| Transcript |
| · | Introduction |
| 0:00 | · | In the 17th century, a very old poem was discovered, possibly dating back to the late 600s. |
| 0:06 | · | It's fractured, and incomplete, but it still contains something remarkable: it |
| 0:13 | · | mentions a place known as "Pengwern". This may seem innocuous, but asides from one other, equally damaged poem, this would |
| 0:21 | · | be the only mention of this place for centuries. These two fragmented poems seem to have recorded the only mentions of whatever this "Pengwern" was. |
| 0:32 | · | That is until the 12th century, where we meet a man named Gerald of Wales. He wrote a sort of travel diary about his journey through well… |
| 0:41 | · | Wales, preserving countless amounts of local history. Including something very peculiar. |
| 0:47 | · | On page 139, Gerald elects to tell us about "the three ancient capitals of Wales". |
| 0:53 | · | Two of them are known to us: Aberffraw, in Gwynedd, and Dinefwr in Deheubarth, but one |
| 0:59 | · | is very strange. According to Gerald, the ancient capital |
| 1:04 | · | of this kingdom, Powys, was known as Pengwern, apparently now called Shrewsbury, in England. |
| 1:12 | · | Gerald had, unknowingly, just resurrected a six-hundred-year-old mystery, that was so |
| 1:17 | · | lost to time, historians were not even aware that something was missing. This single sentence would lead scholars down a rabbit hole for centuries, as they |
| 1:27 | · | tried to find a kingdom that seems to have been intentionally erased from history. |
| 1:33 | · | This is the story of the missing kingdom of Pengwern. |
| · | Amwythig |
| 1:47 | · | So, what exactly do we "know" so far. Well, we have two poems, one from probably the 7th or 8th century, and another from sometime |
| 1:55 | · | around the 9th. Both are fractured, but for our purposes today, invaluable, and they seem to place |
| 2:00 | · | Pengwern somewhere in Shropshire, mentioning the towns of Lichfield, Baschurch, and Maserfield |
| 2:06 | · | as being somewhere nearby, along with the, river Tern. We also have Gerald's single comment, placing this mysterious Pengwern, or more |
| 2:13 | · | specifically the "court of Pengwern" right here: |
| 2:20 | · | This is Shrewsbury, the former home of Charles Darwin, before he moved to the grave, and for about 200 years it was common knowledge |
| 2:27 | · | to English historians that the "Pengwern" mentioned in these poems could be found right here. There's a boat club named after it, and a street. |
| 2:35 | · | Articles from 1829, and 1878 proclaim it as a certainty, as does this newspaper from 1897, however, there is a seemingly obvious caveat. |
| 2:45 | · | "Pengwern" is a Welsh name, meaning a hill with either a grove of alder trees, or a swamp, but the name of Shrewsbury in Welsh, is not "Pengwern", it's "Amwythig". |
| 2:55 | · | And it's been Amwythig for ages. The oldest reference I could find is in the 11th century, possibly the 9th, and historians |
| 3:04 | · | agree that this name is at least as old as the medieval era. Scholars, as you can see, simply believed that this "Pengwern" was an older name |
| 3:12 | · | that was eventually replaced, but no one seems to agree on when, or how this could have happened, a debate that is not helped by no one being able to figure out what "Amwythig" even means. |
| 3:22 | · | This second poem, which uses "Pengwern" might even post-date the name "Amwythig" by over 100 years. |
| 3:28 | · | What we are relying on then is a single sentence from Gerald of Wales, an unreliable author who was most likely just relaying something that someone had told him. |
| 3:38 | · | This tells us that the memory of Pengwern seems to have been alive, but that already by the 12th century, its location had been lost. |
| 3:44 | · | The problem we have, is that this is oral history. Oral history is extremely valuable, but it's way less reliable. |
| 3:50 | · | If something changes in a written record, we can physically spot it most of the time, but if something changes in the spoken record, then that information may be replaced forever. |
| 4:00 | · | Regardless though, what we can establish is that while Pengwern was probably in Shropshire, we don't have any proof that Shrewsbury was ever called by this name. |
| 4:09 | · | So what we know, really, is that even though there are places called "Pengwern" in Wales, this Pengwern was probably somewhere over here, but where, and even when, would |
| 4:19 | · | be a mystery for over 1100 years. |
| · | Caught in the Web |
| 4:26 | · | So perhaps it's time to fast forward to when the poems were discovered, so that we can take a look at them ourselves. |
