The Historia Regum Britannie (Historia) of Geoffrey of Monmouth has been described as ‘‘one of the most influential books of history that has ever been written,’’ and the man who produced it as ‘‘among the most creative authors ever to write in this country.’’Footnote 1 Some elements, at least, of the Historia were probably written during the early years of the troubled reign of King Stephen (1135–54), a period dominated by a civil war fought between Stephen and his cousin Empress Matilda and her son Henry of Anjou for control of the English crown.Footnote 2 The Historia charts the history of the kingdom of Britain from its supposed foundation by the Trojan warrior Brutus to the Saxon invasions of the seventh century AD. It focuses on the actions, qualities, struggles, triumphs, and disasters of the British monarchs, the greatest of whom (Arthur) constructs a continental empire, and the external threats to their power in the form of successive races of foreign invaders. The last of these invaders, the Saxons, eventually overrun a British kingdom decimated by famine, plague, and civil war. The theme is powerfully reinforced by a section of the Historia, known as the Prophecies of Merlin (Prophecies), in which the boy Merlin foretells the troubled future of Britain to the British king Vortigern, a future in which dominion over the island passes successively to various foreign conquerors, and that seems to end in the Apocalypse.
Historians have long debated the meaning and purpose of the Historia. This article will make a further contribution to the debate by building on work that has analyzed the Historia in relation to its specific historical context. It will argue that Geoffrey of Monmouth's book was an intensely topical work, which sought to use history and prophecy to promote peace by warning the Anglo-Norman aristocracy of the dangers of civil war. This aspect of Geoffrey's rationale reinforces the argument for an early twelfth-century transformation in English identity linked to the political crisis of the late 1130s.
The Historia purports to be a genuine historical account but has been viewed as a ‘‘pseudo-history of great imaginative power.’’Footnote 3 John Gillingham summarized three of the most dominant interpretations of its purpose. These interpretations, which are not mutually exclusive, are that Geoffrey was concerned with literary effect and wrote parody, either for mockery and mischief or to ‘‘exalt non-monastic virtues and styles of life’’;Footnote 4 that he was writing for the Anglo-Norman elite in order to point to the destructive impact of the civil war of Stephen's reign and appeal for unity or else to provide Anglo-Norman rulers with an older and more illustrious genealogy than that of the Frankish kings; and that he was more Breton than Welsh or had sympathies for the Bretons outweighing his sympathies for the Welsh. While not discounting these arguments, Gillingham contended that Geoffrey had a more important purpose: he was challenging contemporary perceptions of the Celtic peoples in general, and the Welsh in particular, as barbarians and responding to the dramatic political circumstances of 1136–37, when widespread rebellions in Wales had disastrous consequences for Anglo-Norman power there, including the loss of Caerleon (Monmouthshire) to a Welsh ruler who styled himself king, and to the dilemma these circumstances posed for Geoffrey's patron, Robert, earl of Gloucester, lord of Glamorgan.Footnote 5
In more recent years, other interpretations have emerged that may reveal further important layers of Geoffrey's multilayered purpose.Footnote 6 Either directly or indirectly, a number of studies have supported the view that Geoffrey was concerned, at least in part, to warn his contemporaries about the destructive dangers of conflict and thereby to promote unity and peace during a time of civil war. In Jean Blacker's view, for example, “Geoffrey's pro-British account was a message and a warning to the rulers of his day: keep the peace, make orderly decisions providing for the future of your country, or face destruction. Learn from the example of the British people, who still await Arthur's return to liberate them from miseries of their own making. … Geoffrey aimed to show that unity of purpose was the crucial element in the successful functioning of any system of government. The characters in Geoffrey's work serve this didactic end.”Footnote 7
The case to be developed below offers further support for this view, suggests that peacemaking was one of Geoffrey's most important purposes, and is underpinned by three central arguments. First, Geoffrey wrote this work with an eye to current political affairs and blended history, prophecy, and topicality in a way that reflected and appealed to contemporary concerns about the civil war and the threat it posed to the continuance of Norman domination of England. Geoffrey used a well-known paradigm about God's vengeance upon sinful peoples to explain the Saxon conquest of the Britons. The Prophecies further reinforced this theme by predicting the passage of dominion from the Britons successively to the Saxons, the Normans, and an alliance formed by the Welsh, Bretons, and Scots. It also did so by drawing upon and exploiting a hope—the ‘‘British hope’’—maintained by the Welsh since at least the early tenth century, that Welsh power over Britain would be restored by great redeeming leaders.Footnote 8 These leaders, Cadwaladr and Conan, bore the same names as powerful Welsh and Breton rulers who were alive when Geoffrey was writing and, in the case of Cadwaladr at least, posed a serious threat to Anglo-Norman authority in Britain. On this analysis, Geoffrey encouraged his contemporaries to make peace by warning them that unless they did so their dominion of Britain would soon be brought to a disastrous end by hostile conquerors, and his work thus provides a useful way to glimpse some of the broad political interests and anxieties of the mid-twelfth-century Anglo-Norman world.
The second central argument is that the connections between the Historia and peacemaking are strengthened by the immediate political and religious context of the Historia's first known appearance in January 1139. This was a time when the political community in England was trying to promote the peace and security of the realm by holding a legatine council in London in December 1138 and, probably also, by convening a splendid gathering of the king and many of his leading churchmen and barons at Godstow near Oxford in January 1139, an occasion at which Geoffrey of Monmouth was present.
While acknowledging that there were many possible reasons why the Historia enjoyed a wide circulation, and without seeking to explain its popularity in the centuries that followed King Stephen's reign, the third central argument of the article deals with the Historia's early readership.Footnote 9 It contends that several of those who read it before ca. 1155 interpreted parts of it as a comment on contemporary political circumstances, were capable of understanding Geoffrey's warnings about the dangers these circumstances posed, or shared some of his concerns about God's vengeance and the passage of dominion over Britain to successive nations of invaders. The argument also supports the suggestion that Geoffrey may have been appealing to some of the leading combatants in the civil war for unity. And it shows that one of the Historia's early readers, Geoffrey Gaimar, who was connected with one of these combatants, Robert, earl of Gloucester, used the Historia to write a history that was intended (in part) to warn its readers about the disastrous consequences of civil war and to promote the cause of peace and had other connections with peacemaking.
