The Welsh Princes: The Native Rulers of Wales, 1063-1283

2005

Excerpt The period considered here begins with the death in 1063 or 1064 of Gruffudd ap Llywelyn, a prince of Gwynedd (northwest Wales), who had unified much of the country, but was killed by his own troops during a campaign against Earl Harold (later Harold II of England). This was, of course, almost immediately followed by the Norman Conquest of England, which reached into Gwent and Morgannwg (southeast Wales) by 1072. As Roger Turvey points out, though, unlike William\u27s invasion of England in 1066, the \u27invasion\u27 of Wales was neither planned nor coordinated either by a king preoccupied in consolidating his victory over the Saxon-English or by Norman adventurers selfishly engaged in carving out for themselves pockets of Welsh territory (p. 42)

2003

Paul Remfry has taken as his field Medieval Military History of Wales and the Marches between 1066 and 1282 and is producing a series of booklets covering the families of this era and their castles. He is concentrating on the period from the Norman Conquest of England until the demise of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, the first and last recognised native Prince of Wales, the period containing the Norman incursions into Wales. He has carried out much painstaking research both in this country and in France. This has meant many hours spent in University Libraries in such disparate places as Aberystwyth, Birmingham, Manchester and Paris as well as the British Library and the National Library of Wales. It has also involved many visits for close examination of castle sites on both sides of the English Channel.

2016

In the thirteenth Century, what we now know as Wales was a patchwork of lands belonging to independent Welsh princes, lands conquered by Norman Marcher Lords and those appropriated by the English Crown. The Lord Rhys, Prince of Deheubarth, who died in 1197, had been successful in uniting that part of southern Wales not conquered and colonised by the Normans. The son of Gruffydd ap Rhys, a grandson of Tewdwr Mawr, his mother Gwenllian was killed in 1136, along with his brother Morgan, by the de Londres family in a stand-off at Kidwelly, where the battle site still commemorates her name. Following the death of the Lord Rhys, a great struggle broke out between his sons and grandsons, which division would be exploited fully by the Normans. Kidwelly would prove a flashpoint again in 1258. An attack on the town by LLywelyn ap Gruffydd (‘The Last’) was unsuccessfully rebuffed by Patrick de Chaworth. He was Norman Lord of Kidwelly, in the right of his wife, Hawys, last of the de Londres family. This followed the subjugation of the lands of Ystrad Tywi, by the native Welsh, who were enraged that the rightful lord, had sworn allegiance to the English Crown. Maredudd, Lord of Ystrad Tywi, was the son of Rhys Gryg (d 1233), one of the sons of the Lord Rhys, who had adopted a more conciliatory approach to the Norman English. Maredudd ap Rhys Gryg therefore sided with the English at Kidwelly, being wounded near the bridge, before repairing with the Normans to the garrison at Carmarthen, whence they had come. In 1253, King Henry III, of England, had sailed to Gascony , leaving his realm in the care of his son, Edward, his Queen and his brother, Richard of Cornwall, charging them to take care of his affairs whilst he is overseas with Nicholas FitzMartin , together with Walter Malefant. This visit would pave the way for the marriage of the future Edward I, with his queen, Eleanor of Castile, and Henry would settle early the responsibility for Wales on his son and heir.

Offa's Dyke Journal 4, 2022

This article examines how political relations between England and Wales evolved during the tenth and eleventh centuries. During this period, the newly enlarged English kingdom ruled by Alfred the Great’s descendants became more sophisticated and better able to exploit its inhabitants. At the same time, Wales came to be dominated by a smaller number of more powerful and wide-ranging kings. The combined effect of these changes was a move away from the complete domination over Wales sought by English kings of the earlier tenth century to a pattern of more sporadic intervention exercised through client lords active in the Anglo-Welsh borderlands.

in C. P. Lewis (ed.), Anglo-Norman Studies XXX (Boydell, Woodbridge, 2008), 1–18, 2008

