GEN-MEDIEVAL-L Archives

Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 1999-06 > 0930068427


From: "Brice Clagett" < >
Subject: Edwin, Prince of Tegeingl
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1999 12:20:27 -0400


Bartrum's Welsh Genealogies treats Edwin, Prince of Tegeingl (Englefield) in the modern Flintshire, Wales, as the founder of one of the Welsh tribes, and calls him son of one Gronwy ab Einion and fourth in descent in the male line from Hywel Dda, King of Wales. Edwin's obviously Saxon name has been explained by the claim that his mother was Ethelfleda, daughter of "Edwin, King of Mercia" (Dictionary of Welsh Biography, p.201; but no such King Edwin existed.

Bartrum and DWB either were ignorant of, or discredited, a much older article by H.F.J. Vaughan, "Chief of the Noble Tribes of Gwynedd," in Archaeologia Cambrensis, 5th Series vol. 8, pp. 241, 252-58, which makes a powerful case that Edwin of Tegeingl was the same person as Edwin, Earl of Mercia, son of Aelfgar, Earl of Mercia, and grandson of Leofric, Earl of Mercia, and his wife, Godgifu (Lady Godiva). Earl Edwin -- whose sister Aldgyth (Edith) married (1) Gruffydd ap Llewellyn, King of Wales; (2) Harold II, King of England --, with is brother Morcar, Earl of Northumbria, led the resistance to William the Conqueror after 1068; Edwin was killed in 1071. Tegeingl, comprising the commotes of Rhuddlan, Coleshill and Prestatin, in Flintshire, was mostly part of Mercia from the 9th to the 11th century. If Vaughan is right, Edwin left descendants in his Welsh territories among whom the memory of their Mercian ancestry became confused, being shifted from the paternal side.

The only generally accepted descendants from Lady Godiva come through Edith's marriage to Gruffydd ap Llewellyn. If Vaughan's theory is right -- and, again, his case seems a strong one -- there are many more through Edwin.

According to The Plantagenet Connection, Oct. 1998 page 122, Earl Leofric was 4th in descent from Alfred the Great. I don't know whether that is supported by good proof or not.

This thread: