THE REAL STORY OF KING ARTHUR

© John H. Griffith-Davies, 2020.

Everyone is familiar with the Legend of King Arthur, which is a fictitious story that was concocted by the first great French novelist called Chrétien de Troyes in about 1165, who unscrupulously distorted the facts with his ‘poetic licence’ and modified the names of the characters and places to suit his Frankish audience too.¹ He even invented characters such as Sir Lancelot! His tale became very popular to such an extent that it circulated around the Holy Roman Empire (where Burgundy, Germany and northern Italy are situated nowadays) for several centuries and it became ever more fantastic as other authors embroidered it. The most elaborate synthesis of these myths is the so-called Heidelberg Manuscript. ‘King Arthur’ was transformed over the course of time into a chivalrous Christian knight who belted around the Mediterranean searching for the Holy Grail while encountering various natural and supernatural hazards on the way, rather like a latterday Odysseus. 

Chrétien based his novel on a book² that was a genuine history which had been written six centuries beforehand by the Romano-British priest and monk called Saint Gildas. Gildas was a son of Ceidio, King of Rheged, which was a kingdom in the Romano-British region that covered modern Cumbria and southern Strathclyde. Gildas moved to Caerleon (Camelot) – probably his father sent him there – and he was educated by Saint Illtyd at his monastic college in Llanylltyd Fawr (Llantwit Major) on the coast of South Wales.

Gildas had become a prominent priest in Caerleon and he subsequently witnessed the important historical events at first hand there: his detailed and undoubtedly impeccably accurate historical record – it was a mortal sin for any priest to lie – was bought in the form of a book by Walter de Mapes (who was indeed a Welshman despite his Franco-Germanic name) in Brittany around 1160 during one of his trips to France as Henry II’s ambassador (Brittany was a separate country at that time). Walter could not fully understand the text because the Welsh and Breton languages had changed considerably and also diverged greatly from each other since it was written but he did recognize its importance, so he gave the book (or perhaps a copy of it) to his learned friend Gruffydd ap Athrwys (Geoffrey of Monmouth in English) to translate it into Latin for him, which was the ‘lingua franca’ of cultivated circles in those days. Gruffyd’s surname of ‘ap Athrwys’ clearly indicates that he was a descendent of Athrwys ap Gwythr’s dynasty (see below). Walter passed on the translated copy to Chrétien during one of his trips to the French court in Paris (the town of Troyes lies close to Paris in the south-east and it could be easily reached by horseback or coach within a day). Walter might indeed have re-translated the book into French before giving it to Chrétien because he had studied at the University of Paris and therefore spoke French fluently.  

By the way, King Ceidio was succeeded by another one of his sons, namely Gwenddoleu ap Ceidio, who was encouraged by his court bard and advisor, a Welshman called Myrddin³ (Chrétien’s ‘Merlin’) from Carmarthen, to go to war against Rhydderch Hael, King of Alt Clut. Unfortunately, Gwenddoleu was defeated and killed by Rhydderch’s army – bolstered by Pictish and Scottish troops – at the Battle of Arfderydd in 573 A.D, near Hadrian’s Wall. Myrddin went mad after seeing his leader fall in battle and he only managed to saved his own life by escaping into the Forest of Celyddon, where he apparently stayed until his death; his nickname was Myrddin of the Forest. Rhydderch then proceeded to destroy the kingdom of Rheged.

Let’s take a look at the facts: first briefly and then in detail. This description is based on my own independent research of the surviving original records that were written in Welsh and Latin. It has nothing to do with the half-baked essays that were written by Victorian, later and contemporary historians.

