: :: • • • • • • • •• • THE 9life of Hing ^ttljur ♦ • • • • • • I THE iltfe of Hing ^Irtfiur : FROM ANCIENT HISTOlUAl^S-iND '•« AUTHENTIC DOGLWENTS^;*; >*• :%: [ BY JOSEPH RITSON, ESQ. Ne tut men^oigne, ne tut veir, Ne tut folie, ne tut saver : Tant out li contur cont6, E li fablur tunt fabl^ Pur lur contes enbelir, Ke tuz les funt h fables tener. Le Brut de maistre Wace. No more our long-lost Arthur we bewail. Gray. LONDON : PRINTED FOR PAYNE AND FOSS, PALL-MALL J AND HARDING, TRIPHOOK, AND LEPARD, FINSBURY SQUARE J BY WILLIAM NICOL, CLEVELAND-ROW, ST. JAMES'S. 1825. .5 hAiN ADVERTISEMENT. The curious work now offered to the world was prepared for the press by Mr. Ritson, with a view to immediate publication, a short time before his death ; and the character of the writer is sufficiently established to justify the editors hope of its favorable reception. The difficulty of the subject may be partly estimated from doubts having been actually entertained by the author, during his early researches, as to the identity of his hero, and fears lest the real Arthur might not, after all, be found : " So many of his shadows * had he * met. And not the very king." It is proper to add that the orthography latterly adopted by Mr. Ritson, however ex- cellent, has not, on account of its singularity, been preserved. Stockton upon Tees, May 2, 1825. CONTENTS. Preface, - - - - p. i. The Life of King Arthur, - - 3 Appendix. No. I. Extracts from the lives of Welsh saints, - - 143 No. II. The answer of the abbot of Ban- gor to Augustine, the monk, word for word, in Welsh and English, 155 No. III. British and Welsh saints, 167 No. IV. Welsh saints, - - 160 No. V. Cornish saints, - 164 No. VI, Breton saints, - - If 1 PREFACE. No character, eminent in ancient history, has ever been treated with more extravagance, men- dacity and injustice, than the renowned Arthur, the illustrious monarch and valiant commander of the Britons. Extolled by some, as greater in power, more victorious in war, more abundant in dominion, more extensive in fame, than either the Roman Julius or the Grecian Alexander ; his very existence has, by others, been, positively and absolutely, denied. In the year 1138, being the third of king Stephen, appeared an elaborate work, in a classical style, and containing two short pieces of elegiac poetry, of singular elegance for that age,* intitled '' Historia Britonurtij or * Divaj)otensnem(mm, terror sylvestrihus apris ; Ciii licet amfractus ire per aethereos, Infernasque domos; terrestria jura resolve, Et die quas terras nos habitare velis ? ■ Die certam sedem qua te venernbor in aevum, Qua tibi virgineis templa dicabo choris ?" This elegy, thus Englished by Pope : *' Goddess of woods, tremendous hi the chace To mountain boars and all the savage race ! B ii PREFACE. regum Britanniaey*\ in which this celebrated so- vereign, as, at least, in consequence thereof he Wide o'erth' aethereal walks extends thy sway, And o'er th' infernal mansions void of day ! On thy third reatotbok down ! unfold our fate, And say what region is our destin'd seat ? Where shall we next thy lasting temples raise ? And choirs of virgins celebrate thy praise ? was, according to the author in question, the address of Brutus to the oracular statue of Diana, in the island of Leo- gecia, which he said nine times, himself holding, before the altar of the goddess, the vase of the sacrifice, full of wine and the blood of a white hart ; having encircled the altar four times ; and poured the wine into the fire ; and laid down upon the hart-skin, he, at length, slept. About the third hour of the night, it seemed to him that the goddess stood before himself, and in this manner bespoke him : " Brute, sub occasum soils, trans Gallica regno. Insula in oceano est, undique clausa mari; Insuk in oceano est, habitata gigantibus olim. Nunc deserta quidem ; gentibus apta tuis. Hanc pete, namque tibi sedes erit ille perennis : Siefiet natis altera Troja tuis. Sic de prole tua reges nascentur : et ipsis Totius terrae subdit^is orbis erit :" Englished by the same poet (see Milton's Poems, by Warton, 1791, P. 364) : " Brutus, there lies beyond the Gallic bounds An island which the western sea surrounds. By giants once possess'd ; now few remain To bar thy entrance, or obstruct thy reign. PREFACE. iii became, is represented as a hero of such magni- tude, that, having succeeded Uther Pendragon, To reach that happy sliore thy sails employ : There fate decrees to raise a second Troy, And found an empire in thy royal line. Which time shall ne'er destroy nor bounds confine." This island, of course, was Britain, then called Albion, at which he arrived in good time, and which was inhabited by no one, except a few giants. (B. 1, C. 11, 16.) Whether these two elegies were composed by Geoffrey of Monmouth may be, reasonably, doubted. Henry, arch-deacon of Huntingdon, appears to have been the best elegiac poet of that age. t The title varies in the different manuscripts and printed copies. There are three editions, in Latin, under these titles : ** Britannie utriusque reguni et principum origo et gesta in- signia ah Gaffrido Monemutensi ex antiquis&imis Britanni ser- monis monumentis in Latinum sermonem traducta et ab [Jolianne Badio] Ascensio cura et impendio magistri Luonis Cavellati hi lacem edita. [Parisiis, MDVIII : quarto] : the second edition [MDXVII], by the same printer, differs very little, and in no- thing of consequence, from the former ; the third : ** Galfredi Monumetensis historice. regum Britannia" apud " Rerum Bri- tannicarum [^Hieronimo Commelino edito]: Lvgdiini, do. I o. Lxxxvxi: folio. Beside the English version by Aaron Thompson, in 1718, 8vo : and it is a very common manu- script. It is sometimes, called Liber Briiti ; and the anony- mous author of The Chronicle of Jervaux (falsely attributed to John Bromton, abbot of that monastery, in the time of Henry the sixth) calls it (in Latin) not only " The history of the Britons," or, " The British book ;" but, likewise, " The book of the gests [or actions] of the Britons, vulgarly call'd " Le Brut" (see Co. 725,1153). iv PREFACE. his father, in the kingdom of Britain, he made a sudden assault upon the Saxons, and put them to flight ; that Hoel, his nephew, king of the Ar- morican Britons, sent him fifteen thousand men ; that he made the Saxons his tributaries 5 that he granted a pardon to the Scots and Picts j that he honoured Augusel with the scepter of the Scots, Urien with that of Murray, and Lot with the consulship or dukedom of Loudonesia or Lothian j that he added to his government Ireland, Iceland, Gothland and the Orkneys; that he subdued Norway, Dacia, or Denmark, Aquitain and Gaul, now France 3 that he held his grand coronation- feast at the city of Legions or Caerleon, in Gla- morganshire, to which came the kings of Albany or Scotland, Murray, Venedotia or North-Wales, Denietia or South-Wales and Cornwall ; the archbishops of London, York and Caerleon ; the consuls, dukes, or earls, of the principal cities ; all of whom are enumerated by the most barba- rous names ; the kings of Ireland, Iceland, Goth- land, the Orkneys, Norway, the Dacians or Danes and the Ruteni; the consul (or earl) of Bolonia ; the Duke of Normandy, his butler ; the duke of Andegavia or Anjou, his sewer j the twelve peers of France j* the Duke of the Armorican Britons, * The mention of these twelve peers is a strong proof that the author of the British History had read the no less fabulous life of Charlemagne, by a Pseudo-Turpin, which also sug- PREFACE. V with his nobility, who walked with so great an equipage of ornaments, mules and horses, as was difficult to describe ; that, beside these, no prince of any price remained on this side of Spain, who came not at that proclamation : Nor was it won- derful : for, the munificence of Arthur being divulged through the whole world, had allured every one into the love of him : that, upon this occasion, he received a letter from Lucius Tiberius, general of the Romans (but totally unknown to the Roman historians), demanding justice for tribute withheld, and injuries done j and threat- ening war on his refusal ; which is inserted at length, with the deliberative speeches and argu- ments of his privy- council, pro and con.; that they unanimously agreed upon a war with the Romans j that Lucius Tiberius, called together the eastern kings against the Britons ^ that Ar- thur killed a Spanish giant of monstrous size ; that the Romans attacked the Britons with very great force, but were put to flight by them j that. gested to hini a name for Arthur's sword. This romance is conjectured, by the French antiquaries, to be of the eleventh century ; and was originally printed, in Latin, in •' Germani- carum qtiatuor celebriores vetustioresqiie chroiwgraphi, ^c. Francofurti, a Simone Schardio, 1566, folio ; a licentious ver- sion, however, in French, having been already published by Robert Gaguin, in 1525, 4to. vi PREFACE. in a prodigious battle^ for numbers and slaughter, Lucius Tiberius was killed, and the Britons ob- tained the victory ; that part of the Romans fled and the rest, of their own accord, surrendered themselves for slaves ! ! ! Events never heard of before this miraculous history.* This wonderful book was ushered into the world by Geoffrey of Monmouth, a Welshman, and, in process of time, that is, in the year, 1151, bishop of Saint- Asaph, though, by no means, the only prelate who has owed his advancement * The Danes, likewise, are introduced, long before that people were known in Britain, their first irruption being in 786, 144 years after the supposed death of Arthur. Gormund, king of the Africans is, doubtless, Guthrmi or Godrun, vulgarly called Gormund, king of the Danes, who, having been defeated and made prisoner by king Alfred, was, at his instance, bap- tized, in 878; and even " the forest of Canute," who died ir> 1036, is nientioned in Merlin's Prophecies, about 430 : accu- rate chron(;logy ! Moreover, in the forged laws of Edward the confessor, it is said " thatthelawof/bi/c-mote was ' founded' by Arthur [a British prince to make Saxon laws], who was for- merly the most famous king of the Britons and so consolidated and confederated the whole kingdom of Britain for ever in one. By the authority of this law, the aforesaid Arthur expelled the Saracens, and enemies from the kingdom." {LL. Anglo-Sax. p. 204.) Edward, who made the law, wa» born after 1002 and Arthur, who is said to have died in 542, availed himself of " the authority of this law" made after 1042. PREFACE. vii to publications of a similar nature j* who, in his prefatory chapter, being a sort of epistle dedica- tory to Robert earl of Gloucester, the natural son of king Henry the first, who died in 1146, in which, also, he notices that monarch, whose death had happened in 1135, says, " When, re- volving many things with myself and oftener con- cerning many things in my mind, I fell into the history of the kings of Britain, I imputed it into a wonder, that within the mention which Gildas and Bede had made of them in a creditable trea- tise, I could find nothing of the kings who had inhabited Britain before the incarnation of Christ : nor, even, of Arthur and the many others who succeeded after the incarnation : when both their actions were worthy of the praise of eternity, and, by many people, as if inscribed, pleasantly and by heart, were reported. To me, thinking these things and of such like, many times, Walter * Girald Barry, another Welshman, commonly called Gi- raldus Cambrensis, and, by Leland and Camden, for whatever reason, Silvester Ciraldus, a voluminous writer, was elevated, for the like cause, to the see of Saint David, in 1214 j as was, likewise, John Bale, of equal notoriety, to the see of Ossory, in 1552 and, in later times, according to honest Tom Hearne, " the reverend and learned doctor White Kennett, dean [and, afterward, Bishop] of Peterborough, whose Jidelity and candour and veracity," he says, are very conspicuous and toell known to the world** (Preface to the fth volume of Leland's Itinerary.) viii PREFACE. archdeacon of Oxford, a man learned in the ora- torial art and in foreign histories, brought a certain most ancient book of the British language, which, from Brute, the first king of the Britons down to Cadwalader son of Cadwalo, proposed the acts of all daily and in order with very beauti- ful orations. By his request, therefore, induced, although within foreign gardens 1 had not col- lected fine words, nevertheless, content with a homespun style and my own reeds, I caused to translate that book into the Latin language."* * This mart was Walter of Wallingford, otherwise Calenius, who was archdeacon of Oxford between, at least, 1103 and 1152 (see Le Neve's Fasti, and Tanner's Bibliotheca) and, by no means, Walter de Constantiis, who, according to Le Neve, succeeded in 1175, but, probably, much sooner, as be is so styled in the character of a witness to a charter of Henry the second, granted in 1168 (see Charlton's History of Whitby, p. 137); much less Walter de Mapes, who did not succeed before 1196 and continued to 1223>a difference of * 69' years after the deatli of Geoffrey bishop of Monmouth, who died in 1154. In a copy of Geoffrey's book in Welsh, intitled " Ystori Breiihi- nocdhi y Brytannied o uaitJi Galfridus Monemuthensis guedi i chy viei thy yn Gymraeg,'' described by Lhuyd as in the pos- session of Mr. Vaughan of Hengwrt, is the following entrj in Welsh : " 1 Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, translated this liK)ok out of British into Latin and, afterward, in my graver years, have again done it into Bi'ltish :" a very likely story, indeed ! which, however, puts an end to all pretences of a British original : There is no likeilhood or, even possibility, at the same time, either that Walter Calenius (who, by the wd^ had that appellation from Wallingford in Berkshire, the place PREFACE. ix He, afterward, in a letter to Alexander bishop of Lincoln, (from 1123 to 1147), says, *' The love of his birth, the Latin name whereof is Caleva [qu. Calena] (See Leland's Itinerary, IX. 50) or Waher de Mapes was a Briton, or understood the British language ; which no Englishman, it is believed, has ever been known to acquire or even to culti- vate, unless it be Sharon Turner, the historian of the Saxons and the defender of the Welsh bards j and to find a Welshman, at a period, when the Welsh were enemies, not subjects, to the king of England, when their princes were cohtinually be- headed or hanged, and the whole people, in fact, universally, by the English, despised and detested, archdeacon of Oxford, would be not a little extraordinary, and is certainly unparal- lelled in the ecclesiastical history of England. That the mo- dern Welsh, indeed, do not distinguish the original from the translation, admitting them to have both, is evident from their antiquaries having begun to prmt a palpable translation, in The Cambrian Register, as the original. Lambarde, who voucheth his possession of a Welsh copy, older, in his opinion, than Monmouth's translation, seems, in this conjecture, to have been no less unhappy than he was in mistaking a few lines of Robert of Gloucester for a Saxon fragment which substantiated the Story of Brute. He, clearly, therefore, could be no judge of manuscripts. Carte, who seems suflSciently inclined to credit the authenticity of the British history, allows that the copy in Jesus-college, which Wynne asserts to be the same which Geoffrey made use of, ** doth not seem so ancient as the time of Geoffrey" (1, vi;) and " is, evidently, according to Warton, " not older than the sixteenth century. There is reason," he adds, " to suspect that most [he might have safely said, all] of the British manuscripts of this history are translations from Geoffrey of Monmouth" (I. a 4). " In the library of the family of Davies, at Llanerk in Denbighshire," he says, " is a copy of Geoffrey's book hi the hand-writing of Gutty n Owen, X PREFACE. of thy nobility, Alexander bishop of Lincoln, compels me to translate the prophecies of Merlin a celebrated Welsh bard and antiquary, about the year 1470, who ascribes it to Tyssilio, a bishop, and the son of Brockraael- Yscythroc Prince of Powis" (Ibi.) Lewis Morris, in one of his letters, mentions this manuscript, and says ** I have cleared the matter to Mr. Carte, that he is the greatest advocate for the British history, as we had [r. that we have] ." (^Cambrian register, II. 489.) In another letter, however, to Carte him- self, he says, " You surprise me with Tyssilio's history of Bri- tain ; I have read of no Tyssilio a scholar" {Ibi. II, 484.) The fact is, that Lhuyd speaks of " a chronicle written by Tyssilio, which," says he, *' I find inserted in H. Salbury's manuscript Catalogue of Welsh words, and was extant, as I have been, credibly, informed, within these fifty years" (Archceologia, p. 225). It appears, also, that Archbishop Usher had said, when a young man, that he had seen an old book called " Ec' clesiae Bri tannicae Historia, autore Tyssilio filio Brochmaeli regis Powysii :" which book, however, had been lost, or carried to Rome, before 1680, (Cambrian Register, 1, 27). So much for the history of Tyssilio, which Guttyn Owen has confounded with the Welsh translation of Geoffrey's British romance. The editors of " The Myvyrian archaiology of Wales," who have published in the second volume of that work, two Welsh Translations, one under the other, intitled BrutTysilio and Brut G. ah Arthur as two originals, alledge that " The first of these chronicles should have been called after the name of Walter de Mapes, archdeacon of Oxford [an office, it has been, already observed, he did not attain till upwards of forty years after the death of Geoffrey of Monmouth, so that he must have written this chronicle before he was born] ; for there is no authority for asserting that Tysilio wrote any thing beside some poetry" (preface vi.) PREFACE. xi from British into Latin, before I had written the history which I had begun of the acts of the Britons : for I had proposed to finish that first and explain this work subsequently : lest, while each labour should be in hand, my capacity should the less suffice to either. However, be- cause I was secure of pardon, which the subtile discretion of thy judgment would readily be- stow, I have put to the little books my rude pen, and, in a plebeian stile, interpreted a language to thee unknown."* These prophecies, therefore, are inserted about the middle of the book, in which the history is afterward prosecuted. The last chapter is couched in these words : *^ The kings, however, of those who, from that time, succeeded in Wales, I permit, in matter of writ- ing, to Caradoc of Llancarvan, my contemporary : the kings, truly, of the Saxons to William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon : whom I enjoin to hold their peace concerning the kings of the Britons, inasmuch as they have not that book of the British language, which Walter archdeacon of Oxford imported out of Britain : which concerning the history of these [kings] being veraciously edited in honour of the afore- * This bishop, a man of learning himself, was, also, a great patron and encourager of men of learning. It was to him, likewise, that Henry, archdeacon of Huntingdon, dedicated his history of England. xii PREFACE. said princesj in this manner into the Latin lan- guage I have taken care to translate." It ap- pears, from a very sensible letter of doctor Lloyd, bishop of Saint Asaph, to Thomas Price, printed in Owen s British remains j that this famous history made its first appearance in the year 1138.* Henry of Huntingdon, in an epistle to Warin the Briton, which is inserted in several manuscripts of his history, and, according to bishop Lloyd, in some editions of Sigebert's chronicle, with the additions of Robert de Monte, otherwise de Torineioj or of Thorigny, f to whom Geoffrey appears to have sent, or he had himself procured, an early copy of the British history and * About the year 1100, according to Warton, Walter, arch- deacon of Oxford procured in Armorica an ancient chronicle in the British or Armorican language, in titled "Brut-y-Brerihined ;'" though neither Geoffrey nor any other ancient writer says any such thing, and though he himself, directly referring, in two different places (I, sig. a 4. n. t, e c, n. z), to Geoflfrey's origi- nal, proves, in a third (I, sig. a 4, n. r. a 4 b, n. 3), that no such original exists. t The bishop quotes " App. Thor. [r. Flor.'] Wigorn." but there is no Appendix in either edition, nor does it contain this epistle. This Robert de Torineio or de Monte, published an edition, of Sigebert's chronicle, which he interpolated and pol- luted with the new inventions of Geoffrey of Monmouth. See bishop Lloyd's Letter to Thomas Price, already, referred to. Warin would seem to have, previously to his enquiry of the archdeacon, acquired something upon the story of Brutus by hear-say. PREFACE. xiii Huntingdon thus addresses his friend : " Thou enquirest from me, O Warin the Briton, man gentle and facetious, why, narrating the actions of our country, I have begun from the times of Julius Cesar, and omitted the most flourishing reigns, which were from Brutus unto Julius : I answer thee, therefore, that neither by word nor writing, very frequently enquiring after the knowledge of those times, was I ever able to find it : such a violent death of oblivion overshadows and extinguishes the successful glory of the diu- turnity of mortals. Nevertheless, in this year, which is from the incarnation 1139, as I was travelling to Rome, with Theobald archbishop of Canterbury, at Bee, where the same archbishop was abbot, I found, to my great astonishment, writings of the aforesaid things. Forasmuch as I there met with Robert de Thorigny, a monk of the same place, a man, as well of divine as of secular books a most studious searcher and ac- cumulator : who, when he questioned me con- cerning the order of the history of the kings of England, by me published, and that which he asked of me had willingly heard, brought to me a book to read, about the kings of the Britons, who held our island before the English ; the ex- tracts of which kings, as it becomes in an epistle, very briefly, that is, I send to thee with great pleasure." He then gives a list of Geoffrey's xiv PREFACE. kings, a sort of epitome, that is, of the British history, and concludes by saying : " These are the things which to thee, most dear Warin the Briton, I have promised in few words, of which, if thou desirest more prolixity, thou must, dili- gently, enquire after the great book of Geoffrey ap Arthur, which I found at the monastery of Bee, where thou wilt find the aforesaid things treated with sufficient prolixity and clearness. Farewell." It, therefore, by this account, plainly appears that Henry had actually published the first seven books of his history (in some copies whereof the above letter is inserted be- tween the seventh and the eighth, in others at the end) before the year 1139, and, also, before he had ever seen or heard of the British history of Geoffrey ap Arthur, or any other book on the same subject. Yet it is asserted, by a late En- quirer into history, that *' He was the first Eng- lish writer who adopted the fables of GeoflFrey of Monmouth,"* whom he, likewise, never after- ward, in the course of five additional books, once mentions, nor follows in the minutest respect j being, it would seem, fully satisfied, upon mature reflection, or further enquiry, of his total want of veracity. The British history, therefore, had, * Enquiry into the history of Scotland, II, 153. That he was the *' worst of the old English historians," is equally illiberal and untrue. PREFACE. XV manifestly, never been seen, or heard of, either in Briton or elsewhere, before the year 1138, as it is next to impossible that so well informed and, to all appearance, so industrous and inquisi- tive, a historian as Henry of Huntingdon, a man, at the same time, of eminence and affluence, should not have met with a copy of it or known, at least, the nature of its contents : but the fact is glaring and notorious, that, with an excep- tion of the extracts here and there interspersed in Geoffrey's book, (which, certainly, traces the hand of a prodigious scholar for his age,) from Cesar's Commentaries, Bede's ecclesiastical his- tory, Gildas's querulous epistle on the destruc- tion of Britain, and Nennius's Eulogium Britan- niaej the legends of saint Alban, saint Dubricius, saint Ursula, or others, not a single name or in- cident, which occurs in that work, is to be found mentioned or alluded to by any writer or in any book, before the above sera.