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Briton and Scythian: Tudor representations of Irish origins

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2016

Andrew Hadfield
Andrew Hadfield*
Affiliation:
Department of English, University of Wales, Abersytwyth
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Extract

It is a commonplace of recent British historiography that in the early modern period a sophisticated and sceptical concept of writing history began to develop which involved, among other things, historians becoming significantly less credulous in their use of sources. Often the crucial break with medieval ‘chronicles’ is seen to have been brought about by the triumph of the exiled Italian humanist, Polydore Vergil, over the fervently nationalistic band of British historians and antiquarians led by John Leland, establishing that the Arthurian legends were no more than an origin myth. Jack Scarisbrick, for example, has argued that ‘early Tudor England did not produce a sudden renewal of Arthurianism … As the sixteenth century wore on, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s patriotic fantasies received increasingly short shrift from reputable historians.’ However, this comforting narrative of increasingly thorough and careful scholarship ignores the fact that there was a form of history writing in which the reliance upon origin myths such as the Arthurian legends and the ‘matter of Britain’ actually increased dramatically after the Reformation, namely English histories of Ireland.

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Articles
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 112 , November 1993 , pp. 390 - 408
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1993

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References

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31 The 1570s, when both Hanmer and Campion were compiling their histories, was a time of relative stability in Ireland, and many English government officials and writers believed that Ireland was about to accept the spread of English law, order and administrative machinery: see Ellis, Steven G., Tudor Ireland: crown, community and the conflict of cultures, 1470-1603 (London, 1985), pp 264-74Google Scholar; Canny, Nicholas P., The Elizabethan conquest of Ireland: a pattern established, 1565-76 (Hassocks, 1976), ch. 5.Google Scholar

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35 The use of both ‘allegiance’ and ‘subjection’ seems to imply that the Irish surrendered to a superior power and yet did so voluntarily, i.e. that equal and subordinate status are simultaneous, precisely the ambiguity of imperial authority discussed above.

36 The words Irenius cites are marraah (in Irish ‘horseman’, from the Saxon marh, ’horse’), gemanus (‘to ride’ in Irish and Saxon); these correlations are said to have come about through trade and common inhabitance. ‘Mere Saxon’, as in ‘mere English’ (see, e.g., Holinshed, , Chronicles, i, 27 Google Scholar) or ‘mere Irish’ (see, e.g., Campion, Two bokes, p. 21; Moryson, Fynes, ‘A description of Ireland’ in Morley, Henry (ed.), Ireland under Elizabeth and James I (London, 1890), p. 426)Google Scholar. Moryson more often writes of the ‘wild Irish’, which helps to emphasise the lack of a pejorative implication in ‘mere’, which signifies the purity of that group in terms of the people stated.

37 More specifically they claim a Basque ancestry. In the middle ages the Basques had an extremely low reputation, not unlike that of the Irish: see Gillingham, John, Richard the Lionheart (London, 1978), p. 50.Google Scholar

38 See also Spenser variorum, x, 309–10 for the Polydore Vergil comparison. The annalist John Stowe is another who is sceptical of the explanatory value of the ‘matter of Britain’: see his Survey of London (London, 1965 ed.), p. 486.

39 I have followed Michael Richter and John Gillingham in calling the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland an English invasion: see Richter, Michael, ‘The interpretation of medieval Irish history’ in I.H.S., xxiv, no. 95 (May 1985), pp 289-98Google Scholar; Gillingham, John, ‘Images of Ireland, 1170-1600: the origins of English imperialism’ in History Today, xxxvii (Feb. 1987), pp 16–22 Google Scholar; see also Frame, Robin, English lordship in Ireland (Oxford, 1982).Google Scholar

40 On the legends of the genealogy of Brutus, Polydore Vergil comments: ‘I have stedfastlie promised that I will neither affirme as trew, neither reproove as false, the judgement of one or other as concerning the originall of soe auncient a people, referring all things, as wee have don hertofore, to the consideration of the reader’ (Polydore Vergil’s English history, i, ed. SirEllis, Henry (Camden Soc, London 1846), p. 31)Google Scholar. Despite this disclaimer Vergil makes it quite clear that he has little time for such theories, believing that England being so close to mainland Europe must at some point have been colonised by Spaniards, French, Germans or Italians. He is similarly leading on the authenticity of Arthur (pp 121–2). As Denys Hay has noted, ‘Vergil subjects both stories to a devastating historical analysis, although he politely concludes with a verdict of not proven’ (The Anglia history of Polydore Vergil, ed. Hay, Denys (Camden Soc., London, 1950), p. xxiv)Google Scholar. Camden’s rhetorical manipulation of the reader is identical.

