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THE HISTORY OF ALFRED OF BEVERLEY
 Boydell Medieval Texts

Boydell Medieval Texts is a series of parallel text volumes (Latin/English) presenting

major medieval works, which aims to meet both the requirement of scholarly
editions to the highest standard and the need for readily available translations at
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of the works.
The series volumes will be issued initially in hardback, followed by
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after publication, a paperback version of the translation only will be produced,
with appropriately revised introduction and footnotes.
The editors of the series are Rodney Thomson and Michael Bennett, both
Emeritus Professors of Medieval History at the University of Tasmania.

Previously Published

William of Malmesbury: Miracles of the Blessed Virgin Mary

edited and translated by R. M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom
For and Against Abelard: The invective of Bernard of Clairvaux and Berengar
of Poitiers edited and translated by R. M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom
 THE HISTORY OF
ALFRED OF BEVERLEY

Edited by J. P. T. Slevin
Translated by L. Lockyer

THE BOYDELL PRESS

 © J. P. T. Slevin and L. Lockyer 2023

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First published 2023

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 Contents

vi List of Illustrations
vii Preface
ix Acknowledgements
xi List of Abbreviations

INTRODUCTION
xix Alfred of Beverley – Man, Milieu & Memory
xxviii Date and Circumstances of the History
xxxii Sources
xxxii i. Introduction
xxxii ii. Henry of Huntingdon
xxxv iii. Geoffrey of Monmouth
xliii iv. The Worcester Chronicle
xlvii v. The Durham Historia Regum
liii The Afterlife of Alfred
lx Manuscripts
lxx Historical Place, Purpose & Value
lxxv Editions
lxxv i. Previous Edition
lxxvi ii. This Edition

1 TEXT AND TRANSLATION

165 Appendices
172 General Index

v
 Illustrations

Plates
1. Corpus Christi College Oxford, MS 157 f. 50. Reproduced by kind
permission of the Masters and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford xliv
2. William Caxton, Descripcion of Britayne (1480), Chapter 4 (‘Marvels
and Wonders’). Reproduced by kind permission of The British Library lix
3. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson B 200 f. 1.
Reproduced by kind permission of the Bodleian Library, Oxford lxi
4. Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS Peniarth 384 f. 122.
Reproduced by kind permission of the National Library of Wales lxv
5. London, British Library, MS Cotton Cleopatra A I f. 20 v.
Reproduced by kind permission of The British Library lxvii

Figures
1. Charters xx
2. Sectional Plan of the Historia Regum (HR) Attributed to Symeon of
Durhamxlix
3. List of Surviving Manuscripts lxii
4. The Relationship of the Manuscripts lxx

Map
1. Centres of Historical Writing in Yorkshire and Surrounds, 1100–1200 xvii

The editor and publisher are grateful to all the institutions and persons listed
for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold copyright. Every
effort has been made to trace the copyright holders; apologies are offered for any
omission, and the publisher will be pleased to add any necessary acknowledgement
in subsequent editions.

vi
 Preface

The History of Alfred of Beverley narrates the history of Britain from its supposed
foundation by the Trojan Brutus down to the death of Henry I in 1135. The History
of Alfred of Beverley is the more appropriate name for the Latin text which has
become known, from its previous edition in 1716, as Alfred’s Annals. The text, for
its greater part, is not written in annalistic form but is comprised of self-contained
chapters which each address a distinct narrative theme. Within the chapters, dating
is predominantly supplied by regnal year.
Compiled over the years c.1148–c.1151, and at a time of crisis and schism in
the church of York, the work was sparked by the appearance in c.1136 of Geoffrey
of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, and by the astonished reaction
in literate circles of the time to that work. What appears to have been Alfred’s
original intention, to make excerpts of those parts of the work which did not
‘exceed the bounds of credibility’, developed into a more ambitious attempt to
integrate Geoffrey’s History into an existing understanding of Britain’s early
history, based largely on the accounts of classical authorities such as Orosius,
Eutropius and Suetonius, and on Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica. The historian
Henry of Huntingdon, a decade earlier, had written an epitome of Geoffrey’s
History, the Epistola ad Warinum, including it in copies of his Historia Anglorum
(HA) which circulated from the early 1140s, but he inserted it only as a stand-
alone piece. Henry made no attempt to revise the early sections of the HA in the
light of Geoffrey’s newly revealed history – an indication, perhaps, of misgivings
about its veracity. Alfred is the first Insular chronicler attempting to do so, and his
abridgement and general handling of the text therefore provides valuable insight
into the very earliest reception to Geoffrey’s History.
To assimilate the History of the Kings of Britain within existing historical
understanding required its content to be significantly adapted. Alfred therefore
reworks its two-thousand-year continuous narrative, dividing it into five distinct
historical periods, designated the quinque status, and these occupy the first
five chapters of the book. Alfred’s periodization of Britain’s early history, from
its foundation to the end of the dominion of the British kings, was later to be

vii
 Preface

taken over by Ranulf Higden in his influential fourteenth-century universal

history, Polychronicon, and from there it passed to William Caxton and Tudor
historiography.
Chapters six to nine of Alfred’s History narrate the foundation of the
heptarchic English kingdoms, the emergence of West Saxon hegemony and
the creation of the kingdom of England, the Danish wars and the coming of the
Normans. Alfred compiles his account from three main sources: from Lincoln, the
HA of Henry of Huntingdon (a source of particular influence in the compilation);
from Worcester, the Accounts and Genealogies of the Saxon dynasties contained in
the preliminary section of the Chronicle of John of Worcester; and, from Durham,
the Historia Regum attributed to Symeon of Durham. Although well over 90
percent of the content derives from these sources, by the skilful selection, weaving
and arranging of his material, Alfred composes his own distinct historical account,
creating new narrative from old.

viii
 Acknowledgements

This edition began its life at the photocopying machine at the Institute of
Historical Research in 2003 when emeritus Professor John Gillingham, then
teaching a module on a Medieval History Master’s course at Birkbeck College,
U.O.L. (Historical Writing in Twelfth-Century England), suggested to the editor
that he might ‘take a look at Alfred of Beverley’ as a dissertation subject. I am
thankful I had the good sense to take the professor’s advice. The ‘look’ at Alfred
later continued its journey to doctoral research, under the inspirational guidance of
Professor Julia Crick, Professor of Palaeography and Manuscript Studies at Kings
College, London. Later still, assisted by Dr Lynda Lockyer, the task of preparing,
editing and translating the present text of Alfred’s history began. Special thanks
must here be given to Professor David D’Avray, for encouraging the project and
for bringing together both fledgling editor and so able a translator as Lynda, to
progress the task.
Along the way, thanks and gratitude must be expressed to the many
scholars who have so freely given their time and advice, for without their help
and support, the edition could never have been completed. Thanks therefore
first to Julia Crick, David Rollason, Huw Pryce and Ian Short. Thanks also to
Nicholas Orme, Christopher Holdsworth, David Luscombe, Paul Brand and
Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan. Thanks also to Astrid Khoo, former research assistant
on the Exon Domesday Project, who provided expert palaeographical support.
Paul Russell of the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic Studies at
Cambridge University generously provided access to a microfilm of a manuscript
witness of Alfred’s history, BnF, MS Lat 4126, part of the Department’s Geoffrey
of Monmouth Research Project collection. The librarians and staff at the British
Library, the Bodleian Library, the National Library of Wales and the Institute of
Historical Research in London have all provided invaluable support in locating
texts and manuscripts relevant to the study.
Finally, a special thanks to both the editor of the Boydell Medieval Text
series, Professor Rodney Thomson, for providing critical editorial support, and
to Richard Barber of Boydell and Brewer, for entrusting to two independent

ix
 Acknowledgements

researchers the important task of bringing a neglected medieval chronicle to print,

and thus making it accessible to the wider scholarly community. We hope we have
done justice to the task.
J.P.T.S. & L.L.

x
 Abbreviations

AB Alfred of Beverley.
ANS Anglo-Norman Studies.
ASC The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Revised Translation, ed.
D. Whitelock with David C. Douglas and Susie L. Tucker
(London, 1961).
ASW F. E. Harmer, Anglo-Saxon Writs (Manchester, 1952).
BMBTC Richard Morris and Eric Cambridge, with an Appendix by
Ian Doyle, ‘Beverley Minster Before the Early Thirteenth
Century’ in Medieval Art and Architecture in the East
Riding of Yorkshire, ed. C. Wilson (British Archaeological
Association Conference Transactions, 9, 1989), pp. 9–32.
BMF Beverley Minster Fasti, ed. Richard T. W. McDermid, YARS,
vol. cxlix (Huddersfield, 1990).
Brett M. Brett, ‘John of Worcester and his contemporaries’, in
The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays presented
to Richard William Southern, eds R. H. C. Davis and J. M.
Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford, 1981), pp. 101–26.
CBMLC Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues.
Chron. Steph. Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I,
ed. R. Howlett, 4 vols, Rolls Series (RS) (London, 1884–89).
CJW ii, iii The Chronicle of John of Worcester, vol. ii, ed. R. R.
Darlington, P. McGurk and J. Bray (OMT, 1995), vol. iii, ed.
and trans. P. McGurk (Oxford, 1998).
CPEE Chronica Pontificum Ecclesiae Eboracensis.
CS Councils and Synods with Other Documents relating to the
English Church, vol. i (871–1204), eds D. Whitelock, M. Brett
and C. N. L. Brooke (2 parts: Oxford, 1981).

xi
 Abbreviations

CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum

(Vienna 1866–).
DC Descriptive Catalogue of Materials Relating to the History
of Great Britain and Ireland, ed. T. D. Hardy, 2 vols, RS
(London, 1862–71).
DEB Gildas, De Excidio Britonum. The Ruin of Britain and
other works, ed. and trans. Michael Winterbottom
(Chichester, 2002).
Eadmer, HN Eadmeri Historia Novorum in Anglia, ed. J. M. Rule, RS
(London, 1884).
EAW Epistola Ad Warinum Britonum, HA, vol. viii, pp. 558–83.
EEA English Episcopal Acta v. York 1070–1154, ed. Janet Burton
(British Academy, Oxford, 1988).
EYC Early Yorkshire Charters, vols i–iii, ed. W. Farrer (Edinburgh
1914–16); vols iv–xii, ed. C. T. Clay (YASRS, extra series,
1935–65).
FW MHB Florentii Wigorniensis in Monumenta Historica Britannica,
ed. H. Petrie and illustrated by J. Sharp, vol. i (London, 1848),
pp. 616–44.
FW Thorpe Florentii Wigorniensis Monachi, Chronicon ex Chronicis, ed.
B. Thorpe, Sumptibus Societatis, vol. i (London, 1848).
Gaimar Geffrei Gaimar, Estoire des Engleis, ed. I. Short
(Oxford, 2009).
GC Opera Giraldus Cambrensis Opera, eds J. S. Brewer, J. F. Dimock
and G. F. Warner, 8 vols, RS (London, 1861–91).
GC Works The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. William
Stubbs, 2 vols, RS (London, 1879–80).
GM Geoffrey of Monmouth.
GND The Gesta Normannorum Ducum of William of Jumièges,
Orderic Vitalis and Robert of Torigni, ed. E. M. C. van
Houts, 2 vols, OMT (Oxford, 1992–5).
GP William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, ed.
N. E. S. A. Hamilton, RS (London, 1870).
GRA William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, eds
R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom,
2 vols, OMT (Oxford, 1998–99).

xii
 Abbreviations

Green HI Judith A. Green, Henry I, King of England and Duke of

Normandy (Cambridge, 2009).
GS Gesta Stephani, eds K. R. Potter and R. H. C. Davis
(Oxford, 1976).
HA Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum.
The History of the English People, ed. and trans. Diana
Greenway, OMT (Oxford, 1996).
HAB Historia Aluredi Beverlacensis, The History of Alfred of
Beverley.
HB Nennius, British History and The Welsh Annals, ed. and
trans. John Morris (London, 1980).
HBC Handbook of British Chronology, eds E. B. Fryde, D. E.
Greenway, S. Porter and I. Roy (London, 1986).
HC Hugh the Chanter, History of the Church of York 1066–
1127, ed. C. Johnson, rev. M. Brett, C. N. L. Brooke and
M. Winterbottom (Oxford, 1990).
HCY Historians of the Church of York and of its Archbishops, ed.
J. Raine, 3 vols, RS (London, 1879–94).
HE Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, eds
B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969; rev. edn.
1990).
Hearne, ABA Aluredi Beverlacensis Annales, sive Historia de Gestis Regum
Britanniae Libris IX (Oxford, 1716).
HH Henry of Huntingdon.
HN The Historia Novella by William of Malmesbury, ed. K. R.
Potter, NMT (London, 1955).
HR Symeon of Durham, Historia Regum, in SD, vol. ii,
pp. 1–283.
HRB Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain,
ed. M. D. Reeve and trans. Neil Wright, Arthurian Studies
LXIX (Woodbridge, 2007).
HTC Hugh the Chanter. The History of the Church of York
1066–1127, ed. Charles Johnson, NMT (London, 1961),
rev. M. Brett, C. N. L. Brooke and M. Winterbottom, OMT
(Oxford, 1990).

xiii
 Abbreviations

HWAB John P. Slevin, ‘The Historical Writing of Alfred of Beverley’

(unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Exeter,
2013). Available in Open Research Exeter http://hdl.handle.
net/10871/14432.
HWE i, ii Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England c.550 to
c.1307, i (London, 1974); Historical Writing in England ii,
c.1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century, ii (London, 1982).
JH John of Hexham’s continuation of SD HR in Symeonis
Monachi Opera Omnia, ed. T. Arnold, 2 vols, RS (London,
1882–5), ii. pp. 283–332.
JW John of Worcester.
Kirby EEK D. P. Kirby, The Earliest English Kings (London, 1991).
Leach BCAB Memorials of Beverley Minster: The Chapter Act Book of
the Collegiate Church of S. John of Beverley AD 1286–1347,
ed. A.F. Leach, 2 vols, Surtees Society (SS) (Durham, 1898–
1903).
Memorials Memorials of St Edmund’s Abbey, ed. T. Arnold, 3 vols, RS
(London, 1890–96), i. pp. 26–92.
MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica (Scriptores Rerum
Germanicarum).
MHB Monumenta Historica Britannica, vol. i, ed. H. Petrie and
J. Sharp (London, 1848).
MLGB Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving
Books, ed. N. R. Ker, Royal Historical Society, Guides and
Handbooks no. 3 (London, 1964).
Narratio Hugh of Kirkstall, Narratio de Fundatione Fontanis
Monasterii, in Memorials of the Abbey of St Mary of
Fountains, 3 vols, i, ed. J. R. Walbran, SS, 42 (Durham, 1863).
NMT Nelson’s Medieval Texts.
Observations John P. Slevin, ‘Observations on the twelfth-century Historia
of Alfred of Beverley’, Haskins Society Journal, 27 (2015),
pp. 101–28.
ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Om. Material omitted by AB in quoting from source material in
History.
OMT Oxford Medieval Texts.

xiv
 Abbreviations

OV The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. M. M.