‘King Arthur’ was a Romanized Briton called Brenin Athrwys (King Bear Man). He was the eldest son of Gwythr Pen y Dragon⁴ (Uther Pendragon in English), which signifies ‘Victorius Chieftain’ and he was the king of the fierce Silurian tribe that lived in South Wales: this tribe was the most important and loyal ally of the Romans in western Britain. Athrwys was born in 480 A.D., give or take a couple of years. His second wife (Welsh law permitted a man to have 2 wives simultaneously) was a Cornish woman called Gwenhwyfar⁵ (Chrétien changed her name to Guenièvre in French: this became Guinevere in English), which means ‘Blessed among others’, whom he married in about 510 A.D. when she was exactly 15 years old. It is important to note that Gwenhwyfar is a uniquely Cornish name (the English version of it is Jennifer). He met her at the court of his best friend King Cadwyr⁶ of Cornwall in his fortified capital of Din Dagel (which means ‘fortress with the narrow entrance’ in Welsh; known as Tintagel in English) where  she had been safeguarded as a little girl following the murder of her parents by Saxons, i.e., she was literally a ward of court. Gwenhwyfar was astonishingly beautiful and very intelligent, which earned her the nickname of ‘White Enchantress’ later on in Caerleon. 

However, I believe that Gwenhwyfar’s beauty masked a callous and scheming character! Athrwys already had two sons by his first marriage who were the elder Gwydre and the younger Llacheu (Lacholt in English). The name of Athrwys’ first wife has not survived the passage of time but she was probably a Cornish woman, as were Athrwys’ own mother and stepmother too). I am basing the following conjecture on three apparently unrelated and undated facts. Firstly, Llacheu’s elder brother Gwydre was killed along with two of his attendants while out hunting an enormous boar which gored them (I estimate that this happened around 523 A.D. when he was about 22 years old). Secondly, Athrwys killed his only son with Gwenhwyfar, whose name was Amhar (Amir in English). Thirdly, Gwenhwyfar ‘took the viel’. 

The scene was set: Llacheu became the next in line to the throne after Gwydre’s death. Gwenhwyfar bided her time until Amhar came of age (he had been born in about 510 A.D.), then she convinced him to kill Llacheu in such a way that the latter’s demise would appear to be yet another unfortunate accident, in order to ensure that her son would eventually become the next king (naturally with Gwenhwyfar pulling the strings) after Athrwys eventually died (he was about 20 years older than her) but Athrwys foiled the plot and killed Amhar instead. Athrwys then spared Gwenhwyfar by banishing her to the convent of Saint Julius’ Church where she could eternally repent. 

Athrwys became the first king of Caerleon in 527 A.D., which was 15 years or so after he had married Gwenhwyfar and he reigned for exactly 10 years. He was buried in 537 A.D. within the Welsh pagan religious centre that was located on the largest of three islands in the nearby tributory of the River Usk called Afon Lwyd (Avalon). 

Now I will describe what happened in detail, with more dates. 

Caerleon was the largest, most powerful and richest of the 4 major cities in Roman Britain. It had a permanently stationed legion (Legio II Augusta) that was based there for more than 300 years from 75 A.D. until 382 A.D., when Caerleon’s governor, who was a Spaniard named Magnus Maximus, proclaimed himself as the Western Roman Emperor and then withdrew the bulk of the legion in order to defeat the incumbent Gratianus in Gaul (present-day France). The other 3 major Roman cities in Britain were York, Chester and London (London did not have its own dedicated legion but a powerful navy instead). The next governor in Caerleon quickly brought the skeleton force that remained there up to full strength with retired officers and local recruits. The new legion proved itself to be a powerful army exactly 100 years later (see below).

Caerleon was also the main centre of pilgrimage in Roman Britain from 313 A.D. onwards until 700 A.D. Constantine had decreed with his Edict of Milan in 313 A.D. that the Christian religion could be practised freely throughout the empire; thereby ending the persecution of Christians which Diocletian had begun in 304 A.D. (Diocletian committed suicide in 308 A.D. but the persecution continued unabated nevertheless). It was during the first year of this persecution that two inhabitants of Caerleon, namely Saint Aaron⁷ (a Welshman and honorary Roman citizen who had been baptized with this biblical name when an adult) and Saint Julius (a Roman by birth with this typically Latin name) were executed by decapitation in Caerleon’s amphitheatre in 304 A.D. Incidentally, a Roman soldier called Saint Alban was decapitated in the same year and for the same reason in another amphitheatre* in the town of Verulamium, 25 miles north of Londinium (London); the small town which Saxons subsequently built nearby was named St. Albans in remembrance of him.

