THE GEWISSEI AND A BADON AT LIDDINGTON CASTLE or WHAT HAPPENED AFTER BARBURY CASTLE?

Barbury Castle

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.

For my treatment of Posentesburh, see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-second-battle-of-badon.html.

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 Derbyshire).  

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. 

Now, 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]

For more on Coates's discussion on Bieda and related names, see https://mistshadows.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-liddington-badbury-and-arthur-hero.html.

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, dealt to them by Arthur, lead 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.