Fols. 83–93, a quire of ten + one, with the singleton added between the first and second folios. Its stub is visible between the last two folios. This quire of eleven and the one before it (of twelve) correspond to Borland’s quires i and k, which she collates as i11 and k12, in what seems to be an error of transposition (Catalogue, p. 267).

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The Construction of Vernacular History How that market was generated and satisfied – in particular, what the sources were for exemplars – remains another thorny question. Although the notion of a stationer keeping exemplars of popular works on hand for clients to see and select is attractive, because it seems so sensible, concrete evidence for the practice is so far thin, particularly for the fourteenth century. Mooney and Matheson find that the Middle English prose Brut manuscripts copied by the Beryn scribe in the second half of the fifteenth century all fall into the same manuscript group; they conclude that ‘in his place of work he apparently kept an exemplar of the prose Brut’, and that he not only participated directly in the making of copies of the Brut from this exemplar, but also supervised or allowed copying of it by other scribes working ‘either alone or in collaboration’.23 The survival of a pair of what one might consider fraternal twin manuscripts containing the Short Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut raises the possibility of similar circumstances obtaining in the first half of the fourteenth century. Examination of them will provide some insight on how their makers approached their task, and on the context in which they may have been produced.

Oxford, Bodleian, Rawlinson D.329 and London, Inner Temple Library, Petyt 511, vol. 19 At first glance, RD329 and London, Inner Temple Library, Petyt 511, vol. 19 (hereafter P511/19) seem very much alike: similar in size, format, and embellishment, written in the same rounded anglicana formata script and at least in parts by the same scribe.24 Both begin with Latin hexameter verses on the kings of England from William the Conqueror forward, integrated with charts showing each king’s offspring, and they continue with a Short Version text to 1333 ending within the same sentence.25 RD329 includes an additional final item, the so-called ‘Scottish Chronicle’, a 9½-folio Anglo-Norman prose work on the kings of Scotland, running from Brut to the time of Edward I and placing great emphasis on English sovereignty.26

23 Mooney

and Matheson, ‘Beryn’, pp. 355–7, 368 (quoted). Mosser and Mooney have since identified his work in another manuscript in this group (‘More Manuscripts’, pp. 67–8). 24 Aside from the ending of the Brut in 1333, there is no hard evidence for dating; the hand appears to date from the first half or middle third of the century. P511/19’s pages average 222 x 140 mm, with a written space of 177 x 96 mm and between 26 and 28 lines per page; RD329’s pages average 228 x 150 mm (with the sides definitely trimmed), with a written space of 192 x 108 mm and 31 lines per page. 25 The Latin poem has yet to be edited and has no standard title. On MEPBs with genealogical material, see Matheson, ‘Genealogy’, pp. 222–3, and Radulescu, ‘Gentry’. 26 See Dean no. 28. For an edition of the Scottish Chronicle (unfortunately, not a

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Evidence of Production The components of each manuscript are in booklet form, with the Latin verses in both and the Scottish Chronicle in RD329 physically independent of the prose Brut. The decoration style – alternating blue initials with red flourishing, and red initials with what is now purple flourishing – carries across both Brut texts, although its details vary enough to suggest different individuals at work.27 All is suggestive of a team of individuals collaborating to produce multiple copies of the same works. However, upon close examination, the two manuscripts are more distinctive than they first seem. For one thing, in the parts that they share, neither could have been copied directly from the other. First, to consider the Latin verses in each: for the first few folios, the layout and texts are virtually identical, and the same scribe has written some, if not all, of the text in both.28 The quire begins with what was a blank folio in both.29 Thereafter, the pages are laid out with carefully designed ruling, providing space for a couplet at the top of the page, a portrait of the king in question, and below, genealogical roundels or, for kings with no ruling issue, text. RD329, which contains the full program of portraits and most of the decoration around the genealogical roundels, is obviously not based on P511/19. Aside from the fact that P511/19 never received its illustrations or decoration aside from some touches of red and red outlining on the genealogical charts, and so provides no model for the illustrations, P511/19 is completely missing the last section of verse found on fol. 6v of RD329 as well as a number of the genealogical roundels found in RD329.30 P511/19 also cannot be based directly and exclusively on RD329, for it contains text

reliable one), see P. T. Ricketts, ed., Three Anglo-Norman Chronicles, Anglo-Norman Text Society, Plain Texts Series 16 (Manchester, 2011) pp. 3–4, 28–36. Fisher briefly discusses RD329’s dating (which he in consultation with Hanna places in the 1330–40 range), its Latin verses, and the Scottish Chronicle’s relationship to the 1301 letter of Edward to Pope Boniface VIII, in ‘Genealogy Rewritten: Inheriting the Legendary in Insular Historiography’, in Radulescu and E. D. Kennedy, eds., Broken Lines, pp. 122–41 (pp. 123–8). 27 The purple flourishing may be meant to be so, in ‘folium’ ink, but the possibility that it is blue ink that has changed in color over time should not be dismissed out of hand. Either way, its presence in both manuscripts makes for a distinctive connection. For a lengthy discussion of ‘folium’ and a hypothesis that it held particular appeal for Northern bookmakers, see J. B. Friedman, Northern English Books, Owners, and Makers in the Late Middle Ages (Syracuse, 1995), pp. 73–107, 227–36. The style of flourishing found in both fits the date range proposed above; see A. I. Doyle, ‘Penwork Flourishing of Initials in England from c. 1380’, in Tributes to Kathleen L. Scott: English Medieval Manuscripts and Their Readers, ed. M. V. Hennessy (London and Turnhout, 2009), pp. 65–72 (pp. 66–7). 28 Cf. the writing on fol. 2v of each, for example. 29 In P511/19, the empty space has been filled in with additions by a later user. 30 Cf., e.g., fol. 5v of both.

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The Construction of Vernacular History missing from the latter.31 The spaces left for portraits in P511/19 are narrow rectangles, ill-suited to accommodate the squarish images found in RD329. Close comparison of analogous pages shows both how closely related the two are, and how idiosyncratically their makers addressed difficulties that arose in the course of production. On the page for Henry II, both manuscripts offer the same garbled identifications of his daughters, calling Joan the queen of Castile, when that was in fact Eleanor, and calling Eleanor the duchess of Saxony, when that was in fact Matilda, who does not make it onto the chart (see Plates 1 and 2).32 On this same page, the designer of P511/19 lacks room for the bottom row of the symmetrical diagram as seen in RD329 and awkwardly places the roundels for Eleanor and her children up and to the right side, with errors compounding as a result: there is no roundel for Arthur, the son of Geoffrey duke of Brittany, and the scribe looking at an exemplar with Eleanor and her children at the bottom of the page proceeds to assign Joan ‘Reginam Cezilie’ (now at the bottom of the page), Eleanor’s children, including ‘Otonis Imperatoris’ (i.e., Emperor Otto IV), while filling in the roundels for Eleanor’s offspring with two more imperial Ottos for good measure. In both manuscripts, matters go less and less smoothly in the final folios of the quire. In RD329, on the page for Edward I, the roundels beneath his portrait represent nine children from his first marriage, with a gratuitous tenth roundel left blank (see Plates 3 and 4).33 Showing twelve children from both his marriages, P511/19 gives a better idea of what the layout of the page was probably meant to be, although it botches some of the names, which suggests that the better layout comes not from independent knowledge but from better following of the design of an exemplar.34 P511/19 has an erased roundel in the same position as RD329’s blank one, hinting that something in their exemplars encouraged creating it in the first place.35 In RD329, the three children by Edward’s second wife who are left over from the recto appear in roundels on the verso in the space at the top typically used for a portrait. The rest of the page is filled with concluding verse urging the ruler of England to follow the example of his ancestors, particularly in subjugating the Scots.36 The following recto contains a completed portrait, 31 Fol.

6v; the couplet in question is present in at least one other manuscript of the poem (see below). 32 Fol. 4r. 33 Fol. 6r in both. 34 It repeats the name of Margaret for what should be ‘Maria’, or Mary (the daughter who became a nun), and shows that the scribe has completely failed to understand its source’s roundel for Elizabeth. 35 Fol. 6r. 36 Fol. 6v. There are four more empty roundels. The form of this section of the poem matches the rest and offers no reason to doubt that it was an integral part of the work.

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Evidence of Production which by its placement should be one of Edward II, as well as the usual ruling for a page with roundels and the outlines of three roundels presumably meant to list Edward’s offspring – but it lacks any text at all (see Plates 5 and 6).37 The verso was left blank (with considerable bleed-through from the portrait), and the job remained unfinished. This final leaf of the quire appears to have been added only after it was realized that the three genealogical roundels on the previous verso had taken up the space meant for the portrait of Edward II: its stub precedes the first blank folio, creating a quire of six + one. Hence, perhaps, the odd procedure of providing the illumination before the writing of any text.38 The presence of the outlines for the roundels below the added portrait does suggest an intention to do more than simply fill in material meant to have been on the previous page, although a designer could certainly have decided to take advantage of the space now available for use by adding relevant information. The opening quire of P511/19 consists of six folios. On the final verso, the couplet for Edward II appears above the space for a portrait, and three completed roundels for Edward II’s issue appear below (see Plate 7).39 There is no room left in the quire for the final lines of verse found in RD329. P511/19’s copy of the text is obviously written after the deposition of Edward II: the roundel for Edward III reads ‘Edwardum Regem qui viuit’.40 Even if the exemplar of P511/19 contained the full poem, it might have been a useful strategic decision in more ways than one quietly to shift attention to the next generation by means of a chart, rather than reproducing the part of the verse that could serve as a reminder of dashed hopes for the father. That said, although its first few lines emphasize Wales in a fashion designed to give significance to the birthplace of Edward of Caernarfon, the overall content of the final section of the poem in RD329 is vague enough – with its address to an unnamed king, its exhortations to keep down the Scots and Welsh, and its invocation of the glories of the British past, with mention of the likes of Brutus, Brennius and Belinus, Arthur, and Richard I – that it could be readily enough taken as directed towards Edward III were it so presented.41 Its placement as the final verse in RD329, with no words acknowledging

37 Fol.

7v.

38 Elsewhere

in fols. 2–7, the original scribe’s writing can be seen to have preceded the illustration. 39 Edward II had four known children by Isabelle; Eleanor of Woodstock is the one missing here. 40 Fol. 6v. The ‘qui viuit’ may be modeled on the chart of the offspring of Edward I (fol. 6r), with the names of three sons ‘qui obiit’ above ‘Edwardum’, who in RD329 is ‘Edwardum qui viuit’. In P511/19, the words following ‘Edwardum’ have been effaced and replaced (in a very different hand and ink) with ‘de Karneruan’. 41 For a transcription of these lines from the later manuscript Bodleian Laud misc. 637, see M. D. Legge, ‘A List of Langtoft Manuscripts, with Notes on Ms. Laud Misc. 637’, Medium Aevum 4 (1935), 20–4 (p. 22).

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The Construction of Vernacular History

Plate 1. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson D.329, fol. 4r. Latin genealogical verses on the kings of England following the Norman Conquest: page for Henry II, with Latin verses, a portrait of the king and Thomas Becket, a decorated, somewhat garbled, genealogical chart of his children and grandchildren, and a Latin note on the length of his reign. Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Library.

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Evidence of Production

Plate 2. London, Inner Temple Library, MS Petyt 511, vol. 19, fol. 4r. Latin genealogical verses on the kings of England following the Norman Conquest: page for Henry II, with Latin verses, space for a portrait, and a somewhat garbled genealogical chart of his children and grandchildren. Reproduced by permission of the Masters of the Bench of the Inner Temple.

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The Construction of Vernacular History

Plate 3. London, Inner Temple Library, MS Petyt 511, vol. 19, fol. 6r. Latin genealogical verses on the kings of England following the Norman Conquest: page for Edward I, with Latin verses, space for a portrait, and a somewhat garbled genealogical chart of children by his first and second wives. Reproduced by permission of the Masters of the Bench of the Inner Temple.

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Evidence of Production

Plate 4. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson D.329, fol. 6r. Latin genealogical verses on the kings of England following the Norman Conquest: page for Edward I, with Latin verses, a portrait of the king smiting men in armor, and a decorated genealogical chart with nine of his children. Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Library.

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The Construction of Vernacular History

Plate 5. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson D.329, fol. 6v. Latin genealogical verses on the kings of England following the Norman Conquest: undecorated genealogical chart with three children by Edward’s second wife (in space for portrait) and concluding verse. Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Library.

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Evidence of Production

Plate 6. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson D.329, fol. 7r. Latin genealogical verses on the kings of England following the Norman Conquest: portrait (presumably of Edward II) and empty roundels. Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Library.

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The Construction of Vernacular History

Plate 7. London, Inner Temple Library, MS Petyt 511, vol. 19, fol. 6v. Latin genealogical verses on the kings of England following the Norman Conquest: page for Edward II, with Latin verses, space for a portrait, and roundels for three of his children. Reproduced by permission of the Masters of the Bench of the Inner Temple.

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Evidence of Production the actual reign of Edward of Caernarfon, allows for that reading.42 It is not difficult to see how the poem could be taken as a natural complement to the chronicle. Aside from providing a schematic way to think about the most recent kings of England, it deploys exactly the ancient history recounted in the Brut in its description of Edward I as regaining all the lands peopled by Brutus and in the set of exemplary and genealogical models offered in the closing section – although the opening with William calls attention to the Conquest in a way that undoes some of the Oldest Version’s work.43 Here, texts that begin very similarly diverge in both content and design over their course, in ways that may result from simple problem-solving by their makers but nonetheless generate different experiences for their audiences.

Other Appearances of the Hexameter Verses Other manuscripts with this work offer more clues. In BL Royal (hereafter Royal) 20 A.II, it appears as part of a booklet preceding Langtoft’s chronicle in the manuscript as now constituted.44 Before the Latin verses and genealogical diagrams come nine pages illustrating scenes from British history, and the poem’s king-portraits differ from those of RD329, both in quality and in details of content and composition, although the cruder RD329 illustrations are for the most part derived from a similar model.45 Although the Royal text displays enough textual differences at points where P511/19 and RD329 agree that it cannot be their exemplar, it presents a similar text and layout, down to some of the mistakes involving female issue and the presence of an 42 The

closing lines of the section praising Richard I also express hopes for an Edward, as Legge notes (fol. 4v; ‘List’, p. 22). 43 RD329, fols. 6r–v, 2r. 44 The hand of the Latin text is different in character from P511/19 and RD329 but also probably dates from before 1350; there are not paleographic or other grounds firmly to date any one of these three manuscripts before the others, as far as I can tell. The date of 1307–27 assigned to Royal 20 A.II in the BL catalogue, and the general dating of the manuscript to the first quarter of the fourteenth century found in some other sources, seem to apply better to the textura hand of the copy of Langtoft. (Cf. the plate of the Chronicon Buriensis (Arundel 30, fol. 157r), this portion dated to between 1286 and 1296, in P. R. Robinson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts, c. 888–1600, in London Libraries, 2 vols. (London, 2003), I, 28, II, plate 31.) Royal 20 A.II was included in the Royal Library Westminster inventory of 1542, with its number appearing on fol. 1r, in an indication that the parts had come together by then at least. A full digitized version is available via the BL website: , accessed 7 January 2016. 45 On the illustrations, see S. McKendrick et al., Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination (London, 2011), pp. 342–3. The RD329 ones have also been vigorously defaced so in places are difficult to see; see Fisher, ‘Genealogy’, p. 125, for some commmentary.

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The Construction of Vernacular History empty roundel among the offspring of Edward I.46 Royal 20 A.II gets all of the children from both of his marriages onto the same page, and the empty roundel in the bottom of the middle row may have been meant for Eleanor (by his second wife, Margaret of France), who died in childhood. (Edward’s having two legitimate daughters named Eleanor was a recipe for confusion.) In RD329, the blank appears in the same location on the recto page, but among the children of the first marriage – in what looks like a case of following the general appearance rather than the textual content of an exemplar – while the list on the verso of the three children of the second marriage, among whom Eleanor appears, follows a vertical format, with unfinished roundels connected by bars off to each side.47 At the bottom of the page, both Royal 20 A.II and RD329 offer information (with some added in a later hand) on kings’ years and places of burial that was either never present in P511/19 or was cropped off in binding.48 Like both RD329 and P511/19, the Royal version displays oddities where Edward II is concerned. It has the same couplet above its portrait as in P511/19, but what follows on the rest of the recto and all of the verso is something different from either manuscript, a French poem now known as ‘The Lament of Edward II’, presented from the perspective of the fallen king himself.49 It appears to have been written over another, effaced text, in a contemporary but less formal script than the Latin text preceding, in much the same shade of dark brown ink.50 Although it is tempting to presume that the poem of failure here literally overwrites the expression of hope for the future found in RD329, the traces of old text visible in the first few lines do not allow for a ready identification.51

46 Fol.

9v. 6r–v. P511/19 also gives Eleanor’s name (fol. 6r). 48 The later additions (fols. 4v, 5r, and possibly 3v – very faded) suggest that a user may have been able to get access to a copy of the poem or used the information on other leaves (fols. 2r–3r, 4r, 5v) as a template for supplying fairly standard information. 49 See Royal 20 A.II, fol. 10r, and P511/19, fol. 6v. For an edition and some discussion, particularly of authorship, see T. M. Smallwood, ‘“The Lament of Edward II”’, Modern Language Review 68 (1973), 521–9. For further discussion, see C. Valente, ‘The “Lament of Edward II”: Religious Lyric, Political Propaganda’, Speculum 77 (2002), 422–39. 50 I am inclined to think the scribes are not the same person, although there are intriguing points of both similarity and difference. Smallwood finds it ‘quite impossible to make up one’s mind whether it is or is not an informal hand by the scribe of the Anglicana Formata inscriptions of the earlier pages’ (‘Lament’, p. 521). 51 I have not yet had an opportunity to examine the original manuscript under ultraviolet light, which may settle the question. Smallwood unhesitatingly identifies the replaced text as ‘a poem of conventional praise in Latin (known from another version of this preface) that has been scratched out’, but he does not identify the other version or present specific evidence for the claim (‘Lament’, p. 521). 47 Fol.

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Evidence of Production In all three cases, although they appear to be working from a very similar exemplar, the makers or revisers of the manuscript have taken different approaches to the problems of representing Edward II during his son’s reign: one with a discreet reminder of the success of Edward in producing an heir, one offering optimistic words for the future, and one acknowledging the scope of the disaster fully, but also sympathetically, given the posture of ‘The Lament’ as the words of Edward himself.52 New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke (hereafter Beinecke) 956, possibly dating from as early as 1307–13, is likely to be a direct ancestor of RD329 and P511/19.53 Its version of the text is extremely close to the others, with the same errors in the chart of the children of Henry II as RD329, and once again a blank roundel on the chart for Edward I, among the children of his second rather than his first marriage, so that an empty circle appears next to those naming his three children by Margaret of France.54 The layout of this page, with the blank roundel off to the left instead of the center, makes it less likely that Beinecke 956 was the immediate exemplar and provoker of the confusion shown in RD329.55 But it could well have been the exemplar for P511/19, particularly since like P511/19, it has wide, shallow spaces for the portraits, which here are simple sketches of crowned heads, with no particular distinguishing traits, along with some fabulous beasts in red in the first two folios.56 As it turns out, P511/19’s proportions may have stemmed from its model rather than the constraints of its page size. P511/19 and RD329 may well have been based on different, if extremely textually close, exemplars – or the makers of RD329 may have consulted more than one exemplar for its text and illustrations. What Beinecke 956 has that all three of these lack is a straightforward and completed page for Edward II: the couplet at the top, the portrait in the space beneath, and then the closing verses urging the king to follow the 52 For

evaluation of the possibility that it really was composed by Edward – which at times has been given credence – see Smallwood, ‘Lament’, pp. 528–9, and Valente, ‘Lament’, pp. 421–8. 53 Its ten unbound folios have been digitized, and at this writing, images are available at , accessed 29 March 2016. Unlike the other texts, this one includes a section on the kings of Scotland. Edward II is called ‘rex’ and shown wearing a crown, so the text pretty obviously dates from after his accession. The Beinecke website bases the latter date of 1313 on the year of the death of John of Balliol, because of a present-tense reference in the verses on him (fol. 9v); although the evidence for this dating is tenuous, it is compatible with the textura hand of the manuscript. 54 Fols. 3r, 5r. 55 It also lacks the sentences on regnal years and burial places found in RD329 and Royal 20 A.II. 56 It would not be difficult to read Beinecke 956’s roundel for Elizabeth of Holland as beginning ‘Ebr’ instead of ‘Eliz’ (fol. 5r), and P511/19’s garbled version reads ‘Ebrardum Countem Hoylandie’ (fol. 6r).

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The Construction of Vernacular History example of his forefathers. It makes clear from what model the others have deviated.57 The fact in Royal 20 A.II of an adjustment to the content of a text after it had been prepared is a reminder that even an existing manuscript could change between uses as an exemplar – and that although decisions were evidently made that resulted in the differences between RD329 and P511/19, intimately related as the two are, it is difficult to locate the moment at which those choices were made.58 The scribe who worked on both the RD329 and P511/19 copies of the poem was not engaged in a simple act of mass-production: rather than familiar rote reproduction, the manuscripts bear witness to different choices about how to accommodate the material, and possibly what material to include, along with different errors in copying that reflect different degrees of attentiveness to the exemplar, and different, rather improvisational, solutions to the problems that arise.

What Else the Manuscripts Suggest What do the other contents of these two manuscripts add to the picture? In her study of the manuscripts of Des Grantz Geanz and the verse preface on Albine derived from it, Brereton found that the versions in RD329 and P511/19 could not have been the ancestor or descendant of each other, or of any other surviving manuscript of the poem, but that they also share a number of distinctive readings.59 Minor differences between the texts of the two are common.60 She considered RD329 the superior version and used it as the base text for her edition of the prologue. My own findings for the rest of the chronicle, based for now only on spot­ checking of selected passages as opposed to Brereton’s complete collation, yield results that are similar in some respects. The two manuscripts are clearly more closely related than many others of the Short Version, but neither can be a direct, exclusive ancestor or descendant of the other.61 The text of RD329

57 Fol.

5v.

58 There survive still other copies of the Latin poem, in manuscripts containing custumals

or historical works, including Langtoft and Higden. See Fisher, ‘Genealogy’, p. 124 n. 3: in addition to RD329 and P511/19, he lists Add. 62451 (fifteenth century), Cotton Claudius D.II (on which see more below), and Royal 20 A.II; Bodleian Laud misc. 637 (fifteenth century); and CCCC 139 (extracts added in a fifteenth-century hand on fols. 179v-180r). For a description of Laud misc. 637, see Legge, ‘List’. Deeper study of these manuscripts is the obvious next step in this inquiry. 59 GG, pp. xvi-xviii. 60 See Brereton’s variants, GG, pp. 33–41. 61 P511/19 contains quite a bit of material lacking in RD329; for a case of RD329 containing material lacking in P511/19, see RD329, fol. 101v and P511/19, fol. 118v, and cf. Oldest, ll. 4211–14. For the reign of Arthur, a longer section of the chronicle

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Evidence of Production often reads, especially in the sections after 1272 (which are far less concise than the Oldest Version), as if it has been deliberately abridged, and where the two differ, P511/19 often shows similarities to another Short Version manuscript, CUL Mm.1.33, which may represent a relatively early stage of the development of the Short Version.62 Compared to P511/19, RD329’s version of the prologue appears to be closer to an ur-text, while its version of the rest of the chronicle is further away: the prologue and main chronicle seem not to have traveled in strict tandem. Despite the apparent involvement of some of the same individuals in their production, the texts common to the two manuscripts were not copied from each other, and their prologues and Brut chronicles were not copied from the same exemplars – but the exemplars of all common parts of both were also relatively closely related. These manuscripts show that their makers certainly were not drawing on a single exemplar of the whole, kept for reuse and display (as perhaps with the Middle English prose Brut manuscripts associated with the Beryn scribe), and that different exemplars of these same texts were available to the same people at different times. The evidence indicates a cluster of both texts and producers, but it does not explain the way that cluster operated.63 It could suggest the activity of a stationer who sometimes sold exemplars and kept copies, though that invites speculation as to why. It could also suggest a cooperative community of writers and readers able, upon a new commission, to retrieve a copy of the work in question for use as an exemplar. Hanna argues that near the beginning of the fifteenth century the Guildhall clerk Adam Pinkhurst regained access to an older copy he had written of the Canterbury Tales (now the Hengwrt manuscript) for purposes of consultation while conducting work on another, more lavish one (now the Ellesmere manuscript).64 Mooney and Stubbs characterize Guildhall as an incubator for Middle English literary manuscripts from the late fourteenth century through to the dawn of printing.65 The use of the prose Brut as a that is subdivided differently in different groups of manuscripts, the two make divisions at most of the same points, but they at times differ as to whether to mark the division with a line break and a full two-line initial or only a larger initial within the text block (RD329, fols. 46v–55v; P511/19, fols. 54r–64v). 62 Cf., e.g., the beginning of the reign of Edward II, at RD329 fol. 111r, P511/19 fol. 129v, and CUL Mm.1.33, fol. 58r. By its hand, which displays secretary splay, the CUL manuscript is later in date than the other two, but textual evidence shows that it cannot be directly and exclusively descended from P511/19. 63 The same scribe using different exemplars for different copies of the same work is not an unusual situation: see M. Connolly, ‘Compiling the Book’, in Gillespie and Wakelin, eds., Production of Books, pp. 129–49 (pp. 129–30). 64 Hanna, Introducing, p. 161–2, on Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales (hereafter NLW) Peniarth 392D (Hengwrt) and San Marino, Huntington Library, EL 26.C.9 (Ellesmere). 65 See Mooney and Stubbs, Scribes and the City, as well as their previous individual work on manuscripts they associate with particular Guildhall scribes. See also

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The Construction of Vernacular History source for London chronicles from the fourteenth century on shows that it was both readily available to and respected by the stalwarts of London civic institutions, and among the manuscripts so far identified by Mooney and Stubbs as written by known Guildhall scribes are two copies of the Middle English prose Brut.66 The rounded anglicana formata script used throughout both RD329 and P511/19 is of a type also used for Guildhall texts of the first half of the fourteenth century, in particular those associated with Andrew Horn, fishmonger, city chancellor from 1320 to 1328 (when he died), and likely compiler of the Annales Londonienses.67 Horn had two custumals produced, the more lavish one known as the Liber legum antiquorum regum. Of it, N. R. Ker says, ‘It is and probably always was the finest of the city books, admirably written and executed.’68 Here appears a more formal version of this same script, conceivably representing the work of some of the same scribes as P511/19 or RD329. The custumals also contain interspersed extracts from the same Latin poem and genealogy, with illustrations some of which share the iconography of RD329.69

Christianson, ‘Evidence’, pp. 99–100, on the role of ‘corporate bodies’ in the London book trade. 66 See Matheson, PB, pp. 17–26, 311, esp. on figures such as Robert Fabyan and John Stow; Mooney and Stubbs, Scribes and the City, pp. 7, 38. Baswell notes that the ‘Latin summary of the Brut’ in BL Egerton 2885 is in a collection (assembled at the end of the fourteenth century) containing material relating to the London Fishmongers (‘Troy’, p. 196 n. 85). 67 See, e.g., plate 47 of Robinson, Catalogue of Dated and Datable Manuscripts, c. 888–1600, in London Libraries, the portion of the Liber Custumarum she considers probably produced in the London Guildhall between 1324 and 1327 (I, 33, II, plate 47, with London, Corporation of London Record Office, Cust. 6, fol. 194r shown). On Horn’s career and work, see J. Catto, ‘Andrew Horn: Law and History in Fourteenth-Century England’, in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Richard William Southern, ed. R. H. C. Davis and J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford, 1981), pp. 367–91. 68 ‘Liber Custumarum, and Other Manuscripts Formerly at the Guildhall’, in Books, Collectors, and Libraries: Studies in the Medieval Heritage, ed. A. G. Watson (London, 1985), pp. 135–42 (p. 137). Robert Cotton broke up and reorganized the two (Ker’s manuscripts C and D) into three volumes that ended up in different places: back at Guildhall, as noted just above, as Cotton Claudius D.II, and as Oxford, Oriel College 46. For accounts of the original contents and their disposition across these three manuscripts, see Ker, ‘Liber Custumarum’. 69 E.g., Cotton Claudius D.II, fols. 30r (William), 42v (Henry I), 69r (Stephen), 70r (Henry II), 113r (John). For a plate of Henry I with the wreck of the White Ship and further description and bibliography, see McKendrick et al., Royal Manuscripts, pp. 356–7 (the manuscript has two sets of numbers; McKendrick uses the set that makes this folio 45v); this is one of the manuscripts associated with the ‘Queen Mary Psalter’ group of artists. Portions of the other, more modest, custumal also appear to contain such extracts, e.g., Oriel 46, fols. 27v (William), 38r (William Rufus), 62r (Stephen) (H. Coxe, Catalogus Codicum Mss. Qui in Collegiis Aulisque Oxoniensibus

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Evidence of Production The combination here of a characteristic script and what can be established to be a text used and reused for Guildhall productions is suggestive. Although the custumals themselves are very unlikely to have served as an exemplars for copies of the verses in full, they show that Guildhall was a place where the Latin verses could be found, where content, interest in it, and the means of reproduction could come together. The Guildhall community could easily have served as a source for components of the prose Brut chronicle as well. Mooney and Stubbs say that ‘it is possible that at an early date the Guildhall established itself as the repository for the collection and dissemination of material used in Brut texts’: that date may have been as early as the reign of Edward II.70 It would take vast comparative study of the Letter Books and other work of fourteenth-century scribes associated with Guildhall to say more with any certainty, but these and other Anglo-Norman prose Brut manuscripts may prove key to the investigation of whether copying of it, as well as other historical and/ or Anglo-Norman works, helped establish the vernacular book-writing community that Mooney and Stubbs find in full flower there by the fifteenth century.71 Each of these manuscripts contributes to and also complicates the whole picture. Had any one of the fourteenth-century manuscripts with the Latin verses I have discussed not survived, the picture might look quite different; had twenty more manuscripts survived, it might also look quite different. Not only are we trying to reconstruct a mosaic from a partial set of tiles, but we cannot know how big the mosaic originally was. Proposing Guildhall as a likely home to some of the texts and workers represented in these two manuscripts is not tantamount to declaring it the primary locus of production of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut.72 The wide variety of documentary scripts and ordinatio among surviving AngloNorman prose Bruts suggests many different points of origin for different copies or groups of copies. Rather, the association highlights Guildhall as an outstanding representative of the many civic and legal institutions, large and small, throughout England, that demanded and generated the production of documents and that also brought lay stakeholders, exactly the people to Hodie Adservantur, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1852), I, 17–18, using his foliation). I have not yet seen this manuscript or any images of it. 70 Scribes and the City, p. 60; on evidence for use of Guildhall manuscripts as exemplars, see pp. 30–2. 71 For more on Horn and his books, and an argument associating aspects of them with the Auchinleck manuscript (which of course contains Brut material in the form of the Short English Metrical Chronicle), see Hanna, London, pp. 54–83. 72 Mooney and Stubbs argue this for initial diffusion of a handful of Middle English literary monuments; Scribes and the City brings together their research to make an account of the manuscripts they consider to have been written by identifiable Guildhall scribes.

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The Construction of Vernacular History whom a vernacular Brut text might be of particular value, into contact with scribes able to turn their hands to producing a book.73 At Guildhall and elsewhere in the documentary world of London and beyond, the Anglo-Norman prose Brut (or rather, the demand for it from a growing audience) may have played a significant role in the growth and professionalization of the copying of longer secular, vernacular works in the fourteenth century, just as the Middle English prose Brut appears to have played a role in fifteenth-century developments in organized manuscript production.

Still Further Considerations There is more to say about P511/19. At the bottom of fol. 7v, the first leaf of the second quire, a note in French has been provided on the price of the volume’s production (see Plate 8): En cest volume sount contenuz . xix . quaiers Et chescun quaier de parchemin . ii . d Et pur les alumpner v . d . Et pur lescriue de chescun quaier . iii . d

la somme en tut [with the total effaced]

(‘In this volume are contained 19 quires And for each quire of parchment, 2d. And to illuminate them, 5d. And for the writing of each quire, 3d

the sum in total’)74

73 For

a bracing reminder of what a tiny fraction of late medieval scribal work went into book production (especially deluxe book production) in comparison to the production of documents in England, and of the cost to scholars of neglecting the documentary trove, see A. Prescott, ‘Administrative Records and the Scribal Achievement of Medieval England’, English Manuscript Studies, 1100–1700 17 (2013), 173–99. For a picture of the scope of scribal activity in (mostly) fifteenth-century London, see Mooney, ‘Locating Scribal Activity in Late-Medieval London’, in Design and Distribution of Late Medieval Manuscripts in England, ed. M. Connolly and L. R. Mooney (York, 2008), pp. 183–204. 74 This note is transcribed in the old and newer Inner Temple catalogues, more accurately in the old one. The figure for parchment is taken to be 1d rather than 2d (the issue being whether its first part is an extremely vigorous approach stroke or another long i) in both Historical Manuscripts Commission, The Manuscripts of the Duke of Leeds, the Bridgewater Trust, Reading Corportation, the Inner Temple, etc., eleventh report, appendix, pt VII (London, 1888), p. 232, and J. C. Davies, Catalogue of Manuscripts in the Library of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, I, the Petyt Collection, MSS. 502–33 (Oxford, 1972), p. 249. The form ‘alumpner’ is not attested in the Anglo-Norman Dictionary, ed. W. Rothwell et al., 2nd edn (London, 2005),

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Evidence of Production

Plate 8. London, Inner Temple Library, MS Petyt 511, vol. 19, fol. 7v (detail). Short Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut: note on the price breakdown for the production of the manuscript, following a French summary of the Brut chronicle’s contents, with its final words effaced and replaced. Reproduced by permission of the Masters of the Bench of the Inner Temple.

The note makes clear that the provision of parchment, the writing, and the embellishment were all handled together, but not the binding.75 Written by someone other than the scribe of the Latin poem, the note is in a more casual script and different shade of brown ink. Just above, it looks as if the same person as has written the note has attempted to imitate the hand of the scribe to alter the conclusion of a paragraph summarizing the chronicle’s contents, , accessed 11 Jan 2016. A. I. Doyle mentions the term ‘alumpnour’ as dating from 1135 but does not identify his source (‘The English Provincial Book Trade before Printing’, in Six Centuries of the Provincial Book Trade in Britain, ed. P. Isaac (Winchester, 1990), pp. 13–29 (p. 15)). 75 The cost of the illumination is a reminder of why many purchasers chose to do without colored initials and other decorations; on this issue in relation to a 1346 book contract, see Hanna, Introducing, pp. 188–90. For broader consideration of book prices, and the difficulties of assessing the skimpy evidence for them, see H. E. Bell, ‘The Price of Books in Medieval England’, The Library 4th s. 17 (1936), 312–32; C. H. Talbot, ‘The Universities and the Mediaeval Library’, in Wormald and Wright, eds., English Library, pp. 71–80, esp. n. 28; and J. F. Overty, ‘The Cost of Doing Business: Prices of Manuscript Books in England, 1300–1483’, Book History 11 (2008), 1–32. See also, if it remains available, the very helpful blog post by Aidan Conti: , accessed 12 January 2016.

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The Construction of Vernacular History finishing the existing phrase ‘totes les auentures et batailes qe ount este en ceste terre du temps Bruyt iesques’ with ‘a la bataille de Halidon Hill’ (‘all the happenings and battles there have been in this land from the time of Brut’; ‘until the battle of Halidon Hill’).76 What exactly is the ‘volume’ in question, and what do the erasures and replacements of text add to the picture? First of all, the number of quires in the manuscript is a surprisingly vexed matter. As it now stands, there are not nineteen but twenty: two quires of six at the beginning, followed by thirteen of eight, one of four, three more of eight, and a final quire of four.77 Either the two quires of four counted for one in the reckoning, which would be fair enough, or one of the quires did not factor into the original calculation, and its addition to the ‘volume’ may have occasioned the erasure of the sum. The obvious candidate for an addition is the quire at the beginning, with the Latin verses and genealogy. It is an independent unit, in content, physical organization, and language. Its presence as introductory matter to other histories, such as Langtoft and Higden, shows that it did serve as a supplement in multiple contexts. It has none of the blue or purple ink seen elsewhere, and the handling of the red ink boxes and outlining is generally clumsier than the flourishing of the initials in the Brut. The first page of the second quire of the manuscript was originally blank, as if designed to be on the outside of the text block, as was the entire first folio of the first quire.78 And of course, the price note appears on the back of the opening leaf of the second quire, a more natural place if it were originally meant to be the beginning of the entire volume than if not, particularly given the amount of blank space originally available in the quire with the genealogy. Nevertheless, there is little doubt that the first quire was produced in the same context as the second. The text of both is almost certainly written by the same scribe.79 The distinctive ruling of the opening folio of the second quire is the same as that for the pages with genealogical roundels in the first quire, and there are even many circles lightly traced and impressed on the parchment, as if the sheet had been first meant for use in a copy of the poem and then put to other use, perhaps after the roundels for a particular diagram were botched and/or after it had been used as something of a roundel-making 76 Fol.

7v, quoted in full in GG, ix; the extension runs outside the red box that had already been put around the paragraph. 77 These are followed by a singleton covered in fifteenth-century additions that is likely to have been a flyleaf in an earlier binding, along with a fragment of a Latin theological work probably also preserved from an earlier binding. The manuscript has two folios numbered 42. 78 Fols. 7r, 1. They are now covered with additions in a fifteenth-century hand, which at the beginning extend onto fol. 2r, the page on William the Conqueror. 79 If not, then scribes trained to write a virtually identical hand; cf., e.g., the text of fol. 3v and the Latin transitional paragraph on fol. 12v, easier to compare since in the same language. The same is true for RD329 (cf. fols. 3v and 12r).

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Evidence of Production practice sheet.80 The evidence that the prologue’s text was begun on such a sheet indicates that at the very least, copies of both kinds of work were being made in the same setting at around the same time. The erasure of the total sum in the price note could also reflect not a change in the number of quires copied but a price renegotiation that led to the omission of the portraits in the first quire (or vice versa), or even the recollection by the person seeking payment that the buyer had added more material to the commission than was first sought.81 The price note reveals less than it might seem at first glance: even its total is hard to calculate, since it is unclear whether the quoted price of 5d for illumination is by the quire or for the whole, the former amount seeming high – equal to the cost of copying and parchment together, in a book with infrequent initials in its latter third – and the latter perhaps low.82 But the note certainly draws attention to the physical organization of the manuscript and the question of what its makers may have considered potentially independent units.

What Makes a Complete Brut? As I have already mentioned, the Latin verses in both P511/19 and RD329 and the Scottish Chronicle in RD329 occupy their own separate quires. RD329’s Scottish Chronicle follows a ten-folio gathering and a bifolium, in a manuscript otherwise composed of eight-folio quires after the Latin verses (see above), as if the scribe had been attempting to end the Brut text neatly with a larger quire but underestimated the space needed by a little under a folio.83 These beginning and ending units are easy to see as one-quire booklets 80 Fol.

7.

81 Kwakkel

offers useful cautions about hasty interpretation of such tallies, but in this case, the note’s phrasing and layout, and the appearance of the same hand in the revision of the note above, make it more likely to be the work of a seller than a memorandum by the buyer of the volume (‘Commercial’, p. 179). 82 In a 1346 York book contract for a psalter with substantially more decoration, the copying is quoted at ‘4s. 3d’ and the decoration at ‘5s. 6d’, plus another 18d for gold to be used; a further amount of 4s for clothing and the like is not broken down, and the price for parchment is not mentioned (quoted in full and extensively discussed in Hanna, Introducing, pp. 167–91). That would put the ratio of the price of decoration to copying somewhere between 1.29 and 1.15 to 1, depending on whether one factors in the clothing. For P511/19, at 5d for decorating per quire versus 3d for writing, the ratio is 1.66 to 1; if the 5d is taken to be for all the initials together, then it is .09 to 1. If the cost of parchment is added to the writing and taken to be 2d rather than 1d (see above), then of course the per quire ratio is 1 to 1. See also Overty, ‘Cost’, p. 6, for a table of the costs listed in the famous set of fifteenth-century Peterhouse manuscripts containing price information, for which writing is considerably more expensive and illumination averages less than 1s per manuscript. 83 Fols. 112–20, with two folios numbered 115, and fols. 121–2, with fol. 122 blank, although it now has a later owner’s inscription.

