The Legendary Origins of Merlin the Magician

Ancient Origins

Most people today have heard of Merlin the Magician, as his name has been popularized over the centuries and his story has been dramatized in numerous novels, films, and television programs. The powerful wizard is depicted with many magical powers, including the power of shapeshifting and is well-known in mythology as a tutor and mentor to the legendary King Arthur, ultimately guiding him towards becoming the king of Camelot. While these general tales are well-known, Merlin’s initial appearances were only somewhat linked to Arthur. It took many decades of adaptations before Merlin became the wizard of Arthurian legend he is known as today.

Merlin the wizard. Credit: Andy / flickr

It is common belief that Merlin was created as a figure for Arthurian legend. While Merlin the Wizard was a very prominent character in the stories of Camelot, that is not where he originated. Writer Geoffrey of Monmouth is credited with creating Merlin in his 1136 AD work, Historia Regum Britanniae – The History of Kings of Britain. While a large portion of Historia Regum Britanniae is a historical account of the former kings of Britain, Merlin was included as a fictional character (although it is likely that Geoffrey intended for readers to believe he was a figure extracted from long-lost ancient texts). Merlin was paradoxical, as he was both the son of the devil and the servant of God.

Merlin was created as a combination of several historical and legendary figures. Geoffrey combined stories of North Brythonic prophet and madman, Myrddin Wyllt, and Romano-British war leader, Ambrosius Aurelianus, to create Merlin Ambrosius. Ambrosius was a figure in Nennius' Historia Brittonum. In Historia Brittonum, British king Vortigern wished to erect a tower, but each time he tried it would collapse before completion. He was told that to prevent this, he would have to first sprinkle the ground beneath the tower with the blood of a child who was born without a father. Ambrosius was thought to have been born without a father, so he was brought before Vortigern. Ambrosius explains to Vortigern that the tower could not be supported upon the foundation because two battling dragons lived beneath, representing the Saxons and the Britons. Ambrosius convinced Vortigern that the tower will only stand with Ambrosius as a leader, and Vortigern gave Ambrosius the tower, which is also the kingdom. Geoffrey retells this story with Merlin as the child born without a father, although he retains the character of Ambrosius.

Illumination of a 15th century manuscript of Historia Regum Britanniae showing king of the Britons Vortigern and Ambros waching the fight between two dragons. (Wikimedia Commons)

In Geoffrey’s version of the story, he includes a long section containing Merlin’s prophecies, along with two other stories, which led to the inclusion of Merlin into Arthurian legend. These include the tale of Merlin creating Stonehenge as the burial location for Ambrosius, and the story of Uther Pendragon sneaking into Tintagel where he father Arthur with Igraine, his enemy’s wife. This was the extent of Geoffrey’s tales of Merlin. Geoffrey does not include any stories of Merlin acting as a tutor to Arthur, which is how Merlin is most well-known today. Geoffery’s character of Merlin quickly became popular, particularly in Wales, and from there the tales were adapted, eventually leading to Merlin’s role as Arthur’s tutor.

A giant helps Merlin build Stonehenge. From a manuscript of the Roman de Brut by Wace (Wikimedia Commons)

 Many years after Geoffrey’s Historia Regum Britanniae, Robert de Boron composed a poem called Merlin. Boron’s Merlin has the same origins as Geoffrey’s creation, but Boron places special emphasis on Merlin’s shapeshifting powers, connection to the Holy Grail, and his jokester personality. Boron also introduces Blaise, Merlin’s master. Boron’s poem was eventually re-written in prose as Estoire de Merlin, which also places much focus upon Merlin’s shapeshifting. Over the years, Merlin was interspersed through the tales of Arthurian legend. Some writings placed much focus upon Merlin as Arthur’s mentor, while others did not mention Merlin at all. In some tales Merlin was viewed as an evil figure who did no good in his life, while in others he was viewed favorably as Arthur’s teacher and mentor.

Merlin reciting his poem in a 13th-century illustration for ‘Merlin’ by Robert de Boron (Wikimedia Commons)

Eventually, from the various tales emerged Merlin’s downfall, at the hands of Niviane (Vivien), the king of Northumberland’s daughter. Arthur convinces Niviane to stay in his castle, under Merlin’s encouragement. Merlin falls in love with Niviane. However, Niviane fears Merlin will use his magical powers to take advantage of her. She swears that she will never fall in love with him, unless he teaches her all of the magic he knows. Merlin agrees. Merlin and Niviane depart to return to Northumberland, when they are called back to assist King Arthur. As they are returning, they stop to stay in a stone chamber, where two lovers once died and were buried together. When Merlin falls asleep, Niviane places him under a spell, and traps him within the stone tomb, where he dies. Merlin had never realized that his desire for Niviane, and his willingness to teach her his magical ways, would eventually lead to his untimely death.

Merlin and Vivien dated 1867 by Gustave Dore (Wikimedia Commons)

From Merlin’s inception through the writings of Geoffrey, the wizard appeared in many subsequent tales, stories, and poems. Today, Merlin is most well-known for being the wizard who tutored and taught the young Arthur, before he grew to become the King of Camelot. It was under Merlin’s counsel that Arthur became the king that he was. While this legend continues on today, it is interesting to see the many variations of Merlin, from an evil wizard, to a shapeshifter, to one who met his downfall from teaching his powers to the woman he loved. This powerful and versatile character caught the attention of many people centuries ago, and continues to play a prominent role in today’s storytelling.

By M R Reese

Did Dutch Invaders Wipe Out Bronze Age Britons During the Construction of Stonehenge?

Ancient Origins

A new gene study suggests that large groups of newcomers arrived in Britain during the building of Stonehenge, around 2500 BC. The new study also implies that the possible invaders could have gradually replaced the people who were constructing Stonehenge.

 Did Bronze Age Invaders Replace England’s Original Population 4,500 Years Ago?
It’s no secret that the people who built Stonehenge – undoubtedly the most significant prehistoric British monument – left behind a lasting legacy that will hopefully live for many centuries to come. A new study, however, suggests that the influence of those people wasn’t as significant in other fields of the nation’s history and culture. As the Guardian reports, their input into Britain’s gene pool appears to vanish at some point, possibly terminated by Bronze Age newcomers who invaded the lands of Britain while ancient Britons were constructing Stonehenge. According to the study, it’s very possible that during the end of Stonehenge’s building, these newcomers may have totally replaced the people who were building the iconic monument.

Were the creators of Stonehenge wiped out by Dutch invaders (public domain)

This surprising conclusion is the result of an immense gene study of humans in prehistoric Europe which clearly shows that around 2500 BC, large groups of people known to archaeologists as the “Beaker folk” arrived in Britain. Their DNA seems to be very similar to the people who occupied the Netherlands at the time, and they appear to genetically replace the ancient Britons during the construction of Stonehenge. “It is very striking. There seems to have been a complete replacement of the original folk of Britain with these newcomers. Normally you get some older DNA surviving with a wave of immigrants, even a fairly large wave. But you don’t see that in this case. Frankly it looks more like an invasion,” tells the Guardian Garrett Hellenthal, a statistical geneticist from the University College London.

The Mysterious Spread of the Beaker Folk Race and their Unique Pottery
The arrival and spread of the Beaker folk is one of the most mysterious puzzles of European prehistory. They most likely originated from modern-day Spain, but they would rapidly spread into central and western Europe while searching for valuable metals. A warlike tribe, Beaker folk people were mainly bowmen but were also armed with a flat, tanged dagger or spearhead of copper, and a curved, rectangular wrist guard. In central Europe they came into contact with the Corded Ware culture, which was also characterized by beaker-shaped pottery and by the use of horses and a shaft-hole battle-ax. The two cultures gradually intermixed and later spread from central Europe to eastern England.

Reconstruction of a Beaker burial, (National Archaeological Museum of Spain, Madrid). (Miguel Hermoso Cuesta/CC BY SA 4.0)

 The Beaker folk got their name from their distinctive pottery and their characteristic bell-shaped beakers, decorated in horizontal zones by finely toothed stamps and it is believed that their extensive search for copper and gold contributed greatly to the spread of bronze metallurgy in Europe. At the same time, this rapid spread of Beaker pots has been puzzling archaeologists for many years. On one hand, some suggest that the appearance of Beaker artifacts reflects a massive migration or even invasion of large groups of people who brought their ornaments and tools with them. On the other hand, there are those who believe that Beaker pots spread simply because they were seen as the artistic trend of the Bronze Age. As for the truth? Archaeologists remain divided over the matter to this day.

Ceramic beakers of the Beaker Culture (braasch-megalith.de)

Recent Study Partially Solves the Mystery
A recent gene study published on the website bioRxiv earlier this month, attempted to solve the mystery and to some extent, it appears to succeed doing so. Led by Iñigo Olalde and David Reich of Harvard Medical School, the study was one of the largest ancient genome analyses in recent history, involving more than a hundred scientists working at many research centers in different countries. Additionally, the study included analyses of more than a million pieces of DNA taken from remains found at burial sites of people who had lived across Europe between 4700 BC and 1200 BC. As it was expected, the results were impressive. An amazed Marc Vander Linden (archaeologist from University College London) told the Guardian, “In Europe, it was the pots – and other fashionable artefacts – that moved, not the people.” In other words, Linden declared that despite the massive spread of Beaker artefacts across Europe, there was no replacement of the human population; just a fashion trend.

However, in Britain things are different. The arrival of Beaker pots and artifacts coincided with the disappearance of the genes of the Stone Age people who had been inhabiting the region. Their genes were replaced with DNA associated with that of Beaker people, who have been traced to a region in the modern Netherlands. No evidence of battles have been found in the area, so we don’t know if this happened violently or gradually in a peaceful manner.

Ancient Briton DNA Became Extinct?
Pontus Skoglund, a Harvard Medical School geneticist suggests that the Stone Age farmers who were constructing Stonehenge at the time, were suddenly replaced by Beaker folk invaders, “The people who built Stonehenge probably did not contribute any ancestry to later people or, if they did, it was very little,” he told the Guardian. However, archaeologist Ben Roberts from Durham University appears to be a little more cautious about such conclusions, “There is no doubt that ancient DNA studies are redefining our prehistory, but this work is based on a fairly small sample. The conclusion that there was almost complete replacement of DNA at this time is pushing the data a bit too far. However, this has certainly triggered a renewed debate about the Beaker. We just need more data,” he said as the Guardian reports. His point found in agreement Linden who stated, “This apparent replacement is very striking, but it is possible our results are being skewed. In particular, the introduction of cremation at this time could have destroyed bones that would otherwise have provided DNA samples and which could change results. This is certainly not the end of the story.”

Top image: Ancient Britons by Nicholas Subkov.

 By Theodoros Karasavvas

The Celts: unpicking the mystery

History Extra

Boudicca was considered to be a personification of the goddess Andrasta, says Martin Wall. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

When Greek explorer Pytheas of Massalia made a voyage of exploration to Britain over 300 years before Christ, he called the native peoples Pretanike or ‘the people of the designs’ because of the crazy patterns that warriors painted on their skin. Pretanike or Pretani morphed into ‘Britannia’ or Britain.

 These early Britons and their neighbours in Ireland all spoke some form of Celtic language by the fifth century BC. Their religious beliefs, their gods and goddesses, laws and military methods, technology and art were common to all Celtic peoples, whose settlements extended from Galatia in modern Turkey, through central and Western Europe and the British Isles, all the way to Celt-Iberia constituting Spain and Portugal. But the Celts were intensely independent and tribal. Even within Britain, a host of separate and distinct tribes zealously guarded their ancestral territories, ruled by kings whose ultimate legitimacy was based on divine descent. The priest-magicians who guided these kings and their tribal peoples, the Druids, were described by Julius Caesar as having originated in Britain.

 Not all Britons lived in ‘Britain’, however. Britons occupied territories in an arc from central Scotland all the way to the Loire Valley in France. As a result of the Anglo-Saxon invasions in the fifth century AD, many Britons were forced to emigrate, some to Armorica (modern Brittany), which is still named after them; others went to Britonia in north-west Spain.

 What made a Celt?
The matter of how each wave of Celts was united and divided by both language and religion is one of lively debate.

 Celtic peoples throughout Europe and Asia Minor shared common cultural, technological, legal and spiritual characteristics, and their languages were broadly similar. But no ‘Briton’ thought of themselves as ‘Celtic’ or ‘British’. Their loyalty and kinship connections were to the clan, the tribe – so they were of the Iceni tribe, or the Cornovii or the Catuvellauni, first and foremost. In recent years, revisionist historians have sought to dismiss the traditional account of Celtic settlement, and indeed to ‘dis-invest’ the Celts as an authentic ethnicity with its own distinctive culture.

 Though I take note of current fashionable theories regarding each ‘wave’ of Celtic arrivals in Britain, I have not strayed very far from the traditional view, which was that three waves of Celtic immigrants from the continent arrived, commencing around 900 BC. The first wave, were called Goidels or Gaels. They pronounced the letter ‘Q’ as ‘qu’ or ‘cu’, whereas a secondary wave of Britons pronounced it as ‘p’ or ‘b’. This linguistic difference has long been cited by philologists as the best evidence for distinct waves of immigration, some centuries apart. Finally, about 50 years before the Roman invasions, a tribe called the Belgae or ‘boastful ones’ arrived, and established control over much of the south-east. They had been displaced in their turn by movements among Germanic tribes and by the onset of a much more dangerous threat: Rome.

A depiction of Julius Caesar’s invasion of Britain in 55 BC. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

 The Celts at war
The first, very formidable threat was Rome. The Roman seizure of the Carthaginian colonies in Celt-Iberia (modern day Spain and Portugal) and Caesar’s wars in Gaul, brought them to the threshold of Britain. Two brief but lively incursions by Caesar in 55 and 54 BC had forced the southern tribes to capitulate, but it was to be almost a century before a permanent Roman presence was established in 43 AD. The campaign to subdue and colonise Britain was savage and prolonged.

 The first great hero of the British Celts, Caratacus, fought an epic war for nine years between 43 and 52 AD against the full might of the empire. A few years later between 60 and 61 AD, Boudica, queen of the Iceni tribe, led a spectacular and brutal revolt which came within an ace of dislodging the Romans from Britain and wiping out the colony.

 The Romans gradually established control over what is now England and Wales, and pushed into the Scottish Highlands, but could never establish firm control even over the lowlands there. Even in northern Britain within the empire, there was a separate military administration based at York. Eventually, as the imperial system began to collapse, the unconquered Celtic tribes along with their Irish cousins, as well as Germanic pirates, burst in upon the undefended areas.

 The Anglo-Saxons established their own kingdoms in the eastern part of the island, and epic wars took place between the small Celtic kingdoms and Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex. As these kingdoms constellated into England, desperate wars and political manoeuvring took place for centuries and Wales and Scotland emerged as nation states. These contests provided the material for the legend of King Arthur, ‘Old King Cole’ and many pseudo-historical or actual Celtic heroes. Viking raiding and settlement affected Wales, Ireland, Scotland, Cornwall and Brittany in much the same way as in the rest of Europe. Finally, the most formidable threat of all, the nemesis of the British Celts, arrived in the shape of the Norman invasion of England. Once they had established firm control of England, their wars of expansion against the Celtic nations commenced.

Caratacus, the first great hero of the British Celts, depicted on an engraving c 1754. (Photo by Universal Images Group/Getty Images)

 ‘Barbarian’ peoples?
 Much of what we know about the Celts is derived from classical and especially Roman sources. While we should be naturally suspicious about accepting these portrayals, they were at least contemporary, or derived from eyewitness reports. The Romans had contempt for all ‘barbarian’ peoples, of which the Celts were one.

 People who lived in the great forests of central Europe and Britain were considered ‘savages’, from the Latin silva (‘a wood’). All that was dark, shadowy and sinister was projected onto these ‘primitive’ peoples, and prurient, lurid stories propagated about their inhuman practices. The classical world of ancient Greece and Rome had been shocked to their core when Celtic hordes had sacked Delphi and then Rome itself. Greek philosopher Strabo said that “the whole race is madly fond of war, high-spirited and quick for battle”, and there is no reason to discount this opinion, especially in light of the abundant evidence of subsequent history.

 In fact, the Celts were exuberant and extremist in all matters – their passion for war was no different from their passion for feasting, religious devotions, poetry and art. The Celts liked to show-off their wealth and status, and war gave the opportunity to display their fine horses, chariots, swords, golden torques and similar accoutrements. If they were not actually at war with external enemies or among themselves, then they would be composing bardic poetry about it, celebrating the ancestral heroes of the tribe. It may be true to say that there is a traditional martial eagerness in the Celtic temperament, but ultimately their military traditions were founded upon necessity. They had to either fight or be overwhelmed or exterminated.

 The ‘island of the mighty’
While it is true that few peoples have become so romanticised and mythologised as the British Celts, I believe that the attempt to denigrate and marginalise their history is in danger of doing great violence to a body of knowledge which consists of far more than mere history or archaeology: the mythical lore which has become known as ‘the matter of Britain’.

 The sovereignty of the British race within the ‘island of the mighty’ was exemplified by leaders whose chief attribute was their alleged descent from gods, or their personification of gods or goddesses. The Christianisation of this ancient mythical lore was the template for ‘the Quest for the Holy Grail’ and the Arthurian romances. These themes, reworked for the Anglo-Norman aristocracy, and encrusted around the Tudor dynasty which was of Welsh origins, became the legitimising propaganda for ‘the British Empire’.

 Caratacus ‘the beloved one’ is perhaps the first of these, but Boudicca too was considered to be a personification of the goddess Andrasta. Arthur, the supreme hero of the British Celts, distils much of this into complex myth, which may or may not be based on an actual historical personage. Whether he existed or not, the fact of his existence in the imagination cannot be denied, but there are plenty of real-life Celtic heroes to make up for that: Urien of Rheged and his son, Owain; ‘King’ Cole or Coel; Maelgwn of Gwynedd; Cadwallon who almost reconquered the ‘Lost Lands’; Gruffydd ap Llywelyn and many more. The extraordinary, sad and glorious stories of the last years of Celtic resistance are reserved for Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, Prince of Wales and also called ‘the last’; Scotland’s hero, William Wallace (who had other Celtic connections); and ‘the son of prophesy’ himself, Owain Glyndwr.

These contests between the Celtic kingdoms provided the material for the legend of King Arthur, says Martin Wall. (Photo by Leemage/Getty Images)

 A legacy of this long battle for Celtic Britain was that it preserved a tradition, a pseudo-history or reinterpretation of history, which alleged continuity with ancient Rome, and legendary connections to ‘Brutus the Trojan’, the supposed first king of the Britons. These traditions, bowdlerised from the Brythonic originals, became a corpus of literature called ‘Bruts’ which encapsulated not only history and legend, but also, crucially, prophesy.

 The so-called ‘matter of Britain’ was not conventional history, but magical. At first, the pure forms of these legends were confined to the Celts themselves, and inspired them to defend their lands, or rebel against foreign occupation. The ‘prophesies of Merlin’ promised that one day the Britons would be restored to the sovereignty of Britain. It was this desperate hope which kept alive a fanatical resistance for so many centuries. That struggle was ultimately doomed, but by an incredible twist of fate, the matter of Britain was taken up by the Tudor monarchs, to be reinvented as the British Empire.

 The consequences of that were to be world-changing, but for the British Celts themselves, the irony was that they were the first victims of this ‘empire’.

 Martin Wall is the author of Warriors and Kings: The 1,500-Year Battle for Celtic Britain (Amberley Publishing, 2017)

Britons were eating frogs' legs 8,000 years before the French

History Extra

They’ve long been considered a French delicacy, but a new archeological dig in Wiltshire suggests frogs' legs may have been first enjoyed in Britain.

 Among evidence of life in the eighth millennia BC, found at the Blick Mead site at Amesbury, researchers from the University of Buckingham discovered the burnt leg bone of a toad.

 The team also found small bones of trout or salmon, and burnt Aurochs bones (the predecessor of cows).

 The finds date to between 6250BC and 7600BC, making the discovery the earliest evidence of a cooked toad or frog’s leg found in the world, and around eight millennia before the French.

 David Jacques, senior research fellow in archaeology at the University of Buckingham, said: “It would appear that thousands of years ago people were eating a Heston Blumenthal-style menu on this site, one and a quarter miles from Stonehenge, consisting of toads’ legs, aurochs, wild boar and red deer with hazelnuts for main, another course of salmon and trout, and finishing off with blackberries. 

“This is significant for our understanding of the way people were living around 5,000 years before the building of Stonehenge and it begs the question – where are the frogs now?”

 The latest information is based on a report by fossil mammal specialist Simon Parfitt, of the Natural History Museum, who looked at the find.

The site already boasts one of the biggest collections of flints and cooked animal bones in northwestern Europe. It has resulted in 12,000 finds, all from the Mesolithic era, which fell between the Palaeolithic and the Neolithic.

