WHO WAS ARTHUR?
This scenario converges on the idea that Arthur was primarily the King of Dumnonia. This ancient kingdom is now the English West Country, consisting of Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, and Dorset. Gildas’s peculiar account of the state of Britain, The Ruin of Britain, is really a tortured lament about the poor leadership shown by the Dark Age kingdoms that occupied the English West Country and Wales in the first half of the sixth century. This region coincides exactly with the fourth-century Roman administrative province of Britannia Prima, and it implies that after the Romans abandoned Britain some vestiges of the Roman administrative structure remained.
Certainly by AD 314, when the names appear in the Verona List, Britain was formally divided into four provinces: Prima, Secunda, Maxima Caesariensis, and Flavia Caesariensis. It is possible to visualize a loose confederation of Dark Age kingdoms still functioning in the sixth century within the boundaries of Britannia Prima.
Perhaps the kings of this province went their separate ways most of the time and came together only when there was a common danger. That common danger was the approach of the Saxon colonists, so the many small war-bands of the separate kingdoms needed to be coordinated. In Gail, the Bibracte council in 52 BC agreed on a common strategy: to join forces and resist Rome under the war leadership of one of their kings. In exactly the same way the kings of Britannia Prima agreed to resist the encroachment by the Saxons; and their choice of war leader was Arthur. He was to be dux bellorum, the leader of battles, while that threat existed.
The dates for Arthur’s first and last battles, 516 and 537, give us the span of his later military career, and they imply that he was born in about 475. This would have made him 41, a mature and accomplished commander at the time of Badon, and 62 at the time of Camlann.
A pedigree of unknown reliability exists in the Welsh tradition. Here Arthur was the son of Uther and Ygraine (or Eigr). Ygraine was the daughter of Amlawdd Wledig, who married Gwenn, daughter of Cunedda Wledig. Wledig or gwledig means “king” or “overking,” so Arthur’s maternal line at least was royal. Ygraine had a sister Reiengulid, who was the mother of St. Illtud, which is how Illtud comes to be Arthur’s cousin.
The lack of a well-authenticated (paternal) pedigree for Arthur can be interpreted in many ways. Some say it shows he never existed, while others see it as evidence that he was not of royal blood and others as evidence that he was a usurper. Whatever his origins, Arthur became a king, then overking, and probably through prowess more than birth.
WHERE WAS CAMELOT?
Elsewhere, I have argued that Arthur was initially the sub-king of a small north Cornish territory called Trigg (meaning “three war-bands”), with his home at Castle Killibury, not far from the modern town of Wadebridge. Killibury was a small and discreetly defended hideaway that had a superb view down the Camel estuary, which Arthur probably used as his harbor. In fact imported Dark Age pottery wares have recently been discovered near the seaward end of the estuary.
It is highly significant that early Welsh tradition gives Kelliwic as the name of Arthur’s favorite residence; even the Welsh saw Arthur’s principal home as Castle Killibury. A Welsh Triad lists the places where Arthur held court in Three Tribal Thrones of the Island of Britain. The northern one was at Pen Rhionydd—a place that has not been identified, but thought to near Stranraer in Galloway. The Welsh throne was at St. David’s and the Cornish tribal throne was at Kelliwic. Kelliwic was firmly recognized as Arthur’s base long before any idea of Camelot came up. The poem Culhwch and Olwen mentions five times that Kelli Wic was Arthur’s port. An old name for Castle Killibury is Kelly Rounds and an Anglo-Saxon charter mentions a place called “Caellwic.”
Not far away is Tintagel Island. A significant amount of very high status and very expensive pottery imported from the Mediterranean confirms it as a royal focus of some kind. It was not a permanent settlement but a place for special occasions. The footprint carved into the living rock at the island’s summit marks it as the coronation place: the spot where kings of Trigg (north Cornwall), and perhaps kings of all Dumnonia, came to take their oath and assume the mantle of kingship. This was where Arthur drew his power from the stone (see Places: Tintagel).
Like other Dark Age and medieval kings, Arthur was always on the move. Kings had to peregrinate around their kingdoms in order to be seen by their subjects and maintain the bond of loyalty between king and subject.
Arthur had various muster points where the Dumnonian war-bands could gather before being marched east to engage the Saxons: Warbstow Bury and Lydford were two in the center of Dumnonia; South Cadbury was the major one close to the eastern border, the “war zone.”
One of the many mysteries surrounding Arthur is the location of Camelot, that place of special mystique. It is unlikely to be Castle Killibury. The name “Camelot” strongly suggests a connection with the Celtic war god, Camulos, and if Camelot was named for the war god it is likely to be associated with fighting and with gatherings of the war-bands. Camelot is elusive, for the simplest of reasons: it was not one place, but several. It was mobile; it was wherever Arthur was encamped with his warriors.
THE LAST BATTLE
The site of the last battle, Camlann, has been discussed endlessly. Every author who has written about Arthur has their own favored site. I have discussed elsewhere the reasons for thinking that the likeliest place is Pont ar Gamlan: a boulder-strewn fording-place at the confluence of the Eden and Mawddach rivers a few miles north of Dolgellau in North Wales. A third river, the Gamlan, flows down the steep mountainside from the west to join the Mawddach close by. It flows down through an oak forest and over some impressive waterfalls: the Black Falls, just above Ganllwyd. The name “Gamlan” is very close to the traditional name of the last battle, and in Welsh a cadgamlan is an utter rout, a complete massacre, and this is likely to be the original meaning of the battle’s name, now commemorated in the name of the river.
This may seem an odd place for Arthur to be fighting a battle in that the threat from the Saxons was from the east. But the various traditions about the last battle have in common the idea that it was a fight amongst the British. Arthur was betrayed by a relative, perhaps a nephew, called Modred or Medraut. With that in mind, the final battle might have been fought well inside the frontiers of Britannia Prima, in Devon, Cornwall, or anywhere in Wales.
The North Wales location suggests that Arthur was making his way north into the kingdom of Gwynedd along the major south–north Roman road known as Sarn Helen. The King of Gwynedd was Maelgwn, and his fortress was Castell Degannwy, perched on a rocky, twin-peaked hilltop overlooking the Conwy estuary. Like many other Dark Age strongholds, this was a refortified Iron Age fort. The site has yielded sixth-century pottery and there is a tradition that it was the seat of Maelgwn, though, like Arthur, Maelgwn had a less conspicuous refuge residence, at Aberffraw on the west coast of Anglesey. Degannwy was Maelgwn’s frontline fortress, and this was where Arthur was heading. The last battle took place in an atmosphere of distrust and civil war, and Arthur was probably hoping to deal with Maelgwn’s disloyalty.
Maelgwn had a reputation for ruthlessness. We know from the outright condemnation of him by Gildas that he murdered his own uncle in order to become King of Gwynedd; now he was envious of Arthur’s High Kingship and determined to get it for himself. Maelgwn was Arthur’s enemy; the king who was destabilizing the British confederation and who wanted him dead so that he could be dux bellorum himself.
Whether Arthur and his war-band rode into Gwynedd to quell an overt rebellion and open and anticipated hostility or were lured there by some guile of Maelgwn’s and fell unsuspecting into a trap at Ganllwyd cannot be