Cadwallon ap Cadfan
Encyclopedia
Cadwallon ap Cadfan was the King of Gwynedd
Kingdom of Gwynedd
Gwynedd was one petty kingdom of several Welsh successor states which emerged in 5th-century post-Roman Britain in the Early Middle Ages, and later evolved into a principality during the High Middle Ages. It was based on the former Brythonic tribal lands of the Ordovices, Gangani, and the...

 from around 625 until his death in battle. The son and successor of Cadfan ap Iago
Cadfan ap Iago
Cadfan ap Iago was King of Gwynedd . Little is known of the history of Gwynedd from this period, and information about Cadfan and his reign is minimal....

, he is best remembered as the King of the Britons
King of the Britons
The Britons or Brythons were the Celtic-speaking people of what is now England, Wales and southern Scotland, whose ethnic identity is today maintained by the Welsh, Cornish and Bretons...

 who invaded and conquered Northumbria
Northumbria
Northumbria was a medieval kingdom of the Angles, in what is now Northern England and South-East Scotland, becoming subsequently an earldom in a united Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England. The name reflects the approximate southern limit to the kingdom's territory, the Humber Estuary.Northumbria was...

, defeating and killing its king, Edwin
Edwin of Northumbria
Edwin , also known as Eadwine or Æduini, was the King of Deira and Bernicia – which later became known as Northumbria – from about 616 until his death. He converted to Christianity and was baptised in 627; after he fell at the Battle of Hatfield Chase, he was venerated as a saint.Edwin was the son...

, prior to his own death in battle against Oswald of Bernicia
Oswald of Northumbria
Oswald was King of Northumbria from 634 until his death, and is now venerated as a Christian saint.Oswald was the son of Æthelfrith of Bernicia and came to rule after spending a period in exile; after defeating the British ruler Cadwallon ap Cadfan, Oswald brought the two Northumbrian kingdoms of...

. His conquest of Northumbria, which he held for a year or two after Edwin died, made him the last Briton
Britons (historical)
The Britons were the Celtic people culturally dominating Great Britain from the Iron Age through the Early Middle Ages. They spoke the Insular Celtic language known as British or Brythonic...

 to hold substantial territory in eastern Britain until the rise of the Tudor dynasty
Tudor dynasty
The Tudor dynasty or House of Tudor was a European royal house of Welsh origin that ruled the Kingdom of England and its realms, including the Lordship of Ireland, later the Kingdom of Ireland, from 1485 until 1603. Its first monarch was Henry Tudor, a descendant through his mother of a legitimised...

. He was thereafter remembered as a national hero by the Britons and as a tyrant by the Anglo-Saxons of Northumbria.

History

As with other figures of the era little is certainly known of Cadwallon's early life or reign. The primary source of information about him is the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum
Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum
The Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum is a work in Latin by Bede on the history of the Christian Churches in England, and of England generally; its main focus is on the conflict between Roman and Celtic Christianity.It is considered to be one of the most important original references on...

of the Anglo-Saxon writer Bede
Bede
Bede , also referred to as Saint Bede or the Venerable Bede , was a monk at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Monkwearmouth, today part of Sunderland, England, and of its companion monastery, Saint Paul's, in modern Jarrow , both in the Kingdom of Northumbria...

, who is strongly critical of him. Cadwallon consistently appears in the genealogies of the Kings of Gwynedd
Kingdom of Gwynedd
Gwynedd was one petty kingdom of several Welsh successor states which emerged in 5th-century post-Roman Britain in the Early Middle Ages, and later evolved into a principality during the High Middle Ages. It was based on the former Brythonic tribal lands of the Ordovices, Gangani, and the...

 as the son of Cadfan ap Iago
Cadfan ap Iago
Cadfan ap Iago was King of Gwynedd . Little is known of the history of Gwynedd from this period, and information about Cadfan and his reign is minimal....

 and a descendant of Maelgwn Gwynedd and Cunedda
Cunedda
Cunedda ap Edern , was an important early Welsh leader, and the progenitor of the royal dynasty of Gwynedd.-Background and life:The name Cunedda derives from the Brythonic word , meaning good hound. His genealogy is traced back to Padarn Beisrudd, which literally translates as Paternus of the...

. Historian Alex Woolf
Alex Woolf
Alex Woolf is a medieval historian based at the University of St Andrews. He specialises in the history of the British Isles and Scandinavia in the Early Middle Ages, especially in relation to the peoples of Wales and Scotland. He is author of volume two in the New Edinburgh History of Scotland,...

, however, presents the case that the genealogists have erroneously inserted Bede's Cadwallon into the pedigree of the unrelated Kings of Gwynedd as son of Cadfan. Instead, Woolf suggests that Bede's Cadwallon was the Catguallaun liu found in genealogies as son of Guitcun and grandson of Sawyl Penuchel
Sawyl Penuchel
Sawyl Penuchel or Ben Uchel , also known as Samuil Penisel , was a British king of the sub-Roman period, who appears in old Welsh genealogies and the Welsh Triads....

