THE FIGHT FOR INDEPENDENCE
The Norman Conquest of 1066 was almost as epoch-making in the history
of Wales as it was in that of England. In Wales its effects were as
decisive, though very different, as they were in the neighbouring
country. In England the first and most important result was the
unification of the whole country under a strong central government
vested in the person of the king. Prior to the Conquest there had
been a steady movement in the direction of unity; and at different
times, under a particularly strong monarch, it had almost been
achieved. But such unity was at best precarious; and the great earls
of Wessex, Mercia, and Northumbria were, to all intents and purposes,
independent princes. William the Conqueror, partly from design,
partly by accident, broke up these mighty earldoms. This was the
beginning of a long struggle between the king and the great
feudatories, a struggle which ended with {63} victory for monarchy
and centralization. England in consequence became definitely and for
ever one country, with one ruler and one law. This unity is
precisely what Wales failed to achieve, and the failure is the
greatest tragedy in its history. Before the Norman Conquest Wales
had been divided into three great divisions--Gwynedd, Powys, and
Deheubarth; and although the rulers of the other two divisions
yielded a grudging theoretical homage to the lord of Gwynedd, he
exercised in practice no authority over them. With the coming of the
Normans the supreme test had arrived. The Welsh people were
presented, as so many other nations have been presented before and
since, with two alternatives: they might sink all differences in the
presence of alien enemies, and by forming themselves into one
powerful State successfully resist invasion and so preserve their
independence; or, in the alternative, remain divided and consequently
prove an easy prey to their foes. Before this test the Welsh people
failed. The princes showed that they set greater store upon their
own glory and dignity than upon the safety of the country as a whole;
and time and again they refused to lay aside their rivalries and
jealousies in order to present a united {64} front to the enemy. A
love of liberty and independence had been born, and they were to
inspire a desperate resistance against overwhelming odds on several
occasions; but the one condition absolutely essential if independence
was to be preserved the Welsh princes were not willing to accept.
And so the people of Wales, turning their backs upon this splendid
opportunity, began to tread that long road of political failure and
futility which made them ultimately a mere appanage of England, and
which, but for the efforts of bards and men of letters in the
creation of a precious national literature, would have led inevitably
to the total extinction of the Welsh nation.
This testing time begins with the Conqueror's famous winter march of
1070 from York to Chester, and ends with the proclamation of Edward
II as Prince of Wales at Carnarvon in 1301. In the course of this
period of well nigh two centuries and a half there were years of
comparative tranquillity; but on the whole it appears to us like one
long incessant struggle. It divides itself naturally into two. In
the first period we find the Norman barons conducting campaigns in
Wales in their own private interest, each one {65} fighting for
himself, and taking possession of as much land as he could lay hands
on and retain. It was no more a war of England against Wales than
the adventure of the Conqueror had been a war of Normandy against
England. It was part of the policy of the first Norman kings to
direct the embarrassing and overflowing martial energy of their
followers into the innocuous channel of the Welsh wars. Whether they
destroyed the Welsh, or whether the Welsh destroyed them, was matter
of indifference to their royal master. But this period is of short
duration; and is followed at once by another, in which we find the
King of England himself taking an interest in the conquest of Wales,
and not infrequently leading expeditions in person into its mountain
recesses. It was the astute Henry I who began to see that the barons
who had established themselves in Wales might easily grow so powerful
as to be able successfully to defy the royal will. Indeed at one
period it did seem as if that fine soldier and politician, Robert of
Belesme, Earl of Shrewsbury, would succeed in winning the allegiance
of all the Welsh princes, and in establishing a Norman-Welsh kingdom
of the West, which would be completely independent {66} of England.
In this there would have been nothing impossible, or even unusual.
It was the kind of thing that the Normans had been doing in various
parts of Europe in the course of the preceding hundred years; and if
the Duke of Normandy had succeeded in creating a Norman-English
kingdom, why should not the Earl of Shrewsbury succeed in
establishing a Norman-Welsh kingdom. The scheme failed through
jealousy on the part of the other Norman barons, the Welsh people's
love of independence, and the hostility of the Norman and Angevin
kings.
By the year 1070 the conquest of England by William I was complete,
and all the available sequestrated lands had been divided among his
followers. But the land hunger of the barons was unappeased; and in
order that he might have time to consolidate and to organize his new
kingdom, William directed their attention to Wales. That country
possessed three obvious gates by which invading armies might enter.
