The Rest Is History - 715. King Arthur: The Mysteries of Merlin (Part 3)

Episode Date: October 18, 2026

What are the origins of Merlin, the powerful wizard and King Arthur’s advisor? Who was Geoffrey of Monmouth, and what role did he play in evolving the tales of Arthur and the Round Table? And, was Merlin based on a real historical figure from the Saxon invasion of Britain in the 5th century, and the totemic battle of Badon…? Join Tom and Dominic as they delve into the true origins of history’s greatest wizard: Merlin…. Join The Rest Is History Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to every series and live show tickets, a members-only newsletter, discounted books from the show, and access to our private Discord chatroom. Sign up directly at the⁠⁠restishistory.com⁠⁠. To read our new newsletter, sign up at: ⁠⁠therestishistory.com/newsletters⁠⁠_______ Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. _______ Advertise with us: ⁠[e-mail]⁠ _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Video Editors: Jack Meek, Harry Swan + Adam Thornton  Social Producer: Harry Balden Producers: Tabby Syrett & Aaliyah Akude  Senior Producer: Callum Hill   Executive Producer: Dom Johnson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A week went by, and the king's passion for Egrane had become more than he could bear. He summoned Alfin of Ridd Karadok, one of his friends, and told him how desperately besotted he was with Egrane. If I cannot have her, then I am convinced that I shall suffer a physical breakdown. You must tell me how I can satisfy my desire for her, for otherwise I shall die of this passion which is burning me up. What you request is impossible, answered Alfin. We can't possibly approach your grain while she's inside the walls of Tintagel. The castle is built high above the sea, which surrounds it on all sides, and the only way across to it is via a narrow isthmus of rock.

Three armed men could hold it against you, even were you to stand there with the entire might of Britain at your back. The only man who could possibly solve such a problem is the prophet, Merlin. With his assistance, you might, I think, be able to obtain what you want. And so the king, recognizing the truth of what Ulfin had said, sent for Merlin. So that's a thrillingly dramatic moment. In the history of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Mummuth. So Geoffrey of Mummuth wrote that in the late 1130s.

It was the British bonk-buster of the entire Middle Ages. It's the book that basically invented the legend of King Arthur. it packaged and presented him as this towering figure of European stature as a conqueror who had ruled as the greatest and most glorious king in all British history. And the passage above is the origin story. So Tom, remind everybody who Uther Pendragon is. So Uthamendragon is the king in that passage that you were reading. He is the king of Britain and Igrain, for whom he has the massive hots, is the wife of Goulwa, the Duke of Cornwall, and Geoffrey describes Egrane as being the most beautiful woman in Britain. And Uther and Goulwa had originally been allies

in the fight against the Saxons, who will be coming to in due course in this episode. But then Uther holds court and he gets his first glimpse of the wife of Goulwa, the beauteous Egrane, and he falls madly in love with her. And basically, he comes can't stop gauping at her, you know, eyes wide, kind of salivating. And Gawlwai takes massive umbrage at this and he leaves, he storms out of Uther's court without getting the king's permission and heads off to his duchy of Cornwall. And Uther has a massive drop about this because he feels it's very disrespectful. And he demands that Gawar return with a grain. Gawlwere refuses. And so Uther invades Cornwall, torching its towns and castles, um, biry.

everything in his path. And because Goulwa knows that he can't resist the might of the King of Britain in the open field of battle, he pursues a guerrilla strategy, but not before, he goes out into the woods and the wilds of Cornwall to pursue this guerrilla strategy. But first of all, he makes sure that Igrain is secure by putting her in his strongest castle. And this, as we heard in the passage that you read, is Tintagil, the fortress of the narrow entrance and it stands to this day on the northern cliffs of Cornwall built on a kind of rocky precipitous headland very narrow isthmus as described in that passage and it has a natural water supply as well so you can hold out for a pretty long time and if you've never been there it's i mean

it's a spectacular setting incredibly dramatic yeah and um effectively impregnable yeah however it's impregnable if you are attacking with conventional, you know, conventional forces. Correct. But what if you have the world's ultimate weapon of mass destruction? Indeed, the world's greatest wizard on your side? Well, in that case, everything is slightly different. And fortunately, the greatest wizard is floating around Cornwall at this point. And this is Merlin, who is indeed a figure of awesome, supernatural post.

So who is he? He is the son of a princess who as a very young girl had been placed in a nunnery where she had lived a life of virginal purity But she had been met in her dreams by a glamorous and faintly sulfurous figure who turns out to be an incubus Which is a demon in the form of a very handsome young man and this incubus gets this this virgin princess this virgin nun pregnant. And so Merlin is the son of a woman, a mortal woman, but doesn't have a mortal father. So that makes him very distinctive. It endows him with all kinds of powers. So he is a prophet. He can see far into the future. And he is an enchanter. And if you want a brilliant spell, then Merlin is your man. And that is what Uther wants. And specifically, he wants a spell that will enable him to sleep with egrain. And Merlin is told this by Uther and he obliges.

So this is what Jeffrey of Monmouth has Merlin say. By means of my magic, I can make you look exactly like Gouloulau so that you will resemble him in every way. And everything goes to plan. So Uther, who is now looking exactly like Gouloulau is able to ride across the narrow isthmus. He's recognised by the guards who open the gates to him. He's admitted to the castle. He goes to Egrane, who naturally assumes that this is indeed her husband. Uther disguised as Goulwa sleeps with Egrane. And again, to quote Geoffrey of Monmouth, that very night, she conceived Arthur, most famous of men.

Yeah, but was he? This is the question. So when we were introducing this episode, we talked about how Geoffrey of Monmouth had effectively invented or created the Arthur industry. So up to this point, is Arthur the most famous of men? Or is Jeffrey making that up? Well, the mad thing is that by describing Arthur as the most famous of men, Jeffrey basically succeeds in making that claim true.

