THE ENGLISH CONQUEST
The contest with the Saxons--William the Conqueror--The Norman
invasion of Wales--The castles--The Welsh kingdoms--Rhodri the
Great--Llewelyn the Great--The last Llewelyn--Edward I.’s treatment of
the Welsh.
THROUGHOUT the reigns of the Saxon kings the Welsh had to maintain a
contest, on the one hand with the English, and on the other with the
Danes and Northmen hovering round the coast.
The Vikings, who carried devastation through England, did not overlook
Wales. Wherever we find camps of a certain description, there we know
that either Saxon or Dane has been.
These camps consist of earthen tumps or bell-shaped mounds, usually
hollowed out in the middle, and with base-courts attached, protected
by a palisade, and the top of the tump was crowned with a tower-like
structure of timber.
At times the Welsh were in league with one of the kings of the
Heptarchy against another; at others they were in league with the Danes
against the English, and when not so engaged were fighting one another.
When William the Conqueror had subjugated England he was determined
not to leave Wales to its independence.
But the conquest of Wales was not executed by one master mind. Wales
was given over to a number of Norman adventurers to carry out the
conquest in their own way, under no control, with the result that it
was conducted with barbarity, lawlessness, wanton destruction, and
spasmodically. In England, after the battle of Hastings, the Conqueror
set to work to consolidate the kingdom under his sceptre, and blood
ceased to flow. In Wales, in the north, the Earl of Chester and Robert
of Rhuddlan fought and conquered for themselves in Gwynedd. In like
manner the Earl of Shrewsbury raided in Powys from his fortress at
Montgomery. In the south the Earl of Hereford carried sword and fire
into Deheubarth. Frightful cruelties were committed. Ordericus Vitalis,
as he records the glory of “the warlike marquess,” or Lord Marcher,
Robert of Rhuddlan, is forced to admit with honest indignation that his
deeds were such as no Christian warrior ought to commit against his
fellow-Christians.
Seeing the importance of Shrewsbury, William built a strong castle
there. Chester, Worcester, Hereford, and Gloucester were made into
fortresses, and everything was prepared for advance.
In the reign of William Rufus, Deganwy, the old residence of the kings
of Gwynedd, above the mouth of the Conway, was seized and fortified,
and the Welsh king had to remove to Aberffraw, in Anglesey.
“The conquest which now began,” says Mr. Freeman, “that which we call
either the English or Norman conquest of Britain, differed from
the Norman conquest of England. It wrought far less change than the
landing at Ebbfleet; it wrought far more change than the landing at
Pevensey.
“The Britton of these lands, which in the Red King’s day were still
British, was gradually conquered; he was brought gradually under
English rule and English law, but he was neither exterminated nor
enslaved, nor wholly assimilated. He still abides in his ancient land,
still speaking his ancient tongue.
“The English or Norman conquest of Wales was not due to a national
migration like the English conquest of Britain, nor was it a conquest
wrought under the guise of an elaborate legal fiction, like the Norman
conquest of England.”
The process pursued was this. The Norman barons advanced with their
armed men along the shore, and up the basins of the rivers, till they
gained some point of vantage controlling the neighbourhood, and there
they erected castles of stone. This was an art they had acquired in
Normandy, where stone was abundant and easily quarried. It was one
to which the Brittons were strange. By degrees they forced their way
further; they seized the whole sea-board. They strangled the valleys
by gripping them where they opened out; they controlled the fertile
pasture and arable land from their strongholds. Towns sprang up under
the shelter of the castles, and English mechanics and traders were
encouraged to settle in them.
The Welsh had never been city builders or dwellers in cities. They had
suffered the old Roman towns to fall into decay, the walls to crumble
into shapeless heaps of ruins. They lived in scattered farms, and
every farmer had his _hafod_, or summer residence, as well as his
_hendre_, or winter and principal home. Only the retainers of a prince
dwelt about him in his palace, or _caer_. And now they saw strongly
walled and fortified towns starting up at commanding points on the
roads and beside all harbours. The arteries of traffic, the very pores
of the land, were occupied by foreigners.
As Freeman further observes:--
“Wales is, as everyone knows, pre-eminently the land of castles.