* That the Britons * Henry of Huntingdon, it is true, has a *' Coel rex Britan- nicus de Colecester" (306), who, likewise, occurs in the British history ; which, at first, looks a little suspicious : but, surely, if disposed to plagiarise, he would never have been contented with *' Old king Cole,'^ and it is, in fact, certain that he had not seen Geoffrey's book till sometime after the publication of the seven first books of his own. This respectable historian, how- ever, according to Warton, *' began his history from Cesar and it was only on further information that he added Brute" (I. 120) ; an assertion, at the same time^ without the least xviii PREFACE. This new-ancient history was^ immediately upon its appearance, or, as soon, at least, as would or could impose upon such and so many distinguished personages with the most abominable forgery, the most ex- travagant falsehood, and the most brazen faced impudence, is by no means a proof of those circumstances : as we never find him reviled by, or on the part of, any of these illustrious characters, for so gross an imposition. This, no doubt, is very much in his favour ; but it may be urged, with equal force, on the other hand, that the book which he produced, as a history, is, certainly, a series of palpable and monstrous lies j that, neither Walter Calenius, nor any other, friend or favourer, of or near his own age, not even his own countryman, Girald Barry, who, being himself a bishop, might, naturally, have been expected to have stood forward in the defence of such an illustrious precursor, whose steps, in his prelatical pursuit*, he had followed with such good fortune : not a solitary Welsh- man to support him, in any respect, but by following his ex- ample ; that the pretended original has never been found, nor any, the least, evidence adduced in favour of its authenticity ; that there have been forgers, of as much art, talent, falsehood and impudence, in other ages, whose literary impostures have, for a time, at least, been, altogether, as successful : Joha Fordun, for instance. Hector Bois, Annius of Viterbo, George Buchanan, James Macpherson, Thomas Chatterton, and a variety of other such respectable characters. It is a thousand pities that John Pinkerton had not flourished in the age, and enjoyed the friendship of Geoffrey of Monmouth; that he might have certified, with his sacred signature, the integrity and truth of the original manuscript of that veracious historian, as he did the no less genuine Shaksperiana, of William Henry Ireland. (Samuel, his father, had no hand in this forgery, though it cost him his life). PREFACE. xix copies could be procured, seized, with avidity, by the eager and the weak, whose zeal and ignorance disqualified them from distinguishing between history and fable * Alfred of Beverley • A Welsh translation of GeofFrey ap Arthur's British his- tory, under the title of '* Brut Breninodd ynys Prydain : neu Brut y Breninod," or " Brut Tysilio" has been inserted in a late publication intitled " The Mjvyrian archaioiogy of Wales," although the editors allow that "there is no authority for asserting that Tysilio wrote any thing, beside some poetry" and that this chronicle " should have been called after the name of Walter Mapes, archdeacon of Oxford, who " did turn this book out of Welsh into Latin and, in his old age, turned it the second time out of Latin into Welsh." It it absolutely impossible, that Walter Mapes (made archdeacon of Oxford ia 1197) was any way connected with GeoflFrey of Monmouth, who died in 1154) or that he or any other Walter, archdeacon of Oxford, did actually translate or was capable of translating, Geoffrey's book, either backward or forward, nor can 6ny thing be more absurd than to illustrate one translation by another, both from a common origuial. If, indeed, any reliance could be placed in the genuineness of the Afallenau Myrddin, or Merlin's orchard, supposed to have been written by Myrddin ap Morfryn or Myrddin wylt, Merlinus Sylvestiis or Caledonius, about the year 550, and mentioning Medrawd, Arthur, Gwenhwyfar and the battle of Camlan, nothing would more effectually tend to prove that either Geoffrey or his British author, had worked, at least, on ancient materials : but, unless a manuscript could be produced, in the Welsh language, an- terior to the twelfth century, (which it is believed, does not exist,) the probability is very powerful that every remnant of British literature, whether poetical or historical, in which mer- c 2 xxiv PREFACE. Merlin^ in fact, he fables to have been born of an incubus- devil-father of a woman : to whom, beside, as if taking after his father, he has attri- buted the most excellent and extensive prescience of things to come : when, as'suredly, and with true reasons and the sacred writings, we are taught, that the devils, secluded from the light of god, by no means foreknow things to come by contemplation, but collect certain future events from signs, better known to them than to us, more by conjecture than knowledge. Finally, in their ever so much subtler conjec- tures, they are often deceived and deceive : when, yet, by the prestiges of divinations, with the unskilftd, they may arrogate to themselves the prescience of things to come, which they assuredly have not. Truly, the perspicuous fallacy of the divinations of Merlin is in these events which are known to have happened in the kingdom of the Engles after the death of the before-named Geoffrey, who translated the trifles of these divinations out of British : to which, as it is not vainly believed, he added much from his own fiction. Moreover, to those which happened either before him or in his own days, he, in such wise, tempered his own fictions, which he, certainly, could easily do, that they might receive congruous interpretation. Beside, PREFACE. XXV in his book, which he calls Tlie historij of the Britons, how petulantly and how impudently HE LIES, almost, through the whole, no one, un- less acquainted with the old historians, when he shall dip into his book, is permitted to doubt. For he, who hath not learned the truth of things done, admits, indiscreetly, the vanity of fables. I omit how many of the acts of the Britons^ be- fore the empire of Julius Cesar, this man hath feigned or, feigned by others, hath written them as authentic. I omit whatsoever he has raved in praise of the Britons, against the faith of historical truth, from the time of Julius Cesar, under whom the Britons began to be of the Roman empire until the time of Honorius the emperor, under whom the Romans, by reason of the more urgent business of the republic, voluntarily departed from Britain. Certainly, the Britons, the Romans departing, become their own masters, yea rather left to themselves, to their own ruin and exposed as prey to the Picts and Scots, are read to have had a king Vortigern, by whom, for the protection of the kingdom, the Saxons or Engles, under their leader Hengist, came into Britain -, the barbaric irruptions they repelled for a time, but, after- ward, having spied the fertility of the island and the sloth of the natives, the league being broken. xxvi PREFACE. they turned their arms against those by whom they had been invited : who being shortly routed^ their Avretched remains, which are now called Welsh, they straitened in impassable mountains and woods, and had, by a series of succession, most brave and widely governing kings : of whom were Ethelbert, the great grandson of Hengist, who, his empire being ex- tended from the Gallic sea into the Humber, took up the light yoke of Christ, at the preach- ing of Augustine j Alfred, who, presiding over the Northumbrians, subdued, at once, the Bri- tons and the Scots, with vast slaughter 5 Edwin, who, succeeding to Alfred, reigned, at the same time, over the Engles and the Britons 5 Oswald, his successor, who governed all the people of Britain. It will be evident, that these things, according to the historical truth displayed by the venerable Bede, are authentic : all things which this man has taken pains to write, con- cerning Arthur, and either his successors, or, after Vortigern, his predecessors, partly by him- self, partly, also, by others, have, it is evident, been feigned, either by the unbridled passion of lying or even for the sake of pleasing the Bri- tons, of whom a great many are reported to be so brutish, that they are said to expect that Arthur is yet^ as it were, about to come, nor can PREFACE. xxvii they bear to hear that he is dead * Finally, he makes Aurelius Amhrosius succeed to Vortigern (the * Certainly, such a tradition existed among the Britons or Welsh, before the time of Geoflfrey of Monmouth. It is mentioned by William of Malraesbury, who, observing that the sepulchre of Arthur had never been discovered, adds, " whence the antiquity of elegiac songs and fables, that he is yet to come." (B. 3, P. 115.) Master Wace, in his Roman de Brut, a liberal translation from Geoffrey of Monmouth, finished in 1155, after relating the battle of Camblan, proceeds to tell us, modestly enough : ' Artur, si la geste ne ment. El qiierfii nafre mortelement, En Avalon sejit mener. Pur se$ plaes mediciner ; Uncore i est, Breton Vatendent, Si com il dient e entendent ; De la vendra, uncore pot vivere. Meistre Wace, ki fist cest livere, Nen volt plus dire de sajin Ke en dist le prophete Merlin : Merlin dist de Artur outdrait, Ke sa mort autuse serreit. Li prophete dist veritCy Tut tens en ad lom puis dote, E dutera co crei tut dis Sil est mort u ii est vifs." (" — Arthur himself thore Men sais he wonded sore. For his wondes wer to drede, Therfor, thei did him lede xxviii PREFACE. Saxons^ whom Vortigerii had sent for, being de- feated and expelled) egregiously reigning in the Into the ' ile' of Avaloun And thus sais ilka Bretoun : That olyve ther he es, Man in blode and in flesch And after him yit thei loke. Maister Was, that ' made' this boke, He sais no more of his fine Than dos the prophete Merlyne : Merlyn sais, full mervailous That Arthur [s] dede was doutous ; Therfor, tlje Bretons drede And sais he ly ves in lede : But I say thei trowe wrong If he * ly ve' his life is long ; Bot the Bretons loude lie. He was so wonded him burd die.") (Robert of Brunne.) The French, in fact, have an old romance, in manuscript, intitled, " Roman d'Arthus le rethor^" (that is, Arthur restored or revived). Alanus de Insulis or Allan of Lile, who wrote a book under the following title and died in 1202 : " Prophetia Anglicana [1. Britatinica] et Homuna : hoc est, Merlini Ambrosii Britanni, ex incubo olim, ante annos mille ducentos in Anglia [1. Britannia'] nati vaticijiia, a Galfredo Monumetensi Latine conscripta, una cum septem explanationum in eandem prophetam, excelientissimi sui temporis oratoris, poly- historis [falso] et theologi ;" Francofurti 1608, octavo. In this book, after reciting this part of one of the pretended propecies of the visionary Merlin (apud Galfredi Monumetensis Historia regum Britanniae, L. 7, c. 3), which speaks of A ** boar of PREFACE. xxix whole of Britain, and to him gives Uther-Pen- dragon, his brother, for successor, reigning with Cornwall," who shall give his assistance. — " The house of Romulus shall dread its fierceness and his end shall be du- bious :'* this boar Allan applies to Arthur, and thus proceeds : ** Most, truly, indeed, as at this very day, the various opinion of men proves concerning his life and death : but, if you do not believe me, go into the Armorican kingdom, that is Less- Britain, and i>roclaim, through the ways and streets, Arthur is dead, in the manner of other dead men, and, then, certainly, you will prove by the thing itself that the prophecy of Merlin is true ; if, nevertheless, you should be thence able to escape free ; but you [will] either be stifled by the curses of the hearers or, certainly, be overwhelmed with stones (B. 1, P. 19, 20). It may be fairly inferred that, about this time (as, in fact, it is proved by William of Malmesbury), that this notion had be- come a proverb, in use to ridicule those who were ever ready to believe any thing, manifestly, impossible or absurd. This occurs in the 57th epistle of Petnis Blosensis (Peter of Biois), who was contemporary with Allan de insulis. " Quibus si credideris Expectare poteris Arturum cum Britonibus." This idea seems to be, continually, running in his head, for, in the 34th epistle : " As yet," he says, " I conceive the wishes of a more fortunate event and, peradventure, with the Britons, I tarry for Arthur, about to come, and, with the Jews, expect the Messiah," " In Sicily," according to Gervase of Tilbury, " is mount .iaced upon the river Samara, now the Somme, inthe province E 6 THE LIFE OF in Caesar's time, as was tbe case, indeed, down to a very late period, to have been governed by of Picardy, running between Abbeville and Saint-Vallery, up to Amiens. There is, certainly, a strong analogy between Gallia and Wallia, Gaxils and Walls. This subject will afford discussion at some future period. How came they by the name of Britons, in such ancient times ? What is its etymology ? A curious and important object of disquisition. Why had the Britons, in the sixth century called their country Wallia, as it appears in the awdyl vraith of Taliesin (Myvyrian archai- ology of Wales, 1, 95) ? They seem to have adopted, from the Romans, the fabulous idea of having come from Troy. In the Hanes Taliesin, Taliesin's history {Ibi, 19, 20) is the following stanza : ** Mi afum yn Africa Cyn adeilad Roma Mi a ddoetkym yma At wedillion Troia." (I have been in Africa Before Rome was built, I have come here To the remnants of Troy.) In another poem of Taliesin, already mentioned, Awdyl vraith, a principal class of metres (Ibi, 92, 94) is the subsequent stanza : " Och dduw, mor druan Y daw V ddarogan Drwy ddirvawr gwynvan I lin Troea:' (0 god ! how wretched I'm become The prophecy concerns me much. Through lamentation infinite. The line of Troy.) KING ARTHUR. 7 several petty kings or chieftains j to one of whom, Cassivelaun, '' whose borders," he says, '* from the maritime cities a river divided, which These extracts are translated as literally as possible. It seems, therefore, that the bard had imagined his countrymen, as the Romans pretended, to be Trojans and to have come, with Brute, into Britain, after the destruction of Troy ; pos- sibly, he received his information from Virgil's Aeneis, with which, at least, Gildas was familiar, as he cites, in his 14th chapter, part of th6se two lines : *' Non sic, aggeribus ruptis cum spumeus amnis Exiit, 0ppositasque evicit gurgite moles.'* (L. 2, V. 496, 7.) Their descendants, the present Welsh, call themselves Cynmry or Gynmry, in Latin, Cumbri or Cambri; a name, however, used neither by Gildas, Bede nor Nennius nor, in short, by any historian, before Geoffrey of Monmouth (except by Fabian Ethelwerd (P. 844), who, manifestly, means the in- habitants of Cumberland, which name, likewise, occurs in the Saxon chronicle (Eumbjia-lanb, p. 115) and, apparently, meaning bastards. (See Glos. LL. Wal. voce Cymmerjad.) William Owen, in his Welsh dictionary, explains " Cymro, s. wt. — fl. cymry (cy-bro) A Welshman. Cyrary," he says, *• is the universal appellation by which the Welsh call them- selves ;.... and the name," he asserts, "is, undoubtedly, the origin of the Cimbri and Cimmerii, in ancient authors :" The Cimbri and Cimmeni however, were, notoriously, two as dif- ferent people as it is possible for two people to be : the former, who were Germans, were never heard of before the T^Oth year before Christ ; whereas, the Cimmerii (who are mentioned by Homer, 907, and by Herodotus, 469, years before him) made war on Alyattes the second, king of Lydia, who began to 8 THE LIFE OF was called the Thames, about eighty miles from the sea. To him, in former times, with the re- maining cities, the continental wars had passed between : but, the Britons, being thoroughly moved by our arrival, the whole had set him over the war and the government." He, like- wise mentions Mandrubatius, a chief of the Trino- bantes, now Londoners, who had fled to him, for protection, in Gaul, that he might avoid the fate of his father, Imanuentius whom Cassivelaun had put to death. In Kent, alone, it seems no less than four kings presided, Cingetorix, Carnilius, Taxigulus, and Segonax. Another of these petty princes is noticed hy Florns: '^ Caesar," he says, " in his second expedition, pursuing the Britons, in the Caledonian woods, put, likewise, one of the kings of the Cavelani in chains." t Cassive- reign in the 619th year before Christ and reigned 57 years. The Saxons caUedthem, ll)ala]r,lUealapUJeallap (Wawls) lUealh, tUaelijrcman, UJaelj-e, UJilj-c, UJylij-c (Welsh) UJealhajf , foreigners, strangers or barbarians, for what reason cannot be ascertained ; and those of South- Wales, UJallejl- pente (Saxon chronicle and Lye's dictionary.) The Cumry, Taffy says, are Cimpri, Cimerii, or Gomerii, from Gomer of the olt testament, as hur is creat etymolochist ant font of an olt peticree. t Those people, though precisely so named, are supposed to have been the natives of Lincolnshire, Buckinghamshire^ and some adjoining counties. KING ARTHUR. laun, in fine, on the loss of a great battle, sent ambassadors to sue for peace, which application, Caesar, stipulating a tribute and receiving hos- tages, appears to have complied with. He re- turned to Gaul and never after revisited Britain nor (excepting that *' Caligula, being in Germany, did no more than receive the submission of Ad- minius, the son of Kinobelin, a British prince, who, being forced from his father, came over to him, with a small body of troops 3 yet, as if the whole island had been surrendered to him, be sent bouncing letters to Rome upon it")* was any further attempt made till the reign of Claudius, * Suetonius, Caligula, c. 44. II 10 THE LIFE OF CHAP. II. Of Carddoc, a British king". When (in the year of the vulgar sera 51) Osto- riusj the propraetor, fought a battle against the Britons, in which the latter were defeated. " This victory,' according to Tacitus, " was famous, and the wife and daughter of Carddoc (Caractacus) y [prince of the Silures, inhabitants of present South-Wales, ''whom," the author says, '' many perilous and many prosperous things, had exalted so high, that he far ex- celled the other generals of the Britons,"] his brethren, also, being received into surren- der. He himself (as, for the most part, unsafe things are adverse) when he had entreated the faith of Cartismanduaj queen of the Brigantes, was chained and delivered to the victors, after the ninth year, when the war in Britain [was] be- gun : whence his fame carried into the islands and, spread about the nearest, was, likewise, celebrated through Italy, and they desired to see him, who had, so many years, disdained our riches. So that not, at Rome, truly, the name KING ARTHUR. H of Carddoc was ignoble ; and Caesar, whilst his grace extolled [him], added glory to the con- quered. The people, moreover, being called, as to a famous spectacle. The praetorian cohorts stood in arms, in the field, which lay before ihe camp. Then the royal clients walking in state, trappings and torques and what things he had got in external wars, being brought over: by and by, his brethren and his wife and his daughter : lastly he himself being presented. The supplications of the rest were degenerate, out of fear : but not Carddoc, either with a de- jected look or asking mercy with words. When he stood up to the tribunal, he spoke in this manner : *' If how much nobility and fortune was mine, so much moderation had been of pros- perous things, I had come into this city a friend rather than a captive nor disdained, to be born of famous ancestors, governing many nations, to receive a treaty of peace. My present lot, as much as it is dishonourable to me, so is it mag- nificent to thee : I have had horses, men, arms, riches ; what wonder j if I have lost these against my will ? Whether, if you [Romans] will govern all, does it follow, that all should receive slavery ? If, incontinently, being given up, I should be delivered -, neither my fortune nor thy glory, would grow famous and the pu- 12 THE LIFE OF nishment of me will be followed by oblivion : but, if thou shouldst preserve me safe, I shall be an everlasting example of thy clemency." At these [words] Caesar granted pardon both to himself and his wife and his brethren."* • Annals, B. xii, 36. It is, by no means probable that Carddoc actually delivered this speech, though he might have said, through an interpreter, something becoming his situation. This is only what Tacitus conceives he should or might have said. The practice seems to have been introduced by livy, an.d ended, perchance, in GeoiFrey of Monmouth. KING ARTHUR. IS CHAP. ni. Of Venusius, Paulinus Suetonius, Prasutagus, and Boudicea. After Carddoc was taken, Venusius, chief in the science of warfare, and in the city of the lugantes, and being long faithful, was defended by the Roman arms, when he held queen Cartis- mandua in matrimony, discord having, by and by, risen and, straightway, also, against the Romans, he had taken [up] hostilities : but, at first, it was, only, contested among themselves, and Cartismandua, by wily arts, cut off the bro- ther and near of kin of Venusius.* When Paullinus Suetonius obtained the Britons, he made ready to fall upon the isle of Mona,f strong in inhabitants and a receptacle of refugees, and built ships, with a plain bottom, against a narrow and uncertain shore. So the foot-soldiers, following the horsemen in the ford or higher, among the waters, swimming after the horses, * Tadti Annales. L. 12, $ 40. t Mon, in British, now Anglesey, or the Engles-isle, so named by the Saxons. 