The first was Chester, which William himself had visited, and from
which the great mountains of Gwynedd could be clearly discerned. The
second was Shrewsbury, from which a broad and fertile valley
stretched right into the {67} heart of Powys. The third was
Hereford, the natural starting point for the conquest of Deheubarth.
At each of these points William stationed one of his barons--at
Chester the rapacious Hugh the Wolf, at Shrewsbury the able Roger of
Montgomery, at Hereford William Fitz Osbern. Using these three
towns, at each of which a strong castle was erected, as bases of
operations, the earls, in the course of the next fifty years,
advanced step by step into the country. Their object was to possess
themselves of all the level and fertile land; and their method of
conquest was the castle. Opposition to them was always fierce, but
seldom united or well advised. The three original barons were soon
joined by others; and ere long chains of fortresses stretched out
from Shrewsbury, Chester, Hereford, Gloucester, and Cardiff. The
English border was thereby studded with them; and so was the whole of
South Wales from Gloucester and Hereford to Pembroke and Aberystwyth.
They brought with them traders, architects, and craftsmen; and a
numerous colony of Flemings made Pembrokeshire their home. At the
end of this period of advance it was recognized that to the Normans
belonged the Marches, the fertile plains, {68} and the eastern and
southern slopes of the mountains; while the rest--a land of dizzy
peaks, narrow valleys, and bleak moorland--remained in the hands of
the Welsh people.
The records of these years of conquest are interesting and sometimes
thrilling, but neither edifying nor instructive. They are replete
with martial exploits and deeds of daring. Battles are fought, and
castles are stormed and burned with wearisome monotony. On both
sides there was cruelty and treachery in abundance. A few names
stand out as deserving of remembrance. The men who did most to stem
the on-coming tide of Norman invasion were Griffith ap Conan, and
Griffith ap Rees, both of whom died in the year 1137. The former
ruled in Gwynedd, and the latter in Deheubarth; and to a far greater
degree than any other Welsh princes of the period they perceived how
absolutely essential unity was if Wales was to be saved from becoming
a Norman fief. By this time the Welsh had learnt much of the
Normans' military art. They fought clad, like their foes, in
complete armour; and they knew how to build, how to defend, and how
to attack stone castles. Thus the disparity in equipment, which had
at first made Welsh armies an easy prey to {69} much smaller bodies
of Normans, was disappearing. In 1136, the year after the death of
Henry I, a great pitched battle was fought at Cardigan between
Griffith ap Rees and a league of Norman barons formed in order to
crush him; and in this battle the Welsh were victorious. The Normans
retreated, and were obliged to abandon much of the land and several
of the castles which they had previously held. This is the
high-water mark of the power of the Norman barons as distinct from
that of the Norman kings.
An even greater ruler then ascended the throne of Gwynedd, the famous
Owen Gwynedd, fine soldier, far-sighted statesman, friend of poets,
and patron of monks. He perceived, dimly at least, the utter
hopelessness of the struggle, which had now begun in earnest, against
incorporation in the English kingdom, unless complete national unity
could at once be achieved. Henry II now sat on the throne of
England; for the times of Stephen and Matilda, so helpful to the
enemies of England, were over. Owen persuaded most of the Welsh
chieftains to acknowledge his supremacy; and he made an alliance with
the princely house of Dinevor, the rulers of South Wales. But for
the utter selfishness and the {70} treachery of his brother there is
no knowing but that something like a united Wales might have emerged
before the close of Owen's reign. Never was unity so sorely needed;
for one of the first enterprises upon which Henry II embarked, when
he had made his throne secure, was the subjugation of Wales. But
Henry's first venture was unsuccessful. Starting from Chester, he
penetrated as far as Rhuddlan; but was there confronted with the
great mountain mass of Snowdonia, stretching right into the sea at
the Penmaenmawr. He occupied Anglesey, however; but so fierce was
the opposition with which he was met that he deemed it wise to come
to terms with Owen, and to withdraw.
In 1157 Henry came a second time, but with no better results. Twelve
years later he led his armies into Wales for the third time, on this
occasion starting from Oswestry, and crossing the mountains into the
upper valley of the Dee. At Corwen Owen's army was drawn up in
readiness, an army fairly representative of the whole of Wales.
Before the English could reach him, however, the wind and the rain
had done their work upon the invaders. Baggage was washed away, and
to obtain adequate supplies became an {71} impossibility. Angry and
disappointed, Henry was obliged hurriedly to retreat. This was the
crowning triumph of Owen Gwynedd's life. He had successfully
withstood one of the very greatest of English kings. In the November
of the same year he died, and was buried in Bangor cathedral.
