King Arthur

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Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval from History Hit. I'm Matt Lewis. I was privileged to be given the chance to film a piece for History Hit recently on King Arthur, which you can check out with a subscription or your free trial.

One of the experts who provided some input for us was Dr. Catherine Weikert. We had a fascinating chat about Winchester Hall and its Arthurian links, which I wanted to explore further. So I'm delighted that Catherine has agreed to join me today. Thank you, Catherine. Hello, Matt. Very, very happy to get...

another chance to chat with you. The last time we met we were standing underneath the huge round table in Winchester's medieval Great Hall. Why is that massive table there I guess is my first question. Yeah it's a great question though isn't it because I think you know thinking through winchester thinking about the wrong table you know we kind of associate arthur with points further west don't we you know into the wales and cornwall and tentagel but here we've got this massive

thing this massive table in the great hall and it's really fascinating story how that ended up there and it's really a story about how medieval kings were thinking about themselves and thinking about the past actually in terms of what they could do to represent themselves, to give them that connection to the past.

So it was really probably built around 1290 by King Edward I, so very much after any sort of sense of any kind of Arthur that might have, you know, possibly or probably not existed. Edward I was a really... strong Arthurian reader. He loved reading the Arthurian romances as did his wife Eleanor. They enjoyed these together. They worked this into sort of part of how they represented themselves quite frequently.

And what ended up happening around 1290 is that Edward I was celebrating the forthcoming marriages of three of his children, getting betrayed, getting married at about all the same time, including, I think, his heir. And so what they do is they call a...

massive tournament at Winchester in order to celebrate this particular occasion, to have, you know, the royal court, the betrothed, everyone kind of around for, you know, your big fancy party and a big fancy feast. And what says party and feast in the 13th century, like having a tournament? right having some knights bash around with each other and you know for fun

And so they designed this because they're reading all these Arthurian romances, because this is really a part of their worldview. They designed this table probably at the same time as being built to be a part of the idea of this sort of Wintonian, this Winchester festival.

this tournament that they're doing to celebrate here. So we think the table probably comes from around 1290, from that particular circumstance. But how Arthur is sort of within the legends connected to Winchester is a very, very other different story as well, too.

And so it's currently mounted on the wall at the one end of Winchester Hall, but I remember you telling me that at one point it was actually a table on the ground with legs. Yeah, knowing what size it is, having seen it, can you even imagine how much space that would have taken up there?

And it must have needed some fairly strong structure underneath it to support all of that weight as well. And so how did it fit into Winchester Hall then? So were there other things on the walls? Was the table kind of a centrepiece?

it was very much a centerpiece at the time so when this is coming about so this is before the great hall as we see it now if people want to look up a picture while they're looking at it very quickly there's these two aisles on either side and they're a bit lower in terms of the roof line and how that's pitched

the turn of the 14th century, you know, towards Edward I's reign, those aisle sides were actually a little bit higher. So you don't have quite the height on those aisles. So it's a hole that's a little bit lower in some ways. And so it's definitely not mounted on the wall. It's probably sat on the ground.

But what you have on the two gable ends of the hall are these two paintings. So one's a map of Mundi. It's a map of the world, you know, the world as we knew it in the 13th century. And then on the other side, you have this representation, the painting of the Wheel of Fortune.

which is the sort of age-old tale about how fortune kind of comes and goes. It goes on the turn of a wheel, you know, what comes up must go down. When you're happy one day, you're sad the next. The wheel of fortune, you know, or Fortuna. And so you've got these paintings that are on each side of the gables.

And then in the middle, you've got this honking huge table sat there. And, you know, again, you've seen it, the width of it, the breadth of it. It was taking up almost all of the center in the nave, if you will, sort of before it hits the aisles and those columns on the side.

And when they took it down to do studies of it in the 1970s, what they discovered is not only did it have legs, so those posts are going to put places for 12 legs around the outside of it, it also had the space for a giant pedestal in the middle.

have any of those remaining anymore obviously when that got mounted up on the wall those were probably gotten rid of or moved elsewhere you know used somewhere else but salisbury cathedral the chapter house actually has a bit of a pedestal mount that looks like something that could have been similar i'm not saying it was

the same one but kind of as an example this massive stone pillar sort of low-pitched squat you know can take the width of this table and kind of give it that center sort of fixation as well Yeah so I mean you said it kind of looms large over the hall from on the wall so to think of it there in the middle of the room must have had a much more Arthurian feel to it then I guess as well an actual table that you could sit around as a bunch of knights with the king.

