Castles have received scholarship
from military historians for decades; however, they possess so much more than
just military features. They proclaimed wealth, status, power, and in the case
of Carew Castle they displayed heraldry, lineage and loyalty to a new dynasty. Sir
Rhys ap Thomas was a Welshman, a proud castle owner, and a military leader who
helped defeat Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, thus placing Henry
VII on the throne. Henry VII’s accession announced a new age for Sir Rhys who
was showered with grants of land and administrative leadership that offered him
a prominent role in the south-west of Wales. Just how Sir Rhys came to owning
Carew Castle is a bit of a mystery. We can be certain it was in his possession
by 1506 when he held a five-day sumptuous St George’s Day tournament marking
the anniversary of his election into the Order of the Garter, possibly the
first of its kind in Wales. It does seem highly likely Sir Rhys obtained the
estate a number of years prior to the tournament due to the vast number of
renovations he subsequently made on the property.
The renovations undertaken by Sir
Rhys were primarily focused on the external appearance of his castle. He
embellished the structure, essentially by inserting new windows and doors, by
re-facing the whole courtyard, the outer façade of the lesser hall and its
apartments with a completely new outer skin. Sir Rhys also enhanced the
ceremonial entrance into the great hall by adding a large porch which had three
shields emblazoned over the arch (see fig. 1 below). The middle shield was that
of Henry VII – the royal arms of England – and to either side are Prince
Arthur’s shield as the Prince of Wales, and Katherine of Aragon’s coat of arms.[1]
This is not the only clue we have from Carew that Sir Rhys felt a deep
connection with the Tudor dynasty. During archaeological excavations at the
castle in the early 1990s, fragments of two ornamental dragon sculptures were
found. From the surviving shards it can be deduced that the design appears to
have been a three dimensional dragon (60-80 cm high) grasping a shield
emblazoned with the three white feathers symbolic of the Prince of Wales.[2]
Why did Sir Rhys feel such a deep connection to the Tudor dynasty, and Prince
Arthur in particular? There seems to be two reasons for this.
First, and
most important, Sir Rhys and Henry Tudor both claimed descent from Ednyfed Fycham,
therefore, a blood relationship was shared between the two families.[3]
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries lineage, in a very real way, meant
honour. Only one obligation went deeper than that of honour: the obligation to
kin. For a man’s very being as honourable had been transmitted to him with the
blood of his ancestors, themselves honourable men. Honour, therefore, was not
merely an individual possession, but one of the collective, or the whole of
one’s lineage.[4]
This sense of lineage and kinship became one of the strongest factors of identity
for the nobility and gentry during this time. This identity usually focused on
a place or name that might have taken its origins from the family’s hereditary
residence, but more importantly, it represented the pedigree which was, by this
time, best expressed through heraldry.[5]
The forging of identities during these centuries, and indeed centuries to come,
heavily relied on one’s ancestors and lineage. Sir Rhys lived his life
honouring, and perhaps even flaunting, his ancestors and lineage. He even adopted
his coat of arms, three ravens, from one of his most famous ancestors, Urien
Rheged, king of Gower in Wales, and alleged knight of the round table to King
Arthur.[6]
 |
Figure 1: Porch Entrance.[7]
|
Second, there was a personal connection
between the two houses which led to an undisputed bond. However, it was not Sir
Rhys, but his son, Gruffydd ap Rhys, who had a close connection to the Prince
of Wales. Much like Edward IV, Henry VII set up his son with an independent
household and council based in the Welsh Marches at a very early age. By 1493
the council, household, and prince were established at Ludlow castle, and
thereafter, Arthur spent most of his time in the Welsh Marcher counties.[8]
Gruffydd ap Rhys was a member of the prince’s household by 1501 with the
marriage of Arthur and Katherine of Aragon, and during the wedding festivities
he was created a Knight of the Bath. He was most likely at Ludlow when Arthur
died, he certainly bore the prince’s banner immediately before his coffin, and
carried it during the requiem mass in Worcester Cathedral. When Gruffydd also
died prematurely in 1521 his tomb was placed close to that of the prince.[9]
It doesn’t seem likely that Prince Arthur ever made it to Carew so although the
shields might have indicated a royal visit, it doesn’t seem likely. However, it
is surely not too inconsequential to suggest that Sir Rhys envisaged that at
some later date Arthur, accompanied by his new wife, would make a royal
progress through Wales. Such a progress would have inevitably brought them to
Carew Castle, in the company of Sir Rhys’s own son, and when they arrived,
their shields, proudly displayed, would have greeted them, proclaiming Sir Rhys’s,
and his family’s, fidelity to the Tudor dynasty.
This was certainly an age of
displaying heraldry and all its concomitants of shields, crests, supporters,
and mottoes which turned into a way of conveying information, but more
importantly, to broadcast one’s status. The rise in putting ancestral shields
within residences might be a result of the multitude of up-and-coming men of
the Tudor period wanting to show they were not all that new; and in the same
stroke for old families to flaunt their vast heritage. Although Sir Rhys’s
family had always been prominent in Wales, they never made it to the peerage,
until, of course, Sir Rhys was elected to the Order of the Garter by Henry VII
in 1499. In a sense the Welshman was displaying two things with the shields.
Firstly, he wanted to show the vast lineage of his family, and its bloodline to
the new king, and secondly, he wanted to proudly display his loyalty to the new
dynasty.
Contributed by: Audrey Thorstad
[4] M. James, Society, Politics and Culture: Studies in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 316.
[5] Carpenter, Locality and Polity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 255.
[6] ‘A Short View of the Life of Rice ap Thomas’, in Sir Rhys ap Thomas and his Family: A Study in the Wars of the Roses and Early Tudor Politics, ed. by R.A. Griffiths (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1992) , p. 160.
[7] http://www.castlewales.com/carew.html [accessed on 15/01/2013].
[8] W.R.B. Robinson, ‘Prince Arthur in the Marches of Wales, 1493-1502’, Studia Celtica, 36 (2002), pp. 89-97; S.J. Gunn, ‘Prince Arthur’s Preparation for Kingship’, in Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales: Life, Death and Commemoration, ed. by S.J. Gunn and L. Monckton (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2009), 7-19.
[9] J. Morgan-Guy, ‘Arthur, Harri Tudor and the Iconography of Loyalty in Wales’, in Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales: Life, Death and Commemoration, ed. by S.J. Gunn and L. Monckton (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2009), 50-63 (p. 52); Griffiths, Sir Rhys ap Thomas, p. 51;John Leland, Collectanea, 6 vols (London : White, 1774), V, pp. 375, 377, 380.
No comments:
Post a Comment