In the years which immediately followed the death of Owen the
dominating figure in Welsh politics was Rees ap Griffith, prince of
Deheubarth, the "Lord Rees" as he was generally and familiarly
styled. He inherited Owen's policy of unity and consolidation; but
this time the work was to proceed from Cardigan, and not from the
mountains of the North. The task of repelling the advance of the
Normans was now less formidable than it had ever been; for the
conquest of Ireland had begun, and the more turbulent and adventurous
spirits were finding there an outlet for their energies in just the
same way as their grandfathers had done in Wales. When king Henry II
passed through Wales on his way to Ireland, he was met by the Lord
Rees, and an amicable understanding was arrived at between them. In
1174 Rees was able to give proof of his friendship by assisting Henry
to crush a revolt of his barons. {72} Slowly but steadily Rees
extended his sway over all the princes and barons of the South; and
even over Merioneth beyond the Dovey, the natural boundary between
his dominions and those of the princes of Gwynedd. Not only was Rees
a great warrior, and an able statesman; he was also a munificent and
discriminating patron of culture. An Eisteddfod which he held at
Cardigan in 1176 has become famous. There poets and musicians from
every part of Wales competed; and so just were the awards that the
prize for music was won by the South, and that for poetry by the
North.
The closing decade of the twelfth century saw the accession to the
throne of Gwynedd of the ablest statesman in the whole history of
mediæval Wales. This was Llewelyn, known to English and Welsh
historians alike as Llewelyn the Great. It was no novel spectacle to
see one of the Welsh thrones occupied by a fine soldier; and great as
Llewelyn undoubtedly was in that respect, he was no greater than some
of his predecessors and some of his successors. Where he outshines
all competitors is in his clear reading of the signs of the times, in
his understanding of the politics of England as well as Wales, and in
his firm {73} grasp of a policy which was no fantastic dream but a
theory possible of attainment. His long reign of forty-six years
(1194-1240) divides itself naturally into some half-dozen periods.
In the first period (1194-1201) Llewelyn is fully absorbed in the
task of making himself secure on the throne of Gwynedd. His
difficulty was with the members of his own family, and with Prince
Gwenwynwyn of Powys. The emergence of Gwynedd from the obscurity
which had recently overtaken it was also beheld with jealous eyes by
the princes of the South. But from all these difficulties Llewelyn
soon emerged triumphant. In the course of the struggle he had,
however, learnt one thing, and that was that the only hope for Wales
lay in submission to the king of England, a submission which would
involve only an acknowledgment of overlordship, without the
abandonment of one single title of substantial independence. He
perceived clearly that to fight for the shadow would probably lead to
the loss of the substance; especially as it had now been proved
beyond all possibility of doubt that the Welsh princes never would
submit permanently and peacefully to one of their own order.
{74}
The second period in Llewelyn's reign opens with his marriage to
Joan, daughter of King John. The marriage alliance carried with it a
political alliance as well. Llewelyn used the brief breathing space
which this alliance brought him to the best possible advantage. He
made his position in Gwynedd secure, overran Powys, and carried his
victorious army as far south as Aberystwyth. There he met the
southern princes, and agreed to divide Cardigan with them. Then
turning northwards he marched against Ranulf, Earl of Chester, whose
castles of Deganwy, Rhuddlan, Holywell, and Mold he captured.
In the meantime John had been viewing the victorious career of his
son-in-law with surprise and displeasure. A strong and united Wales
was a thing which no king of England could tolerate. In the third
period of his reign, therefore, between 1212 and 1215, we find John
and Llewelyn in opposition to one another. Twice in the course of
one summer did John invade North Wales, penetrating on the second
occasion as far as Bangor, where, characteristically enough, he
burned the Cathedral, and held the Bishop to ransom. So hard pressed
was Llewelyn that he was obliged to send Joan to make full submission
to {75} her father on his behalf. But the tide soon turned. The
other Welsh chieftains were greatly alarmed at John's manifest
intention to dispossess them; and placing themselves under Llewelyn
they begged him to lead them. John had also quarrelled with Rome;
and the great Innocent III, who then held the Papacy, absolved
Llewelyn and the other Welsh princes from their allegiance to the
English king. Events in England were also most propitious; for John
had by now come into serious conflict with his own nobility, and was
soon to be compelled to concede all their demands by the Charter.
With the English barons Llewelyn made an alliance; and Magna Carta,
when it was eventually signed, contained clauses dealing exclusively
with Wales. One of these clauses consisted of a promise that all
Welshmen dispossessed of their lands or liberty should recover them.
Another declared that all disputes were to be decided in England by
English law, in the Marches by March law, and in Wales by Welsh law.
In the year 1213 John had convened a council, in which some have seen
the germ out of which grew the future English Parliament. The same
idea seems to have found place in the mind of Llewelyn; for on two
occasions {76} he summoned together all the princes of Wales, and all
the wise men. So far as we know there was no process of election,
and certainly no trace of the principle of representation;
nevertheless this council was a distinct advance politically upon
anything that had been seen in Wales before. The princes were to act
as judges, and all questions of policy were to be debated by them
with the assistance of the wise men. The first of these councils
assembled at Aberdovey, a convenient meeting-place for Gwynedd,
Powys, and the South. The decrees of the council were to be upheld
by force; and when Gwenwynwyn of Powys soon after refused to obey, he
was instantly crushed and deprived of his lands.
In order to strengthen himself still further, and at the same time to
erect a bulwark between him and England, Llewelyn cemented his
alliance with the powerful lords of the Marches by giving one of his
daughters in marriage to Reginald de Braose, and the other to Ralph
Mortimer. This lady Gladys, who married Mortimer, became the
ancestress of Elizabeth of York, the mother of Henry VIII. Thus in
the veins of the greatest of the Tudors there flowed some of the
blood of the ancient royal house of Cunedda.
{77}
In the next period of his reign, between 1215 and 1226, we find
Llewelyn at war with the Marshalls, the able and warlike Earls of
Pembroke. William Marshall was as able a statesman as Llewelyn
himself. His aim was to put an end to the turmoil into which England
had been plunged by the struggle between king and barons. He was in
favour of the Charter; but at the same time it seemed to him that the
supremacy of a king was to be preferred to the lawless self-seeking
of the great earls. He believed that the welfare of England demanded
the existence of a strong central Government; and in this he was
unquestionably right. In truth, Marshall was striving to achieve in
England the very same thing that Llewelyn had been striving to
achieve in Wales. With the death of John, and the accession of the
innocent and untried Henry III, the power of the barons began to
decline. Unfortunately the great Marshall died in 1219; and a
vigorous war broke out between his son and Llewelyn. After some
years, however, the younger Marshall lost the favour of the king; and
Llewelyn, always quick to adjust his policy to a changed situation,
at once concluded an alliance with him. Against such an alliance
{78} nothing could stand in Wales. Every castle in the country, with
the solitary exception of Carmarthen, fell into their hands, and the
king's army was defeated in a great battle at Grosmont.
With the victory of Grosmont the period of Llewelyn's aggressive
policy comes to an end. Henceforward he is on the defensive, feeling
the on-coming of old age, and desiring above all things to render
Wales secure against disintegration after his death. Llewelyn had
read correctly the lesson of the past. He knew that, as soon as the
strong hand of an able ruler had been removed, the fruits of his
policy had been dissipated by his mediocre successors. What he now
desired so ardently was to build a Welsh State upon foundations so
secure that it would not be overthrown by incapacity on the part of
its sovereign. The definite announcement of Llewelyn's policy of
dependence upon England produced two parties in Wales, one of them
antagonistic to such dependence, the other favourable to it. This
ultimately proved to be the rock upon which the plan was wrecked; but
it was not until after the death of Llewelyn that the failure of his
policy became apparent. While he lived, his genius and his {79}
prestige were sufficient to compel the reluctant acquiescence even of
those princes who most strongly disapproved of his policy. An
agreement was made with the English king, whereby Wales was to
preserve its independence, while its Prince acknowledged his
dependence, in the feudal sense, upon England. There was to be
perpetual peace between the two kingdoms; and Wales was to support
England in all foreign wars.
Llewelyn's eldest son, Griffith, an able and energetic young man, who
would naturally have inherited his father's throne, was strongly
opposed to the policy which had been adopted. In his view Welsh
independence ought to be absolute and complete; and no political
dealings with England fought to be carried on at all except on a
footing of equality. The young prince was consequently looked upon
as the natural leader of the war party. With what reluctance we do
not know, Llewelyn made up his mind that Griffith should not inherit
his throne, but that it should go to Davydd, the younger of his sons,
an effeminate and peace-loving boy. With this purpose in view the
aged Prince summoned again the Council of Princes to meet, this time
at the Cistercian abbey of Strata Florida. There {80} Davydd was
duly nominated, and the oaths of allegiance of all the assembled
chieftains taken. This was in 1238; and two years later Llewelyn
died, and was buried in the monastery of Aberconway.
