Writing: A Revolution in Saxon England
So the Saxons, the Angles, and the Jutes all began landing in Britain in the 5th century. They sought their fortunes and plunders and...
Where is Arthur? Camlann and Beyond
In all of this talk of the Heptarchy and the ascendancy of the Roman Church, we have seen precious little of the Welsh and...
Far-sighted Romans, Short-sighted Britons
In the second and third centuries, Roman Empire trade with Britannia was increasingly ravaged by seaborne pirates the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, all of...
Into the Void: The Emergence of Ambrosius and Arthur
So this is Britannia in the 400s: Romans gone, Saxons streaming in, Picts threatening in the north, Britons besieged. Vortigern is himself betrayed, not...
Nennius and Arthur’s 12 Battles
Sometime in the 9th century (most scholars say c. 830), a monk named Nennius wrote the Historia Brittonum. This History of the Britons goes...
Mount Badon: Arthur’s Greatest Victory
The Saxons had been raging around the countryside for years. The Britons had been fighting them off as best they could, but the hordes...
Mount Badon: The Importance of the High Ground
It doesn’t really matter what Mount Badon really was for the purposes of this discussion. Rather, it matters what it was.
Mount Badon was a...
Badon Hill: The Importance of Defending Bath
One of the chief mysteries of the story of King Arthur is where the famous Battle of Badon Hill was. Was it at Badon?...
Aelle: First of the Great Saxon Kings
When the dust settled after the Battle of Badon Hill, the Saxon migrations had stopped but the Saxon presence in Britain had not evaporated.
The...
Overlord: Saxons Learn from Their Enemies
With the accession of Aelle to the position of “overlord” (for lack of a better word) of the Germanic lands in Britain, the idea...