The Mammoth Book of King Arthur (27 page)

Continuing along the Cloven Way, Crawford identifies a site to the west of Charford, near the ancient earthworks known as Grim’s Ditch, listed in a charter as
fyrdinges lea.
Fyrding
refers to an army on full war footing, and he suggests this could have been the site of
Cerdices leag.
There is a logic to this route. It may also be significant that at Downton, the village
that adjoins Charford to the north, is a feature called The Moot, or Moot Hill, believed to have been a meeting place for Saxon councils. It would seem only natural that, if the Saxons under Cerdic
first established themselves in this area, they would have a meeting place for their
witan
which, as the first in that area, would have become held in high esteem. Perhaps even more
intriguingly, the part of the Moot that abuts the River Avon has been called for centuries Natanbury, and is believed to have been the burial mound of Natanleod.

It is worth noting that if Cerdic’s confederates did establish themselves in the basin of Southampton Water around Charford,
they were within striking distance of both
Badbury Rings and Liddington, which would have made Cerdic a contender for fighting at Badon if his arrival could be satisfactorily dated to 495. The chronology, however, best suits a later
arrival. If it were possible to prove that one of Cerdic’s battles equated to Camlann, it would bring the Arthurian world into much sharper focus. Unfortunately, no amount of research can
detect any trace of an early Celtic name like Camlann for any of the locations along the Avon valley in which Cerdic’s early battles may have taken place. One can look longingly at the twists
and turns in the river and think that maybe somewhere here was called the ‘crooked enclosure’ or something similar at one time, but that could apply to almost any river.

Intriguingly, the
Mort Artu
, part of the early Vulgate Cycle of Arthurian legends on which Malory based his famous work
(see
Chapter 9), has Camlann take place on Salisbury Plain.
There is no evidence for this at all. Possibly this reflects some distant folk memory, but that could be a dim recollection of any major battle near Salisbury, such as that in 715 between Ceolred
of Mercia and Ine of Wessex.

Despite these suggestions, no firm location can be made for any of Cerdic’s battles. That also applies to
Wihtgaræsbyrg
, presumed to be a hill fort on the Isle of Wight. The
only such fort is at Carisbrooke, but neither archaeological nor linguistic evidence can show any relationship between this and
Wihtgaræsbyrg.
The obvious place, based on the other
Cerdic locales, is Whitsbury, less than 10 km (6 m) west of Charford, and set amongst a maze of valleys and ancient earthworks. However, most etymologies note that Whitsbury evolved from
Wiccheberia
, from
wice
for “wych elm”, thus meaning the “fort where wych elms grow.”

Trying to identify any other possible places associated with Cerdic is complicated by the abundance of the name Cerdic/Ceretic, and also, being a Celtic name, it was doubtless superseded by a
Saxon name in due course. In this sense Cerdic is unusual amongst the early Saxon leaders in that he did not have places named after him. Creoda of Mercia, for example, is remembered in Credenhill
in Herefordshire, and Icel, his forebear, in Ickleton near Cambridge. For some reason Cerdic did not leave his mark on the landscape as much as he did on history.

6. Suggested sites for Arthur’s battles in Armorica.

4. The Breton angle

Ronald Millar, in
Will the Real King Arthur Please Stand Up?
(1978), has enterprisingly managed to find sites for all of Arthur’s battles in Brittany (
see
Map 6
, and below). Some people have dismissed this book as a spoof, or simply as a humorous read, but it raises some interesting points.

Millar reminds us that the Arthurian story also thrived in Brittany, and indeed much of the Arthurian story as we now know it developed there. In later centuries Arthur’s name had mutated
to Arzor, perhaps remembered in the name of the town Arzal, in the south near the mouth of the river Vilaine. Further along the coast is Arzon, which looks over the Golfe du Morbihan to the cliffs
at Baden.

Below is a list of the possibilities identified by Millar:

Millar is able to get a compellingly close similarity with most of the battles, except Bassas, Badon and Camlann. Perhaps this should not be too surprising. It is known that
when the British migrated to Armorica and established new settlements, they brought their old names with them, naming territories Cornouaille and Leon, for example. What this demonstrates is that
place names in Brittany have remained relatively unchanged. Millar’s research is an interesting snapshot of how names might have been identifiable in Britain had not so many changed under
successive settlers.

