In Search of the Arthurian Kings: An Attempt at Finding the Historical Truth About the Collapse of the Roman Empire and the Beginnings of the Saxon Kingdoms

By Anthony Jackson

You thought that when the Romans left, the Saxons came; at least that was what we were all told in school. There are precise dates as well The Romans left in 410 AD and the Saxons came in 440AD. Somewhere in this clear cut time lies a problem called the Arthurian legends. It is as if the clear cut strata in an archaeological dig are subjected to a microscopic analysis to reveal a rather less clear cut profile.

Further, we all have a concept of King Arthur that has been handed to us since the time of Mallory. So that was Arthur was it? Wrong. The only invaders were Saxons, right? Wrong. Arthur was something to do with Merlin-right? Wrong. We are always told the truth by historians, right? Wrong. In terms of what we know, the history has been defined within those references which have led to a distortion of the history.

Be in no doubt that King Arthur existed and there was more than one. Unravelling the ancient sources such as Gildas, Nennius, Bede and other works leads us out of a fairytale of Hollywood into the harsh reality of the early post Roman empire; a world of Civil war and Celtic invasion.

What has been learned is that there was more than one Arthur, in fact many names were repeated and confused, Ambrosius, Ambrosius Aurielanus, Uther, Arthur, Maximus (which one would you like) and Vortigern at a time when not only were the Saxons coming, so were the Scots (the real name of the Irish as conferred by the Romans), Danes at the same time as a tripartite Roman civil war was taking place. So the history of the time is clear?-please read on, its time to become confused.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Apr 21, 2006
• ISBN: 9781467009935

Anthony Jackson

Anthony Jackson was born in 1951 in the town of Oldenburg in Germany, the product of a service family. After a childhood spent in England, Germany, and North Africa, he served in the Royal Corps of Signals in the late Sixties and later became a shipping agent, Police Constable, Security guard and latterly has been serving in the civil service. He is married with a son and daughter. By nature an inquisitive soul, fluent in German, his parents gave him a real love of history with an emphasis on the quirky and the ironic combined with a questioning mind. His interest in the Arthurian legends goes back at least twenty years. He is currently doing research on other subjects.

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© 2006 Anthony Jackson. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 4/11/2006

ISBN: 1-4259-2124-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4670-0993-5 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Contents

An Introduction to the Arthurian Legends

The Arthurian Legends

Arthurian Roots

History

Arthur - a background

Vortigern, who was he?

Ambrosius Aurielanus

Further circumstantial evidence

Some further thoughts on Arthur

The Beginnings of the legend

The Constantinian family.

Gildas; a view point

Gildas, the Anglo Saxon Chronicles

and the Mabinogion

NENNIUS the counterpoint.

The IRISH connection

Geoffrey of Monmouth

The Church

A proposition on Constans.

The Grail and other connotations

Parsifal, the Grail and the Arthurian stories.

A Further look at the facts

Hoaxes and allusions.

Is this the last ARTHUR?

The Arthurian Cycle.

Mordred; what’s in a name?

Mordred;an alternative explanation.

The Battles; a rough attempt at dating

The Arthur story: a revised synopsis

Excalibur, Camelot and the round table

North eastern Kent and its connection with Arthurian legend

Arthur: the dating and final proof.

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C

Appendix D

Appendix E

Anthony Jackson; a thumbnail sketch.

This book is dedicated primarily to my father George

And

Mother Ida

Who formulated in me an awareness and love of history.

It is with gratitude that I thank my wife Genine

And

Children Adrian and Natalie,

all of whom have had to endure nearly twenty years of research which at times drove them to distraction

And finally

To my colleagues at work namely

Margaret Moyse

And

Ian Warner

Who also suffered constant discussions on the matter. Without all of the above, this book would never have been written

Further acknowledgements;

Thanks are due to the following publishers for allowing reproduction of works of various Authors;-

The publishers, Phillimore & Co of Shopwyke Manor Barn, Chichester, West Sussex, PO20 2BG (www.phillimore.co.uk) have given permission for specified quotations from the following works:

The Age of Arthur by Dr John Morris (Chichester 1977)

Gildas: The Ruin of Britain ed. By Michael Winterbottom (Chichester, 1978)

Nennius: British History and the Welsh Annals ed. By Dr John Morris (Chichester 1980).