Yeah. And at this time, the hall was being used much more for that kind of purposes. As we get into, you know, 13th, 14th and, you know, the later medieval period, the Great Hall becomes much more of a judicial space. It's much more a place where you go for your trials. the civil and criminal courts there, I think, by the 18th century or so. But already by the late Middle Ages, you know, Winchester's kind of waning as a royal city in some particular ways. It's no longer really a royal residence.

And so as this whole kind of shifts into this judicial idea, that's one way it goes up on the wall because they need this space. But at the time that it was first put in, it was just this really monumental piece that was really speaking to the Edwardian absolute love, the cherishing of the...

Arthurian romances. And I think you said when we were there as well, it's kind of an odd thing for this round table to have ended up on the wall above the dais where the king would sit. So kind of this big representation of the ultimate equality. of everybody around a circular table is above the king's head, making it very clear who's in charge.

Yeah, it's an absolute subversion of what the roundtable is supposed to mean, isn't it? You know, because that idea of everyone, you know, this sort of equal sitting around it, did some looking up into some of the earlier texts. You're going to have to forget my really terrible middle English, but lay them on towards the term. So right around 1200 or so, about 100 years before Edward I. Leamon's translating Wais' version of Geoffrey of Monmouth, kind of tracking that Arthurian legend.

And so this idea of this round table actually comes from waste. The Norman poet introduces the idea of this round table into the Arthurian legend.

And then Wais is the one he's basically talking about, you know, he doesn't really describe the table, but talks about it being around, and that they were all sort of around each other, all were seated alike and none outside. And then Lehmann translates this French back into Middle English, and it turns... to, the translator says that it's particularly heavy weather of it, which is, I think, quite accurate.

forgive my butchering of middle english here but it essentially it's sort of all are sitting around it so there's none within and none without right so there's no end there's no corner and to make certain that you know none are outside none are inside none are opposite is what

it's kind of saying as well so this idea of this great equality isn't it and then you put it up on a wall just kind of say i'm the king you know it becomes what's referred to as a cloth of a state so putting it on the wall where it goes in the great hall it's

highlighting the fact that this is sort of the king and the queen's end of the hall. You know, this part of the castle too, in the great hall, there were the queen's chambers and the apartments out that direction. It was really the high status area. So you're taking this symbol of great knightly equality.

and sort of putting it above your head kind of saying no never mind that never mind no no no this is my side i'm the one in charge here really it's an absolute subversion of what it's supposed to be doing it's hilarious in that way a little bit kind of early orwellian in you know we're all

equal but I'm a little bit more equal than you all are yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah I hadn't thought of it that way but that's pretty apt yeah and I suppose we have to make a nod to something slightly outside our period here but anyone that goes to visit the roundtable today will

not to be able to fail to notice the massive Tudor rose in the middle of it and the painted figure at the top that looks a lot like Henry VIII or at least probably what Henry VIII would have imagined himself looking like when he was a little bit older. How has he ended up dominating the round table at Winchester? Do we think this is a coincidence? Henry VIII, he really was in love with himself, wasn't he? We say it's a bit out of the period, but it's so much a story of this as well.

By the time we're into Henry VIII Serenia, this sort of table is a part of sort of the fabric of the Great Hall. There's a 15th century chronicle talking about the Round Hall at Winchester. It's very much this known entity.

And what's really interesting is that it wasn't the painted version. So the paint that we see on it now actually wasn't there in the 13th century. So it's probably decorated in some way. It might have had a cover, like a leather cover or something on it. But it was a table. It wasn't painted this way.

So when Henry VIII comes along, he almost literally has to embody Arthur in so many ways. He's had to take over for his older brother. He wasn't the one who was going to be this great king. It was going to be his brother Arthur. So in so many ways, he has to adopt Arthur.

Arthur, the legendary king as well as his brother, you know, to the degree he marries his brother's wife, as we all know. That's a whole other tale of Protestantism and religious issues and many wives, of course. But, you know, in the early part of his reign here, he really has to sort of...

of try to embody that sense of being the rightful heir and the rightful king and I mean this is something that stretches back through all of these kings anyway but with Henry it was really keen and really important and so what he does is he takes this table He whacks on the Tudor rose, the Lancastrian and the Yorkist rose, the great symbol of these so-called united houses at this point.