 The team hopes to confirm Amesbury as the UK's oldest continuous settlement. The dig, which will run until 25 October, is being filmed and made into a documentary by the BBC, to be screened at a later date.

 Andy Rhind-Tutt, chairman of Amesbury Museum and Heritage Trust and co-ordinator of the community involvement on the dig, said the site at Blick Mead could help to explain why Stonehenge is where it is.

 “No one would have built Stonehenge without there being something unique and really special about the area,” he said.

 “There must have been something significant here beforehand and Blick Mead, with its constant temperature spring sitting alongside the river Avon, may well be it.

 “I believe that as we uncover more about the site over the coming days and weeks, we will discover it to be the greatest, oldest and most significant Mesolithic home base ever found in Britain.”

10 things you (probably) didn’t know about the Anglo-Saxons

History Extra

Edward The Confessor, Anglo-Saxon king of England. From the Bayeux Tapestry, which tells the story of the events leading to the 1066 battle of Hastings. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

1) The Anglo-Saxons were immigrants
The people we call Anglo-Saxons were actually immigrants from northern Germany and southern Scandinavia. Bede, a monk from Northumbria writing some centuries later, says that they were from some of the most powerful and warlike tribes in Germany. Bede names three of these tribes: the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. There were probably many other peoples who set out for Britain in the early fifth century, however. Batavians, Franks and Frisians are known to have made the sea crossing to the stricken province of ‘Britannia’. The collapse of the Roman empire was one of the greatest catastrophes in history. Britain, or ‘Britannia’, had never been entirely subdued by the Romans. In the far north – what they called Caledonia (modern Scotland) – there were tribes who defied the Romans, especially the Picts. The Romans built a great barrier, Hadrian’s Wall, to keep them out of the civilised and prosperous part of Britain. As soon as Roman power began to wane, these defences were degraded, and in AD 367 the Picts smashed through them. Gildas, a British historian, says that Saxon war-bands were hired to defend Britain when the Roman army had left. So the Anglo-Saxons were invited immigrants, according to this theory, a bit like the immigrants from the former colonies of the British empire in the period after 1945.

 2) The Anglo-Saxons murdered their hosts at a conference
Britain was under sustained attack from the Picts in the north and the Irish in the west. The British appointed a ‘head man’, Vortigern, whose name may actually be a title meaning just that – to act as a kind of national dictator. It is possible that Vortigern was the son-in-law of Magnus Maximus, a usurper emperor who had operated from Britain before the Romans left. Vortigern’s recruitment of the Saxons ended in disaster for Britain. At a conference between the nobles of the Britons and Anglo-Saxons, [likely in AD 472, although some sources say AD 463] the latter suddenly produced concealed knives and stabbed their opposite numbers from Britain in the back.

Treaty of Hengist and Horsa with Vortigern. (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

 Vortigern was deliberately spared in this ‘treachery of the long-knives’, but was forced to cede large parts of south-eastern Britain to them. Vortigern was now a powerless puppet of the Saxons.

3) The Britons rallied under a mysterious leader
The Angles, Saxons, Jutes and other incomers burst out of their enclave in the south-east in the mid-fifth century and set all southern Britain ablaze. Gildas, our closest witness, says that in this emergency a new British leader emerged, called Ambrosius Aurelianus in the late 440s and early 450s. It has been postulated that Ambrosius was from the rich villa economy around Gloucestershire, but we simply do not know for sure. Amesbury in Wiltshire is named after him and may have been his campaign headquarters. A great battle took place, supposedly sometime around AD 500, at a place called Mons Badonicus or Mount Badon, probably somewhere in the south-west of modern England. The Saxons were resoundingly defeated by the Britons, but frustratingly we don’t know much more than that. A later Welsh source says that the victor was ‘Arthur’ but it was written down hundreds of years after the event, when it may have become contaminated by later folk-myths of such a person. Gildas does not mention Arthur, and this seems strange, but there are many theories about this seeming anomaly. One is that Gildas did refer to him in a sort of acrostic code, which reveals him to be a chieftain from Gwent called Cuneglas. Gildas called Cuneglas ‘the bear’, and Arthur means ‘bear’. Nevertheless, for the time being the Anglo-Saxon advance had been checked by someone, possibly Arthur.

 4) Seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms emerged
 ‘England’ as a country did not come into existence for hundreds of years after the Anglo-Saxons arrived. Instead, seven major kingdoms were carved out of the conquered areas: Northumbria, East Anglia, Essex, Sussex, Kent, Wessex and Mercia. All these nations were fiercely independent, and although they shared similar languages, pagan religions, and socio-economic and cultural ties, they were absolutely loyal to their own kings and very competitive, especially in their favourite pastime – war.

Shield of Mercia, from the Heptarchy; a collective name applied to the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of south, east, and central England during late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Detail from an antique map of Britain by the Dutch cartographer Willem Blaeu in Atlas Novus (Amsterdam, 1635). (Photo by Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

 At first they were pre-occupied fighting the Britons (or ‘Welsh’, as they called them), but as soon as they had consolidated their power-centres they immediately commenced armed conflict with each other. Woden, one of their chief gods, was especially associated with war, and this military fanaticism was the chief diversion of the kings and nobles. Indeed, tales of the deeds of warriors, or their boasts of what heroics they would perform in battle, was the main form of entertainment, and obsessed the entire community – much like football today.

 5) A fearsome warrior plundered his neighbours
The ‘heptarchy’, or seven kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxons, all aspired to dominate the others. One reason for this was that the dominant king could exact tribute (a sort of tax, but paid in gold and silver bullion), gemstones, cattle, horses or elite weapons. A money economy did not yet exist. Eventually a leader from Mercia in the English Midlands became the most feared of all these warrior-kings: Penda, who ruled from AD 626 until 655. He personally killed many of his rivals in battle, and as one of the last pagan Anglo-Saxon kings he offered up the body of one of them, King Oswald of Northumbria, to Woden. Penda ransacked many of the other Anglo-Saxon realms, amassing vast and exquisite treasures as tribute and the discarded war-gear of fallen warriors on the battlefields. This is just the sort of elite military kit that comprises the Staffordshire Hoard, discovered in 2009. Although a definite connection is elusive, the hoard typifies the warlike atmosphere of the mid-seventh century, and the unique importance in Anglo-Saxon society of male warrior elites.

 6) An African refugee helped reform the English church
 The Britons were Christians, but were now cut off from Rome, but the Anglo-Saxons remained pagan. In AD 597 St Augustine had been sent to Kent by Pope Gregory the Great to convert the Anglo-Saxons. It was a tall order for his tiny mission, but gradually the seven kingdoms did convert, and became exemplary Christians – so much so that they converted their old tribal homelands in Germany.

