The Medieval Kingdom that was Erased from History

in the 17th century a very old poem was discovered possibly dating back to the late 600s it's fractured and incomplete but it mentioned something remarkable it mentions a place known as penguin this may seem innocuous but aside from one other equally damaged poem this would be the only mention of this place for centuries it seems that these two fragmented poems preserved the only mention of whatever this penguin was that is until the 12th century where we meet a man called Gerald of Wales he wrote a sort of travel diary about his journey through well Wales preserving countless amounts of local history including something very peculiar on page 139 Gerald elects to tell us about the three ancient capitals of Wales two of them are known to us Abba Frau in Gwyneth in denever in the habath but one is very strange according to Gerald the ancient capital of this kingdom pois was known as penguin apparently now called Shrewsbury in England Jared had unknowingly just resurrected a 600 year old mystery that was so lost a Time historians were not even aware that something was missing this single sentence would lead Scholars down a rabbit hole for centuries as they try to find a kingdom that seems to have been intentionally erased from history this is the story of the missing kingdom of penguin [Music] [Music] so what exactly do we know so far well we have two poems one from probably the 7th or 8th century and another from sometime around the ninth both are fractured but for our purposes today invaluable as they seem to place Penguins somewhere in Shropshire mentioning the towns of Litchfield bass church and masterfield as being somewhere nearby along with the river turn we also have Gerald's single comment placing this mysterious penguin or more specifically the court of penguin right here this is Shrewsbury the former home of Charles Darwin before he moved to the grave and for about 200 years it was common knowledge to English historians that the penguin mentioned in these poems to be found right here there's a boat club named after it and a street articles from 1829 and 1878 Proclaim it as a certainty Alice does this newspaper from 1897. however there is a seemingly obvious caveat penguin is a Welsh name meaning either a hill with a Grove of older trees or a swamp but the name of Shrewsbury in Welsh is not penguin it's Amoy thing and has been a moistic for ages the oldest reference I could find is in the 11th century possibly the ninth and historians agree that this name is at least as old as the medieval year Scarlett as you can see simply believed that this penguin was an older name that was eventually replaced but known seems to agree on when or how this could have happened a debate that is not helped by no one being able to figure out what Amoy think even means the second poem which uses penguin might even Post State the name of moistic by over a hundred years what we are relying on then is a single sentence from Gerald of Wales an unreliable narrator who is most likely just relaying something that someone had told him this tells us that the memory penguin seems to have been alive but that already by the 12th century its location had been lost the problem we have is that this is oral history all history is extremely valuable but is way less reliable if something changes in a written record we can physically spot it most of the time but if something changes in the spoken record then that information may be replaced forever regardless though what we can establish is that while penguin was probably in shrub show we don't have any proof that Shrewsbury was ever called by this name so what we know really is that even though there are places called penguin in Wales this penguin was probably somewhere over here but where and even when would be a mystery for over 1 100 years so perhaps it's time to fast forward to when the poems were discovered so that we can take a look at them ourselves the first poem is called marunath convelan it covers the exploits of the only named king of penguin kanthalan son of congruin this poem claims that his notoriety was known as far as the island of honest mon but one achievement in particular is highlighted his raid on the monastery of Litchfield which the Welsh called kayathuthgoid the city of the gray Woods kanthalan alongside his son mobile are said to have attacked and defeated the son of PID here and carried off a horde of treasure from the monastery and while this doesn't reveal to us where penguin might have been it does narrow down when it might have been you see the monastery of Litchfield was of course a Christian establishment but the English Kingdom Here Murcia only became Christian in 655 so this raid must have occurred no earlier than this support this in 655 the new king of Mercy was named perda and his stories believe that this name was related to this Welsh name of PID or in other words convolan seemed to have defeated one of perda's sons fortunately for us and unfortunately for PETA he only wrote for one year before his kingdom was annexed by his neighbors the northumbrians so if kanthalan defeated peda's son in battle we can assume that this was during Pedro's rule meaning that this raid must have occurred between 6 55 and 656 so we know that penguin was somewhere in Shropshire probably not in Shrewsbury but likely somewhere nearby it was supposedly a Royal Court although there was evidently some sort of Kingdom as well and according