The Christian citizens of Roman Caerleon immediately reorganized themselves following Constantine’s decree and they built the Cathedral of Saint Aaron with a monastery attached to it, as well as the Basilica of Saint Julius (‘ecclesia matris’ in Latin, which means ‘mother church’ and it was subordinate only to the cathedral) with its associated convent as soon as possible, in order to house the shrines containing the mortal remains of Saint Aaron and Saint Julius respectively. I estimate as an architect that it took them between 5 and 10 years to build these two churches in brickwork or stone masonry, i.e., they had both been consecrated by roughly 325 A.D. Caerleon was already a very prosperous capital city due to its exports of tin products and other merchandise before its wealth increased considerably because of generous donations from the constant streams of pilgrims, to such an extent that one Welsh text referred to the roofs of these two holy buildings as being gilded!

Let’s jump forward in time by two entire centuries to 526 A.D. Saint Gildas⁸ (see above) delivered a superbly eloquent Latin sermon that he entitled ‘De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae’ meaning the ‘Ruin(ation) and Conquest of Britain’ in Saint Aaron’s Cathedral, in which he criticized the deteriorating social situation – including some corrupt clergy and bickering petty kings, among others – and he especially targeted Caerleon’s vicious and inept governor of his time, namely Aurelius, by calling him “the lion’s whelp”, which was a sarcastic jibe and a comparative reference to his grandfather Ambrosius Aurelianus⁹, whom Gildas also described admiringly as “the Last of the Romans”. Ambrosius was the great governor who had led the reconstituted legion from Caerleon to Mons Badonicus (Cadbury Hill, which is 2 miles from the present village of Sparkford in central Somerset) to fight a Saxon army which was besieging that strategic fortress and the town within its walls. Ambrosius won the battle and his cavalry contributed greatly to routing the Saxons: they did not return for another 55 years! That momentous event happened in 482 A.D., which was the same year as when Saint Gildas was born, as he actually mentions in his sermon and he also says meticulously that “I am composing this sermon in the 44th year of my life with one month now expired”. 

* The amphitheatre was built somewhere near Verulamium but outside the urban area: recent archaeological excavations did not find its remains.

Well then, Saint Gildas’ sermon incensed Aurelius so much that this evil governor decided to execute him for treason. Gildas was saved by the Arch-Bishop of Caerleon and Wales, namely Saint Dubricius (mentioned in the Book of Llandaff), who immediately sent him on a spurious mission to Ireland, where the Christian faith was apparently flagging following Saint Patrick’s evangelization of the Irish.

Incidentally, the record about Saint Patrick needs to be set straight at this juncture. He was a Welshman not an Irishman and he spent most of his life converting the Irish to Christianity from the age of about 30 until he died there on 17th March 493 A.D. when he was 92. Although Saint Patrick died in his own church, which was a former barn that his first important convert King Dichu gave to him as his religious base, he was buried “where the oxen pulling the cart carrying his body shall stop” on the top of Dun Lethglaise, which was a Celtic fort on the presently called Hill of Down, near a town that was then named after him as Dun Padraig (‘Patrick’s stronghold’) in the Irish language and it is now known as Downpatrick in Northern Ireland.

The so-called Irish Annals state that “the relics of Saint Patrick were placed sixty years after his death in a shrine by Colum Cille” in 553 A.D. Unfortunately, the church which probably housed that shrine was destroyed during Cromwell’s invasion of Ireland 11 centuries later. 

Cille was an Irish abbot from Derry in what is now called Northern Ireland, who is reputed to have evangelized the ‘Scotii’ tribes (Latin for Scots) who lived there. Then he moved with his 12 followers to the Isle of Iona in the Inner Hebrides off the western coast of Scotland, which was part of the Dál Riata tribe’s Kingdom of Ulster (i.e., Northern Ireland), where he founded an abbey. He died there on 9^th June 597 at the age of 75. Colum Cille was sanctified as Saint Columba and he is the patron saint of Derry.

