Читать книгу Royal Wales - Deborah Fisher - Страница 11
ОглавлениеEARLIEST DAYS
We cannot go back far enough in written history to find out much about the pre-Roman rulers of Wales. The earliest Welsh leader whose name we know is the man called Caradog by the Welsh and Caratacus by the Romans, and he did not originate from the region we now call Wales. A son of King Cunobelinos of the Catuvellauni, who ruled the area around Colchester, Caratacus fled westward before the Roman invaders, after the defeat of his own people, and joined forces with the Silures, the tribe native to south-east Wales. After a further defeat, he retreated north to ally himself with the Ordovices. The Iron Age earthwork at Llanymynech, known as Caer Caradoc, is traditionally believed to have been his stronghold, and there is no reason this should not be true.
With their new leader, the western tribes struggled to resist the might of the Roman army, but in AD 51 Caratacus was captured and taken to Rome. The Roman historian Tacitus, in book 12 of his Annals, records how the Emperor Claudius, impressed with the dignified manner of the Celtic leader, spared his life. In referring to the procession of captives and battle spoils, Tacitus uses the Latin adjective equivalent to ‘regal’, implying recognition of Caratacus as a king. Nevertheless, Cassius Dio, a later Roman writer, in his Epitome, puts these words into the mouth of the British leader as he is shown around the city of Rome: ‘How can you, who have such possessions and so many of them, covet our poor tents?’ Either Caratacus was playing down his own standard of living, or Tacitus was exaggerating his status so as to enhance the Roman achievement in defeating the Celts.
Whatever the truth, Caradog is a name which, from the earliest days of recorded history, has been associated with certain qualities: not merely courage and defiance, but the dignity and regal bearing associated with kings. Caratacus certainly did not make the magnificent speeches attributed to him by ancient historians; they wrote for a public who were as eager for drama and sensation as today’s readers, and they did not hesitate to invent suitably stirring speeches to add to their narrative. What presumably happened in real life is that the British leader somehow impressed his captors, either with words or deeds. The general impression conveyed to those who witnessed Caratacus’s visit to Rome (which did not include either Tacitus or Cassius Dio) was one of a man used to leading and commanding others and to being obeyed, a man who did not cower before the emperor.
These are the qualities for which Caratacus is remembered, and these are the qualities to which Welsh leaders aspired when they gave or took the name ‘Caradog’. Their eagerness to identify with him has sometimes led to confusion. For example, Caradog ap Ynyr, sometimes called Caradog Freichfras (‘Caradog Strong-Arm’), a fifth-century king of Gwent mentioned in the Life of St Tathyw and associated with the Roman sites of Caerwent and Caerleon, has also been linked with Caer Caradoc, which is of quite the wrong archaeological period. We have to take great care not to place too much credence in the words of medieval historians, whilst recognizing that there may be a grain of truth behind the stories they tell. They are even more inclined to romance and invention than their predecessors in Roman times.
Somewhere into this morass of legend and fact fits King Arthur, the ultimate Christian hero, who is mentioned in the early British pseudohistories, but whose origins are not entirely clear. Despite the knowledge that Wales as an entity did not exist in the early post-Roman period, the idea that Arthur himself was Welsh will not go away. We will see, in subsequent chapters, the far-reaching influence of this perception.
From the time the Roman legions deserted Britannia in the late fourth century AD, we know the names of many Welsh rulers and quite a lot about some individuals. This is largely due to the preservation of the Celtic Christian tradition in Wales, carrying along with it the tradition of monastic learning. The De Excidio Britanniae, a work by the sixth century ‘saint’ Gildas, begins with a brief history of Roman Britain, and goes on to criticize contemporary rulers such as Maelgwn Gwynedd (who is believed to have reigned during the 520s) for failing to live up to the moral standards expected of a king. According to Gildas, Maelgwn committed treason, murder and adultery. The same ruler is mentioned in several other medieval manuscripts, where, though recognized as a wicked man, he is accorded some degree of respect for his achievements. Gildas explains this by pointing out that Maelgwn was a patron of many bards, whose sole purpose in life was to praise him.
