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William of Newburgh and the
Northumbrian construction of
English history

Anne Lawrence-Mathers

Department of History, School of Humanities, University of

Reading , Reading, RG6 6AA, UK
Published online: 03 Jan 2012.

To cite this article: Anne Lawrence-Mathers (2007) William of Newburgh and the
Northumbrian construction of English history, Journal of Medieval History, 33:4, 339-357, DOI:

10.1016/j.jmedhist.2007.09.002

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William of Newburgh and the Northumbrian

construction of English history

Anne Lawrence-Mathers

Department of History, School of Humanities, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6AA, UK

Abstract

William of Newburgh is chiefly known for his account of twelfth-century English politics, in the

His-

tory of English affairs. However, the Prologue to this work also deserves attention, since it takes the almost
unprecedented form of a comprehensive attack on Geoffrey of Monmouth’s

Historia regum Britanniae,

and especially on the account of the heroic career of King Arthur. William’s Prologue opens with the
forthright statement: ‘The history of our people, that is the English, was written by the venerable priest
and monk, BEDE’ (sic). It goes on to make use of a remarkable range of information, including the ex-
tremely rare work of Gildas. The argument of this article is that this ‘English’ view of history is related to
the contents of a set of complex manuscripts from Durham and the Northumbrian Cistercian houses. These
give details of the generations of ‘English’ kings who conquered post-Roman Britain, together with ex-
tracts from the works of Gildas and Nennius, amongst many others. Together, they place Bede’s version
of the coming of the English at the centre of an encyclopaedic reconstruction of world history, which Wil-
liam of Newburgh (who dedicates his work to the abbot of Rievaulx) also follows. It need hardly be
stressed that in this version of history there is no room for King Arthur.
Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: England; Historiography; William of Newburgh; King Arthur; Cistercians; Manuscripts

William of Newburgh, a learned canon of the Augustinian house at Newburgh in Yorkshire,

died c.1197 or 1198, and is now chiefly known for his well-informed history of England. This
deals with the period from the Norman Conquest to 1197/8, and has been edited and translated

E-mail address:

a.e.mathers-lawrence@reading.ac.uk

0304-4181/$ - see front matter

doi:10.1016/j.jmedhist.2007.09.002

Journal of Medieval History 33 (2007) 339e357

www.elsevier.com/locate/jmedhist

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as the

Historia rerum Anglicarum or History of English affairs.

The achievement of writing

such a history, and of being one of the last ‘monastic’ writers to contribute to what Antonia
Gransden has called ‘a great period for historical writing in England’, is all the greater since
Newburgh had no historiographical tradition and is unlikely to have had an extensive library.

However, William left evidence that his historical expertise extended far beyond post-Conquest
England, in the form of the Prologue to his history. Rather surprisingly this Prologue says noth-
ing about the material covered in the work itself, but is entirely dedicated to a wide-ranging
attack on Geoffrey of Monmouth and his very popular

Historia regum Britanniae. Indeed,

the subject matter of this Prologue is so different from William’s main history that it is hardly
surprising that Gransden has suggested that it may originally have been intended as a separate
work.

William’s historical writing thus already appears as unusual in several ways; but its dis-

tinctiveness is still clearer when it is recalled that William was also the

only historian to criticise

Geoffrey of Monmouth at this height of his popularity. That the author of a history focused only
on post-Conquest England, himself isolated in a house of modest economic and intellectual re-
sources, should make a breakthrough towards a relatively scientific approach to history, and
should attempt to demolish a work already as widely accepted as Geoffrey’s, is clearly extraor-
dinary.

William’s boldness may not appear so great from a modern point of view, but Geof-

frey’s work achieved enormous success almost from the time of its first production in 1136.
More than 50 copies of it survive from the rest of the twelfth century alone; and from the
late twelfth century until the sixteenth its authority was generally accepted.

How William

of Newburgh achieved his breakthrough is thus a problem worthy of consideration.

It is the argument of this article that William’s breakthrough depended fundamentally upon

something which he shared with other Northumbrian scholars of history; an unshakeable belief
in the truth of Bede’s account of post-Roman Britain, and of the conquests of the ‘English’.
Thus, William did in fact have an intellectual context for his attack on the

Historia regum

Britanniae, and this context comes into focus if three sources of evidence are examined. The
first of these is the surviving early copy of William’s history, now British Library [BL], MS
Stowe 62, which is datable to the end of the twelfth century and is written and illuminated
in a style both distinctive and informative. The second is the range of material assembled by
William himself in his Prologue and in his dedicatory letter to Abbot Ernald of Rievaulx (which
precedes the Prologue in Stowe 62). The third, rather less obviously, consists of the complex,
one-volume collections of historical, theological and geographical material produced and cir-
culated throughout the twelfth century by both Durham and the northern English Cistercian
and Augustinian houses. This group of manuscripts has generated an enormous secondary lit-
erature of its own, since there are complex problems as to both the provenance of the volumes

See G. Walsh and M.J. Kennedy,

William of Newburgh, the ‘History of English affairs’, Book 1 (Warminster, 1988).

A. Gransden,

Historical writing in England c.550 to 1307 (London, 1974). For brief discussion of Newburgh and its

books see A. Lawrence-Mathers,

Manuscripts in Northumbria in the 11th and 12th centuries (Woodbridge, 2003),

187e8.

Gransden, ‘Bede’s reputation as an historian in medieval England’,

Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 32 (1981), at

20e2.

For William’s handling of current political issues and the sources for his main

Historia, see J. Gillingham, ‘The

historian as judge; William of Newburgh and Hubert Walter’,

English Historical Review, 119, 484 (2004), 1275e87.

For a valuable listing and discussion of manuscripts see J. Crick,

The ‘Historia regum Britanniae’ of Geoffrey of

Monmouth, vol. III, A summary catalogue of the manuscripts (Woodbridge 1989).

340

A. Lawrence-Mathers / Journal of Medieval History 33 (2007) 339e357

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and the inter-relationships amongst the copies of the very rare texts which they contain.

How-

ever, the concern of this article is not to re-open these issues. Rather, it will be argued that
William of Newburgh could easily have had access to these volumes; and that the range of texts
which they assemble, considered together, constitutes a ‘reference library’ extensive enough to
make it possible for William to obtain and verify the range of information required for his Pro-
logue and its attack on the

Historia regum Britanniae. Finally, when William’s prologue and

this group of complex manuscripts are considered together, they suggest the existence of a larger
project in twelfth-century Northumbria for the creation of a self-consciously English vision of
the past, which allowed no historical gap into which Geoffrey of Monmouth’s King Arthur
could plausibly be inserted.

Before examining the detailed evidence for this Northumbrian, English view of history, how-

ever, it is important to consider briefly whether William of Newburgh’s stance really was as
distinctive as is claimed above. For there is one other writer, contemporary with William,
who is famous for an attack on Geoffrey of Monmouth; and this is Gerald of Wales. However,
William’s critique of Geoffrey’s ‘translation’ of an ‘ancient British’ book is far more serious
than that launched by Gerald.

The latter’s famous (and still funny) attack was written in

1197, when William of Newburgh was probably already at work on his own

Historia.

How-

ever, Gerald simply inserts an anecdote, somewhere between a miracle story and a description
of a natural wonder, into his

Journey through Wales. This tells of an illiterate man from Caer-

leon, endowed with both ‘occult and prophetic gifts’, who was pestered by demons. Relief was
afforded by physical contact with St John’s Gospel, which dispelled the demons; but when
Geoffrey’s work was experimentally put in its place, demons flocked to both the man and
the book!

However, Gerald in fact competed with Geoffrey by claiming to have found

a book in ‘farthest Gwynedd’ which contained the prophecies of Merlin Sylvester of Celidon
(as opposed to the Merlin Ambrosius of Geoffrey’s work), and by taking part in the excavation
of Arthur’s skeleton at Glastonbury in the 1190s.

These are scarcely attempts to prove that

Geoffrey’s discoveries were completely without foundation. By contrast, William of Newburgh
sought to prove that Arthur’s very existence was an historical impossibility, and that Geoffrey’s
entire reconstruction of the reigns of British kings was in contradiction to provable historical
facts. Thus Gerald provides no context for William’s approach.

