First, however, as with Ireland, we have to trace briefly the story of a king who is clearly mythological rather than real, although mediaeval Christian scholars made great claims for his historical authenticity. This is Bran, the son of the British sea god Llyr. The name Bran means ‘Crow’ or ‘Raven*. In the vernacular literature he is just as frequently called Bendigeidfran, ‘Bran the Blessed*. Bran gave his sister Branwen in marriage to the Irish king Matholwch, but failed to obtain the consent of her half-brother Efnisien. During the wedding feast in Wales, Efnisien, slighted because his permission had not been sought, cut off the lips, ears and tails of Matholwch’s horses. By way of apology for Efnisien’s crime. Bran sent Matholwch a magic cauldron, which had the property that dead warriors put into it would emerge alive, although without the power of speech. Back in Ireland, Branwen was cruelly treated by Matholwch. Although she had borne him a son, Gwern, she was forced to work as a scullery maid in the kitchens. To rescue his sister from this insulting treatment. Bran raised a great army and sailed to Ireland, and there was great bloodshed on both sides. Bran returned with only seven survivors. On the journey. Bran himself died of an infected wound. He told his companions to cut off his head, which they did. The head miraculously remained fresh and alive, speaking to them. The group was later called the Assembly of the Wondrous Head. Bran warned his companions that they must never turn to look towards Cornwall, but, after many years of peaceful company together (which to them had seemed like only hours), one of the companions forgot, and the head began to die also. Bran ordered his men to bury his head beneath White Hill in London (where the Tower of London now stands), from where he would always offer protection. (The ravens at the Tower are a token of Bran’s continued presence.)
Although the legend may be no more than that, the historical events of the second, third and fourth centuries certainly supply the necessary background: there were, indeed, frequent raids from Ireland against Wales, and no doubt some retaliatory expeditions from Wales to Ireland. The burial of the head in London presupposes that Bran was the ruler of all Britain, or at least the southern part of the island, but there is no classical evidence of any such figure, and archaeological evidence would be very difficult to assign to a particular individual. According to the legend. Bran’s son was Caradawg or Caradoc, who was overthrown by Caswallon. The historical Caradoc, or Caratacus, described in Chapter Seven (see pages 148-149), may have given his name to the legendary prince.
Cunedda, mentioned above, is supposed to have left Manaw Gododdin in the early fifth century and founded the northern dynasty of Gwynedd. The early manuscripts often refer to ‘three royal tribes’ of Wales, and these are generally held to be represented by the northern dynasties of Gwynedd and Powys, and the larger but more amorphous southern kingdom of Deheubarth. Giraldus Cambrensis tells us that the kingdoms were agreed by three sons of Rhodri Mawr in the ninth century, but there are at least four hundred years and perhaps twelve generations between Maelgwn Fawr, first recognized king of Gwynedd, and Rhodri Mawr.
The name Deheubarth, for the southern kingdoms, is derived from Latin dextralis pars, literally ‘the right-hand part’. A Celtic term Gtvyr y Gogledd, literally ‘men of the left-hand’, came to signify the north of Wales generally, a meaning retained to this day. The pattern was of small, tribal kingdoms, similar to those in Strathclyde, Manaw Gododdin, Cumbria, and earlier in Gaul and in Britain generally - the ancient and original Celtic pattern of royal tribe, sept and clan. Some of these little kingdoms survived independently for a remarkably long time while the great marches of history went on all around them. The unification of Wales does not begin to show any real signs of achievement until the time of Merfyn Vrych and his son Rhodri Mawr in the ninth century, and the great Hywel Dda (‘the Good’) in the tenth century, and even then there were some small kingdoms which could claim an independent history of half a millennium.
The kingdom of Powys developed independently, its tribal base being the
Powerful Comovii (literally ‘horned people*) whose territory had included the valleys of the Severn and the Dee from pre-Roman times. The kingdom probably took its name from the Latin pagus (‘country district’, origin of the word pagan). By the early Middle Ages the tiny kingdoms of Builth and Gwrthrynion on the upper Wye River had become part of Powys. Gwrthrynion is derived from Gwrtheyrn, which is a later variant of the name Vortigern. King Fernmail, who reigned in Builth c. AD 930, the same time Nynniaw or Nennius was writing his chronicles, claimed uninterrupted descent from Vortigern.
