SOURCE: Hanham, Alison. “Polydore Vergil, the Second Italian.” In Richard III and His Early Historians, 1483-1535, pp. 125-47. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.

In this essay, Hanham analyzes Vergil's description of the reign of Richard III in Anglica historia to show what sources most influenced Vergil's writing, how the author subtly expressed his own political views, and why Vergil, and not Thomas More, should be credited with writing the first English literary history.

I

Polydore Vergil was already a scholar of international standing when he came to England in 1502. With the encouragement of Henry VII he undertook to write a history of England, and after some twelve years of research he produced a first complete draft which went up as far as September 1513.¹ He subsequently added and altered material, and the work seems to have circulated in manuscript, as one would expect, before the first edition was published at Basle...