Hywel Dda :: Essays Papers

Hywel Dda King of WalesDavies 1990 Walker 1990 By 950 A.D., Dinefwr was the principal court from which Hywel Dda, The Good, (depicted in a 13th-century manuscript at right), ruled a large part of Wales including the southwest area known as Deheubarth. His great achievement was to create the countrys first supply legal system. Hywel shared with his brothers lands in Ceredigon and Ystrad Tywi after the death of their father, Cadell, about 909. He united their inheritance in 920, and acquired Gwynedd after the death of Idwal Foel in 942. He marry Elen, daughter of Llywarch of Dyfed, and on Llywarchs death in 904 he took over the southern kingdom. In the perspective of the Dark Ages he was a powerful prince, and it may be that later generations borrowed his personal authority to buttress their own power. Like his grandfather, Rhodri the Great, Hywel was given an epithet by a later generation. He became known as Hywel Dda (Hywel the Good), although it would be wrong to consider that go odness to be innocent and unblemished. In the age of Hywel, the essential attribute of a state builder was ruthlessness, an attribute which Hywel possessed, if it is true that it was he who ordered the killing of Llywarch of Dyfed, as some have claimed. Although contemporary evidence is lacking, there is no reason to reject the tradition that Hywel was responsible for some of the integration of the Laws of Wales. Among Hywels contemporaries there were rulers who won fame as law-givers. The law was Hywels law, cyfraith Hywel his name gave to the law an authority comparable with that given to the laws of Mercia by King Offa or the laws of Wessex (and a big area of England) by King Alfred. He almost certainly knew of them he was a regular visitor to the English court and in 928, when in the blush of his manhood, he went on pilgrimage to Rome. In later centuries it was claimed that he took copies of his laws to Rome, where they were blessed by the Pope. Tradition also provided details of the circumstances under which the laws were compiled and promulgated. It was probably the take up to give cohesion to his different territories that prompted Hywel to codify the law. He was also successful in defending his territories, for there is no record that they were ravaged by the Vikings during his reign.