King Arthur, page 1
KING
ARTHUR
KING
ARTHUR
MAN OR MYTH?
TONY SULLIVAN
First published in Great Britain in 2020 by
PEN AND SWORD HISTORY
An imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
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Copyright © Tony Sullivan, 2020
Hardback ISBN: 978 1 52676 367 9
Paperback ISBN: 978 1 52676 371 6
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Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 Roman Britain
Chapter 2 The End of The West
Chapter 3 Contemporary Sources
Chapter 4 Gildas, going to hell in a hand cart
Chapter 5 The Venerable Bede
Chapter 6 The Historia Brittonum
Chapter 7 The Welsh Annals
Chapter 8 The Anglo-Saxons
Chapter 9 Archaeology and Other Evidence
Chapter 10 Timelines
Chapter 11 Saints’ Lives
Chapter 12 The History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth
Chapter 13 The French Romances and Welsh Legends
Chapter 14 The Brittany Connection
Chapter 15 Genealogies and Kings
Chapter 16 Arthur, the name
Chapter 17 Final Evidence
References and Bibliography
Endnotes
List of Maps
List of Tables
Genealogy Tables
Introduction
The figure of Arthur has fascinated people for hundreds of years. However, there is a discrepancy in how he is viewed between academic historians on one hand, and enthusiasts and amateur historians on the other. The fault lines do not bisect these two groups cleanly and there are nuances within each. However, a general consensus from the first group could be summarised as: there is no historical evidence and as such he should be treated in the same way as any other mythical character. In the other corner there are a veritable regiment of different Arthurs and theories. Proponents place these different Arthurs in every corner of the British Isles from Wales, Cornwall, Pennines, Midlands, and even Ireland. We also have a Roman Arthur along with others from the Continent, with particular focus on Brittany and Gaul. In addition, Arthur has been linked to more legendary and mythical figures, from not just the Celtic world, but beyond as far as Sarmatia on the Black Sea.
It is quite difficult for the lay person to sift through all the theories and evidence and determine fact from fiction, or evidence from speculation. The intention of this book is to do just that. I will approach the subject much the same way as a crime scene or fire is investigated; one can often discover the seat of a fire by examining the depths of burning in wood fixtures such as architraves and skirting boards. To put it simply, the greater the depth of charring, the nearer to the origin we are. Unfortunately with Arthur we have the opposite situation. The further from the source one gets in time, the more evidential fog one has to wade through. The nearer to the source one gets, the sparser the evidence. The historical record falls silent.
It is not enough to find the first appearance of the story and work forwards. This is not simply because the first mention of Arthur, around AD 830, placed him 300 years before that time. Because that evidence and dating within it is so suspect, we must go back even further to Roman Britain and work forwards so that we can see all the contemporary evidence as it appears. It must be remembered that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but nor must we forget that there is not a single contemporary record, either from Britain or the Western Empire, that mention Arthur. Given the plethora of books and competing theories, the intention is to approach it in a new and hopefully useful way.
I will attempt to treat the material in a scientific way and conduct a proper historical investigation. A good example, given the subject of Arthur, is the saying ‘there is no smoke without fire’; there is indeed plenty of smoke with this particular ‘fire’, especially from the Middle Ages, several hundred years after Arthur is supposed to have lived. Many point to all the legends and Welsh poems and claim there has to be something to it. However this approach is flawed historically and scientifically; therefore, I intend to be rigorous with the evidence and we may have to be brutal with speculation and hearsay. We will be focusing on original texts and contemporary evidence; later stories and legends written hundreds of years later cannot possibly have the same weight.
In a criminal investigation the police will collect evidence and then the CPS will decide whether to proceed on the basis that it is in the public interest and there is sufficient evidence. I would hope in our case there is still an interest. As to the evidence, I will attempt to present it in a slightly different way to some of the previous works. It will not start with a detailed investigation of stories written in the Middle Ages and then work backwards looking for links; rather, the evidence will be presented in a chronological order. This will mean it may take some time until we reach any references to Arthur at all. I would ask you to bear with this approach as the contemporary historical accounts are crucial in getting a clear picture of context.