A final factor which needs some consideration is the political situation of the 1190s in Eng-

land. Crick, amongst others, has argued that anxiety about the possible political use of Arthur
by the Welsh is suggested by the royal initiative behind the search for, and discovery of,

For a compact survey see B. Meehan, ‘Durham twelfth-century manuscripts in Cistercian houses’, in:

Anglo-

Norman Durham 1093e1193, ed. D. Rollason, M. Harvey and M. Prestwich (Woodbridge 1994), 439e50.

For discussion on Gerald see J. Crick, ‘The British past and the Welsh future: Gerald of Wales, Geoffrey of Mon-

mouth and Arthur of Britain’,

Celtica, 23 (1999), 60e75.

This date depends upon the evidence of BL, MS Stowe 62, which belonged to William’s house of Newburgh, and

which has been recognised at least since the nineteenth century as probably taken directly from William’s own notes.
The opening of the manuscript is fully, if rather naively, rubricated, and brief

incipits and explicits are given for each

book except the last. This ends abruptly with the events of 1197, to which are appended an account of a ‘prodigy’ which
occurred in 1198. Despite the fact that ample space is available, neither an overall conclusion nor a simple

explicit for

the book is given. This gives a definite impression that work on both the text and the fair copy were abruptly brought to
an end at this point.

For the story see L. Thorpe, trans.,

Gerald of Wales; the journey through Wales and the description of Wales (Har-

mondsworth 1978), 116e18.

Crick, ‘The British past’, passim.

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A. Lawrence-Mathers / Journal of Medieval History 33 (2007) 339e357

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Arthur’s dead bones. It has also been pointed out that it was in the 1190s that Hubert Walter
wrote a letter to Pope Innocent III in which he mentioned anxieties about the Welsh historical
claim to rule over Britain.

Historians from Nancy Partner on have noticed William’s fondness

for making negative comments on the various ‘British’ groups mentioned in his history.

Put

beside William’s identification of both himself and his putative audience as predominantly
‘English’, this can suggest that William was writing to oppose ‘British’ political claims which
made use of dubious historical arguments. This offers a possible motivation for the addition of
William’s Prologue to his history of England; but it does not explain how he constructed his
view of the distant past, or how he obtained and verified the range of information required
for his attack on the

Historia regum Britanniae. This article will therefore proceed to examine

the three categories of evidence outlined above, starting with the manuscript of William’s work.

BL, MS Stowe 62 is the surviving Newburgh copy of William’s history. The book’s good

quality vellum and script suggest that this was probably a presentation copy. Moreover, it
has a Newburgh

ex libris, suggesting both that it was produced for William’s own community

and that Newburgh had an organised book collection with an official responsible for its care.
What is most striking about the book, however, is that it conforms in virtually every respect
to the style of book production found amongst the Cistercian houses of northern England in
the second half of the twelfth century, and in some Durham products. Moreover, this style,
with its simple and old-fashioned

mise-en-page, its initials which use only a limited range of

distinctive foliage motifs in just three colours, and its complete avoidance of figurative deco-
ration, as well as gold, fits well with Cistercian ‘legislation’ on book decoration; but is surpris-
ing in the context of an Augustinian house.

What is especially interesting, in a presentation

manuscript for a late-twelfth-century author apparently commissioned by his house, is the ab-
sence of any author portrait, even in an initial. This contrasts strongly, for instance, with the
presentation copy of the works of Prior Laurence of Durham, now Durham University Library,
MS Cosin V iii I, which has a full-page miniature of the author, and uses a wide palette of
colours, as well as gold, in its fashionable initials. Thus, Stowe 62 suggests that Newburgh con-
formed to Cistercian styles of book production, and indeed went even further in this than the
comparable Augustinian house of Kirkham (which had nearly joined the Cistercians). The
impression is confirmed by the plain style of the other surviving Newburgh manuscript of
the period, now BL, MS Arundel 252, a copy of the work of Ivo of Chartres. There is thus
very strong evidence to suggest that Newburgh was involved in the circulation of books and
texts which characterised the intellectual relationship between the Cistercian houses and Dur-
ham, and that this affected both William’s own studies and the whole nature of book production
and collection at Newburgh.

For William’s personal contact with the Yorkshire Cistercians there is certainly evidence, not

least in the dedicatory letter copied into Stowe 62 itself. His

Explanatio sacri epithalamii in

Matrem sponsi (a commentary on the Song of Songs) had been written at the request of Abbot
Roger of Byland, who resigned in 1196. It is likely that this work, which William says he com-
pleted in less than a year, immediately preceded the writing of the

Historia. It is also interesting

Crick, ‘The British past’, 71e2. See also W.A. Nitze, ‘The exhumation of King Arthur at Glastonbury’,

Speculum, 9

(1934), 355e61.

Nancy F. Partner,

Serious entertainments, the writing of history in twelfth-century England (Chicago and London

1977), 64e5.

For a fuller description of the manuscript, and of its place in the putative ‘northern style’ see A. Lawrence-Mathers,

Manuscripts in Northumbria, 187e8.

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to note that this sponsorship was not accompanied by intellectual exchanges with other
scholars, since William’s mistaken belief that his Marian interpretation of the Songs of Songs
was new shows lack of contact with theological developments outside Northumbria.

In the

case of the

Historia, William’s dedicatory letter records that he was commissioned to write

by another Cistercian abbot, this time Ernald of Rievaulx. William further states that several
of the Rievaulx monks would be better qualified to write the

Historia; and yet, whilst express-

ing due modesty, he shows no surprise that he should be asked. Equally, he suggests that Ernald
is aware of his poor state of health, and has toned down the ‘level of difficulty’ of his commis-
sion accordingly. Indeed, the manner in which William refers to what he is not going to do,

altis

scrutandis mysticisque rimandis, stands as a demonstration of his writing skills as well as sug-
gesting ongoing exchanges as to what he should write.

Overall what is conveyed is a picture

of friendly communication about writing, scholarship, textual genres and the roles of Cister-
cians as against Augustinians. The reader also receives the strong impression that William
knew that the monks of Rievaulx were interested in history, even if they were prevented by
the rigours of Cistercian observance from writing it. Finally, the picture of a seriously ill writer
using the Prologue of what is likely to be his last work for an attack on Geoffrey suggests that
this was no light undertaking.

The presentation of the opening of the text in Stowe 62 is intriguing in several ways. The

manuscript shows signs of haste in the writing, with errors sometimes forthrightly marked in
red, suggesting an attempt to complete this fair copy before the author’s death. Moreover there
is neither a title page nor even a title at the head of the opening folio, something mostly found
only in Cistercian book production. Instead, rubrication in red text script introduces the letter
simply as

prefacionalis operis sequentis et apologetica ad abbatem rievallensis. After the letter

come the

capitula for Book One, then the Prologue, noncommittally entered as Proemium se-

quentis historie. An actual title is given only by the ownership inscription, though this is almost
contemporary. Here (on the verso of the flyleaf) William’s work is called

Historia Anglorum,

and this title puts it into intriguing company, since this is the title used for Bede’s

Historia

ecclesiastica in post-Conquest Benedictine, Cistercian and Augustinian library catalogues
from English houses.

It appears thus, for instance, in the twelfth-century catalogue of Durham

(in Durham Cathedral Library [DCL], MS B IV 24); and in the Rievaulx catalogue of c.1190e
1200 (in Cambridge, Jesus College, MS 34).

The point is emphasised by the book’s placing

within the catalogues and, presumably, the book collections which they represent. In the case of
Durham, the title

Ecclesiastica Historia (presumably Eusebius) appears between John Cassian

and Orosius, in a section largely devoted to patristic works. The theological works of Bede
appear in a group of their own, at the end of the ‘patristica’;

but Historia Anglorum appears

separately again, classed with

Liber de gestis Francorum and Liber de gestis Normannorum.

For this see J.C. Gorman, ‘William of Newburgh’s

Explanatio sacri epithalamii in Matrem sponsi’, published as

Specilegium Friburgense, 6 (1960).

Walsh and Kennedy,

William of Newburgh, 26.

See for instance the entries for Burton-on-Trent, Bury St Edmunds, Crowland, Glastonbury, Norwich, Reading, Ro-

chester, St Albans, Westminster, Whitby, Worcester and York (in other words, all the catalogues in which the work is
listed) in,

English Benedictine libraries, the shorter catalogues, ed. R. Sharpe et al. (Corpus of British medieval library

catalogues 4, London 1996).