Hitherto it had not been the case. Previously, Arthur had featured in a few obscure Welsh texts, some enigmatic poems, the odd entry in a Latin chronicle or two, but really nothing more than that, nothing that would reverberate beyond the bounds of Wales. But now, thanks to the incredible success of the history of the Kings of Britain, Geoffrey's history, all of this changes. And loads of what Geoffrey includes in this book will become part of the common currency

of Arthurian legend and of medieval literature more generally. And it's actually, it's still being recycled to this day. So examples include the whole Arthur being conceived in Tintagal story, which Geoffrey basically seems to have made up. Anyone who has seen John Borman's film Excalibur, it opens with this scene, Uther galloping across the dragon's breath, this kind of blue mist, which has been blown by Merlin, across the third. see. It is also Jeffrey who introduces Excalibur, which he actually calls it Calaburnus, so that's

the kind of the Latin form of it. And it's Jeffrey who gives us the name of Arthur's spear, which we've already mentioned. It's called Ron. And so both Ron and Calaburnus are the Latinized forms of names that Jeffrey had found in Welsh poetry describing the sword and spear of Arthur, respectively. And also there are other aspects of the legend that we've already touched on. So in episode one, we talked about this, Mordred's treachery, the last battle, Arthur being taken to Avalon. All of this originates with Jeffrey of Monmouth. So essentially, without Geoffrey, there would have been no Arthurian legends. They would have, Dominic, you would call it the mythos.

No Arthurian mythos. But is Geoffrey conscious that he's inventing the mythos? Well. Well, Jeffrey is describing it to us rather differently, isn't he? He's not like J.R. Tolkien. who's happy for his works to be sold as fiction. He's selling this as fact, right? Hence the title of his book.

Well, yeah, the history of the Kings of Britain. He's absolutely marketing it as fact. Since he did actually make most of it up, I think you could compare him not only to Tolkien or Rowling, but perhaps to Dan Brown. There's more than a whiff of the Da Vinci Code about this. Because a bit like Dan Brown, I mean, he's got this mad,

a lunatic story, but he says, oh, you know, Leonardo was part of it and, you know, the Knights Templar and things like that. Basically, Jeffrey of Monmouth had done something quite similar. So he's dug up sources for some of the stories that he tells, as we shall see. But I think most of them he does basically seem to have invented. And he disguises the bits for which he doesn't have recognizable sources by claiming that he'd been given a very ancient book, those are his words. by the Archdeacon of Oxford.

It had been written in Welsh and Geoffrey has translated it. This is the claim. Now, it has to be said, there is absolutely no evidence that this book ever existed. And it is true that at the time there were scholars who basically suspected Jeffrey of having perpetrated a massive fraud. Yeah. And they're right. I think this is one of the most influential literary frauds of all time.

And a fun example of somebody who suspected that Jeffrey was a fraud is a guy called Gerald of Wales, a very entertaining writer, goes around Ireland and Wales being incredibly rude about the Irish and the Welsh. And he's writing half a century later. And he describes a man who is being oppressed by demons. And to quote Gerald of Wales, whenever the gospel of St. John was placed on this poor man's chest, the evil spirits like startled birds would fly away. But should the gospel be removed and replaced by Jeffrey's book?

then back they would flock and in larger numbers than before. This sounds like a sort of internal Welsh literary spat. It does slightly. And I think it's telling that Gerald was Welsh, because perhaps he's more clear-eyed about exactly what it is that Geoffrey is inventing. But in England, and in fact across the rest of Christendom, I mean, even the most reputable chroniclers are blown away by Geoffrey's book when they read it. So the key endorsement for it, and this I guess is like Lord Dacre saying that the Hitler diaries were authentic.

Yeah. Except Lord Dacre retracted that, didn't he? He did. This is never retracted. And Jeffrey's book is taken as fact. The guy who is the Lord Dacre of this whole shenanigans is an English chronicler called Henry of Huntingdon. And he's traveling to Rome. And in January 1139, he stops off at an abbey called Beck.

in Normandy. And in this abbey, he is shown Jeffrey's recently completed text. It's just been not exactly published, but it's appeared. And he reads it, and he declares himself stupefied. And this matters because Henry of Huntingdon is a much admired historian himself. And to boot, he is the archdeacon of Huntingdon. So his commendation is very, very influential. There's a feeling that this is a commendation that can be.

be trusted. And so it helps to ensure that Jeffrey's work is read not just as a compilation of remarkable stories and entertaining tales, but as a serious, credible work of history. And a measure of how rapidly it gains a reputation as something that can be trusted is that 10 years after Henry of Huntingdon had given his commendation, another English chronicler, Alfred of Beverley, he states explicitly that it's, It is essentially an embarrassment for any historian by this point not to have read and engaged with this kind of bombshell research, which Jeffrey has published. This is stuff that any reputable historian should now be on top of.

So it's like that, is it Black Athena? It's like one of those kind of books that rockets up and people say, my God, it's transformed the field, unbelievable. And then only after that do fellow Welshmen say it's absolutely. Gosh. Except that Gerald Wales is ignored. Oh, sad. As we say, there are naysayers, but I think partly people are convinced by it in a kind of academic sense, but I think also people just want to believe it.

Yeah, of course. It's so fun. It's so exciting. And as a result of this, you get two key figures who previously had been barely known outside Wales, Cornwall, Brittany, being established almost overnight. as titanic figures, not in the mythology of Europe, but in the history of Europe. And the first of these, of course, is Arthur, who is portrayed by Geoffrey, as you said, not just as a king of Britain, but as a great conqueror, you know, the peer of Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar.

And Jeffrey describes him conquering Scotland, Ireland, Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Gaul, and he would have conquered Rome had Mordred not stabbed him in the back. So this is when the story of the last battle is introduced. In Geoffrey of Monmouth, Arthur isn't a broad fighting Lancelot, who hasn't by this stage been invented, but fighting the Emperor of Roman would have won had it not been for Mordred the treachery. And this promotion by Geoffrey of Arthur as a world conqueror has real world political consequences, because it's invoked by Edward I first to justify his conquest of his attempted conquest, I should say, of Scotland. And as late as the Elizabethan period, John D, so Elizabeth's kind of court necromancer.

Yeah, sorcerer. Her sorcerer is invoking Arthur's conquests as a justification for English naval expansion out into the Atlantic. And it's John D who first uses the phrase British Empire. And when he uses that rather than an English empire, it's because he's invoking the memory of Arthur. So there's a sense in which the whole British Empire is named after Arthur's conquests. I love that, which of course didn't happen. But of course the other character whom Geoffrey summons out of the mists of Welsh legend is the subject of today's episode, which is Merlin.