St Augustine of Canterbury, who was sent by Pope Gregory to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. St Augustine is seen here preaching before Ethelbert, Anglo-Saxon King of Kent. Augustine was the first Archbishop of Canterbury. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

 One reason why they converted was because the church said that the Christian God would deliver them victory in battles. When this failed to materialise, some Anglo-Saxon kings became apostate, and a different approach was required. The man chosen for the task was an elderly Greek named Theodore of Tarsus, but he was not the pope’s first choice. Instead he had offered the job to a younger man, Hadrian ‘the African’, a Berber refugee from north Africa, but Hadrian objected that he was too young. The truth was that people in the civilised south of Europe dreaded the idea of going to England, which was considered barbaric and had a terrible reputation. The pope decided to send both men, to keep each other company on the long journey. After more than a year (and many adventures) they arrived, and set to work to reform the English church. Theodore lived to be 88, a grand old age for those days, and Hadrian, the young man who had fled from his home in north Africa, outlived him, and continued to devote himself to his task until his death in AD 710.

 7) Alfred the Great had a crippling disability
When we look up at the statue of King Alfred of Wessex in Winchester, we are confronted by an image of our national ‘superhero’: the valiant defender of a Christian realm against the heathen Viking marauders. There is no doubt that Alfred fully deserves this accolade as ‘England’s darling’, but there was another side to him that is less well known. Alfred never expected to be king – he had three older brothers – but when he was four years old on a visit to Rome the pope seemed to have granted him special favour when his father presented him to the pontiff. As he grew up, Alfred was constantly troubled by illness, including irritating and painful piles – a real problem in an age where a prince was constantly in the saddle. Asser, the Welshman who became his biographer, relates that Alfred suffered from another painful, draining malady that is not specified. Some people believe it was Crohn’s Disease, others that it may have been a sexually transmitted disease, or even severe depression. The truth is we don’t know exactly what Alfred’s mystery ailment was. Whatever it was, it is incredible to think that Alfred’s extraordinary achievements were accomplished in the face of a daily struggle with debilitating and chronic illness.

 8) An Anglo-Saxon king was finally buried in 1984
 In July 975 the eldest son of King Edgar, Edward, was crowned king. Edgar had been England’s most powerful king yet (by now the country was unified), and had enjoyed a comparatively peaceful reign. Edward, however, was only 15 and was hot-tempered and ungovernable. He had powerful rivals, including his half-brother Aethelred’s mother, Elfrida (or ‘Aelfthryth’). She wanted her own son to be king – at any cost.

c975 AD, Edward the Martyr, Anglo-Saxon king of England and the elder son of King Edgar. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

 One day in 978, Edward decided to pay Elfrida and Aethelred a visit in their residence at Corfe in Dorset. It was too good an opportunity to miss: Elfrida allegedly awaited him at the threshold to the hall with grooms to tend the horses, and proffered him a goblet of mulled wine (or ‘mead’), as was traditional. As Edward stooped to accept this, the grooms grabbed his bridle and stabbed him repeatedly in the stomach. Edward managed to ride away but bled to death, and was hastily buried by the conspirators. It was foul regicide, the gravest of crimes, and Aethelred, even though he may not have been involved in the plot, was implicated in the minds of the common people, who attributed his subsequent disastrous reign to this, in their eyes, monstrous deed. Edward’s body was exhumed and reburied at Shaftesbury Abbey in AD 979. During the dissolution of the monasteries the grave was lost, but in 1931 it was rediscovered. Edward’s bones were kept in a bank vault until 1984, when at last he was laid to rest.

 9) England was ‘ethnically cleansed’
One of the most notorious of Aethelred’s misdeeds was a shameful act of mass-murder. Aethelred is known as ‘the Unready’, but this is actually a pun on his forename. Aethelred means ‘noble counsel’, but people started to call him ‘unraed’ which means ‘no counsel’. He was constantly vacillating, frequently cowardly, and always seemed to pick the worst men possible to advise him. One of these men, Eadric ‘Streona’ (‘the Aquisitor’), became a notorious English traitor who was to seal England’s downfall. It is a recurring theme in history that powerful men in trouble look for others to take the blame. Aethelred was convinced that the woes of the English kingdom were all the fault of the Danes, who had settled in the country for many generations and who were by now respectable Christian citizens. On 13 November 1002, secret orders went out from the king to slaughter all Danes, and massacres occurred all over southern England. The north of England was so heavily settled by the Danes that it is probable that it escaped the brutal plot. One of the Danes killed in this wicked pogrom was the sister of Sweyn Forkbeard, the mighty king of Denmark. From that time on the Danish armies were resolved to conquer England and eliminate Ethelred. Eadric Streona defected to the Danes and fought alongside them in the war of succession that followed Ethelred’s death. This was the beginning of the end for Anglo-Saxon England.

 10) Neither William of Normandy or Harold Godwinson were rightful English kings
We all know something about the 1066 battle of Hastings, but the man who probably should have been king is almost forgotten to history. Edward ‘the Confessor’, the saintly English king, had died childless in 1066, leaving the English ruling council of leading nobles and spiritual leaders (the Witan) with a big problem. They knew that Edward’s cousin Duke William of Normandy had a powerful claim to the throne, which he would certainly back with armed force. William was a ruthless and skilled soldier, but the young man who had the best claim to the English throne, Edgar the ‘Aetheling’ (meaning ‘of noble or royal’ status), was only 14 and had no experience of fighting or commanding an army. Edgar was the grandson of Edmund Ironside, a famous English hero, but this would not be enough in these dangerous times. So Edgar was passed over, and Harold Godwinson, the most famous English soldier of the day, was chosen instead, even though he was not, strictly speaking, ‘royal’. He had gained essential military experience fighting in Wales, however. At first, it seemed as if the Witan had made a sound choice: Harold raised a powerful army and fleet and stood guard in the south all summer long, but then a new threat came in the north. A huge Viking army landed and destroyed an English army outside York. Harold skilfully marched his army all the way from the south to Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire in a mere five days. He annihilated the Vikings, but a few days later William’s Normans landed in the south. Harold lost no time in marching his army all the way back to meet them in battle, at a ridge of high ground just outside… Hastings.

 Martin Wall is the author of The Anglo-Saxon Age: The Birth of England (Amberley Publishing, 2015). In his new book, Martin challenges our notions of the Anglo-Saxon period as barbaric and backward, to reveal a civilisation he argues is as complex, sophisticated and diverse as our own.

The 10 worst Britons in history

History Extra

Illustrations by Jonty Clark

The result is a fascinating, if not strictly scientific, top 10, showing the most wicked, harmful and downright evil character of each century in the past thousand years. The rogue’s gallery includes some famous, and not so famous (or infamous) names: there’s a king, a prime minister and (somewhat surprisingly) a couple of churchmen. It’s a thought-provoking and perhaps controversial list. Read on to discover who were the worst Brits of all...

