|
 Pengwern
(Eastern Powys)
Incorporating Caer Guricon, Caer Luit Coyt,
& Caer Magnis
Located on the eastern border of
Powys, Pengwern stretched
deep into the Midlands. For much of its existence it was part of Powys
being indivisible from it and bearing the same name as it. It
apparently remained so until the last quarter of the sixth century
(although some opinion maintains that it was always a constituent
territory of Powys). During at least some of that time one of its chief
cities (and possible capital) was probably Caer Guricon (the former tribal
capital of the Cornovii
tribe,
Roman
Viroconium, modern Wroxeter). There is evidence to suggest the abandonment
of Viroconium around 520, perhaps in exchange for a more defendable
location.
While the territory is usually known as Pengwern, it is uncertain
whether this name was applied to all of it, being as it was the name
of just one fort. The kingdom may just as well have been named after
its last ruling dynasty, the
Dogfeilion kings.
However, Pengwern would have been a powerful name: 'gwern' would have
been pronounced 'wern' by the Romans, and would have been spelled 'vern'
by them if it had been written down (unlikely, as it was local slang
usage). The river that runs through the area, the Sabrina (modern Severn),
probably had the letter 'b' mangled into a 'v' and then a 'w' by the
local Cornovii/Gwynedd Britons.
Then they dropped the 'Se' from the front of Severn, turning Severn into
'Vern', which they pronounced 'Wern', and then altered later into 'Gwern'
as they came to do with any word beginning in 'w'. Also note that the
original British name for the Severn was Habren - the 's' at the start
was a Roman addition - so this would explain how the 's' was removed
from the name - to the Britons it had not been there in the first place.
That sort of mixed progression would occur only at places inhabited by
Romans in numbers that were sufficient enough to influence the name.
Such a concentration of Romans would have to be at the town of Viroconium.
Then when the locals in that town fled up the river to Pengwern, they
took their odd pronunciation with them (not even knowing that wern/gwern
was the same word as Hefren). Pen means 'head' or 'source', so the local
name became Pengwern, headwaters of the Severn, a strong and commanding
name. An alternative explanation has been provided by Mak Wilson, who
still gives 'pen' as 'head', but provides 'gwern' as the meaning of
'alder swamp'. This does though seem to rob the kingdom of some of the
power and glory surrounding its name.
 Although
its exact origins cannot be proven, Pengwern as an independent kingdom,
or at least semi-autonomous subdivision of Powys, does appear to have
been formed only in the sixth century, well after the collapse of the
Post-Roman
central administration. It contained all of Powys' eastern territories.
By AD 600 it seems to have been made up of three sub-kingdoms based on
the cities of Caer Luit Coyt (now known as Wall, in Lichfield),
Caer Magnis, and Caer Guricon (the probable early capital
of Powys) and the first two had their own sub-kings. Originally, these
would have been tributary to Powys, and then subsequently to the ruler
of Pengwern itself.
Caer Luit Coyt (probably a later misspelling of the more valid Caer
Luit Coit/Coed or Luitcoit) came from the Latin Lutocetum. Two
interpretations of the name are possible, although they are very close in
meaning anyway. The first translates it as 'half-wooded' (in essence, lighty-wooded). In the proto-Celtic word lists, 'letos' is a combining
form and can be taken to mean 'half-', while 'coit/coed' means 'wood' or 'forest'.
The second takes an alternative meaning from 'letos' to produce 'breadth,
width, broadness' in the sense of a wide forest, the outcome being that the
region was not half-forested but heavily forested. The modern name of this location, Wall, is either a descendant of the
Old English 'weald', meaning a wood or forest, or 'wealas', meaning
'Welsh'. It could be both, with the locals making a pun of it at the
expense of any native Britons living there.
The first ruler was a son of Brochfael Ysgythrog of Powys, the probable
defender of Caer Legion (Chester) around 613, so it seems the division
was based upon the traditional
Celtic
practice of providing an inheritance for all sons, not just the eldest.
Then, according to what little source material remains, in the early
seventh century Morfael ap Glast, king of
Glastenning, secured
the eastern capital of Caer Luit Coyt during his lifetime. His younger
brother secured the remainder of the territory upon the death of their
father. The capital was moved to Llys Pengwern (the 'court of Pengwern'),
perhaps for security reasons - giving the territory its name and perhaps
defining any independent existence it may have had. The territory
survived as a bulwark against Anglian expansion in the Midlands until
the mid-seventh century.
(Information by Peter Kessler and Edward Dawson, with additional information
by Mak Wilson, from The Landscape of King Arthur, Geoffrey Ashe, from
Roman Britain: A New History, Guy de la Bédoyère, from History of
the Kings of Britain, Geoffrey of Monmouth, from the Historia
Brittonum (The History of the Britons), Nennius, from De Excidio
Brittaniae et Conquestu (On the Ruin of Britain), Gildas (both J A Giles,
Ed & Trans, 1841, published as part of Six Old English Chronicles
(Henry G Bohn, London, 1848)), from Marwnad Cynddylan (The Lament
for Cynddylan), from the Annales Cambriae, James Ingram (taken
from the Harleian manuscript, the earliest surviving version, London,
Everyman Press, 1912), and from External Link:
English Heritage.) |