to Gerald penguin was supposedly the capital of the king of poets and the only known King kanthalan was apparently famous across North Wales in particular for his raid against the monastery of Lichfield which has to have taken place around the year 655 to 656 now we have a year and a rough place so what was happening in the east of Wales at this time before we continue I'd like to give a quick shout out to the sponsor of this video Atlas VPN internet privacy and security has never been easier with Atlas vpn's summer deal of a premium subscription which you can grab right now for only 1.83 a month with three months extra for free Atlas VPN provides some of the most affordable online protection with a 30-day money-back guarantee not to mention their ability to give you real and organic search results stopping ads trackers and malicious links which is what I found most useful while using Atlas VPN by using Atlas VPN you can get the best deals while shopping online and unblock a whole bunch of region locked content on your favorite streaming services as well as being able to use Atlas VPN on an unlimited number of devices all under one subscription so grab Atlas VPN summer deal today and get one of the best and most affordable deals on the market for only 1.83 a month with an extra three months free and a 30-day money-back guarantee protect your internet privacy and security by clicking the link in the description below but be quick as this is a limited time offer thank you so Eastern Wales and Western England in the 7th Century if we can understand what was going on then maybe we can figure out some clues about penguin a couple of decades prior to this raid in Litchfield other Welsh monarchs were active in the area however this time they were here in peace athon of Gwyneth had formed an alliance with King Pender of Mercia their enemy the English Kingdom of northumbria the northumbrians had been encroaching on mercy and territory and in 616 they had attacked and killed the king of Gwyneth at the Battle of Chester providing motivation for both powers to join forces and take revenge and at the Battle of hathfeld in 633 the king of northumbria would be killed we're told that kadwazon and Panda rampaged throughout the entire country following this Victory the monk bead even lamented that kadwatson was going to destroy all of the English however kadwaslon was killed by the new northumbrian king Oswald at heavenfeld in the following year Oswald had pushed the mercians back all the way to Shropshire which is where our King kandalan and penguin come back in you see Mercia seems to have sought another Welsh Ally to once again help them defeat the northumbrians and this time they found one in kadala which brings us to our second home Kani hellev it was probably written sometime between the 9th and 11th centuries historians such as Dunville favor a later date but others such as hayam Breeze and Roland prefer the ninth so we're going to go with this one in this poem we're told that kendalan served as an ally to the king of Mercia in a single battle mice kogui in 642 where the king of northumbria was once again slain candelan probably sided with Murcia because of the imminent threat that then orthondrians posed he likely considered them the greater of two evils convolan may have also had a personal reason for this fight do you remember that battle Chester well Welsh poetry specifically the Triads preserve the names of the three Gatekeepers of Chester presumably the man who led the final defense of the city against the northumbrians The Goo Gone of the red sword madog son of Rin and Guion son of khandruin AKA kanthalan's brother so we can add to what we know so far namely that kanthalan was in an alliance with Mercia in 642 but by 655 something had changed so now we know when penguin was and roughly where but we can get more specific once again thanks to Connie helith and it's here that I'm going to give you a very brief Welsh lesson you see kanyalith just means the song of helith innocent enough but maronath kanvelan means the elegy of kanthalan as in something you write after someone dies by examining this final poem we can come to the end of what little story we have on penguin and we can see how it might not just be bad luck that almost no records of his existence survive we are told by Helen who is kanazalan's Sister that at some point after the battle of mice cogwe penguin would once again find itself in conflict with his English Neighbors and these conflicts are supposedly all her fault as she laments that it was her tongue that brought disasters to penguin we don't know exactly what these disasters were except for the final one where we are told cancelan and two of his brothers marched to defend a town on the river tone from an invasion by the soy grin a rare Welsh term for the English according to helith this town was laid to waste kamzalan and his brothers were killed in the battle and Helen and her maidens were forced to flee to the hills from these Hills they suddenly see the Palace of penguin in Flames fleece penguinetanth the poem says once night falls they go to the smoldering ruins where Health proclaims that condolence all is dark tonight they then find and take the body of the king from the battlefield to the Church of basa where heleth finally laments that her family are now all gone when penguin burned and candelan died it seems that all of the records and memories of this place were erased by their Invaders and