by Mike Ashley
All the evidence suggests that Badon was in Britain – that’s where Gildas set it. The battle campaign that ended in Badon was therefore also going to be in Britain. The commander might have previously fought in Armorica. He might even have been a son of Riothamus, and so could have retired to Armorica afterwards. But otherwise we can exclude Armorica from our battle zone.
5. The overall picture
Map 7 brings together the full distribution of battles. Apart from a few isolated proposals in Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire the concentration of sites is in the North, the West, the South and North Wales. This may be an accident of language, in that old names survived longer in these areas and thus can be made to fit the sites, whereas sites in the east and Midlands have been too long influenced by later settlers and the old names have been lost. Nevertheless, they suggest three possible frontiers, as well as an agglomeration in North Wales. Nor should we ignore a possible eastern frontier, to include the partition mentioned by Gildas.
Table 7.1 groups the more likely sites for these battles by those five areas. In plotting these sites (see Map 8) several patterns emerge. The southern, eastern and western sites form clear frontiers. The northern frontier is more problematic. The pattern suggests a focus around the territory of the Gododdin, with the eastern line presenting a barrier to the Angles whilst the northern and western lines are a barrier against the Picts or Britons of Strathclyde. The southern line more or less follows Hadrian’s Wall and would also be a frontier against the Angles and the Coelings.
The Welsh sites plot a fluctuating border between Gwynedd and Powys. These sites could, at a push, be interpreted as dealing with Irish raiders, but if that was so you would expect a stronger distribution in Dyfed, yet few sites have been proposed for Nennius’s list in either Ceredigion or Dyfed. Whilst accepting the limitations imposed by a selective interpretation of battle sites, the sparsity of other options somewhat speaks for itself.
There is always the possibility that the battle sites did not follow a frontier but were opportunist strikes against local threats. If so, this would suggest that the battles were fought by local chieftains and not one overall commander. No sensible commander would stretch his resources across Britain, even though the capability was there, but would focus them against the main threats. These were Aelle in the south or the Angles in the North, suggesting that the campaign could have been in two halves.
7. Suggested Sites for Arthur’s Battles.
8. Possible British Frontiers
Table 7.1. Nennius Vennius’s site
We have deduced from our earlier chronology that Arthur’s battle campaign, leading up to Badon, probably fell between 485 and 497 so if Nennius’s battle list genuinely relates to Arthur and is not an amalgam of heroic battles, this map will help us focus more closely. We have five options. And we need to know who was ruling, or was the likely premier battle commander, in these locations during those years.
North Wales
The pattern of battles suggests conflict either between the territories of Gwynedd and Powys, or within Gwynedd, between the successors of Cunedda. The Saxons were still many years away from reaching the borders of Powys, and the threat from the Irish raiders, though still present, was no longer of such significance as to require so consolidated a campaign.
At this stage Gwynedd was not the united power it later became but was ruled by the sons and grandsons of Cunedda who governed from their hilltop forts in Anglesey and across the north of Wales. The principal ruler was Cadwallon Lawhir (“Longhand”). Early in his reign he was involved in a series of battles, where he combined forces with his uncle Ysfael against the Irish, who had settled on Anglesey in previous generations. Cadwallon took part in a famous battle called Cerrig-y-Gwyddyl (“Stones of the Irish”), where they hobbled their horses’ front legs together so that they could only charge straight ahead. This was remembered in a Welsh Triad as one of the “Three Fettered Warbands”.
Cadwallon appears in Geoffrey’s story of Arthur as one of the four kings who bore golden swords at Arthur’s coronation. This confirms that at least some tradition makes Cadwallon and Arthur contemporaries, but otherwise there is no firm evidence that Cadwallon fought either against or alongside Arthur.
Another candidate is Cadwallon’s cousin Owain Danwyn, “White Tooth”. Ruler of Gwynedd at Din Arth, he was the father of Cynlas the Tawny (Cuneglasus the Butcher), one of Gildas’s tyrants, and was possibly murdered by his nephew Maelgwyn, son of Cadwallon, another of the tyrants. Graham Phillips and Martin Keatman, in King Arthur, The True Story, suggest that Owain is Arthur, noting that Owain was a contemporary of Arthur of Badon, that Arthur was murdered by his nephew, and that the rulers of Gwynedd were known as the ‘Pendragons’ (head dragons) of Britain.