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The Construction of Vernacular History usable in different contexts or assemblages (and as noted above, the Latin poem appears as such with other works). In P511/19, the verse prologue with the story of Albine and her sisters also occupies its own six-folio gathering, written and embellished in the same fashion as the main text of the prose Brut following, and with a parallel opening rubric of exactly the same size and script as that for the main text of the chronicle: ‘Ci comence lestorie des geantz’ and ‘Ci comence la Romaunce de Bruyt.’84 With an oversized two-line opening initial and flourishing not much more elaborate than that for a regular section break in the interior, the first text does not seem to enjoy quite the status of the second, which opens with a five-line initial, a thin geometrical border or ‘cascade’ along the left side, and red flourishing at top and bottom. It is possible that the placement of the prologue’s heading all the way at the left of the text block was a mistake that prevented the creation of a larger initial.85 Whatever its causation or intention, the difference exists and has an effect. In context, the Albine story appears as a subordinate unit but, labeled as ‘lestorie’ rather than a prologue, also a potentially freestanding one. The isolated quire of four (fols. 116–19) that comes amidst all the quires of eight may prove relevant to the other emendation on fol. 7v, the replacement by the battle of Halidon Hill of whatever originally concluded the descriptive paragraph.86 It turns out that within the quire of four comes an important structural moment in the prose Brut – or at least in the development and transmission of the chronicle: the transition from the reign of Henry III, which concludes the Oldest Version, to that of Edward I. Henry’s death occurs on fol. 118v; in a text that finished at this point, this quiring would have left a full blank folio as protection at the end of the work, just as the prologue and Latin verses were made with blank folios at their beginning.87 There is no sign that in this particular manuscript there was any change of plan partway through: the text continues smoothly with no change of scribe or format at this point. But the small quire at a point where none is needed raises the possibility that the structure itself is a vestigial trait, the result of following a plan retained from an ancestral manuscript extended from a 1272 ending sometime after its original copying. Of course, it would have to be an 84 Fols.

8r, 13r. 8r. For a description of such ‘cascades’ or ‘J-borders’, with alternating segments in the flourishing inks, see Doyle, ‘Penwork’, p. 65. 86 The change could have occurred for any number of reasons including a simple mistake in the original description, although the obvious increase in text supplied signals that it amounted to more than the rewriting of a misunderstood word. 87 On this practice, see Hanna, Introducing, pp. 78–9. See also G. S. Ivy, ‘The Bibliography of the Manuscript Book’, in Wormald and Wright, eds., The English Library before 1700, pp. 32–65 (pp. 41-2), for a helpful overview of scribal approaches to making a text come out neatly. 85 Fol.

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Evidence of Production ancestor with very similar amounts of text on each page in order to match. In such a case, the original conclusion of the description at the beginning could have been another holdover, inadvertently describing an older version of the chronicle – although the description is definitely meant for a text containing an Albine prologue, for it includes the sisters and the giants in its brief account of the book’s contents.88 Another Short Version manuscript that may show such vestigial traits is Arundel 31. Now missing material at both beginning and end, it is of a similar size, script, and date to RD329 and P511/19, although it cannot be a direct, exclusive ancestor or descendant of either of them and displays slightly different styles of initial.89 The transition between the prologue and the opening of the main text comes in midsignature, with the main text beginning with a six-line initial on a new recto.90 But the reigns of both Edward I and Edward II begin on new quires, and after the only initial in the previous quire (beginning the reign of Henry III), the initials for the rest of the text shift from alternating red and blue with flourishing to simple red lombards, although the text script remains the same.91 The reign of Henry III ends only one line up from the bottom of the last verso of its quire, and there a scribe might simply have avoided awkward placement of an initial by beginning the next section as the top of the next page, but at the end of the reign of Edward I the bottom third of the page is left blank.92 Each of these physically separate sections of text does presume the presence of the one before it, beginning ‘Apres cesti Henri regna Edward son fiz’ (‘After this Henry reigned Edward his son’) and ‘Apres cesti bon Roi Edward regna son fiz Edward de Caernaruan’ (‘After this good King Edward reigned his son Edward of Caernarfon’).93 The manuscript presents no compelling reason to think that these sections of text were joined here for the first time. But the shift in the style of the initials does indicate that there was some difference in the production process between core and

88 ‘En

cest liure est contenu coment les xxix soers vindrent en Engleterre, des queux les geantz furent engendrez’ (‘In this book is contained how the 29 sisters came to England, by whom the giants were begotten’), fol. 7v; the number of sisters is different in the LV. 89 RD329 and P511/19 both contain the long account of Richard I mentioned above (see p. 9 n. 25), but Arundel 31 does not, and they both lack substantial material found in Arundel 31. 90 Fol. 6r, in what appears to be an eight-leaf quire that has lost its first two leaves. 91 Edward I begins on fol. 149r, Edward II on fol. 165r; no visible catchword precedes either of these quires (whereas at least traces of catchwords are visible for almost every other quire), but since parts of the pages are eaten away towards the end, not too much can be made of the apparent absence. Because of the manuscript’s extremely tight binding and poor condition, my collation is largely dependent on catchwords. For initials, cf. fols. 137r (flourished) and 143v (simple). 92 Fols. 148v–9r, 164v–5r. 93 Fols. 149r, 165r.

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The Construction of Vernacular History continuation, and the quiring suggests separateness or separability of these components of the text.94 The Brut in RD329, by contrast, manifests no such awareness: all of these same transitions appear not only within quires but within the same page,95 so that any traces of past physical separation have been lost: the remaining vestige of any autonomy of the parts is the equal stature of the opening initial of the prologue and main text – five lines, with a thin geometrical cascade border and extra flourishing – unlike anything else in the manuscript, including the Scottish Chronicle.96 P511/19 may represent a fourteenth-century anthology of historical materials, its components assembled at the request of a commissioner, who may have added the Latin verses to the order when the process was already underway. The picture that this forms of the available options for historical reading is already intriguing.97 But more consequential is the fact that in this volume, the prologue appears in its own quire as an independent and potentially detachable element, something that might or might not be selected on an ad hoc basis as part of a manuscript containing the rest of the prose Brut.98 This independence matters because the presence or absence of a verse prologue has long been taken as a basic classificatory division among the manuscripts of the Short Version, and the existence of a stage of the Short Version before the prologue joined it has been hypothesized.99 Dean, for instance, divides her list of manuscripts of the Short Version into two groups, those without and those with the verse prologue.100 94 This

holds good even if the blank space on fol. 164v results from copying of an exemplar made available quire-by-quire. It will require adequate classification of the SV to shed further light on the question of the possible existence of a state of the SV extending only to 1307, as Brie theorized (see Oldest, pp. 50–1, and above, p. 9). 95 Fols. 12r, 102r, 111r. 96 Fols. 8r, 12r, 123r; neither prologue nor main text has a heading, although space remains in which one could have been put. 97 See Hanna, Introducing, pp. 111–29, and Mooney, ‘Vernacular Literary Manuscripts and Their Scribes’, in Gillespie and Wakelin, eds., Production of Books, pp. 192–211 (pp. 207–10), on late fourteenth and fifteenth century custom-built anthologies, in this case assembled by book-workers who may have kept on hand exemplars and/ or prefabricated booklets for buyers to choose. 98 As noted above, the French paragraph on fol. 7v (the verso of the first leaf of the quire in which the main text begins) mentions the matter of the prologue, so at whatever point in the process it was written, the prologue’s presence was a given. P511/19 is the only extant manuscript so far identified as containing this particular description of the chronicle. 99 See Oldest, p. 48; and GG, pp. xii–xxi: Brereton shows the prologue to be an adaptation of a longer, previously existing work. For discussion of both versions, with attention to manuscript context and the effect of the story on the Brut episode, see Johnson, ‘Return’. 100 Dean no. 36.

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Evidence of Production The nine she lists as ‘without’ form no coherent groups. Five are obviously partial texts: they are fragments, or text inserted on a roll, or contain the Latin link often present between prologue and main text.101 In one, CD7, the prologue appears among fifteenth-century additions to a defective fourteenth-century Brut manuscript.102 Another unusual manuscript, Oxford, Corpus Christi College (hereafter CCCO) 78, offers a prose Albine story as prologue, with the main text beginning on a new quire.103 Only two Short Version manuscripts, Add. 35113 and CUL Mm.1.33, appear to begin cleanly without prologue; since they are not in old bindings and do not as far as I now know offer informative contemporary signature markings, there is no way of knowing if they have lost their opening quires.104 The presence of an added Albine prologue in CD7 and a novel one in CCCO 78 bespeaks a sense that such a thing was an expected part of a prose Brut by the end of the fourteenth century. The construction of P511/19, with the prologue a booklet in its own right, may offer a glimpse of a less settled moment earlier in the chronicle’s history, when a prologue might or might not be included, depending on the wish of the buyer. Not only is it unclear whether CUL Mm.1.33 and Add. 35113 ever had prologues in quires now lost, but it also cannot be taken for granted that, even if they never had prologues themselves, they are descended from manuscripts without prologues. In other words, a Short Version without prologue does not necessarily represent an earlier stage of the text, it is not at all clear that the verse prologue first joined the core text at a different time than the Short Continuation, and the presence or absence of a prologue may not be a powerful piece of evidence for purposes of classification. As RD329 shows, the texts of the prologue and

101 I.e., Cotton Julius A.I, Beinecke 86, CCCO 293A (incomplete), CCCC 98 (roll), Cotton

Domitian A.X (with link, fol. 14r of a large volume with a Cotton contents page, so perhaps assembled by him). Dean also lists We8, not a SV text. 102 Fols. 76r–9v, in another Cotton assemblage. 103 Fols. 3r–8r. The prose prologue is a back-translation of a Latin version (see J. P. Carley and J. Crick, eds., ‘Constructing Albion’s Past: An Annotated Edition of De Origine Gigantum’, Arthurian Literature XIII (1995), 41–114 (pp. 86–7)), and R. Evans, ed., ‘Gigantic Origins: An Annotated Translation of De origine gigantum’, Arthurian Literature XVI (1998), 197–211). The manuscript also contains an illustration (see cover and Plate 18) and a unique continuation running to 1397 (Dean no. 49). See below, pp. 166–7, 206–10. 104 Add. 35113 (heavy wear on the opening folio indicates that it was on the outside for a long time, but also that the manuscript spent a long time unbound), CUL Mm.1.33 (which appears intact at the beginning but ends in mid-sentence (fol. 62r, cf. Anonimalle, p. 123; P511/19, fol. 138r, with the text concluding on fol. 147v)). Beinecke 405 (mistakenly listed as an LV text by Dean (no. 46)) also begins with the main text and concludes with a version of the Short Continuation, but it may be a composite volume (the distinctive first two quires and the rest joined early enough to have medieval foliation) and presents enough textual anomalies for its classification to remain in question (see below, pp. 168–9.)

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The Construction of Vernacular History main text may not have always traveled or developed in parallel, either, and the same may be true of the continuations. The presence of distinctive shared elements among these manuscripts is a good signal of relatedness, but the absence of them is not a sure sign of distance. It will take much more extensive work on all components of the surviving manuscripts of the Short Version to learn how they relate to one another, and possibly to resolve some of these matters. Just as deeper investigation of RD329 and P511/19 reveals their relationship to be far more complicated than their surface similarity suggests, deeper investigation of the whole corpus is more likely to reveal the variety and flexibility of the ways in which prose Bruts were made and used than to make for a tidy schema. A seemingly straightforward question – how alike are these ‘twin’ manuscripts? – has raised many other questions: questions about how, where, and by whom they were produced, the intentions underlying their construction, their textual relations not only to each other but to other manuscripts and works, their audiences, and even what exactly may have constituted a prose Brut chronicle for those audiences. The different aspects of these manuscripts refuse to be isolable. Like other scholars, I often feel as if I need to know everything in order to say anything. But, having in this chapter given a sense of what an integrated analysis of Brut manuscripts may show or suggest, as well as how demanding it can be to explicate and read, I will in the next chapter attempt to restrict my focus to one aspect at a time, even though doing so results in a narrow view of the different manuscripts as they arise in discussion.

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7 The Company That Prose Bruts Keep

The Anglo-Norman prose Brut is a substantial but not enormous work, long enough to be the only work in a codex, but not so long that it demands to be the only work in a codex, nor so dauntingly long that it may repel copying at all, as Mannyng’s massive Story of England may have done.1 It is also highly supplementable, easy to expand with supporting material or material broadening its range of subject matter and time. Just such additions at beginning and end with material that proved durable gave rise to what are now considered the Short and Long Versions of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut. The process of expansion through continuation went on into the fifteenth century with the Middle English versions. The Latin genealogical charts and poems found at the beginning of RD329 and the brief Anglocentric chronicle of Scottish affairs found at its end represent another variety of expansion, with complementary material that might aid in the reading of the main text or flesh out areas given less attention in it. In roughly 40 percent of its manuscripts, the Anglo-Norman prose Brut is the only work in the codex as it currently stands.2 These manuscripts tend to make for portable and not terribly expensive books, and it is easy to imagine these qualities as attractive to the people paying for them. They certainly seem to confirm Connolly’s view that ‘the market for English books may have been moving towards the production of single texts before printing’.3 Of these manuscripts, however, not a single one is in an original or even early binding, and just over half are fragmentary or imperfect at beginning and/or end. Only a few are in volumes that begin and end so tidily as to give one every reason to think that they are complete and intact.4 With the manuscripts that begin or end incomplete, although it may be possible to

1 Mannyng’s

over 24,000-line poem survives in two copies, as well as a fragment of a third; see Mannyng, pp. 22–39, Marvin, ‘Latinity’, pp. 15–17. 2 Here I am not considering brief items such as prayers, recipes, and memoranda added by users on leaves with some room to spare. 3 Connolly, ‘Compiling’, p. 148. 4 E.g., Add. 35092, BSG 935. London, Westminster Abbey (hereafter Westminster) 25 is in an early binding with wooden boards; all it contains in addition to the SV (aside from later jottings) is a one-page table of dates at the end (fol. 98v), in the same script as the PB text.

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The Construction of Vernacular History estimate the amount of material missing from the prose Brut itself, there is generally no indication – like contemporary page numbers or quire markings – of what else might be missing. It would be rash to presume that all of them always contained only a prose Brut. The situation is even more complicated with the approximately 60 percent of surviving Anglo-Norman prose Brut manuscripts that now appear bound with other works, ranging from a page or two to a length equal to or greater than the chronicle itself. The makers and owners of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut certainly did supplement it, or sometimes use it as a supplement to other works – but when and how these agglomerations came into being can be difficult to discern, especially without overintrusive examination of their sewing.5 Beinecke 593 contains a fourteenth-century Short Version text that Godfried Croenen has identified as supplemented in the fifteenth century with a heavily abridged Anglo-Norman text of the A Version of Book 1 of Froissart’s chronicles.6 A rubric in a fifteenth-century hand added to the final page of the complete Brut text explains: Cy finoient lez veulz Cronikes dangleterre appellez le Brute iesqes au temps du Roi Edward le secunde. Et y apres ensuoient pluseurs autres nouelles Cronikes dez guerres de France dangleterre descoce despaigne et de bretaigne faitz en le temps du noble Roi Edward le tierce, et sount extraitez pur nobles cuers encoragier et eulx moustrer exemple et matier dez faites darmes et donneur.7 (‘Here end the old chronicles of England called Brut up to the time of King Edward the Second. And there follow afterwards new chronicles of the wars in France, England, Scotland, Spain and Brittany waged in the time of the noble King Edward the Third and they have been composed to encourage noble hearts and to show them the example and substance of deeds of arms and honour.’)8

In the page introducing the addition, ‘Sire Iohan Froissart Croniqer fraunceis’ is explicitly identified as its author.9 Such a transparent case of contemporary 5 For

an extremely helpful overview of known early owners, geographical spread, and manuscript context (including the less formal additions that I do not discuss here) for Anglo-Norman prose chronicles generally, based largely on their catalogue descriptions, see Spence, ‘Anglo-Norman Prose Chronicles’, pp. 27–59. 6 G. Croenen, ‘The Reception of Froissart’s Writings in England: The Evidence of the Manuscripts’, in Wogan-Browne et al., eds., Language and Culture, pp. 409–19 (pp. 414–15). 7 Fol. 118v. 8 Trans. Croenen, ‘Reception’, p. 415. Croenen notes that the second half of the rubric indicates its descent from a type of Froissart text produced in the Parisian book trade. 9 Fol. 119r.

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The Company That Prose Bruts Keep expansion of a book, with texts and authors named and even a characterization of the book’s purpose given, is very much the exception rather than the rule. What one is more likely to encounter is something like Cambridge, Jesus College Q.G.10: an incomplete Anglo-Norman prose Brut joined up with a Latin chronicle of obviously different origins, related to the annals of Waverley, the whole manuscript both beginning and ending incomplete, with modern foliation, modern binding, nothing to be learned from the catchwords, and little in the way of provenance. The combination is an intriguing one, particularly given the relations of the latter portion of the Oldest Version itself to the Latin tradition represented by the annals of Waverley, but there is no telling when or why it was made.10 In the late sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth century, at least nine Anglo-Norman prose Brut manuscripts came into the hands of Sir Robert Cotton and Sir Simonds d’Ewes, who avidly collected historical manuscripts in aid of the history of Britain that he planned to write. Like his mentor Cotton, but if anything more enthusiastically, he dismembered, rearranged, and decorated his manuscripts, not only adding tables of contents and decorative title pages, but using miniatures cut out of other manuscripts as frontispieces, adding initials, supplying chapter numbers, and filling in missing text on the basis of other manuscripts.11 Although he seems at times to have tried to imitate the script of his manuscripts, his work is, fortunately, not difficult to identify once one is on the lookout for it. All but one of these collectors’ Anglo-Norman prose Bruts now appear in compilations, with Add. 18462a and b containing two Anglo-Norman prose Bruts back to back. Shocking as their behavior is to modern sensibilities of preservation, it is important to remember that had they not taken an interest in these works, they might well not have survived at all.12 It is at least as important also to remember that their manuscripts may well represent non-medieval conceptions about what 10 This

Brut was misidentified by M. R. James as the Scalacronica of Thomas Gray (A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Jesus College, Cambridge (London, 1895), pp. 92–3) and is listed as a Scalacronica by Dean (no. 74). (The ANPB is a major source for Gray.) For a fuller account of the manuscript, which contains what is probably a truncated SV text, see King and Marvin, ‘Warning’. 11 See, e.g., Add. 18462b, 103r–4v, for provision of missing text (after repair of a hole in the manuscript) and Harley 200, fols. 1r–6v, for many of his other habits. A plate of Harley 200, fol. 6r, is the frontispiece to Pagan, ed., 1332. His work is also visible in Add. 18462a and Harley 6359. Many of his books ended up in the Harley collection. Harley 200 appears to be composed of two originally separate books from the library of John Dee; see , accessed 11 November 2015. 12 On their handling of manuscripts, see C. E. Wright, ‘The Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries and the Formation of the Cottonian Library’, in Wormald and Wright, eds., The English Library before 1700, pp. 176–212 (pp. 204–6), and A. G. Watson, The Library of Sir Simonds d’Ewes (London, 1966), pp. 49–51.

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The Construction of Vernacular History material went together or could be taken apart most usefully or conveniently.13 The same may be true of the BL’s Royal manuscripts, since Cotton and the Royal librarian Patrick Young collaborated in mixing and matching elements of manuscripts to fill out their collections, and of manuscripts of Cotton’s that ended up in other collections.14 Thus, when a Anglo-Norman prose Brut text stands alone, it is not necessarily evident whether it has always stood alone, and when it exists in company, it may not be easy to tell how long it has been keeping that company. That said, there do remain enough manuscripts with works clearly joined from the start or very early in their life to offer a sense of the range of language, literary form, and interests that might be united in a codex containing an Anglo-Norman prose Brut. The Brut’s prologues and continuations themselves began as someone’s supplementation or revision of an existing text: the ones that were often recopied have been assimilated into the notion of the ‘standard’ versions of the chronicle, but there are others that do not seem to have had as long or successful an afterlife, if the surviving manuscripts are representative. Oldest Version manuscript D120 contains the beginning of a continuation based on Langtoft from late in the reign of Henry III, which starts as a mise en prose and soon turns into direct copying; only four folios of it survive, and the manuscript ends obviously incomplete, in midsentence, with a catchword for the next gathering, so there is no way of judging how long it ran.15 CCCO 78 provides an otherwise unattested Anglo-Norman prose version of the Short Version’s Albine story, a back-translation into French of a Latin version; it also offers novel (and so far unedited) continuations highly sympathetic to

13 For

more on this issue, see Robinson, ‘Booklet’, p. 56. Carley, ‘The Royal Library as a Source for Sir Robert Cotton’s Collection: A Preliminary List of Acquisitions’, British Library Journal 18 (1992), 52–73; C. G. C. Tite (the foremost student of Cotton), ‘“Lost or Stolen or Strayed”: A Survey of Manuscripts Formerly in the Cotton Library’, British Library Journal 18 (1992), 107–34 (esp. pp. 111–12). I know of four manuscripts with ANPB material in the BL’s Royal collection, one fragmentary (Royal App. 85), one now bound with the Image du Monde, the two works having separate medieval foliation (Royal 20 A.III), one containing the Long Continuation and Brut-derived prophecies of Merlin following a text of the Anonimalle chronicle (Royal 20 A.XVIII), and one complete and alone (Royal 19 C.IX – if the ‘p. 298’ on fol. 8r is a page number, it may at some point have been split off a larger manuscript, although its medieval foliation begins with ‘i’ at the opening of the prologue, after the table of capitula). 15 For a text and more details, see Oldest, pp. 413–16; see also Edition, ed. Thiolier, ll. 35–324, with D120 labeled as O in the variants for Redaction II (not the redaction that is a source for the Short Continuation). OV text We8 also contains a few lines beginning a continuation: for a description and text, see Oldest, pp. 411–12. It appears to be related to the text represented in fuller (but still incomplete) form in St Petersburg, National Library of Russia Fr.F.v. IV 8, identified as an ANPB by Gillette Labory (see Dean no. 45), of which I am now making a study and edition. 14 See

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The Company That Prose Bruts Keep Edward II, from 1307 to 1397.16 The first page of the continuation for Edward II is an obvious palimpsest (fol. 164v): it appears that this continuation replaces and literally overwrites another. Other manuscripts show attempts to expand or alter an existing chronicle, not to bring it into line with a later user’s own views or tastes, but mostly to restore missing portions.

Reconstituted Bruts CD7 represents a mixed case. To a core of fourteenth-century text running from Brut to the beginning of the reign of Henry I, where it breaks off in mid-sentence at the bottom of the page, fifteenth-century additions using a Short Version text have been meticulously made. A verse prologue is added in its own quire at the beginning of the text, and the newer hand picks up the reign of Henry I seamlessly at exactly the right word at the end of the fourteenth-century portion.17 So carefully did whoever was preparing the text read it that a problem in the middle of the fourteenth-century core text was noticed and addressed: towards the end of the reign of Arthur, there is a jump of some 130 lines (of the printed Oldest Version text) in mid-page, and the material missing has been inserted on two folios following, in the same fifteenth-century script.18 London, Lincoln’s Inn, Hale 88 has a similar restoration, although in this case it looks as if the middle pages of a quire have been lost and replaced: five folios in a fifteenth-century hand are inserted in mid-quire in a fourteenth-century Long Version, precisely filling in the needed text.19 In CD7, there is some expansion as well: after the end of the Short Continuation, the text is supplemented with several shorter items in Latin, French, and English, one of which is an account in French of Cadwallader’s exile from Britain, clearly related to the version found in many Middle English prose Bruts, and inconsistent with the events recounted in the body of the chronicle.20 The maker of the restored version evidently cared 16 Dean

nos. 39 and 49. For some commentary and extracts, see V. H. Galbraith, ‘Extracts from the Historia Aurea and a French “Brut” (1317–47)’, EHR 43 (1928), 203–17 (pp. 206–17). On the prologue, see Carley and Crick, ‘Constructing’, pp. 86–7. 17 Fols. 76r–9v, 139v–40r, corresponding to Oldest, l. 3276; Brereton considers this text of the prologue to be derived from Cambridge, Trinity College R.7.14 because of English glossing found in both (GG, pp. vii, x). Dean’s description of the manuscript (under no. 36) contains some inaccuracies. 18 Fols. 118v–20v, corresponding to Oldest, ll. 2008–136. 19 Fols. 51–5 (by the numbering in the top right corners, not that at the bottom of the page, which includes the first flyleaf), corresponding to Oldest, ll. 3377–731). 20 Fols. 180v–2v; see above, p. 121, on the omission of Cadwallader from the OV and subsequent versions. For the Cadwallader episode in English, see Matheson, PB, pp. 57–61. Among the other works, all in the same hand, are the Middle English prose ‘Lamentation of Our Lady’ (fols. 183r–7r) and several short poems by or

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The Construction of Vernacular History enough about this different version of events to include it – and possibly to translate it from English to French, if that is the direction things went (more study is needed) – but also valued the version in the fourteenth-century text enough to leave it undisturbed.21 Making the texts available seems to have mattered more than reconciling them. Whoever reworked CD7 to create a complete Brut thus had access not only to the partial core text, but to another Anglo-Norman prose Brut to serve as exemplar for the replacement portions, and some other prose Brut (or extract from it) with the Cadwallader episode – an indication of an environment in which copies were not hard to come by. Not that scribes looking to supplement a defective exemplar always succeeded in doing so. D120 leaves blank space where a folio may have been missing from its exemplar, but the replacement text was never added.22 A colophon in the Middle English prose Brut Egerton 650 explains that the text ends short of its proper ending ‘be cause we wanted þe trewe copy þerof bot who so euer owys þis boke may wryte it oute . . . whene he gettes þe trew copy’; this suggests, however disingenuously, a hope that a ‘trewe copy’ should not be difficult to find.23 Beinecke 405 may represent another case of contemporary rehabbing of a defective Brut: its first two quires (fols. 1–16) appear to be of different origins than the rest (fols. 17–74), with its scribes writing in decidedly different scripts, using different patterns of ruling, and providing a different layout. Whereas the second portion has completed and flourished initials, with new sections beginning on new lines, the first portion generally runs the sections of the text together continuously in the main block, leaving only minimal space for initials that have never been filled in, even when the space for the initials is at the left edge and could have been filled in the same style as the second, if the initials and flourishing had been added throughout at the same time. The version of the text found in the first two quires is also unusual, not corresponding readily to that of any other manuscript I have so far examined in detail, whereas the rest is a straightforward Short Version. However, at the transition point between the two, the text matches almost perfectly, the beginning of fol. 17r completing the sentence begun at the bottom of fol. 16v, albeit with some awkwardness (the main verb has been lost, possibly because of miscopying at the bottom of fol. 16v or because of differing exemplars in commonly attributed to Chaucer (fols. 188v–9v). Combination of the ANPB with items in English is unusual. I am unsure whether or not the portion of the extant volume preceding the Brut, including the Latin ‘Three Kings of Cologne’ (fols. 12r–75r), and the Latin texts at the very end (fols. 190r–2v) should be considered part of the fifteenth-century version of the codex. 21 Fols. 121v–3v. 22 D120, fol. 41r–v (in mid-quire). 23 Fol. 111r, as transcribed by Matheson, PB, p. 101, and discussed by Baswell, ‘Troy’, p. 187. See also M.-R. McLaren, ‘The Textual Transmission of the London Chronicles’, in English Manuscript Studies, 1100–1700 3 (1992), 38–72 (p. 61).

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The Company That Prose Bruts Keep use).24 It is hard to imagine such exact joining coming out of sheer coincidence. Although the second portion shows some secretary splay and the first portion none, so that one’s immediate instinct is to date the second portion later than the first, fashions in handwriting did not, of course, take hold uniformly and simultaneously. It could be that Beinecke 405 represents a particularly badly coordinated copying job. (‘You’re fired!’ the commissioner of the manuscript says to the first scribe after looking at his work.) It could be that someone who came by the first two quires created a complete Brut by copying and adding the rest. It could also be that the first two quires, with their cramming of the page and their idiosyncratic wording, represent an attempt to add a missing beginning to an extant text, with ad hoc editing and abridgment along the way in an effort to make it all fit into the allotted space. However these chunks came together, they did so early, for there is medieval roman foliation throughout.25

Bruts with Other Works More often, the Anglo-Norman prose Brut is combined with other works entirely: with or as a continuation, with historical works in Latin or the vernacular, or with works quite different in nature. The combination of Anglo-Norman historical works with texts in Latin, long and short, is far from unusual – another blow to the presumption often found in older scholarship that Anglo-Norman served those who could not manage Latin.26 In the following survey, which is not exhaustive, I will consider only manuscripts in which either the booklets have enough traits in common for it to be likely that they have been produced together, or in which the transition from one work to another comes in a way that leaves little doubt as to their common origin.27 The case of Beinecke 593 shows an extant Brut manuscript being supplemented after its initial making, with Froissart essentially serving as a continuation. One surviving group of Short Version manuscripts – Harley 200, Cambridge, Trinity College R.5.32, and Bodleian Douce 128 – deploys a Latin chronicle as a Brut continuation.28 After a text of the Brut that seems 24 The

moment corresponds to Oldest, l. 1126. pages have been so severely cut down in binding that often only traces of the foliation are visible at the top, and the sides have been trimmed practically to the text block in places; I suspect the numbering was added by the user who made a brief index on the back flyleaf, on which more below. 26 See Marvin, ‘Latinity’; Marvin, ‘Unassuming’, esp. pp. 14–19; Spence, ‘AngloNorman Prose Chronicles’, pp. 37–49. 27 My criteria for inclusion are a little more conservative than Spence’s in ‘AngloNorman Prose Chronicles’. 28 Dean no. 44. The Harley and Douce texts are now bound together with other materials of different origin. For a brief description of the manuscripts, see Pagan, 25 The

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The Construction of Vernacular History to have been abridged for a later audience – by such means as the omission of circumstantial detail and the shortening of long lists of names – follows the chronicle of Robert of Avesbury on the reign of Edward III, in each case continuing smoothly on the same page and in the same hand.29 Robert of Avesbury, in Latin but including a number of documents in French, in fact appears only in these three manuscripts: like Gaimar’s Estoire, which survives only as a continuation to Wace’s Brut, it seems to owe its survival to its association with a more popular work.30 The process can go the other way as well: in CCCC 98, a fifteenth-century genealogical roll, portions of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut have been incorporated in available spaces within the charts, with some struggle to reconcile the content of the two. For instance, the original chart runs directly from ‘Eneas’ to ‘Silueyn’, and a later hand has inserted Ascanius between then, as in the prose Brut’s account.31 In CUL Dd.10.32, an Anglo-Norman prose Brut text forms a continuation to Geoffrey’s Historia, picking up on the same page as the Historia’s ending in a new hand and less formal script, and running from Osberht to Henry III with a quick summation at the end of the reign of Edward I.32 Spence has identified a brief extract from the Anglo-Norman prose Brut following the Historia Anglorum of Henry of Huntingdon in Exeter Cathedral Library 3514; according to Crick, the core manuscript was supplemented later at beginning and end with long and short works of historical or scientific interest, one of the supplements being Geoffrey’s Historia, with

ed., 1332, pp. 5–10. Dean and Pagan both date these manuscripts in a range from the late fourteenth to early fifteenth centuries. Although itself likely to be a late revision of the SV, this version may be based on an early SV manuscript; it has headings, common in the OV but not the SV, and it uses the names of both Argentille and Goldeburgh for Havelok’s wife, unlike most SV manuscripts; see Marvin, ‘Havelok’, pp. 292–5, in which I mistakenly label Dublin, Trinity College (hereafter TCD) 501 a SV rather than a LV text (p. 294 n. 42), and Pagan, ed., 1332, p. 13. 29 For the transition, see Harley 200, fol. 79v, Cambridge, Trinity College R.5.32, fol. 59r, and Douce 128, fol. 163v (reproduced in Marvin, ‘Latinity’, figure 8, p. 41). For a sense of the abridgment, cf., e.g., Pagan, ed., 1332, ll. 5771–848, Anonimalle, pp. 82–98, and CUL Mm.1.33, fols. 58r–60r. 30 See Spence, ‘Anglo-Norman Prose Chronicles’, pp. 41–2. 31 For this moment, see , accessed 25 January 2016. For a detailed description of the recto side of the roll, see Tyson, ‘The Adam and Eve Roll: Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 98’, Scriptorium 52 (1998), 301–16; Tyson takes the Brut text to have been incorporated at the time of the manuscript’s making (see p. 313). See also D. B. Tyson, ‘Les manuscrits du Brut en prose française (MSS 50, 53, 98, 133, 469)’, in Les manuscrits français de la bibliothèque Parker: actes du colloque 24–27 mars 1993, ed. N. Wilkins, pp. 101–20 (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 107, 110–11; Marvin, ‘Narrative’, p. 217; Rajsic, ‘Cestuy roy’, p. 128 n. 9. 32 Fols. 63r–82r. Listed independently by Dean under no. 25; see Pagan and De Wilde, ed. and trans., ‘Prose Chronicle’; Spence, Reimagining, p. 15 n. 74; and Crick, Summary Catalogue, no. 45, pp. 76–7.

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The Company That Prose Bruts Keep the prose Brut extract the only non-Latin text in the manuscript aside from subsequent notes by readers.33 Bodleian Lyell 17, a fourteenth-century manuscript that by the fifteenth century belonged to the abbey of St Mary’s in York, contains the Chronicle of Popes and Emperors of Martinus Polonus, a number of short Latin historical pieces of British or ecclesiastical interest, and a Short Version of the AngloNorman prose Brut, all in a single hand, with the transitions between items coming within the page and indeed the column.34 The Anglo-Norman prose Brut fragments now in Beinecke 86 were, according to Ker, part of what was originally a manuscript of over 200 folios containing Martinus Polonus.35 In Royal 20 A.XVIII, the Long Continuation from the beginning of Edward II to its account of the arrogance of the Mortimers has been added in a somewhat later hand to a text of the Anonimalle chronicle that runs only to the coronation of Edward II.36 The extension also includes the Long Version’s prophecies of Merlin, both the full version found during the reign of Arthur and the explications found at the end of kings from Henry III on. This job took some careful selection, and it shows that whoever planned it found the Brut chronicle valuable for more than adding a continuation.37 Interest in supplementary prophetic matter can be seen in several AngloNorman prose Bruts. Latin Bridlington prophecies are found not only in EUL 181, but also Bodleian Ashmole 1804, where they partly fill out the quire with the end of Mandeville’s Travels (in Anglo-Norman) preceding the quire beginning the Long Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut.38 33 P.

450. Spence, ‘Anglo-Norman Prose Chronicles’, p. 38; Crick, Summary Catalogue, no. 70, pp. 114–17; see also N. R. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries (hereafter MMBL), 4 vols. (Oxford, 1969–92) III, 822–4. 34 See the detailed description in A. de la Mare, Catalogue of the Collection of Medieval Manuscripts Bequeathed to the Bodleian Library, Oxford by James P. R. Lyell (Oxford, 1971), pp. 39–42, the major transitions coming on fols. 52v and 58v. 35 Some of it survives as Malmesbury Parish Church 2. For its other contents, some of which will be mentioned below, see MMBL, III, 333–5; Spence, ‘Anglo-Norman Prose Chronicles’, p. 42 and n. 118. 36 The Anonimalle text is in a mid-fourteenth century anglicana formata, the LV extracts in a much looser late fourteenth or fifteenth century anglicana formata, with some secretary splay, written by multiple scribes (or one with an extraordinarily variable hand); the PB extracts (corresponding to Brie, Brut, I, 205–62) pick up directly from the Anonimalle on the last lines of the page (fol. 311r). The presence of LV chapter numbers and other characteristic formatting in the extracts demonstrates that they are derived from a full version of, and do not represent a possible source for, the LV. 37 For more on the prophecies of Merlin introduced in the LV, see below, pp. 239–42, and Marvin, ‘Arthur Authorized’. 38 Fols. 42v–6r. The format, ordinatio, and script of the two parts of the manuscript all match, with at least one scribe in common among multiple scribes (see, e.g., fols. 35v and 64r), although the ruling styles and details of decoration can differ. The contemporary quire markings start over again with the Brut text (fol. 24 marks quire

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The Construction of Vernacular History By modern sensibilities, Mandeville has even less claim to be considered a historical work than does the prose Brut, but as a purportedly truthful narrative, it may have seemed an entirely appropriate complement to the chronicle, creating a book with a much wider scope. Whatever the kinds of generic association that may have brought the texts together, the joining of the two represents another kind of association, that of the prose Brut with other popular works. The Travels in French survive in twenty-four manuscripts.39 With twenty-eight extant manuscripts, the Manuel des Pechiez was another popular work, in another vein: in CUL Ee.1.20, it is followed within the quire by an abridged Long Version text.40 Three Anglo-Norman prose Bruts are accompanied by the thirteenthcentury cosmological poem Image du Monde by Gossuin of Metz, which survives in close to 100 manuscripts in several redactions.41 Hale 88 includes Latin medical and prognosticatory texts in addition to the Image: not all of its four booklets appear to have been produced together, but they are bound together in an early, possibly fifteenth-century, binding with holes for attaching a chain, its flyleaves covered with further scientific and historical matter.42 The copy of Image du Monde that forms the first part of Royal 20 A.III is dated 1342 (fol. 120v), but the Image and the Long Version text that follows are in separate booklets with independent medieval foliation, and although they are plausible contemporaries, it is unclear when they were joined. In NLW 5028C, the prose Brut is now bound with ‘L’Evangile de Nichodemus’ (ending incomplete) and the Image: its parts were all owned by Sir John Legh of Stockwell (d. 1523), who wrote his name at the end of each ‘d’ in the Travels and fol. 73 marks ‘d’ in the Brut); the two may have been separate booklets obtained at the same time. 39 As listed in Dean no. 341, with fourteen insular and ten Continental manuscripts. Beinecke 86 may also have once been part of a manuscript containing Mandeville: see MMBL, III, 334; Spence, ‘Anglo-Norman Prose Chronicles’, p. 44 and n. 151. 40 Fol. 79v. See Dean no. 635 for the Manuel; she lists CUL Ee.1.20 under no. 44 as the ‘Intermediate Version’ of the ANPB. This misleading label stems from persistent confusion as to whether the manuscript, which ends in 1307, could represent an earlier state of the text of the LV than the full one, but it is unmistakably derived from a longer version (see T. M. Smallwood, ‘“The Prophecy of the Six Kings”’, Speculum 60 (1985), 571–92 (p. 579)). 41 See J. Frappier et al., eds., Grundriss der romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters (Heidelberg, 1968–), VI, pt. 2, no. 3672. 42 The contents are a one-quire booklet of Latin prognosticatory and astrological texts, then the LV of the PB (with different scribes taking somewhat different approaches to the ordinatio, as discussed below), then a one-quire booklet with three short Latin medical texts (‘De arte phisionomandi’, ‘Epistola Aristotelis’ (to Alexander the Great), and ‘Secretum Ypocratis’), and then Image du Monde. The same scribe’s work appears in the second and third booklets (see, e.g., fols. 17r and 76r); according to a typed note in the manuscript, the binding was restored in 1959. See J. Hunter, A Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of the Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn (London, 1838), pp. 73–5.

