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                     HENRY, THE FORGOTTEN SON OF CADWGAN AP BLEDDYN
                                                    By Darrell Wolcott
 
         When Cadwgan ap Bleddyn returned from a brief exile in Ireland in 1099, he returned to "the king's peace" by pledging fealty to William Rufus and was restored to his portion of Powys.  He was also given local rule over Ceredigion and, we suspect, required to take a Norman wife.  
 
         His first wife, Gwenllian ferch Gruffudd ap Cynan nephew of Iago, had died some years earlier after producing sons Owain and Madog.  Cadwgan had taken a series of mistresses who gave him sons Einion, Morgan and Maredudd, but was probably a 44 year old widower when he married a daughter[1] of Picot de Say, Lord of Clun and a baron serving Roger de Montgomery, Earl of Shrewsbury.  The pedigree of that family is notoriously corrupt, but its timeline suggests this chart:
 
                                1040  Picot de Say(a) ob c. 1098
                ____________________l_______________
                l                             l                                l
   1070  Helias(b)         1065  Henry(c)          1070  daughter
                l                             l                               =
   1105  Isabel(d)        1095  Helias(e)           Cadwgan ap Bleddyn
               =                             l                    (c. 1055-1111)
     William fitz Alan     1130  Isabel(f)
 
       (a)  Lord of Clun at the time of the Domesday Book, 1086
       (b)  Inheirited the Clun manor and others
       (c)  Inheirited the Stokesay manor and others, some of which he gave to Shrewsbury Abby in 1131 when he was an old man
       (d)  Heiress of Clun which went to her son, William fitz William fitz Alan
       (e) The Helias de Say active during the Anarchy of Stephen's reign, 1135-1154[2]
     (f) The Isabel daughter of Helias de Say who married Geoffrey de Vere and William Boteler; she was no heiress, her brother Hugh inheirited Stokesay 
 
        We would surmise that in 1099, Picot de Say had recently died leaving, beside sons Henry and Helias, a daughter nearing 30 years of age.  Perhaps widowed or divorced, this lady was in possession of some lands when Cadwgan ap Bleddyn married her.[3]  We are told two sons resulted from this marriage: Henry and Gruffudd[4].  Nothing further is known of Gruffudd and he may have died young[5].
 
        Cadwgan fell into disfavor with King Henry I when, in 1109, his son Owain kidnapped the wife of Gerald of Windsor, the king's constable at Pembroke Castle.  To regain favor, he sought peace on "whatever terms he could".  King Henry I "received him and left him in a township which he had had from his wife, who was a Frenchwoman, daughter of Picot de Say"[6].  Cadwgan probably had to give the king hostages, including his young son Henry, because we are told a year later that the boy was released upon payment of 100 marks[7]. 
 
        Probably born about 1100, Henry ap Cadwgan and his mother likely resided at one of the 29 manors her father had held near Clun in Shropshire[8]. It would have been here that Cadwgan hid when his nephew Madog ap Rhiryd ap Bleddyn sought to kill him.  When Cadwgan went to Welshpool in 1111, hoping to stay and build a castle, Madog did kill him.  His wife and child, we believe, continued living at the family manor in Shropshire until her death about 1132, with Henry in the service of a de Say uncle. 
 
          Some modern sources say that a Henry de Say married one of the illegitimate daughters which King Henry I sired by Sybil Corbet.  Sybil, later married to Herbert fitz Herbert, was a daughter of Robert Corbet whose brother Roger was Lord of Caus...both men being sons of Corbet of Pais de Caux who fought under Roger of Montgomery at Hastings.  This points to her date of birth near 1090.  She bore several children by Henry I, probably during the period 1105/1115.  If one of her daughters married a "Henry de Say", it could not have been the man of that name who was the son of Picot de Say; that Henry was a generation older than Sybil herself.  The only other Henry in the de Say family was the son of Cadwgan ap Bleddyn, and he did live at the right time to marry such a lady.  It is reasonable to think that, following his mother's death, Henry did take a Shropshire lady as his wife.  We believe they had a son c. 1135 whom they named Thomas.
 
