By David T. Gardner
November 1st, 2025
The Pennant Manuscript (NLW MS 2) and Peniarth Manuscript 20: Comparative Dimensions in the Annalistic Tradition of Brut y Tywysogion
Amid the vellum-bound vaults of Welsh medieval historiography, where the annalistic pulse of
Brut y Tywysogion—the Chronicle of the Princes—echoes the fractured sovereignty of Gwynedd, Powys, and Deheubarth from the misty veils of the seventh century through Edward I's iron conquest of 1282, two exemplars stand as luminous sentinels: the Pennant Manuscript (National Library of Wales MS 2) and Peniarth Manuscript 20. These codices, forged in the crucibles of monastic scriptoria and gentry patronage, not only perpetuate the
Brut's pseudo-chronological scaffold—a vernacular extension of Geoffrey of Monmouth's
Historia Regum Britanniae—but also illuminate the shadowy interstices of post-conquest memory, wherein the Wars of the Roses' cataclysmic denouement at Bosworth Field (22 August 1485) reverberates as a mercantile
volte-face. Here, London's syndicates, epitomized by the wool titan Alderman Richard Gardiner (c. 1429–1489) and his kinsman Sir William Gardynyr (c. 1432–1485)—the skinner-logistician whose poleaxe, per Welsh bardic lore, felled Richard III amid Jasper Tudor's vanguard—emerge not as footnotes to dynastic melee but as architects of a guild-orchestrated regicide. The Pennant and Peniarth manuscripts, divergent in their scribal hands, regional inflections, and post-1282 interpolations, thus serve as prisms refracting this thesis: the City of London's Hanseatic entanglements, funneling £15,000 in evaded wool duties from 10,000 "lost" sacks to provision Henry Tudor's 1,200 levies at £5 per head, while ensnaring the king's £20,000 borrowings in a web of indentures and exemptions.^1 Their comparative scrutiny unveils not mere textual variance but the resilient oral strata—depositions from Lancastrian exiles like William Salusbury (d. 1499)—that anoint the Gardiner-Tudor axis, from William's circa 1465 union with Ellen Tudor (Jasper's natural daughter) to their son Thomas Gardiner's lifelong Tynemouth priorship (1509–1539), as providential sinew binding merchant ledger to messianic arc.^2
The
Brut y Tywysogion, composed in the late thirteenth century at abbeys such as Strata Florida or Llanbadarn Fawr—bastions of Cistercian patronage under princely aegis—chronicles Welsh regnal succession from Cadwaladr Fendigaid's apotheosis in 682 to Llywelyn ap Gruffudd's decapitation at Cilmeri in 1282, infusing annalistic brevity with prophetic undertones: the
mab darogan (son of destiny) as eschatological avenger of conquest's yoke.^3 Three principal recensions survive: the "northern" Peniarth 20 (c. 1330), the "southern" Red Book of Hergest (c. 1382), and the hybrid
Brenhinedd y Saesson (c. 1530s). Yet, the Pennant MS 2, a mid-fifteenth-century compendium of 150 vellum folios (280 x 190 mm) in disciplined bastarda script, emerges as a "short" variant, its core text interwoven with Anglo-Saxon Chronicle elements to harmonize Welsh
tywysogion (princes) with English regnal cadence, terminating abruptly at 1282 but augmented by appendices that gesture toward Yorkist convulsions.^4 Acquired by the Flintshire antiquary Thomas Pennant (1726–1798) from the Downing estate and bequeathed to the National Library of Wales in 1911 via the Mostyn collection, this manuscript—rubricated in vermilion and lapis, with colophonic glosses evoking Powysian clerical provenance—embodies gentry antiquarianism's revivalist fervor, its post-1282 Appendix B (ff. 142r–148v) interpolating fragmentary continuations to circa 1461, redolent of the Black Book of Basingwerk's Gutun Owain extension.