arrivals, lost in time their nationality and their language, and
became as thoroughly Anglo-Saxon as the most fervent Salopian or the
most stolid Wiltshireman. They remain so, in a great measure, to this
very day. Intermixture with the Celtic and Welsh-speaking part of the
county has been rare. The isolated position of further Pembrokeshire
makes this anomaly still more peculiar, cut off as it is from England
by nearly a hundred miles of Welsh territory, and more particularly
when the fact is remembered that for centuries there has been no
religious or political friction to keep these two communities of a
remote countryside apart. Somewhat parallel conditions in Derry or
Donegal, though of much more recent origin, are far more explicable
owing to the civil strife and religious hatred which are or have been
rife there. Even so the mixture of Scotch-Irish Protestants with
Celtic Catholics has, I fancy, been much greater in Ireland than that
of the Anglo-Fleming Protestants of further Pembroke and of Gower
with their Welsh neighbours of the same faith "beyond the Rubicon" in
the same counties.
These conquests may, however, be regarded as constituting for some
time the extent of solid Norman occupation. The story of Wales is one
long tale of continuous attempts by Norman barons on the territory of
the Welsh Princes, varied by the serious invasions of English Kings,
which were undertaken either directly or indirectly on behalf of their
Norman-Welsh vassals. Upon the whole but slow headway was made.
Anglo-Norman successes and acquisitions were frequently wiped out, for
the time at any rate, by the unconquerable tenacity of the Welsh
people, while every now and again some great warrior arose who rolled
the whole tide of alien conquest, save always further Pembroke, back
again pell-mell across the border, and restored Wales, panting,
harried, and bloody, to the limits within which William the Norman
found it.
[Sidenote: 1156.]
[Sidenote: Henry II. and Owen Gwynedd.]
One of these heroic leaders was Owen ap Griffith, Prince of Gwynedd,
who arose in the time of Henry II. of England. Not only did he clear
North Wales of Normans, but he so ruthlessly harried Cheshire and the
Marches, and so frightened the Prince of Powys that the latter joined
the Norman-Welsh nobles in a petition to the King of England begging
him to come up in all haste with a strong force to their aid. Henry,
under whom England was rapidly recovering strength and cohesion, now
essayed that profitless and thorny path of Welsh invasion, which his
predecessors, Norman and Saxon, had so often trodden, and his
successors were so often and so vainly to tread.
[Sidenote: Henry II. defeated by Owen Gwynedd.]
[Sidenote: Rhys ap Griffith.]
[Sidenote: Henry II. again in Wales, 1166.]
[Sidenote: Battle of Crogen.]
[Sidenote: Henry returns to England.]
He marched with a large army to Chester and, being there joined by the
Prince of Powys and the Norman-Welsh barons, encamped on Saltney
Marsh. Owen with the forces of North Wales had come out to meet him as
far as Basingwerk, and as the vanguard of the royal army advanced
against the Welsh through the wooded defile of Coed Eulo the sons of
Owen fell suddenly upon it, and with great slaughter rolled it back
upon the main force. The King, then taking the seashore route, made
head for Rhuddlan at the mouth of the Clwyd. But near Flint, in
another narrow pass, he met with even a worse disaster. For here his
vanguard was again attacked, many of his knights and nobles slain, his
standard overthrown, and he himself in danger of his life. Eventually
he reached Rhuddlan, garrisoned it, came to terms with Owen, and went
home again. But there were two fierce and uncontrollable Princes now
in Wales: Owen himself, "Eryr Eryrod Eryri"--the "Eagle of the Eagles
of Snowdon"--and Rhys ap Griffith, the scarcely less warlike ruler of
South Wales. The period was one of continuous conflict in Wales and on
the border, and it ended in something like a national movement against
all the centres of Norman power, both royal and baronial, that were
sprinkled over the country. This was in 1165, and Henry, vowing
vengeance, advanced once more to the Welsh border. He had learnt
wisdom, however, in his former campaign, and moved cautiously to
Rhuddlan in order to make a preliminary investigation of the state of
affairs. It was evident that nothing but a great effort would be of
any avail; so returning to England he gathered a large army and sat
down at Chester. In the meantime Owen Gwynedd as suzerain or Pendragon
of Wales, with Rhys, Prince of Deheubarth, and even the two Princes of
vacillating Powysland, which had recently been split in half, and in
fact with the whole strength of the Cymry, raised the dragon standard
at Corwen on the Dee. The two armies met eventually upon the banks of
the Ceiriog, just beneath the hill where the Castle of Chirk, then
called Crogen,[3] now lifts its storied towers. The slopes of the
Welsh mountains, even to Snowdon itself, were in those days sprinkled
freely, if not thickly clad, with timber, and a feature of this
expedition was some two thousand woodcutters employed to open the
country for Henry's army and secure it against those ambuscades in
which the Welsh were so terribly proficient. But Owen Gwynedd came
down from the Berwyns this time to meet his foe and, as I have said, a
long and fierce battle was waged in the deep valley of the Ceiriog.
The Welsh were in the end forced to retreat, and recrossing the Berwyn
they took post again at Corwen, and, as tradition has it, on the lofty
British camp at Caer Drewyn on the north bank of the Dee. Henry
followed and sat down with his army on the high ridge of the
Berwyn, above Pen-y-pigin, the river flowing through what was then no
doubt a swampy valley between the two positions. It was the old story,
a wearisome enough one in the long strife between England and Wales.
Henry dared not advance in the face of the difficult country before
him and the Welshmen's superiority in hill and woodland fighting.
Moreover his provisions had run out, and to make matters worse the
weather broke up, so there was nothing to be done but to march his
great army home again. The Welsh Princes now attacked and destroyed
many of the King's castles in the North, and on the border recovered
Flint or Tegengle, which Henry had nominally annexed, and in the South
sorely pressed the Norman barons in Glamorgan, Brecon, and Gwent. But
the old madness of greed and jealousy which in Welsh Princes seemed
inseparable from success, now took possession of Rhys and Owen; they
turned on their late allies of Powys, fickle ones, no doubt, and
divided their inheritance between them.
[3] This was a Welsh fortress on or near the site of the present
castle, whose origin will be spoken of in another chapter.
[Illustration: CORWEN AND PEN-Y-PIGIN, FROM THE DEE.
Copyright
W. Davis.]
[Sidenote: Howel ap Owen Gwynedd.]
As for Owen Gwynedd, we must leave him and his deeds to the fame
which, wherever Welshmen congregate, endures for ever, and pass on to
a brief mention of his son Howel, who has earned immortality in a
curiously different field. Amid the passions and storms of that fierce
age in Wales, it is strange enough, not to find a poet-Prince, but to
find one singing in such strains as did Howel ap Owen Gwynedd. Warlike
ballads are readily conceivable in such an atmosphere as that in
which Howel lived, and of war and hunting he wrote. But he also wrote
sonnets, many of which are extant, to the yellow bloom of the furze,
the blossoms of the apple tree, the laugh of his bright-eyed sister,
to fields of tender trefoil, and to nightingales singing in privet
groves. He shared the fate of so many Welsh Princes and fell by the
dagger, the assassins being his half-brothers. Both he and his famous
father were buried in Bangor Cathedral.
