page_title: Pembrokeshire
section_title: Middle ages
hierarchical_section_title: Pembrokeshire / History / Middle ages
caption_attribution_description: English: Pembroke Castle at dusk
context_page_description: Pembrokeshire is a county in the southwest of Wales. It is bordered by Carmarthenshire to the east, Ceredigion to the northeast, and the sea everywhere else.
  The county is home to Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, the only national park in the United Kingdom established primarily because of the coastline; the Park occupies more than a third of the area of the county and includes the Preseli Hills in the north as well as the 190-mile Pembrokeshire Coast Path.
  Industry is nowadays focused on agriculture, oil and gas, and tourism; Pembrokeshire's beaches have won many awards. Historically, mining and fishing were important activities. The county has a diverse geography with a wide range of geological features, habitats and wildlife. Its prehistory and modern history have been extensively studied, from tribal occupation, through Roman times, to Welsh, Irish, Norman, English, Scandinavian and Flemish influences.
  Pembrokeshire County Council's headquarters are in the county town of Haverfordwest. The council has a majority of Independent members, but the county's representatives in both the Welsh and Westminster Parliaments are Conservative.
context_section_description: From 1284, when the Statute of Rhuddlan was enacted to establish the rule of law in Wales, there followed a period of relative peace in Pembrokeshire for more than 100 years. The establishment or re-establishment of a large number of castles under the Marcher Lords reinforced this.
  Henry Tudor, born at Pembroke Castle in 1457, landed an army in Pembrokeshire in 1485 and marched to Cardigan. Rallying support, he continued to Leicestershire and defeated the larger army of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field. As Henry VII, he became the first monarch of the House of Tudor, which ruled England until 1603.
  The Laws in Wales Act 1535 effectively abolished the powers of the Marcher Lords and divided the county into seven hundreds, roughly corresponding to the seven pre-Norman cantrefi of Dyfed. The hundreds were (clockwise from the northeast): Cilgerran, Cemais, Dewisland, Roose, Castlemartin, Narberth and Dungleddy and each was divided into civil parishes; a 1578 map in the British Library is the earliest known to show parishes in Pembrokeshire. The Elizabethan era brought renewed prosperity to the county through an opening up of rural industries, including agriculture, mining and fishing, with exports to England and Ireland, though the formerly staple woollen industry had all but disappeared.
  During the First English Civil War (1642–1646) the county gave strong support to the Roundheads (Parliamentarians), in contrast to the rest of Wales, which was staunchly Royalist. In spite of this an incident in Pembrokeshire triggered the opening shots of the Second English Civil War when local units of the New Model Army mutinied. Oliver Cromwell defeated the uprising at the Siege of Pembroke in July 1648. On 13 August 1649, the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland began when New Model Army forces sailed from Milford Haven.
caption: Pembroke Castle, birthplace of Henry VII
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