When did our kings and queens start using surnames?

History Extra

Monarchs in Britain have adopted second names such as ‘Fair’, ‘Ironside’ or ‘Harefoot’ since at least the ninth century...

 Although early British monarchs may have adopted second names, these were not hereditary and were more in the way of nicknames.

The Irish and Welsh rulers kept this system and did not adopt surnames. The first English monarch to use a hereditary surname was Edward IV. He used the surname Plantagenet to emphasise that he was descended from the elder branch of the royal family – unlike Henry VI who came from a younger branch.

The name Plantagenet refers back to Henry II who came to the throne in 1154. Although it had not been used in formal documents before Edward IV, it must have been in informal use during that period as it was clearly of practical benefit to Edward.

The first Scottish king to have a surname is generally said to have been John de Balliol, who gained the throne in 1292 after the death of Margaret, heiress to Alexander III. However, John’s surname was more of a title indicating his hereditary lordship, an objection that could also be made to Robert the Bruce (ruled 1306–1329). The first Scots king undeniably to have a surname was Robert Stewart (or Stuart) who gained the throne in 1371 and ruled for 19 years. His surname derived from the family’s traditional role as Stewards of Scotland.

This Q&A was answered by historian and author Rupert Matthews.

What is gaol fever and how was it caused and spread?

History Extra

Gaol fever is epidemic typhus (not typhoid), and can be prevented by vaccination...

Patients can be successfully treated with antibiotics, but it was once a major killer. The first scientifically reliable accounts of the disease come from 15th-century Europe, though it has probably been around much longer.

Symptoms include severe headache and muscle pain, fever, delirium and a characteristic rash. Several major outbreaks described as ‘plagues’ by chroniclers were, in fact, typhus.

The cause of epidemic typhus is Rickettsia prowazekii, bacteria usually transmitted by body lice. It thrives in overcrowded places where sanitation is poor and immune systems are weakened by hunger. Outbreaks were common in armies well into the 20th century, and it often killed more soldiers than combat, as in Napoleon’s 1812 retreat from Moscow. The last outbreaks of gaol fever to kill significant numbers of Europeans were in Hitler’s concentration camps.

It commonly occurred in the appalling conditions of Britain’s prisons before Victorian reformers cleaned them up, hence the name ‘gaol fever’. Being held in prison before trial could be tantamount to a sentence of death, and more died of goal fever in the 1700s than were executed. In a particularly notorious case, prisoners from Ilchester gaol brought to Taunton assizes in 1730 caused an outbreak that killed the judge, several court officials and hundreds of others.

Answered by Eugene Byrne, author and journalist.

Prehistoric treasures featured on latest Royal Mail stamps

History Extra

Royal Mail has released eight stamps featuring objects and sites of British prehistory, celebrating Britain's “incredibly rich heritage of prehistoric sites and exceptional artefacts”

 A number of sites and treasures of prehistoric Britain have been featured in a new set of eight stamps from Royal Mail. Sites included on the stamps are Skara Brae village, where fierce storms in 1850 stripped away sand dunes on Orkney’s west coast to reveal traces of Neolithic stone-walled houses, and Avebury stone circles, Britain’s largest prehistoric ceremonial monument.

Illustrated by London-based artist Rebecca Strickson, the stamps have been designed as overlay illustrations, detailing how people lived and worked at these sites and used the objects. Strickson said: “This period in time has long been a fascination to me, and stamp collecting was something my late father adored in his youth. That these stamps are coming out on what would have been his 68th birthday makes me really smile.”

Philip Parker explained that the collection aims to “explore some of these treasures and give us a glimpse of everyday life in prehistoric Great Britain and Northern Ireland, from the culture of ancient ritual and music making to sophisticated metalworking and the building of huge hill forts”.

For each of the stamps, Royal Mail will provide a special postmark on all mail posted in a postbox close to where the site is located or the artefact found. It will be applied for five days from 17-21 January 2017, and stamps are available from 17 January 2017, at 7,000 Post Office branches across the UK and at www.royalmail.com/ancientbritain.

What are the origins of the British taste for black pepper?

History Extra

Pepper has long been one of the most popular spices in the world – not just Britain. The Romans traded in it, and peppercorns have been found in ancient Egyptian tombs. Back then, it was a rare and precious commodity, hailing from south India. Peppercorns at various times were regarded as portable wealth, and often more reliable than a government’s coinage.

 Black pepper (and the more expensive white pepper, which comes from the same plant, but is processed differently) initially came overland. That’s why the Guild of Pepperers (nowadays London livery company the Worshipful Company of Grocers), founded in 12th‑century London, chose a camel as its symbol. It was the main spice that European explorers wanted when they sought sea-passages to the ‘Indies’ that would allow them to bypass the overland trade’s expensive middle-men.

The long-cherished view that pepper was used to disguise the flavour of elderly meat is now disputed – surely the rich could afford fresh food – but poorer people might sometimes have used pepper for this purpose once extensive cultivation and trade made it affordable.

The Victorian British working classes bought pepper in large quantities, though usually in ground form; contemporary newspapers are full of scandal stories of pepper being adulterated with other additives.

 Until a few decades ago, most Britons consumed ground pepper. The modern popularity of grinders filled with black peppercorns must surely have been inspired by the large mills wielded by waiters in Italian restaurants from the 1970s onwards.

Answered by: Eugene Byrne, author and journalist

The global origins of the Boston Tea Party

History Extra

Trouble brewing: This illustration shows “Boston boys throwing tea into the harbour” on 16 December 1773. The protestors revelled in the opportunity to make a bold statement that would be felt across the world. (Getty images)

About a hundred men boarded three ships in Boston harbour on the evening of 16 December 1773. No one knows for sure who they were, or exactly how many of them were there. They had wrapped blankets around their shoulders, and they had slathered paint and soot on their faces. A newspaper report called them “resolute men (dressed like Mohawks or Indians)”. In two or three hours, they hoisted 340 chests above decks, chopped them open with hatchets, and emptied their contents over the rails. Since the tide was out, you could see huge clumps of the stuff piling up alongside the ships.

This was in fact 46 tonnes of tea worth more than £9,659. 
At the time, a tonne of tea cost about the same as a two-storey house. The event became a pivotal moment in American history, leading to the overthrow of the British imperial government, an eight-year civil war, and American independence.

Yet the history of the Boston Tea Party belongs not just to the United States of America, but to the world. The Tea Party originated with a Chinese commodity, a British financial crisis, imperialism in India, and American consumption habits. It resounded in a world of Afro-Caribbean slavery, Native American disguises, and widespread tyranny and oppression. And for over 200 years since, the Boston Tea Party has inspired political movements of all stripes, well beyond America’s shores.

To understand why tea had become so controversial in Boston, we would have to look at the history of how this plant had come to be embraced by Britons all over the world. Camellia sinensis grew among the foothills of the high mountains that separated China from the Indian subcontinent. For over a thousand years, it was the Chinese who had popularised and marketed the drink. Chinese merchants traded tea to Japanese ships, Mongol horsemen, and Persian caravans. Few Europeans had tasted tea before 1680. Yet by the 18th century, trading firms like the English East India Company were regularly negotiating with Cantonese hongs (merchants) and hoppos (port supervisors) to bring tea back to the west. As the tea trade grew, the price dropped.

