The Search for the Elusive Arthur

By Tim Walker

It was never my intention to write a version of the King Arthur story. It is a well-trodden path, and what could I possibly add that would be well received?

But I had read Thompson and Giles’s translation of the parts of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s 1136 work, The History of the Kings of Britain, that related to events in the fifth century, and found it a fantastical and captivating read. Geoffrey’s work gives us the first full telling of the stories of Uther Pendragon and his son, Arthur. More than that, he gives a timeline of post-Roman kings of Britain, plugging the gap in our empty history between the end of Roman rule and the establishment of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms – a period of about 200 years. But how reliable is his ‘history’?

The boy Arthur and the sword in the stone

Geoffrey claimed to have been working from a ‘text written in a native tongue’, but no evidence has been found by historians of such a document. Because they can’t verify it, they doubt it ever existed, and have tarnished Geoffrey’s work with the claim that it is a work of fiction – made up to please his Norman sponsor and to appeal to his readership.

More recently, other historians, including Miles Russell (Arthur and the Kings of Britain, 2018), have tried to understand Geoffrey’s approach, and have demonstrated that he did compile and work from a wide range of source material – it’s just that he exercised a certain amount of creativity in plugging gaps in his narrative, and appears to have deliberately moved historical characters and their deeds around in a Middle Ages cut-and-paste job. Russell believes he didn’t invent Uther and Arthur - they are real figures plucked from Welsh chronicles and mentions from literary monks such as Nennius, who credits twelve winning battles to Arthur. Uther Pen-Dragon (‘the head dragon’) is thought to be a king of Gwynedd in North Wales – perhaps a son or relative of the mighty Cunedda who was sent there in the mid-fifth century by King Vortigern to rid Wales of Irish settlers.

Ever since eminent academic, John Morris, in his epic work, The Age of Arthur (1972), announced his belief that Arthur was a real historical figure, the search for evidence has been taken on by others. Morris states: “The personality of Arthur is unknown… But he was as real as Alfred the Great or William the Conqueror; and his impact upon future ages mattered as much, or more so. Enough evidence survives from the hundred years after his death to show that reality was remembered for three generations, before legend engulfed his memory.”

The eminent archaeologist, Leslie Alcock, in Arthur’s Britain (revised,1989) states in the preface: “This book is about the Arthur of history, and about the Britain in which he lived. It will demonstrate that there is acceptable historical evidence that Arthur was a genuine historical figure, not a mere figment of myth or romance.” These two works have given credibility to the search for evidence of Arthur’s existence, and it can only be hoped that more tangible evidence is forthcoming over time.

Geoffrey of Monmouth tells us that a noble prince, Constantine came from Armorica (Brittany in northwest France) and was accepted by a council of tribal kings to be their overlord. He ruled for ten years before being assassinated on the orders of disgruntled noble, Vortigern. Vortigern ruled for perhaps as long as twenty years, covering the middle years of the fifth century, and he is mentioned by a number of sources, including Gildas, who wrote an account of those times around the year 540. He is also named in the Welsh Annales – a record of dates and events.

Depiction of Arthur's 'final battle'

Despite some historians believing that ‘Vortigern’ is a title, meaning ‘high king’, it is widely believed that it relates to one individual. Who was Vortigern and what was his real name? Graham Phillips in The Lost Tomb of King Arthur (2016) has trawled through museums and libraries looking for records of tribal kings in western Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries, and has come up with his own theory. He argues that ‘Vortigern’ may have been the chief or king of Powys in mid-Wales, and that his regional rival was Aurelius, who came from a family of former Roman elite nobles who were rulers of the Dobunni tribe based at modern day Gloucester.

Aurelius defeats Vortigern in battle to become high king of the Britons, possibly at the Battle of Gulloph in Hampshire around the year 460, taking the title ‘Ambrosius’ (the divine one). There are enough mentions of both Vortigern and Ambrosius Aurelianus, and mentions of their battles, to cement them as historical figures who straddle mid to late fifth century Britain; therefore, Geoffrey of Monmouth is on safe grounds including them in his ‘history’. Graham Phillips talks about the descendants of Cunedda ruling over the kingdoms of Gwynedd and Powys, and therefore Uther, Vortigern and Ambrosius could all be related through marriage as members of the ruling elite of that region. Could an alliance have enabled Aurelius and Uther to defeat Vortigern?

