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MEDIAEVAL WALES
CHIEFLY IN THE TWELFTH
AND THIRTEENTH CENTURIES
Six Popular Lectures
BY
A. G. LITTLE, M.A., F.R.Hist.S.
PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF SOUTH WALES AND MONMOUTHSHIRE
AUTHOR OF "THE GREY FRIARS IN OXFORD," ETC.
WITH MAPS AND PLANS
LONDON
T. FISHER UNWIN
PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1902
[_All rights reserved._]
PREFACE
This volume contains the substance of a course of popular Lectures
delivered at Cardiff in 1901. The work does not claim in any way to
be an original contribution to knowledge, and is published on the
recommendation of some friends in whose literary judgment I have
confidence. In a popular book of this kind I have not thought it
necessary to give detailed references to authorities, but a list of
a few of the books which I used in the preparation of the Lectures,
and which are likely to be interesting to readers of Welsh history,
may be useful. Among mediaeval works I may mention the two Welsh
chronicles--the Annales Cambriae and the Brut y Tywysogion, both
published in the Rolls Series; Geoffrey of Monmouth's "History of
the Kings of Britain" (translated in Bohn's "Six Old English
Chronicles"); Giraldus Cambrensis, "The Itinerary and Description of
Wales" (translated in Bohn's library); the prefaces, especially those
by Brewer, in the Rolls Series edition of Giraldus, will be found
interesting. Of the English chroniclers, Ordericus Vitalis, Roger of
Wendover, and Matthew Paris are perhaps the most valuable for the
history of Wales and the Marches during the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries. Among modern books, the reader may be referred to Rhys and
Jones, "The Welsh People"; Freeman, "William Rufus"; Thomas Stephens,
"Literature of the Kymry"; Henry Owen, "Gerald the Welshman"; Clark,
"Mediaeval Military Architecture," and "The Land of Morgan"; Newell,
"History of the Welsh Church"; Tout, "Edward I."; and the "Dictionary
of National Biography." Since these Lectures were delivered at least
three books on Welsh history have appeared which deserve mention: Mr.
Bradley's "Owen Glyndwr," with a summary of earlier Welsh history;
Mr. Owen Edwards's charmingly written volume in the Story of the
Nations Series; and Mr. Morris's valuable work on "The Welsh Wars of
Edward I."
The maps are taken from large wall maps which I used when lecturing.
In drawing up the map of Wales and the Marches at the beginning of the
thirteenth century, I had the assistance of my friend and former
pupil, Mr. Morgan Jones, M.A., of Ferndale, who generously placed at
my disposal the results of his researches into the history of the
Welsh Marches.
A. G. LITTLE.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. INTRODUCTORY 1
II. GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH 27
III. GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS 51
IV. CASTLES 77
V. RELIGIOUS HOUSES 99
VI. LLYWELYN AP GRUFFYDD AND THE BARONS' WAR 125
MAPS AND PLANS
PAGE
WALES AND THE MARCHES, c. A.D. 1200-1210 2
CASTLES AND RELIGIOUS HOUSES 78
CARDIFF AND CAERPHILLY CASTLES 88
[Illustration: WALES & THE MARCHES, c. A.D. 1200-1210.]
I
INTRODUCTORY
In the following lectures no attempt will be made to give a systematic
account of a political development, which is the ordinary theme of
history. History is "past politics" in the wide sense of the word. It
has to do with the growth and decay of states and institutions, and
their relations to each other. The history of Wales in the Middle
Ages, viewed from the political standpoint, is a failure; its interest
is negative; and in this introductory lecture I intend to discuss "the
failure of the nation" (to use the words of Professor Rhys and Mr.
Brynmor Jones) "to effect any stable and lasting political
combination." Wales failed to produce or develope political
institutions of an enduring character--failed to become a state. Its
history does not possess the unity nor the kind of interest which the
history of England possesses, and which makes the study of English
history so peculiarly instructive to the student of politics. In
English history we study primarily the growth of the principle of
Representative Government, which we can trace for centuries through a
long series of authoritative records. That is the great gift of
England to the world. Not only has Wales entered on this inheritance;
it helped to create it. It was Llywelyn ap Iorwerth who began the
revolt against John which led to the Great Charter, and the clauses of
the Great Charter itself show that it was the joint work of English
and Welsh. Wales again exerted a decisive influence on the Barons'
War--the troubles in which the House of Commons first emerged. And
Wales--half of it for more than six hundred years--half of it for
nearly four hundred--has lived under the public law and administrative
system which the Norman and Angevin kings of England built up on
Anglo-Saxon foundations. This public law and this administrative
system have become part and parcel of the life and history of Wales.
The constitutional history of England is one of the elements which go
to make up the complex history of Wales.
The history of Wales, taken by itself, is constitutionally weak; and
its interest is social or personal, archaeological, artistic,
literary--anything but political. And the fact--which is
indisputable--that Wales failed to establish any permanent or united
political system needs explanation.