14 THE LIFE OF passed over. On the opposite shore stood the army in battalia, close with arms and men, the women, running, to and fro, in the manner of furies, their vests being funereal, their hair dis- heveled, bore torches and the druids, round about, their hands being lifted up, pouring-out direful prayers, astonished the soldiers with the novelty of the sight, that, as if, with members sticking together, they would oflFer an immove- able body to wounds. Afterward, at the exhort- ations of the general and they themselves stimu- lating each other, lest they should fear a female and fanatic crew, they brought up the ensigns and threw down those opposing and involved them in their own fire. Afterward, a guard being set over the vanquished and the groves, sacred to their cruel superstitions, being cut down : for they held it lawful to worship [upon] the altars with captive blood and consult their gods with the entrails of men. Suetonius acting these things a sudden revolt of the province was announced.* PrasutaguSj king of the Icenians, famous by long opulence, had inscribed Caesar and his two daughters his heir, thinking, by such obsequious- ness, his kingdom, and, likewise, his household, * Taciti Annates, L. 14, § 29. KING ARTHUR. 15 to be far from injury j which turned out the contrary : insomuch that, the kingdom by cen- turions, the houses by slaves, were wasted, like as those taken by force. Now, for the first time, his wife, Boudicea,* was *^ afflicted' with scourges and his daughters were violated and whosoever were the principal of the Icenians, as if they had received the whole region for a gift, they were stripped of their ancient possessions and their relations were held among the slaves of the king. Already (in the 62d year of the vulgar sera) [to] Suetonius, the fourteenth legion, with their stan- dard-bearers and the soldiers of the twentieth legion and the auxiliaries out of the nearest, were, almost, sent ten thousand armed men : but the forces of the Britons, everywhere, by battalions and troops, rejoiced, exceedingly, how great a multitude, nowhere else and with a mind so savage, that their wives, likewise, they drew with them, as witnesses of their victory, and put them in waggons, which they had set upon the outermost place of the field. Boudicea, carrying her daughters, before her, in a chariot, as she approached to every nation, testified, " It to be usual, indeed, for the Britons to wage war : but * Otherwise, Boodicia (Tacitus, elsewhere) ; Voadica (Vit?t A^ricolae) ; ^av^axot, (Bunduica), Dion. 16 THE LIFE OF then not, as being sprung from such great ances- tors, having lost a kingdom and riches 3 but, only, as one out of the common people, having lost her liberty, to revenge her body, wasted by stripes, the chastity of her daughters violated : that the lusts of the Romans had proceeded so far, that not bodies nor, even, old-age or vir- ginity unpolluted, they should leave. Neverthe- less, that the gods of just vengeance were pre- sent : that a legion had fallen, which had dared the battle :* that the rest were hidden in their camps or were looking about flight. Not so much as the noise and clamour of so many thou- sands, much less their assaults and hands would they endure. If they would consider with them- selves the forces of armed men, if the causes of war, it behoved to conquer or fall, in that battle. That is destined to a woman : let the men live and be slaves !" Suetonius, truly, did not keep silence in so great a danger : who, although he confided in valour, he, nevertheless, mingled exhortations and prayers. . . Such ardour followed the words of the general, and so much did the soldier, old and with much experience of battles, bestir himself, to the flinging of piles, that the * At " The Colony," as the Romans called it, otherwise Camolodunum, now Colchester : it resembled Chelsea-hospital, in so far, as it was the residence of the invalids of the legions. KING ARTHUR. 17 event was certain, should Suetonius give the sign of battle and, in the first place, the legion, with steadfast pace and retaining the straits of the place for a defence, broken forth as a wedge, after the enemy creeping along nearer had ex- hausted his darts with a certain throw. The same attacks of the auxiliaries and the horsemen, spears being outstretched, broke through the line, which was opposed and strong. The rest offered their backs, in difficult flight, because, their waggons laid about, barred the passages and the soldiers did not restrain, truly, the slaughter of the women, and the cattle, pierced with darts, had increased the heap of bodies. Illustrious praise and equal to ancient victories was obtained in that day : forasmuch as, there were those who reported, little less than 80,000 of Britons to have been slain -, almost, 400 of soldiers being killed, nor much more wounded. Boudicea ended her life by poison.* * Taciti Annales, L. 14, § 25. Dio, however, gives a dif- ferent account of this British virago : ** For the most part, Bun- duica, a British w^oman, sprung from a royal race, persuaded those [Britons] that they should, openly, carry on a war with the Romans ; she who, not only, presided over them with great dignity, but, likewise, conducted every war; nourishing greater spirits than became a woman : for the army being assembled, to 1,20,000 of men, she mounted upon a tribunal, made of moorish turves, in the Roman manner : a woman with 18 THE LIFE OF a very large body, a fierce look, a very sour face, a rough voice, who let her very thick hair and the same very yellow,* reach down to her buttocks. She carried, also, a large gold torques and wore a robe covered over with different colours and bound hard to her bosom, to which she had overcast a tliick cloak, connected with the help of a brooch : which habit she, not only, at that time and at others, always, used, but with a spear, likewise, taken into her hands, with which she amazed all present, she spoke after this manner : " Truly," &c. [The speech is too long to recite, and may not be genuine.] When she had said these words, she sent a hare out of her bosom, in order to an omen being taken : which, afterward, ran luckily ; the whole multitude, with joyful minds, shouted together. Then Bunduica, with her hand raised to heaven, I thank thee, said, Adraste and a woman myself, invoke thee a woman not reigning over Egyptian porters, as Nitocrisi; not over Assy- rian merchants, as Semiramis (for these we have received, already from the Romans) nor, again, over the Romans them- selves, as, a little before, Messalina, afterward, Agrippina, now Nero, who, being called by the name of a man, is in fact, a woman : that which I have been able to understand of him, that he sings with voice and harp and that he is dressed like women : but am set over men, Britons, who have learned, not to till fields nor to be mechanics, but to wage wars, in the best manner : who, as all other things, so they esteem their children and wives to be common among themselves and, therefore, also, reigning over these women, who exercise the same valour with their husbands. When, therefore, I may obtain a kingdom among such kind of men and women, I pour out my prayers to * Hentzner says of our Queen Elizabeth, who seems, in more instances than one, to have resembled the British Bun- duica, " she wore false hair and that red." t A celebrated queen of Babylon, mentioned by Herodotus. KING ARTHUR. 19 thee and intreat from tliee victory, health, liberty, against injurious, dishonest, insatiable and wicked men : if such beings are to be called men, who are washed in hot water, eating meats, sumptuously prepared, drinking pure wine, besmeared with ointments, lying softly, coupling with boys and those past their date, and serving a harper, indeed, a bad one. Not to me, I beseech, not to you, for the remaining time, let this Neronia or Domitia to govern ; singing, she should rule the Roman people : for he is worthy who would serve a woman of this kind, whose tyrarmy so long a space of time, already, he should sustain. Thou, truly, lady, I entreat alone, wouldst rule over us. (Cassii Dionis Historia RomanOy Ham, 1752, folio II, 1003.) Bunduica, having destroyed two cities of the Romans, ap- pointed toward the captives a most execrahle punishment, ** it truly was very cruel and very barbarous, because they ' suspended the most noble and most honourable women naked and sewed their paps cut olF to their own mouths, that they might seem to eat them and, afterward, transfixed those very women, with very sharp stakes, through the whole body, ac- cording to its length, and did all these things, performing, at once, the ceremonies of their religion and feasting and bear- ing themselves, lasciviously, as well in their other temples as, especially, hi the grove of Andat6 : for so they called Victory and worshipped her, most earnestly." (^Ibi, 1008.) Bunduica was extinguished by disease and many, grievously, bewailed her and buried her, magnificently. (I6j, 1011.) 20 THE LIFE OF CHAP. IV. Of Agricola and Calgac. I N the 78th year of the vulgar sera lulius Agri- cola arrived in Britain : in 80^ he penetrated to the firth of Forth: in 82, having passed over [thefirth] in the first ship, he vanquished nations, unknown at that time, in frequent, at once and prosperous battles : in 84, he came to the Grampian -mount,* which now the enemies had sitten upon : for the Britons, nothing broken by the event of the former fight, and expecting revenge or slavery. Forthwith, more than thirty thousand of armed men were beheld and, hitherto, flowed in all the youth and with whom the raw and green age, famous in war and every one bearing his honours : when, among many generals, one excelling in valour and race, by name Calgac, who, to the multitude, demanding battle, delivered a speech* They received the oration cheerful and with a song of barbarous manner and shouting and * A hill in Buchan, now called Mm-mmind. KING ARTHUR. 21 dissonant clamours. Agricola having spoken j immediately, a running to arms. The dreadful battle commenced, which is unnecessary to de- scribe here -, suffice it to say, the Britons were defeated, with the slaughter of ten thousand j of the Romans no more than three hundred and forty fell. The Britons, wandering and with the mixed wailing of men and women, to draw the wounded, to call the entire, to desert their houses and through anger, of their own accord, to set them on fire : to choose lurking places and, straightway leave them, and it appeared, sufficiently, some to have been cruel toward their wives and children, as much as they com- passionated them. The next day opened the face of victory more widely : everywhere a vast silence, secret hills, houses smoking afar oflF, no one meeting the spies : by whom, into every part dismissed, where uncertain vestiges of flight nor any where found the enemies to" be gathered round.* Thus Tacitus. * Rolt, the historian, observes, that (in 1746) " the Duke of Cumberland issued a proclamation for disarming such of the clans as refused to surrender themselves; a camp was ^stablislied at Fort- Augustus, whence several detachments were sent to ruin and depopulate the rebellious country j where the devastation was so great, that, for the space of fifty fuiles, neither house, man, nor beast was to be seen ; which wai F 22 THE LIFE OF For some centuries after this, the history of Britain is very obscure. It was, in fact, a Roman province and, generally, speaking, perfectly tame and submissive.* If, however, we may believe two, comparatively, late historians, Dio, that is, and Herodian, the Britons were not essentially improved, in their dress or manners, by their intercourse with the accomplished masters of the world, who had strong garrisons in every part of the island : some of the generals, occa- sionally, usurping the purple. the entire subjugation of this fierce and intractable people, whom neither tlic Romans nor Saxons could reduce, and who had often bid defiance to their native kings." Conduct of the Powers of Europe, IV, 212.) [Every man of taste remembers and admires (and it was originally the author's uitention to insert) the beautiful and pathetic lines of Dr. Smollett on this disgraceful proceeding, beginning, " Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn." EdJ] * Jove fix'd it certain, that whatever day Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away. Pope's Homer. KING ARTHUR. «3 CHAP. V. Of the Britons, Picts, and Scots. About the year of the vulgar sera, 360, the Britons began to be harassed by two barbarous nations, from the north and west, which, like devouring locusts, swarmed over the island and extended their depredations from beyond the Scotish sea or firth of Forth, up even to the gates of London. These savages were denomi- nated (whether by themselves or their enemies is uncertain) Picts and Scots -, they, formerly, had established themselves, for some indefinite time, in the north of Caledon or modern Scotland -, the Scots in Ireland, whence they came over in swarms, to associate with their allies, in the plunder and devastation of the now enervated Britons j but whence they had come, originally, is a fact which it has not been possible to ascer- tain. The Romans, after building for the Bri- tons or teaching themselves to build, walls for their protection : a precaution, by the way, they never either observed themselves or recom- 24 THE LIFE OF mended to their subjected provinces, on any other occasion : well knowing that it is the heads, the hearts, the hands, of men, which are to defend them from their enemies, and not ditches or mounds.* This, however, being as it may, the Romans, in or about the year 404, t either not esteeming the island capable or wor- thy, of defence or, possibly, judging their pre- sence and forces of greater importance to the state, in Gaul or Italy, withdrew, not, only, with their own legions, but with all the flower of the British youth, never *^ after' to return 5 and now the northern wolves, regarding neither walls nor ditches, leaped over the borders, in number- less herds, ravaging and devouring all before them. The wretched and enervate Britons, in the year 446, not able nor, even, willing, to help themselves, had recourse to their old masters 5 * ** The strength of a city," said Agesilaus, king of Sparta, ** does not consist in its walls, but in the courage of the inha- bitants." The poet Alcizus was of the same mind : " Not stones nor timber," he says, " nor the art of builders are cities ; but, wherever there are men, themselves how to preserve knowing, there are walls and cities." (Spartan manual, P. 72.) [t The precise time, when the Roman legions finally aban- doned Britain, cannot be ascertained, as the chronology of the age is scanty and confused : according, however, to Bede, (L. 1. c. 11. 12. 13.) that important event appears to have taken place a few years later. Erf.] KING ARTHUR. -25 addressing them, as Gildas assures us, in a que- rulous and whining tone, to the following effect : '^ To Aetius, thrice consul. The groans of the Britons (and, after a few words complaining,) The barbarians drive us back to the sea -, the sea drives us back to the barbarians 3 between these ^ ^, arise two kinds of deaths, we are either killed ,^ * or drowned."* They received, however, no assistance, and were left entirely to the mercy and discretion of their ferocious enemies. * C. 17. This epistle is interpolated in Polydore Virgil's editiofli with a passage written by himself. 36 THE LIFE OF CHAP. VI. Of Vortigern, king of Britain and the invitation, arrival and success of the Saxons. In the year of the vulgar sera 428 and long before, king Vortigern sat on the throne of Bri- tain or governed, at least, the southern, eastern and western parts of that kingdom or might, possibly, as had, formerly, been the case with the Britons and appears, even, to have been so at this period, as it, likewise, was, both then and long after with the Scots (as the Irish were then named), only, to have the predominant power or military command over his fellow- potentates. This monarch, [of whose] descent or title to the crown very little is delivered by writers of re- putation for their age and authenticity,* being, * Samuel, the scholiast or interpolator of Nennius, as cor- rected by Bertram, gives this computation : From Rufus and Rubellius unto Stilicho consul, there are 371 years, and from Stilicho unto Valentinian, son of Placidia [Flavius Placiditis Valentinianus Casar, consul with Flavins Theodosius Augustus^ 425] and the kingdom of Vortigern, 25 : and from the reign of Vortigern unto the discord of Guitolin and Ambrose, which is KING ARTHUR. 27 completely harassed and overpowered by his barbarous and active enemies, determined, with the advice of his council, to call in the assistance of the Saxon pirates, who had now, at least, for a couple of centuries, infested, occasionally, the narrow seas and the coasts of Britain • insomuch, that long before the Romans abandoned the island, they had a great officer, whose duty it was to protect both, under the title of comes lit- toris Saxonici per Britanniam (the count of the Saxon shore through Britain). The Britons, therefore, in 449, sent over ambassadors, who, in a stile even more pitiful than that they had, already, used toward the Romans, addressed the Saxons to this effect : " Most good Saxons, the wretched Britons, wearied with the frequent attacks of enemies and very much worn down, having heard the victories by you, magnificently, Gualop, that is, Catguoloph [the battle of Guoloph] Vortigern held the empire in Britain, Theodositis and Valentinianus (430^ and, in the 24th year of his reign, the Saxons came into Bri- tain, Flavins Protogenes and Flavins Asturius or Turcius the second Asturius, being consuls, 449 and, from the year, in which the Saxons came into Britain and were taken up by Vortigern, unto Flavius Anicius J nstinianus Augustus and Fla- vins Theodorus Paulinus, the last consul of the west, 85, [534], See Bertram's edition, p. 96, and the Fasti consulares. 28 THE LIFE OF achieved, have sent us to you, supplicating that you would not withhold from them your assist- ance. The land, broad and spacious and filled with a plenty of all things, they offer to yield to your dominion. Under the protection of the Romans, we have, hitherto, freely lived j after the Romans, we are ignorant of better than you : therefore, we seek to fly under the wings of your valour : with your valour, with your arms, only, can we become superior to the enemy's and, whatever kind of service you impose upon us, we shall, willingly, sustain."* Complying with this request, as, they said, the staunch to the Britons and, always, alike ready in their neces- sity and advantage (having, no doubt, in their piratical expeditions, surveyed the advantages of the country with the eyes of a hawk), they came over, according to saint Gildas, " the Jeremiah of Britain," in three keels or long ships, and, after having performed their contract, by driving the old enemies out of the kingdom and received the solid reward of provinces and shires and counties, in the best and richest part of the island, they, forthwith, entered into an alliance with those identical enemies, whom • Wittichind, B. 1, c. 2» This writer, everywhere calls the Britons Bracti. KING ARTHUR. 39 tl^ey had so recently defeated^ and turned their arhis against their employers, whom, at length, they drove out of the country or confined to the mountainous and barren districts of Wales, Cornwall and, for some time, the adjoining shires. so THE LIFE OF CHAP. VII. Of the arrival of Hengist, and Vortigern's mar- riage with Romwen his daughter. XlENGisT, a Saxon prince, forasmuch as he was a man learned and subtle and skilful, when he had looked upon the inactive king and upon his people, because they were without arms, a coun- cil being held, said to the British king. We are few, if thou wilt that we send to our coun- try, that we may invite soldiers of the soldiers of our country and the number may be the more ample to fight both for thee and for thy nation ; and the king this same [thing] allowed : who, incontinently, sent and the messengers passed over the Thetick valley,* who returned vdth seventeen keels and the soldiers chosen came in them and, in one keel, came a beautiful and very graceful damsel : she was the daughter of Hen- gist. After the keels had come, Hengist made a feast to king Vortigern and to his soldiers and * That is, the German ocean, or part of what is now called the North- sea ; from Thetys, the goddess of the waves, the pretended mother of Achilles. See Claudian passim. KING ARTHUR. 31 to his interpreter, who was called Cerdkselmot* Hengist, therefore, ordered the damsel to minis- ter wine and ale to them, who were very much intoxicated and glutted.t Those drinking, Satan entered into the heart of Vortigern, that he loved her very much, and he requested her from her fa- ther by his interpreter and said every thing that, for her, thou canst request from me, thou shalt obtain, although the half of my kingdom, and Hengist, a council being held with his elders, who * This is Samuel's passage in the margin of some of the manuscripts, and appears, in the text of Bertram's edition, in a different character and between crotchets : " No Briton of the Britons knowing the Saxon tongue except this Briton : let him study, who reads, by what event it happened for this very man to understand the Saxon speech." Cerdic is, certainly, a Saxon name and the note is, singularly, shrewd for a Welshman. t That" this lady's name was Rowena^ who came out of her chamber, bearing a golden bowl, full of wine : approaching, then more near to the king, with bended knees, said, Laverd King,wacht heil [r. plajZOJib cmj. yxs hael. Lord king, be of health] ! But he, her face being seen, admired her grace very much and grew hot : then interrogated his interpreter, what the damsel said and what he ought to answer : to whom the interpreter said, she called thee lord king and honoured [thee] by the word of salutation : what, however, thou oughtest to answer, is Drinc /leii [Dpmc hael ! Drink health] ! Vor- tigern, then, answering Drinc hcdy ordered her to drink and took the bowl from her own hand and kissed her and drank," seems to be the invention of Geoffrey of JMonmouth (B. 6, c. 12.) 32 THE LIFE OF had come with him from the island of Anglen,* asked from them what they should demand [of the king,] for the damsel, one counsel was to them all, that they should demand the region which in their tongue is called Canthguaraland, but in our tongue Ghent (Kent) and he gave it to them, king Guorangon reigning in Kent and being ignorant that the kingdom of himself was delivered to the pagans and he himself alone into their power : too much sorrow disturbed him because his kingdom, secretly, treacherously and imprudently, was given to the foreigners and so was the damsel given to him into marriage and he slept with her and loved her very much.f * " Anglia vetus sita est inter Saxones et Giotos, habens oppidum capitale, quod sermone Saxonico Sleswic nuncupatur, secundum verb Danos Haithaby." (Ethelwerdus, L, 1 : that is. Old England is situate between the Saxons and the Jutes, liaving a chief town, which, in the Saxon language is called Sleswickf but, according to the Danes, Haithaby.