         The pedigree cast by Sir John Wynn of Gwydir in the late 1500's deduces his ancestry from a Gruffudd ap Caradog ap Thomas.  Sir John identified that Thomas as a son of Rhodri ap Owain Gwynedd, but the marriage matches he cites make that impossible.  His says his Thomas married Marged ferch Einion ap Seisyllt and the son of that union, Caradog, married Efa ferch Gwyn ap Gruffudd.  Those two ladies were born c. 1150 and 1185, respectively.  No son of Rhodri ap Owain Gwynedd could have been born earlier than c. 1160; while he did have a son named Thomas, that man was born about 1165 and was a generation too young to have married Marged.  This chart shows the timeline for his family:
 
          1055  Llewelyn*              
                       l
           1085  Seisyll                   Owain Gwynedd  1100
                       l                                  l
           1115  Hywel                        Rhodri  1145
                       l                                  l
         1145  Llewelyn                      Thomas  1170
                       l                                  l
       1180  Maredudd Hen                Madog  1195
                       l                                  l
    1210  Llewelyn y Moelwyn**====Sian  1225
 
        *Lord of Buellt, son of Cadwgan ap Elystan Glodrydd
        **Marriage cited in Harl. 2291, part 1, pp 42; Peter Bartrum dates Sian c. 1230 and Llewelyn y Moelwyn c. 1200
 
         It is another, earlier, Thomas who is portrayed in Sir John Wynn's pedigree:
 
                           1080  Seisyllt                Beli*  1080
                                       l                         l
                           1110  Einion**           Gruffudd  1115
                                       l                         l                     
  1135  Thomas=====Marged  1150       Gwyn  1150
                             l                                   l
              1170  Caradog============Efa  1185
 
     *ap Selyf III (1045) ap Brochwel III (1005) ap Aeddon III (975) ap Selyf II (945)Brochwel II (910) ap Aeddon II (880) ap Selyf I (850) ap Brochwel (820) ap Aeddon (785) ap Cyngen (750) ap Brochwel (715) ap Eliseg (685) ap Gwylog (655), the latter of Pillar of Eliseg fame
     **His wife was Nest (1125) ferch Madog (1090) ap Cadwgan (1055) ap Bleddyn (1025)
 
          This Thomas of c. 1135 was not a Gwynedd man; the marriages shown above mark him as a Powys man closely allied with its royal families.  Efa ferch Gwyn ap Gruffudd was a lady of Cegidfa descended from the 1st Powys Dynasty, while Marged was a granddaughter of Madog ap Cadwgan of the 2nd Powys Dynasty.  We would identify Thomas as a son of Henry ap Cadwgan and present the following conjectural scenerio to explain why this might well be the case:
 
         By the time Henry ap Cadwgan reached marriagable age, the only one of his half-brothers still alive was Madog[9].  That man seems to have stood aloof from the inter-family wars between the grandsons of Bleddyn ap Cynfyn and their cousins and uncles.  We posit that when the de Say lady died, her lands were reclaimed by her Norman cousins and Henry went to Madog ap Cadwgan seeking a place to live.  Denied any part of Cadwgan's Powys estate[10], Madog did offer to lease one manor on his own lands to Henry and his bride in return for his services.  Madog was at least 15 years older than Henry and had a young daughter still living at home: Nest, aged about 7 in 1132.
 
         When this niece of Henry turned 13, she was married to Einion ap Seisyllt who resided just across the Dyfy River from Powys in Meirionydd.  Henry and his wife had a son they named Thomas[11] about 1135; when the boy turned 14, he was sent to the court of Einion ap Seisyllt about the time his first-cousin Nest gave birth to Marged.  When Thomas' required apprenticeship ended in 1163, Marged was then 13/14 years old and was given to Thomas as his wife.  Still with no lands of his own, Thomas and Marged remained at the court of Einion as a tenant of his father-in-law.  His father, Henry ap Cadwgan, died about this time. 
 
          In 1170, Owain Gwynedd died.  He was a maternal cousin of Einion ap Seisyllt, their mothers being sisters[12], and Einion had held his lands free of taxes and other renders.  The cantref of Meirionydd was inheirited by Cynan ap Owain Gwynedd, who immediately demanded that Einion acknowledge him as his lord and begin paying everything due to a lord.  Einion refused on the grounds that he had inheirited his lands as a direct paternal descendant of Meirion ap Cunedda of the fifth century.  When Cynan sought to impose his demand by force, Einion went to Owain Cyfeiliog, the king of neighboring Powys Gwenwynwyn, and offered him his personal fealty and his lands for protection from Cynan.  Owain Cyfeiliog's daughter was married to Einion's son and agreed to the offer.  Cynan dropped his demands, not only in fear of Einion's protector, but because he was having his own problems with his siblings as they jockeyed to control the kingdom left by their father.
 
