Here begins the fragment of the Seventeenth Book of the Lost Chronicle of Albion, found beneath the stones of St. Ethelred’s, where moss grew through the windows and the roof had long since wept into the nave. Let those who read it mark well the signs, for though the names have faded, the pattern endures.

And it came to pass in the latter days of the kingdom, that the high streets of Albion grew silent and strange, as if a mist had descended not from heaven but from the mouths of men in lofty towers. The land was not conquered by blade, nor smitten by plague, nor drowned by storm, but by forgetfulness and a smiling face without a name.

The people looked and could no longer see themselves. The cobbler had gone, and with him the old talk of boots and marches. The baker’s boy no longer rang his bell. The green grocer’s stall was shuttered, his scales rusting in the sun. In their place came painted glass and foreign tongues, not bearing invasion, but invitation. And so the change came not as a shout, but as a sigh.

There were many who cried out, not in hatred, but in mourning. “Where are the songs my father knew?” they asked. “Where is the chapel voice, the hedgerow tale, the cricket bat upon the summer green?” But these were called backwards and beastly, and their voices were muffled by velvet laws and digital chains.

For those who ruled from the southern heights of the city no longer cared for the kin of the soil. They dined behind gates, and sipped from the cup of compliance. They spoke of equity, but dealt in erasure. They praised the streets reborn, though none they knew had ever walked them. They named the old as evil, and the unfamiliar as good.

Thus the flags were folded, not burned. The men who once bore them were not slain, but stilled. No gallows were built; no columns fell. But hearts grew quiet. And children learned not the tales of Alfred or Arthur, but the creeds of a new order, fashioned not by craftsmen, but by consultants.

It was then that the watchers on the wall were mocked. The sentinels who cried “Beware the slow forgetting!” were cast out as heretics. The gates were left ajar, not through treason, but through tremble. For the lords feared the scorn of scribes more than the scorn of their people.

And lo, there came upon the land a great numbness, as of sleep without dream. The towns were filled with wares and wonders, yet the soul of the place flickered like a guttered lamp. The rites of belonging were undone. One could be in England, and yet feel not of England. One could walk the streets and hear no echo of home.

And the old women, sitting on their benches beneath the ash trees, whispered one to another: “It was not always thus.” But the wind carried their voices away.

Yet the land itself did not forget. The stones beneath the plough still remembered the weight of the Saxon boot. The hills, though silent, bore the names of heroes carved in an older tongue. And in the marrow of the people, though dulled by convenience and disarmed by comfort, there stirred a question, quiet but persistent: “Is this truly what we are?”

Thus ends the fragment. But in the margin, in a different hand, perhaps written in haste, was one last line:

“And when the forgetting had gone too far, and the heart grew hollow with the hush, the flags rose again, not in hatred, but in homecoming.”

The Second Chronicle of Albion

The Awakening of the Hidden Heart - As preserved in the broken vellum of the Northern Archive, thought to be penned in exile beneath the grey cliffs of Dunheath.

And after the long hush, when the high places grew fat with forgetting and the stones of the low villages wept salt with memory, there came at last the stirring, a sound too quiet for the towers, but loud enough for the hills.

It began not with fire, nor with trumpet, but with a question: “Who are we, and what have we lost?”

And that question moved like a wind through hedgerow and hollow. The ploughmen whispered it as they turned the last honest furrows. The seamstress spoke it beneath the dim lamp in her kitchen. The constable mouthed it in silence as he passed the same corner where no law was kept. It passed from father to son not in lecture, but in glance.

In the beginning, there were few. They bore no flag, for theirs were hidden in chests beside medals and moth-eaten uniforms. They sang no anthem, for the words had been banished from the schools. But they remembered, not just the tales, but the tone, the belonging, the sense that Albion was not soil only, but soul.

And lo, those who had ruled with sleek smiles and soft hands mocked them. “Little Englanders!” they cried, though they themselves had made England little. “Racists!” they screamed, though none had spoken of race, only of home.

But the more they were mocked, the more the wind rose.

In the streets where no English voice had echoed in years, came suddenly the song of forgotten hymns, half-remembered, but alive. In the estates where banners of strange lands had flown, there fluttered once more the cross of St. George, first faintly, then boldly, then defiant.

And the watchers on the wall returned.

Not with bitterness, but with resolve. Not to conquer, but to reclaim. They bore no swords, only the old words, law, honour, kin, country. And these words, long buried beneath slogans and shame, rang like iron on stone.

The lords of the towers trembled. For their enchantment of silence had broken. The people had remembered that they were a people.

