Llywelyn ap Gruffydd

Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, Prince of Wales

Llywelyn ap Gruffydd [ ɬəˈwɛlɪn ap ˈɡrɪfɪð ] (* around 1223 , † December 11, 1282 near the town of Cilmeri , a suburb of Builth Wells ) was the last ruler of an autonomous Wales from 1246 to 1282 before it was conquered by Edward I of England has been. In English he is therefore also referred to as Llywelyn the Last ('Llywelyn the Last'), in Welsh also as Llywelyn Ein Llyw Olaf ('Llywelyn, our last ruler'). Sometimes there are also the names Llywelyn III. (from Gwynedd) or Llywelyn II (from Wales) .

Origin and early years

Llywelyn was the second of four sons of Gruffydd , the eldest son of Llywelyn from Iorwerth , and Senena ferch Rhodri. His older brother was Owain Goch ("Owain the Red"), the younger ones were Dafydd and Rhodri .

The exact date of birth of Llywelyn is not known, but it is believed that he was born between 1222 and 1223. His name is first mentioned in a charter in 1244 as the owner of a property in the Vale of Clwyd.

After his grandfather died in 1240, Llywelyn's uncle Dafydd ap Llywelyn became ruler of Gwynedd . Llywelyn's father and brother Owain were initially held captive by his uncle, but were later held hostage to King Henry III. to be handed over from England . This had her incarcerated in the Tower of London , where Llywelyn's father fell out of a window while trying to escape and was killed in the process. The window was later bricked up, the place can still be seen today.

Since King Henry III. Now Gruffydd could no longer use as leverage against Dafydd ap Llywelyn, a war broke out between them in 1245, in which Llywelyn supported his uncle. Llywelyn's brother Owain had been released by King Henry after his father's death in the hope that he would start a civil war in Gwynedd. Owain, however, disappointed this expectation and stayed in Chester . When Dafydd died unexpectedly and without a successor in 1246, Llywelyn was the only one on the spot and inherited him as Prince of Gwynedd.

Early ruling years

Llywelyn's coat of arms

Llywelyn and Owain negotiated with King Henry and eventually signed an armistice in 1247. The condition was that they withdrew to Gwynedd Uwch Conwy, the part of Gwynedd west of the River Conwy , which was divided between them. The Gwynedd Is Conwy area, east of the river, went to King Henry.

When Llywelyn's second brother Dafydd ap Gruffydd came of age, he paid homage to the king, who promised him part of the already decimated Gwynedd. Llywelyn refused to accept this and Owain and Dafydd joined forces against him. In June 1255 Llywelyn defeated his brothers at the Battle of Bryn Derwin , took them prisoner and thus became sole ruler of Gwynedd Uwch Conwy.

After that, Llywelyn tried to expand his realm. The people of Gwynedd Is Conwy rejected English rule because they suffered from administrative officials. The area, which was also called Perfeddwlad , had meanwhile been handed over from King Heinrich to his son Eduard . He traveled there in the summer of 1256, but failed to remedy the grievances in the administration there. The population turned to Llywelyn, who crossed the Conwy with an army in November 1256. He was accompanied by his brother Dafydd, whom he had released from prison. By December Llywelyn had conquered almost all of Gwynedd Is Conwy, only the royal castles of Dyserth and Deganwy still resisting.

Llywelyn now turned south, where he teamed up with Maredudd ap Rhys Gryg von Deheubarth . They conquered Ceredigion and then Ystrad Tywi , which Maredudd received as a reward for his support. Maredudds nephew Rhys Fychan , the previous ruler of Ystrad Tywi, was expropriated because he had been on the side of the king. In June 1257, Stephen Bauzan tried with an army to bring Rhys Fychan back to power, but his army suffered a catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Cymerau .

Rhys Fychan now recognized Llywelyn as ruler, which posed a problem for Llywelyn, as he had already given the lands to Maredudd. Nevertheless, he transferred his old territories back to Rhys, which led to the king's ambassadors turning to Maredudd and promising him the recovery of all lands if he would pay homage to King Henry. This is what Maredudd did in 1257.

From the spring of 1258 Llywelyn carried the title " Prince of Wales "; This title is first mentioned in a contract between Llywelyn and representatives of the Scottish nobility from the Cummings clan .

In 1263 Llywelyn's brother Dafydd joined the English king.

