Welsh Journals

THE DEATH AND BURIAL OF AN EXCOMMUNICATE PRINCE: THE LORD RHYS AND THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF ST. DAVID'S By Roger Turvey Part One Who was he? when did he die? where was he buried? and why should he be remembered? These are just some of the questions that arise when one comes to consider the life and career of a man who deserves to be remembered as one of the greatest of the princes of Medieval Wales. That such questions need to be posed indicates that he is not as well known today as he undoubtedly was in his own time. In fact, we might go further and suggest that fate has been anything but kind to a prince variously described by his near contemporaries as Rhys the Great, Rhys the Good and Rhys the Generous.1 Why has history apparently overlooked a man whose life, career and achievements are the stuff of which legends are made? In the year that marks the eighth centenary of his death these and other questions, and there are many, demand answers. Here it is proposed to investigate the events leading to and the circumstances surrounding his excommunication and death, the manner of his demise and the controversy, both contemporary and later, regarding his burial in the cathedral church of St. David's. Background As far as the native patronymic will decently allow his full name was Rhys ap Gruffydd ap Rhys ap Tewdwr, he was the son and grandson of kings and the heir to a royal tradition that stretched back to well before the mid- eleventh century Norman conquest of England. As far as can be determined from the meagre evidence available it seems he was born most probably in the heart of Cantref Mawr, possibly at Caeo in c. 1132. Denied a birth and upbringing in Dinefwr, the ancestral seat of the royal dynasty of Deheubarth, on account of the latter's destruction and partition after the death in battle of his grandfather in 1093, Rhys spent the best part of his youth engaged in bitter conflict with his Anglo-Norman enemies from whom he strove to wrest control of his patrimony. That he succeeded is in no small way due to his efforts and those of his family who all died in the