Owen Glyndwr and the Last Struggle for Welsh Independence
by A. G. Bradley · English · Gutenberg #42457 · 608,559 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Owen Glyndwr and the Last Struggle for Welsh Independence
Author: A. G. Bradley
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OWEN GLYNDWR AND THE LAST STRUGGLE FOR WELSH INDEPENDENCE ***
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OWEN GLYNDWR
AND THE LAST STRUGGLE FOR
WELSH INDEPENDENCE
WITH A BRIEF SKETCH OF WELSH HISTORY
BY
ARTHUR GRANVILLE BRADLEY
AUTHOR OF "HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS IN
NORTH WALES," "SKETCHES FROM OLD
VIRGINIA," "THE FIGHT WITH FRANCE
FOR NORTH AMERICA," ETC.
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK
27 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET
LONDON
24 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND
The Knickerbocker Press
1901
COPYRIGHT, 1901
BY
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
Heroes of the Nations
EDITED BY
Evelyn Abbott, M.A.
FELLOW OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD
FACTA DUCIS VIVENT, OPEROSAQUE
GLORIA RERUM.--OVID, IN LIVIAM 265.
THE HERO'S DEEDS AND HARD-WON
FAME SHALL LIVE.
OWEN GLYNDWR
Heroes of the Nations
A Series of Biographical Studies presenting the lives and work of
certain representative historical characters, about whom have gathered
the traditions of the nations to which they belong, and who have, in
the majority of instances, been accepted as types of the several
national ideals.
12^o, Illustrated, cloth, each, $1.50
Half Leather, gilt top, each, $1.75
FOR FULL LIST SEE END OF THIS VOLUME
[Illustration: GLYNDWR'S MOUNT, GLYNDYFRDWY.
Copyright
Miss Walker.
_Frontispiece._]
[Decoration]
PREFACE
If this little book purported to be a biography in the ordinary sense
of the word, the scantiness of purely personal detail relating to its
hero might be a fair subject of criticism. But men of the Glyndwr type
live in history rather by their deeds, and the deeds of those they
lead and inspire. This is peculiarly the case with the last and the
most celebrated among the soldier patriots of Wales. Though so little
remains to tell us of the actual man himself, this very fact has
thrown a certain glamour and mystery about his name even in the
Principality. While numbers of well-informed Englishmen are inclined
to regard him, so far as they regard him at all, as a semi-mythical
hero under obligations to Shakespeare for such measure of renown and
immortality as he enjoys, if the shade of Henry the Fourth could be
called up as a witness it would tell a very different story. It is at
any rate quite certain that for the first few years of the fifteenth
century, both to England and to Wales, to friends and to foes, Owen
was in very truth a sufficiently real personality. What we do know of
him, apart from his work, might well suggest infinite possibilities to
the novelist and the poet. It is my business, however, to deal only
with facts or to record legends and traditions for what they are
worth, as illustrating the men and the time.
Glyndwr is without doubt the national hero of the majority of
Welshmen. Precisely why he takes precedence of warrior princes who
before his day struggled so bravely with the Anglo-Norman power and
often with more permanent success, is not now to the point. My readers
will be able to form some opinion of their own as to the soundness of
the Welsh verdict. But these are matters, after all, outside logic and
argument. It is a question of sentiment which has its roots perhaps in
sound reasons now forgotten. There are in existence several brief and
more or less accurate accounts of Glyndwr's rising. Those of Thomas,
written early in this century, and of Pennant, embodied in his well
known _Tours in Wales_, are the most noteworthy,--while one or two
interesting papers represent all the recent contributions to the
subject. There has not hitherto, however, been any attempt to collect
in book form all that is known of this celebrated Welshman and the
movement he headed. I have, therefore, good reason to believe that the
mere collection and arrangement of this in one accessible and handy
volume will not be unwelcome, to Welsh readers especially. Thus much
at least I think I have achieved, and the thought will be some
consolation, at any rate, if I have failed in the not very easy task
of presenting the narrative in sufficiently popular and readable
guise. But I hope also to engage the interest of readers other than
Welshmen in the story of Glyndwr and his times. If one were to say
that the attitude of nearly all Englishmen towards Wales in an
historical sense is represented by a total blank, I feel quite sure
that the statement would neither be denied nor resented.
Under this assumption it was thought well to attempt a somewhat fuller
picture of Wales than that presented by the Glyndwr period alone, and
to lead up to this by an outline sketch of Welsh history. The earlier
part, particularly, of this contains much contentious matter. But in
such a rapid, superficial survey as will fully answer our purpose
here, there has scarcely been occasion to go below those salient
features that are pretty generally agreed upon by historians. The kind
manner in which my _Highways and Byways of North Wales_ was received,
not only by English readers but by Welsh friends and the Welsh press,
makes me venture to hope that my presumption as a Saxon in making this
more serious excursion into the domain of Welsh history will be
overlooked in consideration of the subject dealt with.
A continuous intimacy of many years with the Glyndyfrdwy region begat
a natural interest in the notable personage who had once owned it, and
this gradually ripened into a desire to fill, however inadequately,
what seemed to me an obvious want. Before venturing on the task I took
some pains to ascertain whether any Welsh writer had the matter in
contemplation, and so far as information gathered in the most
authoritative quarters could be effective it was in the negative. As
this was at a time when the Welsh people were considering some form
of National memorial to Glyndwr, the absence both in fact and in
prospect of any accessible memoir of him overcame what diffidence on
racial grounds I had naturally felt and encouraged me in my desire to
supply the want.
A full list of the authorities I have consulted in the preparation of
this work would, I have reason to understand, be too ponderous a
supplement to a volume of this kind. Before noting any of them,
however, I must first acknowledge the very great obligations I am
under to Professor Wylie for his invaluable and exhaustive history of
Henry IV.; not merely for the information contained in the text of his
book, but for his copious notes which have been most helpful in
indicating many sources of information connected with the persons and
events of the time. The following are some of the chief works
consulted: Dr. Powell's translation of Humphrey Lloyd's _History of
Wales_ from the chronicle of Caradoc of Llancarvan, Ellis' original
letters, _Annales Cambriæ_, Rymer's _Fœdera_, Williams' _History of
Wales_, Warrington's _History of Wales_, Tyler's _Henry V._, Adam of
Usk, Matthew of Paris, Hardyng's and other chronicles, Giraldus
Cambrensis, the historians Carte, Walsingham, and Holinshed,
Bridgeman's _Princes of South Wales_, Lloyd's _History of the Princes
of Powys Fadog_, the Iolo MSS., Owen's _Ancient Laws and Institutions
of Wales_, _Archæologia Cambrensis_, the Brut, and, of course, the
Rolls series. Among living writers who have been helpful in various
ways and have my best thanks are Mr. Robert Owen, of Welshpool, the
author of _Powysland_, the Revd. W. G. Dymock Fletcher, of Shrewsbury,
who has made a special study of the neighbouring battle-field;
Professor Tout, who has published an interesting lecture on Glyndwr
and some instructive maps connected with the period; and Mr. Henry
Owen, the well known authority on Pembrokeshire and author of _Gerald
the Welshman_; nor must I omit a word of thanks to Mr. Owen Edwards,
whose kind encouragement materially influenced my decision to
undertake this book.
I am under most particular obligations to that well known Welsh
scholar, Mr. T. Marchant Williams, for suggestions and criticisms when
the book was still in manuscript, and also to my lamented friend, the
late Mr. St. John Boddington, of Huntington Court, Herefordshire, for
assistance of a somewhat similar nature.
I am also greatly indebted to Miss Walker, of Corwen, for several
photographic scenes in Glyndyfrdwy, which she most kindly took with an
especial view to reproduction in these pages, and to Messrs. H. H.
Hughes and W. D. Haydon, both of Shrewsbury, who rendered a like
service in the matter of Glyndwr's other residence at Sycherth.
[Decoration]
[Decoration]
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION 1
The Romans in Wales--Cunedda--Christianity--Arrival of
Saxons--Their Conquest of Severn Valley--The Latin and
Welsh Churches--The Three Divisions of Wales--Arrival of
Danes--Strathclyde Britons Occupy Vale of Clwyd--Howel
Dda and His Laws--Growing Intercourse between Welsh and
Saxons--Llewelyn I.--Griffith ap Llewelyn--Harold's
Invasions of Wales--Arrival of Normans--William I. and
William Rufus in Wales--Norman Conquest of Glamorgan--
The Flemings Settle in Pembroke--Wars between Owen Gwynedd
and Henry II.--Howel ap Owen Gwynedd--Dafydd ap Owen
Gwynedd--Giraldus Cambrensis on the Welsh--Religious
Awakening in the Twelfth Century--Powys and the English
Power--Llewelyn the Great, 1195--King John's Invasion of
Wales--Llewelyn recognised as Ruler of All Wales--Dafydd
ap Llewelyn Succeeds--He Persecutes his Brother Griffith
and Makes War on the English--Henry III. in Wales--
Llewelyn ap Griffith, Last Prince in Wales--Long Struggle
against Henry III. and Edward I.--Death of Llewelyn and
his Brother Dafydd--Final Conquest of Wales--Edward I.
Enacts Statutes of Rhuddlan, Builds Castles, and Provides
for the Future Government of the Country--Wales between
the Conquest and Glyndwr's Rising.
CHAPTER II
BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE, 1359-1399 82
Owen's Birth and Descent--His Youth--His Connection with
Henry IV. and Richard II.--Sycherth--Glyndyfrdwy--
Marriage--Family.
CHAPTER III
GLYNDWR AND LORD GREY OF RUTHIN, 1400-1401 110
Lord Grey of Ruthin--Anglo-Welsh Towns--Owen's Unsuccessful
Lawsuit--Contemptuous Treatment by the English Court--
Bad Faith of Grey towards Owen--Griffith ap David--Grey
Appeals for Aid against Welsh Insurgents--Grey's Attempt
to Capture Owen--Owen Assumes the Leadership--Iolo
Goch--Owen Raids Ruthin--The King Invades Wales but to
no Purpose--The Prince of Wales Left in Command at
Chester--Owen Winters at Glyndyfrdwy.
CHAPTER IV
OWEN AND THE PERCYS, 1401 135
Hotspur in North Wales--Prince Henry--Conway Taken by
the Welsh--Retaken by the English--Percy Acts against
the Welsh--Owen Goes to Plinlimmon--War Carried to the
South--Flemings of Pembroke Defeated by Glyndwr--Owen
Triumphs in South Wales--King Henry again Invades
Wales--The King in Cardigan--Invasion without Result--
The English Army Retires to Shrewsbury--Owen and the
Percys--Welsh Social Divisions--Owen Captures Grey at
Ruthin--Grey Held to Ransom.
CHAPTER V
THE KING AND HOTSPUR, 1402 163
Portents--Bishop Trevor--Howel Sele--Mortimer Defeated
at Pilleth, and Taken Prisoner--The King Refuses to
Ransom Mortimer--Glyndwr in Carnarvonshire--Great
Invasion of Wales by King Henry--Magic and Tempests
Overwhelm the English Advance--Defeat of the Scots at
Homildon--Hotspur and the King Dispute about Scottish
Prisoners--Mortimer Invites His Radnor Tenants to Join
Glyndwr.
CHAPTER VI
THE BATTLE OF SHREWSBURY, 1403 185
The King in Need of Money--Prince Henry at Shrewsbury--
He Destroys Owen's Property--Letter from the Prince
Concerning this--Glyndwr in the Vale of Towy--Victory of
Anglo-Flemings near Carmarthen--Urgent Appeal for Royal
Assistance from Brecon--Petitions for the Same from
Herefordshire--The Welsh Overrun Western Herefordshire--
Glyndwr at Carmarthen--He Consults a Soothsayer--The
Plot of the Percys--Battle of Shrewsbury--Glyndwr's
Connection with the Movement--He Appears in Flint--The
King Prepares for the Invasion of Wales.
CHAPTER VII
OWEN AND THE FRENCH, 1403-1404 212
Beleaguered Castles--The King Invades Wales--He Reaches
Carmarthen and Hurries Home Again--Glyndwr Takes more
Castles and harries Herefordshire--The French Land at
Carmarthen--Anglesey--Carnarvon--Glyndwr Captures
Harlech--He Calls a Parliament at Machynlleth--Davy
Gam--Glyndwr Sends Ambassadors to Paris--Bishop Trevor
Joins the Welsh--Herefordshire and the English Borders
Ravaged--Urgent Appeals for Succour to the King--The
Earl of Warwick Defeats Glyndwr--Glyndwr Gains a
Victory--He Forces Shropshire to Make Terms--Owen's
Court at Harlech--Iolo Goch.
CHAPTER VIII
WELSH REVERSES, 1405 237
Desolation of Wales--Owen's Methods of Warfare--Country
Houses of the Period--Welsh Rural Life and Population--
Glyndwr Not a Rebel--Lady Despencer and the Young Princes--
Prince Henry's Letter on the Battle--Welsh Defeated at
Mynydd-y-Pwll-Melyn--Owen's Brother Killed, and his Son
Captured--The Percys Rise in the North--Depression among
Owen's Followers--Landing of the French at Milford--The
Allies March to Worcester--Battle of Woodbury Hill--
Retreat of Franco-Welsh Army to Wales--King Henry
Unsuccessfully Invades Wales--Cadogan of the
Battle-axe--Departure of the French--Pembroke Makes
Terms with Owen.
CHAPTER IX
THE TRIPARTITE INDENTURE, 1406 263
The Tripartite Indenture--Defeat and Execution of Lord
Percy and Bardolph--Owen's Letter from Pennal to the
King of France--The Papal Schism--Owen's Star Waning--
Anglesey--Dejection in the Vale of Towy--Glyndwr's
Lonely Wanderings--The Valle Crucis Story--The
Berkrolles' Story--Iolo Goch's Lament.
CHAPTER X
ABERYSTWITH. OWEN'S POWER DECLINES, 1407-1409 284
Owen's Movements Vague--The King Failing in Health but
Anxious to Enter Wales--Preparations for Siege of
Aberystwith--The King Shrinks from Going to Wales--A
General Pestilence--Prince Henry Leads a Large Force to
Aberystwith--Terms of Surrender Arranged--Agreement
Upset by Owen's Sudden Appearance--Fall of Aberystwith
and Harlech--Death of Mortimer--Owen Sinks into a
Guerilla Leader--Pardons and Punishments--Death in Paris
of Bishop Trevor.
