Great Britain -- History -- Anglo-Saxon period, 449-1066; Middle Ages -- Sources
To those who have read the plain and simple statements of Julius Cæsar
and the other classic historians who have described the early state of
Britain, it will be morally certain that all such accounts as we have in
Geoffrey of Monmouth are purely fabulous. The uncertainty of every
thing, save the bare fact, connected with the siege of Troy, is so
great, that to connect its fortunes with those of a distant and at that
time unheard-of island like Britain, can be admissible only in the pages
of romance. But in the latter part of the work which contains the
history of Britain, during its conquest by the Saxons, we may possibly
find the germs of facts unnoticed elsewhere.
This view does not militate against the veracity of Geoffrey, who
professes to have translated from an original in the British language,
but whether any manuscript copy of this original now exists, is a point
which has not been satisfactorily ascertained. In 1811, the Rev. Peter
Roberts published the Chronicle of the Kings of Britain, translated from
Welsh manuscripts, and being in substance almost identically the same as
Geoffrey's History of the Britons,--but it is most likely that these
Welsh MSS., which are all comparatively modern, are themselves
re-translations from the Latin of Geoffrey.
If no other arguments could be adduced to prove the utter incredibility
of the earlier parts of this history, the following Chronological Table
would furnish quite sufficient arguments to establish it, by the
extraordinary anachronisms which it contains. For instance, between the
reigns of Brutus and Leil, is an interval of 156 years; and yet Geoffrey
makes the capture of the ark contemporaneous with the reign of Brutus,
and the building of Solomon's temple with that of Leil. Now the interval
between these two events cannot by any possibility be extended beyond
eighty years. It is, moreover, impossible to bring the chronology of the
British kings themselves into harmony with the dates before Christ, as
there is no mention made of the exact interval between the taking of
Troy and Brutus's landing in Britain.
Geoffrey inscribes his work to Robert, earl of Gloucester, son of Henry
the Second.
GENEALOGICAL SUMMARY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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