Britain AD: A Quest for Arthur, England and the Anglo-Saxons

Malory used two main sources as inspiration for his work. Both were written in the past, and harked back to an age of heroic chivalry. In the mid-fifteenth century, when Malory was writing, most people must have been aware that the world around them was changing. Today, with the advantage of hindsight, we can appreciate that the medieval epoch (the Middle Ages) was in the process of dying.* (#ulink_61401628-f73a-5d9b-a9ce-b10c29467a93) A new period, and with it a new way of thinking about the world—ultimately a new cosmology—was coming into existence. It was a process that had been fuelled by the release of the knowledge contained within the libraries of Constantinople, which fell to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. Archaeologists refer to this as the post-medieval period, but to most people it will be familiar as the time of the Tudors and the early Renaissance.

The first of Malory’s sources was English. It consisted of two Morte d’Arthur poems written in the previous century. Each was distinguished by a particular pattern of rhyming. The so-called Alliterative Morte Darthure was based on Geoffrey of Monmouth, whereas the Stanzaic Morte Darthur was based on a Continental original, the Mort Artu of the so-called Vulgate Cycle of French romances† (#ulink_2eed2c60-8131-5e44-aac3-3d18f92fc7a8) - which forms the second and more important of Malory’s sources. The Vulgate Cycle was a huge collection of Arthurian romances that was put together ‘by a number of authors and compilers, working c.1215—30 under the spiritual direction or influence or inspiration of Cistercian monastic teaching…It survives in many forms and many manuscripts, and occupies seven large quarto volumes in the only edition that aims at completeness.’

(#litres_trial_promo) Derek Pearsall considers that the main aim of Chrétien de Troyes and the compilers of the Vulgate Cycle was to include the story of the Holy Grail as an integral part of the Arthurian epic romance. Malory followed, with many embellishments, where they had led.

Perhaps Malory’s most memorable addition to the legend was the linking of the Holy Grail to the Holy Blood. This has recently been examined by the historian Richard Barber in a fascinating study.

(#litres_trial_promo) He concludes that the linking of the Grail to the blood which dripped from Christ’s side during the Crucifixion was more than an act of literary creation by Malory. He can find no mention of the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail in Chrétien de Troyes or the copious works of the Vulgate Cycle, and comes to the surprising conclusion that Malory ‘was influenced by the cult of the Holy Blood at Hailes [Abbey], not thirty miles from his Warwickshire home, which was a famous pilgrimage site in his day. If this is correct, the Grail reflects Malory’s own piety, typical of a fifteenth-century knight.’ It would suggest too that there was another side to the otherwise unpleasant knight from Newbold Revell. We will see later that there is another lesson to be learned from Richard Barber’s remarkable observation.

Malory was working with a vast and rich set of sources. Faced with such an embarras de richesses he could easily have produced an unwieldy and ultimately unreadable mess of a book. Had he decided to prune away all the excess, we would have been left with a skeleton plot, devoid of atmosphere or romance. As it was he took the middle path, and the result is a literary masterpiece of enduring greatness, even if sometimes the complex interweaving of narrative and ‘the almost narcotic or balletic repetition of the rituals of jousting or fighting is part of the dominant experience of reading’.

(#litres_trial_promo) It can at times be very heavy going.

We have seen that Malory’s printer and publisher, William Caxton, was an astute editor, but he was also an able businessman and bookseller, and he was aware that there was a public demand for an up-todate account of Britain’s most illustrious hero. He was also motivated by patriotism, and felt it was absurd that the most complete account of the Arthur saga should be contained in foreign sources. So he decided to do something about it, and wrote a fine Introduction which makes a persuasive sales pitch.

Le Morte d’Arthur is one of the earliest printed books, and several copies of Caxton’s publication survive. The trouble with printed books is that the manuscripts on which they were based often perish, and we can lose sight of what the author intended to write, before the editors or censors made their changes. But in 1934 a manuscript of Le Morte d’Arthur was found in the library of Winchester College. It was apparent that in his desire to present Malory’s work as a complete and continuous English account of the Arthur sagas, Caxton had removed most of Malory’s internal text divisions and introduced his own, which obscured the original eight sections.

(#litres_trial_promo) So we end this brief review of early Arthuriana with the master spinner of tales himself being spun, and it is ironic that, like the subject of his great work, the identity of Thomas Malory himself remains uncertain.

I want to turn now to the ways in which the legends of Arthur have been used in British public life. Royal dynasties change, and sometimes incomers seek legitimacy by harking back to a real or an imagined past. Unpopular monarchs try to ally themselves to legendary heroes, and popular ones seek to increase their public appeal in the same way. When the legends of Arthur were used politically they really did matter. Arthur, and what he stood for, was deadly serious.

