After Rome

Roman rule in Britain is often said to end in 410, and the next two centuries are often called the Dark Ages. The sources I read are more careful than both phrases. This chapter covers what happened around 410, what the evidence of the next century and a half is, and how the figure of Arthur appears and grows in the sources.

Around 410

The End of Roman rule in Britain article gives these events:

The main source for the expulsion is Zosimus, who wrote in the late 5th to early 6th century. He says the Britons "rejected Roman law, reverted to their native customs, and armed themselves to ensure their own safety". The article gives the scholars' positions: Theodor Mommsen (1885), "It was not Britain that gave up Rome, but Rome that gave up Britain"; Michael Jones (1998), the opposite, that usurpers and poor administration led Britain to break away; and Christopher Snyder, who argues that the rescript, being addressed to communities, implies the cities were then the highest Roman authority. E. A. Thompson's idea of a peasant revolt like the Gallic Bagaudae has, the article says, no direct textual support. Government reportedly reverted largely to the city level around 410.

My excerpt did not mention the Gallic Chronicle of 441 (the one that says Britain passed under Saxon power), so I do not give its wording. The Anglo-Saxon side of these years is covered in The Story of Old English, Chapters 1 and 2.

The sub-Roman centuries

Wikipedia's Sub-Roman Britain article says the term first described 5th- and 6th-century sites where locally made pottery had declined from Roman standards. It now uses 407 to 577 (the Battle of Deorham), and gives the traditional span 410 to 597, ending with Augustine's arrival, noting the end date is arbitrary because the culture lasted longer in the north and west.

• Archaeology: declining villas, a sharp break in town life (with exceptions such as London, York, Canterbury and Wroxeter), the end of stone building, and no new coins in circulation after the early 5th century. Fortified hilltop sites such as Tintagel and South Cadbury show refurbishment and overseas trade.
• Written sources: Patrick's Confessio and Gildas's De Excidio are the closest contemporary British sources. Continental sources include Zosimus and the Gallic Chronicles of 452 and 511, whose reliability is debated. Later sources, including Bede, the Historia Brittonum, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Annales Cambriae, are treated with caution because they are heavily shaped by legend.
• "The Age of Tyrants": a popular name for the period, reflecting the usurpers.
• The kingdoms: in the west and north, Gwynedd, Dumnonia and Rheged, with Powys, Dyfed and Gododdin. The northern British kingdoms are known as the Hen Ogledd, the "Old North". The article says that until the 570s the Britons still controlled roughly half of England and Wales.
• Brittany: migration from the south-west to Armorica may have begun as early as 300 and largely ended by 500, reflected in names such as Cornouaille and Domnonée. A British bishopric in Galicia shows similar settlement.
• Uncertain: the article says the extent of British survival is contested, and that estimates of Anglo-Saxon migration numbers have been revised downward since the 1990s (Chapter 2 of The Story of Old English gives the range).

Gildas

Wikipedia's Gildas article gives his life as c. 450/500 to c. 570, a British monk and abbot who later moved to Brittany. His De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae is a religious sermon in three parts: a short history of Roman Britain with criticism of his countrymen's sins, a condemnation of five British kings (Constantine, Aurelius Conanus, Vortiporius, Cuneglasus and Maelgwn), and an attack on the clergy. It praises Ambrosius Aurelianus as a leader of resistance against the Saxons, the first source to do so, and mentions the victory at Mons Badonicus without saying who led it.

• Date: estimates range from about 479 to 484 to the 540s; his death date of 570 is "at best, traditional" according to one scholar (the article).
• Reliability: the article says the work is "not intended to be an objective chronicle". The Sub-Roman Britain article calls it a moralising polemic with no absolute dates.
• Vortigern: the Sub-Roman Britain article says Gildas describes a council of Vortigern's hiring Saxon mercenaries who later turned on the Britons.
• Arthur: De Excidio does not mention him.

Arthur: what the sources say

Wikipedia's King Arthur article is cautious about the early evidence:

The article does not give a definitive answer on whether he existed. It says most modern historians do not consider Arthur a historical figure and that the evidence is weak. Some scholars argue for a real Romano-British leader who fought the Anglo-Saxons in the late 5th to early 6th century, and the article says Andrew Breeze's identifications are disputed. Proposed models such as Riotamus and Ambrosius Aurelianus have no convincing evidence behind them, and other scholars think Arthur began as a folklore hero or a Celtic deity who was later given historical deeds. The date of Badon itself is given as about 490 in the Sub-Roman Britain article, 516 to 518 in the Annales Cambriae, and the late 5th to early 6th century in the King Arthur article. I show all three and do not choose.

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