The Phoenician Symbol
The Gwennan Mosaic Series Book One
by Basil Maddox

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The year is 1678 AD. Simon Maddox, a graduate student at Christs College Cambridge, receives from his tutor a subject for his thesis in History: “A Century of England and Wales through the Eyes of One Unusual Man.” That man, his uncle Thomas, who has disappeared but may still be alive, has left Simon with adequate research material in a cottage in Grantchester. He must make sense of a Phoenician Symbol described by Ptolemy a thousand years earlier and its connection to the Welsh Prince Madoc who sailed to America three hundred years before Columbus. His legacy was a colony of Welsh-speaking ‘Indians’. Thomas aims to prove that the Maddox family, now living in London, are his descendants. Throughout his lifelong quest, providing encouragement and guidance, is a mysterious and timeless ‘grey lady’ who needs the answers that only Simon can now provide. To complete ‘The Century’ Simon must reach back to the year 1578 AD, to Thomas’s grandparents long before he was born. His grandmother Katherine, part of the Queen Elizabeth’s ‘Virgin Court’, is banished to Wales following a pregnancy and suspicion of her involvement in a plot to assassinate the Queen. Meanwhile his grandfather manages to capture a Spanish treasure ship and after a harrowing confinement in the Tower of London marries Katherine. Her dowry is a small estate in Wales under which lies a forgotten Roman gold mine. This first volume, which ends with Thomas’s birth, traces the family’s early lives in Wales.

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I spent my early life in Wales while my father served overseas. Standing on the battlements of Harlech Castle he awakened my interest in the Maddox ancestry by telling me that a Welsh ancestor was hanged there for sheepstealing. But the guidebook disagreed - he was hanged for burning down several castles! So not a thief but a patriot! Reading about that turbulent period led me to the exploits of Prince Madoc in his ship Gwennan Gorn, and the story of the Stedman family’s claim on the estate of Strata Florida, close to the Roman gold mine of Dolaucothi. Growing up in Esher, Surrey, I obtained a family tree researched by my great-grandfather. The Maddox line in London was complete back to the year 1560. Benjamin Maddox JP, Lord of the Manor of Little Bookham only eight miles from Esher, inducted his son Robert into the Guild of Merchant Taylors. I consulted Surrey records and visited his Manor House, now a school. I studied at Christs College Cambridge, founded by Lady Margaret Tudor, mother of England’s first Welsh king. She had gifted the living of Manorbier, a remote Welsh parish, to Christs College. Like the pieces of a shattered mosaic, a picture of earlier times began to take shape. Suddenly Prince Madoc did not seem so remote in time. I knew Thomas, his family and their dates. So this story, a product of my imagination, is as much history as fiction. Simon has become my avatur!

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Contributors

Author

Basil Maddox

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