So Merlin, we already introduced him. He is the incredibly powerful wizard whom Uther has enlisted to transform him into the this bloke so that he can sleep with a grain. And so basically, without Merlin, there would be no Arthur. And to us, it seems obvious that Merlin is made up. Did it seem obvious to people who were reading Geoffrey of Monmouth's book when it was first written? This is the amazing thing.

I had always assumed that was the case. I had thought, you know, this guy who's a wizard and a prophet, surely people thought that he was a figure of myth, of folktale or whatever. But this turns out not to be the case at all. Merlin was widely accepted by, not just by kind of general readers, but by scholars in the Middle Ages, as absolutely having been an authentic figure of history. And as a result of this, the feats of magic and of prophecy which he is supposed to have performed make him an object of unusual fascination.

because essentially he is the only figure who issues prophecies, who can be accepted by medieval intellectuals as having actually existed. And the consequence of this is that over the course of the Middle Ages, in the stories that are told about Arthur, Merlin comes to play an ever more kind of proactive role, because essentially the writers of the romances are giving readers what they want. People want to know more about Merlin. So in Jeffrey's history, Merlin vanishes from the scene directly he has transformed Uther into the image of Goulwa.

So according to Jeffrey, Goulwa, the husband of Egrain, is killed that same night in a skirmish. Uther is therefore free to marry Egrain and they live happily ever after as king and queen. And when Arthur is born, he is raised as the heir to the throne. There's no kind of complications about that. And so when Uther dies, he's poisoned in St. Albans, according to Geoffrey, there's a very smooth succession. Arthur is 15 years old. He can sit on the throne and rule. And there's absolutely no need for him, for instance, to pull a sword from a stone to demonstrate that he's the rightful king of Britain.

Everyone accepts it. So no need for Merlin to play the sort of the Obi-1-Kinobi role that he's best known for? No need at all. But anyone who has seen the sword and stone will know that this is not how the myth ultimately takes form. Because by the time Mallory comes to write the Mort Arthur, and we've been saying basically the myth of Arthur that people have in their heads now essentially comes from Mallory. In Mallory's account, Merlin takes the newborn Arthur and he gives him to an obscure knight called Sir Ector to be raised alongside Sir Ector's own son, Kay. and Kay is the useless knight who in due course will become the seneschal. Because Arthur has been growing up as a boy in obscurity, he needs to demonstrate his right to the throne of Britain.

And so to facilitate this, Merlin magics up the sword in the stone to demonstrate in the most spectacular manner possible Arthur's right to rule as king. And this motif seems to be drawn from legends of saints in Italy who around the period when this story is introduced. are drawing swords from stones. Why are they taking swords from stones? To demonstrate their holiness. I mean, to demonstrate what they say is right. Essentially, it seems to have become a kind of recognized way of demonstrating your fitness.

I mean, there must have been an awful lot of people putting swords in stones to begin with. Well, Verlin, I suppose. Or God. I don't think the question of how the swords get in the stones bear too much inquiry, to be honest. Anyway, you just have to accept it. Arthur draws a sword from the stone and he's thereby becomes the rightful king of Britain.

And once he's on the throne, Merlin is serving him as his kind of teacher, his guide, his advisor, he's kind of Gandalf to Frodo, Dumbledore to Harry Potter. But in due course, Merlin does vanish from the scene because he ends up besotted by one of the damsels of the lady of the lake. even though he knows as he is falling in love with this damsel that she is going to approve his doom. And sure enough, the happy couple go on a holiday to Cornwall, where else? And there Merlin shows his girlfriend a magic stone. So he knows how to show a girl a good time. And to quote Mallory,

by her subtle working, she made Merlin to go under that stone to let her wit of the marvels there. But she wrought so there for him that he came never out. for all the craft he could do. So this is Nimuey, the girl who tricks him, yeah. Yes. And so supposedly Merlin is still buried beneath that rock to this day. Yeah.

Somewhere in Cornel, waiting to be let out. An important lesson in not falling for the wiles of beautiful young women. Particularly if they're from lakes. Yes. So people, you know, they read all this, they hear all the stories and they say, well, this definitely happened. Merlin sounds pretty real to me. So these kind of romance stories, I don't think they do think happened. Okay.

I mean, I think they recognize that it's entertainment. But, I mean, just to reiterate, they do think that Merlin, as well as being a figure of romance and fantasy, there had been a real figure called Merlin. And there's a brilliant book on this, on just how historical Merlin was believed to have been in the Middle Ages by Anne Lawrence Mathas, the true history of Merlin, the magician. And she writes in that, his feats of magic were at least potentially real historical events in themselves, and thus they provided evidence of what magical power could do. And the one thing more than anything else that people are obsessed by, and this is something that Jeffrey was obsessed by too, is the sense of Merlin as having been an authentic prophet, a man who had genuinely seen into the future. He had had glimpses of what was to come. And the explosive implications of this were recognized right from the moment that Jeffrey's history was published. So very shortly after it appeared, there was an Anglo-Norman monk called Orderick Vitalis, and he's pouring over it.

And he comes to this great compilation of Merlin's prophecies, which is contained within Jeffrey's history. And he is blown away by the implications of what he's reading. Now, it has to be said that Aldrich is a very sober, a very reliable historian. He is a key source for the Norman conquest. We quoted him a lot in our series on 1066. But he's a churchman, and as such, he believes that prophecy is true. There are prophecies in the Bible, so therefore prophecies must be authentic. And so he sits down and he works out, well, when was Merlin delivering these prophecies?

And he works out that the prophecies that Jeffrey has recorded in his history, delivered by Merlin, are six centuries old. And so bearing that in mind, he reads through Merlin's prophecies as laid out in Jeffrey's history. And he tries to map the prophecies that he's reading onto the events of the 600 years that have followed on, that are separating Merlin from Aldrich Fitalis. And to work out, well, what did Merlin prophesy? I love how it doesn't occur to him that Geoffrey of Monmouth himself would have known what had happened in the intervening 600 years and therefore, had he been making it up, he could have ensured that Merlin's prophecies were accurate. But Alderic Vittalus is not as cynical as I am. You lack your clear-eyed skepticism. Right.

