"That is the title by which I hold my lands."
Edward however, did not lose time. David, the younger brother of Llewellyn, had been deprived by the latter of all his property; the King of England conferred many favors upon him, and the prince, out of gratitude, summoned all his partisans under the standard of England. Hostilities began in the summer; Edward entered the enemy's territory, while his fleet took possession of the Isle of Anglesey, and, driving Llewellyn from castle to castle, from retreat to retreat, he reduced him in a short time to famine in the depths of the forests. The Welsh prince was obliged to surrender, hard as were the conditions which were imposed upon him. But Edward was generous, although severe; he remitted his demands one by one, and ended by consenting to the marriage of Llewellyn with Eleanor of Montfort, daughter of the Earl of Leicester; she had for some time been affianced to him, and had been captured at sea in the preceding year, when she was proceeding to Wales. David had received a large gift of property. Edward withdrew his armies, leaving in Wales only some soldiers in the castles, and the Chief Justice, Roger Clifford, who was entrusted with the government of the new conquest.
The King of England had not taken into account the patriotic spirit which endeared their national independence to the Welsh people. In vain had he raised David to the rank of earl; in vain had he given him an English wife; as soon as the Welsh prince found himself in his mountains again, he remembered only that his country was formerly free and that he had contributed towards reducing it to subjection. The civil and military measures ordained by Edward were obnoxious to the people; the highways which were opened up across forests, the executions of criminals for crimes which had formerly been punished by fines, according to the Welsh laws; the encroachments of the king's officers upon the rights of the Welsh nobility; so many grievances easily furnished pretexts for David's new resolve. He persuaded his brother to break all his engagements with Edward. An old prophecy of Merlin began to circulate again throughout the mountains; it was to the effect that the Prince of Wales would be crowned in London when the money in that town should be round, and it was rumored in Wales that it was forbidden to cut in halves the new coin which had recently been struck in England, as had hitherto been the practice. The day of victory seemed at length to have arrived.
It was on Palm Sunday, 1282; dark night had come on, and a violent storm was raging in the forests. David suddenly attacked Hawarden Castle, where the chief justicier resided. The latter was seized in his bed, wounded, and dragged into the mountains. All the country rose; Llewellyn joined his brother and laid siege to the castles of Flint and Rhuddlam; the English settlers were everywhere murdered. All Wales was up in arms when tidings of the insurrection reached the king.
Edward pretended not to believe in the magnitude of the rebellion; but he adopted active measures to repress it. He soon arrived in the mountains; the autumn had come, the bad weather was beginning, and the English suffered greatly from the inclemency of the climate. A portion of the army who tried to make use of the temporary bridge uniting the Isle of Anglesey to the mainland, were attacked by the insurgents and completely destroyed. Edward himself was several times obliged to retreat. Llewellyn, emboldened by his success, entrusted David to defend the defiles of the mountains, and marched to meet the king, who had gathered large forces near Carmarthen. A detachment encountered the Welsh prince in a farm where he had slept, and, without knowing him, an English knight engaged in a combat with him. Llewellyn was killed; the struggle was then carried on between the English and the Welsh who had come to join their prince. When the dead were despoiled after the battle, Llewellyn was recognized, and his head was sent to Edward in token of victory. David still held his position in the mountains; at length he was betrayed, delivered up to the English, and imprisoned in Durham Castle with his wife and children. In the month of September, 1283, the English Parliament condemned him to death as guilty of high treason, while Edward promised a new prince to the country which he had just subdued. Queen Eleanor was at Carnarvon Castle, waiting to be delivered of a child; she gave birth to a son on the 25th of April, 1284. The child was immediately called Edward Prince of Wales; and when he found himself heir presumptive to the throne, by the death of his elder brother Alphonsus, his title became the appanage of the eldest son of the King of England, thus perpetuating the remembrance of the definitive subjection of the Welsh people and the feeble consolation which the conqueror had offered to them.
A few years of peace followed the conquest of Wales. The king had been recalled on the Continent to serve as an arbitrator on the claims of the houses of France, of Arragon, and of Anjou to the crown of Sicily. His English subjects were clamoring for his return, and they ended by refusing him the necessary subsidies. The king then returned to England; but a great misfortune awaited him; Queen Eleanor died on the 29th of November, 1292. With her disappeared the softening influence which had modified the haughty character and ambitious views of the king; and just at this moment a great temptation offered itself to him.
The King of Scotland, Alexander III., had died in 1286, leaving no other heir than his granddaughter Margaret, princess of Norway. She was still a child, and her father had kept her for some time past with him. She at length sailed for Scotland in 1290; but she died during the passage, and Scotland became a prey to all the evils of a contested succession. Thirteen noblemen, descendants of members of the royal family, set up claims to the throne simultaneously; but two of them had prospects very much better than those of any of the others: these were John Baliol and Robert Bruce, grandson and son of two elder daughters of David, earl of Huntingdon, the younger brother of King William the Lion; but no one possessed claims sufficiently strong to impress the people in their favor. The Scotch, troubled by the prospect of anarchy without result, sent an embassy to King Edward to ask him to act as arbitrator in this serious aspect of affairs, and to decide who should be King of Scotland.