The Life of Arthur: General of the Britons

Copyright © Tim Haldon 2015

Published by Lundarien Press, UK

ISBN:

978-1-910816-16-5 (MOBI)

978-1-910816-17-2 (ePUB)

The right of Tim Haldon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

I see the seahorse come to his rendezvous . . .

Making the seashore shake with terror.

He is white as shining snow; he bears on his forehead horns of silver.

The water bubbles under him, in the fire of the thunder from his nostrils.

Two seahorses accompany him, as close as the grass on the edge of the pond ….

(Prophecy of Cian)

The third deep matter for the wise one:

the blessing of Arthur

- Blessed Arthur -

with harmonious song,

- a defence in battle,

Stamping on nine.

Who are the three foremost youths who guarded the land?

Who are the three story-tellers

Who preserved the portents?

(Teyrnon’s Chair)

For the memory of so

hopeless a collapse of the

island and its unlooked for

rescue stuck in the

minds of those who witnessed

both extraordinary events.

(Gildas, on the Downfall of Britain)

Preface

The Arthur of whom I wish to speak was a 5th century British leader in post-Roman Britain and Roman northern France, of an aristocratic family, and speaking the British language, Brythonic, one related to but distinct from Irish Gaelic, as well as speaking the language of the Romans, Latin. The remnants of Brythonic still survive today as Welsh and Breton.

His lifetime saw the downfall of the western Roman empire, in which westwardly migrating peoples such as the Vandals, Goths, Franks and Huns looking for new lands to inhabit (or simply loot) played a major role. There was colossal disorder and unrest, and constant warfare in this period. Rome was sacked by the Goths in 410, and Britain abandoned by the Romans at about the same time. Roman generals tried to resist the tide of new bodies sweeping across their ‘civilized’ world - Gaul (now France), Italy, Spain, even Greece and north Africa along with Dacia, Dalmatia and other long forgotten provinces. Sometimes they gave these newcomers lands and made them federates of the empire, sometimes they turned them loose upon one other, sometimes they made treaties with them as equals, and sometimes they led the fighting against them.  There was no single solution, but for all the Roman resourcefulness, the ‘barbarians’ took control. However, in occasional pockets of the empire there was strenuous resistance against the newcomers with more than temporary success. These regions included Britain and Brittany.

The figure of Arthur looms large in Western culture through the influence of story-tellers both oral and literary in the course of the Middle Ages. His fame is not commensurate with his importance in the times in which he lived. But somehow he caught the imagination of a group of peoples who had seen one of their own bring success to them at a time when it was far from expected. This success was military, and through his military success came peace, though it was not to last much more than a couple of generations. Other stories also accrued to his name - such stories as of the love of Tristan and Isolde, of the wizard Merlin, and of the mysterious artefact, the Holy Grail.

For centuries tales were told of him and his knights and their adventures, inspiring a number of literary masterpieces throughout Europe. The greatest of these in English is Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte DArthur,¹ written over many years by a man held prisoner for serious crimes at the end of the 15th century. Malory’s work is a wonderful summation of the Arthurian literary tradition, combining mainly French romances into a connected whole. It may also be thought of as one of the earliest ‘modern’ works, written in a language that broadly speaking, we can still understand today, as, for instance, one would not choose to say of earlier writers like Gower and Chaucer.

The world of Malory is a storyteller’s world, but this does not mean that we cannot look for certain clues to the original historical background. One of the most important sets of clues is in the names - of places certainly but primarily of people.

For instance, near the beginning of Book I, we discover three Romans, Ladinas, Grastian and Placidas (Latinus (?))², Gratianus and Placidus.) These men are guarding castles in Gaul ‘for dread of king Claudas.’ This king probably has his origin in one of the 5th century Frankish kings, most probably Chlodio or Chlodoveus (Clovis). Another of the Franks is found in book VIII, king Faramon, who is clearly Pharamond (died C.430). He is put into the story of Tristan, a 6th century figure as we know from other sources, so we must accept the limits of historical reliability in these romances.

Here are a number of further examples:

Anguissance of Ireland may be the Aengus ‘ri Alban’ king in Britain, known from Irish sources, whose kingdom was on the Plain of Derwent - a location posited by John Morris as most likely to be around the Devon Dart in Dumnonia, where 5th and 6th century Irish inscriptions have been found.

Pellinor may be map or ap Eleanor, son of Eleanor (or Leonora), and of Arthur too.

King Cradelmas or Cradelment is Cerdic of Elmet, a British kingdom, now part of modern-day Yorkshire.

Cador of Cornwall is Cadwy king of Dumnonia datable to the late 5th/ early 6th century.

Three more Romans: Florence, Floridas,Phariaunce = Florentius, Floridus, Varianus.

Bagdemagus and his son Meliagraunce are perhaps no more than a doublet for Maelwys son of Baeddan in the early Welsh tale Culhwch and Olwen, and to be identified with Melvas, a king in Somerset (part of Dumnonia), who in one old story abducts Arthur’s wife - or even with the adventurers Bieda and Maegla, who according to the A-S Chronicle came ashore at Portsmouth in 501.

