William of Newburgh and the Northumbrian construction of English history Anne Lawrence-Mathers Department of History, School of Humanities, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6AA, UK Abstract William of Newburgh is chiefly known for his account of twelfth-century English politics, in the His- tory of English affairs. However, the Prologue to this work also deserves attention, since it takes the almost unprecedented form of a comprehensive attack on Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae, and especially on the account of the heroic career of King Arthur. William’s Prologue opens with the forthright statement: ‘The history of our people, that is the English, was written by the venerable priest and monk, BEDE’ (sic). It goes on to make use of a remarkable range of information, including the ex- tremely rare work of Gildas. The argument of this article is that this ‘English’ view of history is related to the contents of a set of complex manuscripts from Durham and the Northumbrian Cistercian houses. These give details of the generations of ‘English’ kings who conquered post-Roman Britain, together with ex- tracts from the works of Gildas and Nennius, amongst many others. Together, they place Bede’s version of the coming of the English at the centre of an encyclopaedic reconstruction of world history, which Wil- liam of Newburgh (who dedicates his work to the abbot of Rievaulx) also follows. It need hardly be stressed that in this version of history there is no room for King Arthur. Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: England; Historiography; William of Newburgh; King Arthur; Cistercians; Manuscripts William of Newburgh, a learned canon of the Augustinian house at Newburgh in Yorkshire, died c.1197 or 1198, and is now chiefly known for his well-informed history of England. This deals with the period from the Norman Conquest to 1197/8, and has been edited and translated E-mail address: a.e.mathers-lawrence@reading.ac.uk 0304-4181/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jmedhist.2007.09.002 Journal of Medieval History 33 (2007) 339e357 www.elsevier.com/locate/jmedhist