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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mediaeval Wales, by A. G. Little
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mediaeval Wales
+       Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures
+
+Author: A. G. Little
+
+Release Date: March 29, 2008 [EBook #24947]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEDIAEVAL WALES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sam W. and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from
+images generously made available by The Internet
+Archive/Canadian Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+               MEDIAEVAL WALES
+
+           CHIEFLY IN THE TWELFTH
+          AND THIRTEENTH CENTURIES
+
+
+           Six Popular Lectures
+
+                    BY
+
+      A. G. LITTLE, M.A., F.R.Hist.S.
+
+   PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY
+  COLLEGE OF SOUTH WALES AND MONMOUTHSHIRE
+ AUTHOR OF "THE GREY FRIARS IN OXFORD," ETC.
+
+
+            WITH MAPS AND PLANS
+
+
+                   LONDON
+              T. FISHER UNWIN
+             PATERNOSTER SQUARE
+                    1902
+
+
+
+
+[_All rights reserved._]
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+This volume contains the substance of a course of popular Lectures
+delivered at Cardiff in 1901. The work does not claim in any way to
+be an original contribution to knowledge, and is published on the
+recommendation of some friends in whose literary judgment I have
+confidence. In a popular book of this kind I have not thought it
+necessary to give detailed references to authorities, but a list of
+a few of the books which I used in the preparation of the Lectures,
+and which are likely to be interesting to readers of Welsh history,
+may be useful. Among mediaeval works I may mention the two Welsh
+chronicles--the Annales Cambriae and the Brut y Tywysogion, both
+published in the Rolls Series; Geoffrey of Monmouth's "History of
+the Kings of Britain" (translated in Bohn's "Six Old English
+Chronicles"); Giraldus Cambrensis, "The Itinerary and Description of
+Wales" (translated in Bohn's library); the prefaces, especially those
+by Brewer, in the Rolls Series edition of Giraldus, will be found
+interesting. Of the English chroniclers, Ordericus Vitalis, Roger of
+Wendover, and Matthew Paris are perhaps the most valuable for the
+history of Wales and the Marches during the twelfth and thirteenth
+centuries. Among modern books, the reader may be referred to Rhys and
+Jones, "The Welsh People"; Freeman, "William Rufus"; Thomas Stephens,
+"Literature of the Kymry"; Henry Owen, "Gerald the Welshman"; Clark,
+"Mediaeval Military Architecture," and "The Land of Morgan"; Newell,
+"History of the Welsh Church"; Tout, "Edward I."; and the "Dictionary
+of National Biography." Since these Lectures were delivered at least
+three books on Welsh history have appeared which deserve mention: Mr.
+Bradley's "Owen Glyndwr," with a summary of earlier Welsh history;
+Mr. Owen Edwards's charmingly written volume in the Story of the
+Nations Series; and Mr. Morris's valuable work on "The Welsh Wars of
+Edward I."
+
+The maps are taken from large wall maps which I used when lecturing.
+In drawing up the map of Wales and the Marches at the beginning of the
+thirteenth century, I had the assistance of my friend and former
+pupil, Mr. Morgan Jones, M.A., of Ferndale, who generously placed at
+my disposal the results of his researches into the history of the
+Welsh Marches.
+
+    A. G. LITTLE.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                        PAGE
+
+      I. INTRODUCTORY                                      1
+
+     II. GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH                             27
+
+    III. GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS                              51
+
+     IV. CASTLES                                          77
+
+      V. RELIGIOUS HOUSES                                 99
+
+     VI. LLYWELYN AP GRUFFYDD AND THE BARONS' WAR        125
+
+
+
+
+MAPS AND PLANS
+
+
+                                                        PAGE
+
+    WALES AND THE MARCHES, c. A.D. 1200-1210               2
+
+    CASTLES AND RELIGIOUS HOUSES                          78
+
+    CARDIFF AND CAERPHILLY CASTLES                        88
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: WALES & THE MARCHES, c. A.D. 1200-1210.]
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+INTRODUCTORY
+
+
+In the following lectures no attempt will be made to give a systematic
+account of a political development, which is the ordinary theme of
+history. History is "past politics" in the wide sense of the word. It
+has to do with the growth and decay of states and institutions, and
+their relations to each other. The history of Wales in the Middle
+Ages, viewed from the political standpoint, is a failure; its interest
+is negative; and in this introductory lecture I intend to discuss "the
+failure of the nation" (to use the words of Professor Rhys and Mr.
+Brynmor Jones) "to effect any stable and lasting political
+combination." Wales failed to produce or develope political
+institutions of an enduring character--failed to become a state. Its
+history does not possess the unity nor the kind of interest which the
+history of England possesses, and which makes the study of English
+history so peculiarly instructive to the student of politics. In
+English history we study primarily the growth of the principle of
+Representative Government, which we can trace for centuries through a
+long series of authoritative records. That is the great gift of
+England to the world. Not only has Wales entered on this inheritance;
+it helped to create it. It was Llywelyn ap Iorwerth who began the
+revolt against John which led to the Great Charter, and the clauses of
+the Great Charter itself show that it was the joint work of English
+and Welsh. Wales again exerted a decisive influence on the Barons'
+War--the troubles in which the House of Commons first emerged. And
+Wales--half of it for more than six hundred years--half of it for
+nearly four hundred--has lived under the public law and administrative
+system which the Norman and Angevin kings of England built up on
+Anglo-Saxon foundations. This public law and this administrative
+system have become part and parcel of the life and history of Wales.
+The constitutional history of England is one of the elements which go
+to make up the complex history of Wales.
+
+The history of Wales, taken by itself, is constitutionally weak; and
+its interest is social or personal, archaeological, artistic,
+literary--anything but political. And the fact--which is
+indisputable--that Wales failed to establish any permanent or united
+political system needs explanation.
+
+The ultimate explanation will perhaps be found in the geography of the
+country. The mountains have done much to preserve the independence and
+the language of Wales, but they have kept her people disunited; and
+the Welsh needed a long drilling under institutions, which could only
+grow up in a land less divided by nature, before they could develope
+their political genius.
+
+Wales, owing largely to its geography, had the misfortune never to be
+conquered at one fell swoop by an alien race of conquerors. Such a
+conquest may not at first sight strike one as a blessing, but it is,
+if it takes place when a people is in an early, fluid, and
+impressionable stage, as may be seen from a comparison of countries
+which have undergone it with countries which have not--a comparison,
+for instance, of England with Ireland or Germany. Perhaps the nearest
+parallel in the history of Wales to the Norman Conquest of England is
+the conquest of Wales by Cunedda, the founder of the Cymric kingdom,
+in the dark and troublous times which followed the withdrawal of the
+Roman troops from Britain. But though an invader and a conqueror,
+Cunedda was not an alien; he spoke the same language as the people he
+conquered and belonged to the same race to which the most important
+part of them belonged. And this militated against his chances of
+becoming a founder of Welsh unity. A race of conquerors distinct from
+the conquered in blood and language and civilisation, must hold
+together for a time; they form an official governing class, enforcing
+the same principles of government, and establishing a uniform
+administration throughout the country. And the uniform pressure reacts
+on the conquered, turning them from a loose group of tribes into a
+nation. This is what the Norman Conquest did for England. But if the
+conquerors are of the same race and language as the conquered, they
+readily mix with them; instead of holding together they identify
+themselves with local jealousies and tribal aspirations. This happened
+again and again in Germany. A Saxon emperor sends a Saxon to govern
+Bavaria as its duke and hold it loyal to the central government; the
+Saxon duke almost instantaneously becomes a Bavarian--the champion of
+tribal independence against the central government; and so the Germans
+remained a loose group of tribes and states--a divided people. This
+illustration suggests one of the reasons why Cunedda's conquest failed
+to unite Wales.
+
+Again the custom of sharing landed property among all the sons tended
+to prevent the growth of Welsh unity. Socially it appears far more
+just and reasonable than the custom of primogeniture. It is with the
+growth of feudalism (already apparent in the Welsh laws of the tenth
+century) that its political dangers become evident. The essence of
+feudalism is the confusion of political power and landed property; the
+ruler is lord of the land, the landlord is the ruler. If landed
+property is divided, political power is divided. When the Lord Rhys
+died in 1197 leaving four sons, Deheubarth had four rulers and formed
+four states instead of one; and civil war ensued.
+
+The unity of Welsh history is not to be found in the growth of a state
+or a political system. But may we regard the history of Wales as a
+long and heroic struggle inspired by the idea of nationality? A
+caution is necessary here. It is one of the besetting sins of
+historians to read the ideas of the present into the past; and to the
+general public historical study is dull unless they can do so. It is
+very difficult to avoid doing so; it needs a severe training, a long
+immersion in the past, and a steady passion for truth above all
+things. In no case perhaps is this warning so necessary as in matters
+involving the idea of nationality. This is characteristic of the
+present age, but it has not been characteristic of any other to
+anything like the same extent. We live in an atmosphere of
+nationality; we have seen it create the German Empire and the kingdom
+of Italy, and the Welsh University; we see it now labouring to break
+up the Austrian Empire, and perhaps changing the unchanging East. But
+the whole history of Europe shows that it is an idea of slow and
+comparatively late growth. The first appearance of nationality as a
+conscious principle of political action is found in England--and
+possibly in France--at the beginning of the thirteenth century, and in
+Wales about the same time; in the other countries of Europe much
+later. And it was very rarely till the very end of the eighteenth
+century that it became a dominant factor in politics. Of course our
+ancestors always hated a foreigner--but they did not love their
+fellow-countrymen. The one thing a man hated more than being driven
+out of house and home by a foreign invader, was being driven out by
+his next-door neighbour; and, as his neighbour was more likely to do
+it, and when he did it, to stay, he hated his neighbour most. A
+certain degree of order and settled government was necessary before
+the national idea could become effective.
+
+In mediaeval Wales it never succeeded in uniting the people; the petty
+patriotism of the family stood in the way of the larger patriotism of
+the nation; local rivalries and jealousies were always stronger than
+the sense of national unity. The attempt of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth to
+create a National Council, like the Great Council of England, died
+with him. In the final struggle with Edward I., when for a few months
+the idea of Welsh unity was nearest realisation in action, the men of
+Glamorgan fought on the winning side. Read the "Brut y Tywysogion" and
+consider how far the actions there related can have been inspired by
+the feeling of nationality. Here is the account in the "Brut" of what
+was happening in Wales in 1200 and the following years, the period
+represented by our map.
+
+    "1200. One thousand and two hundred was the year of
+    Christ when Gruffudd, son of Cynan, son of Owain, died,
+    after taking upon him the religious habit, at
+    Aberconway,--the man who was known by all in the isle of
+    Britain for the extent of his gifts, and his kindness
+    and goodness; and no wonder, for as long as the men who
+    are now shall live, they will remember his renown, and
+    his praise and his deeds. In that year, Maelgwn, son of
+    Rhys, sold Aberteivi, the key of all Wales, for a
+    trifling value, to the English, for fear of and out of
+    hatred to his brother Gruffudd. The same year, Madog,
+    son of Gruffudd Maelor, founded the monastery of
+    Llanegwestl, near the old cross, in Yale.
+
+    "1201. The ensuing year, Llywelyn, son of Iorwerth,
+    subdued the cantrev of Lleyn, having expelled Maredudd,
+    son of Cynan, on account of his treachery. That year on
+    the eve of Whitsunday, the monks of Strata Florida came
+    to the new church; which had been erected of splendid
+    workmanship. A little while afterwards, about the feast
+    of St. Peter and St. Paul, Maredudd, son of Rhys, an
+    extremely courteous young man, the terror of his
+    enemies, the love of his friends, being like a lightning
+    of fire between armed hosts, the hope of the South Wales
+    men, the dread of England, the honour of the cities, and
+    the ornament of the world, was slain at Carnwyllon; and
+    Gruffudd, his brother, took possession of his castle at
+    Llanymddyvri. And the cantrev, in which it was situated,
+    was taken possession of by Gruffudd, his brother. And
+    immediately afterwards, on the feast of St. James the
+    Apostle, Gruffudd, son of Rhys, died at Strata Florida,
+    having taken upon him the religious habit; and there he
+    was buried. That year there was an earthquake at
+    Jerusalem.
+
+    "1202. The ensuing year, Maredudd, son of Cynan, was
+    expelled from Meirionydd, by Howel, son of Gruffudd, his
+    nephew, son of his brother, and was despoiled of
+    everything but his horse. That year the eighth day after
+    the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul, the Welsh fought
+    against the castle of Gwerthrynion, which was the
+    property of Roger Mortimer, and compelled the garrison
+    to deliver up the castle, before the end of a fortnight,
+    and they burned it to the ground. That year about the
+    first feast of St. Mary in the autumn, Llywelyn, son of
+    Iorwerth, raised an army from Powys, to bring Gwenwynwyn
+    under his subjection, and to possess the country. For
+    though Gwenwynwyn was near to him as to kindred, he was
+    a foe to him as to deeds. And on his march he called to
+    him all the other princes, who were related to him, to
+    combine in making war together against Gwenwynwyn. And
+    when Elise, son of Madog, son of Maredudd, became
+    acquainted therewith, he refused to combine in the
+    presence of all; and with all his energy he endeavoured
+    to bring about a peace with Gwenwynwyn. And therefore,
+    after the clergy and the religious had concluded a peace
+    between Gwenwynwyn and Llywelyn, the territory of Elise,
+    son of Madog, his uncle, was taken from him. And
+    ultimately there was given him for maintenance, in
+    charity, the castle of Crogen, with seven small
+    townships. And thus, after conquering the castle of
+    Bala, Llywelyn returned back happily. That year about
+    the feast of St. Michael, the family of young Rhys, son
+    of Gruffudd, son of the lord Rhys, obtained possession
+    of the castle of Llanymddyvri."
+
+One may almost say that Wales is Wales to-day in spite of her
+political history. Wales owes far more to her poets and men of letters
+than to her princes and their politics.
+
+Giraldus Cambrensis laid his finger on the spot, when he said: "Happy
+would Wales be if it had one prince, and that a good one." A necessary
+preliminary to the union of Welshmen was the wiping out of all
+independent Welsh princes except one. Till that happened local feeling
+would always remain stronger than national feeling; the disintegrating
+forces of family feuds and personal ambitions and clannish loyalty
+would always outweigh the sense of national unity.
+
+The Lords of the Marches were slowly doing this for Wales; they were
+wiping out all the independent Welsh princes except one. We may see
+the process going on in the accompanying map, which gives the chief
+political divisions of Wales at the beginning of the thirteenth
+century, and we will turn for a few minutes to consider the fortunes
+of some of these petty states and the manner of the men who ruled
+them.
+
+The great Palatine Earldom of Chester, a kingdom within the kingdom,
+was ruled before 1100 by Hugh the Wolf, of Avranches, who conquered
+for a time the north coast of Wales. In Anglesey he built a castle,
+and kennelled the hounds he loved so well in a church, to find them
+all mad the next morning. The stories of his savage mutilation of his
+Welsh prisoners show that he merited the name of "the Wolf." Yet he
+was the friend of the holy Anselm, and died a monk. The struggle
+between Chester and Gwynedd for the possession of the Four Cantreds,
+the lands between the Conway and the Dee, was almost perpetual during
+the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the fortune of war
+continually changing. With the extinction of the old line of the Earls
+of Chester (1237) and the grant of the earldom to Prince Edward
+(1254), a new era opened for Wales.
