The legend of King Arthur has had many interpretations over 1000 years. In a nutshell, a familiar version follows:

Merlin, a wise wizard, prepared young Arthur, whom he called “Wart,” for kingship. Signifying divine selection, Arthur pulled the sword Excalibur from a stone and thuswise became king of England. He ruled as a courageous warrior who cared for peace and justice. At his splendorous castle of Camelot, he established the chivalrous order of the Round Table, from which his knights ventured forth to protect the weak and pursue righteous deeds.

Arthur’s beautiful queen, Guinevere, was unfaithful with his beloved, bravest and once purest knight, Lancelot. Forsaking personal vengeance, Arthur upheld the law by having Guinevere tried by jury for treason. Yet to his relief, at the last moment, the convicted and guilt-ridden queen was rescued from execution by the remorseful Lancelot. Lastly, the forlorn king was mortally wounded in battle by his evil son, Mordred. After killing Mordred, Arthur died on the allusive Isle of Avalon. Excalibur was there entrusted to the Lady in the Lake until his expected, triumphant return.¹

King Arthur by Charles Ernest Butler (1903)

King Arthur’s Life and Legend

Multiple kingdoms of Britain claimed a King Arthur in their past, who supposedly led a defense against the Anglo-Saxons, temporarily stalling invasion in about 500 A.D. at the battle of Mount Badon, perhaps in Dorset.² Henry II tried locating Arthur’s tomb at Glastonbury, which may have been the Isle of Avalon, and monks claimed they found his grave there in 1191.³

Cornwall, Somerset and Winchester in England and Caerleon in South Wales are debated as Camelot’s location. Many historians accept that a Celtic chieftain by that name existed, but others doubt it.⁴ In the Middle Ages and Tudor period, there was no doubt of Arthur’s existence. Medieval English law cites Arthur as the model sovereign and the first king to require all freemen to swear “to defend the kingdom against foreigners and enemies.”⁵

For our purpose, it is irrelevant whether King Arthur existed. Real or not, over centuries he has served his nation and Western civilization. The Arthurian legend, when first originated as the last Roman legions departed Britain, gave the isolated, nervous island inhabitants, cut from their foggy pre-imperial past and their recent Roman identity, a historical anchor of courage and patriotism.⁶

The same is similarly true in later times of fear of foreign invasion, whether Norman conquerors, Viking raiders, Spain’s Armada, Napoleon’s armies, Hitler’s stormtroopers or Cold War communists. In this vein, folktales point to numerous hollow hills and caves in Wales from which Arthur and his knights shall awake and ride to rescue the Britons on their day of greatest need.⁷ The enduring legend, now woven into our culture, not only provided a comforting touchstone of heritage but also a timeless and unifying belief in English decency and goodness worth fighting and dying for, including a faith in law and fealty to justice. And perhaps encouraged by Arthur’s influence, the English cultivated a talent for these civilized concepts of governance. Magna Carta and the unique common law judicial system prove it. And while the newer Robin Hood legend offered frolicking yarns of rough justice for the lower classes at the expense of the wealthy, Arthurian ideals of law and justice reached the very reason for government and society.

King Arthur and the Round Table

A hodgepodge of written romantic tales of Arthur first appeared in Wales.⁸ However, the primary sources for the ever-evolving legend have been grandly crafted literature from the Middle Ages to the modern era on both sides of the Atlantic, most notably the works of medieval Welch bishop Geoffrey of Monmouth, Sir Thomas Malory, William Wordsworth, Sir Walter Scott, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Mark Twain, Howard Pyle and T. H. White, the last employing the legend in the 1950s to discredit fascism and communism.⁹
Unfortunately, Shakespeare avoided the topic, perhaps because the story was so cherished by Tudor monarchs as a claimed part of their otherwise questionable royal pedigree. He dared not risk offending his patrons with his approach to the ideal king. Also, the great Puritan poet John Milton intended to write an epic poem on Arthur but abandoned the project during the English Civil War as too pro-royalty.¹⁰

In contrast to Arthur’s, the Robin Hood fables’ creators and purveyors were vagabond storytellers and balladeers of the commoners. Hence, for a time, the Robin Hood tales were viewed as belonging to the ordinary people and the Arthur legend more of the nobility. And unlike Robin Hood’s adventures, Arthur’s long and distinguished literary journey has generated varied versions and offshoot stories and characters. Moreover, it permitted the legend to adapt not only to changing styles and readers’ tastes, but also to address Britain’s and the world’s immediate insecurities with inspiration and fortitude. Furthermore, as diverse and timely as the written sources are, a consistent theme, among others, has been legal justice.

King Henry’s medieval jury

King Arthur’s Legal Legacy

Like real English kings, in Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, Arthur took a sacred coronation oath to uphold law and justice.¹¹ Five centuries later, in T. H. White’s The Once and Future King, Arthur sought a just realm and way of life to replace the medieval brutality of “might makes right.”¹² His conception of active chivalry, by ordering his knights to protect the weak, was his first attempt. He later turned to religious quests. Ultimately, he forged a novel, practical legal system from whole cloth, chiefly trial by jury supplanting trial by combat. Although an earthly device, his legal system had internal, objective checks against individual human frailty unlike chivalry and piety.