So when Orderick reads Merlin's prophecies in Jeffrey's history, what does he find foretold? Well, very obviously, Merlin speaks of a bore of Cornwall who is going to come to rule both, and I quote, the islands of the ocean and the forests of Gaul and whose fate would be shrouded in mystery. And this is obviously Arthur. This is the Arthur as detailed in Geoffrey's history. But then, in intriguing prophecy, Merlin foretells that a people dressed in wood and iron mail are destined to invade Britain and punish the English for their... wickedness and impose on them the yoke of perpetual slavery. So who do you think they are? It does sound like it could be the Normans. I think it is the Normans. So either Merlin is incredibly far-sighted or Geoffrey of Mummouth is making

this up and knows that the Normans did actually conquer England. And I can't decide which of those two options is more plausible. Oh, Dominic, there's more. So here's another prophecy. The lion's cubs shall be transformed into saltwater fishes. What's making that? I mean, some people might say meaningless and so vague that it could mean anything. I guess other people might say the Lions Cubs could be, could it be the son of Henry I, killed in the white ship in 1120? Yes, could be. And that's, again, either uncanny from Merlin or Jeffrey from Monmouth knows that happened and has constructed a vague prophecy to imply that Merlin also knew that it was, well, knew that it was going to happen. It's incredible

stuff, I have to say. Okay, well, set your skepticism aside because the consequence of the of the drowning of Henry's only legitimate air in the white ship is that you end up with the civil war between Henry's daughter, Matilda and his nephew, Stephen. The anarchy.

So the anarchy, 20 years of civil war. And this is just kicking off as Alderick is studying Jeffrey's book. And so he looks again at the prophecies and what does he find? The island will lie sodden with tears.

Oh my God, it's unbelievable. Unbelievable. Yeah, I mean, this is actually, to be fair. Park your skepticism. I was foolish to have been so skeptical. I was trying to impose my own 21st century sensibility on something that is probably greater and more mysterious than my puny mind can possibly encompass.

And I apologize to the distance. Okay, so that being so, it's the 1130s when Jeffrey's knowledge of what is to happen in the future cuts off. He doesn't know what's going to happen after that. So DeMurland's prophecies stop in the 1130s. They don't. They carry on and on for page after page in Jeffrey's book. And Orderick is, of course, tantalized by this. And he shows great self-discipline in not presuming to analyze what these prophecies might be foretelling. Partly, I think, because he feels nervous about probing God's plans for the future. But also, it has to be said because the

prophecies themselves are sensationally cryptic. They're chilling, actually. I'll try a few out on you. So the ass of wickedness will come next, swift against the goldsmiths, but slow against the wolves ravenous appetite. So what do you think that means? That's Boris Johnson's COVID parties, I think. I was wondering if maybe it was something about the IMF or something.

Oh, 1976, the IMF bailout. Who's the ass of wickedness? Tony Ben. Desilie, I guess. Yeah, maybe Tony Ben. No. The goldsmiths are international currency speculators and the wolves wrap and this appetite. Is that the IMF?

They're the names of Zurich. Right. Yeah. The names of Zurich is actually from an older, from a 60s devaluation crisis. Oh, okay. Whatever. Well, maybe it's that one then. It could be the 1967 devaluation of the pound.

It could be the sterling crisis of the summer of 1966. I mean, it's multi-purpose. Listen, they're both in the future to Merlin. So either way, it proves it. And then a tree shall spring up on the top of the Tower of London. I don't know what that means. 2012 Olympics opening ceremony. Yeah, of course.

Yeah, all that, the poppies going over the side of the tower. Yeah, the poppies for the anniversary of the First World War, completely. And then the hedgehog will hide its apples inside Winchester and will construct hidden passages under the earth. The hedgehog? Maybe the extension of the M3 through Twyford down. The failed trust budget? I mean, it's possible to say, isn't it? Hidden passages under the earth

Is that the construction of the London Underground? I think it's Twyford, the extension of the M3 and they drove it through the Twyford. Yeah. That's my feeling. Swampy, we're supposing it. Maybe he's an hedgehog. So I used to live in Nostradamus' hometown

of Saint-Londre Provence in the south of France, and I went to the Nostradamus Museum there, which was absolutely useless. To have waxworks, rubbish waxworks. It had waxworks, had lots of waxworks. Yeah, I can imagine. It was terrible. Staring at an empty room would have been a better way to spend a rainy afternoon.

And the thing that struck me about Nostradamus's predictions, which I'd been quite interested in when I was about 10, is that they were absolutely worthless because they're so vague and so cryptic. It's like a horoscope, basically. It could mean absolutely anything. But of course, that's the appeal of them, isn't it? Of course. Now, am I right in thinking that Nostradamus may have been inspired to write these ridiculous and worthless prophecies by Merlin?

Yeah. Well, because Merlin is the archetype of a prophet who comes up with mad, mad cryptic clues that could basically mean anything. So yes, Nostradamus is absolutely inspired by his example. Because as we say, Merlin is the great prophetic star. And throughout the Middle Ages, people are endlessly, identifying Merlin's cryptic imagery with the great events of their own times. But more than that, they are directly being inspired by Merlin's prophecies to undertake what otherwise, I mean, might often seem quite quixotic projects.

So we've covered two of these seemingly quixotic projects on the rest of history. So one of them was in 1400 when Owen Glendua raised the banner of Welsh independence against Henry the 4th. More Welsh history, really? Yeah. When there's a point where it becomes overkill. Yeah, absolutely. There's a lot of Welsh history still to come. Massive overkill.

Because he's read Merlin's prophecies and he reads into them a prophecy that he is going to defeat the English. I didn't work out for him, obviously. And in 1428, it was invoked by at Maris of Joan of Arc. who again discovered in Merlin's prophecies. What's she? The hedgehog. I can't remember what she is. I mean, who knows?