The final section of this article strengthens and further illuminates the link between a transformation of English identity and the troubles of Stephen's reign. John Gillingham argues that the 1130s witnessed the emergence, within historical literature written in England, of a new sense of English identity. Distinctions drawn in previous literature between Norman conquerors and their oppressed English subjects vanished and gave way to a new concept of Englishness that embraced both peoples, and this ‘‘twelfth-century revival of the English nation’’ was closely linked to the simultaneous emergence of a new hostile representation by Anglo-Norman writers of ‘‘Celtic’’ peoples as barbarians, as well as to the perceived political crisis of the Anglo-Norman state at this time.Footnote 10 This article will show that Geoffrey's concerns about the civil war and its possible consequences were shared, to a greater or lesser extent, by several other contemporary historians, some of whom had read his work and helped to generate in their histories the ‘‘revival of the English nation.’’ It also highlights the connections between Geoffrey, these other historians, and the powerful bishop of Lincoln, Alexander, who had a natural interest in preserving Norman hegemony within Britain and, as part of this, in promoting peace within England and between England and external powers that threatened it during Stephen's reign.
THE TOPICAL CONCERNS OF THE HISTORIA: CONTEMPORARY POLITICS, HISTORY, PROPHECY, GOD'S VENGEANCE, AND THE ‘‘BRITISH HOPE’’
As John Gillingham argued, the political context in which the Historia was written, especially that of 1136–37, is crucial to understanding its meaning and purpose. Geoffrey of Monmouth first appears in a charter connected with Oxford dating from 1129, may have been a canon of the church of St. George in Oxford Castle, and was later elected to the bishopric of St. Asaph in 1151. He probably began writing the Historia around the year 1135 and certainly completed it, in some form, by the time the chronicler Henry, archdeacon of Huntingdon, was shown and amazed by a copy of it at the Norman abbey of Bec, almost certainly in January 1139.Footnote 11 The 1130s was a deeply troubled decade in English history. The death of Henry I's son, William, in 1120 led to a succession crisis that eventually resulted in a civil war between Henry's daughter Matilda and his nephew Stephen. Although Henry tried to avoid this by having his magnates swear oaths in 1127 and 1131 to accept Matilda as their lady if he died without a male heir, there are signs that some of them were reluctant to do so and also objected to Matilda's marriage to Geoffrey of Anjou in 1128.Footnote 12 When the marriage occurred, ‘‘all men began to assert,’’ according to William of Malmesbury, ‘‘as though by some prophetic spirit, that after his [Henry I’s] death they [the magnates] would fail to keep their oath.’’Footnote 13 Trouble was also brewing in Wales and Scotland from ca. 1120, if not before. In 1121 Henry campaigned in Wales, for only the second time in his reign, to deal with rebellions.Footnote 14 Welsh resistance probably continued to simmer thereafter. Gerald of Wales claimed that the Flemings who had settled in Wales sold their possessions and left the country a year to six months before Henry I's death (December 1135), because they feared future Welsh reprisals.Footnote 15 In 1121–22 there were also signs of political tension between England and Scotland, and although King David of Scots swore the oath to Empress Matilda in 1127 and remained loyal to Henry I, his ambitions to secure control of large parts of northern England became manifest soon after Henry died.Footnote 16 ‘‘Waiting for the death of Henry I,’’ as R. H. C. Davis observed, ‘‘must have been like waiting for the Bomb.’’Footnote 17
When the Bomb exploded, the impact was devastating. Stephen reneged on his oath of 1127 and secured his coronation. But Matilda disputed his royal title, and her husband Geoffrey led several invasions of Normandy during the next few years, a time when the duchy was further disturbed by baronial warfare and uprisings. In England, Stephen faced rebellions and a Scottish invasion of the North in 1136, and in 1138 he was confronted by more serious and widespread risings and two further major Scottish incursions. During the second of these, a Scottish army defeated an English force at Clitheroe in Lancashire, and another entered North Yorkshire and fought the Battle of the Standard. In the same period (1136–38), Anglo-Norman power suffered major reverses in Wales inflicted by widespread Welsh rebellions, the most serious of which, led by Owain and Cadwaladr (sons of King Gruffudd ap Cynan of Gwynedd), led to the Welsh reconquest of nearly the whole of Ceredigion.Footnote 18
At least one contemporary chronicler was convinced that Norman dominion of England was under serious threat. Orderic Vitalis observed that while in Normandy in 1137 King Stephen
heard news of risings among the English, which forced him to hurry back to England in Advent. … On his return … he found the kingdom in turmoil, and discovered a hotbed of appalling cruelty and bloody treason. Certain trouble-makers had conspired together … plotting in secret to kill all the Normans on a fixed day and hand over the government of the kingdom to the Scots. This foul plot was first divulged to Nigel, bishop of Ely, by some of the conspirators, and was revealed by him to the other prelates and nobles of the kingdom and the officials and king's dependants. As a result many of the conspirators were unmasked … [and] they paid the penalty for such wickedness and died the deaths they deserved on the scaffold or in other ways. Some who were conscious of their guilt fled before accusation … and went into exile. But the most powerful of all the rebels recklessly steeled themselves to resist, and entered into an alliance with the Scots and Welsh and other rebels and traitors, bringing down ruin on the people.Footnote 19
Orderic's story appears to be confirmed by information in the Liber Eliensis, written by 1174, about a conspiracy organized by an ex-monk, Ranulf of Salisbury, to ruin all the Frenchmen and seize England, the revelation of which resulted in the punishment of the conspirators by Bishop Nigel. The story also indicates that Nigel, a close relative of Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, played a key role in spreading the news of the threat and that this news was treated very seriously by the king.Footnote 20
Orderic also saw a widespread conspiracy behind the troubles of 1138. He states that, on learning that Robert of Gloucester had defected to the empress (shortly after 22 May 1138), many castellans and bishops—Robert's faventes—including barons from England and the Welsh marches and the Welsh prince Morgan ab Owain, rebelled against Stephen and were assisted by David, king of Scots, who invaded England. After recounting the measures taken by Stephen to overcome or pacify the rebels, Orderic describes the rebellion of William Fitz Alan, castellan and sheriff of Shrewsbury and husband of Robert of Gloucester's niece, which resulted in the king's execution of the Shrewsbury garrison just a few days before the Scots fought the Battle of the Standard.Footnote 21
Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia, especially its Prophecies, needs to be interpreted against this background of civil war and threats to Norman dominion over England and Wales, anticipated and actual. Geoffrey was greatly concerned in the Historia with the passage of dominion over Britain from the Britons to the Saxons, from the Saxons to the Normans, and from the Normans back to the Britons in the shape of their Welsh and Breton descendants. He was intent on using history and prophecy to teach his powerful contemporaries that, unless they mended the errors of their ways and terminated the civil war in which they were engaged, they would lose their power over England to foreign invaders.
