Llywelyn ap Iorwerth (Llywelyn Fawr)
Llywelyn Fawr was possibly the most renowned Welsh ruler of the medieval period. Upon the death of Owain Gwynedd in 1170 AD, his eldest son, Hywel, purportedly a most capable man, succeeded to the rulership of Gwynedd. In Wales, all sons, regardless of their legitimacy, can inherit, provided their father had acknowledged them. This should have been the case with Hywel. As I wrote in this post, the downside of this enlightened approach to illegitimacy is that it divided the kingdom between all the heirs and fostered animosity among brothers over their portion of their inheritance. Such was the case when Owain Gwynedd overcame his brothers to take the throne, such was the case many years later after the death of Llywelyn Fawr, and such was the case in 1170. Thus, Dafydd ap Owain Gywnedd conspired with his mother (Owain Gwynedd’s Read more…
Dolbadarn Castle
? Dolbadarn Castle is only 6 1/2 miles as the crow flies from the Menai Straits, and yet, the topography of the area is such that it was built by Llywelyn Fawr (Llywelyn the Great) to guard the mountain pass from Caernarfon to the upper Conwy Valley. ‘Its position at the tip of Llyn Padarn allowed the garrison to blockade anyone’s movement through that part of the north, then as now a main link to the rest of Wales. The military worth of the spot was evidently recognized as early as the 6th century but surviving masonry dates no earlier than the 1200’s.’ http://www.castlewales.com/dolbd.html Llywleyn Fawr built the castle in the early 13th century and it was one of the last defenses of Dafydd ap Gruffydd–Llywleyn Fawr’s grandson–in 1283 after Edward had defeated Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, Dafydd’s brother (Paul Davis, Castles Read more…
Aberffraw
Aberffraw was the seat of Rhodri Mawr, one of the great kings of Wales, in the early Middle Ages. Nothing of it remains–it seems to have shared a similar fate with Aber Garth Celyn upon the death of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd. We do have information that some of it lasted until 1316 when the last remaining timbers were stripped to repair Beaumaris (or Caerfarnon) Castle, both part of Edward’s ring of iron castles that he built after the conquest of Wales. My favorite Castles of Wales site doesn’t even have Aberffraw in its database because, quite literally, nothing of it remains. The book by Paul Davies, ‘Castles of the Welsh Princes’, states only: ” . . . a modern village sits on top of Aberffraw; the occasional discovery of richly-carved stones hints at the vanished splendour of the great court.” Read more…
Historiography of the Welsh Conquest
Thank you to Brynne Haug for the next installment of her essay on the conquest of Wales. While there has been some measure of historical debate on the benefits and detriments of the English conquest of Wales on the country itself, the majority of scholars have agreed that in terms of identity and culture, the conquest had a negative impact. Wales prior to 1282 was fiercely independent, its people pastoral and very much devoted to the land on which they lived. In the years that followed the conquest, however, Edward I, in an attempt to “civilize” the Welsh, built walled towns throughout Wales and brought English settlers to live in them. Thus, by the beginning of the fourteenth century, the Welsh—who were in theory entirely excluded from these English towns of privilege—were, in the words of R.R. Davies, “outsiders in Read more…
Bwlch y Ddeufaen
Bwlch y Ddeufaen is a pass along the ancient road from Caerhun to Aber. The topography of North Wales is such that no significant road could run along the coastline due to the cliffs that come right down to the Irish Sea. Thus, from ancient times, the people of Wales used a road that crossed the Conwy River at Caerhun and headed into the hills, reaching a pass marked by two standing stones on either side of the road. The road then descended out of the hills, arriving at Aber and was then able to follow the road west towards Bangor and Caernarvon. Even the Romans found the topography impossible and chose to improve the ancient British/Celtic road rather than build an entirely new one closer to the coast. 1000 years later, the Normans faced the same difficulties. It was Read more…
Gwynedd after 1282
After the Treaty of Aberconwy in 1277 AD, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd was reduced to lordship over a small area of land in Gwynedd, mostly west of the Conwy River. Over the course of the 1282 war, he took back much of what he’d lost. He was killed, however, on 11 December 1282, and all of Wales ultimately fell the forces of Edward I. The map at right shows: Green: Gwynedd, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd’s principality Blue: Territories of Dafydd ap Gruffydd Pink: Territories ceded forever to the English Crown This defeat of the native Welsh forces led by Llywelyn ap Gruffydd and then briefly after Llywelyn’s death by his brother, Dafydd, resulted in a much divided Wales. On the top of the hierarchy, instead of native rulers, were English (mostly) absentee landowners. Within the Marche and portions of southern Read more…
Did Europeans smoke in the Middle Ages?
