Coordinates: 51°33′36″N3°24′32″W / 51.560°N 3.409°W Penychen was a possible minor kingdom of early medieval Wales and later a cantref of the Kingdom of Morgannwg. Penychen was one of three cantrefi that made up the kingdom of Glywysing, lying between the rivers Taff and Thaw, the other two being Gwynllwg and Gorfynydd. According to tradition, these cantrefi were created on the death of Glywys (c.480 AD), the first king of Glywysing, when the kingdom was divided between his three sons: Pawl, Gwynllyw and Mechwyn. But our knowledge of the early history of the kingdom is very uncertain, being mainly sourced from medieval documents and traditional pedigrees.
Pawl was the ruler of Penychen and on his death (c.540 AD) passed the cantref on to his nephew.[ citation needed ]
Pawl's brother Gwynllyw was the ruler of Gwynllwg and upon his death it is said that the cantref passed to his son Cadoc (Cadwg), also known as St. Cadoc. Cadoc would later take control of Penychen, but when he was killed by the Saxons he had no heirs, and both cantrefi fell under the control of Meureg of Gwent and were absorbed into his kingdom.
After the Norman conquest of South Wales, the southern parts of Penychen, on the Bristol Channel, came under the direct rule of the Norman Marcher Lords and their descendants, but the rest (the commotes of Rhondda Valley and Miskin) remained under the rule of local Welsh lords, who paid homage to the powerful Norman lords but still retained a degree of independence, which they were very ready to defend.
In the Middle Ages Penychen contained two important ecclesiastical centres: the episcopal seat of Llandaf, and Llancarfan, a clas connected to the early author Caradoc of Llancarfan.
Penychen lay between Senghenydd and Gwrinydd in South Wales; [1] it contained the areas which today are the county borough of Rhondda Cynon Taff, the majority of the Vale of Glamorgan and the west of Cardiff.
Glamorgan, or sometimes Glamorganshire, is one of the thirteen historic counties of Wales and a former administrative county of Wales. Originally an early medieval petty kingdom of varying boundaries known as Glywysing. Then taken over by the Normans as a lordship. The area that became known as Glamorgan was both a rural, pastoral area, and a conflict point between the Norman lords and the Welsh princes. It was defined by a large concentration of castles.
Meirionnydd is a coastal and mountainous region of Wales. It has been a kingdom, a cantref, a district and, as Merionethshire, a county.
Paul Aurelian was a 6th-century Welshman who became first bishop of the See of Léon and one of the seven founder saints of Brittany. He allegedly died in 575, rumoured to have lived to the age of 140, after having been assisted in his labors by three successive coadjutors. This suggests that several Pauls have been conflated. Gilbert Hunter Doble thought that he might have been Saint Paulinus of Wales.
A commote was a secular division of land in Medieval Wales. The word derives from the prefix cym- and the noun bod. The English word "commote" is derived from the Middle Welsh cymwt.
Saint Cadoc or Cadog was a 5th–6th-century Abbot of Llancarfan, near Cowbridge in Glamorganshire, Wales, a monastery famous from the era of the British church as a centre of learning, where Illtud spent the first period of his religious life under Cadoc's tutelage. Cadoc is credited with the establishment of many churches in Cornwall, Brittany, Dyfed and Scotland. He is known as Cattwg Ddoeth, "the Wise", and a large collection of his maxims and moral sayings were included in Volume III of the Myvyrian Archaiology. He is listed in the 2004 edition of the Roman Martyrology under 21 September. His Norman-era "Life" is a hagiography of importance to the case for the historicity of Arthur as one of seven saints' lives that mention Arthur independently of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae.
Gwynllŵg was a kingdom of mediaeval Wales and later a Norman lordship and then a cantref.
Caradog ap Gruffydd was a Prince of Gwent in south-east Wales in the time of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn and the Norman conquest, who reunified his family's inheritance of Morgannwg and made repeated attempts to reunite southern Wales by claiming the inheritance of the Kingdom of Deheubarth.