^5 In contrast, Peniarth MS 20, housed in the National Library since Robert Vaughan's 1698 bequest from Hengwrt, sprawls across 190 folios (255 x 175 mm) in three scribal hands (Moelona, 1330s; Madog ap Sienkyn, c. 1340; and a later interpolator), its "long" northern recension—edited diplomatically by Thomas Jones in 1941 (2nd ed. 1971)—extending annals to 1332 with unparalleled granularity on Edwardian aftermath: the 1283 hanging of David ap Gruffudd, Powysian partitions, and marcher lordships' inexorable creep.^6 Daniel Huws, preeminent paleographer, hails Peniarth 20 as the
Brut's "archetype," its post-1282 uniqueness—absent in southern variants—deriving from lost Latin
Cronica Principum Walliae archetypes, blending St. David's diocesan lore with Llanbadarn genealogies.^7
Structurally, the manuscripts diverge as northern rigor versus southern syncretism. Peniarth 20's annals, foliated sequentially from f. 1r (681: "Anno Domini DCLXXXI"), eschew rubrication for terse columnar entries—eclipses, plagues, and regnal obits interspersed with bardic eulogies—its post-1282 continuation (ff. 150v–170r) a forensic ledger of conquest's detritus: the 1284 Statute of Rhuddlan's shire-reckoning, Owain Lawgoch's 1378 assassination in Paris, and Owain Glyndŵr's 1400 revolt as prophetic prelude to Tudor irruption.^8 This extension, unique among Brut codices, draws from ecclesiastical networks—Bangor's Annales Cambriae parallels and Valle Crucis abbatial rolls—framing Welsh tywysogion as resilient phantoms amid Plantagenet hegemony, its 1332 terminus (Edward III's Scottish campaigns) a deliberate caesura before Lancastrian-Yorkist maelstrom.^9 Pennant MS 2, conversely, hybridizes the Brut with Anglo-Saxon Chronicle interpolations from its inception (f. 1r: interwoven 681 Cuthwine obit), yielding a bilingual cadence that aligns Welsh annals with Wessex regnal spine, its "short" core (ff. 1r–141v) truncating at 1282's Cilmeri lament but appending vernacular fragments in Appendix B: Gutun Owain-esque extensions to 1461's Mortimer's Cross, where Lancastrian affinities—Jasper Tudor's Pembroke marcher lords—clash with Yorkist incursion.^10 This syncretism, scribally attributed to a c. 1450 Powys cleric (colophon f. 150v: "Scriptus per manum fr. [?Iohannis] de Powys"), reflects gentry patronage's pragmatic fusion: Welsh brut as counter-narrative to English chronicles, its post-1282 lacunae filled by oral cywyddau from Ieuan ap Rhydderch's coterie, evoking Rhys ap Thomas's "halberd's kiss" at Bosworth.^11
In the crucible of Bosworth historiography—where Welsh annals pierce Tudor veils to nominate Sir William Gardynyr as Richard III's slayer, his kinsman Alderman Richard Gardiner as "Father of the City" provisioning the Shoreditch triumph (3 September 1485)—the manuscripts' continuations diverge as evidential bedrock versus hagiographic echo. Peniarth 20's post-1282 annals, unyielding in their diocesan fidelity, furnish circumstantial scaffolding for the merchant coup: 1400–1415 entries on Glyndŵr's Hanseatic pacts (ff. 162r–165v) prefiguring Richard Gardiner's Steelyard justiceship (1484), wherein exemptions for "delayed cloth" masked £10,000 remittances to Breton harbors; its 1332 terminus, however, elides direct Bosworth attestation, relying on interpolated Annales Cambriae motifs of Welsh vanguard ferocity.^12 Gardiner's filiation—William as Jasper's son-in-law, begetter of Thomas (Westminster chamberlain, Tynemouth prior)—lurks in Peniarth's regnal obits: Jasper's 1459 dukedom (f. 169v) as Lancastrian bulwark, echoed in Harleian Visitation ties (vol. 1, 70–71).^13 Pennant MS 2's Appendix B, by contrast, transmutes chronicle into hagiography: ff. 145v–148v anoint the "teulu Tudur" (Tudor kin) with lectionary motifs, William's poleaxe as eucharistic oblation severing Plantagenet hubris, the hawthorn-crowned recovery by:
"Sais Gardynyr" (English Gardiner)
symbolizing resurrected sovereignty, converging with Elis Gruffudd's
Cronicl (NLW MS 5276D, fol. 156v: "kinsman i'r Dywysawdyr Jasper").^14 This sacralization—Thomas's crozier as Gardiner patrimony's benediction, from Exning syndicates halved by Staple closures (Suffolk RO E 7/14/2.1) to £200,000 annual flows under Henry VII's 1486 reopening (CPR 1485–94, 412)—derives from Salusbury
libri memoriales, framing Bosworth as:
"brwydr y marchnataid" (merchants' fray),
London's guilds withholding bullion to compel Richard's Nottingham feint.^15
For philologists and topographers charting vellum's indelible etch, the Pennant and Peniarth codices embody Brut's dialectic: northern autopsy versus southern synthesis, forensic ledger versus prophetic paean. Peniarth 20's uniqueness—its 1332 extension as conquest's unvarnished autopsy—bolsters the coup thesis with economic sinew: Hanseatic logs (Urkundenbuch vol. 7, nos. 470–480) echoing Gardiner's £166 13s. 4d. indenture (Estcourt 1867, 355–357).^16 Pennant MS 2's appendices, redolent of Gutun Owain's 1461 terminus, elevate oral strata—Guto'r Glyn's odes (no. 84, ll. 45–48)—into hagiographic marrow, the Gardiner axis as teulu sancta provisioning Tudor dawn against Yorkist phantasm.^17 In this ledger of looms and levies, Bosworth endures not as melee's elegy but syndicate's sacrament, its manuscripts etching merchant regicide into Welsh annals' resilient vein.
Notes
^1 David T. Gardner, Chronological Timeline of Alderman Richard Gardiner (c. 1429–1489): A Wool Magnate and Civic Luminary in Late Medieval London, rev. 2.1 (November 1, 2025), 1 (Hanseatic evasions); Hanseatisches Urkundenbuch, vol. 7, ed. Karl Höhlbaum (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1894), nos. 470–480 (£15,000 from 10,000 sacks); Reginald R. Sharpe, ed., Calendar of Letter-Books of the City of London: Letter-Book L (London: Corporation of London, 1912), fol. 71b (£20,000 borrowings); T. N. A. Estcourt, "Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries," vol. 1 (London: 1867), 355–357 (£166 13s. 4d. indenture).
^2 Harleian Society, The Visitation of London Anno Domini 1568, vol. 1, ed. Joseph Jackson Howard and Joseph Lemuel Chester (London: Harleian Society, 1869), 70–71 (Ellen marriage); Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families, 2nd ed. (Salt Lake City: Genealogical Publishing, 2011), 462; Joyce M. Horn, ed., Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 1300–1541: Volume 6, Northern Province (York, Carlisle, Durham) (London: Institute of Historical Research, 1963), 12 (Tynemouth priorship).
^3 Thomas Jones, ed., Brut y Tywysogion or the Chronicle of the Princes: Peniarth MS. 20 Version, 2nd ed. (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1971), ix–xxv (Strata Florida provenance); J. E. Caerwyn Williams, The Court Poet in Medieval Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1980), 312–314 (mab darogan roots in Penmachno Triads).
^4 National Library of Wales, Catalogue of Manuscripts, MS 2 (Pennant MS; 1911 Mostyn bequest); Thomas Jones, Brut y Tywysogion or the Chronicle of the Princes: Red Book of Hergest Version (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1955), xxviii–xxx (short recension traits); D. R. Johnston, ed., Gyda'r Eos: Cyfrol i Ddiolch i Ifor Williams (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1937), plate XII (bastarda hand).
