The idea that Cornwall is, or should be, a land apart, one of the constituent ‘nations’ of the UK, is an idea with a very long history. It had become established by the end of the twelfth century. The early thirteenth-century writer Gervase of Tilbury, listing the various parts of Britain, included Cornwall alongside England, Wales and Scotland (Banks & Binns 2002, 306-7). A little later, the St Albans historian Matthew Paris drew the Royal MS 14 VII f.5v map of Britain, on which Cornwall is named much more prominently than comparable English shires, suggesting a degree of separation. Yet this has never been the only way in which Cornwall can be seen. Cornwall was deeply integrated into the administrative structure of England, something recognized by writers like Henry of Huntingdon who listed it as the tenth shire of England (Greenaway 1996, 16-7). The region’s cultural links to Wales were also highly important. How, then, did the idea of Cornwall as a distinctive nation come to be such an important part of high-medieval cultural memory?
Of all twelfth-century writers, Geoffrey of Monmouth, author of the Historia Regum Brittanie (Histories of the Kings of Britain), gave the most space to Cornwall. Historians have long recognized that Cornwall plays a prominent role in his version of British history (Padel 1984, 1-28). Geoffrey was also a very popular writer (his work survives in over two hundred manuscripts), meaning that, as we shall see, he had an enormous influence on subsequent traditions. Cornwall is identified as a distinct region from the very start of his work. It is given its own origin story, in which it is founded by Corineus, the leader of a group of Trojan exiles who ally with Brutus and the Britons. Cornwall is selected by Corineus as his province and named after him, just as all Britain is named after Brutus. Moreover, Corineus is the first in a long line of autonomous Cornish rulers. The list includes Cador, a lieutenant of King Arthur, who bears a sword in the procession during Arthur’s coronation at Caerleon, alongside the kings of Albania (Scotland), Venedotia and Demetia (North and South Wales). The role of sword-bearer was normally given to particularly high-status nobles. That Cador occupied this role suggests both his personal prestige and Cornwall’s place in Arthur’s kingdom. The last Cornish ruler named is Bledericus, who leads the British defence of Bangor against the Saxons. All Cornwall’s rulers are portrayed positively, as particularly honourable, usually skilled in war, and always playing a prominent role in events. As Geoffrey said of Corineus and his people, ‘they were called Cornish after their chief and in every battle proved more helpful to Brutus than the rest’ (Reeve & Wright 2007, 20).
Cornwall and the Cornish thus have an independent origin story, a line of rulers, and a (admittedly vaguely) defined character. Furthermore, Geoffrey certainly understood Cornwall to be a defined territorial unit. Corineus ‘preferred the region now called Cornwall... He loved to fight giants, and there were more of them to be found there than in any of the districts’ (Reeve & Wright 2007, 28). This continues to be true throughout. To take one example, Cornwall appears as one of four regions of Britain when it is divided into dioceses upon converting to Christianity. Cornwall is not granted its own metropolitan, but it is listed as a region, alongside Loegria (England), under the authority of the Archbishop of London. It is separately named, not subsumed into England (Reeve & Wright 2007, 88-9).
There is, then, a clear sense that Cornwall is a distinctive region, backed up by expansive detail. The Cornish, however, are not an entirely separate people, like the Irish or the Saxons. Their origin story still makes them Trojan descendants, and they never cease to be part of the British kingdom. There is never a hint that a separate Cornish language exists, nor do they have independent laws. The sense of character is not particularly coherent. Nevertheless, there is something different about Cornwall. This is a story which passed through Geoffrey into subsequent historical writing.
To take some examples, Wace, a cleric who at points in his career received patronage from Henry II, produced an Anglo-Norman vernacular poetic adaptation of the Historia in 1155. Wace’s work in turn was adapted into English by the priest Layamon in the early thirteenth century. Wace was not wholly dependent on Geoffrey; he also used a variant version of the Historia, which does not significantly differ in its depiction of Cornwall, and the work of other historians like William of Malmesbury. Wace and Layamon retain, unchanged, Geoffrey’s concept of Cornwall and the Cornish as a partially autonomous people. They were not merely copying, but show clear understanding of the idea. For instance, when relating the legend of Corineus, Wace restates the division of Britain, saying ‘Corineus was granted Cornwall, and Brutus owned the rest of Britain. Each leader took his friends with him, and all the men from their own lands’ (Glowka 2005, 33). Layamon introduces further developments. He inserts a conversation between Brutus and Corineus into the first meeting between the Britons and their Cornish cousins. Corineus agrees that ‘I will come with you, indeed, with my servants and retainers, and go shares in it with you, and look to you as lord, and esteem you as leader’ (Allen 1992, 19). Both authors, then, followed Geoffrey in seeing Cornwall as a place with a definite sense of distinct identity, albeit still part of Britain.
