x.1 Spenser’s chronicle of Briton kings relies chiefly on Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historium Regum Britanniae (c. 1135), with additional material from John Hardyng, Chronicle (1543); John Stowe, Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1580); Raphael Holinshed, Chronicles (1577, 1587); and A Mirror for Magistrates (1559). Its chief epic antecedent is the procession of Roman worthies in Virgil (Aen 6.756-885).
x.2 Brute: Brutus, descendant of Aeneas and legendary founder of Britain, to which he gives his name; see 9.6-13.5 and III.ix.48-50, as well as 69.7n.
x.2 Uthers rayne: Uther Pendragon is Arthur’s father. His reign is contemporary with the action of the poem (see st. 68).
x.3 rolls: Cf. ‘antique Regesters’, ix.59.4.
x.3 Elfin Emperours: Rulers of Faeryland, in a chronology fabricated by Spenser.
x.4 time of Gloriane: Historically, Gloriana is contemporary with Uther Pendragon, ruling Faery land as he rules Britain; allegorically, she is a figure for Elizabeth I, and in this sense contemporary with Spenser.
x.1.1 St. 1-4 The canto opens with a kind of invocation (a rhetorical question, implicitly answered at 3.6-7). Together with the apostrophe to Elisabeth (4.1), this invocation marks the first four stanzas as a proem-within-the-poem, implying that the chronicles to follow, like a great battle scene in classical epic, call for a special elevation of the poet’s spirit (cf. I.xi.6.6-8.9).
x.1.1 St. 1 Spenser’s stanza translates Ariosto (OF 3.1). Both as a ninth line and in its final word, Spenser’s hexameter (‘By which all earthly Princes she doth far surmount’) wittily surmounts the tribute paid to the house of Este in Ariosto’s ottava rima pentameter.
x.2.1–x.2.3 2.1-3 Cf. Ariosto: di cui fra tutti li signori illustri, / dal ciel sortiti a governar la terra, / non vedi, o Febo, che ‘l gran mondo lustri, / più gloriosa stirpe o in pace o in guerra (‘than whom, among all the illustrious lords ordained by heaven to govern the earth, you do not see—O Phoebus, who light up the great world—a more glorious lineage in peace or in war’; OF 3.2.1-4).
x.2.7 A labor huge: referring to 1.8, ‘I recount’.
x.3.1 St. 3 Once again closely tracking Ariosto (OF 3.3).
x.3.1 Mœonian: Homer’s surname was Mæonides (‘native of Maeonia,’ or Lydia).
x.3.2 Phoebus rote: The lyre of Apollo, god of music and poetry. (Rote, slightly archaic by 1590, designates a medieval stringed instrument.)
x.3.3–x.3.5 3.3-5 In the war between the gods and Titans (parallel to Brute’s conquest of the giants in England), the giants tried to assault the heavens by piling Mount Ossa on top of Mount Pelion in a battle that took place in Phlegra. See Ovid: adfectasse ferunt regnum caeleste gigantas / altaque congestos struxisse ad sidera montis. / tum pater omnipotens misso perfregit Oympum / fulmine et excussit subiectae Pelion Ossae (‘they say that the Giants essayed the very throne of heaven, piling huge mountains, one on another, clear up to the stars. Then the Almighty Father hurled his thunderbolts, shattered Olympus, and dashed Pelion down from underlying Ossa’; Met 1.152-55).
x.3.7 report: L re back, again + portare to carry.
x.4.7 Northern starre: Polaris, ‘the stedfast starre’ at I.ii.1.2 (see vii.1.2n).
x.4.9 that old mans booke: Introduced at ix.59.5-9.
x.5.1

St. 5-68 Stanzas 5-68.2 contain Spenser’s chronicle of British kings from Brute to Uther Pendragon. Mills (1976) points out that, like the human body, the account of British and Faery dynasties is ‘Proportioned equally by seven and nine’ (ix.22.7). Briton moniments is summarized in 63 nine-line stanzas that list 62 kings (Arthur will be the 63rd), while the Antiquitee of Faery Lond (70-76) takes up seven stanzas, or 63 lines. Hamilton 2001 adds that 63 is the number of the ‘grand climacteric’, a notion that goes back to Greek astrology, mathematics, and philosophy.

