castle is again defended by a valiant bride. As Norwich, after the
revolt and flight of Ralph of Wader, was defended by Emma of Breteuil,
so Bamburgh, after the revolt and capture of Robert of Mowbray, was
defended by Matilda of Laigle. Married just as the revolt broke out,
she had had, we are told, but little taste of joyful or peaceful
wedlock; but she was at least zealous in the cause of her husband. She
had Morel to her counsellor and captain, and the two held out in the
ancient stronghold against all attacks. It was now winter, and King
William had come back from Snowdon, not covered with much glory. He
felt no mind to renew the siege of Bamburgh in his own person; but he
bade that the captive Earl should be taken thither, and led before the
walls, with the threat to his wife and nephew that, if the castle was
not at once given up, the eyes of its lord should be then and there
seared out in their sight. To this threat Matilda and Morel yielded,
and the gates of the unconquered fortress were thrown open to the
King’s forces. The valiant Countess thus saved her husband’s eyes; but
his eyes were all that she could save. Robert was sent back to prison
at Windsor, to live in bonds, at least for a season, and in no case to
return to the rights and duties of an earl or a husband. But there are
two widely different stories as to his later fate. The local history
of Saint Alban’s told how one who, however guilty towards others, was
at least a benefactor to that house, was allowed to spend his
remaining days as a monk within its walls. At Saint Evroul a widely
different tale was believed. It was there recorded by the contemporary
writer that Robert survived his capture thirty years, but that the
whole of that time was passed in hopeless imprisonment. If so, he must
have been looked on as dangerous by the calm prudence of Henry no less
than by the wrath or the revenge of Rufus. The story indeed runs that
his imprisonment was deemed so irrevocable that it was held to amount
to a civil death. The once proud Earl of Northumberland was counted to
have passed away from among men as much as if the grave had closed
over him alongside of Malcolm in his own Tynemouth. By a special
permission from Pope Paschal, Matilda was allowed to marry again, as
though she had been his widow and not his wife. Nigel of Albini became
her second husband; but, after the death of her brother Gilbert of
Laigle, he thought he could better himself by marriage in another
quarter. His marriage with Matilda was declared void, not on the
ground that Robert was alive, but because of some kindred, real or
alleged, between Robert and Nigel. The papal dispensation must have
been badly drawn, if it did not provide for the lesser irregularity as
well as for the greater. Of Matilda we hear no more; Nigel took him
another wife of the house of Gournay. Gerard had by that time died on
his way to the crusade;[117] his widow Eadgyth had married again, and
their son Hugh was lord of Gournay. Their daughter, who inherited the
name of Gundrada from her mother’s mother, took the place of the
forsaken Matilda, who was thus left in a strange plight, as the widow,
so to speak, of two living husbands.
[Sidenote: Morel turns King’s evidence.]
[Sidenote: Christmas Gemót of 1095-1096.]
[Sidenote: Adjourned from Windsor to Salisbury. January 13, 1096.]
Meanwhile her partner in the defence of Bamburgh, Morel, the nephew
and steward of the fallen Earl, made his peace with the King by naming
all who had any share in the late conspiracy. Not a few men of high
rank, clerical and lay, were accused by him.[118] The time of the
Midwinter Gemót drew nigh, at which the offenders would regularly be
brought for trial. The King’s prisons were full,[119] and he
determined that the gaol delivery should be a striking and a solemn
one. The Assembly of that Christmas-tide was to be a _Mickle Gemót_
indeed, a Gemót like those which had gathered in King Eadward’s day
beneath the walls of London and in King William’s day upon the plain
of Salisbury. A summons of special urgency went forth, bidding all men
who held any land of the King, if they wished to be deemed worthy of
the King’s peace, to come to his court at the appointed time.[120] The
call was answered. The appointed place of meeting was Windsor, and
there the Assembly came together. But the business to be done needed a
longer time than the usual twelve days of Christmas, and the gathering
was greater than the royal castle and its courts could hold. The work
began at Windsor; but an adjournment was needed, and on the octave of
the Epiphany in the opening year we find the King and his Witan at
Salisbury.[121] The wide fields which had seen the great review and
the great homage in the days of the elder William could alone hold the
crowd which came together to share in the great court of doom which
was now holden by the younger.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Constitutional importance of the meeting.]
[Sidenote: Continuance of the old forms.]
[Sidenote: Import of the summons.]
[Sidenote: Tenants-in-chief only summoned.]
[Sidenote: Their great number.]
[Sidenote: Comparison with the Conqueror’s Gemót at Salisbury.]
[Sidenote: Effects of the practice of summons.]
[Sidenote: Action of the Assembly.]
[Sidenote: No general sympathy with the accused.]
The Gemót of this winter, and specially the strict general summons
sent forth by the King, are of high constitutional importance. They
show how, even under such a king as Rufus, the old constitutional
forms went on. They show how great is the error of those who dream
that the Norman kingship in England was as thorough a despotism in
form as it undoubtedly was in substance. In the eleventh century, as
in the sixteenth, the whole future of English history turned on the
fact that constitutional forms still went on, that assemblies were
still brought together, even if they came together for little more
than to register the edicts of the King.[122] So now Rufus himself,
when about to make a great display of kingly power, specially summons
no small part of the nation to take a share in his acts. On the one
hand, the need of the summons shows that, unless at some specially
exciting moment, men did not flock eagerly to such gatherings.[123] On
the other hand, the fact of the summons shows that kings then knew,
that Rufus himself knew, that the gathering of such an assembly was
both a sign and a source, not of weakness but of strength, on the part
of the kingly power.[124] But in the form of the summons we may see
that the assembly, though still large, is gradually narrowing. The
summons goes, not to all freemen, not to all land-owners, but only to
the King’s tenants-in-chief. These, it must be remembered, were a very
large body, including land-owners on every scale, from the greatest to
the smallest. And it must be further remembered that in this body a
vast majority of the influential members were strangers by birth, but
that a great numerical proportion, most likely a numerical majority,
were natives. The King’s thegn, who had kept a scrap of his old
estate, was as much a member of the court as Earl Hugh of Shrewsbury
or Earl Walter of Buckingham, though he was not so likely to be
listened to in any debate that might arise as Earl Hugh or Earl Walter
was. Still the special summons to the King’s tenants-in-chief marks a
change; it marks the growth of the new ideas. The immediate reason was
doubtless to be found in the main object for which the Assembly came
together. The main work of the earlier Gemót of Salisbury was that all
men in the realm, of whatever lord they held, should become the men of
the King. William the Great therefore summoned the men of other lords,
who had not up to that moment been his own men, who owed obedience to
him as head of the kingdom, but who was not bound to him by any more
personal tie. He summoned them in order that they might bind
themselves to him by that personal tie, that they might become his men
as well as his subjects. But the main work of the present Gemót was to
sit in judgement on a crowd of offenders, of various ranks and orders,
but all of whom were likely to be tenants-in-chief of the King.
According to the notions which were coming in, the right court
for their trial was the court of their peers, their fellow
tenants-in-chief. The King, who could summon whom he would, who
sometimes summoned few and sometimes many, this time, for this special
purpose, summoned the whole body of his tenants-in-chief, great and
small, and summoned no others. But, as every summons tends practically
to the exclusion of those who are not summoned, this summons of a
particular class marks a stage in the process by which the Assembly
shrank up from the crowd which decreed the restoration of Godwine to a
House of Lords of the reign of Henry the Eighth.[125] Still the actual
gathering, even of the summoned members only, must have been very
great. When it came together, the Assembly must have followed the same
law as all other assemblies of that age. Practically it decreed as the
King willed; only a few of the great men were likely to say anything
to guide the King’s will; the mass of the assembly were not likely to
do more than to make the King’s acts their own by crying Yea, Yea. We
must however remember that they had not the slightest temptation to
cry Nay, Nay. The mass of the inhabitants of the land, Norman and
English alike, were not likely to have the faintest sympathy with any
one who really had a share in the late treason. The only question was
whether any were accused who had no share in it. In the case of those
who were charged only with conspiracy and not with open revolt, this
might easily be. Otherwise the Red King, in the vengeance which he now
took, did no more than justice, as justice was deemed in his day. But
his justice was far sharper than the justice of the old kings, far
sharper than the justice of his father. And the tone in which the
story is told implies that men at the time felt that it was so.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Sickness of the Bishop of Durham.]
[Sidenote: Portents foretelling his death.]
[Sidenote: His work at Durham. 1083. 1093.]
[Sidenote: He is summoned to take his trial.]
[Sidenote: He sickens and dies. December 25, 1095-January 1, 1096.]
[Sidenote: His death-bed.]
[Sidenote: Debate as to his burying-place.]
[Sidenote: He is buried in the chapter-house.]
One of the great men of the realm, who, whether guilty or not, seems
to have been at least suspected, died, while the Assembly was in
session, before any formal charge had been brought against him. Before
the Bishop of Durham came to Windsor, it was known in his own diocese
that he had not long to live. One of his knights, Boso by name, had,
while lying under a dangerous sickness, been favoured with trances and
visions, which told him much that was comforting about the monks of
Durham, and much that was fearful about other folk. He saw the old
inhabitants of the land, he saw the new French settlers, above all, he
saw the priests’ wives――these seem to be looked on as three classes of
offenders, gradually increasing in blackness――suffering each a
grievous doom.[126] His visions about the Bishop himself might perhaps
point to an intermediate destiny; at all events they were understood
as implying his speedy death.[127] His work perhaps was done. Thirteen
years before he had filled the church of Durham with monks;[128] three
years before he had begun the great work of its rebuilding; and, by
pressing it on with almost incredible speed, he had carried it on so
far as to set an example of unsurpassed grandeur in its own style, an
example which his own monks could not follow, but which Randolf
Flambard could.[129] William of Saint-Calais came to the Gemót, and
was summoned by the King to appear to take his trial.[130] He pleaded
sickness as his excuse for not appearing. Rufus declared, with his
usual oath, that the excuse was a feigned one.[131] It was however
thoroughly real. Bishop William was sick, and sick unto death. He was
smitten on the day of the Nativity, and died on the day of the
Circumcision.[132] He was comforted in his sickness by the presence
and exhortations of several of his brother bishops who had come
together for the business of the Assembly. There was Anselm whom he
had withstood at Rockingham; there was his own metropolitan Thomas;
there was Walkelin of Winchester; there was John of Bath, born, like
himself and Anselm, beyond the bounds either of England or of
Normandy. These prelates debated concerning the place of his burial.
