Conquest of Chester in 616: Worth its Salt

THE FRONTIER IN ANGLO-SAXON PRE-HISTORY

Why did the Anglo-Saxons suddenly expand westwards around 600 AD to overrun the remaining ‘Welsh’ parts of England?

Well, the usual explanations involved dynastic skullduggery, megalomaniac thuggery by forceful leaders, clashes within the Catholic Church, and a more general sense among the Anglo-Saxons of their Manifest Destiny to rule England from shining sea to shining sea.

Indeed, the English still like to believe (as taught by Frederick Jackson Turner about the Taming of the American West) that ‘the forging of a unique and rugged identity occurred at the juncture between the civilization of settlement and the savagery of wilderness.

This produced a new type of citizen - one with the power to tame the wild and one upon whom the wild had conferred strength and individuality’.

Alas the poor Welsh – who were literate and Christian long before the usurpers.

The blood-thirsty tribal thugs were Æthelfrith and Edwin, it being observed that the routine of kingship at this time involved regular - probably annual - wars with neighbours to obtain tribute, submission and slaves.

What seems to have been left out in all this is the economic dimension – issues that still concern us of comparative advantage and trade deficits.

FIRST OF ALL SOME DATES (I am not a date man so don’t take them too seriously)

593 Æthelfrith becomes king of Bernicia (in the northeastern 'Anglo-Saxon' part of England)

[Æthelfrith, son of Æthelric ruled two Northern English kingdoms in the 7th Century - Bernicia and Deira in the period 592 to 616. The 20th century historian Frank Stenton has written that "the continuous history of Northumbria, and indeed of England, begins with the reign of Æthelfrith".]

597 Battle of Catterick – weakening of Celtic Kingdoms of Rheged and Goddoddin

603 Battle of Degsastan – subjugation of Dal Riata

616 Battle of Chester – ‘Welsh’ of the Old North (Yr Hen Ogledd) cut off from Wales proper

616 Edwin become king

616 Collapse of North Reged

617 Subjugation of Elmet

626 Wessex defeated temporarily

624 Isle of Man taken

624 Isle of Anglesey taken – Anglo-Saxons start to dominate the Irish Sea

[From about 627 onwards, Edwin was the most powerful king among the Anglo-Saxons, ruling Bernicia, Deira and much of eastern Mercia, the Isle of Man and Anglesey. His alliance with Kent, the subjection of Wessex, and his string of successes added to his power and authority.

The imperium (as Bede calls it) that Edwin possessed was later equated with the idea of a Bretwalda or High King of Britain, a later concept invented by West Saxon kings in the 9th century.]

632 Penda of Mercia defeats and kills Edwin.

THE CAPTURE OF CHESTER

Æthelfrith attacked the Welsh Kingdom of Powys and defeated its army in a battle at Chester around 616. In this battle, the Powysian king Selyf Sarffgadau was killed.

Apparently:

'Æthelfrith king of Northumbria, at the instigation of Augustine, forthwith poured 50,000 men into the Vale Royal of Chester, the territory of Prince of Powys, under whose auspices the conference had been held.

Twelve hundred British priests of the Monastery of Bangor having come out to view the battle, Æthelfrith directed his forces against them as they stood clothed in their white vestments and totally unarmed, watching the progress of the battle - they were massacred to a man'.

According to the Raphael Hollinshead, the Tudor Chronicler:

"The Britains that dwelt about Chester, through their stoutnesse prouoked the aforesaid Edelferd king of the Northumbers vnto warre: wherevpon to tame their loftie stomachs, he assembled an armie & came forward to besiege the citie, then called of the Britains Chester.

The citizens coueting rather to suffer all things than a siege, and hauing a trust in their great multitude of people, came foorth to giue batell abroad in the fields, whome he compassing about with ambushes, got within his danger, and easilie discomfited."

So Æthelfrith put together an enormous army to subdue the city of Chester at the extreme southernmost corner of his growing ‘imperium’ of conquests – Why?

