The Cross of Neith (Welsh Y Groes Naid or Y Groes Nawdd) was a sacred relic believed to be a fragment of the True Cross which had been kept at Aberconwy by the kings and princes of Gwynedd, members of the Aberffraw dynasty who established the Principality of Wales. They believed it afforded them and their people divine protection. It is not known when it first arrived in Gwynedd or how they had inherited it, but it is possible that it was brought back from Rome by king Hywel Dda following his pilgrimage in about 928. According to tradition it was handed down from prince to prince until the time of Llywelyn the Last and his brother Dafydd.
Following the complete defeat of Gwynedd and the subjugation of the Principality, following the death of Llywelyn and the execution of Dafydd in 1283, this holy relic was ready for English expropriation alongside the other spiritual and temporal artefacts (see Llywelyn's coronet) of the Principality. The Alms Roll of 1283 records that a cleric named Huw ab Ithel presented this "part of the most holy wood of the True Cross" to Edward I of England at Aberconwy. It then accompanied the king as he finished his campaign in north Wales before being brought to London and paraded through the streets at the head of a procession in May 1285 which included the king, the queen, his children, magnates of the realm and fourteen bishops.
What happened to the Cross of Neith after this is unknown. It has been speculated that it was destroyed, along with other relics, by Oliver Cromwell and fellow Puritans during the revolution of 1649, but other theories have also been put forward.
Famous quotes containing the word cross:
“Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!
Clouds of the west—sun there half an hour
high—I see you also face to face.
Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to me!
On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning
home, are more curious to me than you suppose,
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)