Llywelyn ap Gruffudd: The Last Native Prince of Wales

Llywelyn ap Gruffudd (c.1223 to 1282) was the ruler of Gwynedd who declared himself Prince of Wales in 1258 and won the English crown's recognition of that title in the Treaty of Montgomery in 1267. He was killed near Cilmeri on 11 December 1282 during his second war against Edward I, and his death ended the rule of native Welsh princes.

Key Facts about Llywelyn ap Gruffudd

• Born: c.1223, second son of Gruffudd ap Llywelyn and Senana
• Grandfather: Llywelyn ap Iorwerth (Llywelyn the Great)
• Known as: Llywelyn the Last, or in Welsh Llywelyn Ein Llyw Olaf (our last leader)
• Title: Prince of Wales, claimed in 1258 and recognised by Henry III in 1267
• Wars with Edward I: 1276 to 1277 and 1282 to 1283
• Died: 11 December 1282, near Cilmeri, Builth
• Buried: body traditionally at Abbey Cwmhir; head displayed at the Tower of London

Most people who know the name think of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd as a man who lost. That is true of how his life ended, but it hides what came before. For roughly a decade he held something no Welsh ruler had held before him or would hold again: a principality of Wales that the English king accepted in a sealed treaty, with the other Welsh lords owing their homage to Llywelyn rather than to the crown.

His story is often blurred with that of Owain Glyndŵr, who rose more than a century later and also called himself Prince of Wales. The two belong to different worlds. Llywelyn was the heir of an independent dynasty, bargaining as a prince with Henry III and Edward I. Glyndŵr was a rebel against the conquest that Llywelyn's death made possible. Understanding Llywelyn is the starting point for almost everything that followed in Wales, from Edward I's castles to the Statute of Rhuddlan and the rebellions of the next 130 years.

Llywelyn ap Gruffudd Timeline

• c.1223: Llywelyn is born, second son of Gruffudd ap Llywelyn and grandson of Llywelyn the Great.
• 1240: Llywelyn the Great dies; his legitimate son Dafydd ap Llywelyn succeeds in Gwynedd.
• 1244: Llywelyn's father, Gruffudd, dies trying to escape from the Tower of London.
• 1246: Dafydd ap Llywelyn dies without an heir; Llywelyn and his elder brother Owain Goch share Gwynedd.
• 1247: The Treaty of Woodstock confines the brothers to Gwynedd west of the River Conwy.
• 1255: Llywelyn defeats Owain Goch and Dafydd at Bryn Derwin and becomes sole ruler of Gwynedd.
• 1256: He drives the English out of the Perfeddwlad, the four cantrefs between the Conwy and the Dee.
• 1258: Most Welsh lords transfer their homage to him and he styles himself Prince of Wales.
• 1258 to 1267: Welsh court poets praise Llywelyn as leader of the whole nation.
• 1265: Treaty of Pipton with Simon de Montfort; Llywelyn is betrothed to Eleanor de Montfort.
• 1267: Treaty of Montgomery (29 September): Henry III recognises Llywelyn as Prince of Wales.
• 1272: Henry III dies and Edward I becomes king.
• 1274: Dafydd ap Gruffudd and Gruffudd ap Gwenwynwyn plot against Llywelyn and flee to England.
• 1274 to 1276: Llywelyn repeatedly refuses to do homage to Edward I.
• 1276 to 1277: First War of Independence; Edward declares Llywelyn a rebel in November 1276.
• 1277: The Treaty of Aberconwy (November) reduces Llywelyn to Gwynedd west of the Conwy.
• 1278: Llywelyn marries Eleanor de Montfort at Worcester.
• 1282: Dafydd attacks Hawarden Castle on Palm Sunday, starting the Second War of Independence; Eleanor dies after giving birth to Gwenllian in June.
• 6 November 1282: The Welsh destroy an English force at Moel-y-don on the Menai Strait.
• 11 December 1282: Llywelyn is killed near Cilmeri.
• 1283: Dafydd is captured in June and executed at Shrewsbury in October; Edward begins castles at Conwy, Caernarfon and Harlech.
• c.1283: Gruffudd ab yr Ynad Coch composes his elegy for Llywelyn.
• 1284: The Statute of Rhuddlan brings English law and administration into the Principality of Wales.
• 1301: Edward of Caernarfon is created Prince of Wales.

