The Mammoth Book of King Arthur

by Mike Ashley

  It is a remarkable coincidence to have both a Ljot and a Leudast (for which Geoffrey may have read Leodonus, or Loth) deprived of their titles and, in the latter story, a Riculf being promised the post of bishop. Further evidence that Geoffrey was drawing upon sources from the Frankish kingdoms comes with Arthur’s next exploit.

  After conquering Norway and Denmark, Arthur invades Gaul. The tribune of Gaul is Frollo, who after his defeat retreats to Paris, where Arthur lays siege. After a month, with the inhabitants starving, Frollo suggests that the outcome be decided by single combat. Frollo, a giant of a man, almost defeats Arthur, but in a final rally Arthur cleaves Frollo’s skull in two.

  Some have suggested that Frollo is Geoffrey’s version of Rollo, the Viking adventurer who became first Duke of Normandy in 911. Rollo, or Hrólfur, was the great-great-great-grandfather of William the Conqueror. Geoffrey’s picture of Gaul suggests that the territory, although technically under the sovereignty of the king of France, belonged to England by right of prior conquest. In portraying Gaul in such a way, it would be rather foolish of Geoffrey to suggest that it was conquered by defeating the same Rollo who was the ancestor of Henry I. It is also hard to believe that Geoffrey did not know that Rollo was Henry’s ancestor, and he’s unlikely to have adopted the name by choice.

  In all likelihood, Geoffrey used the name from another source. There was a Roman family by the name of Ferreolus, who played an important role in the final days of the Empire and the development of the Frankish states. A member of this family was a tribune of Gaul in the 450s, and his son was occasionally referred to as Frolle. Frolle’s son, Tonantius Ferreolus, was a patrician and three times Prefect of Gaul. Tonantius, a gifted diplomat, succeeded in gaining the support of the Visigoths in Rome’s battle against the Huns. He also negotiated with the new Visigoth king, Thorismond, and saved the town of Arles from being sacked. Tonantius died in about 490, and thus was a contemporary of Clovis. Geoffrey may have chosen almost any of the Ferreoli, but the likeliest is Tonantius who, although he did not fight Thorismund in single combat, did negotiate with him one to one over a banquet, and thus lifted the siege of Arles. Geoffrey’s imagination could make much of such material.

  Geoffrey’s narrative continues with Arthur’s complete conquest of Gaul. He sends Hoel to take Poitou. Hoel is so successful that he also conquers Aquitaine and Gascony. Arthur’s campaign takes nine years. He gives Neustria (Normandy) to his cupbearer Bedevere, and Anjou to his Seneschal Kay, as well as other provinces to other nobles. Satisfied, Arthur returns to Britain and decides to hold an imperial coronation at Caerleon.

  The nine-year span is the first time-sensitive information Geoffrey has given since Arthur came to power. We have no clues to the time span of his original military campaign throughout Britain, or for the period when Arthur’s reputation grows and the codes of chivalry are established. Logic would suggest that these must cover at least a decade, and probably two. To this we must add the nine-year Gallic campaign; thus, since Arthur was fifteen when he came to the throne, he must now be around 45, which would place us in about 515AD, according to Geoffrey’s timeline.

  All the great and the good attend Arthur’s coronation. A few are worth mentioning here for the benefit of dating. Geoffrey lists four kings, all of whom we can date approximately. “Urian, king of Moray” is Urien of Rheged who ruled in the 570s. “Cadwallo Laurh, king of the Venedoti” is Cadwallon (Lawhir) “Long Hand” of Gwynedd, father of Maelgwyn, who ruled from about 500–534. “Stater, king of the Demetae” was more likely a title than a name. In Latin, stator is a magistrate’s marshal. The name appears in the ancestry of Vortipor as a great-grandson of Constantine the Great, and although this pedigree is clearly confused, it would place Stater in the mid-fourth century. In Tysilio the name is given as Meurig, king of Dyfed, but this is clearly a late addition referring to an eleventh-century chieftain. Finally, there is “Cador, king of Cornwall” who lived in the early sixth century. Only Cador and Cadwallo are contemporaries, and fit within the time scale for Arthur that has been emerging. Also listed is Donaut map Papo (Dunod the Fat), who ruled a territory west of the Pennines in Yorkshire/Cumbria, which is now named Dent after him. He was present at the Battle of Arderydd in 573, making him a contemporary of Urien, and his death is given in the Welsh Annals in 595. Also named is Rhun ap Neithon, who was a prince of the Isle of Man, and lived around the 560s. Almost all of the names are of princes and nobles alive in the mid-to-late sixth century.

  The celebrations last four days, and at the end Arthur receives an envoy from Lucius Hiberius, Procurator of the Republic, bearing a letter admonishing Arthur for not paying his tribute to Rome, and for attacking and claiming Roman territory in Gaul and the islands. Arthur is summoned to Rome to face a trial and due punishment. Failure to attend will lead to the invasion of his territories. Arthur refutes the demands, claiming that by the same token Rome should pay tribute to him because his forebears Constantine and Maximus had both once ruled Rome – another piece of Geoffrey’s propaganda. Arthur believes it is time to teach Rome a lesson and plans to invade, amassing an army of over 180,000 troops.

  When Lucius receives the answer to his letter, he determines to invade Britain and raises an army of over 400,000 troops, drawn from across the Empire.

  Arthur sets off from Southampton, leaving behind Guenevere as regent and his nephew Mordred in charge of the island’s defences. Upon landing in Gaul, Arthur undertakes a detour to fight a giant who is occupying the island of Mont-St-Michel and abducting maidens. Arthur soon despatches the giant and returns to the matter in hand. He encamps at Autun on the river Aube in Burgundy, and awaits Lucius’s army. Arthur sends three envoys to parley with Lucius, including his nephew Gawain. Lucius’s nephew Quintillanus taunts Gawain, who reacts by decapitating him. Gawain and the envoys are chased back to their army, though not before they have killed many of the Romans. A battle ensues and is described in immense detail, running to over twenty pages. Arthur is of course victorious, but at a cost. Amongst the casualties are Bedivere and Kay. Lucius Hiberius is also killed.

  Who was Lucius? Although introduced as the Procurator of Rome, he is later identified as both the Emperor (x.4), and also simply as a general. Elsewhere, Lucius considers whether to wait for reinforcements from “the Emperor Leo” (x.6). As Geoffrey Ashe has analysed in The Discovery of King Arthur, only one Emperor Leo adequately fits this role, and this was Leo I, who was Emperor of the East in Constantinople, from 457 to 474. At that time the Empire in the West was in turmoil, with a succession of puppet emperors. One of these was Glycerius, who Ashe suspects may be Geoffrey’s Lucius. He was emperor for little more than a year in 473/4.

  Another suggestion is that Lucius is the Frankish king Clovis. Clovis succeeded his father as chief of the Salian Franks in 481, when he was only fifteen (the age that Arthur was). His rise to fame came in 486 when he defeated Syagrius, the Roman ruler of Northern Gaul and son of Aegidius. Over the next nine years (the same period as Arthur’s campaign), Clovis pushed his authority south. His campaign to the west in Armorica was far more difficult, but he steadily extended his empire. In 507, the Eastern Emperor Anastasius elevated Clovis to the rank of consul, and in 509 he was declared sole ruler of the Franks. But his efforts had exhausted him and he died in 511, aged only 45. Clovis seems an ideal candidate for the source of Geoffrey’s writings about Arthur. Much of what Arthur achieved seems to be modelled on Clovis’s own campaigns, and his dates are almost identical to those that we have identified for Arthur. It is surprising, too, that Geoffrey should have Arthur fighting in Gaul and yet not encounter Clovis. One could argue that the name Clovis, an early form of Louis, could be mutated into Lucius, and that Arthur was fighting Clovis in his role as consul (read procurator) of Gaul.

  This whole episode of Arthur’s venture into France has to be seen in the light of events in Geoffrey’s own lifetime. Henry I, youngest son of William the Conqueror, had grabbed the crown of England in 1100 while his brother
Robert, the rightful heir, was involved in the Crusades. On his return in 1101, Robert invaded England, but Henry bought him off. Robert retained the duchy of Normandy, but Henry kept the kingship. Five years later, Henry invaded Normandy, captured and imprisoned Robert, and regained control of his father’s lands. At the same time, Henry was in conflict with the Pope. Henry had appointed as archbishop of Canterbury the strong-willed Anselm, and Anselm was determined that only he, through papal authority, should be allowed to appoint bishops and other clergy. Henry disagreed. In 1103 Anselm went into self-imposed exile, and Pope Paschal II wrote to threaten Henry with excommunication. This communication from the Pope was similar to the letter received from Rome by Arthur. Henry eventually recalled Anselm, and reached a compromise whereby Anselm could appoint the bishops, but Henry retained authority over church lands. Meanwhile, Henry’s campaign in France continued for over ten years, a combination of diplomacy and warfare culminating in the defeat of Louis VI (another suitable Lucius) in 1119. Through various marriages and alliances, Henry succeeded in controlling not only Normandy, but also Anjou and Maine.

  In telling of Arthur’s conquest of France, Geoffrey was finding precedents for Henry’s position, and comparing Henry’s achievements with those of Britain’s greatest hero. There are even some parallels with Henry’s final years and the breakdown of the world he had fought so hard to establish, but clearly this was an area in which Geoffrey would tread cautiously. It is perhaps pertinent that Geoffrey’s work was not issued until after Henry’s death, thus he was able to glorify Henry’s reign whilst recognising the perils of kingship. Remember that the book was dedicated to Henry’s eldest illegitimate son, Robert, Earl of Gloucester, and appeared in an England once again riven by civil war.

  After defeating Lucius, Geoffrey tells us, Arthur winters in Gaul, preparing to march across the Alps into Rome the following summer. At this point, however, he receives news that Mordred has seized the crown and is living adulterously with Guenevere. Arthur entrusts Hoel with continuing his campaign against Rome, and returns to Britain, landing at Richborough. Mordred has entered into an alliance with the Saxon Chelric, promising him all the land between the Humber and Scotland, as well as Kent. He has also joined forces with the Picts and the Scots, and a confederate army of 80,000 troops advances to meet Arthur. It is a bloody battle and Gawain and Auguselus die, but Arthur’s army is able to push back Mordred – or the “Perjurer”, as Geoffrey calls him. Mordred retreats to Winchester. Guenevere, fearing the worst, flees from York to the City of the Legions (the Tysilio specifically says Caerleon), and withdraws to a nunnery.

  Arthur marches to Winchester, and a second bloody battle ensues. Mordred loses the most men, and flees by ship to Cornwall. Arthur follows, and a third and final battle takes place at the “River Camblam” (Camlan in the Tysilio). Mordred is killed in the first onslaught, but the battle continues. Arthur, we are told, is mortally wounded and taken to the Isle of Avalon. He hands the crown over to Constantine, son of Cador. Avalon is usually identified with Glastonbury in Somerset, which was supposedly known as the Isle of Apples, or Ynys Afallach (see Gazetteer).

  The final days of Arthur have their prototype in Henry I’s last days. Henry had lost all male heirs to the throne. His second marriage was childless and he pinned his hopes on his daughter Matilda, but conflict erupted between Henry and Matilda’s estranged husband Geoffrey of Anjou – a suitable Mordred in the eyes of the English nobles. Henry died before the war began, and the scene was set for civil war.

  Mordred has since passed into legend as Arthur’s nemesis. We will meet him again as Arthur’s incestuous son, but that is the stuff of later tales and not the story as told by Geoffrey. The Welsh form of Mordred is Medrod, and intriguingly only one person by that name appears in the pedigrees accumulated by P.C. Bartrum in Early Welsh Genealogical Tracts. This is Medrawt ap Cawrdaf, grandson of Arthur’s counsellor Caradog Vreichfras, and a contemporary of Athrwys of Gwent (see Table 3.7). We do not know whether Athrwys inherited the Gwentian throne, since he does not seem to have survived his father. It is possible that he was made a sub-king of Ergyng during his father’s long reign, perhaps because Medrawt was too young to inherit, or perhaps because of a military necessity during the growing campaigns of the Saxons after their success at Dyrham in 577. If so, it is possible that once Medrawt reached maturity he might have sought to claim his patrimony, or, as implied in the Triads, a minor quarrel became a battle. Medrawt may well have killed Athrwys, which is why he did not become king.

  Remarkably, Geoffrey provides a date for Arthur’s passing: “This in the year 542 after our Lord’s incarnation.” Geoffrey can only have calculated that date from the Welsh Annals, in which the battle of Camlann is given as year xciii (93), and which we have refined to 539. However, we now believe that date to be at least nineteen years out, and that it should be closer to 520. Earlier, we established that Arthur’s coronation took place around 515, according to Geoffrey’s timeline, and the Gallic/Roman campaign took at least two years, which brings as surprisingly close to 520. For all its vagueness and unlikelihood, there is a bizarre internal logic to Geoffrey’s timeline that has taken us from the departure of the Romans in 410 to the fall of Arthur in 520. This suggests that Geoffrey must have been following a set of annals, perhaps a more complete version of the Annales Cambriae, which was subsequently lost.

  Geoffrey tells us that Constantine continued in conflict with the sons of Mordred, who still headed a Saxon army. After a “long series of battles” the sons fled, one to London and one to Winchester, taking over those cities. Constantine regained the cities and killed Mordred’s sons, both within churches. This was the sacrilege that Gildas recorded. Geoffrey cites this as happening around the time of the death of the saintly Daniel, bishop of Bangor, but his death is recorded in the Annals as cxl, or 586. Either Geoffrey misread the Annals, or he is referring to a possible later translation of Daniel’s bones, though no other source refers to this.

  Geoffrey states that Constantine died four years later, “struck down by the vengeance of God”. The Brut Tysilio is far more specific and says that “in the third year of his reign Constantine himself was killed by Cynan Wledig.” Geoffrey identifies this Cynan as Aurelius Conanus, another of the “whelps” whom Gildas decries. Geoffrey calls him Constantine’s nephew, and states that Cynan killed another uncle who should have succeeded Constantine. The Tysilio, on the other hand, does not state that Constantine and Cynan are related, but agrees that Cynan/Conanus did kill an uncle and his two sons, who had a prior claim to the throne. Gildas called Conanus a parricide, so it is possible that he wiped out his father, his uncle(s) and his cousins. The Tysilio calls him “a young man, whose abilities were equal to the station, for he was prompt and spirited in war.” However, his reign was brief and according to Geoffrey he died in the third year of his reign, or the second year, according to the Tysilio.

  The next ruler was Vortiporius. He faced another onslaught of Saxons, whom he was able to defeat, and took control “of the entire kingdom.” Geoffrey gives no length for his reign, but the Tysilio states four years.

  Then came Malgo, or Maelgwyn Gwynedd. Geoffrey is generally full of praise for Maelgwyn, calling him “most handsome of all the leaders of Britain”, who “strove hard to do away with those who ruled the people harshly.” He was brave, generous and courageous, and became ruler of not only all of Britain, but also Ireland, Iceland, Gotland, Orkney, Norway and Denmark. However, he was “given to the vice of homosexuality.” Geoffrey does not record Maelgwyn’s fate, although the Tysilio does refer to him having died in a convent after seeing “the yellow spectre”, or the plague. Unfortunately, neither source records the length of Maelgwyn’s reign. After Maelgwyn, Geoffrey follows a catalogue of kings who sink into submission to the Saxons up to the death of Cadwaladr in the year 689, well beyond our period of interest.

  We saw earlier that the end of Maelgwyn’s reign is usually equated to the plague recorded in the Welsh
Annals as occurring in the year 549. The length of his reign is uncertain, but it is commonly given as about fifteen years, starting in 534. Combining the data from Geoffrey and the Tysilio, the total span for the reigns of Constantine, Cynan and Vortiporius is about ten years, possibly more as Geoffrey does not state how long the battles with the sons of Mordred lasted. But ten to twelve years would seem about right overall. Previously we had reached the year 519/520 in Geoffrey’s timeline, and the addition often to twelve years brings us to 529/532, certainly close enough to an uncertain 534 to link in with Maelgwyn’s accession.

  It is possible to recreate Geoffrey’s internal chronology, adjusting his year of 542 by the nineteen-year discrepancy in the Annals. The result, like the ones extracted from Nennius, Gildas and the ASC, is not necessarily any more accurate, but it is one worth reviewing.

  Table 9.1 An Arthurian chronology according to Geoffrey

  410

  End of Roman authority; appeal to Aldroenus; Constantine heads army; defeats Picts; made king.

  410–426

  Reign of Constantine. He marries and has three children: Constans (410), Ambrosius (425) and Uther (426).

  426

  Constantine dies; Constans made king under Vortigern’s control.

  428

  Constans murdered; Vortigern king. Ambrosius and Uther smuggled to Brittany [Llydaw]. Arrival of Saxons [Gewis?].