And then he makes this into this great legend, you know, so he has it painted around the side. It says, and it says this in English, something along the lines of here are the 24 nights of the great round table of Arthur and the names them in English as well. And then puts up.

this painting of Arthur on it but it's really Henry I mean it's widely acknowledged to be essentially not a self-portrait because he didn't do it but essentially that's Henry VIII as Arthur so he's embodying this you know he's wearing cloths of estate he's wearing the ermines he's wearing the period you know furs and robes and everything

And he really has to make this a go. He really has to be the king that is meant to be there. And one of the best things you can always do if you're unsure about your kingship is sort of look to the past to try to solidify, to get your legitimacy by having that long-term sense.

of the past. And especially in his case, he didn't just have his older brother, Arthur, to kind of look up to. Of course, Henry VII essentially won his crown on a battlefield. Say what you will about whether he's the rightful king or not, you know, you're one generation away. from civil wars. You're one generation away from finding the Tudor compromise at the end, if you will. So it was just really crucial for Henry to be able to

And to put his mark on things, to be able to say, I'm not just the king, I'm the rightful king. And I'm the rightful king by dint of my father, by dint of my houses, and by dint of all of this past that's going to sort of load up behind me to show that I'm legitimate.

I'm not sure anyone would really doubt that Henry was a complete narcissist, but I guess for him, Arthur came with an awful lot of baggage relating to his brother and everything else. So perhaps putting himself on that table is a little bit of him owning all of that baggage that it came with. and projecting himself into that space. I am now Arthur.

Yeah, yeah. And I think he really had to, I mean, for as long as his reign was. And I think we tend to think, and this is much more your area, I think, than mine, Matt. We tend to think of the Tudor period as being these sort of great kings, but it was absolutely a period fraught with struggle and, you know,

wars absolutely all the time. You know, the Holy Roman Empire, the Pope, France. Henry's dealing with all of these throughout his very, very long reign. And, you know, part of this sort of representation of himself, too, he brought the Holy Roman Emperor. to winchester so it was right after maximilian had died it was the new emperor the sun

And they're basically on tour of these sites in England together. You know, this is back before the great holy rift, shall we say. And Henry's still casting himself as essentially the defender of faith, you know, the defender of the Pope. So here he is, you know, on this like English grand tour with the... holy roman emperor and they have this great itinerary they're bopping around southern england together seeing the sights as you do

And they whiz through Winchester. They're here like one night. And they go from here very quickly to go to Bishop's Waltham, which there's the Bishop's Palace. It's just down the road. It's just south of Winchester. So they're only in Winchester for maybe a night.

so they're here not to stay here again this is no longer really a royal city henry takes him past to go see the round table there's very little doubt that this is a part of this representation of saying look here i am i'm the new king i'm really the king i'm really arthur look at this great thing that we have It's King Arthur's table, ta-da, you know. And not coincidentally, Maximilian, the Holy Roman Emperor, had also vaguely claimed Arthur as an ancestor as well.

You know, everyone else is doing it. Why not the Holy Roman Emperor? So this is really Henry, like, making this great stake, you know, really kind of putting his seal on this and showing, you know, not just Winchester, not just his royals, but the rest of Europe that...

He was here. This was his place in his space. And he was the king. He was the rightful king in so many ways. Yeah. You pointed out when we were there as well, some of the amazing designs and imagery around the wall. I'm thinking in particular of the ceiling bosses that we talked about. Can you tell us a little bit about those and how that was affected by a kind of Arthurian shift during the reign of Edward III?

Yeah, absolutely. So Edward III, this would be the grandson of Edward I, who probably had the table made. Edward III, also, you know, great Arthurian, really, and very much into chivalry as well. You know, he found the Knights of the Garter, this great chivalric... of knights and nobles upholding these chivalric ideas. And Edward III really wanted to switch this over.