In England, Simon V de Montfort , the 6th Earl of Leicester , had defeated the royal troops at the Battle of Lewes in 1264 and captured the king and his son, Prince Edward. Llywelyn began to negotiate with de Montfort and in 1265 offered him 30,000 marks for a permanent peace treaty in which Llywelyn would be recognized as ruler of Wales. The Pipton-on-Wye Agreement of June 19, 1265 established an alliance between Llywelyn and de Montfort. However, the concessions to Llywelyn in the treaty already indicate the increasing weakening of de Montfort's political position. He was finally killed in 1265 in the Battle of Evesham against the royalists under Edward, in which Llywelyn sided with neither side.

Supremacy in Wales

After Simon de Montfort's death, Llywelyn negotiated with the king and was finally recognized as Prince of Wales in the Treaty of Montgomery in 1267 . In return for the title, the conquered territories and the homage of all native Welsh regional rulers - with the exception of Maredudds - he had to pay 25,000 marks in tribute to the king, which were to be paid in annual installments of 3,000 marks. For another 5,000 marks he could have received the homage from the influential Maredudd. Llywelyn's territorial claims also meant that the smaller South Welsh tribal princes were not friendly towards him.

The Treaty of Montgomery was the culmination of Llywelyn's reign. But soon afterwards problems arose again, initially in the form of a dispute with Gilbert de Clare , 6th Earl of Hertford, about the duty of loyalty of Maredudd ap Gruffudd , a Welsh nobleman who owned lands in Glamorgan . Gilbert built Caerphilly Castle in response . King Henry sent a bishop to take over the castle while the disagreement persisted. However, with a trick Gilbert managed to get the castle back, and the king was unable to prevent this.

When King Henry died in 1272, the new King Edward I was not in the kingdom, and the temporary reign was carried out by three people. One of these regents was Roger Mortimer, 1st Baron Mortimer , Llywelyn's cousin and one of his rivals in the border marches . When Humphrey de Bohun, 3rd Earl of Hereford , tried to retake Brycheiniog, which Llywelyn had been awarded in the Treaty of Montgomery, Mortimer supported de Bohun. At the same time, Llywelyn failed to raise the sums of money that were stipulated in the contract because the estates did not yield that much money. He eventually stopped making payments.

In the spring of 1274, Llywelyn's brother Dafydd, Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn von Powys Wenwynwyn and his son Owain planned to kill Llywelyn. When the attack was due to take place, Dafydd was staying with his brother and Owain was scheduled to appear there on February 2nd with armed men. But he was stopped by a snow storm. Llywelyn did not find out about the failed attack until late that year, when Owain revealed himself to the Bishop of Bangor. Owain declared that it was intended to make Dafydd Prince of Gwynedd; Gruffydd was to be given lands for his help. Dafydd and Gruffydd then fled to England, where they joined the king and raided Llywelyn's possessions, fueling Llywelyn's anger against them. When King Edward asked Llywelyn in 1275 to come to Chester to pay homage to him, he refused.

Further serious tensions with King Edward I came when Llywelyn again allied with the family of Simon de Montfort, although they no longer had the influence as in previous years. He asked for the hand of Eleonore de Montfort , the daughter of Simon de Montfort. The marriage was carried out by a distance marriage, but King Edward I objected, as the bride belonged to the royal family. Her mother was Eleanor of England , daughter of King John and princess of the House of Plantagenet . When Eleanor set sail in France to meet Llywelyn, Edward recruited pirates to bring the ship up. Eleanor was held at Windsor Castle until Llywelyn made certain concessions.

In 1276 Llywelyn was declared a rebel by the king and a year later the king moved against him with a huge army. Eduard intended to take all lands from Llywelyn and to incorporate Gwynedd Is Conwy directly into his own domain. Gwynedd Uwch Conwy was to be divided between Llywelyn's brothers Dafydd and Owain, either entirely or with the exception of the island of Anglesey , which in this case was also to be annexed by the Crown. Eduard was assisted by Dafydd ap Gruffydd and Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn, and a number of the smaller Welsh chieftains who had formerly fought by Llywelyn's side now hastened to make their peace with the king. In the summer of 1277 Edward's troops had reached the Conwy and camped at Deganwy , while another part of the troops had conquered Anglesey and confiscated the entire wheat harvest there. This cut off supplies for Llywelyn, forcing him to negotiate.