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The Company That Prose Bruts Keep work, in a possible indication that they may not have been bound together until later.43 The combination of the prose Brut with these popular works of devotion and information offers a sense of what a personal collection may have looked like for readers who wanted, or could afford, only a few works.44 The Latin calendar of saints preceding the Long Version text in Add. 18462a (fols. 2–8) may represent another such useful collection, but since the volume has been arranged by Simonds d’Ewes and there is no definite evidence to link the two, it is hard to tell. Likewise the prose Brut fragments in Beinecke 86, which according to Ker come from a manuscript containing an Anglo-Norman biblical verse paraphrase as well as Guido delle Colonne and Martinus Polonus in Latin, and possibly Mandeville, in addition to other short items surviving in the Yale manuscript.45 Like the prose Brut, the Travels, the Manuel, and the Image were all to be translated into English. Caxton published his version of the Image as The Myrrour of the World in 1480, the same year that he published the Middle English prose Brut as the Chronicles of England.46 What is markedly uncommon is an Anglo-Norman prose Brut accompanied by fable or vernacular verse narrative, aside, of course, from the Albine poem that became the Short Version’s prologue. There are only two cases in which an Anglo-Norman prose Brut appears with a work that might be considered a ‘romance’ in current generic terms. In a collection of separately mounted fragments that forms part of Cotton Julius A.I, two folios of what seems to be part of the Short Continuation appear ten folios away from a brief fragment of the Queste du saint graal. In 1941, Helen Richardson said that both were written by the same scribe; the manuscript is badly damaged by fire, with the Brut folios particularly difficult to see, and I am not confident that that is the case.47 In the fifteenth-century Continental manuscript Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal (hereafter Arsenal) 3346, a Short Version Brut follows the prose Roman de Loherant Garin, a set of Lorrainer ancestral tales. The two texts are in separate booklets but with the same paper stock, layout, and script, including large spaces at the beginning of each for an illustration never supplied, and both have been marked at

43 The

large initials for the PB and the ‘Evangile’ are decorated in the same (distinctively gawky) style (see esp. fols. 63v, 120r); these components seem at the least to have been handled together from very early on. 44 The considerable library of Thomas of Woodstock included ‘Maundevylle’ and a ‘Livre blanc Fraunceys del ymage de mound’ as well as ‘Cronicles Dengleterre’ and many other historical works in Latin and French (see Cavanaugh, ‘Study’, pp. 844–51 (pp. 848, 847 quoted)). 45 MMBL, III, 333–5. 46 See Matheson, ‘Printer and Scribe: Caxton, the Polychronicon, and the Brut’, Speculum 60 (1985), 593–614. 47 Fols. 51r–3v and 63v; see H. Richardson, ‘The Affair of the Lepers’, Medium Aevum 10 (1941), 15–25 (p. 15).

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The Construction of Vernacular History beginning and end by Guyon de Sardière (1674–1759).48 Whether or not they were bound together early, they are very likely to have been part of the same collection from the start and to reveal something about the interests of their first owner: the identical treatment of the two works may indicate rather that the prose Garin was treated as equivalent to the history found in the Brut than that the Brut was treated as a romance. Aside from these two cases, one tenuous and the other late and Continental, the Anglo-Norman prose Brut does not appear with the kinds of narrative in verse or prose now labeled as romance.49 However tempting it may be to associate the audience for vernacular romance with that for vernacular historiography, the manuscript tradition does not provide evidence that Anglo-Norman prose Bruts were often read together with or regarded as generically analogous to romance.50 If anything, the evidence suggests that the two were understood and consumed in different ways.51 When the Anglo-Norman prose Brut is grouped, it tends to be with works in French or Latin rather than English, even in fifteenth-century manuscripts for which English texts would have been available. (The exception is the short pieces in English added to CD7 by its fifteenth-century restorer.) It also tends to be grouped with other historical works or encyclopedic works like the Travels or the Image du Monde; the historical works are largely either ones that supplement the Brut’s material by widening its geographical or temporal scope, or ones that restate information in the Brut in concise, easily consultable form, like the Latin genealogical poem found in P511/19 and RD329. Less frequently, it may accompany a popular or useful devotional work such as the Manuel or ‘L’Evangile de Nichodemus’ – prayers also appear as informal jottings on flyleaves and the like.52 The appearance of

48 Openings

on fols. 1r, 84r, inscription on fols. 2r, 76r, 84r, 156r. The Garin text has been edited by J.-C. Herbin as La mise en prose de la Geste des Loherains dans le manuscrit Arsenal 3346 (Valenciennes, 1995); see pp. vii–x for his description of the manuscript. 49 See Spence, ‘Anglo-Norman Prose Chronicles’, p. 46, on evidence for romances found with other AN historical works, and Reimagining, pp. 74–104, on the introduction of ‘English heroes’ into AN chronicles. For a comparison of the ordinatio typically found in AN romance and PB manuscripts, see Marvin, ‘Anglo-Norman Narrative as History or Fable: Judging by Appearances’, The Medieval Chronicle 3 (2004), 116–34. 50 As the inventory of the library of Thomas of Woodstock shows, the same person might well own a lot of both (Cavanaugh, ‘Study’, pp. 844–51). 51 On this issue, and for further comparison of the manuscript evidence offered by works of AN historiography and romance, see Marvin, ‘Anglo-Norman Narrative’. Crane’s Insular Romance remains a valuable survey of the varieties of insular narrative, Anglo-Norman and Middle English, subsumed under the label of ‘romance’. 52 See Spence, ‘Anglo-Norman Prose Chronicles’, p. 47.

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The Company That Prose Bruts Keep the Anglo-Norman prose Brut as a free-standing volume, paired with other works of Latin or Anglo-Norman historiography, or combined with other popular works of edification, speaks to the seriousness with which it was regarded and the role it may have played as a basic element of a vernacular library in late medieval England.53

53 See

also the conclusions drawn by Spence, ‘Anglo-Norman Prose Chronicles’, pp. 48–50.

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8 Ordinatio, Apparatus, and Annotation

Ordinatio (broadly speaking, the basic presentation and organization of a work), apparatus (elements provided to aid navigation and interpretation of the text), and annotation (by which I will mean marks made by users after a manuscript’s initial production) are almost always attenuated or invisible in modern editions of medieval texts, but they are of course a fundamental part of the experience of reading in manuscript.1 Each of the major versions of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut has a characteristic ordinatio. Although the manuscripts are far from uniform, all tend to be designed to have larger initials separating sections of text. Even this basic guidance was not so basic that it could not be foregone, since in many manuscripts the initials were never put in, and the reader navigates via blank spaces. The chronicle’s fundamental organizing principle is the reign of a king, and for the many reigns that are briefly reported, the reign is also the basic narrative unit. When accounts of single reigns run longer – as with Brut, Arthur, and the kings from Edward the Confessor on, and especially in the continuations – the unmanageable length of the sections elicits a range of responses from bookmakers. Their choices about if and how to divide text within reigns reveals something about how they make sense of the narrative.2 In the Oldest Version, four of the five surviving manuscripts have brief rubrics heading each section, usually identifying the king in question and perhaps mentioning an outstanding feature of his reign (see Plate 9).3 Among the manuscripts, these headings appear to be related to one another, but 1 See

Parkes, ‘The Influence of the Concepts of Ordinatio and Compilatio on the Development of the Book’, in Medieval Learning and Literature: Essays Presented to Richard William Hunt, ed. J. J. G. Alexander and M. T. Gibson (Oxford, 1976), pp. 115–41. 2 For a thorough example of what can be learned from examining the placement of initials in Wace, see F. H. M. Le Saux, ‘On Capitalization in Some Early Manuscripts of Wace’s Roman de Brut’, in Arthurian Studies in Honour of P. J. C. Field, ed. B. Wheeler (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 29–47. 3 The six-folio fragment in n.a.f. 4267 includes only one heading, enough to give a sense of its format. The very brief headings in We8 appear to be the only completed part of what, from the extra blank spaces left between each section, was intended to be a more elaborate apparatus. D120 uses running heads instead of headings: see Marvin, ‘Vitality’, p. 306, figure 23.1, for an image.

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Plate 9. London, British Library, Additional MS 35092, fol. 61r. Oldest Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut, with typical Oldest Version ordinatio of rubric headings and colored, flourished initials marking textual divisions. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. © British Library Board, all rights reserved.

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Ordinatio, Apparatus, and Annotation also to be adapted by individual rubricators to, for example, fit the space available. The majority of Short Version manuscripts have headings only at the beginning of the prologue and main text, if even then, the result being a set of manuscripts that are not easy to navigate without the addition of supplemental apparatus (see Plate 11).4 With very few exceptions, Long Version manuscripts have both chapter numbers and capitula, which seem to have become part of the fundamental design of the text at the time of the creation of the Long Version (see Plates 27 and 28).5 It is important not to be too eager to assign intention to variation among the texts, when practical concerns such as copyfitting, and circumstances such as an apparatus already in place, may be at least as consequential as anyone’s desire to affect subsequent readers’ experiences in particular ways. Nonetheless, each of these kinds of ordinatio can provoke different kinds of response from both makers and users of particular copies, so that the apparatus of a manuscript may develop over time, in response to the guidance and challenges present in the copy as it is received.

The Presentation of the Chronicle One thing that Anglo-Norman prose Bruts often lack is a title. Petyt 511/19 uniquely (as far as I know) offers ‘Ci comence la Romaunce de Bruyt’; ‘romaunce’ here may well signify simply that the text is in French.6 In NLW 5028C and Add. 18462a, the table of capitula (but not the text itself) gives the label ‘Cronicles Dengleterre’: something along these lines is the most common contemporary identification found in Anglo-Norman prose Bruts, but even this is not found often.7 As already seen in RD329 and P511/19, a longer opening rubric, or a paragraph connecting the Albine prologue to the main text, is sometimes present and offers some sense of how the makers of the chronicle characterize it. The most common of these characterizations is the Latin link found in about a dozen Short Version manuscripts, which presents the history in terms

4 The

exceptions are the three manuscripts in the Robert of Avesbury group (Harley 200, Douce 128, and Cambridge, Trinity College R.5.32), CUL Mm.1.33, Add. 18462b, London, Lambeth Palace (hereafter Lambeth) 504, and CCCO 293A. The idiosyncratic text in CCCO 78, related to the SV, also has headings; f.f. 12156 has a few headings in the first few folios. 5 Two deluxe manuscripts produced on the Continent in the second half of the fifteenth century (Royal 19 C.IX and f.f. 12155) lack chapter numbers but have tables of capitula. NLW 5028C and Add. 18462a (closely related to each other) have all the capitula in tables at the front of the manuscripts, with chapter numbers only in the body of the text. See below, pp. 189–90). 6 Fol. 13r. 7 NLW 5028C, fol. 2r; Add. 18462a, fol. 9v.

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The Construction of Vernacular History of the changing names of the land: after a summary of the Albine prologue preceding, it goes on to describe Brut as replacing the name of Albion with Britain, and then Engist doing the same thing to Britain to introduce the name of ‘Engistlond’.8 The language of the link of course presupposes comfort with Latin among both makers and users of the text, while its focus on the shifts in name, rather like that found toward the beginning of the Roman de Brut, runs against the grain of the Oldest Version’s efforts to smooth over the notion that Britain is ever truly conquered after the time of Brut.9 Even so, this note stops with the name of ‘Engistlond’ and does not use the Norman Conquest as a landmark. The French paragraph found only before the prologue of P511/19 opens with a similar summary of the Albine story but continues with an emphasis not just on the changing names of the land, but also on conquest and the displacement of its inhabitants: it explains that the book will tell coment Brutus vient en Engleterre, et conquist la terre sur les geantz et ousta le noun de Albion et lappella Bretaigne apres son noun demeine. Et coment les Saxons vindrent de Germanie en ceste terre et la conquistrent et engetterent les Bretons et ousterent le noun de Bretaigne et lappellerent Engistlonde apres le noun Engist qe feust le mestre et le dustre des Saissons. Et coment William Bastard conquist ceste terre ensemblement oue totes les auentures et batailes qe ount este en ceste terre du temps Bruyt iesques a la bataille de Halidon Hill. (‘how Brut came to England and conquered the land from the giants, and got rid of the name of Albion and called it Britain after his own name. And how the Saxons came from Germany to this land and conquered it and threw out the Britons, and got rid of the name of Britain, and called it Engistland after the name of Engist, who was the master and the leader of the Saxons. And how William the Bastard conquered this land, together with all the happenings and battles that have been in this land from the time of Brut up to the battle of Halidon Hill.’)10

In P511/19 the presence of the Latin genealogical poem that starts with William the Conqueror – ‘rex est anglorum, bello conquestor eorum’ – further emphasizes his significance, and the sense of his beginning a new epoch in English history.11 For good measure, P511/19 also contains the Latin link 8 Transcribed from TCD 500, in P. Meyer, ‘De quelques chroniques Anglo-Normandes

qui ont porté le nom de Brut’, Bulletin de la Société des Anciens Textes Français 4 (1878), 105–45 (pp. 123–4); see Dean no. 36, for a list. 9 RB, ll. 1189–200. The Latin text can also display heavy abbreviation, another indication of the scribes’ habits and expectations of their readers. 10 Fol. 7v. The last six words replace something previously written: see above, pp. 155–6. The whole paragraph is transcribed by Brereton in GG, p. ix, and in the newer Inner Temple catalogue (Davies, Catalogue, pp. 248–9, with errors). 11 Fol. 2r (‘he is king of the English, their conqueror through war’).

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Ordinatio, Apparatus, and Annotation between the prologue and the main text, and in the blank space left below the Latin link a fifteenth-century user has briefly repeated in Latin the information found in the earlier French note, including William’s conquest (see Plate 10).12 This framing of the narrative is thus strongly reinforced for readers. And it appears to have had an effect: P511/19 is not heavily marked by its users, but at the point when Gurmund invades, a fifteenthcentury annotator, probably the same person who added the Latin note, has provided a lengthy French note on the conquest of Britain and the change of the realm’s name, and there are also two manicules, one at the passage in the text acknowledging ‘la grant mescheance’ and another in the top margin beside the note (see Plate 11).13 The late version of the Short Version represented in the Robert of Avesbury group provides a French paragraph rather than a Latin one between prologue and main text. It puts the reader into the position of a listener and makes for a nice example of the use of the term ‘Brut’ to signify the chronicle itself: Ore auetz oy coment Engleterre fust nome primes Albion, et la resoun purquei. Et ore escutez coment ele fust puis nome Bretayne, si en orrez pleinement le Bruyt de totes lez batailles et auentures qount este en Engleterre du temps de chescune Roy tantqe a temps le Roi Edward de Wyndesore, le tierce Edward apres la conqueste, et ascune partie de soun temps. (‘Now you have heard how England was first named Albion, and the reason why. And now listen to how it was then named Britain, and hear fully the Brut concerning all the battles and happenings that have been in England from the time of each king until the time of King Edward of Windsor, the third Edward after the Conquest, and some part of his time.’)14

The idea of conquest slips in only at the end, with the identification of Edward III. The rubric for the opening chapter, which follows immediately, is in some ways redundant and in others revealing: ‘En ceste liure sount contenuz toutz les batailles et lez tresouns qount estee en Brutayne et en Engleterre’ (‘In this book are contained all the battles and betrayals that have been in Britain and England’).15 ‘Battles and betrayals’ constitutes a darker description of the content of the prose Brut. The presence of this phrase also indicates that the longer French summary in Harley 200 may be a replacement for the Latin and its French

12 Fol.

12v; cf. Plate 8 above of fol. 7v. 511/19, fol. 65r. The top hand has been made an extension of the flourishing of the initial on the page. The two manicules may well have been added by the annotator who wrote the text in the margin, but it is not certain. 14 Harley 200, fol. 6r; see Pagan, ed., 1332, pp. 33, 207. 15 Harley 200, fol. 6r; see Pagan, ed., 1332, p. 33. 13 Petyt

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Plate 10. London, Inner Temple Library, MS Petyt 511, vol. 19, fol. 12v. Short Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut: conclusion of Albine prologue and Latin transitional passage between prologue and main text, followed by a later user’s Latin summary based on the French summary on fol. 7v. Reproduced by permission of the Masters of the Bench of the Inner Temple.

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Ordinatio, Apparatus, and Annotation

Plate 11. London, Inner Temple Library, MS Petyt 511, vol. 19, fol. 65r. Short Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut, with typical Short Version ordinatio of colored initials but no headings to mark textual divisions, later annotation in French, and manicules pointing to both text and annotation. Reproduced by permission of the Masters of the Bench of the Inner Temple.

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Plate 12. London, British Library, MS Cotton Cleopatra D.III, fol. 74r. Long Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut: beginning of the Albine prologue, with border and figure of a seated king in the opening initial ‘E’, as well as remnants of an inscription of ownership by William Jenyns, Lancaster Herald to Henry VIII. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. © British Library Board, all rights reserved.

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Ordinatio, Apparatus, and Annotation

Plate 13. London, British Library, MS Cotton Cleopatra D.III, fol. 75r. Long Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut: beginning of main text, with smaller five-line gilded initial and less elaborate border than the page for the prologue. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. © British Library Board, all rights reserved.

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The Construction of Vernacular History rubric an abridgment of one found in two other manuscripts that include the Latin summary but also extend it in a French heading: En ceste liure sount contenuz touz lez batailles ensemblement oue lez traisouns de touz les rois qount este en Engleterre, auxi bien saresins et de paieme come de rois cristians. Coment Brut occist son piere et sa miere. (‘In this book are contained all the battles together with the betrayals of all the kings there have been in England, infidels and those of pagan stock just as much as Christian kings. How Brut killed his father and mother.’)16

In these two manuscripts, the Latin summary is left to do the job on the land’s changes of name, while the image of the book presented in the French heading that follows is one of comprehensiveness and of contraries brought together – battles and betrayals, Christians and pagans, and even the founder whose career begins with the deaths of his own parents. Of the vernacular versions of the Short Version summary, this is the truest to the content and tenor of the Oldest Version, and is likely to be the version that gave rise to that in the Robert of Avesbury group – but whether that group’s elimination of details such as the pagan and Christian kings stems from someone’s desire not to signal a pagan past, for instance, or simply a lack of space, is impossible to determine. However deliberately or not, each of these introductions pushes the reader of or listener to the book in a slightly different direction – towards associating the Brut with Latinity or with orality, towards reading British history as that of conquest and displacement and/or as that of ever-recurring war, or towards thinking of identity in terms of faith or of nation – British, Saxon, Norman.17

Textual Organization Other aspects of textual organization throw off other kinds of signals to users. CCCO 78 deploys oversized gold initials to mark what seem to be especially favored kings: Arthur, Richard I, and the beginning of the account of Edmund Ironside and Cnut all receive them, for instance – but not William

16 Lambeth

504, fol. 4v; also found in Add. 18462b, fol. 106v. These are among the SV manuscripts with headings throughout. CUL Mm.1.33 has a similar but shorter opening rubric invoking ‘tuz les afferes et lour batailles’ (fol. 1r). The opening rubric in OV manuscript f.f. 14640, which is only partially legible, may also be related (see Oldest, p. 347; Marvin, ‘Narrative’, p. 205). 17 See Matheson, PB, pp. 64–5 (64 quoted), for the text of the introductory exordium found in a substantial group of MEPBs, which includes many of the elements just described and also authorizes the chronicle, drawing on the description of King Alfred’s chronicles to call it the work of ‘men of religioun & oþer good clerkes’: see Brie, Brut, I, 102–3, 111; see also Lamont, ‘Becoming’, pp. 306–7.

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Ordinatio, Apparatus, and Annotation the Conqueror.18 The related Long Version manuscripts NLW 5028C and Add. 18462a create a decisive break at the Norman Conquest: they introduce a Latin heading dividing the text into two books and start the chapter numbers over again.19 NLW 5028C also assigns William a gilded five-line initial and partial border – not as large or with as full a border as the opening of the entire text, but the only place after the beginning so embellished.20 The efforts of the Oldest Version to represent William’s arrival as anything but a rupture are here completely undone. Where this manuscript creates continuity is at the beginning: the story of Albine gets its own eight-line gilded initial and two-sided cascade border, and is numbered as the first chapter, while on the next folio the beginning of the main text is labeled as chapter two and gets nothing more than the same two- or three-line initial that marks normal chapter divisions throughout. Here the prologue has been completely integrated into the history. Throughout the tradition, the relative scale of elements of decoration and rubrics, and the assignment of chapter numbers, can give differing, and even conflicting, senses of the relative importance and relatedness of prologue and main text. Every variation of hierarchy occurs. Like NLW 5028C, some texts unambiguously begin with Albine and simply continue with Brut. Others carefully balance the two: TCD 500, a Short Version with no rubrics, provides equivalent six-line initials and borders for both Albine and Brut.21 And some subordinate the prologue: Short Version manuscript Cambridge, Trinity College R.7.14 gives ordinary chapters oversized plain one-line initials, while Albine gets a three-line flourished initial and Brut a four-line initial, somewhat more elaborately flourished.22 At times the struggle to assimilate the two foundation stories is more apparent. Long Version manuscript CD3, for example, begins the Albine episode with a nine-line gilded initial, containing the figure of a seated, crowned king, a border around both columns, a brief rubric, and no chapter number; on the next folio, the opening of the main text is numbered chapter one, with a smaller five-line gilded initial and less elaborate border – certainly still a page designed to catch the eye and mark a clear division in the text (see Plates 12 and 13).23 The rubric for the prologue reads simply, ‘Coment 18 Fols.

59v, 97r, 112r, and 124r. 5028C, fol. 63r, and Add. 18462a, fol. 56v. For an image of the latter, see Marvin, ‘Latinity’, figure 1. 20 See fols. 63v (William), 9r (Albine); the beginning of the table of capitula (fol. 2r) also gets an oversized initial and cascade border running along two sides. 21 Pp. 13, 19; a man-headed, foliage-tailed bird sketched in red in the lower margin does lend p. 19 a little more visual interest. EUL 181 has six-line initials with frames for both (fols. 46r and 53r); see above, p. 160, on RD329 (fols. 8r, 12r). 22 Fols. 1r, 6v. See above, p. 158, on the more ambiguous case presented by P511/19. 23 Fols. 74r, 75r. 19 NLW

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The Construction of Vernacular History Engleterre fust nosmee Albion et par quele noun’ (‘How England was called Albion and by whose name’). The rubric between the prologue and chapter one is much fuller, with a gesture towards orality: ‘Si finist la prolouge del Isle de Albyon. Ore escutz coment Bruyt fuist engendre et coment il tua primes sa miere et puis son piere et coment il conquist Albion, quele il nosma apres Brutaigne apres son noun de mesme, qe ore est appellee Engleterre par Engist de Saxoine. Capitulo primo’ (‘So ends the prologue on the Isle of Albion. Now hear how Brut was begotten and how he killed first his mother and then his father and how he conquered Albion, which he named Britain after his own name, which is now called England for Engist of Saxony. Chapter one’). Traces thus remain of the Short Version’s separation of the prologue and the main text, and for material introducing the whole chronicle to come between the two. Because the Common Version of the Middle English prose Brut is closely based on a Long Version manuscript of this group, the Middle English tradition tends to follow suit in representing the Albine story as prologue and the beginning of the main text as the first chapter of the Brut.24 The hierarchies of apparatus and decoration here are somewhat at odds with each other and generate tension over what constitutes the real beginning of the chronicle. Although the prologue gets the more elaborate decoration, it also gets a terser rubric, and the figure of a male ruler, sword held erect to penetrate the framing letter, presides over the opening page, as if to anticipate the reassertion of male control that will occur both in the sisters’ own tale and in the coming of Brut to the island. The Long Version’s reworking of the ordinatio of the text with headings and chapter numbers may represent a systematic response to the Short Version’s lack of apparatus, analogous to but more thorough than the ad hoc efforts of the Short Version’s readers.25 Although scribes inserting chapter numbers and headings in spaces left during the writing of the main text would naturally shorten or expand them for purposes of copyfitting, the headings become more or less standardized and tend to be quite detailed, verging on synopsis. Chapter numbers are so ubiquitous in modern printed books as to be taken for granted, but they are not an automatic feature in manuscripts of medieval narrative. They cost money, time, and effort to produce, especially given how easy it is to make mistakes in roman numerals (and mistakes in chapter numbers are not uncommon in Long Version manuscripts). What makes them worth the trouble is that they make it possible to refer to any copy of a work and – in theory at least – find the same place. That is, they are a feature of works to which one might wish to make reference, and their presence in a book is a marker of a degree of intellectual status. Many Long Version manuscripts are also fairly large and presented in 24 See

Brie, Brut, I, 1–5. See also Partridge, ‘Designing’, p. 100, and Baswell, ‘Troy’, p. 186, for their characterizations of the ordinatio typical of MEPB manuscripts. 25 See below.

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Ordinatio, Apparatus, and Annotation a two-column format, which along with the apparatus, make the prose Brut more resemble Latin clerical histories like Ranulph Higden’s Polychronicon or the works of Matthew Paris.26 Over time, and over the course of revision and elaborations, the Anglo-Norman Brut became both literally and figuratively a weightier book. Long Version manuscripts cover a broad spectrum of expense, and particularly among the more modest ones, it is possible to see different efforts to economize. To minimize the expense of the ink and perhaps avoid multiple passes through the pages being copied, headings may be provided in text ink rather than red ink (though sometimes touched or underlined in red), in a larger, exaggerated display script.27 Long Version manuscript Hale 88 begins in this fashion, but then shifts to headings completely in red ink; the text scribes generally appear to be the ones providing the headings.28 Simple initials are present up to the transition, then present sporadically for two more folios, and absent for the rest of the manuscript, in another indication of inconsistent planning or work habits. In Long Version manuscript Mazarine 1860, red chapter numbers and headings are present, but the initials have never been filled in: with the information and demarcation that the rubrics already provide, the initials themselves would be somewhat redundant as finding aids, and no one went to the expense of adding them. Other Long Version manuscripts make the most of the opportunities provided by a more elaborate apparatus, decoratively or functionally. The later fifteenth century deluxe Continental manuscripts of the Long Version provide internal paraph markings, some quite elaborate, in addition to rubric headings and decorated initials, so that each page has both navigational aids and testimony to the book as a luxury product.29 They also take the next step with the information supplied by the rubrics and offer tables of capitula at the beginning of the volume, keyed in different ways: to folio number (Royal 19 C.IX), to chapter number (BSG 935), and not keyed at all, in a manuscript which also lacks chapter numbers in the body of the text (f.f. 12155).30 Even this last approach, awkward as it is to navigate, provides anyone who consults the manuscript with an overview of the content of the whole and at least some help in looking for places of interest. Manuscripts need not be sumptuous to be provided with these tables. 26 E.g.,

CD3, Royal 19 C.IX, Royal App. 85, Hale 88, Ashmole 1804, Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine (hereafter Mazarine) 1860, and BSG 935. 27 On the development of this approach, see M. B. Parkes, ‘Handwriting in English Books’, in Morgan and Thomson, eds., Cambridge History of the Book, II, 110–35 (pp. 132–3). 28 The transition in heading style comes between the two sides of fol. 11. 29 Royal 19 C.IX, f.f. 12155, BSG 935. This is especially the case with BSG 935, which is extravagant in its use of gold; Royal 19 C.IX, which has a single illustration at the beginning, uses simple ink internal paraphs. 30 Royal 19 C.IX has chapter numbers in the body of the text up to fol. 13v.

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The Construction of Vernacular History Long Version manuscripts Add. 18462a and NLW 5028C both have tables keyed to chapter numbers.31 In NLW 5028C, although the writing itself is undisciplined and error-prone (as throughout the manuscript) some expense has been lavished on the table, with a large opening initial and border and flourished paraph markings at the beginning of each heading; in Add. 18462a, the table is simple, marked only with an opening flourished initial, its text fairly heavily abbreviated, the whole nearly a folio and a half shorter than in NLW 5028C.32 It seems designed more for real use than for display. Why so many Short Version manuscripts lack so useful a piece of apparatus as section headings, when they are present in most Oldest Version manuscripts, is of course unknowable. The maker of an ancestral manuscript could have decided to dispense with them in order to economize, or the Short Version may simply be descended from an unfinished Oldest Version manuscript, with the rubrics never inserted. One consequence of their absence, however, is different attempts to remedy the lack, both by makers and by users. Necessarily individualized for every manuscript, and still demanding a certain amount of effort to make and use, running heads are one solution to the problem. They appear in one Oldest Version manuscript, D120, a very modest book produced by a single scribe, perhaps for personal use. Its pages are box-ruled in a single column, its text in a current anglicana hand with sporadic, awkward efforts at a more formal script and proper names often touched with red. Instead of section headings, the text has French running heads consisting mostly of proper names found on the pages below, sometimes listing as many as ten names across an opening.33 This approach clearly saved time and effort in design; it may also suggest a maker who already knew the basic narrative of British history and needed only names to find what was wanted. A simpler but still systematic approach can be found in Short Version Add. 35113, another inexpensive manuscript, which provides the name of the king or kings discussed at the top of most pages, along with a few notable elements such as ‘xi milia virginum’ (another case of casual Latinity among prose Brut users) or ‘Merlin’.34

Scribal Sidenotes and Readers’ Annotations More commonly found, along with or instead of running heads, are scribally supplied sidenotes. (I call these aids to reading ‘sidenotes’ to distinguish them

31 Add.

18462a, fols. 9r–14v; NLW 5028C, fols. 2r–7v. The body of the text has chapter numbers but not headings. 32 Their page size and written space are nearly identical. For more on these manuscripts, see below, pp. 196–8, 245–6. 33 See below, p. 243. 34 E.g., fols. 19v, 25v.

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Plate 14. London, British Library, MS Harley 6359, fol. 27r. Short Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut, with space for initial never filled in and Latin sidenotes provided by the scribe and/or owner. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. © British Library Board, all rights reserved.

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The Construction of Vernacular History from notes added by users of the book after the initial production process, which I call ‘annotations’.) It is not always easy to tell how long a particular bit of writing in a margin has been there – trained scribes were certainly among the users of prose Brut manuscripts, and their occupation may have made them that much more likely to improve the apparatus of their own books. A thoroughgoing Latin apparatus of sidenotes may be found in three Short Version manuscripts that are very closely related textually but very different in aspect (see Plate 14). The oldest and apparent ancestor of the other two, Harley 6359, from the last third of the fourteenth century, is a cheap and basic manuscript, with its initials never filled in, but there are extensive Latin sidenotes throughout the main text, mostly marking plot points and names of places and people.35 The ink color of the sidenotes varies greatly, and they may have been added at different times: the scribe may have been the manuscript’s owner.36 This apparatus resembles the Latin marginal summary and commentary found in school texts, and it hints at the possibility of educational use of the prose Brut.37 The fifteenth-century manuscript Westminster 25 appears to be directly descended from Harley 6359. A more finished product, with completed initials and a lively, if very current, anglicana hand with strong secretary influence, it cuts down considerably on the number of sidenotes. Descended from it is Arsenal 3346, the only known Continental manuscript of the Short Version: apparently designed as a companion text to the prose Roman de Loherant Garin (see above), it is in a large, two-column format, with the notes given red paraph markings and underlining. It, too, provides fewer notes than its ancestor, with pages at a time lacking them in the later parts of the manuscript. (To give a sense: for the one-page reign of King Westmere, Harley 6359 provides four sidenotes (fol. 16r–v), Westminster 25 manuscript two (fol. 20r–v), and Arsenal 3346 none (fols. 98v–9r).)38 Exactly the heavy apparatus that may have initially given Harley 6359 value as an exemplar has apparently become something of a burden in a late Continental context. At times, scribal sidenotes suggest a particular focus rather than an attempt to provide finding tools for the entire text. In Lyell 17, the Short

35 No

sidenotes appear for the verse prologue; some initials and French headings, as well as catchwords throughout, have been added by Simonds d’Ewes (e.g., fols. 1r, 4r). 36 I think that the sidenotes are by the writer of the main text, although some of the characters used in the Latin differ from those in the French: much more study is needed of the manuscript itself, which has microfilmed poorly. 37 See, e.g., the detailed discussion (with plates) of commentary and annotation in English school manuscripts of Virgil in C. Baswell, Virgil in Medieval England: Figuring the ‘Aeneid’ from the Twelfth Century to Chaucer (Cambridge, 1995), esp. chs 2–4. 38 A sustained comparison of the notes might yield a sense of what the scribes found worth their while, but it is beyond the scope of the current study.

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Ordinatio, Apparatus, and Annotation Version alongside the Chronicle of Popes and Emperors of Martinus Polonus, which came into the possession of St Mary’s Abbey, York, the Latin chronicle has a light scribal apparatus of boxed sidenotes, and in the Brut following, a few Latin notes appear, in exactly the same boxed format, marking the contact of Britain with the Roman empire and the birth of Christ.39 A manicule also marks King John’s submission to the pope, but whether or not it is a later addition is unclear.40 An interest in papacy and empire has persisted from the Latin chronicle into the French one. Likewise, in the abridged version of the Long Version in CUL Ee.1.20 that accompanies the Manuel des Pechiez, a high proportion of the French scribal sidenotes concern religious history and morality.41 In addition to noting the beginnings and spread of Christianity, the sidenotes remark on martyrdom, the miraculous, the saints mentioned in the text, and ecclesiastical matters such as the bringing of the archepiscopal pallium to England and John’s conflict with the pope.42 They also have a moralizing strain, with notes such as ‘quoyntise’, ‘traison’, ‘tort’, and ‘deceite’ commenting on events, and they show some interest in prophecy and portents, with notes marking Merlin’s appearances and William Rufus’s ominous dream before his death.43 These sorts of note are by no means intended as navigational tools for the entire history. Instead, they encourage the reader to notice certain kinds of material, and prompt certain attitudes towards it. In CCCC 98, the text on the side of the genealogical roll with added Anglo-Norman prose Brut extracts is mainly French, with some Latin, and with roundels in French: for example, ‘Brut le primer Roy de Britayne’. In its roundel, however, Aeneas’s name is accompanied in the same hand and red ink by Welsh: ‘Eneas ysgwytwyn’. This epithet, meaning ‘Aeneas Whiteshield’, appears in Brut y Brenhinedd and other Welsh works as well: it reveals not only that the roll had a Welsh-literate scribe, but that the scribe was actively linking the history diagrammed on the roll to Welsh historiographic tradition.44

39 Fols.

68v, 69r. This last merits a scribal marking, in or touched with red, in many PB manuscripts. 40 Fol. 103r. 41 The selections in the abridgment itself may manifest such interest, but more detailed study of the text is needed. 42 See, e.g., fols. 90v–2v, 112v, 118v, 121v–2v, 128v–33r, 129r, 134r. 43 Moralizing: fols. 111r, 119v, 125r, 134v. Prophecy and portents: fols. 98v–104v, 110v, 124v. 44 See , accessed 25 January 2016. On the epithet, see B. F. Roberts, ‘The Treatment of Personal Names in the Early Welsh Versions of Historia Regum Britanniae’, Bulletin of Celtic Studies 25 (1973), 274–90 (p. 286); my thanks to Georgia Henley and Timothy Nelson for their generous help on this matter.

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The Construction of Vernacular History

Plate 15. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Wood empt. 8, fol. 24v. Oldest Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut: Latin apparatus carefully supplied by a later user. Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Library.

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Ordinatio, Apparatus, and Annotation Dating from the second quarter of the fourteenth century, elaborately ruled in a single column and written in a disciplined anglicana legal hand, Oldest Version manuscript We8 was designed with a substantial apparatus in mind: each section has a very brief rubric heading, amounting to little more than the names of the pertinent kings, worked into the right side of the text column, and space for a two-line initial (never added) on the left.45 Between sections, several lines of space have been left blank, perhaps for illustration or for a more elaborate synopsis of the content. In the absence of whatever guidance was meant to have been added, a later user of the book, clearly a capable scribe, has provided another apparatus. Careful Latin annotations appear throughout, composed in shield-shaped blocks, added in the margins by a single writer working in blackish ink, in a well-formed secretary-influenced hand (see Plate 15). Names of kings and places, notable events, and incidents with exemplary value are all pointed out, sometimes with apt moral observations. This comprehensiveness, along with their Latinity, the formality of the annotations’ layout, and the pen-flourishes and elaborate capital letters to be found in them, all show that they were designed to become part of the book’s apparatus – they are not casual notes or the kind of memoranda made by a reader marking a few pet issues. And although their obviously much later date means that they did not form part of the original conception of the book, they nevertheless would serve as part of a lucid, formal apparatus for any subsequent reader. So comprehensive are these annotations that additions by still later readers are almost entirely limited to various nota markings. We8 thus represents a far more authoritative-looking chronicle than the hasty, untidy D120, though both of them have been set up for easy use: from the beginning of the tradition, different manuscripts of the Brut evinced different understandings and evoked different responses from later readers.

Users’ Markings Scribal sidenotes defy the scholarly impulse to mark firm boundaries between ‘apparatus’ and ‘annotation’. As We8 shows, a reader may provide ‘scribal’ apparatus. A copyist with particular interests may, while working as a scribe, mark elements of a text that engage him as a reader. The presence of apparatus or annotation may guide later users, both in their reading and in any marking they do, so that a certain conception of a text becomes reinforced over time. What elements to include in, introduce to, or eliminate from a manuscript, whether at the time of first copying or later on, are enormously contingent matters, which may be at least as dependent on the time and

45 See

Oldest, pp. 61–3, 411–12.

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The Construction of Vernacular History material available, and the model presented by the individual manuscript being copied or read, as on the independent interests or desires of makers and readers. I stress this point because there is something so compelling about the concreteness and immediacy of a reader’s marginalia. In the same way as seeing a scribe attempt to correct an error without scraping off the ink, these moments of witnessing an individual in action can be enormously poignant. They can feel more authentic than page after page of dutiful copying, and the temptation can be strong to believe that readers’ annotations afford immediate access to moments of spontaneous response preserved on the page. At times this may be so. But it is far too simple to suppose that users of books mark or annotate what especially interests them as individuals. Readers may mark what interests them, or what interests them at the particular time and for the particular purpose that provoked consultation of the manuscript. They may also mark what they think is supposed to interest them, on the basis of all kinds of cues, especially ones already present in the manuscript itself.46 (Surely not everyone who scratched out the word ‘pope’ in the wake of the English church’s break with Rome was an enthusiastic ideologue; some must have been doing what they considered prudent.)47 The amount of space available around the text, the aspect of the manuscript as an object to be admired or used, the presence of other annotation or apparatus that may obviate the need for further annotation and/or provoke it: all are factors. Even something as straightforward as inscriptions of ownership can show how influential material already present in a manuscript can be. Owners who cut out parts of pages with evidence of previous ownership are refashioning books to their liking, in a savage way. Of course, one can never know exactly what has been removed – creating ignorance may be the purpose of the removal – but especially when small portions are cut out from margins, elimination of such evidence seems a likely reason (rather than, say, removing an illustration or securing some blank parchment for other use).48 At the very end of NLW 5028C, two inscriptions of ownership appear, the first in a fifteenth-century hand, the second dated 1570 and followed by a signature (see Plate 16):

46 For

a case study of the progressive accumulation of annotation and the challenges of interpreting it in one MEPB manuscript, see J. Marvin, ‘“It is to harde for my lernyng”: Making Sense of Annotations in Brut Manuscripts’, Digital Philology 3 (2014), 304–22. For an account of the annotation in a handful of MEPB manuscripts, see T. Drukker, ‘I Read Therefore I Write: Readers’ Marginalia in Some Brut Manuscripts’, Trivium 36 (2006), 97–130. 47 E. J. Bryan offers a wonderful case study of the reactivity of just such later markings in the MEPB (‘Dialoguing Hands in MS Hatton 50: Reformation Readers of the Middle English Prose Brut’, Trivium 36 (2006), 131–56). 48 Among ANPBs with excisions are Mazarine 1860, fol. 108; Royal 20 A.III, fol. 236; and CCCO 78, fol. 2a.

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Ordinatio, Apparatus, and Annotation

Plate 16. Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS 5028C, fol. 183r. Conclusion of the Image du Monde, with parallel inscriptions of ownership by Sir John Legh of Stockwell, Knight of the Bath, and Sir Edmund Brudenell of Deene Park. By permission of Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / The National Library of Wales.