The ultimate explanation will perhaps be found in the geography of the
country. The mountains have done much to preserve the independence and
the language of Wales, but they have kept her people disunited; and
the Welsh needed a long drilling under institutions, which could only
grow up in a land less divided by nature, before they could develope
their political genius.
Wales, owing largely to its geography, had the misfortune never to be
conquered at one fell swoop by an alien race of conquerors. Such a
conquest may not at first sight strike one as a blessing, but it is,
if it takes place when a people is in an early, fluid, and
impressionable stage, as may be seen from a comparison of countries
which have undergone it with countries which have not--a comparison,
for instance, of England with Ireland or Germany. Perhaps the nearest
parallel in the history of Wales to the Norman Conquest of England is
the conquest of Wales by Cunedda, the founder of the Cymric kingdom,
in the dark and troublous times which followed the withdrawal of the
Roman troops from Britain. But though an invader and a conqueror,
Cunedda was not an alien; he spoke the same language as the people he
conquered and belonged to the same race to which the most important
part of them belonged. And this militated against his chances of
becoming a founder of Welsh unity. A race of conquerors distinct from
the conquered in blood and language and civilisation, must hold
together for a time; they form an official governing class, enforcing
the same principles of government, and establishing a uniform
administration throughout the country. And the uniform pressure reacts
on the conquered, turning them from a loose group of tribes into a
nation. This is what the Norman Conquest did for England. But if the
conquerors are of the same race and language as the conquered, they
readily mix with them; instead of holding together they identify
themselves with local jealousies and tribal aspirations. This happened
again and again in Germany. A Saxon emperor sends a Saxon to govern
Bavaria as its duke and hold it loyal to the central government; the
Saxon duke almost instantaneously becomes a Bavarian--the champion of
tribal independence against the central government; and so the Germans
remained a loose group of tribes and states--a divided people. This
illustration suggests one of the reasons why Cunedda's conquest failed
to unite Wales.
Again the custom of sharing landed property among all the sons tended
to prevent the growth of Welsh unity. Socially it appears far more
just and reasonable than the custom of primogeniture. It is with the
growth of feudalism (already apparent in the Welsh laws of the tenth
century) that its political dangers become evident. The essence of
feudalism is the confusion of political power and landed property; the
ruler is lord of the land, the landlord is the ruler. If landed
property is divided, political power is divided. When the Lord Rhys
died in 1197 leaving four sons, Deheubarth had four rulers and formed
four states instead of one; and civil war ensued.
The unity of Welsh history is not to be found in the growth of a state
or a political system. But may we regard the history of Wales as a
long and heroic struggle inspired by the idea of nationality? A
caution is necessary here. It is one of the besetting sins of
historians to read the ideas of the present into the past; and to the
general public historical study is dull unless they can do so. It is
very difficult to avoid doing so; it needs a severe training, a long
immersion in the past, and a steady passion for truth above all
things. In no case perhaps is this warning so necessary as in matters
involving the idea of nationality. This is characteristic of the
present age, but it has not been characteristic of any other to
anything like the same extent. We live in an atmosphere of
nationality; we have seen it create the German Empire and the kingdom
of Italy, and the Welsh University; we see it now labouring to break
up the Austrian Empire, and perhaps changing the unchanging East. But
the whole history of Europe shows that it is an idea of slow and
comparatively late growth. The first appearance of nationality as a
conscious principle of political action is found in England--and
possibly in France--at the beginning of the thirteenth century, and in
Wales about the same time; in the other countries of Europe much
later. And it was very rarely till the very end of the eighteenth
century that it became a dominant factor in politics. Of course our
ancestors always hated a foreigner--but they did not love their
fellow-countrymen. The one thing a man hated more than being driven
out of house and home by a foreign invader, was being driven out by
his next-door neighbour; and, as his neighbour was more likely to do
it, and when he did it, to stay, he hated his neighbour most. A
certain degree of order and settled government was necessary before
the national idea could become effective.
In mediaeval Wales it never succeeded in uniting the people; the petty
patriotism of the family stood in the way of the larger patriotism of
the nation; local rivalries and jealousies were always stronger than
the sense of national unity. The attempt of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth to
create a National Council, like the Great Council of England, died
with him. In the final struggle with Edward I., when for a few months
the idea of Welsh unity was nearest realisation in action, the men of
Glamorgan fought on the winning side. Read the "Brut y Tywysogion" and
consider how far the actions there related can have been inspired by
the feeling of nationality. Here is the account in the "Brut" of what
was happening in Wales in 1200 and the following years, the period
represented by our map.
"1200. One thousand and two hundred was the year of
Christ when Gruffudd, son of Cynan, son of Owain, died,
after taking upon him the religious habit, at
Aberconway,--the man who was known by all in the isle of
Britain for the extent of his gifts, and his kindness
and goodness; and no wonder, for as long as the men who
are now shall live, they will remember his renown, and
his praise and his deeds. In that year, Maelgwn, son of
Rhys, sold Aberteivi, the key of all Wales, for a
trifling value, to the English, for fear of and out of
hatred to his brother Gruffudd. The same year, Madog,
son of Gruffudd Maelor, founded the monastery of
Llanegwestl, near the old cross, in Yale.
"1201. The ensuing year, Llywelyn, son of Iorwerth,
subdued the cantrev of Lleyn, having expelled Maredudd,
son of Cynan, on account of his treachery. That year on
the eve of Whitsunday, the monks of Strata Florida came
to the new church; which had been erected of splendid
workmanship. A little while afterwards, about the feast
of St. Peter and St. Paul, Maredudd, son of Rhys, an
extremely courteous young man, the terror of his
enemies, the love of his friends, being like a lightning
of fire between armed hosts, the hope of the South Wales
men, the dread of England, the honour of the cities, and
the ornament of the world, was slain at Carnwyllon; and
Gruffudd, his brother, took possession of his castle at
Llanymddyvri. And the cantrev, in which it was situated,
was taken possession of by Gruffudd, his brother. And
immediately afterwards, on the feast of St. James the
Apostle, Gruffudd, son of Rhys, died at Strata Florida,
having taken upon him the religious habit; and there he
was buried. That year there was an earthquake at
Jerusalem.
"1202. The ensuing year, Maredudd, son of Cynan, was
expelled from Meirionydd, by Howel, son of Gruffudd, his
nephew, son of his brother, and was despoiled of
everything but his horse. That year the eighth day after
the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul, the Welsh fought
against the castle of Gwerthrynion, which was the
property of Roger Mortimer, and compelled the garrison
to deliver up the castle, before the end of a fortnight,
and they burned it to the ground. That year about the
first feast of St. Mary in the autumn, Llywelyn, son of
Iorwerth, raised an army from Powys, to bring Gwenwynwyn
under his subjection, and to possess the country. For
though Gwenwynwyn was near to him as to kindred, he was
a foe to him as to deeds. And on his march he called to
him all the other princes, who were related to him, to
combine in making war together against Gwenwynwyn. And
when Elise, son of Madog, son of Maredudd, became
acquainted therewith, he refused to combine in the
presence of all; and with all his energy he endeavoured
to bring about a peace with Gwenwynwyn. And therefore,
after the clergy and the religious had concluded a peace
between Gwenwynwyn and Llywelyn, the territory of Elise,
son of Madog, his uncle, was taken from him. And
ultimately there was given him for maintenance, in
charity, the castle of Crogen, with seven small
townships. And thus, after conquering the castle of
Bala, Llywelyn returned back happily. That year about
the feast of St. Michael, the family of young Rhys, son
of Gruffudd, son of the lord Rhys, obtained possession
of the castle of Llanymddyvri."
One may almost say that Wales is Wales to-day in spite of her
political history. Wales owes far more to her poets and men of letters
than to her princes and their politics.
Giraldus Cambrensis laid his finger on the spot, when he said: "Happy
would Wales be if it had one prince, and that a good one." A necessary
preliminary to the union of Welshmen was the wiping out of all
independent Welsh princes except one. Till that happened local feeling
would always remain stronger than national feeling; the disintegrating
forces of family feuds and personal ambitions and clannish loyalty
would always outweigh the sense of national unity.
The Lords of the Marches were slowly doing this for Wales; they were
wiping out all the independent Welsh princes except one. We may see
the process going on in the accompanying map, which gives the chief
political divisions of Wales at the beginning of the thirteenth
century, and we will turn for a few minutes to consider the fortunes
of some of these petty states and the manner of the men who ruled
them.
The great Palatine Earldom of Chester, a kingdom within the kingdom,
was ruled before 1100 by Hugh the Wolf, of Avranches, who conquered
for a time the north coast of Wales. In Anglesey he built a castle,
and kennelled the hounds he loved so well in a church, to find them
all mad the next morning. The stories of his savage mutilation of his
Welsh prisoners show that he merited the name of "the Wolf." Yet he
was the friend of the holy Anselm, and died a monk. The struggle
between Chester and Gwynedd for the possession of the Four Cantreds,
the lands between the Conway and the Dee, was almost perpetual during
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the fortune of war
continually changing. With the extinction of the old line of the Earls
of Chester (1237) and the grant of the earldom to Prince Edward
(1254), a new era opened for Wales.
Further south, in the Middle March, along the upper valleys of the
Severn and the Wye, the great power of the Mortimers was growing. They
had already stretched out a long arm to grasp Gwerthrynion. But the
greatest expansion of their power came later, under Roger Mortimer,
grandson of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, friend of Edward I. in the wild days
of his youth, persistent foe of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd; and soon the
Mortimer lands embraced all Mid-Wales and reached the sea, and a
Mortimer was strong enough to depose and murder a king and rule
England as paramour of the queen. Savage as the Mortimers were, they
were mild compared with one of their predecessors. Robert Count of
Bellesme and Ponthieu, the great castle builder of his time, became
Earl of Shrewsbury and Arundel in 1098. Men had heard tales of his
ferocity on the Continent--how he starved his prisoners to death
rather than hold them to ransom; how, when besieging a castle, he
threw in the horses to fill up the moat, and when these were not
enough he gave orders to seize the villeins and throw them in, that
his battering rams might go forward on a writhing mass of living human
bodies. These tales seemed incredible in England, but the men of the
Middle March believed them when they were "flayed alive by the iron
claws" of the devil of Bellesme. In his rebellion against Henry I. the
princes of Gwynedd supported him, till their army was bought over by
the lying promises of the king; but the day when the Earl of
Shrewsbury surrendered to King Henry and the whole force of England
was a day of deliverance alike to England and to Wales.
