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.37 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.38 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.’39
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.40 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