Tintagel, as the first locality mentioned in the romance, has a special claim to attention: “It befell in the days of the noble Uther Pendragon, when he was King of all England, and so reigned, that there was a mighty and a noble Duke in Cornwalle that held long time wars against him; and the Duke was named the Duke of Tintagil.” So run the opening lines, introducing us at once to the western territory and to the rocky stronghold indissolubly linked with Arthur’s fame. Strange to say, however, the place is absolutely ignored in the later half of the history, despite the fact that Cornwall was the scene of some of the most important concluding events. Tintagel was apparently forgotten by the chroniclers after the story of Tristram was related, and the last mention of it as King Mark’s Castle, where treachery was followed by bloodshed, where the allegiance of the knights began to decline, and where folly, wantonness, and shame served as omens of coming disaster and of the impending shock to the realm which Arthur had made. The history of Tintagel begins in a tale of shame, though King Uther’s deceit of Igraine appears to have been regarded less as dishonour to himself than as a sign of his own and Merlin’s strategy and venturesomeness.[16] Uther, having compassed the death of Gorlois, had no further difficulty in persuading Igraine to become his wife, and their son was Arthur, who at his birth was delivered to Sir Ector, “a lord of faire livelyhood,” to be nourished as one of his own family. The death of Uther while his son was yet an infant left the succession in some doubt, and in order to prove Arthur’s right to the crown the familiar device was adopted of drawing a sword from a stone. The scene of the contest in which Arthur, now assumed by the chroniclers to be a goodly youth, and Sir Ector’s son took part, is vaguely described as being “the churchyard of the greatest church in London”; and it is needless to say that only Arthur proved equal to the feat of pulling the sword from the marble and the steel anvil in which it stood. The letters of gold on the sword declared that “whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvile, is rightwise king borne of England,” and Sir Ector and Sir Kay, his defeated son and Arthur’s foster-brother, were the first to kneel to Arthur as their lord when they saw Excalibur in his hand. Before the lords and commons Arthur again proved his right and royalty at the feast of Pentecost, and with the help of Merlin he proceeded immediately to establish his kingdom, which, during Uther’s illness and after his death, had stood “in great jeopardie.”