Time-slip fiction combining history, the supernatural and romance at its best that also includes a character from the iconic Lady of Hay. Atmospheric story telling and richly observed characterisation meeting with obsessions from the past and the present. Like her other novels it’s immersive and the pace builds. Set in the Welsh marches readers encounter Llywelyn the Last Prince of Wales and the fraught politics and wars of the thirteenth century. Meticulous research about his daughter Gwenllian who was born a few months before his death and her fate when Edward I captured Llywelyn’s brother David and his family draw attention to women without power its consequences for their lives – a factor at play in the story of Alys, a healer, whose story is at the heart of Erskine’s novel. The history of the period casts its shadow across the novel and the life of Erskine’s modern character, Eve – who faces a different kind of persecution while at the same time living in a place where the weight of the past pushes through into the present. Couldn’t put it down!
And as it happens I have recently revisited the fate of Gwenllian of Wales while exploring the life of Eleanor of Castile. An infant at the time of her father’s death, Gwenllian was his only legitimate heir. She was captured, when she was 18-months-old, along with her uncle, Dafydd, and his family on 21 June 1283 at Nanhysglain in Snowdonia. For Dafydid, a brutal execution at Shrewsbury followed. He had, after all, shifted his allegiance one too many times so far as Edward I was concerned.
Gwenllian was separated from her cousins. Daffyd’s legitimate daughter and Gwenllian, with a claim to the crown of Wales, were sent to nunneries to prevent them from marrying and their families contesting Edward’s claim to Wales. Also sent to England for a lifetime of contemplation were Daffyd’s other six, or possibly seven, daughters. Gwenllian, who was twice over a cousin of Edward I due to her descent from King John’s daughter, Joan and the fact that her mother Eleanor was Edward’s cousin, was sent to Sempringham, a Gilbertine priory in Lincolnshire. Dafydd’s own daughter, Gwladys, was sent to Sixhills, another Gilbertine priory in Lincolnshire. Their fate was kinder than the one which befell Dafydd’s sons who were incarcerated in Bristol Castle for the rest of their lives.
Edward I wrote to the prioress that as an ‘innocent’ Gwenllian should be treated with pity given her age and sex. It seemed that while he wanted her removed from the Welsh line of succession he did not want her badly treated or harmed. Four years later, Edward sent an administrator to Lincolnshire to report on the way that Gwenllian and her cousins were being treated and cared for. He also arranged for a pension of £20 a year to be paid to the priory for her care.
The monastery accommodated around 120 nuns and 60 monks – the Gilbertines running double, segregated, houses. Gwenllian, veiled as an infant, spent the rest of her 54 years in Lincolnshire – dying 1337. The Gilbertines took vows of chastity, poverty and obedience but in 1327 when Gwenllian petitioned Edward II she described herself as Prince of Wales – reminding the king ( who would be dead by September) that his father had promised land and rent for the house at Sempringham to fund the pension. It was Edward III who granted her a pension of £20 a year for life.
In April 1328 Edward III visited Sempringham and granted the priory a charter that April.
If you want to know more about Gwenllian and her mother – Sharon Bennett Connolly’s book Ladies of the Magna Carta: Women and Influence in Thirteenth Century England is an excellent starting point.
A plaque commemorating the princess, who was abducted from her homeland, was raised in 1993 at Sempringham at St Andrew’s Church – which contains all that remains of the priory Her grave was lost during the dissolution of the monasteries.
‘Houses of the Gilbertine order: The priory of Sempringham’, in A History of the County of Lincoln: Volume 2, ed. William Page (London, 1906), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lincs/vol2/pp179-187 [accessed 8 June 2026].