 

1000–1100

Eadric Streona

Nominated by Professor Sarah Foot of Sheffield University

_{Illustration by Jonty Clark}
Eadric Streona (died 1017) might have been Aethelred II’s chief counsellor and ealdorman of Mercia – but he has a reputation for deception, treachery and murder.
I nominate him because of the villainous part he played in England’s defeat by the Danish king, Cnut. He was implicated in the murder of Gunnhild and Pallig in 1002 and of Ealdorman Aelfhelm in 1006 – at which time the ealdorman’s two sons, Wulfheah and Ufegeat, were blinded. In 1009 when the English were ready to attack the Danes a Chronicler reported that the whole people “was hindered by Ealdorman Eadric, then as it always was”. In 1015 he was directly involved in the murder of two thegns (noblemen) – Sigeferth and Morcar – who, according to chronicles, he “enticed” into his chamber where they were “basely killed”.
In the same year, having been in command of King Aethelred’s army, he changed sides and joined Cnut. He subsequently switched sides a further couple of times, in 1016 joining first Edmund Ironside and then deserting him at the battle at Assandun (Ashingdon) to rejoin Cnut who pursued Edmund into Gloucestershire where the latter died in mysterious circumstances.
This cruel, unscrupulous individual grew rich out of the proceeds of royal taxation and was a traitor to the English cause. But having being initially rewarded by Cnut – when he’d become king of all England – Eadric was killed in 1017 having outlived his usefulness to the new regime. It was a fitting end.
Sarah Foot is the author of Monastic life in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge University Press, 2006).

1100–1200 

Thomas Becket

Nominated by Professor John Hudson of St Andrews University

_{Illustration by Jonty Clark}
There are a handful of characters in history about whom prejudice seems impossible to avoid. One such is Thomas Becket (c 1120–70), Archbishop of Canterbury. He divided England in a way that even many churchmen who shared some of his views thought unnecessary and self-indulgent. And he has remained a figure inspiring both devotion and detestation.
He was a founder of gesture politics, with the most acute of eye for what would now be called the photo-opportunity. He was also a master of the soundbite. When put on trial in front of a secular court, he refused to accept its jurisdiction, stating “such as I am, I am your father; I will not hear your judgement”. He pushed his way from the court chamber, bearing his cross before him. Complex issues were confronted by a mixture of inflexibility and grand display.
When he left England during his dispute with Henry II, he went to the kingdom of France, furthering the conflict between Henry and the French king, and at the very least opening himself to the accusation of being a traitor. Certainly he was viewed by some as hypocritical, as he changed dramatically from his ostentatious life-style before he was archbishop. As archbishop, he also looked to contemporary medical views for help in retaining some enjoyable habits, claiming to have to drink wine rather than water because it better suited his stomach.
He was also greedy. In 1164 he was brought to trial in part on charges of embezzlement during his time as royal chancellor, the position he held before he became archbishop of Canterbury. The truth of such charges must remain uncertain. However, the wealth of Thomas and his following by the late 1150s was immense and famous. How did he assemble such wealth? Presumably by profiting from his position in the royal administration.
Those who share my prejudice against Becket may consider his assassination in Canterbury Cathedral on 29 December 1170 a fittingly grisly end. However, it also ensured that, as a martyr, he became a saint with a cult that spread with tremendous speed.
John Hudson is author of The Oxford History of the Laws of England (Oxford University Press).

1200–1300

King John

Nominated by historian Marc Morris

_{Illustration by Jonty Clark}
Once described as a man of “superhuman wickedness”, King John of England (1167–1216) has had a pretty awful press. Perhaps his most damning critic was Matthew Paris, a monk at St Albans, who in the mid 13th century wrote: “Foul as it is, Hell itself is defiled by the fouler presence of King John”.
This kind of verdict was eagerly seized on by 19th-century historians to create the monster of legend, the Bad King John. However, the fact remains that John committed some wicked deeds and was a deeply unpleasant person. He was unpleasant in many ways – in the way he behaved towards people; he was untrusting; he would snigger at people while they talked; he couldn’t resist kicking a man when he was down. What’s more, he was a bully and a gloater. Stories about his cruelty are legion, and the deed which has most damned him in the eyes of the world is the murder, possibly by his own hands, of his nephew Arthur – a rival for the throne.
Granted, John was competent when it came to the small-scale tyrant stuff – he could lead an army, he was energetic and dynamic – but his charisma was all negative. He didn’t inspire loyalty, so people deserted him. That was partly why he lost his father’s continental lands – in effect, squandering the family inheritance.
He was clearly one of the worst kings in English history and his reign will always by defined by that one great evil deed – the murder of his nephew. One good thing to come out of his reign was Magna Carta, an attempt to limit his abuses and ensure they could not be repeated.
Marc Morris is author of The Bigod Earls of Norfolk in the Thirteenth Century (Boydell, 2005).

1300–1400 

Hugh Despenser (the Younger)

Nominated by Nigel Saul, professor of medieval history at Royal Holloway, London University

_{Illustration by Jonty Clark}
I nominate Edward II’s appalling favourite, the Younger Hugh Despenser (died 1326). Despenser was neither so well known nor so notorious as his predecessor in Edward’s favour, Piers Gaveston, but he was far worse. Gaveston was just a playboy. Despenser was pure evil.
Dominant at court in the last years of Edward’s reign, he set about eliminating his enemies and amassing a vast territorial empire in South Wales. His rapacity knew no bounds. He gobbled up the lands and possessions forfeited by those who opposed him and his king. He browbeat the weak and the vulnerable into signing away their estates. He tricked people into parting with their property.
Women were especially vulnerable to his ambitions. Alice Lacy, the Earl of Lancaster’s widow, was thrown into prison and forced to sign away her rights. The widow of Sir John Gifford of Brimpsfield was ejected from her estates. Lady Baret of Swansea was allegedly tortured so badly that she went out of her mind. Visiting merchants were robbed of their property. In a stained glass window in Tewkesbury Abbey, Despenser looks all arrogant and swagger.
But pride cometh before the fall. In the autumn of 1326 the tyrannical regime Despenser headed was toppled, and Edward deposed. At Hereford in November he was visited with the full penalties of the traitor. He was drawn, and then hanged from a gallows 50 feet high; his intestines were torn out and burned in front of him.
Nigel Saul is author of The Three Richards: Richard I, Richard II and Richard III (Hambledon & London, 2005).

1400–1500 

Thomas Arundel

Nominated by Miri Rubin, professor of history at Queen Mary, University of London

_{Illustration by Jonty Clark}
Thomas Arundel (1353–1414), administrator and archbishop of Canterbury, earns his place in this list of infamy not for a single infamous act, but for the long-term effect of his success in bringing together church and state, as never before, in the persecution of unorthodox religious opinion.
In this link between religious ideas and sedition lay the foundation for a system of persecution of religious ideas in England which would be used by rulers for centuries. Until Arundel, England had no part in the intensive inquisitorial and persecutory activities which had long been common practice on much of the Continent. The Concordat between Henry IV and Arundel gradually created such a system through ordinances and statutes.
At Oxford in 1407 he phrased ordinances – later extended as Constitutions for the realm – which limited the translation and reading of the Bible in English. The programme was completed shortly after his death, when secular officials, royal justices and sheriffs, were required by oath to enquire into heresy wherever their powers took them. As a result, he made life harder for a generation of people who wished to express and explore their religious ideas, to read the Bible in a language they understood, and discuss the “big questions”, while his clearing out of “venomous weeds” from Oxford meant that intellectual life there became bland for a very long time.
Above all, by enlisting royal officials, and encouraging neighbours to snoop, suspect and inform – he authorised a thoroughly unpleasant involvement of the state in people’s lives.
Miri Rubin is author of The Hollow Crown: A History of Britain in the Late Middle Ages (Penguin, 2005).