Chibnall, 6 vols, OMT (Oxford, 1969–80).
PHR Paulus Historia Romana, MGH, ed. H. Droysen
(Berlin, 1879).
PO Pauli Orosii Historiarum Adversum Paganos Libri VII, ed.
K. Zangemeister, CSEL, v (Vienna, 1882).
Polychron Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden Monachi Cestrensis, eds
Churchill Babington and J. R. Lumby, 9 vols, RS (London,
1865–86).
RH Roger of Howden, Chronica Rogeri de Houedene, ed.
W. Stubbs, 4 vols, RS (London, 1868–71).
R. Hexham De Gestis Regis Stephani et de Bello Standardii in Chron.
Steph., vol. iii, pp. 137–78.
RHS Royal Historical Society.
Rollason HRAD ‘Symeon of Durham’s Historia de Regibus Anglorum
et Dacorum as a Product of Twelfth-century Historical
Workshops’ in The Long Twelfth-Century View of the
Anglo-Saxon Past, eds Martin Brett and David A. Woodman
(Ashgate, 2015), pp. 95–111.
RRAN Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, 4 vols: vol. i, eds
H. W. C. Davis and R. J. Whitwell (Oxford, 1913); vol. ii,
eds C. Johnson and H. A. Cronne (Oxford, 1956); vols iii
and iv, eds H. A. Cronne, R. H. C. Davis and H. W. C. Davis
(Oxford, 1968).
RS Rolls Series.
Ruff. Charters Rufford Charters, ed. C. J. Holdsworth, Thoroton Society
Record Series, 4 vols (29, 30, 32, 34) (Nottingham, 1972–81).
Torigni The Chronicle of Robert of Torigni, in Chron. Steph., vol. iv,
pp. 3–315.
Sawyer ASC Anglo-Saxon Charters. An Annotated List and Bibliography,
ed. P. H. Sawyer, RHS (London, 1968).
SD Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia, ed. T. Arnold, 2 vols, RS
(London, 1882–85).
SS Surtees Society.
Tatlock J. S. P. Tatlock, The Legendary History of Britain. Geoffrey
of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae and its early
Vernacular Versions (Berkeley, 1950).

xv
 Abbreviations

VCH Bev The Victoria History of the Counties of England. A History

of the County of York East Riding, ed. K. J. Allison, vol. vi,
The Borough and Liberties of Beverley (Oxford, 1989).
WM William of Malmesbury.
WN HRA William of Newburgh, Historia Rerum Anglicarum in Chron.
Steph., vol. i, I–408, vol. ii, pp. 1–385.
WP Gesta The Gesta Guillelmi of William of Poitiers, eds and trans.
R. H. C. Davis and Marjorie Chibnall (Oxford, 1998).
YASRS Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series.

xvi
Map 1 Centres of Historical Writing in Yorkshire and Surrounds, 1100–1200

xvii
 Introduction

Alfred of Beverley – Man, Milieu & Memory

What little is known of Alfred the man derives from three principal sources: the
surviving charters in which he appears as a witness, internal evidence from the
History he wrote and his commemoration in later historical and hagiographical
literature.

Charters
Five charters survive in which Alfred of Beverley is named as a witness. These
confirm that he was active during the period c.1135–54 and give information about
the religious communities with which he had contact and the circle in which he
moved. In the East Riding of Yorkshire such contact included the Augustinian
priories of Bridlington, founded before 1114; Warter, founded in 1132, and the
Gilbertine priory of Watton, a double house of canons and nuns founded in c.1150
x 1153 by Eustace fitz John and his wife Agnes.1
Alfred’s attestation of William Tyson’s confirmation of a gift of land in
Averham, in the East Riding, to the Cistercian Rufford Abbey (Nottinghamshire),
founded in 1146, is of particular interest. Preserved in the fifteenth-century Rufford
cartulary, the attestation not only shows Alfred’s association with a Cistercian
abbey located over sixty miles from Beverley, but also names Ernaldo filio Alueredi
as a witness (Figure 1, charter no. 5). The name Ernaldus is not listed immediately
after Alueredo Sacrista – he is the twelfth named and Alfred is third – but there are
reasonable grounds to consider that Ernaldus was the son of Alfred the sacrist. We
learn from this charter therefore that Alfred was a family man, either married, or
(in common with many secular clerks of the period) living in concubinage. In all
these charters Alfred is named as sacrist – in later medieval sources he is described
as thesaurarius, treasurer – attesting evolution in the organisation of the church of
Beverley and in the role of its dignitaries over the period. In charter no. 2, in favour
of the burgesses of Beverley, given by Archbishop William fitz Herbert (c.1143),
1
Janet Burton, The Monastic Order in Yorkshire, 1069–1215 (Cambridge, 1999), p. 137.

xix
 Introduction
Figure 1 Charters
Where
Printed Date Details of Charter
1 EYC i. c.1135–47 Cyrograph of the
no. 104 confirmation of Thurstan
(provost) and the Beverley
Chapter, of alms to canons
of Bridlington priory, as
originally granted by Thomas
(provost) and the canons of
his time.
2 EYC i. c.1143–47 Charter of Archbishop
no. 105 William fitz Herbert of York
EEA v. to the burgesses of Beverley
no. 86 confirming the previous grant
of Archbishop Thurstan of
free burgage to Beverley, as
per York.
3 EYC ii. c.1151–53 Notification by Archbishop
no. 1108 Henry Murdac of York
EEA v. before the Beverley Chapter
no. 129 of confirmation of the gift of
Eustace fitz John to the nuns
of Watton priory.
The gift to support 13 canons
of the order of Sempringham
to minister to the nuns.
4 EYC x. c.1151 Confirmation by Archbishop
no. 67 Henry Murdac of York and
EEA v. notification to Robert (the
no. 128 dean) and the Chapter of
York of the grants made to
the church of St James and the
canons of Warter priory for
the construction of an abbey
by William de Roumare, earl
of Lincoln and family.
5 EYC xii. c.1146–54 Grant in free alms by William
no. 109 Tison to Rufford Abbey
Rufford (Cistercian) of land in ‘Arthes’
Charters in Averham, East Riding of
Yorkshire.
ii.
no. 303
xx
Principal Witnesses
William, dean of York.
Simon, Ralph, Roger, canons
of Beverley.
Aluredus Sacrista.
Total witnesses: 14.
William of Aumale, Robert de
Stuteville (III), Everard de Ros.
Thurstan (provost); Ivo abbot
of Warter; Simon and Ralph,
canons of Beverley.
Magistro Alfrido sacrista
Total witnesses: 20.
Adam, abbot of Meaux.
William (cantor) and Robert
(archdeacon) of York.
Canons of Beverley: Aelward,
Ralph, Simon, Roger, William
Morin.
Warin (clerk of the counts),
William of Warter, Hugh and
Richard Murdac and their
sons Hugh and Stephen.
Aluredus sacrista
Total witnesses: 26.
William (cantor) and Robert
(the archdeacon) of York.
Canons of Beverley: Aelward,
Ralph, Simon, Nicholas,
William, Philip.
Alueredus Sacrista.
Total witnesses: 8.
Canons of Beverley: Simon et
Roger.
Stephen Murdac.
Alueredo sacrista, Ernaldo
filio Alueredi
Total witnesses: 17
 Introduction

Alfred is described as Magister – although the school at which he earned his title
remains unknown.2
Alfred’s co-witnesses in the five charters number over eighty and are a source
of valuable information. Fifteen are senior clergy, including dignitaries and officers
of the chapters of York and Beverley and abbots and priors of East Riding religious
houses. Other witnesses represent a cross section of the landowning aristocracy of
the East Riding of Yorkshire. Amongst them is William le Gros, count of Aumale
(c.1110–1179) who had been a leading lay opponent of Archbishop Henry Murdac
in the disputed election in 1141 and again in 1147, but who later, having reconciled
with Archbishop Henry, founded the Cistercian abbey of Meaux in January
1151. William also founded the priory of Thornton (1139), the abbey of Bytham
(1147), and was co-founder of North Ormsby Priory (1148–54).3 Other notable
witnesses are Robert de Stuteville III (d.1183), a benefactor of Meaux Abbey and
probable founder of Keldholme Priory4 and Everard de Ros, nephew of Walter
Espec, Lord of Helmsley and one of William of Aumale’s principal tenants in
the strategically important lordship of Holderness in the East Riding.5 Everard’s
presence as a witness alongside Alfred (Figure 1, charter no. 2) is noteworthy
because it places Alfred within touching distance of a leading literary patron of
the period. Everard’s uncle, Walter Espec, founder of the Augustinian priory of
Kirkham (c.1121) and Fountains (1132) and lover of history, was the magnate who
lent lady Constance fitz Gilbert the copy of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s HRB which
Geoffrey Gaimar used as a source text for his Estoire des Engleis, as he himself
informs us in the Estoire.6
Among senior ecclesiastical figures in the group of co-witnesses are William
of Sainte-Barbe, dean of York and supporter of Henry Murdac in the York
archiepiscopal election of 1141 and later bishop of Durham (1143–1152), William

2
The authenticity of this charter of Archbishop William has recently been challenged. See David X.
Carpenter and Richard Sharpe, ‘Subversive Acts: The Early Charters of the Borough of Beverley’, History.
The Journal of the Historical Association, vol. 103, December 2018, pp. 715–924 at 719–36. The authors
set out evidence that the charter to the burgesses of Beverley (c.1143) granting them free burgage, as
earlier granted by Archbishop Thurstan, and long regarded as one of England’s earliest town charters,
was one of three charters forged by the burgesses of Beverley in c.1180. This was done, it is argued, in
order to obtain an authentic royal town charter from Henry II after the death of Archbishop Roger of
Pont l’Evêque in c. November 1181, and before a new archbishop was in place. The charter granted
by Henry II confirmed the liberties and free customs which Archbishops Thurstan and William had
supposedly granted the burgesses of Beverley and which Henry’s grandfather (Henry I) had confirmed,
and was issued at Arundel castle c. February 1182 and is printed in EYC, i, no. 110, pp. 103–04.
3
Paul Dalton, ‘William le Gros, count of Aumale and earl of York (c.1110–1179)’, ODNB, 59 (Oxford,
2004), pp. 122–23.
4
Hugh M. Thomas, ‘Stuteville, Robert (III) de (d. 1183), ODNB, 53 (Oxford, 2004), p. 259.
5
Paul Dalton, Conquest, Anarchy and Lordship, Yorkshire 1066–1154 (Cambridge, 1994), p. 182.
6
Gaimar, pp. 348–51, lines 6435–6483.

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 Introduction

d’ Eu the precentor (c.1140–c.1178)7 and Robert Butevilain, archdeacon and later

dean of York (1158–1186). Robert is described as magister in a charter of Henry
Murdac in favour of Kirkstall Abbey8 in which one of the co-attestors was Nicholas
de Trailly, the same York canon whom Geoffrey Gaimar had singled out, in the
epilogue of the Estoire des Engleis, as a source who could attest the veracity of his
historical account.9 Two prominent monastic leaders in the region are among the
co-attestors: Adam, first abbot of the Cistercian abbey of Meaux and formerly
monk of Fountains (1151–60) and Ivo, abbot of Warter priory, which, during its
Arrouaisian phase (c.1142–c.1197), assumed the title of abbey.10

The Church of St John of Beverley

The collegiate church of St John the Evangelist and St John of Beverley, at the time
of Alfred, served as the mother church of the East Riding of Yorkshire, providing
pastoral care for an area extending from the Humber River in the south to Folkton
in the north, and from Holderness in the East to the borders of York in the west.11
Ministering for so large an area, Beverley acted as a departmental sub cathedral
in the administration of the vast diocese of York and its archbishops held a stall
in the choir12 and a residence in the town.13 The church had been named mynstre in
a writ of Edward the Confessor (c.1060–65) to Earl Tosti and the king’s thegns
in Yorkshire confirming Archbishop Ealdred (1061–1069) as sole temporal lord
of Beverley, under the king, authorising him to draw up a privilegium for the
lands belonging to the minster.14 The writ confirmed that this privilege was to be
enjoyed by successor bishops and that minster life and assembly should always be
maintained at Beverley ‘as long as any man shall live’.
The contribution of the last three Anglo-Saxon archbishops of York –
Ælfric Puttoc (1023–1051), Cynesige (1051–1060) and Archbishop Ealdred – to
establishing Beverley’s pre-eminent position in the East Riding is well-attested.
The anonymous Chronica Pontificum Ecclesiae Eboracensis (hereafter CPEE),

7
D. Carpenter, ‘The Dignitaries of York Minster in the 1170s: A Reassessment’, Northern History, xliii
(March, 2006). On the evidence of two previously unpublished charters, it has been established that
William d’Eu survived until 1178 or later.
8
EEA, v. no. 121.
9
Gaimar, p. 350, line 6482.
10
Burton, Monastic Order, p. 96, note 118.
11
For summary surveys of the church and town of Beverley in the eleventh and twelfth centuries see
R. E. Horrox, ‘Medieval Beverley’ in VCH Bev, pp. 2–57; Leach, BCAB, i. pp. ix–cvi; BMF, pp. xv–xxx;
D. M. Palliser, ‘The Early Medieval Minster’ in Beverley Minster an Illustrated History, ed. Rosemary
Horrox (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 23–35; BMBTC, pp. 9–32.
12
Leach, BCAB, i. p. xlvii.
13
Horrox, Medieval Beverley, VCH Bev, p. 14.
14
ASW, no. 7, pp. 135–38; Sawyer, 1067, p. 318; EYC, i. 87, pp. 85–86.

xxii
 Introduction

compiled shortly after the death of Archbishop Thurstan in 1140,15 provides

considerable detail of their benefactions to the minster.16 Archbishop Ælfric
secured St John’s canonization in 1037 and translated his relics to a magnificent
new shrine.17 Cynesige added a high stone tower with two bells, continued work
on the building of a communal dormitory and refectory, and adorned the church
with books and ornaments. Archbishop Ealdred completed the building of the
minster refectory and dormitory begun by his two predecessors,18 improving and
extending them. He built a new presbytery dedicated to St John the Evangelist,
and, according to the anonymous author of the CPEE, ‘adorned it with “sculptures
and paintings of incomparable beauty”’.19 Then he purchased from King Edward
the rights for Beverley to hold an annual fair on the feast of St John the Baptist:
“feriam quoque annuam in nativitate Sancti Joahannis Baptistae cum libertatibus
et optimis consuetudinibus a rege Edwardo datis xii. marcis comparavit”.20 Ealdred
promoted both the cult of St John and Beverley’s attractiveness as a pilgrimage
centre by commissioning the professional hagiographer Folcard, a monk of
St Bertin’s at St Omer, to write a life of St John in the 1060s.21
York’s first Norman archbishop, Thomas of Bayeux (1070–1100), Hugh the
Chanter informs us, remodelled the chapter of York, turning it from one where
the canons lived in common, into a prebendal system, where each canon ‘might
cultivate his own share for his own sake’.22 Beverley, however, retained its communal
character for the greater part of the twelfth century, with a common dormitory
and refectory – known later as the Bedern – and corporate fund.23 According to
the later medieval Beverley Provosts Book (c.1415),24 Archbishop Thomas I in 1092
created a provostry in Beverley, appointing his nephew Thomas (later Archbishop
Thomas II of York) as its first provost, to administer the assets and income of the
minster and with the authority to appoint the dignities of chancellor, precentor
and sacrist. An important component of Beverley’s income was a grain render
from every parish of the East Riding, described as thraves in a writ of Henry
(c.1122 x 1127) to the sheriffs and king’s officials in Yorkshire.25 A charter of
15
BMBTC, p. 12.
16
Pars Prima of the chronicle extending to the death of Thurstan in 1140 is printed in HCY, ii. pp. 312–
87. The chronicle is mainly derived from Bede, Symeon of Durham, Hugh the Chanter and Folcard, but
for Beverley it provides original testimony. See the discussion in HCY, ii. pp. xxi–xxii.
17
HCY, ii. p. 343.
18
Ibid., ii. p. 353.
19
Ibid., ii. p. 354.
20
Ibid., ii. p. 354.
21
Ibid., i. pp. 239–60. Frank Barlow, The English Church 1000–1066 (London, 1979), pp. 89–90.
22
HC, pp. 18–19.
23
BMF, pp. xviii–xix, where the author contends that the introduction of a prebendal system at Beverley
is likely to have begun during the early years of the episcopacy of Roger of Pont l’Evêque (1154–81).
24
Leach, BCAB, ii. 332–33.
25
EYC, i. no. 97, p. 93.

