The History of Alfred of Beverley

The first modern edition of a text which shows the suspicion with which Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain was received two decades after it first appeared. The history of the Yorkshire secular clerk, Alfred of Beverley (c.1148 x c.1151), an important primary source in Anglo-Norman historiography, supplies a history of Britain from its supposed foundation by Brutus down to the death of Henry I in 1135. Alfred's history is of particular interest in that it is the first Insular