Among the other sources for early British history are the Historia Brittonum and the Annales Cambriae. The Historia Brittonum was written in the ninth century, and is attributed to a monk named Nennius, whose exact identity is doubtful. The Annales Cambriae is believed to have been produced in the tenth century, but covers the years 447–954. It was written at the command of Owain ap Hywel (d.987), king of Deheubarth, a son of Hywel Dda. Finally, of course, we have the Brut y Tywysogion, which deals with Welsh royal doings from the year 682 right up to 1332. The date of its original composition is uncertain, as it is thought to be a translation of a lost Latin work entitled Cronica Principium Wallie, which was in turn based on the annals kept by Christian monasteries, specifically the Cistercian abbey of Strata Florida in Ceredigion.
RULING MEDIEVAL WALES
The Welsh rulers whose names are recorded by history tend to be those who stood out among their peers in some way. Most Welshmen, even princes, were known by patronymics, a practice that does not assist the historian in attempting to differentiate between them. Rhodri Mawr (‘the great’) and his grandson, Hywel Dda (‘the good’), are among the few who were given nicknames that reflected their achievements. Rhodri’s father, Merfyn Frych (‘the freckled’) (d.844) is thought to have originated from the Isle of Man, another Celtic kingdom. Rhodri himself had the task of seeing off the Viking marauders who threatened the coast of Wales throughout the ninth and tenth centuries.
Rhodri was a true warrior-king, who met his death in battle. Hywel Dda, on the other hand, gained much of his territorial advantage by shrewd allegiances. Hywel’s success as a ruler manifests itself in the coins of his reign that survive. He had them minted at Chester, which demonstrates the absence of any fear of the English on his part.
Morgan Hen (‘the old’), a king of Morgannwg (d.975) can be assumed to have gained his nickname as a result of his longevity, and longevity was a prized thing at a time when life expectancy in Britain was around thirty. Staying alive might in itself have been enough to enable a ruler to stay on his throne, but the nickname may have an additional connotation of wisdom and experience.
Gruffydd ap Llywelyn (c.1007–63) is perhaps an exception to the rule that the most successful Welsh kings acquired nicknames. Gruffydd overcame several military setbacks to maintain and extend his hold on power. His reputation for aggression eclipsed even his reputation as a king, yet he remains known by a patronymic. This seems to demonstrate that a warlike nature was then, as it is now, far from being the only quality the Welsh admired in a ruler.
Owain Gwynedd (c.1100–70), a direct descendant of Rhodri Mawr, was one of the most successful all-round rulers Wales has ever known, so much so that his ‘nickname’ is the name of his kingdom. Owain personified Gwynedd, at a time when it was strong enough to take the greatest aggression the Normans could offer and retain its independence. Without his presence, Wales might quickly have disappeared from the map altogether.
If there is a more prestigious epithet than Owain’s, it is the one applied to his nephew, Rhys ap Gruffydd (1132–97), known to the Welsh simply as ‘Yr Arglwydd Rhys’ and to the English as ‘The Lord Rhys’. Rhys established himself firmly in Deheubarth after the death of his mother, Gwenllian, and two of his brothers, during the 1136 rebellion centred in Ceredigion.
THE ROYAL CHARACTER
The term ‘royal’, in the English language, means ‘relating to a king’. In the Welsh language, the equivalent term is ‘brenhinol’, which has exactly the same connotation. What does this mean? What does it take to be kingly?
It was important to the Welsh to have leaders whose power was absolute and unquestioned. Hence the Roman emperor Magnus Maximus (d.388) passed into folklore as ‘Macsen Wledig’ (‘Wledig’ meaning ‘land-owning’) through the Mabinogion. The real-life Maximus was a Celt from the Iberian peninsula, making him all the more interesting to those who recognized his ethnic connection with Wales. The grain of truth that no doubt lies within the folk tale of Breuddwyd Macsen Wledig (The Dream of Macsen Wledig) was emphasized by its author because it was seen as a subject for pride that an emperor, immigrant though he was, should have taken a bride from among the native people. That a Welsh princess should have become consort of such a huge empire was viewed as an achievement for Wales as a whole.
