Arthur and the Saxons

The Road to Camlann Part III – The South East

“It is useless to look for Arthur's battle-sites anywhere but round about the area, once highly Romanized, in southern England, in the country south of the Thames and west of Kent. If it can be shown that enough remains to suggest identification of the battle-sites on the fringe of this area, the story of Nennius becomes credible.”1

Arthur's Battles and the Saxon Wars
If Arthur's battles were fought against the Saxons, and it is not certain they were, we might hope to find some trace in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle. We find no records of Badon or Camlann, the high and low points of Arthur's career, among the early English; perhaps they are there, hidden from a form we might recognise, but in a different language.

The battle list contained within the 9th century Historia Brittonum (also known as 'Nennius' if you will) shows a series of battles that culminated in the twelfth at the battle of Badon. This account of the Britons fortunes seems to reflect Gildas (De Excidio Britanniae, ‘On the Ruin of Britain’) who, gives no dates but was writing before Maelgwn's death in 547 AD and certainly within living memory of the battle, places great significance to the ‘siege of Badon Hill’ (obsessio montis Badonicus) as the ‘final victory of our Country which has been granted to our time by the will of God.’

Anderitum Roman fort

Gildas tells us that the Britons took up arms and rallied under Ambrosius Aurelianus, the last of the
Romans and that, “from that time on now the citizens, now the enemy, were victorious ... right up until the year of the siege of Badon Hill, almost the last, not the least, slaughter of the villains, and this the forty-fourth year begins (as I know) with one month already elapsed, which is also [that] of my birth.”

In this passage it seems obvious that Gildas is saying is that he was born in the same year as the siege of Badon Hill and he was writing forty-three years and one month after that battle; we can thus date the battle to within a few years of either side of the year 500 AD.

Alternatively, it has been suggested saying that he is saying that the battle of Badon took place
forty-three years and one month after some other event not named by him in this sentence.

Bede closely follows Gildas in describing the fluctuating fortunes of the Britons, and the battle of Badon: “From that time on, now the citizens, now the enemy were victorious right up until the year of the siege of mount Badon, when there was no small slaughter of the enemy about forty-four years after their arrival in Britain.”2

Here Bede appears to have interpreted Gildas' statement as meaning that Badon occurred in the year of his birth, the forty-fourth year of the English settlement in Britain.

Bede claims the English Advent occurred in 449 AD. Badon, then must have occurred around 493 - 495. 449 is the year that the Anglo Saxon Chronicle records the arrival of Hengist and Horsa in Ipwinesfleet, at the invitation of Vortigern the king of the Britons. Battles at Aylesford (455), Crayford (457) and Wippedfleet (465) followed, which resulted in the Britons conceding Kent and fleeing to London. This account is mirrored in the so-called 'Kentish Chronicle' of the Historia Brittonum, but with the names Hengist and Horsa meaning stallion and horse it raises suspicion of it being a purely mythical foundation story.

In the 10th century Welsh Annals, Badon [Bellum Badonis] is entered under year 72, which corresponds to A.D. 518, and reads,

“The battle of Badon, in which Arthur carried the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ for three days and three nights on his shoulders and the Britons were victorious.”

The Annals are the first to give these details, and the first to provide a precise date for Badon; there are no other extant sources for the 518 date. Frank Reno3 re-calibrates the dates of the Annals Cambriae by 19 years, a full lunar cycle, calculated from the Easter Tables, which once again brings the date for Badon to around 500 AD.

As Badon is the last battle in the 12 listed in the Historia Brittonum (Nennius), Arthur's battles must have all been fought prior to that date, and, following the Welsh Annals, Camlann 21 years later. We can therefore pinpoint Arthur's floruit within a window of around 480 to 520.

Sussex

If Arthur was the leader of the Britons at Badon it is unlikely he could have been around to fight Hengist and Horsa in the mid-5th century, the Britons were led by the sons of Vortigern against the Saxon in Kent. Indeed, if Arthur fought against the Saxons in the south-east during the last quarter of the 5th century his adversaries would have been Aelle and Cerdic. The Anglo Saxon Chronicle records:

477 – Aelle lands at place called Cymenes ora with his three sons, Cymen, and Wlenking, and Cissa, in three ships. There they slew many of the Welsh; and some in flight they drove into the wood that is called Andred's leag.
485 - This year Aelle fought with the Britons at Mearcreades burnam.
490 - This year Aelle and Cissa besieged Andredes cester, and slew all that were therein; nor was one Briton left there afterwards.4

Aelle and the foundation of Sussex
According to the Chronicle, Aelle landed at Cymenes ora (ora = shore), which has been identified as a stretch of south-eastern coast between Selsey and Pagham. Andred's leag is the forest of Anderida, the Weald, which then stretched from Kent in the east to just north of Selsey in the west. Andredes cester is without doubt meant as the Roman Saxon Shore fort at Anderitum (now Pevensey castle) some 50 miles eastward along the coast from Selsey. From these two Chronicle entries we can see Aelle's progress from landing in 470 to the South Saxons spreading to Pevensey twenty years later. But the main area of Saxon settlement in the 5th century seems to have been between the river Ouse and Cuckmere. By the 6th century this had spread westward to the Adur, the opposite direction to the Chronicle.5