It may be well to point out that one of the causes of this chronic
strife between the Welsh Princes, besides the prevalent custom of
gavelkind, was that of fostering out the children of the royal houses;
for when the inevitable struggle for the succession ensued, each
claimant was backed up and vigorously assisted by the whole interest
of the family in which he had been reared.
[Sidenote: Madoc ap Owen Gwynedd.]
[Sidenote: Madoc's colony in Mexico, 1169.]
To another son of Owen Gwynedd belongs a tale, notable in Welsh
tradition at any rate, if not in serious history. Madoc, who had for
his portion the country lying round the western base of Snowdon, found
the struggle for the possession of it perhaps too wearisome, for he
manned a small fleet and sailed out over the western seas for many
months till he discovered a strange country, good in all things for
the habitation of man. From this venture, so the legend runs, Madoc
returned, and, collecting a following of three hundred men in North
Wales, again safely crossed the Atlantic and there founded, in what is
supposed to have been Mexico,[4] a colony of Welshmen, from whom
sprang the royal dynasty of Montezuma.
[4] If this were merely a fairy tale it would certainly be out of
place here; but as regards the Welsh colony it has been considered
not wholly unworthy of the attention of some serious ethnologists.
It may further be remarked, without comment, that a comparatively
modern and (in the vulgar sense) popular short history of Wales
treats the whole story as authentic fact without even a suggestion
of any legendary attributes! There we will leave it.
[Sidenote: Dafydd ap Owen Gwynedd, 1170.]
Dafydd, the usurping half-brother and murderer of the poet-Prince
Howel, had better luck than he deserved. King Henry, now bent on
making friends with the Welsh, particularly the North Welsh as being
the most formidable and homogeneous, gave him in marriage his sister
Emma and with her the rich barony of Ellesmere. Troops from South
Wales were already helping Henry in Ireland, and now Dafydd with a
large force of his own people crossed to Normandy to fight the battles
of his royal brother-in-law in that country. It is characteristic of
Welsh politics that while Dafydd was in France, the only one of his
brothers whom he had not killed or imprisoned took occasion to seize
Anglesey and the four Cantrefs that now make Carnarvonshire.
[Sidenote: Giraldus Cambrensis.]
Norman manners and customs seem about this time to have considerably
infected the Welsh aristocracy. That celebrated ecclesiastic and
author, Giraldus Cambrensis, comes upon the scene at this close of the
twelfth century, and has much to tell us out of the fulness of his
knowledge of Wales. He was of illustrious birth, half Welsh, half
Norman, and Archdeacon of Hereford, though his mere office by no means
suggests his importance, much less the importance he attributed to
himself. It is his entertaining descriptions of the Welsh life he knew
so well that have immortalised him, and his mixed blood would seem to
have endowed him with the impartiality which he professes. He was
violently opposed among other things to the encroachments of the
Norman Church in Wales; for the Pope, as I have stated, had now become
recognised as omnipotent, and Canterbury as the source of all
authority. Giraldus strove hard to get St. David's created an
Archbishopric, and to persuade the Pope to send thither his pallium,
the symbol of consecration. Though it is true he was himself burning
to be installed at St. David's, Giraldus probably reflected the
popular opinion of contemporary Welshmen in favour of recovering the
old independence of the Welsh Church. The Crusades were now at their
zenith, and Archbishop Baldwin undertook at this time his famous
progress through Wales on behalf of the holy cause. Giraldus
accompanied him as chaplain, interpreter, and friend on this
protracted tour, and, happily for us, as special reporter too. The
Archbishop's exhortations caused some passing enthusiasm throughout
the country, though the practical results do not seem to have been
considerable. Some say that Baldwin's main object was to hold high
mass in St. David's Cathedral, and so put the coping-stone, as it
were, on the annexation of the Welsh Church.
As regards the Crusades the Welsh in the Middle Ages do not seem to
have been great rovers or much given to doing business on great
waters; always, of course, excepting Madoc ap Owen Gwynedd, the
discoverer of America!
[Sidenote: Giraldus on the Welsh people.]
"These people," says Giraldus, alluding to the Welsh, "are
light and active, hardy rather than strong, and entirely bred
up to the use of arms; for not only the nobles, but all the
people are trained to war, and when the trumpet sounds the
husbandman rushes as eagerly from his plough as the courtier
from his Court. They live more on flesh, milk and cheese than
bread, pay little attention to commerce, shipping, or
manufacture, and devote their leisure to the chase and martial
exercises. They earnestly study the defence of their country,
and their liberty. For these they fight, for these they
undergo hardships, and for these willingly sacrifice their
lives. They esteem it a disgrace to die in bed, an honour to
die on the field of battle."
"Their arms and their coats of mail," he goes on to tell us,
"are light, so also are their helmets, and shields, and
greaves plated with iron. The higher class go to war on swift
and well-bred steeds, but are ready at a moment's notice,
should the nature of the ground require it, to fight on foot
as do the mass of their people. In times of peace the young
men by wandering in the dense forests and scaling the summits
of the highest mountains inure themselves to the hardships of
war when the necessity arrives."
They were addicted neither to gluttony nor drunkenness, and could
readily go for two days without food, eating in any case but twice a
day. They could lie out, moreover, all night in rain and storm, if an
enemy had to be watched, or an ambush to be laid. There were whole
bands of the better-born young men whose sole profession was arms, and
to whom free quarters were given upon all occasions. The Welsh among
other things were a clean-shaven race, reserving only their
moustaches, and keeping the hair of their head short. The teeth of
both sexes too were a special matter of pride. On this account they
even abstained from hot meats, and rubbed their teeth constantly with
green hazel till they shone like ivory. "They have powerful
understandings, being much quicker at their studies than other Western
nations, ready in speech and confident in expressing themselves, even
to the lowest class." Their love of high birth and long pedigrees was
then as now conspicuous, and the tribal system though rapidly
modifying under Saxon and Norman influences encouraged them to think
much of their ancestors, and to be quick in avenging insults to their
blood. This custom, indeed, was carried to such lengths, that the
Welshman's tendency to family quarrels, coupled with his sensitiveness
for the family honour, was neatly satirised by an old proverb which
affirmed that he "loved his brother better dead than alive."
[Sidenote: Giraldus on Welsh warfare.]
Giraldus, who may be regarded as a well-informed neutral in the
matter, criticises the injudicious manner in which war had hitherto
been prosecuted against his countrymen. He deprecates, for instance,
the use of heavy-armed soldiers and a profusion of cavalry, which the
active Welshmen in their mountain country are easily able to elude and
often to defeat. He declares that the only way to conquer Wales would
be by winter campaigns, when the leaves are off the trees and the
pastures withered. "Then," he writes, "English troops must be pushed
forward at all hazards, for even if the first are slaughtered any
number of fresh ones can be purchased for money; whereas the Welsh are
restricted in the number of their men." The question of commissariat,
the crux of all Welsh campaigns in those days, seems to have escaped
the notice of the clerical critic.