CHAPTER XI
LAST YEARS OF OWEN'S LIFE, 1410-1416 300
Harsh Laws Enacted against the Welsh--Davy Gam--A General
Pardon Offered by Henry V.--Owen an Outlaw in the
Mountains--Owen, Left Alone, Disappears from History--
Henry V. Sends him a Special Pardon--Kentchurch or
Monnington the Scene of Owen's Death--Some Remarks on
his Policy.
CHAPTER XII
CONCLUSION 310
Wales after Glyndwr.
APPENDIX
THE BARDS 333
[Decoration]
[Decoration]
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
GLYNDWR'S MOUNT, GLYNDYFRDWY _Frontispiece_
Copyright, Miss Walker.
CAREW CASTLE 40
[From old print.]
CORWEN AND PEN-Y-PIGIN, FROM THE DEE 44
Copyright, W. Davis.
VALLE CRUCIS ABBEY 54
Copyright, F. Frith & Co.
CONWAY CASTLE 78
Copyright, F. Frith & Co.
DOLGELLY AND CADER IDRIS 82
Copyright, C. H. Young.
HOLT CASTLE 86
[From old print.]
POWYS CASTLE 92
[From an old engraving from painting by W. Daniells.]
LLANGOLLEN AND DINAS BRÂN 96
Copyright, F. Frith & Co.
SYCHERTH, FROM THE SOUTH 100
Copyright, W. D. Haydon.
RUTHIN CASTLE 110
[From old print.]
AN OLD STREET, SHREWSBURY 120
Copyright, J. Bartlett.
CARCHARDY OWAIN, GLYNDWR'S PRISON HOUSE AT LLANSANTFFRAID 130
Copyright, Miss Walker.
INTERIOR CONWAY CASTLE 140
Copyright, F. Frith & Co.
OLD BRIDGE AT LLANSANTFFRAID, GLYNDYFRDWY 154
Copyright, Miss Walker.
LOOKING UP THE MAWDDACH FROM NANNAU 166
Copyright, C. H. Young.
OLD LODGE AT NANNAU, NEAR THE SITE OF THE "OAK OF DEMONS" 168
Copyright, C. H. Young.
PILLETH HILL, RADNORSHIRE 176
Copyright, R. St. John Boddington.
SYCHERTH, FROM THE NORTH 186
Copyright, H. H. Hughes.
HAY 190
Copyright, Marion & Co.
BATTLE-FIELD CHURCH, NEAR SHREWSBURY 200
Copyright, J. Bartlett.
CARNARVON CASTLE 218
Copyright, F. Frith & Co.
MACHYNLLETH 220
Copyright, F. Frith & Co.
OWEN'S COUNCIL HOUSE, DOLGELLY 224
Copyright, C. H. Young.
HARLECH 232
Copyright, F. Frith & Co.
CAERPHILLY CASTLE 244
Copyright, F. Frith & Co.
MANORBIER CASTLE 262
Copyright, F. Frith & Co.
ABERYSTWITH CASTLE 290
Copyright, F. Frith & Co.
MONNINGTON COURT AND CHURCH 300
Copyright, W. H. Bustin.
PORCH OF MONNINGTON CHURCH AND GLYNDWR'S REPUTED GRAVE 308
Copyright, Mrs. Leather.
PEMBROKE CASTLE 312
[From a photograph.]
Copyright, F. Frith & Co.
KENTCHURCH COURT, WITH GLYNDWR'S TOWER 314
Copyright, W. H. Bustin.
[Decoration]
[Decoration]
OWEN GLYNDWR
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY SKETCH OF WELSH HISTORY FROM THE SAXON CONQUEST OF
ENGLAND TO THE RISING OF GLYNDWR
400-1400
The main subject of this book is the man whose memory, above that of
all other men, the Welsh as a people delight to honour, and that
period of Welsh history which he made so stormy and so memorable. But
having what there is some reason to regard as a well founded opinion
that (to the vast majority of English readers) the story of Wales is
practically a blank, it seems to me desirable to prepare the way in
some sort for the advent of my hero upon this, the closing scene of
Cambrian glory. I shall therefore begin with a rapid sketch of those
nine centuries which, ending with Glyndwr's rising, constitute roughly
in a political and military sense the era of Welsh nationality. It is
an audacious venture, I am very well aware, and more especially so
when brought within the compass of a single chapter.
Among the many difficulties that present themselves in contemplating
an outline sketch of Welsh history, a doubt as to the best period for
beginning it can hardly be included. Unless one is prepared to take
excursions into the realms of pure conjecture and speculation, which
in these pages would be altogether out of place, the only possible
epoch at which to open such a chapter is the Saxon conquest of
England. And I lay some stress on the word England, because the fact
of Wales resisting both Saxon conquest and even Saxon influence to any
appreciable extent, at this early period, is the keynote to its
history.
* * * * *
What the British tribes were like, who, prior to this fifth century,
lived under Roman rule in the country we now call Wales, no man may
know. We do know, however, that the Romans were as firmly seated there
as in most parts of Britain. From their strong garrisons at Chester,
Uriconium, Caerleon, and elsewhere they kept the country to the
westward quiet by means of numerous smaller posts. That their legions
moved freely about the country we have evidence enough in the metalled
causeways that can still be traced in almost every locality beneath
the mountain sod. The traces, too, of their mining industry are still
obvious enough in the bowels of the mountains and even beneath the
sea, to say nothing of surface evidence yet more elaborate. That their
soldiers fell here freely in the cause of order or of conquest is
written plainly enough in the names and epitaphs on mortuary stones
that in districts even now remote have been exposed by the spade or
plough. But how much of Christianity, how much of Roman civilisation,
these primitive Britons of the West had absorbed in the four centuries
of Roman occupation is a matter quite outside the scope of these
elementary remarks. Of civilisation beyond the influence of the
garrisons there was probably little or none. As regards Christianity,
its echoes from the more civilised parts of the island had probably
found their way there, and affected the indigenous paganism of the
mountains to an extent that is even yet a fruitful source of
disagreement among experts. Lastly, as it seems probable that the
population of what is now called Wales was then much more sparse in
proportion to the rest of the island than in subsequent periods, its
condition becomes a matter of less interest, which is fortunate,
seeing we know so little about it.
With the opening of the fifth century the Romans evacuated Britain. By
the middle of it the Saxon influx, encouraged, as every schoolboy
knows, by the Britons themselves in their weakness, had commenced.
Before its close the object of the new-comers had developed and the
"Making of England" was in full operation.
For these same conquered Britons many of us, I think, started life
with some tinge of contempt, mingled with the pity that beyond all
doubt they fully merit. Mr. Green has protested in strong terms
against so unjustifiable an attitude. He asks us to consider the
condition of a people, who in a fiercely warlike age, had been for
many generations forbidden to bear arms; who were protected by an
alien army from all fear of molestation, and encouraged, moreover, to
apply themselves zealously to the arts of peace. That men thus
enervated made a resistance so prolonged is the wonder, not that they
eventually gave way. If this nation, which resisted for a hundred
years, is a fit subject for criticism, what can be said of their
conquerors who, five centuries later, in the full enjoyment of warlike
habits and civil liberty, were completely crushed in seven by a no
more formidable foe?
While the pagan Saxons were slowly fighting their way across England
towards the Severn and the Dee, the country about and behind these
rivers had been galvanised by various influences into an altogether
new importance.
After the departure of the Romans, the Welsh tribes, less enervated
probably than their more Romanised fellow-countrymen to the east,
found in the Scots of Ireland rather than the Picts of the North their
deadliest foes. It was against these western rovers that the
indigenous natives of what for brevity's sake we are calling Wales,
relearnt in the fifth century the art of war, and the traces of their
conflicts are strewn thick along the regions that face the Irish Sea.
But while these contests were still in progress, three powerful tides
of influence of a sort wholly different poured into Wales and
contributed towards its solidity, its importance, its defensive power,
and its moral elevation.
[Sidenote: 400-500, Cunedda.]
(1) Out of the north, from Cumbria and Strathclyde, came the great
prince and warrior Cunedda, whose family seem to have taken
possession, with or without resistance, of large tracts of Wales,
Merioneth, Cardigan, and many other districts deriving their names in
fact from his sons. His progeny and their belongings became in some
sort a ruling caste; a faint reflection of what the Normans were in
later days to England.
Cunedda is said to have held his Court at Carlisle, and to have
wielded immense power in the north and north-west of Britain. If he
did not go to Wales in person he undoubtedly planted in it his
numerous and warlike offspring, who, with their following, are usually
regarded as the founders of the later tribal fabric of Wales, the
remote ancestors, in theory at any rate, of the Welsh landed gentry of
to-day; but this is a perilous and complex subject.
[Sidenote: Christianity.]
(2) In this century, too, came the first wave of a real and effective
Christianity, with its troops of missionaries from Brittany and
Ireland, in the front rank of which stand the names of St. David and
Germanus or Garmon, Bishop of Auxerre. The latter is generally
credited with the organisation of the Welsh Church, hitherto so vague
and undefined. It was, at any rate, during this period, that the
Church assumed definite territorial form, and that the Welsh diocese
and the Welsh parish, their boundaries roughly approximating to the
present ones, came into existence. Through the fifth, sixth, and well
into the seventh century, church building and religious activity of
all kinds flourished marvellously in Wales; while Christianity was
being steadily and ruthlessly stamped out over the rest of Britain by
the advancing pagans, native chieftains vied with foreign
ecclesiastics in building churches, cathedrals, and cells; and great
monastic houses arose, of which Bangor Iscoed, on the Dee, with its
two or three thousand inmates, was the most notable. The mountainous
region that in former days had been among those least influenced by it
was now the hope of the island, the seat of religious fervour, the
goal of the foreign missionary and the wandering saint.
[Sidenote: Arrival of the Saxons, 577.]
[Sidenote: British refugees in sixth century.]
(3) The third, and perhaps not the least powerful, factor in the
making of Wales was the advance of the Saxons. After their great
victory of Deorham they destroyed the British strongholds of Bath,
Gloucester, and Cirencester, and about the year 577, or 130 years
after their first landing in Britain, they appeared on the Severn. The
exact fate or disposal of the natives, whom with ceaseless fighting
they thus drove before them, is a matter of perennial controversy. The
ferocity of the conquerors, aggravated, no doubt, by the stubborn
resistance of the conquered, is a fact beyond all question and should
be emphasised, since its direful memories had much to do with the
inextinguishable hatred that was felt for so many centuries, and to a
certain degree is still felt, by many Welshmen towards their Saxon
foes. It may fairly be assumed that the extirpation (though the term
is much too strong) of the native stock was most marked in the eastern
parts of Britain, and that as the tide of conquest swept westward its
results in this particular were much modified. But however great the
slaughter or however considerable the native element that was retained
upon the soil by its conquerors, it is quite certain that the influx
of British refugees into Wales throughout the sixth century must have
been very large. Among them, too, no doubt, went numbers of men and
women of learning, of piety, and sometimes perhaps even of wealth, for
one need not suppose that every Briton waited to be driven from his
home at the spear's point.
[Sidenote: Cynddylan at Uriconium and Shrewsbury.]
A fierce onslaught in great force brought the invaders to the walls of
the Roman-British city of Uriconium, where Cynddylan, Prince of Powys,
with all the power of Central Wales, made a vain but gallant effort to
arrest the ruin:
Cynddylan with heart like the ice of winter.
Cynddylan with heart like the fire of spring.
He and his brothers were at length all slain, and his armies routed.
Uriconium or Tren was sacked, and higher up the valley the royal
palace at Pengwern, as Shrewsbury was then called, was destroyed.
These terrible scenes are described for us by Llywarch Hên, one of the
earliest British bards, himself an actor in them, who thus laments
over the wreck of Pengwern:
"The Hall of Cynddylan is dark
To-night, without fire, without bed;
I'll weep awhile, afterwards I shall be silent.
"The Hall of Cynddylan is gloomy
To-night, without fire, without songs;
Tears are running down my cheeks.
"The Hall of Cynddylan, it pierces my heart
To see it roofless, fireless;
Dead is my chief, yet I am living."
or again, on the destruction of Tren:
"The eagle of Pengwern screamed aloud to-night
For the blood of men he watched;
Tren may indeed be called a ruined town.
"Slain were my comrades all at once
Cynan, Cynddylan, Cyncraith,
Defending Tren the wasted city."
In a few years the Saxons were beaten back, and Pengwern, with the
surrounding country, once more became British, and remained so till
the days of Offa, King of Mercia.
[Sidenote: Augustine and the Welsh bishops, 601.]
By the close of the sixth century Christianity had been introduced by
Augustine into the south-eastern corner of England, and there is no
more suggestive scene in Welsh history than the famous meeting of the
great missionary with the Welsh bishops on the banks of the Severn. It
accentuates in a striking manner the cleavage between the Eastern or
the Latin Church, and that of the West and of the Welsh. Augustine,
about the year 601, fresh from his victories over paganism among the
Kentish Saxons, and having journeyed far through still heathen
regions, approaches these Western Christians with a kindly but
somewhat supercilious and superior air. The seven Welsh bishops--or
so-called bishops, for the full development of the office as
understood later was not yet completed--were ready waiting for him on
the banks of the lower Severn. They were a deputation of the Welsh
Church, and, seeming already to scent patronage in the air, were fully
prepared to resent any sign of it in the Roman missionary. The latter,
it appears, knew very little about the Western Church, with its roots
in Ireland, Armorica, and Gaul, and what he did know he did not like.