Between Gwynedd and Powys lay the smaller kingdoms of Meirionnydd, Penllyn and Edeirnion. In the southeast, where the Roman influence had been strongest, there were several small kingdoms, among them the royal house of Gwent, which took its name from the garrison of Caerwent. Dyfed, which had been settled by Irish immigrants, as attested by its many stones inscribed in Ogham, continued to attract further Irish immigration after the Roman departure, and remained separate in language (Q-Celtic as opposed to P-Celtic; see page 10) as well as in custom. Both Dyfed in the southwest and tiny Brecknock in the south retained their independence from the fifth century to the tenth century.
The other early southern kingdoms, including Ystrad Tywi, Gwyr (Gower) and Brycheiniog, also went their own ways. Morgannwg (Glamorgan), which remained a separate kingdom until the eve of the Norman Conquest, developed from its strong Roman traditions a long Christian tradition and included, as well as the old Roman fortified cities of Cardiff, Caerleon and Caerwent (within the smaller kingdom of Gwent), the important monastic centres of Llancarfan, Llandaff and Llanilltud.
We know that the critical period, during which not only was Wales forming, but also the Gaelic north was turning into the beginnings of Scotland and the Germanic east was turning into the beginnings of England, was from about AD 400 to 600. Unfortunately, this is a period for which reliable historical evidence is thin on the ground, which has made it a favourite arena for historical controversy and point-scoring between professors. The monk Gildas wrote De Excidio Britanniae (‘Concerning the Fall of Britain’) in about 540, but this is a crabby work, filled with polemic, written in dense and verbose Latin, and riddled with sometimes confusing biblical quotations. The earliest of the saints’ lives. The Life of St. Samson, was probably written during or soon after the period, but it is obviously limited in scope. The poems of Taliesin and Aneirin, not found in manuscript until after 1250, were probably composed about 600, but, as was noted above, it is highly probable that both poets were originally inhabitants of what is now southeastern Scotland rather than Wales. Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English, which is a magnificent work, appeared about 730, but Bede was deeply prejudiced against the Welsh. It was only much later that the Welsh genealogies seemed of any importance, so that much of the reconstruction of the earliest Welsh kingdoms was based on late evidence and therefore speculative. The Annales Cambriae, on which we largely rely for what little evidence there is, were probably written around 960 at the request of Owain ap Hywel Dda. A further complicating factor is that the early mediaeval Welsh chroniclers, often anxious to generate genealogies and pedigrees to support claims of inheritance, filled in the gaps with invented kings, usually deriving their names from place names, like Meirion or Marianus from Meirionnydd, Ceredig from Ceredigion, Edeyrn or Aeternus from Edeyrnion, and so on. As with Geoffrey of Monmouth’s interpolations of fictitious names, the effect is pernicious: all the names become suspea.
We have already looked at the story of Vortigern (Chapter Six), whose period of greatest influence was c.420 to 450. In the Welsh form of his name, Gwrtheyrn, he is noted in the early genealogies as an ancestor of the kings of Powys, although later Welsh chroniclers were less keen to grant him that status because of the poor reputation he acquired after the disastrous invitation to Hengist and Horsa. In the power vacuum left behind after the Romans, it is probable that petty kingdoms were the rule. Welsh has the word rhi as a cognate for the Irish ri or righ (‘king’), but the early Welsh also used the word brenin, which seems to have denoted more specifically a petty or tribal king, and in modern Welsh all the vocabulary surrounding royalty, such as bren-hinfainc (‘throne’), brenhindod (‘royalty’), brenhinaidd (‘regal’), etc., is clearly derived from the latter term.
After Vortigern, the first figure of note is Maglocunus, properly Maelgwn ap Cadwallon Llaw Hir (‘of the Long Hand’), known in Welsh tradition as Maelgwn Fawr (‘the Great’) or Maelgwn Gwynedd. He cannot be thought of as a true King of Wales, since his sphere of influence was originally confined to Gwynedd. His seat was the fort at Degannwy, where archaeological excavation has revealed evidence of imported goods from as far abroad as southern France, Athens and the Black Sea.
