21 March 2022

Henry VIII and his local influence

 An email came in from Cymdeithas Hanes Dyffryn Ogwen (the Ogwen Valley historical Society, in loose translation) that there would be a public lecture again. A while ago I had attended one about sheepfolds. I know how to have a good time! But this time it was about Henry VIII and Cochwillan. Cochwillan is one of the local Estates. And it had a lord, at the time of Henry VIII, who seems to have had a bit of a wild life. He seems to have married a 13-year-old, left her, married her sister, left her, married yet someone else, then went back to the sister, and then back to the original wife. Not quite sure why these ladies consented to all that, but maybe they didn't and they just had to put up with it. But the speaker, Gwilym Owen, not only told us all about this, also showing us the evidence he had for this; but he also discussed how the shenanigans of Henry VIII might have inspired this. If people don't approve of you leaving one wife and finding another one, but the King does it himself, then you can just let these people stew. What are they gonna do if the highest authority in the country is condoning it?

An additional link he made was to the laws of Hywel Dda; a Welsh 10th century king, who for famous for having created a set of laws that were still seen as unusually fair. (Hywel Dda means Hywel the good.) They were also much closer to gender equality then any set of laws in many centuries since. His rules were overruled when Edward I conquered all of Wales a few centuries later.

It was also interesting to see the fragments of text the man had used to reconstruct what had been going on. The English had amazing spelling back then; there was 'ryotowslye', which of course in modern spelling is 'riotously'. I didn't manage to take any more examples down. The Welsh was barely recognisable until he pronounced it. But weirder things than spelling were clearly going on in the 16th century!

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