They argued that he who had done such great things for Saint
Cuthberht’s abbey should be buried in the place of highest honour
within its walls. He himself declined any such place. He would be no
party to any breach of Saint Cuthberht’s own rule, which forbade that
any man should be buried within his minster.[133] The bishops
therefore ruled that he should be buried in the chapter-house, so that
his monks, when they came together, should have the tomb of their
founder ever before their eyes.[134] So it was; he was borne to
Durham, and there laid in the place which the bishops had chosen for
him, among the tears and wailings of the brotherhood which he had
founded, any one of whom, we are told, would gladly have died for
him.[135]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Sentences of the Gemót.]
[Sidenote: Hugh of Shrewsbury buys his pardon.]
[Sidenote: Roger of Lacy.]
[Sidenote: January 13, 1097.]
[Sidenote: Combat of Geoffrey of Baynard and William of Eu.]
This touching picture of the death which ended the varied life of
William of Saint-Calais comes as an episode in the middle of the stern
doings of the Gemót of Windsor and Salisbury. The Red King did not
bear the sword in vain. Yet, if his justice was sharp towards those
whom it did smite, it was certainly somewhat capricious, or at least
guided by expediency, with regard to those whom it smote and those
whom it failed to smite. Some of the offenders were men of the highest
rank, some even, it is implied, of the rank of Earl. But these
powerful rebels, ashamed and weakened by the fall of their brother of
Northumberland, were now deemed fitting objects of mercy. By the
advice of the Wise Men, they were spared a public trial;[136] but some
of them were made to pay a heavy price for being left safe in life,
limb, and estate. One is mentioned by name. Earl Hugh of Shrewsbury,
who was at least suspected of a share in the plot, was dealt with
privately by the King as his father had been at Arundel.[137] He
bought his restoration to favour at the high price of three thousand
pounds.[138] Roger of Lacy lost his lands and was banished, as he
would have been in the days of King Eadward, and his possessions were
given to his loyal brother Hugh. But heavier penalties, unknown in
King Eadward’s days, were in store for others of the conspirators,
including one of the loftiest descent. At the adjourned meeting at
Salisbury, Geoffrey of Baynard, bearing a name famous in London city,
appealed no less a man than William of Eu of treason against the King,
of conspiring to slay him, and to give his crown to Stephen of
Champagne.[139] The charge was denied, and, as both parties were
Frenchmen, the trial was, by the law of the Conqueror, referred to the
wager of battle. The judicial combat which followed is memorable in
the history of the time, and forms one of the landmarks in our early
jurisprudence.
[Sidenote: Defeat of William of Eu.]
[Sidenote: Sentence of mutilation on William of Eu.]
[Sidenote: Urged by Hugh of Chester.]
[Sidenote: Feeling with regard to mutilation.]
On the plain of Salisbury the combatants met, and William of Eu was
overthrown.[140] By the laws of the combat his defeat was full
evidence of his guilt. But what was to be his punishment? Save the
case of the beheading of Waltheof, there was no precedent in the
ordinary jurisprudence either of England or of Normandy for any
sentence harsher than banishment, forfeiture, and imprisonment.[141]
The older English precedents went for banishment and forfeiture. The
precedents of Normandy and of Norman rule in England went for
imprisonment, such an imprisonment, it might be, as that of Robert of
Mowbray. For the course actually taken there was no precedent in
either land, unless it were the dealings of Harold the son of Cnut
with the Ætheling Ælfred.[142] The punishment decreed was that of
bodily mutilation. It is said that this course was proposed by Earl
Hugh of Chester, and that on a singular ground. William of Eu was the
husband of the Earl’s sister――her name is not mentioned. He had
neglected his wife, while he had three children by a mistress.[143] If
this was to be ground for the loss of eyes or limbs, the brothers of
the Countess Ermentrude would have had a right to demand that the
portly person of Earl Hugh should be cut down to a shapeless
trunk.[144] Mutilation, it should be remembered, was a familiar
punishment, a punishment which in that generation aroused no horror
when the persons so dealt with were held to be real criminals.[145]
But, with that common inconsistency which reverses the sound rule of
smiting the leaders and sparing the commons, mutilation, death, or any
heavy punishment, seems always to have aroused horror, or at least
amazement, when it was inflicted on any criminal of lofty rank. Such
things had been done in the isle of Britain and out of it, but hardly
by the solemn sentence of the King of the English at the head of his
Witan. But now William of Eu was blinded, and underwent a fouler
mutilation as well.[146] His sentence was seemingly carried out at
Salisbury, perhaps in sight of the assembly. Are we to infer that any
show of indignation was called forth by the bloody sight, when we read
directly afterwards that some of the lord of Eu’s fellow-sufferers
were taken to London, and were blinded or otherwise mutilated
there?[147]
[Sidenote: Story of Arnulf of Hesdin.]
[Sidenote: His innocence proved by battle.]
[Sidenote: He goes to the Crusade,]
[Sidenote: and dies.]
If we may trust a tale to be found in one of those secondary writers
who often preserve scraps of truth, another accused man appealed to
the wager of battle with better luck than William of Eu. This was
Arnulf of Hesdin, a man whose name is familiar enough to us in
Domesday, though it does not call up any distinct personal idea like
the King’s unlucky kinsman.[148] He is set before us as a man of great
bodily stature, brave and active, and in the enjoyment of large
possessions, out of which he and his wife Emmeline had made gifts to
the abbey of Gloucester.[149] He was charged, unjustly and enviously
we are told, with the same crime as the rest.[150] He defended himself
by his champion, who proved his lord’s innocence by overthrowing a man
of the King’s who was matched against him.[151] But Arnulf was so
stirred up with wrath and grief at the unjust charge, that,
notwithstanding the King’s entreaties to stay, he threw up all the
lands that he held of him, and left England for ever.[152] Before the
end of the year, the Crusade offered him worthy occupation elsewhere.
He marched with the Christian host as far as Antioch; he there fell
sick, and declined all medical help; none should heal him save Him for
whose sake he had gone on pilgrimage. Arnulf, professing the opposite
doctrine to Asa of Judah, fared no better than that king. Antioch was
the last stage reached by the armed pilgrim of Hesdin.[153]
[Sidenote: Confiscation of lands.]
[Sidenote: William of Alderi is condemned to death.]
[Sidenote: The King refuses to spare him.]
[Sidenote: His pious end.]
Arnulf, according to this story, became landless, as far as England
was concerned, by his own act. Others underwent the same loss by
sentence, it seems, of the Assembly. Count Odo of Champagne and many
others lost their lands.[154] In one case only does death seem to have
been inflicted. William of Alderi, cousin and steward of William of
Eu, was, as the Chronicle tells us, “hanged on rood.”[155] This
somewhat startling formula doubtless means nothing but ordinary
hanging; but it seemingly marks hanging of any kind as something which
was not ordinary. As to the guilt or innocence of William of Alderi we
have contradictory accounts. One weighty authority declares him to
have been a sharer in the plot.[156] Others class him among many brave
and guiltless men who were ruined by the charges brought by Morel and
by Geoffrey of Baynard.[157] Guilty or innocent, he was, we are told,
a man of high birth, goodly presence, and lofty spirit.[158] He was
moreover the King’s gossip, bound to him by the same tie which bound
Morel to Malcolm. We thus incidentally learn that there were those
whom William Rufus had held at the font, and for whose Christian faith
and Christian life he had pledged himself. But the spiritual kindred
went for nothing with the Red King. Many of the great men are said to
have earnestly begged for the life of William of Alderi, and to have
striven to move the King’s greed by a mighty bribe. The Conqueror had
refused Harold’s weight in gold as the price of his Christian burial;
his son refused three times the weight of William of Alderi, both in
gold and in silver, as the price of his life.[159] Why Rufus was so
bent on his death does not appear; but nothing could move him. It
marks the way in which the King’s will practically ordered everything,
even in so great an assembly of the realm as that which had now come
together, that William of Alderi was condemned and hanged without any
attempt to rescue him, though many believed him to be guiltless, and
though powerful men were eager to save him. When hope was gone, he
made an ending at once as pious and, according to the ideas of other
ages, more manly than the ending of Waltheof. He confessed his sins to
Bishop Osmund, and was, seemingly at his own asking, scourged in the
new-built minster and the other churches of the city on the waterless
hill.[160] Then he gave away his clothes to the poor, and went naked
or slightly clad to the place of hanging, staining his limbs with
blood by often kneeling on the rough stones.[161] The Bishop and a
crowd of people followed him to the place. He then made the most
solemn protestations of his innocence. The Bishop sprinkled him with
holy water, said the commendatory prayer, and then withdrew.[162] It
was not for Osmund of Salisbury, whatever it might have been for Odo
of Bayeux or Geoffrey of Coutances, to look on what was next to come.
