The Reign of Arthur

by Christopher Gidlow

  What they do lack is any sense of a historical context. The reason for this is perhaps that one had already been provided by the Historia. Here, Arthur is one of three named leaders of the British in their wars against the Saxons. The Historia says these wars began after a British ruler, Vortigern, invited the Saxons to settle in the island in return for military service against the Picts. This was in the consulship of Felix and Taurus, i.e. AD 428.

  Nennius treats Vortigern as ruler of Britain, but his own regional bias is obvious. Most of Vortigern’s deeds are located in central and southern Wales. The writer tells us that Fernmail, contemporary ruler of Buelt and Guorthigirniaun, is a descendant of Vortigern. He traces his genealogy back through ten generations to that king.

  The Saxons were led by two brothers, Hengist and Horsa. The Saxons settled peacefully in Kent, but soon broke into revolt. Although Vortigern is shown as weak and helpless, other Britons are ready to take up the fight. The three successive leaders are Vortimer, son of Vortigern, Arthur and Outigirn.

  Nennius writes in the same way about all three resistance leaders. Either their exploits derived from a single source or the author has worked different sources into a unified style. At first sight, this seems not to be the case. The passages dealing with them are not sequential, but crudely interwoven with material from apparently different sources. King Ida appears after Arthur and then again, just before Outigirn, though several English genealogies have been inserted between the two mentions.

  The first resistance leader is Vortimer, who won four battles against the Saxons, three named and apparently located in Kent. ‘The second battle was fought at a ford called Episford in their language and Rithergabail in our language, and there fell Horsa with a son of Vortigern whose name was Categirn.’

  Vortimer died soon after his victories. The Saxons were once again resurgent. We are told about St Germanus and St Patrick. ‘At that time [we still seem to be in the fifth century] the English increased their numbers and grew in Britain. On Hengist’s death, his son Octha came down from the north of Britain to the Kingdom of the Men of Kent, and from him are sprung the kings of the Men of Kent.’

  This is followed by the Arthurian battle-list which begins this chapter. This has been examined countless times. Current opinion favours the idea that the list is a composite of battles from various periods ascribed to one legendary leader. It is sometimes said that the battles have been multiplied to bring them up to the ‘legendary’ number twelve. There is nothing to show that Nennius saw any significance in this number. He was happy to give other leaders different numbers of battles.

  Most of Arthur’s battles are probably unidentifiable, irretrievably hidden behind modern English place-names or British ones too common to be pinpointed. Only two can be located with certainty. It seems clear that the Caledonian wood was somewhere in Scotland. In the Dark Ages, the name was applied to the forests of lowland Scotland.

  There were two cities called ‘the City of the Legion’, Chester and Caerleon-on-Usk. Special pleading could be made for York, which had been a city of the (Sixth) legion though it is never given that name in Dark Age sources. We can be certain which of these the author of the Historia had in mind – Chester. He includes between the historical section and the wonders a list of the cities of Britain. These include York, as Cair Ebrauc, Caerleon as Cair Legeion guar Uisc and Chester simply as Cair Legion. Annales Cambriae mention Chester twice, once as the City of the Legion, in Latin exactly as in the battle-list and once as Cair Legion, site of a battle which also figures in Bede. He gives the Latin and Welsh forms of the name, as well as the English Legacestir, from which our word Chester derives.

  The other battles are more problematic. The Linnuis region is usually taken to be the Lincoln area. Castellum Guinnion ought to be a Roman fort. The Historia refers to Britain having ‘innumerable castella, made from stone and brick’ which can only be Roman buildings. Unless named after an unknown man called Guinnion, it seems most likely to be the British version of Vinovium, Binchester in County Durham (Rivet and Smith 1979).

  Every writer on Arthur has his theory about the location of Mount Badon. Liddington Castle, on the Ridgeway between Badbury and Baydon, is a favourite. Other Badburys, like the hillfort in Dorset, are also frequently cited. The earliest medieval idea placed it at Bath, perhaps at one of the hills like Little Solsbury outside the city. We will return to the location of the battles again later, but it is important to see that the battle-list implies that Arthur fought wide-ranging campaigns against the Saxons.