+
+Further south, in the Middle March, along the upper valleys of the
+Severn and the Wye, the great power of the Mortimers was growing. They
+had already stretched out a long arm to grasp Gwerthrynion. But the
+greatest expansion of their power came later, under Roger Mortimer,
+grandson of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, friend of Edward I. in the wild days
+of his youth, persistent foe of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd; and soon the
+Mortimer lands embraced all Mid-Wales and reached the sea, and a
+Mortimer was strong enough to depose and murder a king and rule
+England as paramour of the queen. Savage as the Mortimers were, they
+were mild compared with one of their predecessors. Robert Count of
+Bellesme and Ponthieu, the great castle builder of his time, became
+Earl of Shrewsbury and Arundel in 1098. Men had heard tales of his
+ferocity on the Continent--how he starved his prisoners to death
+rather than hold them to ransom; how, when besieging a castle, he
+threw in the horses to fill up the moat, and when these were not
+enough he gave orders to seize the villeins and throw them in, that
+his battering rams might go forward on a writhing mass of living human
+bodies. These tales seemed incredible in England, but the men of the
+Middle March believed them when they were "flayed alive by the iron
+claws" of the devil of Bellesme. In his rebellion against Henry I. the
+princes of Gwynedd supported him, till their army was bought over by
+the lying promises of the king; but the day when the Earl of
+Shrewsbury surrendered to King Henry and the whole force of England
+was a day of deliverance alike to England and to Wales.
+
+We next come to the group of lordships held about this time by William
+de Braose, lord of Bramber in Sussex. They stretched from Radnor to
+Gower, from the Monnow to the Llwchwr, and included the castles of
+Builth, Brecon, Abergavenny. But he held these lands by different
+titles, and they were never welded together. William de Braose began
+his public career by calling the princes of Gwent to a conference at
+Abergavenny, and massacring them. He was on intimate terms with King
+John, who gave Prince Arthur into his keeping; but this was a piece of
+work which even De Braose recoiled from, and he refused to burden his
+soul with Arthur's murder. A few years later John suddenly turned
+against him, and demanded his sons as hostages. His wife, Maud de St.
+Valerie, who lived long in the popular memory as a witch, sent back
+the answer: she would not entrust her children to a man who had
+murdered his nephew. The king chased Braose from his lands, caught his
+wife and eldest son, and starved them to death in Windsor Castle. The
+Braose family continued to hold Gower, but the rest of their
+possessions passed to other houses--Brecon to the Bohuns of Hereford,
+Elvael to Mortimer, Abergavenny to Hastings, Builth first to Mortimer
+and then to the Crown.
+
+Glamorgan, during our period, was attached to the earldom of
+Gloucester. From Fitzhamon the Conqueror it passed, through his
+daughter, to Robert of Gloucester, and early in the thirteenth
+century to the great house of Clare, Earls of Gloucester and Hertford,
+who held the balance between parties in the Barons' War. With the
+organisation of Glamorgan and with its great rulers we shall deal
+later. At the time represented by our map, it was in the hands of King
+John, who obtained it by marriage. John divorced his wife in 1200, but
+managed to keep her inheritance till nearly the end of his reign; and
+Fawkes de Breaute, the most infamous of his mercenary captains, lorded
+it in Cardiff Castle.
+
+Further west, between the Llwchwr and the Towy, lay the lordship of
+Kidweli, held by the De Londres family, who had accompanied Fitzhamon
+in the conquest of Glamorgan, and were lords of Ogmore and founders of
+Ewenny. One episode in the history of this family may be
+mentioned--the battle in the Vale of Towy in 1136, when Gwenllian, the
+heroic wife of Rhys ap Gruffydd, led her husband's forces against
+Maurice and De Londres, and was defeated and slain by the Lord of
+Kidweli. Her death was soon avenged by the slaughter of the Normans
+at Cardigan. The present castle of Kidweli dates from the later
+thirteenth century, before the war of 1277, after the lordship had
+passed to the Chaworths.
+
+In the extreme west, in Dyfed, the land of fiords, Arnulf of
+Montgomery had early founded the Norman power, but he was involved in
+the fall of his brother, Robert of Bellesme, and Henry I. tried to
+form the land into an English shire, and planted a colony of Flemings
+in "Little England beyond Wales." But it was too far off for the royal
+power to be effectively exercised there, and the Earldom of Pembroke
+was granted to a branch of the De Clares, who had already conquered
+Ceredigion, and built castles at Cardigan and Aberystwyth. The De
+Clares also held Chepstow and lands in Lower Gwent. The Earldom itself
+was smaller than the present shire of Pembroke, and William Marshall,
+who succeeded the De Clares through his marriage with the daughter of
+Richard Strongbow (1189), owed his commanding position in English
+history of the thirteenth century far more to his personal qualities,
+his courage and wisdom and patriotism, than to his territorial
+possessions.
+
+It was by driving the De Clares out of Ceredigion in Stephen's reign
+that Rhys ap Gruffydd laid the foundation of his power, and raised
+Deheubarth to be the foremost of the native principalities. The Lord
+Rhys was clever and farseeing enough to win the confidence of Henry
+II., and received from him the title of Justiciar--or King's
+Deputy--in South Wales. As long as Owain Gwynedd lived the unusual
+spectacle was seen of a prince of South Wales and a prince of North
+Wales working harmoniously together. But after Owain's death (1170)
+Rhys fought with his successors over the possession of Merioneth,
+while Owain Cyfeiliog, the poet-prince of Powys, did all he could to
+thwart him. In 1197 the death of Rhys, "the head and the shield and
+the strength of the South and of all Wales," and the civil wars among
+his sons, opened his principality again to the encroachment of foes on
+all sides, and removed one danger from Powys. Powys, however, was
+being steadily squeezed by the pressure of Gwynedd on one side, and
+the growing power of Mortimer on the other, and its princes resorted
+to a shifty diplomacy and a general adherence--open or secret as
+circumstances dictated--to the English Crown, till they sank at length
+into the position of petty feudatories of the English king.
+
+The Prince of Gwynedd alone upheld the standard of Welsh nationality,
+the dragon of Welsh independence; only in Gwynedd and its dependencies
+did the Welsh public law prevail over feudal custom. And what was the
+result? Exactly what Giraldus Cambrensis had foreseen and longed for.
+The eyes of Welshmen everywhere began to turn to the Lord of Eryri,
+the one hope of Wales. It was an alluring--an inspiring prospect,
+which opened before the princes of Gwynedd--to head a national
+movement, drive out the foreigners, and unite all Wales under their
+sway. Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, at the end of his long reign, deliberately
+rejected the dream. That is the meaning of his emphatic declaration
+of fidelity and submission to Henry III. in 1237. "Llywelyn, Prince of
+Wales, by special messengers sent word to the king that, as his time
+of life required that he should thenceforth abandon all strife and
+tumult of war, and should for the future enjoy peace, he had
+determined to place himself and his possessions under the authority
+and protection of him, the English king, and would hold his lands from
+him in all fealty and friendship, and enter into an indissoluble
+treaty; and if the king should go on any expedition he would, to the
+best of his power, as his liege subject, promote it, by assisting him
+with troops, arms, horses, and money." Llywelyn the Great refused to
+dispute the suzerainty of England. This may appear pusillanimous to
+the enthusiastic patriot, but subsequent events proved the old
+statesman's wisdom and clearsightedness. His successors were less
+cautious, were carried away by the patriotism round them and the syren
+voices of the bards. And to Llywelyn ap Gruffydd the prospect was even
+more tempting than to Llywelyn ap Iorwerth. The Barons' War weakened
+the power of England, and the necessities of Simon de Montfort led
+him to enter into an alliance with Llywelyn. The expansion of Gwynedd
+was great and rapid. Llywelyn's rule extended as far south as Merthyr,
+and made itself felt on the shores of Carmarthen Bay. The Earl of
+Gloucester found it necessary to build Caerphilly Castle to uphold his
+influence in Glamorgan. But it was just the expansion of Llywelyn's
+power which forced Edward I. to overthrow him once for all. "We hold
+it better"--so ran Edward's proclamation in 1282--"that, for the
+common weal, we and the inhabitants of our land should be wearied by
+labours and expenses this once, although the burden seem heavy, in
+order to destroy their wickedness altogether, than that we should in
+future times, as so often in the past, be tormented by rebellions of
+this kind at their good pleasure."
+
+The "Principality" now became shire land--under English laws and
+English administration. The rest of Wales remained divided up into
+Marcher Lordships for another two hundred and fifty years, under
+feudal laws--a continual source of disturbance and scene of disorder.
+These were the lands in which the King's Writ did not run, where (to
+summarise the description in the Statute of 1536) "murders and
+house-burnings, robberies and riots are committed with impunity, and
+felons are received, and escape from justice by going from one
+lordship to another."
+
+Yet the Marcher Lords did something for Welsh civilisation in their
+earlier centuries. Guided by enlightened self-interest, they often
+founded towns, granting considerable privileges to them in order to
+attract burgesses--such as low rents, and freedom from arbitrary
+fines. Fairs, too, were established and protected by the Lords
+Marchers. The early lords of Glamorgan seem to have been specially
+successful in this respect; in the twelfth century immigrants from
+other parts of Wales are said to have come to reside in Glamorgan,
+owing to the privileges and comparative security which were to be
+found there. Nor perhaps has it been sufficiently recognised how soon
+the Lords of the Marches began drilling their Welsh subjects in
+Anglo-Norman methods of local self-government. Most of the greater
+Marcher Lords possessed estates in England; not a few of them, such as
+William de Braose, served as sheriffs in English shires; some, such as
+John de Hastings, were judges in the royal courts. They introduced
+into Wales methods of government which they learnt in England, and
+institutions with a great future before them, like the Franco-Roman
+"inquest by sworn recognitors," from which trial by jury was
+developed, were soon acclimatised in the Marches of Wales.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH
+
+
+When Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote, Norman influence in Wales was at its
+height. In the old days we used to begin English history with William
+the Conqueror; since Freeman wrote his five thick volumes and
+proved--not that the Norman Conquest was unimportant--but that it did
+not involve a breach of continuity, a new start in national life, the
+pendulum has swung too much the other way, and the tendency of late
+years has been to underestimate the importance of the Norman Conquest.
+
+The Norman wherever he went brought little that was new; he was but a
+Norseman--a Viking--with a French polish. He had no law of his own; he
+had forgotten his own language, he had no literature. But he had the
+old Norse energy; which not only drove him or his ancestors to settle
+and conquer in lands so distant and diverse as Russia and Sicily,
+Syria and North America, but enabled him to infuse new life into the
+countries he conquered. Further, he still retained that adaptability
+and power of assimilation which is characteristic of peoples in a
+primitive stage of civilisation. With a wonderful instinct he fastened
+on to the most characteristic and strongest features of the different
+nations he was brought in contact with, developed them, gave them
+permanent form, and often a world-wide importance.
+
+The Norman conquerors were not always fortunate in their selection.
+Ireland has little to thank them for. The most striking characteristic
+which they found in Ireland was anarchy, and they brought it to a high
+pitch of perfection. To quote Sir J. Davies's luminous discourse on
+Ireland, in 1612: "Finding the Irish exactions to be more profitable
+than the English rents and services, and loving the Irish tyranny
+which was tied to no rules of law and honour better than a just and
+lawful seigniory, they did reject the English law and government,
+received the Irish laws and customs, took Irish surnames, as
+MacWilliam, MacFeris, refused to come to Parliaments, and scorned to
+obey those English knights who were sent to command and govern this
+kingdom."
+
+One extortionate Irish custom, called "coigny," they specially
+affected, of which it was said "that though it were first invented in
+hell, yet if it had been used and practised there as it hath been in
+Ireland, it had long since destroyed the very kingdom of Beelzebub."
+
+England and Wales were more fortunate. In England--while the old
+English literature was crushed out by the heel of the oppressor, the
+Norman instinct seized on the latent possibilities of the old English
+political institutions, welded them into a great system, developed out
+of them representative government, and created a united nation.
+
+In Wales, the Normans paid little or no heed to Welsh laws and
+political institutions; the law of the Marches was the feudal law of
+France, the charters of liberties of the towns were imported from
+Normandy; the Welsh Marches and border shires were the most thoroughly
+Normanised part of the whole kingdom. But with a fine instinct for the
+really great things, in Wales the Normans seized on the literary
+side--the poetic traditions of the people--giving them permanent form,
+adding to them, making them for ever part of the intellectual heritage
+of the whole world.
+
+It may very likely be a mere accident that the earliest Welsh
+manuscripts date from the twelfth-century--Norman times; it may also
+imply an increased literary productiveness. It may be due to
+accidental causes that the first accounts of Eisteddfodau extant date
+from the twelfth century; it may also be that the institution excited
+new interest, received new attention and honour, under the influence
+of the open-minded and keen-sighted invaders. Take, for instance, the
+account of the great Eisteddfod in 1176, from the Brut y Tywysogion:
+"The lord Rhys held a grand festival at the castle of Aberteivi,
+wherein he appointed two sorts of competitions--one between the bards
+and poets, and the other between harpers, fiddlers, pipers, and
+various performers of instrumental music; and he assigned two chairs
+for the victors in the competitions; and these he enriched with vast
+gifts. A young man of his own court, son to Cibon the fiddler,
+obtained the victory in instrumental music, and the men of Gwynedd
+obtained the victory in vocal song; and all the other minstrels
+obtained from the lord Rhys as much as they asked for, so that there
+was no one excluded." An Eisteddfod where every one obtained prizes,
+and every one was satisfied, suggests the enthusiasm natural to a new
+revival. It was now--when Wales was brought in contact with the great
+world through the Normans--that modern Welsh poetry had its beginning.
+The new intellectual impetus is clearly illustrated by the change
+which takes place in the Welsh chronicles about 1100. Before that time
+they are generally thin and dreary: they suddenly become full, lively,
+and romantic. Wales was not exceptional in this renaissance; something
+of the same sort occurred in most parts of Europe; and the
+renaissance is no doubt to be connected with the Crusade, the reform
+of the Church, in a word, with the Hildebrandine movement, and so
+ultimately with the Burgundian monastery of Clugny. But it was the
+Normans who brought this new life to England and Wales; the Normans
+were the hands and feet of the great Hildebrandine movement of which
+the Clugniac popes were the head.
+
+Among the Norman magnates who encouraged the intellectual movement in
+Wales--one stands out pre-eminent--Robert Earl of Gloucester and Lord
+of Glamorgan, a splendid combination of statesman, soldier, patron of
+letters. Robert was a natural son of Henry I.--born before 1100--there
+is no evidence that his mother was the beautiful and famous Nest,
+daughter of Rhys ap Tudor. He acquired the Lordship of Glamorgan
+together with the Honour of Gloucester and other lands in England and
+Normandy, by marriage with Mabel, daughter and heiress of Fitzhamon,
+conqueror of Glamorgan. An account of the wooing is preserved in old
+rhymed chronicle: the king conducts negotiations; the lady remarks
+that it was not herself but her possessions he was after--and she
+would prefer to marry a man who had a surname. The account is not
+historical, as surnames had not come in: in the early twelfth century
+the lady would have expressed her meaning differently. However, there
+is evidence that she was a good wife: William of Malmesbury says, "She
+was a noble and excellent woman, devoted to her husband, and blest
+with a numerous and beautiful family." Robert was a great builder of
+castles; Bristol and Cardiff Castles were his work, and many others in
+Glamorgan; he organised Glamorgan, giving it the constitution of an
+English shire--with Cardiff Castle as centre and meeting-place. After
+Henry I.'s death, he was the most important man in England, and was
+the only prominent man who played an honourable part in the civil wars
+which are known as the reign of Stephen; he died in 1147. His
+relations with the Welsh appear to have been good; large bodies of
+Welsh troops fought under him at the battle of Lincoln, 1141--he was
+probably the first Norman lord of Glamorgan who could thus rely on
+their loyalty. And it is significant that in the earliest inquisitions
+extant for Glamorgan--or inquests by sworn recognitors--Welshmen were
+freely employed in the work of local government.
