Coel
Hen, or Coel the Old*, appears as a founder figure in several Brittonic royal
genealogies. What can we say about him?
Evidence
Genealogies
Coel
Hen (also spelled Coyl Hen or Coil Hen) appears at the head of several
genealogies of sixth-century Brittonic kings preserved in medieval Welsh
manuscripts, for example:
[U]rbgen map Cinmarc map Merchianum map
Gurgust map Coilhen.
[G]uallauc map Laenauc map Masguic clop
map Ceneú map Coyl hen
[G]urci ha Peretur mepion eleuther
cascord maur map letlum map Ceneú map Coylhen.
[M]orcant map Coledauc map Morgant bulc
map Cincar braut map Bran hen, map dumngual moilmut map Garbaniaún map Coyl hen
map Guotepauc [continues]
Llywarch Hen m Elidyr Lydanwyn m Meirchavn m Gorust Ledlvm m Keneu m Coel
Dunavt a Cherwyd a Sawyl Pen Uchel meibyon Pabo Post Prydein m Arthwys
m Mar m Keneu m Coel.
Gwendoleu a Nud a Chof meibyon Keidyav m Arthwys m Mar m Keneu m Coel
Morgant m cletauc m morgant uull brawt branud
uoel m dyuynwawl m garboniawn m coel hen.
Urien
(Urbgen), Morcant (Morgant) and Guallauc are the names of kings who
fought against the kings of Bernicia in the late sixth century according to
Historia Brittonum. Gurci and Peredur died in 580 according to Annales
Cambriae. Gwendoleu was killed at the battle of Arthuret in 573 according to
Annales Cambriae. A corpus of poetry
attributed to Llywarch Hen portrays him as an approximate contemporary of
Urien. So this group of genealogies appear to be concerned with the descent of
kings who were active in the later sixth century.
One
of the genealogies in the Jesus College manuscript also names a wife and
daughter of Coel Hen:
Mam veibyon Cuneda oed wawl verch Coyl hen.
Gwreic Coyl hen oed verch Gadeon m Eudaf hen vchot.
These
lines translate as:
The
mother of the sons of Cunedda was Gwawl daughter of Coyl Hen
The
wife of Coyl Hen was a daughter of Gadeon son of Eudaf Hen.
Eudaf
Hen appears in the Dream of Macsen Wledig as the lord of Segontium/Caernarvon,
whose beautiful (legendary?) daughter Elen married Emperor Magnus Maximus.
Cunedda is the (legendary?) ancestor of the kings of Gwynedd.
Triads
The
wife and daughter of Coel Hen also appear in the Triads:
These are the three times when the Lordship of
Gwynedd went by the Distaff:
One of
them was Stratweul daughter of Cadfan ap Cynan ab Eudaf ap Caradog ap Bran ap
Llyr Llediaith; and this Stratweul was wife of Coel Godebog. She was the mother
of Cenau ap Coel and the mother of Difyr. Others say that she was called
Seradwen daughter of Cynan ab Eudaf ap Caradog.
The
second was Gwawl daughter of (Coel) Godebog, mother of Cunedda Wledig and wife
of Edyrn son of Padarn Peisrudd.
And the
third was Essyll(t) daughter of Cynan Tindaethwy, mother of Rhodri Mawr and
wife of Merfyn Frych.
Interpretation
The
first thing to be said about the genealogies and the Triads is that they are
late sources, surviving in medieval manuscripts written in what is now Wales
several centuries later than the sixth-century kings whose descent they
describe. This leaves ample time for the genealogies to have been miscopied,
misinterpreted, manipulated or even made up altogether. Coel Hen occupies a similar position to that
occupied by Woden in many Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies, and may bear about as
much relation to history. It is quite
possible that Coel Hen was added in by whoever compiled the genealogies at the
top of any short genealogy that was felt to need some additional ancestors in
its upper reaches, or even that he was a fictional figure who never existed at all. The Triads were a sort of aide memoire for
poets and storytellers, not necessarily a record of factual events.
However,
the genealogies and the Triads are about all there is, so with these caveats in
mind, let’s accept that Coel Hen was a real figure of some sort and that the
genealogies and Triads preserve some genuine information. If so, what can reasonably be inferred about
him?
Name
Coel
may be a Brittonic form of a Latin name such as Coelius. This may indicate that
Coel Hen was originally a Roman figure. However, other Latin-derived names
occur in the genealogies; there is a ‘Garboniawn’ son of Coel Hen in one of the
genealogies listed above, which may be a Brittonic version of the Roman name
Germanianus, and the ancestors of Cunedda in another genealogy are given as
Etern, Padarn and Tacit, which may be derived from the Roman names Aeternus,
Paternus and Tacitus. It may simply be
that Roman-derived names were fashionable among certain families or classes,
and that Coel Hen belonged to one of these.
Title
‘Hen’
means ‘old’, and may indicate that Coel Hen lived to a ripe old age, or that
when the title became routinely attached to his name he was thought of as a
figure from the distant past. These are not mutually exclusive.
‘Godebog’
appears as a title or nickname for Coel in the Triads, and the earlier form
‘Guotepauc’ appears as his patronymic in Morcant’s genealogy in the Harleian
genealogies above. It translates as ‘Protector’. This may be derived from a
Roman title or rank and, along with his name, may indicate that Coel Hen was
originally a Roman figure. However, a sixth-century king in south Wales,
Vortipor, was also named ‘Protector’ in a Latin inscription on his tombstone.
It may be that ‘Protector’ was a fashionable title for a ruler, possibly
borrowed from memories of Roman titles but not necessarily with a direct link
to previous Roman structures of government.
Date
Urien,
Peredur, Gurci and Gwendoleu all lived in the late sixth century, as did
Guallauc and Morcant if they are the same individuals named in the Historia
Brittonum. Coel Hen’s name occurs 4-7 (mainly 4 or 5) generations above their
names in the genealogies. Applying the very approximate dating method of
counting generations, and allowing 30 years per generation, this puts Coel Hen in
approximately the early fifth century.
Territory
Urien’s
territory was Rheged, whose location is uncertain but probably somewhere in
what is now north-west England and/or south-west Scotland (more about Rheged in
another post).
Gwendoleu
was killed at the battle of Arthuret, traditionally located at Arthuret House
near Longtown in Cumbria, and the nearby place name Carwinley may be derived
from ‘Caer Gwendoleu’ (see earlier post on the Battle of Arthuret).
Guallauc
ap Laenauc may be associated with the kingdom of Elmet (see earlier post on Guallauc ap Laenauc).
Alternatively, the first element of his name means ‘wall’, so he may have been
associated with one or both of the two Roman walls, Hadrian’s Wall or the
Antonine Wall.
All
of these are located somewhere in what is now northern England or southern
Scotland, and one of the genealogies is explicitly called ‘The Descent of the
Men of the North’, clearly indicating the territorial associations of the
people in it. If Coel was considered an
ancestor (real or imagined) of rulers in northern England/southern Scotland,
that may indicate that he himself was considered to have ruled part or all of
the same area.
The
name of Coel’s wife in the Triads, Stratweul, translates as ‘Wall Road’, and
the name of Coel’s daughter, Gwawl, translates as ‘Wall’. While it is possible that these represent the
actual names borne by aristocratic ladies, it may be more likely that they
represent titles or regional designations misunderstood as names. They may indicate that Coel Hen had some
association (real or imagined) with a famous wall and/or a road associated with
a wall. The two most obvious candidates for a famous wall in early medieval
Britain are the Antonine Wall and Hadrian’s Wall, both of which have associated
military roads. This is also consistent with a location for Coel Hen somewhere
in northern England/southern Scotland.
Rank or status
The
title ‘Protector’ was also used by a ruler in sixth-century south Wales (who
may have been one of the kings castigated by Gildas). This may indicate that
Coel Hen had, or was believed to have had, a similar high status, i.e. as a
king or equivalent. His position at the
top of a large number of genealogies also indicates that he was considered an
important figure (even if the genealogies include a sizeable component of
fiction, why invent descent from a nobody?).
An
attractive conclusion to leap to is that Coel Hen was a very senior Roman
official controlling the northern part of Roman Britain in the early fifth
century, that he continued to rule the same large territory after the official
end of Roman administration in the early fifth century, and that he established
a dynasty that continued to rule his territory (progressively divided between
sons at each generation) for the best part of the next two centuries.
The
first part of this scenario is, I think, plausible. The senior military commander in the northern
part of Roman Britain in the late Empire was the Dux Britanniarum and Prefect
of the Sixth Legion, who was probably based at York (see post on the documentary sources for post-Roman York)
and commanded the garrisons of the forts on Hadrian’s Wall as well as the Sixth
Legion. This would have been a position of considerable power, and strongly
associated with Hadrian’s Wall. The
holder of this position may well have been able to retain a degree of authority
over some or all of the area between York and the Wall for some time after the
official end of Roman administration in the early fifth century. How long would depend on the ability of the
individual concerned, the resources available to him, and whether Roman
government collapsed rapidly in mutinies, civil wars, rebellions and/or
attempted coups, or dwindled gradually as a declining economy and decaying
infrastructure made it progressively more difficult to maintain central control
over a large area, leading peripheral (and progressively less peripheral)
regions to become progressively more independent until they fragmented into
separate polities.
The
latter part of the scenario – that Coel Hen founded a dynasty whose descendants
ruled the north for two centuries – I think is less plausible. Maintaining control of a large area and
handing it on by inheritance over many generations implies a degree of
political stability, unlikely in the aftermath of a change as major as the
collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Britain in the sixth century appears to
have been a mosaic of many small independent polities – Gildas alone names five
kings, and many more appear in Historia Brittonum, the Triads and the poetry. It seems likely to me that this fragmentation
would have occurred earlier rather than later, probably in the fifth century,
and that the rest of the fifth and most of the sixth century was a period of
rearranging the pieces by competition and successive cycles of consolidation,
partition and reconsolidation, resulting in the mix of small and large kingdoms
that are discernible around the turn of the sixth and seventh centuries when
historical records start to become less scant.
However,
the first part of the scenario is by itself consistent with Coel Hen’s
appearance in the genealogies and the Triads. A senior Roman commander in the northern
part of Roman Britain in the Late Empire would be consistent with a Roman name
and a Roman title, and consistent with an association with Hadrian’s Wall. If
he held the position during the last days of Roman rule he would have held the
sort of authority over the area under his command that later ages associated
with a king. If he maintained this
position for enough time to become the subject of stories and panegyrics/
heroic poetry, he could have become established in literary tradition as an
important figure and a powerful ruler in northern England/southern Scotland. Even if the territory fragmented after a few
years or decades into many local rival kingdoms, each with an independent
ruler, he may still have been remembered as the predecessor of them all. Local rulers may have claimed descent from
him as a way of legitimising their own claims to authority, and when later
kings compiled their genealogies, his name would be a logical one to add to the
upper reaches as a famous ancestor. (If he had a family, some of the claims may
have been true.)
Conclusion
If we
accept that Coel Hen had a real existence, his appearances in the genealogies
are consistent with him having lived some time in the early fifth century; been
associated with the Late Roman administration (with a Roman name and title);
held an important position of power in the north of Roman Britain and
associated with one or both Roman Walls; held it for long enough and
effectively enough to become famous, with stories told about him that were
remembered and circulated (and probably embellished) in later years and were
worth referring to in the Triads; had descendants who ruled parts of his
territory after him and/or became established as a suitable figure to add to
the upper reaches of a genealogy in need of an illustrious ancestor from the
distant past (thereby giving him a large family of ‘virtual’ descendants to add
to any actual biological descendants).
As
ever, other interpretations are possible.
References
*
Yes, he may
well be the origin of the Old King Cole of the nursery rhyme. No, absolutely
nothing reliable is recorded about his cheerful disposition or his taste in
music. Pity.