The arrogance of Augustine fully justified the Welshmen's suspicions,
and he still further roused their indignation by hinting that they
should take their instructions and receive their consecration from
Canterbury, as representing Rome. Coming from a man who appeared to
them but the missionary bishop of a handful of recently converted
barbarians, this was a little too much for ecclesiastics who had
behind them three or four centuries of Christianity, and knew nothing
whatever of the Latin Church. Augustine, too, spoke disparagingly of
their customs, and with particular severity of the absence of celibacy
in their Church. This must have touched them to the quick, seeing that
numbers of the offices and benefices in the Western Church were more
or less hereditary, and that even saintship was frequently a matter of
family, the tribal sentiment being predominant. All these things,
together with their difference in Easter observance and in shaving the
head, horrified Augustine, and he spoke so freely as to put all hope
of combination out of the question. Indeed, the Welsh divines were so
offended that they refused even to break bread beneath the same roof
as the Roman saint. At a second conference Augustine, seeing he had
gone too far, proposed that, even if they could not conform to each
other's customs, they should at least combine in efforts to convert
the rest of England. Such endeavours did not commend themselves in the
least to the Welshmen. Whatever missionary zeal may have existed among
Welsh churchmen it did not include the slightest anxiety about the
souls of the accursed conquerors of Britain, the ruthless ravagers and
destroyers of their once civilised and Christian country. It is
probable that Augustine did not realise the fierce hate of the
despoiled Celt towards the Saxon. At any rate his patience at length
gave way, and as a parting shot he in effect told the Welshmen that
since they shewed themselves so criminally careless about Saxons'
souls, they should of a surety feel the prick of Saxon spears. This
random threat, for it could have been nothing more, was strangely
fulfilled within a few years' time, when the victory of the pagan
Ethelfred at Chester, which sundered the Britons of Wales from those
of North-Western England, culminated in the sacking of Bangor Iscoed
and the slaughter of twelve hundred monks.
[Sidenote: 601.]
This futile conference of 601 marks the beginning of the long struggle
of the Welsh or Ancient British Church to keep clear of the authority
of Canterbury, and it lasted for some five hundred years. Till the
close of the eleventh century the bishops of the four Welsh dioceses
were, as a rule, consecrated by their own brethren. St. David's
perhaps took rank as "primus inter pares" for choice, but not of
necessity, for there was no recognised Welsh metropolitan. Ages
afterwards, when Canterbury had insidiously encroached upon these
privileges, the Welsh clergy were wont to soothe their wounded pride
by the assurance that this transfer of consecration had come about as
a matter of convenience rather than of right. Long, indeed, before the
final conquest of Welshmen by Edward the First, their Church had been
completely conquered, anomalous though such an inverted process seems,
by Norman bishops. A Welshman, though his sword might still win him
political recognition and respect, had little more chance of Church
preferment in the thirteenth century than he had in the eighteenth or
the first half of the nineteenth. As early indeed as 1180 that
clerical aristocrat of royal Welsh and noble Norman blood, Giraldus
Cambrensis, pertinently asks the same question which from generation
to generation and from reign to reign through the Hanoverian period
must have been on every native churchman's tongue in the Principality,
"Is it a crime to be a Welshman?"
[Sidenote: The Latin and British Churches.]
There is no occasion to enlarge upon the subtle methods by which the
Norman Church anticipated the Norman sword in Wales. Sleepless
industry no doubt was one. Another was the agency of the newer
monasteries, filled with Norman, English, and foreign monks and for
the most part devoted to the Latin Church. Persistent denial of the
validity of St. David's in the matter of consecration may in time,
too, like the continuous drip of water on a stone, have had its effect
upon the Welsh, even against their better judgment. On one occasion we
know that some of their princes and nobles, stung by what they
regarded as excessive exactions on the part of the Church, stooped so
far as to throw in the faces of their prelates the taunt that their
consecration was invalid. Such an attitude did not tend to lighten the
immense pressure which was exercised in favour of the supremacy of
Canterbury; and long before Welsh princes had begun to take orders
from Norman kings, Welsh bishops were seeking consecration from
Canterbury, unless indeed their thrones were already filled by Norman
priests.
[Sidenote: Divisions of Wales.]
It is not only the ecclesiastical but also the secular divisions of
Wales, that in a great measure date from these fifth and sixth
centuries. The three chief Kingdoms, or Principalities, into which the
country was apportioned, stand out from these days with consistent
clearness till they are gradually broken into fragments by the Norman
power: On the north was Gwynedd; in the centre, Powys; on the south,
Deheubarth or South Wales. As St. David's was the premier see of the
four Welsh dioceses, so Gwynedd was even more markedly the first among
the three Welsh Kingdoms. Its ruler, when a sufficiently strong man to
enforce it, had a recognised right to the title of "Pendragon" and the
lip homage of his brother princes. When a weak one, however, filled
the precarious throne, any attempt to exact even such an empty
tribute would have been a signal for a general outbreak.
Gwynedd included the present counties[1] of Flint, Anglesey,
Carnarvon, and most of Merioneth, together with the northern part of
Denbighshire.
[1] The present counties of Wales were not in existence as such
till after the final conquest by Edward I. Even then, as we shall
see, only six were created; the larger part of the Principality
retaining its feudal lordships until the reign of Henry VIII.
There were ancient subdivisions of the three Welsh Kingdoms ruled
over by petty Princes owing allegiance to their immediate
overlord; and their names still survive in those of modern
counties or districts. Ceredigion, for instance, remains as
Cardigan, Morganwg as Glamorgan, while the vale of Edeyrnion and
the county of Merioneth still preserve the memory of two sons of
the conquering Cunedda. But the units of old Welsh delimitation
were the "Cantrefs" and the "Commotes," which even to this day are
often used for purposes of description, as well as occasionally
for ecclesiastical and political divisions. Of Cantrefs there
would be something like three to the modern county, while each
"Cantref" again consisted of two "Commotes."
[Sidenote: Powys.]
Powys cannot be so readily defined in a line or two, but, roughly
speaking, it was a triangle or wedge driven through Central Wales to a
point on the sea, with a wide base resting on the English border, the
present county of Montgomery representing its chief bulk. Its capital
was Pengwern or Shrewsbury, till the eighth century, when Offa, King
of Mercia, enraged at the inroads of the Welsh, gathered together his
whole strength and thrust them permanently back from the plains of
Shropshire to the rampart of hills along whose crests he made the
famous Dyke that bears his name. Thenceforward Mathraval, and
subsequently Welshpool, became the abode of the Princes of Powys.
[Sidenote: Deheubarth.]
The Southern Kingdom, or Deheubarth, was also something of a triangle,
but reversely placed to that of Powys, its point lying on the English
border, and its broad base stretching along the Irish Sea from the
mouth of the Dovey to the capes of Pembroke.
Of these three divisions, Powys, as will be obvious even from the
brief and crude description of its boundaries here given, had the
greatest difficulty in holding its own against both Saxon and Norman.
South Wales, on the other hand, was the thorniest crown, for it
included to a greater degree than the others semi-independent
chieftains, such as those of Morganwg and Cardigan, who were inclined
to pay their tributes and their homage only when their overlord, who
held his Court at Dynevor on the Towy, was strong enough to enforce
them.
[Sidenote: Warfare in Wales.]
Thus for nearly seven centuries there were separate sources of strife
in Wales, and three distinct classes of warfare. First there came the
meritorious defence of the country against Saxon, Dane, and Norman, in
which, upon the whole, there was much creditable unanimity. Secondly,
during the lulls from foreign invasion, there was almost constant
strife between North and South, Powys holding as it were the balance
of power between them. Lastly there were the purely provincial
quarrels, when heady chieftains fell out with their superiors, as a
form of entertainment to which South Wales, as I have already
remarked, was peculiarly prone.
[Sidenote: Roderic divides Wales, 877.]
But, after all, it is not quite accurate to give such emphasis to the
existence and definition of the three Kingdoms till the death of
Roderic the Great in 877. Several kings had essayed with varying
success to rule all Wales, but it was Roderic who with scanty
foresight finally divided the country between his three sons, laying
particular stress on the suzerainty of Gwynedd. The prevalent custom
of gavelkind worked admirably, no doubt, in private life among the
primitive Welsh, but when applied to principalities and to ambitious
and bloodthirsty princelings the effect was usually disastrous. To
mitigate the dangers of his unwise partition, Roderic ordained a
scheme which would have proved of undoubted excellence if the practice
had only been equal to the theory. This was to the effect that if any
two of the Princes of Wales quarrelled, all three were to meet in
conclave in the wild pass of Bwlch-y-Pawl, through which the present
rough road from Bala to Lake Vyrnwy painfully toils. Here they were to
settle their difficulties peacefully; and as it was presumed that only
two would be parties to the quarrel, the third was to act as arbiter.
For some centuries after this we know very well that the successive
rulers of the three Kingdoms drenched Wales in blood with their
quarrels, but no tradition remains of a single conference at this wild
spot among the hills, where the infant Vyrnwy plunges down through
heathery glens and woods of birch and oak to the most beautiful
artificial lake perhaps in Christendom.
[Sidenote: Cadvan.]
The sins of omission must of necessity be infinite in dealing with so
vast a subject in so compressed a space, and sins of omission, if not
confessed in detail, sometimes affect the accuracy of the whole.
Something, for instance, ought to be said of the pastoral character,
even in these early days, of all Wales, except perhaps Anglesey and
West Carnarvon; of the tribal organisation and the laws of gavelkind;
of the domestic and family nature of the Church, whose minor benefices
at any rate were largely hereditary, and whose traditions were
intensely averse to centralisation. Among other things to be noted,
too, is that Cadvan, who flourished in the seventh century, is
generally regarded as the first genuine King of Wales, just as
Roderic, nearly three hundred years later, was the great
decentraliser.
[Sidenote: 815. Saxons conquer Cornwall.]
Another important date is that of 815, when a Saxon victory in
Cornwall destroyed the last vestige of British independence in
England. For hitherto the Britons of Wales had by no means regarded
themselves as the mere defenders of the soil they occupied. Steeped in
the prophecies of Merlin and his contemporaries, which assured them of
the ultimate reconquest of the whole island of Britain, they still
cherished dreams which may seem to us by the light of history vain
enough, but in the opening of the ninth century they still fired the
fancy of a proud, romantic, and warlike race.
[Sidenote: Saxons made little way.]
Amid the conflicting evidence of rival chroniclers, Saxon and Welsh,
it is not often easy to select the victors in the long series of
bloody combats that continued throughout the centuries preceding the
Norman Conquest. Whatever victories the Saxons gained, they were not
much less barren than their defeats. Nominal conquests were sometimes
made of the more vulnerable districts, but they were not long
maintained. At the next upheaval such loose allegiance as had been
wrung from the provincial ruler was repudiated without a moment's
thought, and often indeed the Saxons beyond the border found
themselves in their turn fighting for hearth and home.
[Sidenote: The Danes, 890.]
In the ninth century the Danes appeared upon the scene. Though they
harried Wales from time to time, both in the interior and on the
coast, their doings in England were so incomparably more serious that
their Welsh exploits almost escape our notice. About the year 890,
Danish outposts were established beneath the Breiddon hills, that
noble gateway of mid-Wales, through which the Severn comes surging out
into the Shropshire plains. Hither four years later came that
formidable Danish leader, Hastings, with the Anglo-Danish forces of
East Anglia and the north behind him. King Alfred, who was in the
west, hastened to the scene and contributed to this strange spectacle
of Saxons and Cymry fighting side by side. A decisive victory at
Buttington, near Welshpool, rewarded their efforts, and though the
struggle between Dane and Saxon was of great service to Wales by
bringing a long immunity from the attacks of her hereditary foe, the
Danish name calls for little more notice in Welsh annals.
Seeing that vague dreams of reconquest still lingered among the Welsh,
England's difficulty, to apply a familiar modern aphorism, should
have been Cambria's opportunity. But readily as the three Welsh
Princes, when their common country was in danger, were accustomed to
combine, and efficiently as they raided in independent fashion across
the English border, cohesion for a serious aggressive movement was
almost hopeless. The moment that they were safe, they turned their
arms against each other. The whole history of Wales, from the days of
Roderic to those of Edward, with a few brief intervals, is one long
tale of bloody strife.
[Sidenote: No Saxon settlement.]
Nor were the Princes of Gwynedd, Powys, and Deheubarth always content
to fight their quarrels out alone. As time went on they grew more
accustomed to their Saxon neighbours, even if they did not love them
more. Occasional amenities became possible. Intermarriages between the
two aristocracies were not unknown, and when they had progressed thus
far a Prince of Powys would scarcely have been human if he had not
occasionally been tempted to call in Saxon aid against his powerful
rivals of Gwynedd or Deheubarth. But in spite of this dangerous game,
played often enough and in later Norman days so fatal, the soil of
Wales, so far as any serious occupation or dominion is implied,
remained inviolate throughout the whole Saxon period.
[Sidenote: Strathclyde Britons occupy the Vale of Clwyd.]
[Sidenote: Saxon settlement prevented by Strathclyde Britons.]
[Sidenote: Victory of Anarawd, 878.]
One very narrow escape from a permanent lodgment of Saxons, of which
the Welsh chronicle tells us, should not perhaps be passed over. It
occurred in the days when Anarawd, one of the sons of Roderic, was
ruling over North Wales, at the close of the ninth century. More than
a hundred years before, the Mercians, under Offa, had driven the Welsh
finally from Shropshire and pressed them back behind the famous Dyke,
whose clearly marked course still preserves the name of their warlike
monarch. The great Saxon victory on Rhuddlan March, at the mouth of
the Clwyd, had occurred soon afterwards, and the wail of the defeated
is still sounded in one of the most notable of Welsh airs. But Offa's
Dyke had been since then considerably overleaped, and the slaughter of
Rhuddlan had been long avenged. When the descendants of these same
Mercians poured once more into the pleasant country that lies upon the
north shore between Chester and the Conway, the invaders of the
"Perfeddwlad," as this region was then called (a term I shall use for
convenience throughout this chapter), proved too powerful for Anarawd.
He was driven back into Snowdonia and Anglesey, and the Saxons settled
down in the Vale of Clwyd and upon either side of it, with a
deliberation that, but for an opportune accident, would have probably
converted a large slice of North Wales into a piece of England for all
time. But just as the Strathclyde Britons in the days of Cunedda had
brought to Wales in the time of her need after the Roman departure a
valuable and warlike element, so their descendants, four centuries
later, came just in time to save what are now the Celtic districts of
Flint and northern Denbigh from becoming Saxon. These people, hard
pressed in north Lancashire, Cumberland, and even beyond, by Danes
and Saxons, decided to seek a new home, and their thoughts naturally
turned to Wales. They made overtures to Anarawd, begging that he would
grant them of his abundance sufficient territory for their needs. But
Anarawd's kingdom had, as we have seen, been sadly circumscribed, and
his homeless subjects from the east of the Conway were already on his
hands. A bright thought struck him, and he informed his Strathclyde
kinsmen that if they could reconquer the Perfeddwlad they were welcome
to it. Necessity, perhaps, nerved the arms of the wanderers, and the
Saxons, who, as Dr. Powell quaintly puts it, "were not yet warm in
their seats," were driven headlong out of Wales. The Mercians,
however, were not the kind of men to sit quietly down after such an
ignominious expulsion; they made vigorous preparations for taking
their revenge, and retrieving their fortunes and their honour. The
Strathclyde Britons sorely doubted their powers of resistance to the
great force which now threatened them, so, carrying all their cattle
and effects back again across the Conway, they begged Anarawd in his
own interest as well as in theirs to support them. The Prince of
Gwynedd rose nobly to the occasion and, joining all his forces to
those of his immigrant kinsmen, they met the returning Saxon invaders
near Conway, and in a pitched battle drove them back to the Dee with
prodigious slaughter, never to return. So the country between the two
rivers was preserved to the Cymric race and saved from becoming, as
for the moment looked extremely probable, another Cheshire or
Shropshire.
