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JIM HARGAN
BY THE SIDE of a Shropshire country lane a few miles east of Salisbury, a deep trench reveals the stumps of classical columns—all that remains of the marketplace of the Roman city of Viroconium, now called Wroxeter. Like other such Roman towns, Viroconium had little protection from attack; it lay across a major road intersection, by a navigable river and surrounded by broad plains. And, like a number of other towns, Viroconium sat in the shadow of a massively fortified hill fort, The Wrekin, that had been abandoned in its favor. So it is strange that this Roman city would survive after Roman civilization collapsed in Britain during the 5th century, a period when other major centers were abandoned.
Astonishingly, Viroconium not only survived the beginning of the Dark Ages, it grew. Somebody added grand new buildings, classically styled, in the center of Viroconium.
That somebody could have been King Arthur.
THE MODERN VERSION of King Arthur—Round Table, knights in armor and all that—starts with a baldly propagandistic pseudo-history penned by a Welshman named Geoffrey of Monmouth in 1135. Titled The History of the Kings of the Britons, it purported to describe all the Celtic Briton kings going back a millennium before Christ, in great detail, and without a gap in chronology. Of these, Geoffrey gave pride of place to King Arthur, whom he placed around AD 500; according to Geoffrey, it was Arthur who expelled the Anglo-Saxon invaders. Geoffrey had two goals in assembling what was, even in his day, dismissed as a farrago of nonsense and lies: first, to glorify the Welsh over their enemies, the English; and second, to suck up to the Norman aristocracy that ruled England. “We have two things in common,” he was telling his Norman masters, “a glorious history and a hatred of the despicable English.” It worked; the Normans made Geoffrey a bishop.
SERIOUS HISTORIANS of the 12th century condemned Geoffrey loudly and at great length, to no avail. Geoffrey’s stories, and particularly his account of Arthur, were too lively. Geoffrey’s fake history became a medieval bestseller and touched off a host of imitators. These imitations and elaborations introduced a wealth of new concepts, including the Round Table, Lancelot and Camelot. By 1284, King Edward I had expropriated Arthur for the English and was using Arthur legends against the Welsh, as a symbol of Britain reunited by a single King—namely Edward, who had just conquered Wales. Two centuries after Edward I, Sir Thomas Malory compiled all of this material into the definitive modern chronicle, Le Morte d’Arthur.
Because Geoffrey’s Arthur was so obviously medieval, and his “history” so much balderdash, historians simply rejected Arthur’s historicity out of hand for many years. Yet Geoffrey did draw on actual Dark Ages sources to add corroborative detail to his propaganda. Historians now agree that there is ample evidence that there really was a man named Arthur who lived around the year 500, and who participated in the defeat of the Anglo-Saxon invaders and establishment of a British Celtic dominance that would last until 550.
Experts still disagree on whether Arthur was the leader of the British or just some local hero whose grossly distorted legends were picked up by Geoffrey. In 1992, however, two British journalists proposed that a set of detailed conclusions about the real Arthur could be teased from the scant fragments of Dark Ages evidence. In their book King Arthur: The True Story, Graham Phillips and Martin Keatman put forth evidence that Arthur could be identified as a real person who lived and ruled in Shropshire, and who died in 519.
It’s a fascinating tale. Phillips and Keatman first go over the elements of the medieval Arthur tales that we know and love, showing how all of them, including the oldest surviving Welsh legends, were heavily influenced by Geoffrey’s self-aggrandizing tall tales. Then they review all the known sources of Dark Ages history, showing how scholars have been able to build a fairly coherent account of the darkest of those days, from 410 to 570—an account that definitely includes a historic Arthur. Finally, they show how tiny bits of neglected evidence allow Arthur to be placed as a specific ruler of a specific place
THERE IS AMPLE EVIDENCE THAT THERE REALLY WAS A MAN NAMED ARTHUR WHO LIVED AROUND THE YEAR 500
You can visit the places in Shropshire where, they claim, Arthur lived, met Guinevere, stored his treasure and where Modred killed him. This is very controversial; Phillips and Keatman are not academic historians, and lack the extensive knowledge of ancient manuscripts, archaeology and the philology that make Dark Ages studies a minefield. Yet, unlike other such amateur Arthurians, their overall story hangs together and could well be true.
