Dafydd from Owain

Dafydd from Owain († May 1203 ) was a prince of the Welsh principality of Gwynedd .

He was a son of Owain Gwynedd and his second wife Christina, a daughter of Gronw from Owain from Edwin. Since his parents were first cousins, the marriage was not recognized by the Church and Dafydd was considered illegitimate. In 1157 he was involved with his half-brother Cynan in the ambush at Coleshill in the woods of Hawarden , in which the troops of the English King Henry II suffered heavy losses during the campaign against the Welsh principalities . During the war against England in 1165 he was with a force in Dyffryn Clwyd and began the conflict with a raid on Tegeingl , in which he made rich booty.

After the death of his father in November 1170, he and his brother Rhodri began the fratricidal wars for his father's kingdom. They attacked their half-brother Hywel from Owain on the island of Anglesey and killed him in a battle near Pentraeth. In 1173 Dafydd attacked another of his half-brothers, Maelgwn ab Owain , and drove him from Anglesey into exile in Ireland. During the Welsh uprising in 1173 against the Anglo-Normans he was on the side of the English king, and could therefore in the summer of 1174 Emma, an illegitimate daughter of Geoffrey of Anjou and a half-sister of King Henry II. Married. Dafydd was now at the height of his power and could also capture his brother Rhodri and occupy his land. He was also able to capture Maelgwn, who had returned from Ireland. The bard Gwilym Rhyel praised him as King of Cemais, but now luck turned against Dafydd. His brother Rhodri escaped from his captivity, gathered his followers and drove Dafydd in 1175 to the area east of the Conwy . As compensation, Henry II gave him the lords of Ellesmere and Hales in Shropshire as a fief at the council meeting in Oxford in 1177 . Dafydd remained the lord of eastern Gwynedd, where Rhuddlan Castle became his residence.

After he had been in conflict with his nephew Llywelyn from Iorwerth since the end of the 1180s , he finally allied himself with his cousins Gruffydd and Maredudd , the sons of his brother Cynan from Owain . Together they defeated Dafydd in 1194 at the Battle of Aberconwy. Dafydd's domain then shrank to three castles, but these too were conquered by Llywelyn in 1197. Dafydd was captured, but was released in 1198 on the intercession of Archbishop Hubert Walter and withdrew to his English possessions.

From his marriage to Emma he had a son and a daughter. His daughter Wennour married Meurig, a son of a baron of the Welsh Marches . His son Owain succeeded him as Lord of Hales and took the name Halesowen. During the war between Llywelyn ab Iorwerth and King John , the English king tried in 1212 to make Owain Prince of East Wales, but the Welsh refused him. Owain died before October 1214, and Hales fell to Peter des Roches , who founded a Premonstratensian monastery there. Dafydd had donated part of his property to the Augustinian monastery at Haughmond in Shropshire, which had already been sponsored by his uncle Cadwaladr . The reign of Ellesmere fell back to the crown after his death and was shortly thereafter given to Llywelyn from Iorwerth.

Web links

• John Edward Lloyd: Dafydd from Owain Gwynedd (d. 1203) , Welsh Biography Online, The National Library of Wales, [1] , accessed June 30, 2014