          Thomas and Marged had a son, Caradog, about the same year that Einion brought his lands to Powys.  While Caradog was still an infant, his father, Thomas died,  His mother remarried Owain Brogynton c. 1171 who was also recently widowed.  Marged agreed to raise Owain's baby son, Bleddyn, along with her own toddler son, Caradog.
 
      By the time Caradog turned 14 in 1184, both Einion and Owain Cyfeiliog were either dead or very aged men.  Caradog was sent to serve Gwenwynwyn ap Owain Cyfeiliog, now king of south Powys.  Near the year 1200, the still-landless Caradog completed his mandatory apprenticeship and entered into the service of one of Gwenwynwyn's barons, the Lord of Cegidfa.  It was at this time he took Efa ferch Gwyn ap Gruffudd to wife. His foster brother, Bleddyn ap Owain Brogyntyn, married Marged, a sister of Efa.
 
         It was the son of this marriage to Efa, Gruffudd ap Caradog, who finally married an heiress.  Lleuci ferch Llywarch Fychan ap Llywarch Goch (descended from Llywarch Hwlbwrch of Rhos) had received a manor in Ceinmarch; when Gruffudd married her c. 1235 he left Powys and settled on her land near the town of Denbigh[13].  That manor was passed down to their son, Dafydd, with whom we shall end this story.
 
         Although we cannot state it as a fact, everything we have learned of the son and grandson of the Thomas in the Gwydir Family pedigree is consistent with him having been the son of Henry ap Cadwgan ap Bleddyn ap Cynfyn.  And is wholly at odds with calling him the son of Rhodri ap Owain Gwynedd[14]. 
 
            
 
                 

NOTES:
[1] ByT under the year 1109 and 1116
[2] Modern writers make Helias a brother-in-law to Earl Robert of Gloucester on the theory that a sister of Robert (both bastard children of King Henry I) married a Henry de Say whom they assume was a brother of Helias.  This is false for several reasons: (1)  It was an earlier Helias de Say, the uncle of the Helias who was contemporary with Earl Robert, who had a brother named Henry; (2) the lady who supposedly married a Henry de Say was only a half-sister of Earl Robert; and (3) if any Henry de Say married an illegitimate daughter of King Henry I, he must have been a grandchild of Picot to fit the timeline. The only known Henry who fits was the son of Cadwgan ap Bleddyn.  Thus, the reputed wife of the first-cousin of Helias was possibly a half-sister to Earl Robert and no relation at all to Helias.
[3] ByT, 1109 
[4] ByT, 1116
[5] Some modern internet sites claim it was Gruffudd ap Cadwgan ap Bleddyn ap Cynfyn who had a daughter who married Sandde Hardd.  Such a Gruffudd must have been born c. 1145, long after Cadwgan was killed.  We identify that man as Gruffudd ap Cadwgan ap Bleddyn ap Madog ap Cadwgan from the Nannau family. Whatever may have become of the Gruffudd that was Henry's brother, he could not have been born later than 1112 and more likely was born before 1105.
[6] ByT, 1109
[7] ByT, 1110
[8] Domesday Book for Shropshire lists holdings of Picot
[9] Owain was killed in 1116, Einion in 1124, Maredudd in 1125 and Morgan in 1128 according to ByT entries
[10] Some would say Henry received a part of his father's lands in 1116, pointing to the ByT notice that after Owain ap Cadwgan was slain "his brothers held his portion of Powys".  We believe only his adult brothers were meant; Henry was less than 16 years old and lived in England with his mother. 
[11] Thomas was a Norman, not Welsh, male name.  No previous Welsh child had ever been given that name, so we can confidently assume his mother was a Norman lady.  A generation earlier, when Cadwgan ap Bleddyn married the de Say lady, one child was given a Norman name (Henry) and one a Welsh name (Gruffudd).
[12] Annes and Angharad, daughters of Owain ap Edwin, were the mothers of Einion and Owain Gwynedd, respectively.
[13] Dwnn ii, 69 cites this marriage
[14] We have taken note of another early Thomas born near 1135, the son of Duling ap Gruffudd ap Cynan cited in ABT 5d.  We rejected identifying him as the Thomas in the Gwidyr Family pedigree because he is called a Jew in that citation.  Apparently Duling, a priest and teacher, left Wales to minister in a part of England where Jewish families had settled.  His son Thomas probably converted to Judiasm at the insistence of a lady he wished to marry.  In that era, no Jewish convert would have been given noble-born Welsh ladies to marry.