Actually, the Dál Riata tribe of Scots had already begun to colonize the western coast of Scotland (Caledonia) from Ireland (Hibernia), starting in about 300 A.D., when they were still pagans of course: the Romans distinguished between them and their traditional enemy, i.e., the natives of what is now called Scotland, namely the Picts, who constantly resisted the Roman occupation on the other side of Hadrian’s Wall (and the less robust Antonine’s Wall farther north of it). Further Scottish tribes migrated from Ireland to western Scotland during the 5th and 6th centuries, then they spread eastwards during the following 9 centuries to eventually dominate the Picts’ stronghold of eastern Scotland, including Edinburgh.

“Patrick”, as the world knows him, was a Romano-Briton who was born with the name of Maewen Suchat in 401 A.D. (his parents had married in the previous year). He was the eldest son of a prominent civil and military leader called Calpurnius, who was the head of the family (paterfamilias in Latin) at his villa called Banna Venta Burniae, which means “meeting place of the Burniae (a Welsh sub-tribe) near the bluff” in the north of present-day Glamorgan. The Latin word of ‘villa’ referred to a mansion with its own agricultural estate and a dependent village in the vicinity. The town that developed from the village over the centuries is called Banwen nowadays and the feast day of Saint Padraeg (he was renamed when converting to Christianity as an adult at the age of about 22) is still celebrated there every year. Sadly, the remains of his family home have never been found, which could be due to the fact that the ground around Banwen was extensively disturbed during the industrial revolution when it became an important centre of the Welsh iron and coal industry. However, I believe that the villa was located quite a long way from the present town: that is to say, very “near the bluff”. That theory remains to be proved of course. 

Only two of Patrick’s numerous letters have survived and both of them were written in Latin. Therefore, Patrick always referred to himself as Patricius in them. These letters are the auto-biographical ‘Declaration’ (Confessio in Latin) – which is enthralling to read – and the ‘Letter to the soldiers of Coroticus’ (Epistola in Latin), which is a devastating tyrade against Coroticus. Patrick wrote this second letter around 450 A.D. after he had already spent many years in Ireland on his Christian mission. Coroticus is the name that Patrick used in Latin for a heathen Irish warlord and cruel landowner who regarded Patrick and his evangelizing activities as undermining his own power. Patrick’s letter chastized him and his soldiers (we would simply call them thugs!) for murdering or enslaving many of the Irish whom Patrick had already converted to Christianity and he demanded their liberty. Whether Coroticus heeded Patrick’s advice is unknown but highly unlikely! By the way, Patrick’s command of the Latin language was far inferior to that of Saint Gildas.  

To resume the history of Caerleon: Aurelius continued to abuse his authority as governor retentlessly …. until the vassal king Athrwys decided to ‘stop the rot’ and end the widespread civil unrest by marching into Caerleon with his own troops during the following year (527 A.D.), where he defeated and killed Aurelius on the spot. It was Athrwys’ 9th of his 12 battles and all of them were victorious according to the Welsh historian Nennius.  

Saint Gildas did not lose any more time tramping around Ireland on his dubious mission. He returned to Caerleon immediately, where he stayed for many years until moving to the Cornish province on the western coast of Brittany (itself a Romano-British colony which Magnus Maximus had founded in Roman Armorica) and it is still called Cornualia, with the intention to become a religious hermit (as Saint Dubricius did himself in 545 A.D. when he ceded his arch-bishopric to Saint David at the Synod of Brefi, sometimes spelt Brevi) but his followers persuaded him to teach them instead, so he founded a monastery on the Rhuys Peninsula in a place that is still named after him as ‘St. Gildas de Rhuys’, where he died on 29th January, 570 A.D., leaving three sons called Gwynnog, Noethon and Tydech respectively, as well as a daughter called Dolgar⁷. Gildas’ tremendous knowledge and literary prowess had long since earned him the Latin nickname of Gildas Sapiens (Gildas the Wise). His feast day is still celebrated in Cornualia every year. Incidentally, it was common for priests to marry and have children until a daft papal edict that was issued in the 12th century forbade this normal human activity! 

