mpleted by 1147. In his later years he resided at
Llandaff. He was ordained priest in February, 1152, and consecrated
bishop of St. Asaph in the same month. In 1153 he was one of the
witnesses to the compact between King Stephen and Henry of Anjou,
which ended the civil wars. He died at Llandaff in 1153.

We will now turn to consider the sources of his History of the Kings
of Britain. Geoffrey says: "In the course of many and various studies
I happened to light on the history of the Kings of Britain, and
wondered that, in the account which Gildas and Bede, in their elegant
treatises, had given of them, I found nothing said of those kings who
lived here before Christ, nor of Arthur, and many others; though their
actions were celebrated by many people in a pleasant manner, and by
heart, as if they had been written. Whilst I was thinking of these
things, Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, a man learned in foreign
histories, offered me a very ancient book in the Britannic tongue,
which, in a continued regular story and elegant style, related the
actions of them all, from Brutus down to Cadwallader. At his request,
therefore, I undertook the translation of that book into Latin." At
the end of his history he adds: "I leave the history of the later
kings of Wales to Caradoc of Llancarven, my contemporary, as I do also
the kings of the Saxons to William of Malmesbury and Henry of
Huntingdon. But I advise them to be silent concerning the kings of the
Britons, since they have not that book written in the Britannic
tongue, which Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, brought out of Britannia."

There has been a good deal of controversy as to whether this very
ancient book was in Welsh or Breton, but the first question is, Did it
ever exist? Was Geoffrey a translator, or an inventor, or a collector
of oral traditions current in Wales or Brittany during his time?

There can be little doubt that the conclusion of Thomas Stephens, in
the "Literature of the Kymry," is correct--that "Geoffrey was less a
translator than an original author." It is very doubtful whether the
Britannic book ever existed, whether it was not a mere ruse, such as
was often resorted to by mediaeval romancers, and is still a favourite
method with modern historical novelists--to give their works an
appearance of genuineness. It has been argued against this, that in
that case, Archdeacon Walter must have been a party to the
fraud--which is incredible. Such an argument implies