Occurring every seven years in life, climacterics were thought to be turning points. The ‘grand climacteric’ (usually the ninth) was seen an especially dangerous moment of crisis. Spenser’s time-scheme, which identifies Arthur allegorically with the advent of Elizabeth, thus implies that both reigns are historically fraught. Since his history is punctuated by lapses of the royal line when monarchs died childless (36.1, 54.1, 61.8), the allegorical advent of Elizabeth/Arthur may be fraught in part because the succession is disrupted.

x.5.8 5.8 Holinshed reports that England was ‘joined without any separation of sea to the maine land’ (1965: 1.427).
x.5.9 Celticke mayn-land: Brittany, formerly inhabited by Celtic tribes
x.6.2–x.6.4 6.2-4 The southeastern coast of England is famously lined with white chalk cliffs, the source of the name Albion (L albus white). T. Cooper (1565) suggests a supplementary derivation from Gk Oλβιον Olbion happy or blessed, because ancient mariners arriving there considered themselves fortunate.
x.6.6 6.6 1596 and 1609, which read ‘safeties sake’, probably read Spenser’s trisyllabic ‘safety’ as disyllabic.
x.6.9 inuade: enter, in a neutral sense (L in + vadere to go), but anticipating the hostilities mentioned at 9.9.
x.7.2 hideous: horrific, with the added sense of monstrous size: cf. ‘Of stature huge and hideous he was, / Like to a Giant for his monstrous hight’ (V.xii.15.1-2).
x.7.5 Roebucke: The roe is a species of small deer; the buck is the male of the species.
x.7.7 liueden: An archaic verb form appropriate to the ancientness of the inhabitants.
x.8.3 That monstrous error: The error is both that of the antiquarians who credit the story of Diocletian’s daughters, and that of the daughters in the story when they couple with fiends.
x.8.4 Dioclesians fifty daughters: Spenser is conflating two similar myths, one of the Assyrian King Diocletian and another of the Egyptian King Daunus. Cf. Holinshed, 1965: 1.434-36. Cf. also Gen. 6:4: ‘There were gyantes in the earth in those dayes: yea, and after that the sonnes of God came unto the daughters of men, and they had borne them children, these were mightie men, which in olde time were men of renoume.’
x.8.8 Geaunts: This spelling alludes to an alternative myth of origin for the giants, identified by many Renaissance writers with the Titans of classical myth, descended from Uranus and Ge (sky and earth). See Holinshed 1.3 on the derivation from Gk Γιγινες Gigines, ‘Borne or bred of or in the earth’ (1965: 1.434). This subtext becomes explicit in 9.1-5, where ‘this land’ figures as ‘their owne mother’, ‘polluted’ by their ‘unkindly crime’, who therefore ‘gan abhorre’ them even though they were ‘borne of her owne native slime’.
x.9.6–x.9.7 See arg.2 and note. Assarac founded Troy; he was great-grandfather to Aeneas, who in turn was great-grandfather to Brutus.
x.9.8 fatall error: fated wandering; see the description of Aeneas as fato profugus (‘exiled by fate’), where profugus also has the sense of ‘fugitive’ (Aen 1.2). Cf. III.ix.49.1, ‘by fatall course’.
x.10.5 groning flore: perhaps a transferred epithet, although the earth (floor) may equally be groaning with the sheer weight of their corpses (see III.ix.50.5-6: ‘th’earth full cold, / Which quaked under their so hideous masse’).
x.10.7 westerne Hogh: Plymouth Hoe (hill) on the southwest coast of England.
x.10.7–x.10.9 10.7-9 Spenser follows Geoffrey of Monmouth Historia (28). Goëmot is also known as Goegmagog (cf. Goemagot, III.ix.50.3); Corineus was a general under Brutus who specialized in wrestling giants.