+
+Robert of Gloucester was a magnificent patron of letters; to his age
+Giraldus Cambrensis looked back with longing regret as to the good old
+times in which learning was recognised and received its due reward. To
+Robert of Gloucester, William of Malmesbury, the greatest historian of
+the time, dedicated his history, attributing to him the magnanimity of
+his grandfather the Conqueror, the generosity of his uncle, the wisdom
+of his father, Henry I. He was the founder of Margam Abbey, whose
+chronicle is one of the authorities for Welsh history; Tewkesbury,
+another abbey whose chronicle is preserved, counted him among its
+chief benefactors; Robert de Monte, Abbot of Mont St. Michel, the
+Breton and lover of Breton legends, was a native of his Norman estates
+at Torigny, and wrote a valuable history of his times. Among the
+brilliant circle of men of letters who frequented his court at
+Gloucester and Bristol and Cardiff were Caradoc of Llancarven, whose
+chronicle (if he ever wrote one) has been lost, and greatest of all
+Geoffrey of Monmouth.
+
+Geoffrey dedicated his History of the Kings of Britain to Robert: "To
+you, therefore, Robert Earl of Gloucester, this work humbly sues for
+the favour of being so corrected by your advice that it may be
+considered not the poor offspring of Geoffrey of Monmouth, but, when
+polished by your refined wit and judgment, the production of him who
+had Henry, the glorious King of England, for his father, and whom we
+see an accomplished scholar and philosopher, as well as a brave
+soldier and tried commander."
+
+Not very much is known about Geoffrey. The so-called "Gwentian Brut,"
+attributed to Caradoc of Llancarven, on which his biographers have
+relied for a few details of his life, is very untrustworthy, and,
+according to the late Mr. Thomas Stephens, was written about the
+middle of the sixteenth century, though containing earlier matter.
+The sixteenth century was a great age for historical forgeries. We
+find a Franciscan interpolating passages in a Greek manuscript of the
+New Testament in order to refute Erasmus; a learned Oxonian forging a
+passage in the manuscript of Asser's "Life of Alfred" to prove that
+Alfred founded the University of Oxford; and Welsh genealogies
+invented by the dozen and the yard--reaching back to "son of Adam, son
+of God." The "Gwentian Brut" or "Book of Aberpergwm" is in doubtful
+company. The following seem to be the facts known about Geoffrey. In
+1129 he was at Oxford, in company with Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford
+(not Walter Mapes). His father's name was Arthur; and he was connected
+with the Welsh lords of Caerleon. He calls himself "of Monmouth,"
+either as being born there, or as having a connection with the
+Benedictine monastery at Monmouth, which was founded by a Breton, and
+kept up connections with Brittany and Anjou. He may have been
+archdeacon--but not of Monmouth. The first version of his history was
+finished in or before April, 1139, and the final edition of the
+History was completed by 1147. In his later years he resided at
+Llandaff. He was ordained priest in February, 1152, and consecrated
+bishop of St. Asaph in the same month. In 1153 he was one of the
+witnesses to the compact between King Stephen and Henry of Anjou,
+which ended the civil wars. He died at Llandaff in 1153.
+
+We will now turn to consider the sources of his History of the Kings
+of Britain. Geoffrey says: "In the course of many and various studies
+I happened to light on the history of the Kings of Britain, and
+wondered that, in the account which Gildas and Bede, in their elegant
+treatises, had given of them, I found nothing said of those kings who
+lived here before Christ, nor of Arthur, and many others; though their
+actions were celebrated by many people in a pleasant manner, and by
+heart, as if they had been written. Whilst I was thinking of these
+things, Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, a man learned in foreign
+histories, offered me a very ancient book in the Britannic tongue,
+which, in a continued regular story and elegant style, related the
+actions of them all, from Brutus down to Cadwallader. At his request,
+therefore, I undertook the translation of that book into Latin." At
+the end of his history he adds: "I leave the history of the later
+kings of Wales to Caradoc of Llancarven, my contemporary, as I do also
+the kings of the Saxons to William of Malmesbury and Henry of
+Huntingdon. But I advise them to be silent concerning the kings of the
+Britons, since they have not that book written in the Britannic
+tongue, which Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, brought out of Britannia."
+
+There has been a good deal of controversy as to whether this very
+ancient book was in Welsh or Breton, but the first question is, Did it
+ever exist? Was Geoffrey a translator, or an inventor, or a collector
+of oral traditions current in Wales or Brittany during his time?
+
+There can be little doubt that the conclusion of Thomas Stephens, in
+the "Literature of the Kymry," is correct--that "Geoffrey was less a
+translator than an original author." It is very doubtful whether the
+Britannic book ever existed, whether it was not a mere ruse, such as
+was often resorted to by mediaeval romancers, and is still a favourite
+method with modern historical novelists--to give their works an
+appearance of genuineness. It has been argued against this, that in
+that case, Archdeacon Walter must have been a party to the
+fraud--which is incredible. Such an argument implies a large ignorance
+of the archdeacons of the twelfth century--when it was a question
+solemnly discussed among the learned--whether an archdeacon could
+possibly be saved. It would be well if there were nothing worse to
+bring against them than such an innocent fraud on the public as this.
+But the strongest argument against the existence of the Britannic book
+is (not that it is not extant now, but) that the historians of the
+next generation never saw it. Geoffrey's History at once created a
+tremendous stir in the literary world--nor was it accepted on
+trust--but received with suspicion and incredulity. Thus William of
+Newburgh, in the latter part of the twelfth century, calls Geoffrey
+roundly, "a saucy and shameless liar." William, of course, did not
+know Welsh, and could not have made anything out of the Britannic
+book, even if he had seen it. This objection does not apply to
+Giraldus Cambrensis; his knowledge of Welsh was indeed slight--but he
+had plenty of Welsh-speaking relatives and friends, and he was himself
+a collector of manuscripts. Gerald refers to "the lying statements of
+Geoffrey's fabulous history," and implies in a much-quoted passage
+that he regarded Geoffrey's history as a pack of lies. Speaking of a
+Welshman at Caerleon who had dealings with evil spirits, and was
+enabled by their assistance to foretell future events, he goes on: "He
+knew when any one told a lie in his presence, for he saw the devil
+dancing on the tongue of the liar. If the evil spirits oppressed him
+too much, the Gospel of St. John was placed on his bosom, when like
+birds they immediately vanished; but when the Gospel was removed, and
+the History of the Britons by Geoffrey Arthur was substituted in its
+place, the devils instantly came back in greater numbers, and remained
+a longer time than usual on his body and on the book." Geoffrey may
+very probably have used some Britannic manuscript, but it could not
+have been very ancient; and he certainly did not translate it, but
+used it as he used Gildas and Bede and Nennius--sometimes quoting
+their statements, more generally amplifying them almost beyond
+recognition.
+
+Was Geoffrey merely an inventor? Sometimes--undoubtedly. The long
+strings of names of purely fictitious princes whom the Roman Consul
+summoned to fight against King Arthur, at a time when in sober history
+Justinian was Roman Emperor, are invented by Geoffrey. And consider
+too his parodies of the practice of historians of referring to
+contemporary events: an instance of the genuine article is given in
+Gerald's Itinerary. "In 1188, Urban III. being pope, Frederick,
+Emperor of the Romans, Isaac, Emperor of Constantinople, Philip, King
+of France," &c., &c. Now take Geoffrey's parodies: "At this time,
+Samuel the prophet governed in Judaea, AEneas was living, and Homer was
+esteemed a famous orator and poet." Or again: "At the building of
+Shaftesbury an eagle spoke while the wall of the town was being built:
+and indeed I should have transmitted the speech to posterity, had I
+thought it true, like the rest of the history. At this time Haggai,
+Amos, Joel, and Azariah were prophets of Israel." One may be quite
+sure that passages like these are not derived from the writings of the
+ancients, or from oral traditions. One can in some cases trace back
+his statements and see how much he added to his predecessors. A good
+instance is his account of the conversion of the Britons under King
+Lucius, in Bk. IV., cap. 19 and 20, and V., cap. 1 (A.D. 161).
+Geoffrey's account is circumstantial: King Lucius sent to the Pope
+asking for instruction in the Christian religion. The Pope sent two
+teachers (whose names are given), who almost extinguished paganism
+over the whole island, dedicated the heathen temples to the true God,
+and substituted three archbishops for the three heathen archflamens
+at London, York, and Caerleon-on-Usk, and twenty-eight bishops for the
+twenty-eight heathen flamens. Now all this is based on a short passage
+in Bede: "Lucius King of the Britains sent to the Pope asking that he
+might be made a Christian; he soon obtained his desire, and the
+Britons kept the faith pure till the Diocletian persecution," which
+itself is amplified from an entry in the _Liber Pontificalis_: "Lucius
+King of the Britains sent to the Pope asking that he might be made a
+Christian." This last does not occur in the early version of the
+_Liber Pontificalis_, and is irreconcilable with the history and
+position of the papacy in the second century; but is a forgery,
+inserted at the end of the seventh century by the Romanising party in
+the Welsh Church--the party desiring to bring the Welsh Church into
+communion with the Roman, and so interested in proving that British
+Christianity came direct from the Pope; and all the talk about the
+archflamens and archbishops, &c., is pure invention. Notice too what
+an important part the places with which Geoffrey is specially
+connected play in his history: Caerleon is the seat of an
+archbishopric and favourite residence of Arthur; Oxford is frequently
+mentioned though it did not exist until the end of the ninth century;
+the Consul of Gloucester (predecessor of Geoffrey's patron, Robert,
+Consul of Gloucester) makes the decisive move in Arthur's battle with
+the Romans.
+
+A parallel case is Geoffrey's account of Brutus and the descent of the
+Britons from the Trojans. The tradition is found in Nennius, and
+perhaps dates from the classical revival at the court of Charlemagne.
+It is clearly not a popular tradition, but an artificial tradition of
+the learned; but whilst Geoffrey did not invent the legend, he
+invented all the details--letters and speeches, and hairbreadth
+escapes and tales of love and war.
+
+Probably his detailed accounts of King Arthur's European
+conquests--extending over nearly all Western Europe, from Iceland and
+Norway to Gaul and Italy--are still more the work of Geoffrey's
+inventive genius, though it is possible they may rest on early Celtic
+myths about the voyage of Arthur to Hades, as Professor Rhys suggests,
+or on late Breton traditions which mixed up Arthur with Charles the
+Great.
+
+Now let us consider Geoffrey as a gatherer and transmitter of the
+genuine oral traditions of the Welsh and Breton people. Genuine
+traditions are true history in the sense that they preserve manners
+and customs and modes of thought prevalent at the time when they
+became current. Thus they are on quite a different level from
+Geoffrey's inventions, though they cannot be taken as containing the
+history of any of the individuals to whom they profess to relate. He
+tells us in his preface that the actions of Arthur and many others,
+though not mentioned by historians, "were celebrated by many people in
+a pleasant manner and by heart," were sung by poets and handed down
+from generation to generation, like the poetical traditions of every
+people in primitive times. There can be no doubt that Geoffrey
+collected a number of these old stories and wove them into his
+narrative. Thus, the story of King Lear and his daughters has the
+ring of a genuine popular tradition about it, though the dates and
+pseudo-historical setting were probably supplied by Geoffrey. Again,
+there were certainly prophecies attributed to Merlin current in
+Geoffrey's time. But one may suspect Geoffrey of doing a good deal
+more than translate the prophecies of Merlin; he adapted them; one may
+even suspect him of parodying them. "After him shall succeed the boar
+of Totness, and oppress the people with grievous tyranny. Gloucester
+shall send forth a lion and shall disturb him in his cruelty in
+several battles. The lion shall trample him under his feet ... and at
+last get upon the backs of the nobility. A bull shall come into the
+quarrel and strike the lion ... but shall break his horns against the
+walls of Oxford." "Then shall two successively sway the sceptre, whom
+a horned dragon shall serve. One shall come in armour and ride upon a
+flying serpent. He shall sit upon its back with his naked body, and
+cast his right hand upon its tail.... The second shall ally with the
+lion; but a quarrel happening they shall encounter one another ...
+but the courage of the beast shall prevail. Then shall one come with a
+drum, and appease the rage of the lion. Therefore shall the people of
+the kingdom be at peace, and provoke the lion to a dose of physic!"
+
+Then as to Arthur. In Geoffrey's history he appears mainly as a great
+continental conqueror--a kind of Welsh Charlemagne. "Many of the most
+picturesque and significant features of the full-grown legend (as
+Professor Lewis Jones points out)[1] are not even faintly suggested by
+Geoffrey. The Round Table, Lancelot, the Grail were unknown to him,
+and were grafted on the legend from other sources." But he made the
+Arthurian legends fashionable; he opened for all Europe the hitherto
+unknown and inexhaustible well of Celtic romance; and it may be said
+without exaggeration that "no mediaeval work has left behind it so
+prolific a literary offspring as the History of the Kings of Britain."
+
+The value of Geoffrey is not in his fictions about past history, but
+in his influence on the literature and ideas of the future. He stands
+at the beginning of a new age: he is the first spokesman of the Age of
+the new Chivalry. Read his glowing account of Arthur's court, where
+"the knights were famous for feats of chivalry, and the women esteemed
+none worthy of their love but such as had given proof of their valour
+in three several battles. Thus was the valour of the men an
+encouragement for the women's chastity, and the love of the women a
+spur to the knight's bravery." Or, as an old French version has it,
+"Love which made the women more chaste made the knights more valorous
+and famous." We have here a new conception of love which has
+profoundly influenced life and thought ever since--love no longer a
+weakness as in the ancient world, or a sin as it seemed to the ascetic
+spirit of the Church, but a conscious source of strength, an avowed
+motive of heroism. And it was round Arthur and his court that the
+French poets of the next generation wove their romances inspired by
+this conception--the offspring of the union of Norman strength and
+Celtic gentleness.
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[1] See his paper on Geoffrey of Monmouth (Transactions of the
+Cymmrodorion Society, 1899), to which I am much indebted.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS
+
+
+Gerald the Welshman was certainly one of the most remarkable men of
+letters that the Middle Ages produced--remarkable not merely for the
+great range of his knowledge, or the voluminousness of his writings,
+but for the originality of his views and variety of his interests.
+
+In this lecture I intend to give first a general account of his life,
+and then deal in more detail with his Itinerary through Wales.
+
+We know a great deal about Gerald; he was interested in many things,
+and not least in himself; he was not troubled by that shrinking sense
+of his own worthlessness--with the feeling of being not an individual,
+but a part of a community--which is so characteristic of mediaeval
+writers, and led them often to omit to mention their own names.
+
+Gerald was born about 1146, at Manorbier, in Pembroke--"the most
+delightful spot in Wales." His ancestry is interesting. His father was
+a Norman noble, holding of Glamorgan, William de Barri by name; his
+mother was the daughter of another Norman noble, Gerald de Windsor of
+Pembroke, and the famous Nest, daughter of Rhys ap Tudor, the Helen of
+Wales. He was cousin of the Fitzgeralds who played so important a part
+in the conquest of Ireland, and connected with Richard Strongbow and
+the great house of Clare. He thus "moved in the highest circles," and
+lived in an atmosphere of great deeds and great traditions.