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43 Speed, Theatre, p. 137. Brittany was more usually referred to as ‘Little Britain’: see Hay, Denys, ‘The use of the term “Great Britain” in the middle ages’ in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, lxxxiv (1955-6), pp 55-6.Google Scholar

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52 Spenser also notes the connexion of Gauls and Britons, the latter being descended from the former (View, p. 45), but nothing is made of this, presumably because it might serve to undermine the distinctions made.

53 The only really significant ‘Gaulish’ custom the Irish are said to have preserved is the ritual blood-drinking described by Irenius at the execution of Murrogh O’Brien (and even here the practice is transformed from the original consumption of enemies’ blood to that of friends).

54 Lucian, , ‘Toxaris, or Friendship’ in The works of Lucian, ed. and trans. Harmon, A. M. et al. (8 vols, London, 1913-67), v, 101–208.Google Scholar

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57 The phrase is borrowed from Benedict Anderson’s influential study of nationalism, Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (London, 1983; repr. 1990).Google Scholar

58 Lucian, ‘Toxaris’, pp 115, 119–21, 205–6. The tract concludes with a hope that their friendship will continue, as they are bound together by ‘this conversation … and the similarity of LtheirJ ideals’ (Mnesippus). The dialogue serves as a fictional narrative of union.

59 Spenser variorum, x, 372; Faerie queene, VII, vi, 37. In the View Irenius praises the religious nature of the Irish, claiming that this will aid their conversion (pp 161–2). Here, at least, Spenser’s text is ‘dialogic’ as Coughlan claims (’“Some secret scourge”’, pp 62–8).

60 Hough, Graham, A preface to Spenser (London, 1968 ed.), p. 192 Google Scholar; Jones, Ann Rosalind and Stallybrass, Peter, ‘Dismantling Irena: the sexualising of Ireland in early modern England’ in Parker, Andrew et al. (eds), Nationalisms and sexualities (London, 1992), pp 157-71.Google Scholar

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63 Camden, Britannia, pp xvii–xviii. On ‘humanism’ and history see Kendrick, British antiquity, ch 6; Eisenstein, Elizabeth L., The printing press as an agent of change (Cambridge, 1980 ed.), ch. 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fussner, Historical revolution, chs 1, 5; Ferguson, Arthur B., ‘Circumstances and the sense of history in Tudor England: the coming of the historical revolution’ in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, iii (1967), pp 170–205 Google Scholar; Levy, Tudor historical thought, ch. 2.

64 Hanmer, ‘Chronicle of Ireland’, pp 14–15.

65 See Appiah, Anthony, ‘The uncompleted argument: Du Bois and the illusion of race’ in Gates, H. L. (ed.), ‘Race’, writing and difference (Chicago, 1986), pp 21–37 Google Scholar, for an analysis of an identical contradiction in nineteenth- and twentieth-century discourses of racial origins.

66 On Stanihurst and the question of the identity of the Palesmen see Lennon, Colm, ‘Richard Stanihurst (1547-1618) and Old English identity’ in I.H.S., xxi, no. 82 (Sept. 1978), pp 121-43Google Scholar; idem, Richard Stanihurst.

67 Stanihurst, ‘Description of Ireland’, p. 6. In Camden’s Britannia Japhet’s descendants populate Europe and north Africa (p. x). On the use of the postdiluvian diaspora as an explanatory narrative of cultural difference in Renaissance ethnology see Hogden, Margaret, Early anthropology in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Philadelphia, 1964), ch. 8.Google Scholar

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69 Stanihurst, ‘Description of Ireland’, p. 4; Lennon, Richard Stanihurst, ch. 7.

70 The notion that life amongst the Irish would serve to make the English ‘degenerate’, i.e. lose their ‘civilised’ characteristics and become Irish, dates back to Giraldus’s observations of the behaviour of the Norman settlers in Ireland: see Topographia, c. 101. It is commonplace among Tudor and Jacobean observers of Ireland: see, e.g., Campion, Two bokes, pp 9, 14–15, 107; Hooker, ‘Chronicle of Ireland’, pp 265-6; Hughes (ed.), Shakespeare’s Europe, pp 201–3 and passim.