Also;

the Random House Group for permission to refer to King Arthur, the true story by Graham Phillips and Martin Keatman, published by Century. Reprinted by permission of the Random House Group.

Also:

The Holy Kingdom by Adrian Gilbert et al published by Bantam press. Reprinted by permission of the Random House Group Ltd.

Also:

Weidenfeldt and Nicholson of the Orion Publishing Group for permission to refer to the following works. Arthur and the Lost Kingdoms, by Alistair Moffat and, The Anglo Saxon Chronicle ed. Michael Swanton.

Additionaly

The Cover Picture is provided with the kind permission of Whitestag Realm of [e-mail] for which many thanks.

An Introduction to the Arthurian Legends

I can’t remember when I started to get interested in the Arthurian legends. In fact, being half German, I actually started to have my appetite whetted by some of the other legends. I loved the story of Hagen and Siegfried and some of the other tales such as Parsifal. Little did I realise that I would be able to make the connection between these tales and the Arthurian legends in later years. In the event I was to find that all the legends, those of the German, Frankish and British kingdoms all had a common origin; that of the gradual collapse of the Roman Empire in the West. Nor was that collapse as predictable as historians today would have us believe. The concept of the Roman implosion has been one of Barbarian invasion with which Rome could not cope because of internal weaknesses and general degeneration of the moral codes in Roman society. What I have found out is that this is only part of the truth.

The general expansion of Barbarian tribes westwards was as much to do with peoples, seeking protection, from being displaced as a result of Chinese expansion, as it was with hordes of bloodthirsty Barbarians trying to topple the Roman Empire. It was also probably to do with economic devastation caused by, reputedly, a massive Mediterranean earthquake, in the mid 4th century, which drowned Alexandria and many of the famous towns along the eastern seaboard of biblical times, the disruption of trade and very probably the enforced economies that had to be made by Rome itself. These factors were the causes of changes gradually imposed on Roman policy. It is arguable that the final nail in the coffin of the Western Roman Empire was plague, which could not be controlled from within and that the failure of the new Christian Empire led to a partial abandonment of Christianity and a return to Pagan beliefs.

The impression we have of these pressures today fails to address these problems. Careful research over 15 years of the primary sources has led me to the conclusions laid out in the book. Many modern books had been written purporting to be histories, but had actually never come to any hard and fast conclusions. This forced me to read the earliest sources, albeit translated, and I am indebted to the works of the late Dr John Morris and others who have taken the trouble to make the earlier texts available. To them I extend my grateful thanks.

Having now read the Mabinogion, Gildas, Nennius, Bede, Geoffrey of Monmouth and Gregory of Tours and the Anglo Saxon Chronicles for the period as well as numerous other books to do with Romans a far more interesting proposition has emerged of the so called Arthurian period. I am no scholar in the accepted sense, I have no journalistic training and as such I cannot express myself with the seamless prose that is necessary in this undertaking, but I have done my best to unravel the truth of the matter. To those who doubt Arthur’s existence, I can say, he is there amongst others bearing the same name.

It is not until the sources have been read, that one can get the flavour of the politics of the time. They are, curiously, not very different to our own time and very partisan. In it we see the importance of the interplay of the Church in political life and it’s suppression of earlier beliefs. Yet in this Century we see claims that Arthur was Welsh or Scottish on the basis of the locations laid out.

Fortunately, no book has yet been written claiming him to be English on the basis that some of the locations are now in England. Having said that, it may be the case that the first and second King Arthur fought with Germanic troops that could loosely be called English, although that name had not come into being, these being tributary troops stationed in Britain.

More recently, Welsh devolution and Scottish self determination have been the vehicles used to prove that Arthur belongs to them. This is a method by which the Welsh and the Scots still try to distance themselves from the English and try to show that they have a far more ancient heritage. I personally find this sad for various reasons particularly given the day to day integration of all kinds of people in England. Adrian Gilbert in his book ‘The Holy Kingdom’ is correct in stating that Welsh history has been suppressed, what he does not address is the fact that every one’s history has been suppressed for one cause or another. True, the Mabinogion does indicate that Britain was more or less divided into three areas roughly corresponding to Wales, England and Scotland. But these were British Kingdoms with a similar language. This in itself does not prove Welshness prior to the 7th or 8th Century and mainly in the time of Offa. Also the Pictish people of the Island do not appear to be treated as British although Scots history indicates that they should be so treated. It seems that some sources say they originally migrated from Ireland, others that they originally came from the continent when the land bridges were still intact. What is clear is that they were here before the Scots and prior to the subdivisions of Britain under Roman administration and should really qualify as a British people. Therefore this notion of a Prythonic Britain is not purely one that comes down from the Welsh So the Story of Britain is more encompassing that it would at first appear to be.

Alistair Moffat in his book The Lost Kingdoms implies a timeless Celtic Scottishness prior to the 8th Century. What is true is that for some considerable time, indeed since the end of the last Ice age groups of people sharing many of the later Celtic beliefs have lived fought and died; they have been born, grown, had their families, grown their crops and the vast majority left no trace of their passing. To that extent we are much the same today. But we know that both Hadrians and the Antonine wall were as much defences against the [Scotti] people from Ireland as against the Pictii. Moreover there is contemporary thought which indicates that Romans were at risk on both sides of the border and that the walls were as much border markers as defences. Hadrian’s Wall is as much a trading area as a defensive one, thus trade it was far more likely that ideas travelled in this way from the various power blocks of the time.

We know that the Romans were at one time in Inverness but later retired to the Antonine Wall and thence to Hadrians defences. This might indicate that the times when the wall was overrun were not such catastrophes as would be thought. The implications are that the forts on the Wall were lightly manned and as such the country’s primary defence was in fact the network of roads down which the legions could advance rapidly.

The origins of Arthur are shrouded in myth. But no matter which way you look at legends, there are certain immutable truths. People are born and they die. An average life span is about 70 years, which even if rare in those days was not unknown. No one lives for 250 years. Every person has a mother and father and nature dictates a gestation period of approximately 9 months. Myths are created by people who do not have a logical explanation for a history they do not understand but they are a way of remembering their origins. Names tend to be prosaic and normally follow a formula of tradition. There is therefore no way in which one can accept the concept of a Methuselah like being, who, is the basis of these legends

What we tend to forget, is, that in a time when life was normally shorter than today the average time by which a person achieved something historic was very young. An average age would be about 25. One need only look at the age of Alexander the Great to understand this concept. It means that history is rather more contracted than would normally be the case. The point I make is that rather like the Western period in America, which in fact was between 1865 and 1900, the number of films and books give people the impression that it is timeless period which lasted longer than it did. As an example of this problem, from the time of American independence to the American civil war which preceded the Western period was barely 90 years.

From the point at which Vortigern expelled the Roman Kingdom in 409 AD to the time of the evacuation in 460AD was 51 years and the Roman Empire lingered on until Odovacer became King of Italy in 475. There followed a further erosion culminating with the defeat of Syagrius, the last Roman legate, by Clovis in 485 AD which founded the Frankish Kingdom. This battle was the root of the legends of Hagen and Siegfried and the Niebelungs. But that series of stories may have started the previous century when Magnus Maximus was defeated in 388AD and Anderagathius is said to have escaped the battle by boat and returned to Britain. Did that journey take him along the Rhine to the Drachenfels or the Dragon’s rocks.

There is a darker side to the German stories resulting from the victory by Varus in 9 AD. This appears to be an attempt to unite the German peoples against Roman expansion. In the end through political intrigue the tribes never became one Germany. It is thought that if Germany had coalesced in that period, European history would have been very different. The list of the German tribes is given by Caesar in his book about the Gallic wars. Some were tributary tribes; others were fiercely hostile to the Romans. What is certain is that if German tribes were present to acclaim Constantine the Great when he succeeded his father Chlorus in 306AD, it is the link to the very early English. Certainly Syagrius’ force was a coalition not unlike that of Aetius in 451AD when Attila was defeated and probably contained the Burgundians from who many of the German legends derive.

The basis of the Arthurian History rests on a number of theories, the principle being a mis-match of history by 100 years. This mis-dating, it can now be submitted, is due principally to the conundrum of Gildas together with a mis-interpretation of Nennius . This misdating also affects many other attempts at unravelling Arthur’s place in history. These factors are crucial to the Arthurian legend because they will prove that the first Arthur, Paternus, was in fact Roman though with British connection. It is the author’s belief that both he and his son Arthur would have considered themselves Roman. It is the contention that Paternus is in fact the son of the Emperor Constans. There is just the outside possibility that he is in fact Constans but short of evidence that he did not die in 350AD, this proposition lacks credibility.

The Mabinogion gives yet another twist implying that Arthur was alive after the battle of Camlan and thus we are able to come to a conclusion about the dating of Gildas. This puts a very different slant on the story and the history of the time. The final factor is the element of the Grail and the legend of finding Arthur and Guinevere at Glastonbury which seems to link the two. This public relations issue is dissected to show how the Avalon legend came into being in the context of their own times. Also explored is the link between the Grail and the legend of the Fisher King, a far older story. But we do know who is reported to be buried at Glastonbury; Edmund Ironside, the last Anglo Saxon King and grandson of Alfred the Great, probably the greatest English king and one who is much underrated.

The further part is the actual identification of who the first Arthur is. Very few people have actually attempted this with any success. From those who suggest he is in fact Ambrosius Aurielanus to other prospective candidates and I would submit that only one person has come close to identifying him. That, for complicated reasons, is gone into with reference to the tale of Vortigern. But Vortigern is not Arthur nor is he Vortigern by virtue of the fact that it is title, not a name. Adrian Gilbert attempts to show the chronology with the identification of Anderagathius as Arthur, yet, nothing, in the end fits this proposition, nor is his proposition that Magnus Maximus is the missing link to Constantine and Crispus able to stand scrutiny but he is looking in the right area. It is Adrian Gilbert who gave the author the final clues to solve the problem.

But Magnus Maximus is important for another reason as he is probably the cause of an internecine struggle. He is certainly the one person that gave real legitimacy to Constantine’s Church and brought into being the Roman Catholic church as a format that we understand today and the Roman Catholic Church in this country today is an echo of Roman power over 1600 years ago.

The third factor has been in identifying the motivation for suppressing the true identification of Arthur. This has as much to do with the mis-information put about in the medieval period. The Church as well as Kings of the English had a vested interest in these factors both as morality tales and as grounds for monarchical superiority.

The reality is that, if the core works are read in context with each other, there is little difficulty in establishing the relevant dates which affect the Arthurian period. When these are placed into context of British/Roman history a very different, highly exciting and intriguing story comes to light. I would argue that it is far more interesting than later recorded legend/ history showing a high level of political awareness and sophistication. Additionally, recent revelations about the size of the Great earthquake that shook the Western Roman Empire in approximately 365AD give us an idea of the really massive economic strains that really occurred in the period. These strains were really beyond the capabilities of men like Valentinian the First, Gratian and Magnus Maximus who were all in truth very able administrators. It was probably to much for the administrative machinery to cope with as well and it was arguably this that finally did for the Western Empire and the Arthurian Kings fit here.

The school version of this history is so bland that the separation of the Roman and Anglo Saxon states is made memorable as if it is a watershed. The reality is that the two overlapped in a hardly perceptible way. The course of this research has been turned into a journey of discovery. By reading Gregory of Tours it was possible to make the decision that Gildas was not a contemporary and that Mark of Cornwall was not in fact Marcus Cunomorus by virtue of the fact that Gregory mentioned his death and Gildas did not. The history has been affected as much by what writers have not said as by what they have.

The true flowering of the medieval romance is the birth of the Arthurian Legend. Started probably in the reign of Henry II it formed the language of Romance and the formation of the French language as we know it today. With Elenor of Aquitaine being the reputed sponsor of many of the books and tales, it tells us more about attitudes in that period and the aspirations of the class that wrote them than it tells us of any kind of history. The exception is that earlier tales wound themselves into the later tales indicating that there was a historical base to the stories. The questions which had to be asked were, Why, When and Where?

Then for at least five hundred years we had an Arthur coloured by the Morte d’Arthur of Mallory and the interpretation placed on him by the Victorians which is the fundamental version used by the Hollywood screen version. The nearest version to the Mallory epic is actually that called Excalibur and Mallory may have been the source of the inspiration for Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings in a round about way. This however has been the primary cause of the inability to understand the period and the root of my decisions to go back to the basics. Ironically, the very monarchs who came to rule at the time this book was written were the Tudors, probably the most repressive of all monarchs, who started the process of re-engineering English history into the British history we know today; and they had Welsh ancestry.

The final factor was that the Arthurians were not successful rulers. They were fighting a losing battle from the very start. They lost the ability to keep Britain as a Roman province, a struggle which was itself an uphill battle due to the stresses and strains of the time and what followed was part of a tripartite Romano/ British civil war. That they would loose was a foregone conclusion in hindsight, but why they lost was far more interesting. They remain Kings who lost against overwhelming odds, a factor much prized by earlier writers who believed in the goodness of heroism; what do we, as a civilisation prize more?

I hope that every reader enjoys the journey and will look upon our history in a different light. They will learn that we are all actually the same, particularly in an age when Celticism is taking on a new mythical status which it does not deserve. We should not however underestimate the craftsmanship of the period, testament to which is found all over Europe and which defies so called cultural differences. If there is a lesson for those looking in the Arthurian legends it is that in it lies the birth of England. Called the dark ages by many, it was a successful and vibrant period that lasted close on six centuries and was a home to culture and learning, both creating and assimilating it. Rather than sustain the complaints of the English domination the truth may lie in the fact that the only real legacy of England is the English language which is such a dominating force today.

The Arthurian Legends

We have all seen or heard of the various films made in Hollywood about the Knights of the Round Table, The Holy Grail or of Camelot. What may not be generally realised is that these are set in the world of one Thomas Mallory who in the 15th century wrote a stylised work called Mort d’Arthur. For those who, like me, have read these books they were filled with all kinds of adventures of a stimulating nature because Thomas Mallory was in his own right an extremely artful writer. Not only that, he was also a knight and had been present during some of the battles of the hundred years war, and therefore was privy to the alleged courtoisie of the time that was to a certain extent a farce. The wars of the Roses which were waged at the approximate time of the book were some of the most brutal and bloody in English history and nobility was not a guarantee of survival; quite the reverse in fact.

Chivalry, as it was known was in fact a hobby which was assisted by the patronage of Eleanor of Aquitaine whilst she was immured by her husband Henry all for many years. In this fantasy world, women were treated in a far better way than in fact they were. That is not to say that there were not powerful women, of which Eleanor was a true example and that they could not fight their corner.

In this world, gentlemen subscribed to behaviour which was noble to levels above that which is humanly possible. The genre initiated modern French language and the word Romance finds it’s origin in this time. It is no accident that French, Italian and Spanish are the languages of Romance for they are an intermingling of older languages and Latin which was the Roman language. That impression of Latin love remains to this day. Literary works or poems and music, which were inspired by Romance, became so popular that it became, as it expanded, essential study for squires aspiring to knighthood by the time that Mallory was writing and it is here that we find the archetypal Arthur stories a la Hollywood.

Unfortunately we run into several problems with Arthur’s identification such as the fact that no such King exists within the accepted British historical table and this is compounded by the fact that Arthur also appears in Celtic and British myth. What is worse is that in that myth he changes character so often that tends to mislead readers. This is further complicated by the lack of contemporary documentary evidence. The writings which do exist, are not contemporary and could be construed as partisan and either political or religious propaganda.

The earliest known written work which records Arthur is the Historia Britanorum compiled by Nennius around the end of the 8th century and in a body of work called the Annals Cambrensis with which he is associated. It is here that the earliest known date is given for the death of Arthur at around 537AD The folk memory of Arthur is actually much older and it may be that the original verbal tales were and are more contemporary to the earliest Anglo Saxon Chronicles and Gildas who is the earliest known British writer.

The myths of Arthur as opposed to the recorded annals pose major problems because they are a collection of stories from Brittany, Wales and Ireland with no given time factor. Add to this that they are mixed with the Merlin stories which are of a different root and the Grail stories which come from yet another group that before we can even start to look for Arthur , these must all be disentangled. Mixed into these stories are kernels of history relating to battles which can be dated but some cannot be identified with any certainty. My own researches in this area conclude that whilst Arthur may have known the West Country he is actually to be found in the north of the country. As the author was also beginning to find out there is also a link with the Atlantis legend. Lastly the dating of historians has got to be suspect as can be seen in the current theory that the Egyptian dynasties are much older.

There was the additional factor that at first sight none of the personages or stories seems to have a cohesive form. It was discovered that this was down largely to dating which came from three separate strands. The first was the authors own observations that dating did not seem to fit with the accepted chronology handed down. Initial indications seemed to indicate a discrepancy of about 120 years. The second factor was the discovery was that elements of the legends indicate lives of improbably long periods. This is not a new device and normally indicates that earlier writers need to fill in gaps they have not explained. It frequently turned out that some of the personages had alter egos or