From Footnotes to Narrative

1 INTRODUCTION LANGUISHING IN THE FOOTNOTES: WOMEN AND WELSH MEDIEVAL HISTORIOGRAPHY The era known as the high Middle Ages, in particular the thirteenth century, was an epochal period for Wales. While the high Middle Ages was a period of cultural transformation in all of western Europe, in Wales it was also a time of great upheaval and complete change, which was to have a greater impact on Welsh society than was experienced by most other medieval societies. In fact, for some, the effects of this upheaval and change in Wales may be described as catastrophic. The thirteenth century has been called the ‘age of the Welsh Princes’. Under the leadership of the rulers of the house of Gwynedd, the Welsh achieved some measure of independence from their English overlords during this century. For a time the native Welsh princes were able to mitigate their characteristic unrelenting internal conflict and factionalism and unite against their Anglo-Norman oppressors.1 Fundamental changes which were to have an overwhelming effect on Wales took place in England during this period. For example, the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth centuries saw the gradual introduction of the English common law into England, much of which is still in use to this day. The ascension to the English throne in 1272 of Edward I, who unlike his two predecessors was a strong king, was another factor in this upheaval and change which took place in Wales. 1 K. Stokes, The Myth of Wales: Constructions of Ethnicity 1100-1300 (Monash: Monash Publications in History: 27, 1999), p.15. 2 The thirteenth century witnessed the rise to power in Gwynedd of Llywelyn ab Iorwerth (later known as Llywelyn Fawr) and his grandson, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, who both ruled much of Wales until its final conquest by the Anglo-Normans, a process which had taken more than two hundred years to complete. The narrative of the history of this period is dramatic, comprised as it is of wars, of heroic deeds, of conquests, bravery and betrayal. In fact the history of Wales in the thirteenth century, as constructed by modern historians, reads like a ‘boys’ own adventure story’. Dynasties rise and fall and the overall impression is of feudal knights galloping about the countryside and of armies and military campaigns. One is struck by the fact, though, that with one or two rare exceptions, women seem to be totally absent from the scene. In a book published in 1998, Robin Frame, while lamenting the fact that the history of Ireland in the thirteenth century has been largely neglected by scholars, has stated that although ‘… Welsh medieval history shares many themes, including conquest and colonization, with Irish; during the last two generations it [Welsh history] has attracted some of the ablest historians, not just in Wales but in Britain generally.’ 2 Among the reasons given by Frame for the fact that Welsh medieval history has received greater attention by historians is the push by the two Llywelyns of Gwynedd for supremacy over the other Welsh rulers and in effect, their efforts to establish a united Wales. Whatever the reason for the increased interest by twentieth-century historians in medieval Welsh history, the fact remains that when these histories have been written, Welsh women were largely ignored, and did not really form part of the history. When they appear at all, they have usually been relegated to the footnotes to the text in modern historical accounts of the period. In his comprehensive history, R.R. Davies acknowledged that he believed that ‘women’s position in Welsh medieval society was not necessarily as inferior or submissive as the legal 2 R. Frame, Ireland and Britain 1170-1450 (London: The Hambledon Press, 1998), p.1. 3 texts suggest’ and that ‘on the contrary, they often acted on their own initiative – for example, founding churches, commissioning translations of devotional works into Welsh, and that through marriage-alliances women played a prominent part in binding families together’.3 Unfortunately, apart from a few footnotes or asides, he failed to actually include women in the 465 pages of this book. This thesis argues that the daughters, wives and mothers of the perpetrators of the action in the history of Wales played a significant part in the outcomes and it is essential they be recognised. It is gratifying to note that the recent mammoth work of J. Beverley Smith, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd:Prince of Wales, does actually include Welsh noblewomen in the text. A full understanding of Welsh medieval history in the thirteenth century demands recognition of the experience of women, particularly Welsh noblewomen, in that history. Women would have constituted at least fifty per cent of the population of Wales, and the figure was probably higher than fifty per cent when one considers the dangers inherent in this militarist society.4 Their absence from the historical narrative