Geoffrey did this partly by using a well-known paradigm in which God punished sinful peoples with invasion and conquest by foreigners. In writing the Historia, he made use of the sixth-century De Excidio Britanniae of Gildas.Footnote 22 Drawing upon the Bible and scriptural exegesis, including the Old Testament story of God's punishment of the sinful Israelites, Gildas warned his fellow Britons, especially kings and churchmen, that the disasters they were enduring, principally at the hands of Anglo-Saxon invaders, were the result of divine vengeance for their sins. These sins included sexual transgressions, treachery, lack of justice, rebelliousness, lawbreaking, royal tyranny, civil wars, and the killing of anointed kings.Footnote 23 Gildas not only compared but also identified the Britons with the Israelites by declaring them ‘‘the verus Israel.’’Footnote 24 As is well known, in the centuries that followed, the idea that God avenged the sins, including the civil wars, of a chosen people by punishing them with crop failure, famine, plague, pestilence, conquest by foreign powers, and, ultimately, the oppression of Antichrist was a recurring aspect of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman Christian historical and homiletic literature. It can be found, among other places, in Bede's Ecclesiastical History, where the author ‘‘bettered Gildas by claiming that the Britons’ sinfulness had caused not only punishment but forfeiture of their share in Israel’’ and ‘‘the Saxons now became the verus Israel which replaced a vetus Israel in the promised land of Britain.’’Footnote 25 It occurs in Alcuin's letters on the Viking sack of Lindisfarne (which referred to Gildas); King Alfred's writings; works written by or associated with Wulfstan, archbishop of York (d. 1023), who knew about Gildas from reading Alcuin and was deeply concerned about the Viking attacks on England during Æthelred II's reign; and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. And it appears again in the histories of Eadmer of Canterbury, William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, and Orderic Vitalis, all of whom used it to explain the Norman Conquest.Footnote 26 It is an idea that Geoffrey of Monmouth also utilized repeatedly to explain the conquest of Britain by the Saxons and, in the Prophecies, to account for the loss of dominion by the Saxons to the Normans.Footnote 27 And it is one that would have been completely understood by the more learned of Geoffrey's contemporaries, some of whom explained the troubles of Stephen's reign in similar terms.Footnote 28
The significance of Geoffrey's utilization of the divine vengeance paradigm in the Prophecies is reinforced by a consideration of the origins and the wider meaning and purpose of this section of the Historia. A version of the Prophecies had been written by ca. 1136–37, when it was incorporated by Orderic Vitalis into his Ecclesiastical History, though it is possible that it was added to or revised during the early years of Stephen's reign. The Prophecies circulated not only within the Historia but also separately as a libellus.Footnote 29 When found within the Historia, the Prophecies is crucial to its structure, located ‘‘exactly in the center of the book, immediately after the most significant event, the arrival of the Saxons who are the instruments of God's vengeance. History stands still for a moment while we seek its significance.’’Footnote 30 The Prophecies begins just after Merlin reveals to the British king Vortigern, who had fled to Wales to escape Saxon invaders, that a tower Vortigern is building is sinking because it was built above a pool containing two sleeping dragons.Footnote 31 Geoffrey explains that he had not yet reached this point in his story when rumors about Merlin were circulating and his contemporaries, the greatest of them Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, impelled him to publish Merlin's prophecies. Wishing to please, Geoffrey translated the Prophecies from British into Latin and sent it to Alexander with a letter. In the letter, Geoffrey states that he had originally intended to complete the Historia before working on the Prophecies, lest his faculties proved inferior to complete both, but being sure of Alexander's favor decided to proceed.Footnote 32 The fact that the Prophecies was written at the behest of Alexander, a close relative of the bishop (Nigel of Ely) said to have uncovered a plot in 1137 to hand the government of England to the Scots, is of major significance in determining its meaning and purpose and those of the Historia as a whole.
The Prophecies’ meaning and purpose, like those of the Historia, are complex and multilayered, and they have been variously interpreted by medieval and modern writers.Footnote 33 It is easy to see why this is so. Geoffrey depicts Merlin's prophecies about the fate of Britain after Vortigern's time down to Geoffrey's own day and beyond to the end of the world, as uttered in allegorical and metaphorical language, which becomes more opaque as the Prophecies proceeds. The prophecies concerning events down to the reign of Henry I are the easiest to decipher and the least contentious to historians, and the divine vengeance for sin paradigm is prominent among them.Footnote 34 To summarize, the Britons (the red dragon in the pool) were to be overrun by the Saxons (the white dragon), though relief would be provided for a time by the ‘‘Boar of Cornwall’’ (King Arthur). He would establish his power over Britain and Gaul, make Rome fear him, and die in mysterious circumstances, after which the Saxons would eventually return and inflict slaughter and famine. The Britons would recover under the ‘‘Man of Bronze’’ (Cadwallo) but would then tear themselves to pieces and suffer God's vengeance through famine, death, and exile. The Saxons would resume control of Britain, and the remaining Britons would be confined to the far end of the pool (possibly Wales). But the Saxons would eventually be decimated by the Normans and reduced to slavery. Two more dragons (possibly William Rufus and Robert Curthose) would follow, one of which would be killed by the ‘‘sting of envy,’’ after which would come the ‘‘Lion of Justice’’ (Henry I). The Lion would be a powerful ruler, but his reign would be tainted with greed and sin, and his cubs would be transformed into fish (an allusion to the White Ship disaster of 1120).Footnote 35
The prophecies that follow are harder to decode.Footnote 36 They are open, and may have been intended to be open, to a variety of possible interpretations.Footnote 37 But when they are analyzed against the background of the events of Stephen's reign, there is much to recommend W. R. J. Barron's suggestion that the Prophecies was ‘‘cleverly calculated to appeal to a society which … viewed the future with an apprehension fired by its troubled present.’’Footnote 38 Some of these prophecies resemble events in the early years of Stephen's reign so closely as to suggest remarkable coincidences, or Geoffrey of Monmouth's accurate anticipation of circumstances likely to occur, or the composition of an extended version of the Prophecies after 1135.Footnote 39