Maelgwn, much like Arthur, was later glorified as the epitome of the warrior-hero king, but, as with Arthur, the reality of his life is very difficult to ascertain. His seat was at Aberffraw, on the southwestern shore of the island of Anglesey, facing Caernarfon Bay. Maelgwn is reported to have died of the great Egyptian plague in 549, which would make him a contemporary of Arthur (assuming that both of them actually existed). There is evidence that some of the legal concepts in the early law books can be traced back to Maelgwn*s time and influence. He was a man of culture, who had minstrels and poets at his court. In the same way that later kings of Britain felt the need to trace their ancestry back to Arthur, so also did later Welsh kings and princes feel the need to show their descent from Rhodri Mawr, and, through him, all the way back to the great Maelgwn. For example, when Llywelyn called an assembly to receive the homage of lesser kings of Deheubarth in 1216, he chose Aberdyfi as the meeting place because, reputedly, it was at Aberdyfi that Maelgwn Fawr’s kingship had been acknowledged seven centuries earlier.
Between 550 and 650, the English (whom the Welsh called Saeson or Saxons) took control of most of southern Britain. They captured Salisbury in 552, and Aylesbury in 571. As noted in the previous chapter, the Battle of Deorham or Dyrham in 577, at which the English killed three British kings and captured Bath, Cirencester and Gloucester, marked the point at which the Celts north of the Severn were separated from their countrymen to the south and west, so that the Cornish and Welsh languages began to develop separately from that date onwards. The ancient Celtic kingdom of Dumnonia (modern Cornwall, Devon and parts of Somerset) continued to survive for some time, however. There was a Celtic king in Devon as late as 710, and the latest reference to a Celtic king in Cornwall is not until 878. Even though Cornwall was formally absorbed into the kingdom of Wessex in 950, it remained Celtic-speaking for at least six more centuries, and Celtic in culture and spirit for three centuries more, and is considered by its staunchest supporters (myself included) a Celtic nation to this very day.
The dynasty of Maelgwn was Christian, and the church of Llangadwaladr (‘Cadwaladr’s monastery’), which still stands near Aberffraw, houses a Latin inscription to King Cadfan, a close descendant of Maelgwn: Catamanus Rex sapientissimus opinatissimus omnium regum (‘King Cadfan, the wisest and the most famous of all kings’). In 633 Cadfan’s son, Catguollaun or Cadwallon II, killed Edwin I of Northumbria, the first English king to invade Wales, and went on to kill Edwin’s successors, Osric of Deira and Eanfrith of Bernicia. Cadwallon pursued the defeated Northumbrians northwards, but was himself killed in battle in 634.
The last English kingdom to develop was Mercia, which was most powerful from about 640 to 800. It was the expansion to the west of Mercia, England’s midland kingdom, which effectively defined the eastern border of Powys and hence, eventually, of Wales. The capital city of Powys, Pengwern, was captured and destroyed by the Saxons in 642, a loss commemorated in elegiac Welsh poems written about two hundred years later. The Welsh (strictly speaking, we should rather say the Celts of Powys at this time) made consistent and determined efforts to reclaim their ancient territories until, probably some time between AD 780 and 796, King Offa of Mercia built a series of fortified earthworks collectively known ever since as Offa’s Dyke (meaning ‘ditch’). The dyke is actually a few miles longer than the much more famous Hadrian’s Wall, although it is visually far less impressive. It was clearly intended more as a border than as a fortification. It was built of earth rather than stone, it was not regularly garrisoned, and there were several gaps where either dense forest or the winding River Severn served the purpose of demarcating the border sufficiently. The remains are still unbroken from Treuddyn in Flintshire to the River Arrow in Radnorshire. South of the Arrow the dyke disappears, but traces reappear between Monmouth and the Severn Estuary, where it reaches the coast in the Beachley peninsula. It has been suggested that the dyke was constructed with the collaboration of some of the kings of Powys and Gwent. For example, the course taken at Rhiwabon appears to have been designed to leave Cadell ap Brochwel, King of Powys, in possession of his fortress at Penygardden. Gwent, in particular, appears to have cut some kind of special deal with Offa, since the dyke deliberately veers east of the natural boundary of the Wye valley, and the continuation down into the Beachley peninsula appears to have been intended to allow the people of Gwent continued access to their traditional harbours on the estuary.