x.11.1 St. 11 Sources for the stories mentioned in this stanza have not been identified, but for evidence suggesting Irish legends as a source for the story of Coulin’s fatal leap, see Forste-Grupp (1999).
x.11.2 Debon: one of Brutus’s followers.
x.11.3–x.11.4 grownd, . . . fell: We conjecture that the comma and semi-colon were transposed by the compositor in 1590.
x.11.3 Coulin: one of the giants, mentioned again at III.ix.50.4.
x.11.3 lugs: a lug is a measure of length varying from 15-20 feet, sometimes equivalent to a ‘rod’ (16.5 feet).
x.11.6–x.11.7 11.6-7 For the story of Albion’s defeat at the hands of Hercules, see Holinshed (1965: 1.433).
x.11.8–x.11.9 11.8-9 Godmer and Canutus do not appear in Spenser’s known sources, but the story that Godmer threw ‘three monstrous stones’ (line 5) at Canutus echoes Holinshed’s description of Hercules’ army turning the tide of battle against the forces of Albion by stoning them.
x.12.1–x.12.5 12.1-5 Based on Geoffrey, Historia (20).
x.12.6–x.12.9 12.6-9 The derivation of Devonshyre from Debon and of Kent from Canute are invented by Spenser, presumably by analogy to Corineus-Cornwaile.
x.12.7 from the rest: ‘away from the rest’, because Kent is to the east of the other shires.
x.13.5 Inogene of Italy: Both Geoffrey and Holinshed record that she was daughter to the Greek king Pandrasus, given in marriage to Brutus when he fled to Greece after his exile from Italy.
x.14.4 quart: This is the only instance cited in OED for this usage.
x.14.5 14.5 Camber’s portion is separated from Logris (England, so called after Locrine) by the Severn river.
x.15.1 St. 15 Overrunning seven consecutive lines of the stanza, this period imitates the aggressive expansion of the Huns (‘a nation straung’), halted in the final couplet by Locrine’s defense.
x.16.2–x.16.3 16.2-3 This river appears in the 1574 addition to A Mirror for Magistrates, where the Huns ‘over Abi streame with haste did hie’ (‘Locrinus’ line 65, in Campbell 1946: 80). The 1587 edition of William Harrison’s Description of Britaine in its account of the Humber does mention an author, ‘Ptolomie Abie, Leland Aber, as he gesseth’ (1807; AMS 1965: 156).
x.16.7–x.16.9 16.7-9 The Hun chieftan Humber gives his name to the ‘mighty streame’.
x.17.6–x.17.9 17.6-9 Geoffrey and Holinshed report that Locrine fell in love with Estrild after taking her captive when he defeated Humber, and wished to marry her; he wed his niece, Guendolene (to whom he was promised), only under pressure from her father Corineus. He kept Estrild secretly as a concubine, and after the death of Corineus put aside Guendolene in her favor.
x.19.5 stoure: 1590 has ‘upon the present floure’. 1596 and 1609 read ‘in that impatient stoure’. The misreading of ‘st’ as ‘fl’ would be easy in secretary hand; we conjecture a correction (‘stoure’) combined with a revision (‘in that impatient’), and adopt the first but not the second.
x.19.6–x.19.9 19.6-8 Retold by Milton in Comus (824-842).
x.19.7 poure: Cf. ii.6.8, on fountains that ‘Had vertue pourd into their waters bace’.
x.20.5–x.20.9 20.5-9 Spenser embellishes the chronicle accounts of Guendolene to combine indirect praise of Elizabeth with an implicit lesson to her.
x.21.1 Madan: Geoffrey says Madan ruled ‘well and in peace for forty years’ (34), but Holinshed ascribes to the father both the tyranny and the manner of death that in Geoffrey belong to the son Mempricius. Stow combines both accounts, recording first of Madan and then of Mempricious that each was devoured by ‘wilde Woolves’ (Summarie 1587: 3).
x.21.3–x.21.5 21.3-5 Spenser heightens the perfidy of ‘Memprise’ by giving Manild a degree more legitimacy than do the chronicles, which suggest that ‘thirst of single kingdom’ was shared by both brothers.
