The Elizabethan Invention of Anglo-Saxon England: Laurence Nowell, William Lambarde, and the Study of Old English by Rebecca Brackmann (review)

Rebecca Brackmann examines the antiquarian writings of two closely associated Anglo-Saxon scholars within the context of sixteenth-century intellectual concerns. Her specific focus is the creation of English national identity fostered by Elizabeth I’s chief advisor, Sir William Cecil, to whose circle Laurence Nowell (1530– c.1570) and William Lambarde (1536–1601) belonged. Central to Brackmann’s thesis is the claim that Anglo-Saxon England was a concept developed by Tudor researchers, and that it was foundational to the Elizabethan English identity that Cecil and others wished to create. She aims to trace ‘some of the ways that the process of regarding the portion of history between the Germanic invasions and the Norman Conquest as somehow essentially “English” in nature took shape in the sixteenth century’ (p. 3).

Brackmann gives particular attention to Nowell’s heavily annotated copy of a Latin school dictionary published in 1552 by Richard Howlet, the Abcedarium Anglico-Latinum, which has not previously been the subject of extended study. Nowell’s annotations, Brackmann points out, bring together in a single volume his work on the Old English lexicon, legal terms, and place names. ‘The English language, the English country-side, and the English legal system’, she observes, ‘could serve as focal points for English identity by claiming to have deep roots in the past, and Cecil wanted exactly such identity fostered’ (p. 20).

Part I details the interaction between the studies undertaken by Nowell and Lambarde and their relation to contemporary debates about the nature of the language, particularly the inkhorn controversy. A critical issue for writers and translators in Cecil’s circle was the standardisation of modern English: ‘The English needed to have a standard way of spelling that represented how they all spoke (or ought to speak), in order to have a uniform Protestant religion giving the Word of God in writing’ (p. 77). Nowell does not explicitly discuss the issue but, despite what he must have known about the multiplicity of Old English dialects and spellings, the Old English lexicon he compiled reveals his attempts to impose a form of standardisation.

Part II deals with sixteenth-century research into place-names and local history. Brackmann holds that the fusion of English place-name etymologies and details of pre-Conquest events in the work of Nowell and others helped to create a corporate memory. According to her, ‘The memory of the Anglo-Saxon past in the places of England, of “Anglo-Saxon England”, first had to be assembled and created before it could be maintained’ (p. 94). Greater relative attention is given in Part II to Lambarde, author of the first county history ( Perambulations in Kent) as well as the first editor of Anglo-Saxon law codes. Brackmann argues that, as Nowell’s literary executor, Lambarde gradually abandoned Nowell’s secular nationalism and drew nearer to the aims of Archbishop Parker in reintegrating Anglo-Saxon identity with Protestant religious polemic.

Part III focuses on Lambarde’s study of legal history. Sixteenth-century study of the law increasingly posited the Anglo-Saxon period as foundational for English identity. Lambarde believed that because English law was indigenous and not Roman in origin, it was crucial to the formation and maintenance of a distinctive identity that clearly distinguished the English from foreign nationals: ‘English law’s supposed development from Anglo-Saxon law also meant that law and Protestantism could both be traced back to England’s past and could support each other as focal points for English identity’ (p. 192).

This is a sound, scholarly study. Brackmann casts far more light on the work of Nowell and Lambarde than on their sixteenth-century context, or the contemporary conception of Anglo-Saxon England. The claim that Tudor scholars inventedthe concept of Anglo-Saxon England is misleading. [End Page 188...