The work of death was then done, and all who beheld wondered that not
a groan escaped the victim as death drew near, and not a sigh in the
act of dying.[163]
[Sidenote: Last days of William of Eu.]
[Sidenote: End of Morel.]
There was thus a marked difference in the fate of the kinsmen and
chief officers of the two leaders, if leaders they both were, in the
conspiracy. The steward and cousin of William of Eu was done to death,
while his master underwent a fate which to modern ideas seems worse
than death. We are not told how long William of Eu lived on in
blindness and misery; but his punishment did not involve forfeiture,
at all events not corruption of blood; for a few years later we find
his son Henry in possession of his county.[164] The steward and nephew
of Robert of Mowbray seems to have gained but little by the act which,
if it were formally allowed to be loyalty to the King, was likely to
be far more commonly looked on as treason to his immediate lord. When
he saw that his kinsman and master was condemned to life-long bonds,
he left England, and died in banishment, poor and hated of all
men.[165]
§ 3. _The Conquest and Revolt of Wales._
1093-1097.
[Sidenote: Relations with Wales.]
[Sidenote: Nature of the Welsh wars of Rufus.]
[Sidenote: Territorial advance and military ill-success.]
[Sidenote: Effect of the building of castles.]
These years, so rich in events in Scotland and on the English lands
nearest to the Scottish border, were at least equally rich in events
on the other border of the English kingdom, towards the lands which
were still held by the remnant of our British predecessors. Wars with
the Welsh may be looked for, as a matter of course, in every reign
during this period; but in the reign of William Rufus such wars form a
special feature, and the position which they hold is a little
singular. It is plain from the records of the time, it is still
plainer from the results, that this reign was a time of great and
lasting advance at the cost of the Britons. It was the time when large
parts of Wales were more or less fully brought under the authority of
the English crown. It is still more distinctly the time when Norman
adventurers, subjects of the English crown, carved out for themselves,
as its vassals, possessions and lordships within the British land. Yet
the first impression which we draw from the writers who record the
British warfare of this reign is that it was a time of ill success on
the English side, especially in those campaigns in which the King
himself took a part. The Chronicler records an expedition, and he
sends up a wail at its ill luck. Nothing came of it; horses and men
not a few were lost; the Welsh escaped to their moors and mountains
where no man might come at them. One chief is put to flight in a
battle, but the others go on doing mischief all the same.[166] The
same story comes almost every year; one would think that the warfare
of the Red King with the Welsh was a warfare than which none was ever
more bootless. And a historian who aspires to more of critical and
philosophical insight sums up the whole British warfare of the reign
as a distinct case of failure.[167] Yet it is clear from the result
that it was not so. And one passage in the Chronicle seems to give us
the key to the whole matter. “When the King saw that he could there
further nothing of his will, he came back into this land, and took
rede that he might let make castles on the borders.”[168] An
expedition which seemed mere failure, in which many men and horses
were lost, while the Welsh escaped to moors and mountains with hardly
any loss at all, was really successful in the long run, if it led to
the building of a border castle. The Britons fled unhurt to their
mountains; but while they lurked in the fastnesses where none might
come at them, the most valuable part of their land was taken from them
bit by bit. When they came down again from the mountains, they found a
castle built, they found so much land as the castle could protect
changed into a settlement of strangers. The lands might be harried;
the castle might at some favourable moment be broken down; but it was
sure to spring up again and again to do its work. The lasting
possession of the fertile land had passed away to the invaders; the
moors and mountains alone were left to the sons of the soil.
[Sidenote: Welsh campaigns of Harold and of William Rufus.]
[Sidenote: Use of horses.]
[Sidenote: Immediate defeat and lasting success.]
[Sidenote: Different objects of Harold and Rufus.]
The mention of these Welsh wars naturally carries us back to the
thought of the great Welsh campaign of a generation earlier. We see
how true, from one point of view, was the saying of the next century
that none since Harold had known how to deal with the Welsh as Harold
had known.[169] As a matter of military success, the failures of
William Rufus stand out in marked contrast to the victories of Harold.
The Red King had no pillars to set up to mark where he had overcome
the Briton in open fight.[170] A single word helps us to at least one
part of the cause. Harold, in his victorious campaign, must have
undergone some loss of men, but he underwent no loss of horses. He
found that the English tactics were not suited for British warfare,
and he made his housecarls turn themselves into light-armed
Welshmen.[171] But the Norman tactics were still less suited for
British warfare than the English. There were places in the moors and
mountains which the mailed housecarl might reach, if with difficulty,
but which the mounted knight could not reach at all. But William Rufus
does not seem to have suited his tactics to the country as Harold had
done; the mention of horses suggests that he repeated the old mistake
of Ralph the Timid in a worse shape.[172] As a matter of fighting
then, Rufus failed where Harold had succeeded; but as a matter of
enduring conquest, the failures of Rufus did more than the successes
of Harold. Harold indeed had no general schemes of Welsh conquest. He
overthrew the Welsh; but, except in the districts which were
definitely ceded to England,[173] he made no attempt to occupy Wales.
He gave back the land whose people he had overcome to princes of their
own blood, bound to him simply by their oath of homage.[174] But
wherever Rufus or his lords planted a castle, there was at once a
piece of Welsh soil occupied, and a centre made ready for occupying
more. The object of Harold in short was simply the defence of England;
the object of William Rufus was the conquest of Wales.
[Sidenote: Comparison of the conquest of Wales with the English and
Norman Conquests.]
[Sidenote: Geographical conditions of the conquest.]
[Sidenote: Extension of England by conquest and settlement.]
[Sidenote: Various elements in Wales.]
[Sidenote: The Flemings.]
[Sidenote: Endurance of the Welsh language.]
The conquest which now began, that which we may call either the
English or the Norman Conquest of Wales, differed widely both from the
English Conquest of Britain and from the Norman Conquest of England.
It wrought far less change than the landing at Ebbsfleet; it wrought
far more change than the landing at Pevensey. The Briton of those
lands which in the Red King’s day were still British was gradually
conquered; he was gradually brought 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 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. William Rufus did not ask the people
of Wales to receive him as their own lawful king; he did not give
himself out to all mankind as the true heir of Gruffydd the son of
Llywelyn, defrauded of his rights by perjured usurpers. Europe had
passed the stage at which a conquest of the earlier kind was possible;
and there was in this case no excuse or opportunity for a conquest of
the later kind. William Rufus was not a man to seek, like his father,
to justify his acts by legal fictions; nor had he the same room for
devising them as his father had. He had doubtless, with the crown of
the Old-English kings, inherited their claims to Imperial supremacy
over the whole island; he called himself “Monarch of Britain” no less
than the kings who had gone before him.[175] But that monarchy gave
him no claim to bring the lands of his subordinate princes under his
immediate rule. If an invasion of Wales needed any justification in
the eyes of William Rufus and his barons, that justification would
take the shape of reprisals. We may be sure that there was no moment
when the men on the border, either on the English or the Welsh side,
could not have brought some complaint against the other side which
might have been deemed to justify reprisals by a more scrupulous
prince than the Red King. But for men like the Norman adventurers of
his day it was enough that a land adjoining to the land which they had
made their own lay open to be conquered. Therein lay another great
difference between this conquest and either of the other two conquests
with which we have compared it, in the fact that the land to be won
lay adjoining to the land which was already won. The Angles and Saxons
wholly forsook their old homes beyond the sea, and, if the Normans in
England did not in the same way wholly forsake theirs, the sea at
least rolled between the old home and the new. But the Norman whose
lot was cast on the Welsh frontier of England had nothing to do but to
press on from the point where he already was. He had simply to add on
the next field to his own field, subject to such resistance as the
actual occupiers of the next field might be able to make. From this
geographical cause, while the Norman Conquest of England was in no
sense an extension of Normandy, the English or Norman Conquest of
Wales was in every sense an extension of England. The Normans in
England did not bring Normandy with them; they had from the very
beginning to put on more or less fully the character of Englishmen,
and to live according to English law. But the Norman who from England
went on into Wales had no thought of putting on the character of a
Welshman or of living according to Welsh law. Wherever he settled, he
most truly carried England with him, such as England had been made
through his own coming. But then for a long time he settled only here
and there in the British land. Where he did settle, the speech, the
laws, the national life, of the Briton passed away in such sort as the
speech, the laws, the national life, of the Englishman never at any
moment passed away from England. But alongside of these conquered
districts there long remained independent districts, where the natives
under their native princes still bade defiance to the invaders.
England had already an uniform aspect; it was the old England with
certain changes; its laws were the laws of King Eadward with the
amendments of King William. Wales, for a long while after the time
with which we are now dealing, was as far from uniformity as any land
east of the Hadriatic. Here was the castle of the Norman lord, with
his following, Norman, English, Flemish, anything but British. Here
was the newly-founded town, with its free burghers, again Norman,
English, Flemish, anything but British. Here again was a whole
district from which the Briton had passed away as thoroughly as he had
passed away from Kent or Norfolk, but which the Norman had not taken
into his own hands. He had found that it suited his purpose to leave
it in the hands of the hardy and industrious Fleming, the last wave of
Low-Dutch occupation in the isle of Britain. And alongside of all,
there was the still independent Briton, still keeping his moors and
mountains, still ready to pour down from them upon the richer lands
which had been his fathers’, but which had passed into the stranger’s
grasp. Those days have long passed away; for three centuries and more
Briton and Englishmen have been willing members of a common state,
willing subjects of a common sovereign. But the memory of those days
has not passed away; it abides in the most living of all witnesses.