Anarawd, however, could not rest content with his triumph over the
Saxons. As an illustration of the thirst for war that seems to have
been chronic with most of the Welsh Princes, it may be noted that,
with the Saxons vowing vengeance on his borders, he did not hesitate
to march into South Wales and make an unprovoked attack upon its
Prince, his own brother.
[Sidenote: Howel Dda, 940.]
But with the death of Anarawd and his brothers, various contingencies,
which need not detain us here, made Howel Dda, or Howel the Good, both
the heir and the acceptable ruler of all three provinces. His reign
was unique in Welsh annals, for it was not only long, but almost
peaceful. This excellent Prince turned his brilliant talents and force
of character almost entirely to the civil and moral elevation of his
people. He drew up his famous code of laws, which, as is sometimes
asserted, unconsciously influence the legal instincts of remoter Wales
even to this day. In the preparation of this great work he summoned
his bishops and nobility and wise men to meet him at Ty Gwyn on the
Towy, for it should be noted that this ruler of a temporarily united
Wales was in the first instance Prince of Deheubarth.
[Sidenote: The laws of Howel Dda enacted.]
Here this select assembly spent the whole of Lent, fasting and praying
for the Divine aid in their approaching task. Howel then picked out
from among them the twelve most capable persons, with the Chancellor
of Llandaff at their head, and proceeded to examine in exhaustive
fashion all the laws of the Cymry. Of these they eliminated the bad,
retained the good, and amended others to suit present requirements.
This new code was then ratified by the entire assembly before it
dispersed. Three copies were made, and it is significant of the change
already creeping over the Welsh Church, that Howel and his four
bishops are said to have journeyed to Rome and submitted one of them
to the Pope for his approval. The Laws of Howel Dda may be read to-day
by anyone with access to a reference library. The rights of every
class of person are herein clearly set forth, and the precise value of
each man's life according to his rank, and of every animal's hide and
carcase accurately defined. The tribal sanctity of land, too, is well
illustrated by a law forbidding the owner of an estate to mortgage it
to anyone but a kinsman. Books, harps, swords, and implements of
livelihood were exempted from distraint, while among livestock horses
were placed in the same category, as being necessary for defence.
Suits in connection with land could not be heard between February and
May, or between May and August, since these were the periods of
seed-time and harvest, while all cases touching inheritance were to be
heard by the King himself. The latter is pictured to us as sitting in
his judicial chair above the rest of the Court, with an Elder upon
either hand and the freeholders ranged upon his right and left.
Immediately below the King sat the Chief Justice of the Province, with
a priest upon one side of him and the Judge of the Commote upon the
other.
[Sidenote: Value of articles fixed by Howel Dda.]
After hearing witnesses and taking depositions, the two judges and the
priest retired to consider the verdict. This done, the King took
counsel with them, and, if he agreed, delivered judgment himself. If
the case was too involved, however, for a satisfactory decision, the
matter was settled by the simple expedient of single combat. A fixed
price, as I have remarked, was set upon almost everything, both living
and inanimate. One is surprised, for instance, to find an apple tree
worth 60_d._, and a tree planted for shelter worth 24_d._, while a
coracle is only worth 8_d._ A salmon net is appraised at just double
the last amount, while a spade, again, is rated at a penny only.
Though the skin of an ox or hart is fixed at 8_d._ the near extinction
of the beaver is significantly shewn by its value of 120_d._ Dogs,
too, vary most curiously on the list. A common cur is held at 4_d._, a
shepherd dog at 60_d._, and the best sporting dogs at four times the
latter sum. There is special mention, too, of chargers, hunters,
roadsters, pack-horses, and draught-horses for carts and harrows.
Horses are not to be broken till their third year; while three rides
through a crowd is the legal test of "warranted broken." Cows and
mares, too, are prohibited from ploughing. We learn also in this
singular price-list the current value, among other things, of a
battle-axe, a bow with twelve arrows, a white-hilted sword, a shield
enamelled with blue and gold; of plaids, too, striped and chequered
stuffs, mantles trimmed with fur, robes, coats, hose, buskins, shoes,
gloves, caps, bonnets, girdles, and buckles.
There are stringent laws against cruelty to animals and in favour of
hospitality. Game laws existed of the strictest kind, classifying
every animal of the chase and dealing with the management of hounds,
and the etiquette of hunting. For their ardour in these pursuits, the
Welsh were distinguished among nations, not being surpassed even by
the Normans themselves.
The customs obtaining in the royal household are tabulated in Howel
Dda's code with extraordinary minuteness, and the duties of every
official, from highest to lowest, strictly defined; from the Chaplain,
Steward, Judge, and Master of the Horse down to the porter and
birdkeeper. The perquisites, it may be noted, of the Master of the
Horse are all colts under two years old, taken in war, and all gold
and silver spurs thus acquired; those of the porter, every billet of
wood he could snatch from a passing load, with one hand, as he held
the gate with the other, and any swine out of a herd that he could
lift breast high by its bristles only!
Of the bards there is so much to be said elsewhere that we need only
remark here that the duties of the Bardd Teulu, or Poet Laureate, were
to follow the army and sing the "Unbennaeth Prydain" or "Monarchy of
Britain" before, and if triumphant after, the battle; to perform at
all times before the Court, and also privately to the Queen, only in
so low a tone as not to disturb the King and his courtiers. This
illustrious functionary was valued at 126 cows.
A remarkable official was the "Crier of Silence," who beat a
particular pillar in the great hall with a rod when the noise became
excessive, and had for his perquisites the fines that were exacted for
any such undue boisterousness. Strangest by far of all was the King's
"footholder," whose duty it was to sit under the table at meals and
nurse his Majesty's foot, and to "scratch it when required."
Nor can we forget the "Pencerdd," the Chief of Song, who was of
popular election and presided at the Bardic Gorsedd held every third
year, and held only at Aberffraw in Anglesey, the royal residence of
Gwynedd; for the Eisteddfodau were held by all the Welsh Princes
apparently at will. The Pencerdd was expected to know by heart the
prophetic song of Taliesin. He lodged in the quarters of the heir
apparent, and was presented by the King with a harp and key.
[Sidenote: Renewed conflicts, 950.]
Howel the Good died about 950. With the divisions and disputes of his
sons and nephews Wales quickly lost its unanimity, and once more the
flame of war was lit from one end of the country to the other by these
foolish broilers, in attempts to despoil each other of their
respective portions. The question was at length settled for a while by
a great battle at Llanrwst, where the men of North Wales utterly
discomfited those of the South, pursuing them with fire and sword far
beyond the northern boundaries of Deheubarth.
[Sidenote: Growing intercourse between Welsh and Saxon.]
[Sidenote: Eadgar rowed by Welsh Princes on the Dee.]
Towards the close of the tenth century we begin to get glimpses of
those amenities between Cymry and Saxon, which a now common religion,
a common foe in the Danes, and considerable private intercourse, had
rendered inevitable. We find King Eadgar himself, for instance, at
Bangor, helping Iago ap Idwal, Prince of Gwynedd, against his nephew
Howel ap Ievan. Everything, however, being amicably arranged, the
Saxon King actually remains in friendly fashion at Bangor, and bestows
gifts and endowments upon its see. Finally the two recent disputants
return with Eadgar to Chester, and take an oar in that celebrated crew
of kinglets which rowed the Saxon monarch upon the Dee. Gwaithvoed,
Prince of Powys, who was invited to assist in this somewhat inglorious
procession, seems to have been the only one of the Welsh _Reguli_ who
refused the honour. "Tell the King," said Gwaithvoed, "I cannot row a
barge, and if I could, I would not do so, except to save a life,
whether king's or vassal's." On being pressed by a second messenger
from Eadgar, his brief answer was: "Say to the King, 'Fear him who
fears not death.'"
It is not easy to define the precise attitude of the Welsh Princes
towards the King of England as the Saxon period drew towards its
close. Though the ancient Britons had become crystallised into
Welshmen, the old tradition of the island as a whole with an "Emperor"
in London, and a general scheme of defence against foreign foes, was
not yet dead. The Saxons, though little loved, had become an accepted
fact, and there seems to have been no particular reluctance among the
Welsh princes to pay lip homage, when relationships were not too
strained, to the "King in London," and tribute, too, as representing
the ancient contribution to "the defence of the island."
[Sidenote: Llewelyn I., 1000.]
For the last hundred years prior to the Norman conquest, one follows
the bloody path of Welsh history in vain efforts to find some
breathing space, wherein rulers turned their attention to something
besides the lust of power and the thirst for glory. It was about the
year 1000 when the first of the three Llewelyns succeeded to the
throne of North Wales. Under a King whose title was absolutely
indisputable, and who possessed some force of character, it seemed as
if the sword was now for a season, at any rate, to remain undrawn. But
it was not to be; for in no long time the throne of South Wales fell
vacant, and there was, unhappily, no direct heir. So the nobles of the
Province, fearing, and with some reason, that Llewelyn would seize the
opportunity to attach the Southern Kingdom to his other dominions,
brought forward a creature of their own, a low-born adventurer, who
claimed to be of the royal lineage. This precipitated the catastrophe
which it was designed to prevent, and Llewelyn fell upon Deheubarth
with the whole force of Gwynedd. The fight lasted through a whole day,
and the slaughter was immense, but the Northerners again prevailed.
[Sidenote: Griffith ap Llewelyn.]
But there were also years of peace under Llewelyn ap Seisyllt, and of
conspicuous prosperity, so the chronicler tells us, in which "the
earth brought forth double, the people prospered in all their affairs,
and multiplied wonderfully. The cattle increased in great numbers, so
that there was not a poor man in Wales from the south to the north
sea, but every man had plenty, every house a dweller, every town
inhabited." Llewelyn fell ultimately before Carmarthen, and his throne
was seized by Iago ap Idwal, a collateral relative. He in turn was
quickly overthrown and slain by Llewelyn's warlike son Griffith, who
enjoyed what from a purely military point of view might be called a
successful reign.
The Danes at this time began again to make attacks on Wales, but were
defeated in Anglesey, and again in the Severn valley.
[Sidenote: Griffith ap Llewelyn attacks South Wales.]
Flushed with victory, and without a particle of excuse, Griffith now
turned upon South Wales, ravaged it with fire and sword, and drove out
its new Prince, Howel ap Edwy. Howel, however, came back with an army
of Danes and Saxons, so had times changed in Wales, but only to meet
with disaster and defeat at the hands of the vigorous Griffith. Yet
again the indomitable Howel returned with a fresh army to try his
luck, and so certain was he this time of victory that he brought his
wife to witness it. But again disaster overtook him, and his wife,
instead of sharing his triumph, was carried off to share his
conqueror's bed.
Thus rolls on the tumult and the turmoil of the old Welsh story. The
wonder is when and how the laws of the wise and peaceful Howel Dda
found scope for application, and we can only suppose that the partial
nature of these fierce struggles atoned in some measure for their
continuity. Yet through all this devastation Church property, of
which there was now a considerable amount and of a tangible kind,
seems to have been well respected. The Danes alone were regardless of
shrines and monasteries; and we hear of them at St. David's and
Llanbadarn and other sacred spots along the seacoast doing wild work.
[Sidenote: 1040.]
[Sidenote: Harold and Griffith.]
The twenty years preceding the battle of Hastings were busy years in
Wales, and the foremost name of that epoch in England came to be
perhaps more dreaded among the native Welsh than that of any other
Saxon since the days of Offa. But Harold, Earl of the West Saxons and
commander of the English armies, got much deeper into Wales than Offa
had ever succeeded in doing, and indeed came much nearer than any of
his predecessors to a conquest of the country. Griffith ap Llewelyn,
Prince of Gwynedd by right, and of all Wales by force, was, as we have
seen, no mean soldier. He was Harold's adversary, and the last Welsh
Prince to face the Saxon power. This, the final quarrel of five
centuries of strife, was, for a wonder, not of Griffith's seeking.
We have seen how greatly modified the cleavage between the two peoples
had by now become. Intermarriages had taken place in the higher ranks,
alliances had been formed, and Saxon influences in matters such as
land tenure and Church government had been sensibly felt beyond the
Severn and the Dee. So now, while the shadow of the Norman invasion
was hanging over unconscious England, Algar, Earl of Chester, falling
out with King Edward, did nothing particularly unusual when he fled
to the warlike son of the first Llewelyn, and tried to embroil him in
his quarrel. Griffith was peacefully hunting at his second residence
at Aber near Bangor, and had indeed made good use of a few years of
peace, but he was not the man to turn a deaf ear to any prospect of a
fight. The upshot was a very serious war, in which Griffith and his
ally were for a long time singularly successful. They defeated Edwin
of Mercia in a great battle near Welshpool; they afterwards took
Hereford, won a victory at Leominster, and penetrated as far as
Wiltshire.
[Sidenote: Harold in Wales.]
[Sidenote: Death of Griffith, 1061.]
A brief truce ensued with Harold, who had been opposing them, and then
the struggle began afresh. The tables were now completely turned.
Harold's memorable invasion of Wales took place, in which he was
assisted to success by the many enemies Griffith had made in his
high-handed annexation of Deheubarth. The Welsh Prince, after a
stirring reign of thirty-four years, perished during this campaign of
1061 at the hand of a hired assassin. His head, like that of many
another Welsh leader, was sent across the border in a basket, and
received at Gloucester by Harold with much demonstrative satisfaction.
The latter, in the meantime, had marched to the Conway, and afterwards
through South Wales. He had been victorious everywhere; and now
nominated fresh rulers to the vacant thrones of Gwynedd and
Deheubarth, under promise of vassalage to the English Crown.