And the reckoning began, not of vengeance, but of vision. A clearing away. A replanting.

Those who had sold the hearth for coin were driven from the circle of the fire. Those who had called disorder progress were shown the order of ploughed field and parish bell. The teachers who had mocked the land were dismissed, and the children taught once more to love it.

Old names were spoken again, Alfred, Drake, Nelson, Edith Cavell, the names of those who gave, not took. The very map of the nation seemed to shift, as if the bones of the land reasserted their shape beneath a long-pressed skin.

And in every town where once the shops bore foreign signs and alien words, there came a reckoning, not of violence, but of values. “Do you love this land?” was the new question. And if the answer was yes, the stranger became neighbour. But if the answer was no, there was no place left in the council of Albion.

The media cried tyranny. The world accused. But the people did not flinch. For at last they understood that survival is not cruelty, and that belonging must be tended like a garden, lest weeds strangle the root.

And thus, the flags were no longer folded. They flew. Not in triumph over others, but in honour of themselves.

The bells that had been silent pealed again. The pubs sang again. The schools prayed again, not to empire, but to endurance.

And when foreign kings looked on, they saw not a relic, but a people reborn in their own image.

So ends the Second Chronicle of Albion, written in the age of the Turning. And the chronicler, an old man whose name was lost, set down these words on the final page:

“Let none say again that the past is gone. For the soul of Albion is not past, it is perennial, like the oak. It may be pruned, but not felled. And though it slumber in shadow, yet it shall rise in dawn.”

The Third Chronicle of Albion

The Dawn Rekindled - As copied from the Ashen Manuscript of the Western Marches, attributed to the Seer of Wytham Holt, dated Anno Restitutae I.

And so it came to pass, in the days after the silence had shattered and the old banners had risen from hearth and chapel, that the land of Albion entered her season of restoration. Not swiftly, nor without pain. But as the tide returns to the weir, so did the soul of the land return to its people.

The fields that had lain fallow were furrowed again, not by machines alone, but by men who remembered that bread was not born in factories, but in soil. And the soil was tended not by hands alone, but by memory. The memory of fathers who once tilled, of mothers who once gleaned, and of children who once sang beside hedgerows now green again.

The cities, once broken into quarters of exile, began to knit. The signs that had once glared in alien tongues gave way to the tongue of the land. Not out of hate, but of harmony. For no house can stand when it denies the foundation on which it was laid.

The high towers, where once the governors had spoken in riddles and ruled in fear of names, were emptied of their lords. In their place stood wardens, elected not by whim or party, but by proof, proof of service, of sacrifice, of love for the folk, not lust for the throne.

And in the schools, the children once more learnt the songs of the sea, the hills, the hearth. Not to glory in empire, but to glory in endurance. In what it means to be stewards, not slavers; to be a people shaped not by conquest, but by conscience.

Law returned to the land, not new laws, sleek with modern sheen, but old laws, tried in fire and oaths. Justice was no longer blind, but rooted, in the parish, the kin, the custom, the creed. The constable again walked without fear. And so did the widow, and the child, and the weary craftsman.

Where once there were mobs, there were now choirs. Where once there was shouting in strange tongues, there was now dialogue in a shared one. For those who chose to remain had chosen to belong. And those who would not belong had gone to lands that better suited their scorn.

The churches, once hollowed out for politics and performance, were again houses of truth. The bells tolled not for war, but for weddings. For oaths made. For seasons marked. For saints recalled. And even the doubter entered quietly, not to scoff, but to listen.

The flag no longer shamed. It shielded. Not from others, but from forgetting. It flew not to command, but to remind: “This is your home. Guard it, love it, make it worthy.”

And in the hearts of men, the dead awoke, not as ghosts, but as guardians. The voices of Kipling and Nelson, of Nightingale and Wilberforce, of Alfred and Boudicca, whispered not condemnation, but courage. “You have remembered. Now build.”

And they built, not with marble, but with meaning. A new Albion. Not empire. Not ethnos. But inheritance. Not hatred. But heritage.

And from the northern crags to the southern chalk, from the marches of Wales to the coasts of Kent, the wind carried the same murmur:

“We are one folk again.”

And thus ends the Third Chronicle of Albion, penned in the time of the Hearth Repaired. On the final folio, beneath the seal of an acorn sprouting from a mailed hand, are written the closing lines:

“What was nearly lost is now reborn.
The land remembers. The people endure.
The dawn is not past, it is always returning.”

(By John Shenton)