Books: A Short History of Wales
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Owen M. Edwards >> A Short History of Wales
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CHAPTER X--LLYWELYN THE GREAT
On the death of the Lord Rees, one of the grandsons of Owen Gwynedd
becomes the central figure in Welsh history. Llywelyn the Great rose
into power in 1194, and reigned until 1240--a long reign, and in many
ways the most important of all the reigns of the Welsh princes.
Llywelyn's first task was to become sole ruler in Gwynedd. The sons
of Owen Gwynedd had divided the strong Gwynedd left them by their
father, and their nobles and priests could not decide which of the
sons was to be supreme. Iorwerth, the poet Howel, David, Maelgwn,
Rhodri, tried to get Gwynedd, or portions of it. Eventually, David
I. became king; but soon a strong opposition placed Llywelyn, the
able son of Iorwerth, on the throne. Uncles and cousins showed some
jealousy; but the growing power of Llywelyn soon made them obey him
with gradually diminishing envy.
His next task was to attach the other princes of Wales to him, now
that the Lord Rees and Owen Cyveiliog were dead. To begin with, he
had to deal with the astute Gwenwynwyn, the son of Owen Cyveiliog;
and he had to be forced to submit. He then turned to the many sons
and grandsons of the Lord Rees--Maelgwn and Rees the Hoarse
especially. They called John, King of England, into Wales; but they
soon found that Llywelyn was a better master than John and his
barons. Gradually Llywelyn established a council of chiefs--partly a
board of conciliation, and partly an executive body. It was nothing
new; but it was a striking picture of the way in which Llywelyn meant
to join the princes into one organised political body.
His third task was to begin to unite Norman barons and Welsh chiefs
under his own rule. He had to begin in the old way, by using force;
and Ranulph of Chester and the Clares trembled for the safety of
their castles. He then offered political alliance; and some of the
Norman families of the greatest importance in the reign of John--the
Earl of Chester, the family of Braose, and the Marshalls of Pembroke-
-became his allies. His other step was to unite Welsh and Norman
families by marriage. He himself married a daughter of King John,
and he gave his own daughters in marriage to a Braose and a Mortimer.
It is through the dark-haired Gladys, who married Ralph Mortimer,
that the kings of England can trace their descent from the House of
Cunedda.
Llywelyn's last great task was to make relations between England and
Wales relations of peace and amity. During his long reign, he saw
three kings on the throne of England--the crusader Richard, the able
John, and the worthless and mean Henry III. It was with John that he
had most to do, the king whose originality and vices have puzzled and
shocked so many historians. John helped him to crush Gwenwynwyn,
then helped the jealous Welsh princes to check the growth of his
power. Llywelyn saw that it was his policy, as long as John was
alive, to join the English barons. They were then trying to force
Magna Carta upon the King, that great document which prevented John
from interfering with the privileges of his barons. In that document
John promises, in three clauses, that he will observe the rights of
Welshmen and the law of Wales.
When John died in 1216, and his young son Henry succeeded him, the
policy of England was guided by William Marshall Earl of Pembroke.
William Marshall was one of the ministers of Henry II., and by his
marriage with the daughter of Strongbow, the conqueror of Ireland, he
had become Earl of Pembroke. It was with him that Llywelyn had now
to deal. He was too strong in Pembroke to be attacked, but his very
presence made it easier for Llywelyn to retain the allegiance of the
chiefs who would have been in danger from the Norman barons if
Llywelyn's protection were taken away. In 1219 the great William
Marshall died; and changes in English politics forced his sons into
an alliance with Llywelyn.
Llywelyn's title of Great is given him by his Norman and English
contemporaries. He was great as a general; his detection of trouble
before the storm broke, his instant determination and rapidity of
movements, his ever-ready munitions for battle and siege, made his
later campaigns always successful. He felt that he was carrying on
war in his own country; so his wars were not wars of devastation, but
the crushing of armies and the razing of castles.
He took an interest in the three great agents in the civilisation of
the time--the bard, the monk, and the friar. The bard was as welcome
as ever at his court; the monk, welcomed by Owen Gwynedd before, was
given another home at Aber Conway. Llywelyn extended his welcome to
the friar, and he was given a home at Llan Vaes in Anglesey, on the
shores of the Menai. The friar brought a higher ideal than that of
the monk; his aim was salvation, not by prayer in the solitude of a
mountain glen, but by service where men were thickest together--even
in streets made foul by vice, and haunted by leprosy. Of the
Mendicant Orders, the Franciscans were the best known in Wales; and,
of all Orders of that day, it was they who sympathised most deeply
with the sorrows of men. And it was this which, a little later on,
brought them so much into politics.
