diated by his brother, who sent his son Howel to ravage his share of Ceredigion and to attack his castle of Aberystwith, Cadwaladr fled to Ireland, whence he returned next year with a fleet of Irish Danes, to wreak vengeance on Owain. The fleet had already landed at the mouth of the Menai Straits when the intervention of the ‘goodmen’ of Gwynedd reconciled the brothers. Disgusted at what they probably regarded as treachery, the Irish pirates seized and blinded Cadwaladr, and only released him on the payment of a heavy ransom of 2,000 bondmen (some of the chroniclers say cattle). Their attempt to plunder the country was successfully resisted by Owain. In 1146, however, fresh hostilities broke out between Cadwaladr and his brother's sons Howel and Cynan. They invaded Meirionydd and captured his castle of Cynvael, despite the valiant resistance of his steward, Morvran, abbot of Whitland. This disaster lost Cadwaladr Meirionydd, and so hard was he pressed that, despite his building a castle at Llanrhystyd in Ceredigion (1148), he was compelled to surrender his possessions in that district to his son, apparently in hope of a compromise; but Howel next year captured his cousin and conquered his territory, while the brothers of the murdered Anarawd profited by the dissensions of the princes of Gwynedd to conquer Ceredigion as far north as the Aeron, and soon extended their conquests into Howel's recent acquisitions. Meanwhile Cadwaladr was expelled by Owain from his last refuge in Mona. Cadwaladr now seems to have taken refuge with the English, with whom, if we may believe a late authority, his marriage with a lady of the house of Clare had already connected him (Powel, History of Cambria, p. 232, ed. 1584). The death of Stephen put an end to the long period of Welsh freedom under which Cadwaladr had grown up. In 1157 Henry II's first expedition to Wales, though by no means a brilliant success, was able to effect Cadwaladr's restoration to his old dominions. Despite his blindness, Cadwaladr had not lost his energy. In 1158 he joined the marcher lords and his nephews in an expedition against Rhys ap Gruffudd of South Wales. In 1165 Cadwaladr took part in the general resistance to Henry II's third expedition to Wales. In 1169 the death of Owain Gwynedd probably weakened his position. In March 1172 Cadwaladr himself died, and was buried in the same tomb as Owain, before the high altar of Bangor Cathedral (Gir. Cambr. It. Camb. in Op. (Rolls ed.), iii. 133).
The Welsh chroniclers are very full of Cadwaladr's exploits, and celebrate him as jointly with his brother upholding the unity of the British kingdom. Giraldus specially commends Cadwaladr's liberality (Op. iii. 145).
[Brut y Tywysogion (Rolls Ser.); Annales Cambriæ (Rolls Ser.); Gwentian Brut, Cambrian Archæological Association.]
CADWALADR CASAIL (fl. 1590), a Welsh poet, flourished in the latter part of the sixteenth century. Some poems by him, consisting mainly of complimentary addresses and elegies, are preserved in the British Museum.
[Brit. Mus. Add. MSS. 14888, 14891–2, 14979, 14994, 15010.]
CADWALADR VENDIGAID, i.e. the Blessed (d. 664?), king of the Britons, had a famous but rather shadowy figure in early Welsh history. Tenth-century sources tell us that he was the son of Cadwallawn, the ally of Penda, and that he reigned over the Britons after that monarch's death. He must have taken part in the ineffectual struggles of the North and Strathclyde Welsh against the overlordship of Oswiu, have participated in their earlier successes, and have shared, and, if the same person as the Cadavael of Nennius, largely helped to occasion the fall of Penda at Winwaed. After this we know nothing of Cadwaladr except that he died of the ‘yellow plague’ that devastated Britain in 664 (Nennius in Mon. Hist. Brit., 45 c. The date is fixed from Bæda and Tighernac, cf. Annales Cambriæ, MS. A, s. a. 682).
The fame of his father and his own connection with the last efforts of the Britons against the Saxon invaders early gave Cadwaladr a high place in Welsh tradition and poetry. Allusions to him are frequent in the dark utterances of the ‘Four Ancient Bards’ (see Skene, Four Ancient Books of Wales, passim, and especially i. 238–241, and 436–46). The prophecy of Merlin became current that he would one day come again, like Barbarossa, into the world and expel the Saxons from the land. At last Geoffry of Monmouth issued his elaborate fiction which made Cadwaladr the last British king of the whole island. After he had reigned twelve years, the story goes on, Cadwaladr was driven from Britain by a plague that raged for seven years, from which he took refuge in Armorica. Here he abdicated his rights in favour of Ivor, son of Alan, king of that land, who, on the cessation of the plague, went to Britain and performed prodigies of valour against the Saxons; but Cadwaladr, despairing of the struggle and