The title Pendragon, whilst closely associated with Arthur and, more specially, his father Uther, was not held solely by the rulers of one territory. According to Laurence Gardner in Bloodline of the Holy Grail, the Pen Dragon or “Head Dragon” was the “Guardian of the Celtic Isle”. The Pendragon was appointed by a council of Druid Elders, and the earliest recorded was Cunobelinus (Cymbeline). During the Roman occupation the title must have been little more than honorific, but once the Roman yoke was lifted the Pendragon was able to re-emerge. The holder would also be a powerful ruler of his own kingdom but, as the Pendragon, was also the personification of Celtic authority. He was not a battle commander, who, rather like the Roman dux, was the guletic, or wledig.
Gardner provides his list of the Pendragons in Realm of the Ring Lords. Those relevant to our period of scrutiny are listed below. Their dates are drawn from my own assessments in Chapter 3. I have added the names of the relevant wledig, according to Gardner, as well as other known wledigs [in brackets] not specified by Gardner.
Table 7.2. British Pendragons and Wledigs
Pendragon
Wledig
Eudaf Hen, c330–400
Macsen [Magnus Maximus] 383–388
Coel Hen, c355–425
[possibly also Coel Hen]
Vortigern, c400–455
Cunedda, c390–460
Cunedda, c390–460
Ceretic of Strathclyde, c400–470
Brychan of Brycheiniog, c430–500
Ambrosius, c425–495
Dyfnwal Hen, c455–525
[Amlawdd, c440–510]
Brychan of Manau, c480–550
[Casanauth, c480–550]
Maelgwyn of Gwynedd, c480–550
[Celyddon, c500–570]
Aedan mac Gabhran of Dál Riata, c534–608
Artúir, 559–596
Gardner shows that although the Pendragon inheritance follows a bloodline, this can pass through daughters as well as sons, and thus may not stay within one kingdom. For instance, Aedan mac Gabhran, of Irish descent, inherited the title because his mother was the daughter of Brychan of Manau, whose wife was the daughter of Dyfnwal Hen.
The Pendragon at the time of Badon, in the 490s, may have been Brychan of Brycheiniog, though he would have been old and unlikely to be present at the battle. Since we cannot be precise about individuals’ lifespans, it’s possible Brychan was dead by then and that Dyfnwal Hen, whom we shall meet later, was the Pendragon. It was not Owain White-tooth.
Phillips and Keatman treat Owain as a ruler of Powys, with his capital at Wroxeter, but the genealogies do not support this. Powys at this time was almost certainly ruled by Cadell (see Chapter 6), the servant of King Benli, who with the help of Germanus (or Garmon) assumes the kingship. Powys was still a single kingdom, as inherited from Vortigern, though it later split into North and South. Bartrum conjectures (based on the Benli story) that Cadell’s fortress was in North Powys, at Llanarmon. Another suggestion, dating back to the seventeenth century, was that the descendants of Cadell (the Cadellings) lived at Gaer Fawr (the Great Castle), a massive hill fort just north of Guilsfield (Cegidfa), near Welshpool. Intriguingly, if you plot the likely Welsh sites for Arthur’s twelve battles,
all but one of them (the Twrc estuary for Tribruit) form a defensive square surrounding Guilsfield. It is a compelling thought that these battles might represent a campaign by Cadell to defend and rebuild the boundaries of Powys. Unfortunately, though archaeological evidence shows that this hillfort was restrengthened at the end of the Roman period, there is not much support for its continued occupation in the fifth or sixth centuries. If it was reoccupied it may have been only as a short-term defensive strategy.
A site nearby, though, holds more intriguing possibilities. Phillips and Keatman believe that Wroxeter was, at least for some time, the most important city within Powys, and the archaeology supports this. Ken Dark, in Civitas to Kingdom, states that “the evidence from Wroxeter does encourage us to suppose that this was, if not the political centre of the Powysian kingdom on the fifth century, at least one of them.” Wroxeter was occupied through to the mid sixth century, but soon afterwards the population moved to the refuge of the hill fort at the Wrekin, just outside the Roman town. Wroxeter has long been proposed as Vortigern’s town. Graham Webster confirms that in the centre of Wroxeter, in the mid fifth century, something like a grand country mansion was built for a “powerful character”.
