The Trophies of Time : English Antiquarians of the Seventeenth Century

The recovery of Britain's various pasts - prehistory, Roman and Saxon - was one of the most remarkable achievements of 17th-century scholarship. This work reviews the heroic phase of antiquarian studies, at a time when the modern sense of the remote past was being securely established.

The Trophies of Time presents the first comprehensive survey of the English antiquarians of the seventeenth century.In Britain throughout the period there was a persistent curiosity about the origins of the nation and its institutions, inspired initially by the publication in 1586 of Camden''s Britannia. A remarkable campaign of scholarship developed, which attempted to imagine the vanished societies that had once flourished there. What could be known of prehistoric Britain from its monuments and language? Could the lay-out of Roman Britain be recovered? Was it possible somehow to retrieve the language, religion, and laws of Saxon England? The answers to these questions often had a bearing on contemporary issues of church and state and also enabled citizens to gain a new insight into the character and identity of their nation. Many of the most learned men of the age addressed themselves to antiquarian enquiry and this book presents lively and fascinating portraits of Camden, Cotton, Selden, Spelman, Ussher, Dugdale, Aubrey, and many other lesser-known scholars.