This week we welcome guest writer Wren Rowan who tells us more about the Kingdom of Elmet. Stay tuned for part two in the coming months.

If you live in Leeds, or you grew up here, you’re likely well aware of the city’s industrial heritage. The city is, after all, full of reminders: mills and factories that have been turned into flats and offices and museums, terraced housing that hoards damp in winter like a dragon hoards gold, cobble stones revealed at the bottom of potholes. But, as is true in most places, there is much more to the history of Leeds than meets the eye. If we travel back past Ralph Thoresby and his Ducatus Leodiensis, past Leeds getting its borough charter in 1626, even past the entry in Domesday, where Leeds is a village worth 4 shillings, then we get to a somewhat fuzzy period in history: post-Roman Britain.

Context

By the time the imperial military started withdrawing from the British Isles in the mid-fourth century, there had been a Roman presence in Britain for 300 years. Trouble elsewhere in the empire meant Roman forces being pulled back onto the continent to protect more valuable assets, and the inhabitants of Britain being left ever more to their own devices. Eventually, in the early 5th Century, it became clear there was going to be no more military involvement from Rome in Britain.

We know quite a lot about the Roman period in Britain, because they left a lot of evidence behind. The letters they wrote, the records they kept. The mosaics that they decorated their stone villas with. In the post-Roman period, this all changed. The people of the British Isles were in charge of their own destiny again, and the structure provided by the empire gradually disappeared.

Of the post-Roman period, it is more difficult to find information. But there are some legends that survice from the period. One of these is the legend of Coel. If he was a real figure, Coel likely lived from c350AD to 420AD. It was suggested by the historian John Morris that he was the last of the duces brittaniarium – the military leader in charge of the militarised north of England, from York to Hadrian’s Wall, though more recent scholarship on the subject rates this as unlikely. The evidence that we have for him remains in traditional Welsh stories, which refer to him as Coel Hen (“Old Coel”), the High King of Yr Hen Ogledd (“the old north”). In the years following the withdrawal of Roman troops from Britain, Coel would have ruled over the north of England, likely having his headquarters at Eboracum (York). He is a character that appears in the genealogies of later rulers, as a way of giving themselves legitimacy.

Of Coel’s life we know little. But there is a story that survives: it concerns his last military campaign. We don’t know how stable his rule was, but the story goes that Coel became increasingly concerned about the people to the north of his kingdom. Rome had always had trouble with the inhabitants of the land north of the wall – the Picts were never brought into the Empire, so the focus had been on keeping them from coming further south. Without the backing of the empire and its military might, it is unsurprising that Coel grew concerned about his neighbours – what might they want to do now that the lands to the south were not so well protected? And now he had not just Picts to worry about – members of the Scotti had crossed from Ireland, and Coel was worried that the two groups would unite and mount an attack against his territories. So, rather than wait for this to happen, Coel sent his own raiding parties into enemy territory, to stir up trouble between the groups, and damage their chances in the same way the Roman military had done in the past. Yet this had the opposite effect to what he wanted, and the Scots and Picts united. They began attacking Alt Clut (around Glasgow), the northernmost part of Coel’s kingdom and only part north of the wall, so Coel declared war against them. The Picts and Scots fled into the hills in the face of Coel’s army and were held at bay, isolated from food and resources, until they became desperate. This desperation led to an equally desperate attack on Coel’s troops, who were taken by surprise, overrun, and scattered. According to tradition, in the aftermath of their defeat, Coel wandered through the countryside, before getting stuck in a bog and drowning, somewhere in Ayrshire, around 420AD.

How much of this story is true is hard to know – the bit about him drowning in a bog certainly has the ring of fiction – how would anyone know unless they followed him and watched him drown? But in the aftermath, his kingdom fragmented. Initially it split in two, between his sons, Ceneu and Gorbanian. Over time these two kingdoms broke up into smaller ones, such as Rheged, Bryneich, Deira, and importantly for us, Elmet.

Locating Elmet

Elmet existed. That much we know for certain. We also know that it was something of a rarity by the end- a solitary Brittonic kingdom surrounded by Anglo-Saxon territories. Not that it started this way. The Britons were the native inhabitants of Britain, but in the post-Roman period, a new wave of settlers crossed the North Sea to start new lives on our shores. The evidence we have of Elmet’s existence is part of a larger story where native Britons get pushed out by Anglo-Saxon settlers, until Elmet is the sole, small, Brittonic hold-out among a sea of foreign rulers.

Finding definite dates or boundaries for Elmet has not been an easy feat for historians. We know the post-Roman period was volatile, with lots of little kingdoms coming into being, boundaries changing, small nations being absorbed by larger neighbours. It’s highly likely that Elmet’s northern border was the River Wharfe, and that its western edge was the Pennines. The eastern and southern borders are somewhat harder to pin down, and likely were subject to more change over time. It’s been posited that the eastern border extended as far as the “headwaters” of the Humber, which forms from the joining of the Ouse and the Trent, putting the border about halfway between Goole and Brough in the East Riding.

This theory on the boundaries of Elmet comes from a 1988 essay ‘West Yorkshire and the Ancient Kingdom of Elmet’ by Martyn T. Clarke, where he explains that, although the border once extended this far, it contracted due to pressures from Anglo-Saxon settlers and thus could later be found at a more easily defensible position – for instance the limestone belt that is roughly where the modern A1 lies. This also corresponds with the location of ‘-in-Elmet’ place names. He also makes the argument that Grim’s Ditch – a linear earthwork near Temple Newsam – and Aberford Dykes were important as part of the defence of Elmet. Archaeological work done since by WYAAS has dated the earthworks to the late bronze or early iron age, so they were certainly not built to defend against the Saxons. In fact their purpose was much more likely to have been boundary marking rather than boundary defence when they were built. And it’s possible that they served this purpose again hundreds of years later. As for the southern boundary, it could have been as far south as the rivers Don and Sheaf in south Yorkshire, but it is hard to know with any certainty.