According to one of these prophecies, ‘‘Albany will grow angry and, calling her supporters, she will devote herself to bloodshed. A bridle-bit, which will be forged in the bay of Armorica, shall be placed between her jaws. The eagle of the Broken Covenant shall gild it and rejoice in her third nesting.’’Footnote 40 This prophecy and ones that follow relating to a ‘‘sixth’’ and a ‘‘lux,’’ possibly originated long before the 1130s but are very similar to events between 1135 and 1138. Albany was Scotland, and the Scots invaded England in 1136 and 1138.Footnote 41 Armorica is Brittany, and the implication is that Scottish actions were being controlled from there—perhaps an allusion to the position of King David's steward, Walter Fitz Alan, whose ancestors were Bretons.Footnote 42 The eagle is easily interpreted as Empress Matilda, who suffered a broken covenant when Anglo-Norman barons ignored their oaths of 1127 and who was certainly identified as the eagle in some medieval commentaries on the Prophecies.Footnote 43 In the next prophecy, the lion's cubs are engaged in violent activities (possibly an allusion to civil war).Footnote 44 This is followed by a probable reference to a series of royal coronations and the prophecy of the ‘‘sixth.’’Footnote 45 The ‘‘sixth’’ would:
overthrow the walls of Ireland and change its forests into a plain … reduce the different parts into one … be crowned with the lion's head. His beginning will be subject to a wandering disposition, but his end shall soar to the heavens. For he shall restore the dwellings of the saints throughout the lands, and place shepherds in fitting places. He shall clothe two cities with two palls and give virgin gifts to virgins. Thereby he will earn the favor of the Thunderer and will be placed among the blessed. From him there will emerge a lux which will penetrate all things and threaten the downfall of its own people.Footnote 46 For through it Normandy will lose both islands and be despoiled of her former dignity. / Then the island's inhabitants shall return to it, for discord will arise among the foreigners. / Also a hoary old man upon a snow-white horse shall divert the River Periron and will measure out a mill above it with his white rod. / Cadwaladr shall summon Conan and accept Albany into alliance. Then the foreigners shall be slaughtered, then the rivers will flow with blood. / Then the mountains of Armorica shall erupt and be crowned with Brutus's diadem. Kambria shall be filled with joy and the Cornish oaks shall flourish. The island shall be called by the name of Brutus and the name given to it by the foreigners shall perish.Footnote 47
As Gillingham observed, there are parallels between some of the events in the Welsh rebellions and Geoffrey's history; Geoffrey was referring at the end of this passage to the ‘‘British hope,’’ and from here on his history is deliberately encapsulated by the framework of the theme of deliverance and renewal important in Welsh historiography since at least the tenth century. This, and the fact that Geoffrey wrote the Prophecies when rumors about Merlin were circulating, led Gillingham to suggest the possibility that the ‘‘British hope’’ theme entered Geoffrey's history at exactly the time when the Welsh rebellions of 1136–37 indicated that it was becoming historical reality.Footnote 48
The contemporary resonance and significance of the series of prophecies from the ‘‘sixth’’ to Cadwaladr's summons to Conan is reinforced by other observations. The identity of the ‘‘sixth’’ is obscure, but he is clearly a king and his actions closely resemble the career of Gruffudd ap Cynan, king of Gwynedd (d. 1137).Footnote 49 Orderic observed that parts of the Prophecies would be intelligible to those who knew the histories of English and British rulers up to the times of Henry I and Gruffudd.Footnote 50 The identification of the ‘‘sixth’’ as Gruffudd is also consistent with the statement in the Life of Gruffudd that ‘‘Myrddin’’ had prophesied that Gruffudd was a fierce attacker ‘‘Who will come intent on onslaught from across the sea. / Despoiler is his name, he will despoil many,’’ and its appearance only a few sentences before a reference to Gruffudd's appeal to Irish kings for assistance against foreigners occupying Gwynedd.Footnote 51 The identification would also fit with the description of Gruffudd by his court poet, Meilyr Brydydd, as ‘‘rightful monarch of Britain’’ and ‘‘leader of the Welsh’’ and with Merlin's prophecy of the ‘‘lux’’ that would emerge from the ‘‘sixth,’’ threaten the downfall of its own race, and cause Normandy to lose its islands.Footnote 52 Gruffudd's son, Cadwallon, murdered his own uncles in 1125; his other two sons, Owain and Cadwaladr, attacked the Normans in Ceredigion between 1136 and 1138; and his daughter, Gwenllian, was killed with one of her sons while attacking the Normans of Kidwelly in 1136.Footnote 53 The ‘‘island's inhabitants’’ in the prophecy of the ‘‘lux’’ must be the Welsh, who regarded themselves as the descendants of the Britons.Footnote 54 The ‘‘foreigners’’ are almost certainly the Normans, and their dissension a civil war. The ‘‘hoary old man’’ resembles again Gruffudd, who appears in his Life as losing his sight in old age, or possibly his son Cadwaladr, who, according to Meilyr Brydydd, rode a white steed.Footnote 55 The rest of this prophecy was probably derived in part from the Armes Prydein (written ca. 930–40), or something similar to it, which predicted the restoration of British sovereignty over England after rulers named Cadwaladr and Cynan, with the help of forces from Ireland, Scotland, Strathclyde, Cornwall, and Brittany, defeated the ‘‘stewards of the Great King’’ (possibly Æthelstan) at Aber Peryddon and drove the Saxons into exile.Footnote 56 As Brynley F. Roberts noted, ‘‘It seems significant that the last clear, intelligible reference in this Prophecy which sets out the meaning of history, is to the restoration of British rule, sometime in an undefined future.’’Footnote 57
The identities of the Prophecies’ Cadwaladr and Conan provide the key to one of its central purposes, which was to warn Geoffrey's contemporaries that this future restoration of British rule was actually imminent. Conan has been identified by modern scholars either as the Conan who appears earlier in the Historia as the ancestor of the Breton kings or as the sixth-century Welsh hero Cynan, son of Clydno Eiddyn, and Cadwaladr has been equated with a late seventh-century king of Gwynedd and with the British Cadwaladr, son of Cadwallo(n), who appears toward the end of the Historia.Footnote 58 But Cadwaladr and Conan were the names not only of long-dead figures of history and prophecy but of two of Geoffrey's powerful contemporaries, Cadwaladr, son of Gruffudd ap Cynan, one of the leaders of the Welsh uprisings of 1136–37, and Duke Conan III of Brittany, the husband of Matilda, an illegitimate daughter of Henry I.Footnote 59
The contemporary relevance and significance of this is reinforced by the nature and purpose of prophecy. It ‘‘was the only source of information about the future … had always the stamp of the divine truth upon it,’’ and was a ‘‘matter of grave intellectual concern to serious and practical men.’’Footnote 60 It was intended to reassure its audience ‘‘of their enduring place in history and to warn them of the impending threats to their existence’’ and to chart an important part of their political destiny, from the Norman invasion to the restoration of a Britain under Celtic domination.Footnote 61 It also frequently involved the incorporation of ‘‘unmistakable references to events in recent history … the casting of past as future.’’Footnote 62 In their thinly veiled references to the Norman Conquest, the death of William Rufus, the reign of Henry I, Empress Matilda, the anger and violence of Scotland, the civil war of Stephen's reign, the career of Gruffudd ap Cynan, Gruffudd's son Cadwaladr, and Conan, duke of Brittany, Merlin's prophecies were deliberately cast in the image of the recent past. In their depiction of the overthrow of the Normans by an alliance—led by Cadwaladr and Conan—of the Welsh, Bretons, and Scots and the restoration of British sovereignty, they projected a terrifying picture of what was soon to come.