From Winchester to Windsor. So by the time of his grandfather, really, Winchester has this really close association with Arthur. And that's because of Waste, because of Leomon, especially the old French prose Lancelot, you know, in the 1230s. That really gives Winchester the...

heavy stead in terms of thinking about Winchester as being really an Arthurian city. By the time we had Edward III, he really wants to switch that over to Windsor. He wants to move that focus away. And I think you've both got this sort of traditional...

of, you know, here is the table. It is in Winchester. It's the round table. It's Winchester's round table. You know, this really is part of this equation here. And then you can't forget that it's also honking huge. You can move it. You can change it around. I mean, it's been done a few times.

the centuries but it is a logistic nightmare you know it takes a lot of time and effort to do this so What happens is that whilst Edward III is trying to shift this over into Windsor, he's also got to deal with this unfortunate table in this castle that he doesn't really use all that much as a house anymore.

and at this time too you're getting that shift in the aisles that i talked about so the aisle sizes were changed at this point and so the shape of the hall the sort of the width and the height of it change in a couple of ways now

it's thought that probably at this point that's probably when it goes on to the gable as well so for one he's moving it away from the floor it's being used in a more judicial sense they don't need it right there they need that floor space quite simply it's a practical place so He whacks it on the wall because his gable is a little bit higher. They can get away with this in certain ways. But what he also does...

And I think it's like a medieval dad pun kind of territory here, right? So you've got these bosses on the wall as you're shifting the ceiling height and you're kind of changing how the framework of the building looks. Those central points where you've got the nice portraiture there. where the ceilings meet in the framework, there are these really interesting looking symbols on them. And if you look at them, they look very much basically like a sun.

So the center is sort of a circle, and then it's got wavy pointed lines coming out of it. And so that's often been seen as sort of the sun, you know, the king, the light, that kind of idea. But there's also one interpretation, too. This is the medieval dad pun. So winds, like winds from the weather, winds from the south, could be represented visually as squiggly lines. And the whole thing was gold. It was gold leaf, which is ore, you know, ore in French.

So it's thought that these bosses, rather than just being sort of like the light of the king, the sun, that kind of thing, they could be the winds door, the winds of or Windsor, which I mean. If it was funny in the 14th century, I don't know. Yeah, I can kind of imagine Edward III. looking around waiting for people to laugh and probably they would eventually out of politeness to the king everyone uncomfortably laughs kind of thinking is that he made a joke he made a joke good one sir

You mentioned earlier about Winchester's importance as a medieval city. How does it become important and why does its importance then wane? It obviously becomes attached to Arthur's story at some point, but then becomes... less important through the medieval period so that Edward wants to move focus away to Windsor.

Why was it important at the beginning of the period and why did it wane through the period? Winchester, it's a royal city and it's an excesiastic city, but it sort of loses its weight. It loses its sort of punch in the royal circles. It's probably an almost royal decline. by probably the end of the 12th century already. It's sort of Wessex heartland territory. You can get into sort of the pre-conquest kings.

It was never capital of England in any sense of the word. There really was no such thing. But what it was was a really central city. And it was a central royal city with a very powerful bishop. from the very early days, and then sort of by luck and by dint of military might, goodness, good defense, good peacemaking, you know, whatever you want to call it into the 10th century.

The House of Wessex becomes essentially the Kings of England by dint of slowly taking over these particular areas, you know, subsuming Mercia into the fold, eventually kind of getting a hold of the Danelaw in the north. And so it's because it's essentially the House of Wessex that's then ruling most of England. And Winchester is one of the main cities of the House of Wessex. This kind of rolls over into being a really important city.

within the central and in the middle of the middle ages period so we've got here royal palace from the pre-conquest period one built after the conquest period as well as the castle that was built up on the hill there was a royal mint here from before

the conquest period up until at least into the 12th century and of course the bishops the bishops of winchester have traditionally been very powerful and actually to this day in rank of precedence like if you go to the house of lords the precedence of the bishops i think winchester is

sort of equal with London and Durham after the two archbishops. So it's always been just a really important center economically, financially, excesiastically, and then royally as well that kind of merges into this city. it kind of starts losing a lot of its gumption, I'm thinking, by the end of the 12th century. And a part of this is that weight is kind of shifting to London at this point.

