A Presentment of Englishry will be published by Shearsman in the UK in 2019.
The book is a series of narrative poems, relating incidents from ‘The Matter of Britain’. The three main stories move from the prehistoric tin trade to the Fall of Roman Britain.
A presentment of Englishry was the offering of proof that a dead man was English in order to avoid the fine that would be levied if the body was Norman; ironically a requirement to prove the insignificance of the dead man due to his nationality.
A Presentment of Englishry began as an attempt to rethink three of Laȝamon's stories.
Laȝamon is not one of medieval literature’s most well known writers: you can find an introduction to his work by clicking on this link and below on this blog.