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The “History of the Kings of Britain” in College of Arms Ms. Arundel XXII
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Manuscript Arundel xxii in the College of Arms, London, contains two Middle English texts, The Seege or Batayle of Troye (fols. 1r-8r col. 2) and what has been described as a translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (fols. 8r col. 2-80v col. 2). This text, which I call “History of the Kings of Britain” (HKofB), is in reality a translation of HRB from the Description of Britain to the wrestling match between Corineus and Gogmagog, and of Wace's Brut from that point on. Although it has been known since the late sixteenth century, it seems never to have been examined completely and in detail.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1954
References
1 Mary Elizabeth Barnicle ed., EETS, Or. Ser., No. 172 (London, 1927).
2 [William Henry Black], Catalogue of the Arundel Manuscripts in the Library of the College of Arms (London, 1829), pp. 31-33; Thomas Duffus Hardy, Descriptive Catalogue of Materials Relating to the History of Great Britain and Ireland to the Reign of Henry VII, i, Pt. 1, Rolls Series (London, 1862), pp. 356-357, dependent on Black; Barnicle, pp. xvii-xviii. It has been noticed also by Robert Huntington Fletcher, The Arthurian Material in the Chronicles, in (Harvard) Studies and Notes in Philol. and Lit., x (Boston, 1906), 221, n. 6, cont. from p. 220; C. Bowie Millican, “The First English Translation of the Prophecies of Merlin,” Royster Memorial Studies, in SP, xxviii (1931), 188, n. 1; Homer Nearing, Jr., “The Legend of Julius Caesar's British Conquest,” PMLA, lxiv (1949), 919 n. 65, 920 n. 27, who must have read at least the account of Caesar's conquest to realize that it “clearly derives … from Wace.”
I have not seen the MS., which was not available for consultation in the late summer of 1939, but have used the rotograph, Library of Congress, Modern Language Association Deposit, No. 310. Without the loan of this copy, and without the patient and indefatigable assistance of Miss Della Mathys, Librarian of the University of North Dakota, who procured for me by interlibrary loan many otherwise unobtainable books, this study could not have been written. I am also indebted to Professor H. M. Smyser, who read the paper and made valuable suggestions.
3 It was cited by Joseph Holand, who owned the MS., and by his friend Sir Robert Bruce Cotton in papers which they presented to the Society of Antiquaries; see my “Joseph Holand, Collector and Antiquary,” MP, xl (1943), 297-298.
4 Not all the additional leaves are reproduced in the rotograph. See Black, Hardy, Barnicle for description of these leaves.
5 There are two series, partly overlapping. One is low on the margin, the other higher up. Seven gatherings are signed in the lower series; the first five are a, b, c, d, g, respectively, the eighth and ninth, e and f. In the other series, gatherings five through ten are signed e, h, i, f (?), j, k; the signature on the first leaf of the eighth gathering seems to have been changed from f to k; on the other leaves it looks like a k.
6 The front of the binding bears his initials.
7 Société des Anciens Textes Français, 2 vols. (Paris, 1938-40).
8 See MP, xl (1943), 298-299, and n. 35.
9 Her suggestion of the “western part of Gloucestershire that borders on the county of Monmouth” as the home of the MS. (p. xxiv) may well be correct, but is surely more precise than our knowledge of ME dialect geography warrants. She was encouraged in making it by her belief that the scribe, whom she confuses with the translator, was Welsh. Actually, nothing is known of the scribe beyond what can be inferred from the MS. What Miss Barnicle (pp. xviii, xxvi) thought was his name (cf. Black, Catalogue, pp. 31-33), “Maister Gnaor” (fol. 74v col. 1), is merely a misreading of Guace.
10 My list is confined to the forms used by Samuel Moore, Sanford Brown Meech, Harold Whitehall, “Middle English Dialect Characteristics and Dialect Boundaries,” Essays and Studies in Eng. and Comp. Lit., Univ. of Mich. Publ., Lang, and Lit., xiii (Ann Arbor, 1935), 1-60. Their conclusions may also be found in Historical Outlines of English Sounds and Inflections (Ann Arbor, 1951), Albert H. Marckwardt's retitled revision of an earlier work of Moore's, on pp. 110-116.
