"The book proceeds by describing in detail the six phases of Geoffrey's competition with Rome as Renaissance writers appropriated them, transformed them and made them part of the nation's understanding of its past. The first phase discussed is ecclesiastical history, as English writers from various quarters tried to formulate a non-Roman ancient British church by drawing from medieval mythology. Thereafter the book examines the Protestant uses of the anti-Roman narrative as Geoffrey set it forth: Britain's founding as Rome's rival, another Trojan civilization; Britain's promulgation of ancient laws and its sack of Rome; Britain's heroic and almost successful resistance to Caesar's invasion; Britain's continued resistance but final capitulation to the Romans in the first century A.D.; and the victory of Britain's King Arthur over the Romans, the climax of his career and of the competition with Rome. Though each phase was riven with historiographical problems, each found adherents and even affected the most enlightened writers like William Camden himself."--BOOK JACKET.