Proposal to De-link Cwichelm

Question

Cwichelm, king of Wessex, was orphaned and I adopted him.  Then the suggestion list called to my attention that someone born in 615 was not likely the son of a man who died in 611.  So I've fleshed out Cwichelm's profile.  Currently I have his date of birth sourced as "Wikitree Data Field, not otherwise sourced" which make his date of birth flaky, although since he died in 636, it's consistent with the short life span of these warriors.  

Neither Cawley in Medlands nor Wikipedia are willing to say his parentage is other than disputed.  There's a note on the profile of Ceolwulf, his supposed father, that the writer of the note was going to leave links as shown but they were often unprovable.  I think at the time the desire to link everyone in a common family tree overrode the desire to be historically conservative.

I propose that our current emphasis on historical integrity now requires us  to delink profiles from each other when our confidence in the relationship is even less than "uncertain" and propose to do so, keeping the links to the possible relations in the biography instead.  

Especially since the profiles are PPP'd and form part of the ancestry of the English monarchy, I wanted to check before cutting the link.

Answer 1

Parentage I'll leave to the historians, but that birth date needs a better estimate.

Do we believe the person who fought at Beandun according to the chronicles is this person? If we do he would be a very precocious foetus to do so if born in 615. If we assume he is at least 5 he would be born before 610. That is at least more consistent with the death date of his purported father.

Tim

Comments

Duh.  This is why we post things in G2G -- to have the very most obvious things pointed out to us!  Thanks, I was blind to that.  I remember thinking, I have no basis to estimate a different birth year.  Well, of course I did, and now I have.  So he now has a living father at his birth.  We just don't know who he is!

Answer 2

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle A version, under the year 648 states that Cuthred was the son of Cwichelm and Cwichelm was the son of Cynegils (so he does need to be detached from his current father) and I haven't found anything so far that disagrees with that family line-up.

The Wikipedia article is basically pretty mixed up.  The article they mention by Kirby is actually D.P.Kirby, 'Problems of Early West Saxon History', English Historical Review, 80 (314), pp. 10-29 and from a brief look it doesn't see any problems with Cwichelm, but does see issues with Cynegils parentage and thinks there might be two people with the same name.

Also the section in Wikipedia about the latin terms makes even less sense, since the Chronicle was originally written in Old English and the Old English is clear that the relationships were as above.  See here 

So by all means change the father for Cwichelm, but seems to be no reason at all to delink him.

I would also change his date of birth to about 600.  Although that makes him only 14 or so in the first battle, naming Cynegils and Cwichelm together may be more of an indication that Cwichelm was the heir apparent rather than he had an important part in the battle.

Kirby does make the point that the chronology of this group of West Saxon Kings is a bit out and making it about 600 may make that a bit more understandable.

Comments

Although the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles were written probably 250 years after these events, William of Malmesbury, whom Charles Cawley refers to in Medieval Lands was writing 150-200 years after that, so I think we go with the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and add that William of Malmesbury had a different view under Research Notes in the biography.

Answer 3

This period is also covered by Bede, p 103, 148

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38326/38326-h/38326-h.html#Book_II_Chap_IX

Obviously Alfred's monks had Bede in front of them,  Question would be, whether they had anything else.