Geoffrey tells us that Ambrosius’s brother was Uther Pendragon, and that he succeeded Ambrosius following his poisoning by a Saxon spy. Could the Briton noble, Uther, have been related to the Roman-named Aurelius through a family marriage alliance, and therefore become his ‘brother’? Uther’s story is one of a powerful warrior king who fights the advancing Saxons, and falls for the charms of the beautiful wife of one of his nobles, the lady Ygerne. Uther is so besotted with her that he instructs his adviser/healer/sorcerer Merlin to find a way for him to have her. Merlin arranges it, but asks that if their union results in the birth of a boy, that he must have the child. And so, the deed is done, and Uther marries Ygerne after her husband is killed in the ensuing civil war. Merlin takes the child – Arthur – and places him with a foster family to raise in secret. When Arthur comes of age, he accidentally pulls the sword from the stone (following Uther’s death), and is then exposed by Merlin as the one true son of Uther and rightful heir.

Much of this narrative, including Graham Phillip’s connections with West England and Mid-Wales, and the possible locations of Nennius’s twelve battles of Arthur, have been incorporated into my storytelling, as I have attempted to breathe life into these fascinating and only dimly-glimpsed characters in my book series.

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Tim Walker is an independent author living near Windsor in the UK. He worked in the newspaper publishing industry for ten years before relocating to Zambia where, following a period of voluntary work with VSO, he set up his own marketing and publishing business.

His new book, published in June 2020, is Arthur, Rex Brittonum, a re-imagining of the story of King Arthur (book five in the series). It follows on from 2019’s Arthur Dux Bellorum, the story of young Arthur (book four in the series), that received recognition from two sources in 2019 - One Stop Fiction Book of the Month in April, and an honourable mention in the Coffee Pot Book Club Book of the Year (Historical Fiction) Awards. The series starts with Abandoned; followed by Ambrosius: Last of the Romans (2017); and book three, Uther's Destiny (2018). 

Find out more about the author at - http://www.timwalkerwrites.co.uk 

Goodreads Author Page: https://www.goodreads.com/timwalker1666 

Amazon Author Page: http://Author.to/TimWalkerWrites

Facebook Page: http://facebook.com/TimWalkerWrites

Twitter: http://twitter.com/timwalker1666

Uther Pendragon: Man, Myth or Legend

by C.M. Grey

The Dark Ages of ancient Britain is an incredibly interesting period of time. We know so much about other times in history, but the Dark Ages is an era where we find few facts handed down to us. There are many stories, poems and myths, and many of these refer to the shadowy figures of Uther Pendragon and his far more infamous son Arthur. There are many people that would love to find proof of King Arthur’s existence; he is a figure that looms large in the imagination, and yet that proof continues to remain elusive. Uther, however, appears more often in the few written accounts that have survived as a man that actually lived, a man who may possibly have drawn the tribes of Britain together when it was needed most.

To set the scene for when the Pendragons may… or may not have existed, we have to take into account that the term Dark Ages refers to the long period of time which started several decades before the Western Roman Empire fell in AD 476 and lasted to the beginning of the Renaissance period, which was around AD1300.

These dark ages were a time of little or no law and order, when civilisation, the written word and record keeping were at a very low point. Britain and most of Europe was in turmoil as the rule of Rome dissolved, all of which leaves modern scholars somewhat ‘in the dark’ as they search for their solid facts. Many of these ‘almost’ facts, these stories and tales of battles, the struggles of leaders and kings, were handed down verbally through generations as people sat around their fires and entertained each other with tales during the cold British nights. As they repeated them they changed, so many facts turned into myths.

To begin with, we know that the Romans conquered the Celtic tribes on their third attempt in AD43 and then ruled and subjugated them for nearly four hundred years. The tribes of Britain were much restricted during this occupation and, of course, were allowed no defences or army of their own. The aggressiveness and fighting spirit that so impressed Cesar when he arrived had been beaten out of them, so that when the Roman legions, the governors and their families began packing their possessions and gradually leaving the shores of Britain from around 410AD, the tribes were left almost defenceless. It must have looked incredibly tempting for other, more warlike groups to slip in during this slow Roman withdrawal and attempt to stake claim to the lands of Briton as their own.