Great and successful in war and policy, in touch with the noblest
influences in the life of the time, Llywelyn applied himself to one
last task. His companions and allies had nearly all died before him;
but he wished that the peace and unity, which they had established,
should live after them. He had two sons--Griffith, who was the
champion of independence; and David, who wished for peace with
England. Llywelyn laid more stress on strong government at home than
on the repudiation of feudal allegiance to the King of England. So
he persuaded the council of princes at Strata Florida to accept David
as his successor.
CHAPTER XI--THE LAST LLYWELYN
David II., a mild and well-meaning prince, was too weak to carry his
father's policy out. He tried to maintain peace, and did homage to
his uncle, the King of England. But, as the head of the patriotic
party, his more energetic brother, Griffith, opposed him. By guile
he caught Griffith, and shut him in a castle on the rock of
Criccieth. The other princes shook off the yoke of Gwynedd, and
Henry III. tried to play the brothers against each other. David sent
Griffith to Henry, who put him in the Tower of London. In trying to
escape, his rope broke, and he fell to the ground dead. Soon
afterwards, in 1246, in the middle of a war with Henry, David died of
a broken heart.
The sons of Griffith--Owen, Llywelyn, and David--at once took their
uncle's place; and by 1255 Llywelyn ap Griffith was sole ruler. By
that year Henry III. had given his young son Edward the earldom of
Chester, which had fallen to the crown, and the lands between the Dee
and the Conway, which he claimed by a treaty with the dead Griffith.
Thus Edward and Llywelyn began their long struggle.
Between 1255 and 1267 Llywelyn tries to recover his grandfather's
position in Wales. In 1255 his power extended over Gwynedd only. He
found it easy to extend it over most of Wales, because the rule of
the English officials made the Welsh chiefs long for the protection
of Gwynedd. The Barons' War paralysed the power of the King, and
Llywelyn made an alliance with Simon de Montfort and the barons.
Even after Montfort's fall in 1265 the barons were so powerful that
the King was still at their mercy. In 1267 Llywelyn's position as
Prince of Wales was recognised in the Treaty of Montgomery. His sway
extended from Snowdon to the Dee on the east, and to the Teivy and
the Beacons on the south--practically the whole of modern Wales,
except the southern seaboard. Within these wide bounds all the Welsh
barons were to swear fealty to Llywelyn, the only exception being
Meredith ap Rees of Deheubarth.
The second struggle of Llywelyn's reign took place between 1267 and
1277. He tried to weld his land into a closer union, and many of the
chiefs of the south and east became willing to call in the English
King. Two of them, his own brother David and Griffith of Powys, fled
to England, and were received by Edward, who had been king since
1272. Llywelyn and Edward distrusted each other. Edward wished to
unite Britain in a feudal unity, and to crush all opponents.
Llywelyn thought of helping the barons; he might become their leader.
Eleanor, the daughter of Simon de Montfort, the old leader of the
barons, was betrothed to him. War broke out. The barons--Clares and
Mortimers, and all--joined the King. Llywelyn's dominions were
invaded at all points, his barons had to yield, one after the other;
and finally, in 1277, Llywelyn had to accept the Treaty of Rhuddlan.
His dominions shrunk to the old limits of Snowdon, his sway over the
rest of Wales was taken from him, and the title of Prince of Wales
was to cease with his life.
The third struggle was between 1277 and 1282. The rule of the new
officials drove the Welsh to revolt; and the chiefs who had opposed
Llywelyn, especially his brother David, begged for Llywelyn's
protection. Eleanor, Llywelyn's wife and Edward's cousin, tried to
keep the peace, but she died while they were arming for the last
bitter war of 1282.
It was comparatively easy for Edward to overrun Powys or Deheubarth,
if he had an army strong enough. But at that time Gwynedd was almost
impregnable. From Conway to Harlech lies the vast mass of Snowdon, a
great natural rampart running from sea to sea. Its steep side is
towards the east, and the invader found before him heights which he
could not climb, and round which he could not pass. If you stand in
the Vale of Conway, look at the hills on the Arvon side--the great
natural wall of inmost Gwynedd, with its last tower, the Penmaen
Mawr, rising right from the sea. The gentle slopes are to the west,
and there the corn and flocks were safe.