What had been tribes in Celtic times gradually developed into self-governing regions. Their rulers were known by various titles, including ‘brenin’ (king) and ‘tywysog’ (prince). ‘Tywysog’ has its roots in the verb ‘tywys’ (‘to lead’) and words of similar origin appear in other Celtic languages, notably ‘Taoiseach’, the title given to the prime minister of Ireland. ‘Brenin’ seems to have replaced another Welsh word, ‘rhi’, derived from the Latin ‘rex’, and to be etymologically connected with the name of the tribe dominant in the region in pre-Roman times, the Brigantes.
The most prominent of these petty kingdoms were Powys, Gwynedd, Seisyllwg, Dyfed, Brycheiniog, Morgannwg and Gwent. Who were these early Welsh royal families and how did they arrive at their positions of absolute, if territorially limited, power? It seems clear from the use of the word ‘tywysog’ that leadership was one of the main things the people sought from their rulers; but there was much more to it than that.
The Normans did not invent the feudal system, any more than the English invented the class system. Since Roman times, or perhaps even earlier, Welsh society had been developing its own pecking order, founded primarily on the ownership of land; this was the only kind of wealth and power that endured. Wales being a small country, its sub-kingdoms and principalities even smaller and its agricultural land poorer, the hierarchy was correspondingly reduced. Whilst it may seem to have been a society of near-equals, compared with today’s experience, this was not really the case. The ‘uchelwr’ (a word which carries the combined connotations of ‘landowner’, ‘nobleman’ and ‘administrator’) was the wielder of power on a day-to-day basis. These were the people who ran Wales in the Middle Ages. If the land could be kept in the family, they might retain their power for many generations.
The correspondence between material possessions and earthly power is self-evident, but the rulers of Wales were also strongly associated with its religious life. Kings and queens were often regarded as saints, and vice versa. When Magnus Maximus was deposed and killed in 388, his Welsh widow, Elen, is said to have returned to Wales with her two sons, Cystennin and Publicius, and all three became regarded as saints. It seems fairly certain that there was confusion over their identity; it is easy to see how Elen may have become conflated with St Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine. For some, Magnus Maximus himself, an orthodox Christian emperor who persecuted the Pelagian heretics, acquired the image of a martyr.
This view of kings as religious leaders as well as political and military ones is especially common in the early Middle Ages. Even St David seems to have played a part in politics. David (or Dewi Sant as he is known in Welsh) was one of the most vociferous opponents of the Pelagian heresy which swept Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries. At Llanddewibrefi, legend has it that he called a synod to refute the heresy, which rejected the concept of original sin. In the course of his keynote speech, it is said that the ground beneath his feet formed itself into a small hill in order that the crowd might be able to see and hear him better, and a white dove descended on his shoulder. Dewi’s efforts to maintain the authority of the church help to explain why this ‘miracle’ is recorded and why he was officially canonized by the pope in 1123. The irony is that Pelagius, the originator of the heresy he so condemned, was also a Celt, and probably British.
Dewi Sant was himself of royal blood, albeit illegitimate. According to his eleventh-century biographer, Rhigyfarch, Dewi’s father was a king of Ceredigion. He is described by Rhigyfarch as ‘Sanctus rex ceredigionis’, which may equally well mean ‘Sanctus, the king of Ceredigion’ or ‘the holy king of Ceredigion’. There does not seem to have been anything very holy about Dewi’s father, at least not to begin with. Dewi’s mother, Non, was a nun or religious recluse, who was raped by the king of Ceredigion, and it was from this most unsanctified union that the saint was conceived. Whether this ancestry was invented, either in order to give the saint royal status or the other way round, will never be known. It is said that Non later married the king, but probably only after she had given birth to her son. The delivery is said to have taken place on top of a cliff in the middle of a storm, and the spot is marked by a much later building known as St Non’s Chapel.
Dewi Sant is almost the only one of the leading figures of the period of Welsh history sometimes called the Age of the Saints to have been genuinely canonized. Other royal families of Wales also claimed descent from ‘saints’ or holy men, but few of them are in the same class. Brychan, who gave his name to the kingdom of Brycheiniog, lived in the fifth century. He was of Irish origin and is commemorated by place names throughout the Celtic world, in Ireland, Cornwall, Wales and Brittany. Like Dewi Sant’s father, ‘Saint’ Brychan was a rapist, not to mention a polygamist, and fathered an estimated sixty-three children. His descendants form one of the three so-called ‘tribes of the saints’, the other two being those of Caw and Cunedda.
