The Mammoth Book of King Arthur (9 page)

Legend remembers Owain as a strong, virile man, who fought the giant Eurnach, with both wielding tree trunks. The same legend records that although Owain defeated Eurnach the giant fell on
Owain, killing him. This may all be fanciful, but at the core it may be a folk memory of Owain struggling against a greater authority whom Owain weakened, but who ultimately defeated him. That
greater authority could well have been Vitalinus, or Vitalinus’s grandson Vortigern, who was also Owain’s brother-in-law, having married Maximus’s daughter Severa. Owain’s
tomb is recorded as being at Beddgelert in Snowdonia, which was near one of Vortigern’s strongholds. There is no further reference to Owain after Vortigern’s rise to power.

As we have seen, the British gave their military leaders the title
wledig.
Magnus Maximus, for instance, was Macsen Wledig, and the title was also applied to Ceretic of Strathclyde,
Cunedda of the Manau and Ambrosius the Younger (son of Vitalinus’s rival), who was called Emrys Wledig. There were about a dozen
wledigs
from the fifth and sixth centuries, some of
whom are remembered only in later tales and legends, and it is difficult to know what part they played in the emergence of these kingdoms. One in particular stands out – Amlawdd Wledig. I
shall discuss him in more detail later, but because he married a daughter of Cunedda, he must also have been fairly active around this period. Legend makes him the grandfather of Arthur’s
wife Guinevere. He is associated with territory in South Wales and it is possible that he filled the vacuum left by Owain.

There is no reason to believe that any other kingdoms emerged in the south at this time. Both the archeological evidence and, to a degree, the written record – primarily that left by
Gildas – suggest that Roman life continued much as before for at least a generation. Whilst northern Britain and parts of west Wales
were the scenes of fighting and
increasing devastation, it was not until the 430s and 440s that the south began to be threatened by the more serious incursion of the Saxons. It was then that the seeds were sown for the Arthurian
legend with the stories of Vortigern, Ambrosius and Uther Pendragon.

In order that we can see how this legend emerged I want to follow through all of the surviving ancient documents that cover this period, no matter how dubious.

The principal documents are the
De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae
(
The Ruin of Britain
) by Gildas, the
Welsh Annals (Annales Cambriae)
, the
Historia Brittonum
,
usually credited to Nennius, and the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
There are also the genealogies, a few ancient poems such as the
Y Goddodin
, and the lives of the saints, none of which is
contemporary and few of which are reliable. More reliable are ancient inscriptions on stones, but these have been subject to weathering and destruction.

There may well have been more documents at some stage. When Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote his
History of the Kings of Britain
in the 1130s, he referred to a “certain very ancient
book” which he had consulted. But such chronicles as may have been kept in the fifth or sixth centuries would mostly have been compiled and retained in monasteries, and these were subject to
regular attack from the Vikings for over two hundred years, let alone the ravages of time and other dangers such as fire and flood. The library at Glastonbury Abbey was all but destroyed by fire in
1184 and one can but weep at what irreplaceable documents were lost.

The Venerable Bede, regarded as the father of British history, was a dedicated researcher and may have had access to some of these lost documents, but he relied heavily on Gildas for his
coverage of the fifth and sixth centuries and, like Gildas, makes no mention of Arthur. That may by itself seem significant, but Bede was not that interested in events before the arrival of St.
Augustine, and would not have looked further into ancient British history. He was, however, the first to provide the name Vortigern. His primary research relates to later years, which means that
England’s foremost historian of the Dark Ages can provide no help with the story of Arthur.

One can live in hope that some long lost document may surface in an ancient archive, but until then we have to work with what we’ve got and hope that archaeology may
help substantiate or further define the world in which the events took place. I shall look at each of these sources over the next few chapters, which will also help flesh out a chronology so we
know where in time to place Arthur.

Before doing that, though, it is worthwhile listing here the various pedigrees that survive in the ancient records. These are far from reliable – in fact at times they are wholly
misleading – and they are almost impossible to date. But we will encounter many of these people as we travel through the other documents so it is worth acquainting ourselves with them here
and trying to get at least a rough chronology. This will also show where the various individuals named Arthur or Artúir or Arthwyr appear.

GENEALOGIES AND KING LISTS

One of the key essentials to identifying Arthur is to place him in a specific period of time, along with his contemporaries. Without that we will get nowhere. In the next few
chapters I will go through the various chronicles and see what timeline they suggest. Here, in order to acquaint ourselves with the names and territories that later emerged in Britain, I shall set
out the various “royal” pedigrees and make some attempt to date them. Several authorities, not least Dr David Dumville, one of the undisputed experts on the Dark Ages, have demonstrated
the difficulty in trying to get any chronology from the pedigrees for reasons I shall cover in a moment. So I start with a huge caveat that of all the sources covered in the next few chapters,
these are amongst the most unreliable. But it seems to make sense to start with the data which is the least in focus and fine tune it as we go along.

The British pedigrees and regnal lists are extensive and survive in a wide variety of ancient documents, though none contemporary with Arthur’s period. There are three major sources and
many minor. The major ones are known as the Harleian MS. 3859, Jesus College MS. 20 and
Bonedd y Saint.
The Harleian manuscript is part of the text which also includes Nennius’s
Historia Brittonum
, but the oldest surviving copy
with the genealogies dates from about 1100. The name Harleian comes from the original collection, now housed in the
British Library, established by Robert Harley (1661–1724), first Earl of Oxford. The surviving copy of Jesus College MS. 20 (now in the Bodleian Library in Oxford) has been dated to around
1340, and was probably drawn from a copy completed about a century earlier. The
Bonedd y Saint
, or “Lineage of the Saints”, survives in many copies and versions, but the oldest
dates from the end of the thirteenth century. This is held in the National Library of Wales and is known as Peniarth MS. 183. Both the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
and Nennius also provide a number
of pedigrees.

The pedigrees start with a contemporary descendant and work backwards through the generations. For instance, the first genealogy of the kingdom of Gwynedd listed in Harleian MS. 3859 begins:

. . . “Owen son of Iguel son of Catell” and so on. For the purposes of this book I want to reverse them into the order we usually understand genealogies, reading
from earliest to latest.

Clearly these genealogies are so far removed in time from the Arthurian period that their accuracy is spurious. This is not simply because they may have been corrupted by scribal errors, but
because there has been ample time for genealogies to have been fabricated. The primary reason for producing a pedigree is to identify a priority of descent, and thereby a claim to a title or land,
and later rulers would have no compunction in having their scribes create a false genealogy. It is only by comparing the many hundreds of documents that survive that we can identify variances and
attempt to correct them.

The other problem is that all too few of these genealogies contain identifiable dates. The only way to create a chronology is by working backward or forward from known dates and for that reason
I take many of the following lists beyond our period of 400–600
AD
in order to get a firm footing. But dating pedigrees has
an inherent problem.
There is a general rule of thumb that a generation covers 25 to 30 years. We can easily test that. In the
Mammoth Book of British Kings & Queens
, I list a pedigree for Queen Elizabeth II
from Beli Mawr, the first known British king who lived in about 100
BC
. It consists of 73 generations covering approximately 2050 years, equalling 28 years per generation.
However, it is a very approximate yardstick. We do not always know if a name in a genealogy is a first born or last born, and a man could father a son at any time from, say, age 15 to 65. It is
quite easy to have a youngest son who is younger than his own nephew. Unless we have some corroborating dates it is easy to be out by an entire generation.

In the following pedigrees I alternate generations by 25 and 30 years to keep the average to around 28. I use the term
floruit
to denote the period of an individual’s prime of life,
from about age 20 to 50. The dates given for
floruit
therefore are not birth-death. Where any real dates are known I provide them. In some cases I list generations from brothers and because
you have to allow ten or more years between a range of brothers I have extended the generational span accordingly from 30 to 40 years. Clearly all of this is very approximate but, if the pedigree
itself is in any way accurate, it will give us a bearing on an individual at least to within thirty to forty years. Even so, some displacements in time do occur, which suggests corruption within
the pedigree.

I am indebted to the work of P.C. Bartrum who has collected and assimilated many of these surviving pedigrees in
Early Welsh Genealogical Tracts
(1966) and explored them further in
A
Welsh Classical Dictionary
(1993). Without his work the following would have been extremely difficult. However I have not always followed the dates that Bartrum has assigned to individuals,
preferring to follow my own logic as consistently as I can.

Following the sequence I discussed above, starting with the kingdoms in the north, the following charts begin with the ancestry of Coel and Cunedda and work through the Men of
the North to Wales, the south-west and finally Brittany. I also include the Saxon pedigrees, such as they are.

This first table lists the two pedigrees in Harleian MS. 3859
that show the descent of both Cunedda and Coel through collateral lines from Beli. The names given are first
the Latin names, as per the pedigree, followed by their Celtic equivalent, as per Bartrum.

The table shows the limitations of the 25–30 year average for each generation, especially when the starting point is also vague. If we assume that Amalech in the first column is a
duplication of Aballac, then there are 15 generations to Coel and 17 to Cunedda, which gives us roughly 410 and 465 respectively. That gives a reasonable mid-life
floruit
for Coel, but the
extra generation places Cunedda too late. Since Cunedda is supposed to have married Coel’s daughter, he must have lived a generation earlier, in the 420s. Although Coel’s dates seem
about right, if the name listed as his father, Guotepauc, was really the title “Protector”, it would push him back a generation, making him too early.

It shows that though the generation calculation may get you to roughly the right period, you need other data to fine tune it, albeit still approximately. The more we work through the pedigrees,
the more the chronology will come into focus.

Table 3.3 introduces the second “Arthur” after Artorius. Because Coel’s descendants are so numerous, I have grouped them by generation, giving an idea of their territories. I
have excluded Coel’s daughter Gwawl who married Cunedda, who appears in a later chart, and Coel’s third son Dydrwr, whose descendants are not known. Because each line includes older and
younger sons, I’ve lengthened the prime-of-life “floruit” to forty years, and averaged the generation span to about thirty years.

This table is a synthesis of several pedigrees, not all of which concur. Presenting them in a chronological form opens up even more queries. For instance, the few certain dates we know are the
life of Kentigern and the fall of Ceredig, last king of Elmet, who was expelled by Edwin of Northumbria around 619/620. Ceredig is usually regarded as the son, or successor, of Gwallawg, who was
involved in battles with the early kings of Bernicia (northern Northumbria and the southern territory of the Gododdin) in the 580s. But Gwallawg is recorded as the son of Llenauc, great-grandson of
Coel, and thus could only have lived around the early 500s. It is possible that the sons were born in their father’s older years, but that raises the question of older sons more likely to
succeed (or, if they were killed in battle, to be
remembered in the poems). It suggests there may be a missing generation. The same applies to Dunod, who is always listed as a
son of Pabo, yet the annals give his death as 590, suggesting either that he lived a very long time or that there is a generation missing.