Britishness, what it is and what it could be, is now high on both ...

of Arthur that provoked Earl Richard of Cornwall to build a gr<strong>and</strong>iose castle there in the
1230s to symbol<strong>is</strong>e h<strong>is</strong> association w<strong>it</strong>h th<strong>is</strong> sacred place. The appearance of Geoffrey’s
H<strong>is</strong>toria may also have caused Cornwall’s el<strong>it</strong>e to re-assess their Br<strong>it</strong><strong>is</strong>h origins. Th<strong>is</strong> at
least <strong>is</strong> the opinion of Hugh Thomas, who notes that John of Cornwall, author of an
independent version of the prophecies of Merlin, had a sense of <strong>be</strong>ing a Br<strong>it</strong>on, d<strong>is</strong>tinct
from the Engl<strong>is</strong>h. 92 “Only in Cornwall, where there were lingu<strong>is</strong>tic <strong>and</strong> perhaps other
cultural features that made Br<strong>it</strong><strong>is</strong>h ident<strong>it</strong>y <strong>and</strong> a connection to Geoffrey’s past
<strong>be</strong>lievable, did Geoffrey have any influence on ident<strong>it</strong>y, by shoring up <strong>and</strong> reshaping an
ethnic ident<strong>it</strong>y that already ex<strong>is</strong>ted”. 93 Geoffrey’s work may thus have stimulated a late
twelfth century Corn<strong>is</strong>h el<strong>it</strong>e to re-identify themselves w<strong>it</strong>h their <strong>Br<strong>it</strong><strong>is</strong>hness</strong> in a similar
way to that in which an el<strong>it</strong>e Scott<strong>is</strong>h ident<strong>it</strong>y appeared in the aftermath of the battle of
Bannockburn. 94
Golden ages <strong>and</strong> h<strong>is</strong>torical memories
Other memories sustained a Corn<strong>is</strong>h sense of difference after the tenth century. In late
medieval Cornwall, saints’ cults were unusual in their origin. Considerably more saints in
Cornwall were unique Br<strong>it</strong>tonic figures (e<strong>it</strong>her Breton, Welsh, Ir<strong>is</strong>h or local saints). As
late as the fifteenth <strong>and</strong> sixteenth centuries the Ir<strong>is</strong>h rather than Engl<strong>is</strong>h context of saints’
lives indicated a pers<strong>is</strong>ting “consciousness of a separate Celtic her<strong>it</strong>age”. 95 Even after the
Reformation, the trad<strong>it</strong>ion of the saints lingered on “more tenaciously” in Cornwall, even
into the eighteenth century. W<strong>it</strong>h the decline of the Corn<strong>is</strong>h language after the midsixteenth
century such h<strong>is</strong>torical memories faded, but they were never entirely eclipsed,
<strong>and</strong> remained as resources to <strong>be</strong> re-appropriated by the antiquarians of the eighteenth <strong>and</strong>
nineteenth centuries.
H<strong>is</strong>torical memories were by then <strong>be</strong>ing replen<strong>is</strong>hed by the shared experience of
industrial<strong>is</strong>ation. In the eighteenth century r<strong>is</strong>ing dem<strong>and</strong> for Corn<strong>is</strong>h copper inaugurated
a precocious early industrial<strong>is</strong>ation. 96 W<strong>it</strong>hin half a century west Cornwall had <strong>be</strong>en
transformed into one of Europe’s early industrial regions, by the 1780s capable of
spawning “one of the most heavily cap<strong>it</strong>al<strong>is</strong>t enterpr<strong>is</strong>es [the Corn<strong>is</strong>h Copper Metal
Company] in the whole of the eighteenth century economy”. 97 During the first half of the
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