Terrabil, the second fortress of Arthur’s father - varied from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Castle Dimilioc - is an old name for Launceston castle,³ presumably recorded in the religious quotation encircling the church O quam terribilis….. est locus iste.’ The name is probably derived from its massive defences which earned its nickname: Castle Terrible, but, if there were an earlier fortification pre-dating the Norman castle, it might be Ty - or Tre - Riwal.

The country of Constantine beside Brittany where Arthur defeats a giant who has been ravaging the countryside is the western coastal district of Normandy known as the Côtentin. This was still recorded as Constantine in the 17th century. But the caveat here is that the Norman rulers were much involved in this part of France, their homeland, and this may have reference to a mediaeval event. Henry I owned the Côtentin shortly after his father’s death in 1087. He died shortly before Geoffrey completed his book.

Lastly, Lucan the butler (or, Luca the botteler or Lucanere) - and perhaps Lucas as well - may have his prototype in Lucas, the butler of Henry II, who was given the manor of Teignweek in Devon in the latter part of the 12th century for his services. Some wag perhaps displaced Bedivere from his traditional role in favour of the contemporary figure.

What I am proposing is a level of somewhat vague historical reality as a setting for the Arthurian stories in Malory’s compendium of romances. There are Romans but not many, there are dark-age kings and adventurers who may well be part of the immediate post-Roman period in Britain: nothing really conclusive, because foreign opponents are mainly lacking; no identifiable Saxons nor Picts, and no later enemies such as Danes or Vikings.⁴ For the most part it is the British amongst themselves unencumbered by outsiders.

The explanation is, I think, a simple one. The stories are set in a time when the British ruled themselves, when they had freedom and control over their own destiny.

Substantially, they lost this from A.D. 43 when the Romans began their conquest. And it was returned to them in the early years of the 5th century, though their territory soon diminished and kept diminishing.

Arthur became the focus of a dream. The dream was autonomy, and, long after autonomy was substantially gone, they could cling to memories of a time when things were different and better.⁵

But, in making Arthur their focus, they altered him. There must be no limit to his grandeur, to his omnipotence, to his royalty. After Geoffrey of Monmouth, there wasn’t much limit to his territory either.

The romantic splendour hid of course ordinary realities: there is no suggestion he was a king till hundreds of years after his death.⁶ And if he was, what of?⁷ He is constantly described as a leader, and a soldier. A general he was surely, but also a warlord with a formidable private army. A powerful man who must have consorted with kings, he did not necessarily have much success off the battlefield. We do not know.

So, attempting these broad outlines of his life, I speak as I find, with what little particles of evidence I have mustered. Are they wholly convincing? Probably not. But I should wager any amount that some of them are true.

Our first reference to Arthur is from about a century after his death when a British poet Aneirin describes the deeds of another warrior - one of a small cavalry force some 300 strong, who went south from Edinburgh into Yorkshire on a disastrous raid. The poet says how Gwawrddur ‘glutted (?) black ravens on the rampant of the stronghold, though he was no Arthur.’ This comparison shows that Arthur already has a semi-legendary status as a great fighter, if we believe this text was in Aneirin’s original manuscript; which some doubt, but not perhaps with good reason. The earliest copy is mediaeval and has been subject to a few interpolations. I cannot support Thomas Green’s idea (see Postscript) that Gwawrddur is being compared to a mythological Defender or Protector of Britain.

Sometime in the early 9th century the fascinating compilation known as the Historia Brittonum was put together from a variety of earlier documents: there are possibly fragmentary materials drawn direct from the Arthurian period. What appears to be one of these is justly renowned. It is a battle-list of Arthur’s that scholars are inclined to believe is a translation (into Latin prose) of an original British poem; this may be from Arthur’s own lifetime. It is so important that I give the full text in chapter 11.

This provides the strongest evidence for Arthur’s British successes and in a preamble we are even given an approximate time-frame. It is easy to scoff and be dismissive because this list is being recorded more than 300 years after Arthur’s lifetime. But it would be a brave man who did not acknowledge this as a probable proof of the reality of Arthur’s achievements. A couple of other mentions, of a more legendary kind, do nothing to undermine this factual account.

Arthur’s concluding battle, the siege of Mount Badon, is happily mentioned by an earlier authority, the monk Gildas C.520, also as a conclusive battle, but he fails to mention who won it.

The great 8th century English historian the Venerable Bede is short of original sources for the Arthurian period and relies heavily on Gildas. However he makes one important mistake by following Gildas too faithfully and placing the coming of the Saxons after an important letter datable to 446. They had come to Britain in 428, and the letter is almost certainly a response to their presence, a desperate message of appeal for Roman help.

So the traditional chronology has to be revised in the light of this; it has caused no end of confusion for historians, especially as the important Anglo-Saxon Chronicle C.900 follows Bede’s mistaken chronology.⁸

Neither Bede nor the A-S Chronicle, while having much interesting information on English matters, knows of Arthur. And it is left to the compiler of some 10th century Welsh annals, the Annales Cambriae, to provide dates for Mount Badon and for Arthur’s final battle. These dates are even more flawed than Bede’s and the A-S Chronicle’s providing another stumbling-block to the truth.

