History
Why isn’t there a Historian Laureate? How Alfred the Great got the best out of his court chronicler david horspool
The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee has been greeted with a steady thud of books by familiar names: Robert Hardman; Andrew Morton; Joanna Lumley. Historians have already published interim reports on the Queen – the volume of the Penguin Monarchs series on Elizabeth II has been out for seven years. Doubtless others are readying final verdicts for the dreaded end of the longest reign in British history. Naturally, we have no idea what the Queen thinks about any of these published opinions, any more than we know what she thinks about her prime ministers (well, you can’t imagine she’s a great fan of Andrew Morton, but we don’t know). If, as is often reported, the recipients of the Order of Merit are the nearest we can get to a sign of personal royal preferences, then historians as a breed aren’t particularly high on her list. Since the death of the military historian Sir Michael Howard, only Neil MacGregor, formerly of the British Museum, remains as a representative of the profession. When the Queen came to the throne, the venerable G M Trevelyan was still a member of the Order, along with H A L Fisher. Her first award to a historian went to the now rarely remembered G P Gooch, an authority on the First World War and former Liberal politician. One can’t imagine Her Majesty curling up with his Cambridge History of British Foreign Policy. There is more of a hint of personal input in the 1960s selections of Veronica Wedgwood, gripping chronicler of the English Civil War and Cromwell; and the great New Zealand biographer of Captain Cook, John Beaglehole. Another Kiwi, Ronald Syme, was the leading ancient historian of his time and the Reverend Owen Chadwick was a great historian of Christianity, which also sounds like something the Queen might have wanted to read or talk about.
chroniclers – monks on These respectable men abbey stools, gleaning (and this woman) are not news from passing in any sense ‘court strangers occasionally, historians’. They don’t and digressing at produce equivalents of length on disputed the behind-the-scenes elections of a new revelations of former abbot or unusual presidents and prime weather patterns – isn’t ministers. Political term wholly inaccurate. limits make such an But there were some who assignment feasible. The got a bit closer to the seat of Queen spans historical periods Alfred the Great: lured power. Probably the best of – not mere decades. Asser with incense them was the polymath The fact that there is no Matthew Paris. He ventured historian version of the Poet Laureate, Astronomer Royal or Master of from his monastery at St Albans to Westminster to witness Henry III the Queen’s History, to place alongside dedicating a vial of Holy Blood at the her Pictures and Music maestri, might shrine of Edward the Confessor. There he imply the role of court historian is records that the king noticed him in the ‘unEnglish’. Alexander the Great crowd and called out to him to write a full lamented that, unlike Achilles, he had no Homer, though he hardly made potential account of proceedings. Henry and Matthew met several times, though that candidates comfortable by having his didn’t stop Matthew from being frank own court historian, Callisthenes, about royal inadequacies. starved in prison. Such stories make the He may not have meant the long form role sound like a more classical – or of his chronicle to be disseminated, as he oriental – one: Saladin had a life written wrote little reminders in the margins of by a fellow Kurdish courtier. bits to expunge ‘quia offendiculum’ In fact, the precedent for a chronicler – ‘because it [was] a cause of offence’. at an English court is very ancient. The The arrival of the Tudors saw first secular biography (ie, not of a saint) Henry VII appoint the nearest thing we’ve in England is a Life of Alfred the Great, had to a court historian, in Bernard André, written by a Welsh bishop, Asser, whom a Frenchman who’d probably arrived Alfred invited to his court. Asser doesn’t with him when he invaded. But his Latin say Alfred commissioned the work. Still, if the king knew he was writing it, life of the king hasn’t been translated. If anyone remembers a historian of this he must have hoped the various period, it is the Italian Polydore Vergil, appointments and ‘a quantity of incense whom Shakespeare had read. weighing as much as a stout man’ he It would be easy to argue that, later offered Asser would ensure a favourable on, historians valued their independence outcome. The result, while little short of too much to apply for the role. But there hagiography, is also peculiarly revealing – for example, about the king’s battle with isn’t an official royal appointment someone isn’t willing to fill. It’s more piles. It’s hard to cast it as an ‘official’ biography, but most later historians have likely that the monarchs decided they could do without these glorified truthbeen grateful for the light it casts on the tellers, alternately flattering and passing warrior scholar king’s world. judgement on them. The popular picture of later medieval The Oldie May 2022 61
