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Owain 5

Name

Summary

Owain 5 held one of two manors in north Herefordshire which together were assessed at 3 hides but were waste in 1066. He may have been the Welsh prince Owain ab Edwin, in exile after being driven from south Wales after 1044, and the father of the King Maredudd to whom Earl William fitzOsbern gave this and other manors after 1066.

Distribution map of property and lordships associated with this name in DB

List of property and lordships associated with this name in DB

Holder 1066

Shire	Phil. ref.	Vill	DB Spelling	Holder 1066	Lord 1066	Tenant-in-Chief 1086	1086 Subtenant	Fiscal Value	1066 Value	1086 Value	Conf.	Show on Map
Shire Herefordshire	Phil. ref. 31,7	Vill Lye	DB Spelling Ouen	Holder 1066 Owain 'of Lye'	Lord 1066 -	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Gruffudd ap Maredudd	1086 Subtenant -	Fiscal Value 1.50	1066 Value 0.00	1086 Value 0.38	Confidence A	Map
Shire Herefordshire	Phil. ref. 9,14	Vill Lower and Upper Lye	DB Spelling -	Holder 1066 Owain 'of Lye'	Lord 1066 -	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Ralph de Mortimer	1086 Subtenant -	Fiscal Value 0.24	1066 Value 0.00	1086 Value 0.00	Confidence -	Map
Totals								Fiscal Value	1066 Value	1086 Value

Profile

The name Owain occurs only once in DB. Lower and Upper Lye are among the wooded hills of the upper Lugg basin, on the Herefordshire–Shropshire border of 1066, with 1 hide of its 5 or 5½ hides being in Shropshire (Herefs. 1:10c; 9:8, 14; 24:4; 31:7; Salop. 6:16). The largest portion of Lye was 3 hides held as two manors by Owain and Almær, waste in 1066. After the Conquest Earl William fitzOsbern gave the manor to ‘King Maredudd’, whose son Gruffudd ap Maredudd held it in 1086.

Maredudd was the nephew of an earlier king of Deheubarth (south-west Wales), Hywel ab Edwin, who had been killed by the northern king Gruffudd ap Llywelyn in 1044. His family then disappears from the history of south Wales for a generation. Their territory was ruled first by a dynasty from the south-east, in the person of Gruffudd ap Rhydderch, then by Gruffudd ap Llywelyn after he overthrew the southern Gruffudd, until his own defeat by Earl Harold in 1062–3. Maredudd and his brothers Rhys and Hywel reappear in the sources from the late 1060s, first being attacked in south-east Wales by the Normans as Earl William fitzOsbern led the advance into Gwent, but soon in alliance with fitzOsbern against their Welsh enemies (Lloyd 1911: II, 372–6; Maund 1991: 15–17, 21, 53, 66).

The father of Maredudd, Rhys, and Hywel was called Owain, who does not appear at all in the Welsh annals or other sources for the period except in the patronym of his sons. We can infer that he did not rule after his elder brother Hywel ab Edwin’s death in 1044, and that he was himself dead by the late 1060s, when his sons appear. Was this princely Owain ab Edwin the Owain who held a modest manor at Lye? Earl William’s later gift of Lye to his son argues for the identification, though the earl also gave Mareddud ab Owain at least one other manor which had plainly not been Owain’s (Herefs. 31:1–6).

Bibliography

Lloyd 1911: John Edward Lloyd, A History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest, 2 vols (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1911)

Maund 1991: K. L. Maund, Ireland, Wales, and England in the Eleventh Century (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1991)