King Aurther

the feast of Pentacost all manner of men assayed to

pull at the sword that wold assay, but none might prevail but Arthur,

and he pulled it afore all the lords and commons that were there,

wherefore all the commons cried at once, 'We will have Arthur unto

our king; we will put him no more in delay, for we all see that it is

God's will that he shall be our king, and who that holdeth against it,

we will slay him'.

And therewith they all kneeled at once, both rich and

poor, and cried Arthur mercy because they had delayed him so

long. And Arthur forgave them, and took the sword between

both his hands, and offered it upon the altar where the Archbishop

was, and so was he made knight of the best man there.

The above passage is from LeMmorte d'Arthur : the history of King Arthur

and his noble knights of the Round Table, by Sir Thomas Malory, a book that

was written and published between 1469-1470, during the reign of King Edward

IV. Prior to this document, the exact origins of Arthurian legend are difficult to

trace reliably before the twelfth century, when Geoffrey of Monmouth produced

the History of the Kings of Britain, in which he devotes the last third of the book

to King Arthur, with the first two thirds leading up to this climax. Although

Monmouth's history contains passages which can be deemed 'mystical' in

nature, especially in regards to Arthur, the preceding pages leading up to King

Arthur's appearance, read as straight history as opposed to mythical tale. I founf

this not only hard to follow but also hard to swlaoow. I think

it's all in the

interpeators eyes. Some see the same facts or so-called-facts and read the

same documents of the same time periods and come up with completly different

ideas. King Arthur would have lived in the end of the fifth century to the

beginning of the sixth century, with his birth most likely occurring around 470

A.D. and his death, as related in the folklore, in the year 539, at the Battle of

Camlan. This means that six hundred years transpired between Arthur's life span

and any surviving written account, history or folklore, of a king named Arthur.

Although the majority of the British population in the fifth and sixth centuries was

illiterate, there was a classically educated, 'Romanized' minority that could read

and write, as well as a literate monastic society. In the year 545, a monk named

Gilda wrote an account of the decline of Roman authority in Britain and the

events which followed. Most contemporary scholars and historians dismiss this

source as unreliable and in many places entirely wrong, in any event, there is no

mention of King Arthur in Gilda's writings. This absence of early written sources

pertaining to King Arthur suggests three hypotheses:

1)There is a document or written account that historians have not found or do

not have access to;

2)The history of King Arthur was an oral tale, passed down verbally through a

number of generations before it was recorded in written form; or,

3)King Arthur is solely a creation of Medieval, romantic literature.

Cadbury was inhabited as a military strong hold, in the Dark Ages, in Britain.

Whether it was occupied by King Arthur is not proven, what is proven is that the

site Camelot was used for what it was supposed to be used for at the right

period in British history. "The truth is however, that attempts to identify 'Camelot'

are pointless. The name and the very concept of 'Camelot' are inventions of the

French Medieval poets