The New Murrey and Blue blog

Powys is an interesting Marcher Lordship in that it was never conquered by the English but descended by inheritance. Of course, the Welsh princes of Powys tended to be quite pro-English. (Perhaps one should really say pro-Anglo-Norman.)

This is quite understandable, however shocking it may seem to modern nationalist sentiment. For one thing, Powys was wide open to invasion from the east. For another, its lords tended to resent the domination of Gwynedd, even to the point that they preferred to be subject to the King of England rather than to the Prince of Gwynedd. Disputes over their mutual borderlands were no doubt part of the issue.

The conflict between Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn and his son Owain ap Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn on the one hand and  Llywelyn ap Gruffudd on the other will be familiar to readers of Edith Pargeter and Sharon K. Penman. The novels are of course written very much from the point of view of Gwynedd. The rulers of Powys simply had a different vision – rather than be part of an independent Wales under Llwelwyn, they preferred to be the lords of what amounted to an independent Marcher Lordship, subordinate to the English King, but in day-to-day matters free to do much as they liked. (No different, in essence, to (say) Glamorgan, Pembroke or Bromfield and Yale.)

Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn married an Englishwoman, Hawise Lestrange of Knockin. His son, Owain, married Joan Corbet, the daughter of another English Marcher family. These alliances gave him useful English relatives and maybe tended to anglicise the Powys family, at least to the point of being Anglo-Welsh.

Owain adopted the English (or rather Anglo-Norman) surname of de la Pole. This is related to his ownership of what has since become Powis Castle. The town at its feet was at that time known simply as ‘Pool’. (It became ‘Welshpool’ very much later, to differentiate it from Poole in Dorset.)

Some people have imagined a connection between these ‘de la Poles’ and the better-known de la Pole family of Hull, which evolved into the earls and dukes of Suffolk. In reality, there seems to be no blood connection. The Yorkshire de la Poles had a ‘Pool’ of their own, but it was not in Powys.

From 1283, the subordination of Powys to King Edward I was formally ratified and the title ‘Prince of Powys’ quietly dropped. From now on, the lords of Powys held what was just another Marcher Lordship. What was different was that they were male-line Welsh.