Families of Sir Benfro
Pembrokeshire
St Davids, Pembroke Castle, and the 'Little England beyond Wales' below the Landsker line.
Tap a region of the map to see who held it.
Families seated in Sir Benfro
- DaviesSon of David, born of the patron saint's name and densest in his own corner of Wales.
- House of HerbertMarcher house of Pembroke and Raglan, the bridge between the Welsh gentry and the Tudor court.
- GriffithsSon of the strong lord, the patronymic of Llywelyn the Last.
- BowenSon of Owen, the patronymic of the great Welsh princely name.
Historic ties to Sir Benfro
Families with historic but not core ground here.
Champions made here
Famous bearers whose lives or work root in Sir Benfro.
- Richard LlewellynThe author of How Green Was My Valley, the south Wales coal-valley novel that became the foundational popular fiction of Welsh national identity, sold seven million copies, and won the 1942 Best Picture Oscar in John Ford's adaptation.
- Henry VIIThe exile of Welsh blood who landed at Milford Haven with a borrowed army, won the crown of England in the field at Bosworth, ended the Wars of the Roses, and founded the house of Tudor.
- Hywel DdaThe tenth-century King of Deheubarth and effective overlord of most of Wales who at the synod of Whitland around 945 codified the laws of Wales, the legal system that governed the country in its native form for the next two and a half centuries until the Edwardian conquest of 1282.
- The Lord RhysThe Prince of Deheubarth whose forty-two-year reign from 1155 to 1197 held the southern half of Wales against the Norman advance, won the formal recognition of Henry II at the Council of Gloucester in 1175, and in 1176 hosted at Cardigan Castle the first recorded eisteddfod, the founding event of the Welsh bardic tradition.
Stories told here
Legends set in Sir Benfro, from any family that carries them.