, rulers in the Hen Ogledd
Hen Ogledd
Yr Hen Ogledd is a Welsh term used by scholars to refer to those parts of what is now northern England and southern Scotland in the years between 500 and the Viking invasions of c. 800, with particular interest in the Brythonic-speaking peoples who lived there.The term is derived from heroic...

or Brythonic-speaking area of northern Britain.

Whatever the case may be, Cadwallon was certainly affected by the ambitions of Edwin
Edwin of Northumbria
Edwin , also known as Eadwine or Æduini, was the King of Deira and Bernicia – which later became known as Northumbria – from about 616 until his death. He converted to Christianity and was baptised in 627; after he fell at the Battle of Hatfield Chase, he was venerated as a saint.Edwin was the son...

, King of Northumbria. Bede, writing about a century after Cadwallon's death, describes Edwin, the most powerful king in Britain, conquering the Brythonic kingdom of Elmet
Elmet
Elmet was an independent Brythonic kingdom covering a broad area of what later became the West Riding of Yorkshire during the Early Middle Ages, between approximately the 5th century and early 7th century. Although its precise boundaries are unclear, it appears to have been bordered by the River...

 (what is now western Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...

) and ejecting its king, Cerdic. This opened the door to the Irish Sea
Irish Sea
The Irish Sea separates the islands of Ireland and Great Britain. It is connected to the Celtic Sea in the south by St George's Channel, and to the Atlantic Ocean in the north by the North Channel. Anglesey is the largest island within the Irish Sea, followed by the Isle of Man...

, and Edwin successfully extended his rule to the "Mevanian Islands" – the Isle of Man
Isle of Man
The Isle of Man , otherwise known simply as Mann , is a self-governing British Crown Dependency, located in the Irish Sea between the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, within the British Isles. The head of state is Queen Elizabeth II, who holds the title of Lord of Mann. The Lord of Mann is...

 and Anglesey
Anglesey
Anglesey , also known by its Welsh name Ynys Môn , is an island and, as Isle of Anglesey, a county off the north west coast of Wales...

. The Annales Cambriae
Annales Cambriae
Annales Cambriae, or The Annals of Wales, is the name given to a complex of Cambro-Latin chronicles deriving ultimately from a text compiled from diverse sources at St David's in Dyfed, Wales, not later than the 10th century...

says that Cadwallon was besieged at Glannauc (Priestholm, or Puffin Island
Puffin Island, Anglesey
Puffin Island is an uninhabited island off the eastern tip of Anglesey, Wales. It was formerly known as Priestholm in English and Ynys Lannog in Welsh.-Geography:...

), a small island off eastern Anglesey, and dates this to 629. Surviving Welsh poetry and the Welsh Triads
Welsh Triads
The Welsh Triads are a group of related texts in medieval manuscripts which preserve fragments of Welsh folklore, mythology and traditional history in groups of three. The triad is a rhetorical form whereby objects are grouped together in threes, with a heading indicating the point of likeness...

 portray Cadwallon as a heroic leader against Edwin. They refers to a battle at Digoll (Long Mountain) and mention that Cadwallon spent time in Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

 before returning to Britain to defeat Edwin.

According to Geoffrey of Monmouth
Geoffrey of Monmouth
Geoffrey of Monmouth was a cleric and one of the major figures in the development of British historiography and the popularity of tales of King Arthur...

's History of the Kings of Britain
Historia Regum Britanniae
The Historia Regum Britanniae is a pseudohistorical account of British history, written c. 1136 by Geoffrey of Monmouth. It chronicles the lives of the kings of the Britons in a chronological narrative spanning a time of two thousand years, beginning with the Trojans founding the British nation...

(which includes a fairly extensive account of Cadwallon's life but is largely legendary—for example, Geoffrey has Cadwallon surviving until after the Battle of the Winwaed
Battle of the Winwaed
The Battle of the Winwaed was fought on 15 November 655 , between King Penda of Mercia and Oswiu of Bernicia, ending in the Mercians' defeat and Penda's death.-History:Although the battle is said to be the most important between the early northern and southern divisions of...

 in 654 or 655), Cadwallon went to Ireland and then to the island of Guernsey
Guernsey
Guernsey, officially the Bailiwick of Guernsey is a British Crown dependency in the English Channel off the coast of Normandy.The Bailiwick, as a governing entity, embraces not only all 10 parishes on the Island of Guernsey, but also the islands of Herm, Jethou, Burhou, and Lihou and their islet...

. From there, according to Geoffrey, Cadwallon led an army into Dumnonia
Dumnonia
Dumnonia is the Latinised name for the Brythonic kingdom in sub-Roman Britain between the late 4th and late 8th centuries, located in the farther parts of the south-west peninsula of Great Britain...

