Part 4

He turned back from Chester, but he placed on the borders a number of barons who were to conquer Wales, as he had conquered England. They had a measure of his ability, of his energy, and of his ambition.

The two great Norman traits were wisdom and courage; but the one was often mere cunning, and the other brutal ferocity. But no one like the Norman had yet appeared in Wales—no one with a vision so clear, or with so hard a grip. A hard, worldly, tenacious, calculating race they were; and they turned their faces resolutely towards Wales.

From England, Wales can be entered and attacked along three valleys—along the Dee, the Severn, and the Wye. At Chester, Hugh of Avranches, called “The Wolf,” placed himself. From its walls he could look over and covet the Welsh hills, as he could have looked over the Breton hills from Avranches. He loved war and the chase: he despised industry, he cared not for religion; he was a man of strong passions, but he was generous, and he respected worth of character. One of his followers, Robert, had all his vices and few of his virtues. It was he who extended the dominions of the Earl of Chester along the north coast to the Clwyd, where he built a castle at Rhuddlan; and thence on to the valley of the Conway, where he built a castle at Deganwy. The cruelty of Robert shocked even the Normans of his time. He even set foot in Anglesey, which looked temptingly near from Deganwy, and built a castle at Aberlleiniog.

At Shrewsbury, where the Severn, after leaving the mountains of Wales, turns to the south, Roger of Montgomery was placed, with his wife Mabel, an energetic little woman, hated and feared by all. Roger himself, while ever ready to fight, preferred to get what he wanted by persuasion; he was not less cruel than Hugh of Chester, but he was less fond of war. He and his sons pushed their way up the Severn, and built a castle at Montgomery.

To Hereford, on the Wye, William Fitz-Osbern came. He was the ablest, perhaps, of all the followers of the Conqueror. He entered Wales; he saw it from the Wye to the sea, and he thought it was not large enough, and that it was too far from the political life of the time. So he went back to Normandy, but he left his sons William and Roger behind him. William had his father’s wisdom. Roger had his father’s recklessness in action; he rebelled against his own king, and found himself in prison. The king sent him, on the day of Christ’s Passion, a robe of silk and rarest ermine. The caged baron made a roaring fire, and cast the robe into it. “By the light of God,” said William the Conqueror, for that was his wicked oath, “he shall never leave his prison.”

But another Norman, Bernard of Neufmarché, came to take his place. He built his castle at Brecon, and defeated and killed Rees, the King of Deheubarth; and, with great energy, he took possession of the upper valleys of the Wye and the Usk.

Further south William the Conqueror himself came to Cardiff, and possibly built a castle. The Norman conquest of the south coast of Wales was exceedingly rapid, and castle after castle rose to mark the new victorious advances—Coety, Cenfig, Neath, Kidwelly, Pembroke, Newport, Cilgeran.

So far, the Norman advance has been a most quick one. In less than twenty-five years from the appearance of the Conqueror at Chester, the whole country had been overrun except the mountains of Gwynedd and the forests of the Deheubarth. This success is easily explained.

For one thing, the Normans had trained, professional soldiers, who were well horsed and well armed. In a pitched battle the hastily collected Welsh levies, unused to regular battle and very lightly armed, had no chance.

Again, the Norman never receded. He was willing to stop occasionally, in order to bide his time; but he clung tenaciously to every mile he had won. His skill as a castle builder was as striking as his prowess in battle or his cautious wisdom in council. He took possession of an old fortified post, or hastily constructed one of turf and timber; but he soon turned it into a castle of stone. At that time the Welsh had no knowledge of sieges; and their impetuous valour was of no use against the new castles.

Again, the Welsh opposition was not only not organised, but weakened by internal strife. While the Norman was winning valley after valley, the Welsh princes were trying to decide by the issue of battle who was to be chief. Bleddyn was slain in 1075; and his nephews and cousins tried to rule the country. Among these, Trahaiarn was a soldier of ability and energy, and a ruler of real genius. But he was the rival of the exiled princes of the House of Cunedda, and he found it difficult to bend Snowdon and the Vale of Towy to his will. Two of the exiles met him, probably near some of the cairns in the valley of the Teivy; and there, in the battle of Mynydd Carn, fiercely fought through the dusk into a moonlight night in 1079, Trahaiarn fell. It looked as if no leader could rise in Wales to fight a Norman army or to take a Norman castle.