By far the most notable of these early rulers was Cunedda (d.c.460), and his reputation rests on his military successes, not on his devotion to God. Like Magnus Maximus before him, he was given the epithet ‘Wledig’, in recognition of the extent of the territories over which he ruled. It has been postulated that it was Magnus Maximus himself who invited Cunedda to Wales, in order that the stable regime maintained by the Romans should be sustained, at least in this western region, relatively safe from the depredations of Saxon invaders.
The eagerness shown by later rulers to trace their ancestry back to Cunedda is indicative of the respect in which his name continued to be held throughout the Middle Ages. The astonishing thing about Cunedda (for us in the twenty-first century, that is) is that he began his career in what is now Scotland. There being no significant ethnic difference between the Celtic tribes of mainland Britain at this time, he had no hesitation in relocating his power base when the Irish threatened to invade, despite the distances involved.
The land and people of Manaw Gododdin, immortalized in a poem (one of the earliest in the Welsh language) attributed to the bard Aneirin, is thought to have been located in the region of modern-day Clackmannanshire. In around 600, its leaders fought the Angles at a place referred to as ‘Catraeth’ in the north of England, tentatively identified as Catterick in North Yorkshire. Aneirin’s poem influenced later royal bards, such as the prince-poet Owain Cyfeiliog (c.1130–97), not to mention Dafydd Benfras, whose works in praise of Llywelyn Fawr (c.1173–1240) draw heavily on the same tradition.
The evidence for Cunedda’s existence is largely circumstantial; for that of his sons, even more so. According to legend, he had eight or nine of these, including such familiar names as Meirion and Ceredig, and Cunedda’s kingdom was shared between them. Historians tend to believe that at least some of the names of Cunedda’s sons were invented by later generations to give greater credibility to dynastic claims on the territories in question, particularly Ceredigion.
Cunedda’s ‘royalness’ is unquestioned by later writers. Royalty feeds off royalty, and lineage was everything in the Middle Ages. The son of a ruler could normally expect to succeed him. The main difference among the Celts from the system we know today is that they did not practise primogeniture, but preferred what seems to our modern eyes a more even-handed system. All the king’s sons, however many there were, and regardless of whether they were legitimate, could expect to inherit an equal share in his realm.
This system had its drawbacks. The in-fighting between a man’s sons to control his property led inevitably to a dilution of the image of royal dignity attributed to them purely by their birth (important as that undoubtedly was). However, we may assume that the ability to overcome opposition was another aspect of kingship that was seen as admirable or at any rate ‘regal’ in the widest sense. At any rate, the experience of previous generations did not stop kings from procreating at a sometimes alarming rate, Owain Gwynedd being a notable example.
One consequence of the practice of primogeniture was that English kings expected a lot of their eldest sons. It did not matter whether a younger son was stronger, tougher or brighter than the eldest; there was no option to designate him heir to the throne. The Welsh did not have quite the same problem, and sons were thus able to develop according to their own abilities. If one son killed all the others in order to acquire the whole of his father’s property, it might be regarded by many as morally reprehensible, but he did not find his rule challenged on the grounds that he had usurped the throne.
In England, a son was expected to live up to his father’s example, and many were unable to do so: Edward II, Richard II and Henry VI would all fail miserably in the eyes of their subjects. Each would lose his hold on the kingdom as a result. As for daughters, they were fit for only one thing: to be married off to a potential ally. Elizabeth of Rhuddlan (1282–1316), the eighth daughter of Edward I, born in Wales during her father’s successful campaign, eventually married a Marcher lord, Humphrey de Bohun, fourth earl of Hereford. She passed on her blood to her Welsh-born great-great-grandson King Henry V, making him royal several times over.