Athrwys was immediately proclaimed king by Saint Dubricius after his victory, who crowned him in Saint Aaron’s Cathedral in 527 A.D. Athrwys’ attendant and sword-bearer at his coronation was his best friend King Cadwys of Din Dagel in Cornwall, who was probably a close cousin too. Athrwys ruled Caerleon and Wales (including Herefordshire and Shropshire) as well as Britania Prima (the West Country) effectively and benevolently for exactly 10 years. He was greatly admired by his people and the remembrance of him endured among the Welsh for many centuries. 

The priests (pagan Druids and Christians) and the knights (soldiers on horseback) were part and parcel of the Romano-British social structure in Wales. Gildas, Dubricius and Illtyd were among Athrwys’ knights and all of them were priests as well as nobles. (Romano-British society only permitted nobles or royalty to become priests). Illtyd was one of the King of Brittany’s sons and actually a soldier already before he migrated to Wales around 500 A.D. as a young man with the intention of joining Caerleon’s legion. He became an influential priest later on.

The Saxons returned to attack Cadbury Hill for the second time in 537 A.D. The combined armies of Athrwys and Cadwys marched there to relieve the siege: this was Athrwys’ 12th and last victorious battle against the barbaric enemy. It was called the Battle of Cad Camlan¹⁰ (which means ‘On the bank of the River Cam’) and it was fought in exactly the same place as the Battle of Mons Badonicus, only 1 mile north of Cadbury Hill. King Cadwys lost his life in the battle and Athrwys’ faithful nephew Mordred – who was also one of his knights – was killed in it too; no doubt defending Athrwys as his bodyguard. One must remember that Athrwys was then about 57 years old and therefore he was not as strong as he had been in his youth.The original Welsh text states that “Athrwys and Mordred fought at the Battle of Cad Camlan”, which later mediaeval historians misinterpreted to mean that they fought against each other. 

Nevertheless, Athrwys was seriously wounded in the battle. He was quickly transported back to Caerleon for treatment and – hopefully – recovery. A Welsh text confirms that “Athrwys was taken up the river to be cured”¹¹. That is to say, he was transferred to a boat as soon as his naval galley arrived back in Caerleon’s large harbour (probably from Portishead on the northern coast of Somerset) to the nearby Welsh pagan religious centre on the main island in the Afon Lwyd tributory, i.e., the Isle of Avalon. His elder half-sister Morgana was the High Priestess cum physician there. She must have tried desperately to save his life but to no avail: he died shortly afterwards and possibly from an infection rather than the wound itself. He was buried on the same holy site according to Druid custom. His sword called Caledfwlch (Excalibur in English) with its elaborately engraved hilt was interred with him (it was probably a short ‘stabbing’ sword of the so-called Pompeian type). One can imagine that a mass was also held for Athrwys in Caerleon Cathedral on the 7th day after his death, although Athrwys never converted to the Christian faith: that is easily proved by the fact that his birth name remained unchanged. 