TRADE & TRADE RELATIONS

If you look at the map of England prior to Æthelfrith’s conquests, it is striking how far the Anglo-Saxon petty kings had succeeded in subduing the drier, eastern agrarian part of England before 600 AD. However, this left the western pastoral areas of England under the control of the ‘Welsh’.

There was therefore both a natural trade synergy and a source of friction between the more densely settled farming communities of the east which led themselves to more conventional forms of authority and the wilder westerners who were happy to trade livestock but who were also happy to embark on mounted raids on settled territory.

The settled lands of the east had granaries, and access to the iron of Sussex and Kent to keep their tool and weapon-smiths employed. However, they lacked resources of non-ferrous metals like lead (from Yorkshire and North Wales), tin (from Cornwall), and gold (from Wales and Ireland).

And, as the economists would say, as they grew richer and consumption increased, they developed a balance of trade and payments problem.

Perhaps most importantly, they lacked their own sources of another limited supply / high value commodity that was in universal demand as a food additive and preservative – salt.

[In the South West of England, the Anglo-Saxon intruders had reached the western shores of England well before 600 AD, having seized a major source of salt at Droitwich and set up the petty kindom of the Hwicce - see lower map].

WORTH THEIR SALT

It has been observed that the Romans seem to have focused a good deal of the infrastructure of their Empire near salt sources or on salt routes between those sites and Rome [Via Salaria].

The Roman word salarium links employment, salt and soldiers, but the exact link is unclear. The least common theory is that the word soldier itself comes from the Latin sal dare (to give salt).

Alternatively, the Roman historian Pliny the Elder stated as an aside in his Natural History's discussion of sea water, that "[I]n Rome. . .the soldier's pay was originally salt and the word salary derives from it. . ." Plinius Naturalis Historia XXXI.

Others note that soldier more likely derives from the gold solidus, with which soldiers were known to have been paid, and maintain instead that the salarium was either an allowance for the purchase of salt or the price of having soldiers conquer salt supplies and guard the Salt Roads (Via Salarium) that led to Rome.

THE ANCIENT SALT TOWNS IN CHESHIRE

Salt extraction was one of the most profitable industries of the Cornovii tribe and was carried out at several sites in Cheshire, notably at Middlewich, known in Roman times as Salinae 'the Salt Pans'. In addition to these main works there is evidence of considerable Romano-British salt production here in Northwich and also at the recently-discovered salt-working settlement at Nantwich.

Condate (Northwich) was so important that is recorded in two separate itinera of the Antonine Itinerary, a the late-second century document which records all of the major road-routes within the Roman Empire.

The second itinerary in the British section of this document is entitled "the route from the Vallum to the port of Rutupiae" and details the road-stations between Hadrian's Wall in the far north of England and Richborough on the Kentish coast.

Towards the middle of this itinerary the station Condate is listed 18 miles from Mamucium (Manchester, Greater Manchester) and 20 miles from Deva (Chester, Cheshire).

Another classical geography which mentions the Northwich settlement is the 7th century Ravenna Cosmology, wherein the name is again listed as Condate, this time between the entries for Salinae (Middlewich, Cheshire) and the capital of the Coritani tribe at Ratae (Leicester, Leicestershire).

In Cheshire, recent archaeology at both Nantwich and Middlewich has confirmed that the Romans established new salt works on green field sites which were then abandoned and returned to agriculture. This was either with their departure in the 5th century or possibly even during the occupation.

One explanation is that these were Roman Army saltworks, providing salt for their own needs, while Romano-British salt makers occupied long established Celtic salt making sites nearby and continued to supply the traditional needs of the local population and the itinerant traders who travelled into Wales and to the North.

Salt making continued in post Roman Cheshire, at first through a period of Welsh control and then as part of the Anglo-Saxon Mercia. The same pattern of trade will have continued and later this attracted Viking influence from the North. The first documentary account of Anglo-Saxon salt making in Cheshire is found in the Doomsday Book of 1086.

[It is also noting that the Cheshire salt towns were detached from Northumbria in the 7th Century, as part of the Wreocansaete to become part of the thriving central English kingdom of Mercia.