VIII GRIFFITH AP CONAN AND GRIFFITH AP REES

IN the battle of Mynydd Carn, a young chief led the shining shields of the men of Gwynedd. He was Griffith, the son of a prince of the line of Cunedda and of a sea-rover’s daughter. He was mighty of limb, fair and straight to see, with the blue eyes and flaxen hair of the ruling Celt. In battle, he was full of fury and passion; in peace, he was just and wise. His people saw at first that he could fight a battle; then they found he could rule a country. And it was he that was to say to the Norman: “Thus far shalt thou come, and no further.”

When Bleddyn died in 1075, Griffith came to Gwynedd, and found that his father’s lands were under new rulers. Robert of Rhuddlan and Trahaiarn of Arwystli were mighty foes; but Griffith drove both of them back; and, by his prowess and success in battle, broke the spell of conquest which kept Gwynedd in bonds. But his enemies attacked him again from all sides; and, while Hugh the Wolf and Robert of Rhuddlan were laying Gwynedd waste, Trahaiarn and Griffith met at the hard-fought battle of Bron yr Erw. Griffith lost the day, and again became a sea-rover. He sailed to Dyved, and there he met Rees, the King of Deheubarth, who also was of the line of Cunedda, and had been driven from his land by the Normans. The two chiefs joined, and they crushed Trahaiarn at Mynydd Carn. Then they turned against the Normans.

Rees soon fell in battle, and left two children, Nest and Griffith. The beauty of Nest and the genius of Rees ap Griffith fill an important page in the history of their country. Nest became the mother of the conquerors of Ireland; Rees became the greatest of all the kings of South Wales.

The Normans found that the Welsh had taken heart. Of their opponents, they feared three: Griffith ap Conan, Owen of Powys, and Griffith ap Rees. The kings of England, the two sons of the Conqueror—red, brutal William and cool, treacherous Henry—had to come to help their barons.

Griffith ap Conan had a long life of strife and success. In his struggle with Hugh the Wolf, he was once in The Wolf’s prison, and more than once he had to flee to the sea. But, backed up by the liberty-loving sons of Snowdon and by his sea-roving kinsmen, he made Gwynedd strong and prosperous. He drove the Normans from Anglesey; he attacked and killed Robert of Rhuddlan; he saw the red King of England himself forced by storm and rain to beat a retreat from Snowdon. He was loved by his people during his youth of adventure and battle, and during his old age of safe counsel and love of peace. His wife Angharad and his son Owen live with him in the memory of his country. When he died, in 1137, it was said that he had saved his people, had ruled them justly, and had given them peace.

In the Severn country the princes of Powys were fighting against the Normans also, especially against the family of Montgomery. The sons of Bleddyn—Cadogan, Iorwerth, and Meredith—were driving the invaders from the valley of the Severn, and from Dyved, defeating their armies in battle, and storming their castles. Sometimes they would make alliances with them, and defy the King of England. But it is difficult to follow each of them. The history of one of them, Owen ap Cadogan, is like a romance. He was brave and handsome, in love with Nest, and a very firebrand in politics. The army of Henry I. was too strong for him, and he had to submit. He then became the friend of the King of England. It was the aim of the princes of Powys to be free, not only from the Norman, but also from Griffith of Gwynedd and Griffith of Deheubarth. They were an able and versatile family; noble and base deeds, revolting crimes and sweet poems, come in the stirring story of their lives.

What Griffith did in the north, and the sons of Bleddyn in the east, Griffith ap Rees did in the south; he showed that the Norman army could be beaten in battle, and that a Norman castle could be taken by assault. After his father’s death he spent much of his youth in exile or in hiding: sometimes we find him in Ireland, sometimes in the court of Griffith ap Conan, sometimes with his sister Nest—now the wife of Gerald, the custodian of Pembroke Castle. But he had one aim ever before him—to recover his father’s kingdom and to make his people free. Castle after castle rose—at Swansea, Carmarthen, Llandovery, Cenarth, Aberystwyth—to warn him that the hold of the Norman on the land was tightening. He came to the forests of the Towy; his people rallied round him, and his power extended from the Towy to the Teivy, and from the Teivy to the Dovey. His wife, the heroic Gwenllian—who died leading her husband’s army against the Normans—was Griffith ap Conan’s daughter. The great final battle between Griffith and the Normans was fought at Cardigan in 1136, in which the great prince won a memorable victory over the strongest army the Normans could put in the field. In 1137 he died, and they said of him that he had shown his people what they ought to do, and that he had given them strength to do it.

