wales in the early middle ages

[citation needed] The Roman era had brought Christianity, and the Celtic Britons living in the land that would become Wales, and elsewhere in Britain, were Christian throughout
the era, and their legacy is found in the many place names of Wales that are prefixed by Welsh: llan, meaning a holy enclosure or church.
[82] There is ongoing debate as to the extent of a lasting Roman influence being applicable to the early Middle Ages in Wales, and while the conclusions about Welsh history
are important, Wendy Davies has questioned the relevance of the debates themselves by noting that whatever Roman provincial administration might have survived in places, it eventually became a new system appropriate to the time and place,
and not a “hangover of archaic practices”.
The end of the early Middle Ages was the time that the Welsh language transitioned from the Primitive Welsh spoken throughout the era into Old Welsh, and the time when the
modern England–Wales border would take its near-final form, a line broadly followed by Offa’s Dyke, a late eighth-century earthwork.
[78] Whatever the circumstances, there is nothing known to connect these settlers either to Roman policy, or to the Irish raiders (the Scoti) of classical Roman accounts.
[89] [90] While the better documented southeast shows a long and slow acquisition of property and power by the dynasty of Meurig ap Tewdrig in connection with the kingdoms
of Glywysing, Gwent and Ergyng, there is a near-complete absence of information about many other areas.
[84] There is no reason to suppose that every part of Wales was part of kingdom even as late as 700.
The size of the religious communities is unknown (Bede and the Welsh Triads suggest they were large, the Lives of the Saints suggest they were small, but these are not considered
credible sources on the matter).
[56] While the synod was an important event in the history of England and brought finality to several issues in Anglo-Saxon Britain, Bede probably overemphasised its significance
so as to stress the unity of the English Church.
[47] Communities[edit] Monasticism is known in Britain in the fifth century though its origins are obscure.
There are mentions of Brycheiniog and Gwrtheyrnion (near Buellt) in that era, but for the latter it is difficult to say whether it had either an earlier or a later existence.
[27] Prior to the tenth century, power was held on a local level,[28] and the limits of that power varied by region.
The nuclear family (parents and children) was especially important, while the pencenedl (head of the family within four patrilinear generations) held special status, representing
the family in transactions and having certain unique privileges under the law.
[citation needed] Irish settlement[edit] In the late fourth century there was an influx of settlers from southern Ireland, the Uí Liatháin and Laigin (with Déisi participation
uncertain),[73][74][75][76] arriving under unknown circumstances but leaving a lasting legacy especially in Dyfed.
That era of struggle saw the Welsh adopt their modern name for themselves, Cymry, meaning “fellow countrymen”, and it also saw the demise of all but one of the kindred kingdoms
of northern England and southern Scotland at the hands of then-ascendant Northumbria.
That era of struggle saw the Welsh adopt their modern name for themselves, Cymry, meaning “fellow countrymen”, and it also saw the demise of all but one of the kindred kingdoms
of northern England and southern Scotland at the hands of then-ascendant Northumbria.
[77] That Roman-era regional rulers were able to exert such power is suggested by the Roman tolerance of native hill forts where there was local leadership under local law
and custom.
[29] There were at least two restraints on the limits of power: the combined will of the ruler’s people (his “subjects”), and the authority of the Christian church.
[17] For example, brenin was one of the terms used for a king in the twelfth century.
[80] This region was placed under Roman civil administration (civitates) in the mid-second century, with the rest of Wales being under military administration throughout the
Roman era.
[69] The term was not applied to the Cornish people or the Bretons, who share a similar heritage, culture and language with the Welsh and the Men of the North.
There is no evidence of warfare, a bilingual regional heritage suggests peaceful coexistence and intermingling, and the Historia Brittonum written c. 828 notes that a Welsh
king had the power to settle foreigners and transfer tracts of land to them.
[93] The name of Powys is not certainly used before the ninth century, but its earlier existence (perhaps under a different name) is reasonably inferred by the fact that Selyf
ap Cynan (d. 616) and his grandfather are in the Harleian genealogies as the family of the known later kings of Powys, and Selyf’s father Cynan ap Brochwel appears in poems attributed to Taliesen, where he is described as leading successful
raids throughout Wales.
[16] Rule tended to be defined in relation to a territory that might be held and protected, or expanded or contracted, though the territories themselves were specific pieces
of land and not synonyms for the gwlad.
[31] Kings[edit] For much of the early medieval period kings had few functions except military ones.
[35] Aristocracy[edit] Power was held at a local level by families who controlled the land and the people who lived on that land.
Throughout the Middle Ages the Welsh used a variety of words for rulers, with the specific words used varying over time, and with literary sources generally using different
terms than annalistic ones.
[91] Seventh-century Pengwern is associated with the later Powys through the poems of Canu Heledd, which name sites from Shropshire to Dogfeiling to Newtown in lamenting the
demise of Pengwern’s king Cynddylan;[94] but the poem’s geography probably reflects the time of its composition, around the ninth or tenth century rather that Cynddylan’s own time.
[12] Society Kindred family[edit] The importance of blood relationships, particularly in relation to birth and noble descent, was heavily stressed in medieval Wales.
[23] A king had to be considered effective and be associated with wealth, either his own or by distributing it to others,[24] and those considered to be at the top level were
required to have wisdom, perfection, and a long reach.
[18] Kings are sometimes described as overkings, but the definition of what that meant is unclear, whether referring to a king with definite powers, or to ideas of someone
considered to have high status.
[81] There are a number of borrowings from the Latin lexicon into Welsh, and while there are Latin-derived words with legal meaning in popular usage such as pobl (“people”),
the technical words and concepts used in describing Welsh law in the Middle Ages are native Welsh, and not of Roman origin.
[91] The early history in the north and east are somewhat better known, with Gwynedd having a semi-legendary origin in the arrival of Cunedda from Manau Gododdin in the fifth
century (an inscribed sixth century gravestone records the earliest known mention of the kingdom).
Roman-era legacy[edit] See also: Wales in the Roman era and End of Roman rule in Britain Forts and roads are the most visible physical signs of a past Roman presence, along
with the coins and Roman-era Latin inscriptions that are associated with Roman military sites.
Early sources stressed birth and function as the determinators of nobility, and not by the factor of wealth that later became associated with an aristocracy.
Successful unification into something recognisable as a Welsh state would come in the next era under the descendants of Merfyn Frych.
[68] Historically the word applies to both the Welsh and the Brythonic-speaking peoples of northern England and southern Scotland, the peoples of the Hen Ogledd, and emphasises
a perception that the Welsh and the “Men of the North” were one people, exclusive of all others.
Universal acceptance of the term as the preferred written one came slowly in Wales, eventually supplanting the earlier Brython or Brittones.
[14] Land and political entities[edit] The Welsh referred to themselves in terms of their territory and not in the sense of a tribe.
The early medieval human population has always been considered relatively low in comparison to England, but efforts to reliably quantify it have yet to provide widely acceptable
results.
However, specifying the ancient usage of land is problematic in that there is little surviving evidence on which to base the estimates.
Forest clearance has taken place since the Iron Age, and it is not known how the ancient people of Wales determined the best use of the land for their particular circumstances,[8]
such as in their preference for wheat, oats, rye or barley depending on rainfall, growing season, temperature and the characteristics of the land on which they lived.
[19] Kingship[edit] Main article: King of Wales Wales in the early Middle Ages was a society with a landed warrior aristocracy,[20] and after c. 500 Welsh politics were dominated
by kings with territorial kingdoms.
[63][64] Cymry: Welsh identity forms The early Middle Ages saw the creation and adoption of the modern Welsh name for themselves, Cymry, a word descended from Common Brittonic
combrogi, meaning “fellow-countrymen”.
All of the northern kingdoms and people were eventually absorbed into the kingdoms of England and Scotland, and their histories are now mostly a footnote in the histories
of those later kingdoms, though vestiges of the Cymry past are occasionally visible.
The earlier, original meaning of brenin was simply a person of status.
The Welsh kingdoms arose in this period, in which the chieftains clashed with one another in internecine warfare, both in the territory that would become Wales (kingdoms such
as Gwynedd) and across the Brittonic kingdoms of northern England and southern Scotland (the Hen Ogledd).This was also a time of structural and linguistic divergence from the southwestern peninsula British kingdom of Dumnonia known to the
Welsh as Cernyw prior to its eventual absorption into Wessex.
[59] ‘Celtic’ vs. ‘Roman’ myth[edit] See also: Celtic Christianity and Celtic Rite One consequence of the Protestant Reformation and subsequent ethnic and religious discord
in Britain and Ireland was the promotion of the idea of a ‘Celtic’ church that was different from and at odds with the ‘Roman’ church, and that held to certain offensive customs, especially in the dating of Easter, the tonsure, and the liturgy.
[72] History After the Roman withdrawal, Wales remained a rural landscape, controlled by warlords that formed a local aristocracy.
Throughout the era there was dynastic strengthening in some areas while new kingdoms emerged and then disappeared in others.
Kings made war and gave judgements (in consultation with local elders)[30] but they did not govern in any sense of that word.
[26] The relationship among people that is most appropriate to the warrior aristocracy is clientship and flexibility, and not one of sovereignty or absolute power, nor necessarily
of long duration.
Under extraordinary circumstances the genealogical interest could be stretched quite far: for the serious matter of homicide, all of the fifth cousins of a kindred (the seventh
generation: the patrilinear descendants of a common great-great-great-great-grandfather) were ultimately liable for satisfying any penalty.
Wales in the early Middle Ages covers the time between the Roman departure from Wales c. 383 until the middle of the 11th century.
Wales was rural throughout the era, characterised by small settlements called trefi.
[32] From the sixth to the eleventh centuries the king moved about with an armed, mounted warband,[33] a personal military retinue called a teulu that is described as a “small,
swift-moving, and close-knit group”.
Control was exerted over a piece of land and, by extension, over the people who lived on that land.
Control was exerted over a piece of land and, by extension, over the people who lived on that land.

Works Cited

[‘1. The same change in climate was occurring around the entire North Sea perphery at this time. See Higham’s Rome, Britain and the Anglo-Saxons (ISBN 1-85264-022-7, 1992): cooler, wetter climate and abandonment of British uplands and marginal lands;
Berglund’s Human impact and climate changes—synchronous events and a causal link? in “Quaternary International”, Vol. 105 (2003): Scandinavia, 500AD wetter and rapidly cooling climate and the retreat of agriculture; Ejstrud’s The Migration Period,
Southern Denmark and the North Sea (ISBN 978-87-992214-1-7, 2008): p28, from the 6th century onwards farmlands in Denmark and Norway were abandoned; Issar’s Climate changes during the holocene and their impact on Hydrological systems (ISBN 978-0-511-06118-9,
2003): water level rise along NW coast of Europe, wetter conditions in Scandinavia and retreat of farming in Norway after 400, cooler climate in Scotland; Louwe Kooijmans’ Archaeology and Coastal Change in the Netherlands (in Archaeology and Coastal
Change, 1980): rising water levels along the NW coast of Europe; Louwe Kooijmans’ The Rhine/Meuse Delta (PhD thesis, 1974): rising water levels along the NW coast of Europe, and in the Fens and Humber Estuary. Abundant material from other sources
portrays the same information.
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Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/marie_paule/14019883858/’]