to Strathclyde (i.e. the region from the Firth of Clyde
to Cumberland). He was constantly engaged, first
in one part, then in another, against the Saxons; but
his principal battles were fought in Scotland. He
occurs in the Welsh accounts of the saints, but never
as a hero, always as a despot and tyrant. His immediate predecessor, Geraint, in like manner is met
with, mainly in Cornwall, but also in Wales, where
he had a church, and in Herefordshire. He had to
keep the frontier against the Saxons.
What played the mischief with Arthur was that Geoffrey of Monmouth, who became bishop of S. Asaph in 1152, published, about 1140, his fabulous History of the Britons, which elevated Arthur into a hero. Geoffrey had an object in view when he wrote this wonderful romance. The period was one in which the Welsh had been horribly maltreated, dispossessed of their lands, their churches taken from them and given to Normans, who neither understood their language nor regarded their traditions. The foreigners had castles planted over the country filled with Norman soldiery, tormenting, plundering, insulting the natives. Poor Wales wept tears of blood. Now Henry I. had received the beautiful Nest, daughter of Rhys, king of South Wales, as a hostage when her father had fallen in battle, and, instead of respecting his trust, he had wronged her in her defenceless condition in a cruel manner, and had by her a son, Robert, who was raised by him to be Duke of Gloucester. To this Robert, half Welsh, Geoffrey dedicated his book, a glorification of the British kings, a book that surrounded the past history of the