Tea for two : A fashionable gentleman takes morning tea with a lady in her boudoir, while a maidservant looks on, in an 18th-century engraving. (Wellcome Collection)

The bitter taste of tea might have been unpalatable to Europeans, had it not been for the trade in another commodity – sugar. The 17th century had seen the cultivation of sugarcane in the West Indies yield an enormously profitable crop. To raise cane and process sugar, West Indian planters relied on the labour of African slaves. Britons did not organise an objection to slavery, sugar and tea until the end of the 18th century. In the meantime, tea and sugar went hand in hand.

Tea made its way to American ports like Boston, Massachusetts, and even into the outermost reaches of the American frontier. Some of it was legally bought, and the rest was smuggled to avoid British duties. It soon became the drink of respectable households all over the British empire, although it also pained critics who worried about its corrupting effects. They lamented that tea led to vanity and pride, it encouraged women to gather and gossip, and it threatened to undermine the nation. Nevertheless, the British government, reliant on the revenues from global trade, did nothing to stand in the way of tea drinkers. Indeed, in 1767, parliament passed a Revenue Act that collected a duty on all tea shipped to the American colonies.

These were years when Great Britain, still groaning under the debts incurred during the Seven Years’ War (1756–63), began tightening the reins on its imperial possessions all over the globe. In America, this meant restrictions on westward expansion, stronger enforcement of customs regulations, and new taxes. In India, this meant increased control over the East India Company.

The employees of the East India Company were not just traders in tea and textiles. Since the reign of Elizabeth I, the company had also been fortifying, making allies, and fighting rivals in the lands east of the Cape of Good Hope. It had a monopoly on the eastern trade, and its role took an imperial turn in the 1750s. Eight years after Robert Clive defeated the Nawab of Bengal at the battle of Plassey in 1757, he arranged to have the company assume the civil administration (and tax collection) in Bengal.

General clamour
Many Britons had high hopes for this new source of revenue but then, in the autumn of 1769, Indian affairs took a horrific turn. A famine struck Bengal, killing at least 1.2 million people – this was equivalent to half the population of the 13 American colonies at the time. A horrified British public blamed the East India Company for the disaster. “The oppressions of India,” wrote Horace Walpole, “under the rapine and cruelties of the servants of the company, had now reached England, and created general clamour here.”

 The East India Company’s troubles multiplied. In 1772, manipulations of its stock were blamed for a series of bank failures that sent a shockwave of bankruptcies across the globe. The company was losing money on its military ventures in India. The Bank of England refused to keep lending it money, and it owed hundreds of thousands of pounds in back taxes. What’s more, competition from smugglers and excessive imports led the company to amass 17.5 million pounds of tea in its warehouses – more than the English nation drank in a year.

This 18th-century watercolour shows workers crushing tea in wooden crates in China, where the drink was first marketed and popularised. (Credit: V&A)

To rescue the company (and gain greater control over it), parliament passed a series of laws in 1773, including the Tea Act. This law levied no new taxes on Americans, but it allowed the company to ship its tea directly to America for the first time. The legislation, Americans feared, would have three effects. First, it granted a monopoly company special privileges in America, cutting out American merchants (except a few hand-picked consignees). Second, it encouraged further payment of a tax that the Americans had been decrying for six years. Third, the revenue from the tax was used to pay the salaries of certain civil officials (including the Massachusetts governor), leaving them unaccountable to the people.

Americans were vitriolic in their response, and their pamphlets resounded in global language. “Hampden”, a New York writer, warned that the East India Company was “lost to all the Feelings of Humanity” as they “monopolised the absolute Necessaries of Life in India, at a Time of apprehended Scarcity”. The new tea trade, he warned, would 
“support the Tyranny of the [Company] in the East, enslave the West, and prepare us fit Victims for the Exercise of that horrid Inhumanity they have… practised, in the Face of the Sun, on the helpless Asiaticks”. John Dickinson, a Pennsylvania lawyer who gained fame as a protestor against British taxes, similarly attacked the East India Company. “Their Conduct in Asia, for some Years past, has given ample Proof, how little they regard the Laws of Nations, the Rights, Liberties, or Lives of Men.”

Having drained Bengal of its wealth, he wrote, they now “cast their Eyes on America, as a new Theatre, wheron to exercise their Talents of Rapine, Oppression and Cruelty. The Monopoly of Tea, is, I dare say, but a small Part of the Plan they have formed to strip us of our Property. But thank GOD, we are not Sea Poys, or Marattas, but British Subjects, who are born to Liberty, who know its Worth, and who prize it high.”

Bostonians responded to these warnings. Under pressure from the Sons of Liberty (a group of American patriots) in New York and Philadelphia, they threatened Boston’s consignees until they fled the town. When the first of the tea ships arrived on 28 November 1773, the Bostonians demanded that the cargo be returned to London without unloading. The owner, a Quaker merchant named Francis Rotch, protested that he couldn’t do this, by law, and so a stalemate of almost three weeks ensued. Upon the stroke of midnight on 17 December, the British customs service would have the power to step in, seize the tea, and sell it at auction.

Derided as savages
Therefore, the evening before, on 16 December, the Bostonians got their Indian disguises ready. These were crude costumes, not meant to conceal so much as warn the community not to reveal the perpetrators’ identities. Yet the choice of a Native American disguise was still significant. Americans were often portrayed as American Indians in British cartoons, and the colonists were often lumped in with the indigenous population and derided as savages. What better way to blunt the sting of this epithet than to assume an Indian disguise?

The Bostonians may have been inspired by a New York City newspaper piece in which “The MOHAWKS” wrote that they were “determined not to be enslaved, by any power on earth,” and promised “an unwelcome visit” to anyone who should 
land tea on American shores. The tea destroyers of Boston selected a costume that situated them on the other side of the Atlantic ocean from the king and parliament. They were beginning to think of themselves as Americans rather than British subjects, as free men throwing off the shackles of empire.

Although most of the tea destroyers were born in Massachusetts, some had more far-flung origins. James Swan, an anti-slavery pamphleteer, was born in Fifeshire, Scotland. Nicholas Campbell hailed from the island of Malta. John Peters had come to America from Lisbon. Although there were wealthy merchants and professionals among the destroyers, the bulk of them were craftsmen who worked with their hands, which enabled them to haul the chests of tea to the decks in a short time. Mostly young men between the ages of 18 and 29, they were thrilled to make a bold statement to the world.

And the world responded. Prints of the Boston Tea Party appeared in France and Germany. In Edinburgh, the philosopher Adam Smith shook his head disapprovingly at the “strange absurdity” of the East India Company’s sovereignty in India. He stitched his ideas together into a foundational theory of free market capitalism in 1776. A Persian historian in Calcutta would write in the 1780s that the British-American conflict “arose from this event: the king of the English maintained these five or six years past, a contest with the people of America (a word that signifies a new world), on account of the [East India] Company’s concerns.” Many years later, activists from China to South Africa to Lebanon would explain their actions by comparing them to the Tea Party. As a symbol of anti-colonial nationalism, non-violent civil disobedience, or costumed political spectacle, the Tea Party was irresistible.

