When the Britons had become somewhat settled in their new possessions, they built themselves a city, which (as has been already stated) was called Pengwern. After its destruction under Cynddylan, we find Pengwern inhabited by a King of Powis,—the capital of his kingdom, and ranking among the twenty-eight cities of Britain.
Brochwel Yscithrog, or the tusked, King of Powis, whom the Saxon Chronicle calls the Earlderman of the Britons, retained possession of a great part of Shropshire, and fixed his residence in Pengwern, about 617; his palace being where the ruins of Old St. Chad’s Church now stand.
Eliseg, his sixth descendant, recovered the portion of his “inheritance of Powis” from the Saxons, by the sword, during the reign of the Mercian King Offa, which continued from 755 to 794, but being unable to maintain it, he surrendered by treaty to the Saxons, whereby Pengwern lost the dignity of a metropolis.
Of the state of our town under its native princes we have no information: the arts of civil life, in which the Britons had improved, under their Roman masters, were probably lost during the almost constant warfare of three centuries. This we may reasonably conclude was the case, from the appellation given to it by the new possessors, Scrobbes-byrig, a fenced eminence, but overgrown with shrubs.
Nothing is related of the town during the period it formed a portion of the Mercian territory, though the place doubtless experienced the many revolutions of that kingdom.
In the reign of Alfred, Scrobbes-byrig was numbered among the principal cities of Britain. Ethelred the Unready, having been pursued by the Danes, kept his Christmas here in 1006, and in the next year resigned the government of Mercia unto his son-in-law Ædric, who made this town his occasional his occasional residence.
Under the Saxon monarchs the town must have been of importance to possess the privilege of a mint, which it retained for a considerable period, many coins of which are extant.
Ædric Sylvaticus, or the Forester, in conjunction with Owen Gwynedd, Prince of North Wales, laid siege to the town in 1068; but William the First sending two earls to the relief of the castle, the rebels burned a portion of the town and withdrew: the king however speedily revenged the insult with much slaughter.
The Saxons were removed from all places of trust by the Norman Conqueror, who rewarded his principal adherents with portions of their lands. He conferred upon his kinsman, Roger de Montgomery, the earldom of Shrewsbury, to which he added a grant of the town and ample domains in the county.
In 1138, the nation being divided as to Stephen’s right to the crown, that monarch laid siege to the castle. Fitz Alan, the governor, favouring the Empress Maud, fled, and Stephen, who had conducted the siege in his own person, was so exasperated at the obstinacy of the besieged, who resolutely held out nearly four weeks, that he put ninety-three of them to an ignominious death.