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The Construction of Vernacular History Iste liber constat Johanni legh milit’ de Stokewell in parochia de lambeth iuxta london’ in Com’ Surrey nunc edmundo Brudenell milliti pertinet per donum Elyzabeth Smith . Anno / 1570 / mense Sepembris / (‘This book belongs to John Legh, knight, of Stokewell in the parish of Lambeth near London in the County of Surrey. Now it belongs to Edmund Brudenell, knight, by gift of Elyzabeth Smith . September 1570.’)49

Not only is the second note presented as a response to the first, but up to a point it follows the form of the first in language, size, and content, with the owners’ parallel self-identifications as knights. Thereafter, John Legh specifies his own placement geographically, while Edmund Brudenell locates himself and the book in terms of time and provenance, asserting the legitimacy of his claim to it. The large and elaborate signature that follows Brudenell’s note literally aggrandizes that claim.50 The placement and structure of the first inscription have determined those of the second. More than 60 percent of Anglo-Norman prose Brut manuscripts have some sort of non-scribal content-related annotation, however scanty it may be. The bulk of this annotation, usually in Latin or French, often dates from the sixteenth century or later; the antiquarians who rescued these manuscripts have literally made their mark. Like used textbooks in college bookstores, many Brut manuscripts display heavy marking of a variety of elements at the beginning, with a steep drop or even total disappearance after that, hinting at an unsustainably ambitious program of annotation and a lapse of engagement and/or diligence. A lesser resurgence of annotation in the later, more recent, parts of the text is also typical. In general, Bruts tend to be most heavily marked at the beginning, towards the end (with recent events of more immediate consequence), and in the reign of King Arthur, in an indication as to which parts of the book got the most attention. Any given annotation may as much signal interest in the act of annotation itself, in establishing and promoting a general notion of the nature and authority of a particular text, as it signals interest in the specifics mentioned. When a recognizable individual can be shown to have a characteristic 49 Fol.

183r. Sir John Legh of Stockwell, Knight of the Bath, died in 1523. The manuscript passed to the Brudenell family: it contains the name of Thomas Brudenell (c. 1497–1549), from whom it seems to have gone to his daughter Elizabeth Smith, who gave it to her brother Edmund. Thomas also owned a MEPB; his name appears in both NLW5028C (fol. 119v) and University of Glasgow Gen 1671 (p. 2). See Matheson, ‘Contextualizing’, pp. 232–3. 50 For a study of a particularly emphatic claim-staking in MEPB manuscript Huntington 136, in which the sixteenth-century owner Dorothe Halbartun is identified over sixty times, see A. Vines, ‘“Thys Ys Her Owne Boke”: Women Reading the Middle English Prose Brut Chronicle’, Trivium 36 (2006), 71–96 (pp. 84–96).

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Ordinatio, Apparatus, and Annotation pattern of annotation beyond the general – say, a habit of adding only northern placenames or names of saints – then one may begin to speak in terms of individual interests. The odder, sparser, and more deeply placed in the book an annotator’s work is, the more likely it is to reflect genuine interest in the particulars noted, as opposed to the cultivation of a certain habit of book-use. On the whole readerly annotation tends to relate to three broad areas, which may of course overlap: 1) the antiquarian: king’s names, the years of their reigns and their places of burial, dates and syncopations, genealogical information, information on geography (especially placenames), and the like; 2) the pragmatic or legal: items that may be taken as precedents, such as the relations of church and crown, the initiation of customs, and information on prices and taxation; and 3) the religious, supernatural, or moral: significant moments in religious history, such as the conversion of Britain under King Lucy and the coming of St Augustine, portentous events such as astronomical phenomena or famine, prophecy, and incidents that prompt moral commentary. Readers’ annotations can, like scribal apparatus, display tendencies towards comprehensiveness, selectivity, or idiosyncrasy. Some cases: the unusual Short Version manuscript Beinecke 405 shows by its very existence that someone was willing to work to make it a complete, usable text, whether it represents two originally different manuscripts fortuitously joined or one part written to supplement the other.51 The user who numbered its folios appears to have made a couple of efforts to create an apparatus for the chronicle in the absence of headings in the text. For the first few folios, traces of running heads are visible on the verso pages and folio numbers on the rectos, but thereafter the running heads may have been abandoned, while the page numbers persist.52 The user also (or instead, after giving up on the running heads) created an index in the back, a chronological list of kings keyed to folio number.53 Such apparatus may be added even when a manuscript already offers guidance, as in the fourteenth-century Long Version manuscript TCD 501, which in addition to the usual chapter headings has French running heads and foliation added throughout by a fifteenth-century user, generally giving names of kings only, but occasionally a bit more: for instance, ‘la terre

51 See

above, pp. 168–9. of trimming, for much of the book only the exaggerated descenders of the folio numbers are visible, and any later running heads may have been cut completely away. See, e.g., fols. 1v–3r, 24v–5r, 63v–4r. 53 Fol. 75v. The index is readable only under ultraviolet light, and my identification of the hand as that of the foliator is somewhat tentative. 52 Because

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The Construction of Vernacular History entredit’ and ‘reles del entredit’ during the reign of John.54 These are straightforward aids to navigation. RD329, one of the manuscripts with the Latin genealogical poem discussed in detail above, shows clear patterns of annotation by two readers – and it also shows how difficult it can be to assign specific meaning even to such clear patterns. Its Short Version text has large initials but no internal headings. A medieval user writing in French has made a fairly thorough job of adding the names of kings in the margins beside their first appearance and/or the initial marking the beginning of their reigns – again, a case of a reader providing a general apparatus where one is lacking. Although it might be safe to say that interest in kings is manifested here, one cannot say that the interest is in kings as such versus kings as handy finding tools, or recognition of kings’ reigns as the fundamental structural device of the chronicle. An early modern user has added some marginal notes in English, on placenames such as Carlisle, Winchester, Canterbury, Bath, Leicester, Billingsgate, Ireland, and Cambridge.55 One user has shown interest in marking reigns, the other in noting placenames. This does not mean that the earlier user was uninterested in placenames, only that he or she did not undertake to mark them. And it certainly does not mean that the later user was interested in placenames as opposed to kings’ names: since the kings’ names were already present in the manuscript at the time he or she had it, they were already available, wanted or not. In some gatherings, the scribe or scribes of Short Version manuscript EUL 181 underline proper names and/or touch them with red, while also supplying red nota markings in the margins, often for incidents disturbing the stability of the realm, like the murder of Porrez, the trick by which King Arvirager is killed, and Engist’s rampage through Britain, as well as reminders of the subordination of the Irish and Scots.56 Subsequent annotations by readers are dominated by one person, writing mostly in French in a fifteenthcentury hand, who pays attention almost exclusively to church history, the main exceptions being attention to the laws of Edward the Confessor, called ‘Seynt Edward’, and a note copying the text’s description of the books for which King Alfred was responsible: ‘le Roy Alured fist escrier vn liuere dez auenturez dez leys & des bataille.’57 (The attention to books as such may not be limited to the annotator; it may well be coincidence, but beside the first

54 Fols.

21r, 25r (‘the land interdicted’ and ‘the release of the interdict’). For more on this manuscript, see below, pp. 246–50. 55 See fols. 19v, 24r, 24v, 25r. For an image, see Marvin, ‘Vitality’, p. 312, figure 23.3. 56 Fols. 65r, 72v, 87r, 69r, 100r. 57 Church history: e.g., fols. 72v, 75r, 80r, 97v. Edward: fol. 133r. Fol. 122v quoted, corresponding to Oldest, ll. 2528–9: ‘fist l’escriure vn liure Engleis des auentures e des leis e des batailles de la terre’ (‘had an English book written concerning the happenings and laws and battles of the land’).

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Ordinatio, Apparatus, and Annotation mention of Alfred’s patronage, the passage glowingly describing chronicles as preserving ‘la dreit foi’ (‘the proper truth’), the initial is flourished with extra verve.)58 It is easy to think that this annotator was concerned only with clerical matters, but again, in supplementing the apparatus of the text as received, the newer material does not destroy the political emphasis of the scribal apparatus, though it does dilute it. The mid-fourteenth century Short Version manuscript TCD 500 may have belonged to the Knights Hospitallers of Clerkenwell.59 The presence of annotation in French and Latin in several medieval hands may be an indication of its institutional provenance, as a work available to and used by a number of people, and perhaps also consulted by the same person at different times, if shifting ink colors are an indication. Different annotators attend to different parts of and issues in the chronicle. What may be one of the earlier annotators (judging by the lack of any secretary traits in the script) begins marking the text only at the death of Edward I and concentrates on dating events of the reigns of Edward II and Edward III.60 Other annotators have marked very little in this later portion of the text, although a late note spelling out a word abbreviated in the main text, ‘herberge’, shows that the book was being read with care in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, and that it was beginning to pose paleographic challenges by then.61 Another thorough annotator, who stops work around the point the date-annotator begins, has a variety of interests: moments of precedent or origination, such as Donebaud’s first wearing a crown and the settlement and naming of Ireland receive nota marks, as do charters, while religious history is assiduously tracked, from the birth of Christ, through the establishment of the Church in Britain and mentions of individual saints, to John’s submission to the papal legate Pandulf.62 This annotator also has an eye for aphorism or pathos: in one place, a few words of the prose Brut text are copied verbatim in the margin, from the moment when Buern Bocard comforts his wife after her rape: ‘nota encontre force ne vault feblesse.’63 A note probably by still another reader, beside Leir’s

58 Fol.

116v, corresponding to Oldest, ll. 2325–32, l. 2326 quoted. first six pages, which contain material relating to the Priory of St John of Jerusalem in 1385–6 (on pp. 3–4), were not originally connected to the following Brut, as both their different appearances and the quire markings in the Brut show, but the entire manuscript was in the hands of Thomas Bolton in the seventeenth century (see inscriptions on pp. 1, 199, 200). 60 Pp. 173–98. 61 P. 183. 62 See, e.g., pp. 34, 37, 125, 155 (precedents), 42, 45, 51, 91, 99, 146 (religious history); these are only a selection. This writer’s ink is generally very faded, and although what I can see seems likely to date from the later fourteenth century, I cannot claim certainty. 63 P. 97 (‘nota: against force weakness does not avail’). For discussion of this episode, see above, pp. 87–90. 59 The

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The Construction of Vernacular History demand of his daughters, reads, ‘beal ensample’.64 Here, rather than directing attention along a single path, the cumulative effect of the annotations is to offer a variety of ways in which later users may be encouraged to read. Sometimes an approach to the text is revealed by even one or a few annotations. In the late fourteenth century or early fifteenth century Long Version manuscript CUL Ii.6.8, a fifteenth-century reader writes ‘hic deficit’ beside a gap in the list of the Heptarchy.65 It is not necessarily that the reader’s independent knowledge is coming into play here: the list is numbered, and the fourth item in the list is skipped. What can be known is that the reader was reading carefully enough to notice the problem and cared enough to call attention to it. The fifteenth-century Long Version manuscript Mazarine 1860 had reached France by the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, when it belonged to Maître Jehan Laloyau of Blois, who probably gave it to the Collège de Navarre, from which it passed to the Mazarine – a reminder that ownership of the prose Brut by universities and university people was not limited to Britain.66 Aside from a characterization of the text in the inscription of ownership, the only comments on the text relate to figures of Continental origin: ‘De Guillaume bastard de Normandie’ and ‘De deuorce’ beside the account of the divorce of Eleanor of Aquitaine from Louis VII.67 In the fifteenth-century Short Version manuscript Bodleian e Mus. 108, one later reader, writing in a hasty scrawl, may or may not have cared about the content as such but was definitely working on French while reading, for in the margins appear about twenty French words from the text, along with their English equivalents. The vocabulary is not obscure (for instance, ‘voluntiers’ translated as ‘gladly’).68 One may surmise that the reader’s French was not advanced. The vocabulary annotations die out about a quarter of the way through: the challenge may have been too great, or the reader’s energy may have flagged. Interest in language is also manifested in Long Version manuscript Royal 20 A.III, where marginal manicules point out passages of English verse in the Long Continuation.69 This has been only a sampling of the kinds of annotation to be found in Anglo-Norman prose Brut manuscripts, rather than the comprehensive comparative study of all the manuscripts that would require, among other 64 P.

29 (‘fine exemplum’). 33v, equivalent to Oldest, ll. 2155–61. 66 See E. Chatelain, ‘Les Manuscrits du Collège de Navarre en 1741’, Revue des bibliothèques 11 (1901), 362–411 (pp. 400–1, 406). 67 Fols. 108v, 51r, 55v. See below, p. 245. 68 Fol. 21r. 69 Fols. 202r–v, 208v, 223r. The manuscript also has a variety of other nota markings. Cf. CD3, fols. 145v–6r, 152r, 167v; Brie, Brut, I, 189, 191, 208, 249 – these are among the ‘few inserted poems’ that for him constitute the entire literary value of the chronicle (I, ix–x). 65 Fol.

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Ordinatio, Apparatus, and Annotation things, long-term study of the manuscripts themselves rather than of reproductions of highly varying quality. And it is worth saying one more time that the vagaries of survival do not ensure a corpus of manuscripts that is necessarily representative of overall patterns of design and usage. The habits of early modern collectors and annotators affect what we perceive, and what we are in a position to perceive. Still, some conclusions are possible. The early readers of the prose Brut seem to have used it as a source for information and occasionally edification. If they were testing its account against other histories, little evidence of that testing appears in the text, aside from the eventual introduction of a Galfridian account of Cadwallader.70 Latin and French, often abbreviated, are common as languages of apparatus and annotation, and English is not: these habits reveal both scribal assumptions and aspirations for the chronicle and something of the expectations and practices of at least a segment of its audience. Some aspects of the chronicle, like church history, can be seen to be of frequent interest, even though the body of the text skimps on the subject. This kind of piecemeal use shows the prose Brut tapped as a resource for information, and people reading (or scanning) with a particular subject in mind: selective reading of a text is scarcely a modern phenomenon. Although the manuscripts are instructive about topics and issues that are of recurrent interest to early readers, no overwhelming patterns emerge to permit big claims about any one approach to the chronicle dominating others, and annotation is not so common, or so thorough when present, as to constitute the definitive evidence about usage that scholars may crave. But however little grand synthesis can be made, the prose Brut does offer a compelling sense of the variety that can be found in the presentation and reception of a single work, and thus a cautionary example against overreading the evidence found in manuscripts of works surviving in sole or few copies. The chronicle shows a range of habits of reading at work, and encouraged in others.

70 The

sixteenth-century antiquarian who extensively marked Lambeth 504 (possibly John Joscelyn (1529–1603), secretary to Archbishop Matthew Parker) collated its text with other historical works and appears to have used it in the collation of other works as well: ‘Cr. gal. thys frenche boke ys so notyd in other bokes of myne’, fol. iv, as transcribed in the Lambeth Palace online catalogue (microfilm not legible), from which other information here also comes: , accessed 26 October 2015.

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9 History Illustrated

Illustration is another kind of supplementation that is difficult to appreciate outside the physical context of the manuscript. Like apparatus and annotation, it resists simple definition. Illustrations may provide decoration, ways of demonstrating the status of the work – iconographically and/or economically – and pointers towards interpretation. They may do as much to test or question the text they accompany as they do to repeat its content in another form, as a variety of apparatus that helps guide readers through the work in question and assigns extra significance to particular moments by singling them out for attention. They are limited to manuscripts with some space to spare and, for the most part, commissioners with money to spare. In addition to serving the function of apparatus, they of course constitute works in their own right: such study as Anglo-Norman prose Brut illustrations have received has generally been in isolation from the textual context.1 They are found rarely throughout the prose Brut tradition, and among AngloNorman prose Brut manuscripts only in a very few insular manuscripts and the three late luxury manuscripts produced on the Continent. Although, as Martha Driver and Michael Orr note, there appears to have been a drive towards standardization of illustrative matter in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the surviving illuminations in Anglo-Norman prose Brut manuscripts do not suggest much in the way of a iconographic tradition.2

Insular Illustrations The manuscripts with illustrations are among the most highly decorated of the insular Anglo-Norman prose Bruts, although not themselves particularly fine or lavish productions. Unsurprisingly, their illustrations appear 1 Bryan

is, however, making a long-term contextual study of images in the MEPB tradition: see, e.g., ‘Picturing Arthur in English History: Text and Image in the Middle English Prose Brut’, Arthuriana 23 (2013), 38–71, and ‘Deciphering the Brut: Lambeth Palace MS 6 and the Perils of Transmission’, Digital Philology 3 (2014), 257–83. 2 ‘Decorating and Illustrating the Page’, in Gillespie and Wakelin, eds., Production of Books, pp. 104–28 (p. 122).

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The Construction of Vernacular History at the beginning of the chronicle and are the manuscripts’ most extravagant feature.3 In the two manuscripts with the Latin poem encapsulating the postConquest kings’ reigns, one (RD329) has a completed, colorful set of king portraits and genealogies and the other (P511/19) space for such portraits; after this emphatic triple gesture directing the reader – via words, images, and diagrams – to think of British history as a series of genealogically linked portraits, an approach much akin to that of the Oldest Version’s narrative, the Albine prologue and Brut chronicle are marked only with nicely made large initials.4 As already discussed, Long Version manuscript CD3 offers a single image of a seated king, blade in hand, in its opening initial E, that for the Albine prologue: whether or not the man is meant to represent any specific figure, like the royal father of the regicidal princesses, it too puts an immediate focus on the king as the organizing principle of the chronicle to follow.5 The main text of Short Version manuscript e Mus. 108 begins with a worn initial E illustrated with a bearded man in armor, standing with a thick curved blade in one hand and a spear in the other, on a page with a full border using gold leaf and blue and pink ink (see Plate 17).6 One might expect a book with a fully decorated interior page to have a decorated opening as well: the first folio of the manuscript with the beginning of the prologue is now missing, and although it may be missing exactly because of an illustration that someone removed, we are unlikely ever to know.7 Here the figure looks like a warrior rather than anyone immediately identifiable as a king, and the width and curvature of his sword may be evoking the ancient East; the image comes off as a specific response to the opening line on the siege of Troy rather than the more general gesture made in CD3. Like the rubrics discussed above, the image encourages users to think of the prose Brut as a book filled with battle. CCCO 78 has already arisen several times in this discussion as a distinctive version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut. It stands out in this regard as well: fol. 7v, the last page of the gathering with the Albine prologue, contains simple but vivid sketches that complement the heading to the main text

3 SV

manuscript TCD 500 has some attractive and amusing figural penwork – faces, fish, and fantastic beasts – in its flourishing and line fillers (e.g., pp. 19, 39, 53, 54, 81, 87, 130, 135). At first examination, they seem mostly to be placed to take advantage of available space; deeper study might reveal whether they have any additional significance in relation to the text. I will not be discussing them further here. See above, p. 187. 4 See above, pp. 158–60. 5 See above, pp. 184–5, 187–8, for more. 6 Fol. 5r. 7 The manuscript was donated to the Bodleian in 1666, and inscriptions on its current fol. 1r suggest that the preceding material was already missing by then, and probably also in 1589, when Thomas Herbert (Lord Mayor of York in 1604) put his name in it.

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History Illustrated across the opening: ‘Coment et de qi Brut fut engendre et coment il occist son piere et sa miere’ (‘How and by whom Brut was begotten and how he killed his father and mother’) (see Plate 18).8 Tinted yellow in a few places, they appear (from the way they run into the gutter) to have been made before the book was bound. The costume of the figures, particularly the youth Brut, suggests that the drawings were made in the later fourteenth century, a date consistent with the hand of the main text of the chronicle.9 Three scenes are portrayed: at the top, the aftermath of Brut’s birth, with his mother abed on the left, her face averted from the attendant holding the baby on the right; in the middle, a shrouded bier with a body, flanked by tapers; and at the bottom, the young Brut with bow in hand at the left, a stag leaping unhurt in the center, and on the right, his father on his knees with an arrow in his chest. In the text itself, it is only after his father’s prophesied death that Brut incurs the wrath of the people: he is not held accountable for the death of his mother in childbirth, that common female fate, prophecy or no prophecy. That the one death is taken in stride and the other provokes exile is a token not only of the relative value accorded to women’s and men’s lives, but also of a distinction between events brought on by an infant in the natural course of events and those caused by a young man’s actions, however inadvertently. Here, the representation of both deaths puts a domestic and tragic face (or faces) on Brut’s and Britain’s origins. The women loom large in the scene, with Brut’s mother drawn on a larger scale than the other figures, and the faces of the two women at the top balancing those of the youth and man at the bottom. The folds of the cloth covering the body on the bier echo those in the coverlet over Brut’s mother, and, to a lesser degree, those in his father’s tunic. It could be the body of either lying there. Brut’s father and mother are linked in death as they are in parenthood, and although it could not be made clearer that Brut is a bringer of death, the page is also designed so that both his dying parents gaze calmly upon the youth, seemingly accepting their fate. Brut appears here as an infant and a feckless-looking youth rather than a warrior or king. Do these images undermine him as a heroic founding father? Perhaps, but more than anything else they humanize him and by extension the other kings who all enter the world as babies, more often destined to their place in the world than striving for it. The sketches poignantly manifest – and 8 Fol.

8r; the word I here transcribe as ‘qi’ is a q with overline that in other places clearly represents ‘qe’. The prologue concludes on fol. 6r, and 6v–7r remain blank. 9 E.g., Brut’s pourpoint (the hunting tunic with padded chest and buttons running down the front), his low plaque belt, his sleeves fitted below the elbow, and the ‘mitten’ sleeves covering part of the hand on all of the figures. My thanks to the members of DISTAFF (Discussion, Interpretation, and Study of Textile Arts, Fabrics, and Fashion) at the International Medieval Congress, Western Michigan University, May 2016, for their helpful observations. See also S. M. Newton, Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince: A Study of the Years 1340–1365 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1980), pp. 54–7, 108–9.

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The Construction of Vernacular History

Plate 17. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS e Mus. 108, fol. 5r. Short Version of Anglo-Norman prose Brut: opening of the main text, with border and figure of armed man in the opening initial ‘E’, and inscription of ownership by Thomas Herbert. Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Library.

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History Illustrated

Plate 18. Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 78, fol. 7v. Anglo-Norman prose Brut, unusual version related to Short Version: page preceding opening of main text, with illustration showing the fates of Brut’s parents. Reproduced by permission of the President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

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The Construction of Vernacular History prompt – emotional engagement with the events that set Brut on his path, familiar moments of joy or diversion turned to grief. As a reminder of the cost of destined greatness, and of death as the portal to kinghood, with attention paid to the suffering of women as well as men, they are much in keeping with the temper of the Oldest Version. This volume in all likelihood belonged to Henry Parry (1561–1616), the great preacher and royal chaplain who attended Elizabeth I at her deathbed and ended his career as bishop of Winchester.10 There is of course no reason to suppose that Elizabeth ever saw this picture, but if she did, it might have spoken to her more eloquently than a conventional, static image of sovereignty like that found in CD3.

Continental Illustrations The more modest Continental manuscripts discussed above indicate that on the Continent, as in Britain, the prose Brut reached a range of people and continued to be copied in different versions through the fifteenth century.11 Although lavish manuscripts are rare among both the Middle English and Anglo-Norman prose Bruts, the fact that so many surviving Continental manuscripts are deluxe ones may tell us more about broad patterns of preservation than about patterns of consumption, while also serving as another reminder of the bankruptcy of the idea that Anglo-Norman texts in general and the prose Brut in particular were the province of the middlebrow and the middle-income. The three deluxe manuscripts of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut produced on the Continent are outliers in many ways: late and large,

10 He

left his books to his son, also named Henry Parry (b. c. 1594), who donated this and other books to Corpus Christi, Oxford, the college of them both. See William Richardson, ‘Parry, Henry (1561–1616)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008, , accessed 11 March 2016; for terms of his will and the son’s Oxford career, see R. E. C. Waters, Genealogical Memoirs of the Extinct Family of Chester of Chicheley, Their Ancestors and Descendants, 2 vols. (London, 1878), II, 407 n. 11 See above, p. 202, for LV manuscript Mazarine 1860, insular in origin but used on the Continent; and pp. 173–4, for Arsenal 3346, a Continental text of the SV. F.f. 12156 is another SV text dating from the second half of the fifteenth century, with an Albine prologue in monorhymed alexandrines, ‘with traces of Picard origin’, according to Dean. It went from Burgundy to the library of Louis XV of France in 1748 (see A.-M. Legaré, ‘Les cent quatorze manuscrits de Bourgogne choisis par le comte d’Argenson pour le roi Louis XV: Edition de la liste de 1748’, Bulletin du bibliophile 2 (1998), 241–329 (p. 302, where it is misidentified as containing Wavrin)). Although the manuscript itself has not been considered Continental in origin, it testifies to further Continental use and adaptation of the text, as Rajsic notes (‘“Cestuy roy”’, pp. 126–7 n. 4).

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History Illustrated single-work codices with the Long Version and tables of capitula, they are the only ones with ambitious illustrations. F.f. 12155, which came from the library of Philip the Good, may be the earliest of these deluxe manuscripts.12 Wijsman dates it to around 1450 and considers it part of a group of works on English and Scottish matter (including Froissart) associated with Philip’s rapprochement with England in the 1440s.13 Right from the rubric that opens the table of capitula, it displays its non-insularity: Cy commence la table des rubrices de chascun chappitre de ce present volume intitule les croniques de la grande bretaigne qui maintenant est appelle angleterre nagaires translate de latin en francois, ainsi comme elles sont en la cite de londres en engleterre. (‘Here begins the table of rubrics for each chapter of this present volume, entitled the chronicles of Great Britain, which is now called England, recently translated from Latin into French, as they are in the city of London in England.’)14

The spurious claim that the text is a recent translation from the Latin and its association with London freshen it up and give it a dignified and cosmopolitan pedigree, far more fitting for a ducal court than that of a common popular history that had already been in circulation for well over a century and concluded in the 1330s.15 The two miniatures in the manuscript similarly emphasize court settings and the reception of texts. At the opening of the first chapter is not any episode from British history, but a presentation scene, seen through a rounded archway, with a gowned, kneeling man presenting an elaborately bound volume (its decoration and clasps visible) to Philip, seated on a throne, dressed in red, and wearing the collar of his Order of the Golden Fleece, with attendants on either side (see Plate 19).16 The dog in the foreground and the man with a bird on his wrist in the background complete the gracious scene. In the second miniature, with the same chequered floor and the same view through an archway, another document is delivered (see Plate 20). This time, 12 It

is in a single-column format, with pages of 312 x 218 mm. It also entered the French royal library in 1748 (Legaré, ‘Cent quatorze’, p. 302, again misidentified as containing Wavrin). 13 Wijsman, Luxury Bound, p. 239 n. 107. 14 Fol. 2r. 15 The appearance of the town of ‘Cotenesse’ rather than ‘Totenesse’ further down the page is a reminder of scribal unfamiliarity with insular geography, easy as this copying mistake is to make. 16 Fol. 10r. Philip founded the order in 1430; cf. the images in Harley 6199, a manuscript of the statutes of the order produced between 1481 and 1486, esp. fols. 7r and 57v (, accessed 13 March 2016).

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The Construction of Vernacular History the man on the left (with the same face as the presenter in the first miniature) is a messenger, the badge of the imperial double-headed eagle visible on his chest, delivering the letter of the emperor to King Arthur, who is enthroned at the Round Table, surrounded by his men.17Appearing at the very beginning of Arthur’s reign, just above the description of him taking the throne at the age of fifteen, this is made a signal moment. The two miniatures are composed in obvious and witty visual parallel, with the matching features of their presenters and little touches like the similar dress of the falconer in the first and the serving man bearing a platter, perhaps with a cooked fowl, in the second. What these parallels may signify is less obvious. The emperor’s letter contains a demand and a threat: do the chronicles of England contain the same to a discerning reader? Arthur and Philip are represented blatantly analogously, though the illustration does not go so far as to induct Arthur into the Order of the Golden Fleece: he wears a crown but no collar. But what does the analogue represent? A simple nod to greatness, connecting the men who have expanded their realms and founded orders of knighthood? Is the analogue between Philip and Arthur at his peak, surrounded by allies, and ready to meet any challenge? Or the Arthur who is about to overreach and fall? The two images seem delicately poised between compliment and cautionary example. What is clear is that they offer a visual version of the patterns of recurrence found throughout the text: the viewer is encouraged to think of past and present in relation to each other and to consider the content of the book, no matter how distant and ancient, to be germane to the here and now. Much less is known of the provenance of Royal 19 C.IX, which dates from the last quarter of the fifteenth century and had entered the English royal library by the time of the 1666 catalogue.18 Not as fine a production as the manuscript made for Philip, it contains a single miniature at the opening of the main text, somewhat crudely executed but compelling nonetheless (see Plate 21). In a single panel, it represents the first foundations of the realm, with the earliest events in the foreground and subsequent events receding into the background. The coastline of a land with mountains and forests runs jaggedly up the panel. In the foreground on the right appears the ship of Albine and her sisters, who are about to step onto shore. They are all crowned (some exotically), with the standing figures markedly tall. At the top of the frame on the left, two giants emerge from the forest, standing taller than the trees and holding tree-trunk staves in their hands. (The bare trunks behind them 17 Fol.

67r.

18 , accessed 13 March 2016. The large initial on fol. 1r contains an as yet unidentified coat of arms. The manuscript is in a two-column format with pages of 318 x 225 mm.

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History Illustrated may be the staves of still more giants.) Although heavily bearded, they are not depicted as bestial wild men. Instead, with their pink and blue tunics matching the colors of the standing women’s dresses, and their yellowish headgear matching the shapes of the women’s crowns, they display their relationship to the two women standing in the prow of the ship. The blue tunic of the giant on the right even has gold decoration evoking embroidery, and he is wearing black stockings that show a well-turned as well as long leg. His gesture towards the sea balances the woman’s towards the land.19 At the top right, paralleling the shape of Albine’s ship but at less than half the size, Brut and his men approach the shore: the lead figure in the ship, standing at the prow with a long staff (or spear?) in hand, wears red over his black armor and helmet, matching the colors of the figure in the foreground ship, likely to be Albine, climbing up to the prow while her sister gestures her on, dressed in red, bearing a small, thin staff, with a black headdress combining the features of turban and crown. Below the giants and across from the women’s faces, equidistant from both, comes the composition’s oddest detail: difficult to discern in reproduction, but clear in the original, it is the hindquarters of a rabbit disappearing into a hole. A denizen of the land like the stag standing in the forest at the edge of the picture, the rabbit is also, by gesture and iconography, a representation of the part of the story that is otherwise not depicted: the mating of the sisters and incubi that will produce the giants. The three groups of figures are both connected and distinguished. Although Brut is acknowledged, he is relegated to the background as an imitative follower of the regicidal princesses who dominate the scene: prodigious women and their offspring precede heroic men in more ways than one. When this Brut arrives, he will be exterminating a population presented as more human than monstrous. The rubric that follows does nothing to dispel the sense of Albine as the true founder of the realm. It reads, ‘Cy commencent les croniques dangleterre, et premierement comment elle eut nom albe et dont lui vint ce nom’ (‘Here begin the chronicles of England, and first of all how it had the name “Albe” and from whom this name came’).20 The text on the page concludes with the birth of the thirty-three sisters and the naming of Albine, so that they are the focus of its words as well as its image. Compared at least to the version of the story found in the group of Long Version manuscripts that gave rise to the Middle English translations, this one puts more emphasis on the women’s depravity: it calls them ‘mauuaises’ (‘wicked’) rather than ‘malurestes’ (‘wretched’) and emphasizes the giants’ birth ‘par illusions dyaboliques’ (‘through diabolical illusions’).21 Although this section of the text is labeled as a prologue, and 19 Cf.

the giants shown as hair-covered wild men in the deluxe MEPB manuscript Bodleian Laud misc. 733, fols. 18r, 22v, discussed in Bryan, ‘Amazons’, pp. 26–7. 20 Fol. 8r. 21 Fol. 10r; cf. Marvin, ‘Albine’, p. 190. Since the genealogy of LV manuscripts is not yet fully worked out, such comparisons are only suggestive.

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Plate 19. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS f.f. 12155, fol. 10r (detail). Continental Long Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut: opening presentation miniature showing Philip the Good receiving the book. Reproduced by permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

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Plate 20. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS f.f. 12155, fol. 67r (detail). Continental Long Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut: miniature showing the messenger of the Roman emperor arriving at Arthur’s court. Reproduced by permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

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The Construction of Vernacular History the chapter numbers begin with the account of Brut, the miniature shows the complete integration of the two foundation stories, to unflattering effect. The tendency shown in Royal 19 C.IX is taken further in BSG 935, the only Anglo-Norman prose Brut with a substantial program of illustrations. According to Wijsman, its eight miniatures represent the work of three artists who worked in Bruges in the 1460s and 1470s: the Master of the Harley Froissart (whom Wijsman identifies with Philippe de Mazerolles, d. 1479), the Master of the Chattering Hands, and the Master of the Chroniques

Plate 21. London, British Library, Royal MS 19 C.IX, fol. 8r (detail). Continental Long Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut: opening miniature showing Albine and her sisters, the giants who are their offspring, and Brut and his men. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. © British Library Board, all rights reserved.

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Plate 22. Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, MS 935, fol. 9r (detail). Continental Long Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut: opening miniature showing the exile of Albine and her sisters. © Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Paris, image IRHT. Used with permission.

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The Construction of Vernacular History d’Angleterre.22 These artists seem to have made something of a practice of illustrating historical manuscripts, sometimes for English patrons including Edward IV, and they frequently collaborated in differing combinations.23 With the largest page size of known Anglo-Norman prose Brut manuscripts, the book takes the typical Long Version format to an impressive extreme, with two columns and elaborate rubric chapter headings and numbers.24 The chronicle opens with a illustration of a specific scene from the Long Version’s prologue, the moment at which Albine and her sisters are set adrift in punishment for the murder of their husbands (see Plate 22).25 The geometry of the scene is markedly similar to that of the frontispiece to Royal 19 C.IX, with the shoreline running irregularly up the middle, ships in the foreground and background on the right, and a group of men and a city with towers occupying the spaces where the mountains and forest are on the left in the Royal miniature. The correspondences are close enough (see, for example, the shape made by the forest, giants, and coast compared to that of the city) to encourage speculation that a single program of illustration containing versions of both scenes may be a common ancestor of these two. Whereas in the Royal image of arrival the women command the scene, standing tall and taking seisin of their new land, here in the image of departure, authority is represented in the figure of their father the king, surrounded by turbaned men, all looking on while laborers, with manifest effort, push off a ship of fifteen gesticulating, mournful women wearing hats rather than crowns. One woman stands alone, making the most dramatic gesture of the group: this may be Albine, distinguished in her grief rather than her power. In the background appears another ship, with a gangway, of eleven women ambiguously placed: some are turned towards the ship as if entering on the voyage, while some are turned towards the land as if either taking one last look at their old home or disembarking in the new one. Whether this image is of departure, arrival, or both, it takes a subordinate place in the composition as a whole. The attention here on the sisters’ punishment, with only a hint at the discovery of the new land and no anticipation of Brut’s heroic conquest, gets the history off to an unsavory start, focused exclusively on female crime and exile rather than male conquest and foundation. The Albine story is not

22 See

Wijsman, Luxury Bound, pp. 64–6, and App. D, pp. 570–86, esp. 584–5. The Chroniques d’Angleterre for which the artist is named are not a PB but a text of Wavrin (Vienna, Österrichische Nationalbibliothek 2534). A still-unidentified coat of arms, which may someday reveal more about its early provenance, appears on fol. 9r; the manuscript was in the BSG collection by 1753 (see note on fol. 1r). 23 In addition to Wijsman, as cited above and p. 531, see T. Kren and S. McKendrick, Illuminating the Renaissance: The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe (Los Angeles, 2003), pp. 261–4. 24 Its leaves measure approximately 380 x 270 mm. 25 Fol. 9r.

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History Illustrated treated as a prologue, but numbered and presented as the first chapter of the chronicle: she becomes the primary founder of the realm. Women continue to appear in fully half of the manuscript’s miniatures, in contexts that emphasize their criminality and/or their influence over the men in their lives. These miniatures illustrate episodes from the Brut that might not be considered obvious choices, and although some are scenes easily represented with standard iconography (a marriage, a baptism), others are clearly based on particulars of the text.26 Kings of Britain are depicted not at heroic moments but rather avoiding battle, dying, or supervising destruction. Brenne and Belin are shown reconciled by their mother, who stands in the center of the panel with them on either side – an image of peace achieved, but also one of female authority over men (see Plate 23).27 This image stands in contrast to that of King Edward the Martyr being spitted by his stepmother’s henchman while she looks on.28 The single image of William the Conqueror comes at the end of his reign: it is of the firing of Mantes (see Plate 24).29 William stands, in armor and crown, at the head of an army, gesturing towards two soldiers who are putting the gate of the walled city to the torch, while the buildings behind the walls are already aflame. Most of the text on the page describes his campaign against the king of France who has insulted him: Il ala en France ardant villes bourgs et chasteaux robant pillant et faisant grant mal par tout ou il passoit. Et au derein il aluma la cite du mans et commanda a ses gens dapporter busches et tout quanques pouoit ardoir et il mesmes de bon courage sentremist de ce faire. (‘He went through France, burning cities, towns, and castles, robbing, pillaging, and doing great harm wherever he went. And finally he set fire to the city of Mantes and commanded his men to bring logs and anything that could burn, and he himself set to do this with a good will.’)30

While the image demonstrates William’s wrathfulness, it is also a reminder of the price he pays for it, for he becomes fatally overheated at Mantes

26 Images

appear on fols. 9r, 27r, 56r, 66v, 80v, 94v, 109v, and 113r. A study of these illustrations in relation to others made by these artists, to see if they offer a fully developed iconography of English history in more thoroughly illustrated texts, is a clear next (but huge) step, beyond the scope of the present work. A selection of images from BSG 935 is at this writing available via the website Initiale, , accessed 14 March 2016. 27 Fol. 27r. Likewise, the scene of St Augustine’s baptism of a seemingly naked Adelbert (Athelberht), is a conventional one of piety, but also of royal submission (fol. 80v). 28 Fol. 94v. 29 Fol. 109v. 30 Fol. 109v. Cf. Oldest, ll. 3196–200; CD3, fol. 124v; Brie, Brut, II, 137–8.

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Plate 23. Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, MS 935, fol. 27r (detail). Continental Long Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut: miniature showing the reconciliation of Brenne and Belin by their mother. © Bibliothèque SainteGeneviève, Paris, image IRHT. Used with permission.

and dies soon thereafter.31 Appearing just above the rubric for the reign of William Rufus, the image does double duty. Although the specifics of the scene make it most applicable to the older William, it serves well enough to illustrate the following rubric as well: ‘Du roy guillame le roux qui destruit 31 Fol.

109v, which is not as explicit about the cause-and-effect relationship of the heat and William’s death as other manuscripts, possibly because of the loss of a phrase that is also missing from the closely related text in Royal 19 C.IX (fol. 83r). Cf. Oldest, ll. 3200–2; CD3, fol. 124v; see Brie, Brut, II, 138.

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Plate 24. Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, MS 935, fol. 109v (detail). Continental Long Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut: miniature showing the firing of Mantes by William the Conqueror, just above the rubric for the reign of William Rufus. © Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Paris, image IRHT. Used with permission.

villes et maisons de religion’ (‘Of King William Rufus, who destroyed cities and houses of religion’).32 Equating the Conqueror and his notorious son is a deft move. Even a more standard although less specifically identifiable moment, a scene of battle, is decidedly bleak (see Plate 26). It accompanies Merlin’s reading of the celestial signs announcing Aurilambros’ death and Uter’s accession to the throne and has no clear corollary in the surrounding text. Without any identifying tokens to mark individuals or sides, at the exact center of the image is the circle formed by the helmet of a man slumped over his falling horse, who is about to be decapitated by his enemy.33 Perhaps most mischievously, the only scene from the life of Arthur represented in the manuscript is that of his marriage to Gunnore, an event that gets two sentences in the chronicle’s typical text.34 The crowned couple stands at the church door, with a mitred bishop officiating, and male attendants for Arthur and female ones for Gunnore. The image of the wedding, though 32 Fol.

109v. 56r; the victorious warrior does have a bit of gold decoration on his helmet not seen on the others. 34 Fol. 66v. 33 Fol.