England has for ages spoken a single tongue, her own ancient speech,
modified by the coming of the conquerors of eight hundred years ago.
But in Wales the speech of her conquerors, the speech of England, is
still only making its way, slowly and fitfully, against the abiding
resistance of that stubborn British tongue which has survived _three_
conquests.[176]
[Sidenote: Local nomenclature of Wales.]
[Sidenote: Contrast with that of England.]
[Sidenote: Teutonic and French names.]
[Sidenote: Places bearing two names.]
The results of this state of things, where so many contending elements
so long stood side by side, are still to be seen on the face of the
British land. The local nomenclature of Wales tells a wholly different
tale from that of England. In England the nomenclature is everywhere
essentially Teutonic; we might say that it is everywhere essentially
English; for the names given by the Danes form one class along with
those given by the Angles and Saxons, as opposed either to Celtic
survivals or to Romance intruders. Both these two last classes are in
England mere exceptions to the general law of Teutonic nomenclature.
But in Wales, while the great majority of the names are Celtic, the
Teutonic names are somewhat more than exceptions. In some districts,
as I have already said, they are the all but invariable rule. French
names, too, though not very common, are, I think, less rare than in
England. Nothing is more common than for a place to bear different
names, according as English or Welsh is spoken. And these names
sometimes translate one another, and sometimes do not. All this is
natural in a land where distinct and hostile races so long dwelled
side by side, each one a thorn in the side of the others. It marks a
kind of conquest different alike from the conquest where the conquered
vanish from the soil and from the conquest where they swallow up their
conquerors.
[Sidenote: The Welsh castles.]
[Sidenote: Lack of castles in England.]
[Sidenote: Houses in England.]
[Sidenote: Border castles.]
[Sidenote: The Welsh towns.]
There is again a visible feature, one so characteristic of the scenery
of Wales as to be all but a natural feature, which arises out of the
nature of the conquest with which we have now to deal. The traveller
who comes back, I will not say from the land of the Grey Leagues, but
from that nearer land of Maine with which our tale will soon have so
much to do, to one of the hilly districts of England, feels something
missing in the landscape, or in the memories called up by the
landscape. On the isolated hill, on the bluff which ends the long
ridge, he comes instinctively to look for the shattered castle or for
the lines which show that the castle once stood there. It is one of
the special signs of what English history has been, one of the signs
which should make us thankful that it has been what it has been, that
in England those bluffs, those island hills, on which the castle or
its traces can still be seen, are in truth few and far between. After
all that we hear of castles and castle-builders, the castle was, at
any moment of English history save the nineteen years of anarchy, a
rare thing in England compared to what it was in other lands. Save
where there was a town to protect or to keep in obedience, save where
there was some special post of military strength that needed to be
guarded, the lord of an English lordship, in whichever host his
forefather had fought on Senlac, found that a simple manor, sheltered
perhaps by some slight defence, served his purpose as well as the
threatening tower. On all the borderlands it was otherwise; the
pele-tower of the north is but the Norman keep on a miniature scale.
And, above all, Wales is, as every one 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 such
castles, meet us at every step. It was needful to strengthen every
height, to guard every pass, while the moors and mountains, the
Asturias or the Tzernagora of the Cymry, still remained unsubdued. The
castles are in truth the leading architectural features of the
country; the churches, mostly small and plain, might themselves, with
their fortified towers, almost count as castles. The towns, almost
always 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 sprang 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 how long warfare remained the daily business alike of the men of
that land and of the strangers who had made their way into it at the
sword’s point.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Advance before the accession of Rufus.]
[Sidenote: Robert of Rhuddlan.]
[Sidenote: Rhys ap Tewdwr.]
[Sidenote: Saint David’s robbed by pirates. 1091.]
We have seen that neither the days of Eadward nor the days of the
elder William were days of peace along the Welsh border. The English
frontier had advanced during both reigns. Rhuddlan,[177]
Montgomery,[178] Cardiff,[179] had become border fortresses of
England. An indefinite tract of North Wales was held by Robert of
Rhuddlan;[180] Radnor was an English possession;[181] the followers of
Earl Roger of Montgomery had harried as far as the peninsula of
Dyfed.[182] The whole land seems to have made some kind of submission
to William the Great at the time when he made his pilgrimage to Saint
David’s, and set free so many of his captive subjects.[183] But real
conquest does not seem to have gone very far beyond the border
fortresses, as within the _march_ of the Marquess of Rhuddlan it did
not go very far from the coast. In the days of the rebellion we have
seen that the hearts of the Cymry rose again, and that they again
ventured on offensive warfare with no small effect. They and their
Scandinavian allies had broken the power and taken away the life of
the man who had so long kept their northern tribes in awe. In that
work we have seen that Rhys ap Tewdwr, the King of Deheubarth, whose
dominions took in the greater part of South Wales, had a hand.[184]
Under him Cedivor seems to have been the vassal prince of Dyfed. The
reign of Cedivor ended in a time of misfortune, ominous of greater
misfortunes to come. The shrine of Saint David was robbed. The holy
bishop Sulien died, and presently his church and city, the holy place
of Saint David, were again sacked by the pagans of the isles.[185] Is
this simply a traditional way of speaking of Scandinavian invaders, or
were there still any wild wikings who avowedly clave to the faith of
Odin? Then Cedivor himself died, and his sons revolted against their
over-lord Rhys, but were again overthrown.[186] This was the year of
the Red King’s siege of Saint Michael’s Mount, the year of his journey
to the North; and one account hints that the movements in Wales as
well as in Scotland had a share in bringing him back from the
mainland.[187] But it is not till two years later that Welsh warfare
began to put on enough of importance for its details to be recorded by
English writers.
[Illustration:
Map illustrating the
WELSH WARS OF HENRY AND WILLIAM RUFUS.
_Edwᵈ. Weller_
_For the Delegates of the Clarendon Press._]
[Sidenote: Beginning of the Conquest of South Wales. 1093.]
[Sidenote: Legend of the conquest of Glamorgan.]
It seems to have been in the year of Anselm’s appointment, the year of
Malcolm’s death, that the conquest of South Wales began in earnest. It
seems now to have been for the first time taken up by the King as part
of the affairs of his kingdom. But the geography of the campaign shows
that a gradual advance must have already begun along the south coast.
Our public entries are concerned only with the land stretching nearly
due west, from the mountains of Brecknock and Abergavenny to the
Land’s End of Saint David’s. This leaves out the sea-land which, with
the bold curve of its coast, projects to the south, the land of
Morganwg or Glamorgan. Yet it may be taken as a matter of course that
this land was not left to be won later than inland Brecheiniog and far
distant Dyfed. The unlucky thing is that, while the conquest of
Brecheiniog and Dyfed is recorded in notices which, though meagre
enough, are fully trustworthy as far as they go, the conquest of
Morganwg, strangely left out in all authentic records, has become the
subject of an elaborate romance which has stepped into the empty place
of the missing history. The romance is, as usual, the invention of
pedigree-makers, working, after their manner, to exalt the glory and
increase the antiquity of this and that local family. This is perhaps
the meanest of the many forms of falsehood against which the historian
has to strive; but it is also one of the strongest and most abiding,
and one which is specially strong and abiding on the northern coast of
the Bristol Channel.[188]
[Sidenote: Story of Jestin and Einion.]
[Sidenote: Story of Robert Fitz-hamon and his knights.]
[Sidenote: Einion recalls Robert.]
[Sidenote: Division of Glamorgan.]
[Sidenote: Share kept by the children of Jestin.]
The legend pieces itself on to that point of the genuine history when
the sons of Cedivor were defeated by Rhys ap Tewdwr. A brother of
Cedivor, Einion by name, who had been in the service of either the
elder or the younger William, and had served the King in his
continental wars, now flees to another enemy of Rhys, Jestin son of
Gwrgan, described as prince of Gwent and Morganwg.[189] Jestin
promises his daughter to Einion with an ample estate, if he can obtain
help from England against the common enemy Rhys. This, it is supposed,
Einion’s friendship with the King and his knights will enable him to
do. Nor was Jestin’s hope disappointed. No less a man than Robert
Fitz-hamon hearkened to the invitation of Einion; he set out at the
head of a company of twelve knights and their followers to give help
to the prince of Morganwg. Their joint forces overcame Rhys in a
battle on the borders of Brecheiniog, and Rhys himself, flying from
the field, was taken and beheaded. His kinsmen and followers seem to
have been killed or dispersed, and we are told that Robert Fitz-hamon
and his companions, being well paid for their services by Jestin, went
away towards London. Then Einion demands his reward; but Jestin says
that he will not give either his daughter or his land to a traitor.
Then Einion persuades Robert and his companions to come back, and take
Jestin’s dominions for themselves. They are of course in no way
unwilling; and they are joined by some of Jestin’s Welsh enemies.
Jestin is driven out, and his land is partitioned. The rough mountain
land is assigned to Einion and his Welsh companions, and Einion also
marries Nest the daughter of Jestin. Robert Fitz-hamon and his twelve
knights divide the fertile vale of Glamorgan among them. Each man
establishes himself in a lordship and castle, and all do homage to
Robert as lord of Glamorgan, holding his chief seat in his castle of
Cardiff. But, while the traitor Einion obtains so sorry a portion, a
son of Jestin is admitted to a share in the rich vale, and is allowed
to hand on his lordship to his descendants. Another of the family, a
grandson of Jestin, Gruffydd son of Rhydderch, refuses to submit,
withstands the invaders in arms, contrives to defend Caerleon, and to
hand on to his son Caradoc a principality in Gwent, seemingly east of
the Usk.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Estimate of the story.]