Gwent was a medieval Welsh kingdom, lying between the Rivers Wye and Usk. It existed from the end of Roman rule in Britain in about the 5th century until the Norman conquest of England in the 11th century. Along with its neighbour Glywyssing, it seems to have had a great deal of cultural continuity with the earlier Silures, keeping their own courts and diocese separate from the rest of Wales until their conquest by Gruffydd ap Llywelyn. Although it recovered its independence after his death in 1063, Gwent was the first of the Welsh kingdoms to be overrun following the Norman conquest.
The Kingdom of Dyfed, one of several Welsh petty kingdoms that emerged in 5th-century sub-Roman Britain in southwest Wales, was based on the former territory of the Demetae. The Normans invaded Wales, and by 1138 incorporated Dyfed into a new shire called Pembrokeshire after the Norman castle built in the Cantref of Penfro and under the rule of the Marcher Earl of Pembroke.
Ystrad Tywi is a region of southwest Wales situated on the both banks of the River Tywi. Although Ystrad Tywi was never a kingdom itself, it was historically a valuable territory and was fought over by the various kings of Dyfed, Deheubarth, Seisyllwg, Gwynedd, Morgannwg and the Normans.
Glywysing was, from the sub-Roman period to the Early Middle Ages, a petty kingdom in south-east Wales. Its people were descended from the Iron Age tribe of the Silures, and frequently in union with Gwent, merging to form Morgannwg.
Gwynllyw Filwr or Gwynllyw Farfog, known in English in a corrupted form as Woolos the Warrior or Woolos the Bearded was a Welsh king and religious figure.
Gwrtheyrnion or Gwerthrynion was a commote in medieval Wales, located in Mid Wales on the north side of the River Wye; its historical centre was Rhayader. It is said to have taken its name from the legendary king Vortigern. For most of the medieval era, it was associated with the cantref of Buellt and then Elfael, small regional kingdoms whose rulers operated independently of other powers. In the Norman era, like the rest of the region between Wye and Severn it came to be dominated by Marcher Lordships.
Glywys is a legendary early 5th century Welsh king, an important character in early Welsh genealogies as the eponymous founder king of Glywysing, a southeast Welsh kingdom whose heartland lay between the Tawe and the Usk.
Buellt or Builth was a cantref in medieval Wales, located west of the River Wye. Unlike most cantrefs, it was not part of any of the major Welsh kingdoms for most of its history, but was instead ruled by an autonomous local dynasty. During the Norman era it was associated with Rhwng Gwy a Hafren, a region independent of the Welsh monarchies and controlled by Norman Marcher Lords. In the 16th century, it was reorganized as a hundred and joined with the former kingdom of Brycheiniog to form the county of Brecknockshire.
St Cadoc's Church is a Church in Wales church located in Caerleon, Newport, Wales and is Grade II* listed. It is one of many buildings associated with the travels of St Cadoc.
Cyfeiliog was a medieval commote in the cantref of Cynan of the Kingdom of Powys. Cynan also contained the commote of Mawddwy. Other sources refer to Cyfeiliog as a cantref in its own right, possibly as a result of Cynan being renamed for the largest commote within it.
Caereinion was a medieval cantref in the Kingdom of Powys, or possibly it was a commote (cwmwd) within a cantref called Llŷs Wynaf. It was divided into the manors of Uwch Coed and Is Coed.
St Cadoc's Church, Llancarfan is a Grade I listed building in Llancarfan, in the Vale of Glamorgan, south Wales. It dates from the 13th century and became a Grade I listed building on 28 January 1963. It is one of several churches in Wales dedicated to St Cadoc, but it was at Llancarfan that the saint is believed to have served as abbot of, or possibly founded, a monastery of some importance. The name "Llancarfan" means "church of the stags". The church once had a chancel window said to be a masterpiece of stained glass. During the reign of Oliver Cromwell a local man named Whitton Bush destroyed the window by repeatedly beating it while shouting "Down with the Whore of Babylon!"
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