Gwladus Ddu
Gwladus Ddu ("Gwladus the Dark"), with full name Gwladus ferch Llywelyn (Gwladus, daughter of Llywelyn) (* around 1195 in Gwynedd, Wales, † 1251 in Windsor (Berkshire) ) was a Welsh princess of Celtic origin, whose life went through the rise of her father, Llywelyn from Iorwerth, Prince of Gwynedd to the most powerful Prince of Wales , through his efforts to prevent the expansion of English influence in Wales by arms or diplomacy, and through her political marriages with potential enemies - her father and the Welsh Independence - was marked. Her descendants include not only large parts of the nobility and gentry in Great Britain , but also almost all European dynasties of modern times.
origin
Gwladus Ddu was a princess from the so-called Aberffraw dynasty of the historical princes - originally kings - of Gwynedd in north-west Wales .
Her father was Llywelyn ab Iorwerth (* around 1173, † April 11, 1240), who prevailed around 1200 as a prince (king) of all of Gwynedd (in north-west Wales) and who managed to expand his domain so that he was the most influential ruler in Wales around 1216. He was then entitled "Prince of Wales, Gwynedd and Powys Wenwynwyn, Prince of Aberffraw and Lord of Snowdon." He went down in history as Llywelyn Fawr (Llywelyn the Great).
Her father's family was of Celtic origin. They descended from the male line of Rhodri the Great , who had become king of Gwynedd from 844 to 878 and king of almost all of Wales by inheritance and conquest.
There are differing traditions and opinions about the origin of their mother. According to some sources, she was the legitimate daughter of Llwelyn from his 1205 marriage to Joan of Wales (* around 1191; † February 2, 1237), who was an illegitimate daughter of King John of England and the title "Princess of Wales and mistress of Snowdonia ”. One possible indication that her mother was Joan of Wales is seen in the fact that she allegedly bequeathed her personal lands to Gwladus Ddu. According to others, she was an illegitimate daughter of Prince Llwelyn from his relationship with Tangwystl Goch (* around 1168; † v. 1205), a daughter of Llywarch “Goch” of Rhos. According to Charles Cawley, however, it comes from her father's relationship with a woman whose name is unknown.
Life
Little details are known about the youth of Gwladus Ddu. Her life was largely shaped by her origins from one of the Celtic royal houses of Wales, by the politics of her father and by the political situation in her homeland at the time.
Wales is part of the "Celtic fringe" (Celtic fringe) of Europe and is one of the six Celtic nations that have preserved their Celtic heritage linguistically and culturally to this day. Historical Wales, which consisted of a large number of petty kingdoms, had survived the invasion of the Anglo-Saxons undamaged and for centuries has successfully resisted the advance of the English kings and the barons of Norman origin near the border. How much the idea of resistance is still alive today is shown by the motto of modern Wales: "Cymru am byth" (Wales forever) or "Y Ddraig Goch ddyry cychwyn" (The red dragon advances)
Gwladus Ddu lived in turbulent times: she witnessed her father's successful struggle for supremacy among the Welsh small principalities as well as his efforts to oppose the hegemony of the kings of England and the advance of the English barons who were wealthy in the border area into Welsh territory. She herself became the plaything of fatherly politics, as her marriages served to secure alliances with powerful border barons.
Subject of paternal politics
Her father, Prince Llywelyn the Great, owed his rise to the most powerful Prince of Wales to a powerful army, but above all to skillful diplomacy based on changing alliances with potential opponents.
The greatest external threat was the kings of England, who fought for centuries to control Wales. Llywelyn managed to neutralize this danger, at least temporarily, by establishing friendly relations with King John Ohneland and making him his father-in-law in 1205 by marrying his illegal daughter Johanna. For those who see Gwladus Ddu as the daughter of Joan of Wales, her birth would be a product of paternal diplomacy.
The friendship turned into enmity when King John invaded Wales to suppress a rebellion in 1211, defeated Llywelyn and in a peace treaty forced him to be the heir if his marriage was childless. Revenge came in 1215 when Lord Llywelyn succeeded in conquering Shrewsbury, which was instrumental in King John's willingness to sign the famous Magna Carta shortly thereafter .
The English lords - mostly of Norman origin - in the neighboring border areas, the so-called "Marcher Lords", represented the other external threat to Welsh independence, as they tried to bring Welsh territories under their control by conquering or enfeoffing the English kings. Through the will of her father, the life of Gwladus Ddu primarily served to avoid this danger.