^ i Nennius, C. 36. KING ARTHUR. S3 CHAP. VIIL Of Hengist's advice to king Vortigern. He n g I s t said to the king, I am thy father and will be to thee a counsellor, and, ever be unwil* ling to neglect my counsel, because thou shalt not fear thyself to be overcome by one man nor by one nation ; that, my nation, is mighty. I shall invite, therefore, my son with his brother's son : those men are warriors, that may fight against the Scots and give thou, to them, the regions which are in the north, hard by the wall, which is called Gual,^ and he ordered that he should invite them : whom he invited, also, Ochta and Ahisa with forty keels. But they themselves, when they navigated about the Picts, wasted the Orkney islands t and came and oc- * Thus, in C. 19.—" muruin et aggerem a mari usque ad mare, per latitudinem Britannia . , ,et vacatur Britannico ser- mone Gual." t Orchades insulas. The mare Fresicum as here or Frisicum litus, as Joceline hath it, in the life of saint Kentigem, is not, as Camden says, the firth [of Forth] , but the mare internum, of Richard, or Irish sea. 34 THE LIFE OF cupied many regions and islands* beyond the Fresick sea, that is, that which is between us and the Scots, as far as to the confines of the Picts ; and Hengist, always invited the keels to himself, by little and little, so that they left the islands from which they came without inhabitant j and when his people had increased both in va- lour and in multitude, they came to the above- said Cantuarian region, t In the year 455, Hengist and Horse fought with Vortigern, the king, in the place which was called ^glesford (now Ailsford, in Kent, at the bank of the river Medway) and his brother Horse was slain and, afterward, Hengist and his son, ^sc, enjoyed the kingdom.^ In the year 457, Hengist and ^sc fought with the Britons, in the place which was called Crec- canford (now Crayford, in KentJ § and there slew four men (generals) and the Britons, afterward, departed from Kent and, with great fear, fled to London. 1 1 In the year 465 Hengist and ^sc fought with • Probably meaning the Hehudes or ^budte corruptly He- brides, and, at present, the Western isles. t C. 37, X Of Kent, that is, Chro. Saxo. p. 13. § ** Crecanford, quod est Crickelade." Leland's Collectanea, I. 218. II Chro. Saxo, ibi. KING ARTHUR. 35 the Welsh, nigh Wyppedes-fleot (now Wipped- fleet in Kent) and there slew twelve aldermen, all Welsh j one, also, of their own, a very noble man, whose name was Wipped, was there slain.* In the year 473, Hengist and Msc fought with the Welsh, and took numberless spoils, and the Welsh fled from the Engles, as if there had been a fire.t * Chro. Saxo. ihi. t Ihi. He died 40 years after his arrival, in 489. See Henry of Huntingdon, p. 312. JEx, his son, reigned 34 years and, as he succeeded his father, must have died in 623. (Ibi and Chro. Sax. p. 14.) Many more battles were fought by the Saxons against the Britons : in the year 577, Cuthwin and Ceawlin fought against the Britons and slew three kings, Corn- mail and Condidan and Favinmail, in a place which is called Deorham and took tliree cities, Gloucester, Cirencester, and Bathancester (now Bath) ; In 607, iEthelfrid [king of the Northumbrians, a pagan] led his army to Leicester, and there killed numberless Britons. There, also, were slain two hun- dred monks [of the abbey of Bangor, living by the labour of their hands] who came thither to pray for the army of the Britons. Brocmail was called their general, who with fifty, more or less, thence escaped : In 710, Ina and Nun, his kinsman, fought with Gefent, King of the Britons {Saxm chronicle). S6 THE LIFE OF CHAP. IX. What counsel the Britons gave to king Vortigerii and the use he made of it. After these things^ therefore, the king in- vited to himself all his great men, that he might ask from them, what he should do : but they said. Go thou into the most remote borders of thy kingdom, that thou mayest build a fortified tower, in which thou mayest defend thyself: because the people whom thou hast taken upon thee hate thee and, with treacherous fraud, will kill thee and the whole regions, which thou hast loved, will occupy, with thy whole people, after thy death. Afterward, truly, the king himself with his magicians, went forward, about to en- quire after the tower and wandered over many regions and many provinces and, by no means, finding that which they sought, lastly, they came to that region which is called Guent, and he, going round about, in the mountains of Heriri (that is, Craig-eriri, the rock of the eagles) by the natives, Snaudun, (Snowdon) in English, at length obtained, in one of the mountains, a place. KING ARTHUR. 37 in which it was convenient to build a tower and the magicians said to him. Make the tower in this place, because it will be most safe from the barbarous people for ever. He, therefore, ga- thered together artificers, that is, stone-cutters and they gathered together stones and wood: but, when every matter was gathered together, in one night it was entirely taken away and, for three times, he ordered it to be gathered together and it nowhere appeared.* Then he called to himself his magicians, and asked them, what was this cause of malice and why it should happen? But they answered to him, saying, [unless] he could find a child without a father, that thou mayest have one who should be slain and the tower sprinkled with his blood, never shall it be built for ever.f Such a boy, being found, says to the king (after a quantity of lies, which are, likewise, in Geoffrey of Monmouth's British history) : Thou, therefore, go from this tower, because thou art not able to build it, and wander over many provinces, that thou mayest find a secure tower j I, indeed, will remain here 5 and the king said to the youth. By what name art thou called? He answered, I am called Am- brose J and the king said. Of what progeny • Samuel, CC. 39, 40, t Id. C. 40. t This boy is not intended for Ambrose-Merlin, according to G 88 THE LIFE OF art thou risen ? but he replied : One of the con- suls of the Roman nation is my father. Then he gave to him the tower with all the provinces of that country (West Britain) and, he himself, with his magicians, came to the left (that is. North) of Britain and fled, as far as the region which is called Guennesij* and built the city which is called by his name Cair-Guorthigirn \^Guasmoric, near Lugubalia'] (Carlisle), he there built that city, which, in English is called Palm- chester.t the interpolator of the history of Nennius and, as it is in Geoffrey of Monmouth, but, certainly, Ambrosius Aurelianus, (a great general and, in process of time, king of Britain) as will appear by the sequel, and who has been here confounded, with Merlin. * He withdrew into North Wales, in Latin, Venedotia, after- ward Gwentt at present in Monmouthshire, upon the Severn^sea. Gale. t Samuel, C. 4S, KING ARTHUR. 39 CHAP. X. Of the second arrival of saint German, and how Vortigern, flying to his tower, followed by the saint, was, in the night, burned, with his do- mestics. Saint German, truly, preached to Vortigern that he would make himself an alien from the illicit mixture of his own daughter, and convert himself to the lord : but he, as far as to the region which, from his name had received its name, that is to say, Guorthirnianum (Vortigern* s land), miserably, fled, that he might lie with his women. Saint German, therefore, pursued him, with all the clergy of the Britons, and there re- mained forty days and as many nights and prayed upon a stone and there stood, by day and by night and, in the mean time, Vortigern, as far as Vortigern* s tower, which he had built and im- posed upon his own name (that is. Din- Girtigmt, Vortigern' s tower) and in the region of the Dyveti (the inhabitants of West Wales, now Pembrokeshire,) near the river Teibi (now the Teivy or Tywy), ignominiously, departed. Saint g2 '40 THE LIFE OF German, however, followed him, in his usual manner, and there fasting, with all his clergy, for three days and as many nights, for good cause, remained j in the fourth night, truly, the whole tower, about the hour of midnight, fell, on a sudden, by fire sent from heaven (that is, lightning) ; the celestial fire burning and Vorti- gem, with all his people who were with him and, with his own wives, ended his life,* [534.] * Samuel, C. 48. He adds : This is the end of Vortigern, as I found it in the book of the blessed German, others, how- ever, have said otherwise. " Forasmuch as all those of his family were hated for his crime, between potent and impotent, between slave and freeman, between monks and laics, between small and great, and he himself, while, wandering, he went from place to place, finally, broke his heart and died, without praise.** (C. 49). Others, however, have said, the earth to be opened, which swallowed him up, in the night, in which his tower was burned about him, because any relics of those who were biurned with him in the tower, were not found (C. 50). KING ARTHUR. 41 CHAP. XI. Of the three principal battles which Vortimer, the eldest son of king Vortigern, waged against the Saxons. 1 H E first battle was upon the river Derwent ; the second, upon the ford, which is called in the Saxons tongue Episford, but in that of the Britons Sathenegahail, and there fell Hors, with the son of Vortigern, whose name was Cantigern : the third battle, in the field near the stone of a mo- nument, which was placed upon the bank of the Gallic sea, and the barbarians were defeated and they themselves returned in flight unto their keels, entering into them in a womanish manner. But he, after a little interval of time, was dead, and, before his death, he adverted to his family, that they would place his sepulchre in the port, from which the Saxons went out upon the bank of the sea : " In which I commend to you, although, in another part, the port of Britain they hold and inhabit, yet in this land they shall pot remain into eternity." They, however, con- 42 THE LIFE OF temned his commandment and interred him in a place in which he had not reigned : for he was buried in Lincolnshire : but if they had observed his commandment, without doubt, by the prayers of saint German, they would have obtained what- soever they had asked. But the barbarians, in great numbers, returned j when Vortigern was their friend on account of his wife [whom he loved, to that pass, that no man dared to fight against them, because they, courteously, cajoled the imprudent king, nevertheless, acting a fraud- ful purpose with a viper's heart*] and no man was able, courageously, to drive them out j be- cause not by their own valour they possessed Britain but by the divine will [and by reason of the very great sins of the Britons, god so per- mitting] : who can endeavour to resist against the will of god 5 but as the lord wills, so he acts, and he himself governs and reigns.f Vortigern had three sons : the first, Vortimer : the second, Cantegirn : the third, Pascent, .... The fourth, Faust, who was born to him of his daughter, whom saint German baptized, nourished and taught, and built a large place upon the bank of the river which is CEilled Renis^ and consecrated * Samuel's interpolations, or marginal notes, t Nennius, C. 45. KING ARTHUR. 43 it to himself, and remains until this day,* and he had one daughter, who, as we have said, was the mother of saint Faustm the second • That is, when Nemiius wrote his history, (of which this chapter is a genuine, part,) which was in or ahout the year 858. There is nowhere to be found any precise date of Vor- tigern's death. The last certain event of his life is the death of his son, Vortimer, who died in 467, and whom he is supposed to have survived : but it seems probable that he was dead long before 500. Moses Williams, who, at the end of his edition of Humphrey Llwyd's " Brittannica descriptionis com- mentariolum'* (London, 1731, 4to.) inserted certain " Mra cam- brobritannictB," of no antiquity, in fact, or authority, admits the year 392 will not answer for that in which Vortigern died, though he conjectures (from these fallacious tera of which Geoffrey of Monmouth's fabulous history is manifestly the ground-work) that be was born in that year. 44 THE LIFE OF CHAP. xn. Of Nazaleod. jLhe Britons, in fact, seem, about this periorf^,^ to have been in no want of valorous and able commanders, for, beside Vortimer, Cantigern and Pascent, the three legitimate sons of king Vortigern, who were valiant leaders along with Ambrose Aurelian, we have an account, in the histories of Henry of Huntingdon, (archdeacon of that bishop from 1110 to 1155) corroborated by the authority of the Saxon chronicle and of Fabius Ethelwerd, of a great battle, between the Saxons and the Britons, in the year 508. I am about to write, says the former, the battle which Nazaleod (Natanleod or Nataleod), the chief king of the Britons, fought against Certic and Cinric, his son, in the sixtieth year of the arrival of the Engles. Nazaleod, verily, was a man of great name and great pride, from whom that region was called Nazaleoli (Natanleag, now Natley), which is now called Certichesford.^ * Now Cherford, as Carte thinks, between Corfe-castle ami the sea» in the isle of Purbeck {History of England, 1, 199jf» KING ARTHUR. 45 All the multitude of Britain, therefore, being gathered together, Gertie and his son requested aid, in affairs of the highest consequence, from Esc, king of the Kentish and from Ella, the great king of the South-Saxons, and from Port and his sons,* who had lately arrived, and they appointed two wings for the battle, Gertie governed the right and Ginric, his son, the left. The battle, therefore, being begun, king Nazaleod, seeing the right wing the more excellent, rushed upon it himself and all his forces, that this, which was the bravest, he might at first overthrow : the banners, therefore, being thrown to the ground and the battalion forced through, Gertie betook himself to flight and a very great slaugh- ter was made of his battalion at the moment. The left wing, however, led by the son, seeing that the right wing of his father would be de- stroyed, rushed on the backs of the pursuers and the battle was, vehemently, aggravated and there fell king Nazaleod and his army took to flight and there were slain of them five thousand 3 to the rest, indeed, swiftness was protection. The Saxons, therefore enjoyed the prerogative of victory, and quiet was given to them for not There is, also, another place called Charford, m Hampshire, which is not less likely to be the true one. ♦ This Port seems to have given his name to Portsmouth. 4(5 THE LIFE OF many years^ and auxiliaries came to them, brave and numerous.* * 312. That Nazaleod, as Carte and others have pretended, was Ambrosius Aurelianus, under another name, is the grossest absurdity possible. This author has, already, mentioned, Ambrosius, and would scarcely have introduced him by a dif- ferent name, without explaining the reason. Beside, Nazaleod was slain in this battle [in] 508, and Ambrosius appears to have been living long afterward. KING ARTHUR. 47 CHAP. xni. Of Ambrose Aurelian. Some of the miserable remains of the Britons, caught, unawares, in the mountains, were slain by heaps : others, exhausted by famine, coming in, surrendered themselves to perpetual slavery 5 if, by that mean, they could escape immediate butchery, which was the highest favour granted : others sought transmarine countries, with great howling, as it were, for their sea- cheer, in this manner, under the folds of the sails, — singing : Thou hast given us like sheep for eating, and scat- tered us among the gentiles:* others, in moun- tainous hills, menacing, craggy, walled, and very thick woods and marine rocks, constantly, reckoning their life to be in the most imminent peril, although, fearful, continued in the coun- try. The time, therefore, intervening a little, when the most cruel spoilers had retired home, the remains, strengthened by god (to whom the most miserable citizens fled for succour, on all * Fsalm xliv. 11. 48 THE LIFE OF sides, from divers places, as eagerly as bees from a storm approaching their hive), entreating him, all at once, with their whole heart and (as it is said) loading the skies with their numberless vows, lest they should be destroyed by universal slaughter, the leader being Ambrose -Aurelian, a modest man (who, peradventure, of the Roman nation, alone survived the collision of such a tempest, his relations, who wore the purple, being slain in the same, whose progeny, then, (in the author's time,) had greatly degenerated from the virtue of their ancestors), they took up strength, provoking the victors to battle, to whom, the lord assenting, the victory fell * In the seventh year of the arrival of the Saxons in Britain [454] , was fought a battle at Milles- treu :f in the beginning, therefore, Hors smote the battalion of Cantigern, with such vigour, that, in the manner of dust, being dispersed, it was overthrown, and slew the king's son, lying prostrate. Vortimer, however, his son, a man, truly, very stout, from moving oblique, broke the battalion of Hors, and Hors himself, the bravest of men, being killed, the remains of the cohort fled to Hengist, who, when he had en- ♦ Gildas (Josselin's edition), C. 25. t iEgelsthorp, ^gelesford, Ailsford, in Kent, at the bank of the river Medway. This battle has been mentioned already. KING ARTHUR. 49 countered the wedge of Ambrose, invincibly, then, therefore, the weight of the battle was turned upon Hengist, and, being straitened by the bravery of Vortimer, when he had long per- severed, not without great loss of the Britons, being overcome, he, who had never before fled, fled now : but, in the following year, Vortimer, the flower of youths, perished by disease, with whom, both at once, the hope and victory of the Britons were extinct.* Vortigern reigned in Britain, and, while he continued to reign, was molested from the fear of Ambrose.f From the reign of Vortigern unto the discord of Guitolin and Ambrose were twelve years, which was Guoloppum, that is, Catguoloph.X Vortigern had three sons : the third, Pascent, who reigned in two regions, that is, Guelth and Fortigernianum, after the death of his father, giving his suflFrage to Ambrose, who had been a great king among all the regions of Britain. § William of Malmes- ♦ Henry of Huntingdon, P. 310. According, however, to the Saxon Chronicle, the year, in which this battle was fought, was 455, the British general, king Vortigern, the place, Egeles- ford : unless they have been different engagements. t Nennius, C. 28. J Idem (Samuel potiits), C. 1, p. 96, 97, of Bertram's edition. $ Idem, C. 5, p. 131, 186, 198, of Bertram's edition. " Were not," asks Girald Barry, " the [Britons] brave in so THE LIFE OF bury, indeed, says, that " Ambrose, the sole survivor of the Romans, after Vortigern, was monarch of the realm,"* war ... in the reign of Aurelius Ambrosius? whom, even,*' he adds, " Eutropius praises" i^Anglia sacra, II, 448). In fact, however, Eutropius, ends his history in 364, 200 years before the aera of Ambrose ; whose Latin name, moreover, was Ambro- sius Aurelianus, not Aurelius Amhrosius, as he was, first, deno- mmated by Geoffrey of Monmouth ; so that the bishop of Saint-David's had swallowed the gross falsehood of the bishop of Saint- Asaph. John Lewis, a Welsh lawyer, whose folio " History of Great Britain" is replete with forgeries and false- hoods, takes this Amhrosius Aurelianus for S[ain]t Ambrose. According to John of Tynemouth, in the life of Dubricius, that place is Ambrose's-mount, which is now vulgarly called Stan- henges (Usher's Antiquitates, p. 241.) * B. 1, p. 9 (Frankfort edition, 1601, folio). However, it must be acknowledged that this respectable historian, who commences his work with the arrival of the Saxons, knew very little of the Britons, and that the little information he had was gleaned from a polluted manuscript of Nennius, which he ap- pears to have taken for the work of Gildai, though he names neither. KING ARTHUR. 51 CHAP. XIV. Of Arthur's birth. Arte UR was born at Padstow in Cornwall.* It seems impossible to deduce the descent of Arthur from any authentic source. At the end of David Williams's '' History of Monmouth- shire" are two diflferent pedigrees of this great monarch, formed partly from the British history and partly in the imagination of two Welshmen, who could not distinguish a lie from a fact. That such has been the character of a Cambrian genealogist is ^^manifest from the life of saint Cadoc> a Welshman, extant in a Cotton manu- script of the thirteenth century (Vespasian, A. XJV, of which further notice will be taken) j where his pedigree is thus accurately deduced : " Augustus Cesar genuit Octavianum, Octavianus genuit Tiberium, Tiberius genuit Gaium, Gaius • '* Ex charta topographica Anglic^* (Leland's Collectanea, 111,47). It will appear, hereafter, that he was king of both Cornwall and Devonshire ; though he might have possessed royal territories in Wales, it is not, however, known where. 62 THE LIFE OF genuit Claudium, Claudius genuit Vespasianum,*' and so forth. This gross absurdity, however, is far exceeded, by the pedigree of Lhywarch-h^n, in William Owen's edition of his '^ Heroic Elegies," p. vii. No wonder, therefore, that the phrase of " fole Briton" should have become proverbial in the thirteenth century.* Even the Bollandist editors of the ^' Acta Sanctorum ^ allude to this '^ familiar fatuity," as they call it, of the Welsh people, in feigning genealogies, and refer to Alford, at the year 508, number 8, in what manner it is said, that Arthur " drew his origin, by his mother, from that noble leader, Joseph of Arimathea, who buried the lord:" for they write, according to these learned Jesuits, that " Helianis, the nephew of Joseph, begat Joshua, Joshua begat Aminidab, Aminidab begat Cas- tellors, Castellors begat Mavael, Mavael begat Lambord, his son, who begat Igerna, of whom Uther-Pendragon begat the noble and famous Arthur." t Owen, in a later book, of which more will be said hereafter, asserts, without the slightest authority, that Arthur, was " the son of Meirig ab Tewdrig, and the twentieth in descent from Bran ab Llyn," and, in 601, '* was * Peter Langtoft's Chronicle^ as translated by Robert Man- ning, p. 167. t Mali, III, 587. KING ARTHUR. 63 a chieftain of the Silurian Britons," and, in 517, '^ was elected, by the states of Britain, to sove- reign authority." Uther-Pendragon (in English, dragons -head), the reputed father of Arthur, may, possibly, have taken that surname from the form of his helmet or his crest. The most ancient author (if one may believe him to have actually been the com- poser of what has been ascribed to him) who appears to have made mention of this Uther, is Taliesin, surnamed Benbeirdh (the head or chief of the bards^j who flourished (as they say) in the sixth century, and is, certainly, mentioned by Samuel, the interpolator of Nennius, £not] long after 858. He appears to have written the Marwnad or elegy, of Uther, which is found among manuscripts of some antiquity :^ his name, however, does not occur in the poem itself, though that of Arthur does, which, cer- tainly, adds nothing to its credit, and has either been composed or interpolated after the appear- ance in 1139, of GeoflFrey of Monmouths British history, before the publication whereof Arthur is never mentioned by any authority unless Samuel or some other interpolator of Nennius, if • " Marunad Ythyr, Uthuri epitaphiu7n" [Uthers elegy]. (Lhuyd's Archieologia Bntannica, p. 264.) H 54 THE LIFE OF they deserved to be so called.