With regard to the Anglo-Saxons, I was thining far more of churchmen like Bede, Wilfred, Aldhelm (who actually warns a student of his against the Irish philosophy precisely because it is so inclusive of pre-Christian ideas), Byrhtferth and so on, and not the more politically motivated secular lords, but you bring up a good point since you could, I suppose, claim that the secular lords represented the 'real' Anglo-Saxon. I would never say so, but let's go with it.

The political motivation of the lords (witness the synod of Whitby that Bede claims was a great triumph over the backward monks of Iona and was more concerned with issues of inheritance from the Norrthumbrian king's perception) I think illustrates, not a deliberate turning from the past in this period, but a willingness to abandon it if obvious benefits were at stake. Let's not forget either that during the Anglo-Saxon period of conversion there were plenty of Lords that were still pagan and allied to Welsh Christians. So, it's a little dodgy to say that Anglo-Saxon lords converted for survival - unless you mean they were pressured by their immediate superiors. Now this was true of the Norse & Danish conversion, but that's something else altogther.

Now regarding your comment about the highlands: don't you think this period (1530-1750 in the Highlands) was a little too complex to make sweeping generalizations? Any period is problematic, but the early modern highlands I find particularly complex with religious, social and political change happening so quickly that populations simply don't show the same kind of singular conformation that they did say two hundred years earlier. I'm happy to get into it, but this post will be long enough as it is. Maybe the next round ...?

I think you misconstrue my statements if you see my points coming out of a "bottom of the staircase" viewpoint. I certainly don't see our various ancestors as not making mistakes - witness the early modern period. Humanity (and others) have made enormous mistakes throughout our collective histories and I believe I would be the first to point out many of them. I nevertheless also view the cultures of our past with the same respect that I would show the elders of my family and seek to learn from them in every way as I try to do them honor as well. Thus, I think it's equally important to value their successes as well as their mistakes - perhaps moreso. I won't go more into this unless you would like me to, but I will say that I get my attitude and method of interpretation - as much as method of expression - from Jerome's De optime genere interpretandi 'On the best kind of interpretation'. Yes this is a Christian work, but it's nucleus is not concerned with sin and atonement, but with interpreting with an open mind searching for the value of what is there - as opposed to a biting and reductive critique.

Regarding Bacon and his place at the Tudor court: I am certain that you would never actually claim that the Tudors, far less Elizabeth herself, were puritans. Elizabeth, if anything, was Lutheran - and not a particularly aggressive one at that. Her attempt to settle the growing and violent tension between the hard-line Catholics and hard-line reformists provided the initial model of the Anglican church as set down in the 1559 Book Common Prayer. Bacon's politics were deeply English (the man was born in London), however fluent he was in Latin and French, and showed the same willingness to turn from the past if good things were at stake as the Anglo-Saxon Lords. This is the heart of my view: that there is an English-ness that one can follow from teh earliest, Anglo-Saxon sources, that survives the transitions to Anglo-Norman society - the very name implying a conditional survival of the previous culture - and its subsequent transition through the early modern and modern (and post-modern?) periods.

Your assertion that the period of the Tudor Monarchs and the Anglo-Saxon period were too far removed to bear on one another simultaneously challenges the underpinning assumption of my statement (that cultures have a thread of continuity traveling through time) and declares with taciturn abruptness your position that once you get bcak to an unspecified point in history, all languages and cultures are equally 'ancient'. As far as this goes it is true. Antiquity can be considered simply a facet or function of age, but there is a connotation to 'antiquity' that this denies and is central to my claim. Old stuff is cool! Why debate what sparks someone's interest?

As for the idea of cultural continuity that you challenge, if you insist that Anglo-Saxon culture isn't as English as post-Norman or early modern English culture, then we have a whole other avenue to explore. In either case, you certainly cannot deny that both Anglo-Saxon and Tudor lay and church society was equally willing to abandon the individual accidences of their previous ages in favor of new ways of thinking. Likewise, the first stirrings of modernism, characterized by a belief in what is now being called 'the myth of progress', occurred in English (and to some degree French) culture, such that with the dismantling of the Gaelic political and thus literary order in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a mass turning toward the English dream of progress occurred in the highlands - thus giving us the Scottish Enlightenment. Now I am not saying that the Enlightenment was strictly English, but I am saying that the English predisposition for turning away from the past made for a fertile soil for the Enlightenment's seed. Moreover, the Scottish Enlightenment required the dismantling of Gaelic culture specifically because it was focused on its past.

Here's where we come to Gaelic culture itself.

... you know, I'm going to post this so I won't lose any data. I'll continue in a little while.