Saxons, Vikings, and Celts

by Bryan Sykes

  The relentless expansion of the Roman Empire was nowhere near as well thought out as we might imagine. It was much more of a hit-and-miss affair, and when the invasion was launched, the Romans had very little idea of the extent or the geography of Britannia. They probably did not even realize that beyond the easily subdued fertile lowlands lay barren mountain tracts which were far more difficult to conquer and then to hold against stubborn and spirited resistance. The mountains were also hardly worth having anyway, since the land was so poor that it could never yield much in the way of taxes. Everywhere there was the problem of secure frontiers.

  The first frontier in western Britannia between the Romans and the unconquered tribes followed the diagonal course of the Fosse Way from Exeter to Lincoln. This proved to be an unstable border and was repeatedly attacked by the Silures in AD 47 and 48, encouraged by Caratacus, the fugitive chieftain of the defeated Catuvellauni who had taken refuge in Wales. To contain the Silures, the Romans built fortresses at Gloucester and Usk. Caratacus moved north to the Ordovices in Snowdonia, and after their defeat in AD 51, and the capture of his wife and children, he fled to the court of Queen Cartimandua, leader of the Brigantes in northern Britannia. There his flight ended and he was handed over to the Romans by Cartimandua and taken to Rome in chains. Rather than execution, which captured ‘rebels’ could usually expect, Caratacus was released by Claudius after a defiant speech in which he is said to have exclaimed, referring to the grandeur of Rome, ‘Why do you, who possess so many palaces, covet our poor tents?’

  Welsh resistance to Rome did not end with the capture of Caratacus. The Silures resumed their attacks and defeated the twentieth legion in AD 52. Eventually the Emperor Nero, who had succeeded Claudius in AD 54, issued instructions to subdue the entire island of Britannia and in AD 58 a new governor arrived in Britannia to carry out the orders of the Emperor. Suetonius Paulinus was a professional soldier with campaign experience in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria, so he was used to dealing with independent-minded tribesmen the hard way. In two years of campaigning he had Wales in an iron grip. Refugees fled to Anglesey, the centre of the Druids, and Suetonius launched an attack. Tacitus records the scene with the British lining the shore of the Menai Straits: ‘Among them were black robed women with dishevelled hair like the Furies, brandishing torches. Close by stood the Druids raising their hands to the heavens and screaming dreadful curses’.

  Tacitus was a historian, but he needed to sell books, so his popular histories were always written to appeal to his readers in Rome. His description of the Druids’ habit of ‘drenching their altars in the blood of prisoners and consult[ing] their gods by means of human entrails’ was bound to boost sales.

  Neither the sight of wailing women nor the threat of evisceration on a Druid altar was likely to deter Suetonius Paulinus. His troops swam across the Straits and easily defeated the Celtic refugees and the Druids, not only killing all they could find but destroying the groves of trees that were sacred to their religion. However, Suetonius was forced to withdraw immediately to deal with the revolt of the Iceni under Boudicca and it was left to Tacitus’s father-in-law, the general Julius Agricola, to complete the subjugation of the Ordovices in AD 78, which he did, according to Tacitus, by killing them all, before moving off the following year to deal with Caledonia.

  Containing the Celtic tribes of Wales proved to be a long and costly operation for the Romans. Legionary forts at Chester, at Wroxeter near Shrewsbury and at Caerleon near Newport in south Wales defined the boundary between the rebellious uplands and the subjugated lowlands. Smaller forts at Caernarfon in the north-west and Carmarthen in the south-west contained Wales within a fortified rectangle, supplemented with a network of camps and smaller forts placed one day’s march apart and connected by straight roads. The military presence was strongest in the lands of the most belligerent tribes, the Ordovices in Snowdonia–so some must have survived Agricola–and the Silures of the south. The other Welsh tribes, the Deceangli along the north-western coastal plain between Conway and Chester, and the Demetae of Dyfed, showed less appetite for resistance and their territories were accordingly less densely garrisoned. Eventually the Celtic tribes of Wales settled for the life of a distant outpost of the Empire. The Romans took gold from Dolaucothi in mid-Wales back to Rome to be minted into coins and mined copper from the Great Orme near Llandudno. The Romans began to withdraw their garrisons from Wales by the beginning of the second century, indicating that the inhabitants were coming to terms with the Roman occupation, the last to succumb being the Ordovices.

