• Born: Afan Wallia, Morgannwg, Cymru

  Research Notes:

Caradog ap Iestyn (fl 1130), founder of the family of 'Avene' in Glamorgan, was a son of Iestyn ap Gwrgant. Iestyn if known to history from two entires in Liber Landavensis; in the first he appears low down in the list of lay witnesses to a grant in Edlygion made to bishop Herwald by Caradog ap Gruffydd; in the second he is himself a ruler, with a warband for whose misdeeds he makes amends to the same bishop by the gift of a manor in the Ely valley. It would, therefore, seem that Iestyn, on the death of Caradog, rose out of an obscure station to be the lord of Glamorgan and was the prince whom the Normans ejected when they attacked the region about 1090. The detailed account of the conquest given in Powel's Historie, 1584, confirmed as it is by no other source, must, however, be set aside as untrustworthy. Of Caradog, there is only one contemporary mention; with his brothers, Gruffydd and Goronwy, he was concerned in 1127 in a deed of violence, the bearing of which is uncertain. But it is clear that, on the collapse of Iestyn's rule, he received from Robert Fitz Hamon the land between Nedd and Afan (and perhaps more) as a subordinate holding, to be retained by his descendants for many generations. By his wife, Gwladus, daughter of Gruffydd ap Rhys, he had four sons, Morgan, Maredudd, Owain, and Cadwallon; the first of these succeeded him in the lordship of Afan. ⁴