Red Bandits of Mawddwy

The only certain historical knowledge about the bandits is that they murdered the Sheriff of Meirionnydd, the Baron Lewis ap Owen, of Cwrt Plas-yn-dre, Dolgellau on 12 October 1555.

[1] The near-contemporary writer Robert Vaughn wrote that the bandits: never tired of robbing, burning of houses, and murthering of people, in soe much that being very numerous, they did often drive great droves of cattell somtymes to the number of a hundred or more from one countrey to another at middle day, as in tyme of warre, without feare, shame, pittie, or punishment, to the utter undoing of the poorer sort.

One of these was very young, and Lowri implored the Baron to have mercy on the youngest, but Lewis Owen refused to listen, and hanged the two together with more than eighty other bandits.

Pennant said that Lowri threatened vengeance on the sheriff:[1] Local farmers were said to be so afraid that they fixed scythes in the wide chimneys of their houses to prevent the bandits from climbing down them - some of these improvised defences remained in place until the early 1800s.

Lowri daughter of Gruffudd Llwyd was named in the court case in Sesiwn Fawr, Bala, in 1558 following the murder, but she was described as a spinster.