71 Fogarty, Anne, ‘The colonization of language: narrative strategies in A view of the present state of Ireland and The faerie queene, Book 6’ in Coughlan, (ed.), Spenser & Ireland, p. 84.Google Scholar

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77 Pawlisch, Sir John Davies & the conquest of Ireland, p. 131. Davies was referring specifically to the use of the customs’ practice of ‘murage’ in Bristol and Waterford. More generally, see Russell, Conrad, ‘The British background to the Irish rebellion of 1641’ in Historical Research, lxi (1988), pp 166-82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘The British problem and the English Civil War’ in History, lxxii (1987), pp 395-415. Williams, Penry, in one of the best discussions of the government of the Tudors, omits a consideration of the administrative machine in Ireland because ‘the complex field of Irish history would have needed a book to itself, so different were Irish society and Irish government from English’ (The Tudor regime (Oxford, 1986 ed.), preface).Google Scholar

78 Barthes, Roland, ‘Myth today’ in Mythologies, trans. Lavers, Annette (London, 1983 ed.), pp 109-59.Google Scholar

79 Hanmer, ‘Chronicle of Ireland’, pp 14–23. Hanmer provides a long list of all the Arthurian figures who went to Ireland (pp 16–17), many of whom seem to be taken from Malory’s Morte D’Arthur.

80 On the problem of defining the term ‘colony’, which is often assumed (erroneously) to be identical with the later historical phenomenon ‘colonialism’, see Finley, M. I., ‘Colonies: an attempt at a typology’ in R. Hist. Soc. Trans., xxvi (1976), pp 167-88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hadfield, A. D., ‘The spectre of positivism?: sixteenth-century Irish historiography’ in Text & Context, iii (1988), pp 10–16 Google Scholar. Richard Beacon, the Munster planter, uses the word in the way described: see Solon hisfollie (Oxford, 1594), Bk 3, c. 14.

81 Holinshed, Chronicles, i, 37; see also William Harrison, ‘The description of Britain’, ibid., p. 201.

82 See Shire, Helen, A preface to Spenser (London, 1978), p. 51 Google Scholar; O’Connell, Michael, Mirror and veil: the historical dimension of Spenser’s ‘Faerie queene’ (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1977), p. 139 Google Scholar; Norbrook, David, Poetry and politics in the English Renaissance (London, 1984), p. 140.Google Scholar

83 Higden, Ranulph, Polychronicon, ed. Babbington, Churchill and Lumby, J. R. (9 vols, London, 1865-86), i, c. 33Google Scholar; Geoffrey, Historia, pp 197,221–2; Giraldus, Topographia, Bk 3, c. 92; idem, Expugnatio, Bk 2, c. 6; William, of Malmesbury, , Gesta regnwn Anglorum [c. 1125], ed. Giles, J. A., trans. Sharp, John (London, 1847), p. 443.Google Scholar

84 See Malory, , Morte D’Arthur, i, 22, 303; ii, 103Google Scholar; Wace, , ‘Roman de Brut’ in Arthurian chronicles, trans. Mason, Eugene (London, 1962), pp 54-7Google Scholar; Layamon, ‘Brut’, ibid., pp 205–7.

85 Higden, , Polychronicon, i, c. 33 Google Scholar; Henry, of Huntingdon, , Historia Anglorum [c. 1129], ed. and trans. Forester, Thomas (London, 1853), pp 10–11 Google Scholar; Nennius, , British history and Welsh annals, ed. and trans. Morris, John (London, 1980), pp 10, 21Google Scholar; Geoffrey, Historia, pp 123–4; Giraldus, Topgraphia, Bk 3, c. 87 and passim. On English policy see Brady, , ‘Court, castle & country’; Edwards, Philip, Threshold of a nation: a study in English and Irish drama (Cambridge, 1979), ch. 4Google Scholar; Loades, D. M., Politics and the nation, 1450-1660 (London, 1972), pt 3.Google Scholar

86 On Spenser see Brady, , ‘Spenser’s Irish crisis’; Grennan, Eamon, ‘Language and politics: a note on some metaphors in Spenser’s View ’ in Spenser Studies, iii (1982), pp 99–110 Google Scholar; on Hanmer and Moryson see the relevant D.N.B. entries; on Stanihurst see Lennon, Richard Stanihurst; on Campion see Vossen’s introduction in Campion, Two bokes.

87 This paper was written with the aid of a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellowship in the Humanities and Social Sciences. I would like to thank Lesley Johnson and John Gillingham for helpful comments on an earlier draft, which saved me from numerous errors.