Hywel

Saint Hywel the Right-⁠Believing (Hywel the Great, Hoel I) was, according to one source, a ruler of the late fifth and early sixth century from the ruling house of Cornouaille in north-⁠west Brittany, a son of Budic II. In his childhood his family lived in exile with Aergol Lawhir, king of Dyfed in Britain, because a cousin had usurped Budic's place. During this time he is credited with the foundation of Llanhowell (now in Llanrhian), and as Saint Hywel he was revered by a local cult as patron of the place. The family was then restored to Cornouaille, where Hywel may have ruled jointly with his father; he died before him, leaving his young son Tewdwr as heir.

Baring-⁠Gould holds him to be a son of Emyr Llydaw, forced to flee Armorica because of a family struggle for supremacy, and says that the sole authority for Hywel as a Welsh saint is an entry in a seventeenth-⁠century list of saints. The Arthurian legends make him a relative and ally of King Arthur. He is a saint of the undivided Church, honoured locally.