* The next writer, that seems to have noticed his name, without knowing it, is this Samuel or some other inter- polator, who says, " Artur, Latinl translatum, sonat ursum horribilem vel malleum ferreum, quo franguntur ' molas' leonum. Mabuter, Brittanicl, filius horribilis, Latins ; quoniam d, pueritia sua crvdelisfuity\ Mab, however, is agreed to mean son, and, though ythr signify horrible, in one sense ; Ythyr, in another, is a proper name, synonymous with Uther ; so that Mab-Uther seems to be the patronymic of Arthur, and though this might be his name of baptism, the other (Uthers-son) may have been a common method, as in fact it was and is to this day among the Welsh people to take the surname of ap Rhees, ap Richard, ap Hugh, and the like, in addition to the baptismal name, and, hence, the frequent corruptions of Preece, Prichard, Pugh, &c. Ap, or ab, is a contraction of Mdb, a son, " and used," according to the dictionaries, " to serve, for- merly, between the sons and the fathers name, * Edward Williams, the bard and poet, does not think this elegy attributed to Taliesin, either genuine or ancient. t C. 61 . (" Arthur," that is, " translated into Latin, sounds horrible bear or iron mallet, [by which are broken] the ' jaw- bones' of lions. Mab-uter, in British, is, in Latin, horrible son j because from his birth he wascruel." KING ARTHUR. 66 instead of a surname, as Mac did, at a still ear- lier period 3 thus, in the interpolations to Nen- nius, the pedigree of Pascent, the third son of Vortigern, king of Britain, and who reigned, after his father, for a few years, runs thus : " Theuduhr Jilius Pascent, Mac Ap-guocan, Mac Moriud, Mac Guortheneu, Mac Guitaul, Mac Ap Glovi : * at Arthurs feast, (as described by Geof- frey of Monmouth) : " Beside the consuls came heroes of no less dignity, who are thus enume- rated : Map-Papo, Map-Coil, Mab-Eridur, Map- Hogoit, Map-Claut, Map-Cledauc^ Mab-Bagan, Map-Goit, Map-Trunat, Map-Catel, Map-Ne- ton."t It must be admitted that Uther-Pen- dragon is not mentioned by any historian, | ex- cept Geoflfrey ap Arthur, who does not, in fact, deserve the name of one : but it is, nevertheless, highly probable that Arthurs entire name was Arthur Mab-Uther. • C. 52. t B. 9, C. 12. ^ Even the Welsh " triads," which, frequently, mention Arthur, and are quoted by the Welsh as a very ancient autho- rity, though not believed to have been written earlier than the twelfth century, and, certainly, not before Geoffrey of Monmouth, are silent about such a name altogether" (Owens Cambrian biographyf p. 17.) 66 THE LIFE OF CHAP. XV. Of Arthurs name. " The reader," according to Pinkerton, " need hardly be told that Arthur was merely a name given by the Welsh to Aurelius Amhrosius, their Roman defender against the Saxons :" to this he adds, '' See Gildas, C. 25, Beda, I, 16 :"* where nothing like it can possibly be found. Neither Gildas nor Bede mentions Arthur nor even Aurelius Amhrosius, a name invented, for the first time, by Geoffrey of Monmouth, whom this writer is apt, as he has done upon this oc- casion, to consult, and cite some more respect- able historian. The name of the British king mentioned by Gildas and Bede is, in fact, AmbrO' sius Aurelianus. If '' Arthur was, merely, a name given by the Welsh'* to Amhrosius Aurelianus (the other being a fictitious name), how then comes Geoffrey of Monmouth, so far from bring- ing them together, to relate the latter to be dead • Enquiry into the history of Scotland, I, 76, Note 9. KING ARTHUR. 57 before the former was born ? " Art-uir, Mr. Pin- kerton says, signifies the chief or great man :" but no such etymology is to be discovered in the vocabulary of Lhuyd nor in the several dictiona- ries of Richards and Ov^en : this, therefore, is another absurdity, a greater, even, than that of Samuel, the interpolator of Nennius, who calls Arthur horrible bear, and, in fact, arthj certainly, means a hear, as ythr does horrible. How hap- pened it, at the same time, that so accomplished a scholar should be ignorant that Arthurs name, as expressed in Latin, actually occurs to the Roman satyrist, Juvenal, four centuries, at least, before Arthur was born : " Cedamus patria, vivant Arturios isthic, Et Catulus—."* He is, repeatedly, too, called Arthurius as well by Carddoc, as in the Cotton-manuscript of the lives of the Welsh Saints, (Vespasian, A. XIV) of the 13th century, and, always Arturius, by Leland, throughout his Assertio Arturii/* In a book written and published by William Owen, in titled "The Cambrian biography or his- torical notices of celebrated men among the ancient Britons [and modern Welsh] :" London, 1803, the author says, under the name of 68 THE LIFE OF ARTHUR, "It has been, generally, inferred that the great achievements of this hero created those illusory actions and scenes depicted in the Mabinogion or juvenilities, and some authors, with this phantom before their eyes, have denied ex- istence to the true Arthur of history." (p. 13.) Edward Lhuyd, indeed, in his catalogue of Bri- tish manuscripts,* mentions Mabinogi, as extant in the red book of Hergest, which he describes as a little book, containing certain fabulous petty histories of the very ancient British nobles, of which he had seen a copy, in four parts, from which he gives a few short extracts in Welsh and Latin. In Owens dictionary, he explains " Mabinogi [plural mabinogion, from mabinawg, mabin, youthful, boyish, mab, a boy, a son], ju- venility j juvenile instruction; the amusement of youth ; the title of some ancient tales. Ma- hinogi Jesu Grist, The infancy of Jesus Christ :" apparently, a childish book or book for children, like "Mother Goose's tales." So far, so good. He thus proceeds : *^ That there was a prince of this name, as Nennius represents, f who often led the Britons to battle against the Saxons, in the commencement of the sixth century [as Geoffrey • Archaeologia Britannica, Oxford, 1707, folio, p. 262. t It is mentioned by Samuel, who appears to have inserted scholia or glosses, but never once by Nennius himself. KING ARTHUR. 69 of Monmouth says], there ought not to be any doubt J for he is mentioned by Llywarch,* Merd- dinjf and Taliesin,X poets who were his 'con- temporaries* and is, often, recorded in the triads, " WHICH ARE DOCUMENTS OF UNDOUBTED CRE- DIT** {Ihi.J. As to the historical triads, no an- cient manuscript is to-be found, and, most pro- bably, they are after Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Mahinogi : they are, manifestly, too childish and ridiculous to be of any ' authority.' '' Such," however, is " the outline of Arthurs portrait, as exhibited by the bards and the triads. The hero of that name, in the dramatic tales, called Mahi- nogion, is, totally, of different features and, in * Moses Williams, a Welshman and a scholar, positively, asserts, in a note on Humphrey Llwyds Comrnentariolum (P. 115) that ** Yarthur [as inLlywarchs elegy upon Geraint ap Erbin] is not Arthur, but larddur ; peradventure, lard' dur ab Diwrig, who, very frequently, occurs in our manu- scripts." t Merlin the wild, the author of Afallenau or The apple- trees, which appears to have been interpolated, with the names of Medrawd, Arthur and Wenhwifarf after the publication of the British history of GeoflFrey of Monmouth, who, actually, wrote the life of this Merlin in Latin verse, 1147". X That Arthur, as victor at the battle of Badon, fought about 512, is mentioned in a pretended elegiac poem of Taliesin of which there is no * memorial* known to be extant eitlier in print or manuscript, except a single stanza, inserted and trans- lated into Latin, by Sir John Prise. 60 THE LIFE OF factj altogether, another personage. The last is, then, a mythological character, of times so an- cient as to be far beyond the scope of history :" which, indeed, is no bad character of Welsh literature in general. "His attributes in the Mabinogion point him out as such : memorials of this being and of several others connected with him are, even, written in the heavens, for cer- tain constellations bear their names. Arthur is the Great-bear. Telyn Arthur or The harp of Arthur is, also, the British appellation for the constella- tion Lyray This, to be sure, is a very curious anecdote of Welsh history : we read of David, king of the Jews, having a harp, but, this is the first time, we have heard of the harp of the " mythological" king Arthur, *' There are some very extraordinary things to be found," adds this perspicacious and far-sighted Welshman, " con- cerning the mythological Arthur, in the Mabino- gion, and, particularly, in the story of Culhwck and Olweuj wherein we recognize adventures, which must have had a common origin with those of Hercules and the Argonautick voyage* (P. 15, 16) : this is, certainly, a singular instance of the modesty of this '^ maganaiz' Briton, as, it might have been, naturally, expected, that " the mythological Arthur" of the Mabinogion, carried up his descent many thousand years beyond Her- KING ARTHUR. 61 cules or the Argonauts, This " common origin," however, has the coequal propensity to forgery and falsehood, which is found no less among the ancient Greeks than the coeval Welsh. The Arcturus or bear-ward, was never [called] the constellation of " The greater-bear." 62 THE LIFE OF CHAP. XVI. Of the death of Howel. GiLDAs, a most holy man, was the contempo- rary of Arthur, king of the whole of Greater- Britain,* whom loving, he loved, whom he, al- ways, desired to obey. His twenty- three brothers, nevertheless, resisted the rebellious king afore- said, not willing to suffer his dominion; but frequently put him to flight, and expelled him from the forest and the battle. Howel, the elder, by birth, an assiduous warrior and most fa- mous knight, obeyed no king, not even Arthur. He afflicted him, he excited between both the greatest fury. He, very frequently, came from Scotland,t he kindled fires, he carried away spoils, with victory and praise : whereupon the king of universal Britain, hearing the magnani- mous youth to have done such things, and to do • This can only mean Wales or part of Wales, and is termed Greater Britain in opposition to Less or Little Britain. In the middle of the sixth century, the greater part of England was in tlje possession of the Saxons. t Cau or Kau, the father of these twenty-four brethren, was a petty king of Strath-Clyde. KING ARTHUR. 6» others equals pursued the most victorious and best of youth, so that the natives said and hoped he was about to be their king. In this hostile pursuit, however, and in a warlike meeting, in the Isle of Man,* he slew his enemy the plun- derer. After that slaughter, Arthur, the con- queror, came back, rejoicing, very greatly, that he had overcome his strongest enemy. t Gildas, * Myna, in the manuscript now citing. Mona (Anglesey), erroneously by Caesar. Humphrey Llwyd (in his Britanniccs. descriptionis commentariolum," re-edited by Moses Williams, 1731, 4to., p. 132) says " There yet remains a fragment of the ancient writer Gildas the Briton, ... in the library of Henry earl of Arundel, in which these words are had : ** Britain hath three islands, Wight against Armorica : the second is situate in the navel of the sea, between Ireland and Britain : its name Eubonia, vulgarly Manaw." Bede calls it " The Menanian islands ; and Henry of Huntingdon," the Menavian island, and vulgarly called Man." (Jb. p. 133). " Nee procul hinc est Mon- muthia, nohis Mynwy a conctirsu Mouse et Vagae dicta," (Ibi. p. 103.) llichard of Cirencester says it had been called Maenaeda, and was then called Manavia. t " There is yet extant," according to Sir John Prise, '* a place in North Wales, which still retains the memory of this slaughter, and has standing a huge stone, bearing the name of this Howel, as was the custom with the ancients to perpetuate the memory of such kind of things." (Defence, &c. p. 143.) If this be true, the slaughter did not happen in the Isle of Man, but in North-Wales, where the stone stands, and which in the sixth century, [may have] been called the Isle of Mynwy. Menay is a river in Anglesey. " Of Gildas," says Girald Barry, 64 THE LIFE OF the historiographer of the Britons, ruling and preaching in the city of Ardmach [in Ireland], heard that his brother had been slain by Arthur. He grieved at the hearing, he wept with groans, that the dearest brother, for the dearest brother, prayed daily for the fraternal spirit. He prayed, moreover, for Arthur, the pursuer and slayer of his brother, fulfilling the apostolic command, which says, '' Pray for those who persecute you and bless those that hate you." In the mean time, the most holy Gildas, the most venerable historiographer, came to Britain.* The arrival *' who so bitterly inveighs against his own nation, the Britons say that on account of his brother, prince of Albany, whom king Arthur had killed, being offended, he wrote these things: whence also, many excellent books, which he had written, concerning the acts of Arthur, and in the praises of his nation, the death of his brother being heard, as they assert, he cast them all into the sea : by reason of which thing, you find nothing of so great a prince expressed in authentic writings." (Be illau, Wal. c. 27.) By " the king on the Clyde, with whom Arthur fought,** Mr. Sharon Turner, who quotes " Usher, p. 676,'* seems to mean this Howel, at p. 677. Arthur, however, fought no king on the Clyde. *Pinkerton pretends that the saint and the historian were two different men." Gildas Alhanius," he says, " or the saints must be carefully distinguished from that Gildas, who wrote the book De excidio Britonum [Britannice] : and who lived a cen^ tury after . . . Caradoc of Llancarvon [Llancarvan] , the Welrfi KING ARTHUR. 65 of Gildas the wise being heard by king Arthur, and the primates, abbots and bishops, of all Bri- tain, numberless individuals, out of the clergy and people came together, that they]might appease Arthur for the abovesaid homicide." But, he, as he had at first done, the rumour of his brothers death being known, granted a pardon to the enemy requesting it : he gave him a kiss, and, with the gentlest mind, blessed him. This done, king Arthur, grieving and crying received, from {Welsh] historian wrote the life of St. Gildas, who was only re- markable for superior piety, and was no writer" (Enquiry, II, 275). Yet this identical Carddoc, in his life of Saint Gil- das, here cited, expressly says, that teaching, at Glastonbury, he, there wrote the history of the kings of Britain : '* Ibi scrip- sit historias de regibus Britannie." (c. 20) ; and, repeatedly calls him " Brittonum historiographus" (c. 10) ; and " vene- rabilis historiographus" (c. 11.). A different life of this Saint, likewise, by an anonymous Monk of Ruys, frequently printed, though it disagree in many particulars with this of Caridoc, still preserves the identity of the historian and the saijit ; and even, gives an extract from his book : that Gildas the saint was a different person from the " British Jeremiah," as Gibbon calls him, and was no writer, are two ignorant assertions. Leland, Bale, Pits and Tanner, it is true, enumerate, among them, no less than seven Gildases, all distinguished with an appropriate epithet, as, Gildas Albanius, Gildas Badonicus, Gildas Bannocho- rensis, Gildas Cambrius, Gildas Hibemicus, Gildas Quartus and Gildas Sapiens-, to which Dempster, adds Gildas Aldanus, and some one else, by way of joke, Gildas Fictitius. 66 > THE LIFE OF the bishops standing by, penance and made amends, in as much as he was able, till he ended his life."* • " Thus one man, in his time, plays many parts, His acts being seven ages .'* It must be admitted, liowever, there, really, is a Gildas, who was none of these, and has no addition, but merely flourished in the ninth century und left a work intitled, " Liber de com- jmto (Cotton MSS. Vitelllus, A. xii), with a prefatory epistle to Rabanus Maurus (inserted in Usher's " Veterum epistolanim Hibei-nicamm Sylloge :" Dub. 1632, 4to. p. 55). Gildas, beside, as we are informed by Leland, [appears] to have written books intitled Cambreidos (a metrical version, it is likely, of the British history of Geoffrey of Monmouth, who came into the world upward of five centwies after Gildas had gone out of it), ** found 80 years and upward, before that time, in the Irish isles, and carried hito Italy" (Collectanea, V, 57), " by one Blasius Biragics, in 1460," as Bale says. Whether this be what is contained in the Cotton manuscript, (Julius D, xi.) ascribed by Bale, in whose hand it seems to have been, to a certain Gildas, who flourished, according to that fabulous writer, in 860 (" Teste Baleo") : it is, frequently, quoted by archbishop Usher, in his " Antiquitates," and begins, " Primm ah Ytalia post patrisfata relegat.'* Ponticus Virunnius, who abridged Geoffreys British History, has some things which are not to be found, precisely in that. This is an extract : ** Now the name of the damsel [Claudius's daughter, see that history, B. 4, c. 15.] was Gennissa, (although the poet Gildas calls her Invenissa, [luvenissa] .... and so a city was there made [by Claudius] . . . and to be composed histories and verses, and the poems Cambres, of KING ARTHUR. 67 which, also, in the fifth book of epigrams, Gildas, the famous British Poet, sajrs : " Jucunda toties cecini tibi carmina Cambres," and said, Sambuca thou rushest from Venus, now to thee Om- nidasituus becoraes vile. Now sambuca is a triangular musical instrument (they vulgarly called it a harp), whereof part is broad, and being concave is held to the breast, the fingers clatter upon the chords, in French they vulgarly call it Ban- dose [Q. Bandore, Mcmdore, F. Pandore, Drayton's, Works,ll. 736} ... so, also, Apollonius detracted Typanon for TympanoUf and Basamon for Balsomon, so Sabuca for Sambuca, and more- over it seems to insinuate as if he himself were the writer of the Cambrean song, and from the sphere of Venus the sweetness of melody to descend, or, even, Cambre that is Britain, as above, it is the British book, as are Caesars commentaries, or any Bri- tish book, which was read at Rome, for, always was Britain learned, even in Greek, or the Poem of Gildas is not to be doubted." Powells edition, 1585, L. 4, P. 28). Lily Gregory Gyrald has these words : •* I remember me to have read Gildas a British Poet far more ancient (as I think) than these [I have, just mentioned], whose elegiack poem appeared to me to be written with wonderful facility nor therefore to be, wholly con- temned : which, afterward I, also found cited in a very ancient British history." (Opera, L. B, 1696, folio, II, 306.) By this " very ancient British history" he must either mean GeofiVey of Monmouth or Poiiticus Virunnius : he is, certainly, deceived in imputing an elegiack poem to Gildas. Bale (amongst pal- pable falsehoods and forgeries) imputes to his Gildas Albanius, 1, Versus vaticiniorum: ** O rabiem Britonum quos copia dip vit :" 2, De Sexto cognoscendo : " Ter tria lustra tenent quum." [MS. Bib. Bod. Digby, 186 : Tanner] : 3, Super eodem Sexto : " Cambria Camewan Anglis :" 4. Versus Gilde de Sexto rege Hibemie, MS. Bod. 2086, 2157. 68 THE LIFE OF In one of the Cambridge manuscripts of Gildas, Cormac, who, in or about the 12th century, prefixed heads for the first twenty chapters, which have great merit and are mistaken by many, as being the genuine work of Gildas ; but that is, cer- tainly, not the case, as, in the same manuscript, his scholia or glosses run through the margin, but have not been printed (ex- cept a few extracts in Ushers Antiquities, the writer whereof thus challenges his right to what he had done, in the following epigram at the end : *' Historiam Gildae Cormac sic perlege script am Doctoris digitis sensu, cultuque, redactam, HtEc tenues superat, multos carpitque superbos.** KING ARTHUR. 69 CHAP. xvn. Of the rape of Gwennimar, Arthurs queen. Glastonbury was besieged by Arthur, the tyrant, with a numberless multitude, on account of Guennemar, his wife, violated and ravished, by the unjust king Melvas, in Somersetshire, and there brought, on account of the refuge of the inviolate place, on account of the fortifications of reeds, and of a river, and of a marsh, for the sake of protection. The rebellious king had sought the queen for the compass of one year j he heard, at length, that she was remaining in that place j he moved the army of all Cornwall and Devonshire, and made ready for a battle against his enemies. This seen, the abbot of Glastonbury (Gildas, likewise, bearing him com- pany), entering between the armies, advised Melvas, his king, that he should, peaceably, - restore the ravished queen. She, therefore, was restored, by whom she had been to be restored, through peace and benevolence. These things being transacted, the two kings, who came to the temple of saint Mary, to visit and to pray, I #■ #*** 70 THE LIFE OF gave to the abbot many territories, the abbot confirming the beloved fraternity, for the peace had and for the benefits which they had made, and, more amply, those which they were about to make. Thence the two kings returned paci- fied, promising, reverently, to obey the most reverend abbot of Glastonbury, and never violate the most holy place nor, even, things subject to the principal placet ♦ Vita sancti Gildae, manuscriptus regis, 13 B. VII. KING ARTHUR. 71 CHAP. XVIII, Of the battles of Arthur. I N or about the year 457, the Saxons prevailed and increased, not a little, in Britain. Now, Hengist being dead,* Ochta, his son, went over, from the leftt part of Britain, to the kingdom of the Cantuarians, and from him are sprung the kings of that country. Arthur fought against them, in those days, that is to say, the Saxons with the kings of the Britons j but he himself was the general of the wars, and in all the battles was conqueror. I The first battle was in the mouth of the river Glem.§ The second and third, and fourth and fifth [battle] upon another river^ • He was the first Saxon king of Kent, and died in 488. t The left, it is said, means the north, because the priest, in aaying mass, looks toward the east : though, it is believed to be, elsewhere, otherwise accounted for. t Samuels additions to Nennius's Historia Britonum, C.62. § The Cambridge manuscript used by Gale, under the name of Gildas, reads Glein, and, in the margin is Devonia [Devon- shire] and Gleni ; but more rightly, he says Glem in Lincoln" 72 THE LIFE OF which is called Duglas, which is in the region Linuis.^ The sixth battle [was] upon the river which is called Bassas.f The seventh battle was in the wood of Caledon, that is, Catcoit Celidon.X shire, where is now Glemford? There is, however, a river Glen in Northumberland, which gives name to Glendale. Thus, in the old ballad of" The hontyng of the Chymat ;" " Glendale gljtteryde on their armor bright." * Linuis or Linnis, which appears to be Lancashire, in which is a river, called the Dowglas, which runs by Wigan and goes into the sea toward Latham, and is the only one of that name, it is believed, in the south of Britain (See Leland's Itinerary, V, 96). The etymon of Duglas, in Welsh, is du (dubh, black) and glas (blue or gi-een). t Bassos.