The Kingdom of Deheubarth
Deheubarth was a southern Welsh kingdom, arising from the former kingdoms of Dyfed and Seisyllwg in 920 AD, under the rule of Hywel Dda. At various times, it fell under the auspices of Gwynedd, namely, during the rule of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn in 1055 AD. The Norman conquest, as for the Saxons to the east, was not a happy event, however, and Deheubarth fell to them before 1100 AD. These Normans conquered the southern regions of Wales more fully than they ever did the north, including Deheubarth (until 1282, at which point Edward I conquered all of Wales). The Normans accepted a client rule in certain instances and granted Cantref Mawr to Gruffydd ap Rhys in 1116. In time, he passed its rule onto his son, Anarawd. With the help of Owain Gwynedd, Anarawd and Gruffydd successfully revolted against their Norman masters Read more…
The Death of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd
? It has been over 700 years since the death of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd on 11 December 1282. J. Beverley Smith writes: “Intimations of treachery, of breach of faith, are so often conveyed darkly, and no chronicle, nor any other source, provides the unequivocal teestomny which might enable us to unravel the threads in the various accounts of the tragic happening in the vicinity of Builth. It was alleged at the time, or shortly afterwards, in the most explicit statement we have, that the prince’s decision to venture into the area was influenced by one of the sons of his old adversary, Roger Mortimer. The Hagnaby chroinicler, an important source for the events of the day on which Llywelyn died, was quite definite: Roger Mortimer, he says, but, more correctly, his brother Edmund Mortimer, drew the prince there by beseeching Read more…
The Quest for Welsh Independence
When the Romans conquered Britain, the people they defeated were the Britons, the ancestors of the Welsh, a Celtic people who themselves had come to the island hundreds of years before. After the Romans marched away in 410 AD, the Saxon invaders overwhelmed the British in successive waves, pushing them west and resulting in a Saxon England and British Wales. When the next conquerors—the Normans—came in 1066 AD, they conquered England but they did not conquer Wales. Not yet. For the next two hundred years, power in Wales ebbed and flowed, split among Welsh kings and princes, Marcher barons (Norman lords who carved out mini-kingdoms for themselves on the border between England and Wales), and the English kings. Through it all, the Welsh maintained their right to independence—to be governed by their own laws and their own kings. The ending came on Read more…
Medieval Coinage
When Edward I hanged Jewish merchants for coin clipping in 1277, confiscating their goods and disinheriting their children, he was making a comment not only on the state of his own treasury, but on the economics of medieval life. Over the previous centuries, coinage–having been scarce once the Romans left Britain–had become more and more important in trade throughout England. Edward the Elder (c. 902-925 AD) ordered: “there be one money over all the king’s dominion, and that no man mint except within port. And if the moneyer be guilty, let the hand be struck off with which he wrought that odense, and be set up on the money-smithy; but if it be an accusation, and he is willing to clear himself, then let him go to the hotiron, and clear the hand therewith with which he is charged to Read more…
Traveling on Medieval Roads
Traveling on medieval roads meant traveling on surfaces as varied as stone, gravel, grass, and dirt. There have been roads across Britain for as long as people and animals have traversed the landscape. The original roads were tracks, created by years, decades, and millennia of people and wheeled vehicles, wearing a passage through forests, fields, and mountainous terrain. One of the first videos we produced was about Bwlch y Ddeufaen, an ancient road across north Wales marked by two standing stones, dating back thousands of years. Because of the difficult terrain, rather than build a new road entirely, the old one was improved by the Romans and then was in continuous use up until the modern era when a new road along the coast line was blasted through the mountains. One of the most lasting effects of the Roman occupation Read more…
Slavery and Wales
The title says Slavery ‘and’ Wales because the degree to which slavery existed in Wales is difficult to determine. Without a doubt, many Welsh were forced into slavery–evidence points to Welsh captives on the continent of Europe as well as in Anglo-Saxon England. St Patrick himself was Briton/Welsh (born 387 AD) and was captured by the Irish and made a slave. The Celts were well-known slave-keepers, as were the Romans after them. But were the Welsh themselves, after the Romans left? Hard to imagine they weren’t when their neighbors all around were enslaving them. But in all of the 767 pages of John Davies The History of Wales, he doesn’t mention slavery once. However, Ron Wilcox writes in his book Between Romans and Normans: “Living alongside the bondsmen were the slaves who worked as agricultural labourers or artisans. Most were born into slavery but Read more…
Cadwaladr ap Gruffydd, brother to the King
If ever your family gets on your nerves, you can be glad that you don’t have a family like Owain Gwynedd. Cadwaladr ap Gruffydd was Owain Gwynedd’s brother. A royal family in Wales wasn’t the same as in England, where the eldest son inherited most everything. In Wales, upon the death of a king, an entire kingdom was to be split among the brothers, even the illegitimate ones. (yes, the Catholic Church objected to this, but the Welsh didn’t much care). This caused problems for Wales time and again–as the brothers fought over lands among themselves and what had been a united kingdom under the father became divided under the sons. Cadwaladr and Owain were often at odds. Owain became the eldest son when his brother, Cadwallon, died, leaving Owain and Cadwaladr to rule without him. Owain and Cadwaladr seemed Read more…
Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn
Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn was a contemporary of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, the last Prince of Wales who died in 1282. He was father to Owain, who with Dafydd ap Gruffydd, Llywelyn’s brother, conspired to murder Llywelyn in 1274. Gruffydd was born sometime before 1216, the date of his father’s death. Llywelyn Fawr had driven the family from their lands in Powys and Gruffydd subsequently grew up in England. “Gwenwynwyn seized Arwystli in 1197 when he was aligned with England. Following the marriage of Llywelyn Fawr and Joan of England in 1208, warfare broke out once more between Gwenwynwyn and Llywelyn. In 1212 Gwenwynwyn’s ancient royal seat at Mathrafal was destroyed and he was evicted from his territories. He changed allegiances again and was restored to his realm in 1215 making a new capital at Welshpool. In 1216 he was defeated in battle with the forces of Read more…
Better Know a Castle*: Abergavenny
On Christmas Day in 1175, William de Braose, a Marcher lord (the 4th Lord of Bramber), summoned Seisyll ap Dyfnwal, Seisyll’s eldest son, Geoffrey, and a number of other local leading Welshmen from Gwent to Abergavenny Castle to hear a royal proclamation. He then murdered them all. This was justified in William’s mind because of a prior killing of his uncle by Seisyll (or so he suspected, though apparently had no proof). “De Braose and his men then mounted horses and galloped the few miles to Seisyll’s home where they caught and murdered his younger son, Cadwalladr a boy of seven years of age and captured his wife, whose exact fate is uncertain.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seisill_ap_Dyfnwal Other sons, not in attendance that day, got their revenge by burning Abergavenny in 1182. Gerald of Wales “alludes to the horrible event in the history of Abergavenny Read more…
Welsh Surnames
This is Sir Taran ap Deiniol (my son) wearing a full coif and tunic of crocheted mail. The ‘ap’ in his name means ‘son of’ for the Welsh. If he were a girl, the ‘ap’ would become ‘ferch’, meaning ‘daughter of”. Among the Welsh today, the number of surnames are few. In general, if you encounter someone with a first name as a last name, their ancestry may very well be Welsh. In Wales today, Jones, Davies, Evans, Williams, and Thomas are the most common surnames. http://www.genealogymagazine.com/welsh.html The reason for this was that the Welsh adopted the use of true surnames very late–beginning in the 15th century and the process didn’t finish until the 18th. This meant that 1) the use of English names and the Englishization of Wales had fully taken hold and 2) the Church’s use of English baptismal Read more…
Gerald of Wales
We are talking about Gerald of Wales because, as a churchmen, he exemplifies the tensions and complicated nature of the relationship between the Welsh and Norman church in the Middle Ages. Gerald was the grandson of Gerald of Windsor and Nest, a princess of Deheubarth, who established Carew Castle after the Norman Conquest of this region of Wales. Thus he was mixed Norman and Welsh descent, and as our daughter writes in her senior thesis, “His Welsh ancestry meant he could act Norman” and side with the Normans but never be accepted as fully Norman. He himself “decried” both Normans and Welsh for despising him, arguing that his uncertain identity left him accepted by neither culture. At the same time, he spoke French primarily, and Latin as a churchman, with only a little Welsh, and overtly participated in Norman efforts Read more…
Anglo-Saxon Law (to 1066)
Anglo-Saxon law didn’t come to an end with the coming of William of Normandy in 1066, but it was definitely changed. Norman law was based in feudalism and heavily influenced by the Church. Anglo-Saxon law had been developed over a long period of time and while influenced by Christianity in later centuries, was more egalitarian. It was based on a system of courts, the main one being the ‘hundred court’. “The hundred court met every four weeks, in the open if possible and usually at a prominent local landmark that gave its name to the hundred. The king’s reeve usually presided over the court. It had many functions, and was a mixture of parish council business meeting, planning enquiry, and magistrates’ court. . . Edward the Elder decreed that the hundred courts were to judge the worthiness of every law-suit and Read more…
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