The Reign of William Rufus and the Accession of Henry the First, Volume 2 (of 2)

by Edward A. Freeman

Advance before the accession of Rufus. We have seen that neither the days of Eadward nor the days of the elder William were days of peace along the Welsh border. The English frontier had advanced during both reigns. Rhuddlan,[177] Montgomery,[178] Cardiff,[179] had become border fortresses of England. An indefinite tract of North Wales was held by Robert of Rhuddlan;[180] Radnor was an English possession;[181] the followers of Earl Roger of Montgomery had harried as far as the peninsula of Dyfed.[182] The whole land seems to have made some kind of submission to William the Great at the time when he made his pilgrimage to Saint David’s, and set free so many of his captive subjects.[183] Robert of Rhuddlan. But real conquest does not seem to have gone very far beyond the border fortresses, as within the march of the Marquess of Rhuddlan it did not go very far from the coast. In the days of the rebellion we have seen that the hearts of the Cymry rose again, and that they again ventured on offensive warfare with no small effect. They and their Scandinavian allies had broken the power and taken away the life of the man who had so long kept their northern tribes in awe. Rhys ap Tewdwr. In that work we have seen that Rhys ap Tewdwr, the King of Deheubarth, whose dominions took in the greater part of South Wales, had a hand.[184] Under him Cedivor seems to have been the vassal prince of Dyfed. The reign of Cedivor ended in a time of misfortune, ominous of greater misfortunes to come. Saint David’s robbed by pirates. 1091. The shrine of Saint David was robbed. The holy bishop Sulien died, and presently his church and city, the holy place of Saint David, were again sacked by the pagans of the isles.[185] Is this simply a traditional way of speaking of Scandinavian invaders, or were there still any wild wikings who avowedly clave to the faith of Odin? Then Cedivor himself died, and his sons revolted against their over-lord Rhys, but were again overthrown.[186] This was the year of the Red King’s siege of Saint Michael’s Mount, the year of his journey to the North; and one account hints that the movements in Wales as well as in Scotland had a share in bringing him back from the mainland.[187] But it is not till two years later that Welsh warfare began to put on enough of importance for its details to be recorded by English writers.

Edwᵈ. Weller

For the Delegates of the Clarendon Press.

Map illustrating the
WELSH WARS OF HENRY AND WILLIAM RUFUS.

Beginning of the Conquest of South Wales. 1093. It seems to have been in the year of Anselm’s appointment, the year of Malcolm’s death, that the conquest of South Wales began in earnest. It seems now to have been for the first time taken up by the King as part of the affairs of his kingdom. But the geography of the campaign shows that a gradual advance must have already begun along the south coast. Our public entries are concerned only with the land stretching nearly due west, from the mountains of Brecknock and Abergavenny to the Land’s End of Saint David’s. This leaves out the sea-land which, with the bold curve of its coast, projects to the south, the land of Morganwg or Glamorgan. Yet it may be taken as a matter of course that this land was not left to be won later than inland Brecheiniog and far distant Dyfed. Legend of the conquest of Glamorgan. The unlucky thing is that, while the conquest of Brecheiniog and Dyfed is recorded in notices which, though meagre enough, are fully trustworthy as far as they go, the conquest of Morganwg, strangely left out in all authentic records, has become the subject of an elaborate romance which has stepped into the empty place of the missing history. The romance is, as usual, the invention of pedigree-makers, working, after their manner, to exalt the glory and increase the antiquity of this and that local family. This is perhaps the meanest of the many forms of falsehood against which the historian has to strive; but it is also one of the strongest and most abiding, and one which is specially strong and abiding on the northern coast of the Bristol Channel.[188]

