Confinement For Fifty Years
Gwenllian and the daughters of her uncle Dafydd ap Gruffudd were all confined for life in remote priories in Lincolnshire, Rippingale fens, and never allowed freedom. It has been speculated that the girls were taken to Lincolnshire from Gwynedd by sea.
Gwenllian was placed in the Gilbertine Priory at Sempringham, where she was held behind high walls until her death fifty-four years later. In committing her to a convent, Edward's aim was not only to prevent her from marrying and having sons who might lay claim to the Principality of Wales, but also to hide her away, unknown to the outside world. He chose the Gilbertines in Lincolnshire because of their remote location in the fenlands and because they were an order in which nuns were hidden from view behind high walls. Gwenllian's royal rank was acknowledged at least once by the English Crown. When writing to the Pope, attempting to secure more money for the Sempringham priory from the Church, the English King stated that "...herein is kept the daughter of the Prince of Wales, whom we have to maintain."
Having been taken from her native land so young, Gwenllian never learned any Welsh. Documents indicate that the priory record-keepers were not even sure how to spell her name correctly; she is listed as "Wencilian" and was herself shown to have signed her name "Wentliane".
Read more about this topic: Gwenllian Of Wales
Famous quotes containing the words fifty years, confinement, fifty and/or years:
“Let it not your wonder move,
Less your laughter, that I love.
Though I now write fifty years,
I have had, and have, my peers;
Poets, though divine, are men:
Some have loved as old again.
And it is not always face,
Clothes, or fortune gives the grace,
Or the feature, or the youth;
But the language, and the truth,
With the ardour and the passion,
Gives the lover weight and fashion.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
“We’re all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life!”
—Tennessee Williams (1914–1983)
“Let it not your wonder move,
Less your laughter, that I love.
Though I now write fifty years,
I have had, and have, my peers;
Poets, though divine, are men:
Some have loved as old again.
And it is not always face,
Clothes, or fortune gives the grace,
Or the feature, or the youth;
But the language, and the truth,
With the ardour and the passion,
Gives the lover weight and fashion.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
“The measure discriminates definitely against products which make up what has been universally considered a program of safe farming. The bill upholds as ideals of American farming the men who grow cotton, corn, rice, swine, tobacco, or wheat and nothing else. These are to be given special favors at the expense of the farmer who has toiled for years to build up a constructive farming enterprise to include a variety of crops and livestock.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)