Welsh kings at the English court, 928-956 (original) (raw)

The Changing Approaches of English Kings to Wales in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries

Offa's Dyke Journal 4, 2022

This article examines how political relations between England and Wales evolved during the tenth and eleventh centuries. During this period, the newly enlarged English kingdom ruled by Alfred the Great’s descendants became more sophisticated and better able to exploit its inhabitants. At the same time, Wales came to be dominated by a smaller number of more powerful and wide-ranging kings. The combined effect of these changes was a move away from the complete domination over Wales sought by English kings of the earlier tenth century to a pattern of more sporadic intervention exercised through client lords active in the Anglo-Welsh borderlands.

A Political Chronology of Wales, 1066 to 1282

2003

Paul Remfry has taken as his field Medieval Military History of Wales and the Marches between 1066 and 1282 and is producing a series of booklets covering the families of this era and their castles. He is concentrating on the period from the Norman Conquest of England until the demise of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, the first and last recognised native Prince of Wales, the period containing the Norman incursions into Wales. He has carried out much painstaking research both in this country and in France. This has meant many hours spent in University Libraries in such disparate places as Aberystwyth, Birmingham, Manchester and Paris as well as the British Library and the National Library of Wales. It has also involved many visits for close examination of castle sites on both sides of the English Channel.

Wales in late medieval and early modern English histories: neglect, rediscovery, and their implications

Historical Research

The major histories written in England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries demonstrate significant interest in Wales, how it came to be ruled by the English, and how relationships between rulers and people had developed. The histories most current in England in the late fourteenth and fifteenth century, by contrast, show far less interest in these Welsh topics. Readers of the most widely-available histories in the late fifteenth century, especially those which were part of the Brut and London Chronicle traditions, would have had relatively little sense of the situation of Wales and its conquest, still less of more recent events, not least the rebellion of Owain Glyndŵr in the early fifteenth century or the turbulence of the most recent half-century. By the late sixteenth century, this position had been reversed, and readers of widely available histories were plentifully supplied with accounts of the Welsh past and its relevance to the English experience. This poses questions as to the reasons for this change, and its impacts. First, it suggests we should explore the role we should attribute to perceptions of the historic and more recent impact of Welsh instability in shaping the civil conflicts of 1450-87; and, second, it points us towards a more subtle understanding of the rediscovery of a Welsh past in English historiography from the early sixteenth century. The intention here is to explore the significance of the Welsh identity of the monarchy and of many people at court in promoting this rediscovery, as well as the prominent role in historical writing and publishing of men such as Richard Grafton, Edward Hall and Raphael Holinshed who had strong marcher connections.

Review of H. Pryce, Writing Welsh History: From the Early Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century (2022)

The Medieval Review, 2023

This book's title creates an obvious quandary: what is Welsh history? Is it the history of a "people," or a state, or a territory? Does it raise particular questions, pose special challenges, or demand certain approaches? Does it have its own historiography, or is that historiography inseparable from broader history writing on relevant themes? Should there be a Welsh historiography? Prior to the advent of Pryce's book, it would have been considerably more difficult to answer such questions. This is not because Pryce set out to answer them specifically. To a certain extent, he lets the material speak for itself on such issues. Rather, by writing a definitive account of the development of Welsh history writing from the early Middle Ages to the present day, Pryce has bestowed order and coherence, for the first time, on long-established traditions of Welsh history writing, creating new space for necessary reflection on the standing of the field. Above all, Writing Welsh History is a contribution to intellectual history. It charts the engagement