For the Rievaulx catalogue see

The libraries of the Cistercians, Gilbertines and Premonstratensians, ed. D. Bell

(Corpus of British medieval library catalogues 3, London, 1992), 87e140. Entry 104 reads Beda de yistoria Anglorum
in uno volumine (see

Libraries of the Cistercians, Gilbertines and Premonstratensians, ed. Bell, 105).

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That this title represents Bede’s

Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum is supported by the ap-

pearance, in the category of

Libri Anglici, of the entries Historia Anglorum Anglice (probably

the Old English translation of Bede’s work) and

Cronica duo Anglica (presumably the Anglo-

Saxon Chronicle).

An explicit link to the work of Bede is forthrightly expressed in William’s

Prologue itself, since the opening words are:

Historiam gentis nostrae, id est Anglorum,

venerabilis presbyter et monachus BEDA conscripsit.

Moreover, the chapter headings further

emphasise this English identity for the work, since the opening chapter of Book One is headed
De Willelmo notho primo ex normannis rege anglorum; and Norman descent is stressed also for
William’s sons. Indeed, the chapter headings appear surprisingly moderate towards the kings of
the Scots, given the negative attitudes which William expresses at several points to the British.
Chapter xxiv has the neutral heading

De rege scottorum david., whilst chapter xxvi has the

rather surprising

De malcolmo christianissimo rege scottorum.

With colours thus pinned to the mast, William’s Prologue then states that Bede also gave

a brief but professional account of

Britonum . celebriora . gesta, drawn from the work of

the Britons’ own historian, Gildas. Moreover, William has compared Bede with the work of
Gildas, and has established by comparison that Bede was quoting from Gildas. He goes on
to observe both that Gildas’ writing style is poor and that the book is rare. This is impressive
for its confident deployment of the twelfth-century scholarly techniques of textual comparison
and analysis. What is more, William apparently had access to a very rare text indeed, to enable
him to make this comparison. For most of William’s contemporaries took the

Historia Britonum

now attributed to Nennius as the work by Gildas cited by Bede; but to make the textual com-
parison which he cites, William must have read at least the opening sections of Gildas’ actual
De excidio.

The possible source of this knowledge will be further discussed below. Moreover,

William’s conclusion on the Britons as depicted by Gildas is devastating, and in complete con-
tradiction to Geoffrey’s picture, for they

nec in bello fortes fuerint nec in pace fideles. Moreover,

since Bede and (by implication) William are genuine historians, Geoffrey of Monmouth,
retailer of the glorious deeds of the Britons, is a mere ‘writer’ who has dared to take the

ridicula

figmenta of British stories about Arthur, and the ‘lying divinations of some Merlin’, and to pres-
ent them, in Latin, as genuine. Having clearly read the

Historia regum Britanniae with some

care, William can hardly have missed Geoffrey’s own citations of Gildas; it is intriguing there-
fore to wonder whether William noticed that Geoffrey makes silent use of Gildas at several
points but that, whenever he does actually name Gildas, it is in relation to one of his more dar-
ing fictions.

In other words, Geoffrey was depending on his readers not knowing Gildas,

whereas William had been able to make a careful study of the work.

A study of Gildas does not account for all of William’s material, however, and it is now

necessary to analyse the rest of the evidence provided by the Prologue. Its next paragraph dem-
onstrates that William has also put in serious study on demons, such as Merlin’s supposed
father, putative source of Merlin’s own prophetic powers. When William says that demons
cannot share divine knowledge, and thus can only make guesses about the future, based on

For these entries, see

Catalogi veteres librorum ecclesiae Cathedralis Dunelm., ed B. Botfield (Surtees Society 7,

London, 1838), at 2, 3, and 5.

For the text see Walsh and Kennedy,

William of Newburgh, 28.

For the confusion of Gildas with Nennius (meaning by this the author/compiler of the

Historia Britonum), and for

medieval versions of the latter, see D. Dumville, ‘The historical value of the

Historia Britonum’, Arthurian literature, 6

(1986), 1e26; and D. Dumville ‘‘‘Nennius’’ and the

Historia Brittonum’, Studia Celtica, 10 & 11 (1975e76), 78e95.

On this see N. Wright, ‘Geoffrey of Monmouth and Gildas’,

Arthurian literature, 2 (1982), 1e33.

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signs which human senses cannot interpret, he is citing the arguments of both St Augustine and
of Isidore of Seville. This has also been observed by Nancy Partner, who gives a detailed anal-
ysis of his probable patristic sources.

William then moves back to his main theme of

Geoffrey’s crimes against history. The next point is that the ‘infantile’ prophecies retailed by
Geoffrey have subsequently turned out to be false; an observation which needs only scepticism
to inform it. However, William also refers to the ‘valid beliefs’ of anonymous ‘others’ that
Geoffrey had invented prophecies of his own as well as passing on traditional ones. Given
that five commentaries on Merlin and on the

Vita Merlini had been written by this time, it is

possible that these others may be the authors of at least some of them; alternatively, the refer-
ence may be to individuals with whom William had personally discussed these issues.

The

Rievaulx library catalogue supports the view that the Rievaulx community were well read on
the works of Augustine, since sections B and C are largely devoted to Augustine, and provide
all his necessary works. The works of Isidore appear in section G, which gives not only his
Etymologies (in two volumes) but also his De nominibus and Synonima. Works of general
relevance by both Hugh of St Victor and St Anselm are also listed, and these, with the works
of St Bernard, also provide a context for William’s slightly old-fashioned theological views.

The response to Geoffrey’s crimes

contra fidem historicae veritatis is the point at which

William’s Prologue becomes especially interesting. He sets up an outline of the reigns of Vor-
tigern, Hengist, Aethelfrith, Edwin, Oswald and Ethelbert (derived from Bede); he then shows
that Geoffrey describes the successive careers of Vortigern, Aurelius Ambrosius, Utherpen-
dragon, Merlin and Arthur on the ‘British’ side. Thus, as William points out, since Geoffrey
makes Arthur fourth in succession from Vortigern, the contemporary of Hengist, and Bede
says that Ethelbert was fourth in succession from Hengist, then Arthur and Ethelbert should
have been contemporaries. This would mean, as William says, that Arthur’s reign and Ethel-
bert’s reception of St Augustine should have been happening at the same time. This argument
goes beyond mere ‘common sense’; William is thus proving that the ‘dark age’ of post-Roman
Britain, poorly recorded as it is, cannot be made to fit chronologically with Geoffrey’s exciting
reconstruction.

William’s next step is to list Arthur’s victories over the English, the Picts and the Scots as

well as his conquests of Ireland, the Orkneys, Sweden, Norway and Denmark (

Dacia) and even

Ultima Thule, all achieved before his triumphant surpassing of Julius Caesar’s victories in

Gaul. All this William dismisses simply with sarcastic, if well-educated, reference to Roman
history and poetry. More serious is Geoffrey’s perversion of Church history. For Geoffrey states
that Arthur had three British archbishops, of London, Caerleon and York, and that Dubricius of
Caerleon was primate of Britain, a legate, and the predecessor of St David. Modern historians,
including Christopher Brooke and Jeff Rider, have pointed out that Geoffrey’s work appears to
be related to material also creatively used in the

Liber Landauensis of c.1135e50 and in Welsh

Partner,

Serious entertainments, 67.

For these commentaries see Kelley M. Wickham-Crowley,

Writing the future; Layamon’s prophetic history (Cardiff

2002), 111, and J. Ziolkowski, ‘The nature of prophecy in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s

Vita Merlini’, in: Poetry and proph-

ecy, ed. J.L. Kugel (Ithaca, 1990), 151e76.

See

Libraries of the Cistercians, Gilbertines and Premonstratensians, ed. Bell, 87e140.

On the use of this technique by Symeon of Durham see

Symeon of Durham, ‘Libellus de exordio atque procurso

istius, hoc est Dunhelmensis, ecclesie, ed. and trans D. Rollason (Oxford, 2000), especially xlivel. For comment see
the review of this edition by P. McGurk in

Reviews in History (2001), Institute of Historical Research,

http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/paper/mcgurkP.html>

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Saints’

Lives.

William, however, takes the material as Geoffrey’s own, and takes it very

seriously. His counter-argument demonstrates knowledge of the history of the Church in
England, Ireland and Scandinavia.