then forgotten for centuries the elegy of kandalan was probably written soon after his death around the late 7th Century but this Kani helith was likely written way later since this church of basa is an English establishment that wasn't consecrated for a few hundred years following Gerald's comment in the 12th century this Kingdom would seemingly fade completely out of History however there is one final line in this poem that we haven't had a look at one final line that almost everybody seems to have ignored for centuries despite Gerald claiming that penguin was in Shrewsbury this poem never mentions the town however it does mention something else following the destruction of penguin hallith is said to have stood at dinclair record and looked over the old lines of penguin So What on earth is din Flair Recon and could this provide us our final clue [Music] record is made up of three pieces din is the word for a fort or a city is a bit more abstract roughly defined as a space in general or a specific place for something means the place for or of a city either in the present or likely in this case the past tense so are we aware of an old city somewhere around Shropshire with a name Huracan yes the old Roman city of riverconium if we remove the Roman suffix we get the old pothonic root of wiricon which appears to have entered Welsh as a guricon in the 9th century and guragon in modern Welsh the English similarly called this place her econ or Recon Caster or roxita today so it appears that this 9th century poem was referring to the old city of riverconium but was this Roman city the Royal Court that we just saw destroyed by the English no from archeology it appears that riverconium was abandoned at the latest by ad550 about a century before the raid on Litchfield could have taken place but there is another Recon close by a big pile of dirt and rocks known today as the Recon home to a colossal Hill Fort that was once likely the capital of the britonic tribe of the cord Noe until they were conquered by the Romans and settled in the nearby uriconium historians such as Melville Richards and Thomas Stevens have suggested that perhaps our sis penguin candelan's Hall may have been up here it is a commanding view of this ever and well within marching distance of the turn Lichfield and the Church of basa but wasn't this old hillfort abandoned well yes but as the Roman Empire began to decline more and more in Britain no longer providing the security against Invaders that they once used to dozens if not hundreds of hilfords would become reoccupied and if you lived in the riverconium in the 550s and were suddenly aware of large powerful polities encroaching on your borders why wouldn't you move to the much more defensible Hill right next door it's a solid theory if only because it's essentially the one and only clue that we have but still others disagree most recently the historian John Davis has suggested that penguin was actually located here in an Old Fort known as the birth here two naturally forming Hills once jutted out of a pool of water forming a perfect defensive sight what makes this a good location for penguin is its proximity to Bass Church aka the Church of basso or that place that candelan was buried in do you remember how I said that Connie Helen must have been written much later because bass church is named after an Englishman so it likely wouldn't have existed prior to the English Conquest well the birth may be the answer to this unfortunately there is a major flaw in this Theory as archaeological excavation has revealed that this fort seems to have been abandoned by the late Iron Age hundreds of years before even the Roman Empire set foot on this island let alone a king from the 7th century furthermore many other places in Canada use names that are derived from English even this dinsler Recon uses the English reckon rather than the Welsh guricon we know the Anglo-Saxons also named many of their conquered lands after their new landowners so perhaps convolan was buried in a pre-existing religious community that was later renamed to the Church of basa and then the original name may have simply been forgotten over the centuries we have now covered the entire story of what we know about penguin so let's add to this we've seen that penguin was somewhere in Shropshire but now we can see there is very likely right here on the Recon Mountain we know that kanthalan allied with Mercia in 642 and became enemies with them by 655 but we now know that sometime after this raid he was slain by an English enemy after which penguin was destroyed and nearly all records of its existence appear to have been erased [Music] a poem commemorating Kung valan was written sometime soon after with another one lamenting the destruction of penguin in the 9th century quite a bit later until finally Gerald of Wales tells us that apparently popular imagination of penguin had made it part of the kingdom of poets with his capital in Shrewsbury we're now left with only three big questions right here who exactly destroyed penguin why was it commemorated again 200 years later and is there any Merit to it being associated with pois or did Gerald just make a mistake the slogan as I mentioned are the English but it's a very rare name for the English the much more common word is Saison in Welsh from the Latin Saxons so which group of English destroyed penguin the most obvious candidate would be the mercians they were a large and Powerful Kingdom right on their