| 4:33 | · | The first poem is called ‘Marwnad Cynddylan'. It covers the exploits of the only named king of Pengwern, Cynddylan son of Cyndrwyn. |
| 4:42 | · | This poem claims that his notoriety was known as far as the island of Ynys Môn, but one achievement in particular is highlighted: his raid on the monastery of Lichfield – which |
| 4:51 | · | the Welsh called Caer Lwytgoed – the city of the grey woods. Cynddylan, alongside his son Morfael, are said to have attacked and defeated the |
| 5:01 | · | "son of Pyd" here, and carried off a horde of treasure from the monastery, and while this doesn't reveal to us where Pengwern might have been, it does narrow down when |
| 5:10 | · | it might have been. You see, the monastery of Lichfield was a Christian establishment, obviously, but |
| 5:16 | · | the English kingdom here, Mercia, only became Christian in 655, so this raid must have occurred |
| 5:23 | · | no earlier than this. To support this, in 655 the new king of Mercia was named Peada, and historians believe |
| 5:31 | · | that this name is related to this Welsh name of Pyd. Or in other words, Cynddylan seems to have defeated one of Peada's sons. |
| 5:40 | · | Fortunately for us, and unfortunately for Peada, he only ruled for 1 year, before his kingdom was annexed by his neighbours, the Northumbrians. |
| 5:48 | · | So if Cynddylan defeated Peada's son in battle, we can assume that this was during Peada's rule, meaning that this raid must have taken place between 655 and 656. |
| 5:58 | · | So, we know that Pengwern was somewhere in Shropshire, probably not in Shrewsbury, but likely somewhere nearby. |
| 6:05 | · | It was supposedly a royal court, althougthere was evidently some sort of kingdom as well. According to Gerald, Pengwern was supposedly the capital of the kingdom of Powys, and their |
| 6:14 | · | only known king, Cynddylan, was apparently famous across north Wales, in particular for his raid against the monastery of Lichfield, which has to have taken place around the years |
| 6:22 | · | 655 to 656. So, we have a year, and a rough place. |
| 6:28 | · | Now, what was happening in the east of Wales at this time? |
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| 7:38 | · | So, eastern Wales and western England in the 7th century. |
| 7:44 | · | If we can understand what was going on, then maybe we can figure out some clues about Pengwern. A couple of decades prior to this raid in Lichfield, other Welsh monarchs were active |
| 7:53 | · | in the area, however this time, they were here in peace. King Cadwallon of Gwynedd had formed an alliance with king Penda of Mercia. |
| 8:03 | · | Their enemy? The English kingdom of Northumbria. The Northumbrians had been encroaching on Mercian territory, and in 616 they had |
| 8:12 | · | attacked and killed the king of Gwynedd at the battle of Chester, providing a motivation for both powers to join forces and take revenge. |
| 8:20 | · | And at the battle of Haethfelth in 633, the king of Northumbria would be killed. |
| 8:25 | · | We're told that Cadwallon and Penda rampaged throughout the entire country following |
| 8:30 | · | this victory, the monk Bede even lamented that Cadwallon was going to destroy all of the English. |
| 8:39 | · | However, Cadwallon was killed by the new Northumbrian king Oswald at Hefenfelth the following year. |
| 8:49 | · | Oswald would push the Mercian's back all the way to Shropshire, which is where our king Cynddylan, and Pengwern come back in. |
| 8:55 | · | You see, Mercia seems to have sought another Welsh ally to once again help them defeat the Northumbrians, and this time, they found one in Cynddylan, which brings us to our second |
| 9:06 | · | poem: ‘Canu Heledd'. It was probably written sometime between the 9th and 11th centuries. |
| 9:13 | · | Historians such as Dumville favour a later date, but others such as Higham, Breeze, and Rowland prefer the 9th, so we're going to go for this one. |
| 9:23 | · | In this poem, we are told that Cynddylan served as an ally to the king of Mercia in a single battle, Maes Cogwy, in 642, where the king of Northumbria was, once again, slain. |
| 9:35 | · | Cynddylan probably sided with Mercia because of the imminent threat that the Northumbrians posed, he probably considered them the greater of two evils. |
| 9:44 | · | Cynddylan may also have had a personal reason for this fight. Do you remember that battle at Chester? |
| 9:49 | · | Well, Welsh poetry, specifically the Triads, preserve the names of the three gate-keepers |
| 9:54 | · | of Chester, presumably the men who led the final defence of the city against the Northumbrians: |
