Richard Hingley (Durham University, UK)

This paper explores the English rediscovery of ancient ancestors during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. It uses John Speed’s (1611) images of ‘rude and uncivil’ ancient Britons and ‘later Britons’ to address the idea of historical change incorporated in contemporary conceptions of the ancient origins of the English. The focus of recent scholarship on William Camden’s Britannia has emphasised the way that he privileged Roman Britain, but it is argued that Speed emphasised the pre-Roman people and the impact of Roman conquest on these indigenous Britons. The re-discovery of classical accounts of ancient Briton and the colonial exploration of Virginia and Ireland enabled Elizabethan and Jacobean English writers and illustrators to imagine ancient ancestors in new ways. These antiquarian imaginings played a significant role in how the English imagined their neighbours and also the people that they encountered overseas. This paper contextualizes an idea of cultural transformation which is evident in the works of Speed and Camden, and address its significance in the changing political circumstances brought about by the territorial expansion of England and the attempted unification of Great Britain.