As Geoffrey of Monmouth tells us, the Prophecies was written at a time when rumors spread about Merlin, who prophesied the overthrow of Norman dominion in Britain, and when a political crisis resulting from a disputed succession to the English crown was either soon expected or had recently erupted. When the Prophecies was doubtless circulating, and possibly revised, four things gave its message even greater credence: Welsh risings led in part by a prince named Cadwaladr, Scottish invasions commanded by a king descended from the Anglo-Saxon monarchs that penetrated deep into English territory, the uncovering of a plot among native Englishmen to kill all the Normans and hand the kingdom to the Scots, and the existence of a Breton duke named Conan. Geoffrey had no need either to make the historical redeemers Cadwaladr and Conan rise from the dead or to have Arthur stand as substitute for them. His purpose was better served by drawing parallels between his version of the historical past, the restoration prophecies of the Armes Prydein, and the realities of a present in which the rule of sinful and war-torn Normans was under threat and powerful men named Cadwaladr and Conan—who were, or could easily be seen as, sources of that threat—lived and breathed. Those who read or heard his history could hardly have missed the point that the time prophesied by Merlin, when the Britons would regain control of their island, was at hand—unless the sinning and the fighting stopped.
THE PREVENTION OF SIN AND PROMOTION OF PEACE: THE POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS CONTEXT OF THE HISTORIA'S FIRST KNOWN APPEARANCE
The connections between the Historia, Geoffrey, and peacemaking went beyond the content of the text. Henry of Huntingdon encountered the Historia when he went to Bec in January 1139, although it could have been there several months before. The encounter could have been accidental and/or part of the normal process of intellectual exchange between scholars with shared historical interests. It is significant, however, that the immediate political and religious context of Henry's visit to Bec was one in which peacemaking was prominent.Footnote 63 The visit occurred soon after and probably as a consequence of the legatine council of Westminster in December 1138, presided over by Alberic, cardinal bishop of Ostia, and attended by Alexander, bishop of Lincoln; Nigel, bishop of Ely; and many other Anglo-Norman prelates. During the council, Alberic invited English representation at the forthcoming Second Lateran Council, scheduled to take place in Rome in April 1139, where the rival claims of Stephen and Matilda to the crown were considered. Henry of Huntingdon was one of the churchmen who went to Rome, and it was during his journey there that he stopped at Bec and discovered the Historia.Footnote 64 As was common with legatine councils, the one at Westminster was much concerned with the mutually supportive objectives of implementing reform, combating sin, and promoting peace. Not long before it convened, Alberic had already been working hard to establish peace between England and Scotland, traveling to meet King David at Carlisle and securing from him a truce until 11 November 1138. This work continued during the December council, where Alberic held discussions and, assisted by Queen Matilda, urged King Stephen to make peace with David.Footnote 65 The council's decision to depose the abbots of Shrewsbury and Crowland was probably a related measure to promote the security and peace of the realm. The abbots were deposed, according to John of Worcester, because they were suspect (infamati degradantur), and it is likely that this was because they were caught up, possibly as messengers, in the troubles of 1138. One of Shrewsbury Abbey's patrons was William Fitz Alan, castellan of the Shrewsbury garrison that rebelled against Stephen that year and a man of Breton descent whose brother Walter was the steward of King David of Scots, and Abbot Waltheof of Crowland's brother was Gospatric, earl of Dunbar, who may have led the ‘‘men of Lothian’’ at the Battle of the Standard.Footnote 66
The December council's concern with peace embraced not only external threats but also the internal troubles of England. Some of its canons introduced ‘‘a new emphasis on the defense against violence of every kind, from violence against clerks to the activity of clerks who act as knights,’’ and addressed the reform of other sins.Footnote 67 Its business also concerned the election as archbishop of Canterbury of Theobald, abbot of Bec, who also went to Rome in January 1139 and did much thereafter to promote peace in England, and the blessing of King Stephen's kinsman Gervase as abbot of Westminster.Footnote 68 The latter advancement is significant in light of attempts being made at this time by the prior of Westminster Abbey, Osbert of Clare, to promote Edward the Confessor's canonization.Footnote 69 Edward, whose remains rested at Westminster Abbey and symbolized the union of the Norman and English ruling dynasties, was regarded as a king who successfully imposed peace and laws in England and had his laws (whether real or imagined) adopted by the Anglo-Norman kings as a means of legitimating their regime.Footnote 70 Osbert presented Alberic of Ostia with a newly composed Life of Edward and an introductory letter, and he may have done so at the December council.Footnote 71
Not long after this council ended, and just before Henry of Huntingdon, Archbishop Theobald, and other English churchmen departed for Rome, another event redolent with peacemaking occurred at Godstow near Oxford in mid-January 1139. There Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, the prelate for whom Geoffrey of Monmouth translated the Prophecies, dedicated the church of a Benedictine nunnery before a great assembly of people, many of whom had recently participated in the legatine council. Among those present were the king and queen, several bishops and barons, and at least two abbots. In attendance, too, were Walter, archdeacon of Oxford, the man who Geoffrey of Monmouth claimed had given him the book written in British on which his Historia was based, and Geoffrey of Monmouth himself.Footnote 72 Discussions were held there about the forthcoming departure for Rome of Geoffrey, abbot of St. Albans, one of the prelates selected to go to the Lateran Council.Footnote 73 It was also an occasion that resonated with a concern to promote, through religious patronage and other means, peace between political rivals in Oxfordshire, the tranquility and protection of the English church, and the stability of the realm.Footnote 74 In this its proceedings chimed with those of the recent legatine council, with a strategy employed by Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, and others to promote peace in Stephen's reign through religious patronage and with some of Geoffrey of Monmouth's preoccupations in his Historia.Footnote 75
THE HISTORIA'S EARLY RECEPTION AND READERSHIP, CIRCA 1135–55
