Blood of the Isles by Bryan Sykes Read Free Book Online

its political usefulness to the King. The ancient Britons and their affinity to the Catholic Church were becoming an embarrassment.
    But the popularity of Geoffrey’s
History
was still sufficient for the publication of Polydore Vergil’s alternative
Anglica Historica
to be greeted with outrage and the author condemned as an unscrupulous papist who had set out to undermine the new self-confidence of the English Church. Even during the reign of Henry’s daughter, Elizabeth I, the
History
was still a source of inspiration to poets like EdmundSpenser, whose
Faerie Queene
links Elizabeth and Arthur, and, of course, to Shakespeare, whose
King Lear
draws its characters straight from Geoffrey of Monmouth.
    Nevertheless, the currency of the myth among scholars continued to decline, even though it enjoyed a brief revival of royal enthusiasm in 1601 when the Stuart King James VI of Scotland/I of England cast himself as the embodiment of Merlin’s prophecy and the restorer of the ancient unity of England, Wales and Scotland first won by Brutus and Locrinus. Eventually, the Stuarts were overthrown and the crown passed to William of Orange. Though he, one would have thought, could not possibly claim a link to the myth, coming as he did from Protestant Holland, this did not stop the poet R. D. Blackmore from portraying William as the Christian Arthur. Even more bizarrely, he managed to twist the myth to the point where William became the champion of the true religion of the ancient Britons (Protestantism!) against the heathen Saxons (Catholic!). That shameful episode was the last bow of the myth on the political stage, though its popularity even today is witness to its continuing fascination.
    The real reason for the slow decline of the myth of a united, essentially Celtic Britain with ancient foundations, as elaborated in the
History
, was that, following the Reformation, it no longer suited the English Church. After Henry VIII’s acrimonious break with Rome, the newly established Protestant Church of England looked back into history to provide it with the historical legitimacy to set itself apart from Roman Catholicism. To do this, scholars seized on a remark made in the sixth century by Gildas in
The Ruin of Britain
that, in what became England, the original Britons had been completely wiped out by the Saxons. The natural conclusion was that the English were the linear descendants of the Saxons, not the Britons at all. This was an undiluted and direct genealogical connection, not with the defeated Britons and the mythical Arthur, but with the victorious Saxons. In this version of events the Saxons were not the malicious and unprincipled opportunists whose foothold in Britain came about only through Vortigern’s treachery. Far from it: the Saxons were strong, self-confident and adventurous pioneers who had triumphed against the weak-willed Britons through the intrinsic superiority of their moral character and their love of freedom. The English Church no longer looked west and north to the mountains of Wales and Scotland for its natural affiliations, but across the North Sea to the Teutonic Germans whose stout spirit of Protestant independence had triumphed against the corruption of the Roman Church.
    To recreate the myth of an Anglo-Saxon golden age before the Norman Conquest, Protestant historians needed a hero to replace Arthur. They found one in King Alfred, and the PR campaign began: ‘the great and singular qualities in this king, worthy of high renown and commendation – godly and excellent virtues, joined with a public and tender care, and a zealous study for the common peace and tranquillity . . . his heroical properties jointed together in one piece’, wrote John Foxe in 1563. It clearly worked: even today, Alfred is the one Saxon king that most children have heard of – even if all they remember is that heburnt the cakes. Unlike Arthur, there is no doubt that Alfred existed, but how close the glowing tributes to both