Immortall fame for ever hath enrold;
As in that old man’s booke they were in order told.”
Here is a compliment of which Geoffrey, could he have foreseen it, would have been as proud as of his inclusion in Chaucer’s ‘Hous of Fame.’ To have been singled out for honour as one “besy for to bere up Troy” was much; it was more to be quoted, by a poet no less illustrious, as an authority for the Arthurian descent of the greatest of British queens. The glorification of the House of Tudor, and of Elizabeth’s Welsh descent, is obvious enough in the lines in The Faerie Queene which refer to the “sparke of fire” that shall
“Bee freshly kindled in the fruitfull Ile
Of Mona, where it lurked in exile:
Which shall breake forth into bright burning flame
And reach into the house that bears the stile
Of roiall majesty and soveraine name:
So shall the Briton blood their crowne agayn reclame.
Thenceforth eternal union shall be made