Part 6

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Conquered Wales may be divided into two parts—the Wales conquered by the Norman barons and the Wales conquered by the English king.

The Wales conquered by the English king was the country ruled by Llywelyn and his allies. In 1284, by the statute of Rhuddlan, it was formed into six shires. The Snowdon district—which held out last—was made into the three shires of Anglesey, Carnarvon, and Merioneth. The part of the land between Conway and Dee that belonged to the king, not to barons, was made into the shire of Flint. The lands of Llywelyn’s allies beyond the Dovey were made into the shires of Cardigan and Carmarthen. Instead of the chiefs of the Welsh prince, the king’s sheriffs and justices ruled the country. But much of the old law remained.

The Wales conquered by the Norman barons lay to the east and south of the Wales turned into shires in 1284. It included the greater part of the valleys of the Clwyd, Dee, Severn, and Wye; and the South Wales coast from Gloucester to Pembroke. It remained in the possession of lords who were subject to the King of England, but who ruled almost like kings in their own lordships. The laws and customs of the various lordships differed greatly; sometimes the lord used English law, and sometimes Welsh law. The great ruling families changed much in wealth and power, from century to century. In Llywelyn’s time the most important were the Clares (Gloucester and Glamorgan), the Mortimers (Wigmore and Chirk), Lacy (Denbigh), Warenne (Bromfield and Yale), Fitzalan (Oswestry), Bohun (Brecon), Braose (Gower), and Valence (Pembroke).

Llywelyn was the last prince of independent Wales. From that time on, the title is conferred by the King of England on his eldest son, who is then crowned. The present Prince of Wales also comes, through a daughter of Llywelyn the Great, from the House of Cunedda, the princes of which ruled Wales from Roman times to 1284. Of all the houses that have gone to make the royal house, this is the most ancient.

XIII CASTLE AND LONG-BOW

SO far I have told you very little about war, except that a battle was fought and lost, or a castle built or taken.

War has two sides—attack and defence. New ways of attacking and defending are continually devised. When the art of defence is more perfect than the art of attack, the world changes very little, for the strong can keep what he has gained. When the art of attack is the more perfect, new men have a better chance, and many changes are made. The chief source of defence was the castle, the chief weapon of attack was the long-bow. Wales contains the most perfect castles in this country; it is also the home of the long-bow. From 1066 to 1284 England and Wales were conquered, and the conquest was permanent because castles were built. From 1284 to 1461, England and Wales attacked other countries, and the weapon which gave them so many victories was the long-bow.

I will tell you about the castles first, about the Norman castles and about the Edwardian castles.

The Norman castle was a square keep, with walls of immense thickness, sometimes of 20 feet. But if the Norman had to build on the top of a hill or on the ruins of an old castle, he did not try to make the new castle square, but allowed its walls to take the form of the hill or of the old castle; and this kind of castle was called a shell keep. The outer and inner casing of the wall would be of dressed stone, the middle part was chiefly rubble. At first, if they had plenty of supplies, a very few men could hold a castle against an army as long as they liked. These were the castles built by the Norman invaders to retain their hold over the Welsh districts they conquered.

But many ways of storming a castle were discovered. They could be scaled by means of tall ladders, especially in a stealthy night attack. Stones could be thrown over the walls by mangonels to annoy the garrison. Sometimes a wall could be brought down by a battering-ram. But the quickest and surest way was by mining. The miners worked their way to the wall, and then began to take some of the stones of the outer casing out, propping the wall up with beams of wood. When the hole was big enough, they filled it with firewood; they greased the beams well, they set fire to them and then retired to a safe distance to see what happened. When the great wall crashed down, the soldiers swarmed over it to beat down the resistance of the garrison. If ever you go to Abergavenny Castle, in the Vale of Usk, look at the cleft in the rock along which the daring besiegers once climbed. And if you go to the Vale of Towy, and see Dryslwyn Castle, remember that the wall once came down before the miners expected, and that many men were crushed.

In order to prevent mining, many changes were made. Moats were dug round the castle, and filled with water. Brattices were made along the top of the towers, galleries through the floor of which the defenders could pour boiling pitch on the besiegers. The walls were built at such angles that a window, with archers posted behind it, could command each wall. Stronger towers were built—round towers with a coping at each storey, solid as a rock, which would crack and lean without falling; there is a leaning tower at Caerphilly Castle. One other way I must mention—the child or the wife of the castellan would be brought before the walls, and hanged before his eyes unless he opened the gates.