In 1773, the diplomat Sir George Macartney waxed poetic about Great Britain, “this vast empire, on which the sun never sets, and whose bounds nature has not yet ascertained”. Bostonians tested those bounds later that year. The Boston Tea Party is often spun as the opening act in the origin story of the United States. 
Yet it is better understood as a bright conflagration on the horizon of a big world – a fire that still burns brightly.

Timeline: From Tea Party to independence
 16 December 1773 Protesters dump 340 crates of the East India Company’s tea into Boston harbour

January 1774 London learns of the destruction of the tea, and of other American protests

 March 1774 Parliament passes the first of the so-called Coerciver Acts, the Boston Port Act, which closes the port of Boston until the town makes restitution for the tea

 May 1774 Parliament passes two more laws for restoring order in Massachusetts. These laws limit town meetings, put the provincial council under royal appointments, and allow British civil officers accused of capital crimes to move their trials to other jurisdictions

 1 June 1774 The Boston Port Act takes effect, and Governor Thomas Hutchinson departs for England, never to return. His replacement is General Thomas Gage, a military commander

Summer 1774 Massachusetts protesters resist the Coercive Acts by disrupting local courts and forcing councillors to resign their seats

September to October 1774 The First Continental Congress meets, declares opposition to the Coercive Acts, and calls for boycotts of British goods and an embargo on exports to Great Britain

February 1775 Parliament declares Massachusetts to be in a state of rebellion. Governor Gage will later receive orders to enforce the Coercive Acts and suppress the uprising

19 April 1775 British regular troops and Massachusetts militiamen exchange fire at Lexington and Concord. In response, armed New Englanders surround the British fortifications at Boston

 March 1776 American forces take Dorchester Heights and the British evacuate Boston

July 1776 The Continental Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence of the United States

The global legacy of the Tea Party
More than two centuries after it took place, campaigners around the world are still inspired by the Boston Tea Party as a model of peaceful protest

Temperance movement
During the 19th century, Americans periodically drew upon the Boston Tea Party as a precedent for democratic protests: labour unions, the Mashpee tribe of Native Americans, women’s suffragists, and both foes and defenders of the anti-slavery movement. As a lawyer in 1854, the future president Abraham Lincoln defended nine women who had destroyed an Illinois saloon in the name of the temperance movement. He argued that the Boston Tea Party was a worthy model for their actions.

American suffragettes picket a building bearing the name of the National Woman’s Party, c1900. (Getty images)

Mahatma Gandhi After the British government in South Africa mandated that resident Indians had to be registered and fingerprinted under the Asiatic Registration Act of 1907, Mahatma Gandhi adopted the practice of satyagraha, or non-violent protest. He led the Indian community in the burning of registration cards at mass meetings in August 1908. Gandhi later wrote that a British newspaper correspondent had compared the protest to the Boston Tea Party.

US tax protestors
Today the Boston Tea Party is proving a rallying point for conservative Americans. American tax protesters have often invoked the Tea Party as their inspiration since the 1970s. The libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul held a campaign fundraiser on 16 December 2007. In February 2009, a business news broadcaster called for a “tea party” to protest against the US government’s plan to help refinance home mortgages. With the help of national organisations and media attention, the movement stitched together local groups of protestors. The tea partiers have been calling for less federal regulation and lower taxes.

Republic of China (Taiwan)
In late 1923, during the struggle for power in China between the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) and the Communist Party of China, Sun Yat-Sen, head of the Kuomintang, threatened to seize customs revenues from Guangzhou. The United States and other western nations sent warships to intervene. On 19 December (three days after the 150th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party), Sun wrote: “We must stop that money from going to Peking to buy arms to kill us, just as your forefathers stopped taxation going to the English coffers by throwing English tea into Boston Harbor.”

African-American civil rights
 In his 1963 ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail,’ the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr called for a “nonviolent direct action program” in Birmingham, Alabama. Discussing his historical inspiration, he wrote: “In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.” Three years later, Robert F Williams would recall the Tea Party to rally more violent action on behalf of African-American civil rights: “Burn, baby, burn.”

Benjamin L Carp is associate professor of history, Tufts University, Massachusetts. His book Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America (Yale University Press) is out now.

Student’s Lucky Find Worth £145,000 Is Rewriting Anglo-Saxon History

Ancient Origins

A student in Norfolk probably never imagined that his discovery of a female skeleton wearing a pendant could rewrite Anglo Saxon history – but researchers say that the “exquisite” gold piece is doing just that.

According to The Telegraph , “The find of the female skeleton wearing a pendant of gold imported from Sri Lanka and coins bearing the marks of a continental king is prompting a fundamental reassessment of the seats of power in Anglo Saxon England.”

 Altogether, the artifacts have become known as the treasure of the Winfarthing Woman. An analysis of the grave goods, namely two inscribed coins, suggests that the grave’s owner was buried between 650 to 675 AD and was an elite member of society, possibly even royalty.

 One of the large gold pendants found on the skeleton is inlaid with hundreds of tiny garnets. That artifact alone has been valued at £145,000 (almost $190,000). A delicate gold filigree cross found in the burial suggests that the woman may have been one of the earliest Anglo Saxon converts to Christianity. Other items found in the grave included two identical Merovingian gold coins which had been made into pendants, and two gold beads. Senior Curator of the Norwich Castle Museum Dr. Tim Pestell said the craftsmanship of these objects is “equal” to the famous Staffordshire Hoard.

The Anglo-Saxon pendant found at the rich grave in Winfarthing, Norfolk. ( The British Museum )

In an amusing turn of events, the discovery was made at a site which has been overlooked by archaeologists over the years due to the poor soil. But Thomas Lucking, who found the site in 2015 decided that the location was worth an examination. “We could hear this large signal. We knew there was something large but couldn't predict it would be like that,” he said, “When it came out the atmosphere changed.”

The Guardian reports the first artifact unearthed was a bronze bowl placed at the feet of the skeleton, when the human remains were noted Lucking paused the dig to call the county archaeology unit in.

Excavating the Anglo-Saxon grave in Winfarthing, Norfolk. ( John Rainer )

Work continues at the site first identified by Lucking as it has been identified as a cemetery, possibly with a settlement located nearby as well. Mr. Lucking now works as a full-time archaeologist.

The Daily Mail notes that Mr. Lucking’s discovery in 2016 is one of the highlights from a record year for public discoveries of ancient treasures. 1,120 treasures were found that year, making the highest figure for 20 years. Two other interesting discoveries described at the launch of the Portable Antiquities Scheme and Treasure annual reports at the British Museum include two Bronze Age hoards and a Roman coin collection. One of the Bronze Age hoards consisted of 158 axes and ingots while the other consisted of 27 axes and ingots. Both were found in Driffield, East Yorkshire and date to around 950-850 BC. The Roman coins numbered more than 2,000 and were discovered inside a pottery vessel in Piddletrenthide, Dorset.