Here’s the part of Phillips and Keatman’s story that historians generally accept. By the year 400, the Celtic British had experienced 350 years of prosperity as the Roman diocese of Britannia, a land so peaceful that stone-built cities, filled with riches, stood almost unprotected on open plains linked by high-speed roads. Then things fell apart. Barbarians attacked everywhere, most definitely including Britannia, and the Roman government cast off Britannia so as to concentrate on more important places. Britannia’s 19 civitates (tribal provinces) had to look to their own defense, appointing an imperator (more of a commander-in-chief than an emperor) to replace their Roman governor. This worked at first, and the British maintained their Romanized lifestyle and economy for another 40 years.
In 425 an exceptionally capable and rich nobleman who called himself Vortigern (Celtic for “Overlord”) took over as imperator. Vortigern defeated invaders from Ireland and Scotland—but to do this, he hired mercenaries from the north German lowlands, the Saxons. Then, as a unified Britain enjoyed a decade of peace, Vortigern faced rebellious nobles, and he retained control by expanding his Saxon forces. In 449 Vortigern made the fatal mistake of entering an alliance with an ambitious Saxon commander named Hengist, and giving him the Isle of Thanet on the northeast corner of modern Kent. Hengist invited his countrymen to join him and thousands responded, with Saxons taking over Kent and their cousins the Angles taking over Norfolk. The Anglo-Saxons rebelled against Vortigern in 455, overrunning Britannia in a disaster that permanently destroyed what was left of Roman society and economy.
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JIM HARGAN
NOW THE STAGEWAS SET for Arthur. Vortigern disappeared around 459, and a nobleman named Ambrosius Aurelianus—said to be Vortigern’s greatest enemy—took over. The following generations would hail Ambrosius as their outstanding hero, their savior and the founder of the nation that would become the Cymry (in English, the Welsh). It was a long war, with battles fought all over the island. Ambrosius exterminated the English in Sussex; his commander Artorius (Arthur) led another army north to retake strategically important Lincolnshire. Then, while Arthur subdued rebellious Britons in the Welsh borderlands, Ambrosius led devastating attacks into Essex.
By 488 Ambrosius was gone, and Arthur commanded the British forces in their final, decisive victory at Mons Badonicus, in the Wiltshire Downs, in 493. Arthur died 26 years later, in 519, fighting against “Medraut” (Geoffrey called him “Modred”) at a place called Camlann. At that point the unified Britain divided up into petty kingships and continuous civil war—a process described in 545 in great detail by a Shropshire-area priest named Gildas, whose jeremiad on the subject survives intact. In 550 the English broke out of their enclaves to begin centuries of conquest and the creation of England.
So much can be gleaned from the tatters of evidence that survive from the Dark Ages. Phillips and Keatman believe they can extend this story, however, extracting important points from obscure corners: a genealogy on an 8th-century stone, now lost; stray statements in an 8th-century manuscript that may have an older source; unusual archaeological findings from Wroxeter; and a difficult line in Gildas’ 545 sermon. From this, they nurse out the fact that Arthur was a Shropshire lad.
Of course, Shropshire didn’t exist in AD 500 any more than did armored knights or castles; it was created 280 years later when an English king conquered it, and it didn’t become a shire for another 200 years. In 500 it was part of the civitas of the Cornovii, a province that encompassed the rich northern half of the Severn Valley. In late Roman times the district to its west (now in Wales) was a military zone, but by 500 the Roman military was long gone; the district had gained the name of Powys, and was under the same rule as the Cornovii civitas.
And then there is the odd matter of Viroconium (Wroxeter), the capital of the Cornovii. Gildas states that, after the Saxon break-out a century before, all the capitals of the civitates were put to the torch, their stones cast down and “covered with a purple crust of clotted blood, as in some fantastic winepress.” Archeology bears this out everywhere—except Viroconium. Alone of the 19 capitals, Viroconium not only was untorched, it was also untouched. Even stranger, it expanded.
Archeologists have shown that, while Viroconium contracted in the 300s, starting in the 420s a British king began a grand building program of large new structures in the Roman style, using post-and-beam timber construction. Phillips and Keatman argue that this was, indeed, Vortigern, just as later generations believed. It would explain why, alone of the civitates, archaeologists have found no evidence of a contingent of Vortigern’s Saxons “guarding” it, and later sacking it. And it would explain where this local king got all his wealth, and felt so secure that he could live in an unprotected capital. Twenty years of being Britain’s imperator would leave Vortigern very rich and very strong.
Today, English Heritage, the country’s department of antiquities, preserves the exposed remains of Viroconium, set out as they would have appeared in the high Roman period when it was the fourth largest settlement in Britannia. The country lane running through it was one of Roman Britannia’s most prominent superhighways, Watling Street, linking Londinium with the major settlements of the west; and this intersects just outside the city with a major ford over the Severn. To one side is the row of column stumps, which is all that remains above ground of the forum, the town’s marketplace and political center. On the other side is the baths, a giant complex centered on a vast basilica, built as an exercise hall, the size of a cathedral.
One wall of the basilica has remained exposed, above ground, for 15 centuries, and continues to loom over the site. It’s an impressive site, the more so as you walk slowly around it, learning about the huge baths that made life a little better for the Romans living in this cold and wet land.
Phillips and Keatman construct an elaborate chain of evidence linking Vortigern’s capital of 425 with Arthur’s seat of 495—but we can do it more simply. Vortigern, who abandoned his Roman name for a Celtic one, was an early leader of the faction that wanted to throw off Roman culture and government; Ambrosius Aurelianus, his enemy, led the faction wanting to preserve a Roman Britain. When Ambrosius took over in 460 he would have naturally awarded his enemy’s lands to his chief lieutenant, Arthur. And, as Ambrosius and Arthur considered themselves Romans, Arthur would have needed neither dynastic justification nor the title of rex (king) of the Cornovii; Arthur would have probably styled himself dux, military leader (and that’s exactly what a Dark Ages source calls him). Arthur’s successor, described at length by Gildas, did style himself king, but by that time all that Roman stuff would have seemed quaintly anachronistic. Arthur of the Cornovii was likely the last Roman in Britain.
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JIM HARGAN
ARTHUR SKEPTICS BASE THEIR THEORIES on the fact that Gildas never mentioned Arthur by name (which would have been “Artorius” in Gildas’ Latin), but that assumes that Arthur was a Celticization of Artorius. Phillips and Keatman propose the opposite, that Arthur took his name from the Celtic word “arth,” for bear—and Gildas does mention a ruler as The Bear, whose successor gets a Gildas sneer as “coach driver for The Bear.” The Bear and his unworthy heir seem to have ruled from Viroconium.
The Shropshire link is a key that unlocks many doors. One such door concerns the stone circle known as Mitchell’s Fold, one of only two in Shropshire; it seems that the 18th-century antiquarian William Stuckley not only surveyed this circle, but reported that the locals claimed it was the place where Arthur drew the sword from the stone. Ancient Welsh rulers had swords, not crowns, as their symbols of authority, and these were presented by tribal elders at sites of great antiquity and power. Mitchell’s Fold would have been two millennia old by the time Arthur was presented his sword, and historians tell us it would have looked very much as it does now, 15 centuries later. It’s a beautiful site, with wide views, a fit place to declare a great ruler.
Guinevere, too, might have been a Shropshire lass. The impressive hillfort at Oswestry, in Shropshire near the Welsh border, is known in Welsh as Caer Ogyrfan, named for Gogyfan, by tradition the father of Ganhumara—rendered by the medieval French poets as Guinevere. This makes political sense; Arthur would have wanted to bind the family that controlled access to Powys in close alliance.
Most impressive is the Shropshire link to Arthur’s last battle, given in the only undisputed contemporaneous reference to him, a snippet in a chronology that reads, “The strife of Camlann in which Arthur and Medraut fell.” Camlann is traditionally given as in Cornwall—a bit mysterious, as Cornwall would have been far out of the mainstream of British politics and warfare, and ruled by a branch of the Cornovii nobility to boot. However, the River Camlad runs through southwest Shropshire, creating a gap through the rough mountains of the Welsh Marches that leads to Viroconium.