As Mercia also acquired the salt facilities of the Hwicce at Droitwich, it then had a full salt monopoly - which led in turn to it becoming the paramount state before the Danish invasions and to the banishment of the 'Welsh' to west of Offa's Dyke, close to the existing boundary between England and Wales].

THE BATTLE FOR SALT & THE IRISH SEA TRADE

So I argue that Æthelfrith conquered Chester mainly because it was the centre of a lucrative trade in salt from Cheshire across the Irish Sea – one that brought Irish gold into England in payment.

And once Æthelfrith had subdued Rheged, the local fishermen and traders on the Fylde coast of Lancashire would have put forward a proposal to use their maritime resources to help wrest back the trade from the Welsh kings of Powys – to the mutual benefit of Rheged and Northumbria.

Remember, the forerunners of Rheged, the territory of the Brigantes (Brigantia) had a pre-Roman presence in both England and Ireland, with colonies around Wexford, Kilkenny and Waterford.

Not surprising then that only a few years after the fall of Chester, the Isle of Man and the Isle of Angesley were both conquered (the latter being a stepping stone to Ireland through Holyhead).

Nor should it be so amazing that, as discussed by Frank Kilfeather, Irish Times, Friday Feb 26 1999, an archaeological has uncovered a "strange" pre-Viking house built in the Anglo-Saxon style in West Temple Bar, Dublin.

The director of the dig, Ms Linzi Simpson, told The Irish Times the find was "very exciting". While working on a Viking dig they knew immediately the house was not Scandinavian, and a comb found in it could only have come from Roman-Britain.

The house was also found at the very lowest level, under Viking buildings. These three factors convinced them of habitation in the area before the Vikings arrived.

The Irish Times asks ‘If it is true that there was Anglo Saxon settlement in Dublin prior to the Viking arrival, it completely changes our understanding of the history of Dublin and Ireland. It also poses so many other questions - if they were Anglo-Saxons, where did they go?’

Well, they probably didn’t go anywhere – at least as long as they were able to exploit their newly established trade monopoly in salt across the Irish Sea.

The Genealogy and Family History of Football

The likelihood is that all of the major ‘football’ codes that are played today worldwide can trace their origins back to Medieval England - and beyond to Britain’s Dark Ages, through the ‘town games’ that were played between factions of the citizenry.

The oldest of these town games – and in this sense the mutual ancestor or ‘concestor ‘ - was the town game played in the City of Chester, Cheshire (where I went to school).

Legend has it that its town game began when the Roman Army pulled out of Chester around 410. It seems the local citizens or ‘Cestrians’ were so incensed at being deserted by their erstwhile colonial masters that they attacked the stragglers and cut off the head of one of the departing legionaries. The head was then used as a football for a town game – and this in turn became an annual event.

However, lacking a regular annual supply of Italians, the citizens shifted to a stuffed pig’s bladder.

The regular ‘Gottesday’ football match was played on Shrove Tuesday in February on the river flats known as the Roodee that lie beneath the town wall. By 1533, the game had become so violent that it was replaced by horse racing on the same site in 1539 (with the consent of the Lord Mayor Henry Gee, whose name apparently led to the use of the term "gee-gee" for horses).

From the 16th Century onwards, town games gradually evolved into team games – and this trend was given impetus by the adoption of compulsory sport in the ‘public’ (i.e. private boarding) schools that educated the upper and upper middle classes.

The modern rules of football are based on the mid-19th century efforts to standardize the widely varying forms of football played at the public schools of England.

The Cambridge Rules, first drawn up at Cambridge University in 1848, were particularly influential in the development of subsequent codes, including association football. The Cambridge Rules were written at Trinity College, Cambridge, at a meeting attended by representatives from Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester and Shrewsbury schools. They were not universally adopted.