x.21.6 21.6-24 Spenser’s account follows Stow’s Chronicles (see Summarie 1587: 3-4) in a number of details.
x.21.7 Brunchild: Stow and Holinshed record this battle as having been fought by Ebranck’s son Brutus (4; 1965:1.445).
x.22.7 22.7-8 germans are brothers (L germanus having the same parents), but the etymology, given in Stow, is invented.
x.22.8–x.22.9 22.8-9 Geoffrey and Holinshed both assert that Ebrank returned victorious from France (34; 1965: 1.445). Stow in Chronicles of England (1580), citing continental writers, adds a reference to Ebrank having been ‘driven back by Brunchildis, Lord of Hanalt, with no small losse of his men’ (20).
x.23.1 St. 23-24 The account of Brutus’s victory over Brunchildis at Estham bruges appears in Stow (p.4); see 21.7n.
x.24.2 Estham bruges: Bruges, ‘which to this day is called Estam bruges, of the station and camp of Brutus’s (Stow 1587: 4).
x.24.4 Eluersham and Dell: Not mentioned in Spenser’s known sources.
x.24.6–x.24.7 Brunchildis (‘brown-shield’) saw ‘The greene shield’ (Brutus’s surname in the chronicles is ‘Greenshield’) dyed red: ‘vermell’ = vermillion.
x.24.8–x.24.9 Scuith gruridh . . . y Scuith gogh: Welsh for ‘green shield’ and ‘red shield’. These phrases do not appear in the known sources; presumably Spenser adds them in a nod to Elizabeth’s Welsh ancestry. See Bruce 1985.
x.25.3 Cairleill: From Celtic cair city + ‘of Leill’.
x.25.3 Cairleon: From Celtic cair city + ‘of the Legion’.
x.26.6–x.26.7 26.6-7 The naturally hot wells at Bath have been popular a health resort since Roman times, bringing (‘welling’ forth) prosperity to the surrounding area.
x.26.8–x.26.9 26.8-9 Stow records that Bladud overreached his ‘artes’ when he ‘presumed to flie, but by falling on his Temple, he brake his necke’ (1587: 5).
x.27.1 St. 27-32 For the story of King Leyr Spenser draws on Geoffrey, 36-44. Shakespeare’s play (1608) draws on Spenser in turn.
x.28.4 when euer it were proou’d: I.e., whenever put to the test, an ironic qualification that emphasizes the merely rhetorical nature of Leyr’s testing in contrast to the more sensible ‘proof’ to come (31.3-4). Interestingly, Geoffrey describes Cordelia as the one putting her father to the proof: ‘Cordellia understood that he had succumbed to the flattery of her sisters and proceeded to answer differently, in order to test him’ (38).
x.29.2 Cambria: Cf. 14.4-5.
x.30.1–x.30.2 30.1-2 Proverbial. Cf. Smith (1970, no. 588).
x.30.2 weeke: With a glance at ‘weak’.
x.30.3 regiment: L regere to rule over.
x.31.3–x.31.4 Too truely tryde . . . to proue the rest: Cf. ‘when ever it were proov’d’ (28.4 and note).
x.33.1 St. 33 Cf. st. 21. The motif of fratricidal rivalry, introduced by the sons of Madan, is revived by the sons of Goneril and Regan.
x.33.8 33.8 Glamorgan: According to Holinshed, from Glau Margan, Welsh for ‘Margans Land’ (1965: 1.448).
x.34.1 St. 34-35 These two stanzas closely track the account in Geoffrey.
x.34.1 his dead rowme: his place after he died
x.34.3 Cæcily: Male in Geoffrey.
x.34.6 Gorbogud: Subject of the first English tragedy, Thomas Sackville’s Gorboduc (1561).
x.35.1 St. 35 Cf. 21.3-5n, st. 33n. The motif of fratricidal rivalry recurs yet again. Its cyclical nature is hinted at by the prepositions (‘Stird Porrex up to put his brother downe’), but the cycle is clearly spiraling downward when the brothers’ ‘mother mercilesse’ steps in to avenge the death of Ferrex, and in so doing brings the lineage itself to an end (36.1).