Having identified a name is one thing, but are they necessarily appropriate settings? Millar himself admits that Baden, atop the cliffs overlooking the massive estuary of the river Vilaine, does
not really fit the description of a
Mons Badonicus.
The monastery of St Gildas is only the other side of this bay, near Arzon, so one would expect Gildas’s description of it to be more
accurate. Likewise, Millar’s suggestion of Camerunn in the marshland
near St-Nazaire is really a throwaway at the end of his book, and not a serious proposal.

The Breton dimension, however, raises the question of whether Arthur’s battles started in Armorica and he then came to help the British at Badon. The Breton historian Leon Fleuriot
suggested that one reason why the British were able to maintain a resistance against the Saxons around the turn of the fifth/sixth centuries was partly due to “the support of continental
Bretons” and that the collapse of the British defence in the late sixth century was because the Bretons were involved in their own war against the Franks. If the British saviour was Arthur
then possibly he either came from Armorica or he was able to command Breton mercenaries, a concept that Geoffrey of Monmouth utilizes in his own story of Arthur, which I explore in Chapter 9. It is
also the basis of Geoffrey Ashe’s case for proposing Riothamus as Arthur though, as we have seen, the dates undermine this.

A variant on this idea comes from Chris Barber and David Pykitt in
Journey to Avalon
where they suggest that Arthur survived Camlann and retired to Brittany as a religious hermit,
adopting the name Arthmael or Armel. Barber and Pykitt believe that he was Athrwys of Gwent, whom they date from 482–562. Little is known about Arthmael. He is believed to have been born in
Gwent, near Llantwit Major but not one knows when. He was a contemporary of and probably related to St Samson and St Cadfan. He appears in Armorica around the year 538, the same year as Camlann
according to the
Welsh Annals.
He died sometime between 552 and 570. The church of Saint-Armel-des-Boscheaux is on the Golfe du Morbihan, close to the monastery of St Gildas.

Barber and Pykitt’s dates coincide with those in the
Welsh Annals
for Badon and Camlann, but are too early for Athrwys of Gwent whom I believe lived from around 600–660. The
name change from Athryws to Arthmael also seems strange. Arthur of Badon is hardly likely to have kept his identity hidden after Camlann, not with Gildas living nearby.

All the evidence suggests that Badon was in Britain – that’s where Gildas set it. The battle campaign that ended in Badon was therefore also going to be in Britain. The commander
might have previously fought in Armorica. He might even have been a son of
Riothamus, and so could have retired to Armorica afterwards. But otherwise we can exclude Armorica
from our battle zone.

5. The overall picture

Map 7 brings together the full distribution of battles. Apart from a few isolated proposals in Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire the concentration of sites is in the North, the
West, the South and North Wales. This may be an accident of language, in that old names survived longer in these areas and thus can be made to fit the sites, whereas sites in the east and Midlands
have been too long influenced by later settlers and the old names have been lost. Nevertheless, they suggest three possible frontiers, as well as an agglomeration in North Wales. Nor should we
ignore a possible eastern frontier, to include the partition mentioned by Gildas.

Table 7.1 groups the more likely sites for these battles by those five areas. In plotting these sites (
see
Map 8
) several patterns emerge. The southern, eastern and western sites form
clear frontiers. The northern frontier is more problematic. The pattern suggests a focus around the territory of the Gododdin, with the eastern line presenting a barrier to the Angles whilst the
northern and western lines are a barrier against the Picts or Britons of Strathclyde. The southern line more or less follows Hadrian’s Wall and would also be a frontier against the Angles and
the Coelings.

The Welsh sites plot a fluctuating border between Gwynedd and Powys. These sites could, at a push, be interpreted as dealing with Irish raiders, but if that was so you would expect a stronger
distribution in Dyfed, yet few sites have been proposed for Nennius’s list in either Ceredigion or Dyfed. Whilst accepting the limitations imposed by a selective interpretation of battle
sites, the sparsity of other options somewhat speaks for itself.

There is always the possibility that the battle sites did not follow a frontier but were opportunist strikes against local threats. If so, this would suggest that the battles were fought by
local chieftains and not one overall commander. No sensible commander would stretch his resources across Britain, even though the capability was there, but would focus them against the main
threats. These were Aelle in the south or the Angles in the North, suggesting that the campaign could have been in two halves.