King Arthur in history and legend

by William Lewis Jones

Geoffrey’s History, to be properly understood, must thus be read in the light of the general literary history of its time. Romance was in demand, and Geoffrey was shrewd enough to perceive the romantic value of the story of Arthur. It is impossible to read the Arthurian chapters in his Book without feeling that the writer is conscious of having got hold of “a good thing,” and that he is determined to make the most of it. So he gives his imagination free play, and palpably expands and embellishes his matter as he goes on. The Historia is much more of a romance than a sober chronicle, and it is quite conceivable that, in an age of literary experiment, its author enjoyed the use to which he was thus putting the time-honoured form of the chronicle. It is not, of course, suggested that Geoffrey invented all, or even the greater part, of his matter; nor need it be believed that the reference to “the British book” is altogether a ruse. Like other chroniclers, he borrows largely from his predecessors; what he has taken from Nennius and Bede, for example, can be clearly traced in his text. But the History obviously contains much which Geoffrey either invented, or of which he was unwilling to disclose the secret source. It is otherwise unaccountable that he should warn orthodox and reputable chroniclers, like William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon, not to pry into the romantic enclosure which was his own particular preserve. In his epilogue, Geoffrey tells these two eminent historians that they may go on writing about “the kings of the Saxons,” if they choose, but he “bids them be silent as to the kings of the Britons, since they have not that book in the British speech which Walter, archdeacon of Oxford, brought over from Brittany.”

Of scarcely less significance than his epilogue, as throwing a light upon the general character of the work, is Geoffrey’s introductory chapter. Its apologetic tone is distinctly suspicious, and seems intended to disarm the critical by vouching an authority, both ancient and written in a strange tongue, for the marvellous narrative that was to follow and for the ornate style in which it was presented. It is worth quoting in full, for it really strikes the keynote to the entire work.

“Oftentimes in turning over in mine own mind the many themes that might be subject-matter of a book, my thoughts would fall upon the plan of writing a history of the Kings of Britain; and in my musings thereupon meseemed it a marvel that, beyond such mention as Gildas and Bede have made of them in their luminous tractate, nought could I find as concerning the kings that had dwelt in Britain before the Incarnation of Christ, nor nought even as concerning Arthur and the many others that did succeed him after the Incarnation, albeit that their deeds be worthy of praise everlasting, and be as pleasantly rehearsed from memory by word of mouth in the traditions of many peoples as though they had been written down. Now, whilst I was thus thinking upon such matters, Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, a man learned not only in the art of eloquence, but in the histories of foreign lands, offered me a certain most ancient book in the British language that did set forth the doings of them all in due succession and order from Brute, the first king of the Britons, onward to Cadwallader, the son of Cadwallo, all told in stories of exceeding beauty. At his request, therefore, albeit that never have I gathered gay flowers of speech in other men’s little gardens and am content with mine own rustic manner of speech and mine own writing-reeds, have I been at pains to translate this volume into the Latin tongue. For, had I besprinkled my page with high-flown phrases, I should only have engendered a weariness in my readers by compelling them to spend more time over the meaning of the words than upon understanding the drift of my story.”

Then follows the dedication to Robert of Gloucester.[76] Having thus given us his authority, and having taken further shelter under the wing of Walter, Geoffrey settles down to his task with all the gravity of a pious monkish chronicler. As other chroniclers had done before him, he, in his early books at least, makes brief references—as, apparently, so many “guarantees of good faith”—to contemporaneous events in sacred and profane history. When, for example, Gwendolen is said to have handed over the sceptre to her son Maddan, we learn that “Samuel the prophet reigned in Judæa, and Homer was held to be a famous teller of histories and poet.” Carlisle, we are told, was founded at the time when “Solomon began to build the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem.” “The fortress of Mount Paladur, which is now called Shaftesbury,” was built by Hudibras, when “Haggai, Amos, Joel and Azarias did prophesy.” We get, in the account of the building of Shaftesbury, a characteristic example of Geoffrey’s way of getting level with the sceptical reader. “There, while the wall was a-building, an eagle spake, the sayings whereof, had I believed them to be true, I would not have shrunk from committing to memory along with the rest.”