+
+He was from the first marked out by his own inclinations for an
+ecclesiastical career. He tells us that when he and his elder brothers
+used to play as children on the sands of Manorbier his brothers built
+castles but he always built churches. He received an elementary
+education from the chaplains of his uncle, the Bishop of St. David's;
+he seems to have been slow at learning when a child, and his tutors
+goaded him on not by the birch rod, but by sarcasm--by declining
+"_Stultus_, _stultior_, _stultissimus_." His higher education was not
+obtained in Wales, and it is singular that he does not notice any
+place of learning in Wales in all his writings. He studied at
+Gloucester, and then at Paris, the greatest mediaeval university. We
+have it on his own authority that he was a model student. "So entirely
+devoted was he to study, having in his acts and in his mind, no sort
+of levity or coarseness, that whenever the Masters of Arts wished to
+select a pattern from among the good scholars, they would name Gerald
+before all others." Later he lectured at Paris on canon law and
+theology; his lectures, he tells us, were very popular. He returned
+thence in 1172, two years after the martyrdom of Thomas Becket, whose
+example and struggle for the rights of the Church made a deep and
+lasting impression on him. Gerald soon obtained preferment: he held
+three livings in Pembroke, one in Oxfordshire, and canonries at
+Hereford and St. David's. His energy soon made itself felt. He
+excommunicated the Welshmen and Flemings who would not pay tithes; and
+then attacked the sins of the clergy. Most of the Welsh clergy were
+married, contrary to the laws of the Church. Gerald hated a married
+priest even more than he hated a monk. The Welsh priest, he says, was
+wont to keep in his house a female (_focaria_) "to light his fire but
+extinguish his virtue." "How can such a man practice frugality and
+self-denial with a house full of brawling brats, and a woman for ever
+extracting money to buy costly robes with long skirts trailing in the
+dust?" Gerald hated women--the origin of all evil since the world
+began: observing that in birds of prey the females are stronger than
+the males, he remarks that this signifies "the female sex is more
+resolute in all evil than the male." Among the married clergy he
+attacked was the Archdeacon of Brecon; and the old man, being forced
+to choose between his wife and his archdeaconry, preferred his wife.
+Gerald was made Archdeacon of Brecon. In later years he had qualms of
+conscience about the part he took in this business.
+
+Between 1180 and 1194 he was often at Court and employed in the
+king's affairs. Henry II. selected him as a suitable person to
+accompany the young prince John to Ireland in 1185, and the result was
+his two great works--"The Topography," and "The Conquest of Ireland,"
+which are the chief and almost the only authorities for Irish history
+in the Middle Ages. The former work he read publicly at Oxford on his
+return; it was a great occasion: we must tell it in his own words.
+"When the work was finished, not wishing to hide his candle under a
+bushel, but wishing to place it in a candlestick, so that it might
+give light, he resolved to read it before a vast audience at Oxford,
+where scholars in England chiefly flourished and excelled in
+scholarship. And as there were three divisions in the work, and each
+division occupied a day, the readings lasted three successive days. On
+the first day, he received and entertained at his lodgings all the
+poor people of the town; on the second, all the doctors of the
+different faculties and their best students; and on the third, the
+rest of the students and the chief men of the town. It was a costly
+and noble act; and neither present nor past time can furnish any
+record of such a solemnity having ever taken place in England."
+
+In 1188 he accompanied the Archbishop of Canterbury in his tour
+through Wales to preach the Third Crusade. With this we shall deal
+later.
+
+He was abroad with Henry II. at the time of the old king's death, and
+has left a valuable account of his later years in the book "On the
+Instruction of Princes." His connection with the Court gave him
+opportunities for studying the great characters of the time at close
+quarters, and we have from his pen graphic sketches of many of them.
+Take this description of Henry II.: "He had a reddish complexion,
+rather dark, and a large round head. His eyes were gray, bloodshot,
+and flashed in anger. He had a fiery face; his voice was shaky; he had
+a deep chest, and long muscular arms, his great round head hanging
+somewhat forward. He had an enormous belly--though not from gross
+feeding. Indeed he was temperate in all things, for a prince. To keep
+down his corpulency, he took immoderate exercise. Even in times of
+peace he took no rest--hunting furiously all day, and on his return
+home in the evening seldom sitting down either before or after supper;
+for in spite of his own fatigue, he would weary out the Court by being
+constantly on his legs."
+
+The whole is very interesting and full of life. It occurs in the
+"Conquest of Ireland," and is quoted in several of his other works.
+Gerald's favourite author was Gerald of Barry, Archdeacon of Brecon.
+
+The next important episode in his life was the struggle for St.
+David's (1198-1203). It was really a fight for the independence of the
+Welsh Church from England and its direct dependence on the Pope.
+Gerald was elected bishop by the canons of St. David's, in opposition
+to the will of King John (whose consent was necessary) and of Hubert
+Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury (whose rights as metropolitan were
+attacked). Gerald hastened off to Rome to get the Pope's support,
+taking with him the most precious offering that he could think of--six
+of his own books; for Rome had a bad name for bribery--and who could
+resist such a bribe? But he found it advisable to supplement his books
+by other promises, especially by the offer to the Pope of tithes from
+Wales.
+
+The Pope at this time was Innocent III.--the greatest of all the
+Popes--who brought kings and nations under his feet and held despotic
+sway over the Universal Church, and stamped out heresy in blood. In
+the references to him in Gerald's works he appears in much more human
+guise. We see him after supper unbending and laughing at Gerald's
+anecdotes and cracking jokes of a somewhat risky character with the
+archdeacon. It is clear that the Pope thoroughly enjoyed the
+Welshman's company, but also that he did not take him very seriously
+as an ecclesiastical statesman. "Let us have some more stories about
+your archbishop's bad Latin," he would say, when Gerald was getting
+too urgent on the independence of the Welsh Church or his own right to
+the see of St. David's.
+
+This archbishop was Hubert Walter, who was much more of a secular
+administrator than an ecclesiastic, and whose Latin though clear and
+ready might show a fine contempt for all rules of grammar. Gerald was
+a stickler for correct Latin grammar; he is great on "howlers." There
+is one of his stories, illustrating both the avarice of the Norman
+prelates and the ignorance of the Welsh clergy: A Welsh priest came to
+his bishop and said, "I have brought your lordship a present of two
+hundred _oves_." He meant "_ova_"; but the bishop insisted on the
+sheep; and the priest probably rubbed up his Latin grammar. Gerald had
+also other patriotic reasons for his hostility to the archbishop, who
+as chief justiciary--_i.e._, chief minister of the king--had recently
+attacked and defeated the Welsh between the Wye and the Severn.
+"Blessed be God," writes Gerald sarcastically to him, "who has taught
+your hands to war and your fingers to fight, for since the days when
+Harold almost exterminated the nation, no prince has destroyed so many
+Welshmen in one battle as your Grace."
+
+Gerald continued the struggle till 1203, though deserted by the Welsh
+clergy. "The laity of Wales," he said, "stood by me; but of the
+clergy whose battle I was fighting, scarce one." He was proclaimed as
+a rebel, and had some narrow escapes of imprisonment or worse--escapes
+which he owed to his ready wit and which he delights to tell. At last
+he gave way, and during the remainder of his life we find him at Rome,
+Lincoln, St. David's, revising his works and writing new ones,
+modifying some of his judgments (especially that on Hubert Walter),
+and encouraging Stephen Langton in the great struggle against John. He
+was buried at St. David's, probably in 1223.
+
+We will now return to the "Itinerary through Wales" and the
+"Description of Wales." Jerusalem was taken by Saladin in 1187, and
+the Third Crusade--the Crusade of Richard Coeur de Lion--was preached
+throughout Europe. In 1188 Archbishop Baldwin made a preaching tour
+through Wales accompanied by Glanville, the great justiciary of Henry
+II., and Gerald of Barry. While the primary object was the preaching
+of the Crusade, the king had an eye to business and saw that the Holy
+Cause could be utilised for other purposes; it gave an opportunity for
+the assertion of the metropolitan rights of Canterbury over the Welsh
+Church, and for a survey of the country by the royal officials, which
+was not possible under other circumstances. That is why the archbishop
+and the justiciar accompanied the expedition. It is remarkable that
+Gerald, the champion of the Welsh Church, should have given his
+support to it; but he had not fully adopted the patriotic attitude of
+his later years; and, with him as with most people of the time, the
+rescue of the Holy Sepulchre was, in theory at any rate, the greatest
+object in the world; while further, we must not forget that the
+journey had many attractions for him as an author; it gave him "copy"
+for a new book, and the chance of reading his Irish Topography to the
+archbishop. Every day during the journey the archbishop listened to a
+portion of this book, and at the end took it home to finish. As the
+journey lasted at least fifty days, one may calculate that it took at
+most an average of three pages a day to send the archbishop to sleep.
+
+The Itinerary (which was later dedicated to Stephen Langton) contains
+in the author's words an account of "the difficult places through
+which we passed, the names of springs and torrents, the witty sayings,
+the toils and incidents of the journey, the memorable events of
+ancient and modern times, and the natural history and description of
+the country."
+
+The route pursued was as follows: From Hereford to Radnor, Brecon,
+Abergavenny, Caerleon, Newport, Cardiff, Llandaff, Ewenny, Margam,
+Swansea, Kidweli, Carmarthen, Haverford, St. David's, Cardigan, Strata
+Florida, thence keeping close to the coast, through Bangor and
+Chester; and then south by Oswestry, Shrewsbury, Ludlow, to Hereford.
+
+The travellers were well received and entertained both by the Lords
+Marcher and the Welsh princes. It was especially to the Welsh that
+their attention was directed, and Welsh princes accompanied them
+through their territories. The chief was Rhys ap Gruffydd (Gerald's
+uncle), prince of South Wales, who was then at the height of his
+power, and had been made chief justice of South Wales by Henry II., to
+whom he faithfully adhered. Gwynedd and Powys were then divided among
+several heirs. One of the princes of Powys, Owain Cyfeiliog, the poet,
+was distinguished as being the only prince who did not come to meet
+the archbishop with his people; for which he was excommunicated.
+Gerald notes that he was an adherent of Henry II., and was
+"conspicuous for the good management of his territory." Perhaps that
+is why he would not have anything to do with the Crusade.
+
+How far was the expedition successful in its primary object in gaining
+crusaders? The archbishop and justiciar had already taken the cross;
+they remained true to their vows and went to the Holy Land, the
+archbishop dying at the siege of Acre, heartbroken at the wickedness
+of the army. Gerald himself was the first to take the cross in Wales,
+not acting under the influence of religious enthusiasm, but (as he
+says himself) "impelled by the urgent requests and promises of the
+king and persuasions of the archbishop," who wanted him to act as
+historian; but Gerald, after setting the example, bought a
+dispensation and did not go. A number of the lesser Welsh princes soon
+took the cross. The Lord Rhys himself was eager to do so, but "his
+wife by female artifices diverted him wholly from his noble purpose."
+The wives were all dead against the whole affair. At Hay the wives
+caught hold of their husbands, and the would-be Crusaders had
+literally to run away from them to the castle, leaving their cloaks
+behind them. A nobler spirit of self-sacrifice was shown by the old
+woman of Cardigan, who, when her only son took the cross, said: "O
+most beloved Lord Jesus Christ, I give Thee hearty thanks for having
+conferred on me the blessing of bringing forth a son worthy of Thy
+service." This son was probably worth more than the twelve archers of
+the castle of St. Clears who were forcibly signed with the cross for
+committing a murder; and one may reasonably look with suspicion on the
+sudden conversion of "many of the most notorious murderers and robbers
+of the neighbourhood" at Usk. It was this kind of thing that turned
+the Holy Land into a sort of convict settlement.
+
+The preachers clearly worked hard and had some trying experiences, and
+kept up their spirits by little jokes, which Gerald retails. They
+nearly came to grief in quicksands at the mouth of the river Neath.
+"Terrible hard country this," said one of the monks next day in the
+castle at Swansea. "Some people are never satisfied," retorted his
+companion; "you were complaining of its being too soft in the
+quicksand yesterday." The mountains were trying to men no longer in
+their youth; after toiling up one the archbishop sank exhausted on a
+fallen tree and said to his panting companions, "Can any one enliven
+the company by whistling a tune?" "Which," adds Gerald, "is not very
+easily done by people out of breath." From whistling the conversation
+passed to nightingales, which some one said were never found in Wales.
+"Wise bird, the nightingale," remarked the archbishop.
+
+One serious difficulty they had was that none of them, not even
+Gerald, knew Welsh sufficiently well to preach in it, though they
+generally had interpreters. The archbishop, who would sometimes preach
+away for hours without result, felt this much more than Gerald. He
+declares he moved crowds to tears though they did not understand a
+word of what he was saying. But one may take the words of Prince
+Rhys's fool as evidence (if any were needed) that ignorance of Welsh
+weakened the effect. "You owe a great debt, Rhys, to your kinsman the
+archdeacon, who has taken a hundred or so of your men to serve the
+Lord; if he had only spoken in Welsh, you wouldn't have had a soul
+left."
+
+In all about three thousand took the cross; but the Crusade was
+delayed, zeal cooled, and it is probable that comparatively few went.
+The _Itinerarium Regis Ricardi_ mentions, I think, only one exploit by
+a Welshman in the Third Crusade; he was an archer, and so a South
+Walian.
+
+This brings me to one of the incidental notes of great value scattered
+about the Itinerary. Speaking of the siege of Abergavenny (1182),
+Gerald tells us that the men of Gwent and Glamorgan excelled all
+others in the use of the bow, and gives curious evidence of the
+strength of their shooting. Thus the arrows pierced an oak door four
+inches thick; they had been left there as a curiosity, and Gerald saw
+them with their iron points coming through on the inner side. He
+describes these bows as "made of elm--ugly, unfinished-looking
+weapons, but astonishingly stiff, large, and strong, and equally
+useful for long and short shooting." Add to this that the longbow was
+not a characteristic English weapon till the latter part of the
+thirteenth century, that the first battle in which an English king
+made effective use of archery (at Falkirk, 1298), his infantry
+consisted mainly of Welshmen; and there can be little doubt that the
+famous longbow of England, which won the victories of Crecy and
+Poitiers and Agincourt, and indirectly did much to destroy feudalism
+and villenage, had its home in South Wales.
+
+Gerald was also a keen observer of nature, and his knowledge of the
+ways of animals is extensive and peculiar. Perhaps even more marked
+is his love of the supernatural; he could believe anything, if it was
+only wonderful enough--except Geoffrey of Monmouth's History. But I
+must confine myself to one story--the story of the boy in Gower who
+(as the root of learning is bitter) played truant and found two little
+men of pigmy stature, and went with them to their country under the
+earth, and played games with golden balls with the fairy prince. These
+little folk were very small--of fair complexion, and long luxuriant
+hair; and they had horses and dogs to suit their size. They hated
+nothing so much as lies; "they had no form of public worship, being
+lovers and reverers, it seemed, of truth." The boy often went, till he
+tried to steal a golden ball, and then he could never find fairyland
+again. But he learnt some of the fairy language, which was like Greek.
+And then Gerald compares words in different languages, and notes how,
+for instance, the same word for _salt_ runs through Greek and British
+and Irish and Latin and French and English and German, and the fairy
+language, which suggests a close relation between all these peoples
+in past ages. It is very modern; and it is not without reason that
+Gerald has been called "the father of comparative philology."
+
+In his "Description of Wales" Gerald describes the manner of life and
+characteristics of the people. All are trained to arms, and when the
+trumpet sounds the alarm, the husbandman rushes as eagerly from his
+plough as the courtier from his court. Agricultural work takes up
+little of their time, as they are still mainly in a pastoral stage,
+living on the produce of their herds, and eating more meat than bread.
+They fight and undergo hardships and willingly sacrifice their lives
+for their country and for liberty. They wear little defensive armour,
+and depend mainly on their mobility; they are not much good at a close
+engagement, but generally victors in a running fight, relying more on
+their activity than on their strength.
+
+It was the fashion to keep open house for all comers. "Those who
+arrive in the morning are entertained till evening with the
+conversation of young women and the music of the harp; for each house
+has its young women and harps allotted for the purpose. In each
+family the art of playing on the harp is held preferable to any other
+learning; and no nation is so free from jealousy as the Welsh." After
+a simple supper (for the people are not addicted to gluttony or
+drunkenness), "a bed of rushes is placed along the side of the hall,
+and all in common lie down to sleep with their feet towards the fire.
