Gwladus Ddu

Marriage

Gwladus married firstly, Reginald de Braose, Lord of Brecon and Abergavenny in about 1215. After Reginald's death in 1228, she was probably the sister recorded as accompanying Dafydd ap Llywelyn to London in 1229.

She married secondly, Ralph de Mortimer of Wigmore in about June 1230. Ralph died in 1246, and their son, Roger de Mortimer, inherited the lordship.

Children

Gwladus had at least three sons and a daughter with her second husband Ralph de Mortimer. The current English royal family claims descent from Llywelyn the Great through this line via their son Roger.

• Roger Mortimer, 1st Baron Mortimer (c. 1231 – 27 October 1282). In 1247 he married Maud de Braose, daughter of William de Braose, Lord of Abergavenny and Eva Marshal, with whom he had seven children.

• Hugh de Mortimer (d. 1273), lord of Chelmarsh.

• Peter John Mortimer, a Franciscan friar in Shrewsbury.

• Joan Mortimer, who around 1253 married Piers Corbet (d. 1300), lord of Caus, Shropshire, and had two sons, Thomas and Peter Corbet, 2nd Baron Corbet.

Legacy

In the 1380s, when Roger Mortimer, 2nd Earl of March was considered a possible heir to King Richard II, Welsh bard Iolo Goch referred to his descent from Welsh royalty through Gwladus Ddu as a potential prophecy.

During the Wars of the Roses, both the House of Lancaster and House of York used Welsh mythological traditions to strengthen their cause. Edward IV claimed descent from the Kings of Gwynedd and Llewellyn the Great via the line of Gwladus Ddu through his grandmother Anne Mortimer to bolster his claim to the English throne.

References

Notes

• Ancestral Roots of Certain American Colonists Who Came to America Before 1700 by Frederick Lewis Weis; Lines 132-C-29, 176B-28
• John Edward Lloyd (1911) * A history of Wales from the earliest times to the Edwardian conquest* (Longmans, Green & Co.)

References

1. "Llywelyn ab Iorwerth [called Llywelyn Fawr] (c. 1173–1240), prince of Gwynedd".
2. Hurlock, Kathryn. (2009). "The Welsh wife of Malcolm, Earl of Fife (d. 1266): An Alternative Suggestion". The Scottish Historical Review.
3. "JOAN (SIWAN) (died 1237), princess and diplomat {{!}} Dictionary of Welsh Biography".
4. "Chronicle of the Princes - National Library of Wales".
5. Matonis, A. T. E.. (1988). "The Harley Lyrics: English and Welsh Convergences". Modern Philology.
6. "Mortimer, Roger de, lord of Wigmore (1231–1282), magnate".
7. Matonis, A. T. E.. (1978). "Traditions of Panegyric in Welsh Poetry: The Heroic and the Chivalric". Speculum.
8. Mortimer, Ian. "Outline Lineage of the Medieval Mortimer family".
9. Burke, John. A genealogical and heraldic history of the commoners of Great Britain and Ireland, enjoying territorial possessions or high official rank: but uninvested with heritable honours, Volume 3, Publ. for Henry Colburn, by R. Bentley, 1836
10. Flood, Victoria. (2014). "Henry Tudor and Lancastrian Prophecy in Wales". Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium.
11. Gray, Madeleine. (2007). "Welsh Saints in Westminster Abbey - Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion".