Medieval Powys. Kingdom, principality and lordships, 1132-1293 by David Stephenson (review)

Abstract

North American journal of Celtic Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2 (November 2018) Copyright © 2018 by The Ohio State University REVIEWS David Stephenson, Medieval Powys. Kingdom, principality and lordships, 1132–1293. Studies in Celtic History xxxv. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2016. ISBN 978–1–78327–140–5. 258 pp. $99.00 (hardback). Catherine McKenna Harvard University David Stephenson has made many contributions to the study of medieval Welsh history. Many Celticists will be familiar with his book on Political power in medieval Gwynedd (2014; an earlier edition, The governance of Gwynedd, was published in 1984). In the volume under review here, he has turned his attention to the kingdom of Powys, supposed site of the court of Cynddylan at Pengwern, home of the great twelfth-century poet Cynddelw, setting of Breuddwyd Rhonabwy. The introduction quite literally frames the medieval territory of Powys, establishing the particularity of its geographical situation, bordered as it was by Gwynedd, the March, and Deheubarth. As Stephenson shows, geography was the principal determining factor in the shifting alliances that have made Powys the favorite whipping boy of some nationalist historians of medieval Wales. His overview of the historiography of medieval Powys is telling, tracing the development of a prevailing narrative in which Powys was, at best, insignificant in the thirteenth-century drive toward a Wales united under the leadership of the princes of Gwynedd, and, at worst, a traitor to this cause, anachronistically conceptualized as ‘patriotic’. He concludes his introduction with a survey of the sources for the history of medieval Powys—chronicles, acta, charters, laws, and bardic poetry. The book is divided into two parts, the first providing an eight-chapter chronological narrative of the political history of Powys from the mid-eleventh through the end of the thirteenth century. Stephenson’s account of the fortunes of the descendants of Madog ap Maredudd brings into sharp focus the fact that the family of his nephew Owain Catherine McKenna [cmckenna@​ fas​ .harvard​ .edu] is Margaret Brooks Robinson Professor of Celtic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. Her research focuses on medieval Welsh poetry and narrative prose, and on Irish hagiobgraphy. She is one of the editors of the Cyfres beirdd y tywysogion. Reviews 187 Cyfeiliog and Owain’s son Gwenwynwyn, although reviled by nationalist historians for their failure to support the ambitions of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, was, in some ways, the most successful of the Welsh aristocratic families, as it survived the Conquest in possession of some of its lands. Although Powys re-appears in the historical record in the eleventh century after falling into obscurity in the ninth, Stephenson situates its emergence as a kingdom in the twelfth under Bleddyn ap Cynfyn and his son Maredudd; he regards accounts of eleventh-century Powys as likely reflecting the retrospective historiography of the thirteenth century. It was during the nearly thirty-year reign (1130–1160) of Maredudd’s son Madog that Powys took its place along with Gwynedd and Deheubarth as one of the three principal polities, to use Stephenson’s term, of medieval Wales. Madog built churches and castles, and, significantly, retained the services of the great poet Cynddelw. Cynddelw celebrated Madog and his court in two surviving eulogies and lamented his death in two marwnadau. In the latter part of his reign, Madog made a canny alliance with Henry II, but also shored up bonds with other Welsh princes by marrying a number of his daughters to their sons. The death of Madog’s designated heir at about the same time that he himself died led to the fragmentation of his realm. Whereas most historiography has focused on that fragmentation and the decline of Powysian glory, however, Stephenson emphasizes the stability and achievements of two of the successor polities, especially of southern Powys under Owain Cyfeiliog (ca. 1160–1197). He calls attention to the continuation of the ongoing ‘cultural flowering’ of Powys in the court of Owain Cyfeiliog, who is admired as the author of Hirlas Owain, a poem celebrating the members of his teulu in terms that vividly evoke Y Gododdin. Owain also established Strata Marcella, the first Cistercian monastery in Powys, and it is likely to have been during his reign that Cynddelw composed...