x.35.4–x.35.5 35.4-5 Ferrex, having fled to France, gathers support there and returns to attack Porrex, but is killed in the battle.
x.36.1 St. 36 On the lapse of Brutus’s lineage see Harper (1910): ‘Here Spenser has made two additions to Geoffrey’s narrative: the first, that the line of Brutus ended with Ferrex and Porrex, and the second, that the progeny of Brutus ruled 700 years. The first statement has ample authority in Holinshed and Stow. The second seems to be based on the figures in the Polychronicon, quoted by Holinshed, according to which the accession of Dunwallo was 703 years after the arrival of Brutus. Spenser may have identified the accession of the new line with the end of the old, and so have spoken of the 700 years that the line of Brutus reigned. But, while both additions to Geoffrey’s story may thus be accounted for by Holinshed, Spenser’s expansion of this part of his story and his emotional treatment of it, in strong contrast with Warner’s brevity, suggest an influence from the lament of Eubulus in the Tragedy of Gorboduc. To this lament Spenser’s lines bear a decided resemblance’ (91).
x.36.4 36.4 See Guyon’s comparison of Ruddymane at ii.2.6 to a ‘budding braunch rent from the native tree’
x.37.1 a man: Disclosure of his name is deferred, perhaps because, as the founder of a new lineage, he must make rather than inherit his ‘name’.
x.37.6 loose: anticipating Donwallo’s later role (cf. 38.4-5n).
x.38.2 of Logris miscreate: Illegitimately made king of England (Logris; see 14.5n), implicitly in contrast to the precedent established by Donwallo (39.9), who according to Holinshed ‘caused himselfe with great solemnitie to be crowned . . . and bicause he was the first that bare a crowne heere in Britaine, after the opinion of some writers, he is named the first king of Britaine’ (1965:1.451).
x.38.4–x.38.5 38.4-5 Cf. st. 29. Albany (Scotland) and Cambria (Wales), formerly distinct kingdoms, are now first united into great Britany (39.6).
x.39.1 39.1-2 The institution of ‘sacred lawes . . . reveald in vision’ identifies Donwallo with Moses, and insofar as they share divine inspiration, perhaps also with the visionary poet. Donwallo’s visions, not mentioned in the chronicle sources, may be Spenser’s invention.
x.39.6 gratious Numa: An equivocal epithet, honorific insofar as Numa is remembered for his wisdom and virtue in creating Roman law and religious culture, but with a slightly subversive edge insofar as he is remembered for fabricating the story of his divine instruction by ‘the goddess Egeria’ (Livy 1.18-21; qtd phrase 1.19.5).
x.39.8 pollicy: No less equivocal than the reference to Numa, this word carries senses that range from ‘statecraft’ to ‘cunning’. The pairing of ‘strength’ and ‘pollicy’ echoes that of ‘matchlesse might, / And wondrous wit’ at 37.1-2.
x.39.9 39.9 Contrast 38.2 and note.
x.40.1 Donwallo: Named only here, at the end of the passage describing his reign (see 37.1n).
x.40.1 St. 40 Geoffrey describes Brennius and Belinus as another pair of fraternal rivals whose conflict closely parallels that of Porrex and Ferrex, although this time the rivalry ends in reconciliation, followed by military victories over France, Germany, and Rome (48-58; see st. 35n). Spenser omits mention of their rivalry and includes the ransacking of Greece, which derives from later chronicles (Harper 1910: 96).
x.40.2–x.40.3 40.2-3 Rome ‘did assay’ (tested) the ‘pearelesse prowesse’ of the brothers, a decision that cost the Romans ‘dearely’ because it led to the sacking of the city.
x.40.4 40.4 According to Geoffrey, the consuls governing Rome negotiated a treaty with the brothers, then violated the agreement by joining forces against them with the Germans (56).
x.41.1 Spenser follows the spelling in Geoffrey; Holinshed gives ‘Gurgunt’.