And the first few kings after the conquest as well, it was kind of like great tradition. You come over, you get yourself acclaimed and crowned in London, and then you go take the treasury in Winchester because the royal treasury was here. And it was a two-step program. You know, step one, get coronated. Step two, go.

get the treasury and one really great scholar said it really says a lot about a king which one they go for first in terms of whether or not they're supposed to be on the throne or not and so Because the treasury was here, there's this great historical tradition of the sort of the ecclesiastic, the secular and the sacred power. This becomes this great city. But after the civil war, after the anarchy period,

Amongst other things, the Treasury shifts to London. So the Royal Treasury is no longer in Winchester after about 1154, definitely by the end of the 12th century. And you just have, I think, the center of gravity moving in royal circles more and more towards London and other estates. You know, Windsor, for example, definitely by the time of the Edwards and the later Plantagenes. And so it just kind of... Slowly kind of quiets down a little bit. It still maintains a lot of

The sacred power, so the bishop, again, still powerful. There was a really great fair here on St. Giles Hill. It saw medieval merchants from across Europe. You know, there's Italian merchants up in the hill. And I'm actually looking at St. Giles Hill right now. It's right there.

looks over the city. You can go to the top of St. Giles Hill, see the entire city, see how it's laid out, see the magnificent cathedral. And this was the bishop's fair. It's how he got a lot of money. He closed the gates for a certain number of days per year and took all of the takings from the city gates on those.

days and that starts again kind of going into decline as well so just in a lot of ways by the time we hit sort of the higher theory in period you know the kind of more chivalric age if you want to think of it that way Winchester is just kind of tootling along a bit nicely. It's got its senses of place and growth. There's been some great excavations in the city to talk about who lives here, how people were living. It was still a city that was thriving, but it had kind of lost that.

sort of impetus, the sort of strength of that royal connection brought to it. You don't see a lot of foreign diplomats coming through like you did with the Holy Roman Emperor, for example. Although you do still see things like Mary I marrying Philip of Spain, wasn't it? They got married in Winchester Cathedral, but they stayed at the bishop's palace. You know, there wasn't even a royal need for a royal launching here by the time we hit the Tudors.

So it maybe lost a bit of its shine as it loses the money that makes its way to London over the period. Yeah. I mean, I always hate to go down to economics, but if you don't have the Royal Treasury, you have much less reason to sort of stop in and check on things, don't you? This episode is brought to you by Royal Kingdom, the latest puzzle game from the creators of Royal Match. When I first heard about Royal Kingdom, it seemed too good to be true.

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How does Winchester become linked with King Arthur's story? Is it one of those candidates for having been Camelot? Is there a story that it was, you know, Arthur's seat of Camelot? Or is it more sideways connection than that?

It's a much more sideways connection, actually, and it's such a roundabout way too. Winchester gets linked into this really quite late All Things Considered. So if you think of Geoffrey of Monmouth as the first one really writing the British Arthurian story, now he talks about Winchester.

Winchester a lot, but he talks about it because it's an important city to him. You know, this is within his time frame and his worldview. Winchester is this very important city, but it's not really linked into Arthur. Uther Pendragon is declaimed here, for example, in Geoffrey of Monmouth. as a player isn't really a part of that and then that starts kind of

transitioning a little bit. So Wais, the Norman poet, translates Geoffrey of Monmouth. It's the Roman de Brut. So it translates this into vernacular French. So Wais is really starting to bring Winchester into this a little bit more into the story.

there is a battle here and Arthur captures the city. So we see an Arthurian victory here. And Wais also is the first one to talk about the round table. He introduces the idea of this, you know, sitting amongst equal, neither within nor without table to the story. But then it's really Lyemon in about 1200 when he's writing, so he's taking waste.

and readapting ways into English. So you've gone from Latin to French to English in all these translations here. And Leomon is really adding a little bit more about Winchester, but it's bringing it back into the vernacular, back around again. But then we start having Crétien de Troyes and then the old French Lancelot proses. So that's right around...

The Old French Lancelot's around 1230, that's anonymous, and Cretin de Troyes a little bit before that. And this really starts kind of gathering the steam here. Cretin de Troyes places one of Arthur's courts at Winchester. And Cretin d'Etoile might have actually at least knew about Winchester. It's thought that he might have visited here. His patron was the nephew of the Bishop of Winchester. So he might have had some connections here as well.

But then it's that old French prose, it's the prose Lancelot, the death of Arthur, a very first early version here, that starts really getting Winchester as a part of the picture. And so Carleon is still considered Arthur's city within this, but Winchester kind of... steps forward in this as well. Arthur has courts here, there's a battle here. And then I think quite importantly to link that then to Edward I, in the old French Lancelot, there is a tournament in Winchester.

