William I of Elland

William I of Elland
King of Elland
Reign	1479 - 1505
Predecessor	none, as King of Elland
Successor	Peter I
Born	22 Petrial 1440 Mardenborough, duchy of Hawkshead (modern Elland)
Died	27 Ediface 1505 (aged 65) Etherley, Elland
Burial	Temple of Remesiana, Etherley
House	House of Elines
Father	Robert Ramilly, earl of Hawkshead
Mother	Blanche d’Elines

William II, Prince of Middlechamp, born William Ramilly d’Elines (1440-1505) was an Ellish nobleman, and was from 1479 acknowledged as the first king of the unified kingdom of Elland under the style of William (later William I).

Childhood and young adulthood

William was born in Petrial 1440, probably at or near present-day Mardenborough in the county of Hawkshead, then the seat of the earldom held his father, Robert Ramilly. His mother, Blanche, was the sister of Richard II, prince of Middlechamp, one of the stronger territories within the Central Ellish Plain; at his birth William became heir-presumptive to his uncle under customary laws of inheritance in the Ellish lands – a matter of some relief to Richard, who had had no direct heir since the death of his younger brother Paul in the previous year. William’s elevation to the responsibilities of rank came well in advance of his formal assumption of the title; Richard’s eyesight had deteriorated to the extent that he was probably functionally blind as early as 1458, and William shared rulership over Middlechamp with his uncle until Richard’s death in Metrial 1462.

The new prince was a physically imposing figure (contemporary accounts suggest a height around 1.93 metres or 6 feet 4 inches), and he was regarded as unusually handsome – something reported too widely to be dismissed as mere court sycophancy. Pièrre de Moeux, the comte de Troarn, reported him as “a man so vigorous and handsome that he might have been made for the pleasures of the flesh.”

Early threats

The new prince was faced with an almost immediate challenge in the north of his realms, involving the disputed status of the county of Doune, a territory flanking the southern bank of the river Marduine (currently the northern border of Elland) and an historic buffer territory between Middlechamp and the Odannach lands north of the river. In an agreement brokered by the Cairan prelate Sorcha ní Mháille in 1451, Richard Quiggan, the earl of Doune, had – perhaps uniquely in the region – been granted the right to maintain neutrality as against both William and Liam IV, the king of Odann. However, Liam – whose hand was perhaps being forced by the ire of restive vassals – had toughened his stance along the border during the winter of 1462-63 as Doune’s faltering health placed the existing position in jeopardy.

In Metrial 1463 William acted to break the impasse, encamping a force close to the earl’s castle in Ballydovey. During the next month William either persuaded or forced the infirm Doune to allow him temporary rule over the duchy during his illness – in the process sidelining the earl’s nephew and recognised heir, Lord Richard Quiggan. In this capacity William mobilised the earl’s own levies alongside his own troops and crossed the river into Odann. Although he declared no designs on the northlands – impressing the status of the river as a demarcation line – Liam saw it as a threat and responded accordingly. Over the next six months a series of skirmishes and small-scale battles, culminating in the Battle of Nurney in Empery. This damaged the Odannach fighting capacity enough that Liam accepted the new status quo along the river – including, in the aftermath, William’s formal annexation of the duchy after the death of Lord Doune (from illness) and his nephew (on the field at Nurney).

The new security in thr north allowed William liberty to address other frontier concerns. While the weight of the Arganite States to Middlechamp’s east was not principally a military concern, the claims of the Sabamic argan in Etamps-La-Sainte to temporal authority affronted the prince. In this respect two minor polities in the region would prove of great assistance.

William’s marriage to Claire, the elder of the two daughters of Maxim de Brede, Earl of Bredemarch, in Nollonger 1472 was, by most accounts and then unusually for its kind, a genuine love-match (and the couple would have no less than eleven children, eight of whom survived to adulthood); but its political advantages in strengthening William’s hand in the east were still plain enough.