11 When this suggestion was made before Comparative Literature Group III (Arthurian Romances) at the 1950 meeting of the MLA, it was objected that the rather frequent infinitives in -y, -ya were evidence for localization farther to the south. These forms are common in Robert of Gloucester's Chronicle. The translator's placing the Stour in Somerset (see below, p. 651) may also be evidence of a more southerly location, but characteristic southwestern forms are not as prominent as one would expect in Somerset, Dorset, Wiltshire.
12 I modernize capitalization and punctuation, expand abbreviations, except that for and, in italics, supply in square brackets words and letters missing in the MS. but necessary to the sense, and bracket and note changes from the MS.
13 [B]ede] rede MS.
14 Geffrei Gaimar, Lestorie des Engles, ed. Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy, Charles Trice Martin, Rolls Series, 2 vols. (London, 1888-89), i, vv. 6448-67; on which see Alexander Bell, “The Epilogue to Gaimar's ‘Estoire des Engleis’,” MLR, xxv (1930), 52-59, and J. S. P. Tatlock, The Legendary History of Britain: Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae and its Early Vernacular Versions (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1950), pp. 453-454.
15 Acton Griscom, ed. The Historia Regum Britannia of Geoffrey of Monmouth (London, 1929), pp. 36-37; Edmund G. Gardner's review of Griscom, MLR, xxv (1930), 220.
Wace is of no help here, because he does not have the preface. He seems to have used the Variant Version, at least in the beginning of the Brut, and his copy probably lacked the preface, as do Hammer's MSS. D, H, and P (Jacob Hammer, ed. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britanniae, a Variant Version Edited from Manuscripts, The Mediaeval Academy of America, Publication No. 57 [Cambridge, Mass., 1951], pp. 6-8). I expect to publish soon a study of Wace and the Variant Version.
16 Robert Manning also believed that Robert was the instigator. See The Story of England by Robert Manning of Brunne, ed. Frederick J. Furnivall, Rolls Series, 2 vols. (London, 1887), i, vv. 167-176.
17 Readings of the Variant Version are cited from Hammer's edition by Vt. with book and line reference; vulgate readings are cited from Griscom's edition by Vulg. and page number, or where unambiguous, by Geoffrey's name.
18 There are inconclusive indications that the Latin text used by the translator was closer to MS. Harlech 17 than to any of the other MSS. used by Griscom or to those used by Edmond Faral, La Légende Arthurienne: Etudes et Documents, iii, in Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes … Sciences Historiques et Philologiques, fasc. 257 (Paris, 1929).
19 Corneus to] C. 7 hym t. MS.
20 he vnderstode] h. for he v. MS.
21 Quoted by Arnold, Brut, i, xciii n. 1, from Warren's article in MP, iii, which is not available to me as I write.
22 Some of them are probably deliberate. Many of the verses, couplets, and sequences of couplets found in Arnold's text, but omitted in HKofB, are omitted by one or more of Arnold's MSS. No one of the extant MSS. was used for HKofB. Every one of them omits lines represented in HKofB; none of them consistently omits, inverts, or adds the same passages as HKofB. Any grouping of these MSS. suggested by agreement with HKofB cuts across Arnold's groupings.
23 John J. Parry, “The Chronology of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia, Books i and ii,” Speculum, iv (1929), 316-322; Tatlock, Legendary History, p. 113. Continued reference to Geoffrey is more likely than that the translator's MS. differed as much in this respect from the extant Brut MSS. as does HKofB. It is also possible, of course, that he used a MS. that had been glossed from HRB.
24 HKofB departs once from both HRB and Wace. It erroneously repeats the reference to Saul and Eristeus (fol. 15r col. 1) instead of making the reign of Ebrauc coincide with the reigns of David in Judea and Silvius Latinus in Italy, as do Geoffrey (p. 259) and Wace (vv. 1512-16). Wace adds details about David that are not found in Geoffrey, and he omits Gad and Asaph from Geoffrey's list—Gad, Nathan, and Asaph—of those who were prophecying at this time, but this difference does not explain what happens in HKofB.
