The Real History of the King Arthur Legend

We all know the medieval Arthurian myths, the great

king

who wisely rules his

king

dom from Camelot, supported by his Round Table of Brave Knights, search for the Holy Grail, fight evil and right wrongs throughout the kingdom. It is a

legend

to which the English kings have committed themselves. from the 13th century and into the 14th century he was providing a model for his kingship, but what you may not know is the Clash of Cultures that occurred in the 12th century that led to the breakup and then redefinition of the Arthurian Story as Celtic. and the Norman worlds would collide head-on in a bitter struggle for supremacy and survival, and a king of England would be forced to kill King Arthur once and for all.

Exclusive foreign documentaries and ad-free podcasts with top historians, watch on your smart TV or mobile device. When you download the historical app from the late 15th century, Thomas Mallory was writing his famous Lamour D

arthur

, the

real

-life version of Arthur we would know and recognize today, but Mallory builds on earlier work through credit from the late 12th century. he compiled several Arthurian stories and even Kratien adds to the work of Jeffrey of Monmouth at the turn of the century, who wrote probably the first version of Arthur that we would recognize as the story of the great king and his Round Table of knights.

Jeffrey of Monmouth finishes his

history

of the kings of Britain in 1138 and this is the first time we see what we might recognize as Arthur's story emerging. He is the son of Uther Pendragon. He is advised by a wizard named Merlin and Arthur goes on to conquer all of Britain. Iceland does so before turning his attention to the mainland, conquering Denmark, Norway and Gaul, bringing him into conflict with the Roman Empire, but Arthur is dragged back home by trouble with Mordred and is mortally wounded in a battle, taken to the Isle of Avalon for treatment and here.

Jeffrey leaves his story with a tantalizing theory that Arthur might still be alive, surely Jeffrey could have made up large parts of his work. William of Nubra said Jeffrey's book was a flight of fancy based on his excessive love of lying, but Jeffrey was pulling. They bring together myths, stories and

legend

s that have existed for centuries and some of the places and people Jeffrey mentioned date back through Welsh mythology to the 6th century or earlier. In some stories he is an invincible warrior, in others he is the protector of all of Britain. defending the Island from human and superhuman enemies Giant dog heads dragons and any other monster that invaded their lands one of the first references is found in the medieval Welsh poem anxious doddin in stanza 99 the poet praises a warrior saying you have had crows blacks In that I am part of a fortress, although he was not the author, but what Jeffrey did was put them all together in the first story that we would recognize as the story of King Arthur.

King Arthur continues to inspire fascination and debate to this day. He is a

real

person, some Celtic warlord or some Roman remnant left after the Empire's evacuation of England, is he an amalgamation of many real people to create an epic medieval hero or is he just a made up morality tale completely to teach us? about the temptations of the flesh that destroy the perfect society, a new Eden lost forever in the green and pleasant lands of England, located here in the hills of Somerset, is Cadbury Castle, an ancient Iron Age hillfort and the Bronze Age, but in the 16th century the Tudor antiquarian John Leyland called it.

Camelot Castle and local legend still hold to this day that this was the seat of the great King Arthur. There is no evidence that this was actually King Arthur's Camelot. Many places claim that title but it's easy to see why this appears to be a brilliant defensible position that can be seen for miles around - it's the perfect position to dominate the countryside and an ideal notion for locals of where Arthur might have based himself to convey his wisdom throughout his kingdom. There are countless local myths about Camelot Castle. Cadbury Castle, my personal. My favorite is that if you came here on Midsummer's Eve the whole hill would become as clear as crystal and inside you could see Arthur sitting with his Knights of the Round Table, but for many people Arthur wasn't just a myth. was a royal figure who could re-emerge and this hope undermined the rule of any living monarch because a great king, the figure of Arthur and the hope that his promised return gave to the rebels, became a problem that was proving impossible to solve King Henry II The Plantagenet monarch and the founder of the Arjunvin dynasty had a problem.

