"Nest pas autentik, mais apocrophum": Haveloks and Their Reception in Medieval England

Like many medieval narratives, the story of Havelok exists somewhere between romance and history, and, to be frank, modern literary critics are more interested in romance than history. The romance versions of the Havelok story, therefore, have received the lion's share of critical attention. This is only to be expected, as both the Anglo-Norman and Middle English Havelok poems are excellent examples of early romance and deserve careful critical scrutiny. Recent work on Havelok, however, has begun to examine more closely the historical texts in which the Danish hero is but one of dozens, or even hundreds, of British rulers. Still, critical comment on the story as it is found in chronicles tends to treat these texts as sources of information regarding the romances, particularly the Middle English Havelok the Dane . ¹ By the mid-fourteenth century, however, Havelok had become part of the broadly defined "Brut tradition," and his story was widely available both as an independent romance narrative and as yet another episode within the lengthy cycle of British historiography. Despite this dual existence, the impact of the story's generic confusion on the reception of its various retellings has gone largely unquestioned, with the notable exception of a bold statement in Thorlac Turville-Petre's study, England the Nation : "We rarely have much evidence on the way in which contemporary readers classified a medieval work, but it is clear that the story of Havelok, though wholly fictional, was unhesitatingly accepted as a history in the early fourteenth century." ² Turville-Petre's comment has much of interest in it (which he addresses in the analysis that follows), but I want to examine two related issues: first, the assumption that there was such as thing as "the Havelok story"; and, second, the claim that such a story "was unhesitatingly accepted as a history." As the quotation makes clear, Turville-Petre is most interested in the early fourteenth century, but it is difficult to gauge the reception of the Havelok story in this period, since the earliest surviving versions do not make explicit their judgment of the narrative's historical authority. By mid century, however, Robert Mannyng and Sir Thomas Gray had serious doubts about the validity of the tale, and fifteenth-century scribes were often at a loss as to how to deal with a tradition that had become confused and contradictory. If indeed early fourteenth-century authors thought the story of Havelok was history, those who read their work even a generation later were much less certain about the historicity of Havelok's reign.

The earliest accounts of Havelok (those dated before 1350) are well known. The complete narratives have been edited numerous times, and the shorter passages found in chronicles have been summarized and reprinted since Frederic Madden's first edition of the English romance. The first surviving Havelok story is found in Geffrei Gaimar's L'Estoire des Engleis , composed in Anglo-Norman in the late 1130s. Gaimar's account is closely related to the Lai d'Haveloc (ca. 1190–1220), and it may be convenient to summarize some of the salient features of the plot. I should note that my interest is not in recapping the whole plot but in emphasizing those instances where these texts differ from the Middle English romance:

During the reign of Constantine, there were two other kings in Britain, Adelbriht (who ruled Norfolk and parts of Lincolnshire) and Edelsi (who ruled Lincoln and Lindsey). Adelbriht marries Edelsi's sister, Orwain. When ill, Adelbriht entrusts the wardship of his daughter, Argentille, to her uncle insisting that, when she came of age, she should be married to the most powerful man that could be found. Edelsi, thinking to steal her inheritance, marries Argentille to Cuaran, a kitchen servant. After witnessing fire issue from her husband's mouth, and experiencing several prophetic dreams, Argentille travels with Cuaran to Grimsby to meet with his family. Here, Cuaran discovers that he is actually Havelok, heir to the Danish throne, and that Grim, who he thought was his father, was actually entrusted...