Old King Cole was a merry old soul – we all know that. What you didn’t know, perhaps, was that he was my grandad. Well, my many, very many times multiple g-grandad, from around 1600 years ago. And thereby hangs a tale; or to be more correct, two tales: one of King Cole himself, and one of a Welsh tribal chieftain called Cilmyn Troed Dhu – Cilmyn of the Black Leg.
Old King Cole was a historical figure, written of in Welsh annals as Coel Wen, meaning ‘Old Coel’ (‘Coel’ was pronounced ‘coil’). He reigned from about 350 AD to 420 AD, during or after the period of the Roman withdrawal and just prior to the times of the legendary King Arthur. Coel Hen is thought to have ruled South West Scotland, Cumbria and Yorkshire down to York, territory that Roman records assigned to the Dux, a Roman military leader, and for this reason it is thought that Coel was the last Roman commander, who turned his command into a kingdom. More importantly, he was the founder of the Cole Dynasty which produced a number of kings who, together, ruled present day Southern Scotland, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Northumberland and Cumbria.
By the 6th century AD the Anglo Saxons were pressing the Cole empire seriously, and by 547 AD the Saxon King Ida had taken Northumbria. This was the beginning of the end for the Coles, who were wiped out by about 616 AD. Meurig Hen (‘Old Matthew’), a relative of Coel Hen, is thought to have written of the King in an account from which the children’s nursery rhyme, first recorded by William King in his Useful Transactions in Philosophy in 1708-9, is believed to have derived. As smoking had not then been invented, it’s assumed that the pipe and bowl were musical instruments equivalent to the modern flute or drum, which seems to suggest that King Cole and his fiddlers played music together as a group – history’s first rockers, perhaps? The term “pipe” was commonly used as an informal term for a flute.
One of Coel Hen’s descendants was a certain Cilmyn, who was a leader of one of the 10 ‘Noble Tribes’ of North Wales, based in Caernarvonshire in the 10th century. Legend has it that one day Cilmyn was busy in his favourite hobby of pursuing a fair young maiden across the plains of Caernarvon, when they came to a broad river. The maiden plunged into the foaming waters and, girding up his loins, Cilmyn was about to do likewise when an old woman, sitting on a boulder beside the river, called on him to halt. “I am a witch”, she told him, “and yonder fair maiden is under my protection. If you dare to plunge into these here foaming waters in pursuit of her, your leg will turn black and fall off’.” All this was spoken, of course, in Welsh.
After telling the witch just what she could do with herself and her broomstick, Cilmyn plunged into the raging torrent. Lo and behold, the leg with which he took his first step into the waters did, indeed, turn black and fell off. When, in due course, he created for himself a coat of arms, he had painted on it a black leg cut off at the knee, giving rise to his nickname: Cilmyn Troed Dhu’, which translates as ‘Cilmyn of the black leg’.
What has this to do with my family? Well, in 1905 a book was published in London and New York entitled ‘A History of the Gilman Family’ by an American member of that family – Alexander William Gilman. Alexander points out that every member of the Gilman family can be traced back to Cilmyn Troed Dhu (in Welsh, ‘C’ is often interchangeable with ‘G’) and that prior to 1500 this was how the Gilmans spelled their family name. As evidence of this relationship with Cilmyn T D , he points out that every subsequent Gilman who has been granted an award of a Coat of Arms by the College of Arms in London has had incorporated into it a leg cut off at the knee. This shows that the College, which is meticulous in its scrutiny of the background of families to whom it awards this honour, must have been satisfied that a blood link existed between these Gilmans (and there have been several thus honoured over the years and centuries, including at least one baronet and a Belgian-based Baron) back to Cilmyn Troed Dhu in Wales. Alexander Gilman also provides a pedigree which links Cilmyn T D with Coel Hen, from whom he was indisputably descended.
