Lhuyd, in seeking to trace the relationships between the “British,” actively constructed that shared identity through the creation of linguistic, cultural, natural, and material histories that could serve as its foundation. He created his “Britain” as both a topographical object and a political object.
Lhuyd further articulated in his 1707 Archaeologia Britannia a vision of the Welsh/British as the “First Planters of the Three Kingdoms,” the first founders of colonies, in the British Isles.74 Latching onto this language of planters and colonies, he crafted a vision of Celtic history appropriate to the dawn of a British imperial age. In this he echoed John Speed, who referred to the ancient Britains as the “first Planters and Possessors” of the island of Britain.75 Such a phrase was redolent with rich associations to projects for imperial expansion and the crafting of the British Empire. Lhuyd’s use of the word “planters” suggests something of the political overtones his work carried. Planters were those who established colonies—another word Lhuyd used, as a label for the earliest human settlements in Britain.76 In the wake of rebellions in Ireland, led first during Elizabeth I’s reign and then again at mid-century during the War of the Three Kingdoms, the English established plantations in Ireland. Land was transferred from rebellious Irish subjects, both native Irish and Old English, Catholic descendants of Norman invaders who were mostly settled in the southeast around Dublin.77 English colonists in the Americas, from Massachusetts Bay to Virginia, were planters.
Planting implied control of territory and settled cultivation of the land, at least partly in the image of Adam and Eve, the first planters; its associations were agricultural, political, and biblical. Planters fixed themselves firmly in the land. Not all of the peoples who had visited Britain had done this, in Lhuyd’s view. In his additions to the 1695 edition of Camden, he firmly rejected the possibility that medieval Vikings had constructed the massive stone circles that could be found across Britain: they were but “roving Pirats,” roaming from place to place rather than establishing the communities that could build such monuments.78 Planting implied civilization: seventeenth-century English planters in Ireland and in the Americas went forth to tame “wild” lands and gradually remake local populations, environments, and culture in England’s image.79 In Ireland this included importing the structures of English governance and English Protestantism.80 Land was divided by counties, replacing traditional lordships; courts of assize were instituted; and Gaelic inheritance laws were replaced by English ones.81 English and Irish were encouraged to blend, but only on English terms: under Cromwell’s leadership the Catholic Irish were made to worship in Protestant churches.82 The virtuoso William Petty’s numerous schemes for “civilizing” the Irish by encouraging marriage between English planters and Irish women were meant to transmute the Irish into English.83
Lhuyd’s description of the ancient Britons as “planters” and their dominions as “colonies” implied that the Celtic peoples—Welsh, Scottish, and Irish—had a natural role to play in the eighteenth-century expansion of the British Empire. Statements such as this were historically used to promote the contribution of the Celts, specifically the Welsh, to the expansion of the “British” Empire; in the sixteenth century, for example, John Dee argued for the legitimacy of Elizabeth I’s claims to possessions in the Americas by tying them to the lands supposedly discovered by the twelfth-century Prince Madoc, who, according to legend, crossed the Atlantic.84 In this reading, the English owed the Welsh thanks for the “British Empire.” Lhuyd went even further, raising up not only the Welsh but also the Celts of Ireland and Scotland (as well as Cornwall and Brittany, though to a lesser degree). Yet this position was one that Lhuyd arrived at only after direct study of the remains of the past, as he prepared his contributions to the revised Britannia. He initially found it difficult to overcome the notion that any antiquities that appeared to reflect a sophisticated culture could be attributed to the ancient Britons, and not, say, the Romans.85 This is not surprising, given Lhuyd’s immersion in English antiquarian and natural historical culture, and the widespread English image of the Celts, especially the Catholic Irish, as barbaric and uncivilized. But awareness of the climate in which he worked renders Lhuyd’s reference to the ancient Britons as “planters” all the more striking as a statement of fellowship.
Lhuyd’s Archaeologia Britannica was not universally well received when it was finally published in 1707. The critiques spoke to divisions between England and the rest of Britain and, possibly, to divisions between the Celtic regions. Wits laughed that the fruit of so many years of study, and so much expense by Lhuyd’s subscribers, should be an etymological dictionary of Celtic languages. The sniping, which echoed traditional English attacks on the Celtic languages, particularly Welsh, started before the book was officially published. Lhuyd, though he acknowledged that few agreed with him, argued that Welsh was a comparatively ancient language and that certain words in ancient Latin and even Greek could be traced back to the original British (John Aubrey, had he still been alive, would have been sympathetic to this claim).86 Lhuyd addressed the critiques defensively in his introduction, claiming that his detractors’ invidious partiality clouded their judgment. They claimed that only “half a dozen” or “half a score” individuals in the nation could possibly be interested in the subject of Celtic antiquities and languages. Lhuyd observed that if their critique were serious and impartial, they would have to admit that there were closer to “Three or Four Hundred” such individuals: still a small number, but enough to support the production of a book such as Lhuyd’s Glossography.87 Lhuyd was silent as to broader motives fueling his unnamed critics’ censures, but a defense orchestrated by the Royal Society revealed that questions of national partisanship were an issue. In a letter published by Hans Sloane in the Philosophical Transactions shortly after the book’s publication, the antiquary William Baxter gave an account of the book and then turned to a defense of Lhuyd as a scholar: “I cannot conclude without taking notice of one Calumny that has been whisper’d about by Men of Passion or Intreague, viz. That this Book is design’d to serve a certain Interest. I therefore think my self oblig’d in Justice, to certifie to the Publick, that after a careful perusal of all the Parts of this Work, I cannot discern a Syllable any where that in the least tends to favour any Party, or is any way concern’d in any National Distinction.”88 Baxter, who corresponded with Lhuyd on antiquarian matters, defended his impartiality and attempted to distance his work from the political context of the early eighteenth century, in which questions of “national distinction” and the relationships among England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales were very much at issue. In his correspondence Lhuyd carefully tracked the publication of Baxter’s review, hoping that, by providing a good character for his book, Baxter would help him move more copies of it.89
However, devoting serious attention to the “British” languages and antiquities was a political act, and it was interpreted as such by Lhuyd’s critics as well as his admirers. Whether they offered praise or critique, correspondents, some of whom had been contributing to the project since Lhuyd first canvassed for subscription over ten years prior, spoke to the questions of what bound and what divided the Celtic regions of Britain. The Irish antiquary Roderic O’Flaherty questioned whether Lhuyd was right to include separate prefaces in Welsh, Irish, and Cornish: “whereas one in a hundred can reade one of the 3 & one in a 1000 (if any) expert in all 3,” would it not have been better to present the material in these prefaces in English, a language “common to the 3 nations”?90 A Welsh correspondent wrote in enthusiastic praise, using the revised Welsh orthography Lhuyd had invented for the Archaeologia. He suggested that consistent use of Lhuyd’s orthography, which, among other things, eliminated “double consonants at the beginning of words,” would garner the Welsh more respect from the English, who were liable to “disrespect and pour scorn on our language and its writing.”91 Yet another Welsh correspondent gently mocked Lhuyd’s innovate orthography, poking fun in particular at the ways in which over the years Lhuyd had altered his own name as he developed his spelling conventions: “Lluyd, alias Lhuyd, alias Lhwyd, alias Llwyd, cum multis aliis aliarum. for all this, I am well assur’d, that my Friend is the same, and that whatever diminuations he may make of his Name, his Reputation is still
