Australian

Celtic
Journal

VOLUME 12
2014

edited by
Anders Ahlqvist, Neil McLeod & Pamela O’Neill

Published by the Celtic Council of Australia

in association with the Program of Celtic Studies,
The University of Sydney
ISSN 1030-2611
© 2014 The Celtic Council of Australia and the authors. This
work is copyright. Apart from fair dealing for private study,
research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright
Act, no part may be reproduced without written permission.
 Section A
ACADEMIC CONTRIBUTIONS
All papers published in Section A have been peer-reviewed.
 Francis Palgrave and the Celtic and Anglo-
Saxon Racial Distribution in Britain:
Nineteenth-Century Thought and (recent)
DNA Evidence and its Significance
MICHAEL STUCKEY
University of New England

W HAT are the assumptions which have been made about

legal and constitutional systems in Britain based upon the
racial composition of the nation(s)? How has race been seen to
have organised legal and constitutional forms and thought?
Up until comparatively recent times our ideas about racial
distribution in Britain have been unequivocally controlled by the
evidence available, namely the linguistic division between Celtic
and Anglo-Saxon / Germanic languages. The starting position,
with which we are all too familiar, can be very simply put: in
those areas where English is the historically prevailing language
the racial make-up of the populace is of Germanic derivation;
and in those areas where Celtic languages prevailed, at least until
some considerable time into the second millennium AD, and
thereafter continuing to exist as diminishing but still viable
tongues (that is, in Scotland and Wales, but possibly also
Cornwall, at least to some degree), the essential racial composi-
tion is Celtic. Because of the absence of any other widespread
evidence-base this reasoning was for many years completely
plausible and in fact difficult to dispute. The languages, literally,
spoke for themselves as racial markers.1

1
As suggested by our first map, Hammond’s Racial Map of Europe, New
York 1919: C. S. Hammond and Co. See, for examples of this conventional
equivalence more generally: E. A. Freeman 31912 (11881) The Historical
Geography of Europe I, London & New York: Longmans, Green, & Co;
Freeman 1877 Race and Language Contemporary Review 29, 711–714 and
also Freeman 1879 Historical Essays, London, Macmillan; A. H. Sayce
1876 Language and Race, The Journal of the Anthropological Institute 5,
212–220 and C. Lévi-Strauss 2001 Race et histoire, race et culture, Paris:
Albin Michel & Editions UNESCO.

ACJ 12, 115–125

116 STUCKEY
PALGRAVE 117

RACE AND BRITISH CONSTITUTIONAL THOUGHT IN THE

NINETEENTH CENTURY

During the nineteenth century, with the emergence of

constitutional theory and legal history, certain ideas about legal
and constitutional systems in Britain based upon the racial
composition of the nation(s) were developed and deployed.
Again, put simply: the existence of an ancient Germanic
constitution, carried by Anglo-Saxon invaders and planted on
British soil, was held to have ensured the development of a free
and independent nation which, over time, became the ideal-type
of modern democratic governance. This ideal-type was to be
contrasted, on the one hand from the authoritarian centralisation
of Roman-derived continentalism, and on the other hand from
undirected and uncivilised Celticism of the wild and wet fringes. 2
Although this thinking was developed largely in the latter part
of the nineteenth century, we need look no further back than the
early nineteenth century to identify a more fluid position. In
1831, Palgrave published a History of England: the Anglo-Saxon
Period (the first volume of a History of England) in ‘The Family
Library’. It was an unsophisticated work, in intellectual terms,
written in a vivacious and popular style, and addressed to a wide
audience possibly including (as Palgrave indicated in the
Preface) children.3 Immediately following this explanation about
audience, Palgrave set out a very unambiguous historiographical
statement about the influence of Rome:

2
The work of Freeman (already mentioned immediately above), leading to
that of Stubbs and Maitland, and so many others (see below notes 14–23),
can all be counted here, although for present purposes another excellent
exemplar is H. S. Maine 1861 Ancient Law: Its Convention with the Early
History of Society and its Relation to Modern Ideas, London: John Murray;
Maine 1875 Effects of Observation of India on Modern European Thought:
The Rede lecture, delivered before the University of Cambridge, 22 May
1875, London: John Murray; and Maine 1883 Dissertation on Early Law
and Customs, New York: John Murray.
3
1831 History of England I the Anglo-Saxon Period, London: John Murray
vii–-viii. He also indicated, at the same point, more academic erudition
would be offered in the forthcoming scholarly work The Rise and Progress
of the English Commonwealth.
118 STUCKEY

I may, perhaps, be allowed to add my opinion, that there is no

possible mode of exhibiting the states of Western Christendom in
their true aspect, unless we consider them arising out of the
dominion of the Caesars.

Yet Palgrave immediately tempered this comment by referring to

‘the distinct and separate political existence of the different
Anglo-Saxon states’ and ‘the federative spirit of our ancient
constitution’.4 Palgrave saw this Roman influence as coming
from Romanised Celts in Britain, and we can see from this
standpoint, plainly, that Palgrave’s ‘Romanism’ was not
unalloyed, but receptive to indigenous modification.
In the following year, 1832, Palgrave published The Rise and
Progress of the English Commonwealth, covering the same
period. As promised, the work is lengthy and detailed and it can
be considered to be Palgrave’s first major historical oeuvre per
se. In two bulky volumes, extending over more than 1100 pages,
its full title—The Rise and Progress of the English
Commonwealth. Anglo-Saxon Period; containing the Anglo-
Saxon Policy, and the Institutions arising out of Laws and
Usages which prevailed before the Conquest—thoroughly
described the compass of the work. Quite early on, in the first
volume, Palgrave went to some length to describe a theory of the
English race, specifically the relative Romano-Celtic and Anglo-
Saxon population ratios, which he saw as a critical factor in his
history of laws and institutions. His hypothesis was that the
overwhelming majority of the English were racially Romano-
Celtic and that the Anglo-Saxon invasion was not a volk-
invasion, but rather it was an elite conquest (in much the same
sense as was the latter, and conventionally understood, Norman
Conquest).5
Although such a theory was controversial, and indeed thought
to be erroneous both in 18326 and at least up until around the start

4
Op. cit. ix.
5
1832 The Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth. Anglo-Saxon
Period; containing the Anglo-Saxon Policy, and the Institutions arising out
of Laws and Usages which prevailed before the Conquest I, London: John
Murray 20 ff.
6
See the Edinburgh Review, 55 (Jan.–July 1832), 305–337: 306–307 and
310–312.
PALGRAVE 119

of the twenty-first century, it now appears that modern DNA

evidence might, possibly, support this theory. Whether genetics
can evidence indicators of Germanic invasions, particularly in
England, is a matter of scientific debate. In a widely cited, but not
unanimously accepted, article published in 2002, Weale et al.
held that the Y chromosome DNA data gathered in their
investigation showed signs of a racial distribution in Anglo-
Saxon England which was best explained by a substantial
migration of Germanic peoples into England but not to North
Wales.7 Oppenheimer contested this conclusion: in his 2006 book
The Origins of the British, Oppenheimer argued that neither
Anglo-Saxons nor Celts had much impact on the genetics of the
inhabitants of the British Isles, and that instead British genetic
ancestry essentially traces back to the Paleolithic Iberian people,
now represented best by the Basques. He also argued that the
Scandinavian genetic input has been underestimated.8
Oppenheimer’s work has, in turn, been criticized by Campbell as
being too ‘historical, anthropological, archeological, linguistic’,
and insufficiently ‘genetic’, to be considered scientifically
reliable.9 All the same, it now appears that it is indisputable that
there are clear signs of Germanic genetic content in parts of
Britain (as shown in other studies such as Capelli et al.) which
would appear to have confined the ‘Celtic gene’ represented by
Haplogroup R1b to the westward and northern parts of Britain
(and Ireland), and that this ‘Celtic’ gene is also more present in
those English-speaking areas than in most parts of mainland
Europe, as the following map generally indicates:10

7
M. E. Weale, D. A. Weiss, R. F. Jager, N. Bradman & M. G. Thomas 2002
Y Chromosome Evidence for Anglo-Saxon Mass Migration, Molecular
Biology and Evolution 19 7, 1008–1021.
8
S. Oppenheimer 2006 The Origins of the British: a Genetic Detective
Story, London: Constable and Robinson.
9
K. D. Campbell 2007 Geographic Patterns of R1b in the British Isles—
Deconstructing Oppenheimer, Journal of Genetic Genealogy 3 2, 63–71.
10
C. Capelli, N. Redhead, J. K. Abernethy, F. Gratrix, J. F. Wilson, T.
Moen, T. Hervig, M. Richards, M. P. H. Stumpf, P. A. Underhill, P.
Bradshaw, A. Shaha, M. G. Thomas, N. Bradman & D. B. Goldstein 2003 A
Y Chromosome Census of the British Isles, Current Biology 13 11, 979–
984; map: <http://www.eupedia.com/europe/Haplogroup_R1b_Y-DNA.
shtml> [31 August 2014].
120 STUCKEY

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF RACE-THEORY AND DNA EVIDENCE

Palgrave’s developed theory of laws, institutions and government

sprang from his theory of race, and it can be expressed (at the
risk of simplification) thus: the kingdoms formed by the
successor nations, including England, out of the Roman Empire,
were connected with it not only by the adoption of many
institutions, but by a conscious and acknowledged derivation of
authority.11 Correspondingly, however, Palgrave emphasized that
monarchical authority based on these imperial rules underscored
the development of the barbaric kingdoms; and he claimed that in
England it was those very legal institutions, of the Germanic
communities, which prevented imperial traditions and customs
from leading to absolutism.

11
1832 The Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth. Anglo-Saxon
Period; containing the Anglo-Saxon Policy, and the Institutions arising out
of Laws and Usages which prevailed before the Conquest I–II, London: John
Murray; some examples at I 371, 490–492 and 552.
PALGRAVE 121

Underlying this critical relationship was, for Palgrave, a racial

grundnorm which situated a romanised Celtic Britain as the
factual foundation of meaning and import. In the introductory
sections of The History of Normandy and of England we can
identify this reality, as expressed by Palgrave:
The Romans had been gradually approximating to the Barbarians
[…] Long had this political commixture of races existed […] They
educated Goth and Celt and Teuton for the Imperial throne […] The
fair-haired Germans of the Rhine traced their ancestry to the banks
of the Scamauder and the fugitives of Troy. Our Cymric tribes, as is
familiarly known, asserted like origin […] history is not
distinguishable from genealogies […] and in Britain the same
principles spread over from the Gauls. Our Anglo-Saxons hastened
into the communion of the Empire […]12

Palgrave’s concentration on the centrality of the imperial

concept, strengthened by this racial grundnorm, is set out
nowhere in clearer terms than in his ensuing introduction to The
History of Normandy and of England, where he summarises his
thesis of (Roman) continuity across the space of six pages:
Strange that Historians should have encouraged each other in the
error that the Empire, extinguished, as they say, in Augustulus, was
now restored. Restored ! never had it been suspended, either in
principle, maxims, or feelings. The shattered, pillaged, dilapidated
Empire was still one state, one community […] the Imperial
principles of government, the doctrines, sentiments, jurisprudence
and policy of Rome, became still more intimately kneaded into the
Teutonism of the Western Commonwealth […] Roman legislation,
leaving undisturbed in the provinces all ancient customs of
occupation and cultivation of land, readily entered into combination
with Teutonic usages […] We read the history of Anglo-Norman
England in Cisalpine Gaul […] The jurisprudence of Rome had
been respected, and partially adopted by the Barbarians, even before
they established themselves within the Empire. In many provinces
the authority of the Roman law was never intermitted. As time
advanced, the civil law gained even more rapidly upon the Teutonic
legal forms, legal customs, legal principles.13

