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A Consular Chronology of Dark Age Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

P. K. Johnstone
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Extract

A POST-ROMAN inscription at Penmachno, Caernarvonshire, (Macalister's number 396) reads, in part:

… IN TE(M) P (ORE)

IVSTI(NI)

CON(SVLIS) …

The comment of Macalister is: ‘As Rhys, followed by Nash-Williams … has shown, this inscription dates the stone to A.D. 540, the year of the consulate of Justinus’. Whether this date is that of the ‘son of Avitorius’ commemorated at right angles to the words cited is uncertain, and for our present purpose unimportant. The point is that here we have evidence for the contemporary use of consular dates in Dark Age Britain.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 36 , Issue 142 , June 1962 , pp. 102 - 109
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1962

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References

1 R. A. S. Macalister, Corpus Inscriptionum Insularum Celticarum, vol. I, 1945, p. 372.

2 J. Lindsay, Arthur and His Times, 1948, 248.

3 D. B. Harden (ed.), Dark Age Britain, 1956, 59 ff., 70, 132, 147 f., 220, 232.

4 Christopher Hawkes, in Harden, op. cit., 95.

5 Hawkes, op cit.; T. D. Reed, Battle for Britain in the Fifth Century, 1944, 90. See also G. Ashe, From Caesar to Arthur, 1960, 113 f., 129–141, 287–289, 295–298.

6 Alfred Anscombe, St Gildas of Ruys (1893), argues that Gildas actually died in 554. But this is based on calculations of the regnal years of certain Irish kings, which do not seem convincing. Anscombe was committed to a date of 470 for Badon, and therefore looking for an earlier date than that offered by the Annales Cambriae for Gildas’s obit.

7 The British genealogical material is almost completely tabulated in S. Baring Gould and J. Fisher, Lives of the British Saints, vol. I, 1912. Unfortunately, they sometimes print the poorer versions of certain pedigrees. Those in Harleian MS. 3859 are conveniently accessible in A. W. Wade-Evans’ edition of Nennius, 1938; also in Y Cymmrodor, vol. IX. They are tabulated and commented on by E. W. B. Nicholson in Y Cymmrodor, vol. XXI, 1908. The almost equally important Jesus College MS XX, is in Y Cymmrodor, vol. VIII, 1887. Stray items are scattered through many sources, some of which are only now being published.

8 E. W. B. Nicholson in The Academy, 1896, pp. 221, 305.

9 Lindsay, op. cit., 219.

10 Kenneth Jackson, in Modern Philology, 1945, p. 55.

11 Nennius, Historia Brittonum, chapter 68. In Mommsen’s edition (M.G.H. series), p. 130.

12 T. O’Rahilly, Early Irish History . . ., 1946, 218 f.

13 ‘Owen Rhoscomyl’, Flame-Bearers of Welsh History, 1905, genealogical table. This is a brilliant piece of work, not always reliable in detail.

14 John Morris in Past and Present, April, 1957, p. 5.

15 Alfred Anscombe deserves lasting gratitude for isolating several of the more important stems and presenting the results in Y Cymmrodor XXIV, 75 and XXIX, 151. These tables are a good starting-point for the student. Eccentricities are few. But it should be noted that our best sources make Gwawl the daughter of Coil (Coel the Old) the wife, not the mother of Cunedda—an error which places all the Coeling princes one generation too early; Emyr Llydaw is not usually presented as the son of Custennhin Gorneu; and there is no solid evidence for the historicity of Uthyr Pendragon. However, there is good reason to believe that here a mythical name has been simply intruded into the place of a historical one (Gorlois?), and that the father of the historical Arthur was a son of Custennhin Gorneu. And Caw, the father of St Gildas, should not have been identified with ‘Cou’ (for Cof) son of Ceidiaw. To judge from his hereditary kingdom of Arecluta (Renfrew), Caw should be one of the descendants of Ceredig Wledig (Coroticus), but his pedigree has not been preserved.