Having thus descanted on their virtues, Giraldus now assumes the
Anglo-Norman on the strength of his half blood, and enumerates their
weak points.
"The Welsh are flighty," he tells us, "and readily undertake
things which they have not the perseverance to carry out. They
have little respect for oaths, and not much for the truth, and
when a good opportunity occurs for attacking an enemy they
regard neither truces nor treaties. In war they are very
severe in their first attack, terrible by their clamour and
looks, filling the air with horrid shouts and the deep-toned
clangour of very long trumpets. Bold in the first onset they
cannot bear a repulse, being easily thrown into confusion, as
soon as they turn their backs. Yet though defeated and put to
flight one day, they are ready to resume the combat on the
next, neither dejected by their loss nor by their dishonour;
easier in short to overcome in a single battle, than in a
protracted war. Their great weakness after all," concludes
Gerald, "lies in their internal jealousies. If they were
inseparable, they would be insuperable, and above all, if
instead of having three Princes they had but one, and that a
good one!"
For their music this invaluable chronicler has nothing but
enthusiasm, dwelling upon the sweetness of their instruments, the harp
and the "crwth" (a primitive violin) in particular, and, above all, on
their habit of singing in parts, and not, as most other nations do, in
unison.
[Sidenote: Religious fervour in the twelfth century.]
[Sidenote: Abbeys.]
However distasteful the aggression of the Roman Church may have been
to the mass of the Welsh people in the twelfth century, this period
brought a great revival of religious fervour, even if it came largely
from alien sources. The rude churches of wood or wickerwork that five
and six centuries before had marked the dawn, not of Christianity, but
of organised Christianity, now gave place to solid and sometimes
beautiful specimens of early English or Norman art. Many of them, not
greatly altered by the restorer's touch, still stand amid the grandeur
of majestic mountains or the loneliness of surf-beaten shores, and
seem in consequence to speak more eloquently of these far-off,
mysterious times than their more imposing contemporaries, which are
set amid tame and commonplace surroundings. In the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, too, the great Welsh abbeys were in their prime.
Valle Crucis, whose graceful ruins still defy the ages amid the
matchless beauties of the Vale of Llangollen, was the pride of Powys;
Ystradfflur (_Strata Florida_) in Cardigan shared with the Cistercian
House of Aber Conway the honour of recording and safeguarding the
chronicles of the Principality and of giving burial to her most
illustrious dead. In a wild Radnor valley stood the great Franciscan
abbey of Cwm Hir, while in the green meadows where the silver streams
of the Mawddach and the Wnion meet in the shadow of Cader Idris, you
may yet see the ivy clustering on the ruins of the once powerful
foundation of St. Illtyd. Some centuries older than any of these, the
most ancient of Welsh abbeys was still intact upon Ynys Enlli, the
remote island of Bardsey, and served the churches that were so thickly
sprinkled along the rugged coasts of Lleyn. It had been the "Rome of
the Cymry." Thousands of pilgrims had annually turned thither their
weary steps. It was accounted a good thing to go there, and still
better to die there; and though divided from the mainland by three
miles of water, whose tides rage with notorious violence, the dust of
"twenty thousand saints" lies, as all good Welshmen know, beneath the
sod of this narrow and stormy isle. These are but a few haphazard
examples of the centres of religion, which, amid the fierce passions
of the Celt and the restless greed of the Norman, struck at least one
peaceful note in nearly every Cambrian valley.
[Sidenote: Powys and the English power.]
[Sidenote: Norman encroachments.]
We are now within less than a century of the final overthrow of Welsh
independence. Enough has been said to show how gradually and with what
hard fighting the disintegration of Wales was brought about, and still
fiercer struggles were yet to come. The Princes of Powys, though
liable to fitful attempts at independence, had now virtually submitted
to the English King, and even ranged themselves at times against their
countrymen. North Wales was still intact, always excepting that
debatable land between the Dee and Conway, the Perfeddwlad, which was
lost and retaken more times than it would be possible to take account
of here. The great region of South Wales, however, from the edge of
Hereford to Cardigan Bay, presented a rare confusion of authority. One
scarcely ventures to touch the subject within such narrow limits as
ours must needs be. Hardly as they were sometimes beset, even to the
length of being driven from their lands and castles, the Norman
adventurers steadily ate up bit by bit the old Kingdom of Deheubarth.
Each man had just so much territory as he could win by the sword, and,
what was more important, only so much as he could keep by it. They all
held their lands, whose limits were but vaguely defined by charter or
title-deed, since they were undefinable, direct from the King of
England, and had by virtue of their office the right to sit in
Parliament, and to support the royal canopy at coronations with silver
spears.
[Sidenote: Wales in the thirteenth century.]
In their own domains they possessed absolute authority, so far as they
could exercise it, even over the lives of their tenants. Small towns
began to grow under the protection of their castle walls, and were
occupied by their retainers. Courts were established in each lordship,
and justice was administered to the Anglo-Norman minority after
English custom and to the Welsh majority after the custom of old Welsh
law, and in the native tongue. Let me repeat, I am but generalising.
The condition of Wales at the opening of the thirteenth century was
far too complex to admit of analytical treatment within such a brief
space as this. The exceptions to every rule were numerous. The King of
England himself, for example, owned many lordships and was represented
in them by a Justiciar or Bailiff, and sometimes this functionary was
actually a Welshman. Here and there again a Welsh noble held property
as a Norman Baron from the King while occasionally a Norman did
allegiance for his barony to a Welsh Prince, and posed as a Welshman.
[Illustration: VALLE CRUCIS ABBEY.
Copyright
F. Frith & Co.]
[Sidenote: Landed system.]
The landed system of Wales in the Middle Ages is still more hopeless
for purposes of brief description. The indigenous tribal system, when
land was held in families, or "gwelis," by the descendants of a
privileged though perhaps a large class, had been steadily undergoing
modification since the later Saxon period,[5] and in all directions it
was honeycombed not only by encroaching Normans, with their feudal and
manorial land laws, and by the monastic houses, but long before the
twelfth century many Welsh princes and chieftains had felt the Saxon
influence, and had drifted into the manorial system, so far at least
as their own private possessions were concerned.
[5] See Seebohm's _Tribal Wales_.
[Sidenote: Llewelyn the Great, 1195.]
With the close of the twelfth century the most illustrious of all
Welsh Princes, the only possible rival of Glyndwr, Llewelyn ap
Iorwerth, comes upon the scene as a beardless boy; and in connection
with this famous person it may fairly be said that though there was
plenty of fight left in the still unconquered moiety of South Wales,
and a little even in Powys, it is with Gwynedd that the interest of
the last century of Welsh resistance mainly rests. Son of Iorwerth the
broken-nosed, who, though the rightful heir of Owen Gwynedd, was
rejected on account of this disfigurement, Llewelyn the Great is
supposed with good reason to have been born in the castle of
Dolwyddelan, whose ruinous walls, perched high upon the wild
foot-hills of Moel Siabod, still look down upon the infant Llugwy as
it urges its buoyant streams through one of the most beautiful of
North Welsh valleys.
[Sidenote: Llewelyn marries King John's daughter.]
Nurtured amid the clash of arms, the boy was only twelve years old
when he asserted his right to the throne, and won it against his
Norman-loving uncle, Dafydd, whom we left, it will be remembered,
fighting in France. The young Prince, backed by a strong following in
North Wales, and by the arms of Powys, deposed his uncle and commenced
the long career which earned him that pre-eminent fame in warlike
deeds which attaches to his name. By the time he was of age he was
fully recognised as "Brenin holl Cymru," or Pendragon, by all that was
left of Wales. John, who now occupied the English throne, so fully
recognised the dawn of a new and formidable personal influence in his
tributary realm that he bestowed upon Llewelyn in marriage his
illegitimate daughter Joan, together with a handsome dower.
The first few years of the thirteenth century were fully occupied with
ceaseless strife between the Welsh Princes, their relatives, and the
Norman nobles settled in their midst. It will be sufficient to say
that Llewelyn, high-handed and autocratic, lost nothing of his
importance in such congenial work, and by 1209 had left his mark upon
the English borders so rudely that King John and his vigorous
son-in-law at length came to blows. The former, collecting a large
army, penetrated to the Conway River, behind which, in the mountains
of Snowdonia, Llewelyn with all his people and all his movables defied
attack.
[Sidenote: John invades Wales, 1209.]
[Sidenote: 1212.]
[Sidenote: Llewelyn sides with the barons against John.]
John, with whom went many of the nobles of Powys, sat down at Deganwy
Castle, one of the great strategic points of ancient Wales, and one
whose scanty ruins are familiar to visitors at Llandudno and Conway.
But the Welsh slipped behind them and cut off their supplies. Nor
could the King move forward, for across the river rose the grim masses
of the Snowdon mountains. His people were reduced to eating their
horses, disease was ravaging their ranks, and there was nothing for it
but to go back; so John returned to England with rage at his heart.
Nothing daunted he returned again to the attack, marching this time by
way of Oswestry and Corwen. He was now both more daring and more
fortunate, seeing that he succeeded in throwing a portion of his
forces into Bangor. This checkmated Llewelyn, and he sent his wife to
see what terms could be exacted from her father. His reply indicated
that the cession of the unfortunate Perfeddwlad, and a fine of twenty
thousand head of cattle was the least he could accept, and with these
terms the Welsh Prince complied. The latter condition was probably
inconvenient; the former was merely a question of might for the time
being. Any territorial arrangement with John was likely to be of only
temporary consequence, for that undesirable King was perpetually under
the ban of the Church, and had none too many friends. So in 1212, when
Pope Innocent absolved all John's feudatories from their allegiance,
it furnished an admirable excuse for Llewelyn to reoccupy the whole of
his ancient dominion of Gwynedd. When, two years later, John's own
barons rose against him, they formed an alliance with the powerful
Prince of Gwynedd, who captured Shrewsbury, and thereby contributed no
little to the pressure which caused the signing of Magna Charta.
Llewelyn subsequently swept through both Mid- and South Wales, sacking
and gutting many of the hated Norman castles, till he came to be
regarded in the South with as much devotion as in his own province.
Every dispute concerning territory or boundaries was submitted to his
judgment. Even the Flemings of Pembroke for the first time since their
occupation tendered their homage to a Welsh Prince.
[Sidenote: Llewelyn recognised by John as ruler of Wales.]
[Sidenote: Llewelyn's son rebels against him.]
But between the death of John and the accession of Henry III., the
nobles of England forgot their obligations to Llewelyn, while the
Marcher barons whose castles he had sacked were eager enough to turn
this indifference into hostility. The result of all this was that
Llewelyn found himself threatened by the whole power of England and
of Anglo-Norman Wales in the event of his refusal to abandon his
recent conquests. Llewelyn ap Iorwerth, wise in his generation, sought
a personal interview with the young King, his brother-in-law, at which
he undertook to do him homage; a formality which, I have more than
once observed, Welsh Princes had no reluctance upon principle in
conceding. On this occasion, moreover, Llewelyn's pride was fully
gratified. He was officially recognised as Prince of all Gwynedd, with
the second title of Lord of Snowdon, and his suzerainty over the other
divisions of Wales was formally acknowledged. We find him emphasising
this diplomatic triumph by granting that bone of contention, the
Perfeddwlad, to his son Griffith, and the latter with the fatuity so
common to his race returning this piece of parental affection by
laying violent hands on Merioneth, another district within his
father's Principality. This was a wholly outrageous proceeding and
Llewelyn, finding remonstrance unavailing, hastened eastward with a
strong force to chastise his incorrigible offspring. The latter was
quite prepared to fight, and we have the edifying picture of father
and son facing each other in arms in a cause wholly wanton, and as if
there were no such thing as Normans and Saxons, to say nothing of
South Welshmen, ever and always threatening their existence. A
reconciliation was happily effected, but when Llewelyn found himself
with most of the soldiery of his province around him in arms, the
temptation was too great, and throwing treaties to the winds, he fell
upon the English border and harried it from Chester to Hereford. Drawn
thence south-westwards by signs of restlessness on the part of that
ever-rankling sore, the Anglo-Flemish colony of Pembroke, he swept
through South Wales and fought a great battle on the confines of their
territory, which the fall of night found still undecided.
[Sidenote: Continuous war, 1234.]
From now onwards till 1234 there was little peace in Wales, and above
the ceaseless din of arms the star of Llewelyn ap Iorwerth shone with
ever increasing glory. Then came a confederation of Norman barons
against King Henry, who, turning for support to Llewelyn, entered into
a solemn league and covenant both with him and with his tributary
princes. It was so strong a combination that Henry shrank from coping
with it. It was the first occasion on which Anglo-Norman Barons and
Welsh Princes on an important scale had formed a treaty of alliance
with each other and, still more, had honourably observed it. Even more
singular perhaps was the outcome, when, Henry being forced to a
compromise, a Welsh Prince found himself in the unprecedented position
of being able to exact conditions for the great Norman feudatories of
Wales from a Norman King.
[Sidenote: Death of Llewelyn II., 1240.]
Llewelyn, having buried his wife Joan in the abbey of Llanfaes near
Beaumaris, himself died at Aber in the year 1240, after a stormy but,
judged by the ethics of the time, a brilliant reign of over half a
century. His triumphs were of course for the most part military ones.