xxiii
 Introduction

King Stephen to the church of Beverley (1136), confirming the privileges, gifts,
liberties and midsummer fair granted to the church of St John by King Edward
and William I, stated the thraves due were ‘four from each plough and plough-
share throughout the East Riding, and on the king’s demesne manors’.26 Stephen’s
charter also confirmed Beverley to have the right of a peace league around the
church of St John of Beverley as granted by King Æthelstan – the earliest record
linking Æthelstan to Beverley. From roughly this time, however, accounts of the
foundation of Beverley by Æthelstan, elaborated at various levels of detail, appear
in hagiographical, chronicle and literary sources.27
Charters and episcopal acta of the period c.1140–1160 preserve the names
of provosts, sacrists and canons active in Beverley at the time of Alfred. Provosts
include Thurstan (c.1142–c.1152)28 and Thomas Becket (c.1154–1162).29 Alfred
himself is the first recorded sacrist, but by c.1157 a Robert was attesting as sacrist
in his place.30 The names of seven canons from the time include Aelward, Ralph,
Simon, Nicholas, William, Philip and Roger (Figure 1). Those of the dignitaries
of precentor and chancellor and the canons’ vicars – the clerks who deputised
for the canons when they were absent from the minster – have come down to us
only from later in the twelfth century.31 That the canons were at hand to witness
episcopal charters in sizeable groups during the episcopacy of Henry Murdac in
the early 1150s suggests a largely residentiary chapter leading a local, corporate
existence.32
The surviving charters therefore provide a snapshot of the community of
clergy, lay aristocrats and local gentry among whom Alfred moved. The sources of
the books used to compile his History are also suggested. Alfred is linked to well-
established religious communities, such as Warter, Kirkham and the Augustinian
priory of Bridlington. Bridlington, some twenty miles north-east of Beverley, was
26
RRAN, iii. no. 99, p. 36; EYC, i. no. 99, pp. 93–94. For a discussion on medieval thraves and their
value see BMF, p. xvi, note 9.
27
A version of the Æthelstan foundation story is found in a collection of miracle stories appended to
the earliest extant copy of Folcard’s Life of St John from the Cistercian Abbey of Holme Cultram in
Cumbria (BL, MS Cotton Faustina B. IV) and written in a hand of c.1175 (BMBTC, p. 29, note. 52).
The collection is printed in HCY, i, pp. 261–91. Aelred of Rievaulx’s Genealogia Regum Anglorum,
a mirror for princes written for Henry, duke of Anjou, in 1153, contains a version of the foundation
account very similar to that contained in the Holme Cultram manuscript (The Genealogia is printed in
PL, CXCV, Cols 711–38 at col. 724–25). See also Aelred of Rievaulx: The Historical Works, ed. Marsha
L. Dutton and trans. Jane Patricia Freeland (Kalamazoo, Michigan, 2005), pp. 90–92. The Liberties of
Beverley text, attributed to Alfred of Beverley, contains a further version of the story (see p. xxvi, below).
28
EYC, i. no. 152.
29
Ibid., i. no. 155.
30
Ibid., xii. no. 23 and see BMF, p. 113.
31
BMF, p. 123. A magister William is the first known precentor from c.1199. The first known magister
scolarum or chancellor, is magister Angotus c.1178 (BMF, p. 118). The earliest vicars named date from
the early thirteenth century (BMF, p. 127).
32
BMF, p. xx.

xxiv
 Introduction

a centre of some literary accomplishment at the time. Its prior was Robert, ‘the
Scribe’ (c.1147–50–c.1160), author of The Bridlington Dialogue and glosses on
Exodus, the Minor Prophets and St Paul. Robert’s commentary on the Minor
Prophets was requested by Gervase, abbot of the Cistercian abbey of Louth Park
in Lincolnshire, founded in 1139 by Bishop Alexander of Lincoln. The priory
was thus in contact with other communities with scholarly interests, extending
beyond the East Riding of Yorkshire,33 and its scholarly interests are attested by
five surviving books from the period.34 A book list from Bridlington is preserved
in a late twelfth century glossed copy of the gospel of St Mark (BL MS Harley 50)
which lists some seventy-seven major titles and some forty parvi libelli contained
in the priory’s magnum armarium.35

Internal Evidence
The little Alfred reveals of himself in the History is found early. In the prologue we
are told of his interest in history and, with due modesty, that he was considered
by his peers to be an accomplished writer – suggesting his community might have
encouraged him in his historical enterprise. At the conclusion of the prefatory
descriptive survey of Britain, he comments that the removal of the Flemings by
Henry I in c.1110 to Rhos in Dyfed, Pembrokeshire, Wales, occurred ‘in our own
time’, providing a clue to a likely date of birth. As noted, a Robert attests as
sacrist in c.1157, along with the chapter of Beverley, in a charter of Watton Priory,
suggesting that Alfred had died and been replaced by that date.36 If he were alive
in 1110 and lived to old age, as described in hagiographical sources,37 it appears
likely that he was born in the closing decades of the eleventh century.

Commemoration
Two late fourteenth-century items – one from Beverley, the other from York –
indicate that Alfred’s memory as a scholar and historian was actively preserved
in both churches.

33
A. Lawrence, ‘A Northern English School? Patterns of production and collection of manuscripts in
the Augustinian Houses of Yorkshire in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries’, in Yorkshire Monasticism:
Archaeology, Art and Architecture from the Seventh to the Sixteenth Centuries, ed. L. R. Hoey, BAA
Conference Transactions, 16 (Leeds, 1995), pp. 145–53, at p. 147.
34
MLGB, p. 12.
35
The Libraries of the Augustinian Canons, ed. T. Webber and A. G. Watson, CBMLC (London, 1998),
pp. 8–10.
36
BMF, p. 113.
37
See pp. xxvii–xxviii below.

xxv
 Introduction

The Liberties of Beverley

The Beverley commemoration is found in the late fourteenth-century Beverley
Cartulary (London, BL MS Add. 61901) an expensively produced volume
commissioned by the chapter of Beverley in defence of its rights and privileges at
a time of conflict between it and Archbishop Alexander Neville (c.1332–1392). The
cartulary contains Folcard of St Bertin’s Life of St John of Beverley, collections
of his miracle stories, and royal, papal and episcopal privileges of the church of
Beverley.38 Folios 60 v–69 r contain the tract The Liberties of Beverley, setting out
the ancient liberties of Beverley as granted by King Æthelstan after his victory
over the Scots at the battle of Brunanburgh (934), giving details of the extent and
the operation of its sanctuary and ‘peace league’. Alfred’s authorship of the tract
is described in the introductory rubric as follows:

The Liberties of the church of Saint John of Beverley, with its papal and
episcopal privileges, which Master Alfred, sacrist of that church, translated
from English into Latin.

Here begin the Liberties of the church of St John of Beverley, munificently

bestowed by the kings and princes of England and observed as famous up to
the present day, by usage and the gathering of custom, which Master Alfred,
a man of venerable life and an ardent student of the scriptures and sacrist
of the aforementioned church, has committed to writing as heard from his
predecessors and seen; and so that they suffer no wrong by posterity, he wrote
them down with his own pen.

The History provides little supporting evidence that its author, and that of
the Liberties tract, were one and the same person. Indeed, several passages in the
History suggest otherwise.39 The tract, however, testifies to the preservation of
Alfred’s memory in later medieval Beverley. The Liberties occupies a central place
in the cartulary and is elaborately presented, making clear its significance to the
compilers. In a matter of importance to the chapter of Beverley, it is Alfred’s name
which is attached to the tract. He is recalled as both a scholar – able to translate
ancient privileges from English into Latin – and as a historian, the collector and
redactor of oral traditions.

38
For a detailed analysis of BL MS Add 61901 by Ian Doyle see BMBTC, pp. 20–27.
39
See below, HAB, viii. p. 117, note 3; p. 119, note 15; HAB, ix. p.137, note 12; p. 139, note 17.

xxvi
 Introduction

The York Minster Tablets

Extracts from the History form part of a medieval historical artefact from York
Minster, indicating that Alfred’s memory was also preserved in York. In the
collection of Minster Library are two tablets: large, folding wooden (oak) boxes,
each consisting of three panels (triptychs), on which are fastened parchments.
They are believed to date from the time of Archbishop Thomas Arundel (1388–
97) and were observed on display in the Minster by John Leland in 1534, who
defaced portions of text relating to papal authority in Britain.40 The Latin text
on all panel parchments is in the same hand. There is no illustrated material.
On the left-hand panel of the larger triptych are historical notices from Geoffrey
of Monmouth, Henry of Huntingdon, William of Malmesbury, Martinus in
chronicis de pontificibus and ‘Alfridus Beverlacens thesaurarius’. The central panel
of the larger triptych, titled ‘Prologus de origine et statu ecclesie Eboracensis’,
contains a 512-line verse account of the foundation of the church of York, which,
the writer says, he composed at the time of the archiepiscopate of Thomas
Arundel.41 The third, right-hand, panel of the larger triptych consists of papal
bulls, archiepiscopal grants and indulgences, privileges in favour of the church
of York, and notices of its metropolitan status over the Scottish bishops. The
panels of the smaller triptych contain biblical material, including an account of
the seven ages of man.

Hagiographical
Alfred is recalled as a participant in a miracle story from a collection of St John of
Beverley’s posthumous miracles entitled Alia Miracula, Auctore ut Plurimum Teste
Oculato and printed in James Raine’s Historians of the Church of York and its
Archbishops, appended to Folcard’s Life of St John.42 The collection commences
with an extended account of the foundation of Beverley by King Æthelstan with
a particular interest in promoting English claims to sovereignty over Scotland.43

40
For the date of the tablets see HCY, ii. p. xxviii. N. Ker and A. J. Piper, Medieval Manuscripts
in British Libraries, iv, Paisley-York (Oxford, 1992), pp. 824–26, list the tablets as Add 533 and 534.
Leland’s defacement is noted in James P. Carley, ‘Leland, John (c.1503–1552)’, ODNB, 33 (Oxford,
2004), pp. 297–301.
41
Printed in HCY, ii. pp. 446–63.
42
HCY, i. pp. 293–320. This miracle story collection was printed by Raine from Acta Sanctorum
Bollandiana, Vita Sancti Johannis, Maii, vii, vol. ii (Antwerp, 1688), pp. 166–94, itself printed from a
now-lost manuscript of Leander Pritchart, a Benedictine monk. For discussion of this lost manuscript
see HCY, i. p. lvii.
43
HCY, i. p. lv. Raine dated this collection of miracle stories to c.1170–1180 but the Æthelstan foundation
story component, with its account of Scotland paying tribute to Æthelstan, and the story of the king’s
miraculous striking through the rock of Dunbar with his sword as a God-willed sign of the legitimacy
of English sovereignty over Scotland, suggests later elaboration, possibly in the time of Edward I.

xxvii
 Introduction

The miracle story which involves Alfred is set during the anarchy of King
Stephen’s reign. The powerful Yorkshire baron (and charter co-attestor with
Alfred) Robert de Stuteville III, has imprisoned a clerk of Lincoln in his castle at
Cottingham, some three miles from Beverley, holding him for ransom. One night
St John appears and frees the clerk from his chains, leading him to the safety of
Beverley. In the morning the clerk informs the Minster clergy of this miraculous
intervention and a remaining iron ring falls from his leg in front of their eyes. The
ring is then hung up in the church near the tomb of St John as a testimony to the
saint’s miraculous powers. The clerk’s feet had been injured by the sharp reeds
of the marshy land he crossed during his escape and, in the morning, these are
tended by Alfred the sacrist, who uses his knowledge of medicine to heal them.
In the story Alfred is recalled as both wise in the laws of the church and as being
of advanced age:

Sacrista eiusdem ecclesiae tunc temporis fuit Alveredus, bonae memoriae,

senex, ecclesiastica institutione sagax.

The sacrist in those days was Alfred of happy memory, an old man and wise
in the laws of the church.

While Alfred’s involvement in the story of the imprisoned clerk of Cottingham

castle is preserved in the version printed by James Raine, he is not involved in
the account given in the collection of St John’s miracles preserved in the Beverley
Cartulary.44

Date and Circumstances of the History

The History is commonly assigned to the year 1143, but information provided in
the prologue, describing the circumstances giving rise to the work, and internal
evidence from the text, indicate that the compilation started life no earlier than
c.1148, and possibly, but not certainly, was completed by early 1151.45 The year
1143 was first assigned to the work by Thomas Duffus Hardy in his influential

44
London, BL MS Add 61901 f. 20 r–f. 21 r. For a translation of Folcard’s Life of St John and his miracle
story collections see Susan E. Wilson, The Life and After-Life of St John of Beverley. The Evolution of
the Cult of an Anglo-Saxon Saint (Ashgate, 2006), pp. 143–218.
45
An extended investigation into the date and circumstances of Alfred’s history is set out in HWAB,
pp. 59–86 and also in ‘Observations’, pp. 107–12.

xxviii
 Introduction

Descriptive Catalogue in 186546 and his mistaken argument for so doing has
remained largely unchallenged to the present day.47
Alfred tells us in the opening lines of the prologue that time to write his
History arose because of a suspension of the celebration of the Divine Office
in Beverley due to the large number of excommunications mandated ‘under the
decree of the council of London’. He tells us also that the ‘pillars of our church
were driven from their sees by royal edict’48 and that the king had imposed an
afflictive tax on Beverley. While it is almost certain that the London council and
decree to which Alfred referred was the Legatine church council of Westminster
in Lent 1143,49 the other events he describes took place several years later. There
is no historical record in the year 1143 of disturbance in the chapters of York
and Beverley, or of interdicts, multiple excommunications, suspension of the
celebration of Divine Office, or the exiling of senior church leaders from their
sees. Indeed, in 1143, the then archbishop of York, William fitz Herbert, cousin
and supporter of Stephen, was enjoying a relatively tranquil period in his troubled
first archiepiscopate. The afflictive tax imposed by the king referred to by Alfred
is described by the chronicler John of Hexham as taking place in 1150. John tells
us that King Stephen visited Beverley and imposed a fine on the town for having
sheltered William’s successor as archbishop of York, Henry Murdac without his
permission:

At the instigation of the citizens of York, King Stephen went to Beverley and
imposed a fine on that place, who had dared, without his leave to receive into
their town the archbishop Henry.50