  What might have been the genetic consequences of the Roman occupation that we should look out for? After the initial campaigns of subjugation, which may well have resulted in the deaths of thousands of men, the military outposts became important centres of economic activity. Around Caerleon, for example, a small township or vicus grew up outside the walls of the fort. By AD 100 there were 2,000 people living in the Caerleon vicus, attracted from far and wide by, and dependent on, the great wealth, in comparative terms, of the garrison. Even though there were rules which banned official Roman marriage between the legionaries and the indigenous people before AD 190, unofficial liaisons were tolerated. Indeed, as the threat level fell, garrisons were reduced in size and troops were withdrawn to be redeployed elsewhere in Britannia; this had a severe effect on the economy of the vici. And not only on the economy, according to one historian, who points out the effect that the redeployment of the garrison would have had on the women who had borne children. They had to stay behind.

  As usual, if there is one, it will be the Y-chromosome that is the witness to this activity. But who were the soldiers of the Roman army? Not all from Rome, that’s for sure. After the initial campaigns, when there would have been a substantial Italian contingent in the legions, the occupation itself was left in the hands of the auxiliaries. In Wales these troops, who would be granted citizenship when they retired, were drawn largely from the valleys of the Rhine and the Danube. It is for Y-chromosomes from that part of Europe that we should keep an eye out as a sign of the genetic influence of the Roman occupation.

  After the withdrawal of the Roman army from Wales in the fourth and fifth centuries AD, the demilitarized population came under attack from the Irish, including the infamous Niall of the Nine Hostages. In a mix of raiding for slaves and settlement, reminiscent of the first decades of the Viking age in Scotland, the coast of Wales facing the Irish Sea endured continual attacks. This period of attempted Irish colonization coincides with the expansion of the Dál Riata into Argyll, only 100 miles to the north. It may even have been carried out by the same people, and for the same reasons: the ambitions of the Ui Neill. But the Irish never established themselves in Wales as successfully as they did in Argyll. There was no equivalent in Wales of the continuous friction in Scotland between the Picts and the Gaels of Dalriada. The Irish form of Gaelic never displaced the P-Celtic of the Welsh as it did in Scotland.

  Within Wales, the people divided into a succession of minor kingdoms and before long the disputed land frontier became a battle zone once again, as it had been during the first years of the Roman occupation. This time the enemy were the Saxons, who had arrived in England in the middle of the fifth century and who, like the Irish, took advantage of the power vacuum left behind when the Romans departed. There is more to come on the Saxons and their genetic legacy when we travel to England, but for the time being we need only know that their westward expansion was effectively halted at roughly the same frontier that the Romans had defined with their lines of legionary forts.

  The boundary was formally marked out in the late eighth century by Offa’s Dyke, named after the Mercian king responsible for its construction. Unlike Hadrian’s Wall, Offa’s Dyke was not a fortified frontier barrier with regularly spaced garrisoned forts, but an earthwork built to denote rather than to defend the frontier, though in its construction it was far more than a boundary fence. Offa’s Dyke consisted of an earth embankment up to 3 metre
s high and backed by a ditch up to 20 metres wide. The boundary it defines stretched for 240 kilometres from Prestatyn on the north coast to Beachley near Chepstow on the Severn Estuary. The Dyke marks this boundary for 130 kilometres, the rest being defined by natural features like the River Severn. Though it is built only of earth, thousands of men must have been involved in its construction, proof of the level of organization in the kingdom of Mercia at the time.

  The Saxons did not advance far beyond the Dyke but, as you might by now expect, it proved to be a fluid boundary. Though the construction of the Dyke coincided with the beginning of the Viking Age, the Welsh kings did not respond by uniting under one leader as the Celts and Picts had done in Scotland. The Welsh never did regain the lost lands in England on behalf of the Britons, though not always through want of trying. In 633 Cadwallon launched a counterattack against the Saxon King Edwin, whose title Bretwalda at least claimed control of the whole of Britain. Edwin had attacked Anglesey, but Cadwallon drove him back into England and eventually defeated and killed him at the battle of Meigen near Doncaster. He then killed Edwin’s heirs, Osric and Eanfrith, and, according to Bede, it was his intention to exterminate the whole English race. He had his best and only chance in 633 for, the following year, he was himself killed by Eanfrith’s brother. As we shall see, the memory of Cadwallon’s near success was to shape things to come.

