Llewellyn Prince of Wales

Richmond Times-Dispatch, 15 APR 1911, p. 4

Originally written by La Marquise De Fontenoy.

The impending investiture of the eldest son of King George, as Prince of Wales, at Carnarvon Castle, of which the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Lloyd-George, is the constable holding his offie from the sovdereeign, has served to revive the discussion concerning the proper means of honoring the last soveriegn Prince of Wales, namely, Llewellyn, with some monument over the last resting place of his headless body.

The head was cut off, paraded about London, and set up with other heads, on spikes, at the Tower of London, where it presumably shared their fate, that is to say, exposed to wind and weather, it was eventually disintegrated and scattered.

There were many legends and stories regarding the locality of the sepulture of the remainder of his body. According to ancient tradition, it was entombed in a stone coffin, in all of Llanrumney Hall, a very ancient Welsh manor house, situated on one side of the Rumney Valley, where the historian Edward Freeman, spent many years. In ancient times it was the habituation of a settlement of monks from Keynsham Abbey, and it has been owned in turn by the Kemeyes, the Morgans, the Lewises, and the Williamses, who are its present occupants. If the wall is in which the body of Llewellyn is asserted to repose, has never been examined, it is because it would have been virtually necessary to upset the entire house by tearing down the whole wall, which is hardly worth while, in order to investigate what is, at best, a local tradition.

For the locality of the real grave of Llewellyn was definitely established about a couple of years ago, by Edward B. Nicholson, the imminent librarian of the world famed Bodleian Library at Oxford, by means of the deciphering of an ancient inscription that confirmed information contained in ancient documents in the possession of the Bodleian Library. It is at Pentra Foelas, in Denbigshire, in a sequestered and wooded knoll, that Llewellyn rests. As history tells us, he was debarred from burial in consecrated ground, owing to his being under excommunication. Otherwise he would have been laid beside his father, before the high altar of the monastery of Aberconwy. As it was, he was buried in unconsecrated ground by the monks. The monastery, however, soon fell under the power and patronage of Edward I., who moved it to a site several miles away, and it is understood that the monks thought it safest to transfer the body of the King's enemy to a distant corner of their property. For the Pentre Foelas land belonged to the Abbey of Aberconwy.

It is there, at Pentre Foelas, that may be seen the stone, on which there is a Latin inscription, in characters of the thirteenth century, to the effect that in front of the stone are the remains of the "For might of arm celebrated Lewelin, Prince of North Wales." I may add that an attempt was made by the Abbot and monks of Aberconwy to secure the post-mortem removal of the ban of the church on Llewellyn, but without success.

It is stated in most of the histories that with the death of this Prince of North Wales, which was his title, in 1282, the royal line of Wales became extinct. Recent investigations, however, proves this not to have been the case. Llewellyn was survived by three brothers. Owen, the eldest, lived and died an obscure country gentleman in Carnarvonshire, and left no issue. David, who had been created an English baron, was tried for high treason, after Llewellyn's death, and was hanged, drawn and quartered. The only remaining brother, Roderick, became a pensioner of the English crown, married an English heiress, and lived and died in England. He had an only son, Thomas, who in turn had an only child, of the name of Owen, who redeemed his family name, and became a hero of romance, even in that bright era of chivalry, his tragic death being in keeping with the unhappy traditions of his house.

Owen ap Thomas, Ap Roderick Llewellyn, as he is styled in state papers, became dissatisfied with his position in England, fled to the court of France, where he was received with the honors due to the rightful Prince of Wales. He fought as such against the English at Poictiers, in 1356, and the glamor of his name drew many a Welshman away from the standard of Edward, the black Prince. Afterwards, Yanain de Galles, as he was called by his French friends, became captain of one of thoise "free companies" which sought adventure in the mountains of Switzerland, in Germany, and the plains of Lombardy. In Brittany he was an honored comrade in arms of the noblest knight in Christendom, Bertrand de Guesclini, and according to Froissart's Chronicles, was "greatly praised and well beloved with all the lords." Assasinated by his trusted squire, John Lambe, at the instance of the British authorities at Bordeaux - Lame's receipt for the price of the murder being still preserved among the English state papers, whre it can be seen by students - the real last of the Llewellyns was entombed in the Church of St. Legere, on the banks of the Gironde, mourned, as Froissart puts it, "by good knyghtes and squires, Bretons, Poictevynes, and Frenchmen - by all the chivalry of France." And with him were buried all the hopes and dreams of his countrymen, who were looking for his return to Wales, and for his deliverance of the principality from the yoke of England.