He had several, but he found many of them easy to solve. Few could resist his powerful will and he was a man famous for being able to reduce castles to surrender faster than any other. Others were alive, but one place frustratingly remained beyond Henry's control, that place was known as Kamri, the land of the people of Wales, in common with all post-conquest kings. Henry II wanted to gain proper control of Wales in 1157, just three years into his reign, he called everyone together. of the barons from him to Northampton and obtained his agreement to accompany him to Wales.

Henry's target was Owen, the Prince of Gwynedd in North Wales, and his plan was to replace Owen with his disgruntled younger Cadwalid brother and thus have a tame footprint on one of the Welsh thrones. Henry gathered his army at Chester. and they followed the estuary of the river D to gwynet, but were not familiar with the terrain. Henry made his first mistake when he rushed his army into enemy territory. They were ambushed by the Welsh at Flint and Henry's army was decimated. and the scattered Henry of Essex, the king's standard-bearer, suddenly appeared, but his master was not in sight.

Terror ran through the army that the king must be dead. Henry of Essex threw down the royal standard and fled for his life and many followed him, but some waited. long enough to see the king emerge breathless but unharmed and sending orders for his army to gather around him again, he reorganized and refreshed the army and advanced towards Wales this time with much more caution. Henry ordered a fleet of ships to follow them along the north coast of Wales ready to resupply the army when needed. Owen realized that the king of England was not going to just leave this time, so he and other local rulers came to make peace with Henry.

Henry had found Wales a challenge, but had adapted. his tactics and won something of a victory, but if you thought that was the last of his problems in that sector, Henry hadn't really paid attention to his

history

in 1163. Prince Rhys arrived in Hubarth and began causing trouble in the central Wales. Henry entered with an army and this time managed to capture Prince Rhys taking him back to the Royal Palace of Woodstock in England. Henry summoned all the other princes of Wales, as well as the king of Scotland, and demanded that they pay him formal homage. Henry was determined to place the tacit acceptance that he was the most powerful ruler of the British Isles on a much more formal basis; he wanted to be recognized as his Supreme Lord in the presence of the king in the king's palace;

The Welsh princes had no choice but to accept, but as soon as they were allowed to return home, they did what they did best and rebelled again in 1165. Henry was determined to assert himself again in Wales. He gathered an army at Shrewsbury and led them to Paris, heading back to Owen's Kingdom of Gwynedd, but the summer was torrential. wet, left all the mountains and roads covered in mud, the supply chain could not keep up with Henry's wet and demoralized army and they were forced to pack up and return home once again. Henry's desire to be obeyed had overcome him.

Henry had failed to crush Welsh resistance partly because they clung to the Arthurian myth, so he decided to approach the problem in a new way: a propaganda battle for the soul of Wales. The remains of the 14th century St Michael's Church still dominate the summit of Glastonbury Tour, to this day, remembered as the Isle of Avalon, once surrounded by water, it has always been closely linked to the legends of the King Arthur and still attracts tourists to enjoy not only the beautiful views but also the Legends of the great King Arthur. The Arthurian legend that really upset Henry II was the end of Jeffrey of Monmouth Jeffrey has Arthur mortally wounded at the Battle of Kamlan in Cornwall and taken to the island of Avalon, which contemporaries believe is the Glastonbury tour that stands out of the surrounding marshes, here Arthur is treated for his wounds, but Jeffrey leaves us with the tantalizing possibility that he did not die at Glastonbury Toren, but lived, relates to some Welsh mythology that Arthur is the once and future that one day will return to save his people from the problem. any man sitting on the throne is that a One and Future King becomes a threat, a challenge to his authority.

Arthur was being used by the resurgent Welsh to give them hope and Henry didn't want the Welsh to have hope, he wanted them to become so desperate. To submit to him, Henry ordered the people to research the legends of Arthur through his books in their libraries and listen to the tales of English storytellers and all of this came together to paint a truly vivid picture of Henry's burial place. Arthur between two stone pyramids about 16 feet deep in an Oak Hollow After Arthur's death, his followers had gone to Great Longitudes to hide the location of his burial from their Saxon enemies.