  We have seen what a significant genetic effect the Viking settlements from the late eighth century onwards have had in Scotland. Can we expect the same in Wales? Although the Vikings soon dominated the western seaways and had, by 830, begun to set up colonies at Dublin and other Irish coastal towns, there is very little evidence of them having succeeded in colonizing Wales. In the north they were actively repelled by Rhodri Mawr (Rhodri the Great), King of Gwynedd, who defeated a Danish attack on Anglesey in 856.

  Only in the far south-west is there any suggestion of Viking settlement. It is there, as we saw in an earlier chapter, that the high levels of blood group A have been used to argue for a substantial Viking settlement in what is now Pembrokeshire. We shall certainly see if we can find corroborative evidence when we look at the genetics. Based on the experience in the Northern Isles, if Viking genes are there in large numbers we will certainly find them.

  The Welsh kings continued in their internecine wars, sometimes making alliances with the Saxon kings against one another. So long as they were busy fighting between themselves, they were no threat to England. Only once did they unite under a single ruler, and then only for six years. Gruffudd ap Llywelyn began as the King of Gwynedd and it was from this position that he launched a campaign of murder and usurpation against the other kings that culminated in his recognition as the King of all Wales by 1057. Gruffudd’s campaigns against Mercia on the border with England revived the memories of Cadwallon, the last Welsh king to interfere in English affairs, so in 1063 the English decided to do something about it. Harold, Earl of Wessex, went after him. Gruffudd was pursued back to Snowdonia, where he was killed by the son of one of his royal victims. To show there were no hard feelings, Harold married Gruffudd’s widow, Ealdgyth, the granddaughter of Lady Godiva. When Harold became king in January 1066, Ealdgyth became Queen of England after six years as the first, and only, Queen of Wales. Her reign as Queen of England was even shorter: it came to an abrupt end when Harold was himself killed by the Normans at the Battle of Hastings the following October.

  The Norman Conquest had immense repercussions for life in England almost immediately. For Wales, the old border held the Normans at bay–for a while. Compared to Scotland, with its 200 years of unified rule under the descendants of Kenneth MacAlpin, Wales was in a shambles after the downfall of Gruffudd ap Llywelyn. Feuds between claimants to the now vacant kingdoms had created a chaos of murder and betrayal which culminated in the battle of Mynydd Carn in 1081. Two royal houses emerged: Gwynedd in the north and Deheubarth in the south.

  Again the perpetual problem of a secure border with Wales presented itself to the first Norman king, William the Conqueror, just as it had to the Romans and the Saxons before him. He had no interest in the conquest of Wales, but he did want a stable frontier. His solution was to grant lands along the frontier to his most reliable barons and, without positively encouraging them, to turn a blind eye if they felt like expanding their holdings into Wales. These men, the Marcher Lords, began by building castles along the frontier, first of earth and timber, then of stone. Then they really let rip and spilled over the border in deadly earnest.

  By 1093 the most aggressive of the Marcher Lords, the Earl of Shrewsbury, reached the Irish Sea coast at Cardigan at the mouth of the River Teifi. Up went a castle. From there he pushed south into Dyfed and built the huge castle at Pembroke. Another Marcher Lord launched an attack against Rhys ap Tewdwr, the ruler of Deheubarth, who was killed at Brecon in 1088 resisting the advance. It was the death of Rhys ap Tewdwr that, to later historians, marked the final demise of the Welsh kingship. It looked as if nothing could save the Welsh from the Norman threat. However, the Welsh did manage to fight back. The forces of the Marcher Lords were expelled from Gwynedd, Ceredigion around Cardigan and from most of mid-Wales, but they hung on around Pembroke, Glamorgan and Brecon. The Norman domination was never complete and there was a resurgence in the position of the Welsh princes. In the Treaty of Montgomery in 1267, Henry III recognized Llywelyn ap Gruffud as the first ‘Prince of Wales’ with control over several of the old Welsh kingdoms.