Athrwys’ only surviving son by his first marriage inherited the throne. His name was Llacheu (Lacholt in English) and he continued the struggle – one might call it a very long-term ‘rearguard action’ – against the Saxons until he himself was killed several decades later: the precise date is unknown and it could have been as late as about 575 A.D. when Llacheu was about 73 years of age, while marching to …. yes, Cadbury Hill once again in order to relieve the third Saxon siege. However, I believe that the date when Llacheu died was around 560 A.D., when he was about the same age as Athrwys had been. Llacheu’s army combined with the army of Prince Geraint The Admiral, son of Erbin, (Tywysog Geraint Llyngesydd ap Erbin [sometimes spelt as Llyngesog or Llyngesic])  of Dumnonia (now called Devon) and this force was intercepted by the Saxons only 10 miles west of Cadbury Hill at a place called Llangborth¹² (which means ‘ferry boat’ in Welsh), now known as Longport and near a small river. The Romano-British forces lost the struggle after a ferocious fight and the Saxons returned to besieging Cadbury Hill, which eventually fell to them, following which they massacred ALL of the inhabitants (the Saxons practised ‘ethnic cleansing’ par excellence), burnt it down (the walls of the fortress comprised a stone rampart with a timber stockade on top of it: remnants of the masonry are visible on the northern side) and then they abandoned it for ever. Excavations that were conducted recently on the so-called Cadbury Hill Project have uncovered the skeletons of the murdered inhabitants – men, women and children – still scattered across the site where they lay after being killed, with the peck marks of carrion crows visible on their bones. 

The dynasty that Athrwys had founded in Caerleon continued – with one interruption – until exactly 700 A.D. Almost all of the succeeding kings called themselves “Athrwys” or “ap Athrwys” (son of Arthur).

The year of 700 A.D. heralded the end of Roman Caerleon, which was destroyed by the Saxons in a sudden attack. Yes, the attack was definitely sudden and it could have been at night because excavations there in 2010 discovered Roman steel armour for fighting purposes and yet more Roman bronze armour for ceremonial use, complete with chainmail and weapons, lying intact in the ruins of the armoury there, which clearly proves that Caerleon’s legion was caught by surprise.* The same series of excavations also discovered accidentally – when some students were practising with geodesic surveying instruments in a nearby field during pauses in the excavations of the fortress under the present town – the largest building complex in Roman Britain, namely, a huge  palace and two or even three much smaller and superficially identical buildings, which I conclude must have housed the archives and administrative staff of Caerleon’s succeeding kings and former governors. Everything had been burnt and therefore all the records of Caerleon’s administration and history were destroyed ‘at a stroke’. The Saxons continued with their genocidal policy of killing the ‘waesla’ (which meant ‘foreigners’ in the Saxon language: what a blinking cheek!) by murdering as many of Caerleon’s inhabitants as they could catch, followed by burning the city down to the ground and demolishing as much of it as possible but they gave up trying to destroy the massive stone amphitheatre as a bad job: it is still the most complete example in Britain. The population of Roman Britain is estimated to have been around 3,500,000 in 410 A.D. when Britain declared independence from the Roman Empire but the invading Saxons had reduced it to roughly 500,000 by 700 A.D. 

The last King of Caerleon was Morgan ap Athrwys¹³ (also called Morgan Mwynfawr, which means Morgan the Benefactor in English). He was the son of the preceding King Athrwys ap Meurig¹⁴, who had died in about 665 A.D. King Athrwys ap Meurig was a brilliant military leader who kept the Saxons at bay by winning several important battles against them. Morgan ap Athrwys fled westwards to a safe area with the remnants of his army and the surviving citizens of Caerleon, where he founded Glamorgan (named after him) in the same year of 700 A.D. I assume that he chose the Roman city of Cae r Dydd (Cardiff) as his military capital and Llanilltyd Fawr (Llantwit Major) as his cultural capital, which was a sizeable town with a huge and internationally renowned “monastic college that incorporated 7 halls” according to a Welsh text. It had been founded by Saint Illtyd¹⁵ himself in about 520 A.D. on the orders of Saint Dubricius to replace the ruined and equally famous Cor Tadwys (College of Theodosius) on the same site, which had been founded in about 385 A.D. (probably by Theodosius himself) and was destroyed by Irish raiders in 446 A.D. 

The ruins of Roman Caerleon, which I estimate comprised about 20,000 buildings, were still clearly visible to the Welsh historian called Gerallt Gymro (Gerald of Wales in English) when he visited the ‘new’ town of Caerleon in 1188, i.e., almost five whole centuries after it had been destroyed. In fact, some of the city’s remains even survived for six more centuries: William Coxe mentions them in his famous  ‘An Historical Tour Through Monmouthshire’ that was published in 1801, which actually summarizes three tours that Coxe had made there during the 1790s.