From ecclesiastical history we move to world history, and to what might be called historical

geography. The first point is that the giant whom Geoffrey says was killed by Arthur must be
fictitious, since William is confident that no historian has told of giants since biblical times.
Equally, Geoffrey’s Arthur boasts of having conquered no fewer than

30 kingdoms before

launching his attack on the Romans and their allies, ‘the kings of Greece, Africa, Spain, the
Parthians, the Medes, the Ituraeans, Libya, Egypt, Babylonia, Bithynia, Phrygia, Syria, Boeotia
and Crete.’ William, however, can confidently assert that this is an impossible number of king-
doms for the known historical world. Knowledge of ancient historians enables him to state that
none of them mentions so great a king, and that this is surely very odd indeed. Finally, we come
back to Bede. For if Geoffrey’s statement that Arthur’s successors ruled Britain

ad septimam

fere generationem were true then the ‘English’ conquerors whose reigns were recounted by
Bede would have been their subordinates. Thus it is impossible for both Geoffrey and Bede
to be telling the truth; and the impugning of the reputation of Bede is the most unforgivable
thing of all.

William’s arsenal, then, contains a wide range of erudition. The references to books of the

Bible are hardly surprising. Equally, knowledge of the arguments of St Augustine and of Isidore
of Seville on demons suggests access to a library like that of Rievaulx, and is not surprising in
a theological writer.

But there is also a broad grasp of ancient history, with confidence on the

careers of Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, as well as careful comment on the number of
years each took to make their conquests, and knowledge of the kingdoms of the ancient and
post-Roman world. Some knowledge of Roman poetry, and of poems to emperors, is suggested.
Detailed textual study of Bede and Gildas is mentioned. William is also knowledgeable on
ecclesiastical history, to the extent of being confident as to which earlier medieval peoples
had a church governed by bishops. He is equally clear as to the absence of archbishops in northern
Europe before the coming of St Augustine to Canterbury. This suggests access to episcopal
lists at least for ‘British’ and Anglo-Saxon regions, as well as the knowledge of Scandinavia
shown elsewhere in his History. Finally, there is William’s technique of listing kings and
counting generations in order to achieve a comparative chronology. Overall, what emerges
is that William is able to make use of a compressed, but very detailed, range of historical
materials, which link biblical history, Roman history, and the history of Britain and the
Roman invasions, to ecclesiastical history and information on the hierarchies and relations
of angels, demons and humans. This is clearly very different from the detailed political
narratives, illustrative documents and eyewitness accounts which William uses in the

Historia

itself, and which have been thoroughly examined by John Gillingham.

C.N.L. Brooke, ‘Geoffrey of Monmouth as a historian’, in: C.N.L. Brooke

The church and the Welsh border in the

central middle ages (Woodbridge, 1986), 95e106; and J. Rider, ‘Arthur and the saints’, in: King Arthur through the
ages, ed. V. Lagorio and M. Leake Day (New York and London, 1990), 3e21.

Augustine was one of the fundamental authors for monastic libraries; Isidore of Seville’s

Etymologiae was some-

what rarer, but a copy was available at Durham from the early twelfth century, and this may have been the exemplar
for the Rievaulx version of this text (now lost) which was divided between two composite volumes (see

Libraries of the

Cistercians, Gilbertines and Premonstratensians, ed. Bell, 101).

See Gillingham, ‘The historian as judge’, 1275e87.

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We thus come to the question of what information on world history might have been made

available to William; which brings the analysis onto the third category of evidence outlined in
the introduction to this article. For the northern Cistercian houses, together with Durham, had,
throughout the twelfth century, produced and circulated collections of historical, theological
and geographical material which provide very interesting comparisons for William’s demolition
of Arthurian history. These manuscripts have generated a large secondary literature, since there
are complex problems as to their provenance, their inter-relationships, and the sources of the
various rare texts which they contain.

However for the purposes of this article the issue is dif-

ferent; what is relevant is that William of Newburgh could easily have had access to them.
S.R.T.O. d’Ardenne, who published the first account of one of the earliest members of the
group, now Lie`ge, Bibliothe`que Universitaire, MS 369C, concluded that it constituted a ‘serious
background . to the study of English history from the remotest times up to the reign of Henry
I’.

Equally Christopher Norton, in the course of his detailed analysis of an even more complex

volume, now divided between Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 66 and Cambridge,
University Library, MS Ff 1 27, observed that it served, in part, to provide ‘a geographical
and chronological framework for human history’ as a context for the tract known as

De primo

adventu Saxonum, and its lists of English historical figures.

David Dumville has seen these

collections as constituting ‘a sort of super

Historia Britonum’ being compiled, in Latin, in

twelfth-century Wales, before reaching northern England.

The proposal of this article is

that they are still more complex than this suggests and that they show striking parallels with
the range of material used by William. The key manuscripts are now: DCL, MS B II 35; Corpus
Christi College, Cambridge, MS 139; Cambridge, University Library, MS Ff 1 27; Corpus
Christi College, Cambridge, MS 66; Lie`ge, Bibliothe`que Universitaire, MS 369C; and BL,
MS Cotton Caligula A VIII. Of these, the first seems always to have belonged to Durham,
but it is closely inter-related to the others, which in turn are related in rather complex ways
to Cistercian houses, and to Augustinian Hexham, as well as back to Durham. It is worth noting
that it seems likely that Whitby was also involved in the circulation of these collections. The
evidence for this comes from an entry in the booklist entered in the Whitby cartulary. Entry
42 reads:

Item Imago mundi et Gilda in uno volumine.

The oldest of the group, DCL, B II 35, was described in some detail by Mynors, whose anal-

ysis established that its copy of Bede’s

Historia ecclesiastica was probably that given to Dur-

ham by Bishop William of St Calais in the late eleventh century, and that it was the source of
several copies in other northern houses; it is now on f. 38ve119.

More recently, Norton has

published a new analysis of the later additions.

Folios 119e129 contain a Life of Bede and his

Historia abbatum, with script and initials suggesting that they were added early in the twelfth
century, as was the

Historia Britonum of Nennius. But most interesting is the activity datable to

See note 6 above.

D’Ardenne, ‘A neglected manuscript of British history’, in:

English and medieval studies presented to J.R.R. Tolkien,

ed. N. Davis and C.L.Wrenn (London 1962), 84e93, at 90.

C. Norton, ‘History, wisdom and illumination’, in:

Symeon of Durham, historian of Durham and the North, ed. D.

Rollason (Stamford, 1998), 61e105, at 92.

D. Dumville, ‘The historical value of the

Historia Brittonum’, 1e26, at 7. See also D. Dumville, ‘Celtic-Latin texts

in northern England, c1150ec1250’,

Celtica, 12 (1977), 19e49.

See

English Benedictine libraries, ed. Sharpe et al., 638.

R.A.B. Mynors,

Durham Cathedral manuscripts to the end of the twelfth century (Durham 1939), 41e2.

Norton, ‘History, wisdom and illumination’, n.52.

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1166, when careful corrections of this text were entered, from a version to be discussed below,
with a chronological note dating this activity. At the same time (to judge from the script and the
style of the illuminations) Nennius’

Eulogium Britanniae was entered onto f. 129v, a Life of

Gildas, accompanied by Genealogies of the kings of Britain, Israel and Judah, was added
onto f. 136ve139v, and the genealogies of the kings of the early Anglo-Saxon kingdoms
(constituting the text known as the

De primo Saxonum adventu) and annotated lists of English

bishops up to c.1164, onto f. 140e149v. This section ends with a brief account of the election
of Hugh du Puiset as bishop of Durham in 1153. Finally, towards the end of the twelfth century,
two blank leaves before the

Historia ecclesiastica were used for the very rare treatise on the

hierarchy of the Church by Gilbert, bishop of Limerick 1106e39. In what is a large but orig-
inally very plain volume, it is striking that not only is the Gilbert of Limerick text accompanied
by an impressive explanatory diagram, but that another diagram is given on f. 140, between the
lists of British and Hebrew kings and the

De primo Saxonum adventu. This presents the gener-

ations from Adam to Woden in its central column. The use of an early exemplar for this
material is suggested by the fact that, in transcribing the name Godwulf (sixth line from
bottom) the scribe not only preserves the round form of ‘d’ but also copies the Old English
character for ‘w’. To either side are tables of peoples and their descent, with biblical groups
to the left and those of the ancient world (set out under the names of the relevant sons of
Noah) on the right. S(h)em is shown in red on the left side, but with the note, in black,

Saxonice

Sceaf (thus inserting the northern European peoples into Biblical history). At the bottom,
flanking the bust of Woden, and set out in separate boxes, are lists of kings of various
Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, in descent from Woden. The user of the table is thus provided with
material for calculating and comparing generations and kings not only across the known
historical world but especially for the generations which saw the creation of Anglo-Saxon
England. The relationship to William’s Prologue becomes still closer if it is remembered that
the texts thus emphasised by diagrams, and by being added onto Bede’s History, are very rare.
Indeed Gilbert of Limerick’s work, which emphasises the small number of archbishops as well
as their rank in the hierarchy of the Church, survives only in this group of manuscripts.

