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Procrustean Feudalism: An Interpretative Dilemma in English Historical Narration, 1700–1725

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Extract

The emergence of a coherent narrative history of England, based upon the critical use of authorities, and written in a connected fashion rather than assembled from reproduced earlier materials, is a much slower process than such a simple statement or its requirements might suggest. The process begins in earnest in the late seventeenth century, after the historian ceases being a principal protagonist in the political pamphlet warfare of the time. The narrator must take account of advances in source criticism, and he must also cope, on the level of interpretation, with national myths that his forbears among the Tudor chroniclers and the seventeenth-century contenders had created. Miss Thompson has remarked that the main purpose of Tudor chroniclers, notably Hall and Holinshed, was to praise ‘the king's illustrious ancestors, reign by reign’.

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Articles
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

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34 George St Amand Historical Essay.

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44 Ibid., 54.

45 Ibid., 56–7.

47 Ibid., 1, 504.

48 Tindal&s translation, 2nd edn, 1, 155. William I had made England ‘his own by Right’. This undefended denial of the Conquest runs clear counter to Rapin, whose work Tindal is supposed to be expounding. The affirmation is not necessary to Tindal&s case, which rests on the use made by William of the Anglo-Saxon social structure, but it is a good example of how closely pre-establishment historical thought adhered to ancient constitutional forms.

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78 Ibid., II, 25.

79 Ibid., I, 514.