The medieval British chronicle tradition remains a corpus of writing that, as a whole, presents readers with a decidedly subjective point of view of medieval history and culture. John Major’s Historia Majoris Britanniae (History of Greater Britain, although one could also translate the title as Major’s History of Britain) was written toward the tail end of the fifteenth century and published in 1521, most likely in Paris.37 Major (whose name is sometimes spelled “Maior” or “Mair”) lived from 1467 to 1550; he was a logician, a biblical commentator, and a theologian.
In the preface to his English translation of Major’s Latin chronicle, Archibald Constable states that he would like to “say something about the singular fairness, the anxious impartiality, of Major’s judgment of the English nation, the cordiality of his appreciation of English customs.”38 Summarizing Major’s contribution as a humanist writer, Constable remarks that the chronicler “showed the insight of a philosophic statesman,” which makes him “unique among Scottish writers.”39 But as with most medieval historiographers, Major was not subtle when it came to identifying those whom he disliked. The English printer, translator, and editor William Caxton (ca. 1422-1491) was perhaps Major’s most notable target, for the Scottish chronicler, in Constable’s words, “heartily abhorred” the notable editor and translator for his inability to foster a sense of “national amity” in his Chronicles of England (published at Westminster in 1480 and 14 8 2).40 Major, it can be said, sought to unify the English and Scottish people under their shared sense of religion and humanity. However, this unification of peoples meant that certain histories needed some degree of reinterpretation and refashioning, and Major set to work.
First, Major describes how “the Scots chose for their king a certain William Wallace, up to this point a man with nothing illustrious in his origin.”41 True to his training as a humanist, Major decidedly revises Caxton’s original text and rebukes Caxton, not so much for his unfavorable portrait of the Scottish outlaw as for his inability to craft a true and objective version. For Major, Caxton’s narrative contains a “mass of incoherencies” and “silly fabrications.”42 Major then proceeds to “place the history of the Scots in its true light.”43 Major’s version of Wallace’s birth, breeding, and valor is somewhat awe-inspiring. It is full of vivid details of Wallace’s upbringing, his physical and social characteristics, his martial abilities, and how he was “hailed as regent by most of the Scots, with the universal acclamation of the common people.”44 At one point, Major compares Wallace’s ability to draw up an army and lead it successfully on the field of battle to some the heroes of classical antiquity: “Hannibal, Ulysses, and Telamonian Ajax.”45 In another work of Major’s, his In Quar-tum Sententiarum, the chronicler compares Achilles’s penchant for eating the muscles from oxen and not fowl with Wallace’s similar dietary predilections.46 And while Major concurs that Robert the Bruce flourished at a later date, nonetheless he argues that Wallace “had no other instructions in warfare than experience and his own genius.”47 Major does not dwell upon the various English atrocities that were carried out during Wallace’s tenure as rebel leader. Instead of underscoring the hatred that so many Scots felt toward Edward I (as well as toward many of the Scottish nobility who surrendered to Edward, such as John de Baliol), Major dispenses with this overheated political rhetoric and chooses instead to elevate Wallace to mythical status. The English are not represented as bloodthirsty animals; instead, they are weak, clueless, and confused, unable to match Wallace’s abilities: “[T]wo or even three Englishmen were scare able to make stand against him,—such was his bodily strength, such also the quickness of his understanding, and his indomitable courage.”48 Major does indeed humanize Wallace, and he also makes him into more of a character out of literature. Perhaps he was influenced by Blind Hary’s narrative, for Major is the first to mention the supposed author of the Middle Scots poem. Near the end of Major’s own history of Wallace, he describes how, “in the time of [his] childhood,” the blind author “fabricated a whole book about William Wallace. . . . I however can give but a partial credence to such writings as these.”49 While Hary the Minstrel’s long verse narrative does include a sizable number of literary embellishments (moments of fantasy, comedic interplay, elements of romance), his overall portrait of Wallace as a fierce leader who commands respect is very similar to Major’s outline of the hero.
World History