46
DC, ii. pp. 172–73: ‘The author appears to have made his compilation soon after 1143 as he states
that in consequence of decrees of the council of London, the number of persons excommunicated was
so great as to prevent the performance of divine service in his church.’
47
See, for example, Jaakko Tahkokallio, ‘Early Manuscript Dissemination’ in A Companion to Geoffrey
of Monmouth. Brill’s Companions to European History, vol. 22, ed. Georgia Henley and Joshua Byron
Smith (Leiden & Boston, 2020), pp. 155–80 at pp. 164, 167. Antonia Gransden, ‘Prologues in the
Historiography of Twelfth-Century England’ in Legends, Traditions and History in Medieval England
(London, 1992), pp. 125–51 at p. 133, which simply rehearses Hardy’s view of 1865. For scholars assigning
the later date of c.1150 to the history, see H. S. Offler, ‘Hexham and the Historia Regum’, in Transactions
of the Architectural and Archaeological Society of Durham and Northumberland, vol. II (1970), pp. 51–62
at p. 61, note 41. See also HCY, i. p. liv.
48
For the significance of the term ‘pillars of the church’ see below, HAB, Prologue, p. 2, note 5.
49
CS, p. 795, note 1. The legatine council of Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester, which took place
at Westminster in Lent 1143, introduced 17 disciplinary canons protecting church property and clergy
from physical violence.
50
JH, p. 323 and see p. 306, note b. John incorrectly supplies the year 1150 for this event. In his chronicle
he had placed Archbishop Thurstan’s death in 1141, instead of 1140, and from that point on the
chronicle is consistently one year ahead. Other chronicle sources, for example GS, 114, p. 219, confirm
King Stephen’s military presence near York and his active building of castles and fortifications in the
surrounding areas in the summer of 1149.

xxix
 Introduction

The events which Alfred describes, well attested in the sources, took place in
York and Beverley between mid-1148 and early 1151, when the church of York was
engulfed in crisis.51 The newly consecrated archbishop of York, Henry Murdac,
who had replaced William fitz Herbert, deposed by Pope Eugenius III in 1147, was
denied access to his see by supporters of King Stephen. Murdac’s retainers were
subjected to violence and the archbishop was driven from York and stripped of his
temporalities by order of the king. It was the first time since the Norman conquest
that an English archbishop had been elected without the approval of the king.52
John of Salisbury, in his Historia Pontificalis (c.1164), noted that the election was
conducted in open defiance of the king’s expressed wishes.53
Retiring to Ripon, Murdac placed York under interdict, excommunicating his
opponents – including Hugh du Puiset and William of Aumale. According to the
chronicler John of Hexham, du Puiset refused to allow the celebration of the Divine
Office to be suspended and issued a counter-interdict against Archbishop Henry
and his supporters.54 The new disciplinary canons of the 1143 Westminster council
are likely to have been invoked in issuing these interdicts and excommunications
by the opposing parties; the specific decree to which Alfred probably refers is
canon five, proscribing the celebration of Divine Office in any location where
excommunicated persons were present:55

Prohibemus nichilominus ne divinum officium celebretur, sed nec campana

pulsetur in urbe vel in castro vel in rure, ubi aliquis excommunicatorum
presens fuerit.

We verily forbid that the Divine Office is celebrated, nor the ringing of bells in
town, hamlet or countryside, where any excommunicate person is present.56

Borrowing from the HA of Henry of Huntingdon in the text also shows

Alfred to be at work on the compilation no earlier than c.1148. At the conclusion
of chapter six, quoting from Henry’s introductory ‘Description of Britain’, and
describing the bishoprics of Britain, Alfred writes:

51
The principal sources for the 1148–51 York crisis are the Chronicle of John of Hexham and Hugh of
Kirkstall, Narratio. For King Stephen’s visit to Beverley, c. August 1149, see RRAN, iii. p. xliii.
52
Janet Burton, ‘English Monasteries and the Continent’ in King Stephen’s Reign 1135–54, ed. Paul
Dalton and Graeme J. White (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 98–114 at p. 111.
53
John of Salisbury’s Memoirs of the Papal Court, ed. and trans. M. Chibnall, NMT (London, 1956),
p. 5.
54
JH, p. 322.
55
No other London council is known to have taken place after 1143 and before spring 1148. It appears
almost certain, therefore, that it is the March 1143 legatine council and its new decrees to which Alfred
refers.
56
CS, p. 801.

xxx
 Introduction

But in the western part of Britain, called Wales, there are three additional
bishoprics: one at St David’s, another at Bangor and a third at Glamorgan,
that is, Llandaff. These three are without cities on account of the desolation
of Wales, which was all that was left to the Britons after they had been
conquered. In our time the Bishop of St David’s received from the pope the
pallium which in ancient days had been at Carleon, but he very soon lost it.57

In her 1996 edition of the HA, Diana Greenway identified the various stages
of the making of the text. In this particular passage she identified the phrase ‘in our
time’ as an addition made in 1140 (version three) but the words ‘he very soon lost it’
as dating from the fourth recension of 1147 (or a little later). The words remained
in subsequent versions of the HA and so it is quite possible that Alfred worked
with version five, dating from 1149. This version represents the largest group of
manuscripts of the HA and brings Henry’s account down to the enthronement of
Robert de Chesney as bishop of Lincoln in January 1149.58
The crisis in the church of York ended, and work on the compilation may
have concluded, when King Stephen and Henry Murdac were reconciled in January
1151. John of Hexham reported that ‘all hostilities between them were laid aside’
at that point.59 Immediately after the agreement, the archbishop, having settled
the affairs in York, travelled to Rome on a diplomatic mission for King Stephen
to seek papal support for the succession to the crown of England of Stephen’s
son, Eustace. With the resumption of church services in Beverley, work on the
compilation may have ended, but of this there is no certainty. We can be confident,
however, that the work was completed before the accession of Henry II. In over
thirty references in the History to King Henry, he is never named as Henry I, which
surely would have been the case, had the work been written after the accession of
Henry II in December 1154.
Alfred’s historical enterprise was thus both occasioned and undertaken at
a time of conflict and crisis in the church of York and Beverley, with implications
as much political as ecclesiastical. In assigning the year 1143 to the compilation,
Hardy mistakenly conflated two entirely separate events – the Westminster council
of that year, which passed new disciplinary ecclesiastical legislation, and the crisis
in the church of York and Beverley during the years 1148–51.

57
HAB, vi. p. 105 and note 193. Taken from HA, i. 5, p. 18.
58
Greenway, HA, p. lxxvi.
59
JH, p. 325.

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 Introduction

Sources
i. Introduction
Scholarly commentary on the History has focused mainly on its epitomization
of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s HRB, with its remaining content, and the sources it
draws on, being largely overlooked.60 Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum
(HA) is of primary influence and from Worcester, the accounts and genealogies
of the heptarchic English kingdoms, which form part of the preliminary reference
materials of the Worcester Chronicle, provide much of the content of chapter six
of the History. For its final three chapters, the work is almost entirely dependent
on the Durham Historia Regum (HR) and is therefore an important witness to
the state of the HR at the midway point of the twelfth century.
Supplementing these main sources are Bede’s HE, Orosius’s Historiarum
Adversum Paganos libri vii, Paul the Deacon, Historia Romana and Suetonius,
Lives of the Caesars. The HRB is frequently collated against these authorities
to either corroborate or raise questions about the veracity of its version of
events. The Historia Brittonum of the pseudo-Nennius, which Alfred appears
to have known in its original Harleian version, provides information on the
wonders and miracles of Britain, used in Alfred’s introductory description of
Britain. Late antique and hagiographical texts also quoted include Aethicus
Ister, The Cosmography, Hegesippus’s Latin translation of Josephus’s Jewish
War, Constantius, Life of St Germanus and Sulpicius Severus, Life of St Martin
of Tours. Alfred also names – but does not use – Pompeius Trogus and quotes
Solinus’s Collectanea Memorabilia, taking the quote from the HA of Henry of
Huntingdon.
A review of Alfred’s use of his four principal sources follows.

ii. Henry of Huntingdon

Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum (HA) is arguably the single most
important influence in the making of the History. Henry is quoted on more than
seventy occasions in five of its chapters. Six chapters take as their themes six of
the ten books of the HA.61 The dating of events, for the most part by regnal year,

60
See for example, HWE, i. p. 212; A Bibliography of English History to 1485, ed. E. Graves (Oxford,
1975), p. 405, entry 2795, based on C. Gross, The Sources and Literature of English History from the
Earliest Times to About 1485 (1900); Jacob Hammer, ‘Notes on a manuscript’, p. 226; Tatlock, Legendary
History, p. 210; J. Taylor, Medieval Historical Writing in Yorkshire, Borthwick Institute of Historical
Research, St Anthony’s Hall Publications 19 (York, 1961), p. 8.
61
HA book i, ‘Kingdom of Romans’, is mirrored in HAB, chs 2 & 3. HA book ii, ‘Coming of the English’,
is mirrored in HAB, ch. 6. HA book iv, ‘Kingdom of the English’ is mirrored in HAB, ch. 8. HA book
v, ‘The Danish Wars’, is mirrored in HAB, ch. 7. HA books vi & vii, ‘The coming of the Normans’ and
‘The Kingdom of the Normans’, are mirrored in HAB, ch. 9.

xxxii
 Introduction

mimics that of Henry. The explanatory commentary provided at the start and end
of each chapter, patiently guiding readers through the narrative, reminding them
of what has been covered and what is to come, rehearses what Nancy Partner has
described as Henry’s ‘insistent orderly’ practice.62 Indeed, the wording Alfred
employs in these clarificatory passages, appears closely modelled on Henry’s.
Compare:
Henry of Huntingdon (HA, iv. p. 31)

Verum ut in libro secundo factum est, ea que in hoc libro dicta sunt breviter
repetenda sunt et regnorum singulorum progressio ex ordine dirigetur.

As was done in the second book, those matters which have been described in
this book must be recapitulated briefly and the progression of the separate
kingdoms arranged in sequence.

with Alfred (HAB, iii. p. 41)

Unde nomina eorundem regum simul colligenda et ex ordine sunt ponenda,

sicque tertia huius opusculi particula est consumenda.

And now the names of these kings need to be collected and at the same
time placed in sequence so that the third brief part of this little work can
be concluded.

Most of the chapters end with summary king lists in the manner of Henry; Alfred
also, like Henry, explains his reasons for including them. Chapter six, narrating
the establishment of the heptarchic Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, provides eight such
summary king lists – the kingdom of Northumbria supplying accounts and lists
for both Bernicia and Deira.
Many of Henry’s important historical ideas are either recycled or used in
adapted form. Henry’s periodising idea of the five plagae – the five peoples sent
by divine providence to either conquer or persecute Britain for the sinfulness of
its peoples – may have served as the inspiration for the repackaging of Geoffrey
of Monmouth’s continuous history of the British kings into five historical periods
(discussed in detail below).63
62
Nancy Partner, Serious Entertainments, p. 23. And see James Campbell, ‘Some Twelfth-Century
Views of the Anglo-Saxon Past’ in Essays in Anglo-Saxon History (London, 1986), pp. 209–28 at p. 213.
Campbell likens Henry’s books in the HA to a series of carefully crafted lectures where ‘methodical pains
are taken to let the reader know where he is’.
63
The quinque plagae was so powerful an idea that it is how some contemporaries thought of Henry’s
history and described it in those words. In the earliest catalogue of the library of the Cistercian abbey of

xxxiii
 Introduction

Henry’s historical ideas are put to use to frame the important sixth chapter
of the History. His heptarchy theory is used to narrate, seamlessly, the transition
of sovereignty from the British to the English kings – the so-called ‘passage of
dominion’.64 In so doing, Henry’s explanation of the threefold naming and
identity of the island is used: first Albion, then Britain and finally Anglia. A second
passage of dominion, the transition from a heptarchy of kingdoms to a unitary
kingdom of Anglia under the monarchy of the West Saxon kings, concludes the
chapter. To narrate this, another of Henry’s ideas is employed – the theory that the
first act of the West Saxon kings on gaining sovereignty was to divide the kingdom
into thirty-five shires.65 The chapter concludes with Henry’s list of these shires.
Finally, Alfred’s own prefatory description of Britain, which was to become
of considerable influence in late medieval historical literature, is greatly indebted
to Henry.66 For the greater part, it is comprised of quotations from Henry’s own
introductory description of Britain.

EPISTOLA AD WARINUM

Such is the imprint of the HA on the History that a question to be considered

is whether Henry’s 1139 epitomization of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s HRB, the
Epistola ad Warinum (EAW), influenced Alfred’s later abbreviation. The EAW was
included in recensions of the HA from 1140 and would therefore have been known
to him.67 Henry’s roughly three-thousand-word abbreviation omitted many of
the chapters of the HRB, did not follow its narrative order closely, and contained
considerable material of his own – including, for example, invented speeches of
King Leir and King Arthur, material on giants, and biblical quotations.68
A close comparison of Alfred’s abbreviation of the HRB with Henry’s,
using Neil Wright’s detailed 1991 analysis of the EAW,69 which catalogued
Henry’s omissions (9), additions (7), modifications (5), and errors (5) in his
Bec epitomization, shows that Alfred appears to have approached the HRB
independently. He includes nothing which Henry has added. He repeats none
Rievaulx (c.1190–1200), item 75 g refers to a volume as de quinque plagis Anglie in uno volumine. For
the biblical origins of Henry’s five plagues metaphor see HA, p. lix and Antonia Gransden, ‘Prologues’,
pp. 147–49.
64
R. William Leckie, Jr., The Passage of Dominion: Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Periodization of
Insular History in the Twelfth Century (Toronto, 1981).
65
HAB, vi. p. 119. Taken from HA, i. 4, p. 16.
66
Discussed below, pp. liii–lx.
67
HA, p. lxx. The Epistola ad Warinum was included in book eight of the HA, De Summitatibus Rerum,
in its third recension.
68
Ibid., p. cii.
69
Neil Wright, ‘The Place of Henry of Huntingdon’s Epistola ad Warinum in the text-history of Geoffrey
of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britannie: a Preliminary Investigation’ in France and the British Isles in
the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Essays by Members of Girton College Cambridge in Memory of
Ruth Morgan, ed. G. Jondorf and D. M. Dumville (Woodbridge, 1991), pp. 71–113.

xxxiv
 Introduction

of Henry’s errors. Most episodes that Henry omitted, Alfred included. But
while the EAW does not appear to have exercised direct influence, more indirect
influence remains possible. Wright commented that in Henry’s EAW ‘the first
faint adumbration of the misgivings with which some mediaeval historians (most
notably William of Newburgh) received Geoffrey’s Historia were observable’.70 In
Alfred’s reception of Geoffrey’s history (discussed below), those misgivings are
much more evident.
The manner in which Henry had inserted Geoffrey’s British history into
the HA may itself have been of influence. Henry had made no attempt to rewrite
the early books of the HA in the light of the newly revealed British past. He
simply inserted his abbreviation as a stand-alone piece, in book eight of the
history (‘On exalted matters’). Many questions were left unanswered and historical
inconsistencies introduced. The EAW ends with the abandonment of Britain by
Cadwaladr – and the transfer of power to the English kings – chronologically well
into the seventh century, which conflicts with Henry’s earlier account in books
one and two of the HA, where the seven English kingdoms were established in the
fifth and sixth centuries. With indebtedness to Henry evident at so many levels
in the History – textual borrowings, thematic structure, language, absorption
of Henrician ideas – the unfinished manner of the EAW’s inclusion in the HA
may have been a factor encouraging Alfred to attempt his own work of historical
assimilation.

iii. Geoffrey of Monmouth

Alfred is the first Latin chronicler to attempt to incorporate Geoffrey’s newly
revealed British history within an account based on an existing understanding of
the island’s past, an initiative which required not only epitomizing the work, but
significantly reworking it.71 The handling of the HRB in the History provides,
therefore, valuable evidence for the reception of Geoffrey’s history in the very
earliest days of its life.

PERIODISING GEOFFREY’S HISTORY – THE FIVE ‘STATUS’

To assimilate the HRB, Alfred reworks its continuous two-thousand-year account

of the rule of the British kings, presenting it as five distinct historical periods,
described as status (states), each occupying a chapter of the compilation. This

70
Ibid., p. 91.
71
Torigni, pp. 65–75. Robert of Torigini had included a copy of Henry of Huntingdon’s EAW in the
introduction to his principal work, the Chronica, begun at the monastery of Le Bec c.1147–c.1150, but
this remained a stand-alone piece, unconnected to the history which followed. Robert’s chronicle was
a continuation of Sigebert of Gembloux’s universal chronicle dealing with events in Normandy and
England from 1100 and extending to the year of his death, 1186.

xxxv
 Introduction

five-part periodisation may have drawn inspiration from Henry of Huntingdon’s

five plagae model, discussed previously. The five status are as follows:

• Ch. 1. British kings in a state of liberty. The line of seventy kings from Brutus
to Lud.
• Ch. 2. Coming of the Romans. Rule of eight British kings from Cassibellaunus
to Lucius under tribute to Rome.
• Ch. 3. Direct rule of eleven Roman rulers in Britain. Severus to Gratian.
• Ch. 4. Abandonment of Britain by the Romans. Britain defenceless against
the attacks of the Picts and Scots. The age of anarchy.
• Ch. 5. Rise and fall of the house of Constantine. Vortigern and the arrival of
Hengest and Horsa. Arthur and Merlin. The line of twelve British kings from
Constantine to Kareticus and the passage of dominion to the English kings.

The final status required major historiographical surgery in order to shoehorn

Geoffrey’s account into existing historical understanding. Alfred ends his account
of the rule of the British kings with the defeat of Kareticus by the African king
Gormundus, the donation of Loegria to the Saxons and the withdrawal of the
Britons into Wales and the western regions of the country. In so doing, almost a
century of Galfridian narrative and the rule of three further British kings: Caduan,
Caduallo and Cadwaladr, is discarded.72 Geoffrey’s account brings the passage of
dominion to the English kings down to the later seventh century. Alfred’s reworked
passage of dominion sits better, if not entirely convincingly, with existing historical
accounts, where the rule of the English kings had begun in the fifth and sixth
centuries.73

QUAE FIDEM NON EXCEDERENT – THE BOUNDS OF CREDIBILITY

If Henry of Huntingdon’s EAW hints at misgivings at the veracity of the HRB,

such misgivings are in much plainer view in Alfred’s compilation, thus introducing
ambiguity into his reception of the work. On the one hand there is the attempt to
assimilate Geoffrey’s history, suggesting acceptance of its historicity – at least in
part. On the other, the abridgement is marked by doubt and questioning, evident
in three main ways. First, in the statements made at the start and conclusion of the
abridgement and in the open expression of doubt made in the prologue of chapter
two. Second in the omission and moderation of important passages of Galfridian
72
For a detailed analysis of the author’s handling of his sources at this point of the history, see R. W.
Leckie Jnr., The Passage of Dominion. Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Periodization of Insular History
in the Twelfth Century (Toronto, 1981), pp. 87–92.
73
Alfred’s periodisation was largely taken over by Ranulf Higden in the fourteenth-century Polychronicon
and, from there, via William Caxton, it entered later historiography. See below, pp. lviii–lix and Plate 2.

xxxvi
 Introduction

narrative. Third, in the frequent questioning collations of Geoffrey’s version of

events with standard authorities.74
Alfred tells us in the prologue that his historical project was sparked by his
colleagues’ enthusiastic conversation about the HRB, of which he was ignorant.
Having secured and studied the history in question, he decided to make excerpts of
it, including only those passages quae fidem non excederent et legentem delectarent
(‘which would not exceed the bounds of credibility and would please the reader’).
From the outset, therefore, Alfred tells us he viewed the HRB as part-fable. Pleasing
his readers, however, would also guide him. Drawing the abbreviation of Geoffrey’s
history to a close at the end of chapter five, its veracity is again questioned:

On this subject, a not inconsiderable issue has caused my humble self

concern. That is, why there is no mention of the illustrious King Arthur
in either the History of the Romans or in the History of the English, even
though he performed famous deeds of innate valour and marvellous worth,
not only against the pagans in Britain, but against the Romans in Gaul? I do
not presume to call into question the historical accuracy of these deeds, so,
in an endeavour to be brief, I have taken trouble to choose extracts from the
British History which leave out things which might seem beyond belief to
certain people, while omitting nothing of merit.

There can be little doubt that the ‘certain people’ here cited – those who
considered elements of Geoffrey’s history to be ‘beyond belief’ – included Alfred
himself: his introductory prologue tells us this. The concluding comment, however,
goes further in suggesting that others shared his doubts. The closing comments to
Alfred’s abbreviation of the HRB are in themselves revealing. No other authority
quoted in the History is provided such singular attention, suggesting that working
with the text had posed a special authorial challenge. Concern at the lack of
supporting historical evidence for Geoffrey’s history had been raised earlier, as
noted. Alfred had asked, at the opening of chapter two: why have authorities
such as Pompeius Trogus, Suetonius, Eutropius, Paulus Orosius, Bede and Gildas
nothing to say about the outstanding deeds of the British kings from Brutus to
Lud? Why such a complete silence of the authorities on these momentous events
until the time of Julius Caesar?
The omission of Galfridian content and the moderation of important
passages of descriptive narrative also suggests authorial misgivings.75 Material
omitted includes the fabulous – that considered beyond the bounds of believability
74
There are over thirty such collations in the text.
75
Significant omissions in the abridgement are identified in the historical footnotes.

xxxvii
 Introduction

– but there also appear to be efforts to scale back content considered exaggerated.
Arthur’s lavish Pentecostal celebrations at Caerleon, a centrepiece of the Galfridian
narrative, are drastically pruned and what little is reported is given only on the
authority of Geoffrey: ‘This is what the History of the Britons describes,’ comments
Alfred. Galfridian numbers are also scaled back. Constantine arrives from
Armorica with 1,000 troops not 2,000. There are 360 British nobles treacherously
slain by Hengest, not 460. Lucius Hiberius’s army, which sets out to subdue Britain,
is 40,160 strong, not 460,100.
Omission of material is almost certainly made, also, for practical reasons – to
produce a concise account, one suitable for oral delivery.76 Such omission includes
speeches, letters, conversations, secret thoughts and motivations, lists and names
of kings, geographic detail, and episodes which are greatly condensed – such as
Brutus’s stay in Greece and his journey to Britain, and descriptions of battles.77
Editorial caution and the desire to avoid controversy may explain other omissions.78
The prophecies of Merlin are likely to have been overlooked for their length and
political content, not for lack of credibility. As the author tells us, they ‘prophesied
many events in the future of the kingdom of Britain’.79 Here, uniquely in the
history, a reason is given for an authorial omission: ‘They [the prophecies] are too
long to be inserted here’. Content omitted, in all probability for being considered
fabulous and thus beyond the bounds of credibility, includes the following:

• Giant-slaying exploits of Corineus and details of the twelve-cubit-tall

Goegmagog.
• The transportation of the giants’ ring of stones from Mount Killaraus in
Ireland and their erection in Stonehenge, orchestrated by the magical powers
of Merlin.
• Merlin’s powers of illusion in enabling Uther Pendragon to pass himself off
as Gorlois, duke of Cornwall, and sleep with his wife, the beautiful Ugerna.
• Arthur’s conception at Tintagel resulting from this union.
• The forging of Arthur’s sword on the island of Avalon.
• How Arthur subdued all Ireland after capturing King Gillomanus
76
Reading of the History in the communal refectory at Beverley is discussed below, p. lxxi.
77
Some eighty-five speeches, letters and conversations contained in the HRB from the journey of
Guithelinus, archbishop of London, to Little Britain to seek the help of King Aldroenus, to Kareticus’s
retreat to the western regions of Britain, are reduced to eleven in the abridgement.
78
Discussed below, pp. lii–liii and note 147.
79
For the interest of the episcopacy of the time in Merlinian prophecy, see Julia Crick, ‘Geoffrey and the
Prophetic Tradition’ in The Arthur of Medieval Latin Literature: The Development and Dissemination
of the Arthurian Legend in Medieval Latin, Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages VI, ed. Siân Echard,
pp. 67–84. Bishops and churchmen of the time who cited Merlin’s prophecies included Arnulf, bishop
of Lisieux (1141–81), Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury (1162–70) and Gilbert Foliot, bishop
of London (1163–87).

xxxviii
 Introduction

• Arthur’s visionary dream of the fight between the dragon and the bear on
the sea journey from Southampton to Harfleur.
• Abduction of Helena, niece of King Hoelus, by the giant from Spain.
• Arthur’s slaying of the giant on Mont St Michael and details of Ritho, the
other giant slain by Arthur.

Collations of Geoffrey’s history with authorities such as Bede, Eutropius

and Orosius, to test the account’s historicity, are frequent and attest a critical
authorial frame of mind.80 In a number of the collations Geoffrey’s account is
adjudged historical. In others, the conclusion is more ambivalent.81 In one collation,
Geoffrey’s account of King Belinus’s road-building programme is contrasted
silently with Henry of Huntingdon’s description of the four ancient highways of
Britain.82 The rhetorical practice of similitudo is here employed, where, by silently
providing an alternative trusted account, the reader is invited to treat Geoffrey’s
account with caution.83

HAEC SECUNDUM BRITANNICUM – NAMING GEOFFREY IN THE HISTORY

Direct references to the HRB and its author are made eighteen times in the History,
on occasion citing the text as Historia Britonum, but principally by naming its
author Britannicus. The words haec secundum Britannicum, or nunc revertamur
ad Britannicum, or huc usque secundum Britannicum are used in these instances.
Naming Geoffrey of Monmouth in this manner is unique among chroniclers
of the day and introduces yet further ambiguity into Alfred’s reception of the
HRB. What precisely are we to read into the nomenclature? Geoffrey enjoyed
considerable literary fame at the time.84 He was named Galfridi Arturi by Henry
of Huntingdon in the EAW85 and named Galfridus Monemutensis by Geoffrey
himself twice in the HRB.86 Robert of Torigni names him Gaufridi Arturi87 and in
a number of charters from the Oxford area over the period 1129–52, a Gaufridus
Artur and Gaufridus magister attest as witness. At the time of writing, Geoffrey
was widely known by one or other of these names and, as Alfred knew both the
EAW and HRB intimately, it is almost certain he did so too. Why then name
Geoffrey in such a way and what are we to understand by it? It is because of its
80
HAB, ii. p. 27. As, for example, in comparing GM’s account of Julius Caesar with that of Bede and
Orosius: ut constet ueritatis habere fundamentum quae de Caesere leguntur secundum Britannicum
(‘so as to establish that what we read about Caesar in Britannicus’s version has a foundation in truth’).
81
HAB, v. pp. 55–56: where the author comments on the historicity of Aurelius Ambrosius.
82
Ibid., i. p. 18.
83
Ibid, note 22, for discussion of the rhetorical practice of similitudo.
84
Tatlock, Legendary History, pp. 438–39.
85
HA, viii, p. 582.
86
HRB, Prologue, line 19, p. 5 & xi. line 1, p. 249.
87
Torigni, p. 75.

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 Introduction

opaqueness that the word Britannicus has been retained in the English translation
in this edition.
Britannicus, an adjective deriving from Britannia and here used as a noun,
seemingly describes Geoffrey racially, as The British or more literally, The Briton.
But had Alfred intended The Briton, the Latin word Brito/Britonem or Britannus/
Britannum would surely have been a more obvious choice of word? And, if Alfred
did indeed mean the Briton, which particular gens or race had he in mind?
Brito and Britones have recently been described as ‘slippery words’,
ambiguous in their meaning.88 Britons might describe the inhabitants of ancient
Britain, or equally the inhabitants of Wales, Cornwall, Brittany or Strathclyde.
From statements made in the History, however, there appears little doubt that when
Alfred referred to Britons he had in mind the people living in the geographical area
of Wales. He had described the Britons in Wales as one of the five peoples presently
inhabiting the island, at the conclusion of his introductory description of Britain.89
Alfred also reported that the language Britannica is spoken by the inhabitants
of Wales.90 Early in chapter one, plundering Geoffrey, he had described how the
Britons were eventually driven into Wales, and then added his own comment that
‘up to the present time, they have resided there and have set up their own kingdom
of Wales’.91 At the close of chapter six, describing the cities and bishoprics of
England, he noted that Wales was all that was left to the Britons after they had
been conquered.92
Huw Pryce has shown how the Latin terminology describing Wales and the
Welsh in Anglo-Norman and Cambro-Latin writing changed during the course
of the twelfth century from British (Britannia, Britanni, Britones) to Walia and
Walenses (or, in Gallicised form, Gualia, Gualenses), terms derived from the
Old English Walas or Wealas.93 Anglo-Norman writers, such as William of
Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon, generally use these terms to describe
Wales and the Welsh. So too does John of Worcester, although he also uses the
British terminology on occasion.94 Alfred is no exception to this practice, using
the term Wallia, Wallias, Walenses at least ten times in the History to describe

88
Joshua Byron Smith, ‘Introduction and Biography’ in Georgia Henley and Joshua Byron Smith, Brill’s
Companions to European History, vol. 22, A Companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth (Leiden & Boston,
2020), pp. 1–28 at p. 20.
89
HAB, i, p. 9.
90
Ibid., i, p. 13.
91
Ibid., i, p. 13.
92
Ibid., vi. p. 105.
93
Huw Pryce, ‘British or Welsh? National Identity in Twelfth-Century Wales’, English Historical Review,
vol. 116, no. 468 (September 2001), pp. 775–801 at pp. 780, 785.
94
CJW i, annal for 895. The Danish army is reported devastating the land of the north Welsh using the
British terminology – ‘terram septentrionalium Brytonum’.

xl
 Introduction

Wales and the Welsh. If Britannicus was meant to denote ‘the Briton’, why then
not use the word Walensis?
Alfred’s use of the term Britannicus appears more likely to have an epithetical
intent than to denote gens, therefore. To act as an agnomen or nickname – for
example, to convey the meaning of ‘the teller of tales of the ancient Britons’. The
chroniclers who name Geoffrey Galfridus Arturus appear to be using Arturus in
just such an epithetical way – ‘Geoffrey the writer of tales of Arthur’.95 Certainly,
this is what William of Newburgh thought when he wrote that Geoffrey was known
by the nickname Arthur (habens agnomen Arturi).96 It might be that in referring to
Geoffrey as Britannicus, Alfred chose an agnomen which he thought to be original
– his own creation – but also one which he considered more representative of the
HRB in its entirety, and not just its Arthurian content.
The question remains, however, why was the name Geoffrey never attached
to the epithet? Is its omission a sign of disrespect or disdain? An example of what
has been described by a number of scholars as the hostile Anglo-Norman views
of the Welsh which developed during the course of the twelfth century?97 Or, if
not hostile, is the nomenclature intended to be sardonic – further evidence of a
sceptical reception of the HRB? By investing Geoffrey with a lofty name from the
classical past, for example, might Alfred be inferring he is the teller of lofty tales,
to be taken with a pinch of salt? Might Britannicus even be considered to be a play
on Geoffrey’s twice repeated proprietary claim in the HRB to be the translator
of quendam Britannici sermonis librum vetustissimum, a very old book in the
British language? When Alfred writes Haec Secundum Britannicum, might this be
a coded way of saying ‘these things are according to the translator of the ancient
British book’?98
Another, and equally possible explanation, is that the term Britannicus had a
literary and rhetorical intent – a term designed to add refinement to the narrative.
Alfred on occasion shows partiality for literary allusion. The History opens, for
example, with an arresting description of Britain as another world – alter orbis

95
There appears little evidence to consider Gaufridus Arturus to be a patronym – Geoffrey, son of
Arthur. See the discussion of Arturus as a patronym or agnomen in Joshua Byron Smith, ‘Introduction
and Biography’ at pp. 7–9.
96
WN HRA, p. 12.
97
The growth of twelfth-century Anglo-Norman views of the Welsh and the Celtic peoples as racially
inferior and as ‘barbari’ is discussed in John Gillingham, ‘The Beginnings of English Imperialism’ in
The English in the Twelfth Century. Imperialism, National Identity and Political Values (Woodbridge,
2000), pp. 3–18, 27 and following. See also Robert Bartlett, England Under the Norman and Angevin
Kings 1075–1225 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 99–102.
98
I am indebted to Professor Huw Pryce for the suggestion that Alfred’s use of the nomenclature
‘Britannicus’ might be linked to Geoffrey’s celebrated claim to have been the translator of the ‘very old
book in the British tongue’ brought to him by Walter, archdeacon of Oxford.

