The Welsh Princes

The Native Rulers of Wales 1063-1283

Roger K Turvey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317883968
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

The Welsh princes were one of the most important ruling elites in medieval western Europe. This volume examines their behaviour, influence and power in a period when the Welsh were struggling to maintain their independence and identity in the face of Anglo-Norman settlement. From the mid-eleventh century to the end of the thirteenth, Wales was profoundly transformed by conquest and foreign 'colonial' settlement. Massive changes took place in the political, economic, social and religious spheres and Welsh culture was significantly affected. Roger Turvey looks at this transformation, its impact on the Welsh princes and the part they themselves played in it.  Turvey's survey of the various aspects of princely life, power and influence draws out the human qualities of these flesh and blood characters, and is written very much with the general reader in mind.

chapter one

FAMILY, DESCENT AND INHERITANCE: THE PRINCES AND THEIR PRINCIPALITIES

Who and what were the Welsh princes? Put simply, and as their title implies, they were men of status and of power. In a hierarchical and stratified society where status was important, theirs was the most important of all, for by birth, lineage and blood they were royal. Their power too was derived in large part from their royal status but was dependent also, as befitted a warrior caste, on their courage in combat and leadership on the battlefield. Heroic in deed, dynastic in ambition and rulers by intent, the princes were the elite of a privileged aristocratic class. Yet in spite of these shared characteristics, it is difficult to categorise the Welsh princes as a group, for although they were royal and they were rulers, they were not necessarily equal. Most were rulers of a single kingdom; some, by dint of conquest, more than one; but the exceptional among them were able to extend their hegemony over the greater part of Wales. However, such successes could usually be measured in the space of a generation since the gains made by one ruler were, more often than not, lost by another. This continual shifting of the dynastic and political balance of power is reflected in the use by contemporaries of a bewildering array of tides to address or describe their rulers. This is perhaps unsurprising in a period spanning a little over two centuries, 1063–1283, since change is inevitable and, in respect of the rulers of medieval Wales, the evolution in the nomenclature of their authority may usually be taken as a fair reflection of the winners and losers in the dynastic battle for supremacy, for while some prospered and increased their power, others suffered a diminution in theirs. However, while we may refer to them as princes, contemporaries were not so consistent in their use of the tide, so that some justification, and definition, is necessary. Consequendy, it is in terms of their identity, status and tide, individual and territorial, together with a discussion of their kinship, descent and inheritance, that this chapter is concerned.

Kings, lords and princes: the nomenclature of authority

The nomenclature of authority was important to contemporaries since a man’s status and power was regulated by law and custom, so that the title he assumes can be taken as a public recognition of one and public expression of the other. Indeed, their tides provide virtually the only evidence of the way in which the rulers of native Wales viewed themselves and, in what was evidently a conscious and calculated move, it was their way of interpreting their status for the outside world. This had not always been so since for much of the period before the tenth century, the rulers of Wales had no, and often did not use, any formal or consistent titles. It is not until the native law texts were assembled during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that the issue of titular nomenclature was seriously addressed, with the result that a measure of definition and hierarchy was gradually introduced into the titles of native rulers. According to those who framed the Welsh laws, Latin-educated jurists who were familiar with concepts of royal office and royal government, supreme power was vested in the title and office of king or brenin (rex). Kingship was compounded of military, civil and religious authority, varying in proportion and strength according to the qualities and fortunes of individual kings. The chief court or prif lys was the seat of the king’s power and it was from here, together with its itinerant satellite courts, that he ruled his subjects.

However, from about the middle of the twelfth century a change can be discerned, the reasons for which have yet to be properly investigated, for as J. Beverley Smith has pointed out, ‘the evidence which survives hardly provides the means for any elaborate study of the Welsh princes’ titles’,¹ so that only a cursory examination can be attempted here. The nature of the change in nomenclature can most closely be followed in the chronicles, both English and Welsh, the poetry, charters and even in some of the romance tales of the period since these sources, despite their often later and copied provenance, reflected far more vividly the reality of daily political life than the precepts of the native laws. Where once the rulers of dynasties had been described as kings they were now called princes (tywysog, princeps) or even lords (arglwydd, dominus). The change was neither immediate nor absolute for there continued to be apparent inconsistencies in the application of titles, an example of which may be instanced from the three versions of the Brut y Tywysogion or The Chronicle of the Princes reporting on the death of Maredudd, ruler of Deheubarth in 1155. The Brut [Peniarth Ms 20] calls Maredudd ‘lord of Ceredigion and Ystrad Tywi and Dyfed’, the Brut [Red Book of Hergest] calls him ‘king’, while the Brenhinedd does not ascribe him any title, he is merely ‘of Ceredigion and Ystrad Tywi and Dyfed’.² Of course, there is no guarantee that the titles employed by the various editions of the Bruts in respect of the rulers of twelfth-century Wales are anything other than later embellishments, for the chronicles as we have them today are essentially late-thirteenth-century copies in Welsh of lost Latin originals.

Commenting on the death of Maredudd’s grandfather Rhys ap Tewdwr in 1093, the English chronicler John of Worcester was moved to declare that ‘from that day kings ceased to rule in Wales’.³ Nor was this merely empty rhetoric for the Welsh chroniclers appear to have been in agreement, stating with unaccustomed unanimity that with the death of Rhys ‘the kingdom of the Britons fell’.⁴ Thereafter, from 1094 to 1137, titles of any description, let alone that of king, are almost entirely absent from the texts of the Bruts. Indeed, in contrast to the chroniclers of old who were apt to use the terminology of kingship more freely, those of the twelfth century appear reluctant to accord the title of brenin or king to rulers, often sons of kings, whose patrimonies were either much reduced or facing extinction. Henceforth, the tenth and eleventh-century brenhinoedd or kingdoms of Ceredigion, Dyfed, Gwent, Morgannwg, Gwynedd and Powys referred to in the Bruts, were to be replaced in the twelfth, by those of Deheubarth, Gwynedd and Powys, along with a host of lesser lordships, while the title ‘king’ was given to only four rulers after 1137: Gruffudd ap Cynan (d. 1137) and his son Owain (d. 1170) of Gwynedd, Maredudd ap Gruffudd (d. 1155) of Deheubarth, and Madog ap Maredudd (d. 1160) of Powys.

