Henry Tudor and English Prophecy in Wales

This article considers the relationship between Welsh and English language prophetic traditions in the years immediately preceding and following the accession of Henry Tudor as Henry VII. A political actor understood by turns as both English and Welsh, Henry appears as a hero of political prophecies produced in England, staging the imperial authority of the Lancastrian line; and Welsh prophecies of national restoration forecasting freedom from English rule. In a period when political investment in the Lancastrian heir spanned the Anglo-Welsh border, a number of long-lived English Lancastrian prophecies were translated into Welsh, with details significantly altered in line with Welsh prophetic models and motifs.
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It focuses on the mid-fifteenth-century Welsh translations of the popular English prophecy, 'Cock in the North', and their Tudor reception history in Wales, considering also the uses of motifs from the prophecy, in cywyddau brud produced by Dafydd Llwyd.

I suggest that this vogue can be understood as part of a broader movement, instrumental for our understanding of the significant relationship between late medieval Welsh and English literature.