NOTE: THIS BLOG POST IS DEDICATED TO SIMON KEAGAN, A FELLOW ARTHURIAN ENTHUSIAST, WHO URGED ME TO CONSIDER THE POSSIBILITY THAT THE ARTHURIAN BATTLES IN THE HISTORIA BRITTONUM MAY HAVE BEEN A WAR WAGED BETWEEN CERDIC OF WESSEX (= CEREDIG SON OF CUNEDDA) AND ARTHUR. I HAD PREVIOUSLY ATTEMPTED TO IDENTIFY ARTHUR WITH CERDIC/CEREDIG, BUT HAD FAILED TO PROPERLY IDENTIFY UTHER [PEN]DRAGON WITH ILLTUD OF THE VALE OF LEADON (THE WELSH 'LLYWDAW'/'LETAVIA'/'BRITTANY'). ONCE I REALIZED UTHER WAS ILLTUD, I WAS FREE TO CONSIDER KEAGAN'S SUGGESTION.
Dobunni Tribal Territory
The first thing new readers will notice when reading the following blog post is that there seems to be major chronological problems with my treatment of the Gewissei battles. However, I've discussed this in my books and in previous posts. In brief, the order of the leaders of the Gewissei in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle are consistently presented to us IN REVERSE ORDER. I opted to accept the veracity of the Welsh sources in this regard. So reigns and martial activities of Gewissei chieftains, as well as supposedly precise dates cited in the ASC, must be held to be extremely suspect. We need to adopt a sort of "backwards viewing" of the dates of the battles as these are to be found in the ASC.
The Gewissei, to summarize, were Irish or Hiberno-British 'federates' (or mercenaries) who had de facto possession of NW Wales. They were recognized by the so-called High King of Wales (himself of partial Irish descent) and offered retention of their lands in return for service against enemies of that High King. To aid in their efforts, the Gewissei allied themselves with the English against a powerful British kingdom that was considered a threat to the High King of Wales. If I'm right, this kingdom was the successor state to the Dobunni, called the Hwicce by the English of a later period. The chief champion of this successor state in the fight against the Gewissei and the English was none other than Arthur. His father was Illtud, styled the "terribilis miles" or Uther [Pen] Dragon, born in the Vale of Leadon to a king or prince of that successor state. Wherever his actual power base may have lain, Arthur was remembered as the "bear" of Barbury Castle, the "Bear's fort", near to Liddington Castle, one of the Badbury forts long proposed as Arthur's Badon.
It now seems to me not only possible, but probable, that Arthur was the war-leader responsible for temporarily stemming the conquest of southern England by the English. Obviously, when we compare the victories of Cerdic of Wessex/Ceredig son of Cunedda with those of Arthur, we are faced with a serious conundrum: who won these victories? Was it the English, who claimed Cerdic as the victor, or was it Arthur?
Either side may have concocted a national hero out of their respective 'battle-leaders.' One side may have conjured a hero as a direct reaction to the glory assigned to the dux erat bellorum of the other. Alas, we will probably never know what the truth is here. Certaintly, the Gewissei had notable successes and were considered by the English to be the founders of Wessex. Yet the British, too, had their champion, and it seems almost inconceivable that the indigenous population would not have had its fair share of victories against the enemies who threatened it after the Roman withdrawal.
As a historian, all I can do if offer this conflicting portrait of what may have happened in sub-Roman/early medieval/Dark Age Britain. As they say, history is written by the victors, and there is no doubt that the ultimate victors in the battle for Britain were the English. How long their conquest of the island was delayed, by whom and for how long, well, I do not feel qualified to say. The only factual answer to the question lies in the hands of the archaeologists. And while great strides have been made in that field in the last few decades, its knowledge base is still far from complete.
Years ago I played around with trying to equate some or all of the battles of Arthur and those of the Gewissei. Alas, my knowledge of place-name development and of the languages involved was insufficient to the task. It was time to take another stab at the problem, bringing new tools to bear.