  However, Henry’s successor, Edward I, decided to conquer Wales once and for all and in 1277 led his army of 800 knights and 15,000 infantry into the heartland of Gwynedd, stronghold of Llywelyn, and forced his submission. Edward continued his campaign through Wales, building a new series of castles, including the impregnable structures at Conway, Harlech, Beaumaris and Caernarfon. A revolt in 1282 gave Edward the excuse for another campaign. This time the Welsh fared better and defeated Edward’s army on more than one occasion. However, Llywelyn himself was killed near Builth in December 1282 and resistance had collapsed by the following summer. In 1284 the Statute of Rhuddlan set out England’s sovereignty over Wales and in 1301 Edward’s son, who became Edward II, was invested with Llywelyn’s title ‘Prince of Wales’ at an elaborate ceremony at Caernarfon Castle. With the exception of Edward II himself, every subsequent British monarch has given the title ‘Prince of Wales’ to their eldest son.

  The Welsh made one final attempt to free themselves from English domination. In 1400, taking advantage of the confusion caused by the overthrow of Richard II, the Welsh rose up in revolt under Owain ap Gruffydd Glyn Dwr of Glydyfrdwy, better known outside Wales by the English translation Owen Glendower. On 16 September 1400 he was proclaimed Prince of Wales at Bala and his followers began their quest to regain the independence of Wales by attacking nearby English settlements at Ruthin. Intriguingly, Owen Glendower used his alleged descent from the legendary Brutus, first King of the British, to back his claim. He reigned for twelve years, even convening a Welsh parliament at Machynlleth in mid-Wales and he was recognized as sovereign of an independent country by the King of France. The revolt was eventually ended by England’s military superiority. Many of the great castles built 100 years earlier by Edward I had never surrendered, and by 1414 the army of Glendower surrendered at Bala. Owen Glendower himself was never captured and, rather like his ‘ancestor’ King Arthur, he vanished into the mists. Finally, in 1563, the Act of Union formally combined the political fortunes of England and Wales.

  14

  THE DNA OF WALES

  Wales is the only part of mainland Britain where the original language is still spoken. We might take that as an indication that there has been very little disturbance of ancient Welsh culture, and maybe very little disturbance of the indigenous genetic make-up. But it is clear from Welsh history that there have been very many foreign intrusions on to Welsh soil from the Roman period onwards. What we do not know is the magnitude of their genetic effect. Traces of Viking DNA are a strong
possibility in Pembroke, and the effects of the Saxon and Norman incursions may have had substantial genetic consequences.

  Our campaign in Wales, for that is how it seemed, began in the early days of the Genetic Atlas Project. Four of us set off by car in a planned series of swoops on secondary schools throughout the Principality. This was in the days before we had discovered the easy delights of the DNA brushes. We needed blood. But we had not arranged to visit blood-donor sessions in Wales. We had yet to refine that approach. The blood samples we used in the early days were taken from fingerpricks, the collection of which had unintended consequences. One of my research team, Kate Smalley, had once been a teacher and she realized that hard-pressed sixth-form Biology teachers might welcome a visit from outside scientists if we gave a lecture and, in return, we may be able to ask for volunteers. That would give the teacher a double period off, if nothing else. We chose Oswestry, a market town on the English–Welsh border not far from Shrewsbury, as our first destination. My main concern was that, however well the lecture on our project went down, it might be hard to get volunteers to submit to a fingerprick blood test. The automatic lancets, the ones diabetics use to take a sample for blood-sugar measurements, drive a short needle into the skin. It isn’t painful, but neither is it completely painless.

  I had been through my presentation and the time to ask for volunteers had arrived. I was met by a sea of blank faces. ‘It really doesn’t hurt,’ I entreated. There was no reaction. I suddenly realized what I needed to do. I got out a lancet and pulled back the spring-loaded trigger. I wiped the tip of my left index finger with an alcohol swab to sterilize it and, ‘ping’, lanced it, trying not to wince. That did the trick and soon we had everybody lancing their own fingers or, better still, their friends’. The drops of blood were soaked up on special cards, which we knew would keep the DNA safe until we got back to the lab. I don’t think we would be allowed to take blood these days. Everyone is so scared of it.