Historically, most of the credit for these judicial innovations rightly goes to Henry II, the “father of the common law,” who came the closest to being the realized King Arthur of legend. Therefore, ironically, in White’s magnificent 20th century treatment, the annals of Arthur borrowed from Henry, in a sense, the genuine King Arthur: humane, curious, creative and just. Henry was also even betrayed by his offspring and his queen, the Guinevere-like Eleanor of Aquitaine, who double-crossed her husband, not for a knightly paramour but for political ambition. So, medieval English kings modeled themselves after Arthur, and Arthur was modeled after Henry.¹³

The mythical Arthur and the actual Henry both founded egalitarian and somewhat democratic institutions within very absolute, pre-Magna Carta monarchies. For the imagined and visionary Arthur, there was the Round Table and the trial jury. For the real and visionary Henry, there were two types of juries, first the indicting grand or Clarendon jury and eventually the trial or petit jury. These he cleverly evolved from the old Norman investigative tool of the royal inquest.¹⁴ And with both institutions, the fictional Round Table and the factual juries, subjects personally came into government and made decisions themselves, a civilized and enlightened activity in an often uncivilized and, by definition, unenlightened “Dark Ages.”

Even though more easily achieved by Arthur than by Henry, the historical advent of trial by jury was just as astounding. The revolutionary nature of this legal reform, in such a tradition bound epoch, was reflected in the 1967 motion picture Camelot. In the film, based on White’s book and the Broadway musical, Arthur tries to explain the new judicial system to his elderly, old-school counselor, Pellinore:

Arthur: It is simple, Pellinore. Once you get it into that armored head of yours that all disputes will be settled by law and not by bloodshed.

Pellinore: Wart, I understand that perfectly. I do not understand how it works.

Let us see. Supposing you are accused of burning down a stable.

Whose?

Let us say a farmer named William.

I wouldn’t, of course, but get along.

Now Pelly, you claim you haven’t. What does he do?

He holds his tongue if he knows what’s good for him or he’ll get a sword through his chest.

Pelly, he takes you to court.

And we fight there.

In court, there is a prosecutor for Farmer William and a defender for you.

Oh, I see! I see. And they fight.

A jury decides. That is why it is called ‘trial by jury.’

The jury? Who in thunderation are they? It’s none of their damn business.

But you don’t know them, Pelly. And they don’t know you.

If they don’t know me and they don’t know Farmer William how can you expect them to care a fig who wins? How can you get a fair decision from people so impartial?

That is precisely the point, Pelly. They are impartial and there will be no bloodshed.

If that jury finds me guilty there’ll be plenty of bloodshed. I’ll have a whack at every last one of them.

Then you will be charged with murder, Pelly.

The ruddy thing’s endless! Another jury finds me guilty, and I’ll have to whack them and so on and so on and whacking and—

Forget it! You will never burn down a stable, you will never know a farmer named William and you will never ever be found in a court.

Not without my ruddy sword, I won’t.¹⁵

Perhaps King Henry had similar conversations. More importantly, maybe King Arthur’s love of law and justice speaks to our immoderate age so tempted by “the ends justify the means,” a mindset one small step from “might makes right.” In any event, historian Christopher Hibbert explained the endless fascination with Arthur: “The search for the man himself has become a continuing quest for what lies hidden in the hearts of all.”¹⁶ Finally, we may discover that the Lady of Justice’s sword, which every lawyer has the duty to wield with honor and zeal, is the true Excalibur. |||

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RUSSELL FOWLER is director of litigation and advocacy at Legal Aid of East Tennessee (LAET), and since 1999 he has been adjunct professor of political science at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He served as the law clerk to Chancellor C. Neal Small in Memphis and earned his law degree at the University of Memphis in 1987. Fowler has written many publications on law and legal history, and is a regular columnist for the Journal. He received the TBA’s Justice Joseph W. Henry Award for Outstanding Legal Writing for 2023.

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NOTES
1. See Fran Doel, et al., World of Arthur: King Arthur in History, Legend and Culture 84-89 (1998).
2. John Cannon and Ralph Griffiths, The Oxford Illustrated History of the British Monarchy 3 (1988).
3. Id. at 167; Doel at 85.
4. C. Warren Hollister, The Making of England 55 B.C. to 1399 29 (7th ed. 1992).
5. Bruce R. O’Brien, “Forgers of Law and Their Readers: The Crafting of English Political Identities between the Norman Conquest and the Magna Carta,” Vol. 42, No. 3 Political Science and Politics 467 (2010).
6. See Doel at 13-26.
7. Christopher Hibbert, The Search for King Arthur 11-12 (1969).
8. Hollister at 229; Doel at 55-74.
9. See A. E. Redgate, “Arthur” in The Oxford Companion to British History 53 (John Cannon ed., 1997).
10. Hibbert at 141; see Doel at 103-119.
11. Ruth Lexton, “Kingship in Malory’s Morte D’Arthur,” Vol. 110, No. 2 The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 173, 185 (2011).
12. T. H. White, The Once and Future King (1958).
13. See Russell Fowler, “Henry II: Father of the Common Law,” Vol. 53, No. 1 Tennessee Bar Journal 25 (2017).
14. Id. at 28-30.
15. Camelot (Joshua Logan dir., 1967).
16. Hibbert at 146.