First, the battles of Arthur from the HISTORIA BRITTONUM:
Mouth of the river Glein
4 battles on the Dubglas River in the Linnuis region
River Bassas
Celyddon Wood
Castle Guinnion
City of the Legion
Tribruit river-bank
Mt. Agned/Mt. Breguoin (and other variants)
Mt. Badon c. 516
Camlann c. 537
And, secondly, those of Cerdic of the Gewessei (interposed battles by other Saxon chieftains are in brackets):
495 - Certicesora (Cerdic and Cynric arrive in Britain)
[Bieda of Bedenham, Maegla, Port of Portsmouth]
Certicesford - Natanleod or Nazanleog killed
[Stuf, Wihtgar - Certicesora]
Cerdicesford - Cerdic and Cynric take the kingdom of the West Saxons
Cerdicesford or Cerdicesleag
Wihtgarasburh
537 - Cerdic dies, Cynric takes the kingship, Isle of Wight given to Stuf (of Stubbington near Port and opposite Wight) and Wihtgar
As Celtic linguist Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson pointed out long ago, 'Glein' means 'pure, clean.' It is Welsh glân. However, there is also a Welsh glan, river-bank, brink, edge; shore; slope, bank. This word would nicely match in meaning the -ora of Certicesora, which is from AS. óra, a border, edge, margin, bank. If we allow for Glein/glân being an error or substitution for glan, then the mouth of the Glein and Certicesora may be one and the same place.
Ceredicesora or "Cerdic's shore" has been thought to be the Ower near Calshot. This is a very good possibility for a landing place. However, the Ower further north by Southampton must be considered a leading contender, as it is quite close to some of the other battles.
Natanleod or Nazanleog is Netley Marsh in Hampshire. The parish is bounded by Bartley Water to the south and the River Blackwater to the north. Dubglas is, of course, 'Black-stream/rivulet.' Kenneth Jackson in his ‘Once Again Arthur’s Battles’ (Modern Philology, Vol. 43, No. 1, Aug., 1945, pp. 44-57) says of the Dubglas:
"Br. *duboglasso-, 'blue-black' which seems confused in place-names with Br. *duboglassio-, OW. *dubgleis, later OW. Dugleis, 'black stream'..."
Linnuis contains the British root for lake or pool, preserved in modern Welsh llyn. Netley is believed now to mean 'wet wood or clearing', and this meaning combined with the 'marsh' that was present probably accounts for the Linnuis region descriptor of the Historia Brittonum.
W. bas, believed to underlie the supposed river-name Bassas, meant a shallow, fordable place in a river. We can associate this easily with Certicesford/Cerdicesford, modern Charford on the Avon. Just a little south of North and South Charford is a stretch of the river called “The Shallows” at Shallow Farm. These are also called the Breamore Shallows and can be as little as a foot deep. An Anglo-Saxon cemetery was recently uncovered at Shallow Farm:
“A Byzantine pail, datable to the sixth century AD, was discovered in 1999, in a field near the River Avon in Breamore, Hampshire. Subsequent fieldwork confirmed the presence there of an early Anglo-Saxon cemetery. In 2001, limited excavation located graves that were unusual, both for their accompanying goods and for the number of double and triple burials. This evidence suggests that Breamore was the location of a well-supplied ‘frontier’ community which may have had a relatively brief existence during the sixth century. It seems likely to have had strong connections with the Isle of Wight and Kent to the south and south-east, rather than with communities up-river to the north and north-east.” [An Early Anglo-Saxon Cemetery and Archaeological Survey at Breamore, Hampshire, 1999–2006, The Archaeological Journal
Volume 174, 2017 - Issue 1, David A. Hinton and Sally Worrell]
Cerdicesleag contains -leag, a word which originally designated a wood or a woodland, and only later came to mean a place that had been cleared of trees and converted into a clearing or meadow. I once thought the Celidon Wood could have been substituted for this site, but that really made no sense. Hardley, Hampshire, being the 'hard' wood (Watts, etc.), looked promising, if we could assume the Welsh knew Celidon (from Calidon-) derived from a British root similar to Welsh caled, 'hard.' But we couldn't assume that.
Instead, Celidon, being a great forest in Pictland, is a mistaken reference to Netley. While the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s insistence on this being named for a British king Natanloed is untrue (Natan- here being wrongly converted into a personal name; it is actually from a root meaning “wet”; see Watts, Mills, Ekwall, etc.), given that the Welsh knew of the famous Pictish Nechtans, in Welsh Neithon or similar (cf. Bede’s Naiton, Naitan), it is probable that the name was identified with a Pictish king and the wood thus relocated to the far North. And, in fact, it is possible that Natanleod/Natanleag in the Linnuis or ‘Lake’ region may have reminded the chronicler of the Dark Age battle of Nechtansmere
(https://canmore.org.uk/site/34664/nechtansmere), which took place at the loch or mire which existed at modern Dunnichen, Scotland, until it was drained in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Castle Guinnion is composed of the Welsh word for 'white', plus a typical locative suffix (cf. Latin -ium). Wihtgar as a personage is an eponym for the Isle of Wight. Wihtgarasburh is, then, the Fort of Wihtgar. But it is quite possible Wiht- was mistaken for OE hwit, 'white', and so Castellum Guinnion would merely be a clumsy attempt at substituting the Welsh for the English. /-gar/-garas/ may well have been linked to Welsh caer, 'fort, fortified city', although the presence of -burh, 'fort, fortified town' in the name may have been enough to generate Castellum. Wihtgara is properly Wihtwara, 'people of Wight', the name of the tribal hidage. Wihtgarasburh is traditionally situated at Carisbrooke.
Arthur's City of the Legion battle may well be an attempt at the ASC's Limbury of 571, whose early forms are Lygean-, Liggean- and the like. The Waulud’s Bank earthwork is at Limbury. Incidentally, Ceawlin’s Wibbandun of 568 is most likely a hill (dun) in the vicinity of Whipsnade, ‘Wibba’s ‘piece of land/clearing, piece of woodland’ (see Ekwall). Whipsnade is under 10 kilometers southwest of Limbury and is on the ancient Icknield Way next to Dunstable Downs.
According to Kenneth Jackson (_Once Again A thur's Battles_, MODERN PHILOLOGY, August,
1945), Tribruit, W. tryfrwyd, was used as an a jective, meaning "pierced through", and some-times as a noun meaning "battle". His rendering of traeth tryfrwyd was "the Strand of the Pierced or Broken (Place)". Basing his statement on the Welsh Traeth Tryfrwyd, Jackson said that "we should not look for a river called Tryfwyd but for a beach." However, Jackson later admitted (in The Arthur of History, ARTHURIAN LITERATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES: A COLLABORATIVE HISTORY, ed. by Roger Sher-man Loomis) that "the name (Traith) Tribruit may mean rather 'The Many-Coloured Strand' (cf. I. Williams in BBCS, xi [1943], 95).
Most recently Patrick Sims-Williams (in The Ar-thur of the Welsh, THE EARLY WELSH ARTHURIAN POEMS, 1991) has defined traeth tryfrwyd as the "very speckled shore" (try- here being the intensive prefix *tri-, cognate with L. trans). Professor Sims-Williams mentions that 'trywruid' could also mean "bespattered [with blood]." I would only add that Latin litus does usually mean "seashore, beach, coast", but that it can also mean "river bank". Latin ripa, more often used of a river bank, can also have the meaning of "shore".
The complete listing of tryfrwyd from The Dictionary of Wales (information courtesy Andrew Hawke) is as follows:
tryfrwyd
2 [?_try-^2^+brwyd^2^_; dichon fod yma fwy
nag un gair [= "poss. more than one word here"]]
3 _a_. a hefyd fel _e?b_.
6 skilful, fine, adorned; ?bloodstained; battle,
conflict.
7 12g. GCBM i. 328, G\\6aew yg coryf, yn toryf,
yn _tryfrwyd_ - wryaf.
7 id. ii. 121, _Tryfrwyd_ wa\\6d y'm pria\\6d
prydir, / Trefred ua\\6r, treul ga\\6r y gelwir.
7 id. 122, Keinuyged am drefred _dryfrwyd_.
7 13g. A 19. 8, ymplymnwyt yn _tryvrwyt_
peleidyr....
7 Digwydd hefyd fel e. afon [="also occurs as
river name"] (cf.
8 Hist Brit c. 56, in litore fluminis, quod vocatur
_Tribruit_; 14 x CBT
8 C 95. 9-10, Ar traethev _trywruid_).
Tryfrwyd itself, minus the intensive prefix,
comes from:
brwyd
[H. Grn. _bruit_, gl. _varius_, gl. Gwydd. _bre@'t_
`darn']
3 _a_.
6 variegated, pied, chequered, decorated, fine;
bloodstained; broken, shattered, frail, fragile.
7 c. 1240 RWM i. 360, lladaud duyw arnam ny
am dwyn lleydwyt - _urwyt_ / llauurwyt escwyt
ar eescwyd.
7 c. 1400 R 1387. 15-16, Gnawt vot ystwyt
_vrwyt_ vriwdoll arnaw.
7 id. 1394. 5-6, rwyt _vrwyt_ vrwydyrglwyf rwyf
rwyd get.
7 15g. H 54a. 12.
The editors of GCBM (Gwaith Cynddelw
Brydydd) take _tryfrwyd_ to be a fem. noun =
'brwydr'. They refer to Ifor Williams, Canu Anei-rin
294, and A.O.H. Jarman, Aneinin: Y
Gododdin (in English) p. 194 who translates
'clash', also Jarman, Ymddiddan Myrddin a Tha-liesin,
pp. 36-7. Ifor Williams, Bulletin of the
Board of Celtic Studies xi (1941-4) pp. 94-6 sug-gests
_try+brwyd_ `variegated, decorated'.
On brwydr, the National Dictionary of Wales has
this:
1 brwydr^1^
2 [dichon ei fod o'r un tarddiad a@^
_brwyd^1^_, ond cf. H. Wydd. _bri@'athar_ `gair']
3 _eb_. ll. -_au_.
6 pitched battle, conflict, attack, campaign,
struggle; bother, dispute, controversy; host, ar-my.
7 13g. HGC 116, y lle a elwir . . . y tir gwaetlyt,
o achaus y _vrwyder_ a vu ena.
7 14g. T 39. 24.
7 14g. WML 126, yn dyd kat a _brwydyr_.
7 14g. WM 166. 32, _brwydreu_ ac ymladeu.
7 14g. YCM 33, llunyaethu _brwydyr_ a oruc
Chyarlymaen, yn eu herbyn.
7 15g. IGE 272, Yr ail gofal, dial dwys, /
_Brwydr_ Addaf o Baradwys.
7 id. 295.
7 1567 LlGG (Sall) 14a, a' chyd codei _brwydyr_
im erbyn, yn hyn yr ymddiriedaf.
7 1621 E. Prys: Ps 32a, Yno drylliodd y bwa a'r
saeth, / a'r _frwydr_ a wnaeth yn ddarnau.
7 1716 T. Evans: DPO 35, Cans _brwydr_ y
Rhufeiniaid a aethai i Si@^r Fo@^n.
7 1740 id. 336, _Brwydrau_ lawer o Filwyr arfog.
Dr. G. R. Isaac of The University of Wales, Abe ystywyth, in discussing brwyd, adds that:
"The correct Latin comparison is frio 'break up', both < Indo-European *bhreiH- 'cut, graze'. These words have many cognates, e.g. Latin fr uolus 'friable, worthless', Sanskrit bhrinanti 'they damage', Old Church Slavonic britva 'ra-zor', and others. The Old British form of brwyd would have been *breitos. It is sometimes claimed that there is a possible Gaulish root cognate in brisare 'press out', but there are diffi-culties with that identification.
It may be worth stressing that the 'tryfrwyd' which means 'very speckled' and the 'tryfrwyd' which means 'piercing, pierced' are the same word, and that the latter is the historically pri mary meaning. The meaning 'very speckled' comes through 'bloodstained' from 'pierced' ('bloodstained' because 'pierced' in battle). But I do not think this has any bearing on the argu-ments.
Actually, Tryfrwyd MAY mean 'very speckled', but that is conjecture, not certain knowledge. Plausible conjecture, yes, but no more certain for that."
That "pierced" or "broken" is to be preferred as the meaning of Tribruit is plainly demonstrated by lines 21-22 of the _Pa Gur_ poem:
Neus tuc manauid - "Manawyd(an) brought
Eis tull o trywruid - pierced ribs (or, metaphori-cally, "timbers", and hence arms of any kind,
probably spears or shields; ) from Tryfrwyd"
Tull, "pierced", here obviously refers to Tribruit as "through-pierced".
Tribruit is a Welsh substitute for the Latin word trajectus. Rivet and Smith (The Place-Names of Roman Britain, p. 178) discuss the term, saying that in some cases "it seems to indicate a ferry or ford..." The Welsh rendered 'litore' of the Tribruit description in Nennius as 'traeth', demanding a river estuary emptying into the sea. However, in Latin litore could also mean simply a river-bank.
As it happens, the location of the Tribruit/Trajectus in question may well be determined by the locations of Mounts Agned and Breguoin. These last two battle-sites fall between those of the City of the Legion and Badon, and after that of the Tribruit.
I decided to take a fresh look at Agned, which has continud to vex Arthurian scholars. I noticed that in the ASC 571 entry there was an Egonesham, modern Eynsham. Early forms of this place-name include Egenes-, Egnes-, Eghenes-, Einegs-. According to both Ekwall and Mills, this comes from an Old English personal name *Aegen. Welsh commonly adds -edd to make regular nominative i:-stem plurals of nouns (information courtesy Dr. Simon Rodway, who cites several examples). Personal names could also be made into place-names by adding the -ydd suffix. –ed1 (see the Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru) is the suffix in the kingdom name Rheged. The genitive of Agnes in Latin is Agnetus, which could have become Agned in Welsh - as long as <d> stands for /d/, which would be exceptional in Old Welsh (normally it stands for what is, in Modern Welsh, spelled as <dd>). I'd long ago shown that it was possible for Welsh to substitute initial /A-/ for /E-/. What this all tells me is that Agned could conceivably be an attempt at the hill-fort named for Aegen.
But what of Mount Breguoin? Well, I had remembered that prior to his later piece on Breguoin ('Arthur's Battle of Breguoin', Antiquity 23 (1949) 48—9), Jackson had argued (in 'Once Again Arthur's Battles') that the place-name might come from a tribal name based on the Welsh word breuan, 'quern.' The idea dropped out of favor when Jackson ended up preferring Brewyn/Bremenium in Northumberland for Breguoin.
So how does seeing breuan in Breguoin help us?
In the 571 ASC entry we find Aylesbury as another town that fell to the Gewessei. This is Aegelesburg in Old English. I would point to Quarrendon, a civil parish and a deserted medieval village on the outskirts of Aylesbury. The name means "hill where mill-tones [querns] were got". Thus if we allow for Breguoin as deriving from the Welsh word for quern, we can identify this hill with Quarrendon at Aylesbury.
All of which brings us back, rather circuitously, to Tribruit. This can only be the Romano-British Trajectus on the Avon of the city of Bath/Badon. Rivet and Smith locate this provisionally at Bitton at the mouth of the Boyd tributary. The Boyd runs past Dyrham, scene of the ASC battle featuring Ceawlin which led to the capture of Bath.
The Welsh and “Bath” of the North
It has often been said that the Welsh Caer Faddon is always a designation for Bath in Avon. However, the only medieval Welsh tale to localize Arthur's Badon places it at Buxton in Derbyshire.
I am speaking, of course, of the early Arthurian romance ‘The Dream of Rhonabwy’, sometimes considered to be a part of the Mabinogion collection of tales. Rhonabwy is transported back in time via the vehicle of a dream to the eve of the battle of Caer Faddon. Arthur has apparently come from Cornwall (as he is said to return thither after a truce is made; this is almost certainly in this context a folk memory for the Cornovii kingdom, the later Powys) to mid-Wales and thence to Caer Faddon to meet with Osla or Ossa, a true historical contemporary of Arthur who lies at the head of the royal Bernician pedigree.