Marriage policy
According to Charles Cawley, her father, Prince Llywelyn the Great, had not only three children born in wedlock, but also six children out of wedlock who could be used to secure strategic alliances. The life of Gwladus Ddu was therefore decisively shaped by her father's tactics to secure strategic alliances through family connections. Her job was to secure the borders of Wales by marrying potentially dangerous lords of the English border marches. Her father therefore married her successively to two of the powerful lords of the neighboring brands.
Her first husband was (1215/16) Reginald de Braose († 1228), who controlled the Welsh territories of Brecon , Abergavenny and Builth in addition to English rulers .
His family was of Norman origin with the ancestral home in Briouze . His father, William de Braose, 4th Lord of Bramber († 1211) already had important territories in Wales - including Gower , Abergavenny , Brecknockshire , Builth and others. Radnorshire - controlled, but lost from 1207 in a rebellion against King John. Llywelyn had conquered the southern Powys and the northern Cerdigion from 1208 during the resulting power vacuum.
Through their marriage, Gwladus Ddu was drawn into the barons' war against King John of England (1199-1216), since Reginald continued his father's fight against the king from 1213 and only came to an agreement with the king in May 1216. As a rebel, he was therefore excluded from the signing of the Magna Carta by King John, but his father-in-law Llywelyn ab Iorwerth is among the signatories of this historical document.
After their marriage in 1215, their father Llywelyn tried to win Reginald in his fight against King John by providing him with extensive fiefs in Wales. Gwladus Ddu returned to her native Wales. In 1217/18 Reginald became reconciled with Johann's successor, Heinrich III. who this time confirmed his possessions as an English fiefdom. This was viewed by Prince Llywelyn - and probably also by Gwladus Ddu - as an open breach of the existing alliance against England, which was sealed by marriage, which resulted in repeated armed conflicts between Reginald and his father-in-law. Reginald could ultimately only thanks to the military support of Henry III. keep in its Welsh territories. As the daughter or wife of the two opponents, Gwladus Ddu was torn between identifying with the interests of her husband and solidarity with her father and maintaining the independence and culture of the beleaguered Celtic principalities in Wales. This tension only resolved with the death of her husband in 1228.
Recently widowed, Gwladus Ddu probably traveled to England in 1229 because King Henry III. on September 5, 1229 issued a letter of safe conduct for her brother Dafydd ap Llywelyn so that he could travel to England accompanied by his sister to pay homage to him.
According to the Annals of Worcester, Gwladus Ddu was married to another Marcher Lord, Ralph de Mortimer of Wigmore , the following year. His family was of Norman origin and bore the name of Mortemer-sur-Eaulne (today Mortemer in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region ). His ancestor, Ranulph I. de Mortimer († c. 1104), was lord of St-Victor-en-Caux (today Saint-Victor-l´Abbaye), but also a baron in the Welsh Marche and Lord of Wigmore in Herefordshire ( England ). As a dowry, Gwladus Ddu brought - according to a document about the foundation of the monastery Wigmore Abbey - to her second husband the Lords of Kery and Kedewyn. Her second husband also controlled territories in Wales and had the castles Cefnllys Castle and Knucklas Castle (both in Powys, central Wales) built around 1240 , where his wife may have stayed occasionally. Both were destroyed by the Welsh in 1262.
Ralph de Mortimer died in 1246, so Gwladus Ddu also survived her second husband.
Legitimacy and Succession
Towards the end of her life, Gwladis Ddu experienced an internal family dispute over the succession of her father when he died in April 1240 - after almost forty years of rule. It was primarily about political considerations but also about the question of legitimacy, which Gwaldus Ddu could have personally affected because of his own birth. The natural candidate under Welsh law was the prince's first-born son, Gruffydd ap Llywelyn Fawr , who, however, came from his extramarital relationship with Tangwystl Goch.
Llywelyn Fawr had another son who came into question for the successor: Dafydd ap Llywelyn, who was a younger but the only legitimate son of the prince. He preferred his legitimate son, as he (erroneously) believed that he - as the cousin of the King of England - would have a much better chance of preserving the independence of his principality against the expansive aspirations of England and the barons of the neighboring English brands. The follow-up dispute ended with Dafydd ap Llywelyn - despite widespread rejection of the "half-Englishman" by the Welsh population - prevailed and succeeded his father from 1240 to 1246. He took his older brother Gruffydd ap Llywelyn Fawr prisoner, but had to deliver him to King Henry III. extradited from England , who imprisoned him hostage in the Tower in London , where he died in 1244.