+They sleep in the thin cloak and tunic they wear by day. They receive
+much comfort from the natural heat of the persons lying near them; but
+when the underside begins to be tired with the hardness of the bed, or
+the upper one to suffer from the cold, they get up and go to the fire;
+and then returning to the couch they expose their sides alternately to
+the cold and to the hardness of the bed."
+
+Gifted with an acute and rich intellect they excel in whatever studies
+they pursue, notably in music. They are especially famous for their
+part-singing, "so that in a company of singers, which one very often
+meets with in Wales, you will hear as many different parts and voices
+as there are performers,"(!) and this gift has by long habit become
+natural to the nation.
+
+"They show a greater respect than other nations to churches and
+ecclesiastics, to the relics of saints, bells, holy books, and the
+cross; and hence their churches enjoy more than common tranquillity."
+
+He then goes on to the other side of the picture: "for history without
+truth becomes undeserving of its name." "These people are no less
+light in mind than in body, and by no means to be relied on. They are
+easily urged to undertake any action, and as easily checked from
+prosecuting it.... They never scruple at taking a false oath for the
+sake of any temporary advantage.... Above all other peoples they are
+given to removing their neighbours' landmarks. Hence arise quarrels,
+murders, conflagrations, and frequent fratricides. It is remarkable
+that brothers show more affection to each other when dead than when
+living; for they persecute the living even unto death, but avenge the
+dead with all their power."
+
+Finally, as a scientific observer of politics, he discusses how Wales
+may be conquered and governed, and how the Welsh may resist.
+
+A prince who would subdue this people must give his whole energies to
+the task for at least a whole year. He must divide their strength, and
+by bribes and promises endeavour to stir up one against the other,
+knowing the spirit of hatred and envy which generally prevails among
+them. He must cut off supplies, build castles, and use light-armed
+troops and plenty of them; for though many English mercenaries perish
+in a battle, money will procure as many more; but to the Welsh the
+loss is for the time irreparable. He recommends that all the English
+inhabitants of the Marches should be trained to arms; for the Welsh
+fight for liberty and only a free people can subdue them. His advice
+to the Welsh is: Unite. "If they would be inseparable, they would be
+insuperable, being assisted by these three circumstances--a country
+well defended by nature, a people contented to live upon little, a
+community whose nobles and commoners alike are trained in the use of
+arms; and especially as the English fight for power, the Welsh for
+liberty; the English hirelings for money, the Welsh patriots for their
+country."
+
+I hope I may persuade some who do not yet know Gerald to make his
+acquaintance, and to read either his works on Ireland and Wales,
+translated in Bohn's library, or Mr. Henry Owen's brilliant and
+delightful volume, "Gerald the Welshman," my indebtedness to which I
+wish to acknowledge. Gerald tells us many miracles; but he has himself
+performed a miracle as wonderful as any he relates; he has kept all
+the charm and freshness of youth for more than seven hundred years.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: CASTLES & RELIGIOUS HOUSES. (12th & 13th Centuries)]
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+CASTLES
+
+
+Wales is pre-eminently the land of castles. There are between thirty
+and forty in Glamorgan alone. The accompanying map, though it is by no
+means exhaustive, shows the general lie of the castles, which may be
+divided into three groups, having as their respective bases Chester,
+Shrewsbury, and Gloucester. But though there is some evidence of an
+organised plan for the conquest of Wales in the time of William Rufus,
+it is useless to look for any great and general system of offence or
+defence, because most of the castles were not built by a centralised
+government with any such object in view, but by individuals to guard
+their own territories and protect their independence against either
+their neighbours or the English king. The great age of castle-building
+was between 1100 and 1300. Castles play a very small part in the
+fighting in Wales till the end of the eleventh century. Before that
+time indeed there were few stone castles anywhere; the usual type, even
+of the early Norman castles, was a moated mound surrounded by wooden
+palisades. One hears for instance of a castle being built by William
+the Conqueror in eight days. An example of this early type of fortress
+was Pembroke Castle at the end of the eleventh century, "a slender
+fortress of stakes and turf," which had the good fortune to be in
+charge of Gerald of Windsor, grandfather of Giraldus Cambrensis. It
+stood several sieges, which shows that the siege engines of the Welsh
+were of a very poor and primitive type. One of these sieges was turned
+into a blockade, and the garrison was nearly reduced by starvation. The
+constable had recourse to a time-honoured ruse. "With great prudence he
+caused four hogs which still remained to be cut into small pieces and
+thrown down among the enemy. The next day he had recourse to a more
+refined stratagem: he contrived that a letter from him should fall
+into the hands of the enemy stating that there was no need for
+assistance for the next four months." The besiegers were taken in and
+dispersed to their homes.
+
+The characteristic types of castles in the twelfth century were the
+rectangular keep and the shell keep; in the thirteenth the concentric
+castle. Of the two last we have splendid examples in Cardiff and
+Caerphilly. Of rectangular keeps there are very few in Wales--Chepstow
+is the only important one--though there are several on the borders,
+notably Ludlow. The square keep seems to us most characteristic of
+Norman military architecture; the Tower of London, Rochester,
+Newcastle, Castle Rising, are well-known examples, and there are many
+more in a good state of preservation; there are many more solid square
+keeps than shell keeps well preserved, but this is simply due to the
+greater solidity of the former; the shell keeps were far more numerous
+in the twelfth century; and the reasons for this are obvious--the
+rectangular keep was much more expensive to build, and it was too
+heavy to erect on the artificial mounds on which the Norman
+architects generally founded their castles.
+
+The keep of Cardiff Castle is one of the most perfect shell keeps in
+existence. It is built on a round artificial mound, surrounded by a
+wide and deep moat--the mound and moat being, of course, complements
+of each other. Such mounds and moats are common in all parts of
+England, and in Normandy. They are not Roman, nor British, nor are
+they, as Mr. G. T. Clark maintained, characteristic of Anglo-Saxon
+work. They are essentially Norman, and a good representation of the
+making of such a mound may be seen in the Bayeux Tapestry, under the
+heading--'He orders them to dig a castle.' When was the Cardiff mound
+made? Perhaps the short entry in the Brut gives the answer: "1080, the
+building of Cardiff began." It would then be surrounded by wooden
+palisades, and surmounted by a timber structure, as a newly made mound
+would not stand the masonry. The shell keep was probably built by
+Robert of Gloucester, and it was probably in the gate-house of this
+keep, that Robert of Normandy was imprisoned. A shell keep was a ring
+wall eight or ten feet thick, about thirty feet high, not covered in,
+and enclosing an open courtyard, round which were placed the
+buildings--light structures, often wooden sheds, abutting on the ring
+wall--such as one may see now in the courtyard of Castell Coch. The
+shell keep was the centre of Robert's castle, but not the whole. From
+this time dated the great outer walls on the south and west--walls
+forty feet high and ten feet thick and solid throughout. The north and
+east and part of the south sides of the castle precincts are enclosed
+by banks of earth, beneath which, the walls of a Roman camp have
+recently been discovered. These banks were capped by a slight
+embattled wall. Outside along the north, south and east fronts was a
+moat, formerly fed by the Taff through the Mill leat stream which ran
+along the west front. The present lodgings, or habitable part of the
+castle built on either side of the great west wall, date mostly from
+the fifteenth century. The earlier lodgings were, perhaps, on the same
+site--though only inside the wall; a great lord did not as a rule
+live in the keep, except in times of danger.
+
+The area of the enclosure is about ten acres--more suited to a Roman
+garrison than to a lord marcher of the twelfth century. That the
+castle was difficult to guard is shown by the success of Ivor Bach's
+bold dash, _c._ 1153-1158. Ivor ap Meyric was Lord of Senghenydd,
+holding it of William of Gloucester, the Lord of Glamorgan, and,
+perhaps, had his headquarters in the fortress above the present
+Castell Coch. "He was," says Giraldus Cambrensis, "after the manner of
+the Welsh, owner of a tract of mountain land, of which the earl was
+trying to deprive him. At that time the Castle of Cardiff was
+surrounded with high walls, guarded by 120 men at arms, a numerous
+body of archers and a strong watch. Yet in defiance of all this, Ivor,
+in the dead of night secretly scaled the walls, seized the earl and
+countess and their only son, and carried them off to the woods; and
+did not release them till he had recovered all that had been unjustly
+taken from him," and a goodly ransom in addition. Perhaps the most
+permanent result of this episode was the building of a wall 30 feet
+high between the keep and the Black Tower--dividing the castle
+enclosure into two parts and forming an inner or middle ward of less
+extent, and less liable to danger from such sudden raids.
+
+Cardiff Castle was much more than a place of defence; it was the seat
+of government. The bailiff of the Castle was _ex officio_ mayor of the
+town in the Middle Ages. The Castle was also the head and centre of
+the Lordship of Glamorgan. This was divided into two parts--the shire
+fee or body, and the members. The shire fee was the southern part;
+under a sheriff appointed by the chief Lord: the chief landowners owed
+suit and service--_i.e._, they attended and were under the
+jurisdiction of the shire court held monthly in the castle enclosure,
+and each owed a fixed amount of military service--especially the duty
+of "castle-guard"--supplying the garrison and keeping the castle in
+repair. There are indications of the work of the shire court in some
+of the castle accounts published in the Cardiff Records, _e.g._, in
+1316, an official accounts for 1d., the price of "a cord bought for
+the hanging of thieves adjudged in the county court: stipend of one
+man hanging those thieves 4d." The "members" consisted of ten
+lordships (several of which were in the hands of Welsh nobles): these
+were much more independent; each had its own court (with powers of
+life and death), from which an appeal lay to the Lord's court at
+Cardiff: generally they owed no definite service to the Lord (except
+homage, and sometimes a heriot at death), but on failure of heirs the
+estate lapsed to the chief Lord. At Cardiff Castle the Lord had his
+chancery, like the royal chancery on a small scale--issuing writs,
+recording services and grants of privileges, and legal decisions:
+practically the whole of these records have been lost--and our
+knowledge of the organisation of the Lordship is mainly derived from
+the royal records at times, when owing to minority or escheat, the
+Lordship was under royal administration. The Lord of Glamorgan owed
+homage, but no service to the king; and (though this was sometimes
+disputed by his tenants and the royal lawyers), no appeal lay from his
+courts to the king's court. The machinery of government was probably
+more complete and elaborate in Glamorgan than in any other Marcher
+Lordship.
+
+Caerphilly Castle had not the political importance of Cardiff, but far
+surpasses it as a fortress. By the strength and position of
+Caerphilly, one may measure the power of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd after
+the Barons' War and before the accession of Edward I. The Prince of
+Wales had extended his sway down as far as Brecon, and Welshmen
+everywhere were looking to him as the restorer of their country's
+independence. Among them was the Welsh Lord of Senghenydd, one of the
+chief "members" of Glamorgan, and his overlord probably saw reason to
+suspect his loyalty. An alliance between him and Llywelyn would open
+the lower Taff Valley to the Welsh prince and give him command of the
+hill country north of Cardiff. It was on the lands of the lord of
+Senghenydd that Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, built Castell
+Coch and Caerphilly.
+
+[Illustration: CARDIFF CASTLE. (12th Century)]
+
+[Illustration: CAERPHILLY CASTLE. (13th Century)]
+
+Caerphilly is described by the latest historian of the Art of War as
+the grandest specimen of its class; it represents the high-water mark
+of mediaeval military architecture in this country, and was the model
+of Edward I.'s great castles in the north. It illustrates the
+influence of the Crusades on Western Europe, being an instance of the
+"concentric" system of defences, of which the walls of Constantinople
+afford the most magnificent example, and which the Crusaders adopted
+in many of their great fortresses in the East.
+
+Caerphilly Castle consists of three lines of defences, and the way in
+which these supplement each other shows that the work in all
+essentials was designed as a great whole; it did not grow up bit by
+bit. There are of course many evidences of alterations and rebuilding
+at later times; the buildings in the middle ward, on the south side,
+seem to be later additions; the hall appears to have been enlarged,
+and the tracery of the windows suggests the fourteenth century; the
+state-rooms to the west of the hall have been much altered; but such
+alterations as appear are confined to the habitable part of the
+castle, and do not affect it as a military work. It has been suggested
+that the castle may have been greatly enlarged in the latter years of
+Edward II., when it played an important part in connection with the
+division of the Gloucester inheritance and the younger Despenser's
+ambitions. There are a number of notices of the castle in the
+chronicles and public records of that time, but apparently no
+references to any building operations. And the unity of plan is
+evidence that the whole dated from the same time.
+
+The castle is built on a tongue of gravel nearly surrounded by low,
+marshy land, forming a sort of peninsula; a stream on the south
+running eastwards to the Rhymny; and two springs on the north. By
+damming these waters and cutting through the tongue of gravel an
+artificial island was secured for the site of the castle. The inner
+ward, or central part of the castle, consists of a quadrangle with a
+large round tower at each corner: in the centre of the east and west
+side are massive gate-houses defended by portcullises; from the
+projecting corner towers all the intervening wall was commanded. The
+gateways communicate with the second line of defence or middle ward.
+This completely encircles the inner ward, on a much lower level; it is
+a narrow space bounded by a wall, with low, semi-circular bastions at
+the corners; it is commanded at every point from the inner ward; the
+narrowness of the space would prevent the concentration of large
+bodies of assailants or the use of battering-rams, and communication
+is at several points stopped by walls or buildings jutting out from
+the inner ward. The middle ward had strong gate-houses at the east and
+west ends, and was completely surrounded by water--east and west by a
+moat, north and south the moat widens into lakes: note how on the
+north a narrow ridge of gravel has been used to ensure a water moat on
+that side, in case there was not enough water to flood the whole lake.
+These lakes form part of the third line of defence or outer ward,
+which includes also on the west the "horn-work" and on the east the
+grand front. The horn-work is about three acres in extent, surrounded
+by a wall 15 feet high, which is of the nature of an escarpment, the
+ground rising above it. It is entirely surrounded by a moat, and
+connected with the middle ward on one side and the mainland on the
+other by drawbridges. It would probably be used for grazing purposes,
+and thus would be of great value to the garrison; but so far as the
+actual defences of the castle are concerned, a lake would have been
+much more effective; the nature of the ground would however have
+prevented this. The horn-work was intended to cover the only side upon
+which the castle was open to an attack from level ground, and to
+occupy what would otherwise have been a dangerous platform.
+
+The eastern side of the outer ward--the grand front--is a most
+imposing structure. It is a wall about 250 yards long, and in some
+parts 60 feet high, furnished with buttresses and projecting towers
+from which the intervening spaces are easily commanded, culminating
+in the great gate-house near the centre, and terminating at both ends
+in clusters of towers which protect the sally-ports. On the outside is
+a moat spanned by a double drawbridge. The northern part of this
+front, which was probably occupied by stables, would in dry weather be
+the least defensible part of the castle; but it was cut off from the
+rest by an embattled wall running from the gate-house to the inner
+moat and pierced only by one small and portcullised gate. The southern
+half was more important and stronger. It crossed the stream at the
+dam, the walls being 15 feet thick where subjected to the pressure of
+the water, and the strong group of towers at the end--on the other
+side of the stream--guarded the dam on which the safety of the castle
+largely depended; the wall and towers here form a semicircle, curving
+back into the edge of the lake, so as to avoid the danger of being
+outflanked.
+
+On the inside of the grand front were various buildings, such as the
+mill. This eastern line was divided from the middle ward by a moat 45
+feet wide--a space which is too wide to be spanned by a single
+drawbridge, and as there are no signs of the foundations of a central
+pier, it seems probable that the bridge rested on a wooden support,
+which could be removed when necessary, and the assailants plunged into
+the moat below.