The legend pieces itself on to that point of the genuine history when the sons of Cedivor were defeated by Rhys ap Tewdwr. Story of Jestin and Einion. A brother of Cedivor, Einion by name, who had been in the service of either the elder or the younger William, and had served the King in his continental wars, now flees to another enemy of Rhys, Jestin son of Gwrgan, described as prince of Gwent and Morganwg.[189] Jestin promises his daughter to Einion with an ample estate, if he can obtain help from England against the common enemy Rhys. This, it is supposed, Einion’s friendship with the King and his knights will enable him to do. Nor was Jestin’s hope disappointed. Story of Robert Fitz-hamon and his knights. No less a man than Robert Fitz-hamon hearkened to the invitation of Einion; he set out at the head of a company of twelve knights and their followers to give help to the prince of Morganwg. Their joint forces overcame Rhys in a battle on the borders of Brecheiniog, and Rhys himself, flying from the field, was taken and beheaded. His kinsmen and followers seem to have been killed or dispersed, and we are told that Robert Fitz-hamon and his companions, being well paid for their services by Jestin, went away towards London. Then Einion demands his reward; but Jestin says that he will not give either his daughter or his land to a traitor. Einion recalls Robert. Then Einion persuades Robert and his companions to come back, and take Jestin’s dominions for themselves. They are of course in no way unwilling; and they are joined by some of Jestin’s Welsh enemies. Jestin is driven out, and his land is partitioned. The rough mountain land is assigned to Einion and his Welsh companions, and Einion also marries Nest the daughter of Jestin. Robert Fitz-hamon and his twelve knights divide the fertile vale of Glamorgan among them. Division of Glamorgan. Each man establishes himself in a lordship and castle, and all do homage to Robert as lord of Glamorgan, holding his chief seat in his castle of Cardiff. Share kept by the children of Jestin. But, while the traitor Einion obtains so sorry a portion, a son of Jestin is admitted to a share in the rich vale, and is allowed to hand on his lordship to his descendants. Another of the family, a grandson of Jestin, Gruffydd son of Rhydderch, refuses to submit, withstands the invaders in arms, contrives to defend Caerleon, and to hand on to his son Caradoc a principality in Gwent, seemingly east of the Usk.

Estimate of the story. Now how much of this story is to be believed? Jestin is a most shadowy being, of whom personally nothing is recorded. But there is evidence enough for the existence of his descendants, and for their retention of an important lordship in Glamorgan.[190] This may make us inclined to put some faith in the account of the transactions between Jestin, Einion, and Robert Fitz-hamon. Elements of truth. The general outline of the tale is perfectly possible, except the very unlikely story that Robert or any other Norman, when once standing in arms on British or any other ground, simply marched out again after receiving a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work. Settlement of Robert Fitz-hamon at Cardiff. That Robert Fitz-hamon did conquer Glamorgan and establish himself at Cardiff cannot be doubted. The settlement of some of his followers is equally historical; but the list of them as given in the legend is untrustworthy, Legendary names in the list. as containing names of families which did not appear in the district till later. That the Normans were invited by a Welsh prince to help him against his enemies, and that they then took his lands to themselves, is quite possible, though the story rests on no certain evidence. That the Norman invaders took the valuable land, the fertile vale, to themselves, and left the rugged mountains to the Britons, is doubtless a true description of the general result, though it is not likely to have been caused by any formal division. The only thing to suggest such a division is the portion which was kept by the descendants of Jestin. But such an anomaly as this last might be accounted for in various ways. The defeat and death of Rhys in Brecheiniog is beyond doubt, and it is not unlikely that Robert Fitz-hamon may have had a hand in it; but at all events the date is utterly wrong.[191] Question of Jestin’s descendants. The most unlikely part of the story is that which describes a grandson of Jestin as founding a principality in that part of Gwent which had already long been an English possession. This story might almost seem to be a confusion with an event of earlier times. We are tempted to think that the Caradoc son of Gruffydd and grandson of Rhydderch, who now settles himself in Gwent, is a mythical repetition of the Caradoc son of Gruffydd and grandson of Rhydderch who destroyed King Eadward’s hunting-seat at Portskewet.[192]

Robert Fitz-hamon; Robert Fitz-hamon, conqueror of Glamorgan—​for of his right to that title there is no doubt—​has his place in the history of this reign and of the early years of the next. other notices of him. We have already heard of him as one of the few faithful among the Normans in England at the time of the great rebellion against the present King.[193] Son or grandson of the famous rebel of Val-ès-dunes,[194] he had an elder brother of his father’s name, who appears, with the title of Dapifer, among the land-owners of eastern England.[195] He holds the lands of Brihtric. He had himself, at one time in the present reign, received those lands which had once been Brihtric’s, which had then been Queen Matilda’s, and which had been afterwards held or claimed by the Ætheling Henry.[196] These made him great in the shires of Gloucester and Somerset, shires from which he might look with a longing eye towards the lands beyond the Severn and the Severn sea. To these, it appears, was added the honour of Gloucester, or rather the lands of Brihtric were made into an honour of Gloucester for his benefit.[197] He marries Earl Roger’s daughter. He married a daughter of Earl Roger, Sibyl by name,[198] and so had the privilege of being brother-in-law to Robert of Bellême. Marriage of his daughter to Robert of Gloucester. His daughter Mabel, heiress of her uncle as well as of her father,[199] became, as we have often had occasion to notice, the wife of King Henry’s son Robert, with whom Gloucester became an earldom. His works at Gloucester and Tewkesbury. He founded the abbey of Tewkesbury, one of the line of great religious houses along the Severn, where his work may still be seen in the vast pillars and mysterious front of his still surviving minster.[200] To the older abbey of Gloucester he was a bountiful benefactor. And the nature of his gifts to these two favoured houses would be almost enough of itself to enable us to set down Robert Fitz-hamon as conqueror of Glamorgan. Grant of Welsh churches to English monasteries. Gloucester and Tewkesbury were enriched at the cost of the churches of Glamorgan, proof enough that he who could thus enrich them had won great possessions in Glamorgan. The holy places of the Briton, Llantwit and Llancarfan, with a crowd of churches of lesser note, supplied the conqueror with an easy means of being bountiful with no cost to himself.[201] So again the mere fact that a man who held such a position as that of Robert Fitz-hamon, one who, though not an earl, ranked by possessions and connexions alongside of earls, plays so small a part as he does in the recorded history of the reign, might almost of itself suggest that he was busy on some enterprise of his own, such as that which legend assigns to him. Conquest of Glamorgan. When the mound by the swift and shallow Taff was crowned by the shell-keep of Cardiff, the progress of invasion was not likely to tarry. The fertile lowlands from the mouth of the Taff to the mouth of the Neath were a natural accession to the lowlands of Gwent which were already won. They were won; they were guarded by a crowd of castles. Building of castles. And the winning of the land, the building of the castles, events about which the genuine local history is strangely silent, were, there is not the slightest reason to doubt, the work of Robert Fitz-hamon and of the men who shared with him in that work.

