Devon is a very secretive place and it guards its secrets well. It has taken some years of research to uncover some remarkable ground breaking evidence which, rather than casting doubt on the idea that the Trojans landed in Devon in the late Bronze age, actually supports it. The reason for this is that it is only in recent years that Indo-European and Celtic scholars have decoded some valuable words hitherto incomprehensible, such as bretona and place names like Uriconium near Shrewsbury.
The result is that it has transformed our understanding of the early language and history of Britain which in turn has important ramifications for the origins of the institutions of our monarchy, our judiciary, our road system and cities and much else besides. In essence, if such institutions have their origins in prehistory, as the recent evidence seems to suggest, then we may better understand the enigmatic words of our earliest British historian St Gildas who intimated that the British are none other than the inheritors of the Israelite's special function as influential in the spiritual and moral advancement of the world. Indeed, no one could argue that John Wilkes, who fought for press freedom and Wilberforce, who pioneered the emancipation of slavery, were not good examples of Britain's special role in this regard. Again the British role in keeping the judiciary separate from the governing executive, is crucial to our personal freedom, something to be cherished as much as another key British concept, that of habeus corpus, or no imprisonment without trial.
A late Welsh poem in Hanes Taliesin states that the British are 'this remnant of Troia'. Furthermore Nennius writing in 800 CE confirms this Trojan tradition, although he states that the Trojan leader Brutus came from Rome, which is due to the fact that Brutus was grandson of Aeneas who fought in the Trojan war before coming to Italy.
In 1136, a mere 70 years after the Norman conquest, Geoffrey of Monmouth in his History of the Kings of Britain, gave the fullest version of the Brutus myth, which stated that Brutus, in about 1100 years before the birth of Christ, landed at Totnes in Devon. Naturally such claims have provoked a mixed reaction down the years and occasionally this could be not just hostile, but down right offensive, questioning Geoffrey's honesty, as to the truth of the source he supplies for his material; an ancient British manuscript which no longer survives.
It might be thought in the light of the historical importance of Geoffrey's work, which recounts a long prehistory of Britain, that it would merit a thorough study to evaluate its claims.
You might think that and you would be wrong. In fact there has never been a serious scholarly analysis of his history, although some like Tatlock made some important observations on particular episodes. However, for the most part, Geoffrey's hostile critics were intent on dismissing his account either with flimsy evidence or even worse, with no evidence at all. This is in spite of the fact that Geoffrey's work had an immense influence on European literature, engendering a vast array of manuscripts in many languages and influencing a diverse range of chronicles, history and mythology. This latter includes the Arthurian corpus, which outside of the Bible, is the largest body of written material in the world, largely; although not uniquely inspired by Geoffrey's work.
So it is curious that such an important and fundamental work has never received the close scrutiny it deserves. If the traditions which Geoffrey recounts are true, then such places as Totnes, Leicester and London are ancient indeed . In the case of London, archaeologists might claim no such evidence of such early settlement has been found, but that is not entirely true as we shall see and in any case our good friend Nennius, over three centuries before Geoffrey, calls London Troinovantum; New Troy, and even earlier Ptolemy in 150 CE names a tribe in this area as Trinovantes, which Geoffrey,s critics have desperately tried to explain as anything but Troia Nova, New Troy, exactly what Geoffrey calls this ancient city and we know that Ptolemy and other Classical writers misspell British place names. Such early evidence for this Trojan incursion into Britain, has for too long been ignored and the evidence for such prehistoric origins for Totnes and surrounding villages is likewise striking, if not overwhelming.
I shall publish such evidence on other blogs on this same blog address.
Like I say, Devon guards its secrets well, so well, that it has taken many hundreds of years before we had any chance of understanding their true nature. Of course, even with the evidence of Ptolemy's New Troy in Britain, it doesn't prove that a Trojan named Brutus actually landed in Devon 1200 years before his time. However, an examination of the available evidence will surprise many, as it did myself, that there seems to be a damned good chance that he did!
And if this be so, it has profound implications for places like Totnes and London, the royal family and for the whole country. Even more curious is the fact that if indeed King Alfred married into the Welsh royal line, as other Anglo-Saxon monarchs may have done so, then William and Harry could be said to descend from no less than the Goddess of Love herself, Aphrodite mother of Aeneas, grandfather of Brutus.
Does this explain the enormous outpouring of emotion that attended the death of their mother, Lady Diana Spencer, for remember it was the Goddess Diana herself who instructed Brutus to seek out the land of Britain, named after him?
Who knows, but then truth was always stranger than fiction as the royal family has abundantly proven.