Here is the entry on Osla from P.C. Bartram's A CLASSICAL WELSH DICTIONARY:
"OSLA GYLLELLFAWR. (Legendary). ‘O. of the Long Knife’. According to the tale of ‘Rhonabwy's Dream’ it was against Osla Gyllellfawr that Arthur fought the battle of Badon (RM 150). He is represented as sending forty-eight horsemen to Arthur to ask for a truce till the end of a fortnight and a month (RM 159, 160). In RM 159 the name is spelt Ossa. The ‘Long Knife’ identifies him as Saxon, and as such he is foisted into the pedigree of Oswald, king of Northumbria, in a late version of Bonedd y Saint (§70+71 in EWGT p.64), where he roughly occupies the place of Ossa, grandfather of Ida king of Bernicia. In this context he is called ‘Offa (or Ossa) Cyllellfawr, king of Lloegr, the man who fought against Arthur at the battle of Badon’, and father of Mwng Mawr Drefydd. It is curious therefore to find Osla Gyllellfawr mentioned as one of the warriors of Arthur's Court in the tale of ‘Culhwch and Olwen’. Here it is said that he carried Bronllafn Uerllydan, (‘Shortbroad’). When Arthur and his hosts came to a torrent's edge, a narrow place on the water would be sought, and his knife in its sheath laid across the torrent. That would be a bridge sufficient for the hosts of the Island of Britain and its three adjacent islands and its spoil (WM 465, RM 109-10). Later in the story Osla took part in the hunting of the boar Trwyth. He and others caught him and plunged him into the Severn. But as Osla Big-knife was pursuing the boar, his knife fell out of its sheath and he lost it; and his sheath thereafter became full of water, so that as he was being pulled out of the river, it dragged him back into the depths (RM 140-1). A WELSH CLASSICAL DICTIONARY 587 It may be inferred that after the battle of Badon, Osla Gyllellfawr, being defeated, was supposed to have become subject to Arthur and to have served him until he was drowned in the Severn (PCB)."
Arthur is said to progress from Rhyd-y-Groes to Long Mountain and Cefn Digoll (Beacon Ring hillfort). As far as the text is concerned, Faddon is hard by this location. Yet we find nothing whatsoever in the region that could possibly be identified with Faddon.
However, if Rhyd-y-Groes were to be rendered directly into the English, it would be Crossford. And we find Crossford at a Roman road crossing of the Mersey. If one continues north from Crossford to Manchester, a Roman road then led straight to the SSE to Buxton. To me, therefore, it seems obvious that Rhyd-y-Groes is a standard relocation of the original site.
"Stretford proper lies in the south, taking its name from an ancient ford over the Mersey, also called Crosford. Leland about 1535 crossed the Mersey 'by a great bridge of timber called Crossford Bridge.'" (from https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol4/pp329-335)
While the romance is entirely fanciful, the chronological accuracy in the context of choosing Osla/Ossa is rather uncanny. Ossa is known in English sources for being the first of the Bernicians to come to England from the Continent. Under his descendants, Bernicia became a great kingdom, stretching eventually from the Forth to the Tees. In the 7th century, Deira – which controlled roughly the area between the Tees and the Humber - was joined with Bernicia to form the Kingdom of Northumbria.
In its heyday, Northumbria shared a border with its neighbor to the south – Mercia – at the River Mersey of ‘Boundary River’. The Mersey flows east to Stockport, where it essentially starts at the confluence of the River Tame and Goyt. The Goyt has its headwaters on Axe Edge, only a half a dozen kilometers from Buxton in the High Peak.
If we allow for the story’s author to have properly chosen Ossa as Arthur’s true contemporary, but to have viewed Northumbria in an anachronistic fashion – i.e. as extending to the River Mersey during Arthur's time – then Ossa coming from Bernicia in the extreme north of England, and Arthur coming from Powys of the Cornovii to the southwest, coming together for a battle at Buxton makes a great deal of sense.