It was a major tournament. So Arthur calls a tournament. He calls it in Caroleon, but he holds it in Winchester outside the city. So for one, it's sort of, again, bringing that court and then bringing the idea of the festivity and the chivalric ideas of tournament into Winchester.

Chester that then Edward I can just look at and say oh I'm having that and sort of drop his tournament into this as well and then these ideas just become really linked from that point. And it all just becomes a bit of a messy smudge because by the end of the period if we dare to step back towards the Tudors for a little second. I mean, Henry VII has his son Arthur born at Winchester on the basis that Winchester is Camelot. So he's kind of just taken that leap really out of no...

previous evidence. So it was a city that was linked to Arthur, but not Camelot in anybody else's mind until Henry VII decides, Winchester was Camelot, my son will be born there and be called Arthur. To be honest with you, I'm not really certain where Camelot comes in, but the Tudors don't strike me as kings who don't have an idea and then say, well, that's it, isn't it? So I'm going to...

I have to admit to not actually knowing when and how Winchester gets linked to Camelot before that point. So what did Arthur mean or what did he represent? to the medieval mind. Why were people, and I think especially kings, obsessed with Arthur during the medieval period? It's a really funny mix of kind of how that all blends in together. I mean, because if you think about if there was an Arthur...

And there probably wasn't a kind of minor king, minor lord, probably lots of war happening at the time, 5th, 6th century, somewhere in there. You know, it's not... that much of a story in terms of history in terms of if he ever really existed and again he likely didn't not in any form that we know but what he came to represent I think It is one of those moments where the mythology absolutely outweighs what actually happened. It doesn't matter what actually happens because of how it ends up.

being portrayed, how he ends up being used, how this sort of entity and the idea of this ideal knighthood just enters the lexicon, enters the mindset of the nobility and the aristocracy of the period. These chivalric ideas that Arthur was to represent and of course this is in no way a historical this is the literary arthur you know but this becomes this powerful

And I think even emotional glue, that's meant to sort of hold people together at times. And I think if you see times when Arthurian legend, Arthurian ideas are really manifesting. So, for example, Edward III, he forms the Knights of the Guard, even though that's Windsor, not Winchester. But, you know, think about his father. Edward III had been one of the ones who was arresting Roger Mortimer. His grandfather, his great-grandfather, was Henry III.

who was essentially a puppet king for a few years. Then you've got John, then you've got all of the anarchy. The idea of this chivalric nobility that glue people together. Hey, what's up? It's Mario Lopez. Back to school is an exciting time, but it can also be overwhelming and kids may feel isolated. A vulnerability that human traffickers can exploit. Human trafficking doesn't always look like what you expect.

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I'd like to tell you about my show, Dan Snow's History Hit, that really explains everything that's ever happened. The origin stories of the cities we inhabit, or of what's in our kitchen cupboards. Why we've always been drawn to dictators. the greatest discoveries, inventions, and mistakes ever made. For curious stories, check out Dan Snow's history hit wherever you get your podcasts.

I think, assists in times of trouble, assists in times where you really need that kind of unifying factor. And because Arthur was such a fictionalized, romanticized... ideal even though the court's not perfect we all know it goes terribly wrong in the end etc but this is something that we can aspire to as leaders as kings as leaders of men and i think that concept combined with chivalry really gives a sort of a cohesion to the aristocracy gives this binding force

to try to draw them together and to try to draw them on side of the king. Chivalry is quite a funny, nebulous thing to begin with, and chivalry kind of manifests to begin with just to keep nobles from killing each other. you are a minority, don't kill each other off because then there won't be anyone left to rule the peasants, right? This is really how chivalry kind of has its roots and maybe we ransom each other off and make some money rather than kill ourselves, you know? And that is...

I think at the most basic level, that is an aristocratic social contract with each other. It's perfectly fine to go off killing peasants. Quote-unquote, nobody cares about the peasants, obviously. You don't want to kill each other when you're elite because then you just don't have enough people to run the peasantry.

So what starts off as this sort of idea that it's better to make money and enforce your rule over the poor becomes this... romanticized really wonderful very stylized idea of how you act as men and as kings and as nobles And I think regardless of anything about Arthur, that's really what Arthur is in this period. He's a unifying force that these kings need. Henry VIII has got the very slim Tudor tradition behind him. Edward III, his father, like we know, that went all horribly wrong.