Probably of more immediate use, however, were the frustrated ambitions of Quèrce, the much-reduced prince of Emilia. The once significant principality had been overrun by the Arganites and been shrunk down to a pocket of territory between the Brede and Semme rivers in the west of the modern Emilian state; while William did not have the strength or the will to send a force of his own against the Argan, he stoked Quèrce’s own anger and was content to provide financial support – and some discreet military aid – when the eastern prince saw Etamps as too distracted and disorganised to put up strong resistance. A dramatic push in 1476 and 1477 – helped along by good support on the ground – forced loose the Arganites’ grip, with Emilia’s historic capital at Pontaliens being recovered in the early autumn of 1477 and a triumphant Quèrce welcoming his brother prince in alliance.

The Salles question

With the northern and eastern borders receding as a concern, William’s most immediate qualms lay with the restive neighbour territories ruled by the prince of Salles, covering large parts of the Central Ellish Plain to the south of Middlechamp. Throughout most of Ellish history the Central Plain has been the engine room of the country’s agricultural industry, but the successive rules of Constant II and his nephew Rochard had borne down heavily on the region’s traditional prosperity, particularly through harsh levels of taxation and the requirement for anyone trading in grain – perhaps the cornerstone of the Sallesian economy – to hold a licence issued (for a sizeable fee) by the royal household.

There had been significant popular opposition to Rochard during the 1470s – something which William used to his advantage in mounting intermittent raids and general harassment along the border between their realms. However, the discontent remained largely unfocused until the involvement of the itinerant Cairan cleric Adeline Bell in early 1477. Bell’s fiery preaching against the current Sallesian order, and the imposition of a sternly regressive poll tax, brought an army out against Rochard. The Salles Revolt, although ramshackle and with poor logistical backing, created a state of disorder across the central plains country that, from William’s neighbouring viewpoint, positively begged for his intervention. The prince met with Bell and her chief associate, the merchant Robert Tailleur, at Austrey on 13 Animare 1479, agreeing to throw his weight behind the Salles rebels and promising an end to the poll tax and other punitive levies, as well as phased modifications to the worst excesses of Rochard’s rule. With this backing, he led a force southward at the beginning of Metrial.

William’s army and Bell’s rebel volunteers met Sallesian forces near Boxhampton on 10 Metrial; the defenders, already underarmed and underprovisioned, fought poorly and were driven from the field in disorder before midday on the 11th. Rochard was taken prisoner late in the battle (folk histories claim that he was found hiding in a pile of straw in a milking shed near the battlefield, although there is no evidence to support this claim). William took control of Rochard’s capital at Pierremont shortly afterwards, offering the defeated monarch the choice of exile or death. Not surprisingly, Rochard chose to be exiled, taking a small retinue and riding east towards the smaller and disorganised Embute statelets beyond the border; his younger brother Constant, clearly better attuned to the prevailing winds, accepted the status of vassal as the first Earl of Pierremont.

The new Elland

William could probably afford to show a degree of mercy; the addition of Salles to his own lands had established him as the pre-eminent ruler in the region, something that he quickly sought to build upon by declaring his expanded principality a kingdom under the name Elland, a contemporary rendition of an Old Ellish form Heallaland which had been used within the region prior to the Secote invasions of the eighth and ninth centuries, and which had wide acceptance, particularly in literature, as a descriptor for the land as a whole. He was formally crowned as king of the new Elland on 17 Sation 1479, in an elaborate ceremony within the Temple of Remesiana in Etherley, with Bell – now elevated by William’s public support to the status of Holy Mother of the now unified Argan of Elland – presiding over proceedings.

William did make some genuine attempts to reassure the people of Salles that he would duplicate Rochard’s failures, but most historians have recognised that this was, for the most part, lip-service. Pierremont was retained as a secondary capital, but the new king’s visits to the town became less frequent after about 1485 and there is no reference to such status later than 1500. However, for all the upheavals that had been caused by the Salles Revolt, the old order was remarkably quick in reasserting itself – perhaps because William had a vested interest in preventing similar disturbances among his own people.

The absorption of Salles left William undisputed as monarch of a country which covered close to two-thirds of the present-day Elland, extending from the river Marduine in the north to the environs of Featherstone and Wymbourne in the south, and from Clairgrave in the north-east extending almost to the headwaters of the Peverell, a tributary of the Gaste in what is now central western Elland. A still largely-sabamicised north-east around Gannsford and Bredemarch (where the earldom was annexed after the death of William’s father-in-law) retained a measure of independence – initially as a buffer against the Arganite States, although this would fade as a concern with their fall in 1498 – while the largely Sirian territory of Northmark remained as a barrier against any incursions from the various Zepnish states in the south.