We next come to the group of lordships held about this time by William
de Braose, lord of Bramber in Sussex. They stretched from Radnor to
Gower, from the Monnow to the Llwchwr, and included the castles of
Builth, Brecon, Abergavenny. But he held these lands by different
titles, and they were never welded together. William de Braose began
his public career by calling the princes of Gwent to a conference at
Abergavenny, and massacring them. He was on intimate terms with King
John, who gave Prince Arthur into his keeping; but this was a piece of
work which even De Braose recoiled from, and he refused to burden his
soul with Arthur's murder. A few years later John suddenly turned
against him, and demanded his sons as hostages. His wife, Maud de St.
Valerie, who lived long in the popular memory as a witch, sent back
the answer: she would not entrust her children to a man who had
murdered his nephew. The king chased Braose from his lands, caught his
wife and eldest son, and starved them to death in Windsor Castle. The
Braose family continued to hold Gower, but the rest of their
possessions passed to other houses--Brecon to the Bohuns of Hereford,
Elvael to Mortimer, Abergavenny to Hastings, Builth first to Mortimer
and then to the Crown.
Glamorgan, during our period, was attached to the earldom of
Gloucester. From Fitzhamon the Conqueror it passed, through his
daughter, to Robert of Gloucester, and early in the thirteenth
century to the great house of Clare, Earls of Gloucester and Hertford,
who held the balance between parties in the Barons' War. With the
organisation of Glamorgan and with its great rulers we shall deal
later. At the time represented by our map, it was in the hands of King
John, who obtained it by marriage. John divorced his wife in 1200, but
managed to keep her inheritance till nearly the end of his reign; and
Fawkes de Breaute, the most infamous of his mercenary captains, lorded
it in Cardiff Castle.
Further west, between the Llwchwr and the Towy, lay the lordship of
Kidweli, held by the De Londres family, who had accompanied Fitzhamon
in the conquest of Glamorgan, and were lords of Ogmore and founders of
Ewenny. One episode in the history of this family may be
mentioned--the battle in the Vale of Towy in 1136, when Gwenllian, the
heroic wife of Rhys ap Gruffydd, led her husband's forces against
Maurice and De Londres, and was defeated and slain by the Lord of
Kidweli. Her death was soon avenged by the slaughter of the Normans
at Cardigan. The present castle of Kidweli dates from the later
thirteenth century, before the war of 1277, after the lordship had
passed to the Chaworths.
In the extreme west, in Dyfed, the land of fiords, Arnulf of
Montgomery had early founded the Norman power, but he was involved in
the fall of his brother, Robert of Bellesme, and Henry I. tried to
form the land into an English shire, and planted a colony of Flemings
in "Little England beyond Wales." But it was too far off for the royal
power to be effectively exercised there, and the Earldom of Pembroke
was granted to a branch of the De Clares, who had already conquered
Ceredigion, and built castles at Cardigan and Aberystwyth. The De
Clares also held Chepstow and lands in Lower Gwent. The Earldom itself
was smaller than the present shire of Pembroke, and William Marshall,
who succeeded the De Clares through his marriage with the daughter of
Richard Strongbow (1189), owed his commanding position in English
history of the thirteenth century far more to his personal qualities,
his courage and wisdom and patriotism, than to his territorial
possessions.
It was by driving the De Clares out of Ceredigion in Stephen's reign
that Rhys ap Gruffydd laid the foundation of his power, and raised
Deheubarth to be the foremost of the native principalities. The Lord
Rhys was clever and farseeing enough to win the confidence of Henry
II., and received from him the title of Justiciar--or King's
Deputy--in South Wales. As long as Owain Gwynedd lived the unusual
spectacle was seen of a prince of South Wales and a prince of North
Wales working harmoniously together. But after Owain's death (1170)
Rhys fought with his successors over the possession of Merioneth,
while Owain Cyfeiliog, the poet-prince of Powys, did all he could to
thwart him. In 1197 the death of Rhys, "the head and the shield and
the strength of the South and of all Wales," and the civil wars among
his sons, opened his principality again to the encroachment of foes on
all sides, and removed one danger from Powys. Powys, however, was
being steadily squeezed by the pressure of Gwynedd on one side, and
the growing power of Mortimer on the other, and its princes resorted
to a shifty diplomacy and a general adherence--open or secret as
circumstances dictated--to the English Crown, till they sank at length
into the position of petty feudatories of the English king.