That these manuscripts represent an historical project of some complexity, as well as great

moral seriousness, becomes obvious if the revised contents of B II 35 are compared with those
of Lie`ge 369C and Cotton Calig. A VIII, both probably of the first half of the twelfth century.
Possibly the earliest of the group is the Lie`ge manuscript, which belonged to the Cistercian
house of Kirkstall by the thirteenth century, but is datable only by style. Its origin is problema-
tised by Meehan, who dates it earlier than the foundation of Kirkstall, thus suggesting that it
was not made there (a suggestion supported by its un-Cistercian appearance and illumina-
tion).

Norton has suggested that this manuscript, like B II 35, originated at Durham; but

this cannot be proved. Like the rest of the group, it is a complex assemblage of sections,
and its original quiring has been disturbed by the insertion of what are now f. 75e129. Never-
theless, all the sections are in contemporary hands, and stylistically related both to one another
and to the other members of the group. The contents are: Eutropius, here given as

liber qui

hystoria romanorum appellatur; a list of Roman emperors, with notes of their regnal years;
the

Historia Britonum; an unfinished version of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Prophecies of Merlin;

a history of the ‘Roman emperors’ down to 1110; a list of popes, also down to 1110; the

primo adventu Saxonum (with a Woden illumination and genealogical tables on f. 88v); the

Meehan, ‘Durham manuscripts’, 441.

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genealogy of King Alfred, with the generations of his successors down to Harold; Durham
chronicle material; and a version of William of Jumie`ge’s

De Ducum Normannorum gestis.

The latter focuses on material relating to England, whilst the text of Eutropius has been marked
up for England, with annotations such as

Britannia subicitur romano imperio on f. 24v, and

Adventus Anglorum on f. 59. The attentive reader would clearly notice the absence of any men-
tion of Arthur and his sequence of victories. The Woden material on f. 88v is related to that in B
II 35 but is focused only on the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, with the generations of their kings ar-
ranged around the central figure of Woden. A similarity of approach to William’s prologue is
again demonstrated by this page. Below the miniature and the tables is an annotation, intro-
duced by an initial P no less than five lines high. The text states that the lists inform the reader
as to the earliest ‘English’ kings (

Anglici generi), and where and when they ruled, in years of

the Incarnation,

post illorum adventu in Britanniam. The provision of this information, together

with Roman history and with a version of the

Prophecies of Merlin (to which William refers) is

striking. Moreover the Woden page is completed by a summary of Bede’s information on the
migration and settlement of the Saxons, Angles and Jutes, opening with the statement that

Anno

ab incarnatione domini ccccxlix Anglorum sive Saxonum gens invitata . Britanniam advehitur.
This is closely related to the opening of Book 1, chapter 15, of Bede’s

Ecclesiastical history;

although Bede merely says that Marcian became emperor in 449, and that it was in his reign
that the Angles or Saxons were invited to Britain.

Cotton Caligula A VIII offers still another version of the

De primo adventu Saxonum, with

a Woden genealogy page on f. 29 related to that in the Lie`ge/Kirkstall manuscript. Like most of
these collections it also shows detailed interest in the list of bishops of Durham, and it includes
le Puiset (1153e95) without mentioning his death. Its membership of this group is confirmed
by the collection of English regal genealogies which accompany its Woden page. Finally, the
range of conservative but highly distinctive motifs used in its decorated initials demonstrates its
northern-English origin. Norton has pointed out that detailed corrections and textual additions
entered into this manuscript by a later reviser are already wholly integrated into the 1166
additions into B II 35; they are also integral to the latest member of the group, the ‘Sawley’
manuscript which he reconstructs from the two Cambridge volumes.

Both in its text and

its Woden page then, the Cotton manuscript (like the Lie`ge/Kirkstall one) appears to represent
an early stage in the collection and checking of this complex material. However, it remained
available to those involved in the project, and was apparently carefully updated in the 1160s,
keeping it in line with B II 35. Just how detailed this editorial process was, is demonstrated
if the Lie`ge/Kirkstall date of 449 for the coming of the Saxons to Britain is recalled. The equiv-
alent statement in the 1166 version of the calculations in B II 35 reads:

Angli Saxones regnante

marciano secundo venerunt ad britanniam anno videl. post passionem Christi cccc.xl.septimo.
The authority for this rather striking revision is not given; but the fact that

septimo is written out

in full suggests an emphasis on the date. It is most likely the result of an editorial decision to
prefer the calculation given by Bede himself in Book 1, chapter 23, of his

Historia ecclesiastica.

Bede here relates the coming of the Saxons to the reign of the Emperor Maurice, giving a re-
sulting date of 446e47. It should be noted that Gildas gives no date for the coming of the
Saxons, merely stating (in Cap. 26 of the

De Excidio) that the Battle of Mons Badonicus

For this text, and the place of this manuscript in its dissemination, see

The ‘Gesta Normannorum Ducum’ of William

of Jumieges, Orderic Vitalis and Robert of Torigni, ed. and trans. E.M.C. van Houts, 2 vols (Oxford 1992e95).

Norton, ‘History, wisdom and illumination’, 82.

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took place 44 years later and in the same year as his own birth (which he does not date). The
Historia Britonum gives a very different set of dating calculations, which make confused use of
an extended list of consuls, based upon that given in the

Cursus Paschalis of Victorius of Aqui-

taine.

The results are both contradictory and puzzling, but suggest a date of 428e29. This was

clearly rejected by the Northumbrian historians, who cited Bede’s datings alone.

Equally suggestive of intensive historical research in northern England in the mid twelfth

century is CCCC 139.

This has been suggested by James to originate at Hexham, given

the Hexham bias of its contents, but Hunter Blair found an erased Sawley

ex libris in a style

roughly contemporary with the volume itself.

Moreover this also is a composite manuscript,

and Baker has argued that it was originally a collection of four separate

libelli.

In its present

form it starts by compiling a

historia omnimoda and following this with the Chronicle of Re-

gino of Pru¨m (an older copy of which is still at Durham) ending at 1002. The unique surviving
copy of the historical work of Richard of Hexham follows, and then come extracts from a world
chronicle (mostly relating to northern England), followed by historical material from Durham,
and the

Historia regum attributed to Symeon of Durham (of which also this is the only copy).

John of Hexham’s work comes next, before more Durham texts and Ailred of Rievaulx’s ac-
counts of the Battle of the Standard and of the affair of the nun of Watton. We then move to
material from St Mary’s York and Fountains, amongst other interests. On f. 168 a new section
of the manuscript starts with the

Eulogium Britanniae and Historia Britonum of Nennius, in

a version closely related to the Lie`ge/Kirkstall copy. It has here been copiously annotated
and amended, and this updated version of the text was the one used in 1166 to correct B II
35. It also provided the basis for that in Ff 1 27.

The availability of all this material may

help to explain William of Newburgh’s comments on the characteristics of various peoples,
(including the Britons) since we are also given information

De malis et perversis naturis gen-

tium and De bonis naturis gentium. The last major text is the Life of Gildas (also related to the
version in B II 35). James notes that this Hexham/Sawley manuscript seems to be closely re-
lated to another recorded as being at Westminster in the sixteenth century.

It is worth noting

that one Master Laurence, a scholar from Durham, (not to be confused with Prior Laurence)
became abbot of Westminster in the second half of the twelfth century, and that respect for
the historical and hagiographical expertise of Ailred of Rievaulx was sufficiently strong in
1162e63 to ask him to compose the

Life of Edward the Confessor (founder of Westminster).

