Cadwaladr

Cadwaladr ap Cadwallon (633? - 682) (in Latin: Catuvelladurus ; in English Cadwallader ), also known under the name of Cadwaladr Fendigaid (Blessed) was a king of Gwynedd. The chroniclers Welsh regard it as being tallest of the British kings ever to have lived. Geoffroy de Monmouth mentions it in its Historia regum Britanniae like the last of the mythical kings of Great Britain. Its banner, which represents a red dragon, was adopted by Henri VII of England, the founder of the dynasty of the Tudor, which was said to go down from Cadwaladr.

Cadwaladr was the son of Cadwallon ap Cadfan and was yet only one child when this one was made kill by the army of Oswald de Bernicie with the battle of Heavenfield. It was then Cadafael which took again the kingdom of Gwynedd. Cadwaladr was abroad high, probably in Ireland, Brittany or in a nearby Welsh kingdom. It replaced Cadafael, probably towards 655, but one is unaware of in which circumstances. It then directed an unhappy forwarding against the Western Saxons in Somerset in 658. For much, Cadwaladr was the last Welsh king to have assembled a serious counter-offensive against the Anglo-Saxon forces which had conquered is insular Brittany since the fall of the Roman Empire of Occident. It is perhaps for this reason that Geoffroy de Monmouth, who was Welsh, chooses it to enclose his chronicle of kings de Grande-Bretagne.

After its first equipped military, it would seem that Cadwaladr dealt with the domestic affairs of its kingdom. It establishes several religious foundations in Gwynedd and was made a reputation of excessively pious person and piles leading. For this reason after its death the Welsh church regarded it as a saint.

According to the Yearly Cambriae , Cadwaladr would have died of the plague in 682, but certain sources suggest that it would have been victim of an epidemic on a former date, towards 663 or 664. However such an early death would have given to the reign of its successor, Idwal Iwrch, one duration well too improbable.

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