25 In good though mistaken company, unless the source MS. had the reading Mons Dolorosus of Hammer's H (Vt., 2: 93); see Tatlock, p. 14, and Roger Sherman Loomis, Arthurian Tradition & Chrétien de Troyes (New York, 1949), p. 109, and n. 3. Roland Blenner-Hassett (A Study of the Place-Names in Lawman's Brut, in Stanford Univ. Publ., Univ. Ser., Lang. and Lit., ix, No. 1 [Stanford, 1950], s.v. “Agnetes hulle”) persists in construing montem as subject of dicitur even though he cites Loomis.
26 Fol. 14v cols. 1-2; Wace, vv. 1424-25, 1439-40; Geoffrey, p. 256. In spite of general agreement that Geoffrey intended the Worcestershire Stour (Tatlock, p. 29; Blenner-Hassett, s.v., “Stoure”), there is an argument, to be published in MLN, in favor of Wace. It is equally applicable to HKofB.
27 This reading and that of Hammer's MS. C, “montem Damen, id est Wingates, super caput Chochem” (Vt., 8: 390-391, p. 146), in which a gloss has clearly been incorporated, suggest that the identification of Damen is a problem of long standing. If Geoffrey is to be interpreted in any way realistically, the identifications of Tatlock (p. 21) and Blenner-Hassett (s.v. “Dinian”) are equally unsatisfactory—30 miles is too far for armies on foot to have travelled before the coming of night put a stop to the pursuit.
28 As in Malory, for example. Or the translator may have turned back for this point to Geoffrey, whose sentence, “Erat tunc filius predicti loth gualguanus nomine. xii. annorum iuuenis obsequio sulpicii pape ab auunculo traditus, a quo arma recepit” (p. 447), is ambiguous. It has consistently been interpreted as meaning that St. Sulpicius gave Gawain arms (as, e.g., by Tatlock, p. 251), but the antecedent of quo may be auunculo just as well as sulpicii pape.
29 William of Malmesbury gives Arthur a nephew Ider, who died at Glastonbury (De Antiquitate Glastoniensis Ecclesiae, Migne, Pat. Lat., clxxix, col. 1701, as cited by Clark Harris Slover, “William of Malmesbury and the Irish,” Speculum, ii [1927], 269). Vague recollection of him could, perhaps, have facilitated the error.
30 Geoffrey introduces the sister at York when he needs her and accounts for her presence by saying that Edwin had captured her at Worcester when he was earlier ravaging Cadwallan's lands (p. 522). Wace anticipates, telling of her capture (w. 14151-54) so that he does not need to account for her presence later (v. 14273). This episode seems to have caused trouble for the writer of the Norse version, who makes Brian the sister of Cadwallan (A. G. van Hamel, “The Old-Norse Version of the Historia Regum Britanniae and the Text of Geoffrey of Monmouth,” Etudes Celtiques, i [1936], 205).
31 One other change, neither the translator's nor the scribe's, may be worth mentioning. The MS. has St. Augustine give tails to the inhabitants of Dorchester (fol. 76v cols. 1, 2). Joseph Holand, loyal southwesterner that he was, changed this to Rochester, even though the change played havoc with the geography of Cerne Abbas, placed by HKofB five miles to the northwest of the city where the miracle occurred.
32 “Cadwalader, Arthur, and Brutus in the Wigmore Manuscript,” Speculum, xvi (1941), 111. Ruth Huff Cline and, less positively, Roger Sherman Loomis (“The Influence of Romances on Tournaments of the Middle Ages,” Speculum, xx [1945], 204, n. 5; “Edward I, Arthurian Enthusiast,” Speculum, xxviii [1953], 117) would have stronger reason for not agreeing with Giffin about the significance of Roger Mortimer's Round Table at Kenilworth in 1279 if the motives of human actions were always single and unmixed. The significance of the genealogy, however, is not dependent on that of the Round Tables and tournaments.
33 Friederich W. D. Brie, ed., EETS, Or. Ser., Nos. 131, 136 (London, 1906, 1908).