Welsh continuity from Roman Britain is a complicated issue for a number of reasons, not least of which are a lack of sources and difficulties in dating the few that survive. I’ll be tackling this question more from the perspective of literary production and historical memory—it would be interesting to hear from others more familiar with fields such as archaeology or legal history.

Some of the earliest indications we have of Welsh historical self-conception come from a document usually called De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae (“On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain”; here is an old translation from an old edition, but should give you a general idea!) Gildas was a churchman, writing probably in the mid-6th century. His text is fiercely polemic, arguing that the moral decrepitude of his people has led to their current misfortunes. In and around his invective, however, can be glimpsed some general historical understanding. Gildas tells how the Romans conquered Britain, brought laws, and exploited its mineral wealth; how under Roman rule, Christianity spread to the Isles, survived persecutions, and eventually became established as the majority faith. He then turns to the titular “ruin and conquest”--the decline of Roman imperial power over Britain in the face of rebellion, invasion, famine, and other disasters. These begin with the uprising of the usurper Magnus Maximus (d. 388) and continue to Gildas’s own day, when the Britons (that is, the Christian, Brittonic-speaking people of the west; the future Cymry/Welsh) live under the rule of a collection of murderous tyrants. Some of these, such as Maelgwn of Gwynedd--d. c. 547?--seem fairly securely historical.

Writing in the Latin language (which he calls “ours”), referring to his countrymen as “citizens” (cives), and celebrating the exploits of Ambrosius Aurelianus--a heroic general, a “man of unassuming character, who, alone of the Roman race chanced to survive in the shock of such a storm (as his parents, people undoubtedly clad in the purple, had been killed in it), whose offspring in our days have greatly degenerated from their ancestral nobleness”--Gildas identifies in many ways as a member of Roman civilization, even while he acknowledges that politically Britain is now a separate entity (or rather, entities.) In an omission that frustrated even medieval commentators, however, Gildas says nothing about Arthur, mentioning only a certain Battle of Mons Badonicus occurring in the year of his own birth (around the turn of the 6th c.)

The next British work to provide an overarching historical narrative of the island doesn’t appear for nearly three centuries. A number of important developments occured in this period. Even by Gildas’s time, Latin was probably dying out as a community language in Britain (it’s unclear to what extent, and over what area, it had ever replaced pre-Roman languages.) While it remained in widespread use among clerics in both monastic and courtly settings, and was both spoken and written extensively, British Latin did not produce a fully distinct vernacular. The divide between the English and the Britons was lessened in some ways during these centuries, such as through the conversion of all English rulers to Christianity by the end of the seventh century; and strengthened in others, such as legal distinctions and the solidifying of the border between Wales and the English kingdoms (roughly where the border lies today, if we don’t include the then-extensive British territories in Cornwall and the North.) Lindy Brady’s Writing the Welsh Borderlands in Anglo-Saxon England (2017) touches on the complex political and cultural nature of English/British relationship, from the 5th to the 12 centuries.

So by the time the Historia Brittonum (“History of the Britons,” here’s a translation) was written in North Wales, in the early 9th c, a lot had changed. But there is also a clear shift in the memory of Britain’s relationship to Rome. The HB draws on Virgil’s Aeneid to explain that the Britons are the descendents of Brutus, a grandson of Aeneas. This made them a nation related to but distinct from the Romans, with their own illustrious Trojan pedigree. The HB gives an embellished but not completely fanciful account of Julius Caesar’s expeditions to Britain, Claudius’s conquest of the island beginning in 43 CE, and the construction of a wall to protect against northern incursions into the province. In all, it mentions seven Roman emperors who went to Britain and accounts 409 years of Roman rule over Britain, which isn’t too far off.

But the Britons and Romans are clearly delineated as separate peoples, with the latter having a distinct period of rulership over the island that ended shortly after the time of Maximus. The HB in general treats this figure much more positively than Gildas does, paving the way for his heroic character in later legends. Britain’s conversion to Christianity is attributed to a seemingly ahistorical King Lucius, living 167 years after Christ; this reference to a British king coexisting with Roman imperial rule also suggests a belief, by this time, that the island had maintained some form of political independence even during the Roman period. The HB is also the earliest secure, datable, and securely-datable reference to Arthur, whom it describes as a great commander who defeated the Saxons at the Battle of Mons Badonicus--the same that Gildas had referenced without naming any participant (probably; there are interpretations of the text that argue Gildas considered Ambrosius Aurelianus the victor of Badon). But neither this Arthur nor his contemporaries are described as Romans. The last personal marker of Roman identity in the text is borne by Ambrosius/Emrys--here seemingly part of the generation before Arthur, a child prophet before he becomes a political leader--who states that his father was a Roman consul.

These two texts, De Excidio and the Historia, seem to have been widely known in Britain. In the following centuries, the memory of Roman and post-Roman Britain that they present becomes increasingly romanticized. Arthur becomes identified as amherawdr, “emperor,” a tradition which grew into Geoffrey of Monmouth’s account of Arthur’s conquest of Rome. In the twelfth century (?) tale Breuddwyd Macsen Wledig (“The Dream of Lord Maximus,” here in Charlotte Guest’s 1838-45 translation), Macsen is a Roman emperor who has a dream of a beautiful woman. He finds her in Britain, marries her, and makes her empress. He remains in Britain for seven years, at which point the Romans appoint a new emperor in his stead. With a British army, Macsen reconquers his empire--specifically needing to request that his heroic British brothers-in-law cede the city of Rome back to him. This short narrative speaks volumes about the medieval Welsh perception of their historical connection with Rome. There are other interesting sources--including tantalizing suggestions of a legend about Caswallawn (Cassivellaunus) and his battles against Caesar, with the Romans more explicitly identified as a hostile invading force. The best place to go for these traditions, as for so much else, is the Trioedd Ynys Prydain, The Triads of the Isle of Britain, a vast compendium of medieval Welsh lore edited by Rachel Bromwich.

(con’t)