| Brutus Greenshield | |
|---|---|
 Brutus Greenshield from the Genealogical Chronicle of the Kings of England to Edward IV (c. 1461) | |
| King of Britain | |
| Reign | 967-955BCE |
| Predecessor | Ebraucus |
| Successor | Leil |
| Issue | Leil |
| Father | Ebraucus |
Brutus Greenshield (Welsh : Brutus Darian Las) was a legendary king of the Britons as accounted by Geoffrey of Monmouth. He was the son of King Ebraucus and came to power in 1001BC. [1]
According to Geoffrey, Brutus, called Greenshield ( Latin:Viridescutum), was the eldest of twenty sons and the only remaining son of Ebraucus in Britain at the time of his death. All Ebraucus's other sons were in Germany establishing a new kingdom there. He reigned for twelve years after his father's death. He was succeeded by his son, Leil. This is all that Geoffrey says of him.
Polydore Vergil says that Greenshield "was greatly renowned neither at home nor in warfare". [2] However, in Elizabethan England he acquired a reputation as a great warrior who is supposed to have led an expedition against the French at Hainaut. Michael Drayton refers to him in Poly-Olbion as "Brute Green-Shield, to whose name we providence impute / Divinely to revive the land's first conqueror, Brute". [3] Greenshield's supposed conquest of Hainaut is also described in Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene , in which it is stated that "to repair his father's loss" he fought "a second battle at Henault with Brunchild [Prince of Hainaut] at the mouth of the river Scaldis". [4] The battle turned his green shield red with blood. Greenshield also appears in other works. Brute Greenshield, a play about the king, was performed by the Admiral's Men in 1598, but the text is lost. It may have been written by John Day and Henry Chettle. [5]
In all these works Greenshield's Hainaut expedition becomes the mythical foundation of the British empire, the first foreign venture to expand British influence in the world. Hainaut was also important to Elizabethans because the Earl of Leicester had led Elizabeth's army against the Spanish there in 1579, so "the Greenshield episode thus prefigures Merlin's prophecy that Elizabeth shall 'stretch her white rod over the Belgicke shore'". [4]
Greenshield is the namesake of a dungeon synth group, Brutus Greenshield, who have released several albums on the popular music site bandcamp.
The Tragedy of Julius Caesar (First Folio title: The Tragedie of Ivlivs Cæsar), often abbreviated as Julius Caesar, is a history play and tragedy by William Shakespeare first performed in 1599.
Michael Drayton was an English poet who came to prominence in the Elizabethan era, continuing to write through the reign of James I and into the reign of Charles I. Many of his works consisted of historical poetry. He was also the first English-language author to write odes in the style of Horace. He died on 23 December 1631 in London.
Corineus, in medieval British legend, was a prodigious warrior, a fighter of giants, and the eponymous founder of Cornwall.
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Philip Henslowe was an Elizabethan theatrical entrepreneur and impresario. Henslowe's modern reputation rests on the survival of his diary, a primary source for information about the theatrical world of Renaissance London.
In the First Folio, the plays of William Shakespeare were grouped into three categories: comedies, histories, and tragedies. The histories—along with those of contemporary Renaissance playwrights—help define the genre of history plays. The Shakespearean histories are biographies of English kings of the previous four centuries and include the standalones King John, Edward III and Henry VIII as well as a continuous sequence of eight plays. These last are considered to have been composed in two cycles. The so-called first tetralogy, apparently written in the early 1590s, covers the Wars of the Roses saga and includes Henry VI, Parts I, II & III and Richard III. The second tetralogy, finished in 1599 and including Richard II, Henry IV, Parts I & II and Henry V, is frequently called the Henriad after its protagonist Prince Hal, the future Henry V.
Polydore Vergil or Virgil, widely known as Polydore Vergil of Urbino, was an Italian humanist scholar, historian, priest and diplomat, who spent much of his life in England. He is particularly remembered for his works the Proverbiorum libellus (1498), a collection of Latin proverbs; De inventoribus rerum (1499), a history of discoveries and origins; and the Anglica Historia, an influential history of England. He has been dubbed the "Father of English History".
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Locrinus was a legendary king of the Britons, as recounted by the 12th-century chronicler Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historia Regum Britanniae. He came to power in 1125BC.
Albanactus, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth, was the founding king of Albania or Albany. He is in effect Geoffrey's eponym for Scotland. His territory was that north of the Humber estuary. This myth was then taken up by Giraldus Cambrensis.
The Trojan genealogy of Nennius was written in the Historia Brittonum of Nennius and was created to merge Greek mythology with Christian themes. As a description of the genealogical line of Aeneas of Troy, Brutus of Britain, and Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, it is an example of the foundation genealogies found not only in early Irish, Welsh and Saxon texts but also in Roman sources.
Mempricius was a legendary king of the Britons, as recounted by Geoffrey of Monmouth. He came to power in 1060BC. He was the son of King Maddan, brother of Malin, and father of king Ebraucus.
Ebraucus was a legendary king of the Britons, as recounted by Geoffrey of Monmouth. He came to power in 1040BC. He was the son of King Mempricius and father of Brutus Greenshield.
Leil was a legendary king of the Britons as accounted by Geoffrey of Monmouth. He was the son of King Brutus Greenshield and came to power in 989BC.
Leir was a legendary king of the Britons whose story was recounted by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his pseudohistorical 12th-century History of the Kings of Britain. According to Geoffrey's genealogy of the British dynasty, Leir reigned around the 8th century BC, around the time of the founding of Rome. The story was modified and retold by William Shakespeare in his Jacobean tragedy King Lear.
Historia regum Britanniae, originally called De gestis Britonum, is a pseudohistorical account of British history, written around 1136 by Geoffrey of Monmouth. It chronicles the lives of the kings of the Britons over the course of two thousand years, beginning with the Trojans founding the British nation and continuing until the Anglo-Saxons assumed control of much of Britain around the 7th century. It is one of the central pieces of the Matter of Britain.
Et tu, Brute? is a Latin phrase literally meaning "and you, Brutus?" or "also you, Brutus?", often translated as "You as well, Brutus?", "You too, Brutus?", or "Even you, Brutus?". The quote appears in Act 3 Scene 1 of William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, where it is spoken by the Roman dictator Julius Caesar, at the moment of his assassination, to his friend Marcus Junius Brutus, upon recognizing him as one of the assassins. Contrary to popular belief, the words are not Caesar's last in the play, as he says "Then fall, Caesar" right after. The first known occurrences of the phrase are said to be in two earlier Elizabethan plays: Henry VI, Part 3 by Shakespeare, and an even earlier play, Caesar Interfectus, by Richard Edes. The phrase is often used apart from the plays to signify an unexpected betrayal by a friend.
Innogen is a character in the Historia Regum Britanniae and subsequent medieval British pseudo-history. She was said to have been a Greek princess, the daughter of King Pandrasus, and to have become Britain's first Queen consort as the wife of Brutus of Troy, the purported first king of Britain who was said to have lived around the 12th century BC. Her sons Locrinus, Camber, and Albanactus went on to rule Loegria, Cambria, and Alba respectively.
Sir John Prise (1501/2–1555) was a Welsh public notary, who acted as a royal agent and visitor of the monasteries. He was also a scholar, associated with the first Welsh printed publication Yn y lhyvyr hwnn. He was a Member (MP) of the Parliament of England for Breconshire in 1547; Hereford October 1553; Ludlow April 1554; and Ludgershall November 1554.