And these are times when these kings need this unifying force to make certain their men are on side because they know all too well what could happen if they don't have that kind of situation. So if they're an Arthur, if they're idealized, if they're portraying themselves in this way... that's giving them this sort of sense of something for them to rally around, as well as that legitimacy of saying, my line goes all the way back to this historic, magnificent king.

It's very much like what Julius Caesar was to the Frankish king or any of the gods in the Roman tradition. Julius Caesar looking back to the Aeneas and things like that. It's very much the same tradition. It's mythologizing your past to legitimize your future. I think it's interesting. So I guess Arthur becomes a malleable, the literary Arthur we're talking about, you know, not historical Arthur. He becomes this kind of malleable figurehead for chivalry who can be...

moulded into whatever suits the current time. So as chivalry evolves and develops and a king's needs and desires evolve, so can Arthur to come to represent all of those things and still provide this big historical anchor.

to legitimize what a king is doing yeah absolutely a really great writer once wrote that essentially if you empty the past of its history it just becomes a blank slate it just becomes whatever you want to make it of And so if you're starting from a place where you don't really know if there's this history anyway, Arthur becomes a vessel. He becomes a representation of whatever you need it to be. I mean, that is genuinely, I think, what happens.

Anytime anyone is dealing with a deep past, and I think we have to remember all of these kings are dealing with... who they thought was someone centuries ago. Arthur wasn't new. He wasn't living memory. Nobody knew Arthur. Nobody could say, oh, I met his great-great-great-grandson. You know what I mean? He was a completely unknown historic entity.

And so you really could make him into what you needed him to be. To some degree, I think it was done respectfully. I mean, it was definitely done purposefully. And I think perhaps manipulatively. But I do think there is some element of belief in this as well. I'm quite a cynic about chivalry and things like that. But I do think that this sort of sense of looking back to this time.

And trying to find this cohesive measure was something that was done, I think, with some belief of what it could be or what should be. My view of chivalry was always that it started off and I... probably have bought into some kind of romantic notions of it here but that it starts off as this band of brothers kind of thing all unifying together and that throughout the medieval period it kind of becomes corrupted and twisted and falls apart towards the end of the period.

But listening to you, it sounds like it started off in a pretty bad shape as being more about the elite protecting the elite. So that element of chivalry serving a purpose... to protect the elite wasn't something that I had thought about before. I think it's an interesting aspect. So it almost places limitations on what they're willing to do to each other to protect each other rather than being this idea of coming together.

for a common purpose. Yeah, well, I mean, if you think about battlefield stuff, you know, you get into the War of the Roses and the Hundred Years' War. I mean, especially the Hundred Years' War, you start to see people ransoming each other off on the battlefield with mad abandon and, you know, prisoners become hostages and that's a different sort of... type of captivity you know one you can make money off of and things like that and it becomes I don't want to say

transactional because that's a bit too rote but you know especially the hundred years war you start seeing this uptick and things like that happening and it has been thought to be a part of this chivalric idea but you've also just got shed loads of nobles off killing shed loads of nobles you know and hundred years war was really a european conflict this was huge

And so to some degree, somebody's got to go rule the roost when this is all over, you know what I mean? You can't just annihilate all of the ruling aristocrats across Europe. not have a massive social upheaval afterwards. You talk of peasants war and things like that, obviously. But if you go back just a few hundred years, I mean, and not saying that that didn't happen, but the idea was simply as you start shifting from things like feud law.

families having feuds and you can settle disputes that way into more sort of regulated law and law codes and things like that. The idea really is to protect each other. Somebody has got to rule the country while you're off. fighting France. You don't want to jeopardise that opportunity. And I suppose the ultimate expression of that probably comes at somewhere like Agincourt, where you get so much of the French nobility killed that it causes massive problems for their country for decades.

to follow that so the rules of chivalry kind of go out the window there. Loads and loads of nobles killed, a perfect demonstration of what they've been trying to protect themselves from.

for hundreds of years yeah I think absolutely yeah I don't know if it needs more attention or if I'm just not you know hearing people talk about it so much it's probably the latter to be perfectly honest with you but I think we just always need to remember that chivalry is beautiful as it is you know and it's produced Great literature, amazing arts and material culture and beautiful songs and poetry. But I...