The tenure of the three Welsh Princes was always complicated and,
indeed, liable to fluctuation with the balance of power, both in Wales
and across the border. In theory, Powys and South Wales owed lip
homage and a nominal tribute to the Prince of Gwynedd as "Pendragon."
The latter, on behalf of Wales, owed a similar service to the King of
England and, as I have mentioned before, was not inclined to dispute
it so long as his independence was respected. Harold's so-called
conquest only altered matters to the extent of making the three Welsh
provinces theoretically equal and individually vassals of the English
Crown. This paper arrangement would have probably remained a dead
letter or would have been maintained just so long as there was an arm
strong enough to maintain it. But a people were coming to eliminate
the Saxon as an aggressive power, and to take his place,--a people who
would not be satisfied with lip homage and occasional tribute.
[Sidenote: 1066. Welsh and Normans.]
The great struggle in England between Norman and Saxon seemed by the
mere force of contagion to set the Welsh Princes once more by the
ears. Some of them, however, in accordance with their generous
tradition of loyalty to the soil of the Britain they had lost, joined
the West Saxons in their resistance to this new and formidable foe.
Others essayed to make use in their domestic quarrels of the crafty
Norman, who was only too glad to get a finger so cheaply into the
Welsh pie.
The followers of William of Normandy, indeed, lost no time in turning
their attention to Wales. Within ten years of the battle of
Hastings,--almost immediately, that is to say, after the completion of
the conquest of England,--they began their marauding expeditions
across the border, and were not unnaturally surprised at finding
themselves confronted by a people so entirely different from those
they had just subdued. But these initial successes taught the Welsh
nothing, and they still continued their fatal internecine strife.
[Sidenote: The Normans in Wales.]
The first serious lodgments of the Normans were made at Montgomery,
where a baron of that name built the castle, whose fragments still
look down from their rocky throne upon the windings of the upper
Severn. Rhuddlan, at the mouth of the Clwyd, the site of an even then
ancient fortress, was next occupied and strengthened. Flushed with
their easy conquest of England, the Normans had already begun to
regard Wales as if it also belonged to them; and still the quarrelsome
Welsh chieftains continued to engage these formidable new-comers in
their disputes. At Chester, Hugh Lupus, its Earl of famous memory, and
the nephew of the Conqueror, held in secure confinement the person of
the Prince of Gwynedd whom he had seized by treachery. He then
proceeded to farm out the realm of the captive prince, but as he only
received £40 as rental the sum is more eloquent than any words would
be to express the nature of the hold he had won over it. It is more
than likely the contractors had a bad bargain even at that figure.
[Sidenote: Lupus, Earl of Chester, invades North Wales, 1075.]
In the conspiracy of 1075, when William was on the continent, many of
the Welsh nobles joined, and had consequently their share of the
hanging and mutilating that followed its discovery. Lupus, however,
marched an army through the North and built or rebuilt castles at
Bangor, Carnarvon, and Anglesey. He was closely followed by the
Conqueror himself, who with a large force proceeded with little
apparent opposition through the turbulent South, received the homage
of its king, Rhys ap Tudor, and its petty Princes, and then repaired
with great pomp to the cathedral of St. David's, at whose altar he
offered costly gifts. This kind of triumphal progress, as the Saxons
well knew, though the Normans had yet to learn the fact, did not mean
the conquest of Wales. King William in this single campaign seems to
have imbibed some respect for Welshmen, for he spoke of them on his
death-bed as a people with whom he had "held perilous conflicts."
Infinitely more dangerous to Welsh liberty was the experiment next
tried by a native Prince of acquiring Norman aid at the expense of
territory. The story of the conquest and settlement of Glamorgan is
such a luminous and significant incident in Welsh history, and was of
such great future importance, that it must be briefly related.
[Sidenote: Norman settlement in Glamorgan.]
[Sidenote: 1091.]
The present county of Glamorgan was represented, roughly speaking, in
ancient Wales by the subkingdom, or, to use a more appropriate term,
the lordship of Morganwg. It had acquired its name in the ninth
century through the martial deeds of its then proprietor, "Morgan
Fawr," or "Morgan the Great." Morganwg, though part of Deheubarth,
was at times strong enough to claim something like independence, and
indeed the uncertain relationships of the smaller chieftains of South
Wales to their overlord at Dynevor may well be the despair of any one
attempting to combine tolerable accuracy with unavoidable brevity. But
these remarks are only relevant for the purpose of emphasising the
comparative importance at all times in Wales of the country we call
Glamorgan; and this was due not only to its size and to its seacoast,
but to its comparative smoothness and fertility. In the year 1091, in
the reign of William Rufus, one Iestyn, a descendant of Morgan the
Great, was ruling over Glamorgan, and as he was upon anything but
friendly terms with his feudal superior, Rhys ap Tudor, Prince of
South Wales, he bethought him of calling in alien aid, a habit then
growing lamentably common among Welsh chieftains.
[Sidenote: Iestyn and Einion.]
[Sidenote: Fitzhamon.]
[Sidenote: William Rufus and Wales.]
[Sidenote: Marriages with Normans.]
[Sidenote: Turberville at Coity.]
The Saxons had ceased to exist as a military power, and the Normans
stood in their shoes. Iestyn knew nothing of Normans, but he had a
friend named Einion who was reputed to have had much experience with
them. To Einion, then, he repaired and promised him his daughter's
hand, which presumably carried with it something substantial, if he
would bring a band of Normans to his assistance in his dispute with
Rhys. Einion consented to be his intermediary and without much
difficulty secured the services of Robert Fitzhamon and twelve
knightly adventurers who served under him. The Normans in due course
arrived and rendered Iestyn invaluable assistance in resisting his
lawful sovereign. They then, so runs the chronicle, having received
their pay, quite contrary to Norman custom peacefully re-embarked at
Cardiff and weighed anchor for home. But Iestyn, before they had well
cleared the harbour, was injudicious enough to repudiate the promise
of his daughter to Einion, whereupon the exasperated princeling put to
sea, interviewed Fitzhamon, and persuaded him to return with his
friends and his forces and eject the faithless Iestyn from his rich
territory. One may well believe it did not take much to win over the
Normans to so attractive and congenial an undertaking. At any rate
they reversed their course with much alacrity, returned to Cardiff,
ejected Iestyn, and after some fighting, assisted by Einion's people,
divided the province among themselves, each building one or more great
castles, whose ruins are notable features in Glamorganshire scenery
to-day. The blood of Fitzhamon's knightly followers courses in the
veins of many an ancient family of South Wales, and one of them at
least is still directly represented in name as well as lineage. This
conquest must be placed among the earliest in Wales, and it became the
type of many future Norman settlements, though it was the outcome of
an incident, while the others were for the most part deliberately
planned. The reign of Rufus was memorable for these filibustering
expeditions. They were executed under the sanction of the King, who
found in them a cheap method of granting favours to his barons,
particularly those who had perhaps not come out so well as they could
have wished in the partition of England. They might, in short, take of
Wales as much as they could keep, subject only to holding what they
acquired as feudatories of the King. There will be more to say about
these Marcher barons later on. In the meantime, Brecheiniog, or
Brecon, had been also conquered by another Norman, Bernard de
Newmarch, with a similar band of followers, and secured by a similar
system of castle building. Montgomery and other points in North and
South Wales had been occupied, but they were for the most part purely
military outposts. The occupation of Brecon and Glamorgan by a Norman
aristocracy is a salient and permanent factor in Welsh history. This
does not, however, imply that such filibustering barons were allowed
to settle quietly down in their seats. Before the end of the reign,
indeed, they were driven out, and William Rufus himself, who marched
through Wales more or less upon their behalf, had, after all, to
retire discomfited: but they were soon back again. It was not wholly
by brute force that they held their own. Life would hardly have been
worth living upon such terms, and as a matter of fact, so far as one
can read between the lines of these old chronicles, there does not
seem to have been at first the same antipathy between Norman and
Welshman as had formerly existed between Saxon and Welshman. Marriages
carrying Welsh property with them seem to have been readily arranged.
A singular and romantic instance of this was in the matter of Coity
Castle, whose ruined walls still hold together near Bridgend, and of
the Turbervilles who even yet, after all these centuries, retain their
name and position in Glamorganshire. For Paine Turberville, one of
Fitzhamon's twelve knights, having been by some mischance forgotten in
the distribution of land, inquired of his chief where he was to look
for his reward. "Here are arms and here are men," replied Fitzhamon;
"go get it where you can." So Turberville went to Coity, which was
still unconquered, and summoned Morgan, the Welsh lord, to surrender
it into his hands. Whereupon Morgan came out leading his daughter, and
passing through the army, with his sword in his right hand, came to
Paine Turberville, and told him that if he would marry his daughter,
and so come like an honest man into his castle, he would yield it to
him; but if not, said he, "let not the blood of any of our men be
lost, but let this sword and arm of mine and those of yours decide who
shall call this castle his own." Upon that Paine Turberville drew his
sword, took it by the blade in his left hand and gave it to Morgan,
and with his right hand embraced his daughter. After settling matters
to the satisfaction of all parties he went to church and married her,
and so came to the lordship by true right of possession; and by the
advice of his father-in-law kept under his command two thousand of the
best of his Welsh soldiers.
Turberville, having now achieved so secure a position without the aid
of Fitzhamon, very naturally refused to pay him tribute or own him as
his overlord, but voluntarily recognised Caradoc, the son of the
dispossessed Iestyn, as his chief. This caused unpleasantness, but
Turberville, with his two thousand Welshmen and his father-in-law's
help, was too strong for Fitzhamon, and he had his way. It must not,
however, be supposed that these martial settlers as a class by any
means followed the example of the later Norman adventurers in Ireland,
and became "more Welsh than the Welsh themselves." They were too near
their King, at whose will they held their lands, and not far enough
removed from the centre of Anglo-Norman life, to throw off its
interests and lose touch with their connections. Nevertheless the
confusion of authority in South and Mid-Wales increased considerably
as time went on; for not only did Norman barons marry Welsh heiresses,
but occasionally a Welsh chieftain would win back a Norman-Welsh
lordship by marriage, and present the anomalous spectacle of a
Welshman holding Welsh land as a direct vassal of the King of England
in entire independence of his district Prince. But these occasional
amenities among the higher aristocracy but little affected the mass of
the Welsh people, who stood aloof with lowering and uncompromising
sullenness.
[Sidenote: Welsh and Norman.]
It was this intolerance of foreigners, bred in the bone and blood of
Welshmen, or this excessive patriotism, call it what you will, that
made possible their long and heroic resistance to the Norman yoke, and
for so long upheld the tottering thrones of their not always honest,
and always quarrelsome, Princes. They hugged their pedigrees and
cherished their bards, who in turn played with tireless energy upon
the chords of national sentiment and martial memories. No transfer of
land to Normans, whether due to the sword or to more peaceful methods,
was regarded as otherwise than temporary. As in parts of Ireland at
the present day, generations of occupation by an alien stock commanded
no respect beyond what belonged to the force of ownership. The
original owners might be long extinct in fact, but in the mind they
were the owners still. The Anglo-Saxon has a short memory; and is
practical even in matters of sentiment. Four or five generations are
sufficient to eliminate the memory of the humble or alien origin of
the _parvenu_, and are quite enough to fill his cup of social
reverence to the brim; perhaps fortunately so. The Celt, and
particularly the Welsh Celt, is fashioned differently. With him the
interloper remained an interloper far beyond his children's children,
and this mental attitude had much to do with the facility with which a
popular leader could at all times stir up strife in Wales, whatever
might be the odds against success.
We have seen, then, the first wedge of alien occupation driven into
this hitherto virgin refuge of the ancient British stock. For we must
remember that, in spite of continual warfare, the Saxons had made no
impression calling for notice in a brief survey like this. We must
remember, also, that the Norman settlements were wholly military. The
followers that came with these adventurers were just sufficient to
garrison their castles. They were but handfuls, and lived within or
under the protection of the Norman fortress: their influence upon the
blood of the country may, I think, be put aside with certain
reservations, as scarcely worth considering.
[Sidenote: 1105. Pembroke and the Flemings.]
The severance of half the present county of Pembroke from Wales in the
reign of Henry the First must by no means be passed over if one is to
get a proper idea of what was meant by Wales at the time when this
story opens. It was in this King's reign that a large body of Flemings
were flooded out in the Low Countries by a great inundation, and
despairing of finding a fresh home in their own crowded fatherland,
they applied to the King of England to allot them territory out of his
presumed abundance.[2] In their appeal the King saw another means of
putting a bridle on the Welsh, at no expense to himself, to say
nothing of the advantage of posing as a philanthropist. He granted
therefore to the Flemings just so much of the south-western promontory
of Wales as they could hold and conquer, together with the peninsula
of Gower, which juts out from the coast of modern Glamorgan. Pembroke
was the more important and populous colony of the two. The native
inhabitants, it may be presumed, were few in the twelfth century; at
any rate the Flemings had no difficulty in driving them inland and
forming a permanent settlement. There was no assimilation with the
natives; they were completely pushed back, and in a short time Normans
came to the assistance of the Flemings. The great castles of
Pembroke, Manorbier, Haverford-west, and Tenby were built, and
speaking broadly the south-western half of the modern county of
Pembroke became as Teutonic, and in time as English, as Wiltshire or
Suffolk. Continual fighting went on between the native Welsh and the
intruders, keeping alive the animosity between the two races and
laying the seeds of that remarkable cleavage which makes the county of
Pembroke present to-day an ethnological curiosity without a parallel
in the United Kingdom.
[2] Some accounts say that Henry first received them in England,
but got uneasy at the number which accumulated there and ordered
them all into south-west Wales. Small lodgments of Normans and
other aliens would seem to have preceded the Flemings.
[Illustration: CAREW CASTLE.
FROM OLD PRINT.]
The Flemings, as English subjects and constantly reinforced by English
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]
CHAPTER II
BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE
1359-1399
"... At my birth
The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes;
The goats ran from the mountains, and the herds
Were strangely clamorous to the frighted fields.
These signs have marked me extraordinary,
And all the courses of my life do show,
I am not in the roll of common men."
