Read The Mammoth Book of King Arthur Online
Authors: Mike Ashley
Gildas was the major witness to early sixth century events, and if Arthur existed he would have known about him. The fact that he does not name him is frustrating but in itself proves nothing.
What Gildas does do is prove that a battle of Badon took place, but he also casts doubt on the dating in the
Welsh Annals
, forcing us to consider an earlier date, during the 490s. He also
provides useful details on Ambrosius, Vortigern and Arthur’s contemporaries, but any other clues about Arthur, despite ingenious interpretations, are very circumspect. We must continue our
search, but now we enter the murky waters of Nennius’s
Historia Brittonum.
6
NENNIUS’S OLD PAPERS
1. Historia Brittonum
Nennius is both the saviour and the curse of Arthurian research. The works attributed to him provide considerable background to early British history that is missing from other
sources. Nennius claimed to “heap” together those records that other historians and church fathers had rejected. Like a jackdaw, he assembled a miscellany of writings known as the
Historia Brittonum
, which, on the surface, seems a goldmine of information, but on close analysis poses more questions than it answers. After working our way through Nennius, the path we
have carved with the help of the
Welsh Annals
, the
ASC
and Gildas will have lost some of its definition.
Nennius tells us in his opening section that “from the passion of Christ 796 years have passed; from the Incarnation 831 years.” In fact, the date, as evident from various references
within the papers, was closer to 828/9. Nennius’s figures show that he believed the life of Christ was 35 years, whereas most scholars treat it as 33, and we will need to bear this in mind in
the computations arising from Nennius’s work.
Nennius benefited from that flowering of research at the court of King Merfyn “the Freckled” of Gwynedd, which also encouraged the compilation of the
Welsh Annals.
However, it
is evident that there were several revisions to the original
Historia Brittonum
, and only one of these incorporates a preface ascribing the work to Nennius. Whilst there’s no reason to
doubt it, we
must consider that the attribution may have been a guess by a later scholar. Nevertheless, for the sake of convenience, I will continue to refer to Nennius as the
author.
That same preface refers to extracts found by Rhun. If this is accurate then it is significant, for it means that amongst the papers found by Nennius were some going back to the century
following Gildas. The son of Urien of Rheged, Rhun was alive in the 620s
(see
Table 3.3
), and entered the church in his later years, retiring to live in Powys. He was on good terms with the
Angles (even credited with baptising King Edwin of Northumbria), and is a logical candidate for producing a Northern Chronicle.
Nennius’s papers go back to the settlement of the Roman consul Brutus, a story told in greater detail by Geoffrey of Monmouth. We need not concern ourselves with his pre-history, but there
are occasional chronological references. For instance, §16 states
2
From the year when the Saxons first came to Britain to the fourth year of king Mervyn, 429 years are reckoned; from the birth of the Lord until the coming of Patrick to
the Irish are 405 years. From the death of Patrick to the death of Saint Brigit are 60 years; from the birth of Columba to the death of Brigit are 4 years.
23 cycles of 19 years from the Incarnation of the Lord until the coming of Patrick to Ireland; these years number 438. From the coming of Patrick to the present 19 year
cycle there are 22 cycles, that is 421 years, two years in the Ogdoad until this present year.
Clearly Nennius – or the author of the paper he was editing – had access to a set of annals, but not the same as those from which the
Welsh Annals
were
compiled, as the latter cite the birth of Columba and the death of St. Brigid in the same year (523). The key date noted here is the first one, relating to the coming of the Saxons. King
Merfyn’s reign is generally accepted to have begun in 825. His fourth year, therefore, is 828/829, the
date believed to be when Nennius compiled his
Historia.
That makes the first Saxon
adventus
the year 400, loosely tying in with the entry in the
Gallic Chronicle
under 410 when the British provinces were “devastated” by the
Saxons, but clashing with another date I shall come to shortly.
The start of his next paragraph contradicts the previous one, though in fact the year cited for the mission of Patrick to Ireland, 438, is close to the traditionally accepted date of 432. The
gap between 438 and 405 is 33 years, the generally accepted lifetime of Christ. Adjusting the number 405 to running from the death of Christ, rather than from his incarnation, reconciles the dates.
Moreover, if we add the 405 years in the first paragraph to the 421 in the second and then add on the two years of the Ogdoad (an ogdoad is a set of eight years), that gives us 828, consistent with
the reference to Merfyn’s reign. This kind of confusing consistency runs throughout Nennius.
The next inconsistency appears between §28 and §30. First Nennius says:
Hitherto the Romans had ruled the British for 409 years. But the British overthrew the rule of the Romans and paid them no taxes and did not accept their kings to reign
over them and the Romans did not dare to come to Britain to rule any more, for the British had killed their generals.
The year 409 at first seems fairly accurate, close to Zosimus’s date of 410, when the British expelled the Roman officials. However, the Claudian conquest of Britain was
in 43
AD
, meaning that Nennius’s 409 years begins then, bringing us to the year 452, which seems far too late. Before contesting this further, let’s see what it
says in §30:
The Romans came with a great army to help them and placed emperors in Britain; and when the emperor was established with his generals the armies went back to Rome, and
came and went in alternation over 348 years. But the British killed the Roman generals, because of the weight of the empire, and later asked their help. The Romans came to bring help to the
empire and defend it, and deprived Britain
of her gold and silver and bronze and all her precious raiment and honey, and went back in triumph.
348 years from 43
AD
is 391, soon after the death of Magnus Maximus. It is, however, worth noting that the gap from 391 to 409 inclusive is 19 years
– one Easter cycle. Nennius’s source may simply have missed (or lost) one set of records.
Elsewhere in his Miscellany, in §66, Nennius has this to say:
From the reign of Vortigern to the quarrel between Vitalinus and Ambrosius are 12 years, that is Guoloppum, or
Catguoloph
[the battle of Wallop]. Vortigern,
however, held the empire in Britain in the consulship of Theodosius and Valentinian, and in the fourth year of his reign the English came to Britain, in the consulship of Felix and Taurus, in
the 400th year from the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The first joint consulship of Theodosius and Valentinian was in 425
AD
, although they also held the title jointly in 426, 430 and 435. However, Felix and
Taurus held the consulship only once, in 428, which was indeed the fourth year after 425. Nennius, though, equates that year to the 400th since Christ’s birth, but may have meant from the
baptism of Christ, at age 28, when he received the Holy Spirit, sometimes referred to as Christ’s true “incarnation”.
Thus we can see that Vortigern came to power in 425, that the Saxons first arrived in 428 and that in 437 was a battle between Ambrosius and Vitalinus, which I shall explore in more detail
shortly.
All this gives the impression that the information is there, but one has to work hard to find it. With that in mind, let us run through the
Historia Brittonum
from §31 onwards, which
follows from the death of Magnus Maximus:
It came to pass that after this war between the British and the Romans, when their generals were killed, and after the killing of the tyrant Maximus and the end of the
Roman Empire in Britain, the Britons went in fear for 40 years. Guorthigirnus [Vortigern] then reigned in Britain. He had
cause for dread, not only from the Scots and
Picts, but also from the Romans, and a dread of Ambrosius.
In the meantime, three ships, exiled from Germany, arrived in Britain. They were commanded by the brothers Horsa and Hengist, sons of Wihtgils. [. . .]. Vortigern received them as friends,
and delivered up to them the island which is in their language called Thanet, and, by the Britons, Ruym.
Gratianus Æquantius at that time reigned in Rome. The Saxons were received by Vortigern, three hundred and forty-seven years after the passion of Christ [and, according to the
tradition of our ancestors, from the period of their first arrival in Britain, to the first year of the reign of king Edmund, five hundred and forty-two years; and to that in which we now
write, which is the fifth of his reign, five hundred and forty-seven years].
The opening paragraph is ambiguous. It could be interpreted as meaning that the fearful 40 years occurred directly after the fall of Maximus in 388
AD
,
during which time Vortigern ruled, or that Vortigern came to power at the end of the forty year period. If the latter, then Vortigern’s rule began in 428, close to the date of 425
extrapolated from §30.
It is pertinent that Nennius records Vortigern as afraid not only of the Picts and Saxons, but also of the Romans, specifically Ambrosius. This reference to the Romans may mean that Vortigern
feared they might try to reclaim Britain for the Empire, but I believe it has to be read in conjunction with the reference to Ambrosius, namely that Vortigern was in fear of the Roman faction in
Britain, led by Ambrosius. Can this be the same Ambrosius that led the British rally against the Saxons in the 460s? It seems unlikely, especially when we check §66, which refers to
Ambrosius’s battle with Vitalinus in 437. If we read this in conjunction with Gildas’s description of Ambrosius’s parents as having “worn the purple”, and therefore
being Roman, we can more logically deduce that Vortigern was in dread of Ambrosius the Elder. But who was Vitalinus?
This brings us to the matter of Vortigern’s real name. The name Vortigern, as mentioned earlier, means “supreme king”,
hence Gildas’s pun on
“superb tyrant.” It may well have been the name by which Vortigern was always known. In §49 Nennius provides a genealogy for Vortigern, telling us that “Guorthegirn
Guortheneu was the son of Guitaul, son of Guitolion of Gloui.” Latinized, this reads “Vortigern, the Third son of Vitalis, son of Vitalinus of Gloucester.” Vitalinus was thus
Vortigern’s grandfather and it is possible that Vortigern’s real name was also Vitalinus or Vitalis.
There is, however, more to Vitalinus. An ancient list of archbishops of London, believed to have been compiled by the twelfth-century Jocelin of Furness and incorporated by John Stow into his
Annales of England
(1580), includes the name Guetelinus as the twelfth to hold that office. No date is attached to him, but intriguingly Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his
History of the Kings
of Britain
, also mentions this Guetelinus as the archbishop of London at the time of the Roman withdrawal. He attributes to Guetelinus the writing of the letter, which we know to have been
written in about 446, to the Roman commander Aëtius, seeking help against the invaders. Although it is entirely possible for Guetelinus to have survived that long, I believe that both Geoffrey
and Nennius’s sources were confusing father and son, or grandson. The elder Vitalinus would have been bishop in 410, and either Vitalis or Vortigern fought Ambrosius the Elder at Guoloph in
437, and wrote the appeal in 446.
Nennius tells us that Vortigern granted Hengist and Horsa territory on Ruym, which in other copies of the manuscript is spelled Ruoichin.
Ruoichin
, or
Ruithin
, is sometimes
translated as “river-island”, and is taken to mean the Isle of Thanet in Kent, separated from the mainland by the Wantsum Channel, and long regarded as the landing place of the Saxons
and their first settlement in Britain. But this does not wholly accord with Nennius’s record. In fact, there is no reference to Kent in this paragraph. For a start he states that Ruym is
called “Tanet” in “their [the Saxons’] language”, but the Isle of Thanet’s name is of Celtic origin,
Tanat,
meaning “fire island”, perhaps
because there was a beacon there.
Ruym, on the other hand, is more likely derived from
rhwym
, meaning a bond or obligation. In other words, this land, wherever it was, was granted to the Saxons in return for their
services. The
town of Bonby in the North Lincolnshire Wolds has a similar origin,
Bond-by
, usually interpreted as “peasant’s farmhouse”, but meaning
literally a farmland worked under bond. Bonby is on the edge of the Ancholme river valley which was regularly flooded until extensive drainage works were built in the seventeenth century. Moreover,
just north of Bonby is Saxby, “Saxon’s farmhouse”, and just north of that, near Barton on Humber, is Beacon Hill, which was almost certainly an island in Saxon times and may also
have been called Tanet by the British. This is not to say that Bonby was the original Saxon settlement, but its location is significant for two reasons. Directly across the Ancholme valley from
Bonby are the villages of Winteringham and Winterton, the names of which are both from an Angle, Winta. J.N.L. Myres has suggested in
The English Settlements
that this is the same Winta as
in the ancestry of the kings of Lindsey (
see
Table 3.11
), a contemporary of Hengist and Icel, and thus one of the first settlers after the initial forays. Additionally, the archaeology has
identified early Saxon settlements with mixed British and Saxon burial customs throughout this area.