Pevensey Castle (Anderitum) - copyright English Heritage

The Chronicle tells us that in 485, in the midst of this reign, Aelle fought the Britons at Mearcreades burnam but does not record this as victory for the English. Mearcreades burnam has been interpreted as 'the river of the frontier agreed by treaty,' i.e the Ouse was the boundary of Saxon settlement, and the battle could have been an attempt by Aelle to break out beyond this boundary.6 At 480-feet Mount Caburn is one of the highest landmarks in East Sussex, on the summit is the remains of an Iron Age hill fort, separated from the South Downs, by Glynde Reach, a tributary of the River Ouse.

Collingwood identifies Arthur's first battle ("on the river Glein") from the Historia Brittonum as the Glynde in eastern Sussex, at its confluence with the Ouse near Lewes beneath the Caburn (Caer Bryn = strong fort). A long barrow on Cliffe Hill, part of the Caburn, is known as the Warriors Grave, which may have been so-named in memory of a battle fought here. Ekwall7 accepts the Glynde as equivalent to the "river Glein” a site often favoured by scholars as the Glen in Northumberland, or the Glen in Lincolnshire.

If this was indeed Arthur's first victory as recorded in the battle list of the Historia Brittonum, the date, 485, fits perfectly with the dates suggested for the Arthurian campaign. Aelle seems to have been contained until he struck at Andredes cester (Pevensey) some five years later.

We then hear no more of Aelle in the Chronicle and there is no record of his death. Yet, Bede, the historian of the English peoples, tells us that Aelle was the first English king to hold sovereignty (bretwalda) over all the southern provinces south of the Humber.8

Traditionally Aelle is the leader of the Saxon's at Badon (c.495) along with Octha of Kent (son of Hengist?). Octha is identified with 'Osla Big-Knife' (Gyllellvawr) in Arthurian tradition; in Culhwch and Olwen he is one of Arthur's warband as they hunt the giant boar Twrch Trwyth, but drowns when he follows the boar into the Severn and the scabbard of his seax (Saxon long-knife) fills with water dragging him under; in the Dream of Rhonabwy he is Arthur's adversary at Badon (Caer Faddon).9

Badbury Rings, Dorset

Traditionally we are are told that Badon was fought at Bath, as this describes the ancient name of the city with the hot springs, an idea that has stuck since Geoffrey of Monmouth's fables; but surely Bath is far too west for a Saxon advance at this time. Even the favoured sites of Liddington Castle (Wiltshire) and Badbury Rings (Dorset) are too far west for a South Saxon advance, a battle site further east, nearer the territory of the South Saxons (suthsaexe) would make much better sense. Archaeological evidence for early Saxon settlement in Sussex has been found in burials at Alfriston, Selmeston, Bishopstone, Beddingham, Glynde, Saxonbury (Lewes) and Wooodingdean.

However, if the identification of Arthur's first battle on the Glynde (river Glein) and his penultimate, Badon, in the south-east are correct we should then also expect to find the other ten battles in this area of England. Collingwood does exactly that for eleven of Arthur's battles but fails to offer a candidate for Badon in the region of the South Saxons.10 Oddly, the south-east is one area of Britain largely absent of Arthurian tradition.

After Badon, Aelle disappears from the Chronicle and even Sussex fails to get a mention for 150 years; it seems almost certain that both Aelle and his sons were killed in the battle. Badon was without doubt such a resounding victory for the Britons, perhaps revenge for the slaughter of all the occupants of the fort at Andredes cester, that the archaeological record shows a cessation in Saxon expansion in the south from this time for several generations. Indeed, writing before 865, a monk from Fulda records Saxons from Britain landing at Cuxhaven, Lower Saxony, Germany, in 531, an event which is also supported by the account in Procopius who writes of 6th century migration from Britain to the land of the Franks across the Channel.

If Arthur's twelve battles were fought in the south of England then can we expect find the site of Camlann also in the same area?


Copyright © 2017 Edward Watson
http://clasmerdin.blogspot.co.uk/


Notes & References
1.  WG Collingwood, Arthur's Battles, Antiquity 11, 1929.
2.  Bede, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Oxford, 2008.3. Frank D Reno, The Historic King Arthur, McFarland & Co, 1997.
4. Michael Swanton (Translator & Editor), The Anglo Saxon Chronicle, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997.
5. Mike Ashley, The Mammoth Book of King Arthur, Robinson, 2005.
6. Ibid.
7. Ekwall, English River Names, Oxford University Press, 1928.
8. Bede, op.cit.
9. Thomas Jones and Gwyn Jones, The Mabinogion, Everyman, New Edition, 2001.
10. Collingwood, op cit.

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