Tag Archives: Tower of London

04/3/12

Llywelyn ap Gruffydd

Llywelyn was the last Prince of Wales, which any reader of my blog should know by now since I obsess about him.  But has anyone ever rendered him in crochet form before as has my daughter?  Behold!

Llywelyn ap Gruffydd was born somewhere around 1225 (amazingly, historians are sure of neither the date nor his true mother–although there are enough hints to conclude that it was Senana, his father’s wife).  He was the second son of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn.   Other sons were Owain, the eldest, Rhodri, who never made a claim for any power in Wales, and Dafydd, who was thirteen years younger.

When Llywelyn Fawr, the great Prince of Wales, died in 1240, he left two sons:  Gruffydd, who was the eldest but illegitimate and Dafydd, who was younger but born to Llywelyn Fawr’s lawful wife, Joanna, the illegitimate daughter of King John of England.  Although it was customary in Wales to divide an inheritance equally between all sons no matter on which side of the blanket they’d been born, Llywelyn Fawr instructed that only Dafydd would follow him as the Prince of Wales.  This decree was supported by King Henry of England, who was the ruler at the time, and the Church, whose aim was discourage the production of by-blows.  This law was not the only conflict between Welsh tradition and the Catholic Church, although one of the most contentious.

Gruffydd, quite naturally, objected to his disinheritance, and set about undermining Dafydd’s rule, in the great tradition of warring, Welsh nobility and brotherhood.  Dafydd retaliated by imprisoning Gruffydd and his eldest son, Owain, in one of his castles.  In a further attempt to undermine her brother-in-law, Gruffydd’s wife, Senana, went to King Henry, begging for her husband’s deliverance.

King Henry responded to her plea by offering Gruffydd’s entire family asylum in England.  When the family arrived, however, King Henry threw them into the Tower of London.  Consequently, Gruffydd’s young son, Dafydd, only three years old at the time, grew up in England.  He spent his days playing with Henry’s son, Edward (and the future king of England), was more fluent in French than Welsh, and hardly knew the lands he claimed to love, or the people in them.

Llywelyn was sixteen at this time.  Rather than follow his father and elder brother into captivity, he ran away to Aber Garth Celyn and his uncle’s court.  That single action set him apart from his brothers and ensured that he was at Garth Celyn, ready to take over, when his Uncle Dafydd died unexpectedly and without an heir in 1246.

Gruffydd, however, had already died first.  In 1244, while trying to escape the Tower of London, the rope he was using to scale down from his window broke.  By this time, Dafydd was six years old and Llywelyn nineteen.  Instead of returning to Wales, Senana made the fateful decision to stay in England, under the continued patronage of the kings of England, and keep her younger sons with her, leaving the field open for Llywelyn and his older brother Owain, with whom he established an uneasy truce.

For Llywelyn’s relationship with his youngest brother, Dafydd ap Gruffydd, see this post:  http://www.sarahwoodbury.com/?p=1007

Llywelyn ap Gruffydd died on 11 December 1282 in the region of Buellt, having left Gwynedd to pursue the war in the Marche.  See http://www.sarahwoodbury.com/?p=117 for the full story.

03/9/10

Senana, Mother of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd

Senana, by all appearances, had to have been quite a woman.  She was the daughter of Caradog ap Thomas ap Rhodri ap Owain Gwynedd, the great king of Gwynedd during the twelfth century.  Her husband was the illegitimate son of Llywelyn Fawr, the great Prince of Wales. 

Llywelyn Fawr ruled Wales with a strong hand, and as his death approached, he made a fateful choice:  that Dafydd, his legitimate son through his wife, Joanna, herself an illegitimate daughter of the King John of England,  would rule after him.  In so choosing, he put Wales on a course for inevitable conflict.

Llywelyn Fawr died in 1240 and Gruffydd immediately began agitating for his own power.  By 1241, Dafydd had imprisoned him in Criccieth Castle, along with his eldest son, Owain.  Senana pleaded first with Dafydd to free her husband and son, and when Dafydd refused to bend, went herself to Shrewsbury where King Henry of England was holding court, to ask him to intercede with Dafydd.  King Henry agreed.  What’s more, she got him to write up a charter dividing Gwynedd into two equal portions, one for Dafydd and one for Gruffydd, and thus indicating his proper patrimony.   

Senana then gathered her family together (all except Llywelyn who was free and at sixteen, an adult) and went with them to England. 

Unfortunately for her, King Henry immediately threw Gruffydd and Owain into the Tower of London.  On March 1, 1244, Gruffydd made a rope out of sheets and attempted to lower himself down from a high window. The sheets broke and Gruffydd fell to his death.

Senana, then, was left alone in England with Owain and her two younger sons, Dafydd and Rhodri.  At that point, she did not return to Wales, but stayed under the protection of the King of England, who still held Owain captive, although less confined then his father.  In so doing, she left Llywelyn alone in Wales beside Prince Dafydd, such that when he died unexpectedly and without an heir in 1246, Llywelyn alone was there to take the reins.  That is not to say she wasn’t proud of him for doing so.   He had carved some lands for himself out of what could have been his father’s.  The history books do not record her thoughts–it is only later, when Llywelyn refused to share power and lands with his brothers, that Senana fought for their rights against him.

Purportedly, Owain, was allowed to hotfoot it to Wales as soon as the news hit that his uncle was dead.  It served the English crown’s purposes to foster dissension among the Welsh royal brothers, but he’d lost six years–years in which Llywelyn had wooed supporters and proven himself a war leader.

And then, in 1252, when Dafydd was fourteen and now a man by the standards of Wales, Senana returned to Wales to try to help him establish his own lands.  At first Dafydd was under the tutelage of Llywelyn, but then Owain gifted him a small portion of land, which Llywelyn had not, thus uniting the two brothers against him.  This is the last mention of their mother in the historical records.

(Llywelyn ap Gruffydd.  J. Beverly Smith.  Cardiff:  University of Wales Press)