Welsh Journals

SIR RHYS AP THOMAS Sir Rhys ap Thomas (1449 1525) is best known for the part he played as Henry Tudor's chief Welsh ally in the campaign which culminated in Bosworth Field, 22 August, 1485. This of course was an event of very great significance in the history of both Wales and England. A little over a century later William Shakespeare could write in one of his greatest plays, Richard III, that at among the allies of Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, was 'Rice ap Thomas with a valiant crew'. When he died at Carmarthen in 1525, Sir Rhys was laden with honours. He was Justice and Chamberlain of the Royal Principality of South Wales which made him the ruler (from Carmarthen Castle) of the royal counties of Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire. But Sir Rhys had many connections with Pembroke. He was owner of Carew Castle in the Lordship of Pembroke, the medieval lordship which corresponded to the southern part of the modern county of Pembrokeshire, created in 1536. Sir Rhys was also given the Lordships of both Narberth and Haverfordwest by Henry VIII. He also acted as an itinerant justice within the Lordship of Pembroke. Before we consider the course of Sir Rhys's career, we should remember that Sir Rhys was the greatest of the Welsh landed magnates even before Bosworth Field, and that after that famous encounter he became in effect a warrior ally of the first two Tudor monarchs. Virtually viceregal powers in Wales were given to Sir Rhys by Henry VII and his son, monarchs whose trust was not easily won. After 1485, Sir Rhys became the leading bardic patron of his day, holding court at his home at Abermarlais and also at Newton, the manor house near Llandeilo which he inherited from his father, which was later rebuilt and later again renamed as Dynevor Castle. Sir Rhys also held court for the bards at Carew Castle, and at Kidwelly, Newcastle Emlyn and probably Narberth. The poets regarded him with great esteem, praising his feats as a great warrior, and also his relationship with the Tudors. During his long life, Sir Rhys thus played many parts as a landed magnate, a soldier, a leading bardic patron, and a prominent Crown administrator in West Wales. He was the forerunner of a whole class of landowners in Wales who were to flourish under the Tudors. Family Background The roots of Sir Rhys's family lay far in the past of West Wales. The Elizabethan antiquary and genealogist, Lewis Dwnn, who was a Deputy Herald at the College of Arms in London considered that Sir Rhys was descended in the male line from Goronwy ab Einion, Lord of Kidwelly and Iscennen. But Dwnn also recorded that the family claimed to trace its descent much further back to Urien Rheged, a legendary British King of Galloway and Strathclyde in the sixth century1. Urien's son, Owain, was reputed to have a bodyguard of three fierce ravens, and it was from this legend sprang the famous arms of Sir Rhys ap Thomas's family, three black ravens divided by a chevron. These arms are still carried by his descendants2. By the fourteenth century we find Sir Rhys's forebears living at Crug, the site of which survives as a smallholding on the western outskirts of Llandeilo. One of these ancestors was Sir Elidir Ddu, Knight of the Holy Sepulchre. Another, who was born about 1400, perhaps a little earlier, was Gruffydd ap Nicholas. He was the grandfather of Sir Rhys ap Thomas, and became the leading political figure in West Wales in the mid-fifteenth