| 10:00 | · | Gwgon of the red-sword, Madog son of Rhun, and Gwion son of Cyndrwyn: aka Cynddylan's brother. |
| 10:11 | · | So, we can add to what we know so far, namely that Cynddylan was in an alliance with Mercia in 642, but by 655, something that changed. |
| 10:26 | · | So now we know when Pengwern was, and roughly where, but we can get more specific, |
| · | Pengwern Ablaze |
| 10:32 | · | once again thanks to Canu Heledd. And it is here that I'm going to give you a very brief Welsh lesson. |
| 10:37 | · | You see, "Canu Heledd" just means the "song of Heledd", innocent enough, but "Marwnad |
| 10:43 | · | Cynddylan" means the "Elegy of Cynddylan", as in something you write after someone dies. |
| 10:48 | · | By examining this final poem, we can come to the end of what little story we have on Pengwern, and we can see how it might not just be bad luck that almost no records of its existence survive. |
| 11:01 | · | We are told by Heledd, who is Cynddylan's sister, that at some point after the battle of Maes Cogwy, Pengwern would once again find itself in conflict with its English neighbours. |
| 11:11 | · | And these conflicts are supposedly all her fault, as she laments that it was "her tongue that brought disasters to Pengwern". |
| 11:18 | · | We don't know exactly what these disasters were, except for the final one, where we are |
| 11:23 | · | told Cynddylan and two of his brothers marched to defend a town on the river Tern from an invasion by the "Lloegrin", a rare Welsh term for the English. |
| 11:32 | · | According to Heledd, this town was laid to waste. Cynddylan and his brothers were killed in the battle, and Heledd and her maidens were |
| 11:40 | · | forced to flee to the hills. From these hills, they suddenly see the palace of Pengwern in flames – "Llys Pengwern |
| 11:48 | · | neu tandde" the poem says. Once night falls, they go to the smoldering ruins, where Heledd proclaims that "Cyddylan's |
| 11:56 | · | hall is dark tonight". They then find and take the body of the king from the battlefield to the "Church |
| 12:02 | · | of Bassa", where Heledd finally laments that her family are now all gone. |
| 12:09 | · | When Pengwern burned, and Cynddylan died, it seems that all of the records and memories of this place were erased by their invaders, and then forgotten, for centuries. |
| 12:20 | · | The elegy of Cynddylan was probably written soon after his death, around the late 7th century, but this Canu Heledd was likely written way later, since this Church of Bassa is an |
| 12:30 | · | English establishment that wasn't consecrated for a few hundred years. And following Gerald's comment in the 12th century, this kingdom would seemingly |
| 12:38 | · | fade completely out of history. However, there is one final line in this poem that we haven't had a look at, one |
| 12:45 | · | final line that almost everybody seems to have ignored for centuries. Despite Gerald claiming that Pengwern was in Shrewsbury, this poem never mentions |
| 12:53 | · | the town. However, it does mention something. |
| 12:59 | · | Following the destruction of Pengwern, Heledd is said to have stood at "Dinlle Vreconn", and looked over the old lands of Pengwern. |
| 13:06 | · | So, what on earth is Dinlle Vreconn? And could this provide us our final clue? |
| · | The City of Virocon |
| 13:20 | · | "Din lle Vreconn" is made up of three pieces. "Din" is the word for a fort, or a city. |
| 13:26 | · | "Lle" is a bit more abstract, roughly defined as a "space in general", or a |
| 13:31 | · | "specific place for something", so "Din Lle" means the "place for or of a city", |
| 13:37 | · | probably, in this case, in the past tense. So, are we aware of an old city, somewhere around Shropshire, with the name "Vreconn"? |
| 13:49 | · | Yes, the old Roman city of Viroconium. |
| 13:56 | · | If we remove the Roman suffix, we get the old Brythonic root of Virocon-, which appears to have entered Welsh as Guricon in |
| 14:03 | · | the 9th century, and Gwrygon in modern Welsh, while the English called this place Wreocon, |
| 14:11 | · | Wreocon-ceaster, or Wroxeter today. So it appears that this 9th century poem was referring to the old city of Viroconium. |
| 14:20 | · | But was this Roman city the royal court that we just saw be destroyed by the English? |
| 14:25 | · | No, from archaeology it appears that Viroconium was abandoned, at the latest, by AD 550, |
| 14:32 | · | about a century before the raid on Lichfield could've taken place. |
| 14:37 | · | But there is another "Wreocon" close by, a big pile of dirt and rocks known today |
