CHAPTER III
SEEKING FOR UNITY
The period between the departure of the Romans and the coming of the Normans was one of political chaos. Wales almost immediately became divided, rival kings and chieftains ruling over different parts of the country. To follow in any detail the petty strivings of these men would be pure waste of time. They fought for no principle; neither are there any signs of nobility of purpose or of a wide and enlightened patriotism. Only the faintest outline of the political history of Wales during the period need be given.
Great as were the benefits conferred upon Britain by the Romans, in one respect their rule had been harmful—they had accustomed the subject people to rely upon them for the defence of the island. It was always the policy of Rome to draw soldiers from one province and to send them to garrison another province in some distant part of the far-flung Empire. The martial ardour of the British youth was not quenched; but instead of serving in Britain and so learning to defend their own land, they were sent across the Pyrenees, to the Danube, and into Asia Minor. When the Empire itself began to be torn with political dissensions in the later years of the fourth century, adventurous Roman generals began to aspire to the higher positions. One of these, a Spanish soldier, Maximus by name (in Welsh legend Macsen Wledig), rose against the emperor Gratian. In Britain he collected a large army with which he defeated and slew Gratian. In A.D. 388, however, he was himself overthrown at Aquileia. The great soldier Stilicho was appealed to by the despairing Britons, harassed by foes on every side; but all the forces at his disposal were needed for the more urgent task of protecting the older and more valuable frontiers of the Empire.
For purposes of defence Britain had been divided into two provinces—the north, commanded by a Dux Britannorum, or, as he was called in Welsh, the Gwledig; and the south-east, commanded by the Count of the Saxon Shore. Of these the first is the more important in Welsh history. The most famous holder of the office was Cunedda. His seat of government originally was in the north; but being compelled to give way to the Picts, he led his Brythons into Wales, where he established himself at Deganwy on the Irish Sea. One of the greatest of Cunedda's descendants was Maelgwn Gwynedd. He perceived that if Wales remained composed of a number of petty independent principalities no other fate could possibly await it than to be swallowed up piecemeal by the foreigners. Accordingly, partly by argument and partly by artifice, he persuaded the other chieftains to acknowledge him as the heir to Roman power, and to bow to his overlord ship. This was about the year A.D. 550. Nevertheless the Saxon advance continued. Under their leader Ceawlin they marched up the Severn valley; and, in the year 577, won a great victory at Deorham, the result of which was that they reached the Bristol Channel, thus cutting off the inhabitants of Devon and Cornwall for ever from their kindred in Wales. Some little time later Ethelfrith, king of the Angles, marched against Chester, won a battle there in 613, and established his power as far as the Irish Sea. This meant that a wedge was driven in between the people of Wales and the Welsh people of Strathclyde. Meanwhile all along the border English power was being consolidated under the able and vigorous kings of Mercia; and soon Offa's Dyke was raised to mark the boundary. Thus by the middle of the seventh century Wales had assumed what were to remain to all intents and purposes ever afterwards its geographical limits. Internally the country was forming itself into the principal territorial divisions which remained until superseded by the shire system of Edward I. The extreme north was called Gwynedd. Next came Powys, roughly corresponding to our Montgomeryshire. Modern Cardiganshire was called Ceredigion. Corresponding to Pembrokeshire was Dyfed. Carmarthen represents the ancient Deheubarth, and Glamorgan the ancient Morganwg; while between the Usk and the Wye was the principality of Gwent.
