ABSTRACT
WILLIAM CAMDEN WAS BORN IN 1551 and died in 1623. At the time of his birth English historiography was still largely medieval in character. The best modern historian of England was the Italian cleric and humanist, Polydore Vergil. The bourgeois chroniclers, notably Fabyan, Hall, and Grafton, were transitional figures, who drew upon the works of the great medieval chroniclers without understanding the limitations of their own scissors-andpaste methods. Sir Thomas More’s History of Richard III was a superb literary portrait, but not a work of historical scholarship. Except for biographies, the early Tudor age produced no great native historical literature. By the time of Camden’s death the whole character of English historiography had changed. The medieval chronicle had been superseded by the modern history. Original research, especially in the public records, had become the hallmark of good historical writing. Camden’s Annales Rerum Anglicarum et Hibernicarum Regnante Elizabethae, written for an international reading public, challenged comparison with the best territorial histories produced on the continent. The Annales, along with the Britannia, were a tribute to the intellectual expansion of Elizabethan England.