The newer or Edwardian castles, those of the reigns of Henry III. and Edward I., are concentric—that is, there are several castles in one; so that the besiegers, when they had taken one castle, found themselves face to face with another, still stronger, perhaps, inside it. Of these castles, the most elaborate is the castle of Caerphilly, built by Gilbert de Clare, the Red Earl of Gloucester who helped Edward in the Welsh wars. And it was by means of these magnificent concentric castles—Conway, Beaumaris, Carnarvon, and Harlech—that Edward hoped to keep Wales.

There are many kinds of bows. In war two were used—the cross-bow and the long-bow. The cross-bow was meant at first for the defence of towns, like Genoa or the towns of Castile. So strength was more important than lightness, and the archer had time to take aim. It was a bow on a cross piece of wood, along which the string was drawn back peg after peg by mechanism. The bow was then held to the breast, and the arrow let off. It was clumsy, heavy, and expensive.

The long-bow was only one piece of sinewy yew, and a string. It was used at first for the chase, and the archer had to take instant aim. It was drawn to the ear, and it was a most deadly weapon when a strong arm had been trained to draw it. Its arrow could pick off a soldier at the top of the highest castle; it could pierce through an oak door three fingers thick; it could pin a mail-clad knight to his horse. It was this peasant weapon that brought the mailed knight down in battle.

The home of the long-bow is the country between the Severn and the Wye. It was famous before, but it was first used with effect in the last Welsh wars. It was used to break the lines of the Snowdon lances and pikes, so that the mail-clad cavalry might dash in. But later on, the same bows were used to bring the nobles of France down.

From the Welsh war on, archers and infantry became important; battles ceased to be what they had been so long—the shock of mail-clad knights meeting each other at full charge.

The long-bow made noble and peasant equal on the field of battle. The revolution was made complete later on by gunpowder.

XIV THE RISE OF THE PEASANT

I HAVE told you much about princes and soldiers, but very little about the lowly life of peasants, and the trade of towns.

The conquest of Wales, by Norman baron and English king, tended to raise the serf to the level of the freeman. The chief causes of the rise of the serf were the following:

1 The ignorance of the English officials. The Norman baron very often paid close attention to the privileges of the classes he ruled, and the Welsh freeman retained his superiority. But the English officials—and Edward II. found that they were far too numerous in Wales—often refused to distinguish between a Welshman who was an innate freeman and a Welshman who lived on a serf maenol. Their aim was to make them all pay the same tax.

2. The fall in the value of money. At the time of the Norman Conquest, silver coins were rare, and their value high. But, in exchange for cloth and wool, of arrows and spears, of mountain ponies and cattle, coins came in great numbers, and it was easier for the serf to earn them. That is the value of coins became less.

This was a great boon to all who were bound to pay fixed sums—the freeman who paid to the king the dues he used to pay to his prince, the serf who paid to his lord a sum of money instead of service. All ancient servitude, political and economic, was commuted for money; as the money became easier to get, the serf became the more free.

3. The rise of towns and the growth of commerce. We must not, however, think of commerce as if it had been first brought by the Normans. There had been roads and coins in Roman times. The Danes had been traders, probably, before they became pirates and invaders. Timber, millstones, cattle, coarse cloth, and arrow-heads crossed the Severn eastwards before the Normans saw it; and corn was carried westward. There were close relations, political and commercial, between Wales and Ireland from very early times.

But the Norman and English Conquests revived and quickened trade. Towns rose, regular markets were established, and the barons who took tolls protected the merchants who paid them. Every baron had a castle, every castle needed a walled town, and a town cannot live except by trade. In the town the baron did not ask a Welshman whether he had been free or serf; the townsmen were strangers, and they welcomed the serf who came to work.

4. The monk and the friar. The bard was a freeman born, a skilled weaver of courteous phrases, not a churlish taeog. The monk or friar might be a serf. They worked like serfs, and ennobled labour. The Church condemned serfdom, and we find chapters giving their serfs freedom.

5. The Scotch and French wars of the English kings gave employment to hosts of bowmen and of men-at-arms, and to the numerous attendants required to look after the horses by means of which the army moved. The greater use of infantry after the reign of Edward I. caused a greater demand for the peasant; and the use of the cheap long-bow gave him a value in war. There were five thousand Welsh archers and spearmen on the field of Cressy. In these and other ways the serf was becoming free.