In these famous lines the Glyndwr of Shakespeare, though not, perhaps,
a very faithful portrait of the true Glyndwr, tells us of those dread
portents which heralded his birth. Thus far, however, tradition rings
true enough in the lines of the great poet, and is even shorn of some
of the most fearsome details it has sent down to us through various
channels. Shakespeare's Glyndwr might, for instance, have told us,
what all Welshmen of his day were well assured of, that on that
memorable night the horses of Griffith Vychan, his father, were found
standing in their stables up to their fetlocks in blood; and how he
himself, while still an infant in his nurse's arms, was accustomed to
greet with demonstrations of delight the sight of a sword or spear and
allow those around him no peace till the deadly weapon was placed
in his baby hand.
[Illustration: DOLGELLY AND CADER IDRIS.
Copyright
C. H. Young.]
There is great uncertainty as to the day, and some disagreement as to
the exact year, wherein old earth thus shook in labour with so heroic
a soul. This divergency of opinion extends over the period of ten
years, from 1349 to 1359. The evidence that seems to give the latter
date unquestionable preference will be alluded to shortly. In any case
the point to be noted is that the hero of this story, judged by the
standard of his time, was quite advanced in life when he began the
long and arduous undertaking that has made his name immortal, and
cherished by his countrymen as the most famous of all names in their
history. For there is no shadow of a doubt that if the Welsh people
were polled upon the subject, Owen Glyndwr would stand, by an
overwhelming majority, at the head of the list of national heroes.
Whether rightly or wrongly he holds the first place among Welsh
warrior patriots in the affections of his countrymen.
It was the fortune, as I have endeavoured to make plain in the
introductory chapter, of a long succession of Welsh chieftains, to
find themselves at the head of a people struggling desperately against
conquest and absorption. It is no wonder that with such opportunities
ever present, century after century, the list of those who seized them
and won distinction and some measure of success, and thereby preserved
their names to posterity, is no short one. It is not to the point that
the field of their exploits was a small one, and the people who
cherish their memory a small people,--so much more, rather, the
honour, seeing the odds against which they contended with such rare
tenacity; nor, again, is it to their discredit that English historians
have done as a rule scant justice to the vigour of the old Welsh
warriors. "Good wine needs no bush." The surface and the tongue of
Wales to-day are sufficient evidence to the vitality of its people and
their martial prowess in the days of old. Their heroes have happily
too long been dust to suffer in reputation at the hands of the modern
destroyer of historic ideals. But above them all, this last and most
recent of patriots, Owen ap Griffith Vychan of Glyndyfrdwy, distinctly
towers. Precisely why this should be is not readily explicable, and to
very many educated Welshmen the fact is not acceptable. But it is
unnecessary to advance here any reasons or theories for the particular
preference accorded to Glyndwr. Whether worthy or not, the fame is
his, and though, curiously enough, uncommemorated in marble, stone, or
brass, and recorded by the poet and historian in a fragmentary and
disconnected fashion, it is fame that seems to grow no dimmer with the
lapse of time. Genealogy has charms for few people, and Welsh
genealogy, to the Saxon who has not served some kind of apprenticeship
to it, is notoriously formidable. But there will be Welsh readers of
an assuredly more sympathetic turn of mind who, not having at their
fingers' ends, perhaps, the details of the national hero's origin,
will be not ungrateful for them.
Owen of Glyndyfrdwy, commonly called Owen Glyndwr, came of the
princely house of Powys, and was a direct descendant in the male line
of the celebrated Bleddyn ap Cynvyn, Prince of Powys, and for a short
time of Gwynedd also, whose reign almost exactly covered the period of
the Norman conquest of England. The second in descent from Bleddyn was
the last Prince of United Powys, and this was Madoc ap Meredith, who
died in 1159. Readers of the introductory chapter will remember that
Powys, between the upper millstone of Norman power and the nether one
of North Welsh patriotism, began to temporise and give way long before
the Edwardian conquest. Its Princes would have been more than mortal
if their politics had not been of an unsteady kind. They frankly
accepted the Norman as "Emperor in London" somewhat early, thus
accepting the inevitable, but could not resist the temptation when
Welsh affairs were prospering to break away to the national side.
While gaining at this cost some immunity from Norman greed and a
measure of semi-independence, the Powys Princes were not wholly
trusted by either party, and sometimes felt the vengeance of both. In
1159 Powysland fell in half; Powys Uchaf, or, roughly speaking,
Montgomeryshire, being given to Madoc's famous nephew, Owen Cyfeiliog,
warrior, poet, founder of Strata Marcella Abbey, and author of _The
Hirlâs Horn_; Lower Powys, or Powys Fadog, the country of the Dee and
Ceiriog, fell to Madoc's son, Griffith ap Madoc. This last was
followed by another Madoc, who in 1200 founded the splendid Abbey of
Valle Crucis, whose ruins, standing as they do in the loveliest nook
of the Vale of Llangollen, are justly celebrated as presenting one of
the most exquisite pictures of the kind in Britain. Beneath its
grass-grown aisles lies the dust of the chieftain of this line of
Powys. To a height of eight hundred feet above its crumbled walls and
gables, still graceful in their decay, springs an isolated cone-shaped
hill, on whose sharp crown stands a pile of ragged, splintered ruins
placed in weird, suggestive fashion against a background of sky. This
is Dinas Brân, the most proudly perched mediæval fortress in Wales,
perhaps in all Britain. Here in this eagle's nest, swung betwixt earth
and heaven, lived the Princes of Powys Fadog; and no more fitting
refuge could be imagined for men who, like them, had sometimes to look
eastward for their foes and sometimes to the west. It was in 1270,
close to the final conquest, that Madoc's son Griffith died, after
dividing his life between friendship with the English King and
repentant alliances with his own race. He had married Emma, daughter
of James, Lord Audley, who had done great service for Henry III.
against the Welsh with a body of German cavalry. The death of this
Griffith ap Madoc is the last event recorded in the Welsh Chronicle.
It is supposed that the monks of Conway and Ystradfflur, who
conjointly compiled it, could not bring themselves to put on record
the sad events of the next twelve years, the last years of Welsh
independence. Griffith's son, another Madoc, followed, and died in
seven years, leaving two young sons, and dividing his inheritance
between them. The elder, Llewelyn, had Dinas Brân with Yale and
Bromfield, while Griffith had Chirk and the territory attached to
it. The orphan boys, their father having been tenant _in capite_ of
Edward the First, became that monarch's wards. Edward, as was
customary, handed them over to the guardianship of two of his nobles,
selecting in this case the great Marcher barons, Warren and Roger
Mortimer. Trusteeships were not in those days, even under favourable
conditions, the thankless and unprofitable affairs they are now.
Warren had Llewelyn and Dinas Brân; Roger Mortimer, Griffith and
Chirk. A Welsh ward in the hands of a Norman Lord Marcher must have
been a lamb among wolves indeed; and as every one, no doubt, expected,
under conditions so painfully tempting, the two boys in due course
disappeared and were no more seen, while two magnificent castles arose
at Chirk and Holt respectively, with a view to securing to these
unjust stewards their ill-gotten territory. A black tale, which
posterity has accepted, crept steadily about, to the effect that a
deep pool in the Dee beneath Holt Castle could tell of a midnight
tragedy therein enacted. The two boys at any rate disappeared, and the
Earls, according to custom, succeeded to their estates. Nor is it very
likely that the King, who himself had a slice of them in that outlying
fragment of Flint still conspicuous on the map of England, asked many
questions.
[Illustration: HOLT CASTLE.
FROM OLD PRINT.]
It seems that such conscience as Earl Warren possessed was smitten
with compunction as years went on, and these twinges he thought to
allay by restoring a fragment of the property to the family he had so
outraged. When the King was sitting at Rhuddlan in 1282 the
remorseful Earl petitioned that the manors of Glyndyfrdwy on the Dee
beyond Llangollen and of Cynllaeth a few miles to the south of it,
should be restored to Griffith, an uncle of the two boys whose fate
weighed, let us hope, upon his soul.
In this manner Griffith succeeded to these estates and was known as Y
Baron Gwyn, or "the White Baron," Lord of Glyndyfrdwy in Yale, dying
about 1300. Fourth in direct descent from him and occupying the same
position was Owen Glyndwr's father, Griffith Vychan (_i. e._, "the
little" or "the younger"), the preceding owner having been a Griffith
too. To him succeeded Owen, as eldest son, holding his two manors,
like his fathers before him, direct from the King. On his mother's
side Owen's descent was quite as distinguished,--even more so if one
is to believe that his mother, Elen, was a great-granddaughter of
Catherine, the daughter of the last Llewelyn. Putting this aside,
however, as mere tradition, it will be enough to say that Griffith
Vychan's wife came from South Wales and was a daughter of Thomas ap
Llewelyn ap Rhys, a descendant of the Princes of Deheubarth, Lord of
Iscoede Vchirwen in Cardigan and of Trefgarn in the parish of Brawdy,
Pembrokeshire. He had two daughters, co-heiresses, the elder of whom,
Elen, married Owen's father, while the younger became the wife of
Tudor ap Gronow of Penmynydd, the grandfather of the famous Owen
Tudor. It will be seen, therefore, that Thomas ap Llewelyn was the
ancestor both of Glyndwr and of our present King.
Owen was actually born in the South Welsh home of his mother's family
and inherited property from her which no doubt added to his wealth and
consequence. Trefgarn Owen, Trefgarn West (or "_castel_"), still
exists as a farmhouse, and the tradition that Owen was born in it is
likely long to outlast the edifice itself. This event occurred
probably in the year 1359, in the heyday of the successful wars in
France, so that it is quite possible that Griffith Vychan may have
been among the crowd of Welsh gentlemen who followed the banners of
Edward the Black Prince across the Channel. This would quite account
for the presence of Owen's mother at such a time in the home of her
fathers; and as we know nothing of his childhood, it is perhaps
permissible to indulge in conjectures that have about them some
reasonable probability.
Of Owen's early manhood and domestic life, however, quite enough is
known to dissipate the notion engendered by Shakespeare, and but
faintly discouraged by English historians, that he was a wild Welsh
chieftain, a sort of picturesque mountaineer. On the contrary, he was
a man accustomed to courts and camps, and, judged by the standard of
his time, an educated and polished gentleman. The first actual record
we have of him is on September 3, 1386, when he gave evidence at
Chester as a witness in the greatest and most prolonged lawsuit that
had ever, in England, filled the public eye. This was the celebrated
case of Scrope and Grosvenor, the point in dispute relating solely to
a coat of arms. It lasted four years and nearly every prominent person
in the country at one time or another gave evidence. Among these
appears the name of "_Oweyn Sire de Glendore de age XXVII ans et
pluis_," also that of "_Tudor de Glindore_," his brother, who was some
three years younger than Owen, and fell ultimately in his service. Of
the nature of his evidence we know nothing. The entry is only valuable
as giving weight to the year 1359 as the most likely date of his
birth.
In the social economy of Wales, Owen's forbears, since they lost at
the Edwardian conquest, in the manner related, the chieftainship of
Powys Fadog, had been simply minor barons or private gentlemen of fair
estate. They had nothing like the official position, the wealth, or
the power of the Lord Marchers. Still they owed no allegiance, as did
many of the lesser nobility, to any great Marcher baron, but held
their estates in North Wales direct from the King himself. And we may
well suppose that with the long memories of the Welsh no Marcher
baron, no Mortimer, nor Gray, nor Talbot, whether in peace or war, was
in their eyes so great a man as simple Owen of Glyndyfrdwy, on whose
modest patrimony the vast estates of these interlopers encroached. As,
in the ancient tribal laws of Wales, it took nine generations for an
alien or servile family to qualify for admission to full rights, so it
was equally difficult to make a medieval Welshman realise that the
ejected landowners and princes of their own race were other than
temporary sufferers. They could not believe that Providence intended
to perpetuate so great an outrage. They recognised in their hearts no
other owner but the old stock, whatever the exigencies of the times
might compel them to do with their lips, and even their spears and
bows, while every vagrant bard and minstrel helped to fix the
sentiment more firmly in their breasts.
Owen himself, as a man of the world, had, of course, no such
delusions. No one, however, when the time was ripe, knew better than
he how to work upon the feelings of those who had. A family grievance
of his own, as we have shown, he might justifiably have nursed, but
there is no reason to suppose that he was on bad terms with the houses
either of Warren or Mortimer. Indeed, he is said to have been esquire
at one time to the Earl of Arundel. His local quarrels lay, as we
shall see, to the north and rested wholly on personal grounds, having
no relation whatever to the wrongs of his great-great-grandfather.
In the only signature extant of Owen previous to his assumption of
princely honours, we find him describing himself as "Oweyn ap
Griffith, Dominus de Glyn D'wfrdwy." To dwell upon the innumerable
ways in which his name and title were spelt by Norman and Celtic
writers, contemporary and otherwise, in times when writers' pens
vaguely followed their ears, would be, of course, absurd. The somewhat
formidable sounding name of Glyndyfrdwy simply means the Glen of the
Dwfrdwy or Dyfrdwy, which in turn is the original and still the Welsh
name for the river Dee. About the first syllable of this word
philologists have no scope for disagreement, "Dwr" or "Dwfr"
signifying water; but concerning the terminal syllable there is room
for some difference of opinion. It will be sufficient for us here to
say that the derivations which seem to the eye most obvious are not
so much in favour as that from "Diw," sacred or divine. This attribute
at any rate has been bestowed on the chief and most beautiful of North
Welsh rivers by English and Welsh poets from Spenser to Tennyson and,
according to the former, "by Britons long ygone."
In regard, however, to the pronunciation of the name of Owen's
patrimony, when I have said that the very natives of the historic
hamlet slur the name into something like Glyndowdy,--a rare luxury
among the Welsh,--it is not surprising that Anglo-Norman chroniclers
and others have made havoc of it with their phonetic spelling. Even
Welsh writers have been unsteady upon the point. And Owen of
Glyndyfrdwy probably figures under more designations than any hero who
ever lived: Glendour, Glindor, Glindore, Glendurdy, Glyndurdu, and
Glendowerdy, are but a few selected specimens.
English historians, with characteristic contempt of Welsh detail, have
selected the last and the most unlikely of them all. In his own
country Owen was generally known during his later life and ever since
his death as Glyndwr, the spelling to which I have adhered in these
pages. It may perhaps not be out of place to note that the Welsh "w"
is equivalent to a "ōō," and by a Welsh tongue the terminal "r" is,
of course, strongly marked.
[Illustration: POWYS CASTLE.
FROM AN OLD ENGRAVING FROM PAINTING BY W. DANIELLS.]
