insular history.”[23] An even more difficult problem than the determination of Arthur’s rank is the identification of the twelve battlefields mentioned in Nennius’s record. The twelfth century chronicler, Henry of Huntingdon, tells us that, even in his own time, “all the places were unknown”; hence it is not surprising that those who have in our day sought to trace geographically the course of Arthur’s campaigns have not brought us much nearer certainty. The most plausible theory is that which would locate most, if not all, the places named by Nennius in the region of the Roman walls in the North,[24] a theory largely supported by Geoffrey of Monmouth’s elaboration of Nennius’s account, and by the fact that the names of several prominent characters connected with the early exploits of Arthur are localised in Lowland Scotland. On the other hand, it is contended that Mount Badon,[25] and Urbs Legionis, at least, must be in the South, and that Linnuis--which in Geoffrey appears as Lindisia (or Lindsey), “otherwise called Lindocolinum”--is in the East. The localisation of Arthur’s battlefields is of no great consequence as compared with the fact that the earliest record of them, however vague and fragmentary, clearly points to a long and victorious campaign conducted under his generalship against the Saxons and other enemies of the Britons in the sixth century. Two, at least, of the victories recorded by Nennius appear to have strongly seized the imagination of later writers of Arthurian story. It mattered less to them where “the castle of Guinnion” actually was than that in the battle fought there Arthur “bore the image of the holy Virgin Mary on his shoulders,” and thus established the tradition which ultimately exalted him into “the first and chief of the three best Christian kings.” Nennius’s brief statement is, of course, expanded and embroidered by Geoffrey[26] and other romantic chroniclers in turn, until the tradition becomes so firmly rooted as to make a modern poet like Wordsworth single out Arthur as a champion of the early British Church, and sing, “Amazement runs before the towering casque Of Arthur, bearing through the stormy field The Virgin sculptured on his Christian shield.”[27] Hence, even Tennyson takes no very great liberty with Arthurian tradition when he converts “Arthur’s knighthood” into a Christian fellowship avowing that “The King will follow Christ, and we the King, In whom high God hath breathed a secret thing.”[28]