Portsmouth. English, as distinguished from Scottish, historians concur in placing Badon Hill in the south. Geoffrey says that the battle was near Bath (not that this is by any means conclusive); Bannesdown has been generally accepted as its situation, though Dr. Guest prefers to place it at Badbury in Dorsetshire. At any rate, we must believe that it took place in the southwest and within stroke of Cerdric. Amid much that is obscure, this battle, as between the British and Saxons and Arthur and Cerdric, presents itself as a sort of anchorage in a sea of doubt.

We may look back upon the preceding battles having regard to the presumption that in 520 Arthur was in the south of England. Of these battles, eleven in number, we have no exact knowledge as to either time or place. With regard to three of them we cannot form any reasonable conjecture. Of the remaining eight each has more than one position hypothetically assigned to it—always one in the lowlands of Scotland, where Arthurian names most abound, another generally in the north of England. It would be vain to pretend that we know enough of the particulars of the invasion to give us more than vague guidance as to the movements of Arthur. It may be supposed that in his time the Angles were penetrating the island by the Humber and the Forth, and it is possible that he may have been concerned in the fighting which ensued. Manifestly he obtained great fame in the north, though we do not know when. Between the battle of Badon Hill in 520 and Camlan in 542 we are in absolute darkness as to his whereabouts. We may presume that he was in the south of England in 520 and in Scotland in 542; between the two dates there is room for conjecture and for much fighting. If we could adapt the traditions to probability, we should suppose that the Scotch battles took place after, and not before, Badon Hill; that in the early part of his career Arthur was at war with Cerdric and the Saxons of Wessex, in the later part with the Angles of the north and possibly with the Picts. But if we accept the list of battles as given by Nennius, and in the order in which he places them, we must believe that Arthur went north before Badon Hill[11] and returned to fight there, for all the little evidence we have indicates that some at least of the battles which this historian records were in Scotland. If this be so, Arthur must have gone north again to conclude his career at Camlan, and thus must have made more than one Scotch campaign, to the multiplication of Arthurian names.[12]

The ‘Saxon Chronicle,’ which gives a detailed account of the battles in Kent, Sussex, and Hampshire, makes no mention of any in the west or north, or of Arthur. The ‘Saxon Chronicle’ is an apparently truthful, if somewhat bald, history. It mentions Vortigern as King of Britain and the opponent of Hengist, it names Natanleod, Commail, Condida and Farinmail as British kings who were defeated and slain; but neither Arthur nor Ambrosius find place in this record. It has been supposed that Natanleod, who was killed, together with five thousand men, by Cerdric at Netley in the year 508, was no other than Ambrosius, but I have not been able to find the evidence on which this theory rests; and there is another tradition with regard to the death of Ambrosius, namely, that he was poisoned in the same year by a Saxon monk. The silence of the Chronicle, if so it be regarded, as to Ambrosius throws no doubt upon his existence; and as to Arthur, though it may indicate that he had no position of national supremacy in the east and south, it goes for nothing as touching the west and north, of which this record takes no cognizance.

The fame of Arthur may have been, or rather must have been, founded upon his deeds, but the vast superstructure raised on that foundation is to be attributed to the close association between the branches of the Celtic race in Cornwall, Wales and Britanny. The fame of Arthur, once established among the Welsh Bards and the Romancers of Britanny, easily lent itself to exaggeration and attracted to itself much that was due to others or was purely imaginary.

I have called Geoffrey of Monmouth an imaginative writer: it may admit of question whether he should be termed imaginative or credulous. He was an indiscriminate collector of Arthurian legends, some of which may contain a modicum of truth, while others are wholly false. Of the latter variety Arthur, according to Geoffrey, conquers Ireland, Iceland and the Orkneys, subdues Norway, Dacia, Aquitaine and Gaul, bestows Normandy upon Bedver the butler, and establishes his court in Paris. He was crossing the Alps to attack Rome when he was recalled by the treachery of Mordred, to conclude his career on the Camel. Such inventions savour more of the twelfth century than the sixth, and mark Geoffrey as one whose statements are not to be accepted without concurrent testimony.

So overloaded is the story of Arthur with fiction or romance that it is difficult or impossible to discern the truth that must necessarily be at the bottom of it. The more remote are the Arthurian writings from the Arthurian epoch, the more voluminous, the more circumstantial, and the more obviously superadditional, they become. But there must necessarily be a root under all this efflorescence, the presence of which is clearly indicated, though it cannot be fully exposed to view.

III

ARTHUR’S LAST BATTLE—THE DOUBTS WHICH SURROUND HIS PLACE OF BURIAL

The last battle attributed to Arthur has obtained more prominence than the most famous battles of antiquity, has been connected with its supposed place by geographical particulars, has been enriched with romantic detail, made the subject of poetry, and so much glorified in English literature from Geoffrey to Tennyson, that it seems like sacrilege to hint that the only fight on the Camel of which we have sure information, took place long after Arthur’s death; and that if he and Mordred encountered, as there is reason to believe they did, the place of that event was not Cornwall but Scotland.

The fatal battle of Camlan, as it is called, which is assigned to the year 542, in which Mordred is supposed to have been slain and Arthur mortally wounded, is stated by Geoffrey, and generally believed, to have taken place on the Camel. There was undoubtedly a great battle on this river, near Camelford, at some remote time, and its position seems to be exactly indicated by a bridge which still bears the name of Slaughter Bridge, or Bloody Bridge. Near the bridge, close to the river, is an inscribed sepulchral stone, obviously of great antiquity, which is held in repute in the neighbourhood as marking the grave of King Arthur.

The position is a likely one to have been chosen by an army on the defensive. The stream, which was probably larger then than now, runs through a marshy bottom with hills ascending on both sides. That a great battle was fought here may be accepted as certain, and equally so that it was between the Britons and the Saxons. One of the writers who attributes it to Arthur tells us that the Camel