The Prince of Gwynedd alone upheld the standard of Welsh nationality,
the dragon of Welsh independence; only in Gwynedd and its dependencies
did the Welsh public law prevail over feudal custom. And what was the
result? Exactly what Giraldus Cambrensis had foreseen and longed for.
The eyes of Welshmen everywhere began to turn to the Lord of Eryri,
the one hope of Wales. It was an alluring--an inspiring prospect,
which opened before the princes of Gwynedd--to head a national
movement, drive out the foreigners, and unite all Wales under their
sway. Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, at the end of his long reign, deliberately
rejected the dream. That is the meaning of his emphatic declaration
of fidelity and submission to Henry III. in 1237. "Llywelyn, Prince of
Wales, by special messengers sent word to the king that, as his time
of life required that he should thenceforth abandon all strife and
tumult of war, and should for the future enjoy peace, he had
determined to place himself and his possessions under the authority
and protection of him, the English king, and would hold his lands from
him in all fealty and friendship, and enter into an indissoluble
treaty; and if the king should go on any expedition he would, to the
best of his power, as his liege subject, promote it, by assisting him
with troops, arms, horses, and money." Llywelyn the Great refused to
dispute the suzerainty of England. This may appear pusillanimous to
the enthusiastic patriot, but subsequent events proved the old
statesman's wisdom and clearsightedness. His successors were less
cautious, were carried away by the patriotism round them and the syren
voices of the bards. And to Llywelyn ap Gruffydd the prospect was even
more tempting than to Llywelyn ap Iorwerth. The Barons' War weakened
the power of England, and the necessities of Simon de Montfort led
him to enter into an alliance with Llywelyn. The expansion of Gwynedd
was great and rapid. Llywelyn's rule extended as far south as Merthyr,
and made itself felt on the shores of Carmarthen Bay. The Earl of
Gloucester found it necessary to build Caerphilly Castle to uphold his
influence in Glamorgan. But it was just the expansion of Llywelyn's
power which forced Edward I. to overthrow him once for all. "We hold
it better"--so ran Edward's proclamation in 1282--"that, for the
common weal, we and the inhabitants of our land should be wearied by
labours and expenses this once, although the burden seem heavy, in
order to destroy their wickedness altogether, than that we should in
future times, as so often in the past, be tormented by rebellions of
this kind at their good pleasure."
The "Principality" now became shire land--under English laws and
English administration. The rest of Wales remained divided up into
Marcher Lordships for another two hundred and fifty years, under
feudal laws--a continual source of disturbance and scene of disorder.
These were the lands in which the King's Writ did not run, where (to
summarise the description in the Statute of 1536) "murders and
house-burnings, robberies and riots are committed with impunity, and
felons are received, and escape from justice by going from one
lordship to another."
Yet the Marcher Lords did something for Welsh civilisation in their
earlier centuries. Guided by enlightened self-interest, they often
founded towns, granting considerable privileges to them in order to
attract burgesses--such as low rents, and freedom from arbitrary
fines. Fairs, too, were established and protected by the Lords
Marchers. The early lords of Glamorgan seem to have been specially
successful in this respect; in the twelfth century immigrants from
other parts of Wales are said to have come to reside in Glamorgan,
owing to the privileges and comparative security which were to be
found there. Nor perhaps has it been sufficiently recognised how soon
the Lords of the Marches began drilling their Welsh subjects in
Anglo-Norman methods of local self-government. Most of the greater
Marcher Lords possessed estates in England; not a few of them, such as
William de Braose, served as sheriffs in English shires; some, such as
John de Hastings, were judges in the royal courts. They introduced
into Wales methods of government which they learnt in England, and
institutions with a great future before them, like the Franco-Roman
"inquest by sworn recognitors," from which trial by jury was
developed, were soon acclimatised in the Marches of Wales.
II
GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH
When Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote, Norman influence in Wales was at its
height. In the old days we used to begin English history with William
the Conqueror; since Freeman wrote his five thick volumes and
proved--not that the Norman Conquest was unimportant--but that it did
not involve a breach of continuity, a new start in national life, the
pendulum has swung too much the other way, and the tendency of late
years has been to underestimate the importance of the Norman Conquest.
The Norman wherever he went brought little that was new; he was but a
Norseman--a Viking--with a French polish. He had no law of his own; he
had forgotten his own language, he had no literature. But he had the
old Norse energy; which not only drove him or his ancestors to settle
and conquer in lands so distant and diverse as Russia and Sicily,
Syria and North America, but enabled him to infuse new life into the
countries he conquered. Further, he still retained that adaptability
and power of assimilation which is characteristic of peoples in a
primitive stage of civilisation. With a wonderful instinct he fastened
on to the most characteristic and strongest features of the different
nations he was brought in contact with, developed them, gave them
permanent form, and often a world-wide importance.
The Norman conquerors were not always fortunate in their selection.
