--- In cybalist@..., guto rhys <gutorhys@...> wrote:
>>> 1)AS ruling families having married into the native dynasty
to 'legitimize' a weak claim to the throne (cf Henry VII for
example)
and maintaining a family name.
>> Ceadwalla's claim was weak, but again I don't think a Welsh
marriage would have strengthened it. The royal family was very much
defined through the male line, and primogeniture seems to have
existed only in so far as it was rare for brothers to squabble over
the crown, unlike the Roman example. I could more easily believe an
alliance with a Welsh prince - I think Ceadwalla's father was
briefly king in Wessex.
> The point, which I failed to explain clearly, was dual. HVII not
only marrying into the previous dynasty, but also calling his eldest
son, and heir to the throne, Arthur. I was wondering if this could be
a possible explanation. Did Cadwalla have 'Brythonic' or Welsh blood?
All I can dig up on him is in the three links below.
http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/saintc39.htm (unreliable)
http://www.ccel.org/b/bede/history/htm/viii.xv.htm
http://www.earlybritishkingdoms.com/adversaries/kingdoms/650.html
I notice that it was Caedwalla (majority spelling) that exterminated
the royal family of Wight. Some of the accounts read as though he
tried to ethnically clean Wight of Jutes!
One of the sites describe him as St (!) Caedwalla of Wales, but
the 'of Wales' must be by confusion with the Welsh prince. (I do
remember reading in a proper history book that it was a saint who
extirminated the royal family of Wight.) As I recall, but none of
the above sites say, he is _believed_ to be half British, whence the
name of his brother Mul. If his name was meant to rally British
followers, it doesn't seem to have worked - no-one accused him of
using Britons to kill Jutes.
Richard.