“The general constitutional effect was that the Principality was considered a distinct parcel of the Kingdom of England, ruled, however, by English laws, save so far as these were not modified by the provisions of the statute.”[3]
I have already told the story of Llewelyn, the last of the Welsh princes, and of his treacherous and unprincipled brother David, but I may here enter into fuller particulars of the end of David.
He had been a fugitive with his wife and children in the forests and mountains, hunted from place to place, with a few tenants accompanying him, grumbling at short commons and wretched quarters, casting sidelong glances at the English, and wondering whether they would not secure better meals and more comfortable lodgings if they turned against their lord and prince. And this desire took effect; for their own base ends they betrayed him to the English king. With the same measure with which he had dealt with his brother Llewelyn, it was meted to him. Delivered over to the hereditary enemies of his race by men of his own household, tongue, and blood, he was brought before Edward at Rhuddlan, and with him were handed over the crown of King Arthur and the rest of the regalia of Wales.
On the last day of September, 1283, Edward held a parliament at Shrewsbury for the trial of David, who was condemned to be hanged, cut down whilst still breathing, his belly sliced open, and his still palpitating heart plucked out. Then his body was chopped in pieces, and the parts distributed for exhibition in certain English towns. His head, forwarded to London, was placed on a spike above the gatehouse of the Tower. His steward, “faithful found, among the faithless faithful only he,” was also convicted of high treason, and was condemned to be torn to pieces by horses.
Edward, the second son of the King, was born at Carnarvon on April 25th, 1284, and the story goes that King Edward, then at Rhuddlan, having assembled there the principal men of Wales, announced to them that as the royal race of Cunedda was extinct, he would give to them a Prince of Wales who could speak no word of English, and who was a native of the Principality. The chieftains replied that this they would accept, and to him they would yield obedience. Thereupon Edward presented to them his infant son, recently born at Carnarvon.
By the death of Alphonso, Edward’s eldest son, at Windsor, this Prince Edward became heir-apparent to the throne.
Some of the jewels of the Welsh regalia were used for the decoration of the shrine of Edward the Confessor at Westminster.
In 1399 Richard II. was prisoner at Rhuddlan on his way to Flint. In 1646 it was captured by General Mytton from the Royalists, and was dismantled by order of the Parliament, and has remained a ruin since.
