Warland Briton/Celtic origins

DNA sampling of Warlands from the Dorset area indicates clearly that their male (Y-) DNA derives from the people with the Y-DNA haplogroup R-L21 who arrived in Britain from around 2,500 BCE, displacing and intermixing with another group of individuals who arrived from around 4,000 BCE. Over 2,000 years passed before the arrival of the Romans and both the 'Brythonic'-speaking people who occupied what is now England ('Britons'), and the Gaelic-speaking people who occupied the area of what is now Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man, created multiple communities across the land.

It has been speculated that the Brythonic-speaking communities developed their own dialects of Brythonic over 2,000 or so years but may have been able to understand other Britons, in the same way that Gaelic-speaking communities had a similar language.

The Roman Period (54 BCE to 410 CE)

The Romans under Julius Caesar invaded Britain around 54 BCE. According to the article in Wikipedia on the Roman Conquest of Britain:

By the 40s CE, the political situation within Britain was in ferment. The Catuvellauni had displaced the Trinovantes as the most powerful kingdom in south-eastern Britain, taking over the former Trinovantian capital of Camulodunum (Colchester). The Atrebates tribe whose capital was at Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester) had friendly trade and diplomatic links with Rome and Verica was recognised by Rome as their king, but Caratacus' Catuvellauni conquered the entire kingdom some time after AD 40 and Verica was expelled from Britain.

The Romans invaded Britain from 43 CE. Vespasian set up his headquarters in the area of Lake Farm in present-day Dorset (where the Warlands lived 1700 years later), where they would have definitely been in contact with the local Britons. It is tempting to speculate that the Briton ancestors of the Warlands lived in that area at the time and were still there 1,400 to 1,500 years later.

The Romans used the generic word 'Celt' to describe the local population, giving names to each 'tribe'. In reality, there were two types of Celts: (a) 'Brythonic Celts' (located in what is now England) and (b) 'Gaelic Celts' (located in what is now Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man).

In what is now the Dorset area, the primary Brythonic population or tribal confederation were the Durotriges. To their north were the Dobunni, to the east the Atrebates and to the west were the Dumnonii. According to the website link in this paragraph:

The tribe had no discernible pre-Roman tribal centre and consisted of a number of fiercely independent baronies rather than a single unified state. However, there was a mint at Hengistbury Head which may denote some sort of central administration. Their territories were possessed of an unusual density of powerful hillforts. ... The civitas capital of the Durotriges is nowadays accepted to be the large walled town of Dorchester (Durnovaria), however, there is no epigraphic or documentary evidence to support this assumption.

According to the Romans in Britain website, '... the Durotriges resisted Roman invasion in AD 43, and the historian Suetonius records some fights between the tribe and the second legion Augusta, then commanded by Vespasian. By 70 AD, the tribe was already Romanised and securely included in the Roman province of Britannia. The Warland ancestors survived the Roman occupation.

The Anglo Saxon Period (c500 CE to 1066 CE)

The Anglo-Saxons who began to arrive after the Romans left occupied the land and, it is said, enslaved between 10 and 30% of the local Britons. The laws of Ine, King of Wessex from around 688 to 726 AD provides an interesting clue to the existence of both free and enslaved Britons in Saxon society. The laws use the word 'wealh', 'wilisice' and 'waliseus' to describe the local population; these words are synonymous with 'Welsh', meaning the local population.

In the above image, the word 'wealh' is used twice (it looks like 'peach'). This word, which is related to 'Wales' and 'welsh', is the word used by the Saxons to describe the local Britons, whether as freemen or slaves. In the first example, it refers to a 'Welsh rent-payer' (said to be the highest class of Welsh peasant) while the second simply refers to a 'Welshman' who owns five hides (of land) - which is quite a lot given that one hide was considered enough for one family.

The image above has two references, the first to a 'homo waliseus' (Welshman) who has a hide of land. The second refers to 'The king's horsewealh (Welsh horsemen), who can carry his messages'. According to one researcher, this line could mean that 'an unfree hose-servant in the king's service was to be paid for as a freeman'.

The last image above states that 'If a Welsh slave kills and Englishman, then he who owns him shall surrender him to the lord and kinsmen or pay 60 shillings for his life'. (If the owner doesn't pay, then 'the avengers are to deal with him').

The laws of Ine also refers to 'Welsh ale' ('cervisie Wilisce') to be paid (among other items) as 'food rent from 10 hides'.

The ancestors of the Warlands who lived in the primary Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia managed to survive, but it will never be known if they were ever enslaved. In any case, the Saxons of Wessex and Mercia clearly regarded the local Britons ('wealhs') as having lesser-status than their own, although those who lived on 'warland' were likely to have had more freedoms and may have been very good workforce - see Dr Rosamond Faith's writing on 'warland' on this page.

Arrival of the Normans

The arrival of the Normans from 1066 likely resulted in two main outcomes from the original Britons who survived Anglo-Saxon society. The first outcome was that they likely became 'villeins', a form of serfdom that existed until the late 1500s. Those Britons who lived and worked on what was documented as 'warland' then took on that word as a surname. It is tempting to conclude that the Britons who remained on warland were regarded as good labourers and farmers because they had *always* worked that land for 3,000 or so years.

Another outcome for the Britons was that they lost their original language as the remnants of the Britons who spoke it were pushed into Wales, Cornwall and/or left for Breton in France.