Gwladus Ddu himself died, as the most important primary source on the history of Wales, "Brut y Tywysogion" (Chronicle of the Princes) mentions, in 1251 in Windsor , Berkshire .
Marriages and offspring
Marriages
- Gwladus Ddu married his first marriage in 1215/1216 as his second wife Reginald de Braose, Lord of Brecon and Abergavenny. This marriage remained childless.
- Gwladus Ddu married Ralph de Mortimer of Wigmore († August 6, 1246, buried in Wigmore Abbey) in 1230.
children
The following children were from this marriage
- Roger Mortimer (* 1231, † October 26, 1282) ⚭ 1247 Maud de Braose, daughter of William de Braose, 7th Baron of Bramber
- Hugh de Mortimer
- John de Mortimer
- Peter de Mortimer
More offspring
Gwladus Ddu left numerous descendants:
In England this includes the kings Edward IV Plantagenet (1461–1470 and 1471–1483), Henry VIII. Tudor (1485–1509) - and three of his six wives Anne Boleyn (* 1501/1507, † 1536), Jane Seymour (* c. 1509, † 1537) and Catherine Howard (* 1521/25, † 1542) and thus also Queen Elizabeth I Tudor (1558–1603).
In Scotland these included King James II Stuart (1437–1460) and his descendants, including Maria Stuart (1542–1567) and the current British royal family.
About Elizabeth de la Pole († April 3, 1440), a daughter of Michael de la Pole, 2nd Earl of Suffolk (* v. 1367, † 1415), Anna Jagiellonka (* 1503, † 1547), the heiress, also come from the kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary and the wife of Ferdinand I ( Roman Emperor , Archduke of Austria etc.) - and thus practically all European rulers - from Gwladus Ddu and their Celtic ancestors.
literature
- Jones, T., ed. 1941. Brut y Tywysogion: Peniarth MS. 20. University of Wales Press
- John Edward Lloyd (1911) A history of Wales from the earliest times to the Edwardian conquest (Longmans, Green & Co.)
- RR Davies: The Age of Conquest. Wales 1063-1415. Reissued. Oxford University Press, Oxford et al. 2000. ISBN 0-19-820878-2 .
- Frederick Lewis Weis: Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists Who Came to America Before 1700 Lines 132-C-29, 176B-28.
- Huw Pryce (Ed.): The Acts of Welsh rulers, 1120-1283. University of Wales Press, Cardiff 2005, ISBN 0-7083-1897-5 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ See the articles in Wikipedia Llywelyn from Iorwerth in German and "Llywelyn the Great" in English
- ^ Charles Cawley: Medieval Lands, in: Foundation for Medieval Genealogy: "Wales"
- ^ A b Charles Cawley: op. Cit.
- ^ Charles Cawley: op. Cit. Note 277 Annales de Dunstaplia, p. 52.
- ↑ See article in Wikipedia in English: "Magna Carta"
- ^ Charles Cawley: op. Cit. Note 279: Patent Rolls Henry III 1225-1232 (1903), p. 263.
- ↑ Charles Cawley op. Cit. Note 280: Luard, HR (ed.) (1869) Annales Monastici Vol. IV, Annales de Oseneia, Chronicon Thomæ Wykes, Annales de Wigornia (London), Annales de Wigornia, p. 421.
- ↑ Charles Cawley op. Cit. Note 281: William Dugdale , Monasticon VI, Wigmore Abbey, Herefordshire, III, Fundationis et Fundatorum Historia, p. 350.
- ↑ Jones, T., ed. 1941. Brut y Tywysogion: Peniarth MS. 20. University of Wales Press.
- ↑ Detlev Schwennike: European family tables, Verlag JA Stargardt, Marburg, 1980 new series, volumes II and I.
- ^ Base de données généalogique . roglo.eu. Retrieved July 17, 2011.
- ^ Charles Cawley: op. cit.
See also
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Gwladus Ddu |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Gwladus ferch Llywelyn |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Princess of Gwynedd in North Wales |
| DATE OF BIRTH | around 1195 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Gwynedd, Wales |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1251 |
| Place of death | Windsor (Berkshire) |