  After Arthur’s victories, the English invited more settlers and leaders over from Germany. This continued until the time of Ida, who became first King of Bernicia. Working backwards from the reign dates for the Northumbrian kings given in the Historia, we can calculate that the author was thinking of this event as taking place shortly before 560. (Bede placed Ida’s arrival in 547.) The flow of the narrative is broken by some Saxon genealogies, but it soon returns to Ida. ‘At that time, Outigirn then fought bravely against the English nation. Then Talhearn Tataguen was famous for his poetry and Neirin and Taliessin and Bluchbard and Cian, who is called Gueinth Guaut, were at the same time famous in British poetry.’

  We know nothing more about Outigirn from any sources. Possibly he was celebrated by some of the poets mentioned. The fact that he has no wonders attributed to him, no famous victories or adversaries and no dynasty, all convince that the Historia had no ulterior motive for mentioning him, except a tradition that he had fought the English. Few historians doubt that he was a real figure from this obscure period. Unlike Arthur, he was not burdened by a weight of medieval legends.

  As mentioned, later verses added to Y Gododdin claim that it was written by Neirin. Whether Neirin composed the poem or not, the early verses give a view consistent with the Historia, that the expedition took place before Ida’s arrival in Bernicia.

  The Historia thus provides a story covering the period c. 450 to c. 550, with the career of Arthur perhaps somewhere in the middle. Arthur seems to be connected to central or south-eastern Wales and to have fought, in the north, with the kings of the Britons against the Saxons. This background is perfectly consistent with Y Gododdin. We can see how Guaurthur was like Arthur: they both fight the Saxons, in the north, at a Roman fortified city. Guaurthur has fought at an encounter where three hundred were slain, but he is not up to the standard of Arthur, who won twelve battles and overthrew three times as many. The obvious conclusion is that the Gododdin poet knew the same story of Arthur as Nennius; that Arthur was credited with similar feats as early as the sixth century. It is highly unlikely that both authors coincidentally linked an Arthur to wars against the Saxons at the same time in similar locations. Although Nennius knew of the Gododdin tribe, he shows no knowledge of the poem. In short, the story of Arthur recorded in the Historia seems to be just what the Gododdin poet had in mind when he made his comparison in the late sixth century.

  The Coming of the Saxons

  The basic story of the Saxon settlement, revolt and British resistance did not originate with the Historia. It is only the name of Arthur as resistance leader which is not found in the earlier sources.

  Bede gives the most detail on names and dates. He uses Gildas’s De Excidio as a primary source, but adds English materials. Bede supplies the name Vortigern for the British ruler who invites in the Saxons, and is followed by all later versions. Gildas simply called this ruler Superbus Tyrannus (the Proud Tyrant). Most commentators see this as a pun on the name Vortigern, which means ‘foremost prince’. There is a convincing case that Gildas specifically uses the Latin term tyrannus because of its similarity to the title tigern actually used by the rulers (Snyder 1998). Some writers argue that Vortigern was not the ruler’s name, but a title, similar to ‘high king’. There is no evidence for this. Many Dark Age men had names incorporating royal or noble titles. ‘Vortigern’ is treated as a proper name by all subsequent writers, and was never used as a title by anyone else.


  Gildas may even have named his Proud Tyrant as Vortigern. The name appears in the Avranches family of Gildas manuscripts, from which the earliest excerpts are taken, but not the earliest complete text (I in Dumville 1990). It seems more likely, however, that this name was inserted by a later copyist. Gildas was generally very sparing of proper names. Given the near unanimity that the tyrant’s name was Vortigern, I will use it as a shorthand for the Proud Tyrant when comparing Gildas to the other sources. Whatever his actual name, all sources agree that he existed.

  Bede more or less introduced the AD dating system to England. Using it, he established a fifth-century date for the arrival of the Saxons. Gildas states only that the first settlement of the Saxons took place at some undefined time after the Britons had appealed to a Roman leader on the continent, one called Agitius, ‘three times consul’, for help against the Picts and Scots.

  The appeal to Agitius can be dated in various ways. At its earliest, the appeal would be made to Aetius, Roman military commander in Gaul from 425, at its latest to Aegidius, sub-Roman ruler of northern Gaul from 457 to 462. The balance of scholarly opinion favours Aetius in the period 446–54 when he was actually consul for the third time. Dark Age writers often used the Latin letter ‘g’ to stand for the ‘y’ sound, meaning Gildas may have pronounced the name as ‘Ayitius’, very close to Aetius. Here the Historia shows its independence from Gildas. If Nennius knew about the appeal to Aetius, consul for the third time, he could have dated it from the consul lists he was using.

  The idea that the Saxons were given lands specifically in Kent originates with Bede as well. Bede’s book is called The Ecclesiastical History of the English People. It traces the spread of Catholic Christianity through the kingdoms of the Angles and the Saxons. Bede’s concept of the kingdom of Kent being the first Saxon kingdom to be established in Britain is closely linked to the fact that it was the first to be converted to Christianity. Gildas tells us only that the Saxons settled in ‘the eastern part of the island’. Archaeologists have found Saxon settlements over most of eastern England, although whether this directly corresponds to the extent of their political control is not certain. The Saxon revolt did not lead to the massacre of all Britons in the east of the island. Gildas says that some Britons remained there as slaves.

  Both Bede and Nennius see Vortigern’s government as being taken over by the Saxons. This would follow the pattern of contemporary events in the rest of the western Roman Empire. Germanic peoples settling in the Roman Empire in return for military service, followed by their violent takeover of these lands, is common in the fifth century. Modern scholars seem to be keen to dismiss Hengist and Horsa themselves as legendary. Archaeology seems to show Saxons infiltrating the island for over a century. The Roman coastal defences were already known officially as the ‘Saxon Shore’. This was paralleled elsewhere in the western Roman Empire, where Germanic barbarians had settled gradually during the fourth century. Universally, however, the Germans took over the western provinces during the fifth century, under named rulers. No one doubts the historicity of Alaric the Visigoth or Clovis the Frank. They led their people in these wars, establishing dynasties which continued to rule in the areas they conquered. Hengist and Horsa are not therefore implausible

  What is unique is the idea that the Britons organised their own resistance. This was no wishful thinking by later Welsh writers. Gildas tells us that he is living in a period of peace which has followed the British resistance. The sixth-century Byzantine historian Zosimus says that the Britons, ‘fighting for themselves, freed their cities from the attacking barbarians’. He dates this to the period immediately following the defeat of usurper Constantine III in 409.

  If Nennius was harking back to a mythical golden age, it is hard to see why he named Vortimer, Arthur and Outigirn as the leaders. They were not remembered as the founders of Welsh dynasties nor were they used to explain contemporary place-names, as both Saxon and British leaders are used in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. There seems to be no ulterior motive for ascribing the victories to them.

  The details of the wars from the British side are first found in the Historia. Unsurprisingly, Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle concentrate on the English side of the picture. Gildas confirms that, up to the battle of Badon, both sides scored victories. Bede knew that Horsa had been killed in battle against the Britons and was buried in east Kent. His principal authority on the area was Albinus, an eminent scholar and Abbot of Canterbury from 709. None of Bede’s English sources passed on the names of the Britons who opposed them until Brocmail, a leader killed at the Battle of Chester, the City of the Legions, in 603. The Historia had no knowledge of Brocmail.

  The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says that Horsa was killed in 455 at the battle of Aegelesthrep (Aylesford in Kent?). In this version, Vortigern himself was the British commander, though this might have been a guess. Battle after battle under various Saxon leaders is recorded in the Chronicle. The British commanders are nearly all unnamed. In 501, Port, Bieda and Maegla fought at Portsmouth and ‘slew a young Briton, a very noble man’. Seven years later, Cerdic and Cynic slew ‘a Welsh King, whose name was Natanleod, and five thousand men with him. The district was known afterwards as Natanleag [Netley].’ Natanleod was not remembered by the Britons, and his name may have been concocted, as indeed Port’s might have been, to explain the place-name. The next Welsh leaders named are the Kings Coinmail, Condidan and Farinmail, killed at the battle of Dyrham in 577. Being remembered after these wars seems to be a fairly unpredictable occurrence!

  It is thus unlikely that the Historia had one source naming both Arthur and Octha as adversaries in these battles. The author had a genealogy, reproduced later in the work, of the kings of Kent naming Hengist’s son as Octha. He probably deduced that, if Hengist was the leader in the first generation of the revolt, his son would have followed in the second wave. Bede had heard of Octha too, in the genealogy of Ethelbert, King of Kent, where he is given as Hengist’s grandson, son of Oisc, Hengist’s son. Oisc appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under the more modern spelling Aesc. He is said to have become co-ruler with Hengist in 455 after the death of Horsa. Thereafter, the two are always reported together until 488: ‘In this year Aesc succeeded to the Kingdom and was king of the people of Kent for twenty-four years.’ There is nothing at all of what he did in those twenty-four years, by which time he would be in his late seventies at least. Thereafter none of the dynasty is mentioned until 565 when Ethelbert succeeded. Three years later, he is recorded as being defeated in battle by the West Saxons.

  If Arthur indeed fought against the kings of Kent, they seem to have taken a severe beating. It is even possible that the line of Hengist and Horsa had really died out. The kings of Kent were in Bede’s time called the Oiscings after their ancestor, Oisc, whom they simply linked to the existing traditions about Hengist. Moreover, in Bede’s time, the inhabitants of Kent were said to be Jutes, though no source describes Hengist’s mercenaries as anything other than Saxons.

  The Historia’s assumption that the kings of Kent were always the leaders of the Saxons during these wars may be based on lack of evidence about any other potential adversaries. According to Bede, before the time of Ethelbert of Kent, two Saxon kings had ruled over all the provinces south of the River Humber. The first was Aelle, King of the South Saxons; the second, Caelin, King of the West Saxons. Considering that Bede’s interest lay in tracing the ecclesiastical history of the English – starting first in Kent, then moving to his own land of Northumbria – this tradition of the Great Kings, serving no political purpose at the time it was recorded, is extremely valuable. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle preserves a title for these great Kings, the Bretwaldas, ‘Rulers of Britain’. The chroniclers, although their primary purpose was to celebrate the exploits of their West Saxon dynasty founder, Cerdic, faithfully recorded victories of Aelle, Bretwalda from the (by then) politically moribund South Saxons. In 491, for instance, he besieged the Roman Saxon shore fort of Pevensey, and t
ook it, killing all the British inside. This was the first time the conquest of a Roman fortification by the Saxons was recorded.

  Even the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle cannot disguise the fact that Saxon victories did not continue unabated. Aelle is never mentioned after his capture of Pevensey. The next Bretwalda, Ceawlin (Bede’s Caelin), fights against the Welsh in 556 and becomes king of the West Saxons in 560. Before his time, there had been a period of twenty-five years (527–52) in which not a single victory against the Britons was reported.

  I do not imagine that these dates have any absolute value. The compilers of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle faced the same problems as the author of Historia Brittonum. They had traditions from various Saxon kingdoms with no means of fixing them until the histories of the West Saxons and men of Kent shared a common event just before the arrival of St Augustine. Only the conversion of the king of Kent brought their traditions within the ambit of literate Christian historians.

  We know that one of the sources used to compile the history of the Anglo-Saxons, their kings’ lists, were not completely reliable. Bede reports that the disastrous rules of two Northumbrian kings, killed fighting the Britons, were omitted by the men who kept the kings’ lists. We have a glimpse of what might be something similar in some of the versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. In one of the West Saxon genealogies, Creoda, son of Cerdic, is given as the grandfather of Ceawlin and father of Cynric. In all the other genealogies he is omitted and Cerdic, founder of the dynasty, is given as father of Cynric. In the actual entries of the Chronicle, Cynric rather implausibly accompanies his ‘father’ Cerdic, throughout the early conquest of Wessex, then rules through the victoryless period of 527–52 before appearing again for a victory at Old Sarum. Creoda has evidently been written out of the official history, and a period of defeat by the Britons provides a convincing reason. In spite of the best propagandist efforts of its compilers, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle seems to tell the same story of British victory as the Historia.