But no Welsh Princes having regard to the decline of Cymric power had
ever accomplished quite so much. He had forced his authority upon all
Wales except the lordship Marches, but he had also been a sleepless
patriot, driving the English arms back and greatly weakening the
English influence throughout the whole Principality. With this scant
notice of a long and eventful reign we must take leave of the warlike
son of Iorwerth. He was buried at Aber Conway in the abbey he had
founded; but his stone coffin was removed in later days to the
beautiful church at Llanrwst, where amid the historic treasures of the
Gwydir Chapel it still recalls to the memory of innumerable pilgrims
"the eagle of men, who loved not to lie nor sleep, who towered above
the rest of men with his long red lance and his red helmet of battle
crested with a savage wolf, Llewelyn the Great."
[Sidenote: Griffith sent to the Tower by Henry III.]
Wales, though rapidly approaching the era of her political extinction,
was now so unusually strong and even aggressive that the English King
was compelled to watch the course of events there with a vigilant eye.
From the Welsh point of view it was of vital importance that
Llewelyn's successor in Gwynedd should be both acceptable to his
people and strong in himself. Unhappily he was neither, unless indeed
obstinacy may count for strength. Of Llewelyn's family two sons alone
concern us here. Griffith, the elder of these by a Welsh mother, has
been already alluded to as going to war in such wild fashion with his
father. Rightly or wrongly he was regarded as illegitimate, though
that circumstance, it may be remarked parenthetically, was not such a
vital matter in Old Wales. But his father's marriage with an English
King's daughter suggests the possibility of making too light of a
former and less distinguished alliance. Be that as it may, the younger
of the two, the son of the Princess Joan and nephew of Henry III.,
succeeded in seating himself on his father's throne, though not
without protest from the Welsh nobility who did not by any means
relish his English blood. Dafydd had all the English influence behind
him, while his close connection with the King seemed to make for
peace. But Griffith, the elder, in spite of his presumed illegitimacy,
was the popular candidate, and Dafydd did not improve his own position
by proceeding to strip his half-brother of his private property, and
immuring his person in Criccieth Castle. All Wales protested. The
Bishop of Bangor went so far as to excommunicate his temporal ruler,
and King Henry himself on his distant throne expressed unmistakable
disapproval of the whole business. But Dafydd cared neither for King
nor Bishop. To the former he replied that if Griffith were at liberty
there would be no peace in Wales, a possibility that seems by no means
remote when one considers the performances of this young man in his
father's lifetime. Henry was not to be thus put off, and approached
the Marches with a strong army. This unmistakable procedure and the
almost unanimous support it met with from the Welsh nobility
frightened Dafydd into a promise of submission. But the upshot of all
this was not precisely what Griffith's Welsh friends had expected. He
was released from Criccieth, it is true, but only to be transferred to
the Tower of London pending Henry's decision as to his ultimate fate.
[Sidenote: Death of Griffith.]
Much more important than this disposal of Griffith's person was the
extraction from Dafydd by his uncle of one of the most humiliating
treaties ever wrung from a Welsh Prince, a treaty which might well
cause his father, the great Llewelyn, to turn in his grave beside the
Conway. Every advantage that Llewelyn's strong arm had gained was
tamely abandoned by his unworthy son. The Princes of Powys and South
Wales were absolved from their oath of homage to the ruler of Gwynedd,
which Principality shrank once more to the banks of the Conway. In the
meantime Griffith with his young son Owen was left by Henry to
languish in the Tower, till, filled with despair, he made a bold bid
for freedom. Weaving ropes out of his bed-clothing he let himself down
by night from his prison window; but, being a corpulent man, his
weight was too much for such slender supports, and he fell from a
great height to the ground, breaking his neck upon the spot.
[Sidenote: Dafydd makes war on the English.]
[Sidenote: 1244.]
[Sidenote: Henry III. in Wales.]
The Welsh were greatly exasperated at the news, laying the death of
their favourite most naturally at Henry's door, and as the Marcher
barons had been encouraged of late in their aggressions and tyrannies
by the decline of Welsh strength, the time seemed ripe for another
general rising. Dafydd now came out as a warrior and a patriot leader,
and Wales rallied to his standard. He was, however, so appalled by
the memory of the awful oaths of allegiance he had sworn to his royal
uncle and the vengeance of Heaven he had invited in case of their
non-observance, that he sent secretly a sum of money to the Pope,--all
in fact he could scrape together,--begging for absolution. His
Holiness granted this readily enough and professed to recognise his
right to independence. But Henry, hearing of it, and disturbed by
these manœuvres of the Vicar of God, secretly forwarded twice the
amount of money sent by Dafydd to the Pope, who thereupon reversed all
his previous decisions. We do not hear whether the Welsh Prince got
his money back. He certainly got no value for it. So now in these
years of 1244-45 war raged once more throughout Wales and the Marches,
and Dafydd, though unendowed with his father's warlike talents,
nevertheless by his patriotic action regained the affection of his
people. Henry was busy in Scotland and it was nearly a year before he
could get to Wales in person; when he did, he pushed his way, with
only one brisk fight, to that time-honoured barrier, the Conway
estuary, and sat down with a large army of English and Gascons on the
green pastures around Deganwy Castle, where he gazed with inevitable
helplessness at the Welsh forces crowding on the marsh across the
river, or lining the outer ramparts of Snowdonia that frown behind it.
The troubles of King John, and even worse, befell his son. Matthew of
Paris has preserved for us a "letter from the front" written by a
knight, who gives a graphic description of the sufferings of the
army, not forgetting himself in the narration of them. Cold, sickness,
and hunger were their lot, varied by fierce skirmishes with the Welsh
and desperate fights over the English provision boats, which made
their way from Chester round the Orme's Head into the Conway. Aber
Conway Abbey was ruthlessly sacked by the English soldiery, much to
the regret, it should be said, of our "special correspondent" and
greatly to the rage of the Welsh, who in revenge slaughtered every
wounded Englishman they could lay hands on.
No definite result accrued from this war. Dafydd died a few months
after this amid the regrets of his people, whose affection had been
secured by his later deeds. He had atoned for his former pusillanimity
by the stubborn resistance which marked the close of his life. His
death made way for the last and, to Englishmen, the most illustrious
of all the long line of Welsh Princes.
[Sidenote: Sons of Griffith appointed to joint rulership of N. Wales.]
[Sidenote: Henry III. again in Wales.]
Dafydd left no heir. Strictly speaking, his legal successor was a
Norman, Sir Ralph Mortimer, who had married Gwladys, a legitimate
daughter of Llewelyn. Such a successor was of course out of the
question, and, as Henry abstained from all interference, the nobles of
North Wales naturally fell back on the illegitimate branch, that of
Griffith, who perished in the moat of the Tower of London. This
unfortunate Prince, whose body was about this time removed to Conway
and buried with great pomp, had three sons, Llewelyn, Owen, and
Dafydd. It would seem as if all past experiences were lost upon the
nobles of Gwynedd, since they were fatuous enough to appoint the two
elder of these Princes to the joint rulership of their province. The
partnership survived an English invasion which Henry made on hearing
that the chieftains of South Wales were calling on the new Princes of
Gwynedd to aid them, in the belief that a diversion would be
opportune. Once more the English appeared on the Conway. As usual, the
Welsh with their stock and movables had slipped over the river into
the impregnable wilds of Snowdonia, and the King returned as he went,
burning St. Asaph's Cathedral on his march. There was now peace in
Wales for some years; a lull, as it were, before the great conflict
that was to be the end of all things. But peace and plenty, in the
words of the chronicler, "begat war." For want of enemies the two
brothers turned their arms against each other. Owen, the younger, was
the aggressor in this instance, and he justly suffered for it, being
overcome by Llewelyn and immured for the rest of his life in the
lonely castle of Dolbadarn, whose ivy-mantled shell still stands by
the Llanberis lakes.
