Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Map
- Introduction
- 1 The Book of Llandaf and the Early Welsh Charter
- 2 The Origin of the Llandaf Claims
- 3 The Charters in the Book of Llandaf: Forgeries or Recensions?
- 4 The Authenticity of the Witness Lists
- 5 The Integrity of the Charters
- 6 The Chronology of the Charters
- 7 The Status of the donors and Recipients of the Charters
- 8 The Fake Diplomatic of the Book of Llandaf
- 9 The Book of Llandaf: First Edition or Seventh Enlarged Revision?
- 10 A new Approach to the Compilation of the Book of Llandaf
- 11 The Evidence of the Doublets
- 12 The Book of Llandaf as an Indicator of Social and Economic Change
- 13 The Royal Genealogical Framework
- 14 The Episcopal Framework
- Appendix I Concordance and Chart Showing the Paginal and Chronological Order of the Charters
- Appendix II Maps of Grants to Bishops
- Bibliography
- Index
- Studies in Celtic History
6 - The Chronology of the Charters
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 April 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Map
- Introduction
- 1 The Book of Llandaf and the Early Welsh Charter
- 2 The Origin of the Llandaf Claims
- 3 The Charters in the Book of Llandaf: Forgeries or Recensions?
- 4 The Authenticity of the Witness Lists
- 5 The Integrity of the Charters
- 6 The Chronology of the Charters
- 7 The Status of the donors and Recipients of the Charters
- 8 The Fake Diplomatic of the Book of Llandaf
- 9 The Book of Llandaf: First Edition or Seventh Enlarged Revision?
- 10 A new Approach to the Compilation of the Book of Llandaf
- 11 The Evidence of the Doublets
- 12 The Book of Llandaf as an Indicator of Social and Economic Change
- 13 The Royal Genealogical Framework
- 14 The Episcopal Framework
- Appendix I Concordance and Chart Showing the Paginal and Chronological Order of the Charters
- Appendix II Maps of Grants to Bishops
- Bibliography
- Index
- Studies in Celtic History
Summary
Approximate dates for the charters are most easily given for Sequence iii. Wendy Davies's Sequence iii begins with the charters of Hywel ap Rhys, who flourished in the 880s according to Asser's Life of King Alfred, §80, and those of Meurig, the father of Hywel's contemporaries Brochfael and Ffernfael, who are also mentioned by Asser. It ends with the charters of Herewald (ob. 1104), which include people mentioned in Domesday Book in their witness lists. Many checks on the chronology on the way have been noted by Davies, and it is not necessary to discuss the chronology of Sequence iii further here.
The absolute chronology of the other two Sequences is much more obscure and the approximate dates for the charters (all ±fifteen years) which Davies uses throughout The Llandaff Charters and An Early Welsh Microcosm have to be treated with reserve.
She suggests dates for the Sequence i charters ranging between the mid-sixth century and the mid-seventh, working on the basis on an average of thirty years for each male generation. Really, though, we have no firm and unequivocal evidence for any date in Sequence i. For reasons which we have already discussed, the appearance of St Dyfrig in the witness lists cannot be used as evidence for a sixth-century date for any of the charters. Some of the donors are said in the charters to have fought against the English, which Davies thinks unlikely before the battle of Dyrham in 577 (cf. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle s.a.); yet this argument depends on accepting the value of the Narrations attached to the charters, and in any case provides only a terminus post quem.
In seeking an absolute date for the Sequence i charters, then, we are forced to fall back on some inherently unreliable hagiographical evidence which Davies understandably passed over.
For instance, Rhygyfarch, in his late-eleventh-century Life of St David, says that St David cured Pepiau regem Ercig of his blindness. This gives a vague late-sixth-century floruit for the king Peibio of Ergyng who appears in the earlier Sequence i charters, since the St Davids view, as represented by the (St Davids) Annales Cambriae, was that David died in 601 (recte 604?).
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- Information
- The Book of Llandaf as a Historical Source , pp. 50 - 58Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2019