| 14:44 | · | as the Wrekin. Home to a colossal hillfort, that was likely once the capital of the Brythonic tribe |
| 14:52 | · | of the Cornovii, until they were conquered by the Romans, and settled in the nearby Viroconium. |
| 14:59 | · | Historians such as Melville Richards and Thomas Stephens have suggested that perhaps our Llys Pengwern, Cynddylan's hall, may have been up here. |
| 15:08 | · | It is a commanding view of the Severn, and well within marching distance of the Tern, |
| 15:14 | · | Lichfield, and the Church of Bassa, but wasn't this old hillfort abandoned? Well, yes, but as the Roman empire began to decline more and more in Britain, no longer |
| 15:25 | · | providing the security against invaders that they once used to, dozens, if not hundreds of hillforts would become reoccupied, and if you lived in Viroconium in the 550s, and |
| 15:35 | · | were suddenly aware of large powerful polities encroaching on your borders, why wouldn't |
| 15:40 | · | you move to the much more defensible hill right next door? It's a solid theory, if only because it's essentially the one and only clue we |
| 15:49 | · | have, but still others disagree. Most recently the historian John Davies has suggested that Pengwern was actually located |
| 15:57 | · | here, in an old fort known as The Berth. Here, two naturally forming hills once jutted out of a pool water, forming a perfect |
| 16:05 | · | defensive site. What makes this a good location for Pengwern is its proximity to Baschurch, aka the "Church |
| 16:13 | · | of Bassa", or that place that Cynddylan was buried in. Do you remember how I said that Canu Heledd must have been written much later, because |
| 16:21 | · | Basschurch is named after an Englishman, so it likely wouldn't have existed prior to the English conquest? |
| 16:26 | · | Well, The Berth might be the answer to this. Unfortunately, there is a major flaw in this theory, as archaeological excavation |
| 16:35 | · | has revealed that this fort seems to have been abandoned by the late Iron age, hundreds of years before even the Roman empire set foot on this island, let alone a king from |
| 16:43 | · | the 7th century. Furthermore, many of the places in the Canu Heledd use names that are derived from |
| 16:49 | · | English, even this Dinlle Vreconn uses the English "Wreoconn" rather than the Welsh "Guricon". |
| 16:56 | · | We know that the Anglo-Saxons also named many of their conquered lands after their new landowners, |
| 17:01 | · | so perhaps Cynddylan was buried in a pre-existing community that was later renamed to the Church |
| 17:07 | · | of Bassa, and then the original name may have been simply forgotten over the centuries. |
| · | Know Your Enemy |
| 17:18 | · | We have now covered the entire story of what we know about Pengwern, so let's add to what we know: We've seen that Pengwern was somewhere |
| 17:25 | · | in Shropshire, but know we can see that it was very likely right here on the Wrekin Mountain. We know that Cynddylan allied with Mercia in 642, and became enemies with them by 655, |
| 17:35 | · | but we now know that sometime after this raid, he was slain by an English enemy, after which Pengwern was destroyed, and nearly all records of its existence appear to have been erased. |
| 17:46 | · | A poem commemorating Cynddylan was written sometime soon after, with another one lamenting |
| 17:53 | · | the destruction of Pengwern… in the ninthcentury, quite a bit later, until finally |
| 17:58 | · | Gerald of Wales tells us that, apparently, popular imagination of Pengwern had made it a part of the kingdom of Powys, with its capital in Shrewsbury. |
| 18:07 | · | We are now left with only three big questions, right here: Who exactly destroyed Pengwern? |
| 18:13 | · | Why was it commemorated again 200 hundred years later? And is there any merit to it being associated with the neighbouring of Powys, or did Gerald |
| 18:20 | · | just make a mistake? |
| 18:26 | · | The Lloegrin, as I mentioned are the English, but it's a very rare name for the English. The much more common word is Saeson, from the Latin "Saxones". |
| 18:35 | · | So, which group of English destroyed Pengwern? The most obvious candidate would be the Mercians. |
| 18:41 | · | They were a large and powerful kingdom right on their border, so perhaps they destroyed this kingdom as revenge for the raid on Lichfield. |
| 18:49 | · | But that leaves us two questions. Why was such a harsh response provoked from the Mercians? They had been allies with Pengwern before, would a simple raid really constitute the |
| 18:58 | · | destruction of the entire royal family? Also, why would Cynddylan attack his former ally? |
