Sovereign Fantasies. Patricia Clare Ingham
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variants remains authoritative. He designates four basic versions, as follows: the Common Version (based on the Anglo-Norman Prose Brut, usually ending with the Battle of Halidon Hill in 1333, but with continuations, some of which bring the chronicle up to 1461); the Extended Version (adding details taken from the Short English Metrical Chronicle); the Abbreviated Version (a shortened account with elements from both the Common and Extended versions); and what he calls “Peculiar Texts and Versions” (a miscellaneous category including Latin Bruts translated into English, idiosyncratic reworkings of English texts, and smaller texts based on the Brut).20 The first volume of Brie’s EETS edition of the Brut offers the Common Version, a chronicle up to 1333. The prophecy of the “Six Last Kings” occurs here, first as Merlin’s prophetic utterance to King Arthur, and later in specific interpretations linked to the English kings Henry III, Edward I, and Edward II. Because of a modern unfamiliarity with this prophecy so very familiar to nearly all fifteenth-century English chronicle writers, I quote a lengthy (abridged) version from the Prose Brut text:
How Kynge Arthure axede of Merlyn ϸe aventures of vj the lastekynges ϸat weren to regne in Engeland, and how ϸe lande shulde ende.
[The lamb] “Sire,” quod Merlyn, “in ϸe Ʒere of Incarnacioun of oure Lorde M CC xv ϸere shal come a lambe oute of Wynchestre ϸat shal haue a white tong and trew lippis and he shall have wryten in his hert Holynesse. This lambe shal… haue pees ϸe most parte of his life, & he shal make one of ϸe faireste places of ϸe worlde ϸat in his tyme shal nouƷt full ben made an ende…. And in ϸe ende of his lif, a wolf of a straunge lande shal do him grete harme … And ϸe lambe shal leue no while ϸat he ne shal dye. His sede ϸan shal bene in strange lande, and ϸe lande shal bene wibout gouernoure a litill tyme.
[The dragon] And after him shal come a dragoun mellede wiϸ mercy and ek wodenesse, ϸat shal haue a berde as a good, ϸat shal Ʒeve in Engeland shadewe, and shal kepe the lande from colde and hete … He shal vnbrace iii habitacions, and he shal oppen his mouϸ toward Walys…. This dragoun shal bene holden in his tyme ϸe best body of al ϸe worlde; & he shal dye besides ϸe Marche of a straunge lande; and ϸe lande shalle duelle faderlesse wiϸouten a gode gouernoure; and me shal wepe for his deϸ; wherefore, ‘alias’ shal bene ϸe commune songe of faderles folc, ϸat shal ouerleuen in his lande destroiede.
[The goat] And after ϸis dragone shal come a gote … ϸat shal haue homes & berde of siluer; and ϸere shal come out of his nosbrelles a drop ϸat shal bitoken hunger & sorw, & grete deϸ of ϸe peple; and miche of his lande … shal be wastede… In ϸat same tyme shal dye, for sorwe and care, a peple of his lande, so ϸat many shal bene oppon him he more bolder afterward…
[The boar] Aftre ϸis goote shal come out of Wyndsore a Boor ϸat shal haue an heuede of witte, a lyons hert, a pitouse lokyng; … his worde shal bene gospelle; his beryng shal bene meke as a Lambe. In ϸe ferste Ʒere of his regne he shal haue grete payne to iustifien ham ϸat bene vntrew; and in his tyme shal his lande bene multipliede wiϸ Aliens…. And he shal whet his teiϸ vppon be Ʒates of Parys, and vppon iiii landes. Spayne shal tremble for drede of him; Gascoyne shal swete; in Fraunce he shal put his wynge; his grete taile shal reste in Engeland softely; Almayne shal quake for drede of him…
[The second lamb]21 After ϸis Boor shal come a lambe, ϸat shal haue feete of leede, an heuede of bras, an hert of a loppe, and a swynnes skyn and herde; and in his tyme his land shal bene in pees…. ϸis lambe shal lesein his tyme a grete parte of his lande ϸrouz an hidouse wold; but he shal recouer it, an Ʒif an Lordeship to an Egle of his landes…
[The mole] After ϸis lambe shal come a Moldewerpe acursede of Godes mouϸ, a caitif, a cowarde as an here. he shal haue an elderliche skyn as a goot; and vengeance shal fall vppon him for synne…. Than shal arisen a dragoun in ϸe North, … and shal meve werre aƷeyens ϸe forsaide Moldewerpe … ϸis dragoun shal gadre aƷeyne into his company a wolf hat shal come oute of the West, ϸat shal bygynne aƷeynes he Moldewerp in his side;
ϸan shal come a lyon oute of Irlande, ϸat shal fal in company wiϸ ham; and ϸan shal tremble ϸe lande ϸat ϸan shal bene callede Engeland, as an aspe lef… and after he shal leue in sorw al his lif-tyme; and in his tyme ϸe hote babes shullen bicome colde; and after ϸat shal ϸe Moldewerp dye aventurly and sodenly—alias, ϸe sorwe!—for … his seede shal bicome pure faderles in straunge lande for euer-more, and ϸan shal the lande bene departede in iii parties, ϸat is to seyn to the Wolf, to ϸe dragoune, and to ϸe lioun; and so shal it bene for euermore. And ϸan ϸis lande bene callede ‘ϸe lande of conquest,’ & so shal ϸe riƷt heires of Engeland ende.”