Ireland has little to thank them for. The most striking characteristic
which they found in Ireland was anarchy, and they brought it to a high
pitch of perfection. To quote Sir J. Davies's luminous discourse on
Ireland, in 1612: "Finding the Irish exactions to be more profitable
than the English rents and services, and loving the Irish tyranny
which was tied to no rules of law and honour better than a just and
lawful seigniory, they did reject the English law and government,
received the Irish laws and customs, took Irish surnames, as
MacWilliam, MacFeris, refused to come to Parliaments, and scorned to
obey those English knights who were sent to command and govern this
kingdom."
One extortionate Irish custom, called "coigny," they specially
affected, of which it was said "that though it were first invented in
hell, yet if it had been used and practised there as it hath been in
Ireland, it had long since destroyed the very kingdom of Beelzebub."
England and Wales were more fortunate. In England--while the old
English literature was crushed out by the heel of the oppressor, the
Norman instinct seized on the latent possibilities of the old English
political institutions, welded them into a great system, developed out
of them representative government, and created a united nation.
In Wales, the Normans paid little or no heed to Welsh laws and
political institutions; the law of the Marches was the feudal law of
France, the charters of liberties of the towns were imported from
Normandy; the Welsh Marches and border shires were the most thoroughly
Normanised part of the whole kingdom. But with a fine instinct for the
really great things, in Wales the Normans seized on the literary
side--the poetic traditions of the people--giving them permanent form,
adding to them, making them for ever part of the intellectual heritage
of the whole world.
It may very likely be a mere accident that the earliest Welsh
manuscripts date from the twelfth-century--Norman times; it may also
imply an increased literary productiveness. It may be due to
accidental causes that the first accounts of Eisteddfodau extant date
from the twelfth century; it may also be that the institution excited
new interest, received new attention and honour, under the influence
of the open-minded and keen-sighted invaders. Take, for instance, the
account of the great Eisteddfod in 1176, from the Brut y Tywysogion:
"The lord Rhys held a grand festival at the castle of Aberteivi,
wherein he appointed two sorts of competitions--one between the bards
and poets, and the other between harpers, fiddlers, pipers, and
various performers of instrumental music; and he assigned two chairs
for the victors in the competitions; and these he enriched with vast
gifts. A young man of his own court, son to Cibon the fiddler,
obtained the victory in instrumental music, and the men of Gwynedd
obtained the victory in vocal song; and all the other minstrels
obtained from the lord Rhys as much as they asked for, so that there
was no one excluded." An Eisteddfod where every one obtained prizes,
and every one was satisfied, suggests the enthusiasm natural to a new
revival. It was now--when Wales was brought in contact with the great
world through the Normans--that modern Welsh poetry had its beginning.
The new intellectual impetus is clearly illustrated by the change
which takes place in the Welsh chronicles about 1100. Before that time
they are generally thin and dreary: they suddenly become full, lively,
and romantic. Wales was not exceptional in this renaissance; something
of the same sort occurred in most parts of Europe; and the
renaissance is no doubt to be connected with the Crusade, the reform
of the Church, in a word, with the Hildebrandine movement, and so
ultimately with the Burgundian monastery of Clugny. But it was the
Normans who brought this new life to England and Wales; the Normans
were the hands and feet of the great Hildebrandine movement of which
the Clugniac popes were the head.
Among the Norman magnates who encouraged the intellectual movement in
Wales--one stands out pre-eminent--Robert Earl of Gloucester and Lord
of Glamorgan, a splendid combination of statesman, soldier, patron of
letters. Robert was a natural son of Henry I.--born before 1100--there
is no evidence that his mother was the beautiful and famous Nest,
daughter of Rhys ap Tudor. He acquired the Lordship of Glamorgan
together with the Honour of Gloucester and other lands in England and
Normandy, by marriage with Mabel, daughter and heiress of Fitzhamon,
conqueror of Glamorgan. An account of the wooing is preserved in old
rhymed chronicle: the king conducts negotiations; the lady remarks
that it was not herself but her possessions he was after--and she
would prefer to marry a man who had a surname. The account is not
historical, as surnames had not come in: in the early twelfth century
the lady would have expressed her meaning differently. However, there
is evidence that she was a good wife: William of Malmesbury says, "She
was a noble and excellent woman, devoted to her husband, and blest
with a numerous and beautiful family." Robert was a great builder of
castles; Bristol and Cardiff Castles were his work, and many others in
Glamorgan; he organised Glamorgan, giving it the constitution of an
English shire--with Cardiff Castle as centre and meeting-place. After
Henry I.'s death, he was the most important man in England, and was
the only prominent man who played an honourable part in the civil wars
which are known as the reign of Stephen; he died in 1147. His
relations with the Welsh appear to have been good; large bodies of
Welsh troops fought under him at the battle of Lincoln, 1141--he was
probably the first Norman lord of Glamorgan who could thus rely on
their loyalty. And it is significant that in the earliest inquisitions
extant for Glamorgan--or inquests by sworn recognitors--Welshmen were
freely employed in the work of local government.
