London is the modern English form of the name of the city in Great Britain which is its largest city and the capital city of England. King Arthur and his father Uther Pendragon are sometimes shown to hold court in London.
The Vulgate Merlin explicitly identifies the city of London with the city of Logres in which King Arthur and King Uther Pendragon are also said to sometimes hold court.
Historically, London began as Londinium, a settlement founded by the Romans in 43 CE. But there were earlier settlements in the area. The meaning of “Londoninum” is unknown. It may be a garbled form of a place name in the region.
In Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, London is said to have originated with the city Trivnovatnum founded by King Brutus and his Trojans and was expanded by a much later king named Lud and renamed Caer Lud, which changed to Caer Lundein, and finally to London.
London in Medieval Arthurian Tales[]
In Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, London is often a city where pre-Arthurian kings hold court. King Ambrosius is said to rule his kingdom from London. King Uther Pendragon holds a court at London to which Duke Gorlois of Cornwall brings his wife Ygerne. (But according to the Story of Merlin, this court was held in Carlisle.)
King Arthur however, in Geoffrey and works based on Geoffrey, is never said to hold court in London. Chrétien de Toyes also never locates King Arthur in London in his romances.
In the Prose Lancelot, King Arthur is said to hold court in London on only three occurrences. When Adragain the Brown visits Arthur’s court near the beginning of the romance, he finds Arthur at London. Arthur again holds court at London many years later, the most splendid he had ever held. to celebrate his reunion with the true Queen Guenevere. At his court, Lionel, Lancelot’s cousin is knighted, and Gawain is abducted by Caradoc the Great, and Lancelot, Galeshyn, Duke of Clarence, and Yvain set off to rescue him. Arthur is again holding court at London when Meleagant, having arranged for Lancelot to be imprisoned in his seneschal’s tower, pretends to seek out Lancelot at the court. It as in the city of London, on Saint Mary Magdalene’s Day (August 22), that the fleet stands ready to bear the Knights of the Round Table and their armies to Gaul to conquer Benwick and Gaunes from King Claudas.
In some other passages of the Prose Lancelot King Arthur holds court in the city of Logres which the authors may intend to be London.
In the Vulgate Mort Artu it is also to London that King Arthur summons his men for a campaign against Lancelot across the sea. But here, when ready, King Arthur and his men march out of London until they reach the seashore and the ships. The author here does not seem to understand that London, although on a river, not on the sea coast, is a seaport city.
Again in the Vulgate Mort Artu, it is London to which Guenevere flees from Mordred to barricade herself and her supporters in the Tower of London and Mordred follows to London to besiege the Tower.
The City of London is the City of Logres[]
The name Logres is a French derivation of Welsh Loegyr, the Welsh name for England. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, the kingdom was named after its first king, Locrine, who was the eldest son of King Brutus.
But some texts also mention a city called Logres. In the Story of Merlin, towards the end, Logres, where the sword in the stone appears, is called a city and in some texts “Logres” is replaced by “Londres”, that is “London”. The text which was the source for Sir Thomas Malory’s version of the sword in the stone story was obviously some such, and Malory even speculates the church before which the sword and stone appeared may have been St. Paul’s Cathedral.
In the sequel to The Story of Merlin, usually known as the Vulgate Merlin, it is explicitly stated that the city of Logres is the city of London (as translated by Rupert T. Pickens in Norris J. Lacy’s Lancelot-Grail, Volume I):
It happened one time that he [King Arthur] held court in the city of Logres, which is now called London in England, on the feast of Our Lady in September.
King Arthur afterward holds court several times in the city of Logres in the Prose Lancelot and in the Vulgate Merlin. See Logres#The City of Logres.
Legendary Origin of London[]
There was a tribe named the Trinovantes in Essex, Suffolk and part of Greater London, mentioned by Julius Caesar in his account of his expeditions to Britain in 55 and 54 BCE. In a later account of these expeditions by Orosius, they are referred to as civitas Trinovantum, ‘the tribe of the Trinovantes’, with Trinovantum in this case being in the genitive plural. But because civitas can also mean ‘city’ and Latin neuter nouns often end in -um in the nominative singular, this phrase was misinterpreted as ‘the city Trinovantum’.
Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historia Regum Britanniae states that Brutus and his Trojans founded a city on the Thames which he named Troia Nova, that is ‘New Troy’. The name was gradually corrupted to Trinovantum. Then, in the reign of King Lud, Lud refortified the city and ordered it to be called Caer Lud from his own name. Cassivellaunus, Lud’s younger brother, reigned after him, and was supposedly the Cassivellaunus against whom Julius Caesar fought.
The name Caer Lud was corrupted to Caer Lundein, and then to London.
Some Name Variations[]
FRENCH: Londres, Londrez, Lundres; LATIN: Londone, Lundra; ENGLISH: London, Lundene, Lundene, Lundenes, Lunden, Londen, Lundenne, Lundenne, Lundenne, Lunde, Lundenne, Londenne, Londone, Londoun; MALORY: London; SPANISH: Londres; WELSH: Llundeyn (Llvndeyn).