How Llywelyn ap Gruffudd Rose to Power in Gwynedd

Llywelyn did not inherit a united country. He inherited a family quarrel. His father Gruffudd was Llywelyn the Great's eldest son but illegitimate, and the old prince had deliberately passed Gwynedd to his legitimate son Dafydd. Gruffudd spent years as a prisoner, first of his half-brother and then of Henry III, and in 1244 he fell to his death from the Tower of London while climbing down a rope made of knotted sheets.

When Dafydd died without children in 1246, Gwynedd was weak, and Henry III made sure it stayed that way. The Treaty of Woodstock in 1247 left Llywelyn and his elder brother Owain Goch sharing only the land west of the River Conwy, with the crown keeping the Perfeddwlad to the east. Welsh custom gave every son a claim to a share, and in 1255 the younger brother Dafydd demanded his. Llywelyn settled the matter at Bryn Derwin in June 1255, defeating Owain and Dafydd together. Owain Goch then spent more than twenty years as his prisoner, by tradition at Dolbadarn Castle in Snowdonia.

This is the side of Llywelyn the heroic version tends to leave out. He held Gwynedd together by locking up his own brother, and the brother he spared, Dafydd, would turn against him more than once. Dividing land between sons had broken Welsh kingdoms apart for centuries. Llywelyn's answer was simply to refuse it.

Prince of Wales: From 1258 to the Treaty of Montgomery

Once Gwynedd was his, Llywelyn moved fast. In 1256 he swept the English out of the Perfeddwlad, where the local people had been angered by the rule of Prince Edward's officials. Over the next two years he pushed into Powys and Deheubarth, and in 1258 the native Welsh lords, with the exception of Gruffudd ap Gwenwynwyn of southern Powys, transferred their homage from the English king to him. In the same year he began to call himself Prince of Wales. The castle he strengthened at Ewloe, in the contested borderland of Flintshire, shows that his lordship was asserted in stone as well as in charters.

England's civil war gave him his opening. Llywelyn allied with Simon de Montfort, and the Treaty of Pipton in 1265 recognised his principality and arranged his betrothal to Montfort's daughter Eleanor. Montfort was killed at Evesham weeks later, but Llywelyn was now strong enough that Henry III still had to bargain with him. At Montgomery on 29 September 1267 the king recognised Llywelyn and his heirs as Princes of Wales, with the homage of almost every Welsh lord. In return Llywelyn did homage to Henry and promised 25,000 marks, payable in yearly instalments of 3,000.

The treaty was the high point of his career, not a forced retreat. Yet the price matters. Wales was a poor country, and the money had to be raised from Welsh landholders and communities through heavier dues and stricter lordship. The Dictionary of Welsh Biography notes that the ruthlessness of his government in these years earned him the hostility of many of his own subjects. For a free farmer in Gwynedd, the new principality meant above all a larger bill.

Why Llywelyn ap Gruffudd Fought Edward I

Edward I became king in 1272, and within two years the Montgomery settlement was coming apart. Llywelyn had stopped paying the instalments. In 1274 his brother Dafydd and Gruffudd ap Gwenwynwyn were exposed in a plot against his life and fled to England, where Edward sheltered them. Llywelyn would not do homage to a king who protected the men who had planned his murder, and he ignored summons after summons between 1274 and 1276.

Then came the marriage. Llywelyn married Eleanor de Montfort by proxy in 1275, and when she sailed from France to join him, ships out of Bristol captured her and Edward held her at Windsor. To Edward the match revived the memory of the rebel Montfort. To Llywelyn the seizure of his bride was proof of bad faith. In November 1276 Edward declared him a rebel.