But I'll tell you who else is inspired by it, a man you admire as a hard-headed, shrewd, ruthless analyst of politics, who would never be model-headed. And that is Henry Tudor, the man who becomes Henry the 7th. Another Welshman. And he is inspired by Merlin's prophecies to launch his invasion of England and overthrow Richard the 3rd. I mean, I admire both his husband, to be fair.

So the salient fact is Merlin's prophecies are in Jeffrey's book. People in the Middle Ages believe them, and they're often inspired by them to kind of change the course of history. So it's a kind of classic example of the way in which the Arthurian legends reflect medieval society and politics and culture, but also end up influencing the course of events and things like that. I guess the question, though, is, you know, it's always very tempting for people to think, oh, obviously people in the past from complete fools and gullible and all of this kind of thing. and they believed any old nonsense. But we know that's not true. We know that people in the past were just as skeptical and clear-eyed as we are.

And smart. And it's massively patronising, yeah, to paint them as idiots, as sort of, you know, dunces and whatnot. So why is it that people who, as you rightly say, somebody like Audrey Vitales, an extremely smart, you know, well-adjusted, successful person,

Why is it that they believe that this is, you know, this is legitimate stuff and can be trusted? Because Jeffrey's account does include sources which are obscure and authentically ancient. And someone like Henry of Huntingdon, who's written a history of England, is particularly qualified to recognize this. He recognizes source material that Jeffrey is using in the fabric of his history. And so he is therefore inclined to accept the truth of what Jeffrey is saying when he says, well, I've come across other sources. Yeah. You know, the fact that he hasn't produced these other sources doesn't, you know, I mean, Henry's relying on him to be telling the truth. And these sources, because they derive from long before Jeffrey's time, I mean centuries before Jeffrey's time, do.

who in the opinion of people like Henry of Huntingdon and Aldrich Fattalys seem to indicate that both Merlin and Arthur were more than just figments of Geoffrey's imagination. And so the question obviously is, well, what were these sources? What did they reveal about Merlin? And in fact, what were the implications for placing Arthur himself within the sweep of early medieval history? So many questions that we will be finding out the answers. after the break.

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Against its strongest foe. Bear Hunt. Available now, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to The Rest is History. So we have been dancing around this question now. for two and a half episodes. And the time is fast approaching when we will finally get the answer

that we're looking for. Did King Arthur actually exist? Now Tom has a sort of, as a little amuse-boosh before that. Let's try to pin down something else first. And this is about Merlin. So we've done, you know, Jeffrey, we've talked about Jeffrey Monmouth.

We've talked about his mysterious sources. and you're going to cast light on those. Did Merlin exist? If so, when did he live? Who was he? If he didn't exist, how is it possible that Geoffrey of Monmouth

could have persuaded so many intelligent scholarly people that he did? Okay, to answer that, we need to look in more detail, I think, exactly what Geoffrey has to tell us about Merlin

because, of course, he's claiming to be writing a history, not a romance. And so it is very important to, for Geoffrey's purposes that he situate Merlin and indeed Arthur in a very, very precise historical context.

And this context, it's basically the 5th and 6th centuries AD, which is one of the darkest and therefore the most intensely debated periods in the whole of British history. In terms of sources, it's a huge black hole. And in Jeffrey's account, this period begins. with the withdrawal of the Romans from Britain in 410. And in Jeffrey's account, the Romans withdraw for very kind of Donald Trump reasons. This is Jeffrey quoting the Romans to the Britons. Stop being lazy.

Pick up your shields, swords and spears. You'll be more than a match for your enemies. We Romans are fed up with having to travel here to do all you're fighting for you. So in other words, man up, do it yourselves. Yeah. Unfortunately, the Britons proved to be complete snowflakes, and so the moment the Romans have withdrawn, the Irish start attacking them from the sea, and the Picts start crossing Hadrian's wall and flooding southwards, and the cities of the Roman province of Britannia start going up in flames. And the Britons try to solve this problem by bringing over a king who is a descendant from the ancient line of British kings going all. all the way back to Brutus, the Trojan.

Yeah. The grandson of Ineus, who'd sailed to Britain and killed a load of giants. And this is the opening of Geoffrey's history. And basically, all the kings of Britain are descended from Brutus. And Constantine is one of these. He's been living in Brittany. So the Britons go over, get Constantine, bring him back to Britain. And Constantine proves to be pretty good as a king.

He hangs around for about a decade. And then, unfortunately, he gets stabbed to death by a Pictish assassin. and Britain is plunged back into crisis. Now, into this power vacuum, there steps a man called Vortigern. I wanted if we'd get to him. Oh, yeah. So how does Vortigern establish himself as a king of Britain, even though he's not descended from Brutus?

Well, first of all, he tries to eliminate the three sons of Constantine. And the eldest one, he has murdered by a war band of Picts. So the picks are killing a lot of people at this point. But the other two at this point who are only toddlers, and little babies, are evacuated by their guardians back to Brittany, and there they're beyond the reach of Vortigern. And the name of these two infant princes,

one of them is called Ambrosius Aurelianus, and the other one is called Uther Pendragon. And obviously we will be hearing more about both of them in due course. Quite different names. You are quite quite. I mean, one looks very much like a Latin name, and the other absolutely does not. It looks like it could be kind of Welsh or something. So, yeah, weird that Constantine would give his kids such wildly different names.

But anyway. And also, just to say that Jeffrey calls him not Uther Paul's Pendragon, but Uthor Pendragon, it's all one name. It's all one word. Yeah, that's a long name. Which makes it an even madder name. Yeah, that's a bad name. Anyway, these are details, Dominic. Okay.

Because back in Britain, Vortigern has had himself crowned and is now laying claim to the rule of the whole of Britain. But he's understandably paranoid because he knows that Ambrosius Aurellianus, the eldest of the two surviving sons of Constantine, he's back in Brittany, he's being trained in arms. You know, he might come back and try and get his rightful patrimony back from Bortigern. and also there are still hordes of Picts and Irish rampaging across the country and so they need to be dealt with. How is you going to handle this? And it's at this point that a seeming solution hoves into view. And what hoves into view is something that is very 2026.

