Is the evidence strong enough to support a medieval Welsh
settlement in North America? First recorded almost four hundred
years after the lifetime of Madoc ap Owain Gwynedd, there is
little to indicate that the story was known before Humphrey
Llwyd. While there certainly were medieval stories about a
Madoc, who seems to have been more well known in Flanders than
in Wales, it is by no means certain that the Madoc of the
stories and poems was Madoc ap Owain. All that can be said of
the medieval romances is that they concern a sea-farer of some
renown. That is as far as the medieval sources go. Where
Humphrey Llwyd got the story is unknown. It is in none of the
sources he translated into English and it is so far from the
medieval versions that they cannot have been the sole
inspiration. It is possible, perhaps even probable, that he
simply made it up. As a proud Welshman at a time when the
English government was doing its best to anglicise the recently-
created province (following An Acte for Lawes & Justice to b