THE ANCESTRY OF EDWIN OF TEGEINGL
By Darrell Wolcott
to have resided at Trefedwen in Caerwys parish in the commote of Rhuddlan, Edwin is sometimes called King of Tegeingl
in the medieval pedigrees. He is wholly absent from the chronicles of Wales but his sons, Owain and Uchdryd, do occur
in the eleventh century.
mother is identified  as Ethelfleda or Aldgyth daughter of Eadwine of Mercia. Her father was probably the Edwyn who
was brother to Earl Leofwine which would make her first-cousin to Earl Leofrig. The lady was first married to Siferth,
a Danish thane and son of Arngrim. When Siferth was slain about 1015 and his estates confiscated by Aethelred the Unready,
the young widow was claimed by the king's son, Edmund Ironsides; he took her to wife over his father's objections. But
young Edmund died in 1016, leaving the lady widowed for the second time. We suspect she was still very young, perhaps
born around 1000, and there is no record that she yet had borne children. (Edmund did have two sons, Edward the
Aetheling and Edmund, but there was scarcely time between his marriage to this lady and his death to attribute those children
to her) It was her third marriage which bore Edwin of Tegeingl; this son was probably born before 1020 and perhaps
as early as 1017.
Some historians claim
she inherited her father's manor in Tegeingl and that Trefedwen was named after him, not after the son she also named
Edwin. It is difficult to say whether Mercia actually controlled all or part of Tegeingl in the lifetime of Eadwine
her father; certainly we are aware of Welsh chieftans who were contemporaries and who held land in the commote of Coleshill
 which adjoins Rhuddlan to the east, even closer to Mercia proper. And a passage in the Cheshire Domesday Book
says King Edward gave to Gruffudd (ap Llewelyn) all the land that lies beyond the River Dee; this may have been
merely an acknowledgement that the Welsh already possessed it and Edward simply quit claiming it on paper. Thus,
it is possible that both commotes were then (in the 10th and 11th centuries) under Welsh control and that young Edwin's
claim to the manor at Trefedwen was not maternal, but an inheritance from his father. But who was his father?
The majority, but by no means
all, of the medieval pedigrees name the father of Edwin as Gronwy. And say this Gronwy was the son of Owain ap Hywel
Dda. But since such a Gronwy would occur c. 940/950, he would be a full generation too old to be the father of Edwin.
Revised pedigrees were soon circulated which "corrected" this to Gronwy ap Einion ap Owain ap Hywel Dda. But none
of the ancient manuscripts included a son of Einion ap Owain who was named Gronwy. There was, however, an Edwin ap Einion born
c. 980 and the occurrance of that male name in the family of Owain ap Hywel Dda is likely the main reason why the medieval
genealogists attached the later Edwin of Tegeingl to this line.
Clearly the male name Edwin
was Saxon in origin, not Welsh. When we inquire as to why Einion ap Owain would have given a son a Saxon name, we learn
that he had married a Saxon lady. Her name is not recorded (nor her ancestry), but in her old age she had insisted
her lands in Mercia be given to a female relative (probably a niece) and not to her son Edwin. This Edwin's son,
Hywel, also married a Saxon princess: the Algitha or Editha whom Gruffudd ap Llewelyn had "taken for himself" after defeating
Hywel in 1041, and whom Harold Godwinson had taken from Gruffudd after his death in 1063. But if we were to accept the
theory that Edwin of Tegeingl also descended from Einion ap Owain, the only way to explain finding him in Tegeingl would be
through his mother; the family's patrimony was much farther south in Deheubarth.
Other extant pedigrees
claim Gronwy was the son of Allwedd, king of Tegeingl. Or that Edwin's father's name was Anlleth the king or
Osbarn ap Elvet of the North. Others confound him with Aleth of Dyfed, a later man who, like Edwin, named one of
his sons Uchdryd. Both Allwedd and Anlleth may be variations of Aleth and account for them being mistakenly placed
into Edwin's pedigrees. One citation makes Edwin the king of Man, a tradition which may be responsible for the arms
of the Isle of Man also being assigned to Owain ap Edwin. We believe it more likely, however, that Owain's arms reflect
his mother's descent. Edwin had married Iwerydd ferch Cynfyn and some believe she was a child by Cynfyn's first
wife who might have been a daughter of an Irish/Danish king whose realm included Man. The Welsh word Iwerddon means
Ireland and it's possible the daughter of Cynfyn was merely nick-named Iwerydd to denote her maternal origin.