Edward had to put a large army into the field, and it cost him much.
In the war with Llywelyn he had to change the English army entirely;
and, in order to get money, he had to allow the Parliament to get
life and power. To carry supplies, and to land men in Anglesey to
turn the flank of the Welsh, he wanted a fleet. But there was no
royal navy then, and the fishermen of the east coast and the south
coast--who had no quarrel with the Welsh, but were very anxious to
fight each other--were not willing to lose their fish harvest in
order to fight so far away.
In 1282, Edward's great army closed round Snowdon. The chiefs still
faithful to Llywelyn had to yield or flee. But winter was coming on,
and could Edward keep his army in the field? An attempt had been
made to enter Snowdon from Anglesey, but the English force was
destroyed at Moel y Don. It looked as if Edward would have to
retire. Llywelyn left Snowdon, and went to Ceredigion and the Vale
of Towy to put new heart in his allies, and from there he passed on
to the valley of the Wye. He meant, without a doubt, to get the
barons of the border, Welsh and English, to unite against Edward.
But in some chance skirmish a soldier slew him, not knowing who he
was. When they heard that their Prince was fallen, his men in
Snowdon entirely lost heart. They had no faith in David, and in a
few months the whole of Wales was at Edward's feet.
CHAPTER XII--CONQUERED WALES
The war between Edward and Llywelyn was not a war between England and
Wales, as we think of these countries now. Some of the best soldiers
under Edward were Welsh, especially the bowmen who followed the Earl
of Gloucester and Roger Mortimer from the Wye and Severn valleys.
It is not right that we Welshmen should feel bitter against England,
because, in this last war, Edward won and Llywelyn fell. It is easy
to say that Edward was cruel and faithless, and it is easy to say
that Llywelyn was shifty and obstinate; but it is quite clear that
each of them thought that he was right. Edward thought that Britain
ought to be united: Llywelyn thought Wales ought to be free. Now,
happily, we have the union and the freedom.
On the other hand, I should not like you to think that Wales was more
barbarous than England, or Llywelyn less civilised than Edward I.
Giraldus Cambrensis saw a prince going barefoot, and the fussy little
Archbishop Peckham saw that Welsh marriage customs were not what he
liked; and many historians, who have never read a line of Welsh
poetry, take for granted that the conquest of Wales was a new victory
for civilisation.
In many ways Wales was more civilised than England at that time. Its
law was more simple and less developed, it is true; but it was more
just in many cases, and certainly more humane. Was it not better
that the land should belong to the people, and that the youngest son
should have the same chance as the eldest? And, in crime, was it not
better that if no opportunity for atonement was given, the death of
the criminal was to be a merciful one? In the reign of John, a Welsh
hostage, a little boy of seven, was hanged at Shrewsbury, because his
father, a South Wales chief, had rebelled. In the reign of Edward
I., the miserable David was dragged at the tails of horses through
the streets of the same town, and the tortures inflicted on the dying
man were too horrible to describe to modern ears. And what the
Norman baron did, his Welsh tenant learnt to do. In Wales you get
fierce frays and frequent shedding of blood; on the borders you get
callous cruelty to a prisoner, or the disfiguring of dead bodies--
even that of Simon de Montfort, the greatest statesman of the Middle
Ages in England--on the battlefield when all passion was spent.
Take the rulers of Wales again. Griffith ap Conan and Llywelyn the
Great had the energy and the foresight, though their sphere was so
much smaller, of Henry II. And what English king, except Alfred,
attracts one on account of lovableness of character as Owen Gwynedd
and Owen Cyveiliog and the Lord Rees do?
When Edward entered into Snowdon, Welsh was spoken to the Dee and the
Severn, and far beyond. There were many dialects, as there are
still, though any two Welshmen could understand each other wherever
they came from, with a little patience, as they can still. But there
was also a literary language, and this was understood, if not spoken,
by the chiefs all through the country. It was more like the Welsh
spoken in mid-Wales--especially in the valley of the Dovey--than any
other. There are many signs of civilisation; one of them is the
possession of a literary language--for romance and poem, for court
and Eisteddvod.
Conquered Wales may be divided into two parts--the Wales conquered by
the Norman barons and the Wales conquered by the English king.
The Wales conquered by the English king was the country ruled by
Llywelyn and his allies. In 1284, by the statute of Rhuddlan, it was
formed into six shires. The Snowdon district--which held out last--
was made into the three shires of Anglesey, Carnarvon, and Merioneth.