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 Introduction

– drawn from Hegesippus.99 Using the agnomen given by the Roman conqueror
of Britain, Claudius, to his son Germanicus, to describe Geoffrey, demonstrates
learning and eloquence – important attributes of a historical writer. It also perhaps
serves to tell us how Alfred understood the intent of Geoffrey’s history. A work
which revealed the glorious history and legacy of the ancient Britons, required its
spokesman to have a fitting name.

CONCLUSION

Geoffrey of Monmouth has been described as a ‘deliberate trader in multiple

ambiguities’100 and thus it is no surprise that the treatment of Geoffrey in the
History itself contains ambiguity. There is, on the one hand, the attempt to
assimilate Geoffrey’s British history, shaping it into a more credible account,
suggesting acceptance of its historicity. The work was, after all, written eloquently
and learnedly in the language of scripture and so required serious consideration.
On the other hand, in both prologue and epilogue Alfred makes clear that he
thought the work was part-fabulous and, throughout the abridgement, there is
persistent questioning of its veracity. The frequent references to Geoffrey and his
history, and the manner of doing so – a practice accorded to no other source in
the compilation – attests a singular relationship with the text, suggesting that
working with it was a challenge for the author. It is likely that much material
was retained which was believed to occupy the ground between fable (it could
not have happened) and verisimilitude (it could have happened). This was done,
most probably, to please his readers and to impress the content on their minds and
memories – the characteristics of good rhetorical practice and hence historical
writing.101 As Alfred had made clear in his prologue, he planned to take only those
excerpts which legentem delectarent et memoriae tenatius adhaererent (‘would
please the reader and would remain firmly in his memory’).

iv. The Worcester Chronicle

Chapter six of the history sees two new sources introduced by Alfred: the
Worcester Chronicle and the Historia Regum (HR) attributed to Symeon of
Durham. Borrowings from the HR are selective, found principally towards the end
of the chapter, but the Worcester Chronicle is quarried extensively to provide the

99
HAB, i. p. 4 and note 9.
100
Rees Davies, ‘The Matter of Britain and the Matter of England.’ An Inaugural Lecture Delivered
Before the University of Oxford on 29 February 1996 (Oxford, 1996), pp. 1–25 at p. 6.
101
Matthew Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History (Manchester, 2011), pp. 1–33 and passim
provides a comprehensive review of classical theory of rhetoric and how it influenced medieval historical
writing. For the important steps for the rhetor to both please his audience (delectare) and impress an
argument on its memory (memoria), see pp. 8–9, 20.

xlii
 Introduction

bulk of the chapter’s account of the establishment of the heptarchic Anglo-Saxon

kingdoms of Kent, East Anglia, Essex, Mercia and the Northumbrian kingdoms
of Bernicia and Deira, and to provide the genealogies of their founder kings.
A short account of the South Saxon kingdom is also provided but this appears
to have been compiled from the HA of Henry of Huntingdon as none exists in
the Worcester Chronicle.102 For the account of the West Saxon kingdom, which
concludes the chapter, Alfred returns to the HA of Henry of Huntingdon and
commences borrowing from the Durham HR, while continuing to draw selectively
on the Worcester Chronicle. Chapter six, therefore, sees the author at a particularly
industrious point in his History, simultaneously compiling from the HA of Henry
of Huntingdon, the Worcester Chronicle, the HR, Bede’s HE, and working with
different source types, including texts and drawn tables.

THE WORCESTER CHRONICLE PREFATORY ACCOUNTS AND GENEALOGIES

Before the commencement of the Worcester Chronicle annals, all manuscripts

contain extensive prefatory reference materials. These include material inherited
from the universal chronicle of Marianus the Scot, which the Worcester Chronicle
expanded, including lists of consular tables, Hebrew prophets, popes, kings of
France and dukes of Normandy.103 Grafted on at Worcester were items of English
historical interest, including lists of English bishops, notes on individual bishops,
information on the creation and division of bishoprics, drawn genealogical trees of
the English dynasties extending back to Woden and Adam, and written accounts
of the history of the dynasties accompanying the trees. The descent trees were
first drawn on the page and the dynastic accounts then written around them.
The genealogical tables not only trace the lineage of the founder kings and their
successors but also provide accompanying details of royal queens and offspring, as
can be seen in Plate 1 following, the Mercian genealogy and dynastic account, as
preserved in Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 157 (hereafter OCCC MS 157).104
The prefatory reference materials, genealogical tables, and dynastic accounts
attest the intense interest in collecting and classifying information about the Anglo-
Saxon past which is a characteristic of Insular historical writing in the first four
decades of the twelfth century. James Campbell described the reference materials
102
No South Saxon royal genealogy survives and none is contained in the Worcester Chronicle.
103
The Marianus Chronicle, extending from the Creation to 1086, was probably introduced to Worcester
by Bishop Robert of Hereford (CJW, ii. p. xix). In the chief manuscript witness of the Worcester
Chronicle, Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 157, the prefatory materials extend to page 89 of a 396-
page volume, before the main chronicle commences with book 1, Adam to Christ. The English annals,
inserted at Worcester, run from AD 450 to 1140.
104
All surviving complete witnesses of the Worcester Chronicle derive from OCCC MS 157. The annals
from 1128 to 1140 have been identified as written in the hand of John of Worcester. The same hand is
also seen in annotations to and corrections of the chronicle from its earliest pages until 1124. See CJW,
ii. p. xxi and Brett, John of Worcester, p. 105.

xliii
Another random document with
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crossed the mist-hung meadows a few hours earlier. It was as if there were
two realities at Pentlands—one, it might have been said, of the daylight and
the other of the darkness; as if one life—a secret, hidden one—lay beneath
the bright, pleasant surface of a world composed of green fields and trees,
the sound of barking dogs, the faint odor of coffee arising from the kitchen,
and the sound of a groom whistling while he saddled a thoroughbred. It was
a misfortune that chance had given her an insight into both the bright,
pleasant world and that other dark, nebulous one. The others, save perhaps
old John Pentland, saw only this bright, easy life that had begun to stir all
about her.
And she reflected that a stranger coming to Pentlands would find it a
pleasant, comfortable house, where the life was easy and even luxurious,
where all of them were protected by wealth. He would find them all rather
pleasant, normal, friendly people of a family respected and even
distinguished. He would say, “Here is a world that is solid and comfortable
and sound.”
Yes, it would appear thus to a stranger, so it might be that the dark,
fearful world existed only in her imagination. Perhaps she herself was ill, a
little unbalanced and morbid ... perhaps a little touched like the old woman
in the north wing.
Still, she thought, most houses, most families, must have such double
lives—one which the world saw and one which remained hidden.
As she pulled on her boots she heard the voice of Higgins, noisy and
cheerful, exchanging amorous jests with the new Irish kitchen-maid,
marking her already for his own.

She rode listlessly, allowing the mare to lead through the birch thicket
over the cool dark paths which she and Michael always followed. The
morning air did not change her spirits. There was something sad in riding
alone through the long green tunnel.
When at last she came out on the opposite side by the patch of catnip
where they had encountered Miss Peavey, she saw a Ford drawn up by the
side of the road and a man standing beside it, smoking a cigar and regarding
the engine as if he were in trouble. She saw no more than that and would
have passed him without troubling to look a second time, when she heard
herself being addressed.
 “You’re Mrs. Pentland, aren’t you?”
She drew in the mare. “Yes, I’m Mrs. Pentland.”
He was a little man, dressed rather too neatly in a suit of checkered stuff,
with a high, stiff white collar which appeared to be strangling him. He wore
nose-glasses and his face had a look of having been highly polished. As she
turned, he took off his straw hat and with a great show of manners came
forward, bowing and smiling cordially.
“Well,” he said, “I’m glad to hear that I’m right. I hoped I might meet
you here. It’s a great pleasure to know you, Mrs. Pentland. My name is
Gavin.... I’m by way of being a friend of Michael O’Hara.”
“Oh!” said Olivia. “How do you do?”
“You’re not in a great hurry, I hope?” he asked. “I’d like to have a word
or two with you.”
“No, I’m not in a great hurry.”
It was impossible to imagine what this fussy little man, standing in the
middle of the road, bowing and smiling, could have to say to her.
Still holding his hat in his hand, he tossed away the end of his cigar and
said, “It’s about a very delicate matter, Mrs. Pentland. It has to do with Mr.
O’Hara’s campaign. I suppose you know about that. You’re a friend of his, I
believe?”
“Why, yes,” she said coldly. “We ride together.”
He coughed and, clearly ill at ease, set off on a tangent from the main
subject. “You see, I’m a great friend of his. In fact, we grew up together ...
lived in the same ward and fought together as boys. You mightn’t think it to
see us together ... because he’s such a clever one. He’s made for big things
and I’m not.... I’m ... I’m just plain John Gavin. But we’re friends, all the
same, just the same as ever ... just as if he wasn’t a big man. That’s one
thing about Michael. He never goes back on his old friends, no matter how
great he gets to be.”
A light of adoration shone in the blue eyes of the little man. It was,
Olivia thought, as if he were speaking of God; only clearly he thought of
Michael O’Hara as greater than God. If Michael affected men like this, it
was easy to see why he was so successful.
The little man kept interrupting himself with apologies. “I shan’t keep
you long, Mrs. Pentland ... only a moment. You see I thought it was better if
I saw you here instead of coming to the house.” Suddenly screwing up his
shiny face, he became intensely serious. “It’s like this, Mrs. Pentland.... I
know you’re a good friend of his and you wish him well. You want to see
him get elected ... even though you people out here don’t hold much with
the Democratic party.”
“Yes,” said Olivia. “That’s true.”
“Well,” he continued with a visible effort, “Michael’s a good friend of
mine. I’m sort of a bodyguard to him. Of course, I never come out here, I
don’t belong in this world.... I’d feel sort of funny out here.”
(Olivia found herself feeling respect for the little man. He was so simple
and so honest and he so obviously worshiped Michael.)
“You see ... I know all about Michael. I’ve been through a great deal
with him ... and he’s not himself just now. There’s something wrong. He
ain’t interested in his work. He acts as if he’d be willing to chuck his whole
career overboard ... and I can’t let him do that. None of his friends ... can’t
let him do it. We can’t get him to take a proper interest in his affairs.
Usually, he manages everything ... better than any one else could.” He
became suddenly confidential, closing one eye. “D’you know what I think
is the matter? I’ve been watching him and I’ve got an idea.”
He waited until Olivia said, “No ... I haven’t the least idea.”
Cocking his head on one side and speaking with the air of having made a
great discovery, he said, “Well, I think there’s a woman mixed up in it.”
She felt the blood mounting to her head, in spite of anything she could
do. When she was able to speak, she asked, “Yes, and what am I to do?”
He moved a little nearer, still with the same air of confiding in her.
“Well, this is my idea. Now, you’re a friend of his ... you’ll understand. You
see, the trouble is that it’s some woman here in Durham ... some swell, you
see, like yourself. That’s what makes it hard. He’s had women before, but
they were women out of the ward and it didn’t make much difference. But
this is different. He’s all upset, and....” He hesitated for a moment. “Well, I
don’t like to say a thing like this about Michael, but I think his head is
turned a little. That’s a mean thing to say, but then we’re all human, aren’t
we?”
“Yes,” said Olivia softly. “Yes ... in the end, we’re all human ... even
swells like me.” There was a twinkle of humor in her eye which for a
moment disconcerted the little man.
 “Well,” he went on, “he’s all upset about her and he’s no good for
anything. Now, what I thought was this ... that you could find out who this
woman is and go to her and persuade her to lay off him for a time ... to go
away some place ... at least until the campaign is over. It’d make a
difference. D’you see?”
He looked at her boldly, as if what he had been saying was absolutely
honest and direct, as if he really had not the faintest idea who this woman
was, and beneath a sense of anger, Olivia was amused at the crude tact
which had evolved this trick.
“There’s not much that I can do,” she said. “It’s a preposterous idea ...
but I’ll do what I can. I’ll try. I can’t promise anything. It lies with Mr.
O’Hara, after all.”
“You see, Mrs. Pentland, if it ever got to be a scandal, it’d be the end of
him. A woman out of the ward doesn’t matter so much, but a woman out
here would be different. She’d get a lot of publicity from the sassiety editors
and all.... That’s what’s dangerous. He’d have the whole church against him
on the grounds of immorality.”
While he was speaking, a strange idea occurred to Olivia—that much of
what he said sounded like a strange echo of Aunt Cassie’s methods of
argument.
The horse had grown impatient and was pawing the road and tossing his
head; and Olivia was angry now, genuinely angry, so that she waited for a
time before speaking, lest she should betray herself and spoil all this little
game of pretense which Mr. Gavin had built up to keep himself in
countenance. At last she said, “I’ll do what I can, but it’s a ridiculous thing
you’re asking of me.”
The little man grinned. “I’ve been a long time in politics, Ma’am, and
I’ve seen funnier things than this....” He put on his hat, as if to signal that he
had said all he wanted to say. “But there’s one thing I’d like to ask ... and
that’s that you never let Michael know that I spoke to you about this.”
“Why should I promise ... anything?”
He moved nearer and said in a low voice, “You know Michael very well,
Mrs. Pentland.... You know Michael very well, and you know that he’s got a
bad, quick temper. If he found out that we were meddling in his affairs, he
might do anything. He might chuck the whole business and clear out
altogether. He’s never been like this about a woman before. He’d do it just
now.... That’s the way he’s feeling. You don’t want to see him ruin himself
any more than I do ... a clever man like Michael. Why, he might be
president one of these days. He can do anything he sets his will to, Ma’am,
but he is, as they say, temperamental just now.”
“I’ll not tell him,” said Olivia quietly. “And I’ll do what I can to help
you. And now I must go.” She felt suddenly friendly toward Mr. Gavin,
perhaps because what he had been telling her was exactly what she wanted
most at that moment to hear. She leaned down from her horse and held out
her hand, saying, “Good-morning, Mr. Gavin.”
Mr. Gavin removed his hat once more, revealing his round, bald, shiny
head. “Good-morning, Mrs. Pentland.”
As she rode off, the little man remained standing in the middle of the
road looking after her until she had disappeared. His eye glowed with the
light of admiration, but as Olivia turned from the road into the meadows, he
frowned and swore aloud. Until now he hadn’t understood how a good
politician like Michael could lose his head over any woman. But he had an
idea that he could trust this woman to do what she had promised. There was
a look about her ... a look which made her seem different from most
women; perhaps it was this look which had made a fool of Michael, who
usually kept women in their proper places.
Grinning and shaking his head, he got into the Ford, started it with a
great uproar, and set off in the direction of Boston. After he had gone a little
way he halted again and got out, for in his agitation he had forgotten to
close the hood.