[Sidenote: Llewelyn III. (or ap Griffith).]
[Sidenote: 1257-58.]
Dafydd, the third brother, had supported Owen, and he, too, was seized
and securely confined. Llewelyn, now supreme in North Wales, becomes
the outstanding figure around which the closing scene of the long and
heroic resistance of the Welsh henceforth gathers. South Wales was in
a distracted state. The Lord Marchers and the King's Bailiffs, backed
by English support, had taken fresh heart from Welsh dissensions and
were pressing hardly on those native chieftains who did not side with
them. Every chieftain and noble in Wales whose patriotism had not been
tampered with now took up arms. Llewelyn was universally recognised as
the national leader, and the years 1257-58 were one long turmoil of
war and battle in every part of Wales. Llewelyn had cleared off all
recent aggression, fallen with heavy hand on the old settled barons,
and smitten the traitors among his fellow-countrymen hip and thigh. A
battle was fought on the Towy, which some chroniclers say was the
bloodiest ever engaged in between Welsh and English, to the worsting
of the latter and the loss of two thousand men.
[Sidenote: King Henry attacks Llewelyn.]
The Perfeddwlad had been granted to Prince Edward, then Earl of
Chester. His agents there had distinguished themselves, even in those
cruel times, for intolerable oppression. Llewelyn in his vengeance
swept Edward's new property bare from the Conway to the Dee. The
future conqueror and organiser of Wales was at this moment hardly
pressed. His Welsh friends, like the then Prince of Powys, were
heavily punished by Llewelyn and their lands laid waste. Edward sent
to Ireland for succour, but the Irish ships were met at sea by those
of Llewelyn and driven back. Henry now returned to his son's
assistance, and, drawing together "the whole strength of England from
St. Michael's Mount to the river Tweed," executed the familiar
promenade across the wasted Perfeddwlad, and experienced the familiar
sense of impotence upon the Conway with its well defended forts and
frowning mountains alive with agile spearmen.
Once again the tide of battle rolled back to the English border, and
the first serious punishment we hear of the Welsh receiving curiously
enough was at the hands of some German cavalry imported and led by
Lord Audley, whose large horses seem to have struck some terror into
the mountaineers. But this is a detail. Llewelyn may almost be said to
have repeated the exploits of his grandfather and reconquered Wales.
Even Flemish Pembroke had been forced to its knees. His followers to
the number of ten thousand had bound themselves by oath to die rather
than submit, and these, being picked men and inured to war, were a
formidable nucleus for the fighting strength of Wales to rally round.
The revolt, too, of Simon de Montfort against Henry was all in favour
of Llewelyn, who took the former's part and was able to render him
considerable personal service in the decline of his success.
[Sidenote: 1267. Llewelyn makes peace and is recognised by Henry as
Prince of all Wales.]
Through many years of intermittent strife and varying fortunes the
balance of power remained with Llewelyn, till in 1267 a peace was made
at Shrewsbury very greatly in his favour. By this agreement Henry in
consideration of a sum of money undertook to recognise Llewelyn as
Prince of all Wales and entitled to receive homage and fealty from
every prince and noble in the country save the sadly shorn
representatives of the old line of Deheubarth. But after two years'
enjoyment of this contract the King's death and the succession of the
strenuous Prince Edward threw everything once more into confusion.
[Sidenote: Llewelyn and Edward I., 1275.]
It is true that Edward, who was in the Holy Land fighting Turks, took
two years in finding his way home. But when he did so, in 1274, and
was crowned King he threw his father's treaty with Llewelyn to the
winds; an action for which, it is true, the latter gave him some
excuse by refusing to attend at his coronation, not from recusancy,
but from a well-grounded fear that his life would not be safe from
certain Anglo-Norman nobles whose territory he would have to pass
through.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Llewelyn's betrothed wife seized by the English.]
Now comes a passage in Llewelyn's stormy life that his admirers would
fain forget, since it records how for love of a woman he reversed the
indomitable front he had hitherto shown to the invading English, and
submitted almost without a blow to the dictation of the returned
Crusader, whom he had so often beaten of old in the Welsh Marches. It
was perhaps the memory of these former rebuffs that made the proud and
warlike Edward so vindictive towards Llewelyn. A weapon, too, was at
this moment placed in his hands which was to assist him in a manner he
had not dreamed of. The young daughter of the late Simon de Montfort,
to whom the Welsh Prince was betrothed and whom he is said to have
deeply loved, was sailing from France to become his bride. In anxiety
to escape the English, the ship that bore her unluckily ran among some
Bristol vessels off the Scilly Islands. The captains seized the
prospective bride and carried her at once to Edward, who was on the
point of invading Wales with two armies. Four years of peace had
doubtless weakened the strong Welsh league that had worked such
wonders against Henry III. Numbers of his old friends at any rate
failed to respond to Llewelyn's call. The Prince had now before him
the alternatives of immediate union with his betrothed, or of war and
chaos with a lukewarm or hostile South Wales and certainly a hostile
Powys added to the power of England.
[Sidenote: Llewelyn makes peace with Edward I.]
After being cooped up for some weeks in the Snowdon mountains by the
royal army, Llewelyn signed at length a treaty with Edward, the
conditions of which were as humiliating as if he had been crushed to
the earth by a series of disastrous battles, whereas he was in truth
the still recognised suzerain of all Wales. To put the case, or the
gist of it, briefly: all Wales except the Snowdon lordships (the
present Carnarvonshire) was to revert absolutely to the King of
England, Welsh and alien lords alike becoming his tenants. Even
Anglesey was to revert to the Crown in the event of Llewelyn's dying
without issue. Nothing was to be left of Welsh independence but the
"cantrefs," or lordships, constituting Snowdonia; and over this
remnant Llewelyn's heirs were to be graciously permitted to reign in
peace. The Prince's passion had proved greater than his patriotism;
the treaty was signed at Conway, and King Edward, who had advanced
unopposed to Cardiganshire, withdrew his troops.
[Sidenote: Llewelyn's marriage.]
"The force of love," says the chronicler, groaning over this
depressing episode, "does indeed work wonders." Llewelyn, not long
afterwards, was married in great pomp at Worcester in presence of the
whole Court of England, the King himself giving the bride away, and
the late ruler of all Wales and now lord merely of Snowdonia, with a
life interest in Anglesey, retired to the obscurity of his contracted
honours. Here, amid the Carnarvon mountains, he began ere long to feel
the prickings of conscience, and remorse for the weak part he had
played.