Modern maps show earthworks along the Camlad at the traditional ford of Shiregrove Bridge, although very recent farming seems to have plowed them out. Arthur may well have fallen right here, defending his de mesne from invaders.
Local legend plays its part. Much Wenlock Abbey, in southeast Shropshire, is reputed to be the place where the kings of Britain stored their treasure. Today’s picturesque ruins date only from 1200, but they occupy a much older site. The abbey was founded by an English king shortly after he managed to annex this corner of Britain in 680. The timing suggests a political act as well as a religious one, perhaps asserting English control over a site important to the Welsh. Located only seven miles from Viroconium, perhaps an earlier religious foundation safeguarded the heirlooms of the kings whose line included Arthur, much as, 700 years later, Westminster Abbey guarded the treasures of the English kings.
These bits of history would have been preserved in the kingdom of Powys, where the heirs of Arthur were naturally concerned more about local doings than events far away. But Powys became separated from Shropshire in 780, forever as it turned out; and the stories of Arthur would become more remote, less meaningful and more fantastic as the centuries rolled on.
Still, when you look at that row of column stumps beside a country lane in Shropshire, you can’t help but think, “What if King Arthur had slept here?”
ENGLISH HERITAGE PRESERVES THE REMAINS OF VIROCONIUM AS THEY WOULD HAVE APPEARED IN THE HIGH ROMAN PERIOD
WHAT IS THE DARK AGE EVIDENCE?
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JIM HARGAN
DARK AGE EVIDENCE is a Rubik’s Cube; there are only so many facts, and all you can do is snap them together in different patterns. Just snapping the squares together isn’t enough, however, as not all the squares are equal. Here we can distinguish three periods of evidence. Contemporaneous or near-contemporaneous evidence was first written while Arthur was alive, or within a generation of his death, say from AD 450 to 570. As it so happens, there is nearly nothing of this sort of evidence beyond Gildas’ lengthy sermon of 545, De Excidio Britanniae (On the Ruin of Britain).
Then there are the documents that can be traced within a handful of centuries of Arthur. By 600 everyone who as an adult had ever known Arthur was dead, and legends were already multiplying. To consider a document to be historical evidence it has to be traced back further than this; otherwise, it merely shows what stories people were telling about Arthur, evidence of an Arthur legend instead of a man. Many scholars maintain that this can be done for certain passages in a 9th century source known as the Historia Brittonum, a collection of works sometimes referred by its purported collector, Nennius. Some lines furnish internal evidence of great age, including a chronology that mentions Arthur by name twice, a list of 12 of Arthur’s battles, and an aside that states that Arthur was a dux rather than a rex.
Place names work the same as documents; if you can’t trace an Arthurian place name back to the 6th century, all it proves is what legends were popular at that place at a later time. Genealogies, on the other hand, are never reliable; they were compiled by kings who felt a need to prove their legitimacy, and are nearly always partially or wholly faked. Genealogies, like legends, show what people believed in the 9th century, not what happened during the 6th century.
When you judge writings about Arthur it’s important to be on the lookout for arguments that violate these criteria. For instance, an Arthurian can’t prove that there were two Vortigerns (father and son) merely by citing the fact that the Historia has Vortigern dying twice; if he can’t show that both references date to the 5th century, all he’s done is to describe the fact that there were two different 9th-century legends about Vortigern. Similarly, an Arthurian can’t claim that the name of the Welsh hillfort Dinas Emrys (Ambrosius’ Fort) proves that Ambrosius was Welsh; without a 5th-century derivation, all it proves is that the Welsh admired Ambrosius. Finally, be skeptical of any Arthurian argument using genealogies to give names to historic characters centuries past. Phillips and Keatman are big offenders here, using a 9th-century genealogy to give Arthur the name “Owain Ddantgwyn”—a name that just as easily could have been made up to fill a gap.
J.H.
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