The probable earliest written reference to Elmet is in a document called Tribal Hidage.

This document was compiled between the 7th and 9th Centuries, and lists 35 tribes south of the river Humber. It tells us that Elmet has 600 hides. A hide is a measure of value rather than area, but as with a lot of non-standardised measurements, the size of a hide changed over time, and the method used in its measurement seems to have been lost. 600 hides may sound like a lot, but for contrast Lindsey (modern-day Lincolnshire) was 7000 hides.

The earliest surviving copy of the tribal hidage is from the early 11th Century and is in the hands of the British Library. It seems likely it was originally a tribute list put together for a king, though which king is unclear. If this is indeed the case though, it points to Elmet by this point being a tribute state to another larger entity. This would make sense given the other fragments of information we have.

Storytime

The earliest historical figure who is associated with Elmet is Gwallog ap Llenog. Legends of his existence survived in fragments and were written down centuries after his death.

He is referred to, in the Historia Brittonum, as one of 4 warlords who fought against the English in Bernicia, the others being Urien of Rheged, Morgan of Gododdin, and Rhydderch of Ystrad Clud. He is also mentioned in the Welsh Triads – medieval manuscripts that preserve Welsh folklore in groups of three – as one of 3 Pillars of Battle of the Island of Britain.

And he is the subject of two poems by semi-legendary bard Taliesin, where he is referred to as a fearsome warrior, and as the “law-giver of Elmet”

As with much of the history of this period, we have to rely on the writings of Bede for a lot of our information. His Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People) was completed in 731 AD, and covered the entire period from the Roman invasion of Britain, right up until his lifetime. He was English, born in Northumbria. He was also a Catholic monk, and very critical of the ways Britons practised Christianity.

Ceredig ap Gwallog is the last known ruler of Elmet (‘ap’ meaning ‘of’, so he could have been the son of Gwallog ap Llenog), and we rely on Bede for some of our information on him, and even then we only know of him because of how he figures into someone else’s story – namely that of Edwin of Northumbria. Other sources such as the Annales Cambriae (Annals of Wales) provide some of the information too.

The story that can be pieced together is this:

In the year 604, Æthelfrith, king of Bernicia, seized the throne of Deira from its king, Ælle, thus uniting the two kingdoms under his rule as Northumbria. Ælle’s son, Edwin, fearing for his life, fled south and found protection with Rædwald of East Anglia. Edwin’s nephew, a man named Hereric , fled too, but not so far. He ended up in Elmet, under the protection of Ceredig. From Northumbria, Æthelfrith attempted to pressure Rædwald to kill Edwin, but Rædwald refused – perhaps seeing in Edwin a valuable future ally, and perhaps not seeing Northumbria, many miles to the north, as a threat. However, in the years following his flight from the north, Hereric died after reportedly being poisoned.

Time passed, and in 616 Rædwald and Edwin rode north out of East Anglia with an army. They surprised the Northumbrian forces on the banks of the River Idle and overwhelmed them. Æthelfrith was killed during the battle, and Edwin took his place as the ruler of Northumbria.

During the early years of his reign, Edwin invaded Elmet. Ceredig was driven into exile and was very soon dead, and Elmet was absorbed into Northumbria.

While this is a very neat narrative, there are things that Bede doesn’t tell us: He doesn’t state explicitly that Hereric was poisoned at Æthelfrith’s command, or even that Ceredig was responsible for his death. It could have been Æthelfrith who wanted Hereric eliminated, but it could equally have been Edwin, looking to remove his nephew as a rival for a throne he meant to reclaim. Or, in another possible version of events, he might not have been purposefully poisoned at all – he could have eaten something that had gone bad or had an allergic reaction. There is simply no way of knowing.

Also, although Bede confirms the existence of King Ceredig, and a region called Elmet, he doesn’t connect the two. Nor does he mention Edwin’s campaign against Elmet. Both of these things come from the Historia Brittonum, a patchwork of writings compiled in the late 820s.

Either way, by the time of Bede’s writing in the early 8th century, Elmet had ceased to exist as an independent kingdom.

Aside from Ceredig, and prior to him Gwallog, there is one very notable person connected to Elmet, and about whom we have somewhat more information: Hilda.

Hilda was born around 614 AD, and was the daughter of the previously mentioned Hereric, and his wife Breguswith. This makes Edwin of Northumbria her great-uncle, and when he converted to Christianity, so did the rest of the family.

She decided that she needed to do more though, she decided to serve God, and over a series of years, she was abbess of Heruteu – modern-day Hartlepool – then of Calcaria, which might be Tadcaster, and then in 657 she founded a new abbey at Streanaeshalch, which is these days known as Whitby. According to the Life of Hilda as written down by Bede, she was so wise and knowledgeable that even kings and princes came to her for counsel. She was known to be highly devoted and considered a great example of how to live a holy life.

It is as part of this story as well that Bede mentions Hereric living in banishment under the protection of Ceredig and dying of poison.

The last years of her life, she suffered from an illness – Bede writes of her having a fever the whole time. And she passed away in 680.

Part two of this two part blog will be coming soon.