The prophecy catalogues England’s fall from glorious sovereign wholeness: beginning with a utopian scene of rule (indebted to images of the Lamb and New Jerusalem from the book of Revelation) the text devolves to a recurring vision of a desolate, fatherless folk. Occasional moments of peace always give way to misery, England overflowing with loss; held by strangers; overrun with “Aliens”; shaking like an aspen leaf; under shadow; turned cold; a land of hunger and sorrow; a wasted land; the land of conquest. Animal-kings allegorize English monarchs of the Plantagenet dynasty of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, beginning with Henry III. Amid his narration of the events of Henry III’s reign, some hundred pages after Merlin’s audience before Arthur, the Brut author (following the Anglo-Norman text) identifies Henry as the lamb of Winchester, Edward I as the dragon, and Edward II as the goat. None of the continuations of the chronicle included in Brie’s text (taking us from 1333 variously into the fifteenth century) continue the prophecies through to their end. By logical extension, however, the remaining three animal-kings, the boar, the second lamb, and the mole must follow as Edward III, Richard II, and Henry IV as the last of England’s kings.
Any chronicler or member of his audience in the years beyond the death of Henry IV knew, of course, that Henry was not the final monarch. Like many unfulfilled prophecies, this one should have lost its power once the events it foretold failed to transpire. And thus Henry V’s succession should perhaps have put an end to the “Prophecy of the Six Last Kings”; this may explain why the interpretations of the last three prophecies are omitted from the Brut continuations. Yet the prophecies of “the end of this land” did not, in fact, die out even after events had proven England’s survival.
Scholars analyzing the use and purpose of the “Prophecy of the Last Six Kings” have focused attention on the historical story of the “Tripartite Convention,” or the “Tripartite Indenture” an account of which is found in a chronicle of the reigns of Richard II and Henry IV.22 The Tripartite Convention was, as mentioned earlier, the name given to the possible alliance between Percy, Mortimer, and Glyn Dwr against Henry Bolingbroke. This story (most famously told in Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV) purports that this rebel alliance was inspired by the “skimble-skamble stuff” of prophecy. Scholars had long assumed an historical link between the “Prophecy of the Six Kings” and the prophecy putatively used by the Glyn Dŵr faction; those links, however, have been compellingly called into question. In a subtle analysis of the manuscript and textual history of “Prophecy of the Six Kings,” T. M. Smallwood argues that, in its Middle English version, the text was not used for the propagandistic purposes so many scholars have assumed. Smallwood compelling argues, in fact, that unlike their Anglo-Norman sources the Middle English versions of the “Six Last Kings” display a particularly striking lack of propagandistic interpolations.23 She questions whether the history of the “Tripartite Convention” is itself authentic, remarking that it might be “no more than a fantasy, … suggested by the ‘Prophecy of the Six Kings’ itself” (592).24
Smallwood argues that Welsh vaticination (which she calls the “common currency” of medieval Welsh politics) not this Middle English prophecy supplied Glyn Dŵr’s prophetic material. Even as she points to the dubious nature of the “Tripartite Convention,” Smallwood documents the longstanding power of Welsh vaticination for imagining an alternative to English insular sovereignty. “Propagandistic and hortatory use of prophecy had been a feature of native Welsh culture for many centuries before Glendower’s time…. It is to this enduring Welsh tradition of political prophecy that we should [look] for an understanding of an outburst