The war of 1277 was short. Edward advanced along the north coast, cleared a road through the woods and sent troops to take the harvest of Anglesey, the grain store of Gwynedd. Facing hunger and the desertion of the other Welsh lords, Llywelyn accepted the Treaty of Aberconwy in November 1277. He kept his title for life but lost the Perfeddwlad and the homage of all but five lesser lords. Edward then allowed the wedding to go ahead at Worcester in October 1278, and attended it himself.

1282: Dafydd's Rebellion and the Death at Cilmeri

The peace of 1277 lasted less than five years, and it was not Llywelyn who broke it. Dafydd, rewarded by Edward with lands in the Perfeddwlad, had come to resent English officials and English law as bitterly as anyone. On Palm Sunday 1282 he attacked Hawarden Castle, and risings followed across Wales. Llywelyn joined the war, although whether he knew of the attack in advance is still debated. The rebellion matters in its own right: it took Edward by surprise, it came from a former ally, and it drew Llywelyn back into a fight he may not have chosen.

The year brought private grief too. Eleanor died in June after giving birth to their daughter Gwenllian. In the autumn Archbishop John Pecham tried to broker peace, and Edward's terms offered Llywelyn an estate in England worth £1,000 a year if he gave up Snowdonia. The Welsh replies refused, arguing that the people of Snowdonia would not do homage to strangers whose language, customs and laws were foreign to them. On 6 November the Welsh destroyed an English force crossing from Anglesey at Moel-y-don.

Llywelyn then went south, probably to raise support in the middle March. On 11 December 1282, near Cilmeri and the bridge over the River Irfon outside Builth, he was separated from his army and killed by an English soldier who did not at first know who he was. Accounts of the day differ, and Welsh tradition has long spoken of betrayal. His head was sent to London and set on the Tower, mockingly crowned with ivy. Dafydd fought on through the winter, was captured in June 1283 and was hanged, drawn and quartered at Shrewsbury that October. You can follow the road from these events to Edward's settlement in the path to the Statute of Rhuddlan.

After Llywelyn: Conquest, Castles and a Changing Society

Edward did not treat victory as the end of a war. He treated it as the start of a settlement. From 1283 his masons began castles and walled towns at Conwy, Caernarfon and Harlech, with Beaumaris following in 1295, and English settlers were planted in the new boroughs, where Welshmen were often barred from living or trading. The Statute of Rhuddlan of 1284 turned Llywelyn's principality into crown land, organised into shires on the English model with sheriffs, English criminal law and royal courts, while Welsh law survived in some civil matters. In 1301 Edward gave the title Prince of Wales to his own son, born at Caernarfon in 1284.

For Welsh society the change ran deeper than the loss of a prince. The princely dynasty was gone, and many of the families who had served it, such as the descendants of Llywelyn the Great's steward Ednyfed Fychan, adapted by becoming officials and landholders under the crown: the beginnings of the Welsh gentry. Court poets who had praised Llywelyn now looked for patrons among these families. Gruffudd ab yr Ynad Coch's elegy for Llywelyn, composed around 1283, treats his death as though the world itself were ending, and it remains one of the great poems of medieval Wales.

Llywelyn's memory did not stay in poetry. It fed every later rising: Rhys ap Maredudd in 1287, Madog ap Llywelyn in 1294 to 1295, Llywelyn Bren in 1316, the French-backed plots of Owain Lawgoch in the 1370s and the national rebellion of Owain Glyndŵr from 1400. I find it telling that each of these leaders reached back to the princes for legitimacy. The idea of a native Prince of Wales outlived the principality by more than a century.

Llywelyn ap Gruffudd and WJEC A-Level History (Unit 3.1)

Llywelyn stands at the start of the WJEC GCE History breadth study, Unit 3 option 3.1, Wales: Resistance, conquest and rebellion c.1240–1415. The paper asks two kinds of question, and his career feeds both.