Roman Legionary by Carole Raddato
from Frankfurt, Germany
[CC BY-SA 2.0] via Wikimedia Commons

The empire had been slowly crumbling for a number of years; at first it was only the better connected that had been leaving the shores of Britain as they realised their empire was weakening. In the late third century, as the Romans governors still struggled to maintain some control, they built a chain of forts along the eastern coast of Britain in an effort to deter the increasing numbers of Saxon invaders, but when reinforcements and pay didn’t arrive from the empire the troops began to desert in earnest, and knowing this the Saxons came in even greater numbers. Irish tribes from the West also began arriving, and raiding Picts became more frequent visitors from across the Northern border of Hadrian’s Wall; the tribes of Britain were in a desperate state. They had gone from being a heavily governed, conquered and yet a protected people, segregated by their tribal identities into small communities, into easy pickings, victims to the invaders - they needed to unite and defend themselves, to become once again the tribes of old.

There have been numerous written accounts of the man that eventually united the tribes and came to rule the Britons. From Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae (1136) we learn that the old king under the Romans, Constantine II had three sons. Constans, the eldest, was murdered, possibly by Vortigern, an advisor to Constantine before he assumed the throne upon the King’s death. The other two sons were Ambrosious and Uther, who was the youngest. Both younger sons had been sent into hiding during their early years, and while we know that Ambrosious grew up in Gaul under the tutelage of Roman teachers, we know little of where his younger brother Uther was brought up. It could also have been Gaul alongside his brother, however, I think it equally likely that it was among the tribes in his native Britain.

When the Romans left, the new King, Vortigern was in a difficult position. With his lands being attacked from all sides he decided to form an alliance with two Saxon brothers, Hengist and Horsa who, while agreeing to defend the kingdom from invading Irish and Picts, brought more and more of their own people in to populate the ravaged land.

By Sir Edward Parrott - The Pageant of British History
[Public Domain] Wikimedia Commons

Vortigern was not a popular King amongst the tribes. When the young Ambrosious returned from exile in Gaul to claim his father’s throne he sent out envoys and messengers and gathered the warriors under his banner with the promise that he would reclaim his father’s lands and defend the tribes from the invaders.

Pendragon Castle by George Robinson [CC BY-SA 2.0]
Wikimedia Commons

When the call went out, Uther joined his brother and then suddenly had to take command when Ambrosious was tragically killed in a battle against the forces of Vortigern.

Uther went on, so the stories, poems and legends say, to keep the tribes united as they fought the Saxons. The stories and legends only tantalise us further when they tell that he was advised throughout his time by a Druid named Merlyn and that it was with Merlyn that he travelled to Ireland to gather the standing stones there known as the ‘Giants Dance.’ Together they transported them back to Stanenges, to form the monument that we now know as Stonehenge.

When the call went out from, Uther joined his brother and then suddenly had to take command when Ambrosious was tragically killed in a battle against the forces of Vortigern.

Uther went on, so the stories, poems and legends say, to keep the tribes united as they fought the Saxons. The stories and legends only tantalise us further when they tell that he was advised throughout his time by a Druid named Merlyn, and that it was with Merlyn that he travelled to Ireland to gather the standing stones that were known there as the ‘Giants Dance.’ Together they transported them back to Stanenges, to form the monument that we now know as Stonehenge.

We are told by Geoffrey of Monmouth that on returning from Ireland Uther attacked his closest ally, Gerlois Duc of Cornwall and stole away with his wife Igraine to father the son who legends tell us was known as Arthur. Yet all of these stories are just the ‘almost-facts’ that come from the poems and stories of the time, because the Dark Ages was the time we know so little about. What little history there really is of this era allows our imagination the license to believe that legends did walk our earth, and because ‘something’ happened way back then, authors will piece these little truths together to tell a tale that ‘could’ have happened.

So, if you get a chance to sit by a fire this winter and stare into its dancing flames, spare a thought to the men and women who lived through those Dark Times, think about what it must have been like to live back then. Dark nights when spirits and Gods stared out from the shadows and when a peaceful night might be broken by the cry of alarm, that ‘the Saxons are coming!’

References:

Wikipedia: Uther Pendragon  

Early British Kingdoms

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C.M.Gray is an Englishman living in the hills outside Barcelona in Spain, yet has lived in many parts of the world from the clamour of Hong Kong to the vineyards of Burgundy France. An author, whose primary interest has been the Dark Ages of Britain, he has written two books about the life and adventures of Uther Pendragon. He loves finding a good story and enjoys writing one even more!

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