^ Where is now Boston, Gale, This, however, only shows his folly, Boston being a contraction of Saint-Bo- tulphs-town. Q. Basford, in Staffordshire. X Cath-coit.'] In the margin of the Cambridge manuscript, Comubiae [Cornwall] : but, in the Cotton one, also ascribed to Gildas, more rightly, (as Gale thinks,) in Lincolnshire : for this reason, as it seems : " On the other part at the Aufona [at this day the Nen or Wella7id'] inhabited, with the Carnabii Bri- gantes and neighbours to the ocean, the Coitanni, ' is' a tract of ground overgrown with woods, which, like other woods of the Britons, was called Caledonia : of this, however, the historian Florus makes mention." (Richard of Cirencester, p. 26.) He has, likewise, two other Caledonian woods, one of which he places in Kent, the other in the most distant northern part of Scotland. The words of Florus, being said of Caesar : '^ Pur- suing the same Britons into the Caledonian woods he put one of the Cavelanian kings in chains," (B. 3, C. 10.) Who, liow- KING ARTHUR. 73 The eighth battle was in the castle Gunnion. The ninth battle was waged in the city Legion [which in British, is called Kaerleun].^ The tenth battle was waged on the shore of the river which is called Ribroit.f The eleventh battle was in the mount which is called Agned Cath-Regonion.X The twelfth battle was in the mount Badon, in which fell, in one day, eight [r. four] hundred and forty men, from one bout of Arthur, and no man overthrew them but himself alone."§ ever, the Cavelani were, does not appear. Humphrey Llwyd imagines they may be " The Cattivellani [K'alof iXXavoi] P^ Dio, or the Cattieuchlani of Ptolemy, now Hertford and Buck- inham, shire mountaineers." (Com. p. 31.) * NowCaerleon-upon-Usk, or Caer-Legion, upon Dee, now West-Chester. ! t Trathtreveroit [Traithenrith or Rhydrhwyd,'] Gildas manu- script, Arderit, Cotton manuscript and Prise and a Chronicon Walliae, manuscript, cited by Gale, probably Aerae Britan- nic(E, adjinem. H. IJwyd, Commentariolum, 17 SI, 4to. p. 142, Arderydd. X In the margin of the Cotton Gildas : "in Sumerseteshire, quern nos Cath-bregion." {Cath or c&d, in Welsh, signifies battle.] "These battles, together enumerated, appear to be waged in the space of forty years and more, and although, all here seem to be attributed to Arthur, nevertheless, they appear to have been waged, under Vortigem, Ambrosius and others," says Gale, but without quoting the slightest authority. § Historia Britonum, C. 63. The battle of Badon, accord-, iug to the computation of Archbishop Usher, was fought in the 74 THE LIFE OP year 520, which date, with his usual weakness, he takes froifflf Matthew of Westminster. *• The Badouick mount," upon the best, because the oldest authority, that of Gildas, " was neat the mouth of the Severn ; and, therefore, cannot be Bans- downe or any hill over Bath, though it may be true that the British name of that city was Caer-Badon, yet Bath is, in na wise, near the mouth of the Severn : and, consequently, the situation of Mount Badon is not now known. The birth of Gildas happened in the year of this battle : but he does not give a precise date throughout his book. His words are these : ** Et ex eo tempore [466] nunc civei, nunc hostes mncebant ... usque ad annum obsessionis Badonici montis, qui prope Sabri- num ostium habetur, novissimaeque ferme defurciferis non mi-' nimae stragis, quique quadragesimus quartus (ut novi oriter [alias orditur] annus, mense jam primo emenso, qui jam et meae nativitatis est." (^Historia de excidio Britanni(Z, C. 26). In English thus : " And from this time," that is " now the citizens, now the enemies conquered . . . until the year of the siege of the Badonick mount, which is near the Severn-mouth, and which was, almost of the last, not of the least overthrow of the villains, and which, as I know, begun the forty-fourth year the first [or, one] month being now elapsed, which, also, was [that] of my nativity." Bede, nearly in the same words, which he, certainly, however, misunderstood, supposes the 44th year, hitended by Gildas, to be that of the arrival of the Saxons [449] ; and, in consequence of this erroneous computation, fixes the siege of the Badonick mount to the year 492. Archbishop Usher, after a quotation, in his usual manner, from Geofi'rey of Monmouth,* proceeds as follows (though neither his Latin or * " If one were desired to mention a work capable of shewing that an authour may be vastly and profoundly learned, with- out possessing common judgment. Ushers Antiquitates Britan- nicarum Ecclesiarum might be produced as an instance. Yet ...» KINC^ .ARTHUR. 75 English is worth giving) : ** As to what belongs to the time of t*ie battle, Bede notes this overthrow of the Saxous to have been made about the fortieth and fourth year of their coming into Britain ; referring that number of years declared by Gildas to things before-hand j whereas the time, in which those things were written by him, seems to have been regarded : forasmuch as if he had said, from the Badonick slaughter the fortieth and fourth year then to have begun to be numbered j one month of that year, being, at that time elapsed : and himself to have known it from his age j because, he himself had learned, from his parents, the year both of his own birth and of that victory to have been the same. Therefore, Matthew, the florilegist^ [who knew nothing of the matter] delivers this battle to have been made in the year of grace 520 : a British chronologer, also, [equally ignorant] giving his vote ; whom we have already shewn to have numbered from the Badonick battle [of which no man of any capacity has ever attempted the exact aera] to tlie fall of Arthur 22 years [Above, C. 12] : which being granted, both Gildas, in that year, to have been brought into light, and, in the year 564, by him written this epistle of his which we have, the corollary will be alike."* This authentic Welsh chronologer, whom the archbishop here refers to, is Sir John Prise, as firm a believer in Geoffrey of Monmouth, or his followers, as himself. In the pages of the Welsh knights book (121, 122), quoted, by Usher, in the margin of his Antiquities, p. 216> are these words : " Item in chronicis Brytannice scriptis had his judgment equalled his learning and diligence, he would have been the most valuable antiquary that the British islands ever produced." (Pinkerton's Enquhy into the History of Scotland, 1, 106.) It is, certainly, a just character. Camden and Heame, however, and many others, are little better, and Stukeley is below contempt. ♦ Britan. Ecclesiarum Antiquitates, C. 13, P.;254. (1687, folio.) ye THE LIFE OF antiqiiissimis," palpable extracts from that writer, who fixes the fall of Arthur to the year 542, and, published by Moses Wil- liams, at the end of his edition of Humphrey Llwyds " Britan- nicae descriptionis commentariolum," (London, 1731, 4lo.), which he calls " Aer(e Cambrobritannicts," which end in 1254, and are nothing but a despicable farrago of no real antiquity, but servilely plagiarised, from the British history, so far as it goes. It is an unfounded assertion, that the Welsh either have or ever had an authentic history or chronology before the twelfth century. Doctor Smith, the learned editor of Bede, after giving the «rords of Gildas, " Quique quadragesimus, &c." adds, *• which, being considered the number of years declared by Gildas, ap- pears to be rather the time of writing than the arrival of the Saxons : for Gildas, that is, to have written a year from the Sardonic fight, 44 the year to himself, in the first place was memorable, to whom, also, was that of his birth. If this be the true interpretation," he adds, " it will give another chrono- logy of this time."* This, no doubt, may be the true construc- tion, yet, as Gildas specifies neither the date of the battle, nor tliat of his birth, nor that of writing his querulous epistle, the former cannot be, possibly, ascertained to be 520, nor the latter 564. The year of his death is known, upon good autho- rity (that of the Ulster annals^, to be 570 ; so that, by com- puting, backward, to the battle of Badon, it is impossible to fix it higher than 526. Still neither Matthew of Westminster nor Sir John Prise or his modem Welsh chronicles, pilfered from that notorious fabrication Geoffrey of Monmouths " His- tory of Britain,'' will afford any decisive authority that 520 was the exact year ; as, in 570, Gildas would be only 50 years old at his death, which is highly improbable, as the monks and * Note on Bedes Ecclesiastical History, B. l,c. 16. KING ARTHUR. 77 hermits, by their habitual temperance, generally attained a very great age. If Taliessin were the contemporary of Arthur (and, certainly the name of this bard is mentioned, among others, in the addi- tions to Nennius's ** History of the Britons,") and the poem supposed, to allude to this engagement be genuine, they would be decisive evidence in favour of Arthur and his victory at Ba- don-mount. The same bard mentions him again in the Martonad Uthyr Pendragon (*' Myrvyrian Archaiology of Wales,'" 1,72), but in no other poem. In the same collection are three dialogues, between Arthur, Cai and Glewlwyd (I, 167^ ; between Arthur and Gwenhwy var (1, 175^ j and between Arthur and Eliowlod (1, 176.^ Lhuyd mentions a very ancient Welsh poem, in Jesus College, Oxford, intitled " Englynion yr ei-yr, a dialogue between Arthur and an eagle." (Archeeologia, P. 256^. Arthur is, likewise, repeatedly mentioned, in a dialogue '* between Trystan and Gwalchmai CI, 178^ ; and, with both Gwenhwy- far and Medrawd, in the Afallenau of Merlin the wild : if, that is, these poems can be proved of sufficient antiquity. He is not, however, according to Moses Williams, the Y Arthur who oc- curs in a poem of Lly warch-h^n, as Sir John Prise, Lewis and William Owen, doubtless, by a corruption of some of the ma- nuscripts, as Williqms, though a man of some learning, was yet a Welshman, and, certainly, would never have given up Ar- thur, if he had not been satisfied of the forgery or sophistica- tion of that name [y Arthur or i Arthur, for Yarthur] : his words being Yarthur non Arthurus est, sed lardurus, larddur, forte larddur ab Diwrig, qui in nostris codicibus manuscriptis saepius occurrit."* Carte says that Llywarch mentions, in his poems, that he had been at the court of King Arthur : but nothing of that kind is to be found in Owens edition, * Humfredi Lhoyd, Britannicae descriptionis commentario- lum Accurante Mose Gulielmio, Londini, 1731," p. 115. 78 THE LIFE OF CHAP. XIX. Of Arthurs dominions and royal palaces. X HE dominions of the British kings were, pro- bably^ not very considerable. The best authority for the situation of Arthurs kingdom seems to be a passage in Carddocs life of Saint Gildas : when he had laid siege to Glastonbury, the castle or palace of Melvas, king of Somerset, who there detained Guennimar, his queen, '' He thither moved the army of whole Cornwall and Devon- shire :"* which seems to denote that he had the power of those provinces, and, consequently, was king thereof. He might, however, be styled king, or a king of Britain, which appears to have been a usual custom with the British kings. He might, nevertheless, have had territories, in South Wales ; but, certainly, was not king of Gwent, which was possessed by Arthrius or Arihruis, ap- parently, a different name and of a distinct race or family, which is much better known than that of our Arthur, whom one may safely venture to * c. n. KING ARTHUR. 7^ call king of Cornwall. The tradition, preserved by Leland, of his being born in Padstow, ap- pears, likewise, to afford some countenance to his being of that country j of which there are other circumstances, by no means irrelative : more plausible, at least, than any thing concern- ing his life or actions, related in Geoffrey of Monmouths '' History of Britain," or the Welsh legends, which are founded upon it j as this people, it is certain, have not the life of a single saint, containing any anecdote, or, even, the name of Arthur, or any of his ancestors, des- cendants or other connections, which is not pos- terior to, and polluted by, that false and fabulous compilation ; except that of Saint Gildas, by Ca- rddoc of Llancarvan, whom Geoffrey himself, along with William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon, orders '' to be silent concerning the kings of the Britons [of which he had treated], since they had not that book of the British speech, which Walter [of Wallingford], arch- deacon of Oxford, brought out of Britany." With respect to Arthurs palace, " They report that a certain man [named] Dihoc, a prince of Less-Britain, by incestuous fornication, polluted his own daughter and of her begot Saint Kyned : who, in a province, by name Goyr,* at one mile * Gwyr^ Gower, or Gower-Iand, a promontory upon the 80 THE LIFE OF from the palace of Arthur, being brought to light, and in the island, which, in British, was called Ynis'Weryn, in Latin, Insula turbae [the isle of trouble], not without a miracle, for eigh- teen years, educated, in Glamorganshire, with Saints David, Theliau and Patern, connected by necessity, passed away the time of his remaining life : in that peninsula, doubtless, which is called Western-Gower, and, at the sea, serves a place, noted to this day by the name of Saint-Kenets- chapel."* A passage in the life of Saint Iltut expressly speaks of Arthurs palace, though it does not name it : " The magnificent knight, Bican, in the mean time, hearing the magnifi- cence of king Arthur, his cousin, desiring to visit the court of so great a conqueror, deserted that which we call Further-Britain, and came, sailing, where he saw the greatest abundance of knights. t There, likewise, being honorably received and rewarded to his warlike desire, his Severn-sea, now in Glamorganshire Cformerly Morganwg), now called Worms-head. Within this territory were several old castles : as, for instance, Swinesey ('that is, in Saxon, the water of sea-hogs or porpoises ; now Swansea,) Guible, Penrise, and " Lochor-castle^* standing' on the hither side of Lochor- river, in the lordship of Gower." (Lelands Collectanea, III, 94.^ * Ushers Antiquities (from John of Tinmouth^, p. 275. t This must be false, as there were no knights in the sixth century. KING ARTHUR. 81 desire of taking presents being fulfilled, he de- parted most grateful, from the royal court."* *^'The public report of those inhabiting the roots of the Camaletic mount, affirms, extols, sings the name of Arthur, the inhabitant, for- merly, of the castle, which safne, in time past, being both magnificent and very strongly forti- fied, and in a very high prospect, where the mount rises up, was situate. Good gods ! how many [are] here of the most deep ditches ! How many are here of trenches of cast-out land ! Fi- nally, what precipices ! and that I may finish in few [words], it seems to me, truly, a miracle of both art and nature."f '* At seges est ubi Troiafuit, stabulantur in urbe, Et fossis pecudes altis, valloque tumenti Taxus et astutcE. posuere cubilia vulpes." " At the very south ende of the chirch of South Cadburi, standith Camallate, sumtyme a famose town or castelle, upon a very tone or hille won- derfully enstrengthenid of nature : to the which * Fo. 42, b. So that, it would seem, John of Tinmouth was mistaken in attributing the journey to Iltut, the son of Bican, himself: See Usher, 252. t Lelands Collectanea, V. 28, 29. The three Latin lines are extracted from the Architkrenius of John Hanvil, of which there were two editions, but no printed copy is now known to exist. S2 THE LIFE OF be two enteringes up by [a] very stepe way : one by north-est, and another by south-est. The very roote of the hille wheron this forteres stode is more than a mile in cumpace. In the upper parte of the coppe of the hille be 4 ditches or trenches, and a balky wauUe of yerth, betwixt every one of them. In the very toppe of the hille, above all the trenchis, is magna area or campus of a 20 acres or more by estimation, wher, yn dyverse places, men may se fundations and rudera of walles. There was much dusky blew stone that people of the villages therby hath caryid away. Much gold, sylver and coper of the Romaine coynes hath be found ther yn plouing : and lykewise in the feldes in the rootes of this hille, with many other antique thinges, and especial [ly] by este. The people can telle nothing ther, but that they have hard say that Arture much resortid to Camalat."* * Lelands Itinerary II, fo. 46, 47 ; p. 75, 76. In Mart d^ Arthur we find " Camelot which is now called Winchester," distinct places in the old French romance of Lancelot. That Arthur, however, should be able to keep his court either at Winchester or in its neighbourhood is rather doubtful, as it is believed, that, during the most part of the sixth century, this country was in the actual possession of the Saxons. That he might have resided at Caer-went, in Monmouthshire, the ruins whereof are said to be still visible, which may, in later times^ have been confounded with Caer-Wynt, now Winchester , h very possible. KING ARTHUR. 83 " Arthures-hall [in the hundred of Trigg, Cornwall], a place so called, and, by tradition, held to be a place whereunto that famous king Arthure resorted. It is a square plot, about sixty foot long and thirty-five broad 3 situate on a plain mountain, wrought some three feet into the ground, and, by reason of the depression of the place, there standeth a stang or pool of water, the place set about with flat stones."* "Three dear times," according to the Welsh triads, [were] in the isle of Britain : one of them was when Medraut [Modred] came to the palace of [his uncle] Arthur, in Kelliwic, in Cornwall ; he left neither meat nor drink in the palace un- consumed, and pulled Gwenhuyfar [his queen], likewise, out of her royal throne, and hit her a blow. The second dear time was when Arthur came to the palace of Medraut ; he left neither meat nor drink in the palace, nor, in the hun- dred."! This tripod of two feet may seem to • Nordens Description of Cornwall, p. 71 : an engraving of " Arthures-hall" is given in the same page ; and " Arthnres- hall, a decayed place," occurs in his map. t. These triads or threes (in Welsh, " Triodh ynys Prydain") are the name of a book, wliich, for its imputed antiquity, and authentic anecdotes, these people hold in very high esteem, alledging it, with their accustomed extravagance, to be not less than of one thousand years, or even " of the seventJi century." 84 THE LIFE OF have given rise to the following nursery- rhyme : "I went to Tatfys house, Taffy was not at home, Taffy came to my house. And stole a marrow-bone."* (Letter from Lewis Morris, Cambrian Register, I. 350 ; and account of the life of Lljwarch h^n, prefixed to William Owens edition of his Heroick Elegies, &cc. p. viii. note). It mentions, however, the ecclesiastical historian Bede, who died in 731, and Morgan Muyn-vaur, king of Glamorgan, whose death happened about 972, and savours too much, it must be con- fessed, of Geoffrey of Monmouths British history, to be, even, coeval with that book, which, as has been, elsewhere, proved, first appeared in the year 1138. Of whatever age it may be, it contains a variety of the adventures of king Arthur, and other Welsh heroes, the names of his knights, courtiers, officers, wives, mistresses, and the like ; but, most probabl^^, nothing, except fable and romance. Robert Vaughan, of Hengwrt, who was bom in 1592, and died in 1666, had proposed and pre- pared an edition of this book, in Welsh and English, with notes ; but it never appeared, nor is it certainly known what became of it, or where it is. The most ancient manuscript of these ti'iades is the Lhyvr koch o Hergest, or red book of Her- gest, now in Jesus-college, Oxford, and the most modern, belike, in the Harleian library, number 4181, with a partial transla- tion by Hugh Thomas, and corrected, in many parts, by W. T. fWilliam Thomas ?] with additions of his own. * Gammer Gurtons garland. KING ARTHUR. 86 CHAP. XX. Of the death of Arthur. L E L A N D, speaking of the Alan, a river in Corn- wall, says, "By this ryvere Arture fowght his last feld, yn token whereof the people fynd there, yn plowyng, bones and harneys."* John, abbot of Burgh [Peterborough, that is, about the year 1260], according to the same antiquary, had, in his annals, committed these [words] to his faith- ful papers : *' King Arthur, about to die, hid himself, lest at such an event, his enemies should insult, and his friends, being confused, should be molested." t There seems, in fact, some truth in this anecdote; since it does not appear to have been known, for 640 years, to any person in the kingdom, where his or his wifes body had been interred. William of Malmesbury, a Somerset- shire man, and very intimate, no doubt, at Glas- tonbury -abbey, who is supposed to have died in 1143, expressly says that "the sepulchre of Arthur was never seen." It would appear a most * Itinerary, VII, 114. t CoUectaMa, V, 44. ae THE LIFE OF extraordinary circumstance that the bodies of Arthur and his queen could have been interred in the public cemetery of Glastonbury-abbey, with all the usual processions, dirges and ceremonies of the abbot and monks, without which no interment was ever permitted in such a place, and that this should be unknown to those who actually assisted in and performed the ceremony.* • This may be thus accounted for : the abbot and monks of Glastonbury were a very diflferent set from tliose of Henry the Seconds : being Britons or Welsh, it is probable, they kept no registers, or, if they had kept any, they might be destroyed by the Saxons, who, for some time were Pagans. The precise year of Arthurs death lias never been, and, most likely, never will be ascertained. KING ARTHUR, 87 CHAP. XXI. Of Noah, the son, and Walwen, the nephew> of Arthur. "Noah (Noe), the son of Arthur, fulfilling the commandment of the apostle, saying, " Give and it shall be given to you :" and, elsewhere, ' as' is said, "The hand extending [itself] shall not be indigent," gave, for the commerce of the celes- tial kingdom, in the first time, the land Penna- lun, vt^ith his territory, without any assessment to [any] earthly man, but only to god and the archbishop Dubricius and LandafF, founded in honour of Saint Peter 5 and to all succeeding him and Llan-Teilo-maur, upon the bank of the Tyvi, with his two territories, where Teliau, the pupil and disciple of saint Dubricius, frequents 5 ♦ and the territories of the North- Welsh,t upon the bank of the river Tay : Noah putting his hand upon the four gospels, and commending, in the hand of the archbishop Dubricius, thin * Teliau succeeded Dubr cius, as archbishop, in 512. It is not known how long the latter had continued in the see. t Aquilensium. 