Robert of Gloucester was a magnificent patron of letters; to his age
Giraldus Cambrensis looked back with longing regret as to the good old
times in which learning was recognised and received its due reward. To
Robert of Gloucester, William of Malmesbury, the greatest historian of
the time, dedicated his history, attributing to him the magnanimity of
his grandfather the Conqueror, the generosity of his uncle, the wisdom
of his father, Henry I. He was the founder of Margam Abbey, whose
chronicle is one of the authorities for Welsh history; Tewkesbury,
another abbey whose chronicle is preserved, counted him among its
chief benefactors; Robert de Monte, Abbot of Mont St. Michel, the
Breton and lover of Breton legends, was a native of his Norman estates
at Torigny, and wrote a valuable history of his times. Among the
brilliant circle of men of letters who frequented his court at
Gloucester and Bristol and Cardiff were Caradoc of Llancarven, whose
chronicle (if he ever wrote one) has been lost, and greatest of all
Geoffrey of Monmouth.
Geoffrey dedicated his History of the Kings of Britain to Robert: "To
you, therefore, Robert Earl of Gloucester, this work humbly sues for
the favour of being so corrected by your advice that it may be
considered not the poor offspring of Geoffrey of Monmouth, but, when
polished by your refined wit and judgment, the production of him who
had Henry, the glorious King of England, for his father, and whom we
see an accomplished scholar and philosopher, as well as a brave
soldier and tried commander."
Not very much is known about Geoffrey. The so-called "Gwentian Brut,"
attributed to Caradoc of Llancarven, on which his biographers have
relied for a few details of his life, is very untrustworthy, and,
according to the late Mr. Thomas Stephens, was written about the
middle of the sixteenth century, though containing earlier matter.
The sixteenth century was a great age for historical forgeries. We
find a Franciscan interpolating passages in a Greek manuscript of the
New Testament in order to refute Erasmus; a learned Oxonian forging a
passage in the manuscript of Asser's "Life of Alfred" to prove that
Alfred founded the University of Oxford; and Welsh genealogies
invented by the dozen and the yard--reaching back to "son of Adam, son
of God." The "Gwentian Brut" or "Book of Aberpergwm" is in doubtful
company. The following seem to be the facts known about Geoffrey. In
1129 he was at Oxford, in company with Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford
(not Walter Mapes). His father's name was Arthur; and he was connected
with the Welsh lords of Caerleon. He calls himself "of Monmouth,"
either as being born there, or as having a connection with the
Benedictine monastery at Monmouth, which was founded by a Breton, and
kept up connections with Brittany and Anjou. He may have been
archdeacon--but not of Monmouth. The first version of his history was
finished in or before April, 1139, and the final edition of the
History was completed by 1147. In his later years he resided at
Llandaff. He was ordained priest in February, 1152, and consecrated
bishop of St. Asaph in the same month. In 1153 he was one of the
witnesses to the compact between King Stephen and Henry of Anjou,
which ended the civil wars. He died at Llandaff in 1153.
We will now turn to consider the sources of his History of the Kings
of Britain. Geoffrey says: "In the course of many and various studies
I happened to light on the history of the Kings of Britain, and
wondered that, in the account which Gildas and Bede, in their elegant
treatises, had given of them, I found nothing said of those kings who
lived here before Christ, nor of Arthur, and many others; though their
actions were celebrated by many people in a pleasant manner, and by
heart, as if they had been written. Whilst I was thinking of these
things, Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, a man learned in foreign
histories, offered me a very ancient book in the Britannic tongue,
which, in a continued regular story and elegant style, related the
actions of them all, from Brutus down to Cadwallader. At his request,
therefore, I undertook the translation of that book into Latin." At
the end of his history he adds: "I leave the history of the later
kings of Wales to Caradoc of Llancarven, my contemporary, as I do also
the kings of the Saxons to William of Malmesbury and Henry of
Huntingdon. But I advise them to be silent concerning the kings of the
Britons, since they have not that book written in the Britannic
tongue, which Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, brought out of Britannia."
There has been a good deal of controversy as to whether this very
ancient book was in Welsh or Breton, but the first question is, Did it
ever exist? Was Geoffrey a translator, or an inventor, or a collector
of oral traditions current in Wales or Brittany during his time?
There can be little doubt that the conclusion of Thomas Stephens, in
the "Literature of the Kymry," is correct--that "Geoffrey was less a
translator than an original author." It is very doubtful whether the
Britannic book ever existed, whether it was not a mere ruse, such as
was often resorted to by mediaeval romancers, and is still a favourite
method with modern historical novelists--to give their works an
appearance of genuineness. It has been argued against this, that in
that case, Archdeacon Walter must have been a party to the
fraud--which is incredible. Such an argument implies a large ignorance
of the archdeacons of the twelfth century--when it was a question
solemnly discussed among the learned--whether an archdeacon could
possibly be saved. It would be well if there were nothing worse to
bring against them than such an innocent fraud on the public as this.
