Shifting views of the past
On a history forum I frequent, someone asked a question about why historians’ views of the past have changed over time, particularly in reference to the ‘Dark Ages’. My novels are set in ‘Dark Age’ and medieval Wales, and this is something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently. Dark Age Britain, as one example, was conquered first by the Romans, who delighted in contrasting their ‘civilized’ society with the barbarity of the native tribes. Next, the Saxons moved in, then the Normans who came in 1066. All of these conquering groups spouted continually about the brutish, uncivilized lives the native British people led (the Scots are included in this too). It’s not uncommon to have English media TODAY speak of the Welsh as some sort of less-than-civilized ‘other’ (I blogged about this here). Compare this to a similar situation: Native Read more…
Lord Rhys ap Gruffydd, King of Deheubarth
In my book, The Good Knight, the King of Deheubarth, Anarawd, dies in the opening chapter. This is in 1143 AD, and King Owain of Gwynedd rules Gwynedd–and much of the rest of Wales–with a strong hand. After Anarawd’s death, the rule of Deheubarth falls to his younger brother, Cadell. “Cadell’s career was effectively ended in 1151. When out hunting, he was attacked by a Norman force from Tenby, who left him assuming him to be dead. In fact he survived, but was so badly injured as to be unable to resume his activities. In 1153 he left on a pilgrimage to Rome, leaving the rule of Deheubarth to his younger brothers Maredudd and Rhys. Cadell is not heard of again until 1175, when he entered the abbey of Strata Florida after a long illness and died there.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadell_ap_Gruffydd The bastard son of Owain Gwynedd, Hywel, plays a key 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…
History of Paper
The history of paper covers thousands of years, just one of many formats in which people kept records. Medieval lords had castle accounts, right? On what were these written? Did they call them paper, or parchment? Were they made of dried skins, linen, paper? During the 8th century, Chinese papermaking spread to the Islamic world, where pulp mills and paper mills were used for papermaking and money making. By the 11th century, papermaking was brought to Europe. It was common enough by the 13th century for a decree from Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in 1221 to declare all official documents written on paper to be invalid! https://paper.gatech.edu/invention-paper-0 “Medieval paper was made from linen rags. It is much stronger and more durable than modern wood-pulp paper, and fifteenth-century scribes were wrong if they believed that it would not survive. Rag paper is manufactured as Read more…
The Wildwood — the lost forest of the UK
Imagine all of the UK covered in a thickly wooded landscape, much like portions of the western United States. I just spent the last 1/2 an hour looking up native plants in Wales, trying to come up with a couple that would have reliably flourished in Gwynedd in the 13th century. My sister-in-law is a botanist, and she agreed that agrimony and juniper would good choices. What has been difficult to determine, as with the Roman and ancient roads, is what the landscape looked like in the Middle Ages. England was mostly denuded of trees by then, but it is possible that wasn’t the case in Wales. So when we see these broad lanscapes in the uplands with no trees, was that what they looked like eight hundred years ago? How do we find that out? According to scientists, only 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…
Books in the Middle Ages
Books have been around as long as there has been writing–it’s just that in the past, they were less accessible, expensive, and rare. Many, many fewer people were literate, especially as we understand the word (see my post on literacy: https://sarahwoodbury.com/?p=1310). “Every stage in the creation of a medieval book required intensive labor, sometimes involving the collaboration of entire workshops. Parchment for the pages had to be made from the dried hides of animals, cut to size and sewn into quires; inks had to be mixed, pens prepared, and the pages ruled for lettering. A scribe copied the text from an established edition, and artists might then embellish it with illustrations, decorated initials, and ornament in the margins. The most lavish medieval books were bound in covers set with enamels, jewels, and ivory carvings.” Source: The Art of the Book Read more…
Medieval Life Expectancy: Muslim World verses Christian World
What was the life expectancy of those in the medieval Muslim world compared to Christian Europe? It is taken as given in this day and age that people living in Europe in the Middle Ages didn’t bathe much, if at all, had no real knowledge of science or medicine, and their high mortality rates were a consequence of this general ignorance. Neither of the these assertions are, in fact, true, but the average human life span in the Middle Ages was significantly lower than the modern one nonetheless. I have discussed this in several places on this blog. Here: https://sarahwoodbury.com/life-expectancy-in-the-middle-ages/ I discuss the life span of the royal house of Wales and the Marche. Eliminating individuals who died before adulthood completely from the equation, the mean life expectancy for women was 43.6 years, with a median of 42/43; for men, it was a mean Read more…
Arwystli
Today is a guest post from Brynne Haug, history major at Whitman College and co-conspirator in the study of all things Welsh. Thanks for stopping by! _________ Arwystli seems an insignificant place—just a small piece of land in the middle of Wales, bordering on the northern kingdoms of Gwynedd and Powys. But Arwystli became instrumental for Wales’s survival in the War of 1282. In February of 1278, when Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, prince of Gwynedd and Wales, faced down King Edward I of England, on the surface he asked only for Arwystli. Although Llywelyn had agreed to cede it to Gruffudd ap Gwenwynwyn, the lord of Powys, when Gruffudd swore fealty to him in 1263,[1] he later laid claim to it on the grounds that Gruffudd had given up his rights when he betrayed him to the English Read more…
Medieval Siege Weapons
Within the world of medieval warfare, there were multiple kinds of siege weapons: ballistas, battering rams, trebuchets, and catapults. ‘Catapult’ can be used as a more general term for all throwing siege weapons: “Catapults are siege engines using an arm to hurl a projectile a great distance. Any machine that hurls an object can be considered a catapult, but the term is generally understood to mean medieval siege weapons. The name is derived from the Greek ‘to hurl a missle’. Originally, “catapult” referred to a stone-thrower, while “ballista” referred to a dart-thrower, but the two terms swapped meaning sometime in the fourth century AD. Catapults were usually assembled at the site of a siege, and an army carried few or no pieces of it with them because wood was easily available on site. Catapults can be classified according to the Read more…
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