Do you think we need to remember it started with literally a gentleman's agreement that when this is done, I won't kill you if you don't kill me. I'm thoroughly disabused of all my romantic notions. Oh, I'm so sorry. I don't mean to ruin anyone of romantic notions. That's not why I'm here. And so do you think then that Arthur was, and maybe still is to some extent, a political tool, a weapon, propaganda item? Absolutely. Absolutely.

Arthur hasn't popped up too much of late, has he? I'm trying to think through if there's any examples that I know of. I think what we're seeing a lot of, anytime that you have something, like I said, the way back machine, right? When you're dealing with something that's so far of the past that it's empty of signifiers.

It's empty of historical meaning. And there's always a danger in that, too. I can point towards Joan of Arc. Marine Le Pen, with the Front National, uses as a symbol the leader of this far-right party in France, gives speeches in front of golden statues of Joan of Arc.

to symbolize and represent herself as the great savior of France. I don't know if this is quite as manipulative or malicious, but you know, Magna Carta keeps on popping up a lot these days. I don't know if you saw the news yesterday up in Edinburgh. As we record this last night, a group of about 30 people attempted to take Edinburgh Castle, claiming Magna Carta Clause 61. I know there was a lot around during the pandemic about people claiming Magna Carta clauses.

meant that they had a right to shop in places and things like that and so yeah it's kind of being adopted for purposes that it was never meant for and which it doesn't actually serve but people will twist it to meet their current need. Precisely, without the historical knowledge of it. So Article 61 is that we shall desize the king if a tyrannical government. So that's the one that everyone knows about Magna Carta, but that one, it wasn't in any of the reissues. It was...

provisional, you know, it was if X, then Y, and it was specific to 25 barons. So it is one of those things. No one can seize anything under clause 61 of Magna Carta these days. But without... that historical context right again it just becomes empty it becomes words that you can latch on to and try to use in particular ways so a little bit further from Arthur like from an actual figure but it is the kind of same feeling to it isn't it in terms of the fact that If something...

You know, I always use the term the Wayback Machine. I think sometimes it's difficult for medievalists to make people understand that the stuff that we do in the Wayback Machine actually has purpose and can get used and can get manipulated. Magna Carta, Jean d'Arc, King Arthur, for example. Any part of the past can get used, I think. And I think Arthur's a really fascinating example because he's already getting used by the 12th century.

He was wide open. And I guess then he becomes a pretty good indicator of what kings are concerned with and interested in and their kind of worldview because Arthur is almost moulded to fix that. So you're tracking his story through the medieval period. can tell us a lot about what kings were interested in and how they saw themselves and what their needs were that Arthur could be made to fit. Absolutely. I mean, that moulding, I mean, you have it exactly right. That moulding of...

a figure in the past to shape your needs. That's exactly what the literary author has been through, through hundreds and hundreds of years. He sort of manifests very nicely in Winchester at these really particular points too. That's been absolutely fascinating. Thank you, Catherine, for lots of...

Very interesting insights there. Can you tell us what you're working on at the moment as well? What can we expect to see from you soon? I'm doing a lot right now, accidentally. I'm just starting to write a book about Queen Matilda and the Empress Matilda, the Matilda of Bologna and Matilda of England, looking at the year of the Civil War of 1141 and thinking about why these two women were, in essence...

leading fights, leading this significant period of civil strife against each other. It's an absolutely unprecedented year in English history and I think everyone ought to know a little bit more about it. And Queen Matilda, I think, is a fascinating lady in her own right, as opposed to Empress Matilda. Underrated, getting a lot more attention these days. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And she deserves it too.

That's something to keep an eye out for and maybe you'll come back and talk to us about the two Matildas at some point in the future too. Thank you very much for your time, Catherine. Yes, thanks very much for having me. I really enjoyed it. Don't forget to subscribe to Gone Medieval wherever you get your podcasts from and to tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval.

This is the part where I usually plug another podcast from History Hit, but I'm going mercenary today with my recommendation. No podcast, just my film on King Arthur, Legend and Legacy, which features Catherine and her colleague Cindy Wood, and which looks at a little-known aspect of Arthur's story. his death at the hands of Henry II, the first Plantagenet king. Intrigued? I hope so. Anyway, I'd better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis, and we've just gone medieval with History Hit.