Ossa would have been viewed as engaging in a battle just across the established boundary.
If I am right about this, the Welsh knew of the ‘Bathum’ or Badon that was Buxton and placed Arthur here as the victor in the great battle. This is an error, of course.
According to the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE, Ceawlin (= Maqui-Coline/Cunedda) and Cynric (Cunorix son Maqui-Coline) fought at Barbury Castle in Wiltshire in 556 A.D. This was part of a push from the south, as 4 years prior to this they had put the Britons to flight at Old Sarum.
Yet, oddly, Ceawlin is not mentioned again until 568, when he drives Aethelberht into Kent. He then fights on several different fronts, but does not return to Wiltshire until 592. He fights there at Adam's Grave (near Alton Priors), but is expelled after a great slaughter. Adam's Grave (= Woden's Barrow) is under 15 kilometers south of Barbury Castle, and less than 20 from the Liddington Badbury. Ceawlin dies a year after this expulsion.
Thus from the attack on Barbury Castle in 556 to his unsuccessful second attempt to take the region in 592, 36 years elapsed.
The question that naturally needs to be asked is this: what happened after Barbury Castle that caused the Gewissei to cease military action in Wiltshire and seek better targets elsewhere?
This is where the Liddington Badbury comes in. Being only a short distance from Barbury along the ancient Ridgeway, it is the logical place for a significant victory that might well have gone unrecorded in the ASC. Do we have any evidence that Liddington may have been the famous Badon? As it happens, I believe we do...
THE LOCATION OF THE SECOND BATTLE OF BADON
There is one possible clue to identifying Badon. It lies in a comparison of the Welsh Annals entry for the Second Battle of Badon and the narrative of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The actual year entry for this Second Battle of Badon reads as follows:
665 The first celebration of Easter among the Saxons. The second battle of Badon. Morgan dies.
The "first celebration of Easter among the Saxons" is a reference to the Synod of Whitby of c. 664. While not directly mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, nor the Anglo-Saxon version of Bede, there is an indirect reference to this event:
664 … Colman with his companions went to his native land…
This is, of course, a reference to Colman's resigning of his see and leaving Lindisfarne with his monks for Iona. He did so because the Roman date for Easter had been accepted at the synod over the Celtic date.
While there is nothing in the ASC year entry 664 that helps with identifying Badon, if we go to the year entry 661, which is the entry found immediate prior to 664, an interesting passage occurs:
661 In this year, at Easter, Cenwalh [King of Wessex] fought at Posentesburh, and Wulfhere, son of Penda [King of Mercia], ravaged as far as [or "in", or "from"] Ashdown…
Ashdown is here the place of that name in Berkshire. It is only a half dozen kilometers to the east of Badbury and Liddington Castle. A vague reference to ravaging in the neighborhood of Ashdown may well have been taken by someone who knew Badon was in the vicinity of Ashdown as a second battle at Badon. As the Mercian king was raiding into Wessex, it is entirely conceivable that his path took him through Liddington/Badbury or at least along the Roman road that ran immediately to the east of the area.
THE PROBLEM FROM THE STANDPOINT OF LINGUISTICS
Obviously, we still have the problem of the philology and phonology of the name Badon to contend with. I've not yet encountered an expert in the languages involved who did not prefer Badon as a British form of English bathum, and such an analysis of the place-name point to Bath in Somerset (or, perhaps, as I once thought, Buxton in Berbyshire).
Yet, while modern place-name scholars and linguists abide by hard and fast rules when parsing Badon, it is, frankly, absurd to suggest that the compilers of things early medieval works like the HB, AC or ASC would have had such knowledge or scruples. Sound-alike etymologies may well have abounded and places that were similar sounding or spelled similarly may well have been inappropriately identified with each other. Errors in translation and copying only add to the possible confusion.
We find Bath in the ASC as a place capured by Ceawlin/Cunedda in 577 A.D. [1] There the place-name is spelled Baþanceaster. It was Ceawlin who was present at Barbury in 556, remember.
