Professor Gwyn Alfred Williams

Madoc: The Making of a Myth

Three hundred years before Columbus, declared Dr John Dee to Queen Elizabeth I in 1580, Madoc, son of Prince Owain Gwynedd, sailed to North America and settled there.

Thus was launched the most pervasive influence on American and Welsh history.

For the first time Gwyn Williams analyses the constituent elments of the Madoc story, and describes why and how it was discovered publicly by the Elizabethans.

Even more fascinating is his explanation of the Madoc fever in the 1790s that gripped both sides of the Atlantic, with the consequent Welsh migration to the United States

Madoc is a unique work of historical detection which not only tracks down strange stories and influential beliefs to their factural origins, but investigates how myth can actually create and shape history.

Above all Madoc is an incredible story, embracing white-skinned, Welsh speaking Indians; the explorers of the Missouri and the unknown American West; the Spaniards in North America; and a whole lost generation of democrats on both sides of the eighteenth century Atlantic.

Now! March 14, 1980 article on Madoc click here

Madoc, Masci, Merthyr Tydfil: The Madoc Legend and the First Welsh Radicalism click here