Distinction between Morganwg and Glamorgan. In strict geographical accuracy the names Morganwg and Glamorgan do not answer to one another.[202] Morganwg in the wider sense is said to have taken in a vast district from the Severn to the Towy, while Glamorgan, said to be called from a prince named Morgan in the tenth century, was less than the present county, taking in only the vale. The distinction between the two was preserved in the style of the lords of “Morgania and Glamorgania.” Extent of Glamorgan. But the country with which we have now to deal may be practically looked on as answering to the present county, somewhat cut short to the west and somewhat lengthened to the east. It takes in the present Monmouthshire between Usk and Rhymny; it does not take in the peninsula of Gower. This last, with the town of Swansea on its isthmus, still forms no part of the diocese of Glamorgan or Llandaff; it marks its formerly distinct character by still belonging to the diocese of Saint David’s. Within this district Robert Fitz-hamon and his successors the Earls of Gloucester held a position like that of the Earl of Chester or the Bishop of Durham. Without bearing their lofty titles, the Lord of Glamorgan practically held, like them, a vassal principality of the crown. Like the other lords marchers, he held most of the powers of kingship within his lordship, and the position of his lordship enabled him to carry out those powers more thoroughly than most of his fellows.[203] Cardiff castle. The chief seat of the lord was at Cardiff on the Taff, where the castle had been, as we have seen, founded in the Conqueror’s day.[204] Bishopric of Llandaff. A little higher up the river was the seat of the bishopric of Glamorgan at Llandaff, with its church, most unlike Le Mans or Durham, nestling by the river at the foot of the hill. Under the chief lord settled several lesser lords, tenants-in-chief, we may almost venture to call them, within Glamorgan, who founded castles and families, and under whom the land was again divided among a crowd of smaller tenants. Some of these lesser lords held within their own lordships powers almost equal to those of the lord of Glamorgan himself. William of London. First perhaps among them was the house founded by William of London, better known under the French form of Londres.[205] The name suggests some thoughts. Who was a William of London in the days of William Rufus? A Norman doubtless, but hardly a Norman of any very lofty rank in his own land. May we follow the analogy of the great bearer of the same name in the next age, and see in him the son of a Rouen citizen settled in London in the very first days of the Conquest, or even in the days of the Confessor? Kidwelly and Ogmore. The house of London spread beyond the bounds of Glamorgan; their chief seat was at Kidwelly; but within the lordship of Fitz-hamon the square keep of Ogmore and the fortified priory of Ewenny, one of the most precious specimens of the Norman minster on the smallest scale, still remain as memorials of their presence. Richard Siward. But the name of Siward—​its first bearer appears in the legend as Richard Siward—​bespeaks English or Danish descent, and we are tempted to see in the colonist of Glamorgan a son or grandson of Thurkill of Warwick.[206] Pagan of Turberville at Coyty. Pagan of Turberville held Coyty, married a Welsh heiress, and became the founder of a house whose feelings became British rather than Norman or English. Aberafan held by the children of Jestin. Aberafan, the fortress at the mouth of the Glamorgan Avon, remained in the hands of the descendants of Jestin, the only native line which, like such Englishmen as Thurkill, Eadward of Salisbury, Coleswegen and Ælfred of Lincoln, abode on its own ground on equal terms with the conquerors. They alone shared the fertile plain with the strangers; the rest of their countrymen, even those who held acknowledged lands and lordships, were confined to the barren hills.[207]