Through those districts with which we are specially concerned, castles
great and small, or the ruins or traces of castles, meet us at every
step. The churches, mostly small and plain, might themselves, with
their fortified towers, almost count as castles. The towns, almost all
of English foundation, were mostly small; they were military colonies
rather than seats of commerce. As Wales had no immemorial cities like
Exeter and Lincoln, so she had no towns which sprung up into greatness
in later times, like Bristol, Norwich, and Coventry. Every memorial of
former days which we see in the British land reminds us of how long
warfare remained the daily business alike of the men in that land and
of the strangers who had made their way into it at the sword’s point.”
Through the reigns of the Plantagenet kings the oppression and
cruelties to which the Welsh were subjected drove them repeatedly to
reprisals. At times they were successful.
During the commotions caused by the misrule of King John and the
incapacity of Henry III. the Welsh took occasion to stretch their limbs
and recover some of the lands that had been wrested from them, and to
throw down the castles that were an incubus upon them.
There were three Welsh kingdoms, or principalities. Gwynedd, roughly
conterminous with the counties of Anglesey, Carnarvon, Merioneth, and
parts of Denbigh and Flint. Powys, sadly shrunken, still comprised
Montgomeryshire and Radnor and a portion of Denbigh. The third
principality, Deheubarth or Dynevor, composed of Pembrokeshire,
Cardiganshire, Carmarthenshire, and Glamorgan. Brecknock was claimed
as part of it, but was an enclave in which the Normans had firmly
established themselves. Monmouthshire also belonged to Deheubarth.
The king of Gwynedd claimed supremacy as head over the rest, and
although this was allowed as a theory, if practically asserted it
always met with armed resistance. But this was not all that went to
weaken the Welsh opposition. Each prince who left sons carved up his
principality into portions for each, and as the brothers were mutually
jealous and desirous of acquiring each other’s land, this led to
incessant strife and intrigue with the enemy in the heart of each of
the three principalities. A great opportunity had offered. Rhodri the
Great had united all Wales in his own hands, as mentioned already. But
the union lasted only for his life; all flew apart once more at his
death in 877, and that just at the moment when unity was of paramount
importance.
Llewelyn ab Iorwerth, surnamed “the Great,” was king of Gwynedd at the
beginning of the thirteenth century, and he had sufficient wit to see
that the only salvation for Wales was to be found in its reunion, and
he attempted to achieve this. As Powys was obstructive, he had to fight
Gwenwynwyn its king, then to subject Lleyn and Merioneth.
In 1202 Llewelyn was firmly established in Gwynedd, and he married
Joan, the daughter of King John, who proceeded to reinstate Gwenwynwyn
in Powys. In 1211 this prince sided with Llewelyn against John, who,
furious at this act of ingratitude, hanged twenty-eight Welsh hostages
at Nottingham.
Llewelyn now turned his attention to the conquest of South Wales. He
stormed one castle after another, and obtained recognition as prince
of Dynevor. But in 1216 the false and fickle Gwenwynwyn abandoned the
Welsh side and went over to that of the English. After some fighting
Llewelyn submitted to Henry III. at Worcester in 1218.
His grandson, another Llewelyn, was also an able man, but he lacked
just that essential faculty of being able to detect the changes of the
sky and the signs of the times, and that ruined him.
In 1256 Llewelyn was engaged in war against the English. He had done
homage to Henry III. in 1247, but the unrest in England caused by the
feeble rule and favouritism of Henry had resulted in the revolt of the
barons. Llewelyn took advantage of this condition of affairs to recover
Deganwy Castle and to subdue Ceredigion. Then he drove the unpatriotic
son of Gwenwynwyn out of Powys. The same year he entered South Wales,
and was everywhere victorious. Brecon was brought under his rule, and
the castles held by the English were taken and burned. But Llewelyn’s
great difficulty lay with his own people, though his power was used for
the recovery of Wales from English domination.
In 1265 he had received the oaths of fealty throughout Wales, which was
now once more an independent principality. But he made at this point
a fatal mistake. He did not appreciate the strength and determination
of Edward I., the son of the feeble Henry, and in place of making
favourable terms with him he intrigued against him with some revolted
barons.
But Edward was a man of different metal from his father, and he
declared war against Llewelyn, and in 1277 invaded Wales.