x.41.3 Easterland: In The First Inhabitation of Ireland (1587), Holinshed mentions Norway, Denmark, and “other those parties, called Ostomanni, or . . . Easterlings, bicause they lie East in respect of us, although indeed they are by other named properlie Normans, and partlie Saxons” (1965: 6.93).
x.41.6–x.41.9 41.6-9 This story, repeated by Geoffrey and other chroniclers, reiterates the mistaken belief that Ireland was first settled by the Spanish (60). Holinshed in First Inhabitation recycles a fanciful etymology that traces the Latin name for Ireland, Hibernia, back to the Latin for Spain, Hiberia (1965:6.1-2). Spenser’s version uses the story to legitimize British sovereignty over Ireland.
x.42.7–x.42.8 42.7-8 See notes to 39.1-2 and 39.6: here again Spenser goes beyond his sources to associate the royal lawgiver with Faery inspiration personified by a female muse-figure; he is still hedging (‘many deemd’) about the authenticity of the inspiration mediated by this equivocal muse—but never about the value of the laws so derived.
x.43.1 Sisillus Sifillus in all three early editions. Chronicle sources for this passage record the forms Sicillus, Cecilius, Sicillius, and Sisillus (Harper 1910: 100-01), of which Spenser presumably chose the last. The error of ‘f’ for long ‘s’ may easily result from misreading or foul case.
x.43.8 Morands: From L Morini the Flemish people.
x.43.9 43.9 Geoffrey and other chroniclers report that Morvidus (Spenser’s ‘Morindus’) was swallowed ‘like a little fish’ in single combat with a sea monster (62). They also describe his savage treatment of foes defeated in combat.
x.44.6 pitteous: translating L pius, given to Elidurus as a surname after he restored the crown to his deposed brother out of pity; also suggesting ‘to be pitied’, in anticipation of 44.9-45.2.
x.44.9 disthronized: A rare form—OED records only one previous instance, in Stubbes (1583), Anatomy of Abuses, and only three instances in all.
x.45.2 outraigned: another rare form, the only earlier usage recorded by OED in the poems of Charles, Duke of Orleans (c1450).
x.45.3 reseized: ‘Seise’ is a technical term in law meaning to be in possession of a feudal holding; hence resiezed means ‘reinstated’.
x.46.5 Troynouant: ‘New Troy’, founded by Brutus and later called London (Lud’s town).
x.48.2 renforst: Normally ‘reenforced’, but here apparently ‘compelled again’ (the only instance if this usage recorded in OED).
x.48.5 perdie: Literally ‘by God’, echoing Geoffrey’s claim that the Romans were driven back by divine providence (70).
x.49.4–x.49.5 49.4-5 According to Geoffrey, Nennius was mortally wounded during the first Roman attack (70). Spenser (perhaps following Hardyng) narrates the death of Nennius following the third attack, where it figures as a climax to the series; and he invents the detail that Caesar’s sword— buried with Nennius, according to Geoffrey (71)—is ‘yet to be seene this day’.
x.49.8 that reckoning defrayd: paid that account—ironically, since he put an end to the payment of tribute. The phrasing anticipates (Arthur’s reign will recall) both Kimbeline’s refusal of tribute, and the greater reckoning defrayed by Christ (st. 50).
x.49.9 swayd: Cf. II.viii.46.6-8, ‘how ever may / Thy cursed hand so cruelly have swayd / Against that knight’.
x.50.2–x.50.4 50.2-4 Echoing Romans 8.3, ‘God sending his owne Sonne, in the similitude of sinful flesh, and for sinne, condemned sinne in the flesh’, and 1 Cor. 15.22, ‘For as in Adam all dye, even so in Christ shall all be made alive’.
x.50.8–x.50.9 50.8-9 Geoffrey records that ‘Kymbelinus . . . was so fond of the Romans that he freely paid them tribute’ (80), which was later refused by his son Guiderius. Holinshed too records that ‘Kymbeline . . . lived in quiet with the Romans’, adding that he does not know which British ruler refused tribute (1965: 1.479). As Harper 1910 notes, Spenser appears to have followed Harison in transferring ‘the story of Guiderius to Kimbeline’ (111).