border so perhaps they destroyed this Kingdom as revenge for the raid on Litchfield but that leaves us with two questions why was such a harsh response provoked from the mercians they had been allies with penguin before and would a simple raid really constitute the destruction of the entire royal family also why would kanvelan attack his former Ally a different candidate comes to us via the historian Peter Bartram who suggests that we shouldn't be looking to the Motions at all but instead to the north akanthalan's old enemies of the northumbrians you see the northumbrian king osui had annexed Northern Mercia in 655. that's when the South became christianized and a peda and is our early State for the raid on Litchfield however Peridot was slain in 656 and for the next three years the entire Kingdom will be ruled by northumbria the historian Peter Basham has suggested that it's within this three-year period that the events of Kenny helith took place kundalan could have raided the monastery at Lichfield when it was under northumber in control and kandana had helped to previously kill the king of northumbria as a battle of mice cogwi in 641 meaning that these two weren't exactly friends hallith even laments that it was her tongue that caused the destruction of penguin which barstream suggests is alluding to her urging her brothers to go and raid their neighbors perhaps it was her idea to loot Lichfield after the king of Mercy had been deposed but finally why such a harsh response well do you remember that battle of mice cogwi where can the Len and Pender slew the northumbrian king Oswald well the new King auswi was his brother it's often forgotten that at the end of the day these figures are not just markers on a map they were people us we may well have enacted such a harsh response against penguin because he knew that their King had killed his brother just as kanthalan may have assisted Mercia against the northumbrians in the first place because they slew his brother at Chester [Music] with that we come to our final question why did this Kingdom become associated with poets so much later you may have noticed that I have hardly brought up poets at all because these poems don't really mention the kingdom aside from both the authors of convalent's Elegy and the Kani hellev being from poets which is interesting but it's not concrete regardless by the 12th century Gerald of Wales had clearly heard that cease penguard was the ancient capital of this Kingdom so how did this happen there's the obvious possibility that Gerald just made it up we can't fully trust these ancient sources and inconsistencies can just be attributed to mistakes but what if he didn't it's not unreasonable to assume that he'd heard it from somewhere and he didn't have the motivation to make this up at all so was penguin a part of pois this Kingdom stretched from our worstly in the South to kaisanvawa in the north is it possible that their borders extended just a bit to the east sure penguin or din slay Recon may have just been a hill Fort within this Kingdom although this does present a few problems firstly the known Kings of poets are always associated with this region of Wales the oldest Kings supposedly had their power base in North Wales not in WorkOne in fact no king of poets prior to this date is even mentioned controlling with economy furthermore One of These Old Kings Rockwell left quite a mark on this region of the country as several poets referred to the land around the machnand or indeed the entirety of what is now Montgomery share as glad Brockwell the country of Rockwell and one of these poems is the Kani hellev if this 9th century poem believed poets and penguin to be one of the same why does it never call kundalan's lands pois and why does it refer to Lam's outside of Shropshire with a traditional name for Palace furthermore when was convaland supposed to have been King he isn't a member of the traditional Dynasty in fact we only know of one of his ancestors his father kundruin if kanzalan was just a regular king of poets then when and why would his power base move all the way to here and why wouldn't he be included in any of the genealogies there is a point to counteract this though and that lies once again in wordconium I've mentioned how it was a Roman city but its proper designation was acquitas a city that had some of its own autonomy and in Britain these usually functioned as a new center of government for the local bartholic tribe [Music] tribe like I mentioned which cover the lands of What Would One Day become penguin and most likely this area or should one day become Powers as the people living here did not seem to have their own local qatars so when the Roman Legions withdrew this local government likely did control these regions meaning that if penguin whose capital moved from the kuwitas to the Recon and powis were separate which would explain these questions we had about candelan we would also have to explain how these two became separate and we can you see Powers appears to come from the Latin pargus the name for the rural provinces outside of the cubitas and it's been theorized by the historian T Charles Edwards that the kingdom of poets developed from the verbal provinces that broke away from the local kiwitas of riverconium if this theory is correct then when the Roman Legions withdrew leaving the kiwitas of wirconium defend for itself perhaps the rural outskirts isolated geographically from the city broke away into their own