68 THE LIFE OF alms for ever, with all his refuge^ and with all his liberty in field and in woods, in water and in pastures, under an everlasting curse, whosoever from that day in future,* should separate from the church of Landaff, the aforesaid lands, and with his dignity : Amen. Of the laicks, Noah is the only witness, with a numberless power of men. Of the clerks, truly, the archbishop Du- bricius, Arguistil, Ubelbui, Lovann, Lunabui,. Conbran, Guorvan, Ethearn, Ludnou, Gurdocui, Guernabui. Be peace in their days, and abun- dance of things to those who shall confirm the gift ; and to those who shall violate it [let] their sons be orphans and their wives widows."* * In antea. t Monaiticon Anglicanum, III, 190, (from the register of Landaff). This is the only instance which occurs^ apparently in that register, with the name of Arthur, so spelled : the king of Gwent, son of Mouric, king of Morganwg, and father of Mor- cant, is, uniformly called Arthritis or AHhruis ; who appears a different personage, and was of a later age, being contempo- rary with Comegern or Comergwyn, bishop of Landaff, about 600. If, therefore, the battle of Badon were actually fought by king Arthur (who, at the same time, is not here called a king, nor appears, even, to be living at the time his son executed this grant, in the presence (amongst other witnesses) of the archbishop Dubricius, who died in 512 : so that he is near ten years too soon, as Arthniis is above twenty too late. Sir John Prise, who appears to have had the register of Landaff (now in Lichfieldcathedrdi, where it is called Saint Chads book), only notices this grant from a certain Noe, son of Arthur (p. 127). KING ARTHUR. 89 ** In the province of Wales, which is called Ros> was found the grave of Walwen, who was the not-degenerate nephew of Arthur out of his sister and reigned in that part of Britain, which hitherto is called Walwertha : a knight most famed in valour, but, from the brother and ne- phew of Hengist, being driven out of his king- dom, first compensating his exile by their great damage. Communicating, deservedly, to the praise of his uncle, that the fall of his tottering country he put off for many years. But the grave of Arthur was never seen, whence the antiquity of trivial songs fables him yet to come : as to the rest, the grave of the other, as I have said before, was found in the time of king Wil- liam [1086], upon the shore of the sea, fourteen feet long, where, by some, he is asserted to have been wounded by his enemies and cast out to seaj by some he is said to have been killed by the citizens in a public feast. The knowledge of the truth, therefore, wavers in doubt, although neither of them has wanted to the defence of his fame."* * William of Malmsbury, B. 3, p. Iln, (eflitioa of Frank- fort, 1601, folio.) Geoffrey calls -Walwen, WalganuSy by others he is called Galganus, Gawain, Gawin or Wawint the W and G being convertible in Welsh. The date, 1086, and the 21st year of the king, is in Lelands Collectanea, I, 417 : but how he came by it does not appear. 90 THE LIFE OF CHAP. XXII. Of Arthurs popularity. William Somerset, monk of Malmesbury^, who appears to have died in the year 1143, has these words : [Vortimer] being extinct, the strength of the Britons withered away [and] their hopes, being impaired, flowed back, and now and then had [things] suddenly gone worse ' if* Ambrose, the sole svrvivor of the Romans who, after Vortigern, was monarch of the realm, had not weighed down the swelling barbarians, with the glorious acts of the warlike Arthur. This,*' he says, " is the Arthur of whom the elegiac songs of the Britons, at this very day, dote :* worthy, it is plain, whom not fallacious fables should have dreamed, but veracious his- tories should have spoken, forasmuch as he long * Be gcstis regum Anglorum, L. 1, C. 1, p. 9. " Bnttonum nugtE :" these nug(B or elegiac songs or poems, usually com- posed on the fall of great heroes, are elsewhere (L. 3, p, 115), called " antiquitas naeniarum," a word of the same meaning, have not come down to us in a single instance. KING ARTHUR. 91 sustained his falliug country and whetted the broken citizens to war.t " This country," says Girald Barry, bishop of Saint-Davids, speaking of Wales, " except from the north, is shut up, on all sides, by lofty moun- tains, having on the west, the mountains of the cantred Bachan, on the south, the southern mountains, the principal of which is called Cadair Arthur, that is, Arthurs chair, on account of the twin points of the promontory, looking in the manner of a chair ; and forasmuch as the chair was situate in a high and arduous place, it was by vulgar nuncupation assigned to Arthur, the highest and greatest king of the Britons."* Sir John Prise gravely remarks, " Not far from this lake [_Lhyn-Tegyd, near Harlech] is a place called Caergay, which was the house of Cray, Arthurs foster-brother/'f * Tbi. It is highly probable, nevertheless, that this vene- rable monk, who commences his history with the Saxon kings, knew very little of the history of the Britons, and still less of king Arthur, and that all the information he had was derived from an apparently imperfect and interpolated copy of Nenniutf whom, however, he never once names. What he says of " ve- racious histories" of Arthur, seems to prove that there was no such thing either in England or Wales. • Itinerarium CambriiB, L. 1, C. 2. t Description of Wales, (prefixed to Caradoca Historie d Cambria, by Lhoyd and Powell, 1584, 4to. b. 1.) p. 9. 92 THE LIFE OF ^'. Artures hille is iii good Walsche miles south-west from Brekenok, and in the veri toppe of the hille is a faire welle spring. This hille of summe is countid the hiest hille of Wales, and in a veri clere day, a manne may see from hit a part of Malvern -hilles, and Glocestre, and Bristow, and part of Devenshir and Corn wale."* " In the isle of Anglesey are several cromlechs, which they there call Arthurs quoits." f " Withyn a myle of Perith, but in Westmer- land, is a ruine, as sum suppose of a castel, withyn a flite-shotte of Loder and as much of Emot water, stonding almost as a mediamnis be- twixt them. The ruine is of sum caullid the round-table, and of summe, Artures castel." J " On this ry ver," says Froissart, mistaking the Tyne for the Esk, " standeth the towne and castell of Carlyel, the whiche some tyme was kyng Arthurs, and held his courte there often-times."§ A parish, in Cumberland, is called by '' The name of Arthuret or Arthurs-head :"|| " Etterby [a township, in the parish of Stan- • Lelands Itinerary, V. 70. t Wrights Louthiana, Part 3, Page 11. t Lelands Itinerary, VII, 52. $ English Translation, 1525, fol. vii, 6. II History of Cumberland, by Nicolson and Burn, 1777, 4to. p. 471. KING ARTHUR. 93 wix, in Eskdale-ward, Cumberland], in old writ- ings is called Arthuri burgum [Arthurs-borough], which seems to imply that it had been a consi- derable village. Some affirm, its name from Arthur, king of the Britons, who was in this country, about the year 550, pursuing his victo- ries over the Danes and Norwegians, [r. the Saxons, the " Danes and Norwegians" did not arrive in Britain for three centuries after the death of Arthur] " .^ Two old ballads, upon the subject of king Arthur, printed in bishop Percys Reliques of an- cient English poetry, suppose his residence at Car- lisle J and one of them, in particular, says, " At Tearae-WadliiJg his castle stands." Thus, likewise, in an ancient Scotish metrical romance, of great merit, " In the tyme of Arthur an aunter bytydde. By the Tunie-Wathelan, as the boke telles. When he to Carlele and conquerour kydde, ^c.** " Tearne-Wadling," according to the inge- nious editor of the above-mentioned Reliques, and which, as he observes, is evidently the Turne Wathelan of the Scotish poem), ''is the name • History of Cumberland, f. 454. 94 THE LIFE OF of a small lake near Hesketli in Cumberland^ on the road from Penrith to Carlisle. There is a tradition/* he adds, " that an old castle once stood near the lake, the remains of which were not long since visible :" Team or Tarn, in the dialect of that country, being still in use for a lake. The tradition is, that either the castle or a great city was swallowed up by the lake (which is now called Armanthwaite, from an estate it adjoins and belongs to, and may be still seen, under favourable circumstances, at its bottom. Walter de Percy, by a charter, in the time of Richard the first, confirms, amongst other tene- ments, to Roger de Bagot, all the land, which he had under the way that led to Werverton, which was called ''Arthurs buttes/' in the territory of Crathorne, in Cleveland.* To the east of Guisb rough, in Yorkshire, within sight from the road to Whitby, stands " Freebro's huge mount, immortal Arthurs tomb.V The memory of this illustrious monarch, on account of his heroick actions and celebrated • Original charter in the archives of Thomas Crathorne, of Crathorne, esquire. t Cleveland'prospect, by John Hall Stevenson, esquire, author of "The crazy tales," and several other poems of humour and excellence. KING ARTHUR. 95 name, received distinguished honour, in being placed in the heavens, as a constellation of him- self, and his war- chariot, amongst the stars. This appears from an ancient poem of the seventh century, composed by Aldhelm, abbot of Malmes- bury, afterward, bishop of Sherborne, who died on the 25th of May, in the year 709, and ob- tained the dignity of sainthood, being canonised, it is presumed, by the bishop of Rome. The verses are : DE ARTURO. Sydereis stipor turmis in vertice mundi, Essedafamoso gesto cognomine vulgi, In gyro volvejis ivgiter non vergo deorsum, Cetera ceu properant ccelorum lumina ponto. Hoc ' dono ditor quonlam' sum proximus axi. * Ryphms Scytice qui latis' montihus errata . Vergilias (Kqxians numeris in arce polorum ; Cui pars inferior stygia letheaque palude Fertur * infemi'fundo succumbere nigro,* (Of Arthur. With starry troops I am environed, in the pole of the world j I bear a war-chariot with a famous surname of the vulgar. Rolling in a circle, continually, I do not decline downward. As the other luminaries of the heavens hasten to the sea. • S. Aldhelmi Poetica nonnulla, . . Mog^mtia:, 1601, 12mo. (p, 63.) 96 THE LIFE OF I am enrich'd with this gift, forasmuch as I am next to the pole. He who wanders in the Ryphaean mountains of Scythia, Equaling, in numbers, the Seven-stars, in the top of the poles ; Whose lower part, in the stygian und lethean marsh, Is reported to fall down in the black bottom of hell.) In Scotland^ near Falkirk^ hard by the Carron, was, anciently, a Roman building, of a round form, demolished by the Gothic owner of the ground on which it stood, one named Sir Michael Bruce, to repair a mill, which relic of antiquity bore the name of Arthurs-hof, or Arthurs-oon (or oven.) As a just judgment upon this sacrilegious act, the above mill was, soon after, swept away by the river. It is re- markable that Gawin Douglas, bishop of Dun- keld, a noted poet, has described this erection in the milky way : ** Of every steme the twynkling notis he. That in the stil hevin move cours we se, Arthurys-hufe and Hyades, betaiknyng rane, Syne Watling-strete, the Home and the Charle-wane."* It is as little known that Arthurs-Plough has likewise obtained immortality, by an ever- * The third hoo'ke of Eneados, p. 85, Ralph Thoresby says, «* Churl-wel is from ceojll, Agricola, and Charles-wain, the Ceojily or countryman's wain, is from the same original." (To- pography of Leeds, 1715, folio, p. 268.) KING ARTHUR. 97 lasting situation in the celestial sphere : for this interesting piece of information we are indebted to dan John Lydgate, monk of Bury, who takes occasion to observe : '* But to shypmen that be discrete and wyse. That lyste their course prudently devyse. Upon the sea have suffysaunce ynoughe. To gye their passage by Arthourys-ploughe."* • Troye-boke, C. 3. If one may believe William Owen, elsewhere alluded to, Arthurs-h^rp is "the British appel- lation for the constellation Lyra." 98 THE LIFE OF CHAP. xxni. Of the discovery, after many centuries, of the remains of king Arthur and his queen. A PARTICULAR relation of the discovery of the bodies or bones of this monarch and his queen, between six and seven hundred years after the supposed and probable time of their deaths,* hath been, with due elaboration and prolixity, brought forth, by his countryman, Girald Barry, otherwise Giraldus CambrensiSjf who died bishop of Menevia or Saint-Davids, in 1229, which, however, it will not seem impertinent to give, at length, from his own Latin, as follows : " The memory of Arthur, the famous king of the Britons, is not to be suppressed, forasmuch, as of the excellent monastery of Glastonbury, of which he, also, was the patron, he had been, in • There is no certainty in the date of this event : nor can any credit be given to Geoffrey of Monmouth, or any of his folIoMrers. t Leland gives him the name of Sylvester Giraldus, in which he is followed by Camden and bishop Godwin j for what rea- son or upon what authority cannot be ascertained. KING ARTHUR. 99 his days, a principal benefactor and magnificent benefactor. Histories much extol him : for, be- fore all the churches of his realm, he most loved, and, before the rest, with far greater devotion promoted, the church of the holy mother of God, Mary, of Glastonbury : w^hence, vv^hen the war- like man was alive, in the fore part of his shield, he had caused to be painted the image of the blessed virgin ; that, internally, he might, always have her, in the contest, before his eyes 3 whose feet, also, when he was, in the moment of en- gagement, he had accustomed to kiss with the greatest devotion.* His body, however, which, as fantastic, in the end, and, as it were, by a spirit, translated to a great distance, neither to death obnoxious, fables have been feigned. In these our days, at Glastonbury, between two pyramidal stones, formerly erected in the sacred burying-ground, hid very deep in the earth, in a hollow oak, and marked with wonderful, and, as • This puif preliminary, in which there is not a word of truth, he had either amplified from some interpolated copy of Nennius or Geoffrey of Monmouth, or from some legend hi the abbey, or been paid for fabricating. He was no more than an occasional visitor, though, by his relationship to the king, and his connections at court, he might have had an eye upon it himself, and this rigmarole stuff been calculated to cajole the monks. 100 THE LIFE OF it were, miraculous tokens, was found,=* and, into the church, with honour, translated, and to a marble tomb decently commended : whence, also, a leaden cross, a stone being put under it, not infixed on the upper part, as it is wont, ought to be, rather, in the lower part, which we, also, have seen, for we have handled [it], contained these letters, and not rising up and standing out, but more within, turned to the stone : Hic jacet SEPULTUS INCLITUS REX ArtHURUS CUM WeN- NEVEREIA UXORE SUA SECUNDA IN INSULA AvAL* L0NIA.I Here, however, occurred very many noble things, for he had had two wives, of whom the last had her interment at the same time * Matthew Paris says, ** In the same year [1191], were found, at Glastonbury, the bones of the most famous king of Britain, Arthur, hid in a certain most ancient stone coffin, about which two most ancient pyramids stood erected, in which were letters defaced : but on account of too much barbarism and deformity, they could, in no wise be read. Now they were found on this occasion : for while they dug there, that they might inter a certain monk, who this place of sepulchre, with vehement desire, in his life, had wished ; they found a certain stone-coffln, to which a leaden cross had been put over, in which was defaced, Hic jacet inclytus Britonum rex ArTHURUS, in insula AVALONIS SEPULTUS (P. 138.) This coflin, Leland obsei-ves, he never heard of, and did not believe. i Gumnimar, Guenever, Winifred : (see Lliuyds Arckao- logia, p. 225, Co. 2 :) " Bychedh Guenvreui : Vita Sancttt Wi- KING ARTHUR. 101 with himself, and her bones were found, at the same time, along with those of her husband, so distinct, nevertheless, that two parts of the sepul- chre, toward the head, had been deputed to con- tain the bones of the man ; the third, also, toward the feet, were to contain the bones of the woman apart : where, also, a yellow lopk; cxlihe yToman's hair was found, with its original entirety and .90- lourj which> a certain mo^k er'reediJy srJ^tcfie.d* with his hand, and being lifted up, the whole im- mediately fell into dust.* When, however, some tokens of the body there found, from his writings, some, from the letters impressed on the pyra- nifredae." Leiand remarks, that Silvester (as he calls him) here added something to the inscription of his own head (^Collectanea, II, 12) ; meaning the words " cum Wen- nevei-ia uxore sua secunda;''* which will be more full explained hereafter. Uaher (in his Index chronologicus, at the year Dxlii) says, " That she may appear to be called second, in respect of another Guenever, married, by Arthur, in the very beginning of his reign ; whom, by Melvas, king of Somerset, ravished at the year 509, from Carddoc of Llancarvan, we have observed." Carddoc, however, gives no such date, nor had Usher any, the slightest, authority for it, but his own fancy : there not being one single date throughout the Vita Gilde. * He has something more upon the shameful violence of this monk ; but the manuscript is too much burned to permit one to make out the whole : it is entirely omitted by sir John Prise, though it was then entire. L 102 THE LIFE OF mids, although very much destroyed by too great antiquity, some, likewise, through visions and revelations, made to good and religious men, chiefly, nevertheless, and most evidently, the king of England, Henry the second, as he had heard it from an ancient historical singer, a Uriton,"* ir».t>mated the whole to the monks, that . *. '* Aj[en?;y, no s;j3all part of an army being raised, came into Wales to levy the rest, and thence to sail from Saint- Davids into Ireland, with the hope of obtaining which he wholly burned. While he acted these things, being, on ac- count of his dignity, entertained by the kinglets of Wales in feasts, he heard bards singing in concert to the harp not with- out pleasure, using an interpreter. There was one, truly, among the rest, the most learned in the knowledge of antiquity. He, the praises and famous actions of Arthur being performed, comparing with him Henry as a future conqueror, with many names, so sung, that the kings ears were wonderfully both tickled and delighted : in which time, also the king chiefly learn- ed this from the bard,that Arthur had been buried at Avalon, in the sacred cemetery : whence, the bard being munificently dis- missed, for the indication of so great a monument, required of Henry of Blois or of Soilli, his nephew, who then, or A LITTLE AFTER, from abbot of Bermondsey, was elected pre- fect to the island of Glastonbury, that he with the most ex- quisite diligence, would narrowly search for the sepulchre in the inclosure of the sacred cemetery. It was several times tried, and, at length, with great difficulty found." (Lelands Assertio Arturii. Collectanea, V, 49.) This interview of kmg Henry the Second and the bard at a feast m Wales, seems to have been worked up by Leiand himself; as Girald Barry KING ARTHUR. 103 very deep, to wit, in the earth, for sixteen feet at the least, they would find the body, and not in a monument of stone, but in a hollowed oak j and, therefore, the body had been so deeply placed, and, as it were hid, that it might, in no wise, be found by the Saxons, occupying his island, after his death, whom, by so great a labour, being alive, he had conquered, and, almost wholly destroyed j and, for this reason, also, letters, the indexes of truth, impressed with certain things, were turned inwardly to the stone, that, at that time, also, those things which it contained, it might hide, and sometimes hide, and sometimes, too, in place and time, divulge. That, however, which is now called Glaston- bury, was anciently called the Isle of Avalon : for, the whole island, as it were, is beset with marshes : whence, it is called in British, enis only says, that " king Henry the second, as he had heard from a historical singer, an ancient Briton " (Ibi. II, 10) j and all his authority for it appears to be an anonymous monk of Glastonbury : " William of Malmesbury," he says, " would have come forward, as the third witness, unless death had taken him away [47 years, that is,] before the discovery of the sepulchre." Henry had not been in Wales since 1169, and Arthurs bones were not discovered until 1191 or 1192, whereas he died on the 6th of June 1189; and Henry de Sayle was not abbot till the 29th of September in that year. 104 THE LIFE OF Avallm, that is the apple-bearing island, for, with apples, which, in the British tongue, are called aval, that place formerly abounded : whence, also, Morganis, a noble matron, and governess, and patroness of those parts, and, also, near in blood to king Arthur, after the battle of Kemelen [Camblan], carried Arthur, to be cured of his wounds, into the island which is now called Glastonbury.* It had, likewise, been formerly called, in British, mis gutrin, the glassy island, from which word, the Saxons, afterward coming, called that place Glastonbury ; for, glas, in their tongue, means glass, and buri is called a castle or city. It is to be known, also, that the discovered bones of Arthur were * Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his British history, mentions nothing of Morgan, (who, in other romances of Arthur, is that roonarchs half-sister, and a powerful fairy), and only says, " But, that famous king Arthur was mortally wounded who thence, to be cured of his wounds, was carried into the Isle of Avallon" (B. 11, c. 21), without explaining that name to mean Glastonbury, which never once appears, by that name, throughout his book ; and, in his metrical life of Merlin the Caledonian, places it in a distant part of the globe, whither, also, Arthur is conveyed in a boat or ship, and where Morgan, skilful in surgery, is the eldest of the kings nine daughters. He forgot the proverb. KING ARTHUR. 