Last in the sequence, but by no means least, is the manuscript now divided between CCCC

66 and Ff 1 27. Norton has shown that it was created as a planned unity across nine component
sections, each of which contains a complex selection of texts.

It involved the collaboration of

See M. Miller, ‘Consular years in the

Historia Brittonum’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 29, 1 (1980),

17e34.

For full description see M.R. James,

A descriptive catalogue of the manuscripts in the library of Corpus Christi Col-

lege, Cambridge, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1912), 317e23.

H. Blair, ‘Some observations on the ‘‘Historia regum’’ attributed to Symeon of Durham’, in:

Celt and Saxon, ed.

N.K Chadwick (Cambridge, 1963), at 74e6.

D. Baker, ‘Scissors and paste: Corpus Christi Cambridge MS 139 again’, in:

The materials, sources and methods of

ecclesiastical history, ed. D. Baker (Studies in Church History 11, Oxford, 1975, 84e139.

For fuller discussion of the textual relationships and their implications see Meehan, ‘Durham manuscripts’.

James,

Descriptive catalogue, 323.

This Master Laurence had also been a pupil of Hugh of St Victor. See G.E. Croydon, ‘Abbot Laurence of Westmin-

ster and Hugh of St Victor’,

Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2 (1950), 169e71.

Norton, ‘History, wisdom and illumination’, 62e72.

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at least three artists and rather more scribes, and is built upon the textual collecting and editing
represented by the previous manuscripts discussed here whilst being considerably more luxu-
rious than them in its illumination. It thus appears to represent a final stage in the evolution
of surviving copies of this material. Its textual relationships with the other members of the
group are extremely complex since it is not only related to almost all of them but also adds
new revisions to existing material. It also brings in a wide range of new texts and excerpts.
Whilst its splendour gives it the appearance of a presentation volume, it is clear that it repre-
sents something more than a luxury copy of an already-completed compilation. Indeed, Norton
argues that its assemblage goes well beyond

bricolage, to create a whole which is both sophis-

ticated and creative.

The volume opens with a

Mappa mundi illumination on f. 1v, as frontispiece to both the

Imago mundi of Honorius Augustodunensis and extracts from geographical texts. Then comes
a Wheel of Fortune miniature on f. 34v, facing an Adam to Woden diagram on f. 35, which is
followed by the

De primo Saxonum adventu (with its Woden-genealogy page on f. 36). Next is

the work of Gilbert of Limerick, as in B II 35, with a fully-painted version of its diagram on f.
51v. This is followed by more king-lists, and then by a group of works such as Clement of Llan-
thony’s allegorical treatise on the wings of the cherubim, accompanied by an image of a cherub
on f. 59v. The very rare text, which William of Newburgh apparently knew, of Book One of
Gildas’

De Excidio Britanniae comes next, with the Historia Britonum of Nennius. Then

come extracts from Bede’s

De temporum ratione, focusing on chronological material and

analysis of the Ages of the World, and accompanied by texts on kings, bishops and visions.
Next is a ‘Durham’ section, focused on the

Libellus de exordio of Symeon. Finally, on f. 158e

165, comes Richard of Hexham’s work on the history of that house. Following Norton’s demon-
stration that this is a planned whole, a

terminus post quem of 1188 is provided by the explicit to the

De primo adventu Saxonum on f. 50v (which also repeats the revised date of 447 for this event).

The origin and purpose of this encyclopaedic work has been much debated. Despite Dum-

ville’s views, it is effectively impossible that the struggling Cistercian house of Sawley could
have produced such a volume in c.1188, even though it had come to own it by c.1200. More-
over, given the deliberate simplicity of Cistercian manuscripts from the north of England in the
twelfth century, it is almost impossible that it could be the product of any such Cistercian
house.

That it is a Northumbrian manuscript is demonstrated partly by the similarity of its

figurative illuminations to those in late-twelfth-century manuscripts at Durham (including
some given by le Puiset) on which Norton has also commented.

Even clearer evidence is

provided by its initials, which are in at least three hands, and which use a distinctively North-
umbrian repertoire of stylised foliage patterns, especially the motif called by Mynors the split-
petal.

These initials are conservative for the late twelfth century, and several suggest strongly

that the scribe-artists were drawing upon models found in their textual exemplars. For instance,
Book One of Gildas opens with an impressive gold and silver B on f. 68, containing large

Norton, ‘History, wisdom and illumination’, 73.

See A. Lawrence-Mathers, ‘English Cistercian manuscripts of the twelfth century’, in:

Cistercian art and architec-

ture in the British Isles, ed. C. Norton and D. Park (Cambridge 1986), 284e98, and eadem, Manuscripts in Northumbria,
194e216.

Norton, ‘History, wisdom and illumination’, 87.

Mynors,

Durham Cathedral manuscripts, 6e8. For further discussion see A. Lawrence-Mathers, ‘Cistercian deco-

ration: twelfth-century legislation on illumination, and its interpretation in England’,

Reading Medieval Studies, 21

(1995), 31e52.

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‘cabbage-leaf’ motifs of a type fashionable in the mid-century, and which can be seen in the
presentation copy of the works of Laurence of Durham already mentioned. Even more old-
fashioned is the B for the

Historia Britonum, on f. 77. This has tripartite foliage motifs, inter-

lace terminals and a strikingly old-fashioned lion-mask clasp, looking back to Anglo-Norman
motifs. It is thus comparable to the equally old-fashioned work in the almost-contemporary,
Rievaulx Chrysologus (now BL, MS Royal 8 D XXII). The latter has been explained as the
result of the use of an Anglo-Norman, Durham exemplar for the production of the ‘Rievaulx’
copy; that Durham initial styles lie behind the initials in the ‘Sawley’ manuscript seems equally
likely.

Throughout f. 87e165 are initials which use the repertoire shared by Durham, Foun-

tains, Rievaulx (and probably York). That is, they combine split-petals and split-wedges with
clusters of short-stemmed berries, and they divide up the stems of letters by the use of scallop-
ing and cable-patterns left in plain vellum. They also use the shared, restricted palette, as seen
already in Stowe 62; but here with the use of bistre shading, something which, amongst these
manuscripts, is largely restricted to the products of Durham and Fountains.

This analysis has, firstly, emphasised once again how close were the connections between

Durham, the Cistercians and the Yorkshire Augustinians, in both their book-production and
their scholarship. It has secondly shown that the volumes here analysed, and their wide dis-
tribution amongst the Northumbrian houses, strongly suggest a shared concern for the estab-
lishment and dissemination of the ‘truth’ about the history of the English. Individual houses
brought in their own selections of additional material, apparently including the historical
works of their own members. But the theme on which the greatest textual detective-work
was expended is that of the history of the ‘English’. The arrival of the Angles and Saxons
in Britain, and their defeat of the British, are repeatedly placed in the context of, and even
at the centre of, an encyclopaedic reconstruction of world history and geography. Strikingly
illuminated tables emphasise the kingdoms which they created, and the generations of their
rulers, as listed by William of Newburgh; and they are even given their place in the descent
from Noah and his sons. Just how advanced some of this scholarship was, is demonstrated
by the fact that the

Mappa mundi illumination on f. 1v of the ‘Sawley’ volume is related to

the considerably later Hereford World Map.

Equally, the presence of Book One of Gildas’

work in the ‘Sawley’ volume bears out William of Newburgh’s belief that he had access to
that work as used by Bede; whilst the same volume could also support his assertions in
relation to ancient kingdoms, rulers and their conquests, and recorded giants (and their lo-
cations). Knowledge of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s

Prophecies of Merlin is demonstrated in

the Lie`ge/Kirkstall manuscript, where that work is juxtaposed with this ‘English’ view of
history. Even William’s arguments as to Geoffrey’s erroneous account of the presence, num-
ber and location of archbishops in Britain and northern Europe before the arrival of Augus-
tine could be helped, not only by the shared lists of episcopal and archiepiscopal sees and
their rulers, but also by the work of Gilbert of Limerick on the structure and hierarchy of
the Church, included in two of these collections and emphasised by large, illuminated
diagrams.

For the Chrysologus comparison see A. Lawrence-Mathers, ‘The artistic influence of Durham manuscripts’, in:

Rollason et al,

Anglo-Norman Durham, ed. Rollason, Harvey and Prestwich, 451e69 and plates 87 and 88.