The work of Griffith ap Conan and Griffith ap Rees was this: they set bounds to the Norman Conquest, and saved Deheubarth and Gwynedd from the stern rule of the alien. But, though the Norman was not allowed to bring his stone castle and cruel law, what good he brought with him was welcomed. The piety of the Norman, his intellectual curiosity, and his spirit of adventure, conquered in Welsh districts where his coat of mail and his castle were not seen.

IX OWEN GWYNEDD AND THE LORD REES

THE men who opposed the Normans left able successors—Owen Gwynedd followed his father, Griffith ap Conan; the Lord Rees followed his father Griffith ap Rees; and in Powys the sons of Bleddyn were followed by the castle builder Howel, and by the poet Owen Cyveiliog.

Owen Gwynedd ruled from 1137 to 1169; the Lord Rees from 1137 to 1197. The age was, in many respects, a great one.

It was, of course, an age of war. Up to 1154, during the reign of Stephen, the English barons were fighting against each other, and the king had very little power over them. The most important Norman barons in Wales were the Earls of Chester in the valley of the Dee, the Mortimers on the upper Wye, the Braoses on the upper Usk, and the Clares in the south. Their castles were a continual menace to the country they had so far failed to conquer, and the Lord Rees was glad to get Kidwelly, and Owen Gwynedd to get Mold and Rhuddlan.

It was, on the whole, an age of unity. It was the chief aim of Owen Gwynedd to be the ally of the Lord Rees; and in this he succeeded, though his brother Cadwaladr, in his desire for Ceredigion, had killed Rees’ brother, to Owen’s infinite sorrow. The princes of Powys, Madoc and Owen Cyveiliog, were in the same alliance also, and they were helped in their struggle with the Normans. Unity was never more necessary. Henry II. brought great armies into Wales. Once he came along the north coast to Rhuddlan. At another time he tried to cross the Berwyn, but was beaten back by great storms. Had he reached the upper Dee, he would have found the united forces of the Lord Rees, Owen Cyveiliog, and Owen Gwynedd at Corwen. There are many stirring episodes in these wars: the fight at Consilt, when Henry II. nearly lost his life; the scattering of his tents on the Berwyn by a storm that seemed to be the fury of fiends; the reckless exposure of life in storming a wall or in the shock of battle. But the Norman brought new cruelty into war: Henry II. took out the eyes of young children because their fathers had revolted against him; and William de Braose invited a great number of Welsh chiefs to a feast in his castle at Abergavenny, and there murdered them all.

It is a relief to turn to another feature of the age: it was an age of great men. Owen Gwynedd was probably the greatest. He disliked war, but he was an able general; he made Henry II. retire without great loss of life to his own army. He was a thoughtful prince, of a loving nature and high ideals, and his court was the home of piety and culture. He is more like our own ideal of a prince than any of the other princes of the Middle Ages. The Lord Rees was not less wise, and his life is less sorrowful and more brilliant. He also was as great as a statesman as he was as a general; and he made his peace with the English king in order to make his country quiet and rich. Owen Cyveiliog was placed in a more difficult position than either of his allies; he was nearer to very ambitious Norman barons. He was great as a warrior; often had his white steed been seen leading the rush of battle. He was greater as a statesman: friend and foe said that Owen was wise; and he was greater still as a poet.

The age was an age of poetry. A generation of great Welsh poets found an equal welcome in the courts of Gwynedd, Powys, and Deheubarth; and even the Norman barons of Morgannwg began to feel the charm of Welsh legend and song; Robert of Gloucester was a great patron of learning. One of the chief events of the period was Lord Rees’ great Eisteddvod at Cardigan in 1176.

It was an age of new ideals. The Crusades were preached in Wales; the grave of Christ was held by a cruel unbeliever, and it was the duty of a soldier to rescue it. It appealed to an inborn love of war, and many Welshmen were willing to go. It did good by teaching them that, in fighting, they were not to fight for themselves. It was in Powys that feuds were most bitter. A young warrior told a preacher, who was trying to persuade him to take the cross: “I will not go until, with this lance, I shall have avenged my lord’s death.” The lance immediately became shivered in his hand. The lance once used for blind feuds was gradually consecrated to the service of ideals—of patriotism or of religion.