This Geralt of Wales claimed that it was because there was room for myths like that of Jeffrey of Monmouth that Arthur was still alive Gerald goes on to tell us that in 1190 or 1191, a year or two after Henry's death, the tomb was found exactly where Henry's research had said it would be between two 16 foot deep stone pyramids in an Oak Hollow, the monks of Glastonbury Abbey discovered a tomb the tomb was covered by a large stone that looked simple when they lifted it the monks found a large lead cross when they removed the cross they found an inscription on the stone underneath that said here lies buried King Arthur with Guinevere his second wife on the Isle of Avalon, so it seemed that it really was the tomb of King Arthur buried with Guinevere , who is described as his second wife, although who he had been married to before is not recorded anywhere;

There was a perfectly preserved braid of her golden hair. into the tomb and an overzealous monk jumped in, but when he picked it up to show it to her brothers, it disintegrated and was blown away by the wind. The monks also found in the tomb are perfectly preserved. sword King Arthur's sword the legendary Excalibur The monks who had sweated hard digging 16 feet into the ground to find Arthur's remains accepted the discovery: the tomb was said to be here on the south side of the lady's chapel and was It became a magnet for pilgrims almost immediately. Why would a medieval monastery get involved with the story of an early medieval leader, the answer is simple and complicated, but the answer is that having cash was a form of income for any cathedral or church and the more important the relics were , the more money they generated as King Arthur's star rose higher in the medieval firmament having his relics here with something of a blank check for Glastonbury Abbey and at a time when Richard I is beginning to squeeze every penny What he can of his new kingdom to finance his Crusades, having Arthur here was suddenly a new way. of income for Glastonbury Abbey that was too good to turn down.

I've come to meet Dr Cindy Wood, an expert in ecclesiastical history, to get to the bottom of this strange medieval mystery, so Cindy, we're here at Glastonbury Abbey, on the site of one. of Arthur's Tombs here, why would the monks of Glastonbury in 1191 have been willing to engage with the myth and legend of King Arthur? Well I think there are many reasons why Glastonbury would like to bring Arthur here, one being the Great Fire of 1184 when the entire church burned down and they were heavily reliant on Henry II for funds to rebuild the church. They needed royal patronage, so in 1191, having miraculously found the remains of Arthur and Guinevere, it suited the king to be seen as part of this restoration. burial of this ancient important even at that time Cheval Rick King and it suited the Abbey to raise their profile because at that time they are in great rivalry with Canterbury Cathedral, this is the Premier Church in the west at that time and in the 11 century at 11 a.m.

By 1191 there had already been two publications in the medieval sense of books about Arthur, so he is the most current and modern event in this period that Glastonbury can claim as its own. We know that in 1278 the remains of ArthurThey moved to this site. This market changed Arthur's reputation in 1278. This church we are in today was finished. It took them a hundred years because in 1191 the remains were built in the Lady Chapel in the west because it is still in ruins after the fire. so it is a symbol of Arthur's importance that he is placed in this place of great religious importance, but I think it is necessary to look at the context of these kings.

I don't think you can ever divorce the story of Arthur from how medieval kings used him. here we have in 1278 is the year after Edward returned from the Crusade in the Holy Land, took his throne and is using Arthur to reinforce his position as well, so it has also been a piece of propaganda for everyone, I think so, Absolutely, yes, yes. They are then later moved to this marble tomb and become a pilgrimage point. Arthur is a really interesting medieval enigma in that sense because most pilgrimages are to a religious site to the site of the remains of a saint that has benefit for the soul of the person visiting after death, whereas Arthur was never a saint, in many ways we could see Arthur as perhaps the more touristic side of the pilgrimage of this period rather than the religious one and I don't want to beI'm cynical about this because I think he should have been pragmatic in the period in which they could take advantage of the fact that these visitors went to other spaces.