Treaty of Aberconwy

Worcester Cathedral where Llywelyn married Eleonore de Montfort

The negotiations ended in the Aberconwy Treaty . Peace was made, but in return Llywelyn had to make some significant concessions. His realm was again limited to Gwynedd Uwch Conwy. Parts of Gwynedd Is Conwy were given to Dafydd ap Gruffydd with the promise that if Llywelyn died without an heir, part of Gwynedd Uwch Conwy would be given to him instead. Llywelyn was forced to recognize the English king as his overlord. So far he had refused, but after the events of 1276, which robbed him of all but a small part of his lands, this was no longer possible.

He traveled to see Edward, who resided in Worcester with Eleanor and the royal family . After Llywelyn gave in to royal demands, he was given permission to marry Eleanor. The ceremony took place in Worcester Cathedral. To this day there is a stained glass window showing the scene. The wedding is said to have been a real love marriage. This thesis is also supported by the fact that Llywelyn, as far as is known, had no illegitimate children, which was extremely unusual in the Welsh ruling family. (In medieval Wales, illegitimate children had the same inheritance rights as legitimate children.)

The Prince and Princess of Wales (who also carried the title Lord and Lady of Snowdon) returned to their diminished kingdom and lived there in peace for a while, but relations with Edward deteriorated more and more. Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn had his land returned and a heated argument arose between himself and Llywelyn over areas in Arwystli . Llywelyn wanted the dispute settled under Welsh law, while Gruffydd insisted on the application of English law, supported by the King.

Last campaign and death

In the spring of 1282, many of the smaller tribal chiefs who had supported King Edward against Llywelyn in 1277 were dissatisfied with the royal tax collectors. On Palm Sunday that year, Dafydd ap Gruffydd attacked the English at Hawarden Castle and besieged Rhuddlan . The uprising quickly spread to other parts of Wales. Aberystwyth Castle was conquered, as was Ystrad Tywi in South Wales and Carreg Cennen Castle . In a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury , John Peckham , Llywelyn said he had nothing to do with planning the uprising. Still, he felt obliged to support his brother, and so began a war for which the Welsh were not equipped. With the beginning of the war, Llywelyn also suffered a family blow. On June 19, 1282 his wife Eleonore died in Garth Celyn (now Pen y Bryn, Abergwyngregyn) giving birth to their daughter Gwenllian .

The Llywelyn Memorial at Cilmeri

The clashes took a similar course as in 1277: Eduard first conquered Gwynedd Is Conwy and then Anglesey, where he again confiscated the wheat harvest. When trying to cross over from Anglesey to the mainland, the occupying army suffered a defeat. The Archbishop of Canterbury tried to mediate between Llywelyn and the King, and Llywelyn was offered a large plot of land in England if he ceded Wales to Edward. Dafydd was to join the crusade and not return without the king's permission. In an emotional response, Llywelyn stated that he would never leave the people his ancestors had protected since the times of Kamber , the son of Brutus of Britain . The offer was therefore rejected.

Llywelyn left Dafydd to defend Gwynedd and moved south with his troops to solicit support in Central and South Wales and to open a strategically important second front.

He was killed at the Battle of Orewin Bridge near Builth Wells after he had temporarily removed from his army. The exact circumstances of his death are unclear and there are two different versions of it. Both agree that Llywelyn was tricked away from his army and then killed. According to the first version, he is said to have approached the troops of Edmund Mortimer and Hugh Le Strange together with the chief clergyman of his army after they had crossed a bridge. There they heard the noise of battle because the main force of their army had met the troops of Roger Dispenser and Gruffudd ap Gwenwynwyn. Llywelyn turned to get to his troops, allegedly being pursued by a lone lancer who then killed him. It was not until much later that an English knight is said to have noticed that the dead man was the Prince of Wales. This version was written 50 years later in the north of England and has suspicious parallels to the story of the Battle of Stirling Bridge in Scotland. The second version was written down by monks in eastern England who had contact with Llywelyn's exiled daughter Gwenllian ferch Llywelyn and his niece Gwladys ferch Dafydd. Afterwards Llywelyn is said to have approached the troops of Edmund and Roger Mortimer, Hugo Le Strange and Grufudd ap Gwenwynwyn at the head of his army, as they had promised to pay homage to him. This was a trick though. The opposing army immediately began fighting and Llywelyn was cut off from his army with 18 followers. At sunset, the group, which included clergymen, was able to take refuge in the forest. There they were caught, however, and Llywelyn was struck down. When he was dying, he asked for a priest and revealed his identity. He was then given the fatal blow and cut off his head. The body was searched and several items were found, including a list of "co-conspirators" (this detail seems very doubtful) and his private seal.

