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Arthur would have been ideal for the purpose. But his name is never mentioned. Instead we are told that the victor of Mount Badon was one Ambrosius Aurelianus—although Alcock, a strong advocate of Arthur being the victor at Badon, doubts whether that was what Gildas meant. Alcock does not deny, however, that Gildas does say that Ambrosius Aurelianus was a successful leader of the Britons in battle.

      According to some readings of his text, Gildas mentions that Badon was fought in the year of his own birth, which was probably around, or shortly after, AD 500. In a difficult passage, Gildas appears to imply that he is writing forty-four years later. Some dispute this, and believe (as did Bede, who had access to earlier and more authoritative versions of Gildas) that what is referred to as having occurred forty-four years earlier is some event other than the author’s birth. But, taken together, the evidence suggests that Mount Badon was fought in the decades on either side of the year 500.

      The name Arthur probably derives from the Latin gens or family name Artorius, although in manuscripts it often appears as Arturus. It may also be derived from artos, the Celtic word for a bear. The first account of a person named Arthur is by the anonymous author (once believed to have been Nennius) of the Historia Brittonum (History of the Britons), a collection of source documents written and assembled around 829-30. Although the Historia draws on many earlier Welsh sources, it is its ‘highly contemporary political motives’¹⁶ that are most important if we are to understand it—and indeed nearly all medieval and earlier Arthurian literature. In this instance the motives relate to politics in ninth-century Wales.

      The author of the Historia Brittonum was writing for the particular benefit of King Merfyn of Gwynedd, in north-west Wales, and his supporters, who were resisting English conquest and Anglicisation. They needed a heroic Celtic leader that people could look back to, and the Historia provided one. The Historia was also created as a counter to the ‘Englishness’ of the Venerable Bede’s history, which was then very popular. As Nicholas Higham points out, the élite surrounding King Merfyn resisted external pressures successfully: ‘The separate existence of Wales is a lasting tribute to their achievement.’¹⁷

      It is always difficult to make use of documents that only exist in the form of later copies or translations, as subsequent copyists may have added their own personal touches to flesh out the events being described. Arthur was very popular in the early medieval period, and it is probable that his name was interposed in earlier histories in this way. One example of this is the account of two important Arthurian battles in the Annales Cambriae (Welsh Annals), written around 1100, but drawing on earlier sources. Historians and others have tended to concentrate their attention on Arthur, but these documents, which were probably produced in south-west Wales, are actually far more concerned with the threat from Gwynedd, to the north, which completely overshadowed the issue of ‘racial’ struggle with England.¹⁸

      The Welsh Annals, a record of significant events, were included in the Historia Brittonum of Nennius.¹⁹ The two crucial references are to the two most famous battles of the Arthur cycle: that at Mons Badonicus, or Mount Badon, in which Arthur and his British army defeated the Anglo-Saxons; and Arthur’s final battle at Camlann. In translation they read as follows:

      [Year 516] Battle of Badon in which Arthur carried the cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ on his shoulders for three days and three nights and the Britons were victors.

      [Year 537] The strife of Camlann in which Arthur and Modred perished. And there was plague in Britain and Ireland.²⁰

      Modred (or Mordred) was Arthur’s nephew, who is supposed to have usurped his throne. There is little doubt about the historicity of Badon, as the battle is mentioned by name in Gildas, who was not writing to promote the British cause. That is not to say of course that Arthur was the British leader—and plainly, if he did carry a cross on his shoulders for three days, he could not have done much actual fighting. The problem is to know when these accounts were written. Were the references to Arthur added later, when the Annals were compiled? Or were the individual annual entries indeed written year-on-year, in which case they would have a greater claim to historical accuracy? Leslie Alcock opts for year-on-year composition, but most historians now believe that the Badon entry was actually written around 954, some 450 years after the event itself.

      Given the strong political motives that we know lay behind the writing and compilation of the Historia Brittonum, we must treat these entries with enormous caution. The substitution of Arthur for Gildas’ Ambrosius Aurelianus as the victor of Mount Badon might partially be explained by the political impossibility—given the Historia’s intended audience—of citing a general with a Roman name as a heroic British leader.

      As I have said, these events have been discussed interminably. The Welsh Annals state that Camlann took place twenty-one years after Badon, but there is no absolute agreement as to the date of Badon, except, as we have seen, that it probably happened in the decades on either side of 500, and probably not after 516. The Welsh Annals add further confusion to an already confused picture by mentioning ‘Bellum baronies secundo’ (the second Battle of Badon), which Alcock believed was fought in the year 667. The actual sites of the two battles are also unknown.

      The most distinguished writer and scholar of the eighth century was the Venerable Bede. This remarkable man was born near Monkwearmouth, County Durham, some time around 673, and died about 735. He is widely associated with the then new monastery at Jarrow, near Newcastle in Northumberland, where he was ordained priest in 703, but he probably lived most of his life at the monastery that was twinned with Jarrow, at Monkwearmouth. His major work, which tradition has it was written at Jarrow, is the Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, which he finished in 731.²¹ Bede’s Ecclesiastical History is a highly important source of early English history. It is both well written and well researched, but like the man, Bede’s intentions in writing it were complex.

      Bede’s primary motive was the salvation of his people, and he saw the Church as the means of achieving it. Although not an ethnic Anglo-Saxon himself, he wrote from their perspective, and his history is essentially about the anarchy and power vacuum that followed the end of Roman rule. He describes a period when southern Britain was subject to marauding bands from the Continent. The conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity by St Augustine in 597 was for Bede the great turning point. As he saw it, the Church imposed order in a world where structure was lacking. He was hostile to the British, whom he saw as chaotic, and he used the writings of their own historian, Gildas, against them—in the process he edited and greatly improved the overelaborate language of the De excidio. Bede fails to mention Arthur, and follows Gildas, his source, in attributing the victory at Mount Badon to Ambrosius Aurelianus.

      The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the last of the major pre-Norman histories of Britain, was established by King Alfred some time in the 890s. In form it was an annal, written in Old English, and was maintained and updated at major ecclesiastical centres. It begins with the Roman invasion and was still being updated in the mid-twelfth century. Surviving manuscripts are associated with Canterbury,Worcester, York and Abingdon. The Chronicle can be patchy as a source on early events, but it is much better in its later coverage, of the reigns of Alfred (871—99), Aethelred (865—71), Edward the Confessor (1042—66) and the Norman kings. It is also an important document for the study of the development of Old English; but while it is not particularly relevant to the Arthur myths, it does provide a useful account of the early Anglo-Saxon histories of south-eastern England, especially Sussex and Kent.

      The first major source of full-blown Arthur stories is the Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain), written by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 1130s.²² It would be fair to call Geoffrey (c.1100—55) the father of the mythical King Arthur, who was largely his invention. He did, however, use the principal earlier authors Gildas,

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