From the moment she turned and rode away from Mr. Gavin, Olivia
gave herself over to action. She saw that there was need of more than mere
static truth to bring order out of the hazy chaos at Pentlands; there must be
action as well. And she was angry now, really angry, even at Mr. Gavin for
his impertinence, and at the unknown person who had been his informant.
The strange idea that Aunt Cassie or Anson was somehow responsible still
remained; tactics such as these were completely sympathetic to them—to
go thus in Machiavellian fashion to a man like Gavin instead of coming to
her. By using Mr. Gavin there would be no scene, no definite
unpleasantness to disturb the enchantment of Pentlands. They could go on
pretending that nothing was wrong, that nothing had happened.
 But stronger than her anger was the fear that in some way they might use
the same tactics to spoil the happiness of Sybil. They would, she was
certain, sacrifice everything to their belief in their own rightness.
She found Jean at the house when she returned, and, closing the door of
the drawing-room, she said to him, “Jean, I want to talk to you for a
moment ... alone.”
He said at once, “I know, Mrs. Pentland. It’s about Sybil.”
There was a little echo of humor in his voice that touched and disarmed
her as it always did. It struck her that he was still young enough to be
confident that everything in life would go exactly as he wished it....
“Yes,” she said, “that was it.” They sat on two of Horace Pentland’s
chairs and she continued. “I don’t believe in meddling, Jean, only now there
are circumstances ... reasons....” She made a little gesture. “I thought that if
really ... really....”
He interrupted her quickly. “I do, Mrs. Pentland. We’ve talked it all over,
Sybil and I ... and we’re agreed. We love each other. We’re going to be
married.”
Watching the young, ardent face, she thought, “It’s a nice face in which
there is nothing mean or nasty. The lips aren’t thin and tight like Anson’s,
nor the skin sickly and pallid the way Anson’s has always been. There’s life
in it, and force and charm. It’s the face of a man who would be good to a
woman ... a man not in the least cold-blooded.”
“Do you love her ... really?” she asked.
“I ... I.... It’s a thing I can’t answer because there aren’t words to describe
it.”
“Because ... well ... Jean, it’s no ordinary case of a mother and a
daughter. It’s much more than that. It means more to me than my own
happiness, my own life ... because, well, because Sybil is like a part of
myself. I want her to be happy. It’s not just a simple case of two young
people marrying. It’s much more than that.” There was a silence, and she
asked, “How do you love her?”
He sat forward on the edge of his chair, all eagerness. “Why ...” he
began, stammering a little, “I couldn’t think of living without her. It’s
different from anything I ever imagined. Why ... we’ve planned everything
... all our lives. If ever I lost her, it wouldn’t matter what happened to me
afterwards.” He grinned and added, “But you see ... people have said all
that before. There aren’t any words to explain ... to make it seem as
different from anything else as it seems to me.”
“But you’re going to take her away?”
“Yes ... she wants to go where I go.”
(“They are young,” thought Olivia. “They’ve never once thought of any
one else ... myself or Sybil’s grandfather.”)
Aloud she said, “That’s right, Jean.... I want you to take her away ... no
matter what happens, you must take her away....” (“And then I won’t even
have Sybil.”)
“We’re going to my ranch in the Argentine.”
“That’s right.... I think Sybil would like that.” She sighed, in spite of
herself, vaguely envious of these two. “But you’re so young. How can you
know for certain.”
A shadow crossed his face and he said, “I’m twenty-five, Mrs. Pentland
... but that’s not the only thing.... I was brought up, you see, among the
French ... like a Frenchman. That makes a difference.” He hesitated,
frowning for a moment. “Perhaps I oughtn’t to tell.... You mightn’t
understand. I know how things are in this part of the world.... You see, I was
brought up to look upon falling in love as something natural ... something
that was pleasant and natural and amusing. I’ve been in love before,
casually ... the way young Frenchmen are ... but in earnest, too, because a
Frenchman can’t help surrounding a thing like that with sentiment and
romance. He can’t help it. If it were just ... just something shameful and
nasty, he couldn’t endure it. They don’t have affairs in cold blood ... the
way I’ve heard men talk about such things since I’ve come here. It makes a
difference, Mrs. Pentland, if you look at the thing in the light they do. It’s
different here.... I see the difference more every day.”
He was talking earnestly, passionately, and when he paused for a
moment she remained silent, unwilling to interrupt him until he had
finished.
“What I’m trying to say is difficult, Mrs. Pentland. It’s simply this ... that
I’m twenty-five, but I’ve had experience with life. Don’t laugh! Don’t think
I’m just a college boy trying to make you think I’m a roué. Only what I say
is true. I know about such things ... and I’m glad because it makes me all
the more certain that Sybil is the only woman in the world for me ... the one
for whom I’d sacrifice everything. And I’ll know better how to make her
happy, to be gentle with her ... to understand her. I’ve learned now, and it’s
a thing which needs learning ... the most important thing in all life. The
French are right about it. They make a fine, wonderful thing of love.” He
turned away with a sudden air of sadness. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have told
you all this.... I’ve told Sybil. She understands.”
“No,” said Olivia, “I think you’re right ... perhaps.” She kept thinking of
the long tragic story of John Pentland, and of Anson, who had always been
ashamed of love and treated it as something distasteful. To them it had been
a dark, strange thing always touched by shame. She kept thinking, despite
anything she could do, of Anson’s clumsy, artificial attempts at love-
making, and she was swept suddenly by shame for him. Anson, so proud
and supercilious, was a poor thing, inferior even to his own groom.
“But why,” she asked, “didn’t you tell me about Sybil sooner? Every one
has seen it, but you never spoke to me.”
For a moment he did not answer her. An expression of pain clouded the
blue eyes, and then, looking at her directly, he said, “It’s not easy to explain
why. I was afraid to come to you for fear you mightn’t understand, and the
longer I’ve been here, the longer I’ve put it off because ... well, because
here in Durham, ancestors, family, all that, seems to be the beginning and
end of everything. It seems always to be a question of who one’s family is.
There is only the past and no future at all. And, you see, in a way ... I
haven’t any family.” He shrugged his big shoulders and repeated, “In a way,
I haven’t any family at all. You see, my mother was never married to my
father.... I’ve no blood-right to the name of de Cyon. I’m ... I’m ... well, just
a bastard, and it seemed hopeless for me even to talk to a Pentland about
Sybil.”
He saw that she was startled, disturbed, but he could not have known
that the look in her eyes had very little to do with shock at what he had told
her; rather she was thinking what a weapon the knowledge would be in the
hands of Anson and Aunt Cassie and even John Pentland himself.
He was talking again with the same passionate earnestness.
“I shan’t let it make any difference, so long as Sybil will have me, but,
you see, it’s very hard to explain, because it isn’t the way it seems. I want
you to understand that my mother is a wonderful woman.... I wouldn’t
bother to explain, to say anything ... except to Sybil and to you.”
 “Sabine has told me about her.”
“Mrs. Callendar has known her for a long time.... They’re great friends,”
said Jean. “She understands.”
“But she never told me ... that. You mean that she’s known it all along?”
“It’s not an easy thing to tell ... especially here in Durham, and I fancy
she thought it might make trouble for me ... after she saw what had
happened to Sybil and me.”
He went on quickly, telling her what he had told Sybil of his mother’s
story, trying to make her understand what he understood, and Sabine and
even his stepfather, the distinguished old de Cyon ... trying to explain a
thing which he himself knew was not to be explained. He told her that his
mother had refused to marry her lover, “because in his life outside ... the life
which had nothing to do with her ... she discovered that there were things
she couldn’t support. She saw that it was better not to marry him ... better
for herself and for him and, most of all, for me.... He did things for the sake
of success—mean, dishonorable things—which she couldn’t forgive ... and
so she wouldn’t marry him. And now, looking back, I think she was right. It
made no great difference in her life. She lived abroad ... as a widow, and
very few people—not more than two or three—ever knew the truth. He
never told because, being a politician, he was afraid of such a scandal. She
didn’t want me to be brought up under such an influence, and I think she
was right. He’s gone on doing things that were mean and dishonorable....
He’s still doing them to-day. You see he’s a politician ... a rather cheap one.
He’s a Senator now and he hasn’t changed. I could tell you his name.... I
suppose some people would think him a distinguished man ... only I
promised her never to tell it. He thinks that I’m dead.... He came to her once
and asked to see me, to have a hand in my education and my future. There
were things, he said, that he could do for me in America ... and she told him
simply that I was dead ... that I was killed in the war.” He finished in a
sudden burst of enthusiasm, his face alight with affection. “But you must
know her really to understand what I’ve been saying. Knowing her, you
understand everything, because she’s one of the great people ... the strong
people of the world. You see, it’s one of the things which it is impossible to
explain—to you or even to Sybil—impossible to explain to the others. One
must know her.”
 If she had had any doubts or fears, she knew now that it was too late to
act; she saw that it was impossible to change the wills of two such lovers as
Jean and Sybil. In a way, she came to understand the story of Jean’s mother
more from watching him than by listening to his long explanation. There
must be in her that same determination and ardor that was in her son ... a
thing in its way irresistible. And yet it was difficult; she was afraid,
somehow, of this unexpected thing, perhaps because it seemed vaguely like
the taint of Savina Pentland.
She said, “If no one knows this, there is no reason to tell it here. It would
only make unhappiness for all concerned. It is your business alone ... and
Sybil’s. The others have no right to interfere, even to know; but they will
try, Jean ... unless ... unless you both do what you want ... quickly.
Sometimes I think they might do anything.”
“You mean ...” he began impatiently.
Olivia fell back upon that vague hint which John Pentland had dropped
to her the night before. She said, “There was once an elopement in the
Pentland family.”
“You wouldn’t mind that?” he asked eagerly. “You wouldn’t be hurt ... if
we did it that way?”
“I shouldn’t know anything about it,” said Olivia quietly, “until it was
too late to do anything.”
“It’s funny,” he said; “we’d thought of that. We’ve talked of it, only
Sybil was afraid you’d want to have a big wedding and all that....”
“No, I think it would be better not to have any wedding at all ...
especially under the circumstances.”
“Mrs. Callendar suggested it as the best way out.... She offered to lend us
her motor,” he said eagerly.
“You discussed it with her and yet you didn’t speak to me?”
“Well, you see, she’s different ... she and Thérèse.... They don’t belong
here in Durham. Besides, she spoke of it first. She knew what was going on.
She always knows. I almost think that she planned the whole thing long
ago.”
Olivia, looking out of the window, saw entering the long drive the
antiquated motor with Aunt Cassie, Miss Peavey, her flying veils and her
Pekinese.
 “Mrs. Struthers is coming ...” she said. “We mustn’t make her
suspicious. And you’d best tell me nothing of your plans and then ... I
shan’t be able to interfere even if I wanted to. I might change my mind ...
one never knows.”
He stood up and, coming over to her, took her hand and kissed it.
“There’s nothing to say, Mrs. Pentland ... except that you’ll be glad for what
you’ve done. You needn’t worry about Sybil.... I shall make her happy.... I
think I know how.”
He left her, hurrying away past the ancestors in the long hall to find
Sybil, thinking all the while how odd it would seem to have a woman so
young and beautiful as Mrs. Pentland for a mother-in-law. She was a
charming woman (he thought in his enthusiasm), a great woman, but she
was so sad, as if she had never been very happy. There was always a cloud
about her.

He did not escape quickly enough, for Aunt Cassie’s sharp eyes caught a
glimpse of him as he left the house in the direction of the stables. She met
Olivia in the doorway, kissing her and saying, “Was that Sybil’s young man
I saw leaving?”
“Yes,” said Olivia. “We’ve been talking about Sybil. I’ve been telling
him that he mustn’t think of her as some one to marry.”
The yellow face of Aunt Cassie lighted with a smile of approval. “I’m
glad, my dear, that you’re being sensible about this. I was afraid you
wouldn’t be, but I didn’t like to interfere. I never believe any good comes of
it, unless one is forced to. He’s not the person for Sybil.... Why, no one
knows anything about him. You can’t let a girl marry like that ... just any
one who comes along. Besides, Mrs. Pulsifer writes me.... You remember
her, Olivia, the Mannering boy’s aunt who used to have a house in Chestnut
Street.... Well, she lives in Paris now at the Hotel Continental, and she
writes me she’s discovered there’s some mystery about his mother. No one
seems to know much about her.”
“Why,” said Olivia, “should she write you such a thing? What made her
think you’d be interested?”
“Well, Kate Pulsifer and I went to school together and we still
correspond now and then. I just happened to mention the boy’s name when
I was writing her about Sabine. She says, by the way, that Sabine has very
queer friends in Paris and that Sabine has never so much as called on her or
asked her for tea. And there’s been some new scandal about Sabine’s
husband and an Italian woman. It happened in Venice....”
“But he’s not her husband any longer.”
The old lady seated herself and went on pouring forth the news from
Kate Pulsifer’s letter; with each word she appeared to grow stronger and
stronger, less and less yellow and worn.
(“It must be,” thought Olivia, “the effect of so many calamities
contained in one letter.”)
She saw now that she had acted only just in time and she was glad that
she had lied, so flatly, so abruptly, without thinking why she had done it.
For Mrs. Pulsifer was certain to go to the bottom of the affair, if for no other
reason than to do harm to Sabine; she had once lived in a house on Chestnut
Street with a bow-window which swept the entrance to every house. She
was one of John Pentland’s dead, who lived by watching others live.
4