Having discussed how we will go about the task, it would be useful to set out the order. A very brief outline of both the legend and the historical setting will be laid out below to aid understanding of what we are working towards and from where we should start our investigation. I will lay out the historical evidence starting from near the end of Roman Britain. That way one can see the body of evidence, or absence or evidence, as it builds. It also places the stories in their correct place: when they were written in the historical record, rather than placing them in the time about which they are written. As many of the stories come at the end of our chronology we will then investigate these legends. Finally we will then investigate some of theories resulting from these legends and look at some specific proposals for the figure of Arthur. Hopefully, in conclusion, we may end with a list of things we can say are supported by the evidence, and on the other end of the spectrum theories, totally unsupported. In between these two extremes there may be suggestions as to what further evidence would be useful and areas worth prioritising in the search for truth.
Before we start we need very briefly to cover two important topics and list some of the major questions that require answering. First: what do we mean by King Arthur? Second: what is the historical setting and background both before and during the period in question? The historical references are quite sparse. What people imagine when they hear King Arthur is the legend created by mainly French authors in the Middle Ages, after an enormously successful book of that time by Geoffrey of Monmouth in 1138. However, what most people are unaware of is that a lot of the story we associate with Arthur, like the Round Table, were added after Geoffrey’s book. In addition, a large part of that first story includes the invasion of the Continent and battles against the Romans. This important part is often ignored, but the connection with Gaul and the wider Roman Empire is vital in understanding this period.
Arthur is mentioned in none of the contemporary records at all. There are, however, the following tantalising references from later periods:
Y Gododdin: a poem reportedly by the sixth-century poet Aneirin about a battle near Catraeth around AD 600 which mentions a warrior who, although brave, ‘is no Arthur’. This only survives in a thirteenth-century manuscript.
Poems attributed to Taliesin, who also from the sixth century but thought to be recorded in the eighth to twelfth centuries.
AD 830 Historia Brittonum written by a Welsh monk Nennius, describing Arthur as a ‘dux bellorum’ (leader of battles, a general rather than a king) fighting with the kings of Britain against the Saxons. He records twelve battles, the last of which is Badon.
1138 Geoffrey of Monmouth’s fantastical Historia regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain) which describes an Arthur more in line with our modern tradition, but including invasions of various European countries culminating with a war against the Romans.
The lives of various saints written around from the eleventh century onwards often showing Arthur as
Welsh poems and stories found in manuscripts from the eleventh century onwards.
The Annales Cambriae (the Welsh Annals): A twelfth-century manuscript, presumed copy of a tenth-century one. It records two entries for Arthur, although dates in the annals are often unreliable and these entries could have be added later:
• Year 72 (c. AD 516) The Battle of Badon, in which Arthur carried the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ on his shoulders for three days and three nights and the Britons were victors.
• Year 93 (c. AD 537) The Strife of Camlann in which Arthur and Medraut (Mordred) fell and there was death in Britain and in Ireland.
Following the success of Geoffrey’s History of the Kings of Britain, there followed an explosion of interest and further literature on the topic. Wace’s Roman de Brut introduced the Round Table and Excalibur in 1155. Chretien de Troyes introduced Lancelot, Camelot and the Grail stories and added much of the chivalric code prevalent in his own time. Le Morte d’Arthur by Thomas Mallory in 1485 continued this tradition. You will notice much of this evidence, aside from Nennius, was written down 500 years and more after the supposed events. Geoffrey’s book, it’s fair to say, also contains a number of errors and mythical stories.
The Welsh legends and poems tend to show both a more mythical and, at times, a more down to earth figure, stealing and killing and generally behaving quite badly. The saints’ lives often use this Arthur in their stories to show how godly their favoured saint is in bringing Arthur to submit to the church. We will look at all these stories as they appear in the historical record in chronological order; I think it is mistake to look at the legends first and then go back in time to find evidence, as this runs the risk of only seeing what we want to see and producing highly speculative theories and tenuous links. It may disappoint the reader to learn that the chances of finding a chivalric knight riding out from a beautiful stone castle to protect the realm and any fair maidens found lying around in fifth- or sixth-century Britain are rather slim. Chivalry was as thin on the ground as stone-castle building in those same centuries.