During the 1850s, many clubs unconnected to schools or universities were formed throughout the English-speaking world, to play various forms of football. Some came up with their own distinct codes of rules, most notably the Sheffield Football Club, formed by former public school pupils in 1857, which led to formation of a Sheffield FA in 1867. In 1862, John Charles Thring of Uppingham School also devised an influential set of rules.

These ongoing efforts contributed to the formation of The Football Association (The FA) in 1863, which first met on the morning of 26 October 1863 at the Freemasons' Tavern in Great Queen Street, London. The only school to be represented on this occasion was Charterhouse. The Freemason's Tavern was the setting for five more meetings between October and December, which eventually produced the first comprehensive set of rules.

At the final meeting, the first FA treasurer, the representative from Blackheath, withdrew his club from the FA over the removal of two draft rules at the previous meeting: the first allowed for running with the ball in hand; the second for obstructing such a run by hacking (kicking an opponent in the shins), tripping and holding. Other English rugby football clubs followed this lead and did not join the FA, or subsequently left the FA and instead in 1871 formed the Rugby Football Union.

The eleven remaining clubs, under the charge of Ebenezer Cobb Morley, went on to ratify the original thirteen laws of the game. These rules included handling of the ball by "marks" and the lack of a crossbar, rules which made it remarkably similar to Victorian rules football being developed at that time in Australia.

The Sheffield FA played by its own rules until the 1870s with the FA absorbing some of its rules until there was little difference between the games.

The kicking and handling forms were later codified by The Football Association and the Rugby Football Union (RFU) respectively. Rugby football had its origins at Rugby School, Warwickshire, England.

The origin of rugby is reputed to be an incident during a game of English school football at Rugby School, Rugby, England, in 1823 when a pupil William Webb-Ellis picked up the ball and ran with it. Although this tale is apocryphal, the Rugby World Cup trophy is named after him.

Rugby football stems from a game played at Rugby School, Rugby, which old pupils initially took to university; with Cambridge believing that Old Rugby pupil Albert Pell was the first student to form a 'football' team.

During this early period different schools used different rules, with former pupils from Rugby and Eton attempting to carry their preferred rules through to their universities.

Significant events in the early development of rugby were the production of the first set of written laws at Rugby School in 1845, the Blackheath Club's decision to leave The Football Association in 1863 and the formation of the Rugby Football Union in 1871. The code was originally known simply as "rugby football"; it was not until after a schism in 1895, which resulted in the separate code of rugby league, that the name "rugby union" came to be used for the game itself.

Supporters of either code will frequently refer to theirs as merely "rugby", unless they are differentiating between the two.

The first rugby international took place on 27 March 1871, played between England and Scotland.

In 1895, a schism in Rugby football resulted in the formation of the Northern Rugby Football Union (NRFU). Although many factors played a part in the split, including the success of working class northern teams, the main division was caused by the RFU decision to enforce the amateur principle of the sport, preventing "broken time payments" to players who had taken time off work to play rugby.

Northern teams typically had more working class players (coal miners, mill workers etc.) who could not afford to play without this compensation, in contrast to southern teams who had other sources of income to sustain the amateur principle. There were similar movements in other countries.

In 1895 a decree by the RFU banning the playing of rugby at grounds where entrance fees were charged led to the famous meeting on 29 August 1895. Twenty-two clubs (plus Stockport who negotiated by telephone) met at The George Hotel, Huddersfield in the West Riding of Yorkshire and formed the "Northern Rugby Football Union".

Within fifteen years of that first meeting in Huddersfield, more than 200 RFU clubs had left to join the rugby revolution.

In 1897, the line-out was abolished and in 1898 professionalism introduced.

In 1906, the Northern Union changed its rules, reducing teams from 15 to 13 a side and replacing the ruck formed after every tackle with the play the ball.

A similar schism occurred in Sydney, Australia. There on the 8th August 1907 the New South Wales Rugby Football League was founded at Bateman's Hotel in George St. Rugby league then went on to displace rugby union as the primary football code in New South Wales and Queensland.

The history of American football can be traced to early versions of rugby football and association football. Both games have their origins in varieties of football played in the United Kingdom in the mid-19th century, in which a ball is kicked at a goal and/or run over a line.

