Amazing & Extraordinary Facts About Kings & Queens (3 page)

T
he king named Cymbeline by William Shakespeare had a more down-to-earth name in the real world of the Celts: Cunobelinus, or ‘Hound of Belinus’. Belinus was a Celtic god who Geoffrey of Monmouth claims helped in the sack of Rome in 390 BC. Cymbeline was Belinus’s descendent in kind. By defeating his neighbours Cymbeline made himself king over most of southern Britain, according to the Latin historian Suetonius.

For 30 years Cymbeline brought peace and prosperity to his kingdom. He adopted the Roman centre Camulodunum (Colchester) as his capital, for his homeland was the Essex of today. Being close to the Channel, he encouraged commerce with the continent and a flourishing trade developed. Wheat, cattle, hunting dogs, hides, slaves and metals were exported in return for such luxuries as wine, fine robes, jewellery and ornamental glass for his barons. In all necessities Cymbeline’s subjects were self-sufficient.

When the Romans tried to exact arrears of tribute from the British realm, they were given short shrift. As the king’s stepson pronounced in Shakespeare’s play, Cymbeline:

D
etermined and fearless though King Caractacus of the Catuvellauni tribe was reputed to be, he was never likely to prevail against the awesome power of the Romans. As the Latin legions massed their ranks on the northern shores of Gaul in 43 CE, ready to invade Britain, Caractacus called his fierce warriors to arms.

Despite brave resistance, Caractacus and his outnumbered compatriots suffered a heavy defeat. The king and some of his men managed to escape westwards. They laid low for five years before rising again, this time allied with the Celtic tribes of mid-Wales, the Ordovices and Silures. Together they conducted a guerrilla warfare that stalled the Roman advance until 51 CE.

A final battle saw Caractacus’s comrades put to the sword and his wife, children and brothers captured. Yet again Caractacus escaped, and thought he had found a safe haven with the Brigantes of the Pennines. But their queen, Cartimandua, secretly formed an alliance with the Romans and betrayed him into their hands.

Taken prisoner to face trial in Rome, Caractacus could only fear the worst. But such valour and bearing as the British king displayed was unusual to behold in an enemy of the imperial court. Legend has it that when Claudius confronted him, Caractacus asked the Roman emperor, ‘Why do you wish to conquer my impoverished country when you already rule Rome?’ Claudius was so impressed at his courage that he pardoned the British king and gave him the freedom of Rome where he spent the rest of his days with his family.

It is said that his father, Cunobelinus (Shakespeare’s Cymbeline), met the apostle Paul while in Rome and was converted to Christianity. He then took the faith back to his homeland and became the first Christian to step foot in Britain.

T
he account of Boudicca’s revolt, the largest ever in Britain against the Romans, is a patriotic landmark in British history. Rich in symbolism - ferocious female leader crushing mighty male-dominated Rome - has resonated through the centuries whenever our small island has faced a powerful enemy from the continent. The statue on London’s Embankment of Boudicca ‘loftily charioted’, in Tennyson’s phrase, is a constant reminder of the achievement. Her rising up in fury at Rome’s confiscation of her deceased husband’s lands, the rightful inheritance of her two daughters, not to mention the alleged atrocities committed to all three females, fired a rebellion of such extraordinary intensity as to reach mythical proportions.

If the rebellion was principally an act of vengeance against a hated overlord, how did Boudicca galvanise her forces so effectively? Were they so incensed anyway that she merely had to say the word and off they would charge like bats from hell? No, for the like of this had not been seen before. Clues to the answer lie in the assembled army on the eve of battle. The Roman historian Dio Cassius gives us the only extant account of the occasion.

Accordingly, Boudicca addressed her East Anglian tribe, the Iceni, at great length, preparing them for their onslaught the next day on Camulodunum (Colchester), the Roman capital in Britain. Dio paints an awesome picture of the Celtic queen: ‘in appearance, terrifying, in the glance of her eye most fierce, and her voice was harsh; a great mass of the tawniest hair fell to her hips.’ In her speech she reminds the assembled people vividly of their recent treatment at the hand of the Romans: she talks of the gulf between freedom and slavery, how the Britons have suffered since the Romans occupied their land. It is not too late to rise up, if only for the sake of their children, lest they too are raised in bondage.

Then, at the end of her speech, Boudicca suddenly produces from beneath the folds of her bright tunic a hare, which she releases. As it darts away, the hare is observed to run ‘in an auspicious direction’, to the loud cheering of the crowd. Clearly this represented a favourable omen for the uprising.

The hare was sacred to the ancient Celts, who saw it as a powerful spirit associated with their goddess Andraste. In ancient mythology the hare was generally believed to have a strong connection with the moon goddess (possibly because at full moon the shape of the animal can be discerned within it). The animal was endowed with lunar characteristics, such as fertility, rebirth, transformation, as well as hidden knowledge. It acted as an intermediary between heaven and earth, and its movements on the ground were used for divining change in the future.