The argument that Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote to warn his contemporaries about the dangers of civil war and to encourage them to make peace is also supported by aspects of the Historia's early reception and readership. Determining the contemporary readership of medieval historical writing, intended and actual, can be difficult for various reasons.Footnote 76 In the case of the Historia, however, there is substantial evidence to help. We know, from Geoffrey of Monmouth's own statements, that the Historia was originally written in Latin and that Geoffrey was urged by people from all sorts of places, including Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, to publish the Prophecies, the section of the Historia that indicated that the Normans would lose dominion of Britain to an alliance of the Welsh, Bretons, and Scots. Hardly surprisingly, therefore, it appears that the Historia was intended, in part, for a Latin-reading audience that included ecclesiastics. We also know that several of these ecclesiastics, in England and northern France, had read the Historia or at least the Prophecies by ca. 1155.Footnote 77 Orderic Vitalis, Robert de Torigny, and Henry of Huntingdon had all read elements or the whole of the Historia by January 1139. Suger of St.-Denis, who became much involved in peacemaking during the period ca. 1141–51, had consulted the Prophecies by the early 1140s.Footnote 78 Alfred of Beverley used the Historia to write a history of England in the same decade and stated that ‘‘‘narraciones de hystoria Britonum’ … were all the rage.’’Footnote 79 An unknown author wrote a commentary on the Prophecies between 1147 and 1154.Footnote 80 The scholar John of Cornwall translated his own verse version of Merlin's prophecies, based upon the Prophecies and other sources and including his own commentary, probably at the request of Robert Warelwast, bishop of Exeter, and possibly between 1153 and 1154.Footnote 81 And two versions of the Historia, Vulgate and first Variant, were also known to Wace by ca. 1150–55.Footnote 82 While there are many possible reasons why these authors were interested in Geoffrey of Monmouth's work, it is well known that some of them read it politically, and, while there is little (directly) to indicate that they were conscious of the Historia's pacificatory message, some of them had very similar concerns to those of its author.Footnote 83
Orderic Vitalis appreciated the contemporary political relevance of parts of the Prophecies, and he clearly felt able to decode all of the prophecies in the version of it that he possessed. His history includes an extract from the Prophecies that ends at the point where Merlin predicts that Normandy will lose both islands and the island's inhabitants shall return to it. Commenting upon this extract, Orderic declares that ‘‘some part of it has, I know, already been fulfilled in past events; and unless I am mistaken more will be proved true with sorrow or joy by future generations. Men well read in histories can easily apply his [Merlin’s] predictions, if they know the lives of [various kings] … of the Angles and Britons up to the times of Henry and Gruffudd.’’ Orderic went on to interpret some of the prophecies as references, ‘‘clearer than daylight to the thinking man,’’ to William Rufus, Robert Curthose, and Henry I, and he concluded that ‘‘after this fashion wise men may clearly decipher the rest.’’Footnote 84 Suger of St.-Denis also interpreted the prophecy of the ‘‘Lion of Justice’’ as a reference to the reign of Henry I. Unfortunately, neither Orderic nor Suger refer specifically to the subsequent prophecies relating to the termination of Norman rule in Britain. Whether this was through choice or because the manuscripts of the Prophecies that they saw did not contain these prophecies is impossible to say. It is clear, however, that both men were alert to the contemporary relevance of some of Merlin's prophecies and more than capable of interpreting in the same way the one in which Norman power in Britain was overthrown by an alliance of the Welsh and Breton rulers, Cadwaladr and Conan, and the Scots. Elsewhere in his history, as we have seen, Orderic was quite prepared to believe that there existed a plot to kill all the Normans in England in 1137 and hand the government of the kingdom to the Scots and that the plotters who escaped punishment for this ‘‘entered into an alliance with the Scots and Welsh and other rebels and traitors, bringing down ruin on the people.’’
Further evidence that some of the Historia's earliest readers shared some of Geoffrey of Monmouth's political concerns is to be found in the Historia Anglorum (HA) of Henry of Huntingdon. Henry's initial excitement about Geoffrey's Historia appears to have been due to its filling of a major gap in his knowledge about British history rather than to its incorporation of didactic messages and warnings about current affairs.Footnote 85 His enthusiasm may have been tinged with skepticism, and it did not inspire him to make substantial alterations to his own HA.Footnote 86 However, the HA was written at the command of the same bishop, Alexander of Lincoln, who commissioned Geoffrey to translate the Prophecies and shared some of the Historia's key themes.Footnote 87 Its major divisions ‘‘are the five plagues that God has inflicted on Britain in the form of belligerent nations: Romans, Picts and Scots, Angles, Danes, and Normans,’’ each of which invaded and (except in the case of the Picts and Scots) successively acquired sovereignty over England—developments usually depicted as a consequence of divine punishment of the sins, internal conflicts, and the treachery of the conquered people.Footnote 88 Moreover, Henry was also determined to show how, from the rebellion of 1088 onward, God had already begun to punish the Normans.Footnote 89 He saw ‘‘through the Norman myth to the self-destructive force within’’ and echoed several times the ‘‘psalm allotted to [him] in the choir at Lincoln, Psalm 77 … a warning to the new generation’’ telling ‘‘the history of God's punishments of the tribes of Israel who neglected His commandments and provoked His wrath.’’Footnote 90
Other early readers of the Historia appear to have been fearful of the prospect of the restoration of British sovereignty. This is evident in John of Cornwall's partially independent version of the Prophecies, which, like Geoffrey of Monmouth's Prophecies, was commissioned by an Anglo-Norman bishop. It ‘‘refers to the return of Conanus and Kavaladro and makes it more explicit than either the Historia or the Armes, that Conanus, who ‘navigat undas,’ represents the Bretons. … This version is more direct in its appeal and ends on the note of restitution.’’Footnote 91 It also ‘‘predicts the overthrow of the Normans and the restoration of the British who will subsequently rule for 363 peaceful years.’’Footnote 92 Although it has been suggested that this may reflect anti-Norman sentiments, it is more likely that other motives inspired the commissioning of the work. Their nature is strongly suggested by its incorporation of the divine vengeance for sin paradigm, reference to the ‘‘British hope,’’ and story about the killing of a certain Tochi or Toki by slayers who included men with English names (an event first recorded in the pipe roll of 1129–30). John's version of the story ‘‘depicted this as part of a feud, but also as a killing by Cornishmen of a Frenchman about which Normandy should take note.’’Footnote 93
Wace's treatment of the Historia is also significant. It has been argued that Wace refrained from translating Geoffrey of Monmouth's Prophecies because of fears about presenting its anti-Norman political content (including references to the liberation of the Britons from Norman rule by Cadwaladr and Conan) to a royal audience.Footnote 94 Wace has also been viewed as substantially improving on ‘‘Geoffrey's theme of domestic treachery as the frequent cause of national disaster.’’Footnote 95 Some of Wace's interests were clearly very similar to those of Geoffrey, and his work is significant in another way. Its translation of the Historia from Latin into octosyllabic French couplets indicates the transmission of the book to a secular as well as an ecclesiastical readership or audience.
