ABSTRACT

The English attitude to J uHus Cresar preserved its medieval ambivalence, and his popularity owed perhaps as much to the fact that the British withstood his invasions as to his versatile genius and terrible fate. In his Priface to his Mirror for Magistrates (1559) Baldwin declared that 'it were ... a goodlye and a notable matter to searche and dyscorse one whole storye from the fyrst beginning of the inhabitynge of the yle', but the first edition, starting where Lydgate left off, had nothing about the early history of Britain. In the additions made by John Higgins in 1574 however this gap was partially filled by sixteen tragedies from early British history which included the tragedy of Cordila, Lear's daughter, and Perrex (told in Gorboduc) and concluded with the tale of Nennius, 'a worthy Britayne, [who] the very paterne of a valiaunt, noble, and faithful subjecte encountring with Julius Cresar at his firste comming into this Islande, was by him death wounded, yet nathelesse he gate Cresar's swoorde: put him to flighte: slewe therewith Labienus a Tribune of the Romaynes, endured fight till hys countreymen wan the battayle, died fiftene dayes after.'