See note 49.

See D.A. Harvey, ‘The Sawley map and other world maps in twelfth-century England’,

Imago Mundi, 49 (1997),

33e42.

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However, whilst these manuscripts support the arguments of William of Newburgh and the

view of ‘English’ history set out in his Prologue, it is clear, not least from the dates of the Lie`ge/
Kirkstall volume and of the revisions to B II 35, that the careful research and calculations which
they represent began considerably before William undertook to write his

Historia for the abbot

of Rievaulx in the 1190s. This raises the issue of how such an ambitious historical project was
first undertaken. Norton, whilst strongly emphasising the sophistication of the ‘Sawley’ book,
stressed its embodiment of a monastic outlook and suggested that it may have been produced by
the Durham community as a weapon in their struggle against Bishop William of le Puiset.

Clearly, a project as wide-ranging as the one outlined here could be used in a number of con-
texts; and a struggle within a particular house could very well be one of them. However such
a struggle, even at Durham, cannot account for all the research and editing work summarised
here. The status of Durham as a centre for historical scholarship in the twelfth century is in no
doubt; its allegiance to Bede and his reputation is demonstrated by the prominence of his works
in its library catalogue, and was based upon its possession of his relics as well as his authorship
of the

Life of Durham’s great saint, St Cuthbert. Durham, and the work of its well-known his-

torian, Symeon of Durham, thus represents the most likely basis for the genesis of the North-
umbrian construction of English history argued for here. Nevertheless, this cannot entirely
account for the widespread acceptance of this view of history amongst the Northumbrian
Cistercian and Augustinian houses, and this problem requires some consideration.

The career of Ailred of Rievaulx perhaps shows further reasons for the regional popularity of

this material. Ailred wrote a number of historical, as well as hagiographical works, which
touched in numerous ways upon the political situation of England and its rulers in the mid
twelfth century. One of these was the

Relatio de standardo, part of which appears in one of

these volumes, and here Ailred has Walter Espec, founder of both Rievaulx and Kirkham,
and defender of northern England against the Scots, talk about how he likes to occupy himself
with histories or listen to ‘the deeds of our ancestors’ (the Normans).

In this same work Ailred

carefully distinguishes, not only between the English and the Normans but also between the
lowland Scots, the highlanders and the Galwegians. This prefigures some of the concerns
with different peoples and their characteristics shown both by William of Newburgh and by
some of the texts collected in the volumes described above. Ailred wrote his

Life of Edward

the Confessor, which emphasises the union of the English and the Normans, in the 1160s,
when further work was apparently undertaken on these volumes. He also made a related point,
in an openly political way, in the

Genealogia regum Anglorum, addressed to Henry II, and

reminding him of his heritage from his maternal grandmother, Edith-Matilda (daughter of
William of Newburgh’s ‘most-Christian’ king Malcolm and of St Margaret).

This suggests

that the influence of Ailred and Rievaulx upon William of Newburgh was strong. Moreover,
Gransden has suggested that Ailred was the first to attack the historical truth of Geoffrey of
Monmouth’s work; and also that there may be some link between this and William of Newburgh’s
Prologue.

Her reference was to Ailred’s

Speculum caritatis, written c.1142e43, which

involves a dialogue between Ailred and a Cistercian novice. The novice is made to talk about

Norton, ‘History, wisdom and illumination’, 87.

See D. Baker, ‘Ailred of Rievaulx and Walter Espec’,

The Haskins Society Journal, 1 (1989), 91e8.

Baker, ‘Ailred of Rievaulx and Walter Espec’. See also J. Bliese, ‘The battle rhetoric of Aelred of Rievaulx’,

99e106 in the same volume where Aelred’s depiction of his namesake, King Alfred is further discussed.

Gransden,

Historical writing, 213.

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A. Lawrence-Mathers / Journal of Medieval History 33 (2007) 339e357

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having been moved to tears by tales about Arthur, even though Ailred denies personal knowl-
edge or acceptance of this figure. However, whilst Ailred calls the stories about Arthur
‘fables and lies’, he gives no details at all about them.

Gransden suggests that the reference

is to the

Historia regum Britanniae itself, pointing out that Walter Espec, founder of Rievaulx

and friend of Ailred, is known to have had a copy of the book.

Ailred’s attack is all the more interesting given his membership of a family who were, in

a sense, hereditary custodians of the Northumbrian past. They were descendants of Ailred’s
namesake, Alfred

larwa, a figure of significance in several ways. He was keeper of the relics

of St Cuthbert for the Community of St Cuthbert, the discoverer of the relics of Bede (and
the one who brought them to St Cuthbert’s shrine). Moreover, Ailred’s family inherited their
position as holders of the Durham rights in Hexham, with its church and relics, from him (rights
which they held until 1138).

This background helps to explain Ailred’s rejection of Geoffrey’s

historical revelations. It also raises the issue of how soon knowledge of the

Historia regum Bri-

tanniae reached Northumbria, and how this relates to the long-lasting historical project outlined
above. Ailred had only just started work on the

Speculum caritatis when he was made abbot of

Revesby, in Lincolnshire, where he stayed until 1147. Interest in the ‘new’ history was already
strong in Lincolnshire, where members of the aristocracy had been sufficiently motivated to
employ a professional writer to make a version of it available in the vernacular (French).
The writer in question was none other than Gaimar, whose collection of source material was
aided by his patrons, the FitzGilberts. Gaimar’s testimony is important, since it confirms
both the speed and the nature of the rewriting of history occasioned by Geoffrey’s work. It
also bears witness to a striking coincidence, since one of the sources obtained was none other
than Walter Espec’s book (this being the source of our knowledge of his ownership). The in-
formation is given in Gaimar’s Epilogue, which has problems of both edition and translation.
Nevertheless, Ian Short has established a revised text and translation, and it is these which will
be used here.

Gaimar was at work c.1135e40, and named as his principal patron Constance, wife of Ralph

or Raoul FitzGilbert (lines 6431 and 6450). It was Constance who acquired for Gaimar’s use the
book from Walter Espec. Gaimar’s first statement about this is that Constance

enveiad a Helme-

slac/pur la livere Walter Espac; but he subsequently explains that Robert of Gloucester had had
this work translated from Welsh books (

solum les liveres as Waleis/k’il avaient des Bretons

reis). Count Robert had sent this book to Espec at the latter’s request (lines 6441e52). It
will be noted that this book is given neither author nor title; but there is little doubt that it
was a version of the

Historia regum Britanniae. Robert of Gloucester, as lord of Glamorgan,

had been drawn into Bishop Urban of Llandaf’s fight over its status and history. This enterpris-
ing prelate, who died in 1134, had assembled a dossier of ‘historical’ and hagiographical
material allegedly going back to the second century, and focusing upon the career of St Dyfrig
as archbishop in the fifth century. This material, collected in the ‘Book of Llandaf’, helps to
explain Robert of Gloucester’s interest in the ‘new’ history.

Thus, Ailred could have encoun-

tered educated patrons in both Yorkshire and Lincolnshire who were excited by these

Patrologia Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1844e64) vol. 195, col.565.

Gransden,

Historical writing, 213.

For discussion of this see Lawrence-Mathers,

Manuscripts in Northumbria, 237e9.

I. Short, ‘Gaimar’s Epilogue and Geoffrey of Monmouth’s

liber vetustissimus’, Speculum, 69 (1994), 323e43.

For discussion see J.R. Davies, ‘The Book of Llandaf: a twelfth-century perspective’,

Anglo-Norman studies, 21

(1998), 31e46.

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A. Lawrence-Mathers / Journal of Medieval History 33 (2007) 339e357

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revelations. Given that Gaimar worked on his version of this exciting revelation for about 14
months, and that he probably finished before the end of 1139, what emerges is a period during
which news of the revelations, and perhaps partial versions of them, were travelling fast.
Further evidence of this is provided by the fact that Alfred, treasurer of Beverley, apparently
encountered the

Historia regum Britanniae in the 1140s (perhaps Espec’s copy was back in

Yorkshire by this time; it is tempting to speculate as to what happened to it when Espec retired
into Rievaulx). Indeed, Alfred suggests that not to know it was to be accused of

rusticitas. If

Norton’s recent re-dating of Alfred’s work is correct, then Alfred was writing his History, which
follows Geoffrey closely, c.1149.

