9 - Powysian polities I: aspects of governance

Summary

The political community

In Powys, as in other polities of the early or high medieval period in Wales, and indeed far beyond Wales, the attitudes and abilities of rulers were central to the fate of the lands under their lordship. The ruler's claim on the loyalty of his subjects was based in large measure on membership of the ruling kin; this is frequently emphasised in the work of the court poets, who emphasise that a royal or lordly patron is the descendant of an important figure in the ruling dynasty. In common with all other Welsh rulers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, those Powysian rulers who had a serious claim to kingly or princely status are not known to have incorporated the phrase Dei Gratia into their styles, though Madog ap Maredudd perhaps came closer than any other ruler to claiming divine sanction for his rule by the use of the phrase Deo suffragante. It would be interesting to know if this usage, found in the only one of Madog's acta to have survived, was an exception or whether it was employed by him with some regularity. But though the explicit claim to rule by divine right is not known to have been made in charters and similar documents, on occasion divine support for rulers was asserted or invoked by their court poets.

Whatever the basis for the legitimation of rule, the ruler's effectiveness clearly depended on the personal qualities that he displayed. We have glimpses of some of the attributes demanded of rulers in the obituaries included in the Welsh chronicles and in similar sources. In the work of the court poets, Powysian rulers – as was the case with those elsewhere in Wales – were the guardians and defenders of their territories, and, by extension, of the population of those territories. Many of the poetic descriptions of or allusions to rulers testify to this. The centrality of the ruler to the well-being of the polity is revealed in clear though restrained fashion by Cynddelw in his brief poem of praise for the court of Madog ap Maredudd.