British Historians Locate King Arthur’s Round Table Legend

By: Michael Stevens
07/11/2010 07:34 PM ET

Historians locate King Arthur’s Round Table legend. Knights of the Round Table were awarded by King Arthur’s Chivalry and historians believe they have located it. The Round Table was thought to be a King Arthur legend, but historians now have proof.

Knights of the Round Table were those men awarded the highest order of Chivalry at the Court of King Arthur in the literary cycle the Matter of Britain. The table at which they met was created to have no head or foot, representing the equality of all the members. Different stories had various numbers of knights, ranging from only 12 to 150 or more. The Winchester Round Table, which dates from the 1270s, lists 25 names of knights.

It is believed that regional noblemen would have sat in the front row of a circular meeting place, with lower ranked subjects on stone benches grouped around the outside. Camelot historian Chris Gidlow stated, “The first accounts of the Round Table show that it was nothing like a dining table but was a venue for upwards of 1,000 people at a time. We know that one of Arthur’s two main battles was fought at a town referred to as the City of Legions. There were only two places with this title. One was St Albans but the location of the other has remained a mystery.”

“In the 6th Century, a monk named Gildas, who wrote the earliest account of Arthur’s life, referred to both the City of Legions and to a martyr’s shrine within it. That is the clincher. The discovery of the shrine within the amphitheater means that Chester was the site of Arthur’s court and his legendary Round Table,” Gidlow said in a statement.