x.51.3 Treachetour: Possibly from trechet to deceive. OED suggests an error for ‘treacherour’, but the same form reappears in 1596 at VI.viii.7.4.
x.53.6–x.53.9 53.6-9 The movement from ‘true it is’ to ‘(they say)’ creates a mild version of the effect Milton will achieve at PL 1.746-7 with ‘thus they relate, / Erring’. According to Matt 27:57-60, Joseph of Arimathea was the disciple who interred Jesus. His association with the Grail of Arthurian romance is legendary but not attested in the chronicles.
x.54.1 54.1 The death of Lucius without heir brings the line of Donwallo to an end, the second extinction of the royal lineage (see 36.1).
x.54.6 Bunduca: Also called ‘Boadicea’ (‘Boudicca’ in Tacitus, Agricola 16). Not mentioned in Geoffrey but celebrated by later chroniclers for leading a military revolt against the Roman occupation in C.E. 61. On the details of Spenser’s treatment see Harper (1910: 117-120). Spenser mentions Bunduca again at III.iii.54 and Time 106-12.
x.56.1 moniment: From L monere to remind.
x.56.2 Semiramis: Wife of Ninus (see ix.21.6n), a warrior-queen who disguised herself as her own son to perform ‘many noble enterprices and valiaunt actes’ (T. Cooper 1565).
x.56.4 Hypsiphil: queen of Lemnos who rescued her father (Statius Thebaid 5.28-39; Chaucer, Legend 1466-1468).
x.56.4 Thomiris: queen of Scythia (Massagetae) who slew Cyrus the Great (Herodotus Histories 1.214).
x.56.5 56.5 Dion Cassius puts the number of Bunduca’s soldiers at 230,000; T. Cooper reports that Thomiris was aided by 200,000 Persians in her defeat of Cyrus (1565).
x.57.1–x.57.4 57.1-4 Spenser’s account here draws on the Mirror for Magistrates.
x.57.6 57.6 He secured command of a Roman fleet and then used it to attack the Romans.
x.57.7–x.57.8 57.7-8 Allectus, sent from Rome, slew Carausius on the battlefield; Harper conjectures that treacherously may reflect a reference in Mirror for Magistrates to Carausius’s ‘trustleless trayne’ (1910: 124). The ‘robe of Emperoure’ put on by Allectus was presumably the one that, according to Stow, Carausius ‘usurped’ when he gained dominion over Britain (1587: 32).
x.58.3 58.3 Holinshed reports that Allectus ‘dispoyled himself of the imperiall robes, bycause he would not be knowen if he chanced to be slayne’ (1965:1.524).
x.58.6–x.58.7 58.6-7 I.e., Coyll, after much debate, became the first ruler since Lucius to be crowned as king.
x.60.1 Constantine: First Christian emperor of Rome, frequently cited as a precedent for Elizabeth because he was born English and ruled both church and state.
x.60.6–x.60.9 60.6-9 Constantine sent Trahern to reclaim Britain from the usurper Octavius, who ‘justified’ his royal title by defeating the Romans and slaying Trahern.
x.61.7 Maximinian: Probably a variant of Maximian; Holinshed uses both forms. According to Geoffrey, Maximian ‘the Empire wan’ by conquering Gaul and Germany, but left Britain undefended against the Huns and Picts, who invaded in his absence (106; 108-110).
x.61.8 61.8 The third time the royal lineage has lapsed (see 36.1, 54.1).
x.62.8 62.8 Spenser’s mention here of the two houses of Parliament (Peares = Lords) is an anachronism.
x.63.2 Easterlings: Cf. ‘Easterland’ (41.3).
x.63.4 bordragings: Probably an Anglicized version of a Gaelic original, for which more than one candidate has been proposed. A variant of bodrags, border raids; see CCCHA 315.
x.63.9 from Alcluid to Panwelt: Coastal sites in northern England mentioned by Holinshed (1965:1.541). Spenser departs from the chronicle accounts in ascribing the construction of the Roman wall to Constantine II.
