A STUDY IN CHARTING MEDIEVAL CITATIONS
By Darrell Wolcott
The Welsh pedigrees found
in the works of the 16th and 17th century heralds and genealogists[1] are often derided unfairly as fantasies. But the
manuscripts rarely were intended to depict all the branches of any family and exist most often as brief snippets which
name men associated with a particular region of Wales. Seldom does a single citation extend back more than a handful
of generations; it is necessary to combine several widely-scattered citations in order to chart a man's full ancestry....and
dozens more to flesh out an entire family. The majority of citations for non-contemporary men were merely copied from
earlier manuscripts which are no longer extant, and were not merely the beliefs of the men who authored the works which now
exist. Rather than be overly critical of their work, we should be thankful they preserved for us data that would otherwise
have been lost.
It has been our experience that
the inaccuracies, gaps and anachronisims we see in "compiled" pedigrees is more a function of flawed assembly than with flaws
in the individual citations themselves. While it is easy to find omitted generations in the manuscripts of any one of these
medieval writers, another writer likely got that one right while making his quota of mistakes elsewhere. Hand copying
is a laborous effort and strings of names containing the same male name multiple times are easy to reproduce in a slightly
corrupt manner. But if the compiler follows a strict timeline for the family he is charting, the gaps he finds should
send him back to the entire body of manuscripts searching for an "authority" that resolves the chronological problem; someone
else probably did not make the same copying error.
To demonstrate how even
a recognized expert such as Peter Bartrum can go astray, we have selected the narrow case of a man called Iorwerth Saithmarchog.
In his Peniarth Ms 139 under the heading "Ruthun", Gruffudd Hiraethog cites two marriages[2]:
"Dyddgu ferch Madog ap Madog
Hyddgam ap Madog ap Cadwgan married Ieuan ap Iorwerth Saithmarchog ap Heilyn" and
"Gwerfyl ferch Gwrgeneu ap Gwrgeneu
married Iorwerth ap Heilyn ap Einudd"
Hiraethog also cites an
"Ieuan ap Iorwerth Saithmarchog ap Iorwerth ap Heilyn" under the same geographical heading.
On his page "Einudd 7" in
vol 2 of "Welsh Genealogies AD 300-1400", Bartrum assembled those fragments into the following chart:
(2)
Einudd
l
(3) Heilyn
l
xx
Gwrgeneu (4) Cadwgan (4)
l l
l
xx Gwrgeneu Fychan (5) Madog (5)
l l
l
xx Gwrgeneu Lloyd (6)
xx
l l
l
(7)
Iorwerth===Gwerfyl (7) Madog Hyddgam (7)
l
l
(8) Iorwerth
Saithmarchog Madog
(8)
l
l
(9)
Ieuan=================Dyddgu (9)
The numbers in parenthesis
are the "generation" numbers which comprise Bartrum's dating scheme; those shown range from c. 1070 (generation 2) to c. 1300
(generation 9). Our own estimates for these people ranges from c. 1045 to c. 1275.
We would point to the
following errors in Bartrum's work, none of which were made by Hiraethog:
1. The assumption that Gwerfyl was a daughter of Gwrgeneu Lloyd instead of a daughter of Gwrgeneu
Fychan. (Hiraethog did not attach the descriptive bynames to his men called Gwrgeneu). Bartrum's choice appears to have
been the one which seemed to fit in the chart he was constructing, which is fine unless the chart itself is flawed.
2. Showing a whole generation
missing from the ancestry of Madog Hyddgam, Actually, there are no missing generations; the problem is that Bartrum
has dated the Cadwgan and Madog at the top of his chart incorrectly.
3. The 3 missing generations
following Heilyn ap Einudd were required ONLY because the other data in the chart has been incorrectly assembled. In
fact, a man named Iorwerth Saithmarchog ap Iorwerth WAS the grandson of Heilyn ap Einudd....just not the one in Bartrum's
chart. Extant charters granting lands to the Abbey of Ystrad Marchell
dated 1176, 1183 and 1198 were witnessed by "Yarourd (or Yoruerd or Joruert) Saithmarchaug"....the spelling of Iorwerth varies
slightly from one charter to the other...who must have been born 100 years earlier than the man of that name who fathered
the Ieuan that married Dyddgu[3].