105 so large that, also, the saying of the poet might appear to be fulfilled ia these things : ** Grandiaque effbsHs mirabitur ossa sepulchris**"^ For, his thigh-bone being put by that of the tallest man of the place, whom, also, the abbot shewed to us, and fixed to the earth close by the foot of that man, it reached full three fingers beyond his knee. The bone, also, of his head, as if it were capacious and thick, to a prodigy or shew ', so that between the hair of the eye-lids, and between the eyes, the space would fully contain a hand -breadth. There appeared in it, however, ten wounds or more, all which, except one greater than the rest, which had made a large gap, and which alone seemed to have been mortal, had come together into a solid cicatrice. f * Virgilii Georgicon, L. 1, V. 497. t Book of the instruction of a prince (Julius, B. XIII, Dis- tinction, chap. 20); and Leland's Collectanea, II, 11. Sir John Prise has given a similar extract from a different work of Girald, usually called JUber distinctionum (no other title occur- ing), and not the Speculum ecclesie, as it is sometimes impro- perly called, that being an entirely different work, and not by Girald ; both extant in the Cotton MS. Tiberius, B. XIII. It begins, as Prise has it: ** Porro quoniam, &c." but reads, " fdfmle conjingi,*' not fabulose ; and (P. 131) " Morgani," not Morgain lefaye, a puerile interpolation. The title of that chapter is *' De sepulcro regis Arthuri ossa ejus continente apud 106 THE LIFE OF With respect to the circumstance of Arthurs second wife, the Welsh antiquaries pretend that he had no less than three wives, every one Glastoniam in nostris diebus invento et plurimis drciter hec notahilibus occasionaliter adjunctis :" that of chap. 10 : " Quod rex Arthurus precipuus Glastoni . ," The manuscript has been much injured, by the fire of 1731, and is partly illegible : but there does not appear, in Prise, any additional circumstance to the narrative already given : he first states the passage be- ginning, " Regnant e nostris, &c." (p. 130.) Porro, &c. Now, it being very certain that Henry de Saliaco, de Sayle, or de Soilli, likewise, called Henry Sully or Swansey, was not abbot before Michaelmas, 1189, being the first year of Richard the first, he could not, therefore, possibly, have assisted at the disinter- ment of Arthur, in the presence or, even in the reign of Henry the second (see Willis's Mitred abbeys, I, 103). An extract by Leland, from -a paper he met with in the library of Glas- tonbury-abbey, says, " The bones of Arthur were raised from the sacred cemetery, in the year 1189, by Henry Sully, abbot of Glastonbury (Collectanea, III, 154) : which, by no means, removes the difiiculty. In other extracts, this discovery is dated 1191 (1, 264, 280, V. 54^, and 1192 (244). See, also, Adam de Domerham, p. 341, and John of Glastonbury, p. 182. Randal Higden says, that the body was found under the year 1180 (Collectanea, II, 372) : and David Powel, in his interpolated and vitiated edition of Caradocs Annals, (1585, 4to. b. 1. p. 238) says, " This yeare [1179] the bones of noble Arthur, and Gwenhouar his wife, were found in the Isle of Avalon.*' At any rate, the discovery, if made in the pre- sence of Henry the second, could not be in the time of Henry de Soilly, or if made by Henry de Soilly, could not be in the presence of Henry the second. KING ARTHUR. 107 named Gwenhwyfar-j "^^ the first> the daughter of Gwryd Gwent^ cauled, by som, Corytus j the second, the daughter of Uthyr ap Gredawgol, cauled, by som, Crediolus -, and the third, the daughter of a giant, cauled Gogfran Gawrj" and that the Wenever or Guenever, whose bones were discovered along with his own^ and whose name occurred in his epitaph " was not his last wife :"* so that he appears to have had one after he was dead. To prove, however, the singular consistency of these infallible Cambrians, it ap- pears, from their favourite *' 7Viot7^," Triades or Triads, that these three Gwennhuyvars were not the wives of Arthur, but '^ Three prime dam- sels" residing at his court; and that his '' three wives or mistresses, were Judee^ daughter to Arvy the tall, and Garvy White -hams, daughter to old Henin, and Guyl, daughter to Endaut."t Leland, mentioning the two chapters of Gi- rald, concerning Arthur^ in what he mistakenly calls his book De specuoo ecclesie, adds, that he had, in another book, read Ihe same translation to have been made in the ocginning of the reign of Richard [1191]. Neif^her, he observes, does Girald there affirm that he was present at the * Lewis, p. 185, 196 ; Prise, 134. t Harley manuscripts, Num. 4181. 108 THE LIFE OF translation of the remains, but that Henry, the abbot, shewed him the cross, with the bones, found a short time before, in the sepulchre of Arthur i and reports this inscription of the cross : *' Hie jacet sepultus inclytus rex Arturius in insula AvallonicB cum Wenneria uxobe sua se- CUNDA3" whereas, says he, in the cross, which they now shew (and which he had himself seen), THERE IS NO MENTION OF HIS WIFE. They crcctcd, as he elsewhere tells us, a leaden cross about a foot long, which, also, he says, I have contem- plated with most curious eyes, containing, in Roman capitals, rudely engraved, the following words : " HiG jacet sepultus inclytus rex Arturius in insula Avalonia."* * Collectanea, V, 45. This is the cross of which Camden has given the figure, and facsimile inscription, imposing it, either by design or ignorance, upon his readers, as the one mentioned by Giraldus ; which he could not but have known, ■when he read and transcribed either that original writer, or Leland, or sir John Prise, was not the fact : he has, in- deed, now and then, the cullibility of honest Leland, and ex- presses or implies his belief in Joseph of Arimathea, Arthur, Guy, Bevis, and so forth, the heroes and creatures of romance, for whose existence he knew he could cite no authority, of which, at least, he would not have been ashamed. Matthew- Paris, in the third place, gives it thus : " Hic jacet inclytus Britonum rex Arturius in insula Avalonia sepul- tus:" so that the epitaph of Arthur has nearly as many v KING ARTHUR. 109 There is nothing wonderful in the circum- stance of this worthy and industrious antiquary, becoming a complete dupe to this imposture, when not less than three of the greatest mo- narchs that ever tyrannised in any part of Britain, were, to use a vulgar phrase, completely taken in: "^ Henry the second, king of England," as Leland observes, '' in the grant of his donation, in which he subscribes to the ancient privileges of the monastery of Glastonbury, plainly affirms himself to have seen th« donation of Arthur :"* which the no less pious than dexterous monks of the blessed mother of god, had, indisputa- bly, forged, as they did the legend of Joseph of Arimathea, their pretended original founder, the charter of saint Patrick, the life of that saint by William of Malmesbury, whom they made to write, ** Of the antiquity of the church of Glastonbury," not less than fifty years after his death, the history of Melkin, and other legendary rhodomontades, with which their precious archives abounded.. King Richard the first, having, upon his visit to various readings as that of Jesus Christ. Leland, at the same time, laments that one whose authority he, deservedly, very much favoured, should have added some redundant words of his own to the epitaph in the inscription^ : meaning, in fact, the aforesaid Matthew Paris. • Collectanea, V, 6, 32, SS, 34. 110 THE LIFE OF Glastonbury, to behold the resurrection of the royal bones, as it is presumed, been presented with the best sword of the noble Arthur, chris- tened by his prelatical historian, Caliburn, trans- ferred it, as the most valuable relick in the world, to Tancred, king of Sicily.* They even produced his great seal, in wax, of an age ante- rior, by five centuries, to the use of seals in Britain, with the following pompous inscription : PaTRICIUS ArTURIUS BRITANNIiB GaLLI^ GER- MANIC Dacije imperator :" which, having some- how or other found its way to Westminster, Leland, if not our best, at least, our most ancient, antiquary, who had met with a reference to its situation in Caxtons chronicle, and the simplicity of whose honest narrative can, scarcely, be now, by his most profound admirer, perused without a smile, went down to the abbey on purpose to examine it, and has given a very minute, and, doubtless, very accurate, descrip- tion of this singular curiosity. * Chro, J. Bromtm, Co. 1195. KING ARTHUR HI CHAP. XXIV. Of Gildas. O I L D A s"(who was probably contemporary with Arthur in the former part of his life, being born on the day of the battle of Badon, and who, appa- rently, wrote at an advanced age) represents the Britons, of his own time, as " a parcel of cowards and rascals, who gave their backs for shields, their necks to swords (a cold fear running through their bones), and held up their hands, to be bound, in the manner of a woman : so that it was carried out, far and wide, into a proverb, and derision^ that the Britons were neither brave in war, nor faithful in peace."* In another place, he says, '^ that, on account of the rapine and a^ arice of the princes, on account of the iniquity and injustice of the judges, on account of the idleness and sloth of preaching of the bishops, on account of the luxury and evil man- ners of the people, they lost their country."t * C. 4, (Josselins edition, p. 86.) i Lelands Collectanea, I, 399 ; Ushers Antiquitates, 289. This passage, extracted from an epistle of Akuinus Albinw 112 THE LIFE OF '^ Britain/' he exclaims, "has kings, but ty- rants j has judges, but, unjust 3 often plundering and^ shaking, but the innocent j vindicating and patronising, but criminals and robbers j having many waives, but harlots and adultresses -, often swearing, but perjuring themselves j vowing, also, continually, but nearly lying ; making war, but making civil and unjust warsj through the country greatly following thieves, and those who sit with them at table, not only loving, but, also rewarding ; giving alms largely, but heaping up out of the country an immense mountain of crimes 3 sitting on the bench to decide, but, rarely, enquiring the rule of right justice 3 the harmless and humble despising j the blood- thirsty, the proud, parricides, soldiers and adul» terers, enemies of god, if their lot, as it is said, he will take away (who with his very name were (Alcuin, a Saxon) Opera, Paris, 1617, co. 1535 and 1668), does not occur in the printed copies ; either, therefore, it must be the sense of Gildas in the phraseology of Alcuin, or the present text is defective. Leland, however, elsewhere observes, ** It appears, from many places in this distinction [the first, that is, of bishop Barrys book, intitled De institu- tione principis] Girald not to have used any other copy of Gildas, tlian that which is now publicly read" (Collectanea, II, 10.) The genuine words of Gildas, therefore, seem to occur in the next sentence. # KING ARTHUR. IIS earnestly to be destroyed), extolling, as they are able, to the stars ; having many bound in prisons, whom, by their own fraud, rather than demerit, they squeeze, loading them with chains : re- maining swearing among the altars, and these same things, as if vile stones, a little after despising."* ♦ Josselins edition, p. 24. One would imagine, that Gil- das, like Merlin, had possessed an incubus of prophecy, and was describing, if the same country, at least, a very different people. He died in 570. 114 THE LIFE OF CHAP. XXV. Of Nennius and Samuel. -M E N N I u s, a Briton, was the disciple of saint Elbodj* and flourished (as the phrase is) in the year 858, and in the twenty-fourth year of Mer- vin, king of the Britons.f He seems, at first, to have called his book *' EulogiumBritannie,''X a-f- ierward ^' Historia [or " Gesta"\ Britonum : which * See Bertrams edition, p. 93, 95, 143. That Nennius was a monk of the monastery of Bangor is a mistake of Gale, continued, with equal fo%, by Bertram. " Elbodius [bishop of LlandafT] , and archbishop of North-Wales [died in the year 809] ; before whose death, the sun was sore eclipsed." (Hw- tory of Cambria, p. 20,) This monastery was destroyed long before 858. t Ibi. p. 94, 104. Whitaker, in his " History of Man- chester," (II, 40, 4to. edition), asserts, that " Nennius is really, prior to Gildas, the former having written about 550, and the latter about 564 : the time of Gildas is well enough hit upon ; but that of Nennius, is a blunder, and not the only one in his fabulous history. i No ancient manuscript has «, but, always, e -, and such a circumstance would [be] a certain criterion of forgery. The English, uniformly, make use of the «, but the earliest Roman manuscripts never have that diphthong j bat, univer- sally, ae. KING ARTHUR. U5 he tells us in his preface, that '' partly from the traditions of the greater [men], partly written, partly, even, from the monuments of the old in- habitants of Britain, partly, also, from the chro- nicles of the holy fathers, that is to say, Jerome, Prosper, Eusebius, and also, from the history of the Scots [Irish] and Saxons, although our ene- mies, not as I willed but as I was able, complying with the commands of my elders, this little his- tory, from what place soever collected, I have accumulated by saying something to no pur- pose." This book, however, considering its antiquity, might have been held in great esteem, though, as books were at that time, it abounds with tradi- tion and fable : and, what is very strange, half of the manuscripts, it is believed, are attributed to Gildas, and many are anonymous : William of Malmesbury appears, from a few extracts, to have had a copy, but did not know the name of the author: Henry, archdeacon of Huntingdon, had another copy, which would seem to have been imputed to Gildas, whom he names. It, unfortunately, fell into the hands of one Samuel,* a Briton, and disciple to Beularius, a priest, who, * Bale calls this man " Samti^l Beulanius," and archbishop Usher, after him, "with equal ignorance, " Samuel Benlan." (p. 206). 116 THE LIFE OF either, interpolated and polluted the text, or, merely, according to the practice of that period, acted the part of a scholiast, by filling the mar- gin, as Eustathius served Homer, and Servius, Virgil, &c. with scholia or glosses j which, falling into still worse hands, were inserted, from time to time in the text, so that a genuine copy of Nennius, as originally written, would be difficult lo meet with. In the year 613 (according to Bede, or 607, upon the authority of the Saxon chronicle), the most brave Aedilfrid [tEJ elj!jii^], king of the Engles [then pagans], a great army being col- lected, gave, at the city of Legions (which was called, by the Engles, Legacaestir [Lejaceajtjie], by the Britons, however, more rightly Carlegion [now Chester], a very great slaughter of that perfidious people : and when, the battle being about to be done, he saw their priests, who had assembled to pray god for the soldier managing the battle, to stand apart in a safer place, he enquired who these were, and what they had assembled in that place about to do. Now a great many of them were from the monastery of Bangor,* in which so great a number of * •• Tweh'e miles from Chester" (Lelands Collectanea, II, 601). KING ARTHUR. 117 iHonks is reported to have been, that when the monastery was divided into seven parts, with the rulers set over them, no portion of these had less than three hundred men, who all were accus- tomed to live by the labour of their own hands. Of these, therefore, a great many, at the re- counted battle, a three-days-fast being accom- plished, had assembled, with others, for the sake of praying, having a defender, named Brocmail, who should protect them, intent to their prayers, from the swords af the barbarians. When king Aedilfrid had understood the reason of their coming, he said : '^If, therefore, they cry to their god against us, and, certainly, they themselves, although they do not bear arms, fight against us, who are persecuted by their im- precations adverse to us :" he, therefore, or- dered, in the first place, the arms to be turned upon them, and so destroyed the other forces of that abominable militia, not without great loss of his own army. They report, about two thou- sand men, of those who had come to pray, to have been extinct in that battle, and only fifty to be fallen in flight. Brocmail, turning, with his soldiers, their backs, at the first coming of the enemy, left those whom he ought to have de- fended, unarmed, and exposed to the smiting swords.* * Bede, B. 2, C. 2. M 118 THK LIFE OF Tanner^ from whatever authority, in his note on Lelands life of Nennius, says, '* he got away from this slaughter, at Chester, and travelled over Wales, and the neighbouring islands of the Scots [Irish], that he might propagate and con- firm the christian religion." The Nennius, how- ever, he is speaking of, wrote in 858 j the battle of Chester happened in 607, a difference of up- wards of 250 years ! Leland, who had called this historian ** an un- certain author," not knowing the work, at any rate, to be that of Nennius. In a note, however, he speaks of '' Ninnius or Nennius, a Briton, the disciple of Elbod, the author of the chronicle, whereof Thomas Sulmo made him a copy : for he had an exemplar, not mutilated and without a preface, [a sufficient proof, however, that it was actually mutilated], as," he says, '^mine was."* He, afterward, " From the annotations, which were inscribed in the margin of the ancient book of Nennius, which,'* says he, '''I borrowed of Thomas Sulmo 3" and, after a few extracts, adds ; ''So I have found, that to thee, Samuel, that is, infant of my master Beulan, in this page I have written. From these words, the conjecture is, for Samuel to have been author of the annota- tions, which were in the margin of Nennius.'* * Collectanea, II. 45. KING ARTHUR. 119 He says of him : "He writes confusedly, and without judgement, also with filthy words, not doubting him to insert fables, any more than old wives." In the margin he adds : " Mention is made of a certain Nennius, in the life of saint Finnan."* This, however, could not, possibly, be Nennius, the historian, who wrote, as already said, in 858, and was not a monk of Bangor, but one of the same name, who was a monk thereof, and would seem, from Tanner, to have escaped from the battle of Chester, in 607- As to the three Irish saints, named Finan, they all appear to have died in the sixth century j as the Scotish ones did in the seventh. Gale inserts the marginal annotations of Samuel (which, in the best, if not all, the manuscripts, are in the margin), between crotchets in the text; Ber- tram, who published his edition at Copenhagen, never saw the manuscripts, but relies upon Gale j only he distinguishes the interpolations, some- times, as well by crotchets, as italics, and in- verted commas, and sometimes, with inverted commas alone : which deforms his book, at least, if it shews no want of judgement, as the marginal annotations, usually attributed to Sa- muel, are, frequently, by others, and should either have been inserted in notes, under the • Collectanea, II. 47. ]20 THE LIFE OF text, or^ after the text, or by way of appendix. From the 60th chapter, (at the end of which are these words, '' Hie expliciunt a Nennio Idiio, cor- rupts, Gilda sapiente composita] conscripta), he marks all the remaining chapters (including Ar- thurs battles), with inverted commas, as some passages are, likewise, between crotchets, and in italics. It appears, from William of Malmes- bury, that the nameless copy he had, contained the battle of the Badonick mount, " fretus imagine dominlecB matris, quani armis suis in- sueratj &c." but these words are not in Bertrams edition, nor the story, under the battle of Badon. Henry of Huntingdons extracts (from '*^Gildas the historiographer") are much more considerable and more consonant to the manu- scripts, than those of William of Malmesbury ; but neither the monk nor the archdeacon no- tices Arthurs fabulous [journey] to Jerusalem j so that, if any new manuscript of Nennius be ever found, that absurd story will not be there to pollute it. It is said, by the Welsh editors of ''The Myvyrian archaiology of Wales" (II, vii) : " There is a copy of Nennius, in the Vatican- library, the oldest that is known, undoubtedly, written in the beginning of the tenth century, which contains the story of Brute.*' These My- vyrian archaiologists seem to suppose, " the KING ARTHUR. 121 ^ unfounded' story of Brute to be the criterion of the most ancient and perfect copy of Nennius : although there is not a single copy, ancient or modern, manuscript or printed. Gale or Ber- tram, wherein '' the story of Brute" does not occur ! a manifest proof that they have never perused nor ever seen a copy of NenniuSj as it stands staring every one in the face, who can either read or see, in the second and third chap- ters, and in the genuine words of the original author : " Britannia insula d quodam Bruto va- catur*' (C. 2) : " Et sic venii ut in nativitate il- lius mulier est mortua et nutritus est filius vocat- umque est nomen ejus Bruto," (C. 3). A Welsh- man, however, who wanted '' the story of Brute," would, naturally, have recourse to the British history of Geoffrey of Monmouth : the pink of veracity! William Owen, in his "Cambrian Biography,*' asserts that Nennius, an historian, flourished toward '^ the close of the eighth cen- tury," but is the year 858, in which Nennius, with his own hand, records himself to have finished his book, in "the close of the eighth century ?" " Like Gildas and Tysilio,'' he adds, " he edited a breviary of the history of Britain, [which was, certainly, done by neither Gildas nor Tysilio] . . . and the same subject was con- tinued by Marcus, whose original copy is in the 122 THE LIFE OF Vatican-library. A very valuable edition/* he says, " with a commentary, is now preparing for the press, by the reverend William Gunn, [of Norwich], which will clear up and rectify the obscurities and errors in the editions by Gale and Bertram :'* this, indeed, we shall be glad to see 5 but, it is to be hoped, that this reverend editor is not a Welshman. KING ARTHUR. 1^3 CHAP. XXVI. Of the translation of the bones of king Arthur and his queen, by king Edward the first and queen Eleanor. In the year of the lord, 1276, king Edward, son of Henry the third, came with his queen to Glastonbury. In the tuesday, truly, next fol- lowing, the king, and all his court were enter- tained at the expenee of the monastery : in which day, in the twilight of the evening, he caused the sepulchre of the famous king Arthur to be opened, where, in two chests, their images and arms being painted, he found the separate bones of the said king of wonderful magnitude. The crowned image, truly, of the queen. The crown of the kings image was prostrate, with the abscision of the left ear, and with the ves- tiges of the wound of which he died. A manifest writing was found upon each. In the morrow, that is to say, on Wednesday, the king the bones of the king, the queen the bones of the queen, being rolled in [two] several precious palls, shut- ting up again in their chests, and putting on 124 THE Life of their seals, commanded the same sepulchre to be, quickly, placed before the high altar, the heads of both being retained without, on account of the devotion of the people, a writing of this kind having been put within : " These are the bones of the most noble king Arthur, which in the year of the incarnation of the lord 1278, in the 13th kalends of May [19th of April], by the lord Edward, the illustrious king of England, were here so placed : Eleanor, the most serene consort of the same king, and daughter of the lord Ferrand, king of Spain, master William de Mid- dleton, then elect of Norwich, master Thomas de Becke, archdeacon of Dorset, and treasurer of the aforesaid king, the lord Henry de Lascy, earl of Lincoln, the lord Amad4 earl of Savoy, and many great men of England, being present.* * Lelands Collectanea, V. 55, from a monk of Glaston- bury. Leland, on liis visit to Glastonbury-abbey, seems ta have found two other epitaphs of Arthur and his wife, which being among his papers, have been inserted in the Collec- tanea, III, 18, and are as follows : " Epitapkium Arthuri." " Hicjacet Arturus,fios regum, gloria regni^ Quern mores probitas commendant laude perenni." " Versus Henrici Swansey, abbatis Glaston." " Inferius ad pedem ejusdem.^' " Arturijacet hie conjux tumulata secunda, Qm