It is time, however, to give some account of Geoffrey’s narrative of the life of Arthur. He was, we are told, the son of Uther Pendragon[77] by Igerne, the lawful wife of Gorlois, duke of Cornwall. Uther is introduced to us as the brother of Aurelius Ambrosius, and becomes, on the death of Aurelius, king of Britain. After conquering the Saxons under Octa and Eosa, and strengthening his kingdom generally, he falls in love with Igerne and quarrels with her husband. He, thereupon, makes war upon Gorlois and besieges him in the castle of Dimilioc. Igerne had, in the meantime, been sent for safer refuge to the neighbouring castle of Tintagel, on the sea-coast. Thither Uther, transformed into the semblance of Gorlois by Merlin’s magic powers, proceeds in quest of her; he gains ready admission, and so becomes the father of Arthur. Immediately afterwards Gorlois, in a sally from Dimilioc, is killed, and in due time Uther marries Igerne. Another child born unto them was a daughter, Anna, who became the wife of “Lot of Lodonesia,” and the mother of Gawain and Modred. After another campaign against Octa and Eosa, Uther is poisoned by the Saxons, and Arthur succeeds to the throne. He is crowned by Dubricius, “archbishop of the City of Legions,”[78] and is thus portrayed as he was at the time of his coronation. “At that time Arthur was a youth of fifteen years, of a courage and generosity beyond compare, whereunto his inborn goodness did lend such grace as that he was beloved of well-nigh all the peoples of the land. After he had been invested with the ensigns of royalty, he abided by his ancient wont, and was so prodigal of his bounties as that he began to run short of wherewithal to distribute amongst the huge multitude of knights that made repair unto him. But he that hath within him a bountiful nature along with prowess, albeit that he be lacking for a time, natheless in no wise shall poverty be his bane for ever. Wherefore did Arthur, for that in him did valour keep company with largess, make resolve to harry the Saxons, to the end that with their treasure he might make rich the retainers that were of his own household.” Thus it comes about that Arthur begins his career of conquest at once. He attacks the Saxon chieftains Colgrin, Cheldric and Baldulph, and with the help of his nephew Hoel, king of Armorica, subdues them after several battles—including the twelve recorded by Nennius—of which the last is fought in “the country about Bath.” Arthur himself, carrying “on his shoulder the shield Priwen,” and armed with Ron, his spear, and “Caliburn, best of swords, that was forged within the Isle of Avalon,” performed prodigies of valour in that battle. “Whomsoever he touched, calling upon God, he slew at a single blow, nor did he once slacken in his onslaught until that he had slain four hundred and seventy men single-handed with his sword Caliburn.” Having restored the whole island to its pristine British dignity, Arthur, we read, “took unto him a wife born of a noble Roman family, Guenevere, who, brought up and nurtured in the household of Duke Cador (of Cornwall), did surpass in beauty all the other dames of the island.”[79] His marriage only stimulated Arthur to attempt, and achieve, further conquests; and, in rapid succession, Ireland, Iceland, Gothland, and the Orkneys, are either subdued or forced to pay tribute to him. Then follow twelve years of peace, during which his court waxed in splendour, and his renown spread until “at last the fame of his bounty and his prowess was on every man’s tongue, even unto the uttermost ends of the earth, and a fear fell upon the kings of the realms oversea lest he might fall upon them in arms and they might lose the nations under their dominion.” Hence, one is not surprised to learn that Arthur’s “heart was uplifted for that he was a terror unto them all, and he set his desire upon subduing the whole of Europe unto himself.” Norway, Dacia and Gaul are invaded, and quickly reduced to submission. Lot, his sister’s husband, is given what was his of ancestral right, the crown of Norway, just at the time, as we are told incidentally, when “Gawain, the son of Lot, was a youth of twelve years, and had been sent by his uncle to be brought up as a page in the service of Pope Sulpicius.” Arthur’s visit to Gaul led to a single combat between him and a man of giant stature, Flollo, “Tribune of Rome”; the British king was wounded in the fight, but at last “raising Caliburn aloft” he clove Flollo’s head “sheer in twain.” He concluded his business in Gaul by giving “Neustria, which is now called Normandy, unto Bedevere, his butler, and the province of Anjou unto Kay, his seneschal.”