We have seen how the composition of the pre-Gilfradic sources was influenced by political motives, especially in the case of the Historia Brittonum of Nennius, which was written and assembled to favour the cause of the Welsh monarchy and aristocracy, with Arthur as a potent symbol of Welsh identity and independence. By the same token, Geoffrey of Monmouth saw to it that Arthur was identified with the Anglo-Norman court in England.

(#litres_trial_promo) He set about achieving this with what today we would see as barefaced sycophancy, but which was usual practice in medieval times: he dedicated editions of his Historia Regum Britanniae to key people: to Henry I’s (1100—35) illegitimate son Robert, and even to the warring King Stephen. Geoffrey’s version of the past, including the strange account of Brutus and the marginally less strange story of Arthur, remained the dominant version of British history until well into the Tudor dynasty.

King Stephen’s successor, Henry II (1154—89), was the first and possibly the greatest of the Plantaganet kings of England. He took an active part in fostering the growth of the Arthurian myth by patronising Wace, author of the Roman de Brut, but he is best remembered as the probable instigator or supporter of a remarkable piece of archaeological theatre that took place at Glastonbury Abbey in 1191, two years after his own death. As we have seen, Arthur was an important symbol of Welsh resistance to the growing power of the English crown, and Henry II realised that something had to be done to lay this particular ghost. It happened that in 1184 the principal buildings of Glastonbury Abbey had been gutted by a catastrophic fire, and the monks were faced with the prospect of raising a huge sum of money to pay for the repairs. The story goes that shortly before his death Henry had been told by a Welsh bard that Arthur’s body lay within the grounds of Glastonbury Abbey. So, with the support of Henry’s successor Richard I (1189—99), top-secret excavations were carried out, and the monks announced their discovery of ‘Arthur’s bones’ in 1191. In a successful attempt to make this farrago credible, a Latin inscription was found with the bones, which translates as:

HERE IN THE ISLE OF AVALON LIES BURIED

THE RENOWNED KING ARTHUR,

WITH GUINEVERE, HIS SECOND WIFE

This fraudulent discovery seems to have had the desired effect. Pilgrims and visitors flocked to Glastonbury Abbey, and the idea—the magic—of Arthur was effectively removed out of Wales into the clutches of the Anglo-Norman ruling élite in England. It was a master-stroke. The appropriation of Arthur provided Richard I, whose domain was spreading beyond the borders of England into Ireland and the Continental mainland, with a hero to rival the cult of Charlemagne that was then so powerful across the Channel. As an indication of the Arthurian legends’ power to impress outside Britain, Richard I gave his Crusader ally Tancred of Sicily a sword which he claimed was Excalibur.

Despite the fact that several English rulers have named their offspring Arthur, none of them has yet managed to sit on the throne. It’s as if the name were jinxed. Henry II was the earliest case in point. His grandson Arthur was acknowledged by Henry’s childless successor Richard I as his heir, and would eventually have succeeded to the throne had he not been murdered by King John in 1203.

Edward I (1272—1307) made considerable use of Arthur’s reign as a source of political precedent and propaganda to be reformulated for his own purposes.

(#litres_trial_promo) He likened himself to Arthur, and with his Queen Eleanor of Castile he presided over a grand reopening of the Glastonbury tomb in 1278; subsequently he organised the construction of a shrine to Arthur in the abbey church, which was destroyed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536. One can well understand the importance Edward I attached to an English Arthur, given his vigorous campaigns against the Welsh in 1277 and 1282—83. It was Edward too who encouraged the belief that Joseph of Arimathea had visited the sacred site at Glastonbury, taking with him the Chalice used in the Last Supper. While he was there he drove his staff into the ground, and it miraculously took root as the Glastonbury Thorn. Finally, it seems likely that Edward I was also instrumental in the construction of the great Round Table at Winchester, which I will discuss shortly.

Edward I’s grandson Edward III (1327—77) was one of England’s most successful monarchs, and like his grandfather he was an admirer of all things Arthurian, making regular visits to Arthur’s shrine at Glastonbury. He founded Britain’s most famous order of chivalry, the Order of the Garter, on his return from his famous victory over the French at Crécy in 1348. Four years previously he had hoped to ‘revive’ the Order of the Round Table at a huge tournament at Windsor, but had to cancel this plan because of the expense. The Order of the Garter made a very acceptable substitute, as Nicholas Higham has pointed out: ‘The new institution was an “Arthurian” type of secular order, albeit under a new name, established at Windsor, which was popularly believed to have been founded by Arthur.’

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Edward IV, whose claim to the English throne was hotly disputed during the Wars of the Roses, actually succeeded to the crown twice (1461—70 and 1471—83). If anyone required legitimation it was he. He bolstered his regal pretensions by showing that he was related to the Welsh kings (which he was), and through them, via Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia, to Arthur, the rightful King of Britain. It was during Edward’s reign that Malory finished his Morte d’Arthur.

