CHAPTER XXIV.
EDWARD I.—Continued.
How King Edward went to war with the Welsh; how Prince Llewellyn and his brother David were put to death for defending their country; how he made war upon Scotland, and put Sir William Wallace to death; and how ambition was the cause of his cruelty.
I am afraid I must not praise King Edward so much, now we are come to his wars, for he was twice very cruel indeed.
You remember that the old Britons were driven by the Angles and Saxons out of England into different countries, and that most of them went to live among the mountains in Wales, where the conquerors could not easily get to them.
These Britons chose princes of their own: one to reign over them in North Wales, one in South Wales, and one in Powys, which was between the two. Many of these princes were very good rulers of the country, and protected it from all enemies, and improved the people very much, by making good laws.
I am sorry to say, however, that the princes of the different parts of Wales sometimes quarrelled with one another, and very often quarrelled with the English who lived nearest to Wales. They did so while Edward was King of England, and he went to war with them, as he said only to make their prince come to him and do him the homage that the Welsh princes had done in former times. But, finding that he could very easily conquer the first of them with whom he fought, he determined to get all Wales for himself, by degrees, and to join it forever with England.
Llewellyn was the last real Prince of Wales before it was taken by the English kings. He loved a young lady called Elinor de Montfort very much, for she was good and beautiful, and he intended to marry her. She was the daughter of the brave Simon de Montfort who fought against Henry the Third. She had been staying a little while in France, and was coming to Wales in a ship, and was to be married to Llewellyn as soon as she arrived. Unhappily, King Edward heard of this, and sent a stronger ship to sea, and took the young lady prisoner, and shut her up in one of his castles for more than two years, and would not let the prince see her until he should do him homage.
Llewellyn fought a great many battles to defend his native land. At last he had no part of Wales left but Snowdon and the country round it. Then he yielded to Edward, who gave him Elinor de Montfort to wife. But he soon began to fight again, hoping that he might by degrees get the better of the English, but at the last he was killed by a soldier, who cut off his head and took it to King Edward, who was then at Shrewsbury.
Edward was so glad to find that Llewellyn was dead, that he forgot how unbecoming it is for really a brave man to be revengeful, especially after an enemy as brave as himself is dead; and I am sorry and ashamed to say that, instead of sending the head of Llewellyn to his relations, to be buried with his body, he sent it to London, and had it stuck up over one of the gates of the city with a wreath of willow on it, because the Welsh people used to love to crown their princes with willow.
Soon after the death of Llewellyn, his brother David was made prisoner by the English. Edward treated him with still greater cruelty than he had treated Llewellyn, and, after his head was cut off, set it up over the same gate with his brother’s.