The Welsh had alternative expectations of their rulers. Piety was one of these, just as it had been for the Romans; but, as we have seen, it was a piety that had a host of manifestations. The English were not without religious devotion, and expected some sign of it from their rulers. Edward I, like his great-uncle Richard the Lionheart, fulfilled public expectations by going on crusade. Failure to live up to the standards required could lead to excommunication, as it had done for King John, whose subjects were encouraged to rise up against him by Pope Innocent III in 1209. This had given an unexpected opportunity to Llywelyn Fawr (c.1173–1240), prince of Gwynedd and most of Wales, who, despite being the king’s son-in-law, took his chance and allied himself with some of John’s disgruntled barons.
Thirty years later, Llywelyn, who had suffered a stroke, went into retirement at the Cistercian abbey of Aberconwy which he had founded. Such a retreat from the world would have been unthinkable for a Norman king of England, but was not without precedent in medieval Wales. (It might of course be argued that the Welsh princes had less to give up, and remained closer to the seat of power even after their retreat.) Princes such as Owain Cyfeiliog had found withdrawal from their role in government an attractive option. In 1195, Owain had retired to the abbey of Strata Marcella, leaving Powys in the hands of his son. No one thought any the less of him for it; indeed, his memory was revered, because Owain had not only been an effective ruler, he had been a poet.
Culture was another requirement in the repertoire of the successful king. One of the most beloved of Welsh princes was Hywel ab Owain Gwynedd, who has gone down in historical legend as a successful military leader, an upright man and a great poet. Some of Hywel’s work has survived. His best-known offering, Gorhoffedd Hywel ab Owain Gwynedd, was a propaganda effort on behalf of his father, praising Gwynedd for its scenery (and its women). Hywel’s death at the hands of his half-brothers led to his acquiring a saintly image and the possibly undeserved reputation of a lost leader who might have exceeded his father’s achievements.
The Welsh medieval rulers were noted for their patronage of bards. This was in common with much of Europe. While England was in the grip of the so-called ‘Dark Ages’, the Welsh boasted poets of the stature of Taliesin and Aneirin. The Saxon king Alfred the Great hired a Welsh bishop, Asser, to improve his Latin and act as his official biographer. It has been suggested that Alfred might, in common with many of his fellow-countrymen, have been fluent in Welsh, but it is more likely that he conversed with Asser in Latin, the international language of literature and learning.
Naturally, the main purpose of keeping a household bard was to sing the praises of the man who held court. Another of the bard’s functions was similar to that fulfilled by what we would now call a herald. The bard could recite the full genealogy of his prince, proving his calibre as a ruler by reference to his royal blood. This would become even more important from the fourteenth century onwards, when the Normans had become dominant but noble families still wished to underline their descent from indigenous Welsh rulers. In post-conquest Wales, it was through the oral tradition that the spirit of independence would be not only kept alive but propagated.
It seems clear that learning and culture were more highly sought-after qualities in a ruler of Wales than in the contemporary rulers of countries that had not been under Roman rule or had subsequently been invaded by ‘barbarians’. It was only in the ninth century that the rulers of the English kingdoms seriously began to concern themselves with the arts. As for the Norman kings, they were too concerned with the consolidation of their military gains to pay much attention to cultural matters, and in any case they spoke and wrote a different language from the majority of their subjects.
In 1176, the Lord Rhys held a festival of music and poetry at his court in Cardigan. This is one of the first recorded eisteddfodau. The tradition of the chairing of bards goes back at least this far in the history of Wales, giving the lie to the popular misconception that the eisteddfod is a nineteenth-century invention. Even if the idea originally came from France or Ireland and was adapted to suit the Welsh, the basic shape of the festival is probably a thousand years old.
The lack of any female names in the historic catalogue of Welsh rulers is irrefutable evidence that royal women were seen in a different light from their fathers, brothers and sons. It was not a woman’s rule to lead her people, however royal her birth. The pre-Roman Celts are known to have had queens, such as Cartismandua of the Brigantes and Boudicca of the Iceni, but these were both married women. Boudicca inherited her kingdom from her husband, and we have no idea how Cartismandua came by hers. They are certainly the exception rather than the rule.
