Folklore Friday: The Feuding Kings of Kent, Part 2- Uther Pendragon

 

Initially, Folklore Friday was intended as our love letter to the folklore we've picked up in various places along the way. However, since our research on Kit's Coty House and the legend behind who is buried there, we've fallen down a bit of a rabbit hole once we learnt of Hengist & Horsa's connection to the Arthurian Legend.

Our knowledge on the Arthurian Legend is always evolving, but we must admit that we never knew that the father of our man of interest was related to something we had briefly looked into so recently. Obviously our Ren has studied the Arthurian Legend for quite some years now, and she's dabbled into Uther Pendragon, especially during our trip to Pendragon Castle which is what inspired this avenue, but we had no idea quite how deeply the legend had become entwined into the history we were exploring.

As it goes, there are several variations of the Legend, and fiction from those who have admired the tales of the great king has played its part into discrediting the entire saga, but somewhere at the start, before Geoffrey interfered, Uther was merely a son of a king. Named as one of the sons of either Constantine III or Constantine of Dumonia which is in modern times South-west England, Uther was never supposed to come into power, and this is where things get muddled as various writers tried to push their own form of events and embellish. Take Geoffrey for example, he wrote that Constantine was Arthur's successor, but it actually seems likely that it was his grandfather and Geoffrey wove this into his tale as a sort of settled ending. However, it was also from Geoffrey that Uther's father was Constantine, the matter not being helped that there were several. From what we can find of pre-Geoffrey influenced works, Constantine was pre-Arthur which settles the Once and Future King firmly within Roman/Anglo Saxon times.

Uther was first mentioned in many Welsh poems, but it wasn't until Geoffrey was crafting his Arthurian tales that his biography was fully fleshed out for all to read. Combining the many texts we gather that Uther and the potential inspiration for Merlin were both of this region's origin (South west/ Welsh), we ourselves have seen first-hand how easy it is to slip from the Cotswolds into Wales and firmly believe that even subconsciously we are being led on the trail to find Arthur.

Regardless, we come to how Uther became king and his connection to our Feuding Kings of Kent.

His father, one of the Constantines died and Constans, his eldest son, takes the throne but is then murdered by his advisor, Vortigern. Now we know about King Vortigern thanks to our research on Kits Coty House and that is where we first met Hengist and Horsa and are planning on going back to them later on, but this seems to be turning into an accidental saga and so The Feuding Kings of Kent became a multiparter. 

So Vortgern became King and a young Uther and his brother Aurelius Ambrosius flee to France which perhaps explains the French later adopting the Arthurian Legend and how this ends up all connecting. The new king forms an alliance with the Saxons through the brothers Hengist and Horsa and promises them the Isle of Thanet and subsequently Kent, but somewhere along the line this goes sour. 

Meanwhile, Uther and Aurelius return to England having grown up and hoping to retake what is theirs. Obviously, Aurelius is due to take the throne as next in line as Uther is the youngest, so he is merely support, but things dont quite turn out how they should. Aurelius kills Vortigern, by burning down his castle. Now remember this is some point after the Battle of Aylesford and so Vortigern and the Saxons have already come to blows and Horsa and Catigern are already dead and supposedly beneath burial chambers in Medway, so being victorious through one battle we highly doubt that Vortigern was expecting a further assault.

But things are pretty hazy here. Vortigern was a Warlord who became King of Britons by killing the rightful heir, but he was then defeated by Hengist who took and formed Kent and thus became King of Kent, but we're under the impression that Vortigern continued to be king of the surrounding areas afterward as when Aurelius kills him, he regains the throne. 

This is where Uther falls in with Merlin as the story of Stonehenge comes into it, he travels to Ireland to move the stones to where they are now to assist Merlin. When he returns from Ireland he finds his brother has taken ill and as the situation is quite up in arms following who should be on the throne, so he takes the king's army and battles against Vortigern's son and a bunch of Saxon allies and during this he sees a comet in the shape of a Dragon and Merlin predicts from this his brother's death and his ascension to the throne. It is this event which led him to take on the moniker Pendragon which was then passed to his son. 

Uther won the battle and returned to find his brother had been poisoned by an assassin so Merlin's prediction had become true. He went on to commission gold dragons in honour of the prophecy Merlin told him that night that came true and so his alliance with Merlin continued. During this time he goes on to be a decent enough king and is a man of the people, he secures Britain and beats back the Saxon uprisings as they come with help from various knights and retainers including the Duke of Cornwall.

This is where the famous tale of Arthur's conception comes into play. Gorlois and his wife, as well as others, had come to a banquet celebrating a victory when Uther had become obsessed with Igraine, the Duchess of Cornwall. This is obviously noticed by her husband and Uther becomes a bit of a pest, enough that a war between the two men ensues, and in the thick of it when Igraine is sent to Tintagel as a safety measure, Uther follows her and with help from Merlin takes the form of her husband, does the deed, and Arthur is conceived. The trick is then found out when Gorlois is announced dead, and yet Uther takes Igraine as his bride not long after.

But back to how it relates to the Feuding Kings. Uther becomes unwell but continues to fight against the Saxons. The latest battle is against Hengist's son in St Albans, either as an attempt to overthrow him, or as a vengeance mission as another work states that Uther killed Hengist after he tried to assassinate him. It was likely that this was to do with the throne of Kent, as Octa became king following the death of his father, but it would have made sense that when Uther killed him he would try to take the throne. It is from this that Merlin supposedly made the round table for Uther, but later texts state he did this for Arthur, not his father. 

Uther did defeat Octa, but the throne passed to his son, not Uther as he was poisoned by the Saxons despite being gravely ill anyway. They poisoned his water source.

So we'll stop there really, before we accidentally rally further into the Arthurian Legend, but we'd like to swing back to how this relates to the subject matter in the title. Unfortunately it written by Geoffrey so take this with a pinch of salt.

When Uther's brother, Aurelius took back the throne he had Hengist captured and executed, presumably by Uther. Octa then went to York in order to rally support and Aurelius's forces followed until Octa surrendered. He negotiated that the Saxons could remain in Britain but must remain in the North, but when Aurelius dies and Uther takes over they determine that this agreement is no longer valid and so continue their uprising against the throne. Uther keeps them at bay and forces them to flee back to Germany, but then they return with reinforcements and the fallout ensues at St Albans, yet Uther kills them and comes away victorious to what ends up as his final battle.

The problem we have verifying whether any of this is true, is that so many poets or writers at the time wished to put their own spin on things or thought their own storyline of events were correct and pushed it out that we no longer can verify if the key players were real or not. The facts and figures have been twisted so far down the line that it is all considered fiction, and the players within this story must be only based on factual historical figures and not one themselves. Take Aurelius for example, it is highly thought that he was based on Ambrosius Aurelianus and that they were not one and the same and the name just got translated. It is a shame that not much survives from the time to verify who is who and what happened.

But we know that Hengist and Horsa alongside Vortigern were real, or at least aspects of their tale, and through this we are now aware of their connection to the Arthurian Legend which is very helpful to us, but also that we very nearly had Uther Pendragon as a King of Kent which adds fuel to Ren's theory that Arthur was buried within Kent.

There will certainly be a part three to this investigation, we just don't know when yet. We had hoped to visit the supposed grave of Hengist, or at least more sites relating to them both, but we don't yet know when this will be possible, so hold tight, the investigations into the Feuding Kings of Kent and the Arthurian Legend will continue! 

If you want to know more about our search for King Arthur and how this relates to places we have been, feel free to look at some of our older posts, helpfully marked 'Arthurian Legend Research', which includes Stonehenge, Tintagel, and Pendragon Castle.