The historical setting and background is much simpler to explain. Before the Romans, Britain was a patchwork of rival tribes. Four hundred years of Roman rule superimposed a political administration involving provinces and civitates. This was not a completely smooth, ordered time. Aside from tribal rebellions, the most famous being Boudica of the Iceni, there were times of civil war and revolt within the Empire. Britain broke away on more than one occasion and several times produced rival emperors who invaded the Continent from Britain. This is important to note because it demonstrates that, at the time, the end of Roman rule may not have been considered the end at all. It may have been thought of, or even hoped to be by some, a temporary transition. Towards the end of the Western Empire there were invasions and large tribal movements across the Western Empire, and Britain was no exception. There were ‘barbarian’ incursions from Irish, Picts and Saxons into Britain in the last years of Roman rule. The ‘final’ end is often seen as coming when Constantine declared himself emperor from his base in Britain in AD 407 and took the remaining troops to Gaul. Others date it to the rescript of Honorius in AD 410 when the emperor in Italy refused to aid the British and advised them to look to their own defences.
It is unlikely that the administrative structure of Britain fell apart the very next day, but certainly within 200 years it had broken into a patchwork of petty kings, and the Anglo-Saxons had taken a firm hold of much of the country. It is this 200-year period we will focus on. We have some contemporary sources from this time but only one from Britain: Gildas. None of them mention Arthur in any way. But we also have a plethora of material from Roman Britain and Anglo-Saxon England either side of this period. Any ‘Arthur’ existing in those times would be well documented.
As we work our way through the sources we will encounter evidence for the following tentative timeline, remembering the dates may be inaccurate and are often contradictory depending on the sources:
In AD 407 Constantine declares himself emperor in Britain and crosses the channel with the last of the Roman legions and fights his way across Gaul before losing his head, quite literally, in AD 411. Sometime before Constantine’s unfortunate ending the British had rebelled (again) against the officials left in charge, and in AD 410 were having so much difficulty from raiders that they sent a letter to the Emperor Honorius begging for help. Honorius, having enough trouble fighting both Constantine and the Visigoths, rejects this request and advises Britons to defend themselves. No Roman army ever returned.
However, two decades after the Romans leave there is still apparently a functioning administrative structure which is eventually led by a character possibly called Vortigern. The province is safe enough for Bishop Germanus to travel from Gaul to Britain in AD 429 to argue against the Pelagian heresy that had taken hold. Increased barbarian attacks cause the British to write again to Rome requesting help, possibly to General Aetius in the 440s. This is rejected. At some point, Saxon mercenaries are invited to help ward of Pictish and Irish raiders (AD 428 if one believes Nennius, AD 449 if Bede). They eventually turn on their employers, causing a period of turmoil and terror for the Romano-British. So much so that the Gallic Chronicle for AD 441 (a possibly inaccurate date) states the island has fallen to the power of the Saxons. Gildas, and later Bede, suggest this revolt was in the 450s. In these troubled times a significant emigration occurs during the fifth century from Britain to Amorica, present-day Brittany, bolstering an already established British community.
Out of this, one historical figure that we can be fairly sure existed appears. Ambrosius Aurelianus leads a counter attack which eventually culminates in the battle of Badon which, for the purposes of this introduction, we will place between AD 470 and AD 520. After this, in approximately AD 520–50, Gildas writes his famous tract castigating the many kings in Britain and bemoaning the land lost to the Saxons. It’s from his work that we can be sure that both Ambrosius Aurelianus and the battle of Badon are not mere fables. By the mid-sixth century the first Anglo-Saxon kingdoms start to appear in the historical record.
Meanwhile, the Roman Empire had also been going through it’s own interesting times on the Continent. Most relevant to our story are the following:
Rome is sacked by the Visigoths in AD 410, having been preceded by years of unrest and migratory movements of Germanic tribes. The last great Roman general, Aetius becomes the dominant force in the Western Empire from 430s to 450s (importantly for our evidence, he becomes consul for the third time in AD 446). Attila the Hun devastates Gaul in AD 451 to be repulsed at the battle of the Catalaunian Plains. Aetius received thanks for this service by being murdered by his emperor, personally, with a sword to the head in 454. The emperor may have regretted this in 455 when the Vandals sacked Rome. One of Aetius’s lieutenants, Aegidus, becomes the last Magister Militum of Gaul at the same time as his allies the Franks rise in prominence under Childeric.
In AD 470–72, there is enough Roman strength left to fight to retain control of Gaul, and a request is made by the Romans to another possibly important character. Riothamus, king of the Britons, arrives by sea with 12,000 men to aid the Romans against the Visigoths, only to be defeated. Whether he comes from Britain or Brittany is a vital question in our investigation. Around this time there is evidence of Saxons in the Loire valley and Britons fighting against them. This may be relevant given the suggestion of Arthur fighting in Gaul.