Returning to Britain, Arthur holds high court at Caerleon-upon-Usk, and in the descriptions of the state that he kept there the colour and pomp of the age of chivalry, and of Norman court-life, run unchecked through Geoffrey’s narrative. Even before he had embarked upon his continental conquests, Arthur had begun to “hold such courtly fashion in his household as begat rivalry amongst peoples at a distance, insomuch as the noblest in the land, fain to vie with him, would hold himself as nought, save in the cut of his clothes and the manner of his arms he followed the pattern of Arthur’s knights.” But, so far, nothing has been heard of “the City of Legions,” except that Dubricius was “archbishop” there. Now, however, we are given a picture of the town “situate on a passing pleasant position on the river Usk in Glamorgan,” which Arthur chose to be the seat of his court, and to be the scene of the “high solemnity” of his second, and seemingly imperial, coronation. The city “abounded in wealth” above all others; ships came to it from oversea; its kingly palaces challenged comparison with those of Rome itself; it was the third metropolitan see of Britain, and “had, moreover, a school of two hundred philosophers learned in astronomy and in the other arts, that did diligently observe the courses of the stars, and did by true inferences foretell the prodigies which at that time were about to befall unto King Arthur.” To the coronation were bidden princes and warriors from every part of the British islands and from realms oversea, until “not a single prince of any price on this side Spain remained at home and came not upon the proclamation.” The description of the splendours of the ceremonial itself, and of the banquet that followed it, taxes Geoffrey’s rhetorical powers to the full. He has, indeed, to give up in despair any attempt to give a complete account of them; “were I to go about to describe them,” he writes, “I might draw out this history into an endless prolixity.” “For at that time Britain was exalted unto so high a pitch of dignity as that it did surpass all other kingdoms in plenty of riches, in luxury of adornment, and in the courteous wit of them that dwelt therein. Whatsoever knight in the land was of renown for his prowess did wear his clothes and his arms all of one same colour. And the dames, no less witty, would apparel them in like manner in a single colour, nor would they deign have the love of none save he had thrice approved him in the wars. Wherefore at that time did dames wax chaste and knights the nobler for their love.”

Here is a passage that must have delighted the hearts of Norman readers nurtured upon ideals of chivalry and courtly love, and seems as though designed to prepare the way for Arthur’s entry into the kingdom of chivalric romance. It is no great step from Arthur’s court, as here pictured, to the knightly fellowship of the Round Table, and all the other elaborate fictions of professional romantic scribes. Of a part with all this romantic presentment of the pomp and state surrounding the British king is Geoffrey’s constant exaltation of his “bounty,” and of his individual prowess as a warrior. Nor is the element of wonder lacking in the narrative given of Arthur’s exploits. He encounters at St Michael’s Mount, and slays by his own hand, a Spanish “giant of monstrous size,” who had carried away and killed the niece of Hoel, duke of Armorica. This adventure leads him to tell Kay and Bedivere, who had accompanied him on the expedition, how he had once, in Wales, despatched another formidable monster, “the giant Ritho,” of Mount Eryri, “who had fashioned him a furred cloak of the beards of the kings he had slain.” Again, in the last battle with the Romans, he is a truly Homeric hero. “He dashed forward upon the enemy, flung them down, smote them,—never a one did he meet, but he slew either him or his horse at a single buffet. They fled from him like sheep from a fierce lion madly famishing to devour aught that chance may throw in his way. Nought might armour avail them but that Caliburn would carve their souls from out them with their blood.”

