GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH'S version of the history of Britain continued to dominate throughout the late Middle Ages, though some doubts concerning his reliability were beginning to be heard. These views, however, constituted a minority. Social and political circumstances of the fifteenth century, particularly the pro-British mentality fostered by the continuation of the Hundred Years War, created the ideal environment for suspension of disbelief in Geoffrey's fantasies and the active encouragement of British history. In this political milieu, Constantine was cited as a royal ideal, and Gregory of Tours' use of the expression ‘New Constantine’ as praise of Clovis was reiterated to refer to other monarchs in England and abroad. Thomas Hoccleve (c. 1416) refers to Henry V as being very like Constantine as a mirror for princes and a champion of the faith, a sentiment repeated by Richard Baxter in 1691 of William III, whom he describes as ‘the new Constantine to head a national church’. Even in the hostile context of the Council of Constance in 1417, originally designed to bring about the unity of the Church, the French accepted the British Helena legend (though from York not Colchester) as part of the credentials of Britain as a great nation. Guillaume Fillastre's diary of the proceedings of this Council reports the English argument, based on the existence of a British Helena: