The most recent critics are disposed to prefer Hume’s and Gibbon’s
belief to Milton’s scepticism as to the actual existence of Arthur. But
upon this question I do not enter. Malory’s historical chapters, as
they may be called, seem to be mainly taken from the _Historia
Brithonum_ of Geoffrey of Monmouth, though much of them is also to be
found in the romances[4]. The details of Arthur’s march to Rome are so
accurate that I think that Malory may have had actual knowledge of the
road, which indeed must have been familiar to many men—soldiers,
priests, and merchants—in the days of Edward IV. But of the rest of
the history and the geography of the book before us we can only say
that they are something
‘Apart from place, withholding time,
But flattering the golden prime’
of the great hero of English romance. We cannot bring within any limits
of history the events which here succeed each other, when the Lords and
Commons of England, after the death of King Uther at St. Alban’s,
assembled at the greatest church of London, guided by the joint policy
of the magician Merlin and the Christian bishop of Canterbury, and
elected Arthur to the throne; when Arthur made Carlion, or Camelot, or
both, his head-quarters in a war against Cornwall, Wales, and the
North, in which he was victorious by help of the king of France; when
he met the demand for tribute by the Roman emperor Lucius with a
counter-claim to the empire for himself as the real representative of
Constantine, held a parliament at York to make the necessary
arrangements, crossed the sea from Sandwich to Barflete in Flanders,
met the united forces of the Romans and Saracens in Burgundy, slew the
emperor in a great battle, together with his allies, the Sowdan of
Syria, the king of Egypt, and the king of Ethiopia, sent their bodies
to the Senate and Podestà of Rome as the only tribute he would pay, and
then followed over the mountains through Lombardy and Tuscany to Rome,
where he was crowned emperor by the Pope, ‘sojourned there a time,
established all his lands from Rome unto France, and gave lands and
realms unto his servants and knights,’ and so returned home to England,
where he seems thenceforth to have devoted himself wholly to his duties
as the head of Christian knighthood.
With the exception just mentioned, the geography is fanciful enough;
and we need the magic of Merlin, or of some conjuror-poet like him of
Horace, to set us with the required disregard of time successively in
Carleon, Carlisle, Winchester, London, St. Alban’s, and Camelot. The
story opens within a night’s ride of the castle of Tintagil. Thence we
pass to St. Alban’s, to London, and to Carlion. This last is, no doubt,
Caerleon-upon-Usk; but it seems through this, as in other romances, to
be interchangeable in the author’s mind with Carlisle, or (as written
in its Anglo-Norman form) Cardoile, which latter in the History of
Merlin is said to be in Wales, while elsewhere Wales and Cumberland are
confounded in like manner. So of Camelot, where Arthur chiefly held his
court, Caxton in his Preface speaks as though it were in Wales,
probably meaning Caerleon, where the Roman amphitheatre is still called
Arthur’s Round Table. Malory himself, though at page 49 he seems to
connect Camelot with Avelion, or Glastonbury, yet farther on, page 63,
says that Camelot is Winchester, where, too, there is a Round Table,
mentioned by Caxton, and still to be seen,—an oaken board with the
knights’ names on it. And yet at the time these authorities wrote
Camelot itself existed in Somersetshire with its proper name, and with
all the remains of an important town and fortress, and, doubtless, the
traditions of Arthur which Leland found there, and which in great part
at least remain to this day. Leland calls it Camallate or Camalat,
‘sometime a famous town or castle, upon a very torre or hill,
wonderfully enstrengthened of nature[5].’ Four ditches and as many
walls surrounded a central space of about thirty acres where
foundations and remains of walls might be seen, and whence Roman
pavements, urns, coins, and other relics have been found up to the
present time. I find it called the Castle of Camellek in maps of the
dates of 1575 and 1610, and in that of the 1727 edition of Camden’s
Magna Britannica, the text of which says ‘the inhabitants call it King
Arthur’s Palace.’ But soon after that date a learned antiquarian[6]
writes that the name had been superseded by that of Cadbury Castle,
which trilingual appellation may seem to indicate the Roman, British,
and Saxon possessors by whom it was probably held in succession. The
neighbouring villages which, according to Leland, bore ‘the name of
Camalat with an addition, as Queen-Camel,’ still exist as Queen-Camel,
or East Camel, and West Camel, and near by runs the river Camel,
crossed by Arthur’s Bridge. Arthur’s well still springs from the hill
side; and if Arthur’s Hunting Causeway in the field below, Arthur’s
Round Table and Arthur’s Palace within the camp, cannot still, as of
old, be pointed out to the visitor, the peasant girl will still tell
him that within that charmed circle they who look may see through
golden gates a king sitting in the midst of his court. Drayton
describes the river Ivel in Somersetshire as
‘The nearest neighbouring flood to Arthur’s ancient seat,
Which made the Britaines name thro’ all the world so great.