Offa was killed at the Battle of Rhuddlan in 796. Although his dyke remained unfinished, it effectively marked the eastern border of the territory which was eventually to become known as Wales. By this time, the Welsh language was distinctively Welsh, and no longer Brythonic. One of the significant changes (which, incidentally, also happened in English) was the loss of grammatical terminations, like the Latin -«5, -«m, - i, - o, and so on, which formerly indicated whether the word was in the nominative, accusative, genitive or dative case. As a result, Roman name forms like Maglocunus or Caratacus began to appear as Maelgwn or Caradoc. (A further complication is that these names became and remained popular for generation after generation, so that not only are there countless instances of the names Williams or Jones or Davies in a modern Welsh telephone book, there are also dozens if not scores of Maelgwns and Llewelyns and Cadells and Gruffudds (Griffiths) in the royal genealogies, so that telling one from another is very difficult: like Jones the Post or Williams the Bread, we have to start talking about Gruffudd ap (‘son oP) Rhys of Deheubarth as opposed to Gruffudd ap Rhys of the House of Gwynllwg, whose grandfather was Gruffudd ap Ifor Bach.)
About fifty years after Offa’s death appeared the first king who might be thought of as a Welsh king rather than a Brythonic king. He was a direct descendant of Maelgwn Fawr, and he was called Rhodri, later honoured with the title Rhodri Mawr (‘the Great’). Rhodri acquired his title, status, and a kingdom which stretched from Anglesey in the far north to Gwyer or Gower in the far south through a very complicated series of marriages and inheritances which brought the great houses of Gwynedd, Powys and Seisyllwg (formerly Ceredigion and Ystrad Tywi) into one blood line. One of his ancestors was Coel Hen, a dynastic king of the north known better in later folklore as Old King Cole. Rhodri’s father was Merfyn, King of Gwynedd. His mother was Nest, of the house of Powys. His wife was Angharad of the house of Seisyllwg. Rhodri acquired all three kingdoms in succession: Gwynedd when his father, Merfyn, died in 844; Powys when his uncle, Cyngen, died in 855; and Seisyllwg when his brother-in-law, Gwgon, died in 871. But Rhodri became known as Rhodri Mawr not only because he ruled a greater geographical territory than any Welsh king before him, but also because he was a mighty warrior against the Northmen, as Brian Boru was to become in Ireland a century later. In 856, Rhodri secured a great victory over the Danes, defeating their leader, Horn, and recovering possession of the island of Anglesey, which had for a thousand years been thought of as a central seat of Celtic druidism. It was a symbolic victory, which gave great delight to the Irish and to the Franks, but also did much to restore the Celtic spirit of the Romanized Britons who were now rapidly becoming the Welsh. Rhodri had battles with the English, too, particularly in Powys. As the English kingdom of Mercia declined, the English kingdom of Wessex (‘of the West Saxons’) grew rapidly in power and influence and began making inroads into Powys. Rhodri Mawr and his son, Gwriad, died in battle against the West Saxons in 877.
His immediate successor was his son, Cadell, but it was his grandson, Hywel, who achieved far greater power and recognition than even his grandfather had achieved. Because of the difficulty with names mentioned a few
Paragraphs ago, it is worth being a little more deliberate about which Hywel we are discussing here: this was Hywel ap Cadell ap Rhodri, most commonly known as Hywel Dda (‘the Good*). Hywel was King of Seisyllwg. His wife was Elen, sister of Llywarch ap Hyfaidd, King of Dyfed. When Llywarch died in 904 (killed by order of Hywel, according to some commentators), Hywel became King of Dyfed as well as of Seisyllwg. It appears that he also became King of Brycheiniog at the same time. It was this group of southern kingdoms which afterwards came to be known collectively as Deheubarth. The King of Gwynedd and Powys at this time (about 930) was a relative of Hywel’s, another grandson of Rhodri Mawr, namely Idwal ab Anarawd ap Rhodri. In 942, Gwynedd, Powys and Deheubarth were united under Hywel’s rule, and for the first time we have a king whom we might justifiably call King of Wales. The only piece missing from the jigsaw puzzle was Gwent and Morgannwg (Glamorgan) in the southeast. The kings of Glamorgan were also descended from Rhodri Mawr through his daughter. Nest.