Now, Barbury is either 'the Bear's fort' or the fort of someone named 'bear.' The Welsh regularly associated Arthur's name with their word (arth) for bear.
In the midst of the Cerdic of Wessex battles (Ceredig son of Cunedda), there is an action featuring a man called Bieda (with variants Baeda, Beda). The battle featuring Bieda occurs c. 501, a time that is nearly perfect for the Badon which supposedly happened at the time of Gildas's birth and which the AC has down for c. 516.
Alheydis Plassmann of Bonn (https://www.fnzrlg.uni-bonn.de/mitarbeiter/wissenschaftliche-mitarbeiterinnen/pd-dr.-alheydis-plassmann) summarizes the dating of Gildas's ON THE RUIN OF BRITAIN and the most likely date for Badon according to that source (see CELTIC CULTURE: A HISTORICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA). The prevailing view (much disputed, of course, in various circles!) is that Gildas finished writing his work in 547 at the latest. Taking his 44 years, then, back from that date to the time of Badon, we arrive at 503. This is as close as one can get to the 501 date for the ASC battle featuring Bieda.
According to Dr. Richard Coates, perhaps the preeminent English place-name expert, the best guess as to the origin of the name Bieda is
"Redin (p. 60) linked it with OE be:odan ‘to command’, though the structure isn’t fully clear. I’ve seen no better or worse suggestion since." [personal communication]
Granted, the Badda/Baddan- element of the Badbury names appears to have a different origin than the Bieda name. However, my work on the Badbury place-names suggest a similar or identical origin (see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2019/12/cadburys-and-personal-name-badda.html).
I've made a very good case for Bieda's name being preserved in Bedenham, Hampshire.
Thus we have a number of correspondences which suggest why Arthur may have been placed at Badon. They may be listed as follows:
1) Cerdic of the Gewissei fights battles to either side of one featuring Bieda of Bedenham. This battle's date fits the date of the "Badon" mentioned by Gildas.
2) Ceawlin/Cunedda of the Gewissei fights at Baddanbyrig/Badbury/Liddington Castle shortly after the Barbury or 'Bear's fort' battle of 556. This is a major loss to the Gewissei and their Saxon allies, leading to their total adsence in Wiltshire for over 3 decades.
3) Ceawlin captures Bath in 577. Badon can be construed as deriving from English bathum.
CONCLUSION
So what exactly happened?
We might imagine this sequence of events playing out in the tradition over the centuries: Gildas is born at the time of the Bieda/Bedenham battle c. 500 A.D. This was, in reality, not a special battle. It merely happened to mark the birth day of a man who became a very famous Christian scholar and saint. At some point it was wrongly identified with the famous battle fought at the Liddington Castle Badbury by Arthur. At some point the very similar Bath name was substituted for that of Badbury.
This explanation may seem unnecessarily complicated or even convoluted. But it does seem to rather nicely account for what may have happened when the usual forces were brought to bear on literary materials created in the British Dark Age.
[1]
Note that the order of the generations of the Gewissei in the English sources are reversed compared to what we find in the Welsh. This may have come about because of a simple confusion over the proper sequence of a genealogy. The relative dates of the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE battles have also been called into question by a number of authorities, and revised chronologies created. It is beyond the purview of the article to treat of this tendency. I would instead urge my readers to research this on their own. For my purpose, there are only three things that are important:
1) That the Bedenham battle was fought in the year of Gildas's birth, c. 500.
2) That a major battle at Liddington Castle was fought by Arthur that effectively stemmed the Saxon tide in Wiltshire for several decades. Precisely dating this action is impossible. The Welsh give us a date of c. 516. But it may have been closer to the middle of the 6th century. If so, the corresponding date of Arthur's Camlan at c. 539 was probably moved back to accord better with the 516 date, itself an error brought about by the need to ascribe the battle to the date of Gildas's birth.
and
3) A later Bath battle fought by the Gewissei was wrongly substituted for both the Bedenham and Badbury events.
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