Some of the artifacts found in the Driffield hoard. ( British Museum )

Top Image: The gold pendant found in the soil. Source: John Fulcher

By Alicia McDermott

Archaeologist Claims that King Arthur Was Not a Real Person But a Fictional “Celtic Superhero”

Ancient Origins

A British archaeologist has controversially claimed that King Arthur was not a real historical figure. Rather, the legendary warrior king was created as a “Celtic superhero” and in reality, was nothing more than an amalgamation of the lives of five real-life warlords.

 King Arthur a Creation of Several Real-life Kings?
Most people have heard tales of the legendary British monarch who rose to the throne by pulling his sword Excalibur out of a stone and ruled Britain with the help of the Knights of the Round Table and the wizard Merlin. As The Times report, however, archaeologist Miles Russell claims that he has solid evidence which proves that King Arthur never existed and was only created as a "Celtic Superhero.”

The taking of Excalibur by John Duncan ( Public Domain )

Traditionally, Arthur is believed to have led the British when they defeated an invading Saxon army at the legendary Battle of Badon sometime between 490 and 520AD. However, archaeologist and senior lecturer at Bournemouth University, Miles Russell, strongly believes that the greatest warrior king in British history, is basically a fictional creation of five real-life warlords. “When you start to look at King Arthur in detail you realize that he is an amalgam of at least five separate characters — he never existed as an independent person at all,” Dr. Russell tells The Times.

 Glastonbury Monks Create Legends?
This is not the first time a respected scholar has claimed that Arthur was a fictional character. As previously reported by Liz Leafloor for Ancient Origins, the epic legends of King Arthur and his Round Table, among other ancient myths, may have been nothing more than fictional stories made up and peddled by enterprising monks at Glastonbury Abbey to make some money. What’s more, these legends muddied modern research into the site by “clouding the judgement” of past experts.

These, at least, were the claims made by a team of archaeologists from the University of Reading in 2015, after a conducting a four-year study. The physical history of the site was reexamined during the study and the conclusions were the following:

“Those feet, immortalized in William Blake’s poem Jerusalem, never walked on the green and pleasant land of Glastonbury; the oldest church in England was not built there by Christ’s disciples; Joseph of Arimathea’s walking stick does not miraculously flower every Christmas after 2,000 years. And it turns out that the supposed link with King Arthur and his beautiful queen, Guinevere, is false too – invented by 12th-century monks faced with a financial crisis in the wake of a disastrous fire.”

Archaeologists went on claiming that the Glastonbury monks clouded the history of the site by deliberately designing renovations after a fire in 1184. The redesign was said to have employed a purposeful archaic architectural style to generate a mythical feel, supporting popular legends and thereby raising more money from eager pilgrims. In addition, Arthur’s supposed grave has been revealed as a cemetery pit containing material dating from between the 11th and 15th centuries, offering no evidential links to the era of the legendary 5th and 6th century leader.

Glastonbury Abbey where King Arthur’s body was said to have been interred (Neil Howard / flickr)

The Role of Monmouth’s Book “A History of the Kings of Britain” to Arthur’s Legend
Dr. Russell explains that he came to his conclusion after studying “A History of the Kings of Britain,” written by Geoffrey of Monmouth in 1136, and other medieval texts. “Geoffrey’s book itself derives from a series of myths, stories and bardic praise poems that go back to the first century BC, at a time just before Britain became part of the Roman Empire,” Russell stated in a press release.

Initially, Dr. Russell noticed the obvious similarities between Arthur and Ambrosius Aurelianus, a leader of the Roman-British population in the fifth century. In the most contemporary account of the period, when Arthur was thought to exist, a British monk Gildas writing around 540AD in a scathing attack on the native Britons, names Ambrosius as the leader who leads the fight against the Saxon. What’s even more suspicious is that Gildas does not mention Arthur at all.

Other than Ambrosius Aurelianus, Dr. Russell cites Roman general Magnus Maximus, Byzantine Emperor Constantine the Great, and prehistoric warlords Arvirargus and Cassivellaunus as clear sources of inspiration for the creation of Arthur’s fictional character, “Once you take all these elements of his story away, there’s actually nothing left for Arthur,” Russell said as Bournemouth University’s official website reports. And added, “He’s an echo of all these other individuals – what Geoffrey of Monmouth did was create a Celtic superhero for his times, a character for the Britons to celebrate, taken from all the best bits of those individuals who lived before."

Magnus Maximus, one of the historical figures that Miles Russell believes was used to shape the character of King Arthur (Wikimedia Commons)

Dr. Russell presented his findings at the BBC History Magazine Conference at the Great Hall in Winchester on Saturday 7 October, while his book Arthur and the Kings of Britain: the historical truth behind the myths is out now, published by Amberley.

Top image: King Arthur. Detail. Charles Ernest Butler, 1903. (Public Domain)

By Theodoros Karasavvas

17th-century 'Great British Bake Off' recipes

History Extra

All images are © Wellcome Images

 Hannah Bisaker’s puff pastry, 1692

To make puff paist
 "Take halfe a quortorh of The Finest Flower then mix yo Flower and water
 and Four white of Eggs together, mould up yo paste but not too stiff,
Then role yo Past out into a Sheete. Then lay some Butter in litle Pecies
Till you have Filled yo sheete but doe not lay it Towards The ends to neare,
 Then Dust a little Flower with yo Drudging Box then Fould it up
Twice before you put any more Then doe soe Till yo have put in
a pound keeping it a little dusted very Fine yo put it to yo Butter,
handle it a little Then cut it to yo own

Fancie Lady Ann Fanshawe's icy cream, 1651-1707

To make Icy Cream
 Take three pints of the best cream, boyle it with
a blade of Mace, or else perfume it with orang flower water
 or Amber-Greece, sweeten the Cream, with sugar let it stand
till it is quite cold, then put it into Boxes, ether of Silver
 or tinn then take, Ice chopped into small peeces and
putt it into a tub and set the Boxes in the Ice couering
them all over, and let them stand in the Ice two
hours, and the Cream Will come to be Ice in the Boxes,
then turne them out into a salvar with some of the same
Seasoned Cream, so sarue it up at the Table.

 Lady Ann Fanshawe's sugar cakes, 1651-1707

To make Sugar Cakes
 Take 2 pound of Butter, one pound of fine Sugar, the yolkes of nine
Egs, a full Spoonfull of Mace beat & searsed [sifted], as much Flower as this
will well wett making them so stiffe as you may rowle it out, then
with the Cup of a glasse of what Size you please cutt
them into round Cakes; pricke them and bake them.

