“Des Gestes des Englays”: England and the English in Piers Langtoft’s Chronicle

Abstract

The chronicle of Piers Langtoft (ca. 1308), written in the French of England, problematizes any simple connection between linguistic and nationalist identities by valorizing English racial, cultural, and political identity. It rejects purgatorial models of the island’s past and presents an unbroken English rule spanning the centuries from the fall of the Britons to Langtoft’s own. Rather than finding the cause of the Norman Conquest in collective iniquity, Langtoft blames the perjury of Harold Godwinson and represents it as a change of power between individuals rather than peoples. This presentation of history and identity calls into question modern models of historiography which connect language and nationalism in England in the late Middle Ages.