The International Prester John Project: How A Global Legend Was Created Across Six Centuries

Tom a Lincoln

Two texts from the early seventeenth century use the title and figure called Tom a Lincoln. The first, The Most Pleasant History of Tom a Lincoln, an unremarkable chivalric romance written by Richard Johnson around 1607, relates the adventures of Tom and his fellow Knights of the Round Table. The second, a shorter dramatized version tentatively attributed to Thomas Heywood and written somewhat later than the prose romance is simply called Tom a Lincoln and follows much of the same basic romance plot. Interestingly, both texts feature a scene with Prester John. In the play, Tom and his fellow knights reach the realm of Prester John. After Tom defeats a dragon, Prester John refuses to allow his daughter Anglitora to marry Tom, and the two abscond together, leaving John and his grieving queen Bellamy to commit suicide. 

A Niayesh (p. 55) points out, in the play Prester John has become emptied of any of the significations that marked his identity for the previous five centuries:

Nothing in the play lends any specificity to his realm, where the character and his daughter simply appear as types of the angry father and disobedient daughter. No reference is made here to Prester John's being a Christian; in fact, he actually swears by 'the gods' (l. 2529) like a true pagan. The geographical whereabouts of his land are in no way detailed, leaving us only to infer that he is neither Indian... nor Ethiopian.  

Brewer (p. 233) includes an excerpt from a 1631 prose edition of Tom a Lincoln, published in London.  


Read the full prose version at the Camelot Project. 

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