In the brief intervals of peace which he had enjoyed in the course of
his long and strong reign, Llewelyn had proved himself not unmindful
of the things of the intellect and the spirit. The Cistercian monks
found in him a warm friend. It was at their home of Strata Florida
that he summoned the last of his councils; and it was at their home
on the slopes of the Conway that he came to sleep his last sleep.
While he was reigning, the mendicant Orders had also come to Wales
for the first time; and they, likewise, especially the Franciscan
Friars, found in him a sympathetic protector; and it was by his
favour that they acquired their beautiful home at Llan Vaes in
Anglesey. We have seen how he negotiated with the Pope. With the
desire of the Welsh Church to be completely independent of Canterbury
he was in full sympathy, although he never went so far as to lay
claims to the power of appointing Welsh bishops. Like almost all the
greater Welsh princes he delighted in music and {81} poetry, and was
a munificent patron of the bard and the minstrel.
In accordance with the decree of the Council Davydd ascended his
father's throne, and set himself to walk the path marked out for him.
But the task which the great Llewelyn had barely been able to
accomplish was far beyond the strength of his less able and less
popular son. His brother Griffith had already been suspected of
harbouring disloyal thoughts and had been immured by his father in
the castle of Criccieth. In 1241 Davydd went to Gloucester, one of
the three cities at which the kings of England used regularly to meet
their advisers in council, and there did homage to Henry III. Then
his real troubles began. The extreme nationalists were determined to
put an end to the policy of dependence; and in the person of the
imprisoned Griffith they knew that they would find an able and
enthusiastic champion. And not only was Davydd opposed by the Welsh
diehards; he also found enemies in many of the border princes and
barons, who resented the supremacy of Gwynedd. Griffith's wife
Senena was free; and she was chosen by the party of opposition to go
to the king and plead her husband's cause. Henry III was
sufficiently {82} crafty to discern the opportunity of maintaining a
state of discord in Wales, by playing off the one brother against the
other. He accordingly decreed that both Davydd and Griffith should
come to court, and have their differences settled by Welsh law. It
soon became obvious, however, that Henry was not to be trusted by
either party. He marched towards Chester, and then commenced to
negotiate with Davydd. The king's terms were accepted; and Davydd
went with Henry to London, and again swore allegiance. Meanwhile
Griffith had been set at liberty. But his liberty was of short
duration. Henry imprisoned him in the Tower of London where, in
1244, he met his death while attempting to escape.
In the summer of 1245 Henry gathered together a large army, and
marched against North Wales. Deganwy was reached, and a new castle
built there. This was waste of valuable time, and ere the work was
completed the king found that Davydd had secured powerful allies in
the form of famine and winter storms. It was the same old story that
could be told of so many of the English invasions of Wales in the
Middle--a swift and irresistible advance in {83} summer, a long halt,
then the oncoming of winter followed by a retreat which very
frequently became a rout. In the next year Davydd died, and was laid
to rest in his father's grave at Aberconway, whither, some time
later, the body of his brother Griffith was also brought.
With the death of Davydd a disputed succession again arose. The two
most obvious claimants, since Davydd had left no children, were
Griffith's two sons, Owen Goch and Llewelyn. But Ralph Mortimer also
claimed the throne through his wife Gladys, daughter of Llewelyn the
Great; and when he died a few months later he transmitted his claims
to his son Roger. An entirely new candidate, however, appeared on
the scene in the person of the young Prince Edward, son of Henry III
and heir to the English throne. The claim was vague, resting upon
the agreement come to between Senena on behalf of Griffith, and
Henry. In effect all that was claimed by Edward was the territory
held by Llewelyn ap Griffith, which comprised the four _cantrefs_
between the Dee and the Conway--Rhos, Rhuvonig, Dyffryn Clwyd, and
Tegeingl--and certain lands south of the Dovey; and these he
obtained. In Gwynedd Owen and {84} Llewelyn now became joint rulers;
and when they had done homage to the English king, they remained
unmolested. Llewelyn had inherited a large measure of his
grandfather's ability and force of character; and owing to the
possession of these qualities he soon began to take the lead in
affairs. With high and low alike he was immensely popular. This
roused the jealousy of his two brothers, Owen and Davydd, and they
rose in revolt against him. But from the start Llewelyn proved
himself a most capable soldier. The rebels were swiftly defeated;
Davydd escaped, and fled to the English court; while Owen was
imprisoned. By the end of the year 1255 Llewelyn was without a rival
in the North.
{85}