But the strongest argument against the existence of the Britannic book
is (not that it is not extant now, but) that the historians of the
next generation never saw it. Geoffrey's History at once created a
tremendous stir in the literary world--nor was it accepted on
trust--but received with suspicion and incredulity. Thus William of
Newburgh, in the latter part of the twelfth century, calls Geoffrey
roundly, "a saucy and shameless liar." William, of course, did not
know Welsh, and could not have made anything out of the Britannic
book, even if he had seen it. This objection does not apply to
Giraldus Cambrensis; his knowledge of Welsh was indeed slight--but he
had plenty of Welsh-speaking relatives and friends, and he was himself
a collector of manuscripts. Gerald refers to "the lying statements of
Geoffrey's fabulous history," and implies in a much-quoted passage
that he regarded Geoffrey's history as a pack of lies. Speaking of a
Welshman at Caerleon who had dealings with evil spirits, and was
enabled by their assistance to foretell future events, he goes on: "He
knew when any one told a lie in his presence, for he saw the devil
dancing on the tongue of the liar. If the evil spirits oppressed him
too much, the Gospel of St. John was placed on his bosom, when like
birds they immediately vanished; but when the Gospel was removed, and
the History of the Britons by Geoffrey Arthur was substituted in its
place, the devils instantly came back in greater numbers, and remained
a longer time than usual on his body and on the book." Geoffrey may
very probably have used some Britannic manuscript, but it could not
have been very ancient; and he certainly did not translate it, but
used it as he used Gildas and Bede and Nennius--sometimes quoting
their statements, more generally amplifying them almost beyond
recognition.
Was Geoffrey merely an inventor? Sometimes--undoubtedly. The long
strings of names of purely fictitious princes whom the Roman Consul
summoned to fight against King Arthur, at a time when in sober history
Justinian was Roman Emperor, are invented by Geoffrey. And consider
too his parodies of the practice of historians of referring to
contemporary events: an instance of the genuine article is given in
Gerald's Itinerary. "In 1188, Urban III. being pope, Frederick,
Emperor of the Romans, Isaac, Emperor of Constantinople, Philip, King
of France," &c., &c. Now take Geoffrey's parodies: "At this time,
Samuel the prophet governed in Judaea, AEneas was living, and Homer was
esteemed a famous orator and poet." Or again: "At the building of
Shaftesbury an eagle spoke while the wall of the town was being built:
and indeed I should have transmitted the speech to posterity, had I
thought it true, like the rest of the history. At this time Haggai,
Amos, Joel, and Azariah were prophets of Israel." One may be quite
sure that passages like these are not derived from the writings of the
ancients, or from oral traditions. One can in some cases trace back
his statements and see how much he added to his predecessors. A good
instance is his account of the conversion of the Britons under King
Lucius, in Bk. IV., cap. 19 and 20, and V., cap. 1 (A.D. 161).
Geoffrey's account is circumstantial: King Lucius sent to the Pope
asking for instruction in the Christian religion. The Pope sent two
teachers (whose names are given), who almost extinguished paganism
over the whole island, dedicated the heathen temples to the true God,
and substituted three archbishops for the three heathen archflamens
at London, York, and Caerleon-on-Usk, and twenty-eight bishops for the
twenty-eight heathen flamens. Now all this is based on a short passage
in Bede: "Lucius King of the Britains sent to the Pope asking that he
might be made a Christian; he soon obtained his desire, and the
Britons kept the faith pure till the Diocletian persecution," which
itself is amplified from an entry in the _Liber Pontificalis_: "Lucius
King of the Britains sent to the Pope asking that he might be made a
Christian." This last does not occur in the early version of the
_Liber Pontificalis_, and is irreconcilable with the history and
position of the papacy in the second century; but is a forgery,
inserted at the end of the seventh century by the Romanising party in
the Welsh Church--the party desiring to bring the Welsh Church into
communion with the Roman, and so interested in proving that British
Christianity came direct from the Pope; and all the talk about the
archflamens and archbishops, &c., is pure invention. Notice too what
an important part the places with which Geoffrey is specially
connected play in his history: Caerleon is the seat of an
archbishopric and favourite residence of Arthur; Oxford is frequently
mentioned though it did not exist until the end of the ninth century;
the Consul of Gloucester (predecessor of Geoffrey's patron, Robert,
Consul of Gloucester) makes the decisive move in Arthur's battle with
the Romans.
A parallel case is Geoffrey's account of Brutus and the descent of the
Britons from the Trojans. The tradition is found in Nennius, and
perhaps dates from the classical revival at the court of Charlemagne.
It is clearly not a popular tradition, but an artificial tradition of
the learned; but whilst Geoffrey did not invent the legend, he
invented all the details--letters and speeches, and hairbreadth
escapes and tales of love and war.
Probably his detailed accounts of King Arthur's European
conquests--extending over nearly all Western Europe, from Iceland and
Norway to Gaul and Italy--are still more the work of Geoffrey's
inventive genius, though it is possible they may rest on early Celtic
myths about the voyage of Arthur to Hades, as Professor Rhys suggests,
or on late Breton traditions which mixed up Arthur with Charles the
Great.