Like Camelot what place was ever yet renown’d?
Where, as at Caerleon, oft he kept the Table Round,
Most famous for the sports at Pentecost so long,
From whence all knightly deeds and brave atchievements sprong[7].’
These old legendary traditions, pleasant to hear or to know of, have
been collected by another Somersetshire antiquarian, the late Rev. J.
H. Bennett, Rector of South Cadbury[8]. Together with the legends told
by Leland and others, and those which he himself gathered on the spot,
Mr. Bennett has given a carefully detailed topographical description of
the old town and fortress of Camelot, strong by nature and strengthened
by art, where the Britons made their last stand against the Saxons; and
he has shewn how its strategical position was connected, in fact as
well as in romance, with the Isle of Avallon, the Monastery of
Glastonbury, and the Nunnery of Almesbury. He thinks that during the
hundred years which followed the taking of Sarum by the Saxons A. D.
551, during which (except in the capture of Bath in 577 A. D.) they
made no further progress in the conquest of Somersetshire, Camelot
became the capital of the South British kingdoms, and stemmed the tide
of war in this direction by its great line of strongholds; and he thus
suggests that we may have here the historical circumstances which
connected or helped to connect, the legends of the great British hero
with Camelot. Leland, who wrote his _Itinerary_ early in Henry VIII’s
reign, mentions, among other relics found at Camelot, a silver
horseshoe, and Mr. Bennett gives us the words of one of the Cadbury
peasants who told him ‘folks do say that on the night of the full moon
King Arthur and his men ride round the hill, and their horses are shod
with silver, and a silver shoe has been found in the track where they
do ride, and when they have ridden round the hill they stop to water
their horses at the wishing well.’ But more than three hundred years
before Leland wrote, this still living legend had been recorded by
Gervase of Tilbury, who, in his _Otia Imperialia_ (date about 1212)
says that in the woods of Britain the foresters, as the common people
call the keepers of the woods and wild game, tell that on alternate
days, about noon, or at midnight when the moon is full and shining,
they often see an array of hunters with dogs and sound of horns, who,
in answer to the enquirers, say that they are of the household and
fellowship of Arthur. And, what is still more curious, Gervase, in the
same place, gives a legend of Arthur, of Mount Etna, which singularly
corresponds with that just mentioned as still living among the mounds
of ancient Camelot. He tells that the horse of the Bishop of Catania
had run away from his groom, and when the groom was following him up
the precipitous side of the mountain, he came upon an open place where
was the Great Arthur, resting upon a couch. Arthur ordered the horse to
be brought back and restored to the bishop, sent him presents, and
related how he had lain there, all those years, suffering from wounds
he had received in the battle with his nephew Mordred, and Childeric
the leader of the Saxons[9]. The British story of Arthur and the
Knights of the Round Table had spread through Italy by the side of the
French romances of Roland and Charlemagne[10] but this curious transfer
of an incident from Camelot in Somersetshire, to Mount Etna in Sicily
seems as if it must have been due to some Norman troubadour who had
actually passed from one land to the other, and given the proper local
colouring to the story in its new home as the bee carries fertility
from one garden to another. Scotland, too, among the stories by which
she claimed her part in Arthur and his knights, had a tale how ‘Arthour
Knycht he raid on nycht with gylten spur and candel lycht[11].’
Legend tells that Glastonbury—founded by Joseph of Arimathea, and his
burial-place, though his body was vainly sought in Edward III’s
reign—possesses the coffin of Arthur. It is said that Henry II found
the bodies of Arthur and Guenever there, and that Guenever had yellow
hair. Their skulls were afterwards taken for relics by Edward
Longshanks and Eleanor.
Almesbury, where Guenever died a nun, is a town in Wiltshire, seven and
a half miles from Salisbury, where may still be seen the ruins of its
celebrated abbey. The name was originally Ambrosebury, then Ambresbury,
and lastly Amesbury, as it is now spelt.
The ruins of the castle of Tintagil, too, may still be seen in Cornwall.
Joyous Gard, Launcelot’s favourite castle, is sometimes identified with
Berwick. Malory tells us that ‘some men say it was Anwick, and some men
say it was Bamborow.’ Bamborow, or Bamborough, is in Northumberland,
sixteen miles southeast of Berwick. The castle, founded in the middle
of the sixth century, which is the supposed time of Arthur’s reign,
stands on a high rock projecting into the North Sea. It now contains a
granary, hospital, and other endowments made for the poor in 1715 by
Lord Crewe, bishop of Durham. Did he think of his predecessor
Launcelot, and his doles of ‘flesh, fish, wine and ale, and twelve
pence to any man and woman, come who would?’
The names of some other places in this book are given in the Glossary.