Cadwallon ap Cadfan

Cadwallon ap Cadfan
Cadwallon ap Cadfan, from Peniarth 23C
King of Gwynedd
Reignc.625 – 634 AD
PredecessorCadfan ap Iago
SuccessorCadfael Cadomedd
Died634 AD (Battle of Heavenfield)
IssueCadwaladr
HouseHouse of Gwynedd
FatherCadfan ap Iago

Cadwallon ap Cadfan (died 634[1]) was the King of Gwynedd from around 625 until his death in battle. The son and successor of Cadfan ap Iago, he is best remembered as the King of the Britons who invaded and conquered Northumbria, defeating and killing its king, Edwin, prior to his own death in battle against Oswald of Bernicia. His conquest of Northumbria, which he held for a year or two after Edwin died, made him one of the last recorded Celtic Britons to hold substantial territory in eastern Britain until the rise of the Welsh House of Tudor.[2] He was thereafter remembered as a national hero by the Britons and as a tyrant by the Anglo-Saxons of Northumbria.

  1. ^ A difference in the interpretation of Bede's dates has led to the question of whether Cadwallon was killed in 634 or the year earlier, 633. Cadwallon died in the year after the Battle of Hatfield Chase, which Bede reports as occurring in October 633; but if Bede's years are believed to have actually started in September, as some historians have argued, then Hatfield Chase would have occurred in 632, and therefore Cadwallon would have died in 633. Other historians have argued against this view of Bede's chronology, however, favoring the dates as he gives them.
  2. ^ Koch, p. 315.

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