The part of the land between Conway and Dee that belonged to the
king, not to barons, was made into the shire of Flint. The lands of
Llywelyn's allies beyond the Dovey were made into the shires of
Cardigan and Carmarthen. Instead of the chiefs of the Welsh prince,
the king's sheriffs and justices ruled the country. But much of the
old law remained.
The Wales conquered by the Norman barons lay to the east and south of
the Wales turned into shires in 1284. It included the greater part
of the valleys of the Clwyd, Dee, Severn, and Wye; and the South
Wales coast from Gloucester to Pembroke. It remained in the
possession of lords who were subject to the King of England, but who
ruled almost like kings in their own lordships. The laws and customs
of the various lordships differed greatly; sometimes the lord used
English law, and sometimes Welsh law. The great ruling families
changed much in wealth and power, from century to century. In
Llywelyn's time the most important were the Clares (Gloucester and
Glamorgan), the Mortimers (Wigmore and Chirk), Lacy (Denbigh),
Warenne (Bromfield and Yale), Fitzalan (Oswestry), Bohun (Brecon),
Braose (Gower), and Valence (Pembroke).
Llywelyn was the last prince of independent Wales. From that time
on, the title is conferred by the King of England on his eldest son,
who is then crowned. The present Prince of Wales also comes, through
a daughter of Llywelyn the Great, from the House of Cunedda, the
princes of which ruled Wales from Roman times to 1284. Of all the
houses that have gone to make the royal house, this is the most
ancient.
CHAPTER XIII--CASTLE AND LONG-BOW
So far I have told you very little about war, except that a battle
was fought and lost, or a castle built or taken.
War has two sides--attack and defence. New ways of attacking and
defending are continually devised. When the art of defence is more
perfect than the art of attack, the world changes very little, for
the strong can keep what he has gained. When the art of attack is
the more perfect, new men have a better chance, and many changes are
made. The chief source of defence was the castle, the chief weapon
of attack was the long-bow. Wales contains the most perfect castles
in this country; it is also the home of the long-bow. From 1066 to
1284 England and Wales were conquered, and the conquest was permanent
because castles were built. From 1284 to 1461, England and Wales
attacked other countries, and the weapon which gave them so many
victories was the long-bow.
I will tell you about the castles first, about the Norman castles and
about the Edwardian castles.
The Norman castle was a square keep, with walls of immense thickness,
sometimes of 20 feet. But if the Norman had to build on the top of a
hill or on the ruins of an old castle, he did not try to make the new
castle square, but allowed its walls to take the form of the hill or
of the old castle; and this kind of castle was called a shell keep.
The outer and inner casing of the wall would be of dressed stone, the
middle part was chiefly rubble. At first, if they had plenty of
supplies, a very few men could hold a castle against an army as long
as they liked. These were the castles built by the Norman invaders
to retain their hold over the Welsh districts they conquered.
But many ways of storming a castle were discovered. They could be
scaled by means of tall ladders, especially in a stealthy night
attack. Stones could be thrown over the walls by mangonels to annoy
the garrison. Sometimes a wall could be brought down by a battering-
ram. But the quickest and surest way was by mining. The miners
worked their way to the wall, and then began to take some of the
stones of the outer casing out, propping the wall up with beams of
wood. When the hole was big enough, they filled it with firewood;
they greased the beams well, they set fire to them and then retired
to a safe distance to see what happened. When the great wall crashed
down, the soldiers swarmed over it to beat down the resistance of the
garrison. If ever you go to Abergavenny Castle, in the Vale of Usk,
look at the cleft in the rock along which the daring besiegers once
climbed. And if you go to the Vale of Towy, and see Dryslwyn Castle,
remember that the wall once came down before the miners expected, and
that many men were crushed.
In order to prevent mining, many changes were made. Moats were dug
round the castle, and filled with water. Brattices were made along
the top of the towers, galleries through the floor of which the
defenders could pour boiling pitch on the besiegers. The walls were
built at such angles that a window, with archers posted behind it,
could command each wall. Stronger towers were built--round towers
with a coping at each storey, solid as a rock, which would crack and
lean without falling; there is a leaning tower at Caerphilly Castle.
One other way I must mention--the child or the wife of the castellan
would be brought before the walls, and hanged before his eyes unless
he opened the gates.
The newer or Edwardian castles, those of the reigns of Henry III. and
Edward I., are concentric--that is, there are several castles in one;
so that the besiegers, when they had taken one castle, found
themselves face to face with another, still stronger, perhaps, inside
it. Of these castles, the most elaborate is the castle of
Caerphilly, built by Gilbert de Clare, the Red Earl of Gloucester who
helped Edward in the Welsh wars. And it was by means of these
magnificent concentric castles--Conway, Beaumaris, Carnarvon, and
Harlech--that Edward hoped to keep Wales.
There are many kinds of bows. In war two were used--the cross-bow
and the long-bow. The cross-bow was meant at first for the defence
of towns, like Genoa or the towns of Castile. So strength was more
important than lightness, and the archer had time to take aim. It
was a bow on a cross piece of wood, along which the string was drawn
back peg after peg by mechanism. The bow was then held to the
breast, and the arrow let off. It was clumsy, heavy, and expensive.
The long-bow was only one piece of sinewy yew, and a string. It was
used at first for the chase, and the archer had to take instant aim.
It was drawn to the ear, and it was a most deadly weapon when a
strong arm had been trained to draw it. Its arrow could pick off a
soldier at the top of the highest castle; it could pierce through an
oak door three fingers thick; it could pin a mail-clad knight to his
horse. It was this peasant weapon that brought the mailed knight
down in battle.
The home of the long-bow is the country between the Severn and the
Wye. It was famous before, but it was first used with effect in the
last Welsh wars. It was used to break the lines of the Snowdon
lances and pikes, so that the mail-clad cavalry might dash in. But
later on, the same bows were used to bring the nobles of France down.
From the Welsh war on, archers and infantry became important; battles
ceased to be what they had been so long--the shock of mail-clad
knights meeting each other at full charge.
The long-bow made noble and peasant equal on the field of battle.
The revolution was made complete later on by gunpowder.
CHAPTER XIV--THE RISE OF THE PEASANT
I have told you much about princes and soldiers, but very little
about the lowly life of peasants, and the trade of towns.
The conquest of Wales, by Norman baron and English king, tended to
raise the serf to the level of the freeman. The chief causes of the
rise of the serf were the following:
1 The ignorance of the English officials. The Norman baron very
often paid close attention to the privileges of the classes he ruled,
and the Welsh freeman retained his superiority. But the English
officials--and Edward II. found that they were far too numerous in
Wales--often refused to distinguish between a Welshman who was an
innate freeman and a Welshman who lived on a serf maenol. Their aim
was to make them all pay the same tax.
2. The fall in the value of money. At the time of the Norman
Conquest, silver coins were rare, and their value high. But, in
exchange for cloth and wool, of arrows and spears, of mountain ponies
and cattle, coins came in great numbers, and it was easier for the
serf to earn them. That is the value of coins became less.
This was a great boon to all who were bound to pay fixed sums--the
freeman who paid to the king the dues he used to pay to his prince,
the serf who paid to his lord a sum of money instead of service. All
ancient servitude, political and economic, was commuted for money; as
the money became easier to get, the serf became the more free.
3. The rise of towns and the growth of commerce. We must not,
however, think of commerce as if it had been first brought by the
Normans. There had been roads and coins in Roman times. The Danes
had been traders, probably, before they became pirates and invaders.
Timber, millstones, cattle, coarse cloth, and arrow-heads crossed the
Severn eastwards before the Normans saw it; and corn was carried
westward. There were close relations, political and commercial,
between Wales and Ireland from very early times.
But the Norman and English Conquests revived and quickened trade.
Towns rose, regular markets were established, and the barons who took
tolls protected the merchants who paid them. Every baron had a
castle, every castle needed a walled town, and a town cannot live
except by trade. In the town the baron did not ask a Welshman
whether he had been free or serf; the townsmen were strangers, and
they welcomed the serf who came to work.
4. The monk and the friar. The bard was a freeman born, a skilled
weaver of courteous phrases, not a churlish taeog. The monk or friar
might be a serf. They worked like serfs, and ennobled labour. The
Church condemned serfdom, and we find chapters giving their serfs
freedom.
5. The Scotch and French wars of the English kings gave employment
to hosts of bowmen and of men-at-arms, and to the numerous attendants
required to look after the horses by means of which the army moved.
The greater use of infantry after the reign of Edward I. caused a
greater demand for the peasant; and the use of the cheap long-bow
gave him a value in war. There were five thousand Welsh archers and
spearmen on the field of Cressy. In these and other ways the serf
was becoming free.
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