Kingship could, however, be inherited through the female line, and many of the early Welsh rulers extended their territories through intermarriage with the female heirs of kings who had no sons of their own. In the early ninth century, Merfyn Frych of Gwynedd married Nest, a princess of Powys, giving their son, Rhodri Mawr, a springboard from which to establish his rule over most of Wales. Nearly a century later, Hywel Dda married a princess named Elen, enabling him to add Dyfed to his own kingdom of Seisyllwg, creating the territory known as Deheubarth.
If the maintenance of law and order was seen as a kingly duty, Hywel Dda was the epitome of the king. Not only did he codify the Welsh laws, he even issued his own coinage, manufactured in a mint at Chester. Hywel was well travelled, having in 928 completed the journey to Rome to which all western Christians aspired. In the Eternal City he was hailed as ‘King of Wales’. Hywel was a skilled diplomat, however, and was prepared to do homage to Athelstan, king of England (d.939), to underline his right to rule. His relationship with his contemporaries over the border was such that his reign was unquestioned. Following his agreement with Athelstan, no battles between the English and the Welsh are recorded, and charters show that Welsh rulers attended the Englishman’s court as ‘subreguli’. Some time between 930 and 945, Hywel called an assembly at Whitland, and put together a document summarizing the laws of Wales as they then stood.
One thing to be said in favour of small kingdoms is that they do not require a great deal of administration. Subjects might receive near-personal attention from their ruler; they could certainly expect to see him from time to time. Is this what so many people resent about the modern monarchy? Does the collective memory of English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish alike go back far enough to yearn for the days when their rulers had time for them as individuals? Is this in fact a historical justification for the trend towards devolution?
Hywel Dda’s attempt to bring his kingdom under the rule of law shows that he was concerned about the possibility of such a large territory becoming unwieldy and difficult to govern. In this he was ahead of his contemporaries, even in the larger Saxon kingdoms – except, perhaps, for Athelstan, whom he supported when the latter was challenged by the Scots during the 930s. The poem known as Armes Prydein is thought by some to have been written during Hywel’s reign, and reflects the discontent of the Welsh under the dominance of the Saxons. It speaks of an alliance of the Celtic peoples of Britain and Ireland against Athelstan, and bemoans the latter’s victory. This was a battle in which the Welsh seem to have taken no part, and which probably took place on England’s northern borders, with the threat coming from the north rather than the west.
Following Hywel’s death, his kingdom was broken up and divided between his three sons, whilst the other territories he had amassed returned to their original ruling families. Owain ap Hywel certainly had some awareness of his father’s legacy, and is thought to have been responsible for the compilation of the Annales Cambriae, a chronicle of events in Wales and the wider world. In one manuscript it is immediately followed by a statement of Owain’s pedigree. This may signify a sense of in-adequacy, a need to emphasize Owain’s right to rule by reference to his ancestors. At first he had shared the kingdom of Deheubarth with his brothers Edwin and Rhodri, but even between the three of them they had been unable to retain their hold on Gwynedd. Owain outlived his brothers by thirty years, passing the whole of Deheubarth to his son Maredudd (d.999).
Resilience and longevity were qualities that the Welsh might have valued, on the rare occasions they experienced them. With stability came peace and prosperity, and this was the best that the common people could hope for. Much as they admired a king who could exert his will on others by force, they admired him still more if he could hold on to his gains. Such a king was Gruffydd ap Cynan (c.1055–1137), father of the better-known Owain Gwynedd.
The English chronicler Orderic Vitalis referred to Gruffydd as ‘rex Guallorum’ (‘king of the Welsh’), revealing that the English also recognized him as royal. His biography, written by a near-contemporary in the Welsh language, has survived, and tells a remarkable story. It is the story of a man who was so determined to rule Gwynedd that he conquered it no fewer than four times. The son of a Welsh prince and an Irish Viking princess, Gruffydd was around 20 when he made his first attempt on the throne of Gwynedd. He was joined in his invasion attempt by none other than Robert of Tilleul, a Norman adventurer with a particularly bloodthirsty reputation who saw some advantage in a temporary alliance with the youth. The Norman later became known as Robert of Rhuddlan, after the stronghold he established on licence from William the Conqueror. Although Gruffydd successfully seized much of the territory he wanted, he was unable to hold onto it, and was forced to retreat to Ireland. Five years later, he was back, this time in an alliance with Rhys ap Tewdwr (d.1093), displaced ruler of Deheubarth. At the Battle of Mynydd Carn in 1081, the allies defeated all their enemies and regained their respective kingdoms.
