William Worcestre and the legendary history of Armorica in the fifteenth century

Abstract

The late fifteenth-century Itineraries of William Worcestre pre- serve a brief account of the legendary history of Brittany. Although the fragment goes back ultimately to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae, it differs from that in several respects. The exact match to the narrative is found in another fifteenth-century document, the so-called Canterbury Roll (previously known as the ‘Maude Roll’). The paper shows that this particular variant of the history of the conquest of Armorica was in some circulation in late medieval  England, and provides some suggestions regarding the interrelation of the texts containing it.