Chapter 14 - London Histories

Summary

In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, and in the civic chronicles of the fifteenth century, London serves a symbolic role as the site of consent between the rulers of England and their citizens. This meant that with each new set of rulers, the myth of London’s importance had to be recovered and reestablished. Thus works such as Wace’s Brut and the anonymous Middle English Saint Erkenwald suggest a dialectic between London’s discontinuous history and its continuous connection to the present. London’s symbolic role also meant that even local histories such as the Middle English civic chronicles often conceal the complexity of local politics in order to present a simpler national narrative.