, where he encountered and defeated the Mercia
Mercia
Mercia was one of the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy. It was centred on the valley of the River Trent and its tributaries in the region now known as the English Midlands...

ns besieging Exeter
Exeter
Exeter is a historic city in Devon, England. It lies within the ceremonial county of Devon, of which it is the county town as well as the home of Devon County Council. Currently the administrative area has the status of a non-metropolitan district, and is therefore under the administration of the...

, and forced their king, Penda
Penda of Mercia
Penda was a 7th-century King of Mercia, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom in what is today the English Midlands. A pagan at a time when Christianity was taking hold in many of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, Penda took over the Severn Valley in 628 following the Battle of Cirencester before participating in the...

, into an alliance. Geoffrey also reports that Cadwallon married a half-sister of Penda. However, his history is, on this as well as all matters, suspect, and it should be treated with caution.

His son was Cadwaladr "Fendigaid" ap Cadwallon.

In any case, Penda and Cadwallon together made war against the Northumbrians. A battle was fought at Hatfield Chase
Battle of Hatfield Chase
The Battle of Hatfield Chase was fought on October 12, 633 at Hatfield Chase near Doncaster, Yorkshire, in Anglo-Saxon England between the Northumbrians under Edwin and an alliance of the Welsh of Gwynedd under Cadwallon ap Cadfan and the Mercians under Penda. The site was a marshy area about 8...

 on October 12, 633 which ended in the defeat and death of Edwin and his son Osfrith. After this, the Kingdom of Northumbria fell into disarray, divided between its sub-kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia
Bernicia
Bernicia was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom established by Anglian settlers of the 6th century in what is now southeastern Scotland and North East England....

, but the war continued: according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is a collection of annals in Old English chronicling the history of the Anglo-Saxons. The original manuscript of the Chronicle was created late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex, during the reign of Alfred the Great...

, "Cadwallon and Penda went and did for the whole land of Northumbria". Bede says that Cadwallon was besieged by the new king of Deira, Osric
Osric of Deira
Osric was a King of Deira in northern England. He was a cousin of king Edwin of Northumbria, being the son of Edwin's uncle Aelfric...

, "in a strong town"; Cadwallon, however, "sallied out on a sudden with all his forces, by surprise, and destroyed him [Osric] and all his army."

After this, according to Bede, Cadwallon ruled over the "provinces of the Northumbrians" for a year, "not like a victorious king, but like a rapacious and bloody tyrant." Furthermore, Bede tells us that Cadwallon, "though he bore the name and professed himself a Christian, was so barbarous in his disposition and behaviour, that he neither spared the female sex, nor the innocent age of children, but with savage cruelty put them to tormenting deaths, ravaging all their country for a long time, and resolving to cut off all the race of the English within the borders of Britain." Bede's extremely negative portrayal of Cadwallon as a genocidal tyrant cannot be taken at face value. Cadwallon's alliance with the Saxon Penda undermines Bede's assertion that Cadwallon had attempted to exterminate the Saxons. Additionally, the fact that Cædwalla, king of Wessex a generation after Cadwallon's death, bore a name derived directly from the British Cadwallon suggests that Cadwallon's reputation could not have been so poor among the Saxons of Wessex as it was in Northumbria. Still it is unlikely that Bede, a careful historian, made up the story entirely. He may have been influenced by Welsh prophetic poetry such as the Armes Prydain in which the Brytons are predicted to finally succeed in forcing the Saxons from Britain for good.

The new king of Bernicia, Eanfrith
Eanfrith of Bernicia
Eanfrith was briefly King of Bernicia from 633 to 634. He was the son of Æthelfrith, a Bernician king who had also ruled Deira to the south before being killed in battle around 616 against Raedwald of East Anglia, who had given refuge to Edwin, an exiled prince of Deira.Edwin became king of...

, was also killed by Cadwallon when the former went to him in an attempt to negotiate peace. However, Cadwallon was defeated by an army under Eanfrith's brother, Oswald
Oswald of Northumbria
Oswald was King of Northumbria from 634 until his death, and is now venerated as a Christian saint.Oswald was the son of Æthelfrith of Bernicia and came to rule after spending a period in exile; after defeating the British ruler Cadwallon ap Cadfan, Oswald brought the two Northumbrian kingdoms of...

, at the Battle of Heavenfield
Battle of Heavenfield
The Battle of Heavenfield was fought in 633 or 634 between a Northumbrian army under Oswald of Bernicia and a Welsh army under Cadwallon ap Cadfan of Gwynedd. The battle resulted in a decisive Northumbrian victory. The Annales Cambriae record the battle as Bellum Cantscaul in 631...

, "though he had most numerous forces, which he boasted nothing could withstand". Cadwallon was killed at a place called "Denis's-brook".
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