It's three boatloads of illegal immigrants who wash up on the coast of Kent. and they're led by two brothers called Hengist and Horsa, both of which in ancient German means apparently horse. And these migrants turn out to have come from Saxony and that they are armed warriors who, despite not being Christians, their pagans, seen the answers to Vortigans' prayers. And so Vortigern duly hires them as mercenaries. The Saxons help him to defeat the Picts and the Irish.

and then because Hengist, who is the kind of the leader, he's aware that Vortigone is kind of twitchy about what's going to happen when Ambrosius or Relyanus comes of age. Hengist approaches Vortigern with a cunning plan, and he says, why not let us send to our own country and invite more armed young men to join us so that our battle strength may thereby be enhanced? And Vortigern, rather than smelling a rat, thinks this is an absolutely

brilliant idea. And so ever more boatloads of armed young Saxons start to arrive and settle in Britain. And I mean, I guess if you if you weren't a fan of Vortigan, you would

call it the Vortigan wave. Very good. Wave of immigration. Very good. So Nigel Farage joins us on the show. Brilliant. Well, the whole thing now starts to play out like a kind of a reform or restore fever dream. So the Saxon settle in Britain and they start hitting on the Britain's women. Oh, no. Plus, there are so many of the

Saxons by now that the Britain start to worry that the Saxons are going to take over and establish their rule. It's like being in a foreign land, isn't it? And so a lot of these Britons want their country back. Yeah, of course. But Vortigern is anxious to reconcile them, to create a multicultural society, you might say. And so he says, well, let's have a great peace conference. Let's try and forge a common path and we will live together as brothers. Where does he invite them? Where's you want to have this conference? Where are you invites them to Wiltshire and the Salisbury area? I've probably had said Wiltson in the Salisbury area back on the show. So the Britons and the Saxons, the leaders of both sides, they come to Wilter in the Salisbury area to Salisbury Plain and

they're supposed to come unarmed, which the Britons do. But the Saxons, I'm afraid to say cheat by hiding their daggers, their sackser from which they take their names in their boots. And when the hen gives a signal, they draw these knives out and they start attacking the Britons. And huge numbers of the Britons are murdered and their bodies end up being buried by a local holy man on Salisbury Plain. And Vortigern is taken prisoner and he's forced to surrender his kingdom in exchange for his life. And the Saxons then take advantage of this to occupy London, York, Lincoln, Winchester. So all the kind of the major towns of Britain. And to quote Jeffrey, when Vortigern saw the devastation that had befallen Britain, he flubes.

led into the depths of Wales, unsure how to combat these accursed people. Dragy. And it is now at last that Merlin enters the story. Vortigern is stuck for sensible policies. And so he invites all his court magicians to give him advice. They give him brilliant advice. They say basically what you should do is build a very tall and impregnable tower and hide yourself in it. So that no one can get you.

And Vortigern thinks, okay, well, that's a good plan. Where shall I build it? The obvious place. build it on Mount Snowden. And so his workmen start doing this. But there's a problem because every day his workmen lay the foundations and start building up the wall. And every night, the foundations of stonework gets swallowed up by the earth so that in the morning there's nothing left. Vortigant gets very cross about this. And so he summons his magicians again and says, well, what's going on here? What's the problem? And they tell Vortiguan, well, what you need to do, you need to find a young boy without a father.

so listeners may remember we've had a young boy without a father on the show already kill this boy mix his blood in with the mortar and voila all will be well you'll be able to build your tower

and so this is where Merlin comes in because remember because he doesn't have a father he doesn't have a father he's the son of this incubus this demon and so Merlin is brought to Vortigan's presence but already even though he's just a young boy

it's evident that he is a much better magician than any of the magicians that Vortigern has in his court. And he tells Vortigern, look, don't kill me. What you need to do is to get your workmen to dig a hole where they're trying to build the tower. And at the bottom of the hole, Merlin says, they will find a pool. Incredible that Vortigern would listen to him and not to his musicians who said kill

this boy. Listen, Dominic, I honestly think that this is a story that doesn't bear too much investigation. Doesn't bear too much skeptical and close analysis. Just accept that the workmen, they dig the workmen. hole and just as Merlin had said, they find the pool. And so Merlin then gets the court magicians and he says to them, tell me you lying flatterers, what lies beneath the pool? And obviously the magicians don't know, but Merlin does. And so he tells them. Below the pool are two sleeping dragons. And Merlin orders the pool to be drained. And once the water has ebbed away, the two

dragons emerge from the respective caves in which they've been sleeping. And one dragon is red and one dragon is white and they start to fight. And first, the white dragon has the better of things, and then the red dragon, and so it goes on. The fight continues and continues and continues. And Vortigone demands to know of Merlin, well, what does this mean? What does it portend? And Merlin goes into a prophetic vision, and then he bursts into tears, and he starts to chant. Alas for the red dragon, its end is near. Its cavernous lair will be occupied by the white dragon, which symbolises the Saxons whom you fought to go and have invited over. The red dragon represents the people of Britain who will be overrun.

And it is the red dragon, of course, that will go on to become the emblem of Wales. But first, Merlin offers the Britain's reassurance. First, he says, the boar of Cornwall shall keep these invaders at bay, for it will trample down their necks beneath its feet. And this, of course, is a prophecy of Arthur. and it all comes to pass, just as Merlin had foretold Fortigern that it would. So Ambrosius Aurellianus, who all this time has been growing up, very well trained, very practiced in weaponry. He is now of an age to claim his patrimony. So he crosses from Brittany back to Britain, seizes the throne from Vortigan.

Vortigern himself is cornered in a wooden tower, so not a stone tower, so very foolish of him. And he gets burnt alive. So that's him. He's asking for it. He's had a, yeah, is useless. Ambrosius Ourellianus then defeat. and beheads Hengist. Okay.

And he goes on to enjoy a triumphant reign. And in due course, he gets assassinated and he is succeeded first by his brother, Uther Pendragon, and then of course by Arthur Uther's son. And Arthur, before he embarks on his career of imperial conquest overseas, first of all, he defeats the Saxons in a succession of battles. And the most glorious of all these battles is won by Arthur at a place called Baden Hill. and Baden Hill is identified by Geoffrey with Hill above Bath. All right.