| 19:04 | · | A different candidate comes to us via the historian Peter Bartrum, who suggests that we shouldn't be looking to the Mercians at all, but instead to the north, at Cynddylan's |
| 19:13 | · | old enemies of the Northumbrians. You see, the Northumbrian king Oswy had annexed northern Mercia in 655, that's when |
| 19:20 | · | the south became Christianised under Peada, and is our earliest date for the raid on Lichfield. However, Peada was slain in 656, and for the next three years, the entire kingdom would |
| 19:29 | · | be ruled by Northumbria. The historian Peter Bartrum has suggested that it is within this three-year period that |
| 19:35 | · | the events of Canu Heledd took place. Cynddylan could have raided the monastery at Lichfield when it was under Northumbrian |
| 19:41 | · | control, and Cynddylan had helped to previously kill the king of Northumbria at the battle of Maes Cogwy in 641, meaning that these two weren't exactly friends. |
| 19:53 | · | Heledd even laments that it was "her tongue" that had caused the destruction of Pengwern, which Bartrum suggests is alluding to her urging her brothers to go raid their |
| 20:02 | · | neighbours, perhaps it was her idea to loot Lichfield after the king of Mercia had been deposed? |
| 20:09 | · | But, finally, why such a harsh response? Well, do you remember that battle of Maes Cogwy, where Cynddylan and Penda slew the |
| 20:17 | · | Northumbrian king Oswald? Well, the new king Oswy was his brother. |
| 20:22 | · | It's often forgotten that, at the end of the day, these figures were not just markers on a map, they were people. |
| 20:29 | · | Oswy may well have enacted such a harsh response against Pengwern because he knew that their king had killed his brother, just as Cynddylan may have assisted Mercia against the Northumbrians |
| 20:39 | · | in the first place because they slew his brother at Chester. |
| · | Powys |
| 20:48 | · | With that, we come to our final question: why did this kingdom become associated with Powys so much later? |
| 20:55 | · | You may have noticed that I have hardly brought Powys up at all, because these poems don't really mention the kingdom, besides from the authors of both Cynddylan's eulogy |
| 21:04 | · | and the Canu Heledd being from Powys, which is interesting, but it's not concrete. Regardless, by the 12th century, Gerald of Wales had clearly heard that Llys Pengwern |
| 21:14 | · | was the ancient capital of this kingdom, so how did this happen? There's the obvious possibility that Gerald just… made it up. |
| 21:22 | · | We can't fully trust these ancient sources, and inconsistencies can just be attributed to mistakes. |
| 21:27 | · | But, what if he didn't? It's not unreasonable to assume that he had heard it from somewhere, and he didn't |
| 21:33 | · | have any motivation to make this up at all. So, was Pengwern a part of Powys? |
| 21:39 | · | This kingdom stretched from Arwystli to Caerllion Fawr, is it possible that their borders extended |
| 21:45 | · | just a bit to the east? Sure, Pengwern, or Dinlle Vreconn, may have just been a hillfort within this kingdom, |
| 21:52 | · | although this does present a few problems: Firstly, the known kings of Powys are |
| 21:58 | · | always associated with this region of Wales. The oldest kings supposedly had their powerbase in North Wales, not in Viroconium. |
| 22:06 | · | In fact, no king of Powys, prior to this date, is even mentioned as controlling Viriconium. |
| 22:12 | · | Furthermore, one of these old kings, Brochwel, left quite a mark on this region of the country, |
| 22:18 | · | as several poets referred to the land around the Mochnant, or indeed the entirety of what is now Montgomeryshire, as "Gwlad Brochwel", the "country of Brochwel", and one of |
| 22:27 | · | these poems is the Canu Heledd. If this 9th century poem believed Powys and Pengwern to be one and the same, why does |
| 22:35 | · | it never call Cynddylan's lands "Powys", and why does it refer to lands outside of |
| 22:40 | · | Shropshire with a traditional name for Powys? Furthermore, when was Cynddylan supposed to have been king? |
| 22:48 | · | He isn't a member of the traditional dynasty, in fact we only know of one of his ancestors: |
| 22:54 | · | his father, Cyndrwyn. If Cynddylan was just a regular king of Powys, then when and why would his powerbase move |
| 23:02 | · | all the way to here? And why wouldn't he be included in any of the genealogies? |
| 23:08 | · | There is a point to counteract this, though, and that lies once again with Viroconium. I've mentioned how it was a Roman city, but its proper designation was a "civitas", |
