Medieval Wales by David Stephenson

Author:David Stephenson [David Stephenson]
Language: eng
Format: epub

LIMITATIONS ON PRINCELY POWER IMPOSED BY INTRA-DYNASTIC RIVALRIES

It was perhaps inevitable that the aspirants to princely status should encounter serious opposition from within their own family, though beyond describing a prince’s rise to power, often at the expense of near kin, the poets and chroniclers seldom make much of the point. But fuller consideration of the extent to which power was shared by sons, brothers, nephews or cousins makes it clear that few princes were able to exploit all of the territories with which they are credited in modern maps and by contemporary chroniclers alike. Thus Madog ap Maredudd of Powys settled his nephews Owain and Meurig, sons of Gruffudd in control of Cyfeiliog in 1149, and one of them, Owain (Cyfeiliog) had clearly established himself in eastern Powys, in the region close to the Breiddin, by 1156.⁵⁵ Owain’s grip on territory in the whole region from Cyfeiliog in the west to Y Tair Swydd in the south-east of Powys was sufficient to enable him to take control of that land after Madog’s death in 1160.

In the north, Owain Gwynedd was for many years obliged to share the territory of Gwynedd with his brother Cadwaladr. Even though Cadwaladr was more than once driven from territories, both in Gwynedd and in Ceredigion, he maintained his claims to extensive lordships, and though it is difficult to identify all of the territories which he possessed, it seems that he held Meirionnydd in the years before 1147, that he held a portion of Ceredigion in the late 1140s and that he exercised lordship in Anglesey in the early 1150s.⁵⁶ Cadwaladr lived as an exile in Shropshire from 1152 to 1157, when Henry II forced Owain Gwynedd to restore him and, in the words of the Brut, ‘Cadwaladr received back his land.’⁵⁷ He can also be reckoned to have held extensive lands in Llŷn, both because he granted Haughmond Abbey lands in Nefyn and because his descendants had particular connections with that land, one as an official of Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, and one as the holder for several years of lordship in part of the peninsula.⁵⁸

In the conflicts of 1165 and 1167 Cadwaladr is closely associated with Owain Gwynedd in the chronicles, and it seems that the two effectively shared control of Gwynedd. Something of Cadwaladr’s eminence can be seen in the reference in the Brut to Owain and Cadwaladr as ‘princes of Gwynedd’, and his appearance in a much later confirmation of his grant to Haughmond of the church and land in Nefyn as ‘quondam princeps Wallie’ and his description as rex Waliarum when he witnessed charters of Ranulf of Chester in 1147–8. At his death, Gerald of Wales recorded that Cadwaladr was buried with his brother in a double tomb in Bangor Cathedral, a further sign of equality of status.⁵⁹ A historiographic fixation with Owain Gwynedd has obscured the spasmodic but very significant part played in Gwynedd by his brother.

The eminence of the Lord Rhys, and the extravagant eulogy that he received in

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