Whatever assumed the form of history was long deemed authentic; and such was the authority of this romance of Geoffry, that when Edward the First claimed the crown of Scotland in his letter to the pope, he founded his right on a passage in Geoffry's book; doubtless this very passage was held to be as veracious by the Scots themselves, only that on this occasion they decided to fight against the text. Four centuries after Geoffry had written, when Henry the Seventh appointed a commission to draw up his pedigree, they traced the royal descent from the imaginary Brutus, and reckoning all Geoffry's British kings in the line--the fairies of history--made the English monarch a descendant in the hundredth degree. We now often hear of "the fabulous" History of Geoffry of Monmouth; but neither his learned translator in 1718, nor the most eminent Welsh antiquaries, attach any such notion to a history crowded with domestic events, and with names famous yet unknown. After the lapse of so many centuries, the scrutinising investigation of a thoughtful explorer in British antiquities has demonstrated, through a chain of recondite circumstances, that this History of Geoffry of Monmouth, and its immediate predecessor, the celebrated Chronicle of the pseudo-Archbishop Turpin, were sent forth on the same principle on which to this day we publish party pamphlets, to influence the spirit of two great nations opposed in interest and glory to each other; in a word, that they were two Tales of a Tub thrown out to busy those mighty whales, France and England.[9] One great result of their successful grasp of the popular feelings could never have been contemplated by these grave forgers of fabulous history. The Chronicle of Archbishop Turpin and the British History of Geoffry of Monmouth became the parents of those two rival families of romances which commemorate the deeds of the Paladins of Charlemagne, and the Knights of Arthur, the delight of three centuries.