| 23:16 | · | a city that had some of its own autonomy, and in Britain usually functioned as the new centre of government for the local Brythonic tribe. |
| 23:24 | · | This civitas of Viroconium was the centre of the Cornovii tribe, like I mentioned, which |
| 23:29 | · | covered the lands of what would one day become Pengwern, and most likely this area, which would one day become Powys, as the people living here do not seem to have had their |
| 23:38 | · | own local civitas. So when the Roman legions withdrew, this local government likely did control these |
| 23:46 | · | regions, meaning that if Pengwern, who's capital seems to have moved from this civitas to the Wrekin, and Powys were separate, which would explain these questions we had about |
| 23:55 | · | Cynddylan, we would also have to explain how these two lands became separate. And we can. |
| · | The Cornovii |
| 24:06 | · | You see, "Powys", appears to come from the Latin "Pagus", the name for the rural provinces outside of the civitas. |
| 24:13 | · | And it has been theorised by the historian T. Charles-Edwards that the kingdom of Powys developed from the rural provinces that broke away from the local civitas of Viroconium. |
| 24:23 | · | If this theory is correct, then when the Roman legions withdrew, leaving the civitas of Viroconium to fend for itself, perhaps the rural outskirts, isolated geographically |
| 24:32 | · | from this city, broke away into their own kingdoms, before eventually being united into this kingdom of the Pagus. |
| 24:39 | · | This would appear to provide our origin story for these two kingdoms. Once a single civitas representing the Cornovii tribe, until being abandoned by the Romans, |
| 24:47 | · | and splitting in two, with one centre in the north, and one to the east in Pengwern, with separate royal families. |
| 24:55 | · | Pengwern being separate from Powys would explain how and why Cynddylan would suddenly appear as a king all the way over here, completely unconnected to the royal family, as he was |
| 25:05 | · | just simply the king of somewhere else. This separation might even be supported in the old Welsh sources as well, as the eulogy |
| 25:12 | · | of a 6th century king of Powys named Cynan proclaims his victories over nearly all of his neighbours: Gwent, Gwynedd, Morgannwg, Dyfed, and… |
| 25:21 | · | "Cernyw", which means "Cornwall"? You may notice that Cynan is not recorded as invading anyone to his east, despite invading |
| 25:30 | · | in every other direction. You may also notice that Cornwall is hundreds of miles away, and would require going through |
| 25:37 | · | other hostile kingdoms. Why would the king of Powys spend weeks, if not months, leading an army to invade a random |
| 25:44 | · | part of Britain? The historian Charles-Edwards believes that he didn't, and instead, that perhaps |
| 25:51 | · | this Cernyw was referring to the Cornovii. By removing the Latin declension, we get "Cornov", the original Brythonic root |
| 25:59 | · | name of this tribe, which sounds very similar to "Cernyw", so perhaps Cynan really invaded |
| 26:06 | · | his eastern neighbours, and this word was simply mistranslated when the manuscript was copied 600 years later, from Cornow to Cernyw, then mistaken for, well, Cernyw, meaning "Cornwall". |
| 26:18 | · | But this also poses one final question: why would this 9th century poem suddenly start |
| 26:24 | · | lamenting the destruction of Pengwern again? And why would its authors, including the author of Cynddylan's elegy written shortly after |
| 26:32 | · | his death, be from Powys? You might be thinking that his elegy writer had simply fled west, but author proclaims |
| 26:39 | · | himself that he was already living there. So perhaps Pengwern and Powys were separate, but maybe Cynddylan really did rule both kingdoms. |
| 26:49 | · | Not as an official and legitimate successor though, but as a usurper. |
| · | The Usurper |
| 27:00 | · | We know that Cynddylan's power base, and lineage, were disconnected from Powys, and that they had been disconnected from each other for centuries. |
| 27:07 | · | So if he had conquered this kingdom, that would explain why he isn't included in the royal genealogies. |
| 27:13 | · | In fact, there were two other usurpers around this time, and both of these men only had their father's names recorded, with the rest of their ancestry being completely |
| 27:22 | · | unknown, just like Cynddylan. This may also explain why the 9th century Canu Heledd recounted the glory days of the |
| 27:30 | · | kingdom of Pengwern. At this time the kingdom of Powys no longer existed, it had been carved up between the |
| 27:36 | · | English kingdom of Mercia, and the Welsh kingdom of Gwynedd. So some historians have suggested that the Canu Heledd sought to call back on a time |
| 27:44 | · | when Powys ruled lands far into England, when Cynddylan of Pengwern controlled these lands |
| 27:50 | · | of Brochwel, expanding their borders far to the east. This would also answer the question as to why a Powysian poem would even seek to recount |
| 27:58 | · | the glories of a foreign king, perhaps it simply wasn't. But this does beg the question of how and when did Pengwern begin to rule Powys. |
| 28:08 | · | But, this can be theorised too, if we look back once again to the battle of Chester. |
| 28:15 | · | Three kings fought at this battle: Iago of Gwynedd, Cadwal of Rhos, and Selyf of Powys, |
| 28:21 | · | alongside a bunch of other warriors, including as we've seen, Cynddylan's brother. |
| 28:26 | · | All three of these kings were killed in this battle, and while we don't have a lot of details, the royal succession seems to have gone just fine in Gwynedd and Rhos, with |
| 28:35 | · | the sons of the previous kings: Cadfan and Idgwyn, inheriting their respective thrones. |
| 28:40 | · | In Powys though… Selyf doesn't seem to have been so lucky, as he isn't recorded as having any ruling descendants. |
| 28:47 | · | Two sons are mentioned, but they don't seem to have ruled. Instead, three hundred years later, a stone pillar would be erected proclaiming the illustrious |
| 28:55 | · | ancestry of the king of Powys, and on it, a man named Eliseg ap Gwylog is commemorated |
| 29:01 | · | as having "annexed the inheritance of Powys from the power of the English". |
| 29:10 | · | Soon after, a royal genealogy would be composed, revealing to us that this Eliseg was the great grandson of king Selyf's… brother, who, like his son and grandson, is |
| 29:21 | · | never recorded as being king. Following Selyf's death, we have about a century-long gap, where there are no recorded |
| 29:29 | · | kings of Powys. So what on earth happened here? Eliseg's commendation would lead us to suggest that the English had annexed the |
| 29:37 | · | entire kingdom, but we don't have any record of this. In fact, the Northumbrians (who invaded Chester) didn't even occupy the neighbouring Mercians |
| 29:45 | · | until 656. Which leads us to another possibility… maybe it was Cynddylan. |
| 29:52 | · | We know that he was fit and healthy enough to lead a raid by 656, so it's possible that he was in his 20s during the battle of Chester. |
| 30:00 | · | Perhaps he, or maybe his father, decided to take military action against their neighbour following the death of their king, interrupting their succession until the eventual demise |
| 30:07 | · | of Pengwern by at least 659. |
| 30:13 | · | Perhaps this led to a brief occupation by the Mercians once they drove the Northumbrians back, whether militarily or just politically, until Eliseg rose up and reinstated Powys's |
| 30:22 | · | independence. We don't know when this had occurred, but the historian Peter Bartrum has roughly estimated Eliseg to have been born in the 680s, which gives us a widow of sometime in |
| 30:32 | · | the 8th century. The historian Kari Maund suggests that perhaps Powys was occupied by the Mercians, |
| 30:41 | · | but that this occupation must have been very brief, as during this time the Mercians had to face aggressions from both Northumbria, and their southern neighbours of Wessex. |
| 30:48 | · | And while they did eventually establish their supremacy over much of southern England, one well-timed revolt during a period where, as Maund puts it, Mercia would not have had |
| 30:57 | · | the men or resources to spare, could have easily been successful. To support this, we know that Powys was |
| 31:04 | · | independent again by at least the 750s, as the king of Mercia, Offa, decided to build |
| 31:09 | · | a massive ditch and wall between the two of them. Furthermore, this wasn't some military instillation to exert power, the ditch weaves |
| 31:17 | · | around important rivers and fortifications, leaving them to the Welsh. This Clawdd Offa looks much more like an agreed-upon boundary, perhaps as a compromise between |
| 31:27 | · | a newly resurgent Powys, and a kingdom of Mercia with no more soldiers to spare. |
| 31:34 | · | This theory relies on putting together a lot of very small pieces of evidence, all of which could be disagreed with, but I think we have a solid idea here. |
| 31:44 | · | With that being said, let's finally recap the entire history of Pengwern, the medieval kingdom that was erased from history. |