[Sidenote: Elements of truth.]
[Sidenote: Settlement of Robert Fitz-hamon at Cardiff.]
[Sidenote: Legendary names in the list.]
[Sidenote: Question of Jestin’s descendants.]
Now how much of this story is to be believed? Jestin is a most shadowy
being, of whom personally nothing is recorded. But there is evidence
enough for the existence of his descendants, and for their retention
of an important lordship in Glamorgan.[190] This may make us inclined
to put some faith in the account of the transactions between Jestin,
Einion, and Robert Fitz-hamon. The general outline of the tale is
perfectly possible, except the very unlikely story that Robert or any
other Norman, when once standing in arms on British or any other
ground, simply marched out again after receiving a fair day’s wages
for a fair day’s work. That Robert Fitz-hamon did conquer Glamorgan
and establish himself at Cardiff cannot be doubted. The settlement of
some of his followers is equally historical; but the list of them as
given in the legend is untrustworthy, as containing names of families
which did not appear in the district till later. That the Normans were
invited by a Welsh prince to help him against his enemies, and that
they then took his lands to themselves, is quite possible, though the
story rests on no certain evidence. That the Norman invaders took the
valuable land, the fertile vale, to themselves, and left the rugged
mountains to the Britons, is doubtless a true description of the
general result, though it is not likely to have been caused by any
formal division. The only thing to suggest such a division is the
portion which was kept by the descendants of Jestin. But such an
anomaly as this last might be accounted for in various ways. The
defeat and death of Rhys in Brecheiniog is beyond doubt, and it is not
unlikely that Robert Fitz-hamon may have had a hand in it; but at all
events the date is utterly wrong.[191] The most unlikely part of the
story is that which describes a grandson of Jestin as founding a
principality in that part of Gwent which had already long been an
English possession. This story might almost seem to be a confusion
with an event of earlier times. We are tempted to think that the
Caradoc son of Gruffydd and grandson of Rhydderch, who now settles
himself in Gwent, is a mythical repetition of the Caradoc son of
Gruffydd and grandson of Rhydderch who destroyed King Eadward’s
hunting-seat at Portskewet.[192]
[Sidenote: Robert Fitz-hamon;]
[Sidenote: other notices of him.]
[Sidenote: He holds the lands of Brihtric.]
[Sidenote: He marries Earl Roger’s daughter.]
[Sidenote: Marriage of his daughter to Robert of Gloucester.]
[Sidenote: His works at Gloucester and Tewkesbury.]
[Sidenote: Grant of Welsh churches to English monasteries.]
[Sidenote: Conquest of Glamorgan.]
[Sidenote: Building of castles.]
Robert Fitz-hamon, conqueror of Glamorgan――for of his right to that
title there is no doubt――has his place in the history of this reign
and of the early years of the next. We have already heard of him as
one of the few faithful among the Normans in England at the time of
the great rebellion against the present King.[193] Son or grandson of
the famous rebel of Val-ès-dunes,[194] he had an elder brother of his
father’s name, who appears, with the title of _Dapifer_, among the
land-owners of eastern England.[195] He had himself, at one time in
the present reign, received those lands which had once been
Brihtric’s, which had then been Queen Matilda’s, and which had been
afterwards held or claimed by the Ætheling Henry.[196] These made him
great in the shires of Gloucester and Somerset, shires from which he
might look with a longing eye towards the lands beyond the Severn and
the Severn sea. To these, it appears, was added the honour of
Gloucester, or rather the lands of Brihtric were made into an honour
of Gloucester for his benefit.[197] He married a daughter of Earl
Roger, Sibyl by name,[198] and so had the privilege of being
brother-in-law to Robert of Bellême. His daughter Mabel, heiress of
her uncle as well as of her father,[199] became, as we have often had
occasion to notice, the wife of King Henry’s son Robert, with whom
Gloucester became an earldom. He founded the abbey of Tewkesbury, one
of the line of great religious houses along the Severn, where his work
may still be seen in the vast pillars and mysterious front of his
still surviving minster.[200] To the older abbey of Gloucester he was
a bountiful benefactor. And the nature of his gifts to these two
favoured houses would be almost enough of itself to enable us to set
down Robert Fitz-hamon as conqueror of Glamorgan. Gloucester and
Tewkesbury were enriched at the cost of the churches of Glamorgan,
proof enough that he who could thus enrich them had won great
possessions in Glamorgan. The holy places of the Briton, Llantwit and
Llancarfan, with a crowd of churches of lesser note, supplied the
conqueror with an easy means of being bountiful with no cost to
himself.[201] So again the mere fact that a man who held such a
position as that of Robert Fitz-hamon, one who, though not an earl,
ranked by possessions and connexions alongside of earls, plays so
small a part as he does in the recorded history of the reign, might
almost of itself suggest that he was busy on some enterprise of his
own, such as that which legend assigns to him. When the mound by the
swift and shallow Taff was crowned by the shell-keep of Cardiff, the
progress of invasion was not likely to tarry. The fertile lowlands
from the mouth of the Taff to the mouth of the Neath were a natural
accession to the lowlands of Gwent which were already won. They were
won; they were guarded by a crowd of castles. And the winning of the
land, the building of the castles, events about which the genuine
local history is strangely silent, were, there is not the slightest
reason to doubt, the work of Robert Fitz-hamon and of the men who
shared with him in that work.
[Sidenote: Distinction between Morganwg and Glamorgan.]
[Sidenote: Extent of Glamorgan.]
[Sidenote: Cardiff castle.]
[Sidenote: Bishopric of Llandaff.]
[Sidenote: William of London.]
[Sidenote: Kidwelly and Ogmore.]
[Sidenote: Richard Siward.]
[Sidenote: Pagan of Turberville at Coyty.]
[Sidenote: Aberafan held by the children of Jestin.]
In strict geographical accuracy the names _Morganwg_ and _Glamorgan_
do not answer to one another.[202] Morganwg in the wider sense is said
to have taken in a vast district from the Severn to the Towy, while
Glamorgan, said to be called from a prince named Morgan in the tenth
century, was less than the present county, taking in only the vale.
The distinction between the two was preserved in the style of the
lords of “Morgania and Glamorgania.” But the country with which we
have now to deal may be practically looked on as answering to the
present county, somewhat cut short to the west and somewhat lengthened
to the east. It takes in the present Monmouthshire between Usk and
Rhymny; it does not take in the peninsula of Gower. This last, with
the town of Swansea on its isthmus, still forms no part of the diocese
of Glamorgan or Llandaff; it marks its formerly distinct character by
still belonging to the diocese of Saint David’s. Within this district
Robert Fitz-hamon and his successors the Earls of Gloucester held a
position like that of the Earl of Chester or the Bishop of Durham.
Without bearing their lofty titles, the Lord of Glamorgan practically
held, like them, a vassal principality of the crown. Like the other
lords marchers, he held most of the powers of kingship within his
lordship, and the position of his lordship enabled him to carry out
those powers more thoroughly than most of his fellows.[203] The chief
seat of the lord was at Cardiff on the Taff, where the castle had
been, as we have seen, founded in the Conqueror’s day.[204] A little
higher up the river was the seat of the bishopric of Glamorgan at
Llandaff, with its church, most unlike Le Mans or Durham, nestling by
the river at the foot of the hill. Under the chief lord settled
several lesser lords, tenants-in-chief, we may almost venture to call
them, within Glamorgan, who founded castles and families, and under
whom the land was again divided among a crowd of smaller tenants. Some
of these lesser lords held within their own lordships powers almost
equal to those of the lord of Glamorgan himself. First perhaps among
them was the house founded by William of London, better known under
the French form of _Londres_.[205] The name suggests some thoughts.
Who was a William of London in the days of William Rufus? A Norman
doubtless, but hardly a Norman of any very lofty rank in his own land.
May we follow the analogy of the great bearer of the same name in the
next age, and see in him the son of a Rouen citizen settled in London
in the very first days of the Conquest, or even in the days of the
Confessor? The house of London spread beyond the bounds of Glamorgan;
their chief seat was at Kidwelly; but within the lordship of
Fitz-hamon the square keep of Ogmore and the fortified priory of
Ewenny, one of the most precious specimens of the Norman minster on
the smallest scale, still remain as memorials of their presence. But
the name of Siward――its first bearer appears in the legend as Richard
Siward――bespeaks English or Danish descent, and we are tempted to see
in the colonist of Glamorgan a son or grandson of Thurkill of
Warwick.[206] Pagan of Turberville held Coyty, married a Welsh
heiress, and became the founder of a house whose feelings became
British rather than Norman or English. Aberafan, the fortress at the
mouth of the Glamorgan Avon, remained in the hands of the descendants
of Jestin, the only native line which, like such Englishmen as
Thurkill, Eadward of Salisbury, Coleswegen and Ælfred of Lincoln,
abode on its own ground on equal terms with the conquerors. They alone
shared the fertile plain with the strangers; the rest of their
countrymen, even those who held acknowledged lands and lordships, were
confined to the barren hills.[207]
[Sidenote: The lords and their castles.]
[Sidenote: The South-Welsh churches.]
