Welsh Journals

THE DEVELOPMENT OF WELSH HERALDRY. By Michael Powell Siddons. The National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, 3 vols. 1991-93. Pp. Vol. I, xxvi, 433; Vol. II, xlix, 626; Vol. III, xxiii, 205. £ 50 per volume. In the three substantial and handsome volumes of this authoritative work, Dr. Michael Siddons provides a comprehensive study of Welsh heraldry founded upon a rigorous critical evaluation of the sources. Important contributions on the subject have been published by a number of earlier scholars but nothing on the scale of the present work has hitherto been attempted. Volume I provides, first, a survey of the source materials, dealing with heraldic manuscripts, poetry and sources other than manuscripts such as sepulchral monuments and seals, and, secondly, an account of the development and characteristics of Welsh heraldry. Volume II is an armorial in which, prefaced by a further discussion of the source materials, coats of arms are described in detail, the material set out in an alphabetical order of the names of the persons to whom the arms are attributed or the families bearing them. Volume III is an ordinary of Welsh arms, where the arms are given in order of blazon to facilitate the identification of a coat of arms, to which is added a list of mottoes of Welsh families to 1700. The work, extensive though it certainly is, thus provides the means to still further study. The earliest reliable indication of the use of heraldic devices comes in the middle years of the thirteenth century with a description and depiction of the arms of Gwynedd by Matthew Paris. This manuscript reflects the chronicler's informed interest in the affairs of Wales after the death of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, and gives the arms of Gruffudd ap Llywelyn and Dafydd ap Llywelyn. This apart, sound evidence comes only in the heraldic rolls of the later years of the century, notably in St. George's Roll, which gives a number of Welsh arms including those of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd and Dafydd ap Gruffudd. The circumstances in which the princes came to be included in the roll are intriguing, for it reveals a strong association with Roger Mortimer of Wigmore which is reflected, for instance, in the inclusion of the arms of his Welsh adherent, Hywel ap Meurig. The thirteenth-century princes evidently bore heraldic arms, a conclusion which is more important than it might seem to be because, as the author shows, the evidence from seals is so slight. There are several references to the great or privy seals of the powerful thirteenth-century princes of Gwynedd, but the surviving impressions of those of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth are equestrian without showing heraldry, while there are no seals of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd. Setting attributions aside, it is only with those of the descendants of Rhodri ap Gruffudd and those of Owain Glyndwr that the lions of Gwynedd are found impressed on seals. There is no contemporary evidence for the seals of the thirteenth-century princes of Deheubarth and Powys Fadog, but there is heraldic roll and seal evidence for the arms of Gruffudd ap Gwenwynwyn of Powys Wenwynwyn The evidence assembled by Dr. Siddons points therefore to the adoption of heraldic arms by the princely dynasties, but shows that the study of Welsh heraldry is essentially concerned with the non-princely lineages of the centuries following the conquest of Wales. It appears that many seals of this period are still non-heraldic and that many of the sepulchral slabs examined in a valuable study by C. A. Gresham, Medieval Stone Carving in North Wales (1968), though carved with shields bearing heraldic charges.