+
+There are a large number of interesting details connected with both
+the military functions of the castle and its domestic economy. There
+were at least four exits (not counting the two water-gates); this
+would give the garrison opportunities of harassing assailants by
+sallies, and would make a much larger army necessary in order to
+blockade the castle; contrast the single narrow entrance to the Norman
+keep--high up in the wall and visible to all outside. The water-gates
+are worth studying, especially the methods of protecting the eastern
+water-gate--two grates with a shoot above and between them. One should
+notice, too, the "splaying" of the outer wall, by which missiles from
+the top would be projected outwards; and also the use of the
+mill-stream to carry away the refuse of the garderobe tower. And there
+are many other points, to which one would like to call attention, if
+time allowed.
+
+The history of Caerphilly in the Middle Ages need not detain us long.
+It was besieged by Llywelyn in 1271, while it was being built.
+Llywelyn declared he could have taken it in three days if he had not
+been persuaded to submit the dispute to the arbitration of the king.
+It is clear that the castle was not finished; shortly after this
+Gilbert de Clare obtained license from the king to "enditch" the
+castle: such license was not, as a rule, required in the Marches (as
+it was in England) and was only necessary now because the king was
+acting as arbitrator. The Earl of Gloucester kept possession. We next
+hear of it in 1315, when it resisted the attack of Llywelyn Bren. It
+was then in the hands of the king, pending the division of the
+Gloucester inheritance among the three co-heiresses. In 1318
+Caerphilly, with the rest of Glamorgan, was granted to the younger
+Despenser, who perhaps enlarged the hall and made the other
+alterations referred to above. Edward II. was there for a few days
+when flying for his life; had he trusted to Caerphilly, instead of
+fleeing further through South Wales, he might have saved his head and
+his crown; at any rate, there would have been a great siege to add to
+the history of mediaeval warfare. The king's adherents held out in
+Caerphilly for months, and only surrendered when, the king being dead,
+there was nothing more to fight for, and they were allowed to go free.
+Happy is the castle which has no history. The perfection of Caerphilly
+as a fortress saved it from serious attacks.
+
+In conclusion, I will give two illustrations of the relations between
+the garrison of a castle and those outside. The first refers to
+Swansea. There is a curious Charter of King John to the good men of
+Swansea, in which he releases them from the "custom of eating" forced
+on them by the men of the castle. This would be a solid variation of
+the liquid scot-ales or free drinks which officials and garrisons were
+in the habit of exacting from their neighbours, and which were among
+the most persistent grievances in the Middle Ages.
+
+The second concerns Builth, and is taken from the Patent Rolls of
+Edward II. in 1315. Builth was then in the hands of the king, to whom
+the townsfolk appeal for redress of grievances. The community complain
+that, though they are only bound to carry timber to the castle twice a
+week, they are often forced to carry it three times a week and more,
+and victuals too; and the men of the castle compel them to plough
+their lands and cut their corn, and hold them to ransom if they
+refuse; and they carry away from the houses of the said complainants
+divers kind of victuals--lambs, geese, hens, &c.--and pay only one
+quarter of their value, or nothing at all; and though the complainants
+gave the keeper of the castle L120 that they might be free from such
+oppressions, he took the money and oppresses them just the same.
+Further, the courts which the people have to attend are multiplied;
+and recently the court was held at a time when so great a flood had
+happened that neither horsemen nor footmen could approach the court,
+and so thirty-six men and women, fearing the cruelty of the bailiffs,
+entered a boat and were overwhelmed in the rush of the river. And one
+night men of the castle, maliciously seeking occasion against the
+commonalty of the town, went out of the castle and pretended to
+besiege it and shot arrows at it; and then secretly re-entered the
+castle and declared the townsfolk had been attacking the castle. And
+on this account many burgesses were imprisoned in the castle and
+ill-treated, and their swine maliciously killed. And things are so
+intolerable that many of the greater burgesses have left the country,
+and the residue, without speedy remedy, cannot remain.
+
+Life was evidently dull in a castle: one had to play practical jokes
+to relieve the monotony; and life was anything but pleasant outside a
+castle. The castles of Wales are much more attractive to us to-day
+than they were to those who lived in them or round them six or seven
+hundred years ago.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+RELIGIOUS HOUSES
+
+
+In speaking of the Religious Houses in Wales I shall deal with those
+which flourished in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries--the period
+we have hitherto been studying--though it is tempting to go back to
+the glories of the old Welsh monasteries of the sixth century, such as
+Llantwit Major and Bangor Iscoed, whose dim memories must always
+exercise a strong fascination. The monasteries of this early type had
+fallen on evil days in Wales, as in Ireland and elsewhere, before the
+twelfth century, many had been wiped out by the Danes; and those that
+remained seem to have lost the spirit of life (save in a few distant
+islands or inaccessible mountains), and made no struggle for existence
+against the vigorous invasion of the new monasticism.
+
+We shall be concerned with two kinds of religious houses--namely, the
+houses of monks and the houses of friars. And, first, let us consider in
+briefest outline the main course of development of the religious orders
+in the Roman Church. The Rule of St. Benedict (+541) was adopted by all
+monks: the essential features of it were prayer, labour, silence, a
+common life and common property. But among the early Benedictines each
+monastery was independent and self-governing, though an abbey might have
+priories in some measure connected with it. The result was that in the
+course of time the discipline and life of monasteries varied infinitely;
+and there was no co-operation for self-defence among the various
+monasteries. Hence in the tenth century arose the Cluniac order--the
+first attempt at organisation--the Abbot of Clugny became head of a vast
+number of monasteries in different countries of Europe; the priors of
+these owed allegiance to the Abbot of Clugny, were appointed by him, and
+paid revenues to the head abbey and the general fund of the Order. This
+organisation was thus monarchical--despotic; the Abbot of Clugny was a
+pope of monasticism. The movement acquired enormous influence on the
+Church as a whole, getting control of the papacy, insisting that the
+Church should be independent of the State, and that celibacy of the
+clergy should be practically enforced. But the Cluniacs instead of
+withdrawing from the world began to dominate it, losing many of the
+essential features of monasticism. Hence another reform movement arose
+about 1100, that of the Cistercian Order, which is associated with the
+name of St. Bernard. This aimed at reviving the Benedictine rule in all
+its strictness, insisting especially on manual labour. Cistercian houses
+were founded in desolate places, as far removed from populous centres as
+possible. But the Order differed from the early Benedictines in
+organisation. Each Cistercian house was independent and self-governing,
+electing its own abbot; but all the abbots were bound to come together
+at stated times for general assemblies or chapters, and these general
+assemblies were the supreme governing body in the Order. Thus unity was
+established; the organisation was close, but not monarchical; the Order
+was a great federation. This is the highest point reached in monastic
+development.
+
+But about the time of the Crusades another ideal made itself felt.
+Hitherto the religious man withdrew from the world: but, as an old
+chronicler put it, "God found out the Crusades as a way to reconcile
+religion and the world"--was it not possible to serve God _in_ the
+world? The knight did it; he went on fighting, but he fought for the
+Holy Sepulchre. The Military Orders (Templars and Hospitallers)
+combined the life of a monk with the life of a soldier. The Regular or
+Augustinian Canons combined the life of a monk with the life of a
+parish priest. And this ideal--new to the Middle Ages--received its
+highest realisation in the Dominican and Franciscan friars. The monk
+left the world in order to become religious; the friar aimed at making
+the world religious. The monk's main object was to save his own soul;
+the friar's, to save the souls of others.
+
+We will now turn to the monasteries in Wales. Of the older
+Benedictine houses there were about fifteen, almost all in South
+Wales, and all except one were not abbeys but priories, or cells,
+_i.e._, they were dependent on some abbey elsewhere. A number of them
+belonged to some foreign abbey, especially the earliest. This was the
+case with the Priory of Monmouth, founded by the Breton Wihenoc, which
+belonged to the Abbey of St. Florence of Saumur (Anjou); and this was
+the case too with the priories of Abergavenny and Pembroke. These
+"alien priories" were simply used by the abbeys abroad as sources of
+revenue; they were foreign, unpopular, and during the French war in
+the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries most of them were suppressed
+and their revenues appropriated by the Crown. The same applies to the
+three Cluniac cells established in Wales, such as St. Clears, which
+seems only to have contained the prior and one monk, who did not live
+with much strictness, though Gerald of Barry says the Cluniacs here
+were better than they were abroad, and not nearly so bad as the
+Cistercians. The life of monks in these outlying cells, where they
+were not under any supervision, and where there was no "public
+opinion" of the monastery to keep them straight, was generally very
+lax; they lived liked laymen, looking after the estates (generally
+wasting them), and without much regard to their vows: "they lived like
+beasts," says Gerald. Thus the Lord Rhys had to eject the monks from
+one cell, because of the charges brought against them by the fathers
+and husbands of the surrounding district, who declared that they would
+leave and go to England if the evil was not stopped.
+
+Another class of houses were those founded as priories or cells of
+English abbeys. Thus the Priory at Brecon was a cell of Battle Abbey,
+founded by Bernard of Newmarch, and largely endowed by the Braoses;
+Ewenny, founded by Maurice de Londres, was a cell to St. Peter's,
+Gloucester. All these of course, like the alien priories, were founded
+by the Norman conquerors, and for two purposes: Firstly, for the souls
+of the founder and his family, a very necessary provision; the Normans
+were in their way a devout people and made sacrifices to win the
+favour of heaven. William de Braose used to give his clerks "something
+extra" for inserting pious expressions in his legal documents.
+Secondly, these houses also served as castles and stations for
+garrisons. Take, for instance, Ewenny; it is much more like a castle
+than a religious house, with its great embattled walls and towers, and
+magnificent gate-house furnished with a triple portcullis and
+"shoots," or holes in the roof above for pouring molten lead on the
+assailants' heads. The De Londres family were businesslike as well as
+pious; Ewenny's prime object was to help them to gain heaven, it also
+helped them to gain the earth. The close and constant connection which
+these houses maintained with their mother abbeys in England and abroad
+always kept them Anglo-Norman in sympathies--foreign garrisons. But
+while recognising this aspect of the monastic houses in Wales, one
+must avoid exaggerating it, as, _e.g._, Mr. Willis Bund does. He
+regards all the monasteries as founded solely with this political
+object: "to represent," he says, "a Welsh prince as founder of a
+religious house in South Wales after 1066 is representing him as the
+worst of traitors. Bad as the Welsh chieftains were, even they would
+have hesitated to introduce into their country what were really Norman
+garrisons;" and he rejects the idea of a Welsh prince founding Strata
+Florida. Now these remarks are only applicable to those religious
+houses which were dependencies on some English or foreign abbey; they
+do not apply to the Cistercian monasteries, all of which were
+practically equal and self-governing; each elected its own head and
+was not under foreign dictation. While the whole Cistercian Order
+formed an united body for purposes of monastic life and discipline,
+each abbey identified itself in a very remarkable way with the local
+or national aspirations of the people round, from whom its monks were
+drawn. Some of the Cistercian monasteries in Ireland refused to admit
+any Englishman. Some of the Cistercian abbeys in Wales were the
+warmest supporters of Welsh independence.
+
+The Welsh princes felt the need of providing for the safety of their
+souls just as the Norman barons did, and the souls of both parties
+needed a great deal of saving. Further, the Welsh were not cut off
+from the great movements of the world; they felt like every other
+country in Europe the waves of religious enthusiasm, which resulted in
+the twelfth century in the spread of the Cistercians, in the
+thirteenth century in the spread of the friars. In the twelfth century
+the acts most pleasing to God were generally thought to be taking the
+Cross and endowing a Cistercian monastery. Again, though many of the
+Welsh chiefs were mere creatures of impulse, there were others who
+looked to the future. The Lord Rhys was an acute man of the world, who
+was not averse to improving his property. He possessed great tracts of
+mountain land, which was practically worthless; he saw Cistercian
+monks elsewhere, not exactly making such tracts blossom like the rose,
+but, at any rate, utilising them for pasture land, keeping flocks of
+sheep, becoming the great wool-growers for all Europe; why should he
+not hand over his worthless property to Cistercians, and by so doing
+lay up for himself treasure in heaven and on earth? Mr. Willis Bund
+says, "How unnatural for any Welsh prince to found a Cistercian
+abbey!" Surely it was the most natural thing in the world.
+
+The Cistercians had far greater influence in Wales than any other
+monastic order. The Cistercian abbeys were Aberconway, Basingwerk,
+Valle Crucis, Strata Marcella, Cymer, Strata Florida, Cwm Hir,
+Whitland, Neath, Margam, Llantarnam, Tintern, Grace Dieu, Dore. We
+have in Gerald a very unfavourable and prejudiced witness on the
+Cistercians. He tells with pious horror and human satisfaction the
+story of the abbot of Strata Marcella, who was a great founder of
+nunneries, and at length eloped with a nun (he soon repented and came
+back to his abbey, preferring the bread and water of affliction to the
+nun). Gerald had a personal grudge against the Cistercians; wanting to
+raise money he had pawned his library to the monks of Strata Florida,
+and when he tried to redeem the books they declared they had bought
+them, and would not give them up.
+
+The Cistercians certainly drove hard bargains, and insisted on their
+rights to the uttermost farthing. In reading the history of any of
+these Cistercian houses--the history, say, of Margam by Mr. Trice
+Martin--one's first feeling is one of disappointment: it is nearly all
+about property. When one looks through to find evidences of spiritual
+influence one finds instead prosecutions for poaching. Did they have
+schools and teach the youth of the country round? I have found no
+evidence of it. Why should they? Monks never professed to be learned
+men or to be teachers. Many were both, but it was a disputed question
+whether they were not in this contravening their rule. At any rate, it
+was going outside their duty. Their business was to serve God--to
+perform divine services--and in the intervals to keep out of mischief
+by manual labour, and to perform works of charity. Margam was
+specially famous for this last.
+
+Margam Abbey was founded by Robert of Gloucester, in 1147, and the
+brother of St. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, the most important man in
+Europe in his time, came over to arrange about the establishment of
+the house. It was endowed with lands by both English and Welsh, such
+as the Earl of Gloucester and the Lord of Senghenydd. William
+Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, granted the monks freedom from toll in all
+his boroughs in Wales and Ireland. The Braoses gave them the privilege
+of "buying and selling freely all manner of merchandise without toll"
+in Gower, and they had the right to all wrecks along the coast near
+Kenfig. We find the abbot asserting his fishing rights sometimes by
+excommunicating poachers, sometimes by the more effective method of
+haling them before the Shire Court at Cardiff and getting them fined
+3d. a head. The monks of Margam obtained also a footing in Bristol
+through the Earls of Gloucester, a great commercial advantage to them
+for the sale of their wool both in England and abroad.
+
+Their lands and privileges were not always, of course, free gifts.
+Thus in the twelfth century Gilbert Burdin grants land to Margam, and
+in return the abbot gives 20s. to the grantor, a gold coin to his
+wife, and red shoes to each of his children. In 1325 John Nichol, of
+Kenfig, gave his property to the abbey in return for a life annuity.
+He was to receive daily one loaf, two cakes, and a gallon of beer;
+also 6s. 8d. for wages, four pairs of shoes (price 12d.), a quarter of
+oats, and pasture for two beasts.
+
+The annual revenue of Margam was returned as 500 marks in 1383, but
+before that time the abbey had suffered severely from inundations, sea
+and sand covering whole villages and much of the best property of the
+house; and the finances were in a bad way. These were improved by
+grants of the tithes of parish churches--a favourite form of gift to a
+monastery, but a great scandal. The rectorial tithes were paid to a
+monastery, while the monks at best put in some under-paid vicar to
+look after the parish. Generally, wherever there is a vicar instead of
+a rector in England or Wales the explanation is the appropriation of
+the tithes by a monastery.