Section A deals with society, culture and the economy over a shorter span, usually 15 to 40 years. A 2019 question asked how far social change was the most significant development in Wales between 1240 and 1284. Material from Llywelyn's era that helps with this kind of question includes:

• Law and status: the shift from princely rule to the Statute of Rhuddlan, and what it meant for Welsh landowners.
• Social class: the end of the princely family and the move of its servants towards gentry status.
• Settlement and plantation: English settlers, new castles and boroughs reserved for the English.
• The economy: towns growing as centres of trade, and people moving from the country into them.
• Government: new crown lands and Marcher lordships, with new offices and powers.
• Culture: poets who had praised Llywelyn between 1258 and 1267 turning to gentry patrons after 1283.

Section B is a compulsory question across at least 100 years of governance and rebellion. The 2019 paper asked whether Dafydd ap Gruffudd's rebellion of 1282 posed the most serious threat to English power in Wales between 1240 and 1415. A balanced answer weighs Dafydd's surprise attack, his breach of trust and the way he pulled Llywelyn back into war, against Madog ap Llywelyn's rising so soon after the conquest, the spread of Llywelyn Bren's revolt from Caerphilly to Dinefwr, Owain Lawgoch's French connections during the Hundred Years War and Glyndŵr's rebellion with its foreign allies and bardic propaganda. The timeline above gives the dates to anchor each judgement.

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This article is part of the Princes of Wales series. Read all articles at historiesandcastles.com/blogs/princes-of-wales.

People Also Ask

Who was Llywelyn ap Gruffudd?

Llywelyn ap Gruffudd was ruler of Gwynedd in north-west Wales from 1246 and Prince of Wales from 1258 until his death in 1282. A grandson of Llywelyn the Great, he brought most of native Wales under his lordship, and in the Treaty of Montgomery of 1267 Henry III recognised him as Prince of Wales with the homage of the other Welsh lords. He died fighting Edward I and is remembered in Welsh as Llywelyn Ein Llyw Olaf, our last leader.

What did Llywelyn ap Gruffudd do?

He turned Gwynedd's dominance into a single principality of Wales. Between 1255 and 1258 he defeated his brothers at Bryn Derwin, drove the English out of the Perfeddwlad, took the homage of the other Welsh princes and declared himself Prince of Wales. He then used England's civil war to win the Treaty of Montgomery in 1267. After 1272 he refused to do homage to Edward I, lost the war of 1277 and was killed leading the second war in 1282.

What did Llywelyn the Great do?

Llywelyn the Great, or Llywelyn ap Iorwerth (c.1173 to 1240), was Llywelyn ap Gruffudd's grandfather. He made Gwynedd the leading power in Wales, married Joan, daughter of King John, presided over a gathering of Welsh rulers at Aberdyfi in 1216 and had his gains confirmed by the English crown in the Treaty of Worcester in 1218. He styled himself Prince of Aberffraw and Lord of Snowdon rather than Prince of Wales, but his grandson built directly on his work.

Who was the last real Prince of Wales?

Llywelyn ap Gruffudd is usually counted as the last native Prince of Wales, because he was the last Welshman to hold the title with the formal recognition of the English crown. His brother Dafydd styled himself prince after Llywelyn's death until his capture in June 1283, and Owain Glyndŵr was proclaimed Prince of Wales in 1400, but neither was ever recognised. From 1301, when Edward I gave the title to his son Edward of Caernarfon, it has belonged to the heir to the English, and later British, throne.

Where is Llywelyn ap Gruffudd buried?

His body is believed to have been buried by the Cistercian monks of Abbey Cwmhir in Radnorshire, an order that had long supported him, though the exact grave is unknown and a modern memorial slab marks the traditional site. His head was taken to Edward I and then sent to London, where it was displayed on the Tower of London. A stone monument at Cilmeri, near Builth Wells, stands close to the place where he is said to have fallen.

Who are Llywelyn ap Gruffudd's descendants?

He has no known living descendants. His only legitimate child, Gwenllian, was born in June 1282, and her mother, Eleanor de Montfort, died soon after the birth. After the conquest Edward I placed Gwenllian in the Gilbertine priory at Sempringham in Lincolnshire, where she died, unmarried, in 1337. Later genealogies claim illegitimate children for Llywelyn, but none is securely documented. The dynasty's last serious claimant, Owain Lawgoch, descended from his younger brother Rhodri and was assassinated in France in 1378.

