The Statute of Wales
King Edward I issued the Statute of Wales (sometimes referred to as the Statute of Rhuddlan) in 1284 as part of his program of subjugating Wales to English law. For Prince Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, and his people, being able to live under Welsh law had been a primary concern and one of the most compelling reasons to war with England. Edward, knowing this, saw to it that the Welsh laws were overthrown, and this act was not repealed for centuries. It was comprehensive and complete–the most comprehensive any King issued during the middle ages (Bowen 1908). To download your own copy: http://www.archive.org/details/statuteswales01bowegoog This site states: “At the Statute of Rhuddlan, 1284, Wales was divided up into English counties; the English court pattern set firmly in place, and for all intents and purposes, Wales ceased to exist as a political unit. Read more…
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…
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, Read more…
The First Welsh Parliament
The first Welsh parliament was established by Owain Glyndwr (Owain Glendower) in 1404 in Machynlleth, a small town on the northwest coast of Wales, not far from Harlech Castle, which was his seat. “In 1404, Glyndwr assembled a parliament of four men from every commot in Wales at Machynlleth, drawing up mutual recognition treaties with France and Spain.” http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~bowen/owainglyndwr.html The Owain Glyndwr Centre exists now on the site of the building where this was established and Owain was crowned Prince of Wales. http://www.canolfanglyndwr.org/ Background: “Glyndwr was a member of the dynasty of northern Powys and, on his mother’s side, descended from that of Deheubarth in the south. The family had fought for Llywelyn ap Gruffydd in the last war and regained their lands in north-east Wales only through a calculated association with the powerful Marcher lords of Chirk, Bromfield and Yale Read more…
St. David’s Cathedral
St. David, or Dewi Sant in Welsh, was one of the original saints of Wales in the 6th century, along with St. Kentigern and Gwenffrewi. St. David’s Cathedral has always been Norman, but it stands on the site of a monastery Dewi Sant founded around 500 AD. Like the other saints we talked about earlier in this season of videos, he was known for miracles, the most famous of which was the rising up of a hill on the spot where he was preaching. His symbol is the leek, which is why Welsh soldiers in the middle ages were known to go into battle with a leek pinned to their clothing and the leek remains a national symbol of Wales. Such was the renown of the monastic community, even hundreds of years after David’s death, that King Alfred is said 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…
Offa’s Dyke
? In 780 AD, King Offa of Mercia was at the height of his authority. Prior to his rule, in 750 AD, King Eliseg (immortalized by Eliseg’s Pillar near Llangollen) had swept the Saxons out of the plains of Powys. Offa, in turn, attacked Powys in 778 and 784, and tradition states that he built the dyke, sometime (or throughout) his reign. Prior to this, Aelthelbald, King of Mercia, had built ‘Wat’s Dyke’, which extends from the Severn Valley northwards towards the estuary of the Dee (A History of Wales, John Davies p. 62). There is a quote from George Borrow, from Wild Wales, that “it was customary for the English to cut off the ears of every Welshman who was found to the east of the dyke, and for the Welsh to hang every Englishman whom they found to Read more…
Caer Fawr (Iron Age Hill Fort)
Caer Fawr, or ‘The Great Fort’, is the scene of the final battle in The Pendragon’s Quest. It is an iron age hill fort with extensive fortifications, most of which are hidden now by vegetation. The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales did a study of Caer Fawr and if you’re interested in the topic, it’s worth downloading: http://www.rcahmw.gov.uk/LO/ENG/Publications/Electronic+Publications/Gaer+Fawr/ It “occupies a prominent hill 1.4 kilometres to the north of Guilsfield (Cegidfa) and 5.4 kilometres north of Welshpool in the old county of Montgomeryshire, now Powys. The topography of this area is dominated by the River Severn, 4.7 kilometres to the east (Fig. 2). The hills flanking its wide river plain rise gently to the west and more steeply to the east and are cut by the tributary rivers which feed the Severn. A series of Read more…
Ynys Mon (Anglesey) in the Dark and Middle Ages
Of all the places in north Wales/Gwynedd, the name for Ynys Mon was deliberately changed by the English/Norman invaders to Anglesey, but it belies the fact that Ynys Mon remains resolutely Welsh, with 7 out of 10 residents speaking Welsh. Because of its location, the populace suffered greatly over the millenia from foreign invaders, culminating with the wars of 1277 and 1282, when it was conquered as a stepping stone to Eryri, the stronghold of the Welsh princes. After this last war, Edward deliberately razed much that was Welsh to the ground, including Llanfaes Abbey, the gravesite of Princesses Joanna and Elinor and built Beaumaris over the top of it. In the process, hundreds of Welsh were ‘resettled’ elsewhere and English people brought in. “Ethnic cleansing is not a new concept. When Edward I reached Llanfaes, he forced all the Welsh Read more…
The Welsh Longbow
The Welsh employed the longbow long before any of their conquerors and used to great effect against their enemies for centuries. https://www.edinformatics.com/inventions_inventors/longbow.htm Bows and arrows have been around since Paleolithic times, with evidence of them as early as 8000-9000 BC in Germany. http://www.newarchaeology.com/articles/history_bow_and_arrows.php Kennewick man, the controversial skeleton found in the banks of the Columbia River inKennewick,Washington dates to roughly 7500 BC. A CT scan revealed a stone, projectile point embedded in his hip. Oetzi the Iceman was found with a quiver of arrows with flint heads and an unfinished yew longbow–taller than he was–in his pack. He dates to 3300 BC. A new find in Norway revealed 4500 year old bows and arrows that are very similar in form and function to those found in the Yukon dating to the same time period. The confirmed first use of the longbow was in 633 AD, in Read more…
The Wool Trade
Edward I was the first English monarch to tax the wool trade–to help pay, as always, for his wars. Sheep have been herded in Wales since possibly the Celts, though it is difficult to pinpoint exactly when sheep first came to Wales. “Excavations show that in about 6000 BC, during the Neolithic period of prehistory, the Castelnovien people, living around Chateauneuf-les-Martigues near present-day Marseille in the south of France, were among the first in Europe to keep domestic sheep. Practically from its inception, ancient Greek civilization relied on sheep as primary livestock, and were even said to name individual animals. Scandinavian sheep of a type seen today — with short tails and multi-colored fleece — were also present early on. Later, the Roman Empire kept sheep on a wide scale, and the Romans were an important agent in the spread Read more…
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