Although Allen Brown did not write extensively about Wales, he was certain that the Normans had made a big difference to its history by inaugurating a conquest that was completed, some two centuries later, by Edward I. 1 Members of the Battle Conference, on its visit to Gregynog, about eight miles west of the motte of Hen Domen near Montgomery, 2 will hardly need persuasion that Norman conquest and settlement were significant in Wales. After all, in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries the Normans and their allies established control over a substantial swathe of the country, extending in an arc along its eastern borders and southern coast, and created marcher lordships that enjoyed extensive autonomy until the reign of Henry VIII. Yet precisely how much difference the Normans made is a matter for continuing debate. Now, I should explain at the outset that my aim is not to try and assess the nature and impact of Norman conquest and settlement in Wales. Rather, what follows will focus on how historians have viewed the place of the Normans in Welsh history, and especially how and how far these conquerors have been integrated into narratives of national history. In other words, this paper is essentially historiographical in its approach. True, Allen Brown was somewhat impatient of the efforts of previous scholars, who, he believed, had muddied the waters by their partisan stance in relation to the Norman conquest of England. Yet, as he clearly saw, his own work responded to those earlier interpretations and in turn contributed to continuing debates about the extent and significance of the Normans in English history. 3 Historiographical reflection is valuable, indeed inescapable, in any serious effort to offer new interpretations of a given subject. That, then, is one justification for my topic: by looking at the work of previous historians, we may gain a clearer understanding of the premises and frameworks underpinning more recent studies of the Norman impact on Wales. But there is more to the enterprise than that. While looking back to previous historians' work provides a background and context for the present state of the subject, it does not follow that we should adopt a Whiggish view that tends to deprecate earlier scholars for their lack of rigour or understanding in order to celebrate the allegedly higher standards of our own day. Instead, an investigation of earlier interpretations of the Normans' place in the history of 1 R. Allen Brown, The Normans, Woodbridge 1984, 5, 73, 153; idem, The Normans and the Norman Conquest, 2nd edn, Woodbridge 1985, 11, 226. I am grateful to all those at the Battle Conference who provided feedback on the lecture at Gregynog, to Neil Evans and J. Beverley Smith for their comments on a draft of the published version, and to Nancy Edwards for her encouragement and support. 2 Cf. Brown, Normans; Chibnall, Normans. Cf. also works which, while narrower in geographical scope, set Norman expansion in a wider context than that of the individual countries of

This thesis examines the origins of the March of Wales, specifically in the earldoms in Cheshire, Shropshire, and Herefordshire, William the Conqueror’s role in their creation, and the perceptions and politics surrounding his choices. Although the year 1066 stands out as a landmark year in history, the events of 1067 were equally as important to the development of post-Conquest England. This thesis will demonstrate how William the Conqueror adopted a defensive attitude toward securing his kingship in England, and that the rebellions of 1067 caused him to adopt certain reforms, which included the establishment of a border frontier between England and Wales. These new Marcher earldoms secured a frontier of defense and conquest that foreshadowed the creation of the Marcher lordships. Ultimately, the creations of William the Conqueror evolved over two centuries, as need arose, and served their function throughout the Conquest of Wales.

1993

THE editor of the largest calendared collection of Irish medieval records, The Calendar of Documents relating to Ireland, noted in the preface to the first volume, published in 1875, that the Irish material in the public records of England formed the largest category of all, with the exception of that for England itself. 1 This may seem surprising, especially to those now working on topics of historical research in Ireland, because the records are better known there for the lacunae in them, the result of many losses over the centuries, ranging from the small to the spectacularly large. 2 Yet, it does serve to emphasise the common provenance of many medieval records, and points to the potential for a similar quality of documentary evid!fnce in the Irish records, if only on a limited basis.

Britons in Anglo-Saxon England, 2009

The annals compiled about the year  by Thady Dowling, probably a native of Laois, contain a famous rhyming couplet commemorating the victory of the Anglo-Normans over the Irish at Baginbun in : 'At the creek of Baginbun / Ireland was lost and won'. The rhyme is regularly repeated in modern accounts of the twelfth-century invasion but rarely with Dowling's addendum, wherein he adds: 'Lost by the Irish and won by the Welsh'.  Dowling's annals were used, and the couplet reproduced, by the Shropshire-born historian Meredith Hanmer when he set about compiling a chronicle after his move to Ireland in the early s, and elsewhere in his chronicle Hanmer explains that 'the first conquerors in Henry the seconds times, that brake the ice into this land, were Welch men, whose names and seates to this day are fresh in memory'.  Generally, Hanmer refers to the early invaders as 'Britaines' and even has one of their leaders, Robert fitz Stephen (whose mother was the native Welsh noblewoman Nesta) addressing his troops 'in the Brittish tongue'.  Writing slightly earlier, the Dubliner Richard Stanihurst states of Ireland that 'the renowne of the Welsh name hath filled all the wayes and the woods of the land',  and it is no surprise that Edmund Campion, who wrote his History of Ireland while residing in the Stanihurst household in Dublin in , should likewise refer to the invaders as 'the Welch army'.  Seemingly, therefore, at some point the perception had emerged that the invasion we normally ascribe to the English or the Normans or the Anglo-Normans -our much-esteemed honorand prefers Anglo-French  -was partly, if not primarily, a native Welsh affair.