Cross of Neith
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The Cross of Neith or in Welsh Y Croes 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. 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 Hywel Dda following his pilgrimage in about 928. According to tradition it was handed down from prince to prince until the time of Dafydd III.
Following the complete defeat of Gwynedd and the arrest of Dafydd III in June 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 business 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 disappeared from history and it is quite possible that it, along with other relics, were destroyed by Oliver Cromwell and fellow Puritans during the revolution of 1649.
[edit] References
- J. Beverley Smith, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, 1998, 333-335 and 580-581
- Calendar of Welsh Rolls, 273-4
- T. H. Parry-Williams, Croes Naid, Y Llinyn Arian (Aberystwyth, 1947), 91-94
- W. C. Tennant, Croes Naid, National Library of Wales Journal (1951-2), 102-115