* On the other hand, Caerleon’s legion could have been routed by a vastly superior Saxon force in a pitched battle, as had happened to Chester’s legion (with supplementary Welsh troops) in 616 A.D. In that case, Morgan ab Athrwys and his defeated army would have beaten a hasty retreat to Caerleon and evacuated as many of its citizens as possible before the Saxon onslaught: they would simply not have had the time to remove their spare armour and weapons from the fortress.

I estimate that the population of Roman Caerleon was at least 120,000 (about the same as London at its zenith around 400 A.D.), which must have swelled by 50,000 or even more as refugees poured into it from what is now Herefordshire from roughly 570 A.D. until about 600 A.D. when the Saxons finally took over that Welsh territory. Even so, there are still several place-names in Herefordshire that begin with ‘Llan ….’, which is the Welsh word for “church and its parish” and the Romano-British culture lingers in Herefordshire nowadays in the form of cider, as it is does in Somerset and Brittany too. Cider is a Romano-British beverage

The Romano-British, or rather Brythons as they called themselves, (the word Welsh is derived from the Saxon word “waesla” – see above – which the Normans modified to “Walsh”) had been defeated but they were just as indomitable as ever and they were determined to recover their lost ground after making careful preparations. They had developed the most lethal of all mediaeval weapons during their exile in Glamorgan, namely the Welsh Longbow, which was 2 yards high and fired an arrow 1 yard long that could penetrate 1/2 inch of tempered steel (armour plate and chainmail) or several inches of hardwood (refer to Gerallt Gymro’s description in his Itinerarium Cambriae of Welsh arrows embedded in Abergavenny Castle’s drawbridge) at a distance of 300 yards. It was this irresistible weapon that enabled them to recover Caerleon from the Saxons in about 730 A.D. (and also ensured that Llewellyn the Great’s army killed 3,000 soldiers of King John’s army in one day several centuries later and literally pinned down another of his armies for 2 days, thereby regaining independence).

However, the Welsh force that returned to Caerleon from Glamorgan merely repaired the breached walls of the ruined fortress and built a little town of Caerleon inside it; they utilized the ruins of the destroyed capital as a convenient quarry. In other words, they never attempted to rebuild Caerleon – which admittedly would have been a colossal task employing thousands of men for many years – but they did recover the county of Gwent, which the English later called Monmouthshire and it has always remained on the Welsh side of the border ever since, even though Shakespeare mentioned “Wales and Monmouthshire” in one of his plays, perhaps with the meaning that Monmouthshire was the most important part of Wales instead of it being an English county.

To summarize, the value of Chrétien de Troyes’ Legend of King Arthur lies in its perpetuation of the facts, albeit in a distorted form. In a similar way, it is thanks to Homer’s Legend of King Minos that Sir Arthur Evans travelled to Crete in 1900, stuck his “spade into a hillside covered with pretty flowers” and ….. discovered the Palace of Knossos along with the ‘mythical’ Minoan civilization.

Unfortunately, the ‘conventional wisdom’ that prevails in historical and archaeological circles nowadays falsely asserts that:  

1) Caerleon has always been an insignificant village. 

2) Caerleon was never a major Roman city – let alone a CAPITAL city and the ONLY major Roman city to have survived after York, London and Chester had all been destroyed by the Saxons (Chester lastly in 616 A.D., following the Battle of Chester when a combined Welsh army from Powys and Gwynedd was defeated by the overwhelming forces of the Saxon King Aethelfrith of Northumbria; a few days prior to which he had ordered 200 Welsh monks to be massacred because he feared that they were praying against him; he died shortly after the battle, which was interpreted by the surviving Romano-British as divine retribution).

3) Caerleon did not have a cathedral or a church during the Roman era. 

4) King Arthur is the figment of a Frenchman’s imagination, as are the Isle of Avalon, Guinevere, etc.