is a glaring oversight. In this thesis I have endeavoured to correct this anomaly in the fascinating history of Wales at this particular period. It has been my aim to trace some coeval Welsh noblewomen with a view to documenting their lives and setting down the contribution they made to the events unfolding in Wales during this often turbulent era. Through the process of scanning the footnotes of the narratives of modern historians and closely researching printed primary sources I have become acquainted with the lives of several interesting, and I believe outstanding, Welsh noblewomen and the role they played in the society 3 R.R. Davies, Conquest, Co-existence, and Change: Wales 1063-1415 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, pp.128-29. 4 R.R. Davies has said that because of a lack of information we may only guess at the population of Wales in the thirteenth century, but he states that Keith Williams-Jones’s estimate of 300,000 for the whole of Wales at the end of the thirteenth century ‘might not be too wide of the mark’. Compare perhaps one million for Scotland and between four and six million for England at the same date. Davies, Conquest, Co-existence, and Change, p.147. 4 of their day. Even though they have been entirely left out of the historical texts so far, they must now be included in the historical discourse. My aim therefore has been to rescue these women from the footnotes and place them firmly into the history of medieval Wales where they belong. History, until quite recently, was largely written by men, and in the words of Gerda Lerner ‘men have defined their experience as history and have left women out’.5 As she also states, ‘women have been … excluded from political power and … from military decision-making’,6 so it is not surprising that when Welsh political history in the medieval period was written from a male perspective in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it took the form of a narrative of male- centred exploits. Men were just as defined by family relationships in the Middle Ages as women. However, it is only men who are portrayed in the political histories as the agents of politically significant action. We are able to look at the men as part of a social and economic network but the women also were significant because of who their father, mother, sisters and brothers were, and whom they married. They also were performers of action. The insertion of women into history has been a highly visible activity for writers of the medieval history of other parts of western Europe for at least the last three decades.7 No such scholarly 5 G. Lerner, The Majority Finds Its Past: Placing Women in History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), p.158. 6 Lerner, The Majority Finds Its Past, p.154. 7 For examples see S.M. Stuard, ed., Women in Medieval Society (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1976, S.M. Stuard, ed., Women in Medieval History and Historiography (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), J. Kirshner and S.F. Wemple, eds., Women of the Medieval World, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), J.C. Parsons, ‘Mothers, Daughters, Marriage, Power: Some Plantagenet Evidence, 1150-1500’ in J.C. Parsons, ed., Medieval Queenship (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1994), J.C. Ward, ‘The English Noblewoman and Her Family in the Later Middle Ages’ in C. Meek and K. Simms, eds., ‘The Fragility of Her Sex? Medieval Irishwomen in Their European Context (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1996), J.A. Green, The Aristocracy of Norman England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), T. Evergates, ed., Aristocratic Women in Medieval France (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), J.C. Ward, Women in Medieval Europe, 1200-1500 (Harlow: Longman/Pearson Education Limited, 2003), L.E. Mitchell, Portraits of 5 endeavours have been forthcoming concerning Wales. Such work is long overdue about this small corner of western Europe. In 1986 Deirdre Beddoes stated that ‘in Wales, as elsewhere, the writing and study of history has for a very long time omitted women’. She observed that ‘things are changing now’, but also that ‘there is a long way to go,’ and I must agree with her that in the twenty-first century there is still an exceedingly long way to go.8 The publication of Women and Gender in Early Modern Wales in the year 2000 was an attempt to redress the gender balance in Early Modern Welsh history. In his introduction to this book Michael Roberts acknowledges the need of Welsh historians to re-examine the part played ‘by ideas about cultural continuity and a traditional way of life’. Moreover, he also states that an emphasis on women and gender ‘needs to be part of their contribution’.9 He notes that this need applies ‘perhaps especially’ to Wales’s more distant past, which would include the thirteenth century.

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