 Orange pudding c1685-c1725

To make Orange Pudding
 Take 2 Oranges pare them and cut them in little pieces,
then take 12 Ounces of fine Sugar, beat them in a stone morter,
put to them 12 Ounces of butter and 12 Yolkes of Eggs,
 and beat all these together, then make a very good paste,
and lay a sheet of paste upon a dish and so lay on your pudding,
and cover it with another sheet of paste,
 and set it in the oven, an hour will bake it

 How to Cook a Husband (c1710-1725)

How to Cook a Husband

 As Mr Glass said of the hare, you must first catch him. Having done so, the mode of cooking him, so as to make a good dish of him, is as follows. Many good husbands are spoiled in the cooking; some women go about it as if their husbands were bladders, and blow them up. Others keep them constantly in hot water, while others freeze them by conjugal coldness. Some smother them with hatred, contention and variance, and some keep them in pickle all their lives. These women always serve them up with tongue sauce. Now it cannot be supposed that husbands will be tender and good if managed in that way. But they are, on the contrary, very delicious when managed as follows: Get a large jar called the jar of carefulness, (which all good wives have on hand), place your husband in it, and set him near the fire of conjugal love; let the fire be pretty hot, but especially let it be clear - above all, let the heat be constant. Cover him over with affection, kindness and subjection. Garnish with modest, becoming familiarity, and the spice of pleasantry; and if you had kisses and other confectionaries let them be accompanied with a sufficient portion of secrecy, mixed with prudence and moderation. We would advise all good wives to try this receipt and realise how admirable a dish a husband is when properly cooked.

Buckingham Palace’s balcony: a focal point for national celebration

History Extra

On the weekend of 10–12 June, members of the British public, the media and the royal family will partake in a series of spectacular events to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s 90th birthday. The grandest celebrations will be enacted in the ceremonial spaces in the heart of central London. For more than 150 years these places have functioned as the sites where crown and people have come together to dramatise a vision of British national life resplendent and historic in character. The official programme for this year’s celebrations includes a special service of thanksgiving in honour of the queen at St Paul’s Cathedral, the annual trooping the colour on Horse Guards Parade, and a street party for 10,000 guests on the Mall – the ceremonial road linking Buckingham Palace to that other arena of Britishness, Trafalgar Square.

 Those unable to line London’s streets will be able to join in the fanfare and festivities from their living rooms as the weekend’s events play out on television. One of the climactic scenes orchestrated as part of the schedule will be the queen’s balcony appearance – that theatrical set-piece where the monarch and the masses appear to greet one another – that has been inscribed on the nation’s imagination through the power of live broadcasting. But even before radio and television, Buckingham Palace’s East Front balcony functioned as a focal point for public displays of unity centred on the sovereign and the royal family. What has changed over time are the meanings associated with this platform, and the symbolic salutation between crown and people enacted from it. 

Historians have identified how the balcony was redesigned as part of a wider palace-backed campaign to remodel London’s ceremonial centre in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In an age dominated by imperial ambition and international competition, European nations vied to construct grandiose capital cities that symbolised their wealth and overseas power.

 David Cannadine was one of the first historians to argue that the European building projects of this period were also intended to convey to new urban publics the enduring power of the social elite. In London, these imperial and hierarchical messages were communicated through new commemorative statues, and through an architectural plan that encompassed the widening of the Mall, the building of Admiralty Arch, the construction of the Victoria Memorial, and the re-fronting of Buckingham Palace.

Admiralty Arch, c1910. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The building work was completed by 1913 to create London’s first triumphal, ceremonial route, the culminating point of which was Buckingham Palace’s East Front. Although royalty had appeared on the palace veranda since 1851 with the opening of the Great Exhibition [the first international exhibition of manufactured products], the new ‘public face’ of Buckingham Palace was much grander and enabled a greater number of people to assemble in front of the gates. So it was on the evening of 4 August 1914 when, having convened a special council to declare war on Germany, George V was called out onto the balcony three times by a crowd who wanted their sovereign to signal his approval of the impending conflict. The king, in turn, interpreted the cheers of the thousands who had gathered around the Victoria Memorial as vindication of his government’s decision to join the fray, recording in his diary that “now everyone is for war and for helping our friends”. Queen Mary, who had joined him on the balcony, similarly noted how “we have the feeling of being supported by the people which is the great & glorious thing”.

 The popularisation of the palace balcony as the altar where crown and people communed at times of national importance was secured with the Allied defeat of Germany and the Armistice on 11 November 1918. Night after night, crowds called the king and queen to the balcony to cheer and wave to them, elevating the monarchs as symbols of the nation’s victory. But now this was a ritual that members of the public outside of London could join in as well. Advances in film technologies meant that newsreel cameras captured the scenes of jubilation along the Mall and outside Buckingham Palace. And so, for the first time, Britain’s cinema audiences could partake in the moments when George V and his consort stepped out onto the balcony to acknowledge the crowds’ cheers.

11 November 1918: a jubilant crowd outside Buckingham Palace celebrates the end of the First World War. The royal family appears on the balcony. (Photo by Spencer Arnold/Getty Images)

This pattern continued through the interwar years with four of George V’s children marrying in a succession of spectacular royal weddings. In a period beset by social and political unrest, the royal marriages of 1922, 1923, 1934 and 1935 were staged by the monarchy and media as national events in order to generate unity and cohesion among the British public. With their emphasis on love and family, the interwar weddings also intensified the personal character of monarchy.

 Princess Mary and her husband became the first royal newlyweds to acknowledge the crowd’s cheers from Buckingham Palace’s balcony in 1922, and in 1934, Prince George, Duke of Kent, and his bride, Princess Marina of Greece, added a further personal touch when they became the first members of the royal family to wave from the balcony to those massed below. This new intimate form of communication contrasted with the bowing that royalty had traditionally used to signal appreciation of a crowd’s ovation, and it immediately took off: at George V’s Silver Jubilee in 1935, the nine-year-old Elizabeth II could be seen waving to the people gathered outside the palace gates, and she did so again alongside her younger sister, Princess Margaret Rose, at their father’s coronation in 1937.

George V and Queen Mary present their daughter, Princess Mary, on the balcony of Buckingham Palace with her new husband, Viscount Lascelles, 28 February 1922. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

In the newsreel coverage of these events, special attention was devoted to the huge crowds that gathered to acclaim the royal family. The arrival of sound newsreels and BBC radio in the mid-1920s also enabled the media to convey the audial atmosphere that characterised these symbolic manifestations of national unity.

 Britain’s victory in the Second World War further enhanced the function of the palace balcony as a focal point for national celebration with the prime minister, Winston Churchill, famously joining the royal family there during the VE Day celebrations. The monarchy’s close association with the armed forces was similarly strengthened with the introduction of the RAF fly-past in these years. Initially popularised during the reigns of George V and George VI, it was as part of the televised balcony appearance following Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation that the fly-past was immortalised as a new ritual in the royal repertoire.

 Now, more than 60 years on, the royal balcony appearance remains an important moment that encapsulates the abiding connection between British people and the crown. The royal protagonists who have stood and greeted their well-wishers from this platform have aged and changed over time, but the continuation of the British dynasty through the Windsor line and the focus on the family group as they smile and wave from the palace balcony helps to remind us of the enduring centrality of monarchy to public life and to the nation’s recent history.

 Ed Owens is a historian and lecturer who is currently writing a new book on the relationship between the British monarchy, media and public in the 20th century.

