Medieval Welsh Armor
Whether or not Welsh wore armor into battle has come up today because a reader of my books reported an ‘error’ in Daughter of Time saying that her ‘reading of history says that the Welsh didn’t wear armor in the Middle Ages’. That simply isn’t true. They did. After I cooled down about the inherent prejudice that comment reflects, I decided a blog post was in order to address the matter. Basically, history is written by the victors, and the English were particularly good at propaganda at a very early point. King Edward I knew very well what he was doing when he plundered Welsh records, took Welsh iconography as his own, and put himself in the lineage of King Arthur (who was, without a doubt, Welsh). Depictions of Welsh people in the Middle Ages are few and far between, Read more…
Medieval Planned Communities
When Edward I conquered Wales, he did more than build castles. He also built townships. These were villages associated with one of his castles. In most cases, he imported English people to live in them, ousting the native Welsh. Caernarfon, Rhuddlan, Conwy, Flint, Harlech and Beaumaris were among these combined castles/villages. “The strategy of building Welsh Medieval Castles was combined with King Edward’s ambition to build and integrate fortified towns with the great castles. These purpose-built townships were designed to predominantly house the English conquerors. The towns were defended by the city walls and, of course, the castles. The Constable of the castle would often perform a dual role as Mayor of the town. Not only did the English have control over the local Welsh population they also had control of commerce and finance. The townships were established as trading Read more…
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 Read more…
King Edward I of England
King Edward is often viewed by historians as a strong king–one of the strongest, in fact. The people he conquered might not argue with that–only in equating ‘strong’ with ‘good’. He had many accomplishments during his reign that are viewed as beneficial to England–which from a certain perspective is true. One could argue (and I do) that conquering other peoples, while bringing in wealth in the short term, does long-term damage not only to the oppressed but the oppressor. 1239: born 17 June 1254: married Eleanor of Castille (he was 15, she 9) 1265: Defeated Simon de Montfort at the Battle of Evesham 1270: Joined the 9th crusade to the Holy Land 1274: Returned to England to take up the throne (Henry III, his father, had died in 1272) 1275-1290: Codified existing statues into a more cohesive system of law, Read more…
Carew Castle
Carew Castle, located on the Caeriw River in Pembrokeshire, southwest Wales, is one of the few castles that displays architecture from the Norman period through the Elizabethan, with archaeological evidence showing indications of settlement dating back 2000 years. The name ‘Carew’, Caeriw in Welsh, is an anglicized combination of, “caer” meaning fortress, and “rhiw” meaning hill–not that the area on which it stands is hilly: “Its position is low-lying, but still prominent in the flat land around the tidal reaches of the Carew river. The castle stands at the end of a ridge at a strategically excellent site commanding a crossing point of the then-still navigable river.” http://www.castlewales.com/carew.html The name also might come from ‘Caerau’, simply the plural, ‘forts’. Tradition states that the original castle was built by Gerald de Windsor, a Norman who came with Arnulph de Montgomery, the first Norman Earl Read more…
Medieval Forensics
Medieval forensics is a real thing, not just the stuff of modern detectives, and is of particular interest to me since I write medieval murder mysteries. In The Irish Bride, my latest medieval mystery, a monk is found dead within moments of Gwen and Gareth’s arrival in Ireland. As medieval detectives, how do they go about finding the killer? What can they possibly determine forensically without laboratories, fingerprints, and all the trappings of modern investigations? Medieval forensics was primitive, but there were some things a medieval detective could determine, including time of death, whether poison was involved, and whether the body was moved (thanks to another author, Jeri Westerson, for some of this information): Time of death: Rigor mortis—literally, “death stiffness,” happens very predictably. Beginning two hours after death and starting from the face and moving down the body, the Read more…
Roman Roads (Bwlch y Ddeufaen)
