Ceredig ap Cunedda (died 453), was king of
Ceredigion in Wales.
[ "Lives of the Cambro British saints"]
p. 396, 1853, Rev. William Jenkins Rees
He may have been born c. 420 in the
Brythonic kingdom of
Manaw Gododdin (modern
Lothian
Lothian (; sco, Lowden, Loudan, -en, -o(u)n; gd, Lodainn ) is a region of the Scottish Lowlands, lying between the southern shore of the Firth of Forth and the Lammermuir Hills and the Moorfoot Hills. The principal settlement is the Sco ...
in
Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...
), centred on the
Firth of Forth
The Firth of Forth () is the estuary, or firth, of several Scottish rivers including the River Forth. It meets the North Sea with Fife on the north coast and Lothian on the south.
Name
''Firth'' is a cognate of ''fjord'', a Norse word meani ...
in the area known as
Yr Hen Ogledd
Yr Hen Ogledd (), in English the Old North, is the historical region which is now Northern England and the southern Scottish Lowlands that was inhabited by the Brittonic people of sub-Roman Britain in the Early Middle Ages. Its population spok ...
.
Little is known of him. One of the sons of
Cunedda
Cunedda ap Edern, also called Cunedda ''Wledig'' ( 5th century), was an important early Welsh people, Welsh leader, and the progenitor of the Royal dynasty of Kingdom of Gwynedd, Gwynedd, one of the very oldest of western Europe.
Name
The n ...
, grandfather of
Saint David
Saint David ( cy, Dewi Sant; la, Davidus; ) was a Welsh bishop of Mynyw (now St Davids) during the 6th century. He is the patron saint of Wales. David was a native of Wales, and tradition has preserved a relatively large amount of detail ab ...
, according to
Nennius
Nennius – or Nemnius or Nemnivus – was a Welsh monk of the 9th century. He has traditionally been attributed with the authorship of the ''Historia Brittonum'', based on the prologue affixed to that work. This attribution is widely considered ...
'
Historia Brittonum, he arrived in what is now modern
Wales
Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...
from Gododdin with his father's family when they were invited to help ward off
Irish invaders. As a reward for his bravery, his father gave him the southernmost part of the territories in north-west Wales reconquered from the Irish. The realm is traditionally supposed to have been called ''Ceredigion'' after him, which led to the name of modern
Ceredigion, one of the
principal areas of Wales.
He married
Meleri
Saint Meleri was a late 5th century Welsh saint and Queen of Ceredigion.
Meleri was one of the 24 daughters of King Brychan Brycheiniog of Brycheiniog (now Brecknockshire) in Wales.
She married King Ceredig of Ceredigion, one of the son of Cun ...
, one of the many daughters of King
Brychan Brycheiniog of Brycheiniog (now Brecknockshire).
Amongst their children was a daughter named Ina who is thought to be the
Saint Ina
Saint Ina is thought to be a fifth century Welsh saint and a member of the royal house of Gwynedd.
Ina was the daughter of Ceredig ab Cunedda Wledig (–453), and a granddaughter of Cunedda Wledig, the progenitor of the royal dynasty of Gwyne ...
to whom St Ina's Church in
Llanina near
New Quay
New Quay ( cy, Cei Newydd) is a seaside town (and electoral ward) in Ceredigion, Wales, with a resident population of around 1,200 people, reducing to 1,082 at the 2011 census. Located south-west of Aberystwyth on Cardigan Bay with a harbour a ...
, Ceredigion is dedicated.
Footnotes
{{Reflist
References
Lives of the Cambro British saints , Thomas Wakeman, 1835
A history of Wales from the earliest times John Edward Lloyd
Sir John Edward Lloyd (5 May 1861 – 20 June 1947) was a Welsh historian, He was the author of the first serious history of the country's formative years, ''A History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest'' (1911).
Ano ...
, 1911
The Cambrian, A Bi-Monthly Published in the interest of the Welsh people and their descendants in the United States, 1881, Vol. 1, 1881
420s births
British traditional history
Britons of the North
Monarchs of Ceredigion
People from Clackmannanshire
5th-century monarchs in Europe
453 deaths