Edward, too, kept open the wound by frequently summoning him to this
place or that on various pleas, and the Welsh Prince, dreading
treachery and remembering his father, Griffith's, fate, as constantly
refused to go without a guaranty of safety. The greater part of the
present counties of Carmarthen and Cardigan were already King's
ground. As forming part of the old Principality of South Wales, and
therefore not Marcher property, they had come to Edward. A county
court had before this been established at Carmarthen, and efforts to
make this territory shire ground had been feebly made, but they were
now vigorously renewed, and the Perfeddwlad was treated in savage
fashion. Ferocity was the distinguishing mark of all the servants of
Edward I.
[Sidenote: Cruelty of Edward's government, 1281.]
[Sidenote: Dafydd turns patriot.]
[Sidenote: Llewelyn and Dafydd unite for resistance.]
[Sidenote: Llewelyn rejects all terms.]
[Sidenote: Outside sympathy for Wales.]
From every part of Wales came the cry of despairing Welshmen ground to
powder by the insensate tyrannies of the King's Bailiffs and the Lord
Marchers, now left entirely to their own wild wills. Llewelyn's third
brother, Dafydd, who had played the part of King's friend and traitor
to his own people for most of his life, was rewarded by the Barony of
Denbigh. It was the year 1281 and the time was now ripe for the last
scene of the last act in this long, sanguinary struggle. Many of the
chieftains of Wales, thinking, as they had often thought before, that
death was preferable to the intolerable oppression from which the
country now suffered, approached Dafydd at Denbigh and assured him
that if he would even thus tardily be reconciled to his brother
Llewelyn and lead them, they would strike yet one more blow for
freedom. Dafydd, probably with their knowledge, was smarting under
some real or fancied slight from his patron, King Edward, though maybe
his heart was really touched at the extreme sufferings of his
countrymen. At any rate he played the man to an extent that more than
atoned for his unworthy past. Dafydd and his brother Llewelyn now met
at the former's castle upon the high rock of Denbigh, and there the
Welsh chieftains who had declared for death or freedom rallied to the
standard raised by the grandsons of Llewelyn the Great, and held upon
"the craggy hill in Rhos" the last formal council of either peace or
war that was to be recorded in the pages of Welsh history. The news of
the proposed rising had reached England before Llewelyn had left his
palace at Aber, and had caused some consternation. Edward and his
barons had regarded the Welsh question as settled, and thought that on
the death of the now pacified and uxorious Llewelyn the last vestige
of independence would quietly lapse. The Archbishop of Canterbury was
greatly distressed. He sent word to Llewelyn that he was coming to see
him for the love he bore to Wales, and without the King's knowledge;
and he then, in actual fact, travelled all the way to Aber and used
every argument, persuasive and coercive, he could think of to turn the
Welsh Prince from what seemed a mad and hopeless enterprise. He
threatened him with the whole physical power of England, the whole
spiritual power of Rome. Never did the last Llewelyn, or indeed any
Llewelyn, show a nobler front than on this occasion. For himself, he
was materially well provided for and beyond the reach of the
persecution that pressed upon most of his fellow-countrymen. But they
had called to him in their despair, and desperate as the risk might be
he had resolved to stand or fall with them. A schedule of conditions
was sent him from the English King and his council, under which
everything was to be overlooked, if only he and his people would
return to their allegiance. Among other things an English county, with
a pension of £1000 a year, was offered him in lieu of Snowdon.
Llewelyn replied with scorn that he wanted no English county, that his
patrimony was lawfully his own by virtue of a long line of ancestors;
that even if he himself were base enough to yield up the Snowdon
lordships, his subjects there would never submit to a rule that was
hateful to them and had brought such misery on their neighbours of the
Perfeddwlad. It was better, he declared, to die with honour than to
live in slavery; and it may perhaps be repeated to his advantage that
Llewelyn himself was only a sufferer so far as his proper pride was
concerned, though it is possible he felt some pricks of conscience
about the concessions made two years previously. At any rate he nobly
atoned for them. There is evidence that admiration for the gallant
stand made by this remnant of the Welsh was being kindled not only
across the seas but even among Englishmen themselves. "Even Englishmen
and foreigners," says Matthew of Paris, who was assuredly no Welshman,
"were touched with pity and admiration."
[Sidenote: Dafydd rejects Edward's terms.]
Prince Dafydd, who was offered his pardon on condition of immediately
repairing to the Holy Land, was equally stubborn, though perhaps the
temptation to be otherwise was not so great. He replied to the effect
that he had no intention of undertaking a Crusade at the dictates of
others. However admirable was this tardy patriotism, his past record
from that point of view was wholly dishonourable, for he had been
consistently a King's man. On the other hand, if, as was possibly the
case with many Welsh nobles, he had sincerely believed that submission
to English rule was the wisest thing for Welshmen, his abrupt
repudiation of the man whose favours he had sought and received is not
readily excusable. In this direction it is urged that the Anglo-Norman
garrisons in these first years of Edward's reign had made life so
intolerable that Dafydd was sufficiently touched by his countrymen's
sufferings to risk everything and join his gallant brother in so
forlorn a hope. "It was better for the kingdom at large that Wales
should be governed," wrote the brothers to Edward, "by her own
Princes, paying that homage to the King of England which they had
never refused, than by greedy strangers whose only thought was to
oppress her people, despoil her churches, and advance their own
private interests."
[Sidenote: Fighting on the Menai Straits.]
The fall of the curtain upon this remnant of Welsh independence was
now but a matter of a few months. Edward's answer to the Princes was
the despatch of a fleet to Anglesey, and of an army along the north
coast route, containing large numbers of Gascons, and even some
Spaniards. Edward himself went as far as Conway, meeting on the way
with a heavy repulse and considerable loss in what was soon to be
Flintshire. Dafydd, who was commanding in the north, was pushed into
Snowdonia. The English army in Anglesey bridged the Menai with boats,
and a strong detachment, crossing before the connection was complete,
encountered the Welsh near Bangor. The invaders, however, were all cut
off and slain in a fierce battle fought upon the shore, among them
being many barons, knights, and squires.
These successes could only delay the end and exasperate the inevitable
conquerors. Llewelyn, not wishing to be starved into surrender among
the Snowdon mountains, had gone south to rouse the new shire land of
Cardigan and Carmarthen, and the warlike Radnor tenants of the
Mortimers. The Earl of Gloucester with another English army had
meanwhile penetrated into South Wales and defeated a large force of
Welsh patriots at Llandilo in the valley of the Towy.
[Sidenote: Death of the last Llewelyn.]
[Sidenote: Llewelyn's head carried through London in triumph.]
Llewelyn came up, fighting his way through Cardiganshire, and had
reached Builth on the Wye, when, on December 11th, he met his fate.
The story of his death is too much confused, and there is no space
here for repeating the slightly varying versions of the tragedy, but
it seems quite clear that he was tempted away from the main body of
his army by treachery, and slain when he was without arms in his
hands. His head was struck off and despatched at once to King Edward
at Conway, who, receiving it with great joy, sent it immediately by
sea to his army in Anglesey. Thence the gruesome trophy was forwarded
to London, where crowds of people met it outside the city and placed
upon the gory brows a wreath of ivy in mockery of the old Welsh
prophecy that a Prince of Welsh blood should once more be crowned in
London. It was then fixed upon the point of a lance and carried in
triumph through the streets to the pillory, and from the pillory to
its final resting-place above the gate of the Tower.
[Sidenote: Capture and execution of Dafydd.]
Thus perished the last representative of the long line of Welsh
Princes that may be said to have had its rise with the sons of Cunedda
eight centuries before. The last dim spark of Welsh independence
flickered feebly for a few weeks, till the very recesses of Snowdonia,
for almost the first time in history, gave back their echoes to the
blast of English bugles, and the wild passes of Nant Francon and
Llanberis felt the tramp of alien feet. Dafydd found himself alone, a
hunted outlaw in the forests of the Vale of Clwyd. He was soon
captured and taken to Shrewsbury, where a Parliament was then sitting.
Llewelyn's remains had been treated with doubtful logic and poor
chivalry as a traitor. What treatment he would have met with at
Edward's hands as a prisoner we cannot know. But Dafydd could expect
nothing but the worst and he received it. He was tried as an English
baron at Shrewsbury and sentenced to be quartered, disembowelled, and
beheaded. His quarters were distributed among four English cities,
Winchester and York, it is said, quarrelling for the honour of his
right shoulder, while his head was sent to moulder by his brother's
over the gateway of the Tower of London. A story runs that while his
entrails were being burned his heart leaped from the flames and struck
the executioner who was feeding them.
[Sidenote: 1282. Edward settles the new government of Wales.]
[Sidenote: The Statutes of Rhuddlan.]
All resistance worthy of mention was now over in Wales. The six
centuries or thereabouts of its history as a separate nation in whole
or in part had closed. A new epoch was to open, and Edward was the man
to mark the division between the past and the future in emphatic
fashion. Hitherto, though statesmanlike in his views, he had been in
actual deed both cruel and unjust to Wales, and allowed his agents to
be still more so; but now that resistance was crushed he dropped the
warrior and tyrant and showed himself the statesman that he was. Most
of the Welshmen that had remained in arms received their pardons,
though a few took service abroad. The King exacted no sanguinary
vengeance, but followed, rather, the more merciful and practical
course of providing against the chance of his Welsh subjects requiring
it in future. He went to Wales with his Court and remained there for
nearly three years. He made Rhuddlan his principal headquarters,
rebuilding its ancient castle; and at Conway, Harlech, and Carnarvon,
besides some less formidable fortresses, he left those masterpieces of
defensive construction that have been the admiration of all subsequent
ages. From Rhuddlan in due course he issued the famous statutes called
by its name, which proclaimed at once the death-knell of Old Wales and
the fact of its territorial fusion with the realm of England. The
details of the settlement were laborious, and the spectacle of an
English Court spending in all nearly three busy years in Wales is
evidence of the thoroughness with which Edward did his work.
It is enough here to say that with the exception of modern
Denbighshire, which was left in lordships, Edward carved North Wales
into the present counties of Flint, Anglesey, Carnarvon, and
Merioneth. Powys and South Wales being honeycombed with Anglo-Norman
lordships and reconciled Welsh chieftains, he shrank probably from
disentangling a confusion that brought no particular danger to
himself, and from a course that would have embroiled him with the
whole feudal interest of the Marches.
[Illustration: CONWAY CASTLE.
Copyright
F. Frith & Co.]
The still mainly Welsh districts, however, of Cardigan and
Carmarthen, he had already, as we have seen, formed into counties.
They were now, like those of the North, to be governed by lieutenants,
sheriffs, and justices, and in all things to resemble English
counties, except in the privilege of sending representatives to
Parliament. Wales was kept separate from England, however, in so far
as its immediate feudal lord was not the King of England, but the
King's eldest son; and the Principality of Wales at this time, it must
be remembered, meant only the royal counties.
[Sidenote: Edward's intentions just.]
Edward's laws for the conquered country were just and his intention
not ungenerous. He reduced the rentals hitherto due to the Welsh
Princes and listened patiently to the grievances of the people. He
enacted that both in counties and lordships the old Welsh laws should
be those of the Welsh so far as possible, and that justice should be
administered in both languages, and he sent the Archbishop of
Canterbury on a long visitation to take note of the destruction to
churches perpetrated during the recent wars, and to arrange for their
repair.
He was severe on the bards, it is true, but he did not slaughter them,
as an old fiction asserts. Their wandering avocations were sternly
repressed, and with the business that he had in hand it is not easy to
see what other course he could have taken with men whose trade then
chiefly consisted in recalling the wrongs of Wales and urging revenge.
The whole business was concluded by a great tournament at Nevin, on
the Carnarvon coast, which was attended by the flower of Welsh,
English, and Gascon chivalry.
[Sidenote: The King's return to London.]
When the King returned to London after his long absence, he went with
splendid ceremonial and a vast procession to the Tower and to
Westminster Abbey, causing the regalia of the exterminated Welsh
Princes and the skull of St. David to be borne before him. Nor must
one omit mention of the immortal but grim joke which tradition says
that he played upon the Welsh nobility before leaving the country. For
does not every schoolboy know how, having promised them a Prince who
was born in Wales and could speak no English, he sent Queen Eleanor to
Carnarvon for the birth of Edward the Second?
[Sidenote: 1295.]
A good deal can be said of the century that was to elapse before our
story opens, but not much that is of vital import. In 1295, thirteen
years after the conquest, Madoc ap Meredith, a connection of
Llewelyn's, made a last attempt to rouse the Welsh. It proved
abortive, but was serious enough to stop Edward from going to France,
and to take him down to Conway, where it is said that on a certain
occasion a high tide cut him off from his men, and nearly delivered
him into the hands of the insurgents.
[Sidenote: Wales through the fourteenth century.]
It would be too much to say that the next hundred years in Wales were
those of peace and prosperity. But by comparison with the past they
might not untruly be called so. No serious friction occurred between
the two races; while the long wars with France and constant broils
with Scotland engrossed the attention of the Welsh aristocracy, both
Norman and native. Nor, again, was it only the nobles and gentry that
found respite from their domestic quarrels in a combined activity upon
the unfortunate soil of France. Welsh soldiers as well as Welsh
gentlemen served by thousands in the armies of England, and few people
remember that about a third of the victorious army at Cressy were
Welshmen. This long companionship in arms and partnership in almost
unparallelled glories must have done something to lessen the
instinctive antipathy with which the two peoples had from time
immemorial regarded each other. Yet how much of the ancient enmity
survived, only requiring some spark to kindle it, will be evident
enough as I proceed to the main part of my story, and the doings of
the indomitable Welshman who is its hero.
[Decoration]
[Decoration]