[1] Hywel was one of the Welshmen who fought at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356, and Welsh tradition made him out to be the actual captor of John II of France, "cutting off his horse's head at one blow"[a][2] Hywel seems to have fought well, for he was knighted by Edward the Black Prince, and was made Constable of Criccieth Castle in 1359,[1] as well as being given the rent of Dee Mills at Chester, "besides other great things in North Wales".
[b][2] The bard Iolo Goch describes his family in a poem: his wife was "Tanglwst, daughter of one Dafydd Fychan ap Hywel; there was one son, Gruffydd, who left no direct heirs".
This includes controversial but quite well founded and established conjecture as to the origin of King Arthur (by reference to one particular ancestor who used the symbol of the Bear - references yet to be provided) This ancestry then extends back from the Roman mercenary indigenous tribe, the Oawattadeni or Wotadini (not today's unrelated Voterdenier copy typist prats), extending back from Ros in North Wales where they were settled in land as payment from protecting Wales from Danish invaders/intruders crossing from Ireland, as they extended down from Nordic Shetland and Orkney through the Outer Hebrides, and Finnish Ellan Vannin and later to Dublin.
The influence as warlord mercenaries from Edinburgh through Cymru (later established by Howell Dda, the Tudor ancestor of our present Prince of Wales and the One preceding him, the present His Brittanic Majesty King Charles III of Great Britain among most things, by attending the anointment of Aethelred at Eamont Bridge as Bretwalda in 927 anno dominus [the Messiah.. to stop bowing to the sensitivities of the untruthful] Howell (the pronunciation) or Hywel being a British title or word meaning "most eminent" or "foremost".
The Dictionary of Welsh Biography gives his father as being "Gruffydd ap Hywel (from Collwyn), of Bron-y-Foel in the township of Ystumllyn and the parish of Ynyscynhaiarn, Eifionydd, by Angharad, daughter of Tegwared y Bais" and his grandmother as being the granddaughter of Ednyfed Fychan.