4. Hiraethog
DID err when he recited the ancestry of the spouse of Dyddgu, but he had previously (within the same pedigree) identified
the man correctly as Ieuan ap Iorwerth Saithmarchog ap Iorwerth ap Heilyn.
Our construction of the
exact same citations yields a completely different chart:
1045 Einudd (or Eunydd)
l
1075 Heilyn
_________________l____
l
l
1105 Einudd[4]
1110 Iorwerth
l
l
1135 Heilyn 1140 Iorwerth Saithmarchog**
Cadfan 1140
l
l
1170 Iorwerth* Cowryd
1175
l
1205 Heilyn
l
1235 Iorwerth
l
1265 Iorwerth
Saithmarchog
l
1295 Ieuan***
*The Iorwerth ap Heilyn ap Einudd
who married Gwerfyl ferch Gwrgeneu ap Gwrgeneu...a sister of Gwrgeneu Lloyd
**The Iorwerth Saithmarchog who witnessed charters in
1176,1183 and 1198
***The Ieuan ap Iorwerth Saithmarchog ap Iorwerth ap Heilyn who
married Dyddgu ferch Madog ap Madog Hyddgam, a lady born c. 1305
Our dating of the ladies in
the cited marriages is consistent with both our charts of their families and with the husbands shown above:
1095 Collwyn
1110 Cadwgan
l
Nannau
1125 Gwrgeneu
l
_______l________ 1140
Madog
l
l
l
1155 Rhiryd 1153
Gwrgeneu 1170 Cadwgan
Flaidd
Fychan
l
___________l______
l
l
l 1200 Madog
1190 Gwrgeneu
1185 Gwerfyl* l
Lloyd
l
1235
Madog Hyddgam
l
1270 Madog
l
1305 Dyddgu**
*We match her with an Iorwerth ap
Heilyn ap Einudd born c. 1170. She was not the Gwerfyl that Bartrum shows as being born a full generation
later
**We date the entire Nannau family nearly a generation
earlier than Bartrum's "generation numbers" would indicate.[5]
Having produced
a chart (actually charts of two entirely different families) which contains two different men called Iorwerth Saithmarchog,
we must explain why that could have been the case. Saithmarchog is a manor in the lower Clwyd valley once held by Gwenllian
ferch Rhys ap Marchen. Her son was the first Einudd in our chart and we posit that manor was passed on to Heilyn, then
to Iorwerth and finally to the same-named son of Iorwerth. We find no cited issue for the c. 1140 Iorwerth
Saithmarchog, but do find an unrelated man situated in the same Clwyd valley...Cowryd ap Cadfan...whose ancestors were not
known to have been located there. Indeed, we believe they had resided in Tegeingl. This Cowryd had a grandson who is
called Iorwerth Saithmarchog and may be assumed to have resided at that manor. A single missing link, if added to the
chart, would make perfect sense of the whole; a marriage between Cadfan and a sister (and heiress) of the first Iorwerth Saithmarchog...the
manor then passed on to the son of that putative sister, thence to his son and grandson. [6]
Our suggestion to other family
researchers is this: don't mistrust the medieval citations simply because others have woven them together sloppily,
but do beware of authors whose charts leave time gaps. This is a sign that the individual citations likely have been
incorrectly assembled.
NOTES:
[1] These include such men as Lewys Dwnn, Gutun Owain, Ieuan Brechfa, Gruffudd
Hiraethog, Thomas ap Ieuan ap Deicws, Jacob Chaloner and others whose works are now housed in the Peniarth, Harleian and other
collections of manuscripts
[2] This group of citations is from page 155 of Peniarth 139, Part 2
[3] The charters are reproduced in full in Montgomeryshire Collections, vol iv,
pp 21, 24 and 31
[4] This is the Einudd or Eunydd to whom the lands called Trefalun and Gresford
in Maelor were first granted. Refer to the paper "Eunydd ap Gwenllian" at the link below:
[5] This family is discussed at length in the paper "Cadwgan of Nannau" at the
link below:
[6] Such a marriage was first posited in our paper "Cowryd ap Cadfan of
Dyffryn Clwyd", at the link below:
