Uniting Britons? Hywel Dda and Whitland Abbey

richardtw
Jul 24
5 min read

A Cistercian Mother Church

There's not much to see of Whitland Abbey now. The once-imposing Cistercian church is a ruin, mostly stone outlines shrouded in grass. Visitors are warned not to let the grazing sheep get out.

Sunlit ruins of the abbey, mostly seen as a depression in a field, lined by the remaining stonwork and shaded by a tree. — Whitland Abbey today - National Churches Trust/Welshbabe

But Whitland Abbey was once one of the centres of medieval Welsh culture, at a flashpoint between English kings, Welsh princes, and raiders from Ireland, Brittany and Scandinavia. Monks from here founded daughter abbeys across Wales and Ireland.

Whitland's biggest contribution to Welsh history, though, goes back even further, to the days when the idea of a united Wales was only just beginning to form.

The First National Assembly?

Before the abbey was built, the ruler of south-western Wales had a hunting lodge on the site. This was Ty Gwyn ar Daf, the White House on the Taf, and it was here, in the 940s, that king Hywel Dda is said to have summoned an assembly of Welsh wise men. These will have been churchmen, tribal leaders, clerks and lawyers, in the only recorded national assembly before the fifteenth-century: six men from each of the cantrefs under Hywel's control.

A simple map showing Hywel's rule over all of Wales except Gwent and Glysysing in the south-east, neighbouring English Wessex and Mercia. — Map showing rough dates and extent of Hywel's rule in blue - Wikimedia

Hywel Dda ruled an unusually high number of cantrefs for the time. The sources aren't terribly clear, but it seems he'd inherited or taken control over most parts of south-western Wales by the late 930s. Around 942 he marched north and – displacing the previous ruler's young heirs – took over the kingdom of Gwynedd and probably its territories in Powys and northern Wales.

In effect, Hywel was king over modern-day Wales, except for the south-east. But this kingdom was an uneasy drawing-together of rival tribal areas, united only under the leadership of Hywel (himself propped up by English kings).

Hywel's assembly at Whitland was tasked with drawing together all the disparate laws and customs of those tribal regions. They would have one law code, like they had one ruler.

Hywel's Law Code

Cyfraith Hywel, 'Hywel's Law', at least as practised in later centuries, gave Wales a legal system distinct from England's. For example, it allowed all of a man's acknowledged sons to inherit something, unlike in England where an inheritance passed only to the eldest son of a church-sanctioned marriage.

A modern marble statue of a bearded 10th-century king holding his hand for blessing, while a kneeling boy looks up admiringly. — F. W. Pomeroy's modern sculpture of Hywel Dda in Cardiff City Hall - Wikimedia

Unfortunately, no written copies of Hywel's Law survive from the tenth-century. Indeed, they may never have existed; our earliest evidence for them comes from thirteenth-century law books, which refer to Hywel as a patron of laws rather a legislator, and could well have been referring to the Welsh legal system as a whole. That system was a largely oral tradition, which had been credited to Hywel, and was only starting to be written down in the 1200s.

By this time, the church and English kings (like Edward I) were trying to impose European standards on Wales, so those law books may well have simply recruited tenth-century Hywel as an ancient and weighty authority to defend the existing Welsh practice, regardless of historical accuracy.

The Code's Legacy (for Wales and Hywel 'the Good')

Hywel Dda's united kingdom didn't last. Perhaps following traditional succession patterns, his southern territories were split between his sons, while the displaced heirs of the north returned to claim their father's lands. They then took revenge by ravaging the southern kingdoms. The Britons were once again disunited, easy prey for Viking raiders and English kings. But the idea of a more unified people had been planted.

For the last Prince of Gwynedd, Llywelyn the Last, defence of Hywel's Law became a defence of Welsh identity and culture. He argued with England's Edward I that the code set the Welsh apart from the English in law and custom.

Part of Edward's answer was the conquest of Wales beginning in 1277, and with it the gradual absorption of Wales into England's administrative, political and legal system.

Harlech's imposing clifftop castle, now with Welsh flags flying overhead. — Harlech Castle, part of Edward I's ring of iron in Wales - worldhistory.org / giborn_134

Association with the code has certainly given a boost to Hywel’s posthumous reputation, though, and maybe helped history (and the Welsh) to look more kindly on his warlord behaviour and all that homage he paid to English kings.

It was only in the 1200s, thanks to those law books which make him a patron of the legal system, that Hywel became Hywel Dda: Hywel ‘the Good’ (perhaps in reference to the qualities of the laws more than the man). Before that he was just Hywel son of Cadell (although, as that marked him as a grandson of Rhodri the Great, it was no small title either). But now, he’s remembered as something of a father to the idea of a Welsh nation, or at least of Welsh law independent of England.

Whitland After Hywel Dda

Some two centuries after Hywel's reign, Whitland Abbey rose as the mother church for Welsh Cistercians, and stood until Henry VIII's Dissolution in 1539. During that time, the Abbey was often caught up in fighting between supporters and opponents of royal authority, between English kings and resistant Welsh princes. Henry VIII's reign – with the final absorption of Wales into England – saw the end of an era for Whitland in more ways than one.

Artist's impression of Whitland Abbey — Artist John Brandrick's impression of Whitland Abbey before the Dissolution - Whitlandabbey.wales

After Dissolution, the abbey was sold on, demolished and stripped for building material, before hosting a seventeenth-century ironworks and later a farm and country house. In recent years, care of the site has passed to Canolfan Hywel Dda and the Friends of Whitland Abby.

The real interpretive work of the site is done two miles down the road, in the village itself. Here, Canolfan Hywel Dda has a Garden and Heritage Centre, designed to celebrate and explore Hywel's law (taking the thirteenth-century texts mostly at face value as being the products of Hywel Dda's time). There's also an exhibition, and a medieval tile from the abbey.

The sloped roof of the Interpretive Centre in Whitland — The Interpretive Centre in Whitland - Hywel-dda.co.uk

Welshness in the Mind...

You need some imagination now, to picture Whitland Abbey in its heyday, just as you do to picture a tenth-century Welsh king writing out laws to unite the peoples of his several territories. But that seems appropriate to a site whose big contribution to British history has been the idea of a unified national consciousness for the Welsh, in defiance of English power.