Hywel acquired his epithet ‘the Good’ principally because of his association with the early establishment of law in Wales, rather than because of any outstanding personal qualities. In 928 he made a pilgrimage to Rome, where, so legend has it, he took copies of his laws to be blessed by the Pope. He also spent a good deal of time at the English court. Hywel’s codification came to be known as the Law of Wales, and the site of its first promulgation is traditionally given as Whitland, close to the border between Dyfed and Seisyllwg. Although the earliest surviving manuscript (written about 1230, copied from a text compiled about 1175) is written in Latin, the original language of the Law (and of most of the surviving copies) was Welsh. Amendments, explanations and case examples were constantly added and incorporated into the texts over the course of many years, so that Hywel’s Law continued to exercise a very great influence long after he was dead. Although there is not space here to describe the Law of Wales in detail, one part of it is worth special mention: unlike canon law, which did not allow for dissolution of marriage, the Law of Wales recognized nine different forms of marriage union, and also gave detailed guidance on inheritance and distribution of property if the marriage came to an end. In that respect, at least, Hywel’s Law seems to be much closer to an earlier, Celtic model than to Roman or Christian law.
When Hywel died in 950, the ancient division between north and south reopened. His son Owain succeeded him as King of Deheubarth, but Gwynedd and Powys returned to the line of Idwal ab Anarawd. In the next generation after Owain, his sons Einon and Maredudd (Meredith) were both kings. From 986 to 999, Maredudd ab Owain rebuilt and restored his grandfather’s original kingdom, or at least approximately the same territorial hegemony, but his was a troubled reign. The Vikings had established firm strongholds in Dublin and the Isle of Man by now, and from them they launched attack after attack on Wales, particularly on the coastal settlements, many of which to this day bear names which are of Nordic rather than Celtic origin, such as Anglesey, Bardsey, Caldey, Fishguard and Swansea. Nordic marauders invaded Anglesey in 987 and captured over two thousand of its inhabitants to be sold into slavery. In 989, Maredudd raised a penny poll-tax to generate money with which to bribe the Northmen to stay away, but their raids continued unabated. In 999, they attacked St. David’s and murdered Morgenau, the bishop.
At the turn of the millennium, there was no clear pattern of identity or unification in Wales, and it was not until the advent of Gruffudd ap Llywelyn, who ruled from 1039 to 1063, that a united kingdom of Wales, this time including Morgannwg in the southeast, emerged. Indeed, Gruffudd was the only Welsh king ever to rule over the entire territory of Wales. Gruffudd’s lineage, not surprisingly in this rat’s nest of tiny kingdoms within larger dynastic houses, is complicated. As his name tells us, his father was Llywelyn. This Llywelyn was Llywelyn ap Seisyllt, who had married Angharad, daughter of Maredudd ab Owain. So, through marriage, Gruffudd could claim Maredudd as his grandfather and, through him, descent all the way back to Hywel Dda and Rhodri Mawr. Gruffudd seized the throne of Gwynedd and Powys in 1039 by killing lago ab Idwal, great-grandson of Idwal ab Anarawd. He fought for control of Deheubarth with Gruffudd ap Rhydderch ap lestyn, whom he finally defeated in 1055. In 1056 or 1057, he seized Glamorgan and drove out its king, Cadwgan ap Meurig. So, for a period of about seven years, from 1057 until Gruffudd’s death in 1063, Wales was, for the first and only time, a single kingdom ruled by a single king. Gruffudd was undoubtedly a brutal leader and a man of intense personal ambition. Not only did he consolidate the Welsh kingdoms, he also launched attacks against the English, notably defeating Leofric, earl of Mercia, in 1039, and, in alliance with Leofric’s son, Aelfgar, burning Hereford and seizing for Welsh repossession many of the borderland territories which had been in English control for two or three centuries. Harold, earl of Wessex and later King of England, seeking revenge for these attacks, pursued Gruffudd in a series of battles, and eventually Gruffudd was killed somewhere in Snowdonia in the high summer of 1063 - by his own men, according to some reports.
After Gruffudd’s death, Wales reverted to its traditional pattern of disunity, with the three large kingdoms of Gwynedd and Powys in the north and centre and Deheubarth in the south. King Harold of England left the Welsh comparatively unmolested, so long as they remained disunited. Gwynedd came first into the possession of a boy-king, another Gruffudd, of Irish-Norse descent, and then Gwynedd and Powys fell to Bleddyn and Rhiwallon, the half-brothers of Gruffudd ap Llywelyn. Deheubarth fell to Maredudd ab Owain. Gwent and Gwynllwg were seized by Caradog, the son of Gruffudd ap Rhydderch. The rest of Glamorgan reverted to Cadwgan ap Meurig. Then, in 1066, three years after Gruffudd’s death in Snowdonia, William of Normandy landed at Hastings, defeated and killed King Harold, and introduced Norman rule to Britain.
The Normans treated Scotland with far greater respect than they did Wales, although they readily recognized the cultural and historical identities of both nations. They despised the Saxon English, whom they rapidly reduced to servile status. For a while, they maintained much more courtly relations with the Welsh, and there were several significant alliances by marriage between Welsh and Norman houses. In particular, largely because of their own long literary traditions and love of troubadours, the Normans had a great deal of respect for Welsh language and literature, especially Welsh poetry. They were also deeply impressed by the long tradition of secular law in Wales, that had begun all the way back with Hywel Dda.
Soon, however; the pettiness of the Welsh kings and their sporadic ambitions came into direct conflict with the Norman ideal of a settled, regulated state with feudal responsibilities and roles clearly established. From 1066 to 1081, William merely watched from the sidelines while various Welsh kings took turns in killing each other, seizing petty kingdoms, and then themselves being killed. In 1081, however, two stronger leaders emerged from the carnage: these were Gruffudd ap Cynan of the House of Gwynedd, and Rhys ap Tewdwr of the House of Deheubarth. William sent a group of barons to take control of the borders: his kinsman William Fitzosbern to Hereford, Roger de Montgomery to Shrewsbury, and Hugh le Gros (‘the Fat’) of Avranches to Chester. By 1086, there were Norman castles at Caerleon, Chepstow and Monmouth. Hugh the Fat captured Gruffudd ap Cynan and imprisoned him for twelve years. The Domesday Book records that Rhys ap Tewdwr paid William an annual tribute of ?40.
When William died in 1087, his second son, William Rufus, became King of England. The border barons took advantage of his weakness to press further into Wales, seizing territory as they went. In 1093, Rhys ap Tewdwr was killed trying to resist Bernard of Neufmarche. Brycheiniog, Penfro and Glamorgan all fell to the barons. In the south, they pressed their advantage all the way west to Dyfed: Pembroke Castle, one of the most outstanding of the Norman fortifications, was built during this period.
For the next five hundred years or so, the pattern continued of a ‘buffer zone’ between the Celts of true Wales and the Anglo-Normans or English. The zone, which changed frequently, came to be known as the Welsh Marches, and the earls who maintained their castles and households there came to be known as the Marcher Lords, or the earls of March. There were similar Scottish Marches. The Welsh earls of March were descended from Roger de Mortemer. His son Ralph figures largely in the Domesday Book as the holder of huge estates in Shropshire and Herefordshire. His grandson Hugh, who spelled his name de Mortimer, founded the priory of Wigmore in Herefordshire. Roger de Mortimer (1286-1330), the 8th earl, was knighted by Edward I and appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland by Edward II in 1316. Another Roger de Mortimer (1374-1398), 4th earl of March and Ulster, was also appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, at the tender age of 7. The earldom of March eventually became merged in the crown of England, when
Edmund de Mortimer, 5th earl of March and Ulster, died in 1425 without issue. These Marcher Lords established separate rights and privileges for themselves which, ironically, later helped maintain the separation between England and Wales.
The royal Welsh houses in inner Wales, the true Wales inside the Marches, continued to exist until about 1400, with their complex separate genealogies and confusing names. The House of Powys, for example, produced a succession of kings called either Madog or Gruffudd over a period of about two centuries. The House of Deheubarth produced a series of kings called either Maelgwn or Rhys, with a couple of Owains and Maredudds, a Llywelyn and a Thomas. The House of Gwynedd also had Llywelyns, Maredudds and Gruffudds, another Thomas, a few Owains and Cynans, and a Rhodri.