Many games known as "football" were being played at colleges and universities in the United States in the first half of the 19th century.

In 1840, a reporter wrote of a Yale University game: "If the truth were told, the game would make the same impression on the public mind as a bullfight. Boys and young men knocked each other down and tore off each others' clothing. Eyes were bunged, faces blackened, much blood was spilt and shirts and coats were torn to rags."

By 1860 the game was abolished in many American schools, but in 1862 Gerritt Smith Hiller organized a group at Yale to play again, using rules that were a reasonably close imitation of soccer. Still, the game was often more an excuse to beat up freshmen than anything else.

In 1871 Harvard University started to play a variation known as the "Boston Game." This allowed a player to pick up the ball and run with it if he were chased, varying from the game that had been prohibited in 1840.

Harvard captain Henry Grant was anxious for his football team to engage in competition and had heard that a similar game was played at McGill University.

Consequently, he contacted the captain of the McGill team, David Roger, and invited them to play two games in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on May 13 and 14, 1874. These were to be the first real football games.

Until this time, Harvard had been playing a game that today would be considered very similar to what we call soccer football. McGill arrived in Cambridge several days prior to the game and practised each day.

The Harvard team was surprised when the McGill players kicked the ball and subsequently ran with it under their arms.

The Harvard captain pointed out politely that this violated a basic rule of American football. The McGill captain replied that it did not violate any rule of the Canadian game. When asked "What game do you play?" Roger replied, "Rugby." They then managed to agree to play the forthcoming games with half-Canadian, half-American rules.

The following day a notice appeared in the Harvard University paper: "The McGill University Football Club will meet the Harvard Football Club on Wednesday and Thursday, May 13th and 14th. The game probably will be called at 3 o'clock -admittance 50 cents. The proceeds will be donated to the entertainment of our visitors from Montreal."

Early in the first half, the Harvard team so enjoyed running with the ball that they agreed to play the remainder of the game with Canadian rules, which stipulated that the ball could be picked up and carried.

Harvard normally played with 15 players, but McGill could only field 11 athletes (the number fielded in the present game of American football). The first game was won by Harvard 3 to 0 and the game played on the following day ended in a scoreless tie. Harvard liked the McGill game so much that it adopted the downs as well as field goals. These rule changes, which included tackling, led inevitably to the physical contact of our present-day collision sport.

American football resulted then from several major divergences from rugby football, most notably the rule changes instituted by Walter Camp, considered the "Father of American Football". The introduction of the line of scrimmage and of down-and-distance rules were among the most important changes.

Canadian football is a form of gridiron football played almost exclusively in Canada. It is very similar to American football and the two sports have shared origins and are closely related.

As early as 1841, there is documented evidence of "foot-ball" being played in Australia. In 1858 English public school football games began to be played in Melbourne and surrounding districts. The earliest known such match was played on 15 June 1858 between St Kilda Grammar School (now defunct) and Melbourne Grammar School on the St Kilda foreshore.

On 31 July, a knock-a-bout match at Yarra Park was played between a "St Kilda scratch team" and "Melbourne scratch team". Trees were used for goal posts and there were no boundaries and the match lasted from 1pm until dark. There were no rules and fights frequently broke out.

Melbourne being a relatively young city, most of the early players were migrants and the media of the time noted that participants of each nationality played the game their own distinctive way: the English played in a fashion that resembled rugby football, the Scottish played recklessly, and the Irish preferred to kick the ball.

This led to the development of Australian Rules Football which has been described as ‘Gaelic Football played on a Cricket Pitch’ (the pitch is oval unlike all the other codes).

So the English city of Chester has a claim to be the source of all the main forms of football that are played internationally.

And, as I mentioned in a previous post, there is some evidence that the Celtic Leader Einion Yrth born around 445 AD was the original King Arthur, making Chester the model for Camelot. This in turn could mean that Einion Yrth’s father Uther Pendragon was the first football impressario!

Old King's School Building, Chester