It was said that after a year Madog returned, and gathered to him other followers, to the number of three hundred men in ten ships, and again departed in 1172 for the wondrous land beneath the sunset, from which he never returned. Consequently he has been esteemed a forerunner of Columbus. But nothing is certainly known about him more than that he sailed away to the west.
Southey’s delightful epic Madoc is based on this story. The expeditions of Madog are spoken of by three contemporary poets, and also by Meredydd ab Rhys, in a poem written before Columbus was heard of.
In 1790 a young Welshman, John Evans, a native of Carnarvonshire, fired with these allusions and traditions of the extensive discoveries of Madog, made an expedition to America in the hopes of discovering traces there of the colony from Wales settled in the twelfth century. He ascended the Missouri for some 1,300 miles, but without success, and returned to S. Louis on the Mississippi to organise another expedition. However, he was prostrated by a fever, and died without accomplishing his object in 1797.
Catlin, in his Manners and Condition of the North-American Indians, convinced himself that he had found the descendants of the Welsh colony in the Mandans, but he has convinced no one else; and no other travellers have found a trace of Madog and his settlers from Wales.
The Celtic saints were children of light, and they followed the light. It was this that took them to Iceland in their wicker-work coracles, pursuing the summer sun.
When, in 870, the Norse refugees, deserting Norway rather than submit to Harold Fairfair, colonised Iceland, they found Irish and perhaps Welsh monks there, and the new-comers called them Papar. These eventually abandoned the island, as they did not care to live among heathen; but left behind them bells, croziers, and books.
Aberdaron, the little port whence pilgrims started for Bardsey, has a church of some interest that was ruinous, but has been recently put in order, and is empty, swept, but not garnished.
Here, at this harbour, in the house of the Dean of Bangor, David Daron, took place that meeting which has been represented by Shakespeare, where those united against Henry IV. contrived the partition of the land between them that they had, as yet, not conquered.
Shakespeare was not historically correct. Harry Hotspur had fallen at Shrewsbury in 1403, and the meeting did not take place till 1406. Those who met were the fugitive Earl of Northumberland, the father of Hotspur, Owen Glyndwr, and Edmund Mortimer.
Northumberland had, in fact, twice revolted against Henry IV., and had escaped to Scotland; he had lost nerve, as he saw tokens, or suspected them, of an inclination on the part of the Scots to exchange him with the English king for Lord Douglas, and he took ship and fled for France, but put in at the headland of Lleyn on his way, for conference with Glyndwr, who doubtless desired to send messages to France through the earl. The assembly took place on February 28th, 1406, and at it the Indenture of Assent was signed by the three contracting parties.