How Were Anglo-Saxon Marriage Ceremonies Different From Modern Weddings?

Made From History

BY CRAIG BESSELL

Weddings, for the people of Dark Age Britain, were more business arrangements than declarations of love. There were several formal customs to adhere to, mainly regarding money, before the marriage could be sealed.

 Marriage Was Like a Business Transaction The contract of marriage was settled on between the prospective groom and the father of the bride. Terms would be discussed in the presence of witnesses from both sides before an agreement could be reached, upon which both groom and the bride’s father would shake hands, officially sealing the contract.

The men of both families would meet first to discuss the terms of the marriage contract.

 The three financial parts of the contract were:

 Morning Gift
 A set amount agreed by the groom and father-in-law that the former must pay to his wife the morning after the wedding. This gift of money was to ensure the financial security of the bride and provide some independence. This sum was the woman’s to keep indefinitely and would help to support her and any children if anything were to happen to her husband.

 Handgeld
 Another gift of money was given to the family of the bride. This monetary exchange showed that the groom was able to look after his future wife financially and it also acted as an act of compensation for the bride’s family because she was leaving them. Essentially the groom would buy his wife.

 The groom had to spend quite a lot just to have the wedding agreed upon, however the bride’s family also had to present some money.

 Bride’s Dowry
 This was paid by her family to her. It was similar to the Morning Gift in that the money was the bride’s to do with what she would and in theory would support her in the event that anything happened to her husband.

The various financial agreements could be paid in coins, a certain amount of raw precious metal, or even in land and livestock.

 This businesslike agreement may seem strange, but these were uncertain times. Death could be lurking behind any bush, hill or tree in the shape of a marauding Viking, another Saxon war-band, the Welsh or, even more likely, disease. The above financial agreement would ensure the bride was cared for in the likely event that her husband should die.

 A Ceremony of Ritual and Religion
The actual wedding was much less businesslike, though there were many traditions to be adhered to. A wedding was usually the time for a wash; a unique event in these times, most people washing only twice a year at most. Both bride and groom would bathe separately the night before the wedding and would not be allowed to see each other until the day of the ceremony.

 On the day, both would be dressed in their best clothes and the groom would be wearing his ancestral sword. The bride would arrive preceded by a member of her family carrying a new sword to be presented to the groom. A priest or Weofodthegn would officiate the ceremony. A Weofodthegn was a priest of the Old Saxon religion, with gods like Woden and Thunor.

The priest would first bless the union, calling on the gods to look favourably upon the couple. Frige, the mother of the gods, would be the deity most called upon, as she was the goddess of love, fertility and marriage.

 Next there would be the official exchange of swords. The groom would receive the new blade, provided by the bride’s family, and the bride would receive the groom’s family’s ancestral sword to one day pass on to their eldest son and heir.

Found in Abingdon, Oxfordshire this hilt, and what is left of the blade, is a good exmple of the Saxon swords exchanged during the ceremony.

 Then another exchange would take place, one more familiar to a modern audience — the exchange of rings. The groom would also present the keys to his house to his new wife. This represented him bestowing upon her governance of the household, just as the sword he received earlier represented his protection of that home.

 Finally, the Weofodthegn would pronounce them wedded and at last everyone could celebrate.

 Eat, Drink and Be Married

When the solemn ceremony was over and the marriage contract sealed, the Saxons woud feast and celebrate.

 A reception would be held after the wedding, similar to a modern one. The couple and their families would eat, drink and make merry, all the while toasting the gods and asking for blessings for the marriage.

 For a month after the wedding the couple would drink mead every day. Mead is an alcoholic beverage made from honey, quite popular at the time. This month was called the hunigmonap, or honeymoon, for this reason.

The Hidden History of Roman London

Made From History


BY GRAHAM LAND

 The Romans founded London as Londinium in 47 AD, later building a bridge over the River Thames and establishing the settlement as a port with roads leading to other outposts in Roman Britain.

 As the largest Roman city in Britannia, London remained under Rome’s authority until 410 AD, a very substantial stretch of time.

 The Origins of London Though Londinium began as a small fortified settlement, after it was demolished by a massive force of native tribes led by Queen Boudica in 60 AD, it was rebuilt as a planned Roman town and expanded rapidly.

 Around 50 years after its founding London was home to some 60,000 inhabitants.

 Life in Londinium

A model depicting life in Roman London during 85-90 AD. Credit: Steven G. Johnson (Wikimedia Commons)

 Though Romanised, most of the population of London were native Britons, including soldiers, families, labourers, tradesmen, sailors and slaves. For the average Londoner, life was tough, though there were relaxing pursuits imported by Rome, including bathhouses, taverns and amphitheatres. People could also unwind during the many Roman festivals celebrated in the city.

 Religion in Roman London
One of London’s most significant archaeological finds dating from Roman times is a temple to the Persian God Mithras, the London Mithraeum, uncovered in 1954. The cult of Mithras, though not Roman or Hellenistic in origin, was popular in the Empire for a time.

 For the most part, however, Londoners worshiped the gods of the Romans, which were mostly derived from the Greek pantheon. In the late period of occupation Christianity began to make inroads.

Finds from the London Temple of Mithras in the Museum of London. Credit: Carole Raddato (Wikimedia Commons)

 Decline and Fall
Londinium was at its peak in the 2nd century when Emperor Hadrian visited on one of his many travels around the Empire. But by the next century, things were headed downhill. Instability and economic troubles of the Empire increased the city’s vulnerability to Barbarian raids and pirate attacks.

 Around 200 AD a defensive wall was built, encircling the city. The population dwindled over the following 200 years.

 By the 4th century, public buildings were demolished (maybe due to a rebellion) and the settlement south of the Thames was abandoned. By 407 Emperor Constantine II withdrew all forces from the city and subsequently Emperor Honorius left London’s defence to the Britons.

 While some aspects of Roman culture and lifestyle remained, particularly among the wealthy classes, officially London was Roman-less.

 Roman London Today
London has maintained a population for over 1,600 years since the Romans left. Time, the elements, demolitions and construction have long removed most visible features of old Londinium. Yet much remains, buried underground and in urban features that survived throughout the years, such as roads that were continually repaved or the odd building foundation.

A surviving remnant of the Roman Wall at Tower Hill. In front is a replica of a statue of Emperor Trajan. Credit: Gene.arboit (Wikimedia Commons)

 Some remnants of Roman London can still be seen today, including sections of the Roman Wall at Tower Hill, the Barbican Estate and on the grounds of the Museum of London.

 Excavations throughout the years have also exposed much of the city’s Latin past, like the Roman house at Billingsgate (uncovered in 1848) and the 2013 discovery of entire Roman streets and countless well-preserved artefacts at the building site of Bloomberg Place in London’s financial district. A Roman ship was found in the Thames in 1963.

 Small artefacts like Roman pottery, statuettes and coins, even brothel tokens, are still routinely found in the city’s main river.

Frontiers of the Roman Empire: Dividing Us From Them

Made From History

BY COLIN RICKETTS

The Roman Empire became very cosmopolitan, containing many races and cultures and granting limited citizenship to many conquered people. However, there was still a strong sense of ‘us and them’ in Roman society – hierarchically between citizen and slave, and geographically between the civilised and the barbarian. The Empire’s frontiers were simple military barriers, but also a dividing line between two ways of life, keeping one safe from the other.

The Limits of the Empire
As Rome expanded out of Italy from the 2nd century BC, there was no force capable of stopping its legions. It’s also important to note that conquest wasn’t always a straight-forward military matter. Rome traded and talked with neighbouring peoples, often having client kings in place before the troops went in. And the Empire – civilised, peaceful, prosperous – was an attractive system to join. 

Everything has limits though and Rome found its in the early 2nd century AD. The subsequent problems in enforcing central power and the eventual splitting of the Empire into as many as four parts suggests that this territory was already too much to manage successfully. Some historians argue that the limit was military, marking a boundary between cultures that fight on foot and the masters of cavalry warfare whom Rome could not defeat.

The Empire at its largest extent, at Trajan’s death in 117 AD.

 Many of the Empire’s boundaries were natural. For example, in North Africa it was the northern edge of the Sahara. In Europe, the Rhine and Danube rivers provided stable eastern borders for long periods; in the Middle East it was the Euphrates.

 The Last Outpost
The Romans also built great frontiers. These were called limes, the Latin word which is the root for our ‘limits’. They were considered the edge of defensible territory and Roman power, and there was an understanding that only exceptional circumstances justified going beyond them. Soldiers sometimes mutinied when they felt the limes were preventing them from doing their job, and were often rewarded with an expedition to sort out whichever uppity tribe had provoked them.

The nature of the defences varied from place to place. Hadrian’s Wall, marking the northern edge of the Empire in Britannia, was the most impressive, with its high stone walls and well-designed and built forts. In Germania, the limes started as an area of felled forest, like a fire break with wooden watch towers. A wooden fence was later added and more forts built. In Arabia, there was no barrier. An important road built by Trajan marked the boundary and forts were built at regular intervals and around the easiest invasion routes from the desert.

 Even at their most imposing the limes could be a little porous. Trade was allowed, and people north of Hadrian’s Wall were being taxed to some extent. In fact, the borders of the Empire were commercial hotspots.

 The Limes: Rome’s Imperial Borders
The best known and preserved limes are:

Hadrian’s Wall
 From the Solway Firth to Wallsend on the River Tyne in the north of the UK, this 117.5-km wall was 6 metres tall in places. A ditch protected the north of the wall while a road to the south helped troops get about quickly. Small mile castles were supplemented with major forts at larger intervals. It only took six years to build. The Antonine Wall further north wasn’t a manned frontier for long.

 The Limes Germanicus
 This line was built from 83 AD and stood firm until around 260 AD. They ran from the Rhine’s northern estuary to Regensburg on the Danube at their longest, a length of 568 km. Earthworks were supplemented with a palisade fence with walls being built later in parts. There were 60 major forts and 900 watchtowers along the Limes Germanicus, often in several layers where invaders could mass in large numbers.

 The Limes Arabicus
 This frontier was 1,500 km long, protecting the province of Arabia. Trajan built the Via Nova Traiana road along several hundred kilometres of its length. Large Forts were placed only at strategic danger points with smaller forts every 100 km or so.

The Limes Tripolitanus
 More of a zone than a barrier, this limes defended important cities in Libya, first from the desert Garamantes tribe, who were persuaded that trading with Rome was better than fighting it, and then from nomadic raiders. The first fort was built in 75 AD. As the Limes grew they brought prosperity, with soldiers settling to farm and trade. The boundary survived into the Byzantine Era. Today, the remains of Roman fortifications are some of the best in the world.

 Other Limes
 —The Limes Alutanus marked the eastern European frontier of the Roman province of Dacia.
 —The Limes Transalutanus was the lower-Danube frontier.
 —Limes Moesiae ran through modern Serbia along the Danube to Moldavia.
 —Limes Norici protected Noricum from the River Inn to the Danube in modern Austria.
 —Limes Pannonicus was the boundary of the province of Pannonia in modern Austrian and Serbia.

 The British and German limes are already part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site and more will be added in time.

Archaeologists Discover Ancient British Stones Have Secret Markings Visible Only at Night

Ancient Origins

A new study suggests that Stonehenge and other ancient stone memorials could have been used for sacred moonlit ceremonies which took place late at night. The archaeologists taking part in this study have come to this conclusion, after finding that some mysterious messages are visible only at night.

 The Peculiarity of Hendraburnick Quoit
Until recently, Neolithic structures were thought to be exclusively connected with the movements of the sun, with the immense Wiltshire circle of Stonehenge being the ultimate example, as the specific monument lines up perfectly with the summer solstice. However, a new archaeological study implies that the Neolithic monument was used differently than most structures of its kind. As The Telegraph reports, the new examination of the Stone Age engraved panel Hendraburnick Quoit in Cornwall by Dr. Andy Jones – who has been working in conjunction with the Cornwall Archaeological Unit – showed ten times as many markings on the engraved panel when viewed in moonlight or very low sunlight from the south east.

Marks on the rock came into view under a camera flash and would have lit up in moonlight Credit: Dr Andy Jones

 For those who might not be aware of the specific monument, keep in mind that Hendraburnick “Quoit” is in fact a misnomer. In reality is not a quoit at all, but an impressive and picturesque propped stone, lying upon a gently rolling valley-side in Cornwall. It is an exciting site, and aside from being a testament to the power of prehistoric people to shift these enormous stones, it also highlights many ancient engravings known as cup-marks, which involve the hollowing out of rounded dimples in the rock.

Hendraburnick Quoit (CC BY SA 2.0)

Special “Effects” under the Moonlight
 Interestingly, archaeologists also noticed that at some point in history, people who probably occupied the location near the site smashed up many pieces of quartz around the area which would have radiated light in the dark, thereby giving a unique and impressive effect during the night.

Dr. Jones claims that this unique phenomenon didn’t take place at the Hendraburnick Quoit exclusively, but instead it has also been traced in a few other ancient stone monuments such as Stonehenge for example. He told The Telegraph, “I think the new marks show that this site was used at night and it is likely that other megalithic sites were as well. We were aware there were some cup and ring marks on the rocks but we were there on a sunny afternoon and noticed it was casting shadows on others which nobody had seen before. When we went out to do some imaging at night, when the camera flashed we suddenly saw more and more art, which suggested that it was meant to be seen at night and in the moonlight.”

llustration of the marks found on the rock Credit: Thomas Goskar

Sacred Attribute of the Hendraburnick Quoit
Writing in the archaeology journal Time and Mine, Dr. Jones and colleague Thomas Goskar conclude, “As in many cultures where darkness is associated with the supernatural and the heightening of senses, it is possible that some activities at Hendraburnick Quoit may have been undertaken at night. Quartz has luminescent properties and reflects both moonlight and firelight. Given that human eye perceives color and shade quite differently at night than by daylight and the art would have been visible in moonlit conditions, the smashed quartz at Hendraburnick could have been used as part of night time activity on the site in order to ‘release’ the luminescent properties of the quartz around the monument and ‘reveal’ the art in a particular way. After the ritual, the broken pieces, once they had fallen on the ground, could have effectively formed a wider platform or arc which would have continued to glisten around it in the moonlight, and thereby added to the ‘aura’ of the site.”