From the moment she encountered Mr. Gavin on the turnpike until the
tragedy which occurred two days later, life at Pentlands appeared to lose all
reality for Olivia. When she thought of it long afterward, the hours became
a sort of nightmare in which the old enchantment snapped and gave way to
a strained sense of struggle between forces which, centering about herself,
left her in the end bruised and a little broken, but secure.
The breathless heat of the sort which from time to time enveloped that
corner of New England, leaving the very leaves of the trees hanging limp
and wilted, again settled down over the meadows and marshes, and in the
midst of the afternoon appeared the rarest of sights—the indolent Sabine
stirring in the burning sun. Olivia watched her coming across the fields,
protected from the blazing sun only by the frivolous yellow parasol. She
came slowly, indifferently, and until she entered the cool, darkened
drawing-room she appeared the familiar bored Sabine; only after she
greeted Olivia the difference appeared.
She said abruptly, “I’m leaving day after to-morrow,” and instead of
seating herself to talk, she kept wandering restlessly about the room,
examining Horace Pentland’s bibelots and turning the pages of books and
magazines without seeing them.
 “Why?” asked Olivia. “I thought you were staying until October.”
“No, I’m going away at once.” She turned and murmured, “I’ve hated
Durham always. It’s unbearable to me now. I’m bored to death. I only came,
in the first place, because I thought Thérèse ought to know her own people.
But it’s no good. She’ll have none of them. I see now how like her father
she is. They’re not her own people and never will be.... I don’t imagine
Durham will ever see either of us again.”
Olivia smiled. “I know it’s dull here.”
“Oh, I don’t mean you, Olivia dear, or even Sybil or O’Hara, but there’s
something in the air.... I’m going to Newport for two weeks and then to
Biarritz for October. Thérèse wants to go to Oxford.” She grinned
sardonically. “There’s a bit of New England in her, after all ... this education
business. I wanted a femme du monde for a daughter and God and New
England sent me a scientist who would rather wear flat heels and look
through a microscope. It’s funny how children turn out.”
(“Even Thérèse and Sabine,” thought Olivia. “Even they belong to it.”)
She watched Sabine, so worldly, so superbly dressed, so hard—such a
restless nomad; and as she watched her it occurred to her again that she was
very like Aunt Cassie—an Aunt Cassie in revolt against Aunt Cassie’s
gods, an Aunt Cassie, as John Pentland had said, “turned inside out.”
Without looking up from the pages of the Nouvelle Revue, Sabine said,
“I’m glad this thing about Sybil is settled.”
“Yes.”
“He told you about his mother?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t let that make any difference? You didn’t tell the others?”
“No.... Anything I had to say would have made no difference.”
“You were wise.... I think Thérèse is right, perhaps ... righter than any of
us. She says that nature has a contempt for marriage certificates.
Respectability can’t turn decay into life ... and Jean is alive.... So is his
mother.”
“I know what you are driving at.”
“Certainly, my dear, you ought to know. You’ve suffered enough from it.
And knowing his mother makes a difference. She’s no ordinary light
woman, or even one who was weak enough to allow herself to be seduced.
Once in fifty years there occurs a woman who can ... how shall I say it?...
get away with a thing like that. You have to be a great woman to do it. I
don’t think it’s made much difference in her life, chiefly because she’s a
woman of discretion and excellent taste. But it might have made a
difference in Jean’s life if he had encountered a mother less wise than
yourself.”
“I don’t know whether I’m being wise or not. I believe in him and I want
Sybil to escape.”
Olivia understood that for the first time they were discussing the thing
which none of them ever mentioned, the thing which up to now Sabine had
only touched upon by insinuation. Sabine had turned away and stood
looking out of the window across the meadows where the distant trees
danced in waves of heat.
“You spoiled my summer a bit, Olivia dear, by taking away my Irish
friend from me.”
Suddenly Olivia was angry as she was angry sometimes at the meddling
of Aunt Cassie. “I didn’t take him away. I did everything possible to avoid
him ... until you came. It was you who threw us together. That’s why we’re
all in a tangle now.” And she kept thinking what a strange woman Sabine
Callendar really was, how intricate and unfathomable. She knew of no other
woman in the world who could talk thus so dispassionately, so without
emotion.
“I thought I’d have him to amuse,” she was saying, “and instead of that
he only uses me as a confidante. He comes to me for advice about another
woman. And that, as you know, isn’t very interesting....”
Olivia sat suddenly erect. “What does he say? What right has he to do
such a thing?”
“Because I’ve asked him to. When I first came here, I promised to help
him. You see, I’m very friendly with you both. I want you both to be happy
and ... besides I can think of nothing happening which could give me
greater pleasure.”
When Olivia did not answer her, she turned from the window and asked
abruptly, “What are you going to do about him?”
Again Olivia thought it best not to answer, but Sabine went on pushing
home her point relentlessly, “You must forgive me for speaking plainly, but
I have a great affection for you both ... and I ... well, I have a sense of
conscience in the affair.”
“You needn’t have. There’s nothing to have a conscience about.”
“You’re not being very honest.”
Suddenly Olivia burst out angrily, “And why should it concern you,
Sabine ... in the least? Why should I not do as I please, without
interference?”
“Because, here ... and you know this as well as I do ... here such a thing
is impossible.”
In a strange fashion she was suddenly afraid of Sabine, perhaps because
she was so bent upon pushing things to a definite solution. It seemed to
Olivia that she herself was losing all power of action, all capacity for
anything save waiting, pretending, doing nothing.
“And I’m interested,” continued Sabine slowly, “because I can’t bear the
tragic spectacle of another John Pentland and Mrs. Soames.”
“There won’t be,” said Olivia desperately. “My father-in-law is different
from Michael.”
“That’s true....”
“In a way ... a finer man.” She found herself suddenly in the amazing
position of actually defending Pentlands.
“But not,” said Sabine with a terrifying reasonableness, “so wise a one ...
or one so intelligent.”
“No. It’s impossible to say....”
“A thing like this is likely to come only once to a woman.”
(“Why does she keep repeating the very things that I’ve been fighting all
along,” thought Olivia.) Aloud she said, “Sabine, you must leave me in
peace. It’s for me alone to settle.”
“I don’t want you to do a thing you will regret the rest of your life ...
bitterly.”
“You mean....”
“Oh, I mean simply to give him up.”
Again Olivia was silent, and Sabine asked suddenly, “Have you had a
call from a Mr. Gavin? A gentleman with a bald head and a polished face?”
Olivia looked at her sharply. “How could you know that?”
 “Because I sent him, my dear ... for the same reason that I’m here now ...
because I wanted you to do something ... to act. And I’m confessing now
because I thought you ought to know the truth, since I’m going away.
Otherwise you might think Aunt Cassie or Anson had done it ... and trouble
might come of that.”
Again Olivia said nothing; she was lost in a sadness over the thought
that, after all, Sabine was no better than the others.
“It’s not easy to act in this house,” Sabine was saying. “It’s not easy to
do anything but pretend and go on and on until at last you are an old woman
and die. I did it to help you ... for your own good.”
“That’s what Aunt Cassie always says.”
The shaft went home, for it silenced Sabine, and in the moment’s pause
Sabine seemed less a woman than an amazing, disembodied, almost
malevolent force. When she answered, it was with a shrug of the shoulders
and a bitter smile which seemed doubly bitter on the frankly painted lips. “I
suppose I am like Aunt Cassie. I mightn’t have been, though.... I might have
been just a pleasant normal person ... like Higgins or one of the servants.”
The strange speech found an echo in Olivia’s heart. Lately the same
thought had come to her again and again—if only she could be simple like
Higgins or the kitchen-maid. Such a state seemed to her at the moment the
most desirable thing in the world. It was perhaps this strange desire which
led Sabine to surround herself with what Durham called “queer people,”
who were, after all, simply people like Higgins and the kitchen-maid who
happened to occupy a higher place in society.
“The air here needs clearing,” Sabine was saying. “It needs a
thunderstorm, and it can be cleared only by acting.... This affair of Jean and
Sybil will help. We are all caught up in a tangle of thoughts and ideas ...
which don’t matter.... You can do it, Olivia. You can clear the air once and
for all.”
Then for the first time Olivia thought she saw what lay behind all this
intriguing of Sabine; for a moment she fancied that she saw what it was
Sabine wanted more passionately than anything else in the world.
Aloud she said it, “I could clear the air, but it would also be the
destruction of everything.”
Sabine looked at her directly. “Well?... and would you be sorry? Would
you count it a loss? Would it make any difference?”
 Impulsively she touched Sabine’s hand. “Sabine,” she said, without
looking at her, “I’m fond of you. You know that. Please don’t talk any more
about this ... please, because I want to go on being fond of you ... and I can’t
otherwise. It’s our affair, mine and Michael’s ... and I’m going to settle it,
to-night perhaps, as soon as I can have a talk with him.... I can’t go on any
longer.”
Taking up the yellow parasol, Sabine asked, “Do you expect me for
dinner to-night?”
“Of course, more than ever to-night.... I’m sorry you’ve decided to go so
soon.... It’ll be dreary without you or Sybil.”
“You can go, too,” said Sabine quickly. “There is a way. He’d give up
everything for you ... everything. I know that.” Suddenly she gave Olivia a
sharp look. “You’re thirty-eight, aren’t you?”
“Day after to-morrow I shall be forty!”
Sabine was tracing the design of roses on Horace Pentland’s Savonnerie
carpet with the tip of her parasol. “Gather them while you may,” she said
and went out into the blazing heat to cross the meadows to Brook Cottage.
Left alone, Olivia knew she was glad that day after to-morrow Sabine
would no longer be here. She saw now what John Pentland meant when he
said, “Sabine ought never to have come back here.”
5

The heat clung on far into the evening, penetrating with the darkness
even the drawing-room where they sat—Sabine and John Pentland and old
Mrs. Soames and Olivia—playing bridge for the last time, and as the
evening wore on the game went more and more badly, with the old lady
forgetting her cards and John Pentland being patient and Sabine sitting in a
controlled and sardonic silence, with an expression on her face which said
clearly, “I can endure this for to-night because to-morrow I shall escape
again into the lively world.”
Jean and Sybil sat for a time at the piano, and then fell to watching the
bridge. No one spoke save to bid or to remind Mrs. Soames that it was time
for her shaking hands to distribute the cards about the table. Even Olivia’s
low, quiet voice sounded loud in the hot stillness of the old room.
At nine o’clock Higgins appeared with a message for Olivia—that Mr.
O’Hara was being detained in town and that if he could get away before ten
he would come down and stop at Pentlands if the lights were still burning in
the drawing-room. Otherwise he would not be down to ride in the morning.
Once during a pause in the game Sabine stirred herself to say, “I haven’t
asked about Anson’s book. He must be near to the end.”
“Very near,” said Olivia. “There’s very little more to be done. Men are
coming to-morrow to photograph the portraits. He’s using them to illustrate
the book.”
At eleven, when they came to the end of a rubber, Sabine said, “I’m
sorry, but I must stop. I must get up early to-morrow to see about the
packing.” And turning to Jean she said, “Will you drive me home? Perhaps
Sybil will ride over with us for the air. You can bring her back.”
At the sound of her voice, Olivia wanted to cry out, “No, don’t go. You
mustn’t leave me now ... alone. You mustn’t go away like this!” But she
managed to say quietly, in a voice which sounded far away, “Don’t stay too
late, Sybil,” and mechanically, without knowing what she was doing, she
began to put the cards back again in their boxes.
She saw that Sabine went out first, and then John Pentland and old Mrs.
Soames, and that Jean and Sybil remained behind until the others had gone,
until John Pentland had helped the old lady gently into his motor and driven
off with her. Then, looking up with a smile which somehow seemed to give
her pain she said, “Well?”
And Sybil, coming to her side, kissed her and said in a low voice,
“Good-by, darling, for a little while.... I love you....” And Jean kissed her in
a shy fashion on both cheeks.
She could find nothing to say. She knew Sybil would come back, but she
would be a different Sybil, a Sybil who was a woman, no longer the child
who even at eighteen sometimes had the absurd trick of sitting on her
mother’s knee. And she was taking away with her something that until now
had belonged to Olivia, something which she could never again claim. She
could find nothing to say. She could only follow them to the door, from
where she saw Sabine already sitting in the motor as if nothing in the least
unusual were happening; and all the while she wanted to go with them, to
run away anywhere at all.
Through a mist she saw them turning to wave to her as the motor drove
off, to wave gaily and happily because they were at the beginning of life....
She stood in the doorway to watch the motor-lights slipping away in silence
down the lane and over the bridge through the blackness to the door of
Brook Cottage. There was something about Brook Cottage ... something
that was lacking from the air of Pentlands: it was where Toby Cane and
Savina Pentland had had their wanton meetings.
In the still heat the sound of the distant surf came to her dimly across the
marshes, and into her mind came absurdly words she had forgotten for
years.... “The breaking waves dashed high on the stern and rockbound
coast.” Against the accompaniment of the surf, the crickets and katydids
(harbingers of autumn) kept up a fiddling and singing; and far away in the
direction of Marblehead she watched the eye of a lighthouse winking and
winking. She was aware of every sight and sound and odor of the breathless
night. It might storm, she thought, before they got into Connecticut. They
would be motoring all the night....
The lights of Sabine’s motor were moving again now, away from Brook
Cottage, through O’Hara’s land, on and on in the direction of the turnpike.
In the deep hollow by the river they disappeared for a moment and then
were to be seen once more against the black mass of the hill crowned by the
town burial-ground. And then abruptly they were gone, leaving only the
sound of the surf and the music of the crickets and the distant, ironically
winking lighthouse.
She kept seeing them, side by side in the motor racing through the
darkness, oblivious to all else in the world save their own happiness. Yes,
something had gone away from her forever.... She felt a terrible, passionate
envy that was like a physical pain, and all at once she knew that she was
terribly alone standing in the darkness before the door of the old house.

She was roused by the sound of Anson’s voice asking, “Is that you,
Olivia?”
“Yes.”
“What are you doing out there?”
“I came out for some air.”
“Where’s Sybil?”
For a moment she did not answer, and then quite boldly she said, “She’s
ridden over with Jean to take Sabine home.”
 “You know I don’t approve of that.” He had come through the hall now
and was standing near her.
“It can’t do any harm.”
“That’s been said before....”
“Why are you so suspicious, Anson, of your own child?” She had no
desire to argue with him. She wanted only to be left in peace, to go away to
her room and lie there alone in the darkness, for she knew now that Michael
was not coming.
“Olivia,” Anson was saying, “come inside for a moment. I want to talk
to you.”
“Very well ... but please don’t be disagreeable. I’m very tired.”
“I shan’t be disagreeable.... I only want to settle something.”
She knew then that he meant to be very disagreeable, and she told
herself that she would not listen to him; she would think of something else
while he was speaking—a trick she had learned long ago. In the drawing-
room she sat quietly and waited for him to begin. Standing by the
mantelpiece, he appeared more tired and yellow than usual. She knew that
he had worked on his book; she knew that he had poured all his vitality, all
his being, into it; but as she watched him her imagination again played her
the old trick of showing her Michael standing there in his place ... defiant, a
little sulky, and filled with a slow, steady, inexhaustible force.
“It’s chiefly about Sybil,” he said. “I want her to give up seeing this
boy.”
“Don’t be a martinet, Anson. Nothing was ever gained by it.”
(She thought, “They must be almost to Salem by now.”) And aloud she
added, “You’re her father, Anson; why don’t you speak?”
“It’s better for you. I’ve no influence with her.”
“I have spoken,” she said, thinking bitterly that he could never guess
what she meant.
“And what’s the result? Look at her, going off at this hour of the
night....”
She shrugged her shoulders, filled with a warm sense of having
outwitted the enemy, for at the moment Anson seemed to her an enemy not
only of herself, but of Jean and Sybil, of all that was young and alive in the
world.