These few families have each something in their name and history which
entitles them to special notice. A few others were of really equal
eminence from the first, and the legend, to make up the full tale of
twelve peers, adds on several names of later date. These great lords,
and a crowd of smaller land-owners as well, built each man his castle;
in Glamorgan the peaceful manor-house, soon to become the rule in
England, seems to have been the reform of a much later day. The
castles with which we are to deal are of course for the most part
castles of the older and simpler type; it was not till long after the
times with which we are dealing that Caerphilly, with its mighty
gateway-towers, its princely hall, its lake wrought by the hand of
man, became the proudest of South-Welsh fortresses, the peer of
Caernarvon itself. Caerphilly lies indeed beyond our immediate range,
in the land still left to the natives, parted off by hills from
Cardiff and from the rich plain which the conquerors kept for
themselves. Not a few others of the famous castles of the district
belong to times far too late for us. From the castles the churches
also caught a military air, and kept it during the whole time of
mediæval architecture. The fortified towers of Glamorgan have the
military character less strongly marked than the towers of
Pembrokeshire; but it is marked quite strongly enough to strike the
English visitor as something altogether in harmony with the endless
traces of castles which meet him at every step. He sees at once that a
state of things which in England existed only during the first years
of the Conquest, or which more truly, unless during the nineteen years
of anarchy, never existed at all, went on in the half conquered
British land for ages.
[Sidenote: Saxon settlements in South-Wales.]
[Sidenote: The Flemings in Pembrokeshire.]
[Sidenote: Foundation of boroughs.]
The leaders in the settlement were of course mainly Norman. It has
been acutely remarked that they mostly came, as followers of Robert
Fitz-hamon most naturally would come, from the old lands of Brihtric
in Gloucestershire and Somerset. They doubtless brought with them an
English following, a strictly Saxon invasion of South Wales. Among the
Teutonic settlers in this district, it is not easy to distinguish the
Saxon from the Fleming. It must always be remembered that, while the
Flemish settlement in Pembrokeshire is matter of history, the Flemish
settlements in Gower and Glamorgan are merely matters of
inference.[208] The English and Flemish settlers were doubtless the
chief inhabitants of the boroughs which now began to arise under the
shadow of the castles. Cardiff, Kenfig, Aberafan, and Neath, arose on
the coast or on the rivers from which some of them took their names.
Cowbridge and Llantrissant lay in the inland part of the vale; the
last, a borough mainly British, was the only one which held at all a
commanding site among the hills. In later times these towns sank into
insignificance――Kenfig indeed well nigh perished under heaps of sand.
But some of them have in later times been called up to a new life by
the wonderful development of mineral wealth which has changed the
barren hills which were left to the Briton into one of the busiest
regions of our whole island.
[Sidenote: Ecclesiastical affairs.]
[Sidenote: Llandaff.]
[Sidenote: Ewenny.]
[Sidenote: Cistercian foundations.]
[Sidenote: Neath. 1130.]
[Sidenote: Margam. 1147.]
In ecclesiastical matters the conquest of this district was for awhile
chiefly marked, as has been mentioned, by the spoliation of the
ancient British foundations, to the behoof of the conqueror’s
favourite monasteries at Gloucester and Tewkesbury. The bishopric of
Llandaff or Glamorgan kept its place, though it never became, either
in the extent of its possessions or in the fabric of its church, at
all the peer of Saint David’s. Ewenny arose, if not in the very first
days of the conquest, yet within the first or second generation. The
Cistercian movement reached this district early. The abbey of Neath
arose in King Henry’s time, under the patronage of Earl Robert;[209]
and in the last year of his life, while the anarchy still raged, the
same earl, the most renowned of the lords of Glamorgan, found means to
found the more famous abbey of Margam.[210]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Conquest of Brecknock.]
[Sidenote: Bernard Newmarch.]
[Sidenote: The castle of Brecknock.]
[Sidenote: Bernard’s gifts to Battle Abbey.]
[Sidenote: His wife Nest.]
[Sidenote: Defeat and death of Rhys at Brecknock. 1093.]
[Sidenote: End of “the kingdom of the Britons.”]
[Sidenote: Effect of the death of Rhys.]
[Sidenote: Cadwgan harries Dyfed. April 30, 1093.]
[Sidenote: Norman conquest of Ceredigion and Dyfed. July 1, 1093.]
The conquest of Glamorgan thus stands out as an event which is
altogether unrecorded in authentic history, but of which it is not
hard to put together a picture from its results. Other parts of the
conquest of South Wales are more clearly entered in both British and
English annals. The mountain land of Brecheiniog must have been
occupied early in the reign of Rufus, if not earlier still. Its
conqueror, Bernard of Neufmarché, better known in the English form of
_Newmarch_, has already figured in our story;[211] and he was clearly
in possession when William Rufus lay sick and penitent at Gloucester.
His followers are then spoken of as the French who inhabited
Brecheiniog. By that time then the upper valley of the Usk, from
Abergavenny westward, must have been already subdued. The rich land of
the holy King Brychan, with his twenty-four sainted daughters――the
church where the worship of one of them turned the people of the land
into frenzies which offended the soberer devotion of the
Norman[212]――the rivers full of fish, the lake of marvels, the whole
pleasant valley cut off by its hills from the extremes of heat and
cold[213]――all had passed away from British rule. Bernard had
doubtless by this time reared on the hill of Aberhonwy at least some
rude forerunner of the castle of Brecknock, the fragments of which
still stand, facing the southern mountains, alongside of the massive
church of his own priory, the church which he made his far-off
offering to Saint Martin of the Place of Battle.[214] We know not
whether Bernard had by this time striven to confirm his power on
British soil by a marriage which connected him with the noblest blood,
alike British and English. His wife Nest united the blood of Gruffydd
with the blood of Ælfgar. We are not told the name or race of her
father;[215] but her mother was Nest the daughter of Gruffydd and
Ealdgyth, the stepdaughter of Harold, the half-sister of his twin
wanderers, the granddaughter of Ælfgar and his perhaps Norman
Ælfgifu.[216] Nest thus came on the spindle-side from Godgifu the
mirror of English matronhood; but the woman who shamelessly avowed to
King Henry that her son was not the son of her husband Bernard hardly
walked in the steps of her renowned ancestress.[217] During that
memorable Lent, while King William lay sick at Gloucester, the new
lord of Brecknock found it needful to gather his strength to withstand
an attack from the people whom he had despoiled. The Britons came
together under Rhys the son of Tewdwr, the king of whom we have often
heard, and who must have been at this time the most powerful prince of
South Wales.[218] He invaded the invaders; and in the very Easter
week, while matters were busy between William and Anselm on the one
hand, between William and Malcolm on the other hand, a battle took
place near Brecknock. There Rhys was killed, by the help, according to
the Glamorgan legend, of Robert Fitz-hamon. According to the same
legend, Rhys did not fall in open fight, but as a prisoner to whom
quarter was refused. Another account describes him as being slain by
the treachery of his own men. His death was marked as an epoch in the
history of Wales. With him, the native historian writes, fell the
kingdom of the Britons, a phrase which an English writer seems to have
misunderstood as meaning that after him no Welsh prince bore the
kingly title.[219] The overthrow of Rhys led to great movements in
other parts of South Wales. We can hardly doubt that, whether Robert
Fitz-hamon had a hand in the fight at Brecknock or not, his settlement
in Glamorgan was at any rate already begun. But the fall of Rhys laid
the lands to the south-west, the lands of Ceredigion and Dyfed, open
to invasion; and two sets of invaders were equally ready to make the
most of the chance which was now laid open to them. The British enemy
came first. Cadwgan son of Bleddyn, who had once before driven Rhys
from his throne,[220] seized the moment of his death to carry a
wasting inroad into Dyfed.[221] He was presently followed by invaders
who were to do something more than make a wasting inroad. “About the
kalends of July the French for the first time held Dyfed and
Ceredigion, and set castles in them, and thence occupied the whole
land.”[222]
[Sidenote: Pembrokeshire.]
[Sidenote: Tale of Rufus’ threats against Ireland.]
These words of the British annalist mark a most important stage in the
occupation of his country. The campaign of this summer completed the
conquest of South Wales, so far as a land could be said to be
conquered which was always revolting, and where native chiefs still
kept, sometimes by their own strength, sometimes by formal
acknowledgement, such parts of the land as the invaders could not or
did not care to occupy. But it was now that a land was planted with
castles which is still pre-eminently the land of castles; it was now
that a land was brought under the power of those who bore rule in
England which was itself to become a new England beyond the line of
the Briton. Ceredigion, the land of Cardigan, the vale of Teifi with
its still abiding beavers,[223] the sites of the castles of
Aberystwyth and Cilgerran, of the abbey of Strata Florida and the
priory of Saint Dogmael, were added to the dominion of the conquerors.
Thence they pressed on to the extreme south-western land, and added
Dyfed by a new name to the possessions of the English crown. A tale
has been told how the Red King himself made his way to the most
western point of all, to the headland of Saint David’s; there, from
the treeless rocks, he looked over the sea to the land beyond, which
may now and then be seen on a cloudless evening. Then he boasted that,
lord as he was of Britain, he would be lord of Ireland too, how he
would gather round that headland the fleets of his whole kingdom, and
would make of them a bridge by which he might pass over and win the
great island for himself. The tale goes on to tell how, when the
threatening words were brought to King Murtagh,[224] he asked whether
the King of the English had added to his threat the words, “If God
will?”[225] The Red King had not used the formula which he hated to
hear even from the lips of others,[226] and the Irish prince at once
answered that he did not fear the coming of one who meant to come only
in his own strength, and not in that of the Most High.[227]
[Sidenote: Estimate of the story.]
[Sidenote: Acquisition of Saint David’s.]
[Sidenote: Bishop Wilfrith.]
[Sidenote: Milford Haven.]
[Sidenote: The Pembrokeshire castles.]
