Madoc

Key facts and history

Owain Gwynedd, Madoc's supposed father, was a real 12th-century king of Gwynedd.^[3] At Owain's death in 1170, a bloody dispute broke out among his sons.^[3] John Dee used Llwyd's manuscript in his 1580 treatise "Title Royal" to Queen Elizabeth I, claiming Madoc led a colony to Florida in 1170.^[4] The story was first published by George Peckham in 1583 and appeared in David Powel's Historie of Cambria in 1584.^[4]

According to Powel, Madoc and Rhirid sailed from Llandrillo to explore the western ocean.^[5] Madoc returned to Wales for more settlers, gathered eleven ships and 120 people, and sailed west again, never returning.^[5] The legend reached its greatest prominence during the Elizabethan era, used to bolster British claims against Spain.^[6] Later developments said Madoc's voyagers intermarried with Native Americans, producing Welsh-speaking descendants.^[1]

Humphrey Llwyd's Cronica Walliae, an English adaptation of the Brut y Tywysogion published in 1559, contains the earliest complete surviving narrative of Madoc's journey and is the first to assert he visited America before Columbus.^[6]

What the cited sources add

The Flemish writer Willem identifies himself around 1250-1255 as "Willem die Madoc maecte" in his poem Van den Vos Reinaerde.^[7] The painter George Catlin in 1841 speculated the Mandans were descendants of Madoc, citing similarities between the Mandan bull boat and Welsh coracle.^[8] In a letter dated 26 November 1608, Peter Wynne informed John Egerton that certain members of Christopher Newport's exploration party thought the Monacan people's speech sounded like Welsh, which Wynne spoke, and requested he serve as an interpreter.^[9]