CHAPTER 19
The details of the many other battles in the Wars of the Roses need not concern us here. What is important is that both sides had what were, in their eyes at least, legitimate claims to the throne of England. It was a struggle that would not be finally resolved until 1485 when Henry Tudor, the last Lancastrian claimant, defeated Richard III and had himself crowned as Henry VII. To cement his victory, he married the heiress to the Yorkist claim, Edward IV’s daughter Elizabeth. The symbol of this union was the Tudor Rose, half red and half white, which was to become the most important badge of the subsequent Tudor Dynasty.
Henry’s primary claim was through his mother, Margaret Beaufort – a great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt by his second wife, Catherine Swinford – rather than his father Edmund Tudor, who was the son of Catherine of France, the widow of Henry V, by her second husband, Owen Tudor.
As his personal banner, Henry Tudor adopted the red dragon on a green-and-white background that we today associate with Wales. He did this because, as part of his private propaganda, he wanted to present himself as the fulfilment of certain prophecies contained in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain. For as well as Geoffrey’s flowery translation of the Welsh Annals, this book also contained a translation of another book, The Prophecies of Merlin. Rather like the Book of Revelation, which closes the Bible, Merlin’s prophecies use very obscure imagery. They begin with the story of how, as a boy, Merlin was brought to the court of King Vortigern.
As the King of the Britons credited with having invited in the Anglo-Saxons, Vortigern gets a bad press. His stupidity led to their colonizing of England and the marginalization of the native Britons to the mountainous region of Wales, Cornwall and parts of Scotland. For this reason, Vortigern is called mandubrad, meaning ‘traitor’, in the Welsh triads. In fact, he is regarded as one of three great traitors of the Cymry (Welsh), the other two being Avarwy, son of Lud (the ‘Mandubracius’ of Julius Caesar), who made a pact with the Romans, and the other Medrawd (Mordred), who betrayed King Arthur and brought about the collapse of his revived kingdom.
The Merlin of the Prophecies is a somewhat different figure from his Hollywood caricature. Said to have been born in Carmarthen, he is more of a psychic than a magician. His story begins when, as a boy, he is taken to Dinas Emrys. Here, Vortigern is having a castle built, which he intends to be a refuge of last resort. To the King’s annoyance, the builders are having problems for, every night, what they have built the day before falls down. Vortigern asks his magicians for guidance and is told that to make the building secure, they must first sacrifice a boy with no father and sprinkle his blood on the foundations. Merlin is such a boy, which is why he is brought to the castle. When Merlin discovers that he is to be offered as a human sacrifice, he is outraged. Nevertheless, he keeps his head cool and engages the King in conversation. Bit by bit he exposes the ignorance of the so-called magicians, revealing that, in reality, they know nothing of consequence. He explains that the problem with building the castle is that beneath it there is an underground pool. After excavation reveals this to be the case, he challenges the magicians to tell the King what lies at the bottom of the pool. They don’t know, of course, but he explains that there are two stones: one containing a red dragon and the other a white. The King then orders that the pool be drained, and after this is, indeed, revealed to be the case, the dragons emerge from their stones and begin fighting.
All this is a prelude to the subsequent prophecies, which concern the destinies of these two dragons. The red one, Merlin explains, symbolizes the native British, ie the Welsh, while the white symbolizes the Anglo-Saxons. Emerging from their stones, they start fighting. Initially, the white dragon is victorious and the red is forced to retreat. However, Merlin prophesies that the red will eventually defeat the white:
‘Cadwallader [the last Welsh king of Britain, who died in Rome in AD 689] shall summon Conanus [the first king of Brittany at the time of Magnus Maximus] and shall make an alliance with Albany [Scotland]. The foreigners [Anlo-Saxons] shall be slaughtered and the rivers will run with blood.
The mountains of Armorica [Brittany] shall erupt and Armorica shall be crowned with Brutus’ diadem [the crown of Britain]. Kambria [Wales] shall be filled with joy and the Cornish oaks shall flourish. The island shall be called by the name of Brutus [ie Brittania] and the name given to it by the foreigners [ie England] shall be done away with.’
The full meaning of this prophecy, like most of the rest of the book, is necessarily vague, but it could, at a stretch, be interpreted by Henry’s supporters as applying to him. Henry crossed over to Wales from Brittany, bringing some Bretons with him. His army was largely composed of Welshmen, although there were also Scots fighting under his banner. He himself, of course, claimed descent from the legendary Brutus, the eponymous ‘father’ and founder of the British nation. He could, therefore, be said to be wearing Brutus’ diadem.
There is also an obvious parallel between the red and white dragons of Merlin’s prophecy and the red and white roses. York was a prominent city in Anglo-Saxon times and, in many respects, the epitome of the new state of England. It was certainly one of the first Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and more purely Angle or English by blood than counties on the western side of Britain. Lancaster, by contrast, and more especially Lancashire as a whole, was joined to Wales as part of Cymry for a very long time. Indeed, just to the north of it lies the county of Cumberland, whose name retains the heritage of being part of Cambria. For these reasons, the red rose of Lancaster can be thought of as a surrogate for the red dragon of Wales. It is, therefore, not unreasonable to interpret the Wars of the Roses as a continuation of the much earlier conflict between the Britto-Welsh (red dragon) and the Anglo-Saxon invaders (white dragon), although, as I was to discover later, this is an oversimplification.
To summarize, my trip to Tewkesbury, which was now coming to an end, posed as many questions as answers. I had come there searching for clues that perhaps the esoteric schools of South Wales, which were once based at clas churches such as Llantwit and Llancarvan, had been transferred to Tewkesbury following the Norman invasion. I had not found direct evidence of this, but even so there were some intriguing signs of other links with Wales. The tomb and arms of Sir Guy de Brien indicated a connection with bardism that fitted with his taking over of Loughor Castle, a site previously connected with Urien Rheged and the 6th-century bard Taliesin. Tewkesbury had also featured prominently in the Wars of the Roses and these, I was discovering, were linked to Merlin’s dragon prophecies. The conflict between the red and white dragons in Merlin’s prophecies seemed to be prescient of the actual wars of the red and white Roses in the 15th century. Furthermore, the accession of a Welshman, Henry Tudor, as King of England could be interpreted as the fulfilment of Merlin’s most important prophecy: the restoration of Brutus’ diadem.
All of this was certainly food for thought. However, there was something else that this investigation had drawn my attention to, and this was the connection between the Tudor Dynasty (notably Queen Elizabeth I) and Rosicrucianism. The two paintings of her, with their reflected images, hinted at this. Even though she herself was not a Freemason, the fact that she was wearing jewels signifying the Masonic degree of Rosecroix in the paintings seemed too much of a coincidence to have no meaning. The implication was that this Masonic degree and her own private ‘Way’ were drawing inspiration from the same source, one which may be connected with the mystery of the Welsh tombstones and which, for want of a better name, we could call Rosicrucianism. Inexorably, it seemed, I was being drawn back to a secret connection between the 5th- and 6th-century Welsh memorial stones and the chief emblem of the 17th-century Brotherhood of the Rosy-cross. Investigating this mystery further was my next task.