14th Century Howell Coytmor English Anglo-Saxon Welsh Nobleman

First known Oivners of Gwydyr History of the Gwydyr Family,  written by Sir John Wynne, p. 98; Feniarth MS. 47, p. 100. — The  first known owner is Howell Coytmor (who lies buried in Llanrwst Church).’ He was a Captain of a hundred Denbighshire men and fought under the Black Prince at the field of Poytiers, France, where John King of France was taken, and he was slain in Flanders in 1588.’  Dafydd, (David) son of this Howel Coytmor, sold his paternal property,  Gwydyr, to Jevan ap Meredydd, ancestor of Sir John Wynn, the historian. 

During the Hundred Years’ War, the Battle of Poitiers was fought on 19 September 1356 between a French army commanded by King John II and an Anglo-Gascon force under Edward, the Black Prince. It took place in western France, 5 miles south of Poitiers, when approximately 14,000 to 16,000 French attacked a strong defensive position held by 6,000 Anglo-Gascons.

The word used to describe the colour black in historical and classical Europe was Moor (also Melas). First used in Europe by the Greeks, as Mauros. Its cognates are found in every European language, even if variant spellings are used. Thus you have Mohr (German), Maure, Mire (French), Moor (English), Moros (Italian/Spanish), and Mor (Old and Middle English). All those variants meant the same thing, the colour today known as black. Mor, aka Moore, can be found on monuments all over Britain. Historians have attempted to whitewash the term to mean something else so that Etymology dictionaries will give the word another meaning. It would open up a can of worms if they were honest with the true meaning.

Howell Coytmor should have been painted elaborately and maybe adorned with real gold, but they have removed the paint and disfigured his face to hide his true facial features. The paint colour is normally visible on the corners of the monument where it was hard to remove. I ZOOMED in on the image and picked up the original brown colour. The brown arrow is the paint colour picked up from my graphics software.

But one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep. Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed to open the scroll and [a]to loose its seven seals.”

Revelation 5:5 KJV  

Citation: Wales Explorer, Images jmc4 – Church Explorer Flickr – Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)