Layamon (lived c. 1200)

English poet. His name means ‘law man’ or ‘judge’, and according to his own account he was a priest of Areley (now Areley Kings), Worcestershire. He was the author of the Brut, a chronicle of about 16,000 alliterative lines on the history of Britain from the arrival of Brutus, the legendary Roman senator and general, to Cadwalader, which gives the earliest version of the Arthurian legend in English.

The Brut is based on the French rendering by Robert Wace of the Latin Historia Regum Britanniae by Geoffrey of Monmouth, with additions from Celtic legend. The first important poem written in Middle English, the Brut is written mainly in alliterative lines but occasionally uses rhyme and assonance; it therefore shows English verse in transition. Two composite manuscript copies survive (housed in the British Museum).