He became a fugitive after waging war against the English occupation of Wales, but was captured, and then executed on 3 October 1283, which were on the orders of King Edward I of England.

[5] The following year, Henry found himself under siege from a group of his rebellious barons, and Llywelyn used the situation to assert his status as Prince of Wales in 1267.

Llywelyn was alerted to the plot and called Dafydd to answer charges of treason, but he fled to the court of Edward I, who had succeeded Henry in 1272.

[12] Archbishop John Peckham tried to intervene in the war by suggesting that Llywelyn accept land in England in return for surrendering to Edward I, while Dafydd was supposed to go on crusade at the king's expense.

With limited resources of manpower and equipment available the passes leading to Dolwyddelan became indefensible and Dafydd moved down to Castell y Bere.

[citation needed] Dafydd escaped the siege and moved north to Dolbadarn Castle,[2] a guardpost in the Peris Valley at the foot of Snowdon.

Edward triumphantly proclaimed that the last of the "treacherous lineage", princes of the "turbulent nation", was now in his grasp, captured by men of his own language (per homines linguae suae).

[17] On 30 September, Dafydd ap Gruffudd, Prince of Wales, was condemned to death, the first person known to have been tried and executed for what from that time onwards would be described as high treason against the King.

Edward ensured that Dafydd's death was slow and agonising, and also historic; he became the first prominent person in recorded history to have been hanged, drawn and quartered, preceded by a number of minor knights earlier in the thirteenth century.

Dafydd was dragged through the streets of Shrewsbury attached to a horse's tail, then hanged alive, revived, then disembowelled and his entrails burned before him for "his sacrilege in committing his crimes in the week of Christ's passion", and then his body cut into four-quarters "for plotting the king's death".