The tale is eminently characteristic of William Rufus; yet it sounds
somewhat like an echo of the real visit and the real schemes of the
great William translated into the boastful language of his son. The
Conqueror did visit Saint David’s;[228] he did plan the conquest of
Ireland;[229] but it is not likely that he threw the expression of his
designs into such a shape as that which William Rufus would have been
likely enough to choose. The younger William may have made his way to
Saint David’s; but it is not easy to find a time for his coming,
either in this year or in any other. But, whether through his coming
or not, Saint David’s itself passed under the obedience of the
conquerors. We presently find its bishop, a bishop spoken of as a
Briton, but bearing the English name of Wilfrith, acting in their full
confidence.[230] But the holy place, deep in its hollow, was left to
be guarded by its own holiness. No castle of king or earl or sheriff
invaded its precincts; the home of its bishop did not, as at Llandaff,
take the form of a castle looking down upon the minster, but that of a
peaceful palace resting by its side. The conquerors pressed on,
through the land of Cemaes and Emlyn and by the hills of Preseleu,
till they reached the south-western land, the land of creeks and
peninsulas, where the tides of Ocean rise and fall beneath the walls
of far inland towns and fortresses. In those waters the wandering
wiking had seen the likeness of his own fiords, and he had left his
mark here and there on a _holm_, a _gard_, a _thorp_, a _ford_, some
of them bearing names which seem to go back to the gods of
Scandinavian heathendom.[231] The Norman won the land, to hand it over
in the next reign to the Flemish settlers, who rooted out whatever
traces of the Cymry Northmen and Normans had left. Two of the chief
towns, Pembroke and Tenby, kept their British names in corrupt
forms.[232] Milford and Haverford would seem to have been already
named by the Northmen. On every tempting point overlooking the inland
waters, sometimes on points overlooking the Ocean itself, castles
arose, some of which grew into the very stateliest of their own class.
Tenby, Haverfordwest――Manorbeer, birthplace of Giraldus[233]――Caerau,
connected with so many famous names of later date[234]――and a crowd of
castles of lesser note, witness the means by which the conquerors knew
how to hold down the land which they had won.
[Sidenote: Pembroke Castle.]
[Sidenote: Pembrokeshire buildings.]
[Sidenote: The castle begun by Arnulf of Montgomery.]
[Sidenote: Second building of Gerald of Windsor. 1105.]
[Sidenote: His wife Nest.]
At the head of all stands the great fortress which gave its name to a
town, a shire, and a long line of earls, and in our own time to a
great workshop of the naval strength of the land. _Pen bro_, the head
of the sealand, grew into Pembroke, with its vast castle rising on a
peninsula above two arms of the inland sea――with its stately hall
looking down on the waters――with the deep cave underneath its walls,
with the huge mass of the round tower――with the one hill-side covered
by the houses and churches of the town, the other crowned by the long
line of the priory of Monkton, with its stern square tower and its now
roofless choir. The character of military strength and simplicity,
which is stamped in a lesser measure on the churches and houses of
Glamorgan, comes out in all its fulness in the churches and houses of
Pembrokeshire. Of all this the days of which we are speaking saw the
beginnings, but only the beginnings. On the tongue of land between the
two creeks a fortress was raised by Arnulf of Montgomery, son of Roger
and Mabel, a man of whom we have already heard and shall hear again.
But his defences were as yet small and feeble as compared with what
was to follow; the first castle of Pembroke was a mere earthwork with
a palisade.[235] Arnulf placed his work under the care of a valiant
knight named Gerald of Windsor, who afterwards was the beginner of a
castle of greater strength on the same spot.[236] In after times he
married a wife of the noblest British blood, yet another Nest, the
daughter of Rhys son of Tewdwr, and grandchild through her mother of
that Rhiwallon who had received a kingdom at the hands of Harold.[237]
Before her marriage she was the mother of one of the sons of King
Henry, though assuredly not of the great Earl of Gloucester.[238] In
later days, through another marriage, she became the grandmother of
Giraldus Cambrensis.
[Sidenote: Hugh of Chester in Anglesey.]
[Sidenote: Castle of Aberlleiniog.]
[Sidenote: Advance of Earl Roger in Powys.]
[Sidenote: Castle of Rhyd-y-gors.]
The course of events in North Wales during these years is less easy to
mark with exact dates. But it is plain that the death of Robert of
Rhuddlan had been only a momentary triumph for the Cymry, and that it
had not given any real check to the Norman power. Earl Hugh of
Chester, strong on the border of the continental Britons, still held a
hand no less firm on their island kinsfolk. He even pressed on into
Anglesey, and there built a castle, most likely at Aberlleiniog on the
eastern coast of the island, a spot of which we shall have to speak
again more fully in recording a memorable day later in our story. Earl
Roger meanwhile, from his capital at Shrewsbury and his strong outpost
at his new British Montgomery,[239] pushed on his dominion into Powys.
The King at least approved, if he did not at this stage help in the
work; the castle of Rhyd-y-gors was built at the royal order by
William son of Baldwin.[240]
[Sidenote: Seeming conquest of Wales.]
[Sidenote: Gower and Caermarthen unsubdued.]
[Sidenote: 1093-1094.]
[Sidenote: Effects of William’s absence.]
[Sidenote: Revolt of the Welsh. 1094.]
The conquest of Wales was thus, to all appearance, nearly complete.
The two great earls were going on with their old work in the north,
while in the south the tide of conquest was advancing with such speed
as it had never advanced before. In the south-east Gwent and Morganwg
seemed to be firmly held, while in the south-west the torrent of
Norman invasion had rushed by a single burst from the hill of
Brecknock to the furthest coast of Dyfed. In the south at least the
only independent region left was that which lies between the conquest
of Robert Fitz-hamon and the conquest of Arnulf of Montgomery. Gower,
with its caves, its sands, its long ridge, where the name of Arthur
has made spoil of a monument of unrecorded times――with its Worm’s Head
looking out in defiance at the conquered land beyond the bay――the
whole range too of coast with its sandy estuaries, from the mouth by
Llwchr to the mouth by Laugharne――Kidwelly also, not yet crowned by
the gem of South-Welsh castles――Caermarthen and the whole vale of
Towy――were still unsubdued. Otherwise the Britons might truly say with
their chronicler that on the death of Rhys their kingdom passed away
from them. So things slept while Anselm received his archbishopric,
while Malcolm pressed on to die at Alnwick, while King William was
kept by the winds at Hastings. But when the king was beyond the sea,
when he and the great men of England were busy with Norman
affairs――when Argentan bowed to Robert and Philip and when the brother
of the conqueror of Pembroke was a prisoner[241]――when the great Earl,
the father of both of them, had died with the cowl on his head at
Shrewsbury――then the Britons deemed that the hour of deliverance was
come. The English Chronicler, though he does not at this stage help us
to the names of British men or of British places, paints the general
picture in his strongest colours; “The Welshmen gathered themselves
together, and on the French that were in Wales or the nighest parts
and had ere taken away their lands, they upheaved war, and castles
they broke and men they offslew, and as their host waxed, they
_todealed_ themselves into more. With some of those _deals_ fought
Hugh Earl of Shropshire and put them to flight. And none the less the
others all this year never left off from none evil that they might
do.”[242]
[Sidenote: Cadwgan son of Bleddyn.]
[Sidenote: Divisions of the Welsh.]
[Sidenote: General revolt of Wales.]
[Sidenote: Invasion of England.]
[Sidenote: Deliverance of Anglesey.]
[Sidenote: Aberlleiniog castle broken down.]
In this version the Norman or English champion stands clearly forth.
We see that Earl Hugh had sharp work upon his hands from the moment
that he stepped into his father’s earldom. The British writers give us
a clearer sight of the geographical extent of the movement, and they
help us to the name of its chief leader. This was Cadwgan son of
Bleddyn, whom we last heard of as harrying Dyfed, and who even now
seems at least as anxious to make Dyfed a land subject to Gwynedd as
to drive Normans, English, or Flemings, out of either. Thus the
Britons were, as ever, in the words of the Chronicler, _todealed_;
they were divided into local and dynastic parties. Yet, as he puts it,
even this division, if it did not give strength, at least delayed
subjection. If Earl Hugh or any other leader of a regular force was
able to overthrow one _deal_, another _deal_ was ready all the same to
do as much evil as before. But it was in Gwynedd and under Cadwgan
that the work began. The Britons could not bear the yoke of the
French; they rose, they broke down the castles, and, as men commonly
do in such cases, they did by the invaders as the invaders had done by
them. It is not very wonderful if, in their hour of victory, they
revenged the reavings and slaughters done on them by the French with
new reavings and slaughters done on the French themselves.[243] And,
as our Chronicler hints, it was not only on the French within Wales,
but on those also in the nighest parts that they rose. By this time
the whole land had risen; South-Welsh and West-Welsh――that is now no
longer the men of the peninsula of Cornwall, but the men of the
peninsula of Dyfed――were in arms no less than the men of Gwynedd.
Gruffydd and Cadwgan burst into the neighbouring shires, Cheshire,
Shropshire, and Herefordshire; they burned towns, carried off plunder,
and slew Frenchmen and Englishmen alike.[244] The Saxon, the old
enemy, had not become less an enemy, because he had, through his own
conquest, become an accomplice in the invasions of his conquerors.
Gwynedd was now free; the deliverers crossed into Anglesey; they broke
down the castle at Aberlleiniog or elsewhere, and put an end for a
while to the foreign dominion in the island.[245]
[Sidenote: Action of Cadwgan in Dyfed.]
[Sidenote: Pembroke holds out.]