+
+What did Margam do with its income? The first charge was the support
+of about forty monks and forty lay brethren. Next there were the
+construction and keeping in repair of the church and other monastic
+buildings; and, thirdly, the expense of charity and hospitality. The
+monasteries were the hotels of the Middle Ages, except that they made
+no charges, and Margam was celebrated for its hospitality for
+centuries. Gerald, the enemy of monks, says: "This noble abbey was
+more celebrated for its charitable deeds than any other of that order
+in Wales. And as a reward for that abundant charity which the
+monastery had always, in times of need, exercised towards strangers
+and the poor, in a season of approaching famine their corn and
+provisions were divinely increased, like the widow's cruse of oil."
+Two centuries later we find the Pope bearing witness to the well-known
+and universal hospitality of the Abbey of Margam. It was placed on the
+main road between Bristol and Ireland, at a distance from other places
+of refuge, and so was continually overrun by rich and poor strangers,
+the poor evidently preponderating. In this connection I will give one
+instance of wise charity on the part of these monks from the end of
+the twelfth century. Hugh, son of Robert of Llancarven, gives the
+abbey some land in return for "four marks of silver and a young ox,
+given to him in his great need by the Abbot." The monastery performed
+some of the services of the modern bank.
+
+Strata Florida presents some different characteristics. Like most
+Cistercian houses, it lay off the beaten track. It was founded in 1164
+by the Lord Rhys, near the site of an older monastery. It was endowed
+with large expanse of lands, mostly mountain pastures, and the monks
+soon began building their church and refectory and cloister. The
+monastery was completed in 1201, when "the monks came to the new
+church, which had been erected of splendid workmanship." The
+architectural details of this church are peculiar and almost unique.
+Mr. S. W. Williams notices especially the large amount of interlacing
+work in the carving, which one sees in the old Celtic crosses, and
+which is so characteristic of Celtic art. The convent seems to have
+become very soon essentially Welsh. Nearly all the abbots have Welsh
+names. It was the burial-place of the princes of South Wales; but as
+they were, after the Lord Rhys, quite unimportant, its political
+interest is connected with the princes of Gwynedd. When in the
+thirteenth century the princes of North Wales were attracting the
+allegiance of the South Welsh also they found Strata Florida a
+convenient place for important political assemblies. It was here that
+Llywelyn ap Iorwerth summoned all the Welsh chiefs to do homage to his
+son David. The monastery suffered damage during the wars of Edward I.,
+who in 1284 granted it L78 for repairs. But it suffered the worst
+injuries during the rebellion of Owen Glyndwr, when the English troops
+used it as a barracks, and stabled their horses in church and choir.
+
+The patriotic tone of Strata Florida is expressed in the Welsh
+chronicles written there. The later part of the _Annales Cambriae_ was
+written there, and the Brut y Tywysogion. At Margam also a chronicle
+was composed which has been preserved. When an abbey decided to begin
+a chronicle, the first step was to borrow a chronicle from some other
+house; thus Margam, founded by Robert of Gloucester, copied out the
+Chronicle of William of Malmesbury, which was dedicated to Robert of
+Gloucester. The monks of Strata Florida copied out the earlier portion
+of the _Annales Cambriae_. These chronicles of course only became of
+historical value when they become independent and contemporary. They
+do not confine themselves to the monastery or local history, but
+relate events of general interest--to the whole of Britain and to all
+Europe--intermixed with notices of the burning of a monastic barn or
+the death of the local abbot. Knowledge of the great world came to an
+abbey through the travellers who stayed there; through political or
+ecclesiastical assemblies held there; and through public documents
+sent to the monks for safekeeping or to be copied. We generally do not
+know who wrote these chronicles; they were rather the work of the
+community than of the individual monks. "Every year (so runs a
+regulation on the subject) the volume is placed in the _scriptorium_,
+with loose sheets of paper or parchment attached to it, in which any
+monk may enter notes of events which seem to him important. At the end
+of the year, not any one who likes, but he to whom it is commanded,
+shall write in the volume as briefly as he can what he thinks of all
+these loose notes is truest and best to be handed down to posterity."
+"Thus it was that a monastic chronicle grew, like a monastic house, by
+the labour of different hands and at different times; but of the heads
+that planned it, of the hands that executed it, no satisfactory record
+was preserved. The individual is lost in the community."
+
+Coming now to the Friaries in Wales, we find ourselves in a different
+atmosphere. The friars were not troubled with questions of property:
+they had none; they depended for their livelihood on the alms of the
+faithful. Again, speaking generally, one may say that while the
+Benedictine priory is found under the shadow of a castle, and the
+Cistercian abbey in the heart of the country, the friaries were built
+in the slums of the towns. As there were few towns in Wales, the
+houses of the Mendicant Orders were not numerous or important. The
+Dominicans (or Black Friars) had houses at Bangor, Rhuddlan, Brecon,
+Haverfordwest, and Cardiff; the Franciscans (or Grey Friars) at
+Cardiff, Carmarthen, and Llanfaes; the Carmelites (or White Friars) at
+Denbigh; and the Austin Friars at Newport in Monmouthshire. It is
+remarkable that the Dominicans had more houses in Wales than the
+Franciscans; though the Franciscans--the mystic apostles of love--were
+more in sympathy with the Celtic spirit than the Dominicans, the stern
+champions of orthodoxy. Francis of Assisi strove to reproduce again on
+earth the life of Christ--in the letter and in the spirit; and the
+religious poetry of Wales in the thirteenth century is saturated with
+Franciscan feeling--full of intense realisation of the childhood and
+suffering of Christ, the humanity of God. This may be illustrated by
+the following poem by a Welsh friar of the thirteenth century, Madawc
+ap Gwallter:--
+
+    "A Son is given us,
+    A kind Son is born ...
+    A Son to save us,
+        The best of Sons.
+
+    A God, a man,
+    And the God a man
+        With the same faculties.
+    A great little giant,
+    A strong puny potentate
+        Of pale cheeks.
+
+    Richly poor
+    Our father and brother,
+    Exalted, lowly,
+        Honey of minds;
+    With the ox and ass,
+    The Lord of life
+    Lies in a manger;
+    And a heap of straw
+    As a chair,
+        Clothed in tatters;
+
+    Velvet He wants not,
+    Nor white ermine--
+        To cover Him;
+    Around His couch
+    Rags were seen
+        Instead of fine linen."
+
+I do not know the dates of the foundations of the Welsh Franciscan
+houses; the dates given in Mr. Newell's scholarly "History of the
+Church in Wales" are impossible. Llanfaes is said to have been
+established by Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, and Franciscan influence would
+come to Wales through Thomas the Welshman, Bishop of St. David's
+(1247), who had been lecturer to the Franciscans at Oxford, and was
+famous for his piety and learning. Another Franciscan I wish to
+mention is Friar John the Welshman, who in his old age was employed to
+negotiate with the Welsh in 1282. He had studied and taught at Oxford
+and Paris, and made a creditable show beside such intellectual giants
+as Thomas Aquinas and Roger Bacon, his contemporaries. The widespread
+and lasting popularity of his works is shown by the large number of
+manuscripts and early printed editions which have come down to us. But
+his chief interest and life-work was the popularisation of knowledge
+in the service of morality. He devoted his energies to training up
+lecturers who should go to the Franciscan friaries in the chief towns
+in England and Wales and teach friars and clergy the art of popular
+preaching. Friar John of Wales was one of the chief inspirers of the
+"University Extension" movement of the Middle Ages. These popular
+preachers or lecturers did not do much for the advancement of sound
+learning, because they did not study any science for its own sake,
+but only for the moral lessons they could find in it. But, to rouse
+some intellectual interest in the people at large, and stimulate their
+moral sense, was a work not unworthy of the universities; and this aim
+was to some degree attained. One of the favourite ways of spending a
+holiday in the Middle Ages was to go and hear a friar preach. Here is
+a summary of a friar's sermon constructed after the method of Friar
+John of Wales, on the relative merits of the Ass and the Pig.
+
+"The pig and the ass live not the same life: for the pig during his
+life does no good, but eats and swills and sleeps; but when he is
+dead, then do men make much of him. The ass is hard at work all his
+days and does good service to many; but when he dies, there is no
+profit. And that is the way of the world. Some do no good thing while
+they live, but eat and drink and wax fat, and then they are dragged
+off to the larder of hell, and others enrich themselves with their
+goods. Whereby I know that those, who for God's sake live the life of
+holy poverty, shall never lack substance, because their heavenly
+Father has pigs to kill. For as the good man before the season will
+kill a pig or two to give puddings to his children, so will our Lord
+kill those hardened sinners before their time, and give their goods to
+the children of God. So the psalmist says: 'The bloodthirsty and
+deceitful men shall not live out half their days,' because they do no
+work to keep their bodies healthy. Nothing is so healthful for body
+and soul as honest work. Work is the life of man, the guardian of
+health; work drives away sin, and makes people sleep well at night.
+Work is the strength of feebleness, the health of sickness, the
+salvation of men,--quickener of the senses, foe of sloth, nurse of
+happiness, a duty in the young and in the old a merit. Therefore it is
+better to be an ass than a pig."
+
+One of the most able of these "extension lecturers" was another
+Welshman--probably a native of Cardiff--Friar John David, whose
+lectures at Hereford were so successful that after a year both the
+friars and the clergy of the city declared he was indispensable, and
+petitioned for his reappointment. He became the head of the
+Franciscan province of England, and lies buried among the ruins of the
+church of the Grey Friars in Cardiff.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+LLYWELYN AP GRUFFYDD AND THE BARONS' WAR
+
+
+Throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the history of England
+and the history of Wales are so closely bound up together that it is
+impossible to study either apart from the other. In illustration of
+this general statement I will ask you to consider briefly the history
+of twelve years, from 1255 to 1267--a period of special interest to
+us, because these are the years in which Llywelyn's power was founded
+and built up.
+
+In 1255 occurred three events of great importance to Wales: (1)
+Llywelyn overthrew his brothers in battle; (2) Edward Longshanks took
+possession of his Chester estates; (3) Edmund Crouchback was formally
+proclaimed king of Sicily.
+
+1. David, younger son of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, died in 1246, leaving
+no descendants, and the Principality was seized by the three sons of
+his elder brother Gruffydd--Owain the Red, Llywelyn, and David. For
+some years they held together, because Henry III. opposed the
+accession of any of them, claiming the Principality as a lapsed fief
+under a treaty made with the last prince, David ap Llywelyn. But after
+a time the king accepted the homage and recognised the rights of the
+sons of Gruffydd. Being thus freed from direct hostility of the
+English king, the joint rulers soon quarrelled, and came to open war
+in 1255. "By the instigation of the devil," says the Brut y
+Tywysogion, "a great dissension arose between the sons of
+Gruffydd--namely, Owain the Red and David on the one side, and
+Llywelyn on the other. And thereupon Llywelyn and his men awaited
+without fear, trusting in God, at Bryn Derwin the cruel coming of his
+brother accompanied by a vast army, and before the end of one hour
+Owain was taken and David fled, after many of the army were killed and
+others captured, and the rest had taken to flight. And then Owain the
+Red was imprisoned; and Llywelyn took possession of the territory of
+Owain and David without any opposition." Thus Gwynedd was united under
+one ruler.
+
+2. It was the policy of Henry III. to collect the earldoms into the
+hands of his relations. Thus the great palatine earldom of Chester,
+having lapsed to the Crown through failure of heirs, was granted in
+1254 to the king's eldest son, Edward. Besides Chester and its
+dependencies Edward received Montgomery and the royal lands in South
+Wales (Cardigan and Carmarthen), Ireland and Gascony--in fact all the
+territory outside England over which the king had rights. These
+possessions were calculated to give the heir to the throne a varied
+experience and splendid training in the art of government. Edward was
+in need of such training, as the story of his early years shows. He
+was only sixteen years of age in 1255, but in the Middle Ages men
+lived short lives and matured very early. Edward was married in 1254,
+and had much experience in war and statesmanship before he was
+twenty. It was a wild time, and young Edward was among the wildest
+spirits; as he rode through the country, accompanied by his two
+hundred followers--mostly rollicking and arrogant foreign
+adventurers--who robbed and devastated the land, and thrashed and even
+mutilated passers-by for fun, people looked forward with great fear to
+the accession of such a ruffian. A few years of responsibility, and
+failure, soon changed him into the noblest and most law-abiding of the
+Plantagenets. It was Wales which gave him his first lesson. He first
+tried his hand at the reorganisation of the "Middle Country," making
+it "shire-land," introducing the English law and administrative
+system; the same policy was put in force in Cardigan and Carmarthen,
+which formed one shire with a Shiremoot and the usual institutions of
+an English county. Some Welshmen had already petitioned the king for
+the introduction of English law into Wales, complaining that by Welsh
+law the crime of the guilty is visited on the innocent relations. At
+best it was a task which required very careful management, and Edward
+and his advisers were as yet quite unfitted for it, prone as they were
+to violent methods, having an insolent contempt for all customs and
+habits which differed from those to which they were used, and all
+classes except their own. The result is thus expressed by the Welsh
+chronicler: After Edward returned to England, "the nobles of Wales
+came to Llywelyn, having been robbed of their liberties and made
+captives, and declared they would rather be killed in war for their
+liberty than suffer themselves to be trampled on by strangers. And
+Llywelyn was moved at their tears, and invaded the Middle Country and
+subdued it all before the end of the week." In this work Llywelyn was
+assisted by descendants of Rhys, the princes of South Wales, who in
+Cardigan suffered from Prince Edward's policy in the same way as the
+men of the Middle Country or Four Cantreds. This union of North and
+South Wales is one of the special characteristics of the struggle
+under Llywelyn ap Gruffydd. That the Welsh of the North should join
+those of the South was, notes Matthew Paris, "a circumstance never
+known before." And Llywelyn was statesman enough to see the importance
+of this union and take steps to strengthen it. After recovering the
+Middle Country, he marched south, took possession of Cardigan and
+Builth--then a possession of the Crown, though in the custody of
+Mortimer--and gave these districts to Meredydd, grandson of the Lord
+Rhys, to hold as vassal--a wise measure, intended to bind the South to
+him by common interests. Matthew Paris, who holds up the Welsh
+resistance to tyranny as an example to the English, puts in Llywelyn's
+mouth a striking speech in favour of unity: "Let us then stand firm
+together; for if we remain inseparable we shall be insuperable"--the
+very words of Gerald of Barry, whose advice had borne some fruit. But
+Meredydd soon proved a traitor, and the failure of Henry III.'s
+campaign in 1257 was less due to the union of the Welsh than to the
+disunion of the English.
+
+3. This brings us to the third event referred to above--the
+proclamation of Edmund as King of Sicily. The Pope was trying to
+conquer Sicily, but wanted some one else to pay the war budget. After
+trying various people he induced Henry III. to accept the crown of
+Sicily for Edmund and promise enormous sums for the payment of the
+papal armies, and pledge his whole kingdom as security for the
+payment. This, coming on the top of many years of misgovernment and a
+long series of extortions, led directly to the crisis of the
+reign--the revolution known as the Provisions of Oxford in 1258, by
+which the powers of government were taken away from the Crown and
+given to committees of barons.
