Osborn Wyddel

Osborn Wyddel the Irishman (fl. 1280), was founder of the houses of Cors y gedol, Wynne of Ynys maengwyn, Wynne of Maes y neuadd, and other important families in Merionethshire.

Life

He came over from Ireland and settled in the neighbourhood of Llanaber, Barmouth, in the latter part of the thirteenth century. Tradition, the only authority for his career, asserts that he was a Geraldine, of the Desmond branch of that family. On this assumption Sir William Betham, Ulster king of arms, thought he was in all probability a son of John FitzThomas, the first Geraldine lord of Decies and Desmond (d. 1261).

The circumstances of his settlement in Ardudwy (North-west Merionethshire) are unknown, though it may be conjectured that he was driven to seek a home in Wales by the temporary overthrow of the Geraldine influence in Desmond which followed the Battle of Callan (1261). A spot called Berllys (or Byrllysg), a little to the north of Cors y gedol, is pointed out as the site of Osborn's first residence.

He afterwards married, it is said, the heiress of Cors y gedol, and moved thither. He was assessed in the parish of Llanaber for the fifteenth levied in 1293 or 1294 upon holders of land in Wales.

References

• Lewys Dwnn, Heraldic visitations of Wales and part of the Marches: between the years 1586 and 1613, under the authority of Clarencieux and Norroy, two kings at arms, publisher Rees, 1846, page 71
• Archaeologia Cambrensis (1863), Cambrian Archaeological Association, Third Series, Vol.IX, pp. 56
• Archaeologia Cambrensis (1875), Cambrian Archaeological Association, Fourth Series, No.21, pp. 2
• Archaeologia Cambrensis (1885), Cambrian Archaeological Association, Fifth Series, No.5, page 118
• Archaeologia Cambrensis (1886), Cambrian Archaeological Association, Vol.3, No. 9, page 254 and page 269
• Archaeologia Cambrensis (1908), Cambrian Archaeological Association, Vol.8, Sixth Series, page 405
• Archaeologia Cambrensis, 3rd ser. iv, 315, ix. 66-9
• Kalendars of Grwynedd, note by Mr. W. W. E Wynne, p. 69
• Williams's Eminent Welshmen.

Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Osborn Wyddel". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.