There is also a memorial stone, dating from this time, commemorating a king called Cunorix. It reads CUNORIX MAQUS MAQUI COLONE, and is usually translated as “Cunorix, son of Maquicoline”. It has been dated as most likely of the late fifth century, probably 460–475. It is usually presumed to be a memorial to a visiting king, possibly one of the rulers of Dyfed, who was the guest of the head man in Wroxeter.
Cun- is a frequent prefix in Celtic names, such as Cunedda and Cunobelinus. The name Cunorix means “Hound King”, and would convert into Welsh as Cynwrig, strikingly similar to Cerdic’s son Cynric, suggesting the possibility that Cynric was named after one of Cerdic’s relatives, perhaps an uncle, who might be commemorated here because he was one of the defenders of Wroxeter.
Maquicoline is an unusual compound name. It translates as “Son of the Holly”. The equivalent word in Welsh for holly was celyn. Celyn was an occasional name, sometimes corrupted to Cuhelyn or Celynin. One of Gildas’s brothers was called Celyn, but the name is not known for any king. Curiously, in the Brut y Brenhinedd, the name of Vortigern’s grandfather, Vitalinus (Guethelinus), is copied as Cuhelyn. If we follow this fancy a little further, then Cunorix, as “the son of the son of” Cuhelyn, could be Vortigern himself. Vortigern means “supreme king”, which could also be an interpretation of Cunorix.
Regardless of who Cunorix was, it is evident that Wroxeter was not only a major town in the fifth century, but one that was fit for a king who entertained kings. Someone would have succeeded to this estate after the death of Vortigern and his sons, and this can only have been the successor to the territory of Powys. Initially it may have been Ambrosius himself, ruling Powys from Wroxeter from the 460s to the 470s before Cadell took over.
This all rather temptingly makes Cadell a candidate for Arthur, one I have not seen previously suggested. One could even fancy Viriconium as the mythical Camelot, not by name, but as the most impressive surviving town in sub-Roman Britain. The archaeologists at Wroxeter stated that the town contains “the last classically inspired buildings in Britain”. Christopher Snyder, in An Age of Tyrants, writes, “sub-Roman Wroxeter was a town worth protecting, with new structures and imported goods, worthy of a local lord and his guests.”
This suggests something of far wider consequences than Cadell protecting Powys from the young upstart Maelgwyn. It suggests that Viriconium, in the hands of Cadell, served as a protection not just for Powys but for the whole of Wales, which brings us to the next option.
Western Frontier
The most remarkable aspect of the line connecting these battles is that it runs almost vertically north-south, much of it following what later became Offa’s Dyke. It thus forms a natural frontier between Wales and beyond, reaching up into the old British kingdom of Rheged. It could easily be held from three forts – Caerleon in the south and Chester and Ribchester in the north, with Viriconium as the administrative centre. It would require a consortium of only three rulers, as in the 480s and 490s Chester was probably part of Powys. If we accept Cadell as the principal ruler in Powys, the ruler in Rheged was most likely Merchiaun (Mark) the Lean. The ruler in Gwent is more problematic as data is confusing. Table 3.7 suggests it would be Erb, one of those individuals who is no more than a name in a pedigree. The power in the area was either Brychan of Brycheiniog, or more likely Erb’s predecessor Caradog, who was probably still alive.
Caradog is one of many with that name, but some believe that this is the real Caradog Vreichfras, not the descendant of a century later. Caradog was Arthur’s senior counsellor whom we will discuss in more detail in the next chapter. Meirchion may have been the father of King Mark of the Tristan legend (see Chapter 13). This frontier would thus be held by four powerful rulers: Cadell, Brychan, Caradog and Meirchion. All of them could have been involved in battles holding the line in the name of the Ardd Ri, who at that time was Brychan.
The biggest problem with this proposal is why the frontier was here. Although today it runs remarkably close to the present border between Wales and England, there was no such division in the late fifth century. If there was any border, it was that between Britannia Prima and the other two southern provinces, which ran about thirty miles to the east. If, as we have suggested, Maxima Caesariensis had still sought to continue a Roman style of administration, whilst Flavia Caesariensis was becoming settled by the Saxons in the east, this border would be all the more significant to those in Britannia Prima.