It has connections and a great resonance in Wales. This church is on the Welsh pilgrimage route. The Celtic Church obviously has great strength and depth in Ireland, this church is on the pilgrimage route from Ireland, they come from Bristol, so there is a growing Englishness of Arthur and perhaps a forgetting of Celtic, so which in case any Welsh people are looking for their hero Arthur, they can be sure he is there. died and buried here, but also that he was English and absolutely Glastonbury has claimed that this ancient Celtic king and made him a very, very English foreigner in 1278 Edward I and his wife Eleanor of Castile were here to oversee the translation of Arthur's remains to his new tomb before the high altar the relics remained here until the dissolution of Glastonbury Abbey in 1539.

The stone slab that had been at the top of the tomb is last recorded as being in the possession of William Hughes, Chancellor of Wells, early 18th century. century, what happened to the relics after Glastonbury Abbey was dissolved unfortunately remains a mystery, there is very little evidence about what happens, we have the two surviving letters from the commissioners to Thomas Cromwell about Glastonbury Abbey in the which really only talk about how much cash he spent because the last abbot here, Richard Whiting, was actually executed on the Glastonbury tour, but we know that all the relics of this stuff were thrown into piles of rubbish even though It is a secular pilgrimage point.

I think he probably suffered the same fate, so it's interesting. how Arthur's reputation changes, he goes from being a hero of Welsh folklore, to being claimed by the English, to being killed by Henry II and then claimed and reused by future English kings, well, I think it's a, my point of view In a medieval period, it is him. actually he is like a prism and you can see Arthur through religious reasons. You know, the founding of the first church in England is meant to be at Glastonbury and Arthur's links to that, you can see it through politics and politics, especially Henry II. and Edward I and Edward III and how they used Arthur, then you can see his chivalric role, which is not limited to England and chivalry extends throughout Western Europe, he uses the idea of ​​Arthur and the round table and art, his idea of ​​chivalry.

In all those different contexts, you can look at Arthur and see that they are a way of looking at medieval life and medieval thoughts, which is our biggest challenge as historians: to really see what people thought in that period, whether they believed that or not. he was real. In reality, it is irrelevant because that is how they used it we as historians see it. It's a useful tool, whether you saw it in those terms. It's a very modern way of looking at it, but they used him and one of the other great finds in Arthur. In the tomb of that sword Excalibur we know that Richard the First takes possession of it and that he takes it with him when he goes on crusade to the Holy Land but the sword never reached Jerusalem on the Route Richard stopped in Sicily and discovered that his sister Joan was a prisoner of the new king tankrid there as part of the negotiations to secure his release Richard gave up Excalibur why would he do this why would he part with such a potent symbol of power and authority perhaps as his father Richard was interested in denigrating Arthur's memory to remove him from the Welsh Consciousness to show that he didn't mean anything.

There is another possible explanation while he was in Sicily. Richard appointed his nephew Arthur as his Heir if he died in the Holy Land without children of his own as part of the Peace Negotiations. A wedding was arranged between one of Tankard's daughters and Arthur, perhaps Richard left the sword there, meaning that Tankard took Arthur with her tonight when she came, dared to marry, and gave him back the sword so that there would be a new King Arthur, king of Britain. carrying the legendary sword Excalibur Richard felt able to engage with a new myth of Arthur as a great English king what became of Excalibur remains a frustrating mystery the jug's daughter never married Arthur and Arthur would never become king of England and therefore there would not be a new King Arthur carrying Excalibur at least not for approximately 300 years when King Henry VII, the first of the two demons, committed to his own Welsh heritage and the new Arthurian mythology and named his first son Arthur as a new King Arthur to bring hope to a country. that had gone through a civil war but unfortunately Arthur Tudor would die at the age of 15 and would never be king.

The stories of King Arthur were integral to the fabric of our medieval Shepherd. Nowhere is this more evident than in Winchester, once the capital of the Kingdom of Wessex and seat of England's medieval treasury. I have come to the Great Hall to meet Dr Catherine Weikert, Senior Lecturer in Early Medieval European History at the University of Winchester, we will come face to face with the most famous survivors. object of Arthurian legends The magnificent round table of Edward I, Catherine, what can you tell us about this fantastic painted round table hanging here in Winchester Hall? Isn't that a surprising thing to begin with?