The campaign against the Romans, undertaken with an army of “eighty-three thousand two hundred, besides those on foot, who were not easy to reckon,” seems to have followed close upon the festivities at Caerleon.[80] The Romans were under the command of “Lucius Hiberius, procurator of the Commonwealth,” who, summoning to his aid “the kings of the East,” put into the field a host numbering “four hundred thousand one hundred and sixty.” It is unnecessary here to give any detailed account of the fighting, and of the final discomfiture of the Roman forces. It need only be said that the British triumph was obtained at heavy cost. Among the slain were the faithful Kay and Bedevere,—in death, as in life, not divided. Bedevere was buried at Bayeux, “his own city that was builded by Bedevere the first, his great-grandfather;” Kai was laid to rest near Chinon, “a town he himself had builded.” The chief disaster to the Romans was the loss of their leader Lucius, whose body Arthur “bade bear unto the Senate with a message to say that none other tribute was due from Britain.” Arthur designed to follow up this message by a march upon Rome itself, and he had actually begun to climb the passes of the Alps when news reached him that “his nephew Modred, unto whom he had committed the charge of Britain, had tyrannously and traitorously set the crown of the kingdom upon his own head, and had linked him in unhallowed union with Guenever the Queen in despite of her former marriage.”

So ends Geoffrey’s tenth book. “Hereof” begins the eleventh, strangely enough,—but, of course, plainly referring to the affair of Guinevere,—“verily, most noble Earl, will Geoffrey of Monmouth say nought.” He will only treat of the battles which Arthur, after his return to Britain, fought with his nephew, according to the account given “in the British discourse aforementioned,” and what he “hath heard from Walter of Oxford, a man of passing deep lore in many histories.”[81] The final, and fatal, battle did not take place all at once; it came at the end of a campaign of some length. Modred, retreating rapidly into Cornwall, is at last brought to bay on the river Camel, and is slain in a battle in which “well-nigh all the captains that were in command on both sides rushed into the press with their companies and fell.” And “even the renowned King Arthur himself was wounded deadly, and was borne thence unto the island of Avalon for the healing of his wounds, where he gave up the crown of Britain unto his kinsman Constantine, son of Cador, duke of Cornwall, in the year of the incarnation of our Lord five hundred and forty-two.”

“Borne unto the island of Avalon for the healing of his wounds,”—here, surely, are words never before used in a professedly historical narrative of a kingly hero wounded unto death. This touch, alone, is sufficient to attest the kinship of Geoffrey’s “history” of Arthur with the waifs and strays of Celtic romance. The circumstances of Arthur’s birth, as told by Geoffrey, were marvellous enough; like other saga-heroes, such as Finn and Cormac, he was born out of wedlock, through Merlin’s magical intervention. But what caught the imagination of poets and romancers even more was the fable of his “return.” “Some men say yet,” writes Malory, “that King Arthur is not dead, but had by the will of our Lord Jesu into another place. And men say that he shall come again, and he shall win the holy cross. I will not say it shall not be so, but rather I will say, here in this world he changed his life. But many men say that there is written upon his tomb this verse, Hic jacet Arthurus Rex quondam Rexque futurus.” Later in the twelfth century an attempt was made, at the instance—so it is alleged—of Henry II to destroy the persistent belief in this “Celtic messiahship” by an announcement that the body of Arthur had been exhumed at Glastonbury by the monks of St Dunstan’s abbey.[82] It was, however, of no avail. A poet of the next generation, Layamon, tells us that “the Britons believe yet that Arthur is alive, and dwelleth in Avalon with the fairest of all elves, and ever yet the Britons look for Arthur’s coming.”