THE "EDNOWAIN BENDEW II" OF MEDIEVAL PEDIGREES
By Darrell Wolcott
In his Pedigrees of the
Welsh Tribal Patriarchs[1], Peter Bartrum comments as follows: "Ednywain Bendew of Tegeingl was ancestor of one Pymtheg
Llwyth Gwynedd (one of the 15 Noble Tribes of Gwynedd). His descendants through his sons Madog, Maredudd, Gruffudd and
Gwyn point to a date of birth of about 1100 for Ednywain. He must therefore be distinguished from an earlier Ednywain
Bendew, born c. 1020, who had two sons Bledrus and Rhotbert, and two daughters Morwyl and Ceinfryd (ABT 2d, 8h; HL 1b, 2i)"
Some 11 years later, when Bartrum
published his charts in Welsh Genealogies AD 300-1400, he estimated that Gruffudd ap Ednowain was probably born
c. 1070 and must have been a younger son of the first Ednowain Bendew[2]. But he continued to date Madog, Maredudd and
Gwyn to c. 1130 thus requiring a second Ednowain Bendew as their father.
When we abandon his "generational"
dating scheme and replace it with more precise estimates, we actually find Maredudd and Gwyn were born nearer 1170 but Madog
ap Ednowain occurs c. 1080. And Bartrum's charts for Madog's family omit the first two generations after Ednowain, skipping
directly to the Madog of c. 1145 (whom he dates to c. 1130) This omission can best be seen in the family which held
Bodidris in Ial in 1315[3]:
Bartrum's Chart
Our Construction
1050 Ednowain Bendew
l
1080 Madog
l
1100 Ednywain Bendew II
1110 Iorwerth
l
l
1130
Madog
1140 Rhiryd
l
l
1170
Iorwerth 1175
Einion
l
l
1200
Rhiryd
1205 Madog
l
l
1230
Einion
1235 Maredudd
l
l
1270
Madog
1265 Llewelyn
l
l
1270
Maredudd
1295 Llewelyn
l
1300
Llewelyn
l
1330
Llewelyn
In the 1315 Extent of Bromfield
and Yale the holders of Bodidris in Ial included "Llewelyn ap Llewelyn ap Maredudd"[4]. The co-holder was
Gruffudd Lloyd (ap Maredudd ap Llewelyn ap Ynyr) who had married the first-cousin of Llewelyn ap Llewelyn, Tangwystl the daughter
and heiress of Ieuaf ap Maredudd ap Madog. Both of these land holders were young men in 1315 as both the father and
uncle of Gruffudd Lloyd are named as holders of Gelligynan, Ial in the same survey[5] and were still alive on that date.
In our chart, we make Llewelyn ap Llewelyn a man in his early 20's (our date estimates are + or - 5 years) while the Bartrum
chart depicts a man not yet born in 1315. That he was proceeding uncertainly with his dating is also evident when he
places both Maredudd and his father Madog in the same generation. We think it is clear that his chart is missing two
early generations, that in fact the Madog he dates c. 1130 was a brother of the Rhiryd ap Iorwerth in our chart. What
led him astray is the fact that this Rhiryd did have a brother Madog (born c. 1145) who named a son Iorwerth, that Iorwerth
had a son Rhiryd and that Rhiryd had a son named Einion. This Einion ap Rhiryd was born c. 1240 and had a son named
Madog who was father to Madog Wyddel, Cwnws, Hywel and Gruffudd....but not to any Maredudd. In family after family,
Bartrum's charts ignore a common tendency to repeat long strings of male names; we see it very often in the 10th to 14th centuries.
And this is certainly not the only example to be found in the families who descended from the c. 1050 (not c. 1100) Ednowain
Bendew.
To make his early generations
"work" chronologically, Bartrum has accepted one error repeatedly made in pedigrees of this family but "emended" another citation
to fit. Most medieval charts show the following at the top[6]:
Ednowain Bendew
l
Madog=====Arddun ferch Bradwen, sister of
l
Ednowain ap Bradwen
Iorwerth=====Arddun ferch Llewelyn ap Owain
ap Edwin
Since the first Arddun depicted
was born c. 1155, Bartrum decided the next Arddun must be incorrect...a granddaughter of Owain ap Edwin would occur c. 1115/1120.