Henry Tudor defeated Richard III (1483—85) at the Battle of Bosworth, and ruled as Henry VII (1485—1509). To legitimise his shaky claim to the throne, he asserted that his new Tudor dynasty united the previously warring houses of York and Lancaster, and also claimed legitimacy through his connection to Arthur and the real heroic king figure of seventh-century Wales, Cadwaladr (Anglicised as Cadwallader). Henry would have been aware of prophecies that predicted that both heroic figures would one day return to right ancient wrongs. In the second year of his reign he sought to strengthen his perceived ties to Arthur by sending his pregnant wife, Elizabeth of York, to Winchester, which was popularly believed to have been the site of Arthur’s court. At Winchester she gave birth to Arthur, Prince of Wales. Sadly Arthur succumbed to consumption and died, aged fifteen, in 1502; he was elder brother to the future Henry VIII.

After this initial recourse to Arthur (which did not involve a serious attempt to prove that the Tudor dynasty really was descended from the mythical king), Henry VII does not appear to have made significant use of the legend later in his reign. Similarly his son Henry VIII generally stayed clear of Arthur, except when it came to the crisis of his divorce from Catherine of Aragon.

(#litres_trial_promo) In order to establish his own, and his country’s, independence from the Roman Catholic Church he resorted to Geoffrey’s Historia as an account of English history that was free from direct foreign influence (apart from Brutus). He also had his own image, labelled as King Arthur, painted on Edward I’s renowned Round Table at Winchester. A recent study of this portrait and the tabletop on which it was painted has thrown unexpected new light on Henry’s view of himself, his court—and Arthur.

The Great Hall of Winchester Castle was built by King Henry III between 1222 and 1235; it is arguably the finest medieval aisled hall surviving in England. The vast painted tabletop resembles nothing so much as an immense dartboard of 5.5 metres diameter, with the portrait of King Arthur at the top (at the twelve o’clock position) and the places of his Knights of the Round Table indicated by wedge-shaped named segments. Today it hangs high on the hall’s eastern gable-end wall, but originally it would have stood on the ground.

The Round Table was taken down from its position on the wall for the first time in over a hundred years on Friday, 27 August 1976. The reasons for removing it were to inspect its condition, carry out any necessary restoration and to check that the brackets which secured it to the wall were in sound condition. It also gave archaeologists, art historians and other specialists a chance to date the tabletop and its painting, and more importantly to form a consensus on why and how it had been constructed. The results of their work were edited together by the team leader, Professor Martin Biddle, into a substantial but fascinating volume of academic research.

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Tree-ring dates suggest that the Round Table was constructed in the second half of the thirteenth century, between 1250 and 1280, as the centrepiece for a great feast and tournament that took place at Winchester Castle in 1290.

(#litres_trial_promo) It was probably made in the town from English oak by the highly skilled carpenters who were one of England’s great assets in the medieval period. Visit the spire of Salisbury Cathedral, the roof of Westminster Hall or the great lantern at Ely if you want to see examples of their work, which was unrivalled anywhere in Europe.

(#litres_trial_promo) The purpose of the tournament was to celebrate, in Martin Biddle’s words, ‘the culmination of King Edward I’s plans for the future of his dynasty and of the English crown’. The construction of the Round Table and the holding of the tournament also had the effect of transferring, in popular imagination, Arthur’s fabled capital from Caerleon in Wales to Winchester in southern England. In other words, it was a major public relations coup.

It may seem improbable, but the impact of a round table on medieval sensibilities would have been considerable. Tables are important pieces of furniture. Around them take place meals and other social gatherings, and the shape of the table itself reflects the organisation and hierarchy of the gathering. Today many family dining tables are round or oval. This does not just reflect the fact that the shape is more compact and better suited to smaller modern houses; it also says something about the way modern family life is structured. In Victorian times, for example, long rectangular tables were the norm in middleclass households. This reflected the importance of the Master and Mistress of the house, who would have sat—or rather presided—at either end. Along the sides sat the children, poor relations and others. In medieval times dining arrangements in great houses were even more formal. The Lord and his immediate family would have eaten at a separate high table, probably raised on a dais at one end of the hall. Tenants, servants and others would have dined in the main body of the hall. The high table would have been separated from, but clearly visible to, all those present. To make the display even clearer, the Lord’s family and retinue would probably all have sat along one side of the high table, facing out over the hall for everyone to see. The Winchester Round Table broke all these rules, and it must have had a shocking effect on the people who saw it: in the late Middle Ages a round table was not merely an offence against protocol, it challenged the rigidly hierarchical system in which the understanding of political reality was enshrined.