This transmission is also suggested by Geoffrey of Monmouth's various dedications of the Historia to Robert of Gloucester, to Robert of Gloucester and Waleran of Meulan, and to Robert of Gloucester and King Stephen, though we cannot be certain if any of these dedicatees ever read the work, had it read to them, or understood its pacificatory purpose. This purpose may be reflected, however, in the dual dedications to men who, for part of Stephen's reign, were on opposite sides in the civil war. There were many reasons, of course, why works of history might be dedicated to powerful and wealthy patrons but, as Neil Wright noted, it is significant that the ‘‘Historia abounds in examples of the folly of civil strife and the advantages of concord’’ and its dedication ‘‘to men who newly found themselves enemies might therefore be a powerful, if covert, plea for unity.’’Footnote 96
One of these men, Robert of Gloucester, certainly possessed a copy of the Historia that circulated among other secular lords and ladies and in directions that lead us back again to peacemaking. By the early 1140s this copy had passed from Robert to Walter Espec, lord of Wark (Northumberland) and Helmsley (Yorkshire), and was almost certainly borrowed from Walter by Ralf Fitz Gilbert and his wife Constance, a secular couple who held lands in Lincolnshire and may have been linked to court circles in Winchester. Constance wanted Walter's book in order to provide source materials for a writer she had commissioned to write a history of Britain from ancient times to the death of William Rufus. The writer was Geoffrey Gaimar, and his history, which was probably based in part upon the Historia, was written in French, intended for a secular aristocratic audience, and (like the Historia) composed partly for the purpose of promoting peace.Footnote 97 The surviving portion of Gaimar's work, known as the Estoire des Engleis, usually dated to the period 1135–40 but possibly a little later, is (as John Gillingham observed) closely associated in several extant manuscripts with a text, the Description of England, that may date from ca. 1140 and reflects a concern about Welsh uprisings and the restoration of British sovereignty.Footnote 98 The main body of the Estoire has every appearance of being intended, in part, to warn contemporary aristocrats about the disastrous consequences of civil war and to teach them about the virtues and advantages of peace.Footnote 99 Moreover, Gaimar and his Fitz Gilbert patrons were connected with peacemaking in other ways. Their associate Walter Espec was the founder of Rievaulx Abbey (Yorkshire), the home of Ailred of Rievaulx, who did much to promote peace during and after Stephen's reign, partly by writing history.Footnote 100 Furthermore, during the early 1140s Ailred became the first abbot of Rievaulx's daughter house at Revesby in Lincolnshire, of which the Fitz Gilberts became major patrons, and was encouraged there by Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, to accept gifts of lands in dispute between knights as a way of generating peace.Footnote 101
THE HISTORIA AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF ENGLISH IDENTITY
The observations above have important implications for our understanding of the nature and transformation of English identity and the assimilation between Normans and English after 1066—major subjects that continue to attract research and debate. Gillingham has recently advanced an important argument that the distinction drawn in Anglo-Norman historical literature written before the 1130s between oppressive Norman rulers and downtrodden English subjects disappeared and was replaced by 1140, as the Norman settlers began to think of themselves as English, with the perception of a single gens of Normans and English and that this coincided with the emergence in this literature of a new prejudicial image of ‘‘Celtic’’ peoples as barbarians. The argument is based on evidence drawn primarily from Henry of Huntingdon's HA but also (in part) from the work of Geoffrey Gaimar, whose ‘‘milieu was secular, aristocratic Lincolnshire society’’ and whose Estoire ‘‘shows … that French-speakers living in England could see the Anglo-Saxon past as their past.’’ The proposed ‘‘twelfth-century revival of the English nation,’’ a ‘‘newly re-emerging sense of English solidarity and identity,’’ took root when the power of the English kings was in danger of being overthrown by Scots and Welsh rulers during the late 1130s.Footnote 102 It is supported by Elizabeth Freeman's study of the methods by which the Estoire des Engleis ‘‘asserted and indeed facilitated its own acceptance as an authoritative version of the past,’’ a study that contends that the Estoire ‘‘strengthened the Norman claim to insular dominion,’’ was representative of an attempt by the Anglo-Norman aristocracy ‘‘to create and seize its own past,’’ and played a part in bringing the Anglo-Saxon past into existence—a development important in the process by which the Normans and English became integrated.Footnote 103
As Hugh Thomas convincingly argued, this process progressed gradually and unevenly for more than a century after 1066, but there are good reasons for agreeing with Gillingham ‘‘that important shifts had taken place by the 1140s.’’Footnote 104 The existence of a relationship between some of these shifts and the political crisis of the late 1130s is very likely. As Gillingham and other scholars noted, the literary depictions of the Normans and English as one people and of the Scots and Welsh as inferior barbarians feature most prominently in accounts of the Battle of the Standard in 1138, a crucial confrontation that, but for the leadership of Thurstan, archbishop of York, might have had disastrous consequences for Norman power in England.Footnote 105 Henry of Huntingdon uses the phrase gens Normannorum et Anglorum to describe the army led by northern barons that opposed the Scots, and, in the speech attributed by Ailred of Rievaulx to the Anglo-Norman baron Robert de Brus before the battle, in which Robert attempted to persuade King David of Scots not to fight, Robert drew a sharp distinction between English and Normans on the one hand and Scots and Galwegians on the other and tried to convince David that he was bound much more closely and profitably to those living south of the border.Footnote 106 Similar themes occur in some of Ailred's other works—including his Genealogia Regum Anglorum—which emphasize the kinship and other bonds between the Anglo-Saxon, Norman, and Scottish ruling houses, the benefits that unity and peace bring, and the negative consequences of disunion and civil war, including foreign invasion and conquest.Footnote 107