There is, though, little evidence to show that the provinces survived much beyond the middle of the fifth century. Charts identifying the distribution of Saxon occupation by the late fifth century show them penetrating little further west than the line of Dere/Ermine Street, though with probable forays across the Midlands into eastern Powys which, at this time, stretched more into the centre of Britain.
The Dream of Rhonabwy, later included as part of The Mabinogion, talks of the battle of Badon as Caer Faddon, and places it near to Welshpool (see Chapter 8). Although the story dates from more than seven centuries after Arthur, it is clearly a memory of a major confrontation with the Saxons. It may not have been the Battle of Badon, as recalled by Gildas, but it must have been a significant battle at a place with a name sufficiently similar to Badon to become identified with it.
The battle of Caer Faddon probably took place in the late sixth century, a hundred years after Badon and twenty years after Gildas’s death, though we can’t be certain of that. Even before Gildas died the Saxon war machine had stirred again. In 556 Cynric and Ceawlin fought the British at Beranbyrg (Barbury Castle), close to Liddington Castle in Wiltshire. The date may not be wholly accurate, because the next victory isn’t recorded until 571, when the West Saxons captured four towns in the Thames Valley. Then came the major defeat of the British at Dyrham in 577 followed by another at Fethanleag in 584 and “great slaughter” at Woden’s Barrow (possibly Wanborough) in 592. All this is recorded in the ASC. We know that at the same time the Angles under Creoda were advancing across the British Midlands, carving out what became the kingdom of Mercia. Creoda died in 593 and there must have been many skirmishes, if not wholesale battles, before then, and certainly under his successor Pybba. So whereas the 480s and 490s saw the British rise up and force back the invaders, the 580s and 590s saw the reverse with the British slaughtered under a massive Saxon onslaught.
Under those circumstances the western frontier as shown in Map 8 takes on a new reality, but a century after Badon. This is the time of Artúir of Dyfed, Meurig of Gwent, Cynan of Powys, and Cynfor Host-Protector of the North. Cynan of Powys spent his time harrying his neighbours rather than fighting the Saxons. That was left to Cyndrwyn, a rival ruler of Pengwern, an outcrop kingdom of Powys, around Shrewsbury. Thanks to Cyndrwyn and his sons, including the famous Cynddylan, the men of Pengwe
rn fought bravely to protect their lands against the Mercians. Cynfor Host-Protector doubtless rallied the Men of the North, though nothing is now remembered of his battles. In Gwent, Meurig and his famous father Tewdrig, who came back from retirement to fight one last battle against the Saxons, are long remembered in song. Meurig’s son Athrwys possibly fought alongside them.
Between them, Meurig, Cyndrwyn and Cynfor could doubtless have held that frontier line and fought at those battles in Nennius’s list. Yet, none is associated with them in legend, unless it is via Athrwys ap Meurig. We know virtually nothing about him, not even whether he succeeded to the kingdom of Gwent. He signed no charters as king, and the records show that Meurig, who had a long life, was succeeded by his grandson Morgan. This would, of course, fit in with Nennius’s description of Arthur as a dux bellorum, and not necessarily a king. Perhaps Athrwys was killed in battle, and perhaps he fought alongside Cyndrwyn and Cynfor in holding the western frontier. If he did, those are not the names he is associated with in legend. And though Athrwys could not have fought at the Badon remembered by Gildas, he could have fought at Caer Faddon.
The western frontier is thus plausible a century after Badon, but not earlier.
Northern Frontier
One ruler dominated the north in the late fifth century. In the territory between the Walls the main force was Dyfnwal Hen, Pendragon after the death of Brychan of Brycheiniog, and one of the most powerful warriors of his day. His grandfather was Ceretic of Strathclyde, and his sons became rulers of the territories between the Walls. One of his daughters married Brychan of Manau, possibly a son of Brychan Brycheiniog. His descendants were notably wealthy and later owned part of the legendary “Thirteen Treasures of Britain” sought by Merlin, including the halter of Clydno Eityn and the magic sword of Rhydderch Hael. Dyfnwal appears in the Irish stories about Cú Chulainn, in which he is known as Domnal, the warlike ruler of Scotland.