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The Construction of Vernacular History benign enough in itself, serves as a reminder of the marriage’s part in the tragic end of Arthur’s story, even while the narrative itself is occupied with its triumphal beginning. The picture may also constitute a gesture towards the Continental Arthurian tradition in which Guinevere’s role is much larger, and Arthur’s much smaller, than in the prose Brut: the main text adds to the usual description of Gunnore’s upbringing by Cador that she was ‘la plus belle damoiselle et la plus courtoise de tout le pays dangleterre’ (‘the most beautiful and most courteous young woman in the whole land of England’).35 This observation is of course not atypical of Arthurian tradition generally, but it represents an elaboration of this section of the prose Brut in particular.36 The chapter rubric directly beneath the illustration mentions only the marriage, and not the conquest of Ireland that falls in the same chapter and is included in the largely standardized headings found in the Long Version.37 In more ways than one, Arthur’s ruinous marriage is made to displace the triumphs of his reign. The last miniature in the manuscript shows the reconciliation of Louis VI of France and Henry I of England in 1120 (see Plate 25).38Accompanied by a cleric and an armored knight, Louis stands at the center of the composition, his height and uprightness emphasized by the mountain behind him, his staff held straight. Set off to one side, Henry stands shorter than not only Louis but even the hat of the attendant next to him; Henry’s knee is bent to Louis, on a line continued by his angled staff and the tree in the immediate background, while the horizontal line of the city in the background presses him down. All of the pictorial elements that aggrandize Louis diminish Henry. But the text itself has something else to say about who is on top: Le Roy de France fut desconfitz et eschappa a grant paine et tous les pluiseurs de ses gens furent prins, et le Roy Dangleterre fist de eulx sa voulente. Les vns mist il en prison et les autres mist il a mort et les aucuns fist il francement aler quitez et deliures. Mais depuis furent les deux rois accordez. (‘The king of France was defeated and escaped with great difficulty, and the greater part of his men were captured, and the king of England did with them as he pleased. Some he put into prison, others he put to death,

35 Fol.

66v. Oldest, ll. 1701–4, in which she is simply ‘vne bele gentile damoysele’. See CD3, fol. 103r, and Brie, Brut, II, 77. 37 BSG 935, fol. 66v: ‘Comment arthus espousa geniure cousine de cador conte de cornuaille’; likewise Royal 19 C.IX, fol. 51r. F.f. 12155 here mistakenly repeats the heading from the previous chapter (fol. 74r). Cf. CD3, fol. 102v: ‘Coment Arthur espousa Gunnore Cosyn de Cador Counte de Cornwaille et puis conquist de Guillomer la terre dirland’ (see Brie, Brut, II, 77). 38 Fol. 113r. 36 Cf.

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History Illustrated

Plate 25. Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, MS 935, fol. 113r (detail). Continental Long Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut: miniature showing the reconciliation of Louis VI of France and Henry I of England. © Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Paris, image IRHT. Used with permission. and some he freely set at liberty. But afterwards the two kings were reconciled.’)39

Here the illustration has been designed not only to redirect the reader’s attention but to undermine the explicit content of the chronicle itself: the page tells of a high point of English success against France, but the English submission that it shows appeals much more to a French eye, and indeed, 39 Fol.

113r. Cf. Oldest, ll. 3322–6; CD3, fol. 126v; Brie, Brut, I, 142–3.

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Plate 26. Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, MS 935, fol. 56r (detail). Continental Long Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut: miniature depicting a battle. © Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Paris, image IRHT. Used with permission.

corresponds much better to later history.40 The miniature makes Louis and Henry’s reconciliation prefigure more recent, and different, events. Taken together, the illuminations of BSG 935 constitute a series of selective readings of the chronicle, ones that exploit the Brut’s apparent authority to emphasize true British history as one of crime, disgrace, betrayal, defeat, and the domination of men by women. The story is still represented as worthy of memorialization, but with its truth differently inflected. 40 Initial

spotchecking of the manuscript does not reveal major substantive revisions to its text of the LV, but further examination is needed.

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The Brut on the Continent Although a full comparative study of the texts of these manuscripts must await another project and the adequate classification of Long Version manuscripts, spotchecking suggests that their texts, too, may be adjusted for a later, Continental audience. Some of these adjustments reflect the passage of time. All of them conclude their Brut text in the midst of the 1333 siege of Berwick, a bit earlier than the account of the battle of Halidon Hill that ends many manuscripts of the Long Version. The long list of individuals in the wards of both Scotland and England contained in this section is an invitation to error and not necessarily of enormous interest to a fifteenth-century Continental audience: eliminating it may have been incentive enough for the truncation.41 In what looks like a one-off attempt to bring the book to more of a conclusion, a different scribe adds about one column’s worth of text to BSG 935, with a quick account of Edward III’s character, his Continental campaigns, the years of his reign, and his place of burial.42 Other differences seem more pointed. All three manuscripts call the land of Brut’s birth Italy rather than Lombardy.43 The later manuscripts, BSG 935 and Royal 19 C.IX, are more closely related to each other than f.f. 12155 (although they are not identical), and they offer more classicizing details, as well as possibly romanticizing ones, such as mention of Paris and Hecuba in the Brut episode, the outright identification of Diane as a goddess, and the description of Gunnore noted above.44 In CD3, the rubric for the chapter on Arthur’s conquest of France reads, ‘Coment le Roi Arthur revient in France et ce conquist del Romain Frolle et ly tua’, translated in the Middle English Common Version as ‘How Kyng Arthure come into Fraunce, & conquered þat londe of Frolle, þat was a Romayn, & him quellede’.45 In the BSG and Royal manuscripts, it reads, ‘Comment le roy Arthus conquist le duc frole des romains et loccist’ (‘How King Arthur defeated Duke Frolle of the Romans and killed him’).46 The rubric appears to have been edited to avoid attention to just what land is being conquered here (though it is acknowledged in the text): in this case, the beginning rather than the end has been eliminated (as occurs in the rubric about Arthur’s marriage above), so the abridgment is clearly not simply a truncation for the sake of space. The equivalent rubric in the manuscript made for Philip the Good, who had his own conflicts

41 Cf.

CD3, fols. 181r–2v; Brie, Brut, I, 283–5; f.f. 12155, fol. 233v; BSG 935, fol. 207v; Royal 19 C.IX, fol. 155r. 42 Fols. 207v–8r. 43 BSG 935, fol. 12r; Royal 19 C.IX, fol. 10v; f.f. 12155, fol. 13v. 44 BSG 935, fols. 12v, 14r, 56v; Royal 19 C.IX, fols. 11r, 12r, 51r. Cf. Oldest, ll. 6, 39–40, 83–4, 1703; CD3, fols. 75r, 75v, 76v, 103r; Brie, Brut, I, 5, 6, 8, 77. 45 CD3, fol. 103r; Brie, Brut, I, 78. 46 BSG 935, fol. 67v (quoted); Royal 19 C.IX, fol. 51v.

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The Construction of Vernacular History with both England and France over the course of his career, effectively splits the difference, calling attention to the territory but assigning the loss to the Romans: ‘Comment le roy arthur vint en france et conquist grant plente des Rommains’ (‘How King Arthur came into France and defeated a great many Romans’).47 It should not be forgotten that Continental production (or production by Continental scribes, who are known to have worked in England) does not automatically equate to Continental use of a manuscript, but in these cases, the manuscripts do not seem to have been designed for English patrons. The Continental influence of the prose Brut tradition is much greater and broader than what is represented in this handful of manuscripts. Although the prose Brut tradition has long been noted as a major influence on Wavrin, only recently have scholars such as Norbye, Rajsic, and L. F. Davis begun to explore other Continental works that draw on the Anglo-Norman prose Brut.48 Like the prose Brut itself, these works tend to be anonymous and lack common, long-established titles, and they frequently appear in rolls, a medium that modern scholarship finds far more difficult to assimilate than codices, given their mix of idiosyncrasy (especially in text-fitting and selection), apparent uniformity (especially in the presentation of genealogies that for obvious reasons may differ little across different works), and frequently derivative nature. Like the prose Brut, they have suffered from neglect. It turns out that literally dozens of manuscripts of these works abridge and adapt a version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut, drawing heavily on its earlier portions, for their accounts of the matter of Britain.49 Rajsic calls this adaptation the Croniques d’Engleterre Abrégiées, after its title in one early manuscript.50 It almost always (as far as is now known) appears together with a short chronicle on the matter of France entitled by Norbye A tous nobles qui aiment beaux faits et bonnes histoires, or A tous nobles, which as Rajsic says, ‘may 47 F.f.

12155, fol. 75r. Wavrin and his likely use of the library of the dukes of Burgundy, see Matheson, PB, pp. 22–3. See, e.g., M. A. Norbye, ‘Genealogies and Dynastic Awareness in the Hundred Years War: The Evidence of A tous nobles qui aiment beaux faits et bonnes histoires’, Journal of Medieval History 33 (2007), 297–319, and ‘A Popular Example of “National Literature” in the Hundred Years War: A tous nobles qui aiment beaux faits et bonnes histoires’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 51 (2007), 121–42; Rajsic, ‘“Cestuy roy”’; L. F. Davis, ed. and trans., La Chronique Anonyme Universelle: Reading and Writing History in Fifteenth-Century France (Turnhout, 2014). 49 Spence’s conclusion that ‘fundamentally, Anglo-Norman historical writing was an English phenomenon’ thus needs to be revisited, although as will be seen, the works in question do not fully or uncritically reproduce their source material (Spence, ‘Anglo-Norman Prose Chronicles’, p. 32). 50 Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale 10233–36, fol. 290r. This manuscript was listed in the 1467–69 inventory of the library of the dukes of Burgundy, bringing to three the number of Brut or Brut-derived texts known to have belonged to it (Rajsic, ‘“Cestuy roy”’, pp. 126–7 nn. 4, 6). 48 On

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History Illustrated appear on its own, embedded within a universal chronicle that shows the successions of popes and emperors and of the kings of England, or alongside the genealogical history of England’s rulers only’.51 The prose Brut supplies material from Aeneas to Edward I within one of these universal chronicles, entitled and edited by L. F. Davis as La Chronique Anonyme Universelle, which survives in around thirty manuscripts, typically multicolumn rolls with genealogical roundels, sometimes roundel miniatures, and text.52 Despite the possible end of the prose Brut’s influence at 1272, the version used is likely to be derived from the Long Version, as the text includes distinctive Long Version elements such as the regnal years of the kings following Esidur and King John’s death by poison.53 L. F. Davis says, ‘Compiled and first read in the French context of the Hundred Years War, the present Chronique reveals a barefaced francophilic sentiment that, not surprisingly, exists alongside an equally-blatant anti-English prejudice, biases that are also reflected in the illustrative cycle’.54 That said, the prose Brut text is not aggressively altered in the ways one might imagine – mentions of kings like Ebranc and Arthur conquering Gaul or France are, for instance, retained – but the closer to the present the chronicle draws, the more perfunctory its account of England becomes.55 One early moment that may represent the beginning of an abandoned editorial project is the characterization of Brut’s departure from France: following the account of his victory over King Goffar, the text reads, ‘Apres celle desconfiture bruit se partit du pays pource quil veoit bien quil ne pouoit resister contre goffar’ (‘After this defeat, Brut left

51 Rajsic,

‘“Cestuy roy”’, p. 129. Norbye’s ‘Genealogies’ provides the fullest account of the A tous nobles tradition and its over sixty manuscripts, which she classifies into twenty-one groups. 52 See the rightmost column in L. F. Davis’s edition, pp. 188–219, 224–61, 274–83; from then to the accession of Henry IV, the content is so extremely condensed that the relation to any particular version of the PB cannot be ascertained, and material other than the PB is definitely also in use (pp. 282–91; see also Rajsic, ‘“Cestuy roy”’, pp. 133–5). L. F. Davis’s catalogue of the manuscripts is App. 1, pp. 99–144; see plates 5 and 7 (pp. 387 and 389) for images showing Brut material. Including the Chronique Anonyme Universelle, a PB-derived text may be found in some forty universal chronicle manuscripts, according to Norbye (‘Genealogies’, p. 319). 53 L. F. Davis, ed., Chronique Anonyme, pp. 216–19, 278–9; cf. Oldest, ll. 624–32, 4026–9 and p. 343; CD3, fols. 84v–5r, 137r–v; Brie, Brut, I, 30–1, 169–70. See Rajsic, ‘“Cestuy roy”’, pp. 129–30. L. F. Davis’s terminology is a little eccentric, and it is not clear whether what she calls the ‘“Old Version” of the French Prose Brut’ corresponds to any of the usually recognized versions, but the textual markers she identifies with the ‘Old Version’ can be found in all versions of the ANPB and the MEPB as well (see pp. 18, 35–8, 42). Her identification of the LV manuscript Royal 19 C.IX (discussed above) as Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale 19.C.IX is an error (an understandable one) (p. 38). 54 See pp. 12–14; p. 12 quoted. 55 Pp. 204–5, 246–7; see pp. 274–91.

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The Construction of Vernacular History the land because he could see well that he could not resist against Goffar’).56 On the whole, abridgment seems to be the textual approach of choice, and as L. F. Davis notes, the contrast between the kings of France and England is drawn most vividly in the program of illustrations, in which French kings receive ‘noble royal portraits or images of construction and foundation’, while scenes to do with England ‘are mostly of murder (Arthur), violence (the sacking of England), and treachery (Hengist)’.57 As with the illuminated prose Brut manuscripts, illustrations can again be seen to be deployed for ends independent of the words on the parchment. And although many questions remain as to how rolls, especially large ones, were actually used by their audiences, it is easy to imagine their pictures making more impact than their words, small and awkwardly configured as those words often are. In her study of the eight manuscripts of the Croniques Abrégiées that appear twinned with A tous nobles rather than in the fuller context of the universal chronicle, as well as a number of other related texts, Rajsic notes the effect of its abridgments and finds its termination with the accession of Henry IV to provide an opportunity for all subsequent history to be ‘filtered through a French lens’: ‘the silence of the Croniques on the reigns of Henry IV, V and VI enables A tous nobles scribes to evade many of the English military successes in France, and to present the successes they do admit in such a way that reflects less critically on the French.’58 But she also notes that, read in itself, while also paying extra attention to Brittany and Normandy, and in some cases soft-pedaling French defeat or aggrandizing French accomplishments, the Croniques Abrégiées appear to provide not so much a jaundiced view of England as a general mirror for princes, with British kings providing positive exempla as well as negative ones.59 She also notes two fascinating cases of related insular rolls that re-adapt format and content to promote English interests, particularly the claim to France (Bodleian Bodley Rolls 2 and Add. 27342), and one that translates the Continental French version into Middle English (Add. 29503).60 On the Continent as in Britain, the prose Brut was read, produced, altered, and deployed in ways that served different interests and audiences. The adjustments in presentation and content noted here are for the most part fairly subtle and restrained. They may indicate that the Brut text itself commanded enough respect not simply to serve as a framework for a

56 Pp.

194, 195, italics mine; cf. Oldest, ll. 152–5 and p. 299; CD3, fol. 77r–v; Brie, Brut, I, 10. See above, pp. 29–30, for a discussion of this moment in the OV. 57 Chronique Anonyme, p. 13. 58 ‘“Cestuy roy”’, p. 136. 59 Rajsic, ‘“Cestuy roy”’, pp. 137–40; see particularly her discussion of adjustments made to the same passage on the conflict between Henry I and Louis VI discussed above in relation to BSG 935. 60 Rajsic, ‘“Cestuy roy”’, pp. 142–6.

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History Illustrated thoroughly revisionist history – but other works adapting the Brut more freely may simply have yet to be identified. What they certainly provide is more evidence of how, through elements such as apparatus and illustrations, manuscript culture enables book-makers and users to shift a work’s emphases without much alteration of the words of the main text. As editions of texts in the prose Brut tradition proliferate, and its influence on other works can be more readily identified, new chapters will continue to open on the ways its matter was used, adapted, and renewed over the centuries, and on this matter’s role in cultivating vernacular literacy, habits of reading both texts and the past depicted in them, and the formation of national and transnational identity among Francophone and eventually non-Francophone audiences.

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Conclusion Merlin’s Power

In the face of modern depictions of Merlin as everything from comic sorcerer complete with pointy hat to proto-environmentalist Druid, medievalists – particularly those who teach undergraduates – often find themselves emphasizing him as first and foremost a prophet in the eyes of medieval audiences. Geoffrey of Monmouth, the first main promulgator of the matter of Merlin in writing, claims that interest in Merlin’s prophecies was so great that he had to stop work on the Historia to translate them. Geoffrey interrupts his narrative with an unusual first-person comment: Nondum autem ad hunc locum historiae perueneram cum de Merlino diuulgato rumore compellebant me undique contemporanei mei prophetias ipsius edere, maxime autem Alexander Lincolniensis episcopus, uir summae religionis et prudentiae. . . . Cui cum satisfacere praeelegissem, prophetias transtuli et . . . direxi. (‘Before I had reached this point in my history, news of Merlin spread and I was being pressed to publish his prophecies by all my contemporaries, and particularly by Alexander bishop of Lincoln, a man of the greatest piety and wisdom. . . . Wishing to please him, I translated the prophecies and sent them to him.’)1

In the Historia, when the doomed usurper Vortiger has haled Merlin into his court, after being advised to temper the mortar of his castle’s unstable foundation with the blood of someone who has no father, Merlin reveals that the foundation is undermined by a pool of water inhabited by two dragons, red and white, the sight of which inspires him to deliver a lengthy, violent, cryptic beast allegory extending well beyond the meaning of the dragons themselves. As Crick has argued, the presence of prophecy seems only to have strengthened the authority of the entire Historia for much of its audience: ‘Merlin seems generally to have enhanced, not detracted from, Geoffrey’s respectability as a historian.’2 Geoffrey’s prophecies, which 1 HRB,

§ 109, pp. 143, 142. The fulsome dedicatory letter that follows in HRB is not present in HRBVV: see pp. 101–2. 2 J. Crick, ‘Geoffrey of Monmouth, Prophecy and History’, Journal of Medieval History 18 (1992), 357–71 (p. 359).

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The Construction of Vernacular History constitute Book 7 of the Historia, were also copied and transmitted separately.3 New prophecies were being composed and attributed to Merlin into at least the fourteenth century, and they remained common enough cultural currency that Shakespeare can have the Fool joke about them, prophesying prophecy, in King Lear.4 But if Merlin’s primary medieval and early modern identity is that of prophet, Merlin’s prophecies themselves have a spotty history in the vernacular Brut tradition stemming from Geoffrey, with the Galfridian prophecies disappearing and reappearing, and different prophecies attributed to Merlin sometimes replacing them. Consideration of the character of Merlin in the Oldest Version, the ways in which his role is altered and expanded in later versions, and his presentation in the manuscripts will offer a sense of how the prose Brut chronicle could incorporate different, and even opposed, understandings of the power and function of historical narrative and the effect of the individual on history itself. The Oldest Version of the prose Brut does not include fullblown Galfridian prophecies of Merlin. The straightforward reason would seem to be that Wace’s Brut, its main source at this point, does not have them either.5 Wace explicitly declines to provide them, while also presuming the audience’s familiarity with them: Dunc dist Merlin les prophecies Que vus avez, ço crei, oïes, Des reis ki a venir esteient, Ki la terre tenir deveient. Ne vuil sun livre translater Quant jo nel sai interpreter; Nule rien dire nen vuldreie Que si ne fust cum jo dirreie. (‘Then Merlin made the prophecies which I believe you have heard, of the kings who were to come and who were to hold the land. I do not wish to

3 For

an excellent, succinct overview of the transmission and use of Galfridian prophecies into the late Middle Ages, see Eckhardt, ed, and intro., The Prophetia Merlini of Geoffrey of Monmouth: A Fifteenth-Century Commentary (Cambridge MA, 1982). She has counted nearly eighty Latin copies of the Prophetia independent of the Historia (‘The Prophetia Merlini of Geoffrey of Monmouth: Latin Manuscript Copies’, Manuscripta 26 (1982), 167–76). 4 At the end of act 3, scene 2, in the Folio but not the First Quarto. See The Tragedy of King Lear, ed. B. A. Mowat and P. Werstine, Folger Digital Texts (Washington, n.d.), , accessed 30 September 2016. For more on Shakespeare’s use of the prophetic material in the Brut tradition, see Marvin, ‘Arthur Authorized’, p. 90. 5 On Wace’s omission of prophecies of Merlin see J. Blacker, ‘“Ne vuil sun livre translater”: Wace’s Omission of Merlin’s Prophecies from the Roman de Brut’, in Anglo-Norman Anniversary Essays, ed. I. Short, Anglo-Norman Text Society, Occasional Publications Series 2 (London, 1993), pp. 49–59.

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Merlin’s Power translate his book, since I do not know how to interpret it; I would not like to say anything in case what I say does not happen.’)6

But that answer, as is so often the case once the surface is scratched with the Brut tradition, is not sufficient. Wace’s omission was not uniformly accepted by insular audiences for the Roman de Brut, as evidenced by the composition, insertion, and circulation of Anglo-Norman translations of Geoffrey’s prophecies that fill in the gap in Wace in four surviving texts of the poem.7 Among the manuscripts of Wace containing these prophecies are the surviving ones most closely related to the Oldest Version, the Durham and Lincoln ones, and the writer of the Oldest Version may well have been using a manuscript of Wace and Gaimar that, like them, contained such interpolated prophecies.8 Whether or not he had access to the prophecies in Anglo-Norman translation, the evidence of the rest of the text shows him to have been using the Vulgate Historia directly at least in places, and he was a competent Latinist. And he evidently consulted something in addition to Wace here, because the episode in the Oldest Version contains matter missing from the ‘pure’ Roman de Brut – a detailed account of the fight between the red and white dragons and a brief explication of their signification in relation to the coming wars between the Britons and the Saxons.9 Nothing remains, however, of the extensive allegory that follows in Geoffrey.10 The writer of the Oldest Version is thus not simply following the example set by his source, or any of his known sources or analogues. If his immediate source closely resembled the Durham manuscript, he may in fact have reinvented rather than duplicated Wace’s omission of the full prophecies, because in its revision, the Durham manuscript replaces a substantial piece of Wace’s narrative, including the demurral quoted above.11 He may even go one better than Wace, because not only does he omit the rest of the prophecies, but he does not so much as acknowledge their existence at this point

6 RB,

ll. 7535–42. has edited and translated the two surviving versions of the prophecies inserted into texts of Wace, which also appear in other contexts; see her introduction for a lucid discussion of the manuscripts, and of the tradition of prophecies attributed to Merlin (Prophecies, pp. 1–26). 8 They each contain a different version of the prophecies and are the base texts for Blacker’s editions. 9 Oldest, ll. 1337–47. 10 Cf. HRB, § 111–17, pp. 145–59; RB, ll. 7523–82; and Oldest, ll. 1328–56, and see p. 311. 11 Dur omits RB, ll. 7333–582, and supplies its own material there; see Blacker, ed., Prophecies, pp. 4 and 27–33. The material on Vortiger’s immediate fate in Oldest, ll. 1348–56, corresponding to RB, ll. 7543–82, and HRB, § 118, p. 161, is not found in Dur, so something strictly analogous to its text cannot be the writer’s only source here. 7 Blacker

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The Construction of Vernacular History in the text.12 Clearly, although Merlin is identified as a prophet in the Oldest Version,13 the Galfridian content of his prophecies is not what gives him value here, and his role is not primarily that of a vehicle for prophecy. What is it, then?

The Merlin of the Oldest Version The general tendency of the Oldest Version to rationalize the supernatural is evident in its portrayal of Merlin, from his first appearance in the text and the tale of his conception.14 His actions are also represented less magically, especially in comparison to Wace. Following Geoffrey, Wace uses the story of the removal from Ireland of the stones that become Stonehenge as an opportunity for Merlin to remark on the superiority of brains to brawn. As in the Variant but not the Vulgate Version of Geoffrey, when Uter’s men fail, Merlin uses an incantation to make the stones moveable. Wace is somewhat coy: his Merlin says, ‘Or verrez engin e saveir Mielz que vertu de cors valeir.’ Dunc ala avant sil s’estut, Entur guarda, les levres mut Comë huem ki dit oreisun; Ne sai s’il dist preiere u nun. (‘“Now you shall see how knowledge and skill are better than bodily strength.” Then he stepped forward and stopped. He looked around, his lips moving like a man saying his prayers. I don’t know if he said a prayer or not.’)15

Very much in the temper of the Vulgate, the Oldest Version simply reports, Quant il virent les peres e la manere coment eles esturent, il auoient tresgrant merueile e disoient entre eux qe nul homme ne les remueroit par force ne par engin, tant furent grandes e huges. Mes Merlyn par son sen e par sa cointise les remua e les fist venir en lor nefs, e reuindrent en ceste terre.

12 The

OV does later follow RB (ll. 13401–2) in associating a prophecy of Merlin (concerning a sea-wolf) with the invader Gurmund (Oldest, ll. 2094–5). The sea-wolf is mentioned in HRB, § 112, p. 145; see also the Durham and Lincoln prophecies, p. 59, in Blacker, ed., Prophecies, pp. 34, 59. 13 He is called ‘Merlin le prophete’ at ll. 1195 and 1542–3. 14 See above, pp. 86–7, for a discussion. 15 RB, ll. 8145–50, cf. HRB, § 130, p. 175, and HRBVV, § 130, p. 125: ‘Et paulisper insusurrans motu labiorum tamquam ad oracionem precepit ut adhiberent manus et asportarent quo uellent.’ See also N. Wright’s introduction to HRBVV, p. l, on the differences in content and tone between the Vulgate and Variant here.

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Merlin’s Power (‘When they saw the stones and the manner in which they stood, they marveled greatly and said among themselves that no man could move them by force or by contrivance, they were so great and huge. But through his wisdom and his ingenuity Merlin moved them and brought them into their ships, and they returned to this land.’)16

Although Merlin taunts kings in the Oldest Version, he does not taunt the common men here, and the qualities with which he succeeds are wisdom and ingenuity. Likewise, although Wace goes into some length about the ‘nuvels medecinemenz’ and ‘enchantemenz’ that Merlin uses to transform Uter’s appearance to that of the earl of Cornwall so he can sleep with the earl’s wife Igern, the Oldest Version only briefly says that Merlin accomplishes the change by ‘sa art qil sauoit’ (‘the art that he knew’).17 (The word ‘art’ can have a broad spectrum of meanings, in which magic is a possible but not necessary or dominant one.)18 Compared to its analogues, the chronicle deals with Uter’s disguise circumspectly. For the sake of the story of Arthur’s conception it cannot be omitted, but it can be minimized. The Vulgate Historia: Cum crepusculo . . . uenerunt. . . . apertae sunt ianuae et intromissi sunt uiri; quid enim aliud accessisset, cum prorsus ipse Gorlois reputaretur adesse? . . . Deceperat namque illam falsa specie quam assumpserat. . . . Vnde ipsa credula nichil quod poscebatur abnegauit. (‘They arrived at dusk. . . . the gates were opened and the men admitted; what else could have happened, since it was thought that Gorlois himself was really there? . . . Igerna was deceived by his false appearance. . . . So she trustingly denied nothing that he asked.’)19

Wace: En Tintajuel le seir entrerent. Cil, ki cunuistre les quiderent, Les unt receüz e joïz E a joie les unt serviz. Li reis od Ygerne se jut.

16 Oldest,

ll. 1417–21. RB, ll. 8701–36, ll. 8702, l. 8727 quoted, and Oldest, ll. 1545–57, l. 1547 quoted. The Vulgate HRB mentions both ‘nouis artibus’ and ‘medicaminibus’, translated by Wright as ‘strange arts’ and ‘herbs’ (§ 137, pp. 187, 186), and HRBVV adds to these ‘arte magica’ (§ 137, p. 134). 18 See Anglo-Norman Dictionary, , accessed 17 September 2015. 19 HRB, § 137, pp. 187, 186. 17 Cf.

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The Construction of Vernacular History (‘In the evening they entered Tintagel. Those who thought they knew them, received and welcomed them, and joyfully served them. The king lay that night with Ygerne.’)20

The Oldest Version: Le roi . . . prist son chimin vers Tintagel o Vlfyn e Merlin. E quant il estoit venuz, le porter entendi qil vst este son seignur demene. E quant vint a houre de cucher, le roi se cucha prede Igerne e enfist tute sa volunte. (‘The king . . . made his way towards Tintagel with Ulfyn and Merlin. And when he had come, the doorkeeper believed that he was his own lord. And when it came time to go to bed, the king lay down with Igern and did all he desired with her.’)21

In the Oldest Version’s telling, since the only person necessarily fooled by the disguise is the doorkeeper himself, it does not need to rise to a supernatural level of verisimilitude. (The Oldest Version also omits the episode, found in both Geoffrey and Wace, in which word of Gorlois’s death reaches Tintagel in the morning, and Uter must keep up appearances before everyone until he leaves.)22 The effect here is not only to humanize Merlin, making his machinations more plausibly within the realm of skill, but to humanize the prose Brut’s Igern as well, allowing for the possibility that she is less an ignorant victim than a powerless one, or perhaps a woman like the Estrild before her and particularly the Estrild after her, navigating her course as best she can among the men who wish to possess her.23 These rationalizing tendencies come to the fore even at Merlin’s explicitly prophetic moments in the Oldest Version. After watching the red and white dragons under Vortiger’s castle fight, with the white dragon prevailing on its second attempt, Le Roi Vortiger e sa gente qe virent ceste bataille auoient grant merueile, e prierent Merlyn qil lor deit qei ceo poeit signifier. ‘Sire Roi’, fet il, ‘ieo vous dirrai. Le rouge dragon signefie vous mesmes, e le blaunk dragon signefie les genz de Sessoine qe primes receustes e retenustes en ceste terre, qe ore se est combatu o vous e vous ad enchace hors de vostre terre. Mes les Brutons qe sunt de vostre linage les venquirent e lenchacerount vne pece, e pus au darein reuendrount les Sessouns e recouerount ceste terre, e la tendrount touz iours. E enchacerount les Brutouns e enferrount de ceste terre tute lor volunte, e destruerount la crestienite par mi la terre.’ 20 RB, ll. 8729–33; cf. HRBVV, § 137, p. 134, which is much more concise than the Vulgate. 21 Oldest,

ll. 1554–6. § 118, p. 161; RB, ll. 8750–86. RB here makes it clearer that Ygerne has been fooled by the disguise (ll. 8781–2). 23 See above, pp. 74–6, 80–4. 22 HRB,

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Merlin’s Power (‘King Vortiger and his people who saw this battle marveled greatly, and they asked Merlin to tell them what this could mean. “Lord King”, he said, “I will tell you. The red dragon signifies you yourself, and the white dragon signifies the people of Saxony whom you first received and retained in this land, who now have fought with you and have driven you out of your land. But the Britons who are of your lineage will conquer them and drive them out for a time, and then at last the Saxons will return and recover this land, and they will hold it forever. And they will drive out the Britons and will do whatever they please with this land, and they will destroy Christianity throughout the land.”’)24

That is, Merlin interprets the phenomena immediately before the spectators, tells a bit more about what will come to pass, and leaves it at that, without even going on to the boar of Cornwall that represents Arthur, much less the seven more printed pages’ worth of beast allegory found in Geoffrey.25 The prophecies here serve as local readings of particular signs. Likewise, soon afterward Merlin interprets for Uter the meaning of new celestial objects witnessed by everyone, which turn out to signify the death of the king his brother, his own coming to the throne, and his offspring. In this passage, the Oldest Version not only retains the detail found in Wace and Geoffrey but expands on it with praise of Arthur, and with reiterated stress on meaning and interpretation itself (emphasized here in the translation): Ceste esteille fu veu de meint homme, mes nul ne sauoit la signifiance. Vter frere le roi, qe fust en Gales oue son ost, vist ben cele esteille e les rais e se merueilla durement quei ceo poeit signifier. E fist appeller Merlyn e li moustra lesteille e les rays, e li priast qil li deist la signifiaunce. E Merlin regarda cele esteille auisement, pus suspira e pluroit tendrement e dit: ‘Allas’, fet il, ‘qe si noble roi est mort. Sachez qe le Roi Aurilambros vostre frere est mort e empusoine, e ceo vey ieo ben en cele esteille. E vous mesmes estes signifie par la teste del dragon, qe vous serrez roi e regnerez. E par le raie qe sestent vers Fraunce est entendu qe vous engendrez vn fiz qe serra roi de Fraunce, e conquerra tustes les terres apurtenaunces ala corone de Fraunce, e serra roy de plus grant honur qe vnqes ne fu nul de ses auncestres.’ (‘This star was seen by many men, but no one knew its meaning. The king’s brother Uter, who was in Wales with his army, saw the star and its beams well, and he wondered greatly what this might mean. And he had Merlin summoned and pointed out to him the star and its beams, and he asked him to tell him their meaning. And Merlin looked carefully at this star, then sighed and wept tenderly and spoke: “Alas”, he said, “that such a noble king is dead. Know that King 24 Oldest, 25 HRB,

ll. 1337–47. § 112–17, pp. 145–59.

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The Construction of Vernacular History Aurilambros your brother is poisoned and dead, and I see this well in this star. And you yourself are signified by the head of the dragon, for you will be king and reign. And by the beam that stretches towards France it is signified that you will beget a son who will be king of France, and he will conquer all the lands appertaining to the crown of France, and he will be a king of greater honor than ever were any of his ancestors.”’)26

Thus, in the representation of Merlin’s origins, his actions, and his utterances, the Oldest Version depicts him as something more akin to a classical augur than to an Old Testament recipient of divine revelation. Its emphasis falls on interpretation versus inspiration and on wisdom versus magic as sources of knowledge and power, and on the signs interpreted versus the glamour of the individual interpreter. This Merlin is far more a sage and reader of signs than a supernatural figure with direct, privileged communication from beyond. These aspects of his character, present in the Oldest Version’s analogues, become his central features here, while the usual key aspect – his access to occult knowledge by means of revelation, and the transmission of that knowledge (or mystery) to an audience through him – is downplayed or omitted. It is worth noting in this context that the other major moment of divine revelation of the Galfridian narrative, the angelic voice that forbids Cadwallader to return to Britain at the end, is also missing from the Oldest Version of the prose Brut.27 Where others see inexplicable and frightening events, and insurmountable obstacles, Merlin sees shape and meaning. Sometimes he recognizes problems that can be solved, as with the engineering of Stonehenge. Sometimes he recognizes the scope of the fundamental problem that has eluded others: the real problem is less with Vortiger’s castle than with his reign itself, and with the invading horde that even Arthur will deter only during his lifetime. Merlin understands and says what others do not or dare not, but his knowledge can no more alter the course of all events than his blood can give mortar supernatural powers. The order that he brings out of the disorder wrought by the ambitious and devious is largely conceptual: Stonehenge is a memorial to all the men murdered on Salisbury Plain through Engist’s treachery, and Merlin bears witness to the poisoning of the good king Aurilambros, which he predicts and then announces but does not prevent.28 What makes the rocks that will form Stonehenge worth bringing from Ireland is that they have curative powers – but their seizure triggers the alliance between the Irish and the 26 Oldest,

ll. 1472–83, and see p. 312; cf. RB, ll. 8302–38, and HRB, § 133, p. 179. Oldest, ll. 2297–317, and p. 322. Cf. HRB, § 205, p. 279, and RB, ll. 14475–800, which also invokes the prophecies of Merlin at this point. The OV also omits Arthur’s portentous dream before his war with the emperor (RB, ll. 11243–78; HRB, § 164, pp. 223–5). 28 See Oldest, ll. 1388–407, 1355–6, 1477–89. 27 See

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Merlin’s Power Saxons that leads to Aurilambros’s assassination. Merlin acts to enable the adulterous conception of Arthur but does not prevent the betrayal by his nephew that brings the best of reigns to an end and is emblematized by Modred’s repetition and amplification of the crime of Uter when he takes Gunnore to his bed.29 Individual human passions and choices are here shown as having enormous consequences. In his capacity as interpreter of the world around him, Merlin becomes a reader of history – a reader of events themselves – and he also becomes an exemplar for readers of the Brut chronicle in their own task of interpretation. With its patterned narrative, directed by the strategic repetition of events rather than an explicating, moralizing authorial voice, the Oldest Version of the prose Brut teaches its readers to become such readers of history, albeit in a more mundane vein. The portents that ordinary history offers may not be as spectacular as dragons and comets, but they are not as cryptic, either. It does not take divine inspiration to see that King Vortiger is going to come to a bad end once he has invited his new friends the Saxons to help him in Britain, or that the disrespect of King William Rufus or King John for everything that others hold sacred will not serve them well. The Oldest Version offers a history so crafted that any careful reader can discern the shape and meaning of events, and not just of words. As a reader, Merlin is different more in degree than in kind from the chronicle’s ideal audience. In his capacity as memorializer of the sufferings and follies, as well as the very occasional glories, of those who enter into history, Merlin becomes also a lightly drawn figure of the historian. Just as he can see more than the ordinary viewer, he can say more than the ordinary cleric.30 He, and a scattering of figures like him, talk back to the powerful men who will not see or listen, even when they have asked for advice in the first place, and through them, so does the writer of the Oldest Version, if only in the most delicate and indirect of ways.

The Merlin of the Long Version With the figure of Merlin, as with so much in the prose Brut tradition, the text supplied by the Oldest Version becomes a template or medium for later readers and revisers. In general, as has already been discussed, the editorial tendency is to supplement: to make the prose Brut text one’s own, interpret it, and emphasize aspects of particular interest through elements such as apparatus, annotation, illustrations, and, infrequently, the addition or replacement of substantive episodes in the body of the text itself, such as continuations or, for instance, the provision of a different version of the death 29 Oldest,

ll. 1972–3. J. Simpson, Reform, pp. 98–101, on the presence of the wise ‘clerical’ voice in late fourteenth century ME poems on the matter of Troy.