Roman roads crisscross Britain and for centuries were the best way to travel through the country. In an earlier post, I discussed the routes across the Welsh and English countryside during the Middle Ages. Many of these roads were based in the Roman roads, built between the 1st and 4th centuries AD. In Wales, the Romans built roads but also improved old ones, which wasn’t their normal operating procedure. It was forced upon them, however, because they found the land so inhospitable that it made it difficult for them to lay down their straight roads. The Roman roads lasted such a long time because the Roman legions who built them designed them to do exactly that. The Romans built over 53,000 miles of roads, intended to connect every corner of their empire ultimately with Rome. Britain, of course, was one Read more…
Betrayal in the Belfry of Bangor
“And there was effected the betrayal of Llywelyn in the belfry of Bangor by his own men.”—Brut y Tywysogyon, Peniarth manuscript 20. (Chronicle of the Princes) This comment is sandwiched between the description of the defeat of the English at the Menai Strait on November 6th, and the death of Llywelyn on December 11th. It is only found in the manuscript kept at the National Library of Wales, not the incomplete version at Oxford, which ends with the firing of Aberystwyth Castle on Palm Sunday (April, 1282). Here is the full record for the year 1282: “In this year Gruffydd ap Maredudd and Rhys Fychan ap Rhys ap Maelgwn took the castle and town of Aberystwyth. And Rhys gained possession of the cantref of Penweddig and Gruffydd the commot of Mefenydd. On Palm Sunday took place the breach between Llywelyn ap Gruffydd and Edward Read more…
Dafydd ap Gruffydd, Prince of Wales
Dafydd ap Gruffydd was the younger brother of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, the Prince of Wales who ruled portions of Wales, to a greater or lesser degree, since the death of his uncle (also named Dafydd) in 1246. The younger Dafydd was born in 1238, at least a decade after Llywelyn. This Dafydd spent the majority of his life in England, to which his family was forced to come when his father was imprisoned at the Tower of London by King Henry. At the time, Llywelyn had refused to leave Wales with the rest of his family, and thus was on the spot, so to speak, when his uncle Dafydd died. The family itself, however, was not imprisoned, and Dafydd grew up as a close companion to Prince Edward himself, a fact which could explain much of his later behavior. At that Read more…
Gruffydd ap Cynan, King of Gwynedd
One of the greatest kings of Gwynedd was Owain Gwynedd, but his father Gruffydd ap Cynan can equally lay stake to such a claim. His rule was certainly eventful. Gruffydd ruled in Wales on and off since he was a young man, in between his flights to Ireland when the English—or other Welsh barons—ousted him from Gwynedd. Gruffydd’s grandfather had been the King of Gwynedd once upon a time, and Gruffydd had claimed the throne as its lawful heir. But staking his claim hadn’t been easy. That first time, Gruffydd landed on Anglesey with an Irish and Danish, not Welsh, force. After he defeated Trahaearn, the man who’d usurped his throne, Gruffydd led his army eastwards to reclaim territories the Normans had taken over during the unrest. Despite the prior assistance given to him by the Norman, Robert of Rhuddlan, Read more…
The Battle of Cymerau
The fortunes of the Welsh ebbed and flowed in the 13th century, but between 1255 (the Battle of Bryn Derwin when Llywelyn defeated his brothers, Dafydd and Owain) and 1277, they were on the rise. One of the first important battles was that of Cymerau. In September of 1256, Stephen Bauzan, Prince Edward’s officer in south-west Wales, brought a substantial force of men to Ystrad Tywi, located in the northern portion of Deheubarth at the base of the Cambrian Mountains. Thus, on the eve of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd’s advance into Perfeddwlad, a force was arraigned against Maredudd ap Rhys Gryg, the Welsh lord of those lands. Llywelyn and Maredudd, eyeing each other with mutual concern about their own power and authority, struck an alliance, and perhaps this is the true impetus for Llywelyn’s foray east of the Conwy River. After Read more…
Owain Gwynedd’s birthday
When was Owain Gwynedd born? Here’s the truth: no idea. Okay, that’s not entirely true. Like Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, nobody seems to have recorded the date Owain Gwynedd was born, or even the year. This is fine as far as it goes, because we can make some general estimates. The problem arises when the birthdays for his many, many children haven’t been recorded either. Nor his siblings. Nor the dates of his marriages. My go-to-guide, John Davies History of Wales doesn’t discuss birthdays or ages, probably because he knows it’s fraught with difficulties, but many web sources try. For example, here’s one huge root of the problem, the Wikipedia entry, citing a book by John Edward Lloyd A history of Wales from the earliest times to the Edwardian conquest (Longmans, Green & Co.) written in 1911. This has Owain born c. 1100, Read more…
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