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Sixty years after the tournament Edward III had the legs removed and the tabletop hung high on the wall, for everyone to see and wonder at. I believe that the effect of this removal from the ground to a more remote spot, high on the wall, was deliberate. Yes, it was more visible, but it was also removed, like an altar in church, visible but separate, and—I can think of no other word—Holy. Although it was still unpainted, there is some evidence that it may have been covered by a rich hanging or cloth.

The painting of the Round Table took place in the sixteenth century, in the reign of Henry VIII. Apart from some later touching up, to everyone’s surprise X-ray photos showed there to have been just one layer of paint. In other words, the design had not been built up over the century and a half or so between the time of Edward III and Henry. There were two known events attended by Henry at Winchester which could have led to the creation of the painting. The first was a visit he made in 1516; the second was a more grand state occasion, when the King came to Winchester with the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1522. In a fascinating exercise in detailed art history, Pamela Tudor-Craig charted the history of Henry’s beard.

(#litres_trial_promo) This study was able to link the Round Table’s portrait of Henry as King Arthur to the period of his second, of three, beards, characterised as ‘square, relatively youthful and short-bearded’, that Tudor-Craig dated to the period June 1520—July 1522.

Clearly Henry was out to impress the Holy Roman Emperor. But there was more to it than that. Pamela Tudor-Craig points out that by this stage of his reign he had rid himself of Cardinal Wolsey, who had failed to gain approval for the annulment of Henry’s first marriage, and was

directing attention to historical research whereby the case for independence from Rome can be bolstered by the citation of ancient and national roots. The image of a seated king on the Round Table inWinchester Great Hall is not only a prime example of the interest in British history evinced by Henry VIII and his advisors: it is a card in the game of international diplomacy that engaged the papacy, the Holy Roman Empire, and the French and English monarchies during most of Henry VIII’s reign. The Roman Emperor had Charlemagne, Francis of France claimed Julius Caesar. Henry VIII called out the Round Table presided over by King Arthur, his own imperial ancestor.

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During the Renaissance people in intellectual circles were inclined to question ideas that had been widely accepted during the Middle Ages, and the concept of a long-dead king whose courtiers slipped in and out of the realms of religion and magic began to lose credibility as a historical fact. But Arthur continued to exercise a degree of influence in certain circles, as Nicholas Higham explains:

Although it is quite easy to over-emphasise Arthur’s importance, he was successively used for political and cultural purposes by Edward IV, Henry VII, Henry VIII, and Elizabeth, then James VI and I, variously as a source of dynastic legitimacy and imperial status, as a Protestant icon, as a touchstone of nationalism and the new identity of the realm with the monarch’s own person, and as a source of courtly ideals and pageantry.

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By the seventeenth century a population that had embraced Protestantism and accepted first Oliver Cromwell and subsequently parliamentary government, by which the Divine Right of Kings was repudiated, would not willingly have embraced Arthur, despite the pretensions to equality suggested by the Round Table. Instead, attention shifted towards the more historically verifiable King Alfred as England’s founding father. Alfred saw himself as a Saxon king, and from the eighteenth century onwards the Anglo-Saxons, rather than the semi-legendary Romanised British, became the preferred origin myth in England.

It is probably not stretching the truth to think of Alfred as the English or Anglo-Saxon Arthur. He is often represented in similar poses, looking noble, his head held proudly aloft. There is usually a large sword hanging from his belt or grasped in his right hand. He is portrayed as being rather more rugged than the somewhat fey image of Arthur. All in all, Alfred is seen as very English, and an altogether appropriate ancestor for someone like Queen Victoria.* (#ulink_e240f0b6-83f4-5777-829b-0e3aaf8fcb88) Like Arthur, it would seem that Alfred acquired much of his reputation and many of his heroic legends after his lifetime.

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Ultimately it was the Renaissance that finished Arthur as a potent political symbol. Ironically, the freedom of thought engendered by that great change in intellectual attitudes liberated people’s imaginations, and Arthurian legends were given a new and wholly fictitious life. The Arthur of history was replaced by the Arthur of fiction. Today that Arthur is still thriving, and has contributed to a new genre of literature by way of epics such as Tennyson’s Morte d’Arthur and Idylls of the King, and the fantasies of J.R.R. Tolkien, which owe more than a nod in Arthur’s direction. The world of Arthur has acquired a life of its own: the post-Industrial, pre-modern age has become an unlikely Avalon. It is, for me at least, a somewhat unsettling thought that one day Arthur might prove to be the most enduring character from British history.

* (#ulink_a6b897a2-826c-577a-80e8-277235d42420)In Latin Geoffrey of Monmouth translates as ‘Galfridus Monemutensis’, hence ‘Galfridian’.

† (#ulink_acab26de-b9d5-54f4-b183-f6cd902d9211)All royal dates refer to the period on the throne.