+
+The disaffection against Henry III. at once made itself felt in the
+Welsh war. "Those who had promised the king assistance did not come;"
+and when the whole knighthood of England were called out to meet at
+Chester, only "manifold complaints and murmurs were heard." We might
+have expected the Marcher Lords at any rate to rally round the king;
+but they were not disposed to assist in building up a royal power in
+Wales which would endanger their independence, and were glad enough to
+stand by and see the scheme thwarted. Some of them even went so far as
+to send secret information to the Welsh prince. The king had to
+retreat ingloriously, pursued by Llywelyn, and followed by the
+derisive sneers of the enemy. It may interest some of us to note that
+in this war the English army fought, as often, under the Dragon
+standard; probably the Dragon made in 1244 by Edward Fitz Odo, the
+King's goldsmith, who was commanded to make it "in the manner of a
+standard or ensign, of red samit, to be embroidered with gold, and his
+tongue to appear as though continually moving, and his eyes of
+sapphire or other stones agreeable to him." This was in 1257; the king
+was still less able to attack Llywelyn in 1258 and the following
+years, and had to agree to an ignominious truce.
+
+Almost the whole English baronage under the leadership of Simon de
+Montfort, Earl of Leicester, and Richard de Clare, Earl of Gloucester,
+combined against the king, who was only supported by the royal family
+and those of his foreign relations to whom he had given earldoms and
+baronies and bishoprics in England or Wales. If Llywelyn had contented
+himself with occupying the royal lands in Wales--the territories
+granted to Edward--and with seizing Powys, which held to the English
+king, he would have had nothing to fear at this time from the English
+baronage, and the Crown was powerless to resist. It is clear from the
+English chroniclers that there was a genuine admiration for the Welsh
+resistance on the part of the English people. "Their cause," says
+Matthew Paris, "seemed a just one even to their enemies." But Llywelyn
+attacked the great Marcher Lords; it was difficult for a champion of
+Welsh patriotism to avoid doing so--it may be also that Llywelyn
+failed to grasp thoroughly the political situation in England, as he
+certainly failed to grasp it after the accession of Edward I. The
+first to suffer severely from him was Roger Mortimer, lord of the
+Middle March; thus Llywelyn drove him out of Gwerthrynion and
+Maelienydd, and added these territories to his own. Successes like
+these roused great enthusiasm among the Welsh gentry, though they
+excited the alarm and jealousy of some of the princes (such as
+Meredydd, and Llywelyn's brother David, who "by the instigation of the
+devil" deserted the cause and went over to the English). But the good
+men of Brecon revolted from their lord, the Earl of Hereford, and
+adhered to Llywelyn, who came down and received their homage in 1262.
+
+The general situation was altered by these events. It became clear to
+the Lords Marchers that their power was endangered by Llywelyn's
+success, and that they must make common cause with Prince Edward. The
+Lords Marchers began to form the royalist party. Thus Mortimer, who in
+1258 was among the leaders of the baronial opposition to the Crown,
+was in 1260 acting with the king against the barons. The Mortimers
+were the most directly affected of all the Marchers by the successes
+of Llywelyn, not only because their territories lay near Gwynedd, but
+because nearly all their lands lay in or close to the Marches; they
+had all their eggs in the same basket, while the other leading Lords
+Marchers had large possessions elsewhere, from which they drew the
+bulk of their revenues, using their March lands as a recruiting-ground
+for their troops. Thus to the De Clares their estates in Kent were
+probably worth more as a source of income than the whole of Glamorgan;
+and they also had estates in Hertford and Suffolk and Hampshire, and
+elsewhere; the Fitzalans were great landowners in Sussex; the Bohuns
+of Hereford had broad acres in Huntingdon, Essex, and Hertford. To
+these men the limitation of the royal powers--especially of the power
+of taxing, and the king's right to employ foreigners in places of
+trust--was more important than the checking of Llywelyn's advance,
+which certainly weakened the king and made it easier to enforce
+constitutional rights against him.
+
+Still we have here one of the causes which broke the unity of the
+baronage, which created a royalist party, and led to open war. This
+has hardly been enough emphasised. It is generally said that the
+question on which the barons split was the question of the recognition
+of popular representation in the government of the country--the
+question, in a word, of a House of Commons--Simon de Montfort being
+the leader of the popular cause, Richard de Clare, Earl of Gloucester
+(till his death in July, 1262), the leader of the oligarchic party,
+which aimed merely at transferring the royal power to a committee of
+barons. This was undoubtedly the most important cause of the quarrel,
+because it was a question of principle big with results for the
+future, affecting the whole course of English history, while the
+attitude which the barons ought to take towards Llywelyn was merely
+for the barons a matter of political tactics. But it is probable that
+the latter loomed larger in the eyes of contemporaries--certainly in
+the eyes of most of the Lords Marchers.
+
+Hence it came about that, when war actually broke out in the spring of
+1263, the elder of the Lords Marchers fought on the side of the
+king--such as Roger Mortimer and Humphrey de Bohun--though the younger
+men--young Gilbert of Gloucester and Humphrey de Bohun, the son of
+Hereford--remained under the spell of Simon de Montfort's fascination
+and high-minded enthusiasm. The war began in the Welsh Marches, Simon
+attacking the forces of Edward of Chester and Roger Mortimer--the
+principal royalists. As these were also the most formidable enemies of
+the Welsh, Llywelyn at the same time attacked them from the other
+side, the baronial party and Welsh co-operating, though without any
+formal alliance or friendly feelings. Thus in 1263 the baronial army
+besieged Shrewsbury, which defended itself till "a countless host" of
+Welshmen, came up and began to attack it from the other side; the town
+then surrendered to the barons lest it should fall into the hands of
+the Welsh.
+
+This campaign led to a very great defection from the baronial side:
+the Lord Marchers generally--such as Clifford and Fitzalan--deserted
+Simon, who appeared as a traitor to the country. How great the
+defection is shown by Simon's words: "Though all should leave me, yet
+with my four sons I will stand true to the just cause, which I have
+sworn to uphold for the honour of the Church and the good of the
+kingdom; I have been in many lands, pagan and Christian, but in none
+have I found such faithlessness as in England."
+
+The royalists were now the strongest party in the Marches, and in 1264
+Edward and Mortimer gained a number of successes over the troops of
+Simon and Llywelyn (who seem to have been acting together) and
+captured Brecon. But they were called off to the main seat of war in
+the Midlands, and Simon inflicted a crushing defeat on the royalists
+at Lewes, in Sussex, 1264. It appears that Welsh archers fought in
+Simon's army, but these would be South Welsh, not North Welsh, the
+troops of Gilbert de Clare, not those of Llywelyn. The Marchers who
+escaped from Lewes were followed up by Simon, and being encircled by
+his forces and those of Llywelyn, submitted in December, 1264.
+
+But Simon in the hour of triumph was now near his fall, which was made
+inevitable by the defection of Gilbert de Clare and whole of the
+Gloucester interest. The causes of the quarrel as given in the
+chronicles are mainly personal. Simon, with all his greatness, was
+quick-tempered and overbearing, inclined to seize power for himself,
+and perhaps even avaricious; one may infer this from the statement of
+a friendly chronicler, William Rishanger: "his habitual prayer to God
+was that he would save him from avarice and covetousness of worldly
+goods." But, apart from merely personal questions, it is to be noticed
+that the closer the relations between Simon and Llywelyn became, the
+less cordial became his relations to Gilbert de Clare. Thus when Simon
+co-operated with Llywelyn in bringing Mortimer and the Marchers to
+submission in December, 1264, Gilbert began to intrigue with them; and
+soon after the famous parliament of 1265 had transferred to Simon the
+earldom of Chester--thus relieving Llywelyn of his most dangerous
+neighbour, Prince Edward--Gilbert definitely joined Mortimer and
+Edward. The meeting between the three at Ludlow is very important;
+for Prince Edward now, at the instance of Gloucester, definitely
+pledged himself to the cause of reform and good government. It may be
+said for the Red Earl of Gloucester that in deserting Simon he did not
+desert his cause. To ensure the future of English liberties it was no
+longer necessary to support De Montfort: "henceforth it was not Simon
+but Edward who best represents the cause of orderly national
+progress."
+
+A few days after the desertion of Gloucester Simon made his first
+formal treaty with Llywelyn, ceding to him Hawarden, Ellesmere,
+Montgomery, Maud's Castle, a line of fortresses along the eastern
+border, recognising his right to the title of Prince of Wales, and to
+the homage of all the Welsh barons, while Llywelyn engaged to supply
+Simon with five thousand spearmen and raid the estates of Mortimer and
+De Clare. The first part of the campaign of Evesham was carried out in
+Gwent. Prince Edward held the line of the Severn, separating Simon at
+Hereford from his English partisans. Simon, while waiting for his
+English supporters to concentrate, entered Monmouthshire, where
+Llywelyn's spearmen joined him and ravaged the Gloucester estates,
+trying to entice the royalists into Wales. Edward followed; but--his
+pupil in war as in politics--the young prince outgeneralled him at
+every point, and Simon only escaped at Newport by hurried flight
+across the river, burning the bridge behind him. He kept the Usk
+between him and his enemy, but this involved a long march north,
+through mountains and barren country, and he got back to Hereford with
+a half-starved army, only to find the line of the Severn held more
+strongly than ever. We cannot follow out the rest of the campaign,
+marked as it was by brilliant strategy on the part of the young
+Edward, which proved him a born master of the art of war. In the final
+battle all the advantages were on his side, and one cannot blame the
+spearmen of Gwynedd for trying to save themselves by flight at the
+"murder of Evesham." The body of the great Earl of Leicester was
+shamefully mutilated by the conquerors, and his head sent as a
+fitting present to Matilda de Braose, wife of Roger Mortimer.
+
+The struggle continued for two years both in England and Wales. In
+England Simon's adherents held out owing to the severity of the terms
+which the victorious party insisted on. They are known as "The
+Disinherited," and their cause was championed by the two
+enemies--Llywelyn and Gilbert de Clare. The "Brut" states that in
+1267, "Llywelyn confederated with Earl Clare; and then the earl
+marched with an immense army to London; and through the treachery of
+the citizens he got possession of the Tower. And when King Henry and
+his son Edward heard of this they collected an immense army and
+marched to London and attacked it, and upon conditions they compelled
+the earl and citizens to submit." "The Annals of Winchester," a
+contemporary English chronicle, relate the same event, but omit any
+mention of Llywelyn: "Earl Gilbert took London, and the Disinherited
+flocked to him as to their saviour; peace was settled in June, and
+many of the Disinherited were pacified at the instance of the Earl of
+Gloucester." It is clear that each of these rivals posed as champion
+of the Disinherited, but for opposite reasons. Llywelyn's object was
+to encourage their resistance and keep England divided by civil war;
+Gilbert's to insist on better terms in order to induce them to yield.
+Gilbert was successful in bringing about peace and reform. The
+Disinherited were allowed to pay a fine instead of losing all their
+property, and many of the legal reforms demanded by the baronial party
+at the beginning of the struggle were embodied in the Statute of
+Marlborough. And now the Earl of Gloucester employed his resources in
+strengthening his Glamorgan lordship to resist the threatened invasion
+of Llywelyn by building Castell Coch and Caerphilly.
+
+Llywelyn continued his victorious career as long as war lasted. In
+1266 he inflicted a crushing defeat on Mortimer at Brecon. In the
+autumn of next year, when peace had been established in England, he
+came to terms, through the mediation of the papal legate, in the
+Treaty of Montgomery. Llywelyn kept the four cantreds of the Middle
+Country; also Cydewain, Ceri, Gwerthrynion, Builth, and Brecon. But
+Maelienydd was restored to Roger Mortimer, though Llywelyn reserved
+his right to appeal to the law against this article. Further, the
+Prince of Gwynedd received the hereditary title of Prince of Wales,
+and was recognised as overlord of all the Welsh barons in Wales,
+except Meredydd ap Rhys, who remained immediate vassal of the King of
+England: his territories therefore in the Vale of Towy were withdrawn
+from the power of Llywelyn. The Prince of Wales in return did homage
+and agreed to pay him 25,000 marks by instalments. The treaty is less
+favourable to Llywelyn than that of 1265. His rights in Deheubarth
+were curtailed, and he gave up his claims to Ellesmere and Montgomery,
+and possession of Maelienydd.
+
+The papal legate who arranged the treaty is not to be congratulated on
+his draftsmanship. Many things were left undecided, and a series of
+disputes arose. Thus Llywelyn seems to have claimed suzerainty over
+the Lord of Senghenydd as one of the "Welsh barons," though that term
+was surely only meant to include the Welsh barons who held directly of
+the king, not the vassals of the Lord of Glamorgan. But it is evident
+that Llywelyn did not try to abide by the treaty. He continued to
+intrigue with the English barons, posing as the successor of Simon de
+Montfort, and failing to see that Edward I. was the political heir of
+the great earl. He tried to throw off the suzerainty of England, with
+the result that he lost the independence of his country. He lived in
+an atmosphere of enthusiasm and flattery, and failed to realise the
+limits of his power. The bards by whom he was surrounded exercised a
+"highly pernicious influence in practical concerns," and ill-repaid
+his generosity by urging him to attempt the impossible.
+
+    "His bards are comely about his tables,
+    I have seen him generously distributing his wealth,
+    And his meadhorns filled with generous liquors.
+    I never returned empty-handed from the North.
+    The bards prophesy that he shall have the government and
+        sovereign power;
+    Every prediction is at last to be fulfilled."
+
+But if Llywelyn lacked the hard head of the practical statesman, if
+he did not, like his grandfather, merit the title of "the Great," he
+will always remain an attractive and striking figure in history; he
+possessed qualities which made him an ideal representative of the
+Cymric race in the Middle Ages:--
+
+    "A bold and bounteous lion--the most reckless of givers,
+    Man whose anger was destructive; most courteous prince;
+    A man sincere in grief, true in loving,
+    Perfect in knowledge."
+
+
+
+
+UNWIN BROTHERS, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON.
+
+
+
+
+    =SOME WELSH BOOKS.=
+
+
+    =WALES.= By OWEN M. EDWARDS. Crown 8vo, cloth, 5s. ("The
+    Story of the Nations" Series.)
+
+    =THE WELSH PEOPLE.= By JOHN RHYS, M.A., and DAVID
+    BRYNMOR-JONES, Q.C., M.P. Third Edition, revised. Demy
+    8vo, cloth, 16s.
+
+
+    =THE WELSH LIBRARY.=
+
+    Edited by OWEN M. EDWARDS, Author of "Wales." Each
+    volume Foolscap 8vo. 2s. Cloth, 1s. Paper.
+
+    =Vols. 1-3. THE MABINOGION.=
+        (_In Preparation._)
+
+
+    LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note
+
+Minor typographic errors in punctuation and variations in hyphenation
+have been corrected without note.
+
+The following amendments have been made:
+
+    Page vi--Cymry amended to Kymry--"... Thomas Stephens,
+    "Literature of the Kymry"; ..."
+
+    Page 21--harminously amended to harmoniously--"... and a
+    prince of North Wales working harmoniously together."
+
+    Page 34--FitzHamon amended to Fitzhamon--"... daughter
+    and heiress of Fitzhamon, conqueror of Glamorgan."
+
+    Page 37--Caradog amended to Caradoc--"... attributed to
+    Caradoc of Llancarven, on which his biographers ..."
+
+    Page 80--omitted word 'the' added--"... fighting in
+    Wales till the end of ..."
+
+    Page 84--Senghennydd amended to Senghenydd--"Ivor ap
+    Meyric was Lord of Senghenydd, ..."
+
+The single oe ligature (in Coeur), and superscripts within century
+numbers have not been retained in this version. The single dagger symbol
+is indicated using a + symbol.
+
+The illustration on page 88 (Cardiff and Caerphilly Castles) has been
+moved so that it is not in the middle of a paragraph.
+
+Repeated headings at the start of each essay have been deleted so
+there is only one instance left for each.
+
+Advertising material has been moved to the end of the text. Bold in
+that material is indicated =like this=.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mediaeval Wales, by A. G. Little
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEDIAEVAL WALES ***
+
+***** This file should be named 24947.txt or 24947.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
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