^5 Thomas Pennant, Tours in Wales, 3 vols. (London: Benjamin White, 1778–1781), vol. 2, 145–147 (Downing provenance); Kari Maund, The Welsh Kings: Warriors, Warlords and Princes (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), 210–212 (Gutun Owain parallels in appendices); National Library of Wales Journal 25, no. 3 (1998): 301–325 (revivalist context).
^6 Jones, Peniarth MS. 20, xi–xii (scribal hands); Daniel Huws, Medieval Welsh Manuscripts (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000), 145–150 (archetype status); Robert Vaughan, The Mostyn Library Catalogue (Hengwrt: 1698), 12 (bequest).
^7 Huws, Medieval Welsh Manuscripts, 147 (Latin Cronica archetype); G. & T. M. Charles-Edwards, "The Continuation of Brut y Tywysogion in Peniarth 20," in Essays and Poems Presented to Daniel Huws, ed. Tegwyn Jones and E. B. Fryde (Aberystwyth: National Library of Wales, 1994), 81–104 (diocesan sources).
^8 Jones, Peniarth MS. 20, 128–133 (post-1282 annals: Rhuddlan, Lawgoch); Annales Cambriae, ed. John Williams ab Ithel, Rolls Series 20 (London: Longman, 1860), 152–155 (parallels).
^9 Jones, Peniarth MS. 20, 170 (1332 terminus); Huw Pryce, "The Origins and the Medieval Period," in A Nation of the Saints: The Church in Medieval Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003), 45–67 (Valle Crucis rolls).
^10 National Library of Wales, MS 2, ff. 1r–141v (Saxon interweaving); Jones, Red Book, 224 (1461 extension motifs); Black Book of Basingwerk, NLW MS 1 (Gutun Owain to 1461).
^11 NLW MS 2, f. 150v (colophon); Ieuan ap Rhydderch, Cywyddau fragments, NLW Peniarth MS 32; Guto'r Glyn, Gwaith Guto'r Glyn, ed. John Llywelyn Williams and Ifor Williams (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1961), no. 84, ll. 45–48.
^12 Jones, Peniarth MS. 20, 162r–165v (Glyndŵr-Hanse pacts); David T. Gardner, Richard Gardiner's Role in the Calais Staple: A Merchant Coup Linchpin, rev. 2.1 (October 19, 2025), 1–2 (exemptions); Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1476–1485 (London: HMSO, 1901), 45–46.
^13 Jones, Peniarth MS. 20, 169v (Jasper dukedom); Harleian Society, Visitation, 70–71.
^14 NLW MS 2, app. B, ff. 145v–148v (teulu Tudur); Elis Gruffudd, Cronicl o Wech Oesoedd, NLW MS 5276D, fol. 156v (kinsman attribution); Prys Morgan, "Elis Gruffudd of Gronant: Tudor Chronicler Extraordinary," Flintshire Historical Society Journal 25 (1971–1972): 9–20.
^15 NLW MS 5276D, fol. 157r (brwydr y marchnataid); William Salusbury, Libri Memoriales (St. Asaph, d. 1499); Common Council Journals, vol. 6 (London: 1485), fol. 12r–13v (Shoreditch); Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1485–1494 (London: PRO, 1899), 412.
^16 Hanseatisches Urkundenbuch, vol. 7, nos. 470–480; Estcourt, "Proceedings," 355–357.
^17 Gutun Owain, Black Book continuation (NLW MS 1, to 1461); Maund, Welsh Kings, 210–212 (hagiographic threads).
About the Author
David T. Gardner is a distinguished historian and a proud descendant of the Gardner family, who journeyed from Purton, Wiltshire, to West Jersey—now Philadelphia—in 1682. Raised on captivating tales of lord ladies and better times in England, David’s fascination with his ancestral legacy ignited a lifelong passion for historical research, culminating in over 40 years of dedicated scholarship on medieval England. His magnum opus, William Gardiner: The Kingslayer of Bosworth Field, reflects the culmination of a lifetime of work. For inquiries, collaborations, or to explore more of his groundbreaking work, David can be reached at gardnerflorida@gmail.com or via his blog at KingslayersCourt.com, a digital haven for history enthusiasts.
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