Of the early youth of Glyndwr history tells us nothing, nor, again, is
it known what age he had reached when his father died and the estate
came into his possession. It is supposed that like so many Welshmen
of his time he went to Oxford; but this, after all, must be mere
surmise, though, judging by the bent of his life at that period, we
seem to have good grounds for it. In such case it is likely enough
that he took a leading part in the ferocious faction fights with which
the jealousies of English, Welsh, and Irish students so often
enlivened the cramped streets of medieval Oxford. It is quite certain,
however, that Owen went to London and became a student of the Inns of
Court, a course virtually confined in those times to the sons of the
wealthy and well-born. There is something very natural in the desire
of a large Welsh landowner of that time to familiarise himself with
English law, for the two codes, Welsh and English, to say nothing of
compromises between them, existed side by side over nearly all Wales,
and one can well understand the importance of some knowledge of
Anglo-Norman jurisprudence to a leading Welshman like Glyndwr, who
must have had much to do, both directly and indirectly, with both
kinds of courts. That he was no wild Welsh squire has been already
shown, and it was not unnatural that a youth of handsome person, high
lineage, and good estate should drift, when his law studies were
completed, into the profession of arms and to the English Court. Here
he soon found considerable favour and in course of time became squire
of the body, or "scutiger," not, as most Welsh authorities have
persisted, and still persist, to King Richard the Second, but to his
cousin of Bolingbroke, the future Henry the Fourth. This latter view
is certainly supported by the only documentary evidence extant, as
Mr. Wylie in his able and exhaustive history of that monarch points
out. "Regi moderno ante susceptum regnum," is the sentence in the
_Annales_ describing Glyndwr's position in this matter, and it surely
removes any doubt that Bolingbroke is the King alluded to. In such
case Owen must have shared those perils and adventures by land and sea
in which the restless Henry engaged. It is strange enough, too, that
men linked together in a relationship so intimate should have spent
the last fifteen years of their lives in a struggle so persistent and
so memorable as did these two. Bolingbroke began this series of
adventures soon after the loss of his wife, about the year 1390, and
we may therefore, with a fair probability of truth, picture Glyndwr at
that grand tournament at Calais where Henry so distinguished himself,
and poor Richard by comparison showed to such small advantage. He may
also have been present at the capture of Tunis, where English and
French to the wonder of all men fought side by side without friction
or jealousy; or again with Bolingbroke on his long journey in 1393 to
Jerusalem, or rather towards it, for he never got there. There were
adventures, too, which Owen may have shared, with German knights upon
the Baltic, and last, though by no means least, with Sigismund, King
of Hungary, at that memorable scene upon the Danube when he was forced
into his ships by the victorious Turks.
Yet the tradition is so strong that Glyndwr was in the personal
service of Richard during the close of that unfortunate monarch's
reign, that one hesitates to brush it aside from mere lack of written
evidence. Nor indeed does the fact of his having been Henry's esquire
constitute any valid reason for doing so. It is not very likely that,
when the latter in 1398 was so unjustly banished by Richard to an
uneventful sojourn in France, Glyndwr, with the cares of a family and
estate growing upon him, would have been eager to share his exile. On
the other hand, he must have been by that time well known to Richard,
and with his Pembrokeshire property and connections may well, like so
many Welshmen, have been tempted later on to embark in that ill-fated
Irish expedition which promised plunder and glory, but turned out to
be incidentally the cause of Richard's undoing. That this feckless
monarch possessed some peculiar charm and a capacity for endearing
individuals to his person seems tolerably evident, however strange.
That the Welsh were devoted to him we know, so that perhaps the
loyalty to Richard with which most Welsh writers credit Glyndwr arose
from such personal service rendered after the departure of Bolingbroke
for France. And it is quite possible that he went, as they assert,
with the King on that last ill-timed campaign which cost him his
crown.
Some declare that he was among the small knot of faithful followers
who, when his army abandoned the slothful Richard on his return to
Pembrokeshire from Ireland, rode across country with him to Conway,
where Salisbury in despair had just been compelled to disband his
freshly mustered Welshmen for lack of food and pay. If this is true,
Glyndwr, who most certainly never lost battles from sloth or timidity
when he became in one sense a king, must have witnessed with much
sympathy the lamentations of the faithful Salisbury:
"O, call back yesterday, bid time return,
And thou shalt have ten thousand fighting men;
To-day, to-day, unhappy day too late,
O'erthrows thy joys, friends, fortune, and thy state."
All this occurred in September of the year 1399. Henry, taking
advantage of Richard's absence, had landed, it will be remembered, at
Ravenspur in Yorkshire some two months earlier. He found discontent
with the existing state of affairs everywhere prevalent and the
recognised heir to the throne but lately dead. The situation was
tempting to a degree. Bolingbroke's first intention had almost
certainly aimed at nothing more than the recovery of his own immense
estates of which he had been most unjustly and unscrupulously deprived
by his royal cousin. But unexpected temptations confronted him. He was
met on landing by the Percys and soon afterwards by other great
nobles, who, from what motives it matters little, encouraged him to
seize the throne. To make a short story of a famous episode in English
history, Bolingbroke found himself by September, when Richard was
returning with fatal tardiness from Ireland, not indeed actually
crowned, but in full possession of London and other districts and
virtually acknowledged as King. In the same month he was heading a
triumphant march by way of Bristol at the head of a great and
gathering army towards North Wales, where Richard lay, as we have
seen, at Conway, helplessly wringing his hands and cursing the fate he
had brought upon himself.
[Illustration: LLANGOLLEN AND DINAS BRÂN.
Copyright
F. Frith & Co.]
According to the Welsh version, Glyndwr must have been present when
Percy, Earl of Northumberland, who in years to come was to be so
vitally bound up with his fortunes, entered the great hall of Conway
Castle, to all appearances a friendly and unarmed envoy of Henry of
Bolingbroke. We all remember his soft speech and how with the utmost
deference and humility he told King Richard that all his dear cousin
required of him was to ride back by his side to London and there
summon a Parliament, and bring to justice certain persons, who, for
the past few years, had been his evil counsellors. If Glyndwr was in
truth there, he must almost certainly have seen these two illustrious
personages commit that astounding piece of perjury and sacrilege in
Conway church, when they knelt side by side and swore before the altar
and upon the sacred elements that their intentions towards each other
were wholly friendly and without guile. He must then, too, have heard
King Richard, when scarcely off his knees, swear that if only he could
get his dear cousin of Bolingbroke into his hands he would put him to
such a cruel death it should be long spoken of even in Turkey. Perhaps
it was the memory of the spectacle that decided Glyndwr on certain
occasions in his after life to show a curious reluctance to "put his
trust in princes," however loyal in the abstract he might be to their
memory. If we follow the Welsh tradition, he saw this game of
duplicity to the bitter end and made one of the small band of
horsemen who crossed the estuary of the Conway in the dawn of an
autumn morning with the puling king on their way to Rhuddlan Castle,
whose ivy-mantled ruins still make such a charming picture amid the
meadows where the Clwyd winds its tidal course towards the sea. Long
before Richard got there, and while still surmounting the steep
headland of Rhos above Old Colwyn, he caught sight of the troops which
the crafty Northumberland had left there in concealment. It was too
late to retreat. The waves roared far beneath him and rocky crags
towered high above his head. He saw that he was undone and read in the
situation the black treachery he would have himself dealt out with
scant scruple to anyone lingering in the path of self-indulgence,
which he had so long trodden.
"O that I were as great
As is my grief, or greater than my name,
Or that I could forget what I have been,
Or not remember what I must be now."
Amid faces from which the friendly mask had already half fallen and
spears that may well have had an ominous glitter in his eyes, the
disheartened King passed on to Rhuddlan and from Rhuddlan to the
strong castle of Flint. Here in the morning came to him his cousin of
Bolingbroke, inquiring, among other things, whether he had broken his
fast, for he had a long ride before him. Whereat Richard demanded what
great army was that which darkened the sands of Dee below the castle
walls. Henry replied curtly that they were Londoners for the most
part, and that they had come to take him prisoner to the Tower, and
nothing else would satisfy them. If Glyndwr were indeed present it
must have been a strange enough sight for him, this meeting of his
former patron and his present master, under such sinister
circumstances, in the gloomy chambers of Flint Castle. If he were
still here it may be safely assumed that, like the rest of Richard's
escort, he went no farther. Even if he were absent, quietly hawking
and hunting at Glyndyfrdwy, there would be nothing irrelevant in
calling to the reader's recollection a famous episode, the chief
actors in which had so far-reaching an influence on the Welsh hero's
life; how all semblance of respect for the King's person was dropped;
how, mounted of design upon a sorry nag, he was led with many
indignities along the weary road to London and there made to read his
own abdication in favour of his captor and cousin; and how he was
hurried from fortress to fortress, till at Pontefract he ended his
misspent life in a manner that to this day remains a mystery--all this
is a matter of historic notoriety. Whether the unfortunate Richard
died of grief, failing health, and lack of attention, or whether he
was the victim of deliberate foul play, only concerns us here from the
fact of his name occurring so frequently in our story as a
rallying-cry for Henry's enemies, and from the mystery attaching to
the manner of his death being for years a genuine grievance among the
rank and file of the disaffected, and a handy weapon for their more
designing leaders.
How much of his life Glyndwr had so far spent in his native valleys
of the Dee or Cynllaeth it is impossible to guess. Perhaps at odd
times a good deal of it; seeing that he was now over forty, had found
time to marry a wife, a lady of the neighbourhood, by whom he had
become the father of a numerous family, and to win for himself great
popularity and a name for hospitality. The famous Welsh poet, Gryffydd
Llwyd, much better known by his bardic name of "Iolo Goch," or the Red
Iolo, was his constant friend and companion at this time, and became,
later on, the Laureate of his Court and of his cause. In the thick
volume which the extant works of Iolo fill he has left us a graphic
though somewhat fantastic picture of Glyndwr's domestic life. I have
already shown how the Welsh chieftain owned the two estates of
Glyndyfrdwy and Sycherth or Cynllaeth in his native district, while
from his mother he inherited property in Pembroke. The two former
places were near together. If the mountain fringes of Glyndyfrdwy,
which ran east and west, did not actually touch the Sycherth estate,
which ran north and south with the waters of the Cynllaeth brook,
there could have been little but the deep Vale of the Ceiriog to
divide them. There were mansions upon both estates, and, though
Glyndyfrdwy was the more important property, it was in the less
striking but still charming valley down which the Cynllaeth babbles to
meet the Tanat beneath the woodlands of Llangedwyn, that Sycherth or
Sychnant, the more imposing of Glyndwr's two houses, was situated.
This valley lies snugly tucked away behind the first ridge of hills
which rises abruptly behind Oswestry and so conspicuously marks the
Welsh frontier. It practically skirts the English border, and Offa's
Dyke trails its still obvious course along the lofty summit of its
eastern boundary. Scarcely anywhere, indeed, does the Principality
begin in a social sense with such striking abruptness. Once over the
hill from Shropshire, and within a short hour's drive from Oswestry,
and you are for every practical purpose in the heart of Celtic Wales.
Few travellers come this way, for it is on the road to nowhere that
the outside world takes count of, and few strangers but an occasional
antiquary ever see the well-defined and flat-topped tumulus on which
the manor house of the most famous of all Welshmen stood. It lies in a
meadow between a wooded hill and the Cynllaeth brook, not far from
Llansilin, and is very conspicuous from the road leading up the valley
to the little hamlet, whose churchyard holds the dust of another
famous Welshman, the seventeenth-century poet, Huw Morris. The inner
and the outer moat of Sycherth are still more or less perfect, and
there are even yet, or were not long ago, plain traces of stonework
beneath the turf. It will be well, however, to let Iolo, who was there
so much and knew it so well, tell us what it looked like in his time,
five hundred years ago.
[Illustration: SYCHERTH, FROM THE SOUTH.
Copyright
W. D. Haydon.]
There was a gate-house, he says, a strong tower, and a moat. The house
contained nine halls, each furnished with a wardrobe filled with the
raiment of Owen's retainers. Near the house on a verdant bank was a
wooden building supported upon posts and roofed with tiles. Here were
eight apartments in which the guests slept. There was a church, too,
in the form of a cross, and several chapels. The mansion was
surrounded with every convenience and every essential for maintaining
a profuse hospitality: a park, warren and pigeon-house, mill,
orchards, and vineyard; a fish-pond well stocked with "gwyniads" from
Bala Lake, a heronry, and plenty of game of all sorts. The cook, Iolo
declares with much enthusiasm, was one of the very best; and the
hospitality of the establishment so unstinted that the office of gate
porter was a sinecure. Our bard indeed makes his poetic lips literally
smack over the good things beneath which Glyndwr's table groaned. Nor
does he forget his hostess:
"The best of wives,
Happy am I in her wine and metheglyn;
Eminent woman of a knightly family,
Honourable, beneficent, noble,
Her children come forward two by two,
A beautiful nest of chieftains."
Charming, however, as is the site of Sycherth, nestling beneath its
wooded hill and looking out towards the great masses of the Berwyn
Mountains, it would ill compare with that almost matchless gem of
Welsh scenery, where the vales of Edeyrnion and Llangollen meet among
the mantling woodlands and sounding gorges of Glyndyfrdwy. It is a
curiously apt coincidence that one of the most romantic spots in Wales
should have been the cradle of the man who is without doubt the most
romantic personage in Welsh history. Scarcely anyone, as I have said,
ever finds his way to Sycherth; but thousands of travellers every
summer follow by road or rail that delightful route which, hugging the
Dee from Ruabon almost to its source beyond Bala Lake, reveals new
beauties at every turn. Such being the case I would venture to ask any
intending traveller from Ruabon to Bala and Dolgelly to take special
note of a spot just five minutes to the westward of Glyndyfrdwy
station, where the wide torrent of the Dee, after clinging to the
railroad for some distance, takes a sudden bend to the north.
Precisely here, but perched high upon the other side of the railroad
and so nearly overhanging it as not to be readily visible, is a green
tumulus crowned by a group of windswept fir trees. This is locally
known as "Glyndwr's Mount," not because, as was probably the case at
Sycherth, it was erected as a foundation for the chieftain's
house,--since this one here is evidently prehistoric,--but merely from
the fact that the house stood at its foot. Vague traces of the house
are still visible beneath the turf of the narrow meadow that lies
squeezed in between the Holyhead Road on the upper side and the river
and railroad on the lower side.[6] Whether Sycherth was Owen's
favourite home in peace or not, Glyndyfrdwy was most certainly his
more natural headquarters in war, while in his own district. Both,
however, were burnt down by Prince Henry, as we shall see later on, in
one of his expeditions against the Welsh. As for the mound, it is a
notable landmark, being one of a series which are sprinkled along the
Dee valley in such fashion as to indicate beyond a doubt that if they
were indeed the tombs of dead warriors, they were also most admirable
signal-stations for living ones. But whatever the origin of this one
it had at any rate no connection with times so recent as those of
Glyndwr. The only surviving relic of that hero's residence is a long,
narrow oaken table of prodigious thickness, which is yet treasured in
a neighbouring farmhouse. A meadow below is still called "Parliament
field," while the massive old stone homestead of Pen-y-bont, half a
mile up the valley, contains a portion of the walls which formed, it
is believed, Glyndwr's stables, or, more probably, his farm buildings.
But as many of these local points will come up in the course of my
story, it is time to say something of the lady who, so entirely blest
in her earlier years, was to spend her later ones amid such stress and
storm, and to share so precarious a crown.
[6] A friend of the writer, who lived to an advanced age, was told
in his youth by old men in the neighbourhood that they could
remember when there was a good deal of stonework to be seen lying
about. Now, however, there is little to mark the spot but the
suggestive undulations of the turf.
This lady bountiful of Sycherth and Glyndyfrdwy, so extolled by Iolo,
came of a notable Flintshire house. She was the daughter of Sir David
Hanmer of Hanmer, a family long settled in that detached fragment of
Flint known then as Maelor Seisnig, or "English Maelor." Sir David had
been appointed by Richard the Second one of the Justices of the King's
Bench and at the same time knighted. There are Hanmers even yet in
those parts; till comparatively lately there were still Hanmers of
Hanmer. More enduring than a human stock, there are monuments in stone
and brass that tell the story, common enough in England, of a family
that for centuries were great in their own district without ever
making their name a familiar one to the average British ear. The
Hanmers, too, were a fair specimen of many families in the Welsh
Marches who had both English and Welsh blood in their veins, and whose
sympathies were divided when social animosities took a warlike turn.
It was very much so indeed with the Hanmers when Glyndwr's war by
degrees forced everyone to take a side in self-defence. Of Glyndwr's
sons only two are directly mentioned, Griffith and Meredith, both of
whom we shall find fighting by his side, but at such an advanced stage
of the struggle that it seems probable they were but boys when
hostilities broke out. We hear dimly of three more, Madoc, Thomas, and
John. Of the daughters somewhat more is known; and they must for the
most part have been older, since it seems that three were married
before the troubles began. The eldest, Isabel, became the wife of a
Welshman, Adda ab Iorwerth Ddu. The second, Elizabeth, married Sir
John Scudamore of Kent Church and Holme Lacy in Herefordshire, whose
descendants still retain the name and the first of these historic
manors. Another, Janet, was given to John Crofts of Croft Castle in
the same county, and the youngest, Margaret, called after her mother,
took another Herefordshire gentleman, Roger Monnington of Monnington.
The most celebrated was the fourth daughter, Jane, whom we shall find
being united under romantic circumstances to her father's illustrious
captive and subsequent ally, Sir Edmund Mortimer. She it is, of
course, whom Shakespeare brings upon his stage and, in her song to
Hotspur and Mortimer,
"Makes Welsh as sweet as ditties highly penned,
Sung by a fair queen in a summer's bower."
The Commote of Glyndyfrdwy, which formed Owen's Dee property, lay in
the then newly formed county of Merioneth, though it was wedged in by
the Marcher lordships of Chirk, Bromfield, and Yale on the east; while
to the north, Denbighshire as yet having no existence, it touched the
Norman lordships of Ruthin and Denbigh in the Vale of Clwyd. But
Glyndwr held his estates direct from the King, having manor courts of
his own, and resorting in more important matters to the assize towns
of Dolgelly and Harlech. Corwen must have been actually on his
property but, though a notable gathering-spot in war time, it had no
corporate existence, and was probably even more insignificant in size
than the other Merioneth towns. The Welsh did not herd together in
towns or villages. Each individual or group of individuals dwelt on
their small homesteads scattered about the hillsides or cut out of the
forests which then covered so much of the country and had contributed
so greatly to its defence.
* * * * *
Owen in his home life must have been something of an unique
personality. He was the equal in breeding and in knowledge of the
world of the great barons around him,--the Greys, Talbots, and
Charltons,--and of sufficient estate to be himself a grand seigneur.
Yet his hospitable house must have offered a remarkable contrast in
the eyes of the natives to the grim fortresses of Chirk, or Dinas
Brân, or Ruthin, whose owners' mission in life, so far as the Welsh
were concerned, was to make themselves unpleasant. Their claws, it is
true, had been considerably cut down by Edward the First, but the same
blood was there; and the habit of former years, which looked upon the
killing of a Welshman as a meritorious action, only wanted an
opportunity to reassert itself.
Owen's rent-roll was about two hundred pounds a year, and some slight
mental effort is required to realise that this was a very large one,
both actually when judged by the contemporary value of money, and
relatively as regards the financial standing of private landowners,
particularly in Wales, where this was low. Owen was probably one of
the richest native Welshmen of his day. Few if any in the north had
such an opportunity of showing the contrast between the simple and
profuse hospitality of a native aristocrat, and the stiff,
contemptuous solemnity of the lord of a Norman fortress. It was easy
enough for the descendant of Madoc ap Griffith to make himself popular
upon the banks of the upper Dee, and Owen seems to have added a desire
to do so to the personal magnetism that the whole story of his life
shows him to have possessed in a very high degree. All the bards of
his own time and that immediately following unite in this praise of
his hospitality. Amid much fanciful exaggeration, such for instance
as that which compares Sycherth to "Westminster Abbey and Cheapside,"
there is no doubt about the esteem and admiration in which Owen was
held by the Welsh and particularly by the bards who lived at free
quarters in his roomy halls. But all this began before he had any idea
of utilising his position and popularity in the manner that has made
him immortal. There is really no authority at all for making him a
follower of Richard. All Wales and Cheshire were indignant at the
King's deposition and treatment, and Glyndwr, even supposing his Irish
expedition to have been mythical, may well have shared this
indignation. But in such a case his antecedents were, from private
attachments, wholly Lancastrian. Not only had he been Bolingbroke's
squire, but his former master, the Earl of Arundel, had been a
pronounced foe of the late King. Discontent and turbulence were
brooding everywhere, but we have no reason to suppose that Glyndwr at
this date, the last year of the century, had any excuse whatever for
entering into dynastic quarrels. On the contrary, unless the story of
his recent connection with Richard be true, he had much reason to be
contented with Bolingbroke's accession. At this moment he was in all
probability living quietly at Sycherth, hunting deer amid the birchen
woods and bracken glades of the Berwyn and hawking in the meadows of
Llansilin. Amid all the pleasures, however, which filled his rural
life there rankled one deep and bitter grievance, and this concerned
the upland tract of Croesau that lay upon the north-western fringe of
his Glyndyfrdwy manor, over which he and his powerful neighbour,
Reginald Grey, Lord of Ruthin, had been falling out this many a long
day. The details of this quarrel, the primary cause of that decade of
strife which desolated Wales and profoundly influenced the reign and
embittered the life of Henry of Bolingbroke, must be reserved for
another chapter.
[Decoration]
[Decoration]
CHAPTER III
GLYNDWR AND LORD GREY OF RUTHIN
1400-1401
Reginald, Lord Grey, of Ruthin, the prime cause of all the wars that
devastated Wales and the English Marches throughout the first ten
years of the fifteenth century, was a typical Lord Marcher, and was
perhaps the worst of a fierce, unscrupulous, and pitiless class. His
ancestors had been in the Vale of Clwyd for over a hundred years. At
Edward's conquest the first Earl had been planted by the King at
Ruthin to overawe the Welsh of what is now northern Denbighshire and
of the two recently created counties of Flint and Carnarvon which lay
upon either side. There were other Lord Marchers and other English
garrisons between Chester and Carnarvon, but at the time this story
opens the Greys were beyond a doubt the most ardent and conspicuous
props of the English Crown. The great Red Castle at Ruthin, the
"Castell y Gwern Loch," had risen in Edward's time beside the upper
waters of the Clwyd, and its ample ruins still cluster round the
modern towers where the successors of the fierce Lord Marchers
exercise a more peaceful sway.
[Illustration: RUTHIN CASTLE.
FROM OLD PRINT.]
Around Ruthin Castle, as at Denbigh, Conway, and Carnarvon, a group of
English adventurers--soldiers, tradesmen, clerks, and gentlemen--had
gathered together and built for themselves habitations, aided by
favourable charters from the King, and still greater favours from
their lord, who leant upon their services in times of danger. They led
profitable, if sometimes anxious lives. Welsh and English alike
pleaded before the lordship courts, whose records may still be read by
the curious in such matters. Both Welsh and English laws,
theoretically at any rate, were administered within the lordship, but
as the Lord Marcher was, within his own domain, a law unto himself,
the state of affairs that existed at Ruthin and similar places was
complicated and is not immediately pertinent to this story. It will be
quite accurate enough for present purposes to describe Grey as
surrounded and supported by armed burghers and other dependents,
mainly but not wholly of English blood, while the mass of the Welsh
within his lordship, gentle and simple, remained obedient to his rule
from fear and not from love. I need not trouble the reader with the
limitations of his territory, but merely remark that it bordered upon
that of Owen.
Now, upon the wild upland between the Dee valley and the watershed of
the Clwyd, lay the common of Croesau, whose disputed ownership
eventually set Wales and England by the ears. This strip of land had
originally belonged to Owen's estate of Glyndyfrdwy. Lord Grey,
however, in Richard the Second's time, had, in high-handed fashion,
appropriated it to himself on the sole and poor excuse that it marched
with his own domain. Glyndwr, being at that time probably no match for
Grey at the game of physical force, possessed his fiery soul in
patience, and carried the dispute in a peaceful and orderly manner to
the King's court in London. Here the justice of his claim was
recognised; he won his suit and Lord Grey was compelled to withdraw
his people from the disputed territory, cherishing, we may well
believe, an undying grudge against the Welshman who, before the eyes
of all the world and in an English court of justice, had got the
better of him.
Now, however, a new King was upon the throne, and Owen apparently out
of favour. The opportunity was too good an one to be missed by the
grasping Norman, who, driving Owen's people off the disputed
territory, annexed it once more to his own estate. Glyndwr
nevertheless, whatever the cause may have been, proved himself even
under this further provocation a law-abiding person, and, refraining
from all retaliation, carried his suit once more to London and laid it
before the Parliament which Henry summoned in the spring of 1400, six
months after he had seized the throne. But Owen, though he had been
esquire to the King, was now wholly out of favour, so much so as
greatly to support the tradition that he had served the unfortunate
Richard in a like capacity. His suit was not even accorded the
compliment of a hearing, but was dismissed with contemptuous brevity.
Trevor, Bishop of St. Asaph, who was then about the King's person and
deeply in his confidence, protested in vain against the unjust and
ill-advised course. As a Welshman, familiar with the condition of his
own country, he solemnly warned the authorities against provoking a
man who, though of only moderate estate, was so powerful and so
popular among his own people.
The Bishop's pleadings were of no avail. "What care we for the
barefooted rascals?" was the scornful reply. The Welsh were in fact
already in an electrical condition. In spite of their general
discontent with English rule, they had been attached to Richard, and
with that strength of personal loyalty which in a Celtic race so often
outweighs reason, they resented with heartfelt indignation the
usurpation of Bolingbroke. They were very far from sure that Richard
was even dead. If he were, then Henry had killed him, which made
matters worse. But if in truth he actually still lived, they were
inclined to murmur as loudly and with as much show of reason at his
dethronement. Richard, it will be remembered, after having been
compelled publicly and formally to abdicate the throne, had been
imprisoned for a time in the Tower, and then secretly conveyed from
castle to castle till he reached Pontefract, where he ended his
wretched life. The manner of his death remains to this day a mystery,
as has been intimated already. Whether he was murdered by Henry's
orders or whether his weakened constitution succumbed to sorrow and
confinement or bad treatment, no one will ever know. But his body, at
any rate, was brought to London and there exposed in St. Paul's
Cathedral for the space of three days, that all the world might see
that he was in truth dead. The men of Wales and the North and West of
England had to take all this on hearsay, and were readily persuaded
that some trickery had been played on the Londoners and that some
substitute for Richard had been exposed to their credulous gaze. For
years it was the policy of Henry's enemies to circulate reports that
Richard was still alive, and, as we shall see in due course, his ghost
was not actually laid till the battle of Shrewsbury had been fought
and won by Henry. Indeed, so late as 1406 the old Earl of
Northumberland alleged, in a letter, the possibility of his being
alive, while even seven years after this Sir John Oldcastle declared
he would never acknowledge Parliament so long as his master, King
Richard, still lived.
Glyndwr, after the insults that he had received in London, returned
home, as may well be conceived, not in the best of tempers; Grey,
however, was to perpetrate even a worse outrage upon him than that of
which he had already been guilty and of a still more treacherous
nature. It so happened that at this time the King was preparing for
that expedition against the Scots which started in July, 1400. Among
the nobility and gentry whom he summoned to his standard was Glyndwr,
and there is no reason to assume that the Welshman would have failed
to answer the call. The summons, however, was sent through Lord Grey,
in his capacity of chief Marcher in North Wales; and Grey, with
incredibly poor spite, kept Owen in ignorance of it till it was too
late for him either to join the King's army or to forward an
explanation. Glyndwr was on this account credited at Court with being
a malcontent and a rebel; and as there had been some brawling and
turbulence upon the Welsh border the future chieftain's name was
included among those whom it was Grey's duty, as it was his delight,
to punish. There is no evidence that Owen had stirred. It is possible
he might have made himself disagreeable to Grey upon the marches of
their respective properties. It would be strange if he had not. There
is no mention, however, of his name in the trifling racial
disturbances that were natural to so feverish a time.
It seems pretty evident that if the malicious Lord Marcher had rested
content with his plunder and let sleeping dogs lie, Owen, and
consequently Wales, would never have risen. This ill-advised baron,
however, was by no means content. He applied for further powers in a
letter which is now extant,
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