Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Defending Anglia
- 2 Attacking Scotland: Edward I and the 1290s
- 3 Regime change
- 4 The destruction of England: crisis and complaint, c.1300–41
- 5 Love letters to Edward III
- Envoy
- Appendix: The tail-rhyme poems of Langtoft's chronicle
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE
1 - Defending Anglia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Defending Anglia
- 2 Attacking Scotland: Edward I and the 1290s
- 3 Regime change
- 4 The destruction of England: crisis and complaint, c.1300–41
- 5 Love letters to Edward III
- Envoy
- Appendix: The tail-rhyme poems of Langtoft's chronicle
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE
Summary
THE PROBLEM OF CUMELINGS
On the day of the battle of Evesham in 1265 a chronicler thirty miles away in Gloucester witnessed a great storm and darkening of the sky. He made a comparison with the darkened skies at the Crucifixion and chose this moment to identify himself as ‘roberd / Þat verst þis boc made & was wel sore aferd’. For Robert of Gloucester (as we know him), an evident supporter of Simon de Montfort, it was indeed a dark day, when Montfort and his followers were slaughtered, and Montfort's body savagely dismembered. That the chronicler should name himself at this point, thousands of lines into his work, suggests the event's particular importance to him; it perhaps does more than that, indicating that it is these events which stand as the chronicle's originating trauma. Having dealt with it, the chronicler concludes shortly afterwards, with the Lord Edward's departure on crusade and the end of Henry III's reign.
Several centuries and nearly 12, 000 lines before that, the chronicle begins fictively with that exemplary narrative of invasion and conquest, foreignness and indigeneity, the story of the Trojan named Brut and his settlement of Britain. This story begins by announcing an encomium to the land: ‘Engelond his a wel god lond · ich wene ech londe best ·’ (I).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Writing to the KingNation, Kingship and Literature in England, 1250–1350, pp. 29 - 51Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010