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Early life
He was a Prince of Gwynedd, a younger son of Gruffudd ap Llywelyn and his wife, Senana, and thus grandson of Llywelyn the Great. In 1241, he is recorded as having been handed over to Henry III of England as a hostage together with his younger brother, Rhodri, as part of an agreement. He came of age under Welsh law on 11 July 1252, his fourteenth birthday, and was invested, in front of his mother Senana and the Bishop of Bangor, as Lord of the commote of Cymydmaen, at the outer reaches of the Llŷn Peninsula. In 1253, he was called upon to pay homage to King Henry III of England.
In 1255, he joined his brother Owain in a challenge to his other brother, Llywelyn, but Llywelyn defeated them at the Battle of Bryn Derwin. Dafydd was imprisoned, but Llywelyn released him the following year and restored him to favour. In 1263, he joined King Henry in an attack on his brother. After Llywelyn was acknowledged by King Henry as Prince of Wales in 1267, Dafydd was again restored to Llywelyn's favour, but in 1274, he joined King Edward I of England to challenge Llywelyn once again.
Family
Parents: Gruffudd ap Llywelyn ab Iorwerth (died 1244) and his wife Senana.
Brothers:
- Owain Goch ap Gruffydd (died c. 1282)
- Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Prince of Wales (lured into a trap and put to death, 11 December 1282) married Eleanor de Montfort, daughter of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester. They had one daughter, Gwenllian. Eleanor died in childbirth at the royal home Garth Celyn on 19 June 1282.
- Rhodri ap Gruffudd (died c.1315) married 1) Beatrice, daughter of David of Malpas. 2) unknown. He had a son Thomas ap Rhodri (died 1363) by his second marriage, who was the father of Owain ap Thomas (died 1378).
Sisters:
- Gwladus ferch Gruffudd (died 1261) married Rhys Fechan (died 1271) of Ystrad Tywi.
- Margaret ferch Gruffudd married Madog ap Gruffudd (died 1277) of Powys Fadog. They had two sons, Gruffudd ap Madog and Llywelyn ap Madog. The two boys died in mysterious circumstances shortly after the outbreak of war in 1282.
Thomas Pennant1 states that the boys were ‘drowned in the River Dee’ at Holt by their guardians John de Warenne, earl of Surrey, and Roger Mortimer the younger. D. Powel2 mentions the ‘destruction’ of the two princes, whose guardians, Warenne and Mortimer, ‘so garded their wardes wit so small regard, that they never returned to their possessions. And shortlie after the said guardians did obtaine the same lands to themselves by charters of the king.’
7 October 1282, John de Warenne was granted the land of Maelor (Bromfield) that had previously held by the two sons of Madoc ap Gruffudd at the beginning of the war.3
Dafydd ap Gruffudd married (sometime after 1265) Lady Elizabeth Ferrers, daughter of William de Ferrers, 5th Earl of Derby, and the widow of William Marshal, 2nd Baron.
- Through the marriage Dafydd came into possession of the manor of Folesham, Norfolk. He exchanged Folesham with John Marshal for the manor of Norton, Northampton.
- September 1278, he accepted a grant for life from Edward l, King of England, of the manor of Frodsham, near Chester.4
Prince of Wales
At Easter 1282, Dafydd ap Gruffudd attacked Hawarden Castle, thereby starting the final conflict with Plantagenet-ruled England, in the course of which Welsh independence was lost. The last Tywysog of Gwynedd and Prince of Wales, Dafydd was leader of his nation only for a few months after his brother Llywelyn ap Gruffudd's death.
Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Prince of Wales, had been lured into a trap and put to death on 11 December 1282 (see corr. of Archbishop John Peckham, Lambeth Palace Archives)citation needed. Dafydd was his brother's successor but by January 1282, Edward of England had the heartland of independent Wales ringed with a massive army. With limited resources of manpower and equipment available to him, Dafydd moved down to Castell y Bere. In April, Castell y Bere was besieged by over 3,000 men and the small Welsh garrison, commanded by Cynfrig ap Madog, surrendered on 25 April. Dafydd escaped and moved north to Dolbadarn Castle, a guardpost in the Peris Valley at the foot of Snowdon. In May 1283, he was forced to move again, this time to the mountains above the Welsh royal home Garth Celyn.
