Royal Wales. Deborah Fisher
late wife, Eleanor de Montfort (1252–82), had been Edward’s first cousin. Llywelyn’s uncle and predecessor, Dafydd, had been another first cousin. Llywelyn’s aunt, Gwladus Ddu, had been married to Ralph Mortimer, lord of Wigmore, a Norman whose forebears had served Edward’s ancestor, William the Conqueror, and had done well out of the invasion of England. The Mortimers had also intermarried with the English royal family, and several of their descendants would have a pivotal role to play in the future of Anglo-Welsh relations.
It was not unusual, in the Middle Ages, for close family ties to be ignored when political issues came to the fore. Just as families today may fall out over things like wills, divorce and the custody of children, so royal families in the past have squabbled and have even resorted to systematic elimination of their nearest and dearest in order to reinforce their own position. The Welsh were not above the same practice. After the death of Owain Gwynedd in 1170, his sons famously fought one another for dominance, the overall winners being ‘Cristin’s brood’, the children of Owain’s charismatic second wife. This being the case, we should hardly be surprised at the suffering English kings were prepared to inflict on their rival rulers across the border.
Throughout the Middle Ages and afterwards, not only in England and Wales but worldwide, marriages between the members of royal and noble families were made for political reasons. The idea was that the children of such marriages would inherit the parents’ titles and property and that their kingdoms, principalities, fiefdoms or other types of territory would thereafter become firm allies. It seldom worked that way in practice. In Wales, rulers of small individual kingdoms were handicapped by the tradition of dividing their inheritance equally between all male children (including the illegitimate ones). Occasionally, they got around this by marrying off their sons to the daughters of other rulers, thus enabling kingdoms of a comparable size to be created. This was how men like Rhodri Mawr (c.820–78) and Hywel Dda (c.880–950) succeeded in becoming ‘kings’ of most of what we now call Wales.
Royalty, for many people today, is a dirty word. Republicans see it as a symbol of oppression, a legacy of the times when physical power and inherited privilege decided who held sway, times when the greatest happiness of the greatest number was not even a peripheral consideration. For others, even in Wales, the word ‘royalty’ embodies all that is great about the island of Britain. It symbolizes tradition, permanence and pageantry. This is not a new phenomenon; the royal families of the now United Kingdom, like those of other monarchies, have always had an ambivalent relationship with their subjects. This book examines where Wales fits into that picture.
The customs, traditions and government of the principality are in many ways inseparable from those of the UK as a whole, yet their origins in the activities of our royal families are often ignored. It is no accident that we have a prince of Wales, a Royal Welsh regiment and a Royal Welsh Show, that our towns and organizations are proud of their royal charters, that royal wedding rings are made from Welsh gold.
Unlike my two previous books published by University of Wales Press, Princesses of Wales and Princes of Wales, this book does not attempt to tell the stories of people’s lives. Its goal is to explore the meaning of the word ‘royal’ in the context of Welsh life, uncovering unexpected connections and revealing how, even in the present day, the British royal family is indissolubly linked with its Welsh subjects. Our past has been heavily influenced by the royals; could it be that their future depends on us?
EARLIEST DAYS
We cannot go back far enough in written history to find out much about the pre-Roman rulers of Wales. The earliest Welsh leader whose name we know is the man called Caradog by the Welsh and Caratacus by the Romans, and he did not originate from the region we now call Wales. A son of King Cunobelinos of the Catuvellauni, who ruled the area around Colchester, Caratacus fled westward before the Roman invaders, after the defeat of his own people, and joined forces with the Silures, the tribe native to south-east Wales. After a further defeat, he retreated north to ally himself with the Ordovices. The Iron Age earthwork at Llanymynech, known as Caer Caradoc, is traditionally believed to have been his stronghold, and there is no reason this should not be true.
With their new leader, the western tribes struggled to resist the might of the Roman army, but in AD 51 Caratacus was captured and taken to Rome. The Roman historian Tacitus, in book 12 of his Annals, records how the Emperor Claudius, impressed with the dignified manner of the Celtic leader, spared his life. In referring to the procession of captives and battle spoils, Tacitus uses the Latin adjective equivalent to ‘regal’, implying recognition of Caratacus as a king. Nevertheless, Cassius Dio, a later Roman writer, in his Epitome, puts these words into the mouth of the British leader as he is shown around the city of Rome: ‘How can you, who have such possessions and so many of them, covet our poor tents?’ Either Caratacus was playing down his own standard of living, or Tacitus was exaggerating his status so as to enhance the Roman achievement in defeating the Celts.
Whatever the truth, Caradog is a name which, from the earliest days of recorded history, has been associated with certain qualities: not merely courage and defiance, but the dignity and regal bearing associated with kings. Caratacus certainly did not make the magnificent speeches attributed to him by ancient historians; they wrote for a public who were as eager for drama and sensation as today’s readers, and they did not hesitate to invent suitably stirring speeches to add to their narrative. What presumably happened in real life is that the British leader somehow impressed his captors, either with words or deeds. The general impression conveyed to those who witnessed Caratacus’s visit to Rome (which did not include either Tacitus or Cassius Dio) was one of a man used to leading and commanding others and to being obeyed, a man who did not cower before the emperor.
These are the qualities for which Caratacus is remembered, and these are the qualities to which Welsh leaders aspired when they gave or took the name ‘Caradog’. Their eagerness to identify with him has sometimes led to confusion. For example, Caradog ap Ynyr, sometimes called Caradog Freichfras (‘Caradog Strong-Arm’), a fifth-century king of Gwent mentioned in the Life of St Tathyw and associated with the Roman sites of Caerwent and Caerleon, has also been linked with Caer Caradoc, which is of quite the wrong archaeological period. We have to take great care not to place too much credence in the words of medieval historians, whilst recognizing that there may be a grain of truth behind the stories they tell. They are even more inclined to romance and invention than their predecessors in Roman times.
Somewhere into this morass of legend and fact fits King Arthur, the ultimate Christian hero, who is mentioned in the early British pseudohistories, but whose origins are not entirely clear. Despite the knowledge that Wales as an entity did not exist in the early post-Roman period, the idea that Arthur himself was Welsh will not go away. We will see, in subsequent chapters, the far-reaching influence of this perception.
From the time the Roman legions deserted Britannia in the late fourth century AD, we know the names of many Welsh rulers and quite a lot about some individuals. This is largely due to the preservation of the Celtic Christian tradition in Wales, carrying along with it the tradition of monastic learning. The De Excidio Britanniae, a work by the sixth century ‘saint’ Gildas, begins with a brief history of Roman Britain, and goes on to criticize contemporary rulers such as Maelgwn Gwynedd (who is believed to have reigned during the 520s) for failing to live up to the moral standards expected of a king. According to Gildas, Maelgwn committed treason, murder and adultery. The same ruler is mentioned in several other medieval manuscripts, where, though recognized as a wicked man, he is accorded some degree of respect for his achievements. Gildas explains this by pointing out that Maelgwn was a patron of many bards, whose sole purpose in life was to praise him.
Among the other sources for early British history are the Historia Brittonum and the Annales Cambriae. The Historia Brittonum was written in the ninth century, and is attributed to a monk named Nennius, whose exact identity is doubtful. The Annales Cambriae is believed to have been produced in the tenth century, but covers the years 447–954.