| · | Pengwern |
| 32:01 | · | Prior to the Roman invasion of Britain, a Celtic-speaking tribe named the Cornovii lived in this area, likely centred on a hillfort |
| 32:09 | · | right here. When the Romans conquered this region, this hillfort was abandoned, and the civitas |
| 32:15 | · | of Viroconium was settled in its stead. Eventually the Roman legions, who provided the safety and security, left, and the already |
| 32:24 | · | crumbling Roman city inherited the governance of the area. This civitas seems to have controlled |
| 32:30 | · | the lands that would one day become both Pengwern and Powys, but these rural provinces, the pagus, seem to have revolted against this civitas leading to, eventually, two major |
| 32:40 | · | centres of power in the region: The kings of Powys, in the north, and the remaining rulers of Viroconium in the east. |
| 32:48 | · | By the year 550 at the latest, Viroconium was abandoned, and the old hillfort on the Wrekin was likely reoccupied, becoming the royal court known as Llys Pengwern. |
| 32:58 | · | We can wager that there were conflicts between the two, Cynan likely invaded them alongside literally all his neighbours, but eventually they would team up to defend the |
| 33:07 | · | city of Caerllion Fawr against the English kingdom of Northumbria, with one of Cynddylan's brothers being killed defending the city, alongside Selyf, the king of Powys. |
| 33:18 | · | Cynddylan himself may have been king at this point, or perhaps his father still ruled, but either way it appears that they may invaded the kingdom, as no further kings of Powys |
| 33:27 | · | are recorded until Eliseg, a century later, is said to have revolted against the English. |
| 33:34 | · | Cynddylan was ruling by at least 641, as he then accompanied Penda, the king of Mercia, and aided him in defeating and slaying the king of Northumbria at the battle of Maes Cogwy. |
| 33:43 | · | However, this victory would only be temporary, and by 655 the north of Mercia would be occupied |
| 33:48 | · | by the Northumbrians. Sometime between this year and 656, possibly at the urging of his sister Heledd, Cynddylan |
| 33:57 | · | launched an attack on the monastery at Lichfield, defeating the king of Mercia's son, and ransacking the settlement. |
| 34:04 | · | Unfortunately, this king would be killed in 656, and Oswald of Northumbria soon assumed |
| 34:09 | · | control over the entire kingdom. Annoyed at the transgressions of his much smaller neighbour, and not forgetting that |
| 34:17 | · | it was their king who helped slay his brother, Oswald may have been the one who attacked the kingdom of Pengwern on the river Tern, killing king Cynddylan in battle, and burning |
| 34:26 | · | the royal palace of Llys Pengwern, wiping out the entire royal family, and erasing all |
| 34:31 | · | records we had on the kingdom, eliminating it from history for centuries. |
| 34:37 | · | Oswald may have annexed the lands of Powys too, as they were also ruled by Pengwern, or this might have come later, after Mercia regained its independence, but either way, |
| 34:46 | · | these lands appear to have been dominated by the English for nearly a century. |
| 34:51 | · | Cynddylan would be buried in Basschurch, perhaps in a pre-existing Welsh religious community, and his eulogy would be written in his newly conquered Powys. |
| 35:00 | · | This kingdom would eventually reassert its independence under king Eliseg, and soon a colossal ditch would be constructed between it and Mercia, forming a boundary between |
| 35:08 | · | the two kingdoms for a century, until eventually Powys would be invaded by both of its neighbours again. |
| 35:15 | · | During this time, the second of our only three surviving mentions of Pengwern would be composed, harkening back to a day where the king of this land ruled a country that |
| 35:23 | · | extended far to the west and the east. And eventually, in the 12th century, Gerald of Wales records that Pengwern, at least by |
| 35:31 | · | some, had become reimagined not as a conquering neighbour, but as the old capital of Powys, |
| 35:36 | · | with its location being moved from the once-important Wrekin to the then-important Shrewsbury, sealing |
| 35:42 | · | its fate in history for hundreds of years. Until historians, with what little records we have, managed to piece together what, perhaps, |
| 35:50 | · | the kingdom of Pengwern really was. |
| 36:02 | · | • Thank you very much for watching. If you want to hear about another mysterious kingdom, I made a video on the missing kingdom |
| 36:08 | · | of Rheinwg, which you can click on here. |