In a letter to Robert, Bishop of Bath and Wells , Archbishop Peckham wrote on December 17, 1282 :

"If the king wants the specimen (of the list) found in Llywelyn's breeches, he can get it from Edmund Mortimer, who keeps it, as well as Llywelyn's secret seal and some other items found in the same place."

Various legends have grown up about the fate of Llywelyn's severed head. It is known that he was sent to see King Edward in Rhuddlan and then on to the troops in Anglesey. Then Eduard sent the head to London, where it was displayed in the pillory for a day. He was "crowned" with ivy (to show that he was the king of the bandits) as a mockery of the Welsh prophecy that one day a Welshman in London would be crowned king over all of Britain (which eventually happened as Henry VII. Became king in 1485). Then the head on the tip of a lance was brought by a rider to the Tower of London and displayed on the battlements of the gate. Even 15 years later, it is said to have been there.

The whereabouts of the headless body is not clear, although the tradition says that it was buried in the Cistercian abbey of Abbeycwmhir . On December 28, 1282 Archbishop Peckham instructed the archdeacon of the monastery in Brecon in a letter to clarify whether the body of Llywelyn had been buried in the church of Cwmhir.

Another reference to this whereabouts is found in the Chronicle of Florence of Worcester:

"As for the prince's body, his mutilated torso, he was buried in the abbey of Cwm Hir, which belongs to the Cistercian order."

According to another theory, his body was moved to Llanrumney Hall in Cardiff .

The poet Gruffydd from yr Ynad Coch wrote in an elegy about Llywelyn:

Do you not see the path of the wind and the rain?

Do you not see the oak trees in turmoil?

Cold my heart in a fearful breast

For the king, the oaken door of Aberffraw

A puzzling reference without further explanation can be found in the Welsh Chronicle Brut y Tywysogion:

"[...] and then Llywelyn was betrayed by his own men in the Bangor bell tower."

The end of the ruling house

Llywelyn statue in Cardiff City Hall

With the loss of Llywelyn, the morale of the Welsh and the will to resist waned. Dafydd was Llywelyn's successor and tried for several months to continue the uprising. In June 1283, he and his family were captured on Mount Bera above Garth Celyn. He was brought before the King and then sentenced to death by an extraordinary session of Parliament in Shrewsbury . After being dragged through the streets, he was executed by " hanging, stretching and quartering ."

After the final defeat of 1283 Gwynedd was stripped of all regal insignia and coats of arms. Eduard was particularly pleased to confiscate the family residence of the Gwynedd dynasty. In August 1284, King Edward I held court in Garth Celyn (today Abergwyngregyn) and there, too, removed all references to his own principality. Llywelyn's crown was ceremonially displayed in the Shrine of St. Edward in Westminster. The family jewels were confiscated and the seal pattern plates of Llywelyn, his wife and brother Dafydd were melted down and made into a drinking cup. The most valuable religious relic in Gwynedd, the so-called Cross of Neith - according to legend a piece of the " true cross " of Jesus - was brought to London and in a solemn procession in May 1285, led by the King, the Queen, the Archbishop of Canterbury with 14 bishops and the most influential people of the empire, carried through the city. Through these measures, King Edward appropriated the historical and religious regalia of the House of Gwynedd to show the world that the line of Welsh rulers of Gwynedd had been obliterated and the principality had fallen to the English crown. A contemporary chronicler is said to have said: "And with that all Wales was overthrown." ("And then all Wales was cast to the ground.")

Most of Llywelyn's relatives spent the rest of their lives in captivity; notable exceptions were his younger brother Rhodri and a distant cousin, Madog ap Llywelyn . Rhodri had ceded his right to the royal crown to Llywelyn at an early stage and always tried to remain politically inconspicuous. In 1272 he went into exile in England, where he died in 1315. He owned estates in Gloucestershire, Cheshire, Surrey and Powys. His grandson Owain Lawgoch later tried again unsuccessfully to get the title "Prince of Wales".