Where can I buy a book about the Middle Ages?

The book No Law for the Poor explores more than five centuries of crime, punishment, justice, and authority in England and Wales. Beginning with Anglo-Saxon law and the Danelaw, it follows the impact of the Norman Conquest, the growth of royal justice, the significance of Magna Carta, and the changing relationship between rulers, landowners, communities, and the poor. Available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Deepen Your Understanding

• Llywelyn the Great: Llywelyn ap Gruffudd's grandfather, whose dominance of Wales and Treaty of Worcester gave his grandson the model to build on.
• The Treaty of Aberconwy (1277): the settlement that stripped Llywelyn of the Perfeddwlad and most of his overlordship after the first war.
• The Statute of Rhuddlan (1284): how Edward I turned Llywelyn's principality into English crown land after 1282.
• Welsh Resistance After the Statute of Rhuddlan: the risings of Rhys ap Maredudd, Madog ap Llywelyn and others that kept his memory alive.
• Owain Glyndŵr: the man proclaimed Prince of Wales in 1400, and why his rebellion was a different kind of struggle from Llywelyn's.

Primary Sources and Further Reading

• Gruffudd ab yr Ynad Coch (c.1283): Elegy for Llywelyn ap Gruffudd: the great contemporary Welsh lament for the prince, written soon after Cilmeri. Dictionary of Welsh Biography entry

• Thomas Jones, ed. and trans. (1952 and 1955): Brut y Tywysogyon: or, The Chronicle of the Princes, University of Wales Press: the main Welsh chronicle for Llywelyn's reign, including his death in 1282. WorldCat

• National Library of Wales: Llywelyn ap Gruffydd ('Llywelyn the Last'), Prince of Wales, Dictionary of Welsh Biography: a concise scholarly account covering 1258, Montgomery, his burial at Cwmhir and Gwenllian. biography.wales

• J. Beverley Smith (1998, revised 2014): Llywelyn ap Gruffudd: Prince of Wales, University of Wales Press: the standard modern biography. Google Books

• R. R. Davies (1987): Conquest, Coexistence, and Change: Wales 1063–1415, Oxford University Press (reissued as The Age of Conquest): the best overview of the princes and the Edwardian conquest. WorldCat

• WJEC: Knowledge Organiser, Unit 3.1 Wales: Resistance, conquest and rebellion c.1240–1415: the exam board's own summary of key dates and question types for this period. WJEC (PDF)

Note: Llywelyn's year of birth is approximate. The circumstances of his death are reported differently in English and Welsh sources, and the tradition of betrayal cannot be proved. His burial at Abbey Cwmhir rests on later testimony rather than a surviving grave. Some writers give the sum promised at Montgomery as 24,000 or 30,000 marks; 25,000 is the figure most often cited.

Relevant Exam Boards & Specifications

• WJEC GCE AS/A Level History

  Unit 3: Breadth study, Option 3.1 Wales: Resistance, conquest and rebellion c.1240–1415

  Module Focus: Llywelyn's principality, the wars of 1276 to 1277 and 1282 to 1283, Dafydd ap Gruffudd's rebellion and the social change that followed the conquest, all set against later threats to English power up to 1415.

• AQA GCSE History (8145)

  Paper 2, Section B: British depth study, Medieval England: the reign of Edward I, 1272–1307

  Module Focus: Edward I's Welsh wars, his conflict with Llywelyn ap Gruffudd and the castles and settlement he imposed on Wales after 1282.

Who Would Benefit from Reading This?

• GCSE History Students: a clear account of why Edward I went to war with Llywelyn and what the conquest of Wales involved, for the AQA Edward I depth study.
• A-Level History Students: a dated timeline and both sides of the Section A and Section B debates for WJEC Unit 3.1.
• History Teachers and Tutors: a corrected, source-backed narrative of Llywelyn's career that separates him clearly from Owain Glyndŵr.
• Independent Historical Researchers: a starting point with links to the Welsh chronicle, the elegy and the standard modern biography.

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