The short answer to that question is ‘no’. Tobacco is a New World good, and thus, not available to Europe until after 1492. The native peoples of the Americas used tobacco primarily for ritual purposes. The longer answer is that ‘smoking’, though not as we understand it today (with tobacco), was a factor in cultures other than Europe, though even those never caught on much in Europe, even after the Crusades. From Wikipedia: The history of smoking dates back to as early as 5000 BC in shamanistic rituals.[2] Many ancient civilizations, such as the Babylonians, Indians and Chinese, burnt incense as a part of religious rituals, as did the Israelites and the later Catholic and Orthodox Christian churches. Smoking in the Americas probably had its origins in the incense-burning ceremonies of shamans but was later adopted for pleasure, or as a social tool.[3] The Read more…
Medieval Cursing
Contrary to what how we curse today, bodily functions were not the worst of the worst for medieval people when it came to swearing. Here is what Melissa Mohr, author of “Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing,” has to say: “generally, people of medieval England did not share our modern concept of obscenity, in which words for taboo functions possess a power in excess of their literal meaning and must be fenced off from polite conversation…Medieval people were, to us, strikingly unconcerned with the Shit.” People back then “did not have much of an issue with describing bodily functions in ways that we might find less appropriate. Going into a city you might find a street called ‘Shitwell Way’ or ‘Pissing Alley’. Open a school textbook for teaching children how to read and you might find the words arse, shit Read more…
Life Expectancy in the Middle Ages
What was the typical life expectancy in the Middle Ages? Life expectancy varied according to diet, climate, location, relative wealth, etc., but the answer is definitive: not as long as we do now. For starters, infants and children died at a horrific rate (some say up to 1/3 of all died before the age of 5) and a significant percentage of women died in association with childbirth: 5% perhaps from the birth itself, often dying with the child, and a further 15% from childbed fever–the infections that followed a poorly managed delivery (by our standards). Following that, if a person made it out of childhood, they could be expected to live into their middle forties, provided they maintained good health and weren’t killed in war. Both those, of course, are big ‘ifs’. Below is the recorded birth and death date for the adult royal Read more…
The Little Ice Age and the MWP
We all realize that temperature is not a constant. It’s hard enough to imagine what life was like in the Middle Ages, without adding in differences in temperature. As it turns out, many of my books falls directly into the ‘medieval warm period’ of 950 to 1250. “The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) is generally thought to have occurred from about AD 950–1250, during the European Middle Ages.[9] In 1965 Hubert Lamb, one of the first paleoclimatologists, published research based on data from botany, historical document research and meteorology combined with records indicating prevailing temperature and rainfall in England around 1200 and around 1600. He proposed that “Evidence has been accumulating in many fields of investigation pointing to a notably warm climate in many parts of the world, that lasted a few centuries around A.D. 1000–1200, and was followed by a decline of temperature levels till between Read more…
The Fallen Princess Available now!
The next Gareth and Gwen Medieval Mystery, The Fallen Princess, is now available at Amazon US and all Amazon stores, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, the Apple iBookstore and in paperback. If you haven’t read the first book in the series yet, it’s available for free everywhere: all Amazon stores Kobo Smashwords Apple iBookstore Barnes and Noble The Fallen Princess Hallowmas 1144. With the harvest festival approaching, Gareth has returned from fighting in the south, hoping for a few months of peace with Gwen before the birth of their first child. But when an innocent foray to the beach turns up the murdered body of Prince Hywel’s long lost cousin, a woman thought to have run away with a Dane five years earlier, it is Gareth and Gwen who are charged with discovering her killer. The trail has long since gone cold, or so Gareth and Gwen think, until their investigation threatens to expose dangerous Read more…
Houses and Nails
How long have we been using nails to hold pieces of wood together? The answer is … a long time. “Bronze nails, found in Egypt, have been dated 3400 BC. The Bible give us numerous references to nails, the most well known being the crucifixion of Christ. Of course we should not forget that model wife in Judges who in 1296 BC drove a nail into the temple of her husband while he was asleep, “so he died.”” http://www.fourshee.com/history_of_nails.htm “In the UK, early evidence of large scale nail making comes from Roman times 2000 years ago. Any sizeable Roman fortress would have its ‘fabrica‘ or workshop where the blacksmiths would fashion the metal items needed by the army. They left behind 7 tons of nails at the fortress of Inchtuthil in Perthshire. For nail making, iron ore was heated with carbon Read more…
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