On 22 June, Dafydd and his younger son Owain ap Dafydd were captured at Nanhysglain, a secret hiding place in a bog by Bera Mountain to the south of Garth Celyn. Dafydd, seriously wounded (graviter vulneratus) in the struggle, was brought to King Edward's camp at Rhuddlan that same night (Cotton Vesp. B xi, f30). Dafydd was taken from here to Chester and then on to Shrewsbury. Dafydd's wife Elizabeth de Ferrers, their seven daughters, and their infant niece, Gwenllian ferch Llywelyn, were also taken prisoner at the same time. Whether they were with Dafydd and Owain at Bera is not recorded, but it is likely.
On 28 June, Llywelyn ap Dafydd was captured. Edward triumphantly proclaimed that the last of the 'treacherous lineage', princes of the 'turbulent nation', was now in his grasp, captured by men of his own nation (per homines lingue sue). 5
Welsh resistance to the invasion temporarily came to an end.
On 28 June, Edward issued writs to summon a parliament to meet at Shrewsbury, to discuss Dafydd's fate.
On 30 September, Dafydd ap Gruffudd, Prince of Wales, was condemned to death, the first person known to have been tried and executed for what from that time onwards would be described as high treason against the King. Edward ensured that Dafydd's death was to be slow and agonising, and also historic; he became the first prominent person in recorded history to have been hanged, drawn and quartered, preceded by a number of minor knights earlier in the thirteenth century.
Dafydd was dragged through the streets of Shrewsbury attached to a horse's tail then hanged alive, revived, then disembowelled and his entrails burned before him for 'his sacrilege in committing his crimes in the week of Christ's passion,' and then his body cut into four quarters 'for plotting the king's death'.
Geoffrey of Shrewsbury was paid 20s. for carrying out the gruesome task on 3 October 1283 (though some sources give the date as 2 October).
Dafydd's daughter Gwladys, like her cousin Gwenllian ferch Llywelyn, was sent to a convent in Lincolnshire — Gwenllian to Sempringham and Gwladys to Sixhills, where she died in 1336. Their sons were both imprisoned at Bristol Castle; Llywelyn ap Dafydd died at Bristol Castle in mysterious circumstances in 1287 or 1288, while Owain ap Dafydd is last found living in August 1325. Dafydd had another (illegitimate) son, Dafydd Goch, who survived.
One cadet member of the ruling House of Cunedda also survived, Madog ap Llywelyn, who later rallied the people of Wales to the banner of Gwynedd one last time.
References
- Bellamy, J. G. The Law of Treason in England in the Later Middle Ages. Cambridge University Press, 1970.
- Maud, Ralph, David the last prince of Wales. The Ten 'lost' months of Welsh History.
- Pryce, Huw (ed.) The Acts of Welsh Rulers 1120-1283 (Cardiff, 2005).
- Smith, J. Beverley Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, 1998, p.579
Notes
- ^ Tours in Wales (1874), citing an MS communicated by the Reverend Mr Price, Keeper of the Bodleian Library.
- ^ History of Cambria (1584).
- ^ Calendar of Welsh Rolls, Calendar of Chancery Rolls, Various, London, 1912, page 240).
- ^ CCR, 1272-79, 317; CPR, 1272-81, 279.
- ^ Note: Much has been read into this latter statement regarding Llywelyn ap Dafydd's betrayal, but it has to be taken in context with the other events of 1283, the fact that Llywelyn's father and brother had been taken, and the size of the army that had by now occupied Snowdonia.
External links
| Preceded by Llywelyn I |
Prince of Wales Dormant |
Succeeded by Edward Plantagenet |
| Preceded by Llywelyn III |
Prince of Gwynedd Abolished |
Succeeded by — |
| Titular Prince of Gwynedd 1282-1283 |
Succeeded by Madoc |
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| Head of the House of Aberffraw 1282-1283 |
Succeeded by Llywelyn ap Dafydd |