My own father, James Gilman, was born in London where the family had a military tailor’s business. His father, also James Gilman, was also born in London, whereas his grandfather, yet another James Gilman, was born in Reading, Berkshire, where his father, yes, James Gilman once again, worked as a whitesmith (a worker in white metals such as aluminium). He, however, was an immigrant from the rural Berkshire village of Lambourn, and it was in Lambourn that my branch of the family had its origins, with records of their name and occupations locked within the pages of the parish registers going back to the early 1500s when those records began. And in those pages, a mystery exists linking us with Old King Cole of yore.
For over 200 years, beginning in 1576 and terminating in 1796, generations of Gilmans adopted the name COLE or COLES as an alternative surname or as an alias. In fact it could have been for an even longer period, as the Lambourn parish registers don’t go back any further than the mid-1500s.
Now, a man may adopt a different name as an alias for a number of reasons ranging from marriage and inheritance to criminality. But for some 6-8 generations of the same family in the same village to have adopted the same alias over 2 centuries is not only unusual: it is unique. Here are the Gilmans (with normal variations in the spelling of the name) who did so:
1576 December 15th Alexander COLES (alias GILLMORE) baptised
1596 December 17th Sibbil, daughter of Thomas COLES alias GILLMORE baptised
1597 August 20th Marie, daughter of Thomas COLES alias GILLMORE baptised
1601 August 15th Thomas, son of (Thomas) GILLMORE alias COLES, of Lambourn, baptised
1602 December 17th Alice, daughter of Thomas GILMER alias COLES baptised
1603 January 21st Christian daughter of Thomas COLES (alias GUILMER) baptised
1604 October 8th Alice, daughter of Thomas GUILMORE (alias COLES) buried
1606 March 8th Jane daughter of Thomas GUILMER alias COLES) baptised
1608 September 30th Thomas GUILMER (alias COLES) buried
1608 October 13th William son of Thomas COLES (alias GUILMER) baptised
1625 January 9th William son of John GILMER (alias COLES) baptised
1644 May 1st William son of John GILMAN (alias COLES) buried
1655 February 11th Thomas COALES (alias GILLMAN) married Jewda FAIRECHILD
1655 July 9th Jane GILLMAN (alias COLES or COOLES) married William Pitfale
1680 July 11th Ann GILLMAN (alias COLES or COULES) married Giles Larance
1694 February 3rd John COWLES (alias GYLMAN) married Mary Thatcher
1796 December 18th William COULES (alias GILLMAN) buried
Why would these Gilmans adopt the alias COLE for such a long period of time, if it were not for some tradition in the family that recorded their link with the Cole dynasty? Remember, this began centuries before the nursery rhyme of Old King Cole was first written. Which in turn yields yet another mystery. While landed gentry families in those days might well have inherited manorial rolls and other documents that outlined their family tree from ancient times, it seems most unlikely that a family from the tradesman class (the Gilmans of Lambourn were the village bakers) would have held such records. So how did they know of their ancient lineage?
My father, though born in London, was brought up in Hastings. It was his proud boast that it was a Gilman who plucked the arrow out of King Harold’s eye at the Battle of Hastings, a boast which I’ve always attributed to the accident of my dad’s geographical home rather than to historical fact. (And yet… the Saxon King Alfred who famously burnt the cakes and was a predecessor to the Saxon King Harold was, by tradition, born in Lambourn. So you never know!) But it doesn’t end there.
According to the Welsh annals quoted by Alexander Gilman in his book, the Cole dynasty was also descended from the English-born Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, who in turn was descended from the legendary Brutus, who fled the burning ruins of Troy to come to these shores, bringing with him the name he gave to our country – Britain. He also brought with him the fabled London Stone which, buried up to its neck in a pavement near London’s Liverpool Street Station, was the stone which the Romans used as the starting point for measuring all distances along the roads of their province of Britannia.
There is even more. The same annals tell of Coel Hen being himself a descendant of the English-born St. Anne, mother of Mary of Nazareth and grandmother of Jesus Christ. So who knows, it may be that jostling for pride of place in my bloodstream is a gene from the bloodline of the Messiah Himself. But that’s another story…
