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The Fourteenth Century in Wales |
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'[In the fourteenth century] Wales produced her greatest poet, Dafydd ap Gwilym, and with him a new freedom, a new and splendid imaginative life. For two centuries she enjoyed an outburst of fine poetry unrivalled for its sophistication, its brilliance and poise, by anything the Celts have ever achieved, before or since. [...] The Welsh achieved something comparatively rare in the history of mankind: high civilization, unique to themselves.' Anthony Conran. |
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Wales in the fourteenth century had known rapacious neighbours - Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Norsemen, Normans, English - for more than a thousand years. By the time of Dafydd ap Gwilym. the English had seized most of the land, although there were periods when the Welsh regained their freedom and there were areas where the English did not hold power. However, the division between Welsh and English was often unclear, for endless, temporary alliances were made as individual lords sought to extend their power at the expense of others. Thus an English leader might fight with the Welsh against a rival English army, just as Welsh leaders fought for the English against other Welsh. Thus Dafydd's family, although upholders of Welsh language and culture, had held official positions in the Norman hierarchy for generations, and Rhys ap Gruffudd, the uncle of Dafydd's mother, raised and led the army which triumphed at Crécy in 1345, the first major battle of the Hundred Years War. This racial and cultural confusion is
exemplified by events in Emlyn some two centuries before Dafydd, events which
influenced the future of Wales and of England, and also of Ireland and the
United States. Nest, a Welsh princess, had many lovers and many children by
them: some by Henry, King of England, some by Owain, a Welsh Prince, and some
by her husband, Gerald, the start of the Fitzgerald family, which was to
figure so prominently in Ireland and in the United States.
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