Three formidable armies poured in, and Llewelyn was driven to
take refuge among the wilds of Snowdon, where he was starved into
submission. All might have gone smoothly thenceforth had Edward been
just. But he was ungenerous and harsh. He suffered his officials
to treat the Welsh with such brutality that their condition became
intolerable. Appeals for redress that were made to him were
contemptuously set aside, and the Welsh princes and people felt that it
would be better to die with honour than to be treated as slaves.
A general revolt broke out. In 1282 Llewelyn took the castles of Flint,
Rhuddlan, and Hawarden in the north, and Prince Gruffydd rose against
the English in the south.
Edward I. resolved on completely and irretrievably crushing Wales under
his heel. He entered it with a large army, and again drove Llewelyn
into the fastnesses of Snowdon. Llewelyn thence moved south to join
forces with the Welsh of Dyved, leaving his brother David to hold the
king back in North Wales.
The place appointed for the junction was near Builth, in Brecknock, but
he was betrayed into a trap and was surrounded and slain, and his head
sent to Edward, who was at Conway.
Edward ordered that his gallant adversary’s body should be denied a
Christian burial, and forwarded the head to London, where, crowned
in mockery with ivy leaves, it was set in the pillory in Cheapside.
Nor was that all: he succeeded in securing the person of David, had
him tried for high treason, hanged, drawn, and quartered. Llewelyn’s
daughter was forced to assume the veil. Thus ended the line of Cunedda,
and Llewelyn is regarded as the last of the kings of Wales.
Edward was at Carnarvon when his second son Edward was born, 1301, and
soon after he proclaimed him Prince of Wales.
It has been fondly supposed that this was a tactful and gracious act of
the king to reconcile the Welsh to the English Crown. It was nothing of
the kind. His object was to assure the Crown lands of Gwynedd to his
son.
“Edward’s brutal treatment of the remains of Llewelyn, who, though
a rebel according to the laws of the king’s nation, was slain in
honourable war, and his utter want of magnanimity in dealing with
David were long remembered among the Cymry, and helped to keep
alive the hatred with which the Welsh-speaking people for several
generations more regarded the English.”[1]
The principality of Wales indeed remained, but in a new and alien form,
and all was over for ever with the royal Cymric line.
PEDIGREE OF THE PRINCES OF GWYNEDD AND OF POWYS
Rhodri the Great = Angharad
+877 | heiress of Ceredigion
|
GWYNEDD | POWYS DEHEUBARTH
+-------------------------------------+------+------------+
| | |
Anarawd. +918 Mervyn. +901 Cadell. +907
| | |
Idwal Voel. +948 Llewelyn Howell Dda.
| | |
+----------+------------+ | +--+
| | | | |
Iago. +978 Ievan +967 Meurig. +972 Angharad = Owen. +987
| | |
+----------+ | +-----------+
| | | | Einion ancestor of
| | | | the kings of Dynevor
| | | | princes ofCardigan
| | | |
Howel Cadwallon Idwal. +995 Meredydd. +998
| +984 +985 | |
| | |
Cynan. +1003 Iago. +1039 Angharad = Cynvyn
| | ab Gwerystan
| +------+
| |
Cynan. +1005 Bleddyn. +1072
| |
+----------------------+ |
| |
Gruffydd. +1137 Meredydd. +1129
| |
| POWYS VADOG | POWYS WENWYNWYN
Owen Gwynedd. +1169 |
| +-------+-------------+
+---------+--------------+ | |
| | | | |
Howel. +1171 David. +1204 Iorwerth Madog. +1159 Gruffydd. +1125
| | |
+------------------------+ Gruffydd. +1191 Owen Cyveiliog. +1197
| | |
Llewelyn. +1240 Madog. +1236 Gwenwynwyn. +1216
| | |
+------------+ | |
| | Gruffydd. +1270 Gruffydd. +1274
David Gruffydd. +1244 | |
| +-----------------+ |
+------------+-------+ | | Owen. +1282
| | | | |
| | | Madog. +1278 Gruffydd Vychan
Owen Goch Llewelyn David | ancestor of
+1254 +1282 +1283 Gruffydd. +1282 Owen Glyndwr