The charming primitive Welsh romance of Culhwch and Olwen may belong to the next century. Here Arthur is already in legendary guise, performing heroic and miraculous deeds. In such details as the names of his followers or his court in Cornwall, we may dimly touch historical reality. Finally, there is Geoffrey of Monmouth, the writer who gave Arthur international fame without letting a good story be too much troubled by a concern for the truth. He completed at the beginning of the reign of King Stephen (1135 - 1154) his ‘History of the Kings of Britain’.

His claim to be using an ancient book on British history received from his friend Walter Archdeacon of Oxford may be true - a book which he says was brought out of Brittany. But his additional claim to have translated it from British to Latin without embellishment is much less convincing. In the life of the Breton saint Goueznou written in 1019, we may have another reference to this book.

What is easier to say is that Geoffrey used what early sources he could find - including both Gildas’ De Excidio and the Historia Brittonum.⁹ He also used his imagination. We take Geoffrey’s words literally at our peril: the crowning centrepiece of his book is Arthur who becomes emperor after a pitched battle with the Romans in Gaul (France).

Geoffrey’s work preceded by a few years, and largely spawned, the immense quantity of mediaeval romances through a number of European countries. Though some of these are of outstanding merit, they hardly concern the present work, the stream, so to speak, being too much muddied from the source. Geoffrey’s work becomes a kind of taint on too many literary and historical works that follow, reducing their value for our purposes, such is his cultural dominance. Arthurian writings post-Geoffrey must be used guardedly. Even around his own time, capable historians complained of his work, sometimes in veiled terms.

The historical Arthur can be traced back to a readily defined period after the Romans had abandoned Britain to its fate at the beginning of the 5th century. This was, as already indicated, a tumultuous time in the Western Roman Empire involving the migration of many tribes and peoples westward, some for a place to live having lost their own homes, some with more sinister intentions. To some extent, the peaceful and aggressive intents of those groups were interchangeable.

There is no evidence of Arthur’s part in the first post-Roman British generation’s defence of their land, to which other names are attached. Arthur seems to have arrived later, and (I believe) his public life straddles the second half of the century, more or less. But what I also believe is that much of his time was spent in northern Gaul, and that he moved between the post-Roman world of Britain and the twilight of the empire where Roman law and bureaucracy, taxation and control persisted. The enemies fighting against whom he earned his reputation included not only Picts and Scots and Saxons but, on another stage, Goths and Franks and even perhaps Huns, where he might have been battling beside Romans. Though the traces of his presence in Gaul are very slight, I have no qualms about proposing this other dimension to his life and career. Perhaps there is still further evidence to be found.

Lastly, I might add that this book is an essay in biography, an attempt to identify Arthur in an historical context. This context is a backdrop, and I hope my book is sooner judged for throwing light on Arthur than the period in which he lived. Not very much is really known about him - some might say, nothing at all - but I am trying here to open up a subject too long largely neglected: are there any truths, are there any facts about the legendary hero?

CHAPTERS

Chapter 1 - How Books Get Written

A terrible event occurred at Glastonbury in the South-West of Britain about the year 520 AD. It would seem that the widow of the recently deceased King Cadwy - he had ruled over the south-westerly province, Dumnonia for many years - had been staying in the famous abbey with her two sons. They had gone into a chapel to pray. Through a side-door had appeared the abbot as if to officiate, but… suddenly turning, he revealed himself as Cadwy’s younger brother, Constantine, the regent, dressed in the abbot’s robes. In the most shocking manner, before his sister-in-law’s horrified gaze he proceeded with the help of other armed men to murder his helpless nephews and the retainers who tried to protect them. Their blood stained the altar - perhaps the self-same altar before which earlier in the year Constantine had sworn his oath as regent to do no harm to his subjects.

The sole survivor, the distraught and broken-hearted queen sent a letter to one of the leading churchmen of the time recounting the ghastly incident with bitter complaints and lamentations. And for this man, already appalled by the immorality and lawlessness of contemporary life, that was to be the final straw. He set pen to paper to give his unsparing views both on the dismal past of the Britons and the present climate of immorality1. It is from this man - Gildas - that we learn of the murders, for his work has fortunately survived. And here we find ourselves so tantalizingly close to the object of our search, for the dead king had been no less than Arthur’s own good friend.

Throughout his book Gildas never names Arthur, but he tells us one very significant fact about himself: that he was born in the year of the siege of Mount Badon.¹⁰ And we have reason to believe that this was Arthur’s greatest and certainly most important success. So here is a big chronological clue placing Arthur roughly two generations before Gildas. Arthur’s final battle (in which, or, as a result of which he died) is given in another early source as occurring 21 years after Badon. So Gildas was about 21 at the time of Arthur’s death. Gildas lived a long and successful life, dying in 570. We are almost certainly correct in placing his birth and Badon in the period 475-500, and Arthur’s death in the period 495-520, though Gildas writes of a long vanished time when British success had been achieved, suggesting to us an early date for these battles, close to 475 for Badon, and close to 495 for his death.

Gildas’ words are these, describing the events that followed Badon when he was growing up: ‘But not