The Mammoth Book of King Arthur (28 page)

We have deduced from our earlier chronology that Arthur’s battle campaign, leading up to Badon, probably fell between 485 and 497 so if Nennius’s battle list
genuinely relates to Arthur and is not an amalgam of heroic battles, this map will help us focus more closely. We have five options. And we need to know who was ruling, or was the likely premier
battle commander, in these locations during those years.

North Wales

The pattern of battles suggests conflict either between the territories of Gwynedd and Powys, or within Gwynedd, between the successors of Cunedda. The Saxons were still many
years away from reaching the borders of Powys, and the threat from the Irish raiders, though still present, was no longer of such significance as to require so consolidated a campaign.

At this stage Gwynedd was not the united power it later became but was ruled by the sons and grandsons of Cunedda who governed from their hilltop forts in Anglesey and across the north of Wales.
The principal ruler was Cadwallon Lawhir (“Longhand”). Early in his reign he was involved in a series of battles, where he combined forces with his uncle Ysfael against the Irish, who
had settled on Anglesey in previous generations. Cadwallon took part in a famous battle called
Cerrig-y-Gwyddyl
(“Stones of the Irish”), where they hobbled their horses’
front legs together so that they could only charge straight ahead. This was remembered in a Welsh Triad as one of the “Three Fettered Warbands”.

Cadwallon appears in Geoffrey’s story of Arthur as one of the four kings who bore golden swords at Arthur’s coronation. This confirms that at least some tradition makes Cadwallon and
Arthur contemporaries, but otherwise there is no firm evidence that Cadwallon fought either against or alongside Arthur.

Another candidate is Cadwallon’s cousin Owain Danwyn, “White Tooth”. Ruler of Gwynedd at Din Arth, he was the father of Cynlas the Tawny (Cuneglasus the Butcher), one of
Gildas’s tyrants, and was possibly murdered by his nephew Maelgwyn, son of Cadwallon, another of the tyrants. Graham Phillips and Martin Keatman, in
King Arthur, The True Story
,
suggest that Owain is Arthur, noting that Owain was a contemporary of Arthur of Badon, that Arthur was murdered by his nephew, and that the rulers of Gwynedd were known as the
‘Pendragons’ (head dragons) of Britain.

The title Pendragon, whilst closely associated with Arthur and, more specially, his father Uther, was not held solely by the rulers of one territory. According to Laurence
Gardner in
Bloodline of the Holy Grail
, the Pen Dragon or “Head Dragon” was the “Guardian of the Celtic Isle”. The Pendragon was appointed by a council of Druid
Elders, and the earliest recorded was Cunobelinus (Cymbeline). During the Roman occupation the title must have been little more than honorific, but once the Roman yoke was lifted the Pendragon was
able to re-emerge. The holder would also be a powerful ruler of his own kingdom but, as the Pendragon, was also the personification of Celtic authority. He was not a battle commander, who, rather
like the Roman
dux
, was the
guletic
, or
wledig.

Gardner provides his list of the Pendragons in
Realm of the Ring Lords.
Those relevant to our period of scrutiny are listed below. Their dates are drawn from my own assessments in Chapter
3. I have added the names of the relevant
wledig
, according to Gardner, as well as other known
wledigs
[in brackets] not specified by Gardner.

Gardner shows that although the Pendragon inheritance follows a bloodline, this can pass through daughters as well as sons, and thus may not stay within one kingdom. For
instance, Aedan mac Gabhran, of Irish descent, inherited the title because his mother
was the daughter of Brychan of Manau, whose wife was the daughter of Dyfnwal Hen.

The Pendragon at the time of Badon, in the 490s, may have been Brychan of Brycheiniog, though he would have been old and unlikely to be present at the battle. Since we cannot be precise about
individuals’ lifespans, it’s possible Brychan was dead by then and that Dyfnwal Hen, whom we shall meet later, was the Pendragon. It was not Owain White-tooth.

Phillips and Keatman treat Owain as a ruler of Powys, with his capital at Wroxeter, but the genealogies do not support this. Powys at this time was almost certainly ruled by Cadell (
see
Chapter 6), the servant of King Benli, who with the help of Germanus (or Garmon) assumes the kingship. Powys was still a single kingdom, as inherited from Vortigern, though it later split into
North and South. Bartrum conjectures (based on the Benli story) that Cadell’s fortress was in North Powys, at Llanarmon. Another suggestion, dating back to the seventeenth century, was that
the descendants of Cadell (the Cadellings) lived at Gaer Fawr (the Great Castle), a massive hill fort just north of Guilsfield (Cegidfa), near Welshpool. Intriguingly, if you plot the likely Welsh
sites for Arthur’s twelve battles, all but one of them (the Twrc estuary for Tribruit) form a defensive square surrounding Guilsfield. It is a compelling thought that these battles might
represent a campaign by Cadell to defend and rebuild the boundaries of Powys. Unfortunately, though archaeological evidence shows that this hillfort was restrengthened at the end of the Roman
period, there is not much support for its continued occupation in the fifth or sixth centuries. If it was reoccupied it may have been only as a short-term defensive strategy.

A site nearby, though, holds more intriguing possibilities. Phillips and Keatman believe that Wroxeter was, at least for some time, the most important city within Powys, and the archaeology
supports this. Ken Dark, in
Civitas to Kingdom
, states that “the evidence from Wroxeter does encourage us to suppose that this was, if not
the
political centre of the Powysian
kingdom on the fifth century, at least one of them.” Wroxeter was occupied through to the mid sixth century, but soon afterwards the population moved to the refuge of the hill fort at the
Wrekin, just outside the Roman town. Wroxeter has long been proposed
as Vortigern’s town. Graham Webster confirms that in the centre of Wroxeter, in the mid fifth
century, something like a grand country mansion was built for a “powerful character”.

There is also a memorial stone, dating from this time, commemorating a king called Cunorix. It reads
CUNORIX MAQUS MAQUI COLONE
, and is usually translated as
“Cunorix, son of Maquicoline”. It has been dated as most likely of the late fifth century, probably 460–475. It is usually presumed to be a memorial to a visiting king, possibly
one of the rulers of Dyfed, who was the guest of the head man in Wroxeter.

Cun-
is a frequent prefix in Celtic names, such as Cunedda and Cunobelinus. The name Cunorix means “Hound King”, and would convert into Welsh as Cynwrig, strikingly similar to
Cerdic’s son Cynric, suggesting the possibility that Cynric was named after one of Cerdic’s relatives, perhaps an uncle, who might be commemorated here because he was one of the
defenders of Wroxeter.

Maquicoline is an unusual compound name. It translates as “Son of the Holly”. The equivalent word in Welsh for holly was
celyn.
Celyn was an occasional name, sometimes
corrupted to Cuhelyn or Celynin. One of Gildas’s brothers was called Celyn, but the name is not known for any king. Curiously, in the
Brut y Brenhinedd
, the name of Vortigern’s
grandfather, Vitalinus (Guethelinus), is copied as Cuhelyn. If we follow this fancy a little further, then Cunorix, as “the son of the son of” Cuhelyn, could be Vortigern himself.
Vortigern means “supreme king”, which could also be an interpretation of Cunorix.

Regardless of who Cunorix was, it is evident that Wroxeter was not only a major town in the fifth century, but one that was fit for a king who entertained kings. Someone would have succeeded to
this estate after the death of Vortigern and his sons, and this can only have been the successor to the territory of Powys. Initially it may have been Ambrosius himself, ruling Powys from Wroxeter
from the 460s to the 470s before Cadell took over.

This all rather temptingly makes Cadell a candidate for Arthur, one I have not seen previously suggested. One could even fancy Viriconium as the mythical Camelot, not by name, but as the most
impressive surviving town in sub-Roman Britain. The archaeologists at Wroxeter stated that the town contains “the
last classically inspired buildings in Britain”.
Christopher Snyder, in
An Age of Tyrants
, writes, “sub-Roman Wroxeter was a town worth protecting, with new structures and imported goods, worthy of a local lord and his
guests.”

This suggests something of far wider consequences than Cadell protecting Powys from the young upstart Maelgwyn. It suggests that Viriconium, in the hands of Cadell, served as a protection not
just for Powys but for the whole of Wales, which brings us to the next option.

Western Frontier

The most remarkable aspect of the line connecting these battles is that it runs almost vertically north-south, much of it following what later became Offa’s Dyke. It thus
forms a natural frontier between Wales and beyond, reaching up into the old British kingdom of Rheged. It could easily be held from three forts – Caerleon in the south and Chester and
Ribchester in the north, with Viriconium as the administrative centre. It would require a consortium of only three rulers, as in the 480s and 490s Chester was probably part of Powys. If we accept
Cadell as the principal ruler in Powys, the ruler in Rheged was most likely Merchiaun (Mark) the Lean. The ruler in Gwent is more problematic as data is confusing. Table 3.7 suggests it would be
Erb, one of those individuals who is no more than a name in a pedigree. The power in the area was either Brychan of Brycheiniog, or more likely Erb’s predecessor Caradog, who was probably
still alive.

Caradog is one of many with that name, but some believe that this is the real Caradog Vreichfras, not the descendant of a century later. Caradog was Arthur’s senior counsellor whom we will
discuss in more detail in the next chapter. Meirchion may have been the father of King Mark of the Tristan legend (
see
Chapter 13). This frontier would thus be held by four powerful rulers:
Cadell, Brychan, Caradog and Meirchion. All of them could have been involved in battles holding the line in the name of the
Ardd Ri
, who at that time was Brychan.

The biggest problem with this proposal is why the frontier was here. Although today it runs remarkably close to the present
border between Wales and England, there was no
such division in the late fifth century. If there was any border, it was that between Britannia Prima and the other two southern provinces, which ran about thirty miles to the east. If, as we have
suggested, Maxima Caesariensis had still sought to continue a Roman style of administration, whilst Flavia Caesariensis was becoming settled by the Saxons in the east, this border would be all the
more significant to those in Britannia Prima.

There is, though, little evidence to show that the provinces survived much beyond the middle of the fifth century. Charts identifying the distribution of Saxon occupation by the late fifth
century show them penetrating little further west than the line of Dere/Ermine Street, though with probable forays across the Midlands into eastern Powys which, at this time, stretched more into
the centre of Britain.

The Dream of Rhonabwy
, later included as part of
The Mabinogion
, talks of the battle of Badon as Caer Faddon, and places it near to Welshpool (
see
Chapter 8). Although the
story dates from more than seven centuries after Arthur, it is clearly a memory of a major confrontation with the Saxons. It may not have been
the
Battle of Badon, as recalled by Gildas, but
it must have been a significant battle at a place with a name sufficiently similar to Badon to become identified with it.