I mean, the first thing you notice is just how big it is, it's absolutely monumental, and it's a really unique survival of the medieval world. We don't have boards this size that really outlive us and I think the fascinating thing about this one is that it pretends to be you. I know maybe from the 5th century, this is actually a pretty late thing in terms of Arthur, but it's right at the peak when Arthurian literature or theory and mythology, the peak of chivalry, really starts to come into play. in medieval England, so this is probably here from about the beginning of the 14th century, when Edward I had a magnificent tournament outside Winchester celebrating the upcoming nuptials of one of his sons and two of his daughters at the same time and not We know a lot about that particular festival. in that particular tournament, except it was within the Arthurian ideals and Edward was a really passionate Arthurian, he believed in these ideals, he loved these stories and you think that's maybe one of these points when Edward first thinks about building this table. having this idealized Arthurian object, this round table of mythology here in the heart of Winchester in this Great Hall and how Winchester is so closely associated with the Arthurian myths.

Jeffrey of Monmouth talks a lot about Winchester calling it an ancient capital in essence. and Winchester was never, in any sense, a capital of early England, it was an important city, but it was not a central city, it was not a capital as we see it today. Jeffrey, from mon, the lost story is a notoriously unreliable species of mythology, claimed that he had a source written in the ancient Protonic language, by which he actually means Welsh and we don't have that source, we don't know if he's working starting from something and then the story of Monmouth keeps being told over and over again, it's very typical medieval adaptation story french historian norman wace takes Jeffrey Abonemouth's latin story and translates it, adds it and turns it into a french prose a poet essentially in Norman French and this is about the middle of the 12th century and then at the end In the 12th century we have Lehman in England wasting it, embellishing it and putting it back into English, first in English poetry, so this story is turned bad in about a century, so it starts to become a really popular tale, but we don't necessarily have that connection with Winchester yet and that actually starts to come a little later with a detour, so its very famous works about Arthur are set in Arthurian Court here in Winchester, that's the first beginning of that Association, then we have stories like Arthur having his tournament. knows how to call a tournament, so although his main city is not Winchester in this particular story, he calls the tournament to be held outside of Winchester, which is what Edward I emulates in 1290, so the Association actually recovers and keep going. and it's these early medieval English kings who are really okay with this connection to Winchester as well and what's really funny too is that when you get to Edward III and he forms the order of the Garter, this really important chivalric ideal yours Essentially, you know a Brotherhood of Knights and he's very specifically based on the Arthurian Legend, but he's trying to set it in Windsor.

He was born in Windsor, it's not a coincidence and at this point you also have an idea of ​​when Arthur was. in Windsor too, but you've got this huge honking table here in Winchester, you know it's a feat of monumental proportions to move this thing down the hall is being rebuilt at about the same time, so the ceiling we see above us is part of this is from that decoration, so you have these wonderful bosses up there, if you look closely you will see basically a rose in the center and then rays come out that are often thought to be from the Rose and the Sun, which is very yours.

I know one type of royal symbol, but there is also medieval iconography depicting victories like lightning bolts like that, either wavy or designated as we see above us, so there's the idea that this might be one of those great medieval puns. of those bosses that represent victories. gatewinds made of Windsor gold, so although this tablet remains here, Edward III is trying to make this connection between Arthur Winchester and more specifically Windsor to suit his purposes, but the order of the Garter has another specific connection to Winchester and that the Bishop of Winchester is the prelet of the order of the Garter and still is today, so he maintains that really close connection between the ideas of Cheval Rick, the order of the ideas of King Arthur of the Garter, and Winchester between the table, the bishop and this really terrible pun of the Windsor trying to fetch, fetch, you all know triangular for Edward III, so the whole Windsor Winchester Arthur connection is really being stretched, but in 1486 Prince Arthur, the first Tudor Prince, will be born here in Winchester to cement that connection, as Camelot is right, yes, the guardians.