From two of these houses was descended the last of the great Welsh warrior kings, the last Welsh hero of the ancient type, Owain Glyn Dwr, often Anglicized as Owen Glendower. Glyn Dwr’s mother was Elen or Helen, daughter of Thomas, descended from the Lord Rhys of the House of Deheubarth. His father was Gruffudd Fychan II, son of Madog, of the House of Powys. Through both parents, therefore, he could claim descent from the ancient Welsh kings. Glyn Dwr was born about 1359, probably at his father’s estate of Glyndyrdwy in Merioneth. He was sent to Westminster to study law, and for a short while was squire to the earl of Arundel. The greatest title that anyone at the English court would ever deign to give to a Welsh king like Glyn Dwr would be ‘prince’, but even that would be hard to come by, so it is not all that peculiar to see someone who would be called ‘king’ in Wales (especially with a pedigree as immaculate as Glyn Dwr’s) called ‘squire’ or ‘seneschal’ or some such title in the English court. Glyn Dwr later joined the service of Henry of Bolingbroke, the future Henry IV.
The House of Glyndyrdwy had a longstanding feud with their English neighbours, the Greys of Ruthin. In 1400, Reginald Grey, following feudal custom, should have called Glyn Dwr to armed service in a court expedition against Scotland. Grey deliberately neglected to give Glyn Dwr that call, and then accused him of treason for failing to appear. Welsh sympathies had been on the side of Richard II, and therefore against Henry, so what was essentially a family quarrel now joined forces with a national trend, and Glyn Dwr found himself the champion of a Welsh rebellion against the English king. When Henry returned from Scotland in the September of 1400, he found north Wales in insurrectionary turmoil. He led an expedition into Wales in person, but the campaign was ineffectual. By the spring of 1401, Glyn Dwr was leading raids into southern Wales, so Henry mounted another expedition, which also ended in failure. During the winter of 1401-02, Glyn Dwr forged alliances with the Irish, the Scots and the French. He had powerful secret allies in the English court in the persons of Henry Percy (Hotspur) and Percy’s brother-in-law. Sir Edmund Mortimer. In the spring of 1402 he
Attacked Ruthin, taking Grey prisoner, which represented a sweet personal revenge as well as an important strategic victory for the Welsh. In the summer, he defeated the men of Hereford, who were under the command of Sir Edmund Mortimer. When tales of how kindly Mortimer was being treated as a prisoner got back to the English court, Henry began to realize the gravity and importance of the Welsh rebellion. Within months of being taken prisoner, Mortimer was released and married Glyn Dwr’s daughter. In the autumn of the same year, Henry was driven back a third time by Welsh forces. Glyn Dwr now openly declared himself King of Wales, established a government, and called a parliament of Welsh nobles at Machynlleth. The French, honouring their alliance, sent troops to his aid, and in 1404 he captured the important strategic castles of Harlech and Aberystwyth. He was within a hair’s breadth of restoring the kingdom of Wales, which had existed only once before, for those seven short years under Gruffudd ap Llywelyn, almost four centuries earlier.
In the spring of 1405, however, Henry’s fortunes at last improved. He recovered Aberystwyth in 1408, after a long siege. In February 1409, the English recaptured Harlech, and Glyn Dwr’s wife, children and grandchildren were taken prisoner. There is doubt about how Glyn Dwr himself came to his death. According to the Chronicle written by Adam of Usk, he died in 1415. According to Welsh legends, he used magical powers to remain in hiding from the English court, and lived a peaceful old age with his sons-in-law, eventually dying and being buried at Monington in Herefordshire.
Modern political debate about Wales has been about devolution, rather than independence, but for all those who discuss such questions, the name of Owain Glyn Dwr has acquired a special status. While Maelgwn, Rhodri Mawr and Gruffudd ap Llywelyn can be said to have achieved greater things, it is Owain Glyn Dwr who has become the Welsh national hero, revived and amplified in legend and folklore as the incarnation of the national Celtic spirit of Wales.
World History