Nice to be winning a battle on an old Roman site. Well, that's what Jeffrey says. And what Jeffrey also says is that while all this has been going on, Merlin has been getting up to all kinds of shenanigans. And among them is he has transported Stonehenge from Ireland to Salisbury Plain, where it is erected to serve as a war memorial to the Britons murdered by Hengist in his attack on them. Oh, that's a nice explanation. Yeah.

That's how Stoneheny. Hens came to exist. But the Saxons are still there, aren't they? They, I mean, they are, and growing in number. Yes, a growing menace. And once Arthur has gone off to Avalon, they return with renewed force. And Jeffrey's history, if you're a Welsh reader, ends on a very somber note, because the Saxons under the rule of their great king, Athelstan, are now the masters of what has become Logoros, the lost land, the kingdom of England. And it is with the reign of Athelstan that Geoffrey ends his history of the kings of Britain. And as for the Britons, Geoffrey writes, God did not wish them to rule in Britain anymore until that time should arrive,

which had been prophesied to Arthur by Merlin. There's an awful lot going on there. A lot to unpick. When it first comes out, people like Henry of Huntingdon and Aldrich Votalis, I mean, we've been emphasising that these are not gullible, stupid men at all. What do they make of all the stuff about dragons and caves and people being burned in towers and all of these goings on. I think they assume that this is the material that was in this mysterious Welsh book. Right. Given to Geoffrey by the Archdeacon of Oxford, which no one has ever seen apart from Geoffrey. I think is what they assume.

But the reason they don't just dismiss Geoffrey as a liar is because they can recognize in this narrative details that do authentically derive from what are in effect the only written sources for the century or so that follows the collapse of Roman rule in Britain. Okay. So do you know what this reminds me of this, that famous academic footnote where I can't remember what it's from, where some academic professor wrote. The footnote just says, this was revealed to me in a dream. It's not, I mean, it's not a dream. That's the point. Yeah. It is, you know, it, there is this mysterious work of history, which Jeffrey says is true. But he is drawing on texts that certainly Henry of Henry of Huntingdon can recognize.

There aren't many of them, but they are there. So let's just have a look at what these sources are. The source specifically for Merlin, there is an assemblage of various Welsh writings that when you stitch them together do enable the life to be written of a kind of wild prophet called Murtham. And the earliest of these, it only derives from the 10th century. But Merton himself, by the lifetime of Geoffrey, is supposed to have lived much earlier, so around the 6th century. And tradition said that he had been driven mad by the death in battle of the king who he'd been serving. And that Mirthin had fled into the woods where he'd lived on roots and wild berries and uttered wild prophecies.

And the key thing that Geoffrey takes from this tradition aside from the prophecies is the name of Merlin. Merton and Merlin are obviously cognate. When Merton is written in Welsh, if you're a French reader seeing it in Jeffrey's Latin text, it's going to read like Mert, so French word for shit basically. And so this is generally thought why Jeffrey changes his name to Merlin. But you were saying, what about Merlin's meeting with Vortigern, the stuff about the red and white dragons, the link with Arthur and all of that. essentially the germ of this derives from another earlier source which was written in in 829 purportedly by a Welsh monk called Nenius and this is the Historia Britonum, the history of the Britons and it includes Vortigone welcoming Hengist and Horser to Britain when they land in Kent, the kind of the mass arrival of the Saxons from across the sea.

Vortiguan retreating to what Neneas describes as the remote boundaries of his kingdom and trying to build. his tower, the mysterious boy without a father, and the red and white dragons. So they are all in Nenius. The boy in this story isn't called Merlin or in Jonathan. Instead, confusingly, he's called Ambrosius, and he ends up revealing that he's the son, not of an incubus, but of a Roman consul. And so it's unclear here whether this is meant to be Ambrosius or Raylianus, who in Jeffrey's history is clearly a very separate character from Merlin. And it's presumably this that enabled Jeffrey, when he kind of read the historian of Brutonum, to separate out Ambrosius, who is the infant prophet, and Ambrosius Oralianus, who is the great warrior, who, you know, goes on to defeat

a Vortigern and defeat the Saxons, and to portray Merlin and Ambrosius oralianus as two separate and distinct characters. So he's basically splitting them into two. He's splitting them into two. Yeah. And it's a masterstroke, because by aliding this kind of infant Ambrosius, the infant prophet, it with Murthin, Jeffrey is able to create this composite character called Merlin. But even more crucially, it enables him to construct a link then between Merlin and Arthur.

And it's this that persuades scholars like Henry of Huntingdon that both Merlin and Arthur are authentically rooted in history. Okay. Because there's just enough material that's been drawn from authentic sources that scholars can recognize it and think, oh yeah, Jeffrey's really onto something and it's just clearly that he has better sources than us. But the scaffolding for that story is what Jeffrey is using. So the scaffolding is for from Neneas, basically. And so Neneas is our oldest source for Arthur? Is that effectively what you're saying? Yes. And so Neneas, the Historia Britonum,

contains what can be described without any fear of exaggeration as the single most consequential paragraph ever written about Arthur. And the reason that it's so consequential is because it is the oldest surviving document to name him. So it's, you know, said it's from 829, so early the 9th century, but also because it situates Arthur in a context that seemed to Jeffrey's contemporaries and indeed to many scholars in the 20th century to be an entirely plausible one. Because namely, the resistance of the Britons in post-Roman Britain to the westwards advance of the Saxons. And it's portraying him not as a figure of romance, not as a figure of myth or poetry, but of history. Neneas is describing Arthur as a dux ballorum, the leader of wars. It lists 12

victories that he's supposed to have won against the Saxons. And the 12 of these battles is Baden Hill. So that's where Geoffrey gets it from. This is the genesis of Jeffrey's stuff about the battles, about Arthur, about the showdown in Bath. Well, Baden Hill, it's Jeffrey who says that it's Bath. There's nothing to indicate. indicate in Nenius where Baden Hill was. There's a kind of big mystery there. And this paragraph is not lengthy. I think it's about 14 sentences, but it provides the kind of the acorn from which the entire massive oak of Geoffrey's history and then the Arthurian legends more generally will sprout. So it's absolutely crucial to the whole edifice. And the reason that it's crucial is because

the other two key sources for the 5th and 6th centuries that Jeffrey is drawn. drawing on and which Henry of Huntington obviously recognises. Both of them are older than the Historia Britonum, and neither of them actually mention Arthur. So that's the problem. So you need the Historia Britonum, because otherwise you don't have Arthur. So these two sources, both of them are much better known, I think, than the Historia Britonum. The first of these is by Bede, who's a Northumbrian monk, and he is writing around 7.30, the ecclesiastical history of the English people, the first great work of history.

in English. And Bede, of course, is essentially English. He's an Anglian of Northumbria. And so his perspective is very different from that of Neneas, the Welsh monk. And you could see why he might not mention Arthur if he's English. You know, he might not be interested in them. But in Bede's history, you do get lots of familiar names and details. So you get Vortigo and you get Hengist and Henghis and Hens and Cepres and Eames or Elianas. Bede mentions all of those. And Bede himself is drawing on an even earlier source. And this is the only source that was available to Geoffrey, certainly, that actually derived from the period in which he was setting Merlin and Arthur. Yeah, because all of these other things are written, generations and generations afterwards.

But this guy, so he's Gildas, and he's writing what? The late 5th century, early 6th century. So within possibly living memory of the events that he's talking about. Yeah, so Gildas is the saint who will pop up in the story about Melas abducting Gwynavir that we talked about in the previous episode. That is not historic. Okay. That's something that's made up many, many centuries later.

But there are certain things that we could probably say with some degree of safety about Gildas. He probably lived in southern Britain, the West Country, southern Wales, that's the likeliest. He's definitely a Britain. He has an odd name. So David Howlett, great scholar of onomastics in this period. He suggests that it might come from Hebrew and mean skinny, which I like. From the Latin that he writes, it's evident that Gildas is highly educated and very

familiar with Latin legal terms. That's kind of interesting. It's about a century after the Romans have withdrawn. It implies that the traditional frameworks of Roman culture haven't completely collapsed by this point. And Gildas is the author of what I think can fairly be described as the Dark Ages equivalent of a daily male editorial. And this is a text called the day Exidio Britanniae, the ruin of Britain. And it is a Jeremiahad which laments a country going to the dogs, a country that's been ruined by incompetent establishment stooges. It's resulted in the collapse of property prices across Britain. Britain is now overrun by immigrants and it's basically on the brink of total collapse. Wow, sounds very familiar. But Gildas's argument, I mean,

it's unusual to see even, you know, the most excitable daily mal columnists making this argument today. He says this is all because God is having, you know, God is punishing the British people for their sins. They've been licentious and God is taking no prisoners. Wouldn't Peter Hitchens kind of maybe say that? I don't know, maybe something like that. Anyway, by the bye. Anyway, yes, so Dominic, as you say, Gildas's thesis is that the British are sinners, God is angry with them, he's punishing them. So essentially, what he's writing is into history, it's a sermon. And the form that the punishment that God is sending to the Britons is one that will be echoed in their different ways by Bede, by Nenius, by Geoffrey of Monmouth, namely that the Saxons have been invited into

Britain to serve as mercenaries and they are now running a mock like wolves let into a sheepfold. And to quote, Gildas, nothing more harmful nor more bitter ever happened to our island than this. So he is writing a sermon and as a result, there is a frustrating lack of historical detail. He's not giving us basically the kind of things that we need and want. So Ambrosius Aurellianus, he does get a mention and he's described as a Roman nobleman. Also getting a mention is Baden Hill and it's described as a siege, a successful siege. And Gildas mentions it because it occurs in the year of his birth. So it's maybe 30, 40 years before Gildas is writing.

Gildas does also mention a proud tyrant who has employed the Saxons as mercenaries, but otherwise this proud tyrant has no name and it's left a bead to give him the name of Fortigan, which is then picked up by Geoffrey of Monmouth. But otherwise, that is it. There's nothing in Gildas about Hengist and Horser, no mention of red and white dragons. And, Ruchelie, Dominic, there is no mention of Arthur.

The implication in Gildas is that the battle leader who wins Bader is Ambrosius Oralianus. What are the implications of all this for the question that this whole series has been moving towards, namely, did Arthur actually exist? Is he a figure of history as well as of legend?

Was he a great war leader who, for a short while, managed to keep the Anglo-Saxon invaders at bay? Or is it possible that in Arthur's case, there really can be smoke without fire? So many questions. And in the next and final episode of this series, we will definitively and exclusively be giving the verdict. We will discuss the theories about who Arthur was, where he lived, when he might have lived,

and as I say, exclusively on the rest of history, Tom Holland will be pronouncing an absolutely definitive verdict on whether King Arthur existed and who he was. This is unbelievable stuff. Now, I can imagine lots of people thinking, I cannot wait to hear this. The way to listen to it right now is to join our own Dark Ages, small boat, get on the high seas with us, and the members of the Restis History Club. And you can do that by going to theresteshistory.com and signing up,

you will get ad-free listening, you will get early access to series and a whole host of supplementary benefits. So on that bombshell, I literally cannot wait. I'm so excited. We'll see you next time for the answers to the questions that have perplexed. so many great minds for so long. Who was King Arthur and did he really exist? Goodbye. Bye-bye. Hello, Goldhanger History listeners. This is Marina Hyde and Richard Osmond from The Rest

is Entertainment. Hello, everybody. Every Thursday and Friday, we are reacting to the pop culture phenomenon that is the celebrity traitors. We'll be on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. And Marina and I are digging into all the castles, twists and turns, giving our expert opinion on what should happen next. Now, which historical figure do we think would be the greatest traitor. It's tempting to think of an actual traitor. Yeah. A Guy Fawkes or a Kim Filby, but then all of those are traitors who got caught. Philby had a great run though, I have to say. He did have a great run. I think he could probably see off, you know, Joanne. Yes, maybe. And probably sort of where he ended up in Moscow is probably roughly like where the contestants have to spend

every night as well. Yeah. So maybe there's some sort of equivalence. So if you're watching Celebrity Traders, don't forget to tune in to our reaction episodes every Thursday and Friday night at 10pm. Find us on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.