I think I have a lot to answer for with this whole Arthurian thing and that goes back to this idea of ​​legitimacy. You know, if you're Henry VII, you've basically become king in Battlefield. Richard III is dead and therefore a pretty easy answer for why you have the throne regardless of what clan name he has, so while battlefield legitimacy is a very specific type of legitimacy, you also don't have that linked to that line that the orchestra or the Lancasters could have. in its indirect ways, so the guardians are really based on these Arthurian Legends, you know Arthur The Eleven and he would be in Future King here, you know, actually personified embodied in this young prince and of course when Arthur dies before come, King Henry VII has to then take on that mantle, he has to somehow become an idealized Arthur, both in the sense of being his brother and this king of the past, so this Arthurian connection with the Tudors was enormously important. in terms of legitimacy and also there are dangerous ways that the throne could and could be claimed in different ways at the moment, so sometimes it's about providing the roots that some monarchs really didn't exactly have and that's something that It is very common throughout the medieval period.

You also have kings. Claiming that Charlemagne on the continent, of course, Roman emperors are descended from gods is pretty funny, so this idea of ​​drawing Missy legit through a deep past is something that's reallyconstant throughout history and in Britain and England in particular, Arthur was that ideal. that could be presented as a future king, the once Future King, the rightful King, a good King and then give you that sense of that deep past that you wouldn't otherwise have, so the table and the whole building become They use it as a theater and a stage to convey a message.

Absolutely this, the entire Great Hall in each iteration, each construction was part of a grand theatrical representation of what it was like to be king. So when Henry III rebuilt this place in the middle of the 13th century the decoration in the gabeeland on one side had a map of Mundi, that is, a map of the entire world and on the other side it had a Wheel of Fortune with the idea that fortune can turn for anyone, King, God or man. so this is part of the staging of your royalty, so this table was initially a table when Edward made it, it was probably sitting on the floor, somewhere in here there is evidence of where a pedestal would have been in the middle and 12 legs around the side to support it to be a flat table, but when Edward III tries to make that connection with Windsor, it no longer serves that purpose, so he hangs it on the gable end behind the dice and then it becomes in a state fabric. it becomes part of that performance of highlighting that hierarchy, highlighting the idea that this is the top end of the table, this is where the elite sits, this is where the king sits, and of course there's great irony. of what a representation is supposed to be. from an egalitarian, you know, 12 nights sitting around a headless table directly behind the king to use that to point out that I'm the king here, it's actually all staged throughout the rest of the story.

Arthur has been accepted by England as a national hero. The former and future king, the great monarch who led knights in sacred deeds in the 16th century. Henry VII is adopting the Arthurian myth for his own purposes. It has the round table.Repainted with the Tudor Rose in the center and a figure of King Arthur on top that bears a striking resemblance to Henry himself, the Victorians considered it the ideal of medieval English chivalry and Camelot became something which passed through time, became a late medieval Palace in an early medieval world, when Winchester Hall was renovated in the 1870s, the Victorians gave us these fantastic stained glass windows and they really speak to a lingering interest in heraldry and chivalry.

In those heroic kings we see Edward III, the king who led England in the Hundred Years' War below him is his son Edward, the famous black prince, and next to Edward III is Henry V, the great Victor of Agincourt, and These colorful depictions really speak to a medieval Arthurian fascination with heraldry and chivalry and the achievements to herald a little later. We can see the coat of arms of Arthur Prince of Wales, the boy who was born here in Winchester to be the new King Arthur born in Camelot and next to him we can see Edward IV, the man who would have his own genealogical role designed to include the King.

Arthur, like one of his own ancestors, this is a man who was really embracing the Arthurian myth, incorporating it into the family and linking English kings to Arthur. If the once and future King had been a threat, then the dead Arthur became a blessing to him. Medieval kings would trace their lineage back to him to reinforce and anchor their claims in ancient history. It was this murder of Arthur that allowed later medieval kings to adopt him as a revered ancestor at the pinnacle of chivalry and an ideal of kingship. All this. It was only possible because Henry II had found King Arthur's tomb or at least that's what they said thanks for watching this video in history.

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