Lost princes

In September 1228 Llywelyn the Great seized Gruffydd, his son by his first wife, and imprisoned at Degannwy castle. This apparently occured just prior to Henry III’s Ceri campaign in that year; since Ceri was an area that had been under Gruffydd’s control it may be that the king was acting on behalf of his vassal, just as he would later claim to do in 1241.

Over the past twenty years, Llywelyn’s attitude towards his eldest son had swung from one extreme to the other. In 1211 he handed over Gruffydd as a hostage to King John, only to receive him back again in 1215. This was probably because Gruffydd became less valuable to the king after the birth of his brother, Dafydd, in 1212. Via the terms of the original treaty, Llywelyn had surrendered Gruffudd permanently to the king, implying he wanted to get rid of him.

Everything changed in 1226, when Llywelyn granted Gruffydd a large share of Powys. Since Gruffydd’s maternal great-grandfather had been Madog ap Maredudd, the last king of a united Powys, Llywelyn may have hoped to substitute Gruffydd for the heirs of Gwenwynwyn as prince of Powys. For some reason the experiment failed and within two years Gruffydd was imprisoned. This was apparently so Llywelyn’s son by Joan Plantagenet, Prince Dafydd, could secure his grip on the inheritance.

As an aside, Llywelyn’s first wife - and Gruffydd’s mother - is said to have been Tangwystl Goch, daughter of King Reginald of Man. Reginald had no such daughter and there was no such person: the alleged daughter was invented in the 17th century to clean up the genealogy.

The real Tangwystyl Goch was in fact a man. In 1336, about 130 years after the period in question, the survey of Denbigh recorded that Llywelyn had at some unknown time mortgaged land worth £13 to ‘some friend of his named Tangwystl Goch’ - ‘Qui quidem Princeps dedit dictum pignus cuidam amice sue nomine Tanguestel Goch’.