The Britons now seemed to have altogether undone the work of the
invaders. It was now time for vigorous action on the other side. The
French――Hugh of Chester, Hugh of Shrewsbury, or any other――entered
Gwynedd with a regular force; but if one _deal_ was put to flight,
another, under Cadwgan himself, claims to have overcome the invaders
at Yspwys.[246] The path was now open for a march of the Britons to
the south. Late in the year a general attack was made on all the
castles throughout Ceredigion and Dyfed. Two only held out; Gerald of
Windsor successfully defended Pembroke; William the son of Baldwin
successfully defended Rhyd-y-gors.[247] But the warfare of Cadwgan was
waged in the interest of Gwynedd, not in that of Dyfed. By a harsh,
though possibly prudent policy, he enforced a migration somewhat in
the style of an Eastern despot. The men and the cattle of Ceredigion
and Dyfed――we must take so general a statement with those deductions
which the laws of possibility imply――were transported to the safer
region, and south-western Wales was made, so far as Cadwgan could make
it, a wilderness.[248] Gerald, in his castle among the creeks, was
left to lord it over whom he might find, and to feed himself and his
followers how he might, in the wasted land. As far as we can see,
Gwent, Morganwg, and Brecheiniog, remained in the hands of the
conquerors. The rest of the British land, from the isthmus of Gower to
the furthest point of Mona, was either free or a wilderness.
[Sidenote: Question of a winter campaign.]
[Sidenote: December 28,1094-January, 1095.]
[Sidenote: Conquest of Kidwelly, Gower, and Caermarthen.]
[Sidenote: 1099.]
[Sidenote: Swansea Castle.]
[Sidenote: The castles of Gower.]
[Sidenote: Alleged West-Saxon settlement of Gower.]
It is almost past belief that William Rufus could have found time for
a winter campaign against the Welsh in the few weeks, or rather days,
which passed between his return from Normandy at the end of December
and his interview with Anselm at Gillingham in the middle of
January.[249] But there was plenty of fighting in the course of the
year in Wales and elsewhere. The Britons seem to have kept their
independence in the newly liberated districts, while the Norman
conquerors of Glamorgan made a successful attack on the intermediate
lands which had not yet been subdued. “The French laid waste Gower,
Kidwelly, and the vale of Towy;” and we are further told that those
lands, as well as Dyfed and Ceredigion, remained waste.[250] But if
Normans laid waste, they did not simply lay waste, like the Welsh.
What they found it expedient to lay waste for a season they meant to
put in order some day for their own advantage. This was no doubt the
time when William of London established himself at Kidwelly, and made
the first beginnings of castle, church, borough, and haven.[251] It
was now too that the way was at least opened for the work of
colonization which made Gower a Teutonic land. According to an
authority to which we turn with a certain doubt, the actual settlement
dates from five years later. Castles were built, Abertawy or Swansea
guarding its own bay and the approach to the peninsula, Aberllwchr
guarding the sandy estuary between the peninsula and the opposite
coast to the north, Oystermouth, Penrice, Llanrhidian, on points
within the peninsula itself.[252] And in this version the settlement
is made, not by Flemings, according to the common tradition, but by
West-Saxons brought across the channel from Somerset.[253] It is
certain, as has been already said, that there is not the same
historical evidence for Flemings in Gower which there is for Flemings
in Pembrokeshire. But it is perhaps less important to fix the exact
origin of each Teutonic settlement along this coast than to insist on
the fact that, as compared with the native Cymry, any two branches of
the Nether-Dutch stock, whether Flemish or Saxon, came to very much
the same thing.
[Sidenote: Pagan of Turberville joins the Welsh.]
Along with this territorial advance on the part of the invaders, we
hear, from the same somewhat doubtful quarter, of a movement among the
invaders themselves which turned to the advantage of the natives. It
is characteristic of the outwardly legal nature of the Norman Conquest
of England that it gave no opportunity for a character not very rare
in less regular invasions, the invading chief who finds it to his
interest to separate himself from his own fellows and to place himself
at the head of those whom he has helped to subdue. In the conquests
both of Wales and of Ireland there was room for such a part to be
played, and the story sets before us one of the Norman conquerors of
Glamorgan as playing it with some effect. The lord of Coyty, Pagan of
Turberville, married to a wife of the house of Jestin, took the side
of his wife’s countrymen, and, we are told, went so far as to attack
Cardiff on their behalf. The result, it is said, was a confirmation of
the ancient laws of Wales on the part of the lord of Glamorgan. This,
it is added, led many to transfer their dwellings from the disturbed
parts of the country to the more settled lands under his rule.[254]
[Sidenote: North Wales keeps its independence.]
[Sidenote: Autumn, 1095.]
[Sidenote: The Welsh take Montgomery.]
[Sidenote: William’s invasion of Wales. Michaelmas, 1095.]
[Sidenote: He reaches Snowdon. November 1.]
[Sidenote: Ill-success of the campaign.]
Meanwhile in the northern parts of Wales the Britons still kept the
independence that they had won by the struggle of the last year. They
had got the better of the local powers on their own borders, and the
King, busied with the peaceful opposition of Anselm and the armed
opposition of Robert of Mowbray, had little time to spare from
councils and sieges within his kingdom. At last, towards autumn, while
the siege of Bamburgh was going on, after he had himself turned away
from it, and left the _Evil Neighbour_ to do its work, William heard a
piece of news from the British border which at once stirred him to
action. One of the great fortresses of the march had fallen. In vain
had Earl Roger made his nest on the rock to which he gave the name of
his own Norman home.[255] Montgomery, _Tre_ _Baldwin_, was in the
hands of the Britons, and all Earl Hugh’s men within it were
slain.[256] William was wroth at the tidings, and he at once called
out the _fyrd_ of his realm, so much of it as was not needed for the
lingering leaguer-work in Northumberland.[257] Soon after Michaelmas
he entered Wales at the head of his host. He divided it into parties,
and caused them to go thoroughly through the land. At last, by the
feast of All-hallows, the whole army met together by Snowdon. If
merely marching through a country could subdue it, William Rufus had
now done a good deal towards the conquest of Gwynedd. But William
Rufus was not Harold; the master of continental chivalry could not
bring himself to copy Harold’s homely tactics. While the royal army
scoured the dales, the Welsh betook them to the moors and mountains
where no man might come at them.[258] Harold had found out the way to
come at them; but the Red King knew it not. All that he could do was
to go homeward, when he saw that he there in the winter might do no
more.[259] The British annalists, with good right, rejoice as they
tell how God their people sheltered in the strong places of their
land, and how the King and his host went away empty, having taken
nothing.[260]
[Sidenote: 1096.]
[Sidenote: The Welsh gain Rhyd-y-gors. 1096.]
[Sidenote: Revolt of Gwent and Brecknock.]
[Sidenote: English feeling towards the war.]
[Sidenote: Vain attempt to recover Gwent.]
The next year saw the bloody Gemót at Salisbury; it saw Europe pour
forth its forces for the deliverance of Eastern Christendom; it saw
the Red King become master of the Norman duchy. Among such cares,
William had no time, perhaps he felt no strong call, for another Welsh
campaign, either in winter or summer. But the lords of the marches
could not be thus idle; with them the only choice was to invade or to
be invaded. The year seems to have begun with another gain on the part
of the Britons. William son of Baldwin, who had kept the castle of
Rhyd-y-gors safe through all perils up to this time, now died. His
spirit did not abide in his garrison; they left the castle empty, a
prey to the enemy.[261] The spirit of the Britons, even in the lands
which seemed most thoroughly subdued, now rose. Within the bounds of
the present Glamorgan the favourable composition of the last year
seems to have kept men quiet; but the lands to the east, parts of
which had been so long under English rule, were now encouraged to
strike another blow for independence. The natives were in arms along
the whole line of the Usk; Brecheiniog, Gwent, and Gwenllwg, the land
between Usk and Wye and the land between Usk and Rhymny, threw off, as
their own writers say, the yoke of the French.[262] The marchers had
now to act in earnest. Our own Chronicler says mournfully how “the
head men that this land held ofttimes sent the _fyrd_ into Wales, and
many men with that sorely harassed, and man there sped not, but
man-marring and fee-spilling.”[263] We see that the old duty of every
man to fight for the land when called on had come to awaken some of
the feelings which attach to a conscription. Men were, we may believe,
ready for a campaign in Normandy or Maine, where plunder was to be
had, and where there was most likely still some satisfaction felt in
fighting against French-speaking enemies, even under French-speaking
captains. To drive back Malcolm would come home to every man’s heart
as a national duty; to dispose of Malcolm’s crown under the leadership
of an English Ætheling might call up long-forgotten feelings of
national pride. But who could be tempted by the prospect of a march to
Snowdon, even in the fairest weather? What interest had the men of
perhaps far-off English shires in rivetting the dominion of a Norman
lord on the men of Brecknock or Pembroke? No doubt every Englishman
was ready to drive back the Briton from Shropshire and Herefordshire;
but it was an irksome and bootless work to go and attack him in his
own land, a land from which even conquerors could draw so little gain.
Even to win back Gwent, the conquest of Harold, was an enterprise
which would lead mainly to man-marring and fee-spilling. Into Gwent
however they were marched; but nothing was done; the land was not
subdued; the army was even attacked on its retreat, and after great
slaughter put to flight.[264] A second greater attempt came to nothing
more. The grandsons of Cadwgan, Gruffydd and Ivor, attacked this army
too on its return, and cut it also off at Aberllech.[265]
[Sidenote: Effects of the castle-building.]
[Sidenote: Pembroke castle holds out.]
[Sidenote: The Welsh attack Pembroke. 1096.]
[Sidenote: Resistance of Gerald of Windsor.]
[Sidenote: His devices.]
[Sidenote: His dealings with Bishop Wilfrith.]
[Sidenote: Offensive action of Gerald.]
[Sidenote: 1097.]