Delegitimizing and Erasing Female Kingship in the “Epistola Warino Britoni,” the Chronica majora, and Laȝamon’s Brut

Abstract

Soon after Geoffrey completed his Historia regum Britanniae, two clerks with ecclesiastical sensibilities undermined his feminist version of the early British past: first the anonymous redactor of the text now known as the First Variant, and then the poet Wace. However, as Geoffrey’s account of the early British past became part of the standard account of insular history, it suffered much greater distortion. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, two more redactors altered the content of The History of the Kings of Britain to a much greater extent than the anonymous Variant-redactor had done. First Henry of Huntingdon, in the “Epistola Warino Britoni” that he appended to his Historia Anglorum, and then Matthew Paris in his Chronica majora forced Geoffrey of Monmouth’s account of the past into conformity with traditional, Bedan historiography. This action on their part is consistent with what is known about their careers: Henry of Huntingdon’s role as archdeacon of Huntingdon was to ensure uniformity of message throughout his diocese, and Matthew Paris’s role was to serve the Benedictine community of Saint Albans by compiling a comprehensive history that teaches moral lessons through its exempla.1 KeywordsFemale CharacterFemale FigureTraditional MasculinityEnglish PoetPlot SequenceThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.