12
1861 The History of Normandy and of England I 9–16.
13
Op. cit. 29–35.
122 STUCKEY

Where did this approach position Palgrave in relation to Whig

historiography at a theoretical or intellectual level? Can we say
that he prefigured the work by others over the following century?
What was his ‘position’ on ‘race’ and the Norman Conquest, for
example, as an iconic date of national significance? It is
submitted that his emphasis on the importance of the imperial
idea, as an underlying spirit which powered the growth of the
Germanic kingdoms and which in England nurtured the
beginnings of developed constitutional forms, authentically
represented a kind of history which was original.14 This premise
sets Palgrave, foreshadowing Freeman15 (and ultimately
Powicke16, and so many others), as the leading English proponent
of continuity over disruption, of organic national progress over
historical cataclysm.17 These attributes exemplify the distinctive
qualities of Palgrave’s legal history: in his broad view about the
compelling inspiration of the Roman imperial idea (before it was
pushed back by the accomplishments of the Germanist school) as
an archetype of continuity and progress.
Beginning with the work of John Mitchell Kemble (1807–26
March 1857) Palgrave’s ecumenical and nuanced approach was
gradually replaced by a more focused emphasis on Germanic
lineages and a contrapuntal effacing of the Romano-Celtic
inheritance. The accentuation of Kemble’s studies was directed
towards the Anglo-Saxon period through the influence of one the
famous brothers Grimm, Jacob, under whom he studied at
Göttingen in 1831. His comprehensive knowledge of the
Teutonic languages and his critical proficiencies were shown in
his translation of the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf (1833–1837).
For our purposes, however, Kemble’s Codex diplomaticus aevi

14
See B. Melman 1991 Claiming the Nation’s Past: The Invention of an
Anglo-Saxon Tradition, Journal of Contemporary History 26 3/4, 575–595:
578–584.
15
E. A. Freeman 21872 The Continuity of English History, Historical
Essays, London: Macmillan 40. This essay was first published in 1860.
16
Sir M. Powicke 1931 Medieval England 1066–1485, London: Oxford
University Press 15, 23. See also J. O. Prestwich 1963 Anglo-Norman
Feudalism and the Problem of Continuity, Past and Present 26, 39–57: 41–
43.
17
W. C. Hollister 1961 The Norman Conquest and the Genesis of English
Feudalism, The American Historical Review 66 3, 641–663: 642f.
PALGRAVE 123

Saxonici (London 1839–1848), and his History of the Saxons in

England (1849; new ed. 1876),18 set out a new direction, one
which was squarely oriented towards a Germanic pedigree in
British history, culture and historiography.

As detailed by Dewey:
The building-blocks of Kemble’s Saxon society were the village
communities; the basic units in a hierarchic political federation.
Existing families threw out fresh households within the community;
existing villages threw out fresh villages within the waste; and the
process was repeated until the family became a tribe, and the tribe a
kingdom.

Dewey acknowledges, however, that this representation was

idealised rather than empirical and that, for example, Kemble’s
handling of the village economy was vague.19 Nevertheless
Kemble established a pattern which was assumed and amplified
by others over the course of the latter part of the nineteenth
century. As we have already noticed, its chief proponent, and it is
not too extravagant to say even ‘polemicist’ was one A. E.
Freeman (2 August 1823–16 March 1892) the famous English
historian, and Liberal politician. He held the position of Regius
Professor of Modern History at Oxford. He published 239
distinct works, perhaps the best known being History of the
Norman Conquest (published 1867–1876). Freeman’s racial
essentialism was, by contrast, much more developed, specific and
all-embracing. As ‘an ardent Teutonist’ Freeman can be seen as
having cultivated his antipathy toward the non-Aryan, and even
towards non-Germanic Aryans such as the Celts; and we can
agree with Parker in his overall assessment of Freeman that:

18
Kemble regarded the peoples subdued by the Germanic tribes as
‘degenerate races’: J. M. Kemble 21876 The Saxons in England, London:
Bernard Quaritch I 232.
19
C. Dewey 1972 Images of the Village Community: A Study in Anglo-
Saxon Ideology, Modern Asian Studies 6 3, 291–328: 301–302. Dewey cites
J. M. Kemble, 1849 The Saxons in England, London: Longmans I v–vi and
39–40; Dewey also cites, interestingly, F. Palgrave 1876 History of the
Anglo-Saxons, London: Tegg, although Dewey does not cite a specific page
reference to Palgrave at this point or indeed expand upon the noted
connection.
124 STUCKEY

His academic and political honours symbolized the extent of his

Aryan world, which stretched from ‘New England’ […] to Russia
and the Balkans. Every major piece of history he wrote was in-
formed by, or influential upon, his developing theory of race.20

In the second half of the nineteenth century, and extending into

the first few years of the twentieth, two other remarkable dons
dominated the scholarship of English medieval and constitutional
history. As Campbell explains, William Stubbs and his younger
contemporary Frederic William Maitland were, respectively, the
establisher of medieval history as a subject for study in British
universities, and the extraordinary historian of English law. Both
professors owed much to German historiography, and their
commitment was part of an Anglo-German intellectual affiliation
in the study and appreciation of history. Although this relation-
ship was wrecked by the First World War, and the theory (insofar
as it related to and depended upon the Teutonic origins of
representative government) was debunked by Beard 193221; the
legacy and tradition of Anglo-Germanism were upheld by
disciples such as Tanner, Powell, Tait, Tout, Powicke and
Trevelyan. It remained strong enough to organise much of the
intellectual paradigm of constitutional history and associated
historico-legal discourse throughout the twentieth century.22
These theories and their legacies were based upon assumptions
about race, assumptions which were drawn very largely from
linguistic evidence.23 We now have more ‘scientific’ information

20
C. J. W. Parker 1981 The Failure of Liberal Racialism: The Racial Ideas
of E. A. Freeman, The Historical Journal 24/4, 825–846: 825–826. See also
M. Lake 2004 The White Man under Siege: New Histories of Race in the
Nineteenth Century and the Advent of White Australia, History Workshop
Journal 58, 41–62: 47.
21
C. A. Beard 1932 The Teutonic Origins of Representative Government,
The American Political Science Review 26 1, 28–44.
22
J. Campbell 2000 Stubbs, Maitland, and Constitutional History, British
and German Historiography, 1750–1950: Traditions, Perceptions and
Transfers, edited by B. Stuchtey and P. Wende, Oxford University Press
99–122; see also B. Bentley 2005 Modernizing England’s Past: English
Historiography in the Age of Modernism, 1870-1970, Cambridge University
Press.
23
On Maitland, in particular, see his 1897 Domesday Book and Beyond:
Three Essays in the Early History of England, Cambridge University Press
PALGRAVE 125

about race—drawn from genetic evidence based on widespread

DNA sampling. Does the new evidence cause us to think about
these questions of history and legal forms differently?
Specifically, and given that it appears to be now recognised that
the inappropriate equation of biological ‘race’ with the cultural
attribute of ‘language’ can be eschewed; could (and should) it
now be argued that the emerging paradigm is an equally
inappropriate equation of the biological attribute ‘DNA’ with the
cultural attribute ‘legal and social institutions’?

365 and his The Survival of Archaic Communities reprinted 1911 in The
Collected Papers of Frederic William Maitland edited by H. A. L. Fisher,
Cambridge University Press II 313–365; on Stubbs, see his 1883 The
Constitutional History of England, Oxford Clarendon Press i and 2–3;
similarly: P. Vinogradoff 1893 Folkland, The English Historical Review 8,
1–17, and his 1905 The Growth of the Manor, London: Macmillan 25–27;
also W. B. Dawkins 1882 The Ancient Ethnology of Wales, Y Cymmrodor
5, 209–223 and more prosaically, for example, W. B. Dawkins 1889 The
Place of the Welsh in the History of Britain, London: Simpkin, Marshall &
Co 6.