By "emending" the citation to read "Llewelyn ap Owain ap Aldud ap Owain ap Edwin", we produce an Arddun of c. 1185 to fit
with the Iorwerth who was a son of the first Arddun. However, the only construction which fits all the later branches
of this family is this:
1050 Ednowain
Bendew
l
1080
Madog (unknown wife)
l
1110
Iorwerth===Arddun ferch Llewelyn 1120
l
1145 Madog===Arddun
ferch Bradwen 1155
l
1180 Iorwerth (unknown wife)
We find the Iorwerth ap Madog
of c. 1110 had, besides the son Madog, a son Rhiryd as shown in our first chart and a son Llewelyn who was father to the Tangwystl
who married Maredudd ap Cadwaladr[7]. Rhiryd ap Iorwerth of c. 1140 had, in addition to the son Einion, a daughter
Tibod who married Ithel Gam ap Maredudd[8].
Madog ap Iorwerth of c. 1145 had,
beside the son Iorwerth shown immediately above and in the Bartrum chart, a son Rhiryd who married Nest ferch Gronwy ap Einion
ap Seisyllt[9] (a lady wholly omitted from Bartrum's index probably because she didn't fit anywhere on his charts).
That Rhiryd ap Madog had sons Einion and Iorwerth. Since the early family used so few male names, only by following a rigid
timeline can one distinguish one Rhiryd ap Iorwerth, for example, from another.
Returning to our opening
paragraphs now, we find those 3 "sons" of a "second" Ednowain Bendew were most likely born as follows:
Madog c. 1080
Maredudd c. 1055 [10]
Gwyn c. 1055 [11]
That these men did not share
a common father should be evident; only Gwyn and Maredudd might be brothers.
The family descended from Gwyn seems
to be found in Maelor and intermarried with the Tudor Trevor clan, while that descended from Maredudd held manors in Whitford...lands
within the old lordship held by the first Ednowain Bendew. The pedigrees offered by Bartrum are deficient for these
two brothers; they were born much earlier than Bartrum estimated. Our work suggests both were sons of the c. 1020
Ednowain Bendew. We are left with the large family which descended from Madog of c. 1080 as possibly having descended
from a "second" Ednowain Bendew, a man born c. 1050.
Not only did the family hold lands
in Tegeingl, but in those areas formerly owned by Edwin ap Gronwy of the eleventh century. That the man called "Ednowain
Bendew" at the top of Madog's pedigree was part of Edwin's clan is almost certain and he occurs in the same generation
as the known sons of Edwin. So who exactly was he?
Rather than suggest an answer immediately,
we would point you to two other men born about the same time as Madog and whose descendants also held lands in the heart
of Edwin's old lordship[12]:
1. Madog ap "Ednowain Bendew",
born c. 1080
2. Aldud ap "Owain ap Edwin",
born c. 1085
3. Uchdryd ap "Edwin", born
c. 1085
This Uchdryd was father to Maredudd
who named a son Ithel Gam and the subsequent families became fixated on that male name, churning out other Ithels nicknamed
"Gam", "Fychan", "Lloyd" and "Anwyl" by the handfuls. Our work is yet incomplete on that family, but the Uchdryd at
the top of the pedigree cannot be the Uchdryd ap Edwin who was brother to Owain; this one occurs in the generation
of Edwin's grandsons.
It has occurred to us that the three
men, Uchdryd, Aldud and Madog, might be brothers or at least first-cousins; in the pedigrees the "father" is
respectively called Edwin, Owain and Ednowain...the latter perhaps no more than a joining of the first two names. We
now have papers that suggest the father of Uchdryd was actually Uchdryd ap Edwin (link shown below;
that Aldud was an adopted child of Owain ap Edwin (link shown below);
and that Madog was a son of Owain ap Edwin whose later family was ashamed to
claim him as their ancestor since certain medieval historians labeled Owain a traitor for ruling Gwynedd as the Norman's
sub-king (to the exclusion of their hero, Gruffudd ap Cynan). Madog's family called their ancestor Ednowain Bendew...replacing
Owain with his father-in-law[13]. See the full pedigree at the link shown below:
Our instant purpose is to set the
stage for our later papers by elminating Gruffudd, Gwyn and Maredudd as brothers of Madog; we believe they descended
from the c. 1020 Ednowain Bendew. If there even was such a man as Ednowain Bendew II, his only known son was Madog.
But we doubt that was the true name of Madog's father; however one might call him Edwin's Owain!
