Hywel ab Ieuaf
king of Gwynedd
Hywel ab Ieuaf (died 985) was a King of Gwynedd in North West Wales from 979 to 985.
Hywel was the son of Ieuaf, who had ruled Gwynedd jointly with his brother Iago ab Idwal until 969. In that year the sons of Idwal quarrelled and Iago took Ieuaf prisoner. Hywel is first recorded as accompanying Iago to Chester to meet King Edgar of England in 973 when together with a number of other kings, including the kings of Scotland and of Strathclyde, he pledged that he would be the king's henchman on sea and land. Later chroniclers made the kings into eight, all plying the oars of Edgar's state barge on the River Dee.
In 974 Hywel raised an army and drove his uncle from Gwynedd temporarily. Iago was able to return but was forced to share power with his nephew. In 978 Hywel made another attempt to take the kingdom from his uncle, raiding the monastery at Clynnog Fawr. In this raid, Hywel was assisted by English troops, possibly provided by Ælfhere, Earl of Mercia. Hywel defeated Iago in battle in 979, and the same year Iago was captured by a force of Vikings, possibly in Hywel's pay, and vanished from the scene.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hywel ab Ieuaf” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.