On 3 March 1284 King Edward I, Longshanks, enacted the Statute of Rhuddlan, also known as the Statute of Wales. The statute is named for Rhuddlan Castle, one of the new fortifications Edward built to quell any potential Welsh resistance.
This statute turned the formerly independent kingdoms of Wales into the English Principality of North Wales and former Welsh princes into Edward’s vassals.
As part of his conquest, King Edward I erected multiple castles and walled towns around Wales, loading them with English immigrants. However, this was mostly a conquest on paper; if an Englishman stepped outside the safe walls of his faux-England town then he quickly met the Grim Reaper in Welsh guise.
To try to hold onto ‘his’ Welsh lands, the king also created four new marcher lordships in northeast Wales — Chirk, Bromfield and Yale, Dyffryn Clwyd and Denbigh — and one in the south, Cantref Bychan. Edward hoped these warlords would be able to subdue the still rebellious Welsh population and keep the Welsh from destroy the new English towns.
King Edward also rewarded his Welsh allies, giving Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn back his lands in Powys Wenwynwyn, but Gruffydd (and his successor Owen de la Pole) were demoted from princes of Wales to English marcher lords. Another former prince, Rhys ap Maredudd of Dryslwyn, got the same deal as Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn, but he lost the estated of Cantref Mawr just a few years later when he rebelled against King Edward in 1287.
A handful of other Welsh landholders also submitted to Edward in order to keep their property, but they no longer had the right to live under Welsh laws. On paper, at least, Wales was finished.
There was one more shaker of salt for Edward to rub onto the wounds of the defeated and leaderless Welsh. In 1301 Edward named his son, Edward of Caernarfon (the future King Edward II), the Prince of Wales.
The Tywysog Cymru would be Welsh no more … until King Henry VII‘s sons.
King Henry VII’s grandfather, Owain Tudur, was the grandson of Marged ferch Tomos, who was the sister of Elen ferch Tomos, Owain Glyn Dŵr’s mother. Both the ferch Tomos sisters were decendants of Angharad ferch Llywelyn, a daughter of Llywelyn Fawr (Llywelyn the Great). From Arthur Tudor onwards, every subsequent Prince of Wales has carried the bloodline of the last true Tywysog Cymru.