Shortly after this second conquest of Gwynedd, Gruffydd ap Cynan was taken prisoner by the Normans. He remained in captivity for at least twelve years. The story goes that the prisoner was on show, in the marketplace at Chester, in chains, when a local man, Cynwrig Hir (‘Cynwrig the Tall’), carried him off. If Gruffydd owed his freedom to Cynwrig, he nevertheless had already shown his powers of endurance, and his long sojourn in prison seems only to have made him more determined. Yet again, he was unable to hold on to Gwynedd and fled once more to Ireland; but a couple of years later he was back, and this time there was no question of his superiority over his rivals. Robert of Rhuddlan, who had betrayed his former ally, was later killed trying to repel a sea attack by Gruffydd’s raiders, and the Norman’s severed head was displayed on the mast of their ship. With such a history, it is no wonder Gruffydd’s life was recorded and held up as an example to his successors. Tenacity and perseverance, then, should be added to the list of qualities admired in a Welsh ruler.
As far as political skill and diplomacy go, though, it would be difficult to find a more successful Welsh prince than the Lord Rhys. In September 1171, Rhys had a formal meeting with King Henry II in the Forest of Dean, and the two entered a non-aggression pact whereby Rhys would pay annual tribute to the English king; Henry in return agreed to enter Wales only for the purposes of transporting troops to Ireland. Henry even turned a blind eye when Rhys failed to deliver the promised tribute. The frequent absences from the kingdom of Henry’s successor, King Richard I, gave Rhys the opportunity he needed to expand and consolidate. He and his sons had just completed another successful campaign against the Normans in 1197 when the Lord Rhys died suddenly, of a ‘pestilence’ that was ravaging the country. Although he had been excommunicated as a result of a falling out with the Norman bishop of St David’s, he was buried in the cathedral there, in full recognition (according to Brut y Tywysogion) of his status as ‘unconquered head of all Wales’.
SON OF PROPHECY
By the thirteenth century, there was something else the Welsh were looking for. They awaited the ‘mab darogan’ or ‘son of prophecy’, who would come to save them from the English yoke. Saxon or Norman, English rulers were all much the same as far as the Welsh were concerned. The concept of ‘mab darogan’ is credited to Myrddin, better known to us as Merlin, a mystical figure linked with the legend of Arthur. The first recorded use of the term, however, is in a poem addressed to Llywelyn Fawr by his bard, Prydydd y Moch. Prydydd says that this Messianic figure will be ‘o hil eryron o Eryri’, a descendant of the eagles of Snowdonia, suggesting the royal family of Gwynedd. Llywelyn had more sense than to claim the title of ‘mab darogan’ for himself; better to leave that implicit in the words of his bard.
A hundred years later, one of Llywelyn’s dispossessed descendants, Owain Lawgoch (c.1330–78), would be recognized by his followers as the son of prophecy and would make a serious but unsuccessful attempt to invade Wales in 1372. Owain Lawgoch was assassinated shortly afterwards, but within thirty years another would-be claimant had arisen.
It was alleged by some that Owain Glyndŵr (c.1359–c.1416) ate eagles’ flesh to make himself worthy of his people’s expectations. The prospects looked bright for a few years, until the advent of a brighter star, Henry of Monmouth, who destroyed Glyndŵr’s plans for the renewal of Wales’s independence.
The Welsh had to wait until 1485 for their true Messiah, but when Henry Tudor came along, there was no longer any doubt. Born in Pembroke and carrying the royal blood of England, Wales and France, Tudor had been the subject of a prophecy made by his uncle, King Henry VI, who had by some psychic or magical power recognized the boy as a future king. Snatching the throne, in a shrewd but violent manner, from the usurper Richard III, Henry Tudor proceeded to establish a dynasty that would rule England and Wales for over a hundred years and make the country an international superpower. The search for the son of destiny seemed to be at an end.