kingdoms before eventually being united into this Kingdom of the pargas this would appear to provide our origin story for these two kingdoms once a single cubitat representing the konawaii tribe until being abandoned by the Romans and splitting in two with one Center in the north and one to the east in penguin with separate royal families penguin being separate from Powers will explain how and why Canada would suddenly appear as a king all the way over here completely unconnected to the royal family as he was simply just a king of somewhere else the separation might even be attested in Old Welsh sources as well as the eulogy of a 6th Century king of powers named Kanan proclaims his victories over nearly all of his neighbors gwent Gwyneth morganug David and kernu which means Cornwall you might notice that Conan has not recorded as invading anyone to his East despite invading in every other direction you might also notice that Cornwall is hundreds of miles away and would require going through other hostile kingdoms why would the king of powers spend weeks if not months leading an army to invade a random part of Britain the historian Charles Edwards believes that he didn't and instead that perhaps this konu was referring to the cornuity by removing the Latin declension we get corono the original breathonic root name of this tribe which sounds are very similar to karunu so perhaps Conan really invaded his Eastern neighbors and this word was simply mistranslated when the manuscript was copied 600 years later from coronu to keronu then mistaken for well kernu meaning Cornwall but this also poses one final question why would this 9th century poem suddenly start lamenting the destruction of penguin again and why would its authors including the author of condolence Elegy Written shortly after his death be from pois you might be thinking that this elegy writer simply fled West for the author proclaims himself that he was already living in pois so perhaps penguin and Poets were separate but maybe kanzalan really did rule both kingdoms not as an official and legitimate successor though but as a usurper we know that conveyland's power base and lineage were disconnected from poets and that they've been disconnected from each other for centuries so if he had conquered this Kingdom that would explain why he isn't included in the Royal genealogies in fact there were two other usurpers around this time and both of these men only had their father's names recorded with the rest of their ancestry being completely unknown just like kanthalan this may also explain why the 9th century Kani helith recounted The Glory Days of the kingdom of penguin at this time the kingdom of pois no longer existed it had been carved up between the English Kingdom of Mercia and the Welsh Kingdom of Gwyneth so some historians have suggested that the Kani helith sought to call back on a time when Powers ruled lands far into England when kendallan of penguin controlled these lands of Brockwell and expanded their borders to the east this would also answer the question as to why a powissian poem would even seek to recount the glories of a foreign King perhaps it simply wasn't [Music] but this does make the question of how and when penguin began to rule poets but this can be theorized too if we look once again to the Battle of Chester three kings fought in this battle Yago of Gwyneth cadwal of Ross and celev of powers alongside a bunch of other Warriors including as we've seen kanthalan's brother all three of these kings were probably killed in this battle and while we don't have a lot of details the royal succession seems to have gone just fine in Gwyneth and Ross with the sons of the previous Kings kadvan and Edwin inheriting their respective Thrones in poets though celev doesn't seem to have been so lucky as he isn't accorded as having any ruling descendants two sons are mentioned but they don't seem to have ruled instead 300 years later a stone pillow would be constructed proclaiming the illustrious ancestry of the king of powers and on it a man named eliseg abuilog is commemorated as having annexed the inheritance of powers from the power of the English foreign genealogy would be composed revealing to us that this eliseg was the great grandson of King celev's brother who like his son and Grandson is never recorded as being King foreign 's death we have about a century-long gap where there are no recorded Kings of powers so what on Earth happened here LSX Commendation would lead us to suggest that the English had annexed the entire Kingdom but we don't have any record of this in fact the northumbrians who invaded Chester didn't even occupy the neighboring mercians until 656 which leads us to another possibility maybe it was kanthalan we know that he was fit and healthy enough to lead a raid by 656 so he was probably alive during the Battle of Chester perhaps he or his father decided to take military action against their neighbor following the death of their King interrupting their succession until the eventual demise of penguin by at least 6 59. this led to a brief occupation by the mercians once they drove the northumbrians back either militarily or just politically until ellisek Rosa and reinstated palace's Independence we don't know when this had occurred but the historian Peter Bartram has roughly estimated ellisek to have been born in the 680s which gives us a window sometime in the 8th century [Music] the historian Cary Mound suggests that perhaps Powers was