By the close of the eighth century the struggle between Celt and Saxon had abated somewhat of its severity; but no sooner was the strife over than the Danes appeared on the scene, a menace alike to England and to Wales. The most famous of Welsh champions in the fight against the Danes was Rhodri Fawr, whose reign began in 844. In many respects Rhodri resembles his great contemporary Alfred of Wessex. He consolidated his power, built a fleet, and kept the invaders at bay. But after his death in 877 dissension and discord again prevailed. The Danes renewed their attacks; and the famous law-giver Howel Dda proved quite incapable of dealing adequately with the situation. Howel died when things were at their worst, leaving one child, his daughter Angharad. Fortunately this girl was married to a man of commanding personality, Llewelyn ap Seisyll, a good statesman and a capable soldier. He succeeded in bringing the whole of Wales under his sway, in restoring order, and in keeping out both Danish and Saxon invaders. But towards the close of his life, in 1022, the Danes again arrived in renewed strength; and the old king's successor, Griffith ap Llewelyn, became a fugitive, while anarchy prevailed throughout the land. Llewelyn, however, proved to be one of the greatest rulers that Wales has ever had. In 1038 he returned from exile, overcame all resistance, drove back the Mercians, deposed the reigning pretenders, and made himself undisputed ruler of the whole country from the Dee to the Severn. Griffith was a man of wide vision who looked beyond the frontiers of Wales. He perceived that the great enemy of his country was Harold of Wessex; and in order to be strong enough to resist him he married Eadgyth the daughter of Harold's great rival Aelfgar, earl of Mercia. For some time Griffith was successful; but in 1063 Harold organised a campaign on a big scale. He himself marched into Wales from Bristol; while Tostig, with another army, invaded Gwynedd. Wales was harried with fire and sword; and in the midst of it all Griffith was murdered by one of his own discontented followers. But the English conqueror had only just placed the country under the government of Griffith's two brothers, Bleddyn and Rhiwallon, when he was summoned to attend to sterner tasks by the death of Edward the Confessor.
CHAPTER IV
RELIGION, LAW, ETC.
Legends have accumulated freely about the early history of Christianity in Britain. According to one tradition St. Paul himself visited the island. According to another tradition Joseph of Arimathea was the first to bring the glad tidings, as the beautiful ruins of the chapel dedicated to his memory at Glastonbury testify. A third legend tells how Bran, the father of Caratacus, accompanied his captive son to Rome, became a convert to Christianity, then returned to his native land as a missionary, to become known ever after as Bran the Blessed. All, however, that we can say with certainty is that Christianity had made good progress in Britain many years before its adoption as the official religion of the Roman Empire early in the fourth century. We have some detailed information, which is probably authentic, about the lives of the first British martyrs Alban, Aaron, and Julius; and we know that there were British bishops present at the Council of Arles in the year 314. The earliest Christian building that has been discovered is the one at Silchester. Of the progress of the new religion in Wales one must speak with greater caution. Wales had been the last home of the Druids, and the people clung long to their old mythology. Centuries even after the adoption of Christianity the old deities—Llud, Merlin, Ceridwen, Coil, Olwen—shared in popular estimation the fame of the newer saints of the Christian calendar. It is also well known that the Roman soldiers were the men who clung longest to the ancient paganism; and it was by the soldier, rather than by the civil servant or the trader, that the Empire was represented in Wales. We should probably be fairly near the mark if we said that there were no Christian churches in Wales prior to the fifth century.
When Christianity did arrive in Wales it came in the form of monasticism. This was not the type of monasticism which became so famous afterwards under the name Benedictinism. Its pattern was not found at Monte Cassino but in the Egyptian desert, where abbots ruled over a number of associated, but otherwise independent, cells. From Egypt the fashion had travelled to St. Honorat, one of the beautiful isles of Lérins off the French coast, now a favourite resort of visitors from Cannes. There the great St. Patrick himself lived for a time; and a painting on the walls of the monastic refectory commemorates his expulsion of all venomous reptiles from the island. From Lérins the new ideal spread to Arles and the cities of Provence; then up the Rhone valley and to Tours, where it received a warm welcome from St. Martin. It then came to Britain where it struck root and, in the course of the succeeding two centuries, produced a large number of saints, the most celebrated of whom were David, Patrick, and Columba. That the British Church was full of vigour is proved by the rise of Pelagius at the beginning of the fifth century, and the heresy associated with his name; for the presence of heretics in a Church always indicates life, just as orthodoxy indicates apathy and indifference. So firm a hold did this type of Christian life lay upon the Celtic people of the British Isles that, despite the pressure of the Roman Church, it lingered on well into the twelfth century.