It is clear from this that Ailred of Rievaulx, Henry of Huntingdon, and Geoffrey of Monmouth shared some similar concerns. They also shared something else: close connections with Alexander, bishop of Lincoln. Alexander commissioned Henry and Geoffrey to write and encouraged Ailred, during his abbacy of Revesby, to use religious patronage for the purpose of peacemaking. The significance of this is reinforced by Geoffrey Gaimar's completion of his Estoire des Engleis in Lincolnshire, probable acquisition from Walter Espec (the founder of Rievaulx Abbey) of the Historia as one of his sources, and interest in using history to highlight the dangers of war and promote the virtues of peace.Footnote 108 It is further strengthened by Stephen Marritt's observation that Bishop Alexander and his brother, David, archdeacon of Buckingham, had the same Christian names as the Scottish kings (also brothers) Alexander I (1107–24) and David I (1124–53)—whose mother, Queen Margaret, belonged to the Anglo-Saxon royal family—and by Marritt's revelation of other important connections between Bishop Alexander's family, the Scottish royal house, and an Anglo-Saxon elite society that survived into the twelfth century in southwest England.Footnote 109
All of this supports the case that the ‘‘twelfth-century revival of the English nation,’’ the demonization of the ‘‘Celtic’’ peoples, and the political and military crises of the early years of Stephen's reign were interrelated. The relationship was shaped, to some extent, by attempts to prevent the termination of Norman domination in Britain through the writing of history designed to warn Anglo-Norman contemporaries of the danger and to promote unity, peace, and a sense of shared identity not only among them but also between them, the native English, and the closely related Scottish royal family. It also appears to have owed something to the influence and concerns (pacificatory and unificatory) of the powerful bishop of Lincoln, Alexander. His diocese was home, for a time, to Ailred, Henry of Huntingdon, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and Gaimar. His relative Nigel, bishop of Ely, is said to have uncovered an English plot in 1137 to kill all the Normans and hand the government of England to the Scots, who had recently invaded the country. And his family had associations with Anglo-Saxon aristocrats and the (partly Anglo-Saxon) Scottish royal family.
CONCLUSION
Geoffrey of Monmouth's motives for writing the Historia were undoubtedly complex and multifarious. This article has argued that one of his most important purposes was to encourage his Anglo-Norman contemporaries to live in peace by writing an intensely topical history that warned them about the terrible dangers of sinfulness, especially civil war, including the divinely orchestrated loss of dominion over England to foreign invaders in the shape of an alliance of Welsh, Bretons, and Scots. As R. R. Davies noted, the prophecies of Merlin ‘‘were deeply disconcerting stuff,’’ and ‘‘Arthur, Merlin, and the word Britain were an eminently dangerous combination: they were a deadly threat to English supremacy since they predicated the return of Britain and the Britons to their former glory.’’Footnote 110 To the French-speaking aristocracy living in England in the deeply troubled late 1130s, this threat must have been all the more immediate and disturbing. The Historia appeared when Welsh risings, Scottish invasions, and the presence of Welsh and Breton rulers bearing the names of redeemers who were every bit as dangerous as Arthur, celebrated in Welsh literature since at least as early as ca. 930, and spoken of by Merlin in his prophecies, gave its message added force.Footnote 111
This message was also sanctioned and supported by the bishop of Lincoln, Alexander.Footnote 112 Alexander was doubtless concerned, like his relative Bishop Nigel of Ely, to preserve Norman supremacy in England. He probably wanted to do so without damaging the harmonious connections that his family had developed with Anglo-Saxon elite society and the Scottish royal family. He also came to experience, together with his powerful relatives, the damaging effects of civil war at firsthand, most notably during an incident at King Stephen's court in June 1139 known as the ‘‘arrest of the bishops.’’ Alexander and his uncle Roger, bishop of Salisbury, were arrested on the pretext of suspicion of treachery. Nigel, bishop of Ely, escaped but was besieged by the king at Devizes, and all three prelates were eventually forced to surrender their castles: events that nearly led to a rift between church and state. It is significant that the arrests were orchestrated partly by two prominent lords of Breton descent, one of whom was Count Alan of Brittany. Not only was Alan the object of an old hatred of Bishop Alexander; he was also the husband of the daughter and heiress of Conan III, duke of Brittany, the ruler who bore the same name as one of the allies prophesied by Merlin to overthrow Norman power in Britain.Footnote 113
All of this further strengthens the links between history, prophecy, peacemaking, and English identity in Anglo-Norman England and has important implications for our understanding of the nature and operation of Anglo-Norman politics, especially in relation to the intended and actual political influence of historical literature. It has a bearing upon our understanding of the efflorescence and multifarious purposes of such literature in the first half of the twelfth century, the interests and concerns of the scholars and patrons who generated it, and the ‘‘revival of the English nation’’ it embodied. It further illuminates contemporary perceptions of and reactions toward the nature and security of Norman rule in England and the prospect and actuality of conflict after 1135.Footnote 114 And it suggests that one of the many and complex reasons why history was written in early twelfth-century England, the promotion of peace and unity, may deserve more attention and emphasis than it has hitherto been accorded. The works of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Henry of Huntingdon, Geoffrey Gaimar, and Ailred of Rievaulx were all intended, in part, to appeal to those who might be or were engaged in sin, treachery, and armed aggression to mend the error of their ways, prevent and stop the fighting, and avoid thereby the disastrous consequences of their actions, consequences that, in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia, were manifest in the cataclysmic destruction of Norman rule in England.Footnote 115 They were another of the many and varied means by which some churchmen, and some of their secular patrons and friends, sought to defuse the civil war of King Stephen's reign, bring it to an end, and bolster the threatened British hegemony of the Normans. In the process, they played a significant part in transforming, in historical literature at least, the nature of English identity.