Madog ap Llywelyn sat at the head of a revolt against King Edward in 1294 and also called himself Prince of Wales, but was defeated and captured by the English troops in 1295.

Llywelyn and Eleonore's daughter, Gwenllian , who was only one year old , was given to the convent at Sempringham in Lincolnshire , where she stayed until she died in 1337 with no offspring. She probably knew little about her princely parentage and spoke no Welsh .

Dafydd's two surviving sons were sent to Bristol Prison , where they remained for the rest of their lives. There are no more records of Llywelyn's older brother Owain after 1282. It is believed that he was also murdered.

Historical novels

• The American author Sharon Kay Penman has processed the stories of Llywelyn Fawr , Llywelyn ap Gruffydd and Dafydd ap Gruffydd into a novel trilogy. The titles of the individual volumes are: Here be Dragons , Falls the Shadow and The Reckoning .

• The life of Llywelyn is the subject of the Brothers of Gwynedd Quartet , a four-volume novel cycle by Edith Pargeter . The individual volumes are: Sunrise in the West (1974); The Dragon at Noonday (1975); The Hounds of Sunset (1976); Afterglow and Nightfall (1977).

Saga world

As a gift from King John Ohneland of England, Prince Llywelyn from Iorwerth of Gwynedd is said to have received the dog Gelert . One day, returning from the hunt, Llywelyn found his young son's cradle knocked over. The baby was nowhere to be found, and Gelert, whom Llywelyn had left to guard the child, was covered in blood. Llywelyn believed that the dog killed his son and killed him with his sword. Shortly afterwards, however, the prince heard a child crying and found his son unharmed under the cradle. Next to it was a wolf that Gelert had killed. Llywelyn regretted his act, had the dog buried in honor and is said to have never laughed again afterwards.

See also

• Gwynedd House
• List of Welsh rulers

literature

• Gwynfor Evans : Cymru O Hud. 2il arg. Y Lolfa, Talybont (Ceredigion) 2004, ISBN 0-86243-545-5 (Welsh).
• Gwynfor Evans: Eternal Wales. Y Lolfa, Talybont (Ceredigion) 2002, ISBN 0-86243-608-7 (English).
• John Edward Lloyd : A history of Wales from the earliest times to the Edwardian conquest. 2nd edition. Longmans, Green & Co., London, 1912 (Reprinted by Kessinger Publishing, Whitefish MT 2007, ISBN 978-0-548-18250-5 ).
• Kari Maund: The Welsh kings. Warriors, warlords and princes. Tempus, Stroud 2006, ISBN 0-7524-2973-6 .
• T. Jones Pierce: But Gwyn Gregin. In: Caernarvonshire Historical Society Transactions. 24, 1963, ISSN  0144-0098 , pp. 37-43.
• J. Beverley Smith: Llywelyn Ap Gruffudd. Prince of Wales. University of Wales Press, Cardiff 1998, ISBN 0-7083-1474-0 .
• David Stephenson: The governance of Gwynedd. University of Wales Press, Cardiff 1984, ISBN 0-7083-0850-3 ( Studies in Welsh History 5).
• Tystiolaeth Garth Celyn. In: Y Traethodydd. Vol. 153, July / Gorffennaf 1998, ISSN  0969-8930 , pp. 145-159, online .

Web links

Commons : Llywelyn ap Gruffydd  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Llywelyn.co.uk
• Llywelyn ap Gruffydd on infoplease.com
• Death of Llywelyn on cilmeri.org (Cilmeri is the current name of the place Cefn-y-Bedd, where Llywelyn is said to have been killed.)
• The Final Campaign of Prince Llywelyn ap Gruffydd - Essay on Llywelyn's last campaign

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} "Death of Llywelyn" ( Memento of the original from February 9, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at www.cilmeri.org, accessed July 14, 2008. 
2. ↑ Tryst Williams: Last true Welsh prince buried under pub? August 8, 2005 article on walesonline.co.uk (accessed July 21, 2008).
3. ^ Rees Davies: Wales: A Culture Preserved at bbc.co.uk/history (accessed July 21, 2008).

predecessor	Office	successor
Dafydd ap Llywelyn	Prince of Gwynedd 1246–1282	Dafydd ap Gruffydd