30 Cf.

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The Construction of Vernacular History of King John or the reinstatement of the full Cadwallader story found in many manuscripts of the Middle English prose Brut.31 The Long Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut represents the most thorough revision of the chronicle in the prose Brut tradition and the basis for the Middle English translations: its addition of prophecies of Merlin, along with their explications, constitutes its most ambitious change to the core text.32 The prophecies brought into the chronicle are not the Galfridian ones themselves, but a version of the Prophecy of the Six Kings to Follow John, beast allegories in a Galfridian mode, probably first composed early in the reign of Edward II (but after 1312) and beginning with a figure easily identifiable as Henry III.33 As adapted for later use in the Brut, they are inserted awkwardly during the reign of Arthur. Merlin’s last appearance in the text has been just before Arthur’s conception. Suddenly, in the middle of Arthur’s first long campaign, a chapter heading intrudes, doing some narrative work, and Merlin is once again present:3435 . . . les Escotz furent si rauissauntz qe ils pristrent quant qils poeint trouer en la terre de Monye [?] saunz rien esparnier de qi ils chargerent lour gentz encountre lour repoirer en Escoce. Coment le Roy Arthur demanda de Merlyn les auenture de les sis darreins Rois qe furent a regners en Engleterre et coment le terre fineroit Capitulo lxxv Sire fait Marlin en lan del Incarnacion ihesu crist mille deux centz et sesze . . .34

. . . þe Scottes were so grete rauenours þat þai token al þat þai myȝt fynde in þe lande of Lymoigne wiþ-outen eny sparyng ; and þerwiþ þai chargede aȝeyne þe folc, into Scotland forto wende. How Kyng Arthure axede of Merlyn þe aventures of vj the laste kynges þat weren to regne in Engeland, and how þe lande shulde ende. ¶ Capitulo ¶ Septuagesimo ¶ Quinto. ‘Sire’, quod Merlyn, ‘in þe ȝere of Incarnacioñ of oure Lorde Ihesu Crist M CC xv [sic] . . .35

31 See

above, p. 126. For John, see Marvin, ‘Albine’, pp. 175–6. some general comparison of the prologues and continuations to the SV and LV, see Marvin, ‘Albine’, pp. 149–76. 33 The major treatment of the Prophecy of the Six Kings remains Smallwood, ‘Prophecy’. (Lesley A. Coote’s characterization of the prophecies, which she entitles The Last Kings of England, as originally describing ‘three, or perhaps four [kings], to whom others were added in the course of time’ and as written during ‘the final year of the reign of Edward II’, seems to be based on a misunderstanding of Smallwood (‘A Language of Power: Prophecy and Public Affairs in Later Medieval England’, in Prophecy: The Power of Inspired Language in History, 1300–2000, ed. B. Taithe and T. Thornton (Thrupp, 1997), pp. 17–30 (p. 18 and n. 4); see ‘Prophecy’, p. 576).) 34 CD3, fol. 100v; where CD3 has ‘Monye’ or perhaps ‘Mouye’, CUL Ii.6.8, fol. 44v, reads ‘Lymonie’. Both ‘Mounref’ (Moray) and ‘Lamonie’ (possibly corresponding to Loch Lomond) are mentioned hereabouts in the OV (ll. 1668–9, and see p. 314). The chapter heading itself is an indication that the rubrics and the prophecies were introduced into the ANPB at the same time. 35 Brie, Brut, I, 71–2. 32 For

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Merlin’s Power The prophecies run to about four-and-a-half pages in Brie’s edition of the Common Middle English translation – somewhat less than Geoffrey’s Latin prophecies – and reappear with lengthy point-for-point explications at the end of the relevant kings’ reigns. A sample:3637 De cesti Roi Henry prophetiza Merlin et dist qe vn agnelle viendroit hors de Wyncestre en lan del incarnacioun Mille iiC et xvi oue liures veritables et seintite escript dedeins son coer et voiers dist il qar luy bon Henry fust nee en Wyncestre lan susdit et il parla doucez et veritablez parolez et seint homme estoit il et de boun conciens.36

And of þis Kyng Henry, propheciede Merlyn, & said þat ‘a lombe shulde come out of Wynchestre in þe ȝere of Incarnacioñ of our Lord M CC & xvj, wiþ trew lippis, and holynesse wryten in his hert’. And he saide soþ, for þe gode Henry þe Kyng was born in Wynchestre in þe ȝere abouesaide, and he spake gode wordes & swet, and was an holy man, and of god conscience.37

Tedious as they may be to read, these prophecies accomplish a great deal in the Long Version. They command credence through their prophecy ex eventu – already convincingly fulfilled, since composed after the event. And they draw immediate, intimate connections between the recent past and the greatest events and people of the reign of Arthur. Like the Arthur of the Galfridian prophecies, Edward III is figured as a boar, who ‘anguissera ses dentz sur les portez de Paris’ (‘shal whet his teiþ vppoñ þe ȝates of Parys’), and before whom the countries of Europe will tremble.38 Edward is to be another Arthur to his people, and he has already been seen and admired by no less than Merlin and Arthur themselves (who, by means of this connection and admiration, are emphatically made forerunners and exemplary figures for the whole island rather than narrowly British or Welsh ones).39 The prophecies reinforce belief in the past recounted by the chronicle and hope for the immediate future predicted, with their optimistic picture of French conquest shifting the text into a more imperial mode than the Oldest Version.40 The insertion of these prophecies into the narrative of the chronicle, along with the explications demonstrating their fulfillment up to a point, proved to 36 CD3,

fol. 140v–1r. Brut, I, 177. 38 CD3, fol. 101v; Brie, Brut, I, 74. 39 For a fuller discussion of the introduction and function of these prophecies in the LV, see Marvin, ‘Arthur Authorized’. L. A. Coote summarizes and glosses, with occasional inaccuracy, the version of the prophecy found in the main Middle English translation of the prose Brut (Prophecy and Public Affairs in Later Medieval England (York, 2000), pp. 101–11). 40 For use and adaptation of the Six Kings material in later reigns, as the prophecies’ predicted end grew nearer, see, e.g., Strohm, England’s Empty Throne: Usurpation and the Language of Legitimation, 1399–1422 (New Haven, 1998), pp. 6–19, and H. Fulton, ‘Arthurian Prophecy and the Deposition of Richard II’, Arthurian Literature XXII (2005), 64–83. 37 Brie,

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The Construction of Vernacular History be a powerful and attractive gesture, and the Six Kings material persisted in the Middle English Brut tradition. By restoring Merlin to the status of a prophet with occult knowledge, someone with something immediate to say about the recent past and near future that cannot be known except by revelation, this revision overwrites and somewhat undoes the Oldest Version’s portrait of Merlin as sage and speaker of truth to power.

Merlin and the Reader The nature of the connection that Merlin illuminates between the past and the reader’s own time differs meaningfully with these two approaches. When Merlin appears primarily as an augur, he serves as a reminder that the signs are there to be read if one has the eyes to see them: it is possible to learn from the past how the world works and therefore to become able to read, and perhaps act in, the present. He provides a model – if a spectacular one – for the witness or reader actively engaged in making sense of why and how things happen. When he appears primarily as a divinely inspired narrator of the future, telling what will be on the basis of supernatural knowledge, the audience of the text is, by contrast, put into a passive role. Readers may hope to become the vicarious recipients of revelation, but they are entirely dependent on the prophet and his authority. The one approach encourages readerly autonomy and attention to events, the other encourages readerly subordination to an authoritative, explanatory voice. The manuscript evidence suggests that some users or makers of Brut manuscripts were affected by the different emphases in their texts. In the surviving manuscripts of the Oldest Version that have section headings, four section headings generally cover the part of the chronicle in which Merlin appears. As Add. 35092 gives them, beginning when Vortiger takes the throne: ‘Coment les Sessouns vindrent primes en ceste terre, ci put hom sauoir’, ‘Coment Merlin fist venir les peres qe furent appelez la Carole de Geanz’, ‘Coment le Roi Aurilambros estoit empusoigne a Wincestre’, and ‘Coment le Roi Vter se combati souentfoiz oue les Sessons par granz batailles’ (‘Here one may learn how the Saxons first came into this land’, ‘How Merlin brought the stones that were called the Giants’ Carol’, ‘How King Aurilambros was poisoned at Winchester’, ‘How King Uter fought with the Saxons many times in great battles’).41 In We8, the heading about Stonehenge simply reads, ‘De Stonhenges’, not naming Merlin at all.42 F.f. 14640, which throughout tends to divide the text into smaller sections, provides two more 41 Oldest,

ll. 1090, 1408, 1441, 1500–1; see textual notes for this section, pp. 362–8, for the versions found in the other manuscripts. We8 and D120 both name Vortiger in the first heading, so that the relevant king appears consistently. 42 We8, fol. 20r; cf. Oldest, ll. 1390–2, p. 366. The heading comes a few lines earlier in

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Merlin’s Power headings, one on Vortiger’s expulsion from England by Engist and another, ‘Coment les messagers amenerent Merlin e sa mere deuaunt le roi’ (‘How the messengers brought Merlin and his mother before the king’).43 In other words, the name of Merlin appears in the scribal apparatus at most once or twice, and he is most consistently remarked on for his association with the great, enduring phenomenon of Stonehenge. His moments of prophecy or augury are not highlighted. In We8, the user who has added a Latin marginal apparatus has followed the lead provided by the text. After an initial sidenote, ‘De Merlino’, at the moment when Merlin first appears and is named, the supplementary notes direct attention to the phenomena that Merlin interprets or the events that he helps bring about: the white and red dragons, the sign in the heavens before Uter’s reign, and the conception of Arthur.44 They do not mention his name again.45 D120 lacks section headings: the scribe has instead provided rubric running heads throughout the book, listing the people and places to be found on the page (they are often also touched in red). His work can be erratic and a little hasty, and at times can be seen to be based on the words that happen to be most prominent on the page. Once, the name ‘Vergounde’, unknown even to legendary history, appears in a heading: the scribe has seen it in the top line of text, following the word ‘Roi’, and taken it to be a proper name, although in context it occurs as a past participle: ‘me ad le Roi vergounde’ (‘the king has dishonored me’).46 In this manuscript, Merlin appears in the headings on the pages in which he is named, but only as one of a number of figures. For instance, the top of the opening with the pages telling of Uter’s infatuation, the conception of Arthur, and more of Uter’s reign lists ‘Igerne . Tintagel . Vlfin . Merlyn . Vter’ and ‘Arthur . Vter . Otta . Ossa . Aloth . Bertel baryn’.47 A little before, on the page with the tale of Merlin’s conception, the only heading reads ‘Adhan la mere Merlyn’, although Merlin and Vortiger are both prominent on the page in question.48 Merlin here is a figure who commands the same level of attention as others. By contrast, in a number of Long Version manuscripts, both the standard apparatus and supplementary material specific to particular manuscripts show far greater interest in Merlin. The rubric chapter headings in Long the text and is integrated into the main text block rather than presented as a new section heading. 43 F.f. 14640, fol. 16r; see Oldest, ll. 1249, 1268, pp. 364, 365. 44 Fols. 18v, 19r, 21r, 22r. Since Stonehenge has its own rubric in the main text block, it was already noted when it came into the later user’s hands (fol. 20r). See also Plate 14 for a sidenote in a SV manuscript emphasizing the meaning of the celestial signs. 45 The allusions to Merlin’s prophecies later in the text do not receive sidenotes (fols. 28v and 29v). 46 D120, fol. 31v; see Oldest, ll. 2334–80 for the context. The relevant line is 2353. 47 Fols. 17v–18r. 48 Fol. 13v.

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The Construction of Vernacular History Version text CD3, which come much more frequently than in the Oldest Version, give Merlin a somewhat more prominent place: of the seventeen that cover events between the accession of Vortiger and the birth of Arthur, only two name Merlin, but an additional five concern events in which he is involved, such as the moving of the stones from Ireland, the interpretation of the great star marking Aurilambros’ death, and the conception of Arthur.49 Chapter headings for the ‘prophecie del Marlyn’ or the like begin each of the later explications, as well as the original prophecy in Arthur’s reign, in which each new king is marked with a two-line initial.50 The manuscript also offers a set of running heads in red, reading ‘Merlyn’, for the pages on which the prophecies first appear.51 These are the only running heads in the chronicle – in fact, the only apparatus aside from the integrated chapter headings and numbers in the entire text.52 (Although the Brut is now bound in the middle of the codex, its collation and wear patterns, and the marks of ownership left by William Jenyns, strongly suggest that it constituted a volume in its own right until at least 1526.)53 The headers make Merlin a figure uniquely emphasized, and the attention drawn to him and his prophetic material may help account for an addition made on the folio left blank at the end of the final gathering when the Brut text was copied. A somewhat later writer – not the Brut’s scribe, nor one seeking to imitate the chronicle’s two-column format – has added a Latin version of the allegorical Prophecy of the Lily, the Lion, and the Son of Man, which like the Prophecy of the Six Kings predicts great things for a figure easy to understand as Edward III: in this case, the interpretation is made all the easier by a brief key provided at the end that invokes ‘Myrlinus in historia 49 See

CD3, fols. 92r–8v; cf. Brie, Brut, I, 49–67, which closely corresponds. fols. 140v, 150v, 165r, 100v–2r; cf. Brie, Brut, I, 177, 203, 242, 72–6, which closely correspond. 51 Fols. 101v–2r; no such headers appear for the prophecies’ explications on fols. 140v–1v, 150v–1r, and 165r–6v. 52 The badly faded Latin notes on fols. 169v and 176v, which accompany dates noted in the text, and the French note on fol. 180r, appear to have been added in later use. 53 Jenyns (or Jennings) became Lancaster Herald to Henry VIII in 1526 and died in 1527; his inscriptions identifying himself as Lancaster Herald and owner of ‘this bowke’ appear on 74r (the first page of the Brut, see Plate 12), 181v, 182v (in the right column after the end of the text), and 183v (in Latin, on the Brut’s final folio), but not, as far as I have been able to ascertain, anywhere else in CD3. The Brut text’s last gathering is one of six leaves, while all its others are of eight, and wear and pen-trials on the originally blank verso of the final folio show it to have been on the outside of a text block for some time before it joined the works with which it is now bound. It remains unclear if the parts of the current codex were joined together before they came into the hands of Robert Cotton. On Jenyns, of whom little is known, see M. Noble, A History of the College of Arms (London, 1804), p. 127. He is also known to have owned the early sixteenth-century manuscript College of Arms L6, which contains an Albine-Brut story with a heraldic flavor (edited and discussed by R. Moll, ‘Brutus the Emperor: National and Heraldic Foundations in London, College of Arms L6’, Mediaeval Studies 75 (2013), 109–45). 50 CD3,

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Merlin’s Power Britannorum’.54 The presence of and extra attention directed to the prophecies of Merlin within the chronicle appear to have encouraged further supplementation with prophetic material: prophecy perhaps begetting prophecy. Similarly, the Long Version manuscript Bodleian Ashmole 1804 contains the Latin prophecies attributed to John of Bridlington, some of which concern events recounted in Brut continuations; the prophecies use space left at the end of the last quire of the Anglo-Norman Mandeville that precedes the prose Brut.55 Not that prophecies of Merlin were required for a prophetic text to be seen as a valuable complement to the Brut: the Short Version text in EUL 181 is also preceded by a text of the Bridlington prophecies, heavily glossed in Latin.56 And a later user has added prophetic material to Oldest Version manuscript We8: its damaged last folio contains a Latin extract from Geoffrey’s prophecies of Merlin.57 Mazarine 1860 contains a set of running heads for Merlin’s prophecies that may have influenced the conception of the text by its late fifteenth or early sixteenth century Continental owner, Maître Jehan Laloyau of Blois, who characterizes the text in a note at the end: ‘la lignee dont sont descenduz les Roys Dangleterre. Et merlin’ (‘the lineage from which the kings of England are descended. And Merlin’).58 Royal 20 A.XVIII contains a text of the Anonimalle chronicle up to the coronation of Edward I. It is supplemented with two sections of the Long Version of the prose Brut: the Long Continuation starting in 1307, and, at the end, both the prophecies of Merlin as delivered to Arthur and their later explications, copied complete with chapter numbers and the ‘Merlyn’ running head.59 Here is a concrete indication of the attention paid to, and the promulgation of, this prophetic material. Long Version manuscripts NLW 5028C and Add. 18462a, very closely related to each other, both use tables of capitula at the beginning of the entire

54 Fol.

183r: the prophecy is headed ‘Verba prophecie secundus Hemericum’. For a description and partial transcription, see H. L. D. Ward, Catalogue of the Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, 3 vols. (London, 1883–1910), I, 318, with discussion of other BL manuscripts containing this text on pp. 316–19, 321. (The manuscript was misnumbered when Ward examined it: hence his placement of the prophecies on fol. 184.) For partial transcription and some discussion of other versions of the prophecy, see Coote, Prophecy and Public Affairs, pp. 96–8, and ‘A Language’, pp. 19–20. 55 Fols. 42v–6v. 56 Fols. 33r–46r. Its version of the main text of the chronicle also contains an additional allusion to prophecies of Merlin in its longer section on Richard I. 57 Fol. 58r. It is only partially legible even under ultraviolet light, and I have not yet attempted to decipher the whole, but its beginning corresponds to HRB, § 116, p. 151, l. 151, and the folio ends in mid-sentence with material corresponding to HRB, § 116, p. 155, l. 203. See Oldest, pp. 411–12. 58 Fol. 108v. 59 The chapter numbers suggest that the text used by the writer may have been related to the same group of manuscripts as Royal 20 A.III, CUL Ii.6.8, and TCD 501.

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The Construction of Vernacular History work rather than headings in the body of the text itself, an unusual method of presentation: in these tables, their prophecies of Merlin have been divided into separate chapters, further emphasized in both manuscripts with an additional scribal sidenote in the outer margin, ‘la prophecie de Merlyn’;60 only a few other items in NLW 5028C and one other item in the BL manuscript receive similar treatment in the tables of capitula, and the one in the BL manuscript is in all likelihood an error brought on by copying of a correction in its exemplar.61 Both manuscripts also provide the name ‘Merlyn’ in the margin at the beginning of the chapter in which he first appears.62 They otherwise provide very little in the way of additional apparatus throughout the chronicle, even when it would be useful, as at the beginning of Merlin’s prophecies themselves, where the transition from narrative to prophecy is bewildering without the explanatory heading.63 Again, although the approach is not especially helpful for the reader, the prophet is treated as a figure of outstanding importance, worthy of unique treatment. Three more Long Version manuscripts are also known to be closely related to these two – if not quite as closely: Royal 20 A.III, CUL Ii.6.8, and TCD 501. The first two share with NLW 5028C and Add. 18462a a distinctive interpolation containing a puzzle based on the seating arrangements at Arthur’s Round Table.64 TCD 501 begins incomplete, well after Arthur’s reign, but

60 NLW

5028C, fol. 4v quoted; cf. Add. 18462a, fol. 11r, partially cut off in binding. 5028C’s other apparently scribal sidenotes in the table concern King John, with an additional one (this the one in common with Add. 18462a) on the coming to the throne of Edward II, which in the former appears to be a heading added after the fact (a chapter number and heading are missing from the table) and in the latter is a redundancy possibly brought on by copying of an exemplar very much like NLW 5028C (the number and header are present in the table, though in different words). See NLW 5028C, fols. 2r–8v and 89r; Add. 18462a, fols. 9r–14v and fol. 77v. The textual matter in question corresponds to Brie, Brut, I, 205. 62 NLW 5028C, fol. 30r; Add. 18462a, fol. 31r. 63 See NLW 5028C, fol. 37r, Add. 18462a, fol. 36r. In both manuscripts, much later readers can be seen supplying the deficiency in finding tools in the later (especially fourteenth-century) portions: the BL manuscript was one of those owned by Simonds d’Ewes, although the body of this particular text is relatively uncompromised (see above, pp. 165–6). The many scribal additions in the margins of NLW 5028C, including the single word ‘wassail’ on fol. 28r, are corrections or fill in gaps in the text; the scribe seems to have been unsure of the word ‘wassail’ and left a space to fill it in later, and he was prone to eyeskip and dittography. He left an explicit on 119v: ‘Explicit expliceat ludere scriptor eat . Deo gratias . Nomen scriptoris Johannes plenus amoris.’ See L. Reynhout, Formules latines des colophons, Bibliologia 25a (Turnhout, 2006), I, 109–15 and 186–94, on these common formulae and the now largely discounted idea that ‘plenus amoris’ represents a personal name rather than a part of a scribal tag. For a discussion that entertains the possibility of the words as a proper name, with bibliography and extensive list of English ‘plenus amoris’ manuscripts, see Friedman, Northern, pp. 67–72. 64 On the puzzle, see Dean no. 230, pp. 129–30; for further discussion along with a 61 NLW

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Merlin’s Power has other features confirming the association.65 As first written, all three of these single-column manuscripts follow the more typical Long Version format of integrated chapter headings and numbers, in red in Royal 20 A.III and TCD 501, and in text ink but a larger, more formal display script in the more cheaply produced CUL Ii.6.8.66 They all thus provide basic finding tools throughout the text. Merlin can again be seen to command extra attention and apparatus. In Royal 20 A.III, flourished scribal running heads reading ‘Merlin’, usually touched with red, have been added from the page on which the sages first advise Vortiger to seek a child with no father through to Merlin’s departure from Vortiger’s court (see Plate 27).67 They appear again on every page from the coming of the star marking the death of Aurilambros through to the end of the prophecy of the six kings.68 At the explications of the prophecies on Henry III, Edward I, and Edward II, first beginning forty folios later, they begin again, with ‘Merlin’ carefully added in the outer margin at the exact beginning of the explications and at the top of the page thereafter.69 CUL Ii.6.8 follows this model as well, with over thirty carefully boxed scribal running heads reading ‘Merlin’ that mark his appearances in the text, his prophecies, and the later explications of his prophecies.70 ‘Merlin’ thus looms over the entire reign of Uter and the first eleven pages of the reign of Arthur, about five of which are narrative in which Merlin does not appear at all and six of which are prophecy.71 In total, his name appears on about 10 percent of the pages of the chronicle.72 transcription, translation, and reproduction of the diagram in the puzzle as found in Royal 20 A.III, fol. 160r–v, see Moll, ‘Enigma’. 65 Its chapter numbers match those of Royal 20 A.III and CUL Ii.6.8 (which differ from most LV texts because of the puzzle and the division of Merlin’s prophecies into separate chapters): cf. TCD 501, fol. 1r (numbered ‘li’ in a fifteenth-century hand); Royal 20 A.III, fol. 171v; CUL Ii.6.8, fol. 67v. Brie also found TCD 501 and Royal 20 A.III to be textually extremely close, and spotchecking confirms that impression, even down to spelling, across the work of multiple scribes (Geschichte, p. 32). 66 The texts of Royal 20 A.III and TCD 501 are both in a fairly current anglicana, the former with no secretary influence, the latter with some splay but no secretary characters, whereas CUL Ii.6.8 displays far more secretary influence and the occasional one-compartment a. 67 Fols. 148v–50v; proper names in the text block are also often touched with red. 68 Fols. 152v–8r. 69 Fols. 198r–v, 206v–7v, 221v–2r. 70 The birth of Christ is on fol. 20r, and the Merlin headings are on fols. 34v–6v, 37v, 39r–47v, 108r–v, and 144r–6v. (The scribe apparently had a lapse, though: the heading is not present for the explications of the prophecies on Edward I (fols. 122r–3r), but it is for Henry III and Edward II.) 71 Fols. 39r–47v. 72 That is, thirty-two of 326 pages in the CUL manuscript. The percentage is about the same for the Royal manuscript.

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Plate 27. London, British Library, Royal MS 20 A.III, fol. 152v. Long Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut, with typical Long Version ordinatio of colored initials, rubric headings and chapter numbers, and in addition, a scribal running head touched with red for Merlin. Reproduced by permission of the British Library. © British Library Board, all rights reserved.

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Plate 28. Dublin, Trinity College, MS 501, fol. 41r. Long Version of the AngloNorman prose Brut, with typical Long Version ordinatio of colored initials, rubric headings and chapter numbers, with later user’s added running head beside a red scribal running head for Merlin. Reproduced by permission of the Board of Trinity College Dublin.

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The Construction of Vernacular History In both manuscripts, this emphasis is made all the more striking by the absence of extra scribal apparatus for other events or figures. Royal 20 A.III has none, aside from what may be a scribal ‘Nota’ marking by the birth of Christ;73 CUL Ii.6.8 has one scribal sidenote naming Ireland, by the story of Irlamal, and one other running head, for the birth of Christ.74 And that is all. Here, Merlin and the content of his prophecies become roughly synonymous, and the figure of Merlin effectively overshadows the kings to and of whom he speaks, including Arthur himself. It is his name, not theirs, that heads the page. The claim by Geoffrey of Monmouth that he had to put aside history in favor of prophecy because his readers demanded it is bolstered by this kind of treatment. TCD 501, however, serves as a reminder of how a manuscript may be transformed in the course of use. The Brut manuscripts discussed above show light marking by later users, generally early modern antiquaries interested in the history of Christianity, information to be gleaned from the continuations, or in one case, the presence of the English language in an Anglo-Norman text.75 The surviving parts of TCD 501 show it to have originally had a format similar to theirs, and boxed red running heads for Merlin appear exactly where one would now expect them, for the explications of the reigns of Henry III, Edward I, and Edward II.76 But in the manuscript as it now exists, these headings are not as prominent or as exceptional as in the other manuscripts of this subgroup: they coexist with a complete set of running heads carefully added by a fifteenth-century user of the text, the same one who foliated the manuscript before its first part was lost, writing in blackish ink and a somewhat formal script. This user mostly supplies names of kings, with an occasional other point of significance. At one point in the prophecies’ explications Merlin must share billing with the next king in line: beside his name at the top of the page is added ‘Edward fitz Roy E’ (see Plate 28).77 Here Merlin is made to stand alongside the Brut’s kings, not above them – even if he alone stands in red – and the prophecies no longer dominate a casual perusal of the text. Whether or not the later reader was inspired to add running heads by the ones already present, or did so with any aim beyond that of greater ease in navigation, the emended apparatus of TCD 501 makes Merlin one figure among many, as in the running heads to D120, and reinstates a sense of history as primarily a succession of kings, as in the Oldest Version of the Brut.

73 Fol. 138v. It may be the work of a later annotator who has made Latin notes on other

events in Christian British history on fols. 140v and 167v. 16v, 20r. 75 A manicule marks English in Royal 20 A.III (fols. 202r–v, 208v, and 223r). See above, p. 202. 76 Fols. 30r, 40v–1r, and 56v–7r. 77 Fol. 41r. 74 Fols.

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The Knowledge of History Historical narrative and prophecy offer competing notions of how much we can hope to know, how we can come by our knowledge, and if and how that knowledge can be put to use. Interest in political or historical prophecy bespeaks a desire for more certitude than ordinary human observation of the world can supply.78 Prophecy offers apparent access to more authoritative knowledge than people can ordinarily have, at the price of belief in human power to determine events, if what is predicted must happen. The readers of prophecy become the victims rather than the agents of history. When God invalidates the prophecy of doom upon Nineveh in response to the city’s repentance, the prophet Jonah is outraged. Jonah knows how prophecy is supposed to work: no amount of sackcloth and ashes should make any difference.79 The privileged knowledge of prophecy is shown as a mixed blessing at best from the start of the Oldest Version: knowing through prophecy that Brut is to kill his mother and father does not keep them from dying, through what the chronicle calls ‘mesauenture’ and ‘mescheaunce’, but his punishment of exile is exactly what sets him on his prophesied heroic path.80 The prophecy that Brut himself hears from Diane is part truth and part lie, and the part that is a lie – that there are no more giants in the island of Albion – both costs him men and ensures that he and his men must act to win their new land, not simply receive it as a destined possession.81 As if to underline the point, in the Oldest Version the murderous giants arrive at the Trojans’ feast just after they have given thanks to Diane, ‘par qi conseil il furent la venuz’ (‘by whose counsel they had come there’).82 If history itself can tell how and why things happen, then it has predictive value – the patterned narrative of the Oldest Version, ready and waiting for the exegetical reader, promotes that idea. But exegesis is work. The idea that knowledge of the past can affect the future puts a great deal of responsibility on 78 R.

W. Southern, ‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing, 3: History as Prophecy’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 5th s. 22 (1972), 159–80 (p. 168). 79 Jonah 3–4. 80 Oldest, ll. 34, 35; cf. RB, l. 139, which has the hunting accident occur ‘a mal eür’ (‘in an evil hour’), and HRB, § 6, p. 9, which says that Brut kills his father with an unintended shot (‘inopino ictu sagittae’). 81 Oldest, ll. 83–99. 82 Oldest, l. 162. Only in the OV is this the first attack by the giants, and only in the OV is the feast specifically dedicated to Diane. See RB, ll. 1051–92, which makes much more of the island as promised and destined; HRB, § 20–1, pp. 25–9, which similarly offers reminders of the island as ‘vouchsafed to him by divine prophecy’ (‘insulam quam ei diuinis praedixerat monitus exigere’) and goes into some detail on the conflict between men and giants before the feast (§ 20, pp. 26, 27 quoted). See Oldest, pp. 298–300, for more detailed comparison.

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The Construction of Vernacular History the readers of history. The Oldest Version hints that at least some of the mistakes of the past can be avoided if recognized, but it is up to the book’s readers, and those whom they advise and influence, to do the avoiding. That is harder and less glamorous work than glossing beast allegories, however obscure. And not only does it offer little assurance of success, it is often fruitless – not because of some grand, inevitable destiny, but because people choose to make the same mistakes over and over, whether or not they know or are told better. The Oldest Version recognizes and reminds its readers how rarely those in power listen to what they do not want to hear. Even at the start, the army of the Greek king Pandras is slaughtered to the last man when he refuses simply to let the Trojan slaves leave in peace.83 Brut’s own son Locrin parodies rather than follows his father’s example: like Brut, he takes as bride the daughter of his defeated enemy.84 Unlike Brut, he is already promised to the daughter of his father’s greatest warrior, and the consequence of his folly, when he ignores prudent counsel and puts aside his British wife, is civil war and his own death.85 Warned by his own ominous dream and that of a monk of his household, told by all not to go hunting that day, William Rufus can only restrain himself until after he has eaten before going to the woods and meeting his death – again by ‘mescheaunce’ – from Walter Tirel’s stray arrow.86 After King John has failed to listen to the pleading of his own bishops ‘weeping on their knees’ (‘li prierent en genulant e ploraunt’) and England is interdicted, he meets his own Merlin in the form of the papal legate Pandulf, who bluntly dismisses the king’s bluster and threats and tells him exactly what will happen if he does not meet the pope’s terms.87 John still must learn the hard way: he submits only under threat of a French invasion, after he is excommunicated, and now he must surrender his crown to the pope, represented in proxy by the triumphant Pandulf himself. The exchange between Pandulf and John is one of the longest individual scenes in the Oldest Version, which usually preserves little dialogue from its sources. It is of course a matter of speculation why the writer seems to have found this scene of a king being dressed down and outwitted by a cleric worth presenting at such length.88 But it is not difficult to see the appeal of a story of the humiliation of the powerful man who will not listen and the vindication of the lesser one who knows better – and who does not need occult powers to do so. Another moment from its sources that the Oldest Version develops at

83 Oldest,

ll. 55–63. is Humbar’s captive rather than his daughter in RB and HRB: the shift in the OV enhances the parallel. See RB, ll. 1317–22, HRB, § 24, p. 33, and Oldest, p. 300. 85 Oldest, ll. 225–46. 86 Oldest, ll. 3233–66, 3258 quoted; see Oldest, p. 334, for the episode’s source relations. 87 Oldest, l. 3664. 88 Oldest, ll. 3749–830, and see p. 341. 84 Estrild

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Merlin’s Power uncharacteristic length comes at the end of Arthur’s reign, when he is ‘naufre ala mort’ (‘mortally wounded’): Mes il se fist porter en vn liter en Aualoun pur mediciner ses plais, e vnquore entendount les Brutouns qil est viuaunt en autre terre e qil vendra e conquerra tute Bretaine. Mes pur verite ceo est la dreite prophecie de Merlin: il dit qe sa mort serroit dotous, e il dit verite, qar lem ad pus tute temps dote e dotera sil soit mort ou vifs. Arthur fust issint porte en Aualoun apres la Incarnacioun Ihesu Crist v cent aunz e xlii. E quant il entendi qil ne poeit plus longement regner, il fist venir deuant li Constantin le fiz Cador counte de Cornewaille, soun neuou, e li bailla tut son regne e li dist qil enfust roi tanqe a son reuenir, pur ceo qe il nauoit nul heir. (‘But he had himself borne in a litter to Avalon for his wounds to be treated, and the Britons still believe that he is living in another land and will come and conquer all Britain. But in truth this is the correct prophecy of Merlin: he said that his death would be doubtful, and he spoke truly, because ever since men have doubted and will doubt whether he is alive or dead. Arthur was thus borne to Avalon 542 years after the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. And when he realized that he could reign no longer, he had come before him Constantin son of Cador earl of Cornwall, his nephew, and he entrusted his whole realm to him and told him that he would be king of it until his return, for he had no heir.’)89

Merlin says that Arthur’s death will be doubtful; people are full of doubt about his death; therefore the prophecy is true. The doubt generated by the prophecy becomes the vehicle of the prophecy’s fulfillment. Here the Oldest Version is clearly drawing on Wace, who in turn builds on Geoffrey’s brief account.90 In the Roman de Brut, the sly prophecy that Wace himself has introduced appears as part of a barrage of disclaimers associated with the idea of Arthur’s return, which Wace acknowledges but neither endorses nor flatly denies. He first invokes a nameless source – ‘si la geste ne ment’ (‘if the story does not lie’)91 – then attributes belief in Arthur’s return to the Britons

89 Oldest,

ll. 2020–9. RB, ll. 13275–98, Oldest, p. 318. The account in HRB runs, ‘Sed et inclitus ille rex Arturus letaliter uulneratus est; qui illinc ad sananda uulnera sua in insulam Auallonis euectus Constantino cognato suo et filio Cadoris ducis Cornubiae diadema Britanniae concessit anno ab incarnatione Domini .dxlii.’ (‘But the illustrious king Arthur too was mortally wounded; he was taken away to the island of Avallon to have his wounds tended and, in the year of Our Lord 542, handed over Britain’s crown to his relative Constantinus, son of Cador duke of Cornwall’) (HRB, § 178, pp. 253, 252; HRBVV varies here only in minor details of wording (§ 178, p. 174)). 91 RB, l. 13275, translation mine. 90 See

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The Construction of Vernacular History and redirects responsibility for propagating the claim by drawing a firm distinction between himself (and his book) and the tale he is here transmitting: Encore i est, Bretun l’atendent, Si cum il dient e entendent; De la vendra, encor puet vivre. Maistre Wace, ki fist cest livre, Ne volt plus dire de sa fin Qu’en dist li prophetes Merlin; Merlin dist d’Arthur, si ot dreit, Que sa mort dutuse serreit. Li prophetes dist verité; Tut tens en ad l’um puis duté, E dutera, ço crei, tut dis, Se il est morz u il est vis. (‘He is still there [Avalon], awaited by the Britons, as they say and believe, and will return and may live again. Master Wace, who made this book, will say no more of his end than the prophet Merlin did. Merlin said of Arthur, rightly, that his death would be doubtful. The prophet spoke truly: ever since, people have always doubted it and always will, I think, doubt whether he is dead or alive.’)92

The Oldest Version dispenses with Wace’s self-conscious and self-distancing gestures while acknowledging the existence of the British hope. It finishes Arthur’s reign with a reflection on a favorite topic, the difficulties of succession, by expanding a single line of Wace that may be little more than rhyme-filler: ‘Damage fud qu’il n’ot enfanz’ (‘It was a great loss that he had no children’).93 The Oldest Version says, E mult fu grant damage qe si noble e si vaillaunt chiualer nauoit nul enfaunt de son corps. Mes ceo qe dieu veut couint qe soit fet, qi noun soit beneit, loe, e glorifie en tuz siecles. Amen. (‘And it was a great loss that so noble and so worthy a knight had no child of his body. But what God wills must be done, whose name be blessed, praised, and glorified in all ages. Amen.’)94

It has here reversed the order of material from Wace, who ends Arthur’s

92 RB,

ll. 13279–90. The phrase ‘si ot dreit’ in l. 13285 is perhaps deliberately ambiguous: depending on the contstrual of ‘si’, one could take it to mean ‘rightly’, as Weiss has translated it, or as ‘if he was right’. Cf. RB, ll. 7535–42, discussed above, in which Wace speaks of ‘not wanting’ to translate the prophecies of Merlin, this time in the first person (‘ne vuil’, l. 1539). 93 L. 13294; it finishes a couplet beginning, ‘Cinc cenz e quarante dous anz’, i.e., AD 542. 94 Oldest, ll. 2029–31.

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Merlin’s Power reign with his selection of Constantin to rule ‘tant qu’il revenist’ (‘until he returned’), to conclude with an exhortation to acceptance of sad reality.95 And whereas Wace continues to refrain from committing himself one way or the other as to what has become of Arthur, the Oldest Version leaves no room for doubt at the beginning of its next section: ‘Cesti Constantin qe regna apres la mort Arthur estoit noble chiualer e vaillant de cors’ (‘This Constantin who reigned after the death of Arthur was a noble knight and stalwart of body’).96 The effect of stripping away both the authorial self-exculpation and the quibbling over whether an ancient king really may some day return and rule is to put the focus on Merlin’s prophecy and its effect. The truth of the prophecy of Arthur’s return has nothing to do with the facts of Arthur’s life or death, but only people’s uncertainty, when the prophecy is taken to be about doubt itself. Wace’s exercise in bet-hedging here becomes a wonderfully wry moment, in which the power of a story to affect people’s beliefs – and consequently their actions – is both described and manifested. What we believe, both about what has happened and what may happen, helps determine what we do and cause to happen. And words, whether those of prophecy or those of narrative, help determine what we believe. By taking a moment of mystery and turning it into one of demystification, the Oldest Version demonstrates that the true power of prophecy is not to show what will happen, but to affect how people think. By introducing prophecies of Merlin, ones with relevance to the lives of the chronicle’s earliest audiences, so that Merlin predicts their own futures and their recent past, the Long Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut makes a retrograde move – a turn away from the Oldest Version’s portrayal of human responsibility for, and aspiration to affect, or at least somewhat understand, the course of history. The Long Version shifts power from the reader back to the exceptional, superhuman figure of the prophet. It also makes a few strategic changes to the account of Arthur’s end as given in the Oldest Version and preserved in the Short Version.97 Its first adjustment deploys apparatus to useful effect. The long chapter on Arthur’s campaign against Modred is made to end with the account of Merlin’s prophecy and the year in which Arthur is taken to Avalon: Arthur fust porte en Avyoun le vint et second an de son regne apres la incarnacion ihesu crist Cynk Centz et quarant ans.98

95 See

RB, ll. 13294–8, l. 13298 quoted. None of the RB manuscripts used in I. Arnold’s variants make this switch (Le Roman de Brut, 2 vols., Société des Anciens Textes Français 56 (Paris, 1938, 1940) II, 694): it seems likely to be original to the OV. 96 Oldest, ll. 2033–4. 97 All manuscripts of the SV with this section of text that I have been able to check retain the OV account essentially unchanged, but I have not yet made a comprehensive search. The Robert of Avesbury SV group makes additional mention of Glastonbury in association with Avalon; see Pagan, ed., 1332, l. 2633. 98 CD3, fol. 107v.

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The Construction of Vernacular History Arthure was born to Auyouñ þe xxij ȝere of his regne After þe Incarnaciouñ of oure lorde Ihesu Crist v. C and xlvjti ȝere.99

Particularly with the addition of the number of years of Arthur’s reign, which along with burial place is the Long Version’s standard concluding formula, this passage takes on the appearance of the end of Arthur’s story – with his passage to Avalon replacing death as the final event. A new rubric and number set off as a chapter in their own right the few sentences in which Arthur entrusts the realm to Constantin, as well as the prayer that in the Oldest Version marks the end of Arthur’s reign. And the chapter after that, on Constantin’s reign proper, begins, Cesti Constantyn estoit noble Chiualer et vaillant de corps.100 This Constance was a noble knyght and a worþhi of body.101

The Oldest Version’s phrase ‘apres la mort Arthur’ (‘after the death of Arthur’) has been eliminated. With these adjustments, simple as they are, the Long Version remystifies Arthur’s end.

History and Authority When Merlin makes his first appearance, he is a teenager squabbling in the street with another boy. In Geoffrey of Monmouth and Wace, only the boy speaks, boasting of his lineage and taunting Merlin for not having a father. Wace: Li uns vers l’altre est irascuz; Li uns l’altre contraliout E sun lignage reprovout: ‘Teis tei’, dist Dinabus, ‘Merlin; Jo sui assez de plus halt lin Que tu nen iés si te repose. Ne sez ki es, malvaise chose? Ne deiz pas vers mei estriver Ne mun lignage repruver. Jo sui nez de reis e de cuntes, Mais si tu tes parens acuntes, Ja tun pere ne numeras, Kar tu nel sez, ne ne savras. Unc tun pere ne cuneüs Ne tu unches pere n’eüs.’ 99 Brie,

Brut, I, 90. fol. 107v. 1 01 Brie, Brut, I, 91. 100 CD3,

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Merlin’s Power (‘One was angry with the other, opposing him and insulting his family. “Hold your tongue, Merlin,” said Dinabuz, “Stop, because I am of a much nobler lineage than you. Don’t you know who you are, you wicked thing? You shouldn’t quarrel with me or insult my family. I am born of kings and counts, but if you consider your parents, you can never name your father, for you don’t know him, nor will you. You never knew your father nor did you ever have a father.”’)102

This is enough to let Vortiger’s searchers know they have found the boy they seek. In the Oldest Version, Merlin gets the first word: E dit lun al autre: ‘Danebac’, fet il, ‘vous auez tort de tenser ou estriuer oue moi, qar vous ne sauez resoun ne sen com ieo sai.’ ‘Certes, Merlin’, fet lautre, ‘de vostre sen ne de vostre reson ne fa ieo force, qar hom dit communement qe vous nauiez mie de deu, desicome vous nauiez onqes pere, tut sache lem qi est vostre mere.’ (‘And the one spoke to the other: “Danebac”, he said, “you are wrong to quarrel or contend with me, for you do not recognize reason or wisdom as I do.” “Indeed, Merlin”, said the other, “I care nothing for your reason or your wisdom, because everyone says that you did not get them from God at all, since you never had a father, even though it is known who your mother is.”’)103

Merlin claims the authority of ‘resoun’ and ‘sen’, reason and wisdom. With Danebac’s rejoinder, the argument becomes not one over the missing father’s effect on their relative social rank, but over him as the potentially ungodly root of Merlin’s talents. The thing that no one knows – the identity of Merlin’s father – disenfranchises Merlin in one way but is also implied to be the source of what he knows.104 By the standards of the Oldest Version, this constitutes a substantial introduction of new material: it sets the tone for the rest of the portrayal of Merlin as someone outside conventional social norms and standards of judgment, and also someone who does not suffer fools gladly. Does this scene as elaborated also make a call for a meritocratic perspective versus one based on lineage? If so, it is brief and muffled. Danebac does not care what Merlin has to say and says as much. For him, and for much of the world, reason and wisdom count for nothing in themselves if you haven’t got the right father. The boy seems to get the last word in the exchange – but it 102 RB,

ll. 7370–84. HRB, § 106, p. 137, and HRBVV, § 106, p. 99, are similar in content, but, as usual, briefer. 103 Oldest, ll. 1276–80. 104 Danebac makes a briefer version of the same argument as raised by William of Newburgh, who argues that if Merlin is demon-spawn his supernatural perception cannot be trusted (History, pp. 28–30).