occupied by the mercians but that this occupation was very brief as during this time the mercians had to face aggressions from both northumbria and their southern neighbors of Wessex and while they did eventually establish their Supremacy over much of Southern England one well-timed Revolt during a period where as Mount puts it Mercia would not have had the men or resources to spare could have easily been successful to support this we know that powers was independent Again by at least the 750s as the king of Mercia offer decided to build a massive ditch and war between the two of them furthermore this wasn't some military installation to exert power this ditch weaves around important rivers and fortifications leaving them to the Welsh This Cloud offer looks much more like an agreed upon boundary perhaps as a compromise between a newly resurgent pois and a kingdom of Mercy with no more soldiers to spare thank you this Theory relies on putting together a lot of very small pieces of evidence all of which could be disagreed with but I think we have a solid idea here with that being said let's finally recap the entire history of penguin the medieval Kingdom that was erased from history foreign invasion of Britain a celtic-speaking tribe named the cornuity lived in this area likely centered on a hill Fort right here when the Romans conquered this region this hillfoot was abandoned at the kiwatas of uriconium was settled in its Stead eventually the Roman Legions Who provided the Safety and Security left and the already crumbling Roman city inherited the governance of the area this kiwita seems to have controlled the land that would one day become both penguin and Powers but these rural provinces the pargas or the pagi seem to have revolted against the kiwitas leading to eventually two major centers of power in the region the kings of pois in the North and the remaining rulers of riverconium in the east by the year 550 at the latest with a corneum was abandoned and the old Hill fought on the weekend was likely reoccupied becoming the Royal Court known as sleece penguin we can wager that there were conflicts between the two kanana pawis likely invaded them alongside literally all of his neighbors but eventually they would team up to defend the city of caiac Leon vawa against the English Kingdom of northumbria with one of kanthalan's Brothers being killed defending the city alongside saliv the king of poets candelan himself may have been King at this point or perhaps his father still ruled but either way it appears that they may have invaded the kingdom as no further Kings of poets are recorded until elliseg a century later is said to have revolted against the English kanthalan was ruling by at least 641 as he then accompanied Panda the king of Mercia and aided him in defeating and slaying the king of northumbria at the Battle of maiskogway however this Victory would be only temporary and by 655 the north of Mercy would become occupied by the northumbrians [Music] sometime between this year and 656 possibly at the urging of his sister hellev gonzalan launched an attack on the monastery at Lichfield defeating the king of mercia's son and ransacking the settlement unfortunately this king would be killed in 656 an Oswald of northumbria soon assumed control over the entire Kingdom annoyed at the transgressions of his much smaller neighbor and not forgetting that it was their King who helped slay his brother Oswald may have been the one who attacked the kingdom of penguin or the river turn killing kundalan in battle and burning the Royal Palace of sleece penguin wiping out the entire royal family and erasing all records we had on the kingdom eliminating it from history for centuries [Music] Oswald may have annexed the lands of pois too as they were also ruled by penguin or this may have come later after Mercia regained its independence but either way these lands appear to have been dominated by the English for nearly a century afterwards candelan would be buried in bass Church perhaps in a pre-existing Welsh religious community and his elegy will be written in his newly conquered poets this Kingdom would eventually reassert its independence under King elisec and soon a colossal ditch will be constructed between it and Mercia forming a boundary between the two kingdoms for a century until eventually poets would be invaded by both of its neighbors again during this time the second of our only three surviving mentions of penguin would be composed hearkening back to a day where the king of this land or a country that extended far to the West and East and eventually in the 12th century Gerald of Wales records that penguin at least by some had become reimagined not as a conquering neighbor but as the old capital of pois with this location being moved from the once important Regan to the then important Shrewsbury sealing its fate in history for hundreds of years until historians with what little records we have managed to piece together what perhaps the kingdom of penguin really was thank you very much for watching if you want to hear about another mysterious Kingdom I made a video on the missing Kingdom of raynuk which you can click on here foreign

Channel: Cambrian Chronicles

Views: 909,844

Keywords: Wales, Welsh, Welsh History, English History, History of England, Mercia, Northumbria. Cynddylan, Pengwern, Shropshire, History of Wales

Id: muGjr7vnElY

Length: 36min 15sec (2175 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 06 2023