1500–1600

Sir Richard Rich, Lord Rich of Leighs

Nominated by David Loades, emeritus professor of history at the University of Wales

_{Illustration by Jonty Clark}
I’ve chosen Sir Richard Rich (1496/7–1567), who seems to have had no principles, political or religious, but simply joined whichever side seemed likeliest to further his career.
According to John Foxe (author of the Acts & Monuments of the English Martyrs, first published in 1563), he was personally responsible for the torture of Anne Askew – who’d broken off her marriage to an orthodox Catholic – in 1546 and was charged with heresy. He is reputed to have operated the machine himself despite the fact that women (and especially gentlewomen) were supposed to be exempt from torture.
He is alleged to have committed perjury to secure the conviction of Thomas More for treason. He promoted Protestantism under Edward VI, and then persecuted Protestants under Mary.
A lawyer by profession, Rich was a man who was constantly on the make, constantly on the lookout for the main chance. He became a powerful minister to Henry VIII and was Lord Chancellor during much of King Edward VI’s reign.
It is difficult to quite know what to make of him personally but nobody seems to have been very fond of him. Greedy he certainly was, and cruel – to judge from the Anne Askew affair. He was responsible for several burnings of heretics in Essex, and acted as a bigot because it was convenient to appear as such at that time.
In short, Rich was a slippery and unprincipled opportunist. For centuries after his death his name was a byword in the county of Essex for wickedness. Right up to the 20th century, it was said “better a poor man at ease than Lord Rich of Leighs”.
David Loades is the author of Intrigue and Treason: the Tudor Court 1547–1558 (Pearson, 2004).

1600–1700 

Titus Oates

Nominated by John Adamson, a fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge University

_{Illustration by Jonty Clark}
The self-styled Dr Titus Oates (1649–1705) was in a league of his own, both in the depths of his vileness – a comprehensive blend of vanity, murderous con-trickery, and serpentine guile – and the scale of the evil for which he was responsible.
He was the principal promoter, in 1678, of the fantasy that there was a Jesuit conspiracy to assassinate Charles II (with silver bullets) as a prelude to a French-backed Catholic reconquest of the country.
Undoubtedly his most evil act was allowing 16 innocent laymen, and eight Catholic priests, to go to a hideous death (the penalty for treason being partial hanging, castration and disembowelment alive, and then the quartering of the corpse) as a result of his spurious accusations.
Oates’s entire career was built on the purveyance of various forms of malice and falsity. At the height of the Popish Plot mania, he laid an indictment against the Lord Chief Justice who, refusing to succumb to the popular hysteria, had acquitted four of the men implicated by Oates’s accusations. He would have willingly sent these four, and the Chief Justice, to the gallows for his own aggrandisement.
Anyone who is prepared to see innocent men go to their deaths – and particularly grisly deaths at that – on accusations that he knows to be false qualifies as cruel, bloodthirsty, and a bigot. What makes Oates’s knavery all the more invidious is that his motives appear to have been largely financial: he expected, and eventually obtained, a substantial reward from the Whig interests which profited from his accusations.
In 1678–79, Oates’s actions arguably brought the country close to the brink of another civil war. And while Oates did not create anti-Popery, his fantasies certainly sharply exacerbated a religious hatred that would endure in British society well into the 19th century. In short, he was a thoroughly odious individual.
John Adamson is author of The Noble Revolt: The Overthrow of Charles I
(Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2007).

1700–1800

Duke of Cumberland

Nominated by Professor Rab Houston, chair of modern history at St Andrews University

_{Illustration by Jonty Clark}
The Duke of Cumberland (Prince William Augustus, 1721–65) showed his wickedness in many ways, not least in his contempt for opponents and for his own men who failed to live up to his strict standards.
He showed a particular disdain for the defeated Jacobites after the battle of Culloden in 1746, who he regarded as cowardly, dishonourable and undeserving of mercy. Thus fleeing soldiers were pursued and slaughtered while the wounded could expect no help except to be shot, bayoneted or clubbed to death.
At a time when the etiquette of warfare was considered very important, Cumberland was able to dispense with it by labelling the Highlanders as inhuman savages. He even condemned officers who had shown mercy to the Jacobite soldiers after the battle, when his orders were to give no quarter. The Highlanders hated him, renaming a weed Stinking Billy in mockery of the English renaming of a flower Sweet William in his honour.
In effect, he used the full power of the fiscal-military British state to commit genocide on the mainland of Britain. He was the equal of Cromwell in Ireland, terrorising a whole people into submission.
The English welcomed the Duke’s victory but opinion turned against him equally quickly. He acquired the title of Butcher because, when told that he was to be made an honorary freeman of a London company for his services against the Jacobites, some wag said it would have to be the Butchers. The Duke’s successes were recognised by his being voted an income of £40,000 per annum in addition to his revenue as a prince of the royal house. It was, in effect, blood money earned by war crimes.
While much of Cumberland’s reputation rests on the immediate events surrounding Culloden, he was also a strong advocate and savage pursuer of the suppression of Highland culture. He left behind him the largest army of occupation ever seen in Britain in order to pacify the Highlands while permanent fortifications were built.
He contributed to a policy of cultural imperialism by disarming the Highlands, abolishing the wearing of Highland dress, suppressing certain surnames linked with the rebellion and seeking to extirpate Catholicism from the land. He even suggested transporting whole clans like the Camerons and MacPhersons to the colonies – a sort of ethnic cleansing.
By helping to destroy the social nexus of the clan that was at the heart of Highland society, he helped sever the bond between chiefs and clanspeople that had been the basis of Highland society for centuries.
Lastly, by institutionalising the prejudice that the Highlanders were uncivilised, Cumberland also contributed to the racist views responsible for their later misfortunes.
Rab Houston is the editor of The New Penguin History of Scotland: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day (Penguin, 2005).

1800–1900

Jack the Ripper

Nominated by Professor Clive Emsley of the Open University

_{Illustration by Jonty Clark}
No-one can touch the serial killer Jack the Ripper for sheer wickedness during 19th-century Britain. Firstly, because he preyed on the most pathetic and vulnerable women in London’s East End. Secondly, for the sheer horror of his brutal crimes.
During his murder spree in the autumn of 1888, Jack the Ripper definitely killed five prostitutes – and possibly a couple of other women too – in the most appalling and extreme circumstances. His victims were disembowelled, their intestines draped over their shoulders and their breasts cut off. This man was manifestly a savage brute and while he may have had mental problems – he must have had, to do what he did – they can’t excuse his terrible actions.
The murders had huge repercussions at the time – and have influenced our view of serial killers ever since. For months after the murders women across the land, be it in Norwich or Newcastle, were terrified to go out at night. And while the press might have coined the name by which this most notorious serial killer is known, this does not detract from the savagery of his crimes. Of course, we assume it was “Jack”, and it probably was, but it just might have been “Jill”.
The Ripper has become a villain – for all time – and his shadow extends to the present day. And the way in which the world responds to modern serial killers such as the Yorkshire Ripper is influenced by the way we responded to the most notorious serial killer of all, Jack the Ripper.
All sorts of people have been accused of being Jack the Ripper: the painter Walter Sickert; rogue royals; Freemasons, you name it – but it seems unlikely we’ll ever know his true identity. However, this has just served to add to the mystique surrounding this most wicked of men.
Clive Emsley is the author of Hard Men: Violence in England since 1750 (Hambledon, 2005).