The contrast in the titles employed by the Welsh chroniclers between the eleventh and latter half of the twelfth century is quite marked; the title of king was gradually giving way to those of lord and prince. This may reflect the changed political conditions of the twelfth century, a result of piecemeal Anglo-Norman conquest and the spread of feudal influence, for the Welsh rulers would have been nothing more than pale reflections of their Angevin neighbour, King Henry II (d. 1189), had they retained the increasingly meaningless title of king. The late T. Jones Pierce suggested that the change may have been due to pressure exerted by Henry II on the leading rulers of Wales to drop the title of king thus enabling him to assert the principle of the English Crown’s superiority and its political overlordship.⁵ The Welsh chronicles would seem to support this assertion, for after 1155 the title is applied but once more to a native ruler, Owain Gwynedd, and then only at his death in 1170.⁶ On the other hand, David Crouch has argued that the abandonment of kingship was a ‘native decision’ and that the Welsh were not ‘forced into it’.⁷ In stark contrast to their counterparts in Wales, the English chroniclers, with one notable exception, Ralph of Diceto, seem to have taken a different view since they were according native rulers like Rhys ap Gruffudd (d. 1197) of Deheubarth regal status consistently calling him variously, rex Walensium [king of the Welsh], rex Sutwalliae [king of south Wales] or simply rex [king Rhys].⁸ Once only is he acclaimed rex Walliae or king of Wales in the late-thirteenth-century Annals of Tewkesbury.⁹ So why was Rhys so called by contemporary observers from across the Severn who, from their experience of European kingship, knew perfectly well, or should have known, what regal status entailed. A clue to their attitude on the nature of Rhys’ regal status is afforded by Roger of Howden who consistently styles Rhys regulus which may be translated as petty or little king, thus strongly suggesting the superiority of Angevin kingship over that of its Welsh vassals.¹⁰ This accords well with the view that Rhys and his fellow rulers, at the behest of Henry II, set aside all pretensions to regal status in return for confirmation of their landholdings. It seems that during the twelfth century the native chroniclers were tending increasingly to acclaim only their greatest rulers brenin or rex and then only as an epithet of greatness to be dispensed at death as a mark of respect and for past deeds should they warrant titular distinction. By the thirteenth century this practice had ceased completely and the title of king is henceforth only to be found in the texts of the Welsh laws, or at least in those copies that have survived.

Gerald de Barri (d. 1223), as he should more properly be addressed, though known to posterity as Gerald of Wales, or in Latin, Gimldus Cambrensis, was in no doubt as to what they were and how they should be addressed. Being related to some of the native rulers, he either knew well or knew of the others, there was no dispute in his mind but that the greatest of them were princes, and it was with great pride and by means of his mixed ancestry that he declared that he was ‘sprung from the princes of Wales and from the barons of the Marches’.¹¹ His eloquent testimony bridges the gap somewhat between the views expounded by native writers and the opinions expressed by their English and continental counterparts. Of course, we have no way of knowing whether Gerald’s definition of the title, dignity and authority of ‘prince’ matches that described by the native chroniclers or that used by the native rulers themselves. Certainly in the surviving, though admittedly late and often copied, charters, letters and other acts issued by the Welsh rulers it is as princes that they present themselves, the styles of which vary and were intended to imply a personal, in terms of status, a political, in terms of an ill-defined leadership of the Welsh people, or a territorial authority. Thus was Rhys ap Gruffudd of Deheubarth styled or referred to by contemporaries between 1165 and 1197 as Prince Rhys (Principis Rest), Rhys, prince of south Wales (Reso principi SuthwMiae) and Rhys prince of the Welsh (Resus Walliarum princeps).¹² It is important to note that the adoption of the title and style of prince did not necessarily mean a dimunition in status and power for as J. Beverley Smith has said in respect of Owain Gwynedd he ‘did not cease to be king of Gwynedd in order to be prince of Gwynedd,… he chose to present himself as ‘prince of the Welsh’ (princeps Wallensium).¹³

If the changing nature of the relationship between the Crown of England and its native vassals, the rulers of Wales, was, arguably, at the root of the change in their nomenclature in the twelfth century, in the thirteenth its cause was as much the ambition of the princes of Gwynedd as pressure exerted by successive English kings. In their efforts to extend their hegemony over native Wales, the princes of Gwynedd were seeking to define the nature of their relationship with the other native rulers whom they attempted to make their vassals. Their success in this endeavour can be measured in respect of the progress they made via the reigns of Ll...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• The Medieval World
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Editor's Preface
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Genealogical Tables and Maps
• Introduction: Outlines and Sources
• Chapter One Family, Descent and Inheritance: The Princes and Their Principalities
• Chapter Two Conflict or Coexistence: Marchia Wallie and Pura Wallia
• Chapter Three Challenge and Response: English Kings and Welsh Princes
• Chapter Four The Governance of Native Wales: The Princes as Rulers
• Chapter Five Conquest and Consolidation: The Princes as Warriors
• Chapter Six Culture and Religion: The Princes as Patrons
• Chapter Seven Conclusion: The Princes After Conquest
• General Bibliography
• Index