When doubt exists as to a man's
ancestry, our inclination is to examine the lands he may have inherited and passed down to his descendants. This includes
adjoining lands which may have earlier been a part of a single gwely. The Welshman called Ednowain Bendew, born within
a couple years of Edwin of Tegeingl, is said to have resided at Llys y Coed in the parish of Cilcain, commote of Coleshill
in Tegeingl. This commote lies to the immediate east of the commote Rhuddlan. Both Llys y Coed and Trefedwen lie
in the interior of Tegeingl near its southern border, and some distance away from the coastline route the Saxons used when
invading Wales from Chester; even if the latter was in Saxon hands in the eleventh century, they would have had little use
for the interior portion of Tegeingl where it meets the Clwydian mountain range.
Ednowain Bendew was the son
of Neniad ap Gwaethfoed ap Gwrydr Hir and the latter probably can be identified as Gwrydr ap Caradog ap Lles Llyddog.
Although that earlier family is believed to have ruled the portion of Powys south of the Severn, this Gawethfoed represents
a junior cadet:
860 Lles Llyddog
890 Gwynnog Farfsych
920 Gwaethfoed of
Ednowain Bendew 1020
The marriage assigned to Gwrydr
Hir points to his might having been settled in far northeast Wales; he married a daughter of Tudor Trevor, the so-called Lord
of the March whose lands of Maelor, Chirk and Whittington bordered Mercia. In the late tenth century, we posit that
Gwaethfoed ap Gwrydr might have been Lord of the commotes of Rhuddlan and Coleshill if not all of Tegeingl. If he divided
those lands between two sons, we might have the following result to explain the land holdings by the mid-eleventh century:
955 Gwaethfoed of Tegeingl
It is not unreasonable
to assume all these men had made their peace with the Earls of Mercia, being close neighbors. Some historians actually identify
this Edwin with the Edwin son of Aelfgar who became Earl of Mercia in the 1060's. A look at the family of Aelfgar makes
that conjecture doubtful:
960 Leofwine Eadwine*
995 Eadwine*** Ethelfleda 1000
1025 Algitha**** Edwin 1017
Earl of Mercia
* Probably a brother
** Earl of Mercia who was married
to Lady Godiva
*** The "Edwin brother of Earl Leofrig" reported
killed by the Welsh in 1039
**** Wife of Hywel ap Edwin ap Owain of Deheubarth
who was taken from him
in 1041 by Gruffudd ap Llewelyn 
The Welsh king Gruffudd ap Llewelyn
was an ally of Earl Aelfgar who twice aided the Earl in regaining his earldom when Alefgar had been outlawed by King Edward
the Confessor. The men were in-laws of some sort; some say Gruffudd was married to Alefgar's sister while others
say the lady was his daughter. Our chronology has the men born in the same generation, with Alefgar probably a bit
younger than Gruffudd, so we identify the lady as a sister...the daughter of Leofrig. Called Editha by most accounts,
the lady was either a sister of the wife of Hywel ap Edwin ap Owain or she was identical to that lady. If forced to
choose, we would opt for the latter but admit Gruffudd might well have removed a sister of his wife from Hywel to get her
out of harm's way; the chronicler who reported that Gruffudd then married the lady may well have confused her with a sister
already married to Gruffudd.
the mother of Edwin of Tegeingl was a blood relative of Aelfgar as well as an in-law of Gruffudd and we believe the giving
of Iwerydd (either his step or half sister) to Edwin as a wife was a part of the alliance he made with Aelfgar. Gruffudd
probably also elevated Edwin to a Lordship in Tegeingl, accounting for the claims he was its "king".
In the last
years of the eleventh century and the opening years of the next, Owain ap Edwin was installed by the Normans as ruler
of Gwynedd after they had caused Gruffudd ap Cynan to flee to Ireland. It earned him the Welsh epithet "Fradwr" or traitor;
but it seems clear from the chronicles that this family remained a major player in north Wales until 1125 when three sons
of Owain ap Edwin were killed by a son of Gruffudd ap Cynan.
we tend to agree that the father of Edwin was named Gronwy. But we discount the attempts of those who attach him
to the family of Hywel Dda; medieval genealogists seem to have been obsessed with the notion that descent from Rhodri Mawr
was required for the major players in north Wales. The fact that the two men, Edwin ap Gronwy and Ednowain Bendew, who
were contemporaries with one called Lord of Tegeingl and the other called King of Tegeingl, argues for common paternal ancestry.
We suggest that they were first-cousins, sons of brothers Neiniad and Gronwy ap Gwaethfoed.
Another theory was advanced by author
T.A. Glenn in 1934 which has little to recommend it; see Appendix I.