Next step for archaeologists is to discover what exactly happened during these special ceremonies under the moonlight. The new research was published in the archaeology journal Time and Mind.

Top image: Lanyon Quoit. Used as the overriding image of ancient Cornwall and also known as the Giant's Table. (CC BY SA 2.0)

By Theodoros Karasavvas

Who Pulled the Sword from the Stone? The Truth of the Swords of King Arthur

Ancient Origins

This spring a new movie, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, is to hit the big screens. Staring Charlie Hunnam as the fabled warrior, the film title suggests that the central theme is Arthur’s legendary sword. It will be interesting to see just how the sword is depicted, considering that previous Arthurian epics have been far from true to the original tales.

 The Sword in the Stone
The theme of King Arthur pulling the sword from a stone in order to prove himself worthy to rule is perhaps the most muddled of all the Arthurian legends.

Arthur Draws the Sword from the Stone, by the nineteenth-century English artist Walter Crane. (Public Domain)

To start with, in the original story the sword is stuck in an anvil that rests on a stone—not in the stone itself. And the sword in question is not Excalibur, as commonly believed, but a completely different weapon. The usual setting for the event portrayed by Hollywood is somewhere in the countryside or in a dark forest. However, in the Arthurian romances composed during the Middle Ages, the episode takes place right in the heart of London. The oldest surviving version of the sword and stone story was written by the Burgundian poet Robert de Boron, around the year 1200, who claimed to have taken the theme from a much earlier Dark Age account. According to Robert, the event occurs in the churchyard of “the greatest church in London.”

Merlin dictating his prophecies to his scribe, Blaise; French 13th century miniature from Robert de Boron's Merlin en Prose (written ca 1200). (Public Domain)

Since Roman times, the largest and most important church in the British capital has been St. Paul’s Cathedral. Although St. Paul’s went through many periods of reconstruction, culminating with the building we see today, erected in the late 1600s, its location is recorded as having been the seat of the bishops of London since the Romans ruled Britain in the 4th century. As cathedrals were the seats of bishops, it’s certain then that there had been a cathedral on the site, whether or not it was originally dedicated to St. Paul, during the time Arthur is said to have lived— around the year 500.

 Surprisingly, an ancient stone really did stand in St. Paul’s churchyard during the Middle Ages that was recorded as being associated with a sword of power. Surviving records dating from as early as eleven hundred years ago refer to the stone as having great ceremonial significance, marking the traditional place where laws were passed and proclamations issued. After 1189, when Henry Fitz-Ailwin became London’s first mayor, the inauguration ceremony expressly required the new incumbent to strike the stone with his sword to validate his entitlement to govern the city. Just how far back the tradition associating the stone with a sword of authority actually goes is unknown, but it certainly existed when Robert de Boron penned his work.

The London Stone
Against all odds, this ancient stone still survives, and local folklore does associate it with King Arthur. Known as the London Stone, it was removed from the churchyard when St. Paul’s was rebuilt after the Great Fire of London in 1666. More recently, and for many years, the stone lay unnoticed and almost forgotten, set into a niche in the wall of a bookstore opposite Cannon Street Station, where it was practically obscured by an iron grille.

The London Stone. (Photography by Debbie Cartwright)

The building is now being demolished to make way for a new one, and the London Stone has been taken to the nearby Museum of London. The object is a block of limestone, approximately 53 × 43 × 30 centimeters (21 × 17 × 12 inches) in size, the remnant of what was once a somewhat larger item, and the museum has confirmed that the artifact could well be of Roman origin, making it old enough to have been in the cathedral churchyard at the time King Arthur is said to have lived.

The London Stone was hidden away for years behind an iron grille on a busy city street. (Photography by Debbie Cartwright)

The Angles and Saxons
The unusual notion of a sword being stuck in an anvil on top of a stone might be accounted for by an early mistranslation or mix-up of words. Arthur is said to have successfully fought against the invading Anglo-Saxons, originally two separate tribes— the Angles and Saxons— from northern Germany. The Latin word for a rock or large fragment of stone is saxum, a word that sounds very similar to “Saxon.” This, together with the similarity of the name “Angle” and the word “anvil,” might explain how the unusual motif originated. If the legend held that Arthur had “drawn the sword” – in other word, “taken the fight” – from the Angles and Saxons, then at some point during the turmoil following the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 400s, and the subsequent lack of historical records, oral accounts may have become confused. By Robert de Boron’s time, an account of Arthur seizing the initiative from the Angles and Saxons might well have evolved into the story of him drawing a sword from an anvil and stone.

 Excalibur
Excalibur is another sword entirely. In the medieval Arthurian tales, Merlin takes Arthur to receive this marvelous weapon from a mysterious water nymph called the Lady of the Lake.

King Arthur asks the Lady of the Lake for the Sword Excalibur, by the nineteenth-century English artist Walter Crane. (Public Domain)

And when the king ultimately lies dying on the field of battle, Excalibur is thrown into an enchanted pool, where the Lady of the Lake catches the weapon and takes it down into the watery depths. This theme probably developed from the ancient Celtic practice of casting prized belongings, such as swords, into sacred lakes and pools as offerings to a water goddess. Archaeologists have uncovered many such objects: for example, from the bed of the dried-up lake of Llyn Cerrig Bach on the island of Anglesey in North Wales. It is thought that warriors’ swords were thrown into such hallowed waters during funerals so as to assure the spirit’s safe passage to the afterlife.

Sir Bedevere Casts the Sword Excalibur into the Lake, by the nineteenth-century English artist Walter Crane. (Public Domain)

A Historical Sword
Perhaps the most common mistake made by Hollywood in the portrayal of Arthur’s sword, be it Excalibur or the one connected with the stone, is to depict it as a long, medieval “arming sword,” commonly, but wrongly, referred to as a broadsword. Around the year 500, the period in which the story of Arthur is set, swords would have been much shorter, with a stunted cross-guard, such as the Roman-style cavalry sword, the spatha.

A historical “Excalibur.” Replica of a high-status spatha, a short Roman-style sword possessed by post-Roman British chieftains. (Photography by Debbie Cartwright)

These were basically used for cutting down opponents from horseback, rather than for swordfights as depicted in the movies. The spatha seems to have been adopted as a sword of office by the post-Roman Britons, so if there was an historical Arthur then his sword would most likely have been one of these.

So, when you watch what is promising to be the new blockbuster Arthurian movie, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, perhaps it would be fun to tick off just how many aspects of the “legend” tie up with the original tales, or the historical period in which the story was first set.

A fuller account of this investigation into the legends of King Arthur can be found on Graham Phillips’ website: grahamphillips.net

And in his book The Lost Tomb of King Arthur ***