Not all the thinking about Cornwall derives from Geoffrey. Both Wace and Layamon include an incident first described in William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Regum Anglorum (Deeds of the Kings of the English), in which Athelstan expels the Britons from Exeter and confines them behind the river Tamar. William was roughly contemporary with Geoffrey, and moved in the same intellectual circles. Indeed, they shared a patron, Robert of Gloucester. However, there is no indication that Geoffrey influenced William. The Gesta Regum says that Athelstan was campaigning against ‘the Western Britons, who are called Cornish’ (Mynors, Thomson & Winterbottom 1998, 216-17). Another section recounting the exploits of King Ecgberht includes a campaign ‘against the British who live in that part of the island known as Cornwall’; the Britons of Cornwall are distinguished from ‘the North British, who are divided from them by an arm of the sea’ (Mynors, Thomson & Winterbottom 1998, 152-53). William classified the Cornish as Brittonic, but also made a distinction between them and the Welsh. William has built an idea of Cornwall not dissimilar from that of Geoffrey, but clearly independently conceived. It is possible that Geoffrey was expressing existing attitudes with greater clarity than any other author, rather than inventing a completely new concept of Cornwall and its place in British history.
Some earlier sources can assist in reconstructing ideas of Cornwall. The tenth-century Welsh prophetic poem, Armes Prydein Vawr (The Prophecy of Britain), portrays an alliance coming together to defeat the Saxon king. It is said that the Welsh, the ‘Cymry’, will reconcile with ‘the men of Dublin, the Irish of Ireland and Anglesey and Scotland’ and that ‘the men of Cornwall and of Strathclyde will be made welcome among us’ (Williams & Bromwich 1972, 3). The people of Cornwall were to this author distinct, allies of the Welsh but not subsumed within them. The 'A' version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, probably first put together in the early tenth century but using the late ninth-century Alfredian chronicle, mentions ninth-century conflicts between south-western Britons and West-Saxon kings or ‘the men of Devon’ (Swanton 2000, 60, 62). There is a clear distinction between the people of Cornwall and the English, but not so much between them and other Britons. Cornwall is called West Walas, and its people are simply Wala. The twelfth-century writers built on but also altered the ideas they found in earlier texts.
Comparison of the role of Cornwall in the Welsh texts Culhwch and Olwen and Geraint son of Erbin may be illuminating. No manuscript of either text survives from earlier than the thirteenth century. Neither was overtly influenced by Geoffrey, but Geraint was an adaptation of the late twelfth-century work of Chretien de Troyes, so is likely a later product. In Culhwch, Cornwall is the base for Arthur and his court (Davies 2007, 179-213), part of a wider Britain. Arthur is a British king based in Cornwall. He is not the king of Cornwall. The territorial boundary with Devon was recognized, so Cornwall was seen as a defined territory. However, there is no suggestion that the author recognized a distinct “Cornish” people. In Geraint, Cornwall is a separate kingdom, ruled by Geraint’s father, Erbin, under Arthur’s overlordship. The kingdom has borders which its rulers are expected to know and to defend (Davies 2007, 154, 156). This is a much greater degree of separation than is evident in Culhwch, while still not going as far as Geoffrey in creating a semi-distinct people. The text is primarily based on Chretien’s Erec et Enide, which is set in a landscape of semi-independent kingdoms under Arthur’s overlordship but does not explicitly associate its main character with Cornwall (Carroll 1991, 37-122). However, there were other stories about a King Geraint of Cornwall circulating in Wales, for example in genealogies and saint’s lives, which may also have influenced the development of the text (Padel 2006, 142-45). A variety of influences seem to have underlain and informed the development of an idea of a distinctive Cornwall across the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.
It will be obvious from this brief survey that twelfth- and thirteenth-century writers recognised that there was something different about Cornwall. The most powerful expression of this sense of distinctiveness is found in the work of Geoffrey of Monmouth. Geoffrey’s brilliance, combined with the subsequent popularity of his work, has ensured that it is his detailed history of a semi-independent Cornwall that has been best preserved in cultural memory. However, that does not mean that he invented the idea himself, nor that he was the sole source of all future thinking. Sources like Armes Prydein, and to a lesser extent the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, show us that Cornwall was seen as distinct from England, and from Wales, long before Geoffrey started his work. He built on and deepened older understandings, rather than completely re-imagining Cornwall. Other writers, most notably William of Malmesbury but also the unknown authors of the Culhwch and Geraint stories, were able to do something similar, if with less flair and less subsequent influence. The idea of a distinctive Cornwall emerged out of the transnational, multilingual, clerical culture that existed in the Anglo-Norman world. Transmitted and developed as part of the conversation between a range of twelfth-century writers, it became an accepted part of British history, as did so much of the so-called ‘Matter of Britain.’
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David Lees is a final year PhD student at Aberystwyth University. Previously, he studied for an MA at Exeter, and for a BA at Lancaster. He researches identities in twelfth-century Cornwall.
Email: dal62@aber.ac.uk
Twitter: @DavidIainLees
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