Financial management

An early priority for Wlliam was the strengthening of the new kingdom’s finances and the restoration of confidence in the coinage. Rochard had carried out an at least partly systematic debasement of Salles’ coin, mainly through progressive reduction in its silver content (at the time of William’s coronation, most Sallesian coinage ranged between 40% and 60% silver by weight). While a round-up of all coins in issue in both his realms was impracticable, William issued an order in council in Empery 1481 that new Ellish coins would be put into circulation to replace those of Middlechamp at par, and those of Salles at a ratio of 1:2. Additionally, he ordered that old coins from either realm would not be recognised as valid after the end of 1486, and that they had to be given up before that date for exchange at the holder’s county town. The new coinage would bear the name crown (and a representation of William’s crown was stamped on it) in reference to the king’s statement that “Our coins shall bear the weight and majesty of Our crown; and Our unflinching promise shall ever be its worth”. The phrase “by this promise” (Old Sabamic ab hoc juramento), or the initials A.H.J., is still carried today as an inscription on Ellish coinage.

Gaining full control over the money supply was a significant issue for William in that his treasury was stretched hard by the demands of pressing capital expenditure – particularly the chain of castles which he had built along the south bank of the Marduine to guard against possible incursion from the north – while at the same time he was conscious that he could not press hard against his subjects to raise funds for fear of prompting the same kind of unrest that had destabilised Alban in Salles. Some of the gap was plugged by the creative use of amercements – often severe financial penalties for apparently minor infractions – but these rarely approached significant sums, and for long periods during his reign William owed substantial amounts to foreign moneylenders, particularly in Brocquie and Quènie.

Church and state

William had thrown much weight behind bringing together Elland’s various Cairan clerical factions to help forge the new Argan of Elland; although he was not unduly pious by the standards of the day, he valued the new argan for its role as standing counterweight to the Etamps arganic state. However, this support availed him little in his dealings with the clergywomen. His imposition of Adeline Bell as Holy Mother was much resented, and as Bell steadily deteriorated under the advance of familial dementia, the old order began to reassert itself. This was itself changing to some extent because of the spread of Orangism out of the Sabamic lands to the east, and these changes also fed into the ongoing friction. Although William did endow some argan-linked hospitals – of which two, at Carling and Stoke Eccleston, still survive today – he baulked hard at the argan as it attempted to place its authority above his own. Court disputes between the two sides were frequent, and Claire de Laurigny, who had succeeded Bell as Holy Mother in 1487, was actually exiled from Elland during the winter of 1491-92 when she travelled to Ráth to attend the investiture of Síle uí Nháill as Holy Mother of Odann, despite William expressly denying her permission to make the journey.

Later years and death

In Dominy 1501, Queen Claire died in an accident during a family meal, when she took too large a bite from an apple and choked to death before it could be dislodged from her throat. William was almost inconsolable at the loss of his wife; although some half-hearted attempts were made to find a new spouse for him – one of which, involving the then 25-year-old Britta, princess of Stranda, went as far as William’s dispatch of ambassadors to Ekerö to enquire as to her suitability – they amounted to nothing. William became increasingly reclusive after Claire’s death, and for long periods only Daphne, the younger of his two surviving daughters, was permitted to attend him; court records show lengthy spells in which he refused to grant visitors audience “due to the King’s sore Melancholy”. Peter d’Elines, the eldest son of William’s sister Livia and the heir-apparent, shouldered much of the weight of royal responsibility in this period, although this did not go as far as a formal regency.

William died on 27 Ediface 1505 at the age of 65 years, after suffering from tuberculosis for some three months; Peter succeeded him as king.

Legacy

William is, perhaps, remembered more for his status as the first king of what is the oldest of Messenia’s currently-extant states than for his actions as king in themselves, although it should be recognised that bringing unity to this fractious realm was a significant achievement in its own right. However, much of this sense of unity rested on William’s personal authority, and, although he made genuine efforts to de-emphasise regional differences within his new kingdom, it would not be until after Peter assumed the throne that this work would see real results.