1900–2000

Oswald Mosley

Nominated by Professor Joanna Bourke of the School of History, Classics, and Archaeology, Birkbeck College, London

_{Illustration by Jonty Clark}
Oswald Mosley (1896–1980) was the founder of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) in 1932. He remains an inspiration for far-right groups in Britain and thus continues to have a pernicious impact on our society. His authoritarian politics relied on anti-Semitism and anti-immigration, and the party’s willingness to use violence was most notoriously exhibited at the Fascist rally at Olympia in 1934.
His most evil act was inciting anti-Semitic feeling and in 1934, the BUF launched an anti-Semitic campaign in the East End of London, home to one-third of British Jews. He attacked the “big Jews” for threatening the economy and the “little Jews” for “swamping” British cultural identity. While he never succeeded in turning Britain Fascist, 70 per cent of respondents under 30 chose Fascism, when asked to choose between it and Communism, in a Gallup Poll in 1937.
He was handsome and charming, and his early career – in the Conservative and then Labour Party – showed him to be a man of ideas and energy. In the early 1920s, his opposition to the “Old Men” who supervised the carnage of the First World War won him many supporters. However he was vain, megalomaniac, and had delusions of grandeur, although Attlee observed that his theatrical displays were routinely derided (at one meeting, when Mosley strode on stage with his arm uplifted, a voice called out, “Yes, Oswald dear, you may go to the lavatory”).

It would be difficult to find a more unpopular politician than Mosley in 1945: he was widely regarded as a traitor and a symbol of Fascism. On his death in 1980 his son Nicholas concluded that his father was a man whose “right hand dealt with grandiose ideas and glory” while his left hand “let the rat out of the sewer”.
Joanna Bourke is the author of An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth Century Warfare (Granta, 2000).

Bronze Age Britons Mummified the Dead: Smoked over Fires, Preserved in Bogs

Ancient Origins

Mummification may have been more common in Bronze Age Britain than previously believed, and the ancient Britons may have purposefully mummified their dead with unknown funerary rituals—but why and how still eludes archaeologists.
According to science news site Phys.org, researchers studying Bronze Age skeletons from various sites across the UK found that mummification may have been a wide-spread funerary practice in ancient Britain.
A team comprised of researchers from University of Sheffield, University of Manchester and University College London, compared 301 skeletal remains from prehistoric Europe with preserved mummies from northern Yemen and Ireland.
Dr. Thomas Booth, bioarchaeologist of the Department of Earth Sciences at London's Natural History Museum said that microscopic bone studies indicated that some bodies buried at sites throughout Britain were intentionally mummified between 4,200 and 2,750 years ago, reports ScienceNews magazine.

• Bronze Age steam room may have been used by select Orkney settlers for rites
• Walk Like An Egyptian… Scientists Preserve Modern Human Leg using Ancient Egyptian Methods
• Body of 4,000-year-old teenager near Stonehenge may give clues about Bronze Age lives

The Bocksten Man is the remains of an ancient male body found in a bog in Sweden. His remains were partially preserved in a bog. (CC BY 2.0)

Gut Reactions

Gut bacteria was the key to unlocking which bodies had been intentionally preserved, and which were simply buried at death to decompose naturally.

“After you die and your cells start to break down, the kind of internal gates that keep your bacteria within their locales break down as well,” Booth told LiveScience.
"Your bacteria — they have no loyalty. They start to attack your soft tissues in the first few hours after death,” he said.

Microscopic tunnels and holes are created in the bones by the bacteria—a process called bacterial bioerosion. If a body has been purposefully mummified with either man-made methods or through natural preservation (such as lying in a peat bog, or dying in icy or arid conditions), the bones tend to have few to no discernable holes.

Ötzi the Iceman, a man from about 3300 BC, famously a naturally preserved body, was found in a glacier in the Alps. (© South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, Fair Use)

The team’s work has been detailed this week in the archaeology journal, Antiquity. It reveals that bones from 16 out of 34 Bronze Age Britons had little to no bacterial damage. This strongly suggests that either artificial or natural preservation blocked rapid decomposition of the flesh.

Making Mummies in the Bronze Age

This evidence says to researchers the ancient Britons purposefully mummified their dead, although without the elaborate rituals and chemicals of the ancient Egyptians. Instead of using plant resins or wrappings, it’s thought the Britons may have smoked dead bodies over a fire, or brined them in peat bogs. If bodies were mummified or preserved intentionally in other ways in prehistoric times, the wet climate conditions of Britain would have long ago destroyed evidence of the burials.
Scientists from Zurich, Switzerland demonstrated this earlier this year as they attempted to mummify human legs from a recently deceased donor using both Ancient Egyptian and natural mummification methods. The naturally mummified leg succumbed to decomposition after a single week in the cool and damp Zurich lab and without the traditional preservative salts and arid conditions of Egypt.
According to Phys.org, Dr. Booth noted, “Our research shows that smoking over a fire and purposeful burial within a peat bog are among some of the techniques ancient Britons may have used to mummify their dead. Other techniques could have included evisceration, in which organs were removed shortly after death.

“The idea that British and potentially European Bronze Age communities invested resources in mummifying and curating a proportion of their dead fundamentally alters our perceptions of funerary ritual and belief in this period.”

• The practice of sacrifice in Iron Age Britain
• Stone Age Britons traded with European farmers 8,000 years ago
• Fire Mummies - The Smoked Human Remains of the Kabayan Caves

Cultural Motivations Remain Mysterious

It has not yet been determined why the prehistoric Britons might have practiced mummification of their dead. Intentional mummification is widespread in societies around the world, and can be seen in the artifacts and remains of various ancient cultures.
Science magazine Smithsonian writes, “Inca, for instance, mummified their rulers to allow them to remain at their posts, while some Buddhist monks may even self-mummify to achieve the ultimate state of enlightenment. But with a lack of associated burial artifacts, it's unclear what would have motivated Bronze Age Britons to mummify their dead.”

The naturally mummified bog body of the Man of Rendswühren from Germany, dated to the Roman Iron Age of the 1st or 2nd century AD. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Continuing studies at other prehistoric sites throughout Europe may reveal why Bronze Age Britons sought to preserve their dead, why they selected the people they did, and exactly how they went about it. This and other work is hoped to provide insight into the ancient beliefs and funerary practices of the European ancestors.
Featured Image: Bronze Age skeleton found at Stragglethorpe, during archaeological work on the Highways Agency scheme, England. Representational image only.  (CC BY 2.0)
By Liz Leafloor

LOST TREASURES OF THE ANCIENT WORLD (1998): 1. STONEHENGE AND THE ANCIENT BRITONS