This, assuming that it became known to students of history

in the monastic houses of Northumbria, can only have deepened concern amongst those who
agreed with Ailred (by now abbot of Rievaulx). The history of the region itself during the
ongoing civil war can only have sharpened awareness of the rival claims of the Normans,
the English and the Scots; and Ailred raises these issues in several of his own works. However,
Ailred himself can scarcely be pictured as having sufficient time to direct the historical
researches outlined in this article.

At this point, Powicke’s reconstruction of the shadowy figure of Maurice of Rievaulx be-

comes relevant.

Maurice was educated at Durham, where he became sub-prior by 1138,

and was suggestively called ‘second Bede’ by his fellow-monks. He moved to Rievaulx, where
his skills were further demonstrated as cantor (suggesting computistical expertise); and where
he achieved the distinction of becoming its second abbot in 1145. His reputation was such that
when Henry Murdac (himself interested in scholarship) was made archbishop of York, he chose
Maurice as his successor as abbot of Fountains. However, Maurice stayed at Fountains for only
a few months before resigning and returning to Rievaulx. He outlived Ailred of Rievaulx, but
was clearly no longer at Rievaulx when he wrote to Ailred’s pupil and biographer, Walter Dan-
iel, probably in the late 1160s. This puts the ‘second Bede’ at Durham up to the late 1130s, and
thus at the time when the first additions and corrections were being made in B II 35. Further-
more it gives Maurice the opportunity as scholar, cantor and abbot, to develop his work in two
Cistercian houses up to c.1165. It also makes it possible that he was back at Durham by c.1166,
when the historical project was continued there. It seems unlikely that Maurice was still alive
by 1188, the date in the ‘Sawley’ volume; but that this was some sort of culmination to a project
initiated by him seems possible. A link is suggested by the fact that its final text is that of
Richard of Hexham, the continuator of John of Hexham, our informant on Maurice and his
career.

Thus, whilst the careers of Ailred and Maurice as abbots of Rievaulx cannot be directly

linked to any of the individual volumes discussed in this article, the correlation between their
recorded interests and writings and the textual contents of the volumes is clear. In other words,
it seems almost certain that Rievaulx will have played a part in the creation of the historical
project which underlies these surviving volumes, and which links Durham to Hexham, Sawley,
Kirkstall, Fountains, Whitby and York. At the very least, a picture emerges which fleshes out
William of Newburgh’s suggestion that both Abbot Ernald and several members of his Rievaulx
community were learned in the field of history and had encouraged his own researches. The
direct links of two abbots of Rievaulx to Durham can only have strengthened the intellectual

See C. Norton,

St William of York (Woodbridge, 2006), 127e8, and n.9.

F.M. Powicke, ‘Maurice of Rievaulx’,

English Historical Review, 36, 141 (1921), 17e29.

Powicke, ‘Maurice of Rievaulx’, 17 and n.1.

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and spiritual contacts suggested also by Ailred’s encouragement of the Durham hagiographer,
Reginald of Durham. That it should be in Bede’s own ‘province’ of Northumbria (as it was
called by William of Newburgh) that Bede’s status as the pre-eminent historian of the English
as a

gens was thus strongly defended is hardly surprising.

What remains is to look briefly at

the overall nature of the complex historical project discussed in this article.

Examination of Stowe 62 has strongly suggested that this ‘fair copy’ of William of Newbur-

gh’s historical work was probably completed just as the author died (in 1197 or 1198) and that
the manuscript itself actually conforms fully to Cistercian concepts of book production as they
were applied in twelfth-century Northumbria. William’s dedicatory letter, entered first into the
manuscript, establishes a link between the contents of the volume and historical study at Rie-
vaulx. In the case of William’s main

Historia, with its focus on ‘modern’ political history, it

would be extremely surprising to learn that any Rievaulx monk envisaged writing such
a work. However, it has been shown here that William’s comprehensive and compact summary
of evidence relating to the falsity of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s account of King Arthur is
strongly related to the contents of the Northumbrian historical compendia discussed here. In-
deed, their inclusion of a genuine text of ‘Gildas’ at a time when this was extremely rare is
particularly striking, given William’s knowledge of this work. What remains intriguing is
William’s bold declaration of English identity, both for himself and for his

Historia, when

he uses the opening words of his Prologue to raise the concept of the history of ‘

our people,

that is, the English’. This article has argued that Ailred of Rievaulx showed comparable sensi-
tivity to issues of ethnic identity, and was keen to inform the readers of his own historical works
as to the prowess of ‘English’ kings such as Alfred, as well as the English ancestry of Henry II.
A link between the career of Maurice of Rievaulx and the historical project suggested here can-
not be proved; but the very name ‘second Bede’ is highly suggestive. Loyalty to Bede, and to
the truth of his historical account of the English, has been shown to constitute a thread holding
together the complex works discussed here; and this can hardly be surprising in a ‘province’
which he himself had put on the historical map, which held his relics and where it was possible
to visit what was believed to have been the very cell in which he composed his works.

Northumbrian attempt at a scientific buttressing of Bede’s construction of English history, plac-
ing it within an encyclopaedic approach to chronology and to the kingdoms and wonders of the
world, is convincing as a twelfth-century project. The up-to-date approach suggested by the
remnants of this work is, moreover, interestingly related to that formulated by Hugh of St
Victor, who had taught

magister Laurence (of Durham). Hugh wrote a ‘training manual’ for

historians, the

De tribus maximis circumstantiis gestorum, which included not only a diagram

(of the Creation) but also chronological tables, lists of ancient historians and advice on the lay-
out of historical material. No Northumbrian copy of this work survives, but copies are recorded
from Kelso and from Cistercian Newminster (and the brevity of the work meant that it tended to
be included in collections of historical material, and thus might well not appear in a library-
list).

Moreover, none other than the well-educated Bishop Hugh of Durham seems to have

been interested in this ‘new’ approach to history. The surviving list of the books which he

For discussion of William’s terminology in relation to Northumbria see Lawrence-Mathers,

Manuscripts in North-

umbria, 3e6.

For at least one apparent ‘pilgrimage’ to Bede’s cell by a medieval Northumbrian historian, see Symeon of Durham,

Libellus de exordio atque procursu istius hoc est Dunhelmensis ecclesie, ed and trans. Rollason, I, 14, 68e71.

On this work and its popularity in England see J. Harrison, ‘The English reception of Hugh of Saint-Victor’s

Chron-

icle’, British Library Journal (2002), 1e33, online at <

http://www.bl.uk/eblj/2002articles/article1.html>

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left to his cathedral priory at Durham in 1195 includes not only a

Mappa mundi but also an

Abbreviatio scolasticae historiae as well as a complete Scolasticam historiam (sic).

This

work is almost certainly the

Historia scholastica of Peter Comestor, composed apparently

whilst the author was responsible for the school of Theology at Paris (it is addressed to
students) and thus probably in the 1160s. It built upon Hugh of St Victor’s approach, and con-
structed a ‘scientific’ version of Biblical history, incorporating cosmological, philosophical and
geographical data in a manner reminiscent of the Northumbrian project for ‘English’ history.

Thus, the Prologue to William of Newburgh’s

Historia, and its scientific approach to the demo-

lition of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s ‘British’ history, appears not, after all, as the breakthrough of
an isolated individual. It is rather the most explicitly confrontational expression of a ‘Northum-
brian’ project for the proper calculation of ‘English’ history which was the result of shared
endeavours across much of the twelfth century, and which appears to have been brought to
an end by the deaths, in the 1190s, of both William of Newburgh and Bishop Hugh of Durham.

Anne Lawrence-Mathers

is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History in the Department of History, University of Reading,

and Director of the Reading Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies. Her publications include

Manuscripts in Northum-

bria in the eleventh and twelfth centuries (2003) and a series of articles on the manuscripts and libraries of the Cister-
cians and Augustinians in England, including ‘Cistercian twelfth-century legislation on illumination and its
interpretation in England’,

Reading Medieval Studies, 21 (1995). Her current research project is a study of the comput-

istical elements of liturgical calendars from Benedictine houses in England.

Catalogi Veteres Librorum Ecclesie Cathedralis Dunelm, ed. Botfield, at 118e19.

For the text, see

Patrologia Latina, ed. Migne, vol. 198, cols.1053e844.

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William of Newburgh and the Northumbrian construction of English history

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