x.64.5 Armorick: Armorica, the Roman name for Brittany.
x.66.5 his faire daughters face: According to Geoffrey, Vortigere was smitten by Hengist’s daughter Rowen, and married her (128-30).
x.66.8–x.66.9 66.8-9 Geoffrey reports that Merlin assisted Constantine’s son Aurelius Ambrose (see 67.2, 7) in moving the stones (‘Giant’s Ring’) from Ireland to the scene of the massacre (172-4), which Holinshed locates on Salisbury plain (1965: 1.565).
x.67.7–x.67.8 peaceably did rayne, / Till that through poyson stopped was his breath: The story of the king’s poisoning by a Saxon pretending to be British appears in Geoffrey (176-78) and Holinshed (1965: 1.566).
x.68.1 Pendragon: Welsh pen head + dragon; see the description of Arthur’s helmet at I.vii.31.
x.68.2–x.68.3 68.2-3 The pun on Caesar/ceasura (L caedere to cut) underpins the analogy between royal succession and syntax, both of which are interrupted in Spenser’s unpunctuated but metrically unruffled line 2. Since this epic chronology is broadly indebted to the procession of Roman Worthies in Virgil, Aen 6, Spenser may be imitating the grammatical/genealogical rupture of Marcellus’s death at 6.882-83 (see Miller 2003: 70 n.22).
x.68.5 th’Author selfe: Since the ‘untimely breach’ is caused by the irruption of the present moment of the narrative (the reign of Arthur’s father, Uther Pendragon), there may be a pun: it is ‘th’Arthur self’ who must ‘attend / To finish’ the next chapter of the chronicle.
x.69.7 brutish: As opposed to British.
x.70.5–x.70.9 70.5-9 Spenser’s account of the Promethean creation derives from Conti (Mythologiae 4.6), Horace (Odes 1.16.13-16), and Ovid (Met 1.76-88).
x.71.1–x.71.2 Elfe . . . Quick: The etymology is Spenser’s invention.
x.71.4 the gardins of Adonis: Described at III.vi.29-52.
x.71.8 Fay: fairy. The surmise of divinity that inspires this naming is a characteristic Spenserian trope, deriving from Virgil (Aen 1.327-28) and repeated with variations in many contexts, beginning with the emblems to ‘Aprill’ in SC.
x.72.1 St. 72-75 Commentators have suggested various historical figures, from Osiris and Hercules to Lucius and Constantine, as referents for the early rulers of Faeryland, but the progressive unfolding of the dynasty suggests rather a kind of abstract or historical paradigm, in which conquerors alternate with builders as empire expands. This pattern converges with British history in the figure of Elficleos as Henry VII.
x.72.2 warrayd: see 50.8, ‘the Romanes him warrayd’.
x.73.8–x.73.9 73.8-9 Echoing Rev 15: 2, ‘And I sawe as it were a glassie sea . . .’. ‘Hevens thunder’ has an appropriately apocalyptic rumble, but also vividly describes the sound likely to be made by passage across a bridge made of brass.
x.75.6–x.75.9 75.6-9 Arthur, the oldest son of Henry VII, died at age 16. His younger brother Henry took his place both on the throne and in marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
x.76.3 That: either a pronoun referring to ‘seat’, suggesting that the throne itself has become a monument to Oberon, or an ellipsis for ‘so that’, with ‘remaines’ construed as intransitive (his wide memorial yet remains).
x.76.4–x.76.5 76.4-5 The diplomatic phrasing of these lines omits the reigns of Edward IV and Mary I and forgets that prior to his ‘last will’ (testament), Henry had designated Mary his successor and had Elizabeth declared illegitimate.
x.76.6–x.76.9 76.6-9 After so many stanzas chronicling the uncertain fortunes of the British throne, the controversy over Elizabeth’s failure to produce an heir and subsequent refusal to name a successor makes itself felt even in Spenser’s terms of praise for her (‘this howre . . . Long mayst thou Glorian live’).
x.77.2 desire: Also suggesting desire for their countries’ welfare.