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The Construction of Vernacular History is what he has said dismissing Merlin that reveals Merlin to the searchers as the one they need. Merlin goes on to tell off one king after another and win a lasting name for himself, while Danebac vanishes from the scene.105 Merlin’s reason and wisdom will be vindicated over and over again. Yet what the searchers want is not Merlin’s words: they want his blood. Neither his blood nor his words can make a rotten foundation stand: he can only tell Vortiger the consequences of his bad choices, not avert them. What he has to offer, kings too rarely want. What kings want, he can rarely offer. Kings are men whose place in the world often depends on who their father is, and what they often want is reassurance of success while doing as they please. Merlin in particular and the Oldest Version in general deny them that reassurance. They appeal not to another authority as the basis of what they say, but to reason and wisdom. With the reintroduction of prophecies of Merlin in the Long Version, the easy approach to judgment re-enters the Brut tradition: the future already narrated, albeit veiled in allegory – in the case of the Prophecy of the Six Kings, transparent allegory for the parts ex eventu, providing exactly the sort of reassurance about the future that the Merlin of the Oldest Version eschews.106 Oddly, by making Merlin into a figure more like the one Danebac fears, it creates a history more in line with the world as he wants it to be, one in which reason and wisdom can be brushed off as irrelevant. Does the reading of history confirm one’s hopes and assumptions, or disrupt them? Does it instill a sense of helplessness or agency in the reader, especially the reader who is not a king? In its portrayal of Merlin, as in other ways, the Oldest Version appears to be a precociously humanistic text – though to be sure, not so stridently or explicitly that the tendency could not be ignored or overwritten in later versions of the prose Brut. Far more politely than Merlin himself, the Oldest Version of the prose Brut tests its readers, prompting them to form their own interpretations and to draw their own conclusions, even while structuring its narrative to shape what some of those conclusions are likely to be. There can be no single characterization of all the responses found in the form of revisions, continuations, presentations,

105 For

what it is worth, in Wace, the boy Dinabuz more or less shares his name with the rapist giant of Mont-Saint-Michel whom Arthur kills. (The giant is not given a name in HRB (§ 106, 165, pp. 137, 225–9) or HRBVV (§ 106, 165, pp. 99, 158–60).) The boy is ‘Dinabuz’ (ll. 7369, 7373) and the giant ‘Dinabuc’ in Weiss’s edition (l. 11317; not all manuscripts contain the line naming him, and Dur places the couplet with his name after l. 11300, per numbering and apparatus in Arnold, ed. Roman de Brut, II, 590. In Dur, the boy is ‘Dinabuz’ (fol. 42v) and the giant ‘Dinabius’ (fol. 69v). In the OV, the boy is ‘Danebac’ and the giant ‘Dinabus’ (ll. 1276, 1873, and see textual notes for further variation). It is tempting to consider this an intentional gesture by Wace, pointing out an essential similarity between their attitudes towards the little people. 1 06 For a more detailed account, see Marvin, ‘Arthur Authorized’, esp. pp. 90–6.

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Merlin’s Power annotations, and translations of the Brut, much less all the responses for which no physical evidence survives. But Danebac, the boy who is uninterested in thinking more than he must, stands within the chronicle itself as a cautionary representative of an all too common response to the challenge of confronting and re-evaluating history.

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Bibliography

Manuscripts Aberystwyth National Library of Wales / Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru 5028C Peniarth 392D Brussels Bibliothèque Royale 10233–36 Cambridge Cambridge University Library Dd.10.32, Ee.1.20, Ii.6.8, Mm.1.33 Corpus Christi College 98, 133, 139 Jesus College Q.G.10 Trinity College R.7.14, R.5.32 Chatsworth Collection of the Duke of Devonshire Bolton Abbey Accounts Chicago University of Chicago 224 Dublin Trinity College 500, 501 Durham Durham Cathedral Library C.IV.27 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Library 181 261

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Bibliography Exeter Exeter Cathedral Library 3514 Glasgow University of Glasgow Gen 1671 Leeds University of Leeds Library Brotherton 29 Lincoln Lincoln Cathedral Library (housed at the University of Nottingham) 104 London British Library Additional 18462a, 18462b, 27342, 29503, 35092, 35113, 62451 Cotton Claudius D.II, Cleopatra D.III, Cleopatra D.VII, Domitian A.X, Julius A.I, Tiberius A.VI Egerton 650, 2885 Harley 200, 2253, 4690, 6199, 6359 Royal 19 C.IX, 20 A.II, 20 A.III, 20 A.XVIII, App. 85 College of Arms Arundel 30, 31, 58 L6 Corporation of London Record Office (housed at London Metropolitan Archives) Cust. 6 Inner Temple Library Petyt 511, vol. 19 Lambeth Palace 504 Lincoln’s Inn Hale 88 Westminster Abbey 25 Malmesbury Malmesbury Parish Church 2 New Haven Yale University Beinecke 86, 405, 593, 956

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Bibliography Oxford Bodleian Library Ashmole 1804 Bodley Rolls 2 Douce 120, 128 e Mus. 108 Laud misc. 637, 733 Lyell 17 Rawlinson B.414, C.292, C.666, D.329 Wood empt. 8 Corpus Christi College 78, 293 Magdalen College lat. 199 Oriel College 46 Paris Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal 3346 Bibliothèque Mazarine 1860 Bibliothèque nationale de France fonds français 12155, 12156, 14640 nouvelles acquisitions françaises 4267 Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève 935 San Marino Huntington Library EL 26.C.9 Huntington 136 St Petersburg National Library of Russia Fr. F. v. IV 8 Vienna Österreichische Nationalbibliothek 2534

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Bibliography Watson, A. G., The Library of Sir Simonds d’Ewes (London, 1966). Weber, M., The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. T. Parsons (New York, 1958). Wijsman, H. W., Luxury Bound: Illustrated Manuscript Production and Noble and Princely Book Ownership in the Burgundian Netherlands (1400–1550) (Turnhout, 2010). Wogan-Browne, J., et al., eds., Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England, c. 1100–c. 1500 (York, 2009). Wormald, F., ‘The Monastic Library’, in Wormald and Wright, eds., The English Library before 1700, pp. 15–31. Wormald, F., and C. E. Wright, eds., The English Library before 1700 (London, 1958). Wright, C. E., ‘The Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries and the Formation of the Cottonian Library’, in Wormald and Wright, eds., The English Library before 1700, pp. 176–212. Wulf, C. A. T., ‘Merlin’s Mother in the Chronicles’, in On Arthurian Women: Essays in Memory of Maureen Fries, ed. B. Wheeler and F. Tolhurst (Dallas, 2001), pp. 259–70. Zatta, J., ‘Translating the Historia: The Ideological Transformation of the Historia Regum Britannie in Twelfth-Century Vernacular Chronicles’, Arthuriana 8 (1998), 148–61.

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General Index

This index includes both named and unnamed persons. Persons with clear historical analogues are generally listed first under the modern English version of their name (generally as given in the third edition of the Handbook of British Chronology), followed by versions used in the works discussed. Persons without clear historical analogues are generally listed first under the version given in the English translation of the Oldest Version of the Anglo-Norman prose Brut, followed by versions used in the other works discussed. Cross-references to or from the modern English versions of these names are provided only when the English is not alphabetically close to the Anglo-Norman. Unnamed persons are listed by the primary person to whom they are related (e.g., ‘Buern Bocard, wife of’). Readers may need to browse for what they want. Kings whom the prose Brut chronicle represents simply as reigning in Britain or England are identified only as kings, in order to avoid imposing on them specificity of territory or ethnicity unwarranted by the text. From Alfred the Great on, kings of England are given the title of ‘King’ in their modern English identifications. Page numbers in bold type refer to illustrations and their captions. Abbreviations Used k. = king abp. = archbishop LV = Long Version of ANPB ANPB = Anglo-Norman prose Brut chronicle m. = mother b. = brother OV = Oldest Version of ANPB bp. = bishop q. = queen da. = daughter s. = son e. = earl SV = Short Version of ANPB emp. = emperor w. = wife f. = father h. = husband

A tous nobles qui aiment beaux faits et bonnes histoires 226–7, 228 Adhan (m. of Merlin) 86–7, 91, 243, 257 adventure 94–5, 108–12 Aelfthryth see Estrild Aelred of Rievaulx 68 n.37 Aeneas, Eneas (Trojan) 6, 25, 33, 34, 35, 36–40, 42–3, 45, 47, 170, 193, 227 Aeneid see Virgil Aethelberht, Athelbert, Adelbert (Aethelberht I, k. of Kent) 70–1, 219 n.27 Aethelred, Eldred (King Aethelred the Unready) 80, 82, 83 Alamichel, M.-F. 34 nn.44–5, 46 Alban, St 70, 86 n.43

Albine (founder of Albion) 8–9, 126, 173, 244 n.53 in illustrations 212–13, 216, 217, 218–19 Latin version of story of 161 n.103, 166 see also prologues under Anglo-Norman prose Brut chronicle, Long Version of ANPB, Short Version of ANPB Aldred (abp. of York) 122 Alexander (bp. of Lincoln) 231 Alfred, Alured (b. of King Edward the Confessor) 61–2, 63–4, 121 Alfred, Alured (King Alfred the Great) 61, 63, 124, 186 n.17, 200–1 allegory 231, 233, 237, 240–1, 244–5, 252, 258 Alliterative Morte Arthure 55, 95

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General Index alumpner (verb) 154 n.74 Anglo-Norman dialect orthography of xv scholarly disregard for 3, 12, 17, 169 Anglo-Norman Dictionary 154 n.74 Anglo-Norman literature, audience and patronage of 12–13, 80, 169 Anglo-Norman prose Brut chronicle (ANPB) and medieval popular culture 18 Arthur in see Arthur as element of basic vernacular library 12–13, 173–5 as source for Continental works 8 n.20, 13 n.38 as source for insular genealogical rolls 170, 228 audience of 11–15, 35, 91, 111–12, 151–4, 174, 180, 192, 203, 210, 226 contextualization of 13–5, 47, 101–7 continuations of 7 n.20, 24, 93 n.4, 163, 166–7, 177, 239, 240 n.32, 250, 258 see also under Long Version of ANPB, Short Version of ANPB dissociated from romance 94, 108–12 editions of xv n.2, 4, 7 nn.19–20, 8 n.22 evidentiary value of 15, 17–18 manuscripts of see Index of Manuscripts Cited and manuscripts of ANPB Merlin in see Merlin misidentification of 3, 4–5, 165 n.10, 210 n.11, 211 n.12, 227 n.53 prologues to 7 n.20, 8–9, 126, 163, 166, 240 n.32 see also under Long Version of ANPB, Short Version of ANPB reign as organizing principle of 21, 177, 206, 250 relationship of versions of 8–9, 188 supplementability of 163–4, 239–40 version to 1307 of, hypothesized 9, 160 n.94, 172 n.40 versions of, unusual or hybrid 9, 161, 166–7, 168–9 see also Brut tradition, Long Version of ANPB, Oldest Version of ANPB, Short Version of ANPB Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 63, 124–5, 200–1 animals 21–2, 23–4, 48, 58–9, 65, 102, 149, 206 see also allegory Anjou 100

Anna (sister of Arthur) 103 n.40 Annales Londonienses (attributed to Andrew Horn) 152 annotation see under manuscripts of ANPB, Middle English prose Brut chronicle Anonimalle chronicle 9 n.23, 12 n.34, 161 n.104, 166 n.14, 170 n.29, 171, 245 apparatus see under manuscripts of ANPB appeal (in law) 61–3 Argentille (w. of Havelok) 170 n.28 Armorica 45 n.84, 50, 53 Arthur, Artur, Arthure, Arthus, Arturus (k.) and prophecy 240–1, 252–6 and Rome 44–5 and Scotland 102–3 as central character in OV 93 as crusader 105–6 as defender of poor and weak in OV 98, 102–3, 109 as exemplar 94, 103–7, 111–12 chronicle and romance traditions of 94–7, 110–12 combat of with giant of Mont-SaintMichel 108–10 compared to Brut in OV 93, 97 compared to Edward I in OV 107 conception of 235–6 death of 253–6 military campaigns of 51–3, 98, 102–3, 105–7 Pentecost feast of 52, 99–100 presence of in late-medieval texts 93 prose Brut as most widespread representation of 2, 112 single combat of 52, 108 social emphasis of in OV 94, 97–100 treatment of baronage by in OV 98–100 vernacular appeal of 111–12 Arthur (Middle English poem) 11 n.29 Arthur (s. of Geoffrey, duke of Brittany) 138 Artogalle (k.) 58 Artour and Merlin 94 n.6 Arvirager, Aruirager (k.) 67, 114, 200 Ascanius, Asqanius (s. of Aeneas/Eneas) 33, 36, 37, 38, 39 n.61, 40 n.64 Assaracus (patron of Brutus) 26 assassination 9, 65, 77–9, 82–3, 200, 219, 238–9

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General Index Augustine, Austin (St Augustine of Canterbury) 42, 70–1, 199, 219 n.27 Aurilambros (k.) 79, 80, 221, 237–9, 242, 244, 247 Austin see Augustine Avalon, Aualoun, Auallon 253–6 Barlings, chronicle of 7, 16, 72 n.50, 91, 122 Barons’ War 14, 104–5 Baswell, C. 15 n.44, 34 n.42, 35 n.50, 96 n.16, 152 n.66, 168 n.23, 188 n.24, 192 n.37 Bath 99, 200 Battle Abbey 12 Baumgartner, E. 115 n.8 Beaune, C. 31 n.34, 34 n.44, 46 n.90 Becket, Thomas (abp. of Canterbury) 140 Bede 6, 12 n.37, 25, 67 Bedewer (count of Normandy) 108 Belin, Belyn, Belinus (k.) 40, 43, 44, 49, 60 n.12, 76–7, 139, 219, 220 Bell, H. E. 155 n.75 Bennett, M. 133 n.8 Benoît de Sainte-Maure 35, 39 Beowulf 99 Beryn scribe 136, 151 binding 11, 131 n.3, 133, 135, 155, 156 n.77, 159 n.91, 161, 163, 165, 172, 211 Blacker, J. 232 n.5, 233 n.7 Boffey, J. 5 n.12 Bolton, Thomas 201 Bolton Abbey 11–12 booklets 135, 137, 147, 156–60, 161, 169, 172, 173 booklists see inventories books of hours 131 n.2 Borland, C. R. 134 n.15, 135 nn.16 & 22 Bracton, On the Laws and Customs of England 64 Brenne, Brennius (b. of Belin) 40, 43, 44, 49, 60 n.12, 76–7, 139, 219, 220 Brereton, G. E. 150, 160 n.99, 167 n.17, 180 n.10 Bretaine, Bretaine la Grande, Bretaigne, Bretayne see Britain Bretons 33 Bridlington, John of see John of Bridlington Brie, F.W.D. 3, 4, 10 n.26, 37, 40, 160 n.94, 241, 247 n.65

Briens, Brianus (Briton) 116, 119 Britain, Bretaine, Bretaine la Grande, Bretaigne, Bretayne naming of 31–2, 180, 181, 188 natural territory of 48 see also Brut, Rome Britons, Brutons, Brutouns, Bretun (Britons), naming of 27, 31 Britons, ruin of in manuscript apparatus 180 in Wace and Geoffrey of Monmouth 115–16, 119 suppressed in OV 116–21, 180 Brittany 52, 164, 228 Brooke, C. 33 n.40 Bruce, Robert see Robert Bruce Brudenell, Edmund 197, 198 Brudenell, Thomas 198 n.49 Bruges 216 Brut see Anglo-Norman prose Brut chronicle, Brut tradition, Latin prose Brut chronicles, Long Version of ANPB, manuscripts of ANPB, Middle English prose Brut chronicle, Oldest Version of ANPB, Short Version of ANPB and see also under Laȝamon, Wace Brut, Bruyt, Brutus (founder of Britain) as exemplar 45–6, 57 as Roman 34 characterization of in OV compared to sources 25–32, 47 compared to Aeneas 33 compared to Arthur 93, 97 illustrations of 206–7, 209, 210 Brut, mother of 25, 207, 209, 210 Brut tradition development of 6–11 lack of fixed titles in 3, 11 longevity of 2, 14, 125–6 multilingualism of 3 popularity of 2, 5, 14–15, 78, 125 prose as medium for 3 scholarly neglect of 3–5, 15, 37, 54–55, 131 see also Anglo-Norman prose Brut chronicle, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Latin prose Brut chronicles, Long Version of ANPB, manuscripts of ANPB, Middle English prose Brut chronicle, Oldest Version of

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General Index ANPB, Short Version of ANPB see also under Laȝamon, Wace Brut y Brenhinedd 193 Bryan, E. J. 15 n.44, 86 n.42, 126, 196 n.47, 205 n.1, 213 n.19 Buern Bocard (baron) 88–90, 201 Buern Bocard, wife of 87–90, 91, 201 Burgundians, Burgonnins 51–2 Burgundy, ducal library of 12–13, 210 n.11, 226 nn.48 & 50 burial, places of 9, 30, 53, 59, 86, 148, 149 n.55, 199, 225, 256 Busby, K. 12 n.35 Cador (e. of Cornwall) 99, 222, 253 Caduallo (k.) 116, 120 see also Cadwalein Cadwalein, Cadwaleyn (k) 48, 119–20, 121 see also Caduallo Cadwallader, Cadualadrus (k.) 103 n.40, 116–17, 121, 124, 125, 126, 167–8, 203, 238, 240 Cadwan, Caduanus (k.) 116, 118, 126 Caernarfon 139 Caesar, Cesar see Claudius Caesar, Julius Caesar Caldwell, R. A. 16 n.46 Caliburn 111 n.61 Cambridge History of the Book 4–5 Canterbury 99, 200 Carley, J. P. 161 n.103, 166 n.14, 167 n.16 cascades 158, 160, 187 Cassibelaun, Cassibelan, Cassibellane (k.) 43–4, 114 ‘Castleford’s Chronicle’ 16 catchwords 135, 151 n.91, 166, 192 n.35 Catherine, Seint Katerine (St Catherine of Alexandria) 41–2 Catto, J. 152 n.67 Cavanaugh, S. H. 11 n.31 Caxton, William 2, 96, 173 Certik (k.) 117 Châlus 54 Chatelain, E. 202 Chaucer, Geoffrey 3, 14, 35, 78, 85, 91, 95, 168 n.20 Chester 99 Chesterton, G. K. 4 Chichester 99 childbirth 25, 207, 209 chivalry 52, 93 Chrétien de Troyes 94, 99 Christ, birth of 67, 193, 201, 247 n.70, 250

Christianity 41–2, 66, 67–8, 70–1, 117, 119, 193, 237, 250 see also Church, Holy Christianson, P. 133 n.9, 152 n.65 Chronicon Buriensis 147 n.44 Chronique Anonyme Universelle 226 n.48, 227–8 Church, Holy, Seinte Eglise 42, 59, 65, 90 Claudius Caesar, Claudius Cesar (Roman emp.) 114–15 Clerkenwell 201 Clifford, Roger 104 Cnut (King Cnut) 186 coats of arms 212 n.18, 218 n.22 Coel (k.) 49–50 Coïl see Koil Coillus see Koil Collège de Navarre 202 Cologne, Coloine 86 colophons 155 n.75, 168, 246 n.63 Conewenne (m. of Belin and Brenne) 76–8, 219, 220 Connolly, M. 12 n.37, 151 n.63, 163 Constance (patron of Gaimar) 12 Constans, Constainz Constant (k., f. of Emperor Constantine) 49–50 Constans (k., b. of Uter and Aurilambros) 79 Constantin (k., f. of Constans, Uter, and Aurilambros) 49, 50, 67–8 Constantin, Constantyn, Constantinus, Constance (k., successor to Arthur) 100, 253, 254–5, 256 Constantine, Constantin (k., Roman emp.) 41–2, 45, 50, 73 continuations see under Anglo-Norman prose Brut chronicle, Long Version of ANPB, Middle English prose Brut chronicle, Short Version of ANPB contrariety 59–60, 65, 100 Coote, L. A. 240 n.33, 241 n.39, 245 n.54 Cordeille (q., da. of Leir) 76 nn. 10 &12, 84 Corin (founder of Cornwall) 29, 32, 74–5, 82 Cormier, R. J. 35 n.48 Cornwall, Cornewaille, Cornuaille 51–2, 75–6, 116, 237 Cornwall, e. of (h. of Igern) 235 costume 99, 206, 207, 211–13 Cotton, Robert 152 n.68, 161 nn.101–2, 165–6, 244 n.53

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General Index counsel 14, 27–30, 52, 60, 62–3, 69–70, 99–100, 104, 114, 239, 247, 251, 252 courtesy 51, 57–8, 59, 88, 98, 222 Coxe, H. 152 n.69 Crane, S. 95 n.10, 98 n.22, 174 n.51 Crick, J. 6 n.16, 161 n.103, 167 n.16, 170–1, 231 Croenen, G. 164 Croniques d’Engleterre Abrégiées 226, 228 crusade 41, 54, 71 103–4, 105–7 custumals 150 n.58, 152–3 Damasius, Latin work on contempt of the world 135 Danebac (British youth) 256–9 see also Dinabuz Davies, J. C. 154 n.74, 180 n.10 Davis, L. F. 8 n.20, 226, 227, 228 ‘De arte phisionomandi’ 172 n.42 de la Mare, A. 171 n.34 de Lacy family 12 n.36 De Origine Gigantum 161 n.103 Dean, C. 93 Dean, R. 2 n.4, 7 n.20, 8 nn.21–2, 35 n.48, 136 n.26, 160–1, 165 n.10, 166 n.15, 167 nn.16–17, 169 n.28, 170 nn.28 & 32, 172 nn.39–40, 180 n.8, 210 n.11, 246 n.64 Deane see Diane Dee, John 165 n.11 Denmark, Denemarz 68–9 Des Grantz Geanz 8, 126, 150, 156 n.76, 160 n.99, 167 n.17, 180 n.10 see also Albine, prologue under Short Version of ANPB Destruction of Troy 35, 55 d’Ewes, Simonds 165–6, 173, 192 n.35, 246 n.63 Diane, Deane (goddess) 28, 67, 116, 225, 251 Dinabus, Dinabuc, Dinabius (giant of Mont-Saint-Michel) 108–10, 258 n.105 Dinabuz, Dinabus (British youth) 256–7, 258 n.105 see also Danebac Distichs of Cato 135 Domesday survey 122 Donebaud (k.) 67, 201 Dorigen (character in Chaucer) 91 Doyle, A. I. 137 n.27, 155 n.74, 158 n.85 Driver, M. 205 Drukker, T. 196

Duffy, E. 131 n.2 Dunstan, St 82, 83 ‘Dux Normannorum Willelmus’ see Latin hexameter verses with genealogy of kings of England after the Conquest Eadred, Eddred (King Eadred) 59 Ebrauc, Ebranc (k.) 48, 60 n.12, 227 Echard, S. 33 n.40, 115 n.8 Eckhardt, C. D. 4, 34 n.42, 42 n.72, 46 n.85, 53 n.119, 54, 55, 115 n.6, 232 n.3 Edelfridus, Elfrid (k. of Northumberland) 70, 116, 118 Edelwold (h. of Estrild) 81–2 Edgar (King Edgar I, h. of Estrild) 60, 78 n.20, 80–2, 83–4, 88 n.48 Edgar Aetheling, Edgar Hethelyng (s. of Edward the Exile) 122–3 Edmund (King Edmund the Martyr) 86 n.43 Edmund Ironside, Edmund Ireneside (King Edmund II Ironside) 122–3, 186 Edward (King Edward the Martyr) 80, 82–3, 219 Edward, Seint Edward, Seint Edward le Confessour (King Edward the Confessor) 7, 93, 121, 122–3, 177 and Godwine 61–3 and miracles 68–70 as lawgiver 64, 200 Edward (King Edward I) 1, 11, 14, 47, 126, 127, 227, 245 and Scottish succession crisis 1, 47, 137 n.26 compared to Arthur 101–7 in genealogies 138–9, 142, 143, 144, 147, 148, 149 in prophecies 247, 250 in prose Brut continuations 132 n.5, 158, 159, 170, 201 Edward, Edward of Caernarfon (King Edward II) 14, 246 n.61 and “Lament of Edward II” 148 in genealogies 139, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149–50 in prophecies 247, 250 in prose Brut continuations 9, 55 n.129, 126, 151 n.62, 159, 164, 166–7, 171 Edward (King Edward III) 11 n.31, 93, 126, 133 n.8, 201

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General Index in genealogies 139 in prophecies 241, 244 in prose Brut continuations 55 n.129, 164, 170, 181, 201, 225 Edward (King Edward IV) 218 Edwards, A.S.G. 5 n.12 Edwin, Edwyn, Edwinus (Edwin, k., s. of Elfrid) 116, 119 Edwin, Edwyn (analogous to King Eadwig the All-Fair ) 59, 82 n.35 Edwin (e. of Mercia) 122 Eldred see Aethelred Eleanor (da. of King Henry II) 138 Eleanor (two da. of Edward I) 148 Eleanor of Aquitaine (w. of King Henry II) 7, 202 Eleanor of Castile (first w. of King Edward I) 138, 148 Eleanor of Woodstock (da. of King Edward II) 139 n. 39 Eleine (Helen of Troy) 37, 38 Eleine, Eleyne (Saint Helen, finder of the True Cross) 45, 49–50, 73 Eleine, Eleyne, Helena (niece of Hoel) 108–9 Eleine, nurse of 108–9 Eleine’s Tomb, Toumbe Eleyne 108 Elencherie (pope, analogous to Eleutherius) 67 Elfrid, Edelfridus (k. of Northumberland) 70, 116, 118 Elizabeth (Queen Elizabeth I) 210 Elizabeth of Holland (da. of King Edward I) 138 n.34, 149 n.56 Emma, Emme (Emma, w. of King Aethelred the Unready and King Cnut) 121 Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle 11 n.4, 34 n.44 Eneas see Aeneas Engist, Hengist (Saxon) 70, 78–80, 118, 119, 180, 188, 200, 228, 238, 243 Engistlonde, Engistlond, Englond (England) see England England, Engistlonde, Engistlond, Englond naming of 31–2, 80, 117–18, 180, 181, 188 sovereignty of 1, 46, 47–8, 51, 102–3, 136, 200 England, royal library of 147 n.44, 166, 212

‘Epistola Aristotelis’ (to Alexander the Great) 172 n.42 Escoce see Scotland Esidur (k.) 58, 227 Esteuen see Stephen Estrild (da. of Humbar) 74–6, 78, 79, 101, 236, 252 n.84 Estrild, Alftrued, Estrueth, Estruet (q., analogous to Aelfthryth, w. of King Edgar I) 80–4, 88 n.48, 101, 236 Estrild, sons of 81, 82–3 Euerwyk see York ‘Evangile de Nichodemus’ 172–3, 174 Excalibur, Caliburn 111 n.61 exemplars evidence for use of 134, 135, 147–51, 153 provision of 136, 151, 168 exile 8, 25–6, 27–8, 33, 46, 66, 103, 116, 167, 207, 217, 218, 251 fable (fabula) 10–11, 96, 110–11, 173–4 Fabyan, Robert 5 n.12, 152 n.66 fealty see homage and fealty feasts 31, 52, 82 n.33, 99–100, 102 n.36, 107 n.52, 251 Federico, S. 34 n.43 Ferrez (k.) 77 Fisher, M. 17 n.48, 137 n.26, 147 n.45, 150 n.58 Fishmongers’ Guild 152 n.66 Fitzpatrick, Ela 91 Flanders 100 Flemings, Flemyngs 51–2 Flint, V. I. J. 33 n.40 folium (ink) 137 n.27 Forest, New (Noue Foreste) 65 foundation stories see Albine, Brut, Troy, matter of France 32, 45, 48, 52–4, 202, 219, 225–8, 238 France, royal library of 210 n.11, 211 n.12 Frappier, J. 172 n.41 Friedman, J. B. 137 n.27, 246 n.63 Froissart, Jean, chronicles of 164–5, 169, 211 Frolle (governor of Paris) 52–3, 225 Fulton, H. 33 n.40, 241 n.40 Gaimar, Geffrei as source for OV see use of Gaimar under Oldest Version of ANPB

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General Index Estoire des Engleis 7, 12, 16, 61, 63 n.22, 64 n.26, 80–4, 87, 89, 121, 124, 125, 170, 233 lost Galfridian history 7 Galahad 94 Galbraith, V. H. 167 n.16 Gales see Wales Gawain-poet 99 Genewenne, Ienewenne (da. of Claudius Caesar) 114–15 Geoffrey, duke of Brittany (s. of King Henry II) 138 Geoffrey of Monmouth as source for OV see use of Geoffrey of Monmouth under Oldest Version of ANPB contemporary response to works of 6–7, 95 n.12 critical tradition on 33–4 Historia Regum Britanniae 6, 87 n.47, 94, 115–16, 119, 231 Historia Regum Britanniae, First Variant Version 16, 37 n.54, 38 n.55, 39 n.57, 43 n.74, 87 n.47, 231 n.1, 234 n.15, 235 n.17, 236 n.20, 253 n.90, 257 n.102, 258 n.105 Historia Regum Britanniae, Vulgate Version 16, 37 see also use of Geoffrey of Monmouth under Oldest Version of ANPB manuscripts of 170 Prophetia Merlini 231–2 use of by Wace 16 n.46, 37 n.54, 232–3, 253 Gerald of Wales 6 ‘Germanie’ (homeland of Saxons) 79, 180 Geste des Loherains 174 n.48 giants 8, 25, 28, 31, 37, 74, 108–10, 126, 159, 180, 212–13, 216, 218, 251, 258 n.105 Giffin, M. E. 103 n.40 Gillingham, J. 31 n.34, 33 n.40 Glastonbury 255 n.97 God and law 63–6, 82 favor of 68–70, 120–1 grace of 26, 70, 86 invocation of 85, 102, 105–6 will of 21–2, 36, 45, 71, 254 wrath of 21–2, 23, 24, 58–60, 115, 116 Godwine, Godwyn (e. of Wessex) 61–3, 69, 123

Goffar (k. of France) 29–31, 227 Gogmagog (giant) 74 Goldeburgh (w. of Havelok) 170 n.28 Golden Fleece, Order of the 211, 212, 214 Goldstein, R. J. 1 n.1, 47 n.91 Gorgonian (k.) 23 Gorin Batruz, Goryn Batruz (k.) 21–2, 48 Gorlois (e. of Cornwall) 235–6 Gormundus see Gurmund Goscelin, Goscelyn, Goscelin (bp. of London) 67 Gossuin of Metz, Image du monde 166 n.14, 172–3, 174, 179 Gotland, Gutland 51 Gowan (k. of the Huns) 50, 66, 67, 86 Gower, John 35 Gracian (k.) 59 Grafton, Richard 5 n.12 Grandobodian (k.) 67 Gransden, A. 4 Gray, Thomas, Scalacronica 16, 40 n.64, 51 n.108, 165 n.10 Great Britain, Bretaine la Grande see Britain Gregory (St Gregory the Great) 70 Guentholen, Guentholon, Guincelin (k.) 21–2 Guentholen (q., w. of Corin) 74–6, 78, 84 Guido delle Colonne, Historia Destructione Troiae 34–5, 95 n.12, 173 Guildhall 151–4 Guillaume see William Guillomer (k. of Ireland) 222 n.37 Guinevere see Gunnore Gunnore (q., w. of Arthur) 94, 100–1, 221–2, 225, 239 Gurmund, Gurmunt, Gormundus (k. of Africa) 66, 116, 117–18, 181, 234 n.12 Guyon de Sardière 179 Habran (da. of Locrin and Estrild) 75 hagiography 7, 68 n.37, 84, 85 Hagneby, chronicle of 7 n.19 Halbartun, Dorothe 198 n.50 Halidon Hill, battle of 9, 156, 158, 180, 225 Hanna, R. 12 n.37, 60, 132 n.7, 135 n.17, 137 n.26, 151, 153 n.71, 155 n.75, 157 n.82, 158 n.87, 160 n.97

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General Index Hanning, R. W. 24 n.10, 25, 33, 58 n.2, 78 n.18, 115 n.8 Harold, Harald (King Harold II Godwinesson) 49, 121–3 Hastings, battle of 122 Havelok (k. in Britain and Denmark) 7 headings and chapter numbers see under manuscripts of ANPB, Middle English prose Brut chronicle Hearne, Thomas 7 n.19 Hecuba (Trojan) 225 Helen, Eleine (Helen of Troy) 37, 38 Helen, St 45, 49–50, 73 Helena see Eleine Hengist see Engist Henley, G. 193 n.44 Henry, Henri (King Henry I) 126–7, 152 n.69, 228 n.59 Henry, Henri, Henri Fiz Lemperice (King Henry II Fitzempress) 7, 60 n.10, 122, 123, 126, 138, 140–1, 149, 152 n.69, 222, 223, 224 Henry, Henri (King Henry III) 2, 14, 60 n.9, 103–4, 107, 127, 158–9, 240–1, 247, 250 Henry (King Henry IV) 95, 228 Henry (King Henry VIII) 244 n.53 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum 170 Heptarchy 66 n.31, 117, 121, 202 Herbert, Thomas 206 n.7, 208 Higden, Ranulph, Polychronicon 35–6 n.50, 96–7, 150 n.58, 156, 189 Hohan (k.) 21–2 homage and fealty 26, 27, 48, 51, 62, 65, 75, 82, 88, 100, 102–3, 114–15 Horn, Andrew 152, 153 n.71 Humbar (k. of the Huns) 47, 74, 252 n.84 Humber (river) 71, 116 Hundred Years’ War 53, 227 Hunter, J. 172 n.42 Hyrelgas (warrior) 106 Iceland, Islaunde 51 Idon (m. of Ferrez and Porrez) 77–8 Ienewenne see Genewenne Igern, Igerne, Igerna, Ygerne (m. of Arthur) 78 n.20, 82 n.33, 235–6, 243 illustration see under manuscripts of ANPB Imiogen (w. of Brut) 27–8

imperialism 16, 33–4, 46 n.87, 47, 53, 55, 241 incubus 86–7, 213 Ingledew, F. 33 n.40, 34 nn. 43–4, 46 n.87, 55 nn.127 & 129 initials see under manuscripts of ANPB intention 18, 25 n.12, 129, 179, 186 intercession see mediation intertextuality 40, 45–6 inventories 11–13, 147 n.44, 174 n.50, 226 n.50 Ireland, Irlaunde 48, 51–2, 119, 200, 201, 222, 234, 238, 244, 250 Irlamal (settler of Ireland) 48, 250 Isabelle (q. of King Edward II) 11 n.31, 139 n.39 Italy 25, 37, 38–9, 40, 225 Iulius Cesar see Julius Caesar Ivy, G. S. 158 n.87 James, M. R. 165 n.10 J-borders see cascades Jenyns or Jennings, William (Lancaster Herald) 184, 244 Joan (da. of King Henry II) 138 John (King John) 48, 49, 54, 60 n.9, 64, 71 n.46, 72, 90–1, 93 n.4, 103, 127, 152 n.69, 193, 200, 201, 227, 239–40, 246 n.61, 252 John de Verdun, Iohan de Verdoun 104 John de Vescy, Iohan de Vescy 104 John of Balliol 149 n.53 John of Bridlington, prophecies attributed to 135, 171, 245 John of Brittany, Iohan de Bretaine 104 John, St (the Evangelist) 68 Johnson, L. 8–9 n.23, 126 n.43, 160 n.99 Joscelyn, John 203 n.70 Julius Caesar, Iulius Cesar (Roman emp.) 10, 42–4, 114 Kennedy, E. 93 n.3, 95 n.10, 99 n.22 Kennedy, E. D. 2 n.4 Kent 70, 124 Ker, N. R. 152, 171, 173 Kimbelin (k.) 41, 67 King, A. 3 n.6, 165 n.10 Kingsford, C. L. 2 n.4, 11 Knights Hospitallers of Clerkenwell 201 Koil, Coillus, Coïl (k.) 40–1 Kooper, E. 2 n.4, 11 n.29 Kren, T. 218 n.23

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General Index Kwakkel, E. 131 n.3, 133 n.9, 157 n.81 Kymor (k.) 21–2 Labory, Gillette 166 n.15 Lacy see De Lacy Laȝamon, Brut 3 n.6, 5, 7 n.17, 35, 39, 44, 55, 86 Laloyau, Jehan 202, 245 ‘Lament of Edward II’ 148–9 ‘Lamentation of Our Lady’ 167 n.20 Lamonie, Lymonie, Lymoigne (lake in Scotland, Loch Lomond?) 240 n.34 Lamont, M. 14 n.43, 46 n.89, 78 n.21, 80 n.25, 91 n.57, 116 n.10, 125 n.41, 186 n.17 Lancelot 94, 95 Langtoft, Peter, chronicle of 9 n.23, 16, 35, 147, 150 n.58, 156, 166 Langton, Stephen (abp. of Canterbury 71 n.46 Latin hexameter verses with genealogy of kings of England after the Conquest 136–9, 140–6, 147–50, 152–3, 156–8, 160, 174, 180, 206 relationship of manuscripts containing 137–8, 147–50, 152 Latin prose Brut chronicles 2, 11, 161 n.103 Latinie, Latin (k. of Lombardy) 36–7 Latinus (k. in Italy) 37 Laud Troy Book 35, 55 Laviane, Lauiane, Lavinia (w. of Brut) 36–7, 39 Le Saux, F. H. M. 16 n.46, 35 n.48, 94 n.7, 115 n.9, 177 n.2 Lear see Leir Legaré, A.-M. 210 n.11, 211 n.12 Legge, M. D. 139 n.41, 147 n.42, 150 n.58 Legh, John, of Stockwell 172, 197, 198 Leicester 99, 200 Leir (k.) 49, 76 n.10, 201–2 Leofric see Leverich Leverich, Leuerich (analogous to Leofric, e. of Mercia and lord of Coventry) 62, 69–70 Liber custumarum 152 Liber legum antiquorum regum 152 Little Britain 49, 50, 67, 85, 116 Livere de Reis de Engleterre 9 n.25 Loch Lomond see Lamonie Locrin, Locrinus (k., s. of Brut) 47, 74–6, 78, 79, 252 Loire 29

Lombardy, Lumbardie 36, 40, 45, 48, 225 London, Londres, Loundres 60, 67, 90, 122, 152, 154, 211 see also New Troy London, e. of (Briton) 114 Long Version of ANPB (LV) Arthur in see under Arthur as basis for Middle English translation 10 as revision of SV 9 Cadwallader named in 126 characterized 9 continuations of 9, 55, 126, 166 n.14, 171, 202, 245 differences from OV or SV 85 n.39, 111, 126, 240, 255–6 Merlin in see under Merlin prologues to 218, 219 content of 9, 126 treatment of in manuscripts 184–5, 187–8, 206, 213, 216, 217, 218, 219 prophecies in see under prophecy puzzle in manuscripts of 246–7 see also Anglo-Norman prose Brut chronicle, Brut tradition, manuscripts of ANPB Longespée family 12 n.36, 91 Lords Appellant 14 Lorrainers, Loherins 52, 173 Louis (King Louis VI of France) 222, 223, 224, 228 n.59 Louis (King Louis VII of France) 202 Louis (King Louis VIII of France) 49 Lucius (k.) see Lucy Lucius (Roman emp.) 44–5, 51–2, 53, 95, 99, 100, 105, 120, 212, 238 n.27 Lucy, Lucius (k.) 67, 70, 124 n.39, 199 Lucretia 85, 89 Lud (k.) 46 n.86 Lydgate, John 12 n.37, 35, 55 Lynch, A. 33, 55 n.126 MacColl, A. 15 n.44, 49 n.100, 57 n.1, 88 n.48, 121 n.24, 124 n.39, 125 n.42, 127 n.52 Madhan (k.) 76 magic 87, 95 n.10, 111, 234–6, 238 Magna Carta 64, 72 n.50, 90 Maine, men of, Manseis 51–2 Maitland, F. W. xv Malcolm (King Malcolm III of Scotland) 122

