Along with its neighbour Glywysing, it seems to have had a great deal of cultural continuity with the earlier Silures,[1] keeping their own courts and diocese separate from the rest of Wales until their conquest by Gruffydd ap Llywelyn.

Gwent came into being after the Romans had left Britain, and was a successor state drawing on the culture of the pre-Roman Silures tribe and ultimately a large part of their Iron Age territories.

In the post Roman period, the territory around Venta became the successor kingdom of Guenta, later Gwent, deriving its name directly from the town through the normal sound change in the Brythonic languages from v to gu.

Other suggestions are that Gwent was founded by Erb, possibly a descendant of Caradoc, who may have been a ruler of Ergyng east of the Black Mountains who won control of a wider area to the south.

[4] Gwent's existence as a separate kingdom again temporarily ended when Gruffydd ap Llywelyn won control of the area and Morgannŵg in 1055, so extending his rule over the whole of Wales.

In 1056 Gruffyd ap Llywelyn campaigned from the vicinity of Monmouth with an army of Welsh, Saxons and Danes to defeat Ralph, Earl of Hereford, ravaging the surrounding countryside.

[6] King Maredudd of Deheubarth decided not to resist the Norman encroachment on Gwent and was rewarded with lands in England in 1070,[7] at the same time as the chronicler Orderic Vitalis noted in his Historia Ecclesiastica that a Welsh king named "Caducan" (Cadwgan ap Meurig) suffered defeat in battle at the hands of William FitzOsbern, 1st Earl of Hereford.

Welsh law as seen through Norman eyes continued, with Marcher lords ruling sicut regale ("like a king") as stated by Gilbert, Earl of Gloucester.

[10][19] The Marcher Lordships were the basic units of administration for the next 450 or so years, until Henry VIII passed the Laws in Wales Act 1535.

In the local government re-organisations of 1974/5, several new administrative areas within Wales were named after medieval kingdoms - Gwent, Dyfed, Powys, and Gwynedd.