Having received this godly revelation, Boudicca then prayed: ‘I thank thee, Andraste, and call upon thee as woman speaking to woman.’ It is thought that Andraste was the war-goddess of the Iceni, and in so addressing herself to the deity, Boudicca was assuming a joint role as priestess, prophetess and war leader. She was effectively embarking on a Holy War against the Romans – a war which, it had been prophesied, the Iceni would win.

No wonder her people were so committed to the cause. With the divine stamp of approval, they surely could not fail. Thus fired with fanatic fervour, Boudicca’s army rampaged southwards at daybreak and overwhelmed the bemused Romans, first in Camulodunum, then Londinium (London), and finally Verulamium (St Albans). It is said that Boudicca charged with the holy hare tucked into her cloak. Alas, once the Romans had recovered from the shock they mustered their considerable forces and retaliated in kind. The Iceni suffered a heavy defeat and Boudicca resorted to taking poison rather than face the humiliation of an inevitably gruesome punishment.

L
egends abound about King Cole, a merry old soul who lived the life of Reilly in Colchester. Wine, pipes and fiddlers’ tunes are the stuff of a nursery rhyme that gave colour to this character, supposedly once the king of Britain. Ancient lore is often far-fetched but it can also spring from a grain of truth. Is there any to be had here?

According to tradition, Coel (or Cole), Duke of Colchester, attacked and defeated King Asclepiodotus and took the British crown for himself. As Britain was a protectorate at the time, Rome sent over senator Constantius to negotiate, and a settlement was agreed. Coel’s rich living got the better of him, however, and he died within a month of the treaty being formed. Feeling the need to grab the tiller in the sudden absence of a captain, Constantius assumed control, though not the throne. To become popular with his new subjects he is said to have married Coel’s lovely daughter, Helena (known to posterity as St Helen).

Now we do know that Constantius ruled Britain, in fact for 11 years, and that he married a woman named Helena. She bore him a son, Constantine, future great emperor of Rome (and reputedly in later life discovered the True Cross in Jerusalem). Some traditions maintain Helena was British, some even say she was a British princess. If that was so, was King Cole her father?

There was clearly a need to establish Helena’s status in British royalty. It is Henry of Huntingdon we have to thank for first making the connection in English records, in 1129, between Helena, ‘mother of Constantine’, and ‘King Coel, ruler of Colchester’. A noble figure by the name of Coel probably did exist, as a ruler in northern Britain, but his connection with Colchester and, even more tenuous, with Helena, has to be consigned to fiction.

It transpires that the real Helena was a barmaid from Drepanum in Bithynia (now part of Turkey). Constantius met her on a drinking spree, married her and indeed divorced her before even setting foot in Britain to take charge. His son Constantine joined him there and when Constantius died was sworn emperor at York.

F
or all the associations of Arthur with Glastonbury, this connection did not exist until monks at Glastonbury Abbey claimed in the twelfth century to have discovered the tomb of King Arthur. Prior to then, even the great legend-maker Geoffrey of Monmouth did not identify Glastonbury with Avalon, the mythical Isle of Apples, where Arthur traditionally was laid to rest.

It was the medieval French writer Malory who really set the romantic flame alight in Le Morte d’Arthur by developing the legends of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

Yet for all the dismissiveness of modern scholars that Arthur was at best no more than a Celtic warrior fending off invading Saxons, Glastonbury Tor does appear majestic above the Somerset Levels as though designed to be a grand cenotaph to a national hero. The Tor has a mythic quality about it and has prompted a good deal of research into its significance in the landscape surrounding it.

A theory was put forward by Katherine Maltwood in the 1920s that the Arthurian story was in fact a literary reflection of an astrological mystery embedded in the landscape. She identified topographical features that seemed to be aligned in a circle. This arrangement, she claims, is the reality behind the Round Table, which can be seen as a kind of terrestrial zodiac – a gigantic map of the stars on the ground. Features such as water courses, ancient roads, dykes and woodlands are configured in such a way as to indicate astrological characters. Arthur, for instance, is imaged as a mounted archer, the tenth sign of the zodiac.

The geographic zodiac, according to Maltwood

Sceptics make counter-claims that these geographical features did not all exist at the same time and so cannot be said to form a coherent whole. And no conventional archaeologists support the theory.

Others, however, have raised further celestial speculations, including the idea that seven hills around Glastonbury make a configuration resembling the constellation known as the Great Bear, or the Plough. In line with this, it is pointed out that Arthur’s name stems from the Welsh Arth Fawr, meaning Great Bear.