BELI MAWR AND LLYR LLEDIATH IN WELSH PEDIGREES
By Darrell Wolcott
A number of the Welsh
royal families trace their ancestry to the man called Beli Mawr, whose pedigrees make him descend from the legendary Brutus
of Troy.[1] We doubt his birth-name was Beli (BAY-lee), this being one of the major Celtic gods, the God of the Sun.
But a real man of some name spawned the ensuing families, so we shall call him Beli Mawr for lack of sources citing his birth
name. He should not be confused with the fictional Beli and wife, Don, found in Welsh mythology[2].
The earliest extant pedigree
contains what we believe to be a later copyist's gloss which attempts to describe his son Aflech as "who was son of Beli Mawr
and Anna, she said to be a cousin of Virgin Mary mother of our Lord Jesus Christ"[3]. Not only was the era of Beli Mawr
100 years too early for such a wife, there appear to be at least two (incorrect) reasons why some early writers thought the
ensuing family was related to the Virgin Mary. In some very early texts, his name was abbreviated "B.M." which
was wrongly thought to mean "Beata Maria", the blessed Mary. But more likely, his name was simply confused with the
Biblical man, Heli, who is cited as the husband of Anna and father of Mary[4]. Geoffrey of Monmouth also referred
to Beli Mawr as "Heli".
In an earlier paper[5], we reproduced
the pedigree which contains the 700 years of links from Beli Mawr back to the legendary Brutus, and we shall not dwell here
on its authenticity. Rather we shall present the pedigrees of the major families which claim descent from him.
The very early names are spelled several ways in the various sources; the orthography we use is our modern equivalents:
130 BC Beli Mawr
l
100 Aflech (Lludd)
l
70 Afallach
______________l________
l
l
40 Owain
35 Euddolen
l
l
10 Bryddgwyn
5 Eudos
l
l
20AD Dubun
25AD Eneid
l
l
50 Onwedd
60 Eudeyrn
l
l
80 Anwerydd
90 Eudigant
l
_______l_________
l
l
l
110 Amgolydd 120
Rydeyrn 125 Deheuwaint
l
l
l
140 Dwfyn 155
Rhifedel 155 Rydeyrn
l
l
l
170 Doli 185
Gradd 185 Gwrtheyrn
l
l
l
205 Cein
215 Urban 220 Cadeyrn
l
l
l
235 Gwyndog 250
Telpwll 250 Rhuddfedel Frych
l
l ________l_______
l l
l
l
265 Iago 280 Deheuwaint l
l
l
l l l
295 Tegid 310
Tecfan l
l
l
l l
l
325 Padarn Beisrudd 340 Coel Hen
l
l
l
l
l
355 Edern(a) _____l
l
l
l
l
385 Cunedda
280 Gloyw Gwallt Hir(b) 285 Brydw
l l
315 Guidolyn
315 Pasgen
l
l
350 Gwydol
350 Cadeyrn
l
l
385 Gwrtheyrn(c) 380 Cadell Ddyrnllwg
(a) One of the earliest man
in the extended family whose wife is known; he married a daughter of Coel Hen, a lady we date c. 370
(b) No sources
cite the ancestry of Gloyw. See note (c) for our attaching him to this family
(c) It is his position
in the family timeline, and the fact that the only other man known to bear this name occurs in the pedigree of Cadell
Ddyrnllwg, which makes our conjecture a reasonable guess. He also chose the names of ancestors of Cadell for his
sons' names. This man was known to history as Vortigern.
You may have noted that we did
not include another family said to have descended from Beli Mawr: the senior line which ruled the Catuvellauni tribe during
the invasions of both Julius Caesar and Claudius. That branch became extinct in the male line early in the second century
AD and was never involved with Welsh genealogies. It included Tecfan (Taciovanus), Cynfelyn (Cunobelinus) and Caradog
(Caraticus), men familiar from Roman histories. The Welsh trace their ancestry to a younger son of Lludd called Afallach,
a man who relocated to another part of the isle of Britain probably by marrying a princess from another tribe.
It is not known where the
early men in our chart made their homes. But by the time Rome left Britain in the early 5th century, two branches
were seated in the far north (Cunedda and Coel Hen) and two in what is now Powys (Gwrtheyrn aka Vortigern and Cadell).
Cunedda relocated to Gwynedd where his family had intermarried with men descended from Llyr Llediath and he was the founder
of the First Royal Dynasty of Gwynedd. Men descended from Coel Hen were called "The Men of The North"[6] and they did
not migrate to Wales until the Saxons forced them from their lands in the 7th century. A man of that line founded the
Second Royal Dynasty of Gwynedd in the 9th century[7]. We think a double marriage united the two Powys families in the
5th century[8]; the First Powys Dynasty was descended from Cadell Ddyrnllwg, while the Second Powys Dynasty descended from
Cassanauth Wledig, a man we believe was a grandson of Gwrtheyrn (Vortigern).
In the first century
AD, the portion of Wales west and south of the territory later called Powys was ruled by descendants of Llyr Llediath.
He is another man of unknown birth name, simply known to us as "the man of the seas who spoke with a foreign accent".
We suspect he was a Menapii sea trader who spoke Goidelic Celt. His son is called Bran, but both he and his father were
simply equated to Celtic gods of those names. It was Caradog ap Bran who was defeated by the Romans in 51AD and taken to
Rome as a prisioner. By the time Rome left Britain early in the 5th century, this family held virtually all the coastal
lands circling Wales on three sides. Thereafter, it intermarried with the descendants of Cunedda and,
by the 7th century, ruled only the southeast part of Wales.
The extant pedigrees of Llyr
Llediath are almost certainly corrupt[9]; they seek to connect him to Brutus of Troy but lack about 15 generations to be credible. The
families which claim descent from him, however, can present chronologically stable pedigrees:
60BC Llyr Llediath
l
30 Bran
l
5AD Caradog
l
35 Cyllin
l
65 Owain
l
100 Meirchion Fawr Filwr
l
130 Gorug
l
160 Gwrddwyfn
l
1st wife=======Einudd======2nd wife
l 190 l
l __________l__________
220
Caradog(a) l
l l
l l
l
230
Arthfael(b) Eudaf Hen(c) Gereint(d)
230 235
(a) King of Demetae, the westernmost point in Britain
both north and south of the Bristol Channel. Geoffrey of Monmouth calls him Duke of Cornwall and advisor to Eudaf
Hen. Probably the father of usurping Emperor Carausius
(b) Ancestor of the Gwent Dynasty which included
Meurig ap Tewdrig and Morgan ap Athrwys
(c) King of Cernyw in north Wales and father of
Elen; his great-granddaughter, Stradwel, was the grandmother of Cunedda whose descendants ruled Gwynedd until the early
800's
(d) King of Llydaw in north Wales; his son
Cynan Meriadog is said to have taken an army to Gaul under Emperor Maximianus Herculus and received lands in Brittany which
he named after his lands in Wales