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General Index Malgo (k.) 117 Malory, Thomas 55, 94, 96, 111 Mandeville, John, Travels 171–2, 173, 245 Mandeville, John, 1435 Middle English translation of LV by 10, 40 n.63 manicules 181, 183, 193, 202, 250 n.75 Mannyng, Robert, chronicle of 16, 35, 39, 44, 55 n.126, 163 Mantes, Mans 54, 219, 220 Manuel des Pechiez 172, 173, 174, 193 manuscripts particularity of 15–18, 129, 177 survival of 129, 203, 210 see also Index of Manuscripts Cited, manuscripts of ANPB manuscripts cited see Index of Manuscripts Cited manuscripts of ANPB annotation in 177, 181, 195–203, 249, 250 compared to scribal sidenotes 195–6 contingency of 195–6, 197, 198, 200–1 reading, habits of suggested by 181, 182, 183, 198–203, 246 n.63 antiquarian use of 198, 199, 203, 250 see also Cotton, Robert, d’Ewes, Simonds, Joscelyn, John apparatus in 177, 179–95 characterization of works by 179–81, 182, 186 development of over time 179, 195, 250 guidance provided by 186–90, 191, 194, 195, 242–50, 255–6 see also annotation in, illustrations, ordinatio under manuscripts of ANPB as single-work codex 163–4, 210–11 bindings of see bindings booklets in see booklets borders (decorative) in 184–5, 187, 206, 208 see also cascades Cadwallader episode added to 167–8 chapter numbers in see headings and chapter numbers in under manuscripts of ANPB classification of 7–9, 10 n.26, 17, 160–2, 225 composite texts in 161 n.104, 167–9, 199 Continental illustrations in 205, 210–13, 214–17, 218–19, 220–1, 222, 223–4

incorporation of Brut material in genealogical rolls 226–8 of SV 173–4, 192, 210 n.11 ownership of 174, 202, 210 n.11, 211, 226 n.50, 245 textual details of 211, 213, 219–21, 222–4, 225–6 documentary scribes, role of in production of 132, 152–4 economizing measures taken in 131, 134, 135, 189 English language, presence of in 200, 202, 203, 250 exemplars for see exemplars excisions from 196, 206 flourishing in 134–5, 137, 200–1 foliation, contemporary in 161 n.104, 169, 172, 199 Guildhall as possible production locus of 152–4 headings and chapter numbers in and illustrations 184, 187–8, 206–7, 213, 219–20, 221 functions of 158, 177–9, 179–81, 186, 187–8, 211, 242–4, 256 standardization of in LV 188 illustrations and apparatus 184, 187–8, 206–7, 213, 219–20, 221 functions of 187–8, 205, 212–24 in Continental manuscripts 205, 210–13, 214–17, 218–19, 220–1, 222, 223–4 in insular manuscripts 137–9, 140, 143, 145, 184, 187–8, 205–7, 208–9, 210 lack of standardization of 205 of Albine and her sisters 212–13, 216–17, 218–19 of armed men 208, 219, 220, 221, 223–4 of Arthur 211–12, 215, 221–2 of battle 221, 224 of Brut 206–7, 209, 210, 213 of giants 212–13, 216 of Gunnore (Guinevere) 221–2 of kings 137–9, 140, 143, 145, 184, 187–8, 206, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224 of Philip the Good 211–12, 214 of women 207, 209, 210, 212–13, 216–17, 218–19, 220, 221–2

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General Index in composite codices 164–9 indices in 169 n.25, 199 initials as evidence of production practice 134, 137–8, 168, 173 n.43, 189 guidance provided by 150 n.61, 158–60, 177, 184–5, 186–8, 200, 206, 208, 244 missing 133, 155 n.75, 177, 189, 191, 192, 195 relative size of 158, 160, 184–5, 186–8 style of 134, 137, 159, 168, 173 n.43, 181 n.13, 189–90, 200–1 Latin, presence of in 161, 169, 179–81, 182, 186, 187, 190, 191, 192–3, 194, 195, 198, 201, 203, 243, 250 n.73 see also with works in Latin under manuscripts of ANPB LV 8 n.22, 9, 10, 13 n.38, 15, 131, 132 n.5, 133, 161 n.104, 167–8, 170 n.28, 171–3, 179, 184–5, 187–90, 193, 199–200, 202, 206, 210–13, 214–17, 218–26, 227 n.53, 243–7, 248–9, 250 market for 132–3, 135–6, 153–4, 160–1, 163 number of 7 ordinatio 177, 179–81, 186 typical of LV 9, 179, 248–9, 188–90 typical of OV 177, 178, 179 typical of SV 134, 179, 183, 190 OV 14, 22 n.2, 91 n.55, 122 n.30, 131, 132, 161 n.101, 163 n.4, 166, 168, 177, 178, 179, 186 n.16, 190, 195, 242–3, 245, 250 ownership of 11–13, 152 n.68, 161 nn.101–2, 164 n.5, 165–6, 171, 172–4, 184, 192–3, 196, 197, 198, 201, 202, 206 n.7, 208, 210, 211, 212, 226 nn.48 & 50, 244, 245, 246 n.63 ownership, inscriptions of 131, 157 n.83, 172–3, 174, 184, 196, 197, 198, 208, 244 price of 154–7 production of 131–6, 137, 150–62, 169 provenance of 11 quiring of, evidence provided by 134, 135, 139, 156–60, 168–9, 171 n.38 relation among manuscripts of LV 171 n.36, 172 n.40, 225, 245–6 OV 132

SV 137–47, 150–1, 159, 167 n.17, 170 n.28, 186, 192 see also Robert of Avesbury group under Short Version of ANPB rubrics in see headings and chapter numbers in running heads in 177, 190, 199–200, 243–5, 247, 248–9, 250 scribal practice in 133–5, 139, 156–60, 242–3 scribal sidenotes in 190, 191, 192–3, 195–6, 246 supplementation of 164–5, 166–9 SV 8 n.22, 9 n.25, 13 n.38, 15, 134–5, 136–9, 140–6, 147–62, 163–71, 173–4, 179–81, 182–3, 186–7, 190, 191, 192–3, 199–202, 206, 208–9, 210, 245, 255 n.97 tables of capitula in 166 n.14, 179, 187 n.20, 189–90, 211, 245–6 titles in see headings and chapter numbers in transitions between components of 179–81, 182, 185, 186–8 variety of, physical 131, 132, 203 vernacular manuscript production, role in growth of 153–4, 229 with devotional or philosophical works 135, 167 n.20, 172–3 with fable or vernacular verse narrative 173–4 with Mandeville’s Travels 171–2, 173 with other historical or genealogical works 132 n.5, 136–47, 157–60, 164–5, 169–71, 173 with prophecy 135, 171, 244–5 with romance 173–4 with scientific and cosmological works 172 with works in English 167–8, 174 with works in Latin 8 n.22, 135, 136–9, 140–6, 147–50, 157, 160, 163, 165, 167, 168 n.20, 169–75, 180–1, 193, 206, 244–5 see also Anglo-Norman prose Brut chronicle, Brut tradition, Index of Manuscripts Cited, Long Version of ANPB, manuscripts, Middle English prose Brut chronicle, Oldest Version of ANPB, Short Version of ANPB Marcie, Marcia (q.) 22, 23, 24, 74

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General Index Marcus Antonius (Roman emp.) 67 n.34 Margaret (da. of King Edward I) 138 n.34 Margaret of France (w. of King Edward I) 138, 148, 149 Martin, G. 5 n.12, 111 Martinus Polonus, Chronicle of Popes and Emperors 171, 173, 193 martyrdom 41–2, 67, 70–1, 73, 85–6, 193 Marvin, J. xv n.2, 2 n.3, 3 n.6, 6 n.14, 7 n.19, 9 n.24, 11 n.29, 12 n.35, 60 nn.9–10, 78 n.17, 113 n.2, 126 nn.43–4, 132 n.6, 163 n.1, 165 n.10, 169 n.26, 170 nn.28–9 & 31, 171 n.37, 174 nn.49 & 51, 177 n.3, 186 n.16, 187 n.19, 196 n.46, 200 n.55, 213 n.21, 232 n.4, 240 nn.31–2, 241 n.39, 258 n.106 Marx, W. 3 n.8, 15 n.44, 121 n.24, 126 n.46 Mary (da. of King Edward I) 138 n.34 Master of the Chattering Hands 216 Master of the Chroniques d’Angleterre 216–17 Master of the Harley Froissart 216 Matheson, L. M. 2 nn.4–5, 4 n.11, 5 n.12, 7 n.18, 8 n.22, 10, 11 nn.29 & 31, 13, 73 n.1, 76 n.12, 92 n.58, 109 n.55, 126, 131–2, 136, 152 n.66, 167 n.20, 168 n.23, 173 n.46, 186 n.17, 198 n. 49, 226 n.48 Mathey-Maille, L. 34 n. 42–3 Matilda (da. of King Henry II) 138 Matilda, Maude (Empress Matilda) 76 n.12, 83, 123 Maxence (analogous to Roman emp. Maxentius) 41–2, 67 n.35 Maximian (k.) 45, 50, 53 Maxwell, M. 22 n.22 McKendrick, S. 147 n.45, 152 n.69, 218 n.23 McLaren, M.-R. 168 n.23 Meale, C. M. 5 n.12 mediation 27–8, 61–3, 70–1, 75–6, 102–3, 123 Memprice (Trojan) 27–8, 62 Mempriz (k.) 58–9 Mercian Law 22, 23 Merlin, Merlyn, Marlin, Marlyn, Myrlinus (prophet) actions of rationalized 234–8, 257–8 and Arthur 235–6, 239, 240, 253–6 and Stonehenge 234–5, 238–9 and Vortiger 80, 231, 236–7

as augur 237–8, 242 as historian 239 as prophet 231–2, 236–8, 240–2 as reader 238–9 authority of 242, 257–8 compared to Pandulf 252 conception of 86–7, 234 in Geoffrey of Monmouth 231–2, 234–8 in LV 9, 94, 126, 171, 240–2 in manuscript apparatus 190, 193, 242–7, 248–9, 250 in OV 233–9, 242–3, 253–5 in Wace 87 n.47, 234–8, 253–4 introduction of 256–8 wisdom of 238–9, 257–8 see also prophecy Merlin, mother of 86–7, 243, 257 Meyer, P. 180 n.8 Middle English prose Brut chronicle annotation in manuscipts of 196 nn.46–7, 198 nn.49–50 Arthur in 93–4, 225, 256 see also Arthur as calque of LV 10, 36 n.52, 40 n.63, 111 n.61 as source for later works 10–11, 151–2 Brie edition of 3–4, 202 n.69 Cadwallader episode introduced in 126, 167, 203, 240 Caxton edition of 173 Common Version to 1333 188, 225 classification of manuscripts of 2 n.4 colophons, headings and chapter numbers in manuscripts of 168, 186 n.17 continuations of 2, 3 n.8, 4, 10, 24, 55, 73 n.1, 93 n.4, 163, 239 dating of 14 n.43 early printed editions of 5 n.12 Guildhall as possible production locus of 151–2 influence on English prose of 5, 10 language, role of in 46 n.89, 78 n.21, 80 n.25 manuscripts of 12 n.37, 94 n.6, 127 n.52, 136 n.25, 210, 213 n.19 number of manuscripts of 10, 126 ordinatio typical of 188 production of 131–2, 133 n.9, 136, 151, 154 prophecies of Merlin in 240–2 prologues to 37

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General Index as foundation of prose Brut tradition 15–16 authorship of 1–2, 66 baronage in 60, 74–6, 98–100, 103–4 Brut (founder of Britain) in see Brut chronicles, representation of in 124–5 Church in see Christianity, Church, Holy community of the realm in 57 conflict in avoidance of 61–3, 69–71, 103–4, 119–20 civil 53, 113, 123–4 family 53, 114, 119 conquest of Britain in see Britons, ruin of, Norman Conquest, Rome Continent in, representation of 47, 48–54, 219–26 conversion of Britain in 67, 70 dating of 14 direct speech in 26–8, 90, 109 exemplarity in 24–5, 54, 89–90, 239 figurative language in 118–19 genealogy in 46, 76, 86 n.43, 113, 121, 122 n.34, 123, 126–8 historical vision of 5–6, 16, 25, 54, 57, 94, 111–12, 113, 127–8, 239, 251–9 hostage-taking in 61, 103 n.42 identity as ethnic or religious in 46, 118–21, 127 kingship in 21–4, 27, 32, 47, 57–60, 67–8, 89–90, 94, 100 language, representation of in 79 n.22, 118, 122 see also wassail law in 63–6, 82 letters in 27, 44–5, 52, 79, 212, 215 lineage in 26, 54, 60, 76–8, 83, 113–28, 256–7 love in 74, 78–9, 81–2, 88–9 naming, acts of in 27, 31, 46 n.86, 117–18 narrative technique of 23–6, 41, 46–7, 53 n.119, 55, 57–9, 78, 80, 82, 84, 117–21, 125 see also secular typology of order, desire for in 112, 113, 125 pagans in 42, 50, 61, 66, 67, 70, 79, 85, 100, 105–7 passage of dominion in see ruin of Britons past as construct in 125–6 patronage of 1, 91

Rome in 115 n.6 translation by John Mandeville 10 n.27, 40 n.63 Troy in 35–7 women in 73 n.1, 85 n.39, 86 n.42 see also Brut tradition Milton, John, History of Britain 10–11 miracles 68–70, 86, 120, 193 Modred (nephew of Arthur) 51, 100–1, 103, 239, 255 Moll, R. 10 n.27, 93 n.2, 94 n.6, 244 n.53, 247 n.64 monsters 21–4, 109 see also animals Mont Joux, Mountioie 45, 51–2 Mont-Saint-Michel 108–9 Mooney, L. R. 2 n.5, 131–2, 133 n.9, 136, 151–2, 153, 154 nn. 73–4, 160 n.97 Moray, Mounref, Monye?, Mouye? (Moray in Scotland) 240 n.34 Moreton, C. E. 11 nn.32–3 Morgan le Fay 94 Morkere (e. of Northumbria) 122 Morpidus see Morwith Mortimer family 55 n.129, 103 n.40, 171 Morwith, Morpidus, Morvidus (k.) 21–2, 23–4 Mosser, D. W. 15 n.44, 132 n.4, 136 n.23 Nall, C. 13 n.37 Navarre, Collège de 202 Nelson, T. 193 n.44 Nennius, Historia Brittonum 34 Nero (Roman emp.) 41 New Troy 31, 46 n.86, 49, 63, 74 see also London Newton, John 12 n.37 Newton, S. M. 207 n.9 Noble, M. 244 n.53 Norbye, M. A. 8 n.20, 226–7 Norman Conquest 12 n.37, 64, 118 n.15, 121–3, 147, 180–1, 187 Normandy 54, 100, 228 Normans, Normanz 33, 46, 51–2 Octobon (analogous to Ottobuono Fieschi, papal legate) 104 Oldest Version of ANPB (OV) adventure in 28, 108–11 anarchy in 65–6, 77–8, 124, 128 and Virgil 35–7, 39–40, 46–7 anti-imperialism of 47–55 Arthur in see Arthur

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General Index populism of 26–8, 30–2, 54, 116 pragmatism of 62–3, 77–8, 81, 89, 101 prophecy in see prophecy rape in see rape rationalizing tendencies of 234–8, 257–8 reading, habits of encouraged by 125, 239, 242, 251–2, 258 religion in 66–72 see also Christianity, martyrdom, pagans Rome in see Rome secular typology of 16, 24, 57–72, 73, 84, 107, 120, 239, 251–2, 258 see also historical vision of, narrative technique of, reading, habits of encouraged by under Oldest Version of ANPB seduction in 78–9, 81–2 sources of see use of Barlings chronicle, use of Gaimar, use of Geoffrey of Monmouth, use of hagiographic material, use of Wace under Oldest Version of ANPB sovereignty of England in 1, 46, 47–8, 51, 102–3, 136, 200 succession in see lineage in under Oldest Version of ANPB Trojans in 25–32 Troy, matter of in see under Troy, matter of tyrants in 41–2, 58–9, 64, 109 use of Barlings chronicle 7 use of Gaimar 7, 61, 64 n.26, 80–4, 87–90, 125 use of Geoffrey of Monmouth 7, 24, 25–33, 37, 39–47, 48–51, 54–5, 61, 75–6, 99, 108–9, 114–21, 233, 234–8, 251 n.82, 256–8 use of hagiographic material 7, 68–70, 85 use of Wace 7, 22–4, 25–33, 39–45, 48–51, 61, 75–7, 79 n.22, 85–6, 97–101, 103, 105–6, 108–11, 115–21, 233–8, 251 n.82, 252–5, 256–8 war in justifications for 31, 32–3, 47–8 representation of 27, 29–31, 53, 61 see also conflict under Oldest Version of ANPB women in 73–92 as martyrs 85–6 as mediators 75, 76–7

as mothers 76–8, 82–3, 207, 209, 210 as murderers 77–8, 79, 83 as regnant queens 75–6 as victims of rape 85–91, 108–10, 236 characterization of 73 dynastic interests of 76, 80, 83 in religious life 80–1, 86, 100–1 see also Anglo-Norman prose Brut chronicle, Brut tradition, manuscripts of ANPB orality 15, 35, 111, 181, 186, 188 Ordainers 14 Order of the Golden Fleece 211, 212, 214 ordinatio see under manuscripts of ANPB, Middle English prose Brut chronicle origin myth see Albine, Brut, Troy, matter of Orr, M. 205 Osbert of Clare 68 n.37 Osbright (Osberht, Northumbrian k.) 88–90, 132 n.5, 170 Oswald (St Oswald, k. of Northumberland) 119–20, 121, 124, 126 Oswy, Oswi (Oswiu, k. of Northumberland) 116, 120, 124, 126 Otto (Emperor Otto IV) 138 Otto de Grandson, Othes de Grandson 104 Overty, J. F. 155 n.75, 157 n.82 Oxford 76 n.12, 133 n.8 Pagan, H. 7 n.19, 8 nn.20 & 22, 132 n.5, 169 n. 28, 170 nn.28–30 & 32 palimpsests 148, 155, 167 pallium 193 Pandras (k. of Greece) 26–8, 31, 61, 62, 252 Pandulf (papal legate) 72, 201, 252 papacy 42, 193 paratext 17 Paris (Trojan) 38, 225 Paris, Parys (city) 52, 53, 164 n.8, 241 Paris, Matthew 12 n.37, 189 Parker, Matthew (abp. of Canterbury) 203 n.70 Parkes, M. B. 132 n.7, 177 n.1, 189 n.27 parliaments 60, 61–2, 65 see also counsel Parry, Henry (bp. of Winchester) 210 Parry, Henry (s. of Henry Parry, bp. of Winchester) 210 n.10

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General Index Partholoim (founder of Ireland) 48 particular, value of the 18 Partridge, S. 15 n.44, 134 n.10, 188 n.24 Peanda (ally of Cadwalein) 116, 120–1, 122, 124, 126 Pentecost 52, 68–9, 99, 102 n.36 Peter, St 41, 67 Peterhouse 157 n.82 Philip (King Philip I of France) 89, 219 Philip the Good (Duke Philip III of Burgundy) 12–13, 211–12, 214, 225–6 Philippe de Mazerolles 216 Pickens, R. 108 Pinkhurst, Adam 151 Plantagenets 113, 123, 127 Poitou 100 Porrez (b. of Ferrez) 77–8, 200 portents 193, 199, 238 n.27, 239 Powicke, M. 107 n.52 Prescott, A. 154 n.73 Press, A. R. 40 n.62, 81 n.27 pride 58, 59, 97–8, 115, 120, 122 prologues see under Anglo-Norman prose Brut chronicle, Long Version of ANPB, Middle English prose Brut chronicle, Short Version of ANPB prophecy absence of Galfridian prophecies in OV 232–4 added to prose Brut manuscripts 135, 171, 244–5 ex eventu 241, 258 in Geoffrey of Monmouth 231–2 in LV 9, 94, 126, 171, 240–2, 255, 258 in OV 25, 232, 251, 253–5 in Wace 232–3, 253–5 popularity of 231–3 power/authority of 242, 251, 255 relationship to historical narrative of 242, 251–2, 255 see also Merlin Prophecy of the Lily, the Lion, and the Son of Man 244–5 Prophecy of the Six Kings to Follow John 240–2, 244 prose Brut chronicle see AngloNorman prose Brut chronicle, Brut tradition, Latin prose Brut chronicles, Long Version of ANPB, manuscripts of ANPB, Middle English prose Brut chronicle,

Oldest Version of ANPB, Short Version of ANPB Prose Brut to 1332 7 n.19, 8 n.22, 165 n.11, 170 nn.28–9, 255 n.97 Putter, A. 96 n.14, 99 n.25, 110 n.59 ‘Queen Mary Psalter’ group of artists 152 n.69 Queste du saint graal 173 Radulescu, R. 5, 127 n.52, 136 n.25 Rajsic, J. 8 n.20, 13 n.38, 170 n.31, 210 n.11, 226–7, 228 Ranulf, Randulf (Ranulf de Blundeville, e. of Chester) 90 rape 84–91, 95 n.10, 108–10, 201, 236 rebellion, right of 14, 26–7, 58–60, 76, 101–5, 127 Rei de Engleterre, Li 124 n.39 Remus (founder of Rome) 40 revelation 238, 240 Reynhout, L. 246 n.63 Reynolds, S. 34 n.44 Richard (King Richard I) 9 n.25, 54, 60 n.9, 103, 139, 147 n.42, 159 n.89, 186, 245 n.56 Richard (King Richard II) 14, 95 Richard (Duke Richard II of Normandy) 121 Richardson, H. 173 Ricketts, P. T. 136–7 n.26 Rishanger, William 107 n.52 Rithon (giant) 109 n.58 Robert Bruce, Robert de Brus (King Robert I of Scotland) 104 Robert Curthose (duke of Normandy) 71 Robert of Avesbury, Latin chronicle of 8 n.22, 170 Robert of Gloucester, chronicle attributed to 16, 35 Roberts, B. F. 193 n.44 Robertson, K. 33 n.40 & 42 Robinson, P. R. 135 n.17, 147 n.44, 152 n.67, 166 n.13 Rodrik (k. of Aquitaine) 103 Roger Clifford, Roger de Clifford 104 rolls 13 n.38, 122 n.34, 161, 170, 193, 226–8 Roman d’Eneas 35 Roman de Loherant Garin 173–4, 192 romance and knightly adventure 99, 108–12

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General Index and vernacularization 40 Arthurian 93–6, 99 n.25, 108–12 chronicle labeled as 179 in manuscripts containing ANPB 173–4 insular 98 n.22 relation of to ‘history’ 4–5, 31 n.34, 37, 56, 80–1, 84–5, 173–4, 225 Rome and Arthur 44–5 British conquest of 40, 41–2, 49, 50 identification with 33–4, 43–4 invasion of Britain by 40, 42–4, 114–15 relationship to Britain of 33–4, 40, 42–4, 45, 49–53, 55 relationship to Troy of 44–5, 55 treatment of in OV 32–46 tribute to 41, 42, 43, 44–5, 49, 99, 114–15 Romulus (founder of Rome) 40 Ronewenne (w. of Vortiger) 78–80, 81, 83, 101 Rothwell, W. 12 n.35 Round Table 46, 51–2, 53, 55 n.129, 99, 110, 134 n.10, 212, 215, 246–7 rubrics see headings and chapter numbers under manuscripts of ANPB, Middle English prose Brut chronicle Ruch, L. 9 n.24, 126 n.43 St John of Jerusalem, Priory of, Clerkenwell 201 n.59 Salisbury 99 Salisbury Plain 80, 238 sanctuary 67, 101 Sargent-Baur, B. N. 96 n.14, 110 n.59 Saxons (Sessouns) against Britons 6, 66, 70–1, 79–80, 180, 233, 237, 242 in Brut tradition 33, 46, 115–21, 127, 186 in reign of Arthur 94, 96, 98, 100, 102–3 Scalacronica 16, 40 n.64, 51 n.108, 165 n.10 Scota (founder of Scotland) 48 n.94 Scotland, Escoce and Arthur 52, 102–3, 105 n.47, 240 and Edward I 1, 107 and Edward II 138, 139 and Edward III 139, 164, 225 and Norman Conquest 122

English sovereignty over 1, 46, 47–8, 51, 102–3, 136, 138, 200 royal genealogy of 149 n.53 Scots, Escotz, naming of 48 n.94, 79 n.22 Scottish Chronicle 136–7, 157, 160, 163 ‘Secretum Ypocratis’ 172 n.42 Seysyl, Sisillus (k.) 21–2, 23 Shakespeare, William 232 shame (hunte) 89–9, 109 shipwreck 85, 126, 152 n.69 Short Version of ANPB (SV) characterized 8 classification of manuscripts of 150–1, 160–2 continuations of 8–9, 158–60, 161–2, 167, 173 potential independence of components of 158–60 differences from OV or LV 9 n.25, 85 n.39, 126 Latin linking paragraph in 161, 179–81 prologue to 8, 126, 160–2, 167, 173, 174, 180–1 as evidence for classification of manuscripts 150–1, 160–2 as potentially independent unit 158, 160–2 monorhymed alexandrine version of 210 n.11 prose version of 161, 166–7 treatment of in manuscripts 157–60, 179–81, 182, 187–8, 192 n.35, 206–7 Richard I, longer account of in some manuscripts of 9 n.25, 159 n.89 Robert of Avesbury group of 8 n.22, 169–70, 179 n.4, 181, 186, 255 n.97 see also Anglo-Norman prose Brut chronicle, Brut tradition, manuscripts of ANPB Silvein, Silueyn, Silvius, Siluius (f. of Brut) 25, 36, 37, 42, 170, 207, 209, 210 Simpson, G. G. 1 n.1, 47 n.91 Simpson, J. 34 n.43, 35 n.47, 46 n.87, 53 n.121, 54, 55, 239 n.30 Sir Perceval of Galles 94 n.6 Sisillus see Seysyl slaves 26–7, 46, 103, 252 Smallwood, T. M. 148 nn.49–51, 149 n.52, 172 n.40, 240 n.33 Smith, Elizabeth 197, 198 sodomy 58–9 Southern, R. W. 251 n.78

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General Index Spain 48, 164 Spence, J. 8 n.20, 13, 25 n.12, 40 n.64, 51 n.108, 107 n.52, 121 n.26, 122 n.34, 123 n.36, 164 n.5, 169 nn.26–7, 170, 171 nn.33 & 35, 172 n.39, 174 nn. 49 & 52, 175 n.53, 226 n.49 Spiegel, G. M. 93 n.3, 96 n.14, 113 n.1, 127 n.51 Stanzaic Morte Arthur 94, 95 stationers 136, 151 Stephen, Esteuen (King Stephen) 123, 152 n.69 Stephen Langton, abp. of Canterbury 71 n.46 Stonehenge 234–5, 238, 242, 243, 244 Stones, E. L. G. 1 n.1, 47 n.91 Stow, John 5 n.12, 152 n.66 Strohm, P. 71 n.46, 94 n.5, 241 n.40 Stubbs, E. 133 n.9, 151–2, 153 succession 24, 75–8, 80, 113, 121, 125–7, 254 Swein, Sweyn le puisne (k. of Denmark, analogous to Swein Estrithson) 68–70 Taine, H. 3 Talbot, C. H. 155 n.75 Taylor, A. G. 133 n.8 Taylor, J. 4 n.11 Theobald, Thebaud de Canterburi (Theobald, abp. of Canterbury) 123 Thomas de Clare 104 Thomas of Woodstock (s. of King Edward III) 11, 12, 173 n.44, 174 n.50 Thomson, R. M. 5 n.12, 111 ‘Three Kings of Cologne’ 168 n.20 Tirel, Walter 252 Tite, C. G. C. 166 n.14 Tolhurst, F. 33 n.40 Tourn Rotelin, Turn Rotelin, Turnus (k. in Italy) 36–7, 39 Tours 29, 30 Townshend, Roger 11 Trevet, Nicholas, Annales 11 n.33, 16 Trevisa, John 36 n.50, 96 Troy, matter of 33–40, 45–6, 53 n.121, 54–6, 95 Turnus see Tourn Rotelin, Turtin Turtin, Turnus (nephew of Brut) 29, 30, 31 n.32

Tyerman, C. 107 Tyson, D. B. 15 n.44, 93 n.3, 107 n.52, 170 n.31 Ulfyn, Vlfin, Vlfyn (British knight) 236, 243 Ursula, Vrsula (St Ursula) 70, 73, 85–6, 91 Uter, Vter, Uther (k.) 78 n.20, 79, 80, 82 n.33, 221, 235–6, 239, 242, 243, 247 Vale, J. 93 n.1 Valente, C. 60 n.11, 148 n.49, 149 n.52 vernacularization 40 vert and venison 65 Vines, A. 198 n.50 violence see conflict in, war in under Oldest Version of ANPB, and also martyrdom, rape Virgil, Aeneid 33–5, 37–40, 45–6, 47, 54, 192 n.37 Vita Edwardi Secundi 60 Vortiger, Vortigern, Vortegirnus (k.) 60, 78–80, 81, 86, 231, 233 n.11, 236–7, 238, 239, 242–4, 247, 258 Vortumer (k.) 79 Vulgate Cycle, French prose 94, 99 Wace, Roman de Brut 94, 115–16, 119, 170 as source for OV see use of Wace under Oldest Version of ANPB manuscripts of 7 n.19, 35 n.48, 40 n.64, 41 nn.68 & 70, 43 nn. 75–6, 87 n.47, 97 n.19, 101 n.32, 110 n.59, 233, 234 n.12, 258 n.105 style of 24 use of Geoffrey of Monmouth 16 n.46, 37 n.54, 232–3, 253 use of Virgil 37–9 Wales, Gales 47–8, 51–2, 70, 102 n.36, 116, 139, 237 Walter of Oxford 6 Walter Tirel (OV) 252 Ward, H. L. D. 245 n.54 Warren, M. R. 34 n.43 wassail 79, 81–3, 84, 246 n.63 Waswo, R. 34 nn.42–4 Waters, R. E. C. 210 n.10 Watson, A. G. 132 n.7, 165 n.12 Waverley, annals of 7 n.19, 165 Latin chronicle related to in Jesus Q.G.10 165

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General Index Wavrin, Jean de, chronicles of 210 n.11, 211 n.12, 218 n.22, 226 Welsh (language) Galfridian material in 11 in genealogical rolls 127, 193 Welsh (people) 33, 116–17, 139 Westmere (k.) 103, 192 Westminster, Westmonster 68, 147 n.44 Wijsman, H. W. 13 n.38, 211, 216–17, 218 nn.22–3 William, William Bastard, Guillaume Bastard (King William I the Conqueror) 49, 54, 89, 121–3, 136, 147, 152 n.69, 180–1, 186–7, 219–20, 221 William Longespée (e. of Salisbury) 91 William of Newburgh, The History of English Affairs 6, 257 n.104 William Rufus, Guillame le Roux (King William II Rufus) 59–60, 65–6, 152 n.69, 193, 220, 221, 239, 252 wills 7, 11, 14

Winchester, Wincestre 59, 114, 124, 200, 242 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, The Blue Book 18 women and Anglo-Norman literature 11 n.31, 12, 80 representation of see illustrations, of women, women in under Oldest Version of ANPB and women in under Middle English prose Brut chronicle Wormald, F. 12 n.34 Wright, C. E. 165 n.12 Wulf, C. A. T. 87 n.47 Ygerne see Igern York, Euerwyk 11, 48, 88, 171, 193, 206 Yorkshire 11–12, 13 Young, Patrick 166 Ywain and Gawain 94 n.6 Zatta, J. 33 n.41

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Index of Manuscripts Cited

Aberystwyth National Library of Wales 5028C 172–3, 179, 187, 190, 196, 197, 198, 245–6 Peniarth 392D 151 Brussels Bibliothèque Royale 10233–36 13 n.38, 226 Cambridge Cambridge University Library Dd.10.32 8 n.20, 132 n.5, 170 Ee.1.20 172, 193 Ii.6.8 133, 202, 240 n.34, 245 n.59, 246–7, 250 Mm.1.33 151, 161, 170 n.29, 179 n.4, 186 n.16 Corpus Christi College 98 161, 170, 193 133 40 n.64 139 150 n.58 Jesus College Q.G.10 165 Trinity College R.7.14 167 n.17, 187 R.5.32 169–70, 179 n.4 Chatsworth Collection of the Duke of Devonshire Bolton Abbey Accounts 11–12 Chicago University of Chicago 224 103 Dublin Trinity College 500 180 n.8, 187, 201–2, 206 n.3 501 170 n.28, 199–200, 245 n.59, 246–7, 249, 250 Durham Durham Cathedral Library C.IV.27 7 n.19, 40 n.64, 41 nn.68 & 70, 43 nn. 75–6, 87 n.47, 97 n.19, 101 n.32, 110 n. 59, 233, 234 n.12, 258 n.105

Edinburgh Edinburgh University Library 181 9 n.25, 134–5, 171, 187 n.21, 200–1, 245 Exeter Exeter Cathedral Library 3514 8 n.20, 170–1 Glasgow University of Glasgow Gen 1671 198 n.49 Leeds University of Leeds Library Brotherton 29 9 n.23 Lincoln Lincoln Cathedral Library 104 7 n.19, 40 n.64, 41 nn.68 & 70, 43 nn. 75–6, 97 n.19, 101 n.32, 110 n.59, 233, 234 n.12 London British Library Additional 18462a 165, 173, 179, 187, 190, 245–6 18462b 165, 179 n.4, 186 n.16 27342 228 29503 228 35092 22 n.2, 131, 163 n.4, 178, 242 35113 134, 161, 190 62451 150 n.58 Cotton Claudius D.II 150 n.58, 152 Cleopatra D.III 85 n.39, 111 n.61, 184, 185, 187–8, 189 n.26, 202 n.69, 206, 210, 219 n.30, 220 n.31, 222 nn.36–7, 223 n.39, 225, 227 nn.53 & 56, 240, 241, 243–5, 255, 256 Cleopatra D.VII 9 n.25, 161, 167–8, 174 Domitian A.X 161 n.101 Julius A.I 161 n.101, 173 Tiberius A.VI 132 n.5 Egerton 650 168 2885 152 n.66

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Index of Manuscripts Cited Harley 200 8 n.22, 165 n.11, 169–70, 179 n.4, 181, 186 2253 132 n.7 4690 10 n.27, 40 n.63 6199 211 n.16 6359 165 n.11, 191, 192 Royal 19 C.IX 166, 179 n.5, 189, 212–13, 216, 218, 220 n.31, 222 n.37, 225, 227 n.53 20 A.II 147–50 20 A.III 166, 172, 196 n.48, 202, 245 n.59, 246–7, 248, 250 20 A.XVIII 166, 171, 245 App. 85 166, 189 n.26 College of Arms Arundel 30 147 n.44 31 159–60 58 10 n.27 L6 244 n.53 Corporation of London Record Office Cust. 6 152 n.67 Inner Temple Library Petyt 511, vol. 19 136–9, 141–2, 146, 147–54, 155, 156–9, 160, 162, 174, 179–81, 182–3, 206 Lambeth Palace 504 179 n.4, 186, 203 Lincoln’s Inn Hale 88 167–8, 172, 189 Westminster Abbey 25 163 n.4, 192 Malmesbury Malmesbury Parish Church 2 171 n.35, 172 n.39, 173 New Haven Yale University Beinecke 86 161 n.101, 171, 172 n.39, 173 405 161 n.104, 168–9, 199 593 164–5, 169 956 149–50 Oxford Bodleian Library Ashmole 1804 171, 189 n.26, 245 Bodley Rolls 2 228 Douce 120 22 n.2, 132, 166, 168, 177 n.3, 190, 195, 242 n.41, 243, 250 128 169–70, 179 n.4

e Mus. 108 202, 206, 208 Laud misc. 637 139 n.41, 150 n.58 733 213 n.19 Lyell 17 171, 192–3 Rawlinson B.414 7 n.19 C.292 132 n.7 C.666 132 n.7 D.329 9 n.25, 85 n.39, 111 n.61, 136–9, 140, 143–5, 147–52, 156 n.79, 157–62, 163, 174, 179, 200, 206 Wood empt. 8 91 n.55, 132, 161 n.101, 166 n.15, 177 n.3, 194, 195, 242, 243, 245 Corpus Christi College 78 161, 166–7, 179 n.4, 186–7, 196 n.48, 206–7, 209, 210 293A 161 n.101, 179 n.4 Magdalen College lat. 199 7 n.19, 72 n.50, 91, 122 Oriel College 46 152 nn.68–9 Paris Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal 3346 173–4, 192 Bibliothèque Mazarine 1860 189, 196 n.48, 202, 245 Bibliothèque nationale de France fonds français 12155 13 n.38, 179 n.5, 189, 211–12, 214–15, 222 n.37, 225–6 12156 13 n.38, 179 n.4, 210 n.11 14640 122 n.30, 186 n.16, 242–3 nouvelles acquisitions françaises 4267 14, 22 n.2, 177 n.3 Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève 935 131, 163 n.4, 189, 216, 217, 218–19, 220–1, 222, 223–4, 225, 226, 228 n.59 San Marino Huntington Library EL 26.C.9 151 Huntington 136 198 n.50 St Petersburg National Library of Russia Fr. F. v. IV 8 166 n.15 Vienna Österreichische Nationalbibliothek 2534 218 n.22

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Writing History in the Middle Ages 1 Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s Historia Normannorum: Tradition, Innovation and Memory, Benjamin Pohl (2015) 2 The Classicist Writings of Thomas Walsingham: ‘Worldly Cares’ at St Albans Abbey in the Fourteenth Century, Sylvia Federico (2016) 3 Medieval Cantors and their Craft: Music, Liturgy and the Shaping of History, 800–1500, edited by Katie Ann-Marie Bugyis, A.B. Kraebel and Margot E. Fassler (2017) 4 Universal Chronicles in the High Middle Ages, edited by Michele Campopiano and Henry Bainton (2017)

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ConstructingVernacularHistory_PPC 20/03/2017 12:27 Page 1

he prose Brut chronicle was the most popular secular vernacular work of the late Middle Ages in England, setting a standard for vernacular historical writing well into the age of print, but until recently it has attracted little scholarly attention. This book combines study of the chronicle’s sources, content, and methods of composition, together with its manuscript contexts. Using the the Anglo-Norman Oldest Version as a touchstone, it investigates the chronicle’s social ideals, its representation of women, and its distinctive versions of such elements of British history as the Trojan foundation myth, the ruin of the Britons, the Norman Conquest, and Arthur and Merlin, arguing that its humane, populist vision demands reassessment of medieval popular understandings of British history, and of the presumed dominance of imperialism, next-worldly piety, misogyny, and a taste for violence in late-medieval culture. The book also analyses evidence for the production of the Anglo-Norman Brut, and examines the ways in which its makers and users reconstructed British history through manuscript context, ordinatio and apparatus, annotation, and illustration.

T

JULIA MARVIN is a Fellow of the Medieval Institute and Associate Professor in the Program of Liberal Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Front cover: Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 78, fol. 7v, detail (Anglo-Norman prose Brut). The prophesied fates of the mother and father of Brut, the founder of Britain: his mother dying in childbirth, his father struck by an arrow that Brut means for a stag. Reproduced by permission of the President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

An imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge IP12 3DF (GB) and 668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620–2731 (US)

JUL IA MAR VIN

YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS

THE CONSTRUCTION OF VERNACULAR HISTORY IN THE ANGLO-NORMAN PROSE BR UT CHRONICLE

WRITING HISTORY IN THE MIDDLE AGES

THE CONSTRUCTION OF VERNACULAR HISTORY IN THE ANGLO-NORMAN PROSE BRUT CHRONICLE The Manuscript Culture of Late Medieval England

YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS

JULIA MARVIN