Scott Dempsey (ANU): ‘Historia Successorum Regum Britanniae: A Study in Medieval and Early Modern English “Historical” Argument’

This thesis investigates the important role that pseudo-historical argument played in shaping aspects of medieval and early modern English political thought. Training its focus on four key ‘moments’ – two from the medieval period and two from the early modern – the work examines how forms of ‘historical’ rhetoric, embedded in the vast historiographical tradition that emanated from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1136), were used to legitimate political programmes during the reigns of John, Edward I, Henry VIII, and Edward VI. Although initially hostile towards Monmouth’s history, from the late 12th century the English began appropriating the HRB and portraying themselves as the rightful successors to the ancient Britons. The British theme would prove to have enormous political import for centuries to come, with generations of English thinkers turning to the legendary inheritance to ‘discover’ inalienable monarchical rights of various kinds. Looking in particular at baronial resistance to John’s submission to papal overlordship, Edward I’s claim to high-kingship of Scotland, Henry VIII’s break with the Roman church, and Edward VI’s campaign for Anglo-Scottish union, the thesis explores the ways in which English thinkers appealed to the ancient British past in order to frame the most revolutionary of political objectives as forms of conservation and restoration. Deploying a serial contextualist method, the work hopes also to shed new light on changing conceptions of kingship, empire, and church and state relations.

S. W. Dempsey is a doctoral student at the Australian National University. His work focuses broadly on medieval and early modern English political thought. He was a Visiting Doctoral Scholar at the University of St Andrews during the Martinmas semester 2017. His work has been published in Fourteenth Century England and The Scottish Historical Review.

Date & time

Wed 30 Oct 2019, 4.15–5.30pm

Location

McDonald Room, Menzies Library

Speakers

Scott Dempsey (ANU)

School/Centre

School of History

Contacts

School of History

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