Wales

by William Watkin Davies

As in all early legal systems the laws relating to contract in Wales were extremely formal, the validity of an agreement depending entirely upon the strict observance of certain procedure. One curious point is that practically everything had a fixed price. This was the price at which the thing could be bought or sold, and it was the price exacted by way of fine from a person who happened to injure or destroy it. The onus of guaranteeing the good condition of an article, or the good health of an animal, seems to have rested entirely upon the seller, so that the English legal maxim caveat emptor would have to be reversed in ancient Wales.

Using the materials afforded by the Laws of Howel alone, it would be possible to paint a fairly full and accurate picture of life in Wales in the early Middle Ages. In addition to this source, however, we are fortunate in possessing a document of unique interest and great charm, a document which, though certainly later in date, does reflect the life of the country before it had become very greatly altered by Norman modes. This document is the account by Giraldus Cambrensis of his journey round Wales in 1188. In this journey Gerald was the companion of Baldwin Archbishop of Canterbury. The ostensible object of the tour was to invite the princes and people of Wales to join in the Crusade against Saladin; but one cannot but suspect that Baldwin's real object was to establish the authority of Canterbury over the four Welsh sees. In order to do this he wished to celebrate Mass in each of the Welsh cathedrals—Llandaff, St. David's, Bangor, and St. Asaph—and in so doing he visited practically every corner in the country. Gerald is one of the most interesting men of his age. He was born in 1148 in the beautiful castle of Manorbier on the coast of Pembroke, the son of a Norman father and a Welsh mother. He was highly educated after the manner of the age, having studied at Paris, and on one occasion having read a composition of his own before an admiring academic audience at Oxford. In 1188 he was an archdeacon, and the great objects of his life—to acquire for himself the bishopric of St. David's, and to convert that bishopric into an independent archbishopric of Wales—were already formed in his mind.

The pilgrimage of Baldwin and Gerald began at Radnor, where they were officially received by the Lord Rees, one of the ablest of mediæval Welsh rulers. From Radnor they crossed the Wye into Brecon, of which Gerald was Archdeacon. Thence they proceeded eastwards, past Llanthony to Abergavenny. From Abergavenny they went to Usk, from Usk to Caerleon, and from Caerleon to Newport. There they turned to the west, and visited Cardiff, Margam, Swansea, Kidwelly, Carmarthen, Whitland, Haverfordwest; and so to the Vale of Roses at St. David's. They then directed their steps towards the north, following the river Teifi as far as Lampeter. At Strata Florida they spent a night; then proceeding past Llanddewi they came to Llanbadarn where another night was spent. Continuing in a northerly direction they reached the shores of the Dovey, then as now the boundary between North and South Wales. From the boat which carried them across the broad estuary they would behold the great mountains of Gwynedd—Cader Idris towering right above them, and the fine peak of Snowdon blue in the distance; while out to sea they would discern the low outline of Bardsey Island, the burial place of countless pilgrims and saints. They landed at Towyn, followed the coast of Merioneth through Barmouth and Harlech, and then struck across Carnarvonshire from Criccieth to Nevin, where they spent Palm Sunday. Their next stopping-place was Carnarvon, and from that town they went to Bangor. Not content to leave any part of the country unvisited, they next crossed the Menai Straits into Anglesey. Returning to the mainland, they followed the coast to Conway and Deganwy; then they entered the lovely Vale of Clwyd, where they were entertained by the son of Owen Gwynedd in his castle of Rhuddlan. From Rhuddlan they went to St. Asaph, and then on to Chester. They had then reached the most northern point in their itinerary; and so, turning southwards, they visited in succession Oswestry, Shrewsbury, Wenlock, Ludlow, Leominster, and Hereford. The effect of the Archbishop's sermons could not have been particularly profound; for only some three thousand men took the cross, and in fact none of them ever quitted their native land.

But if the journey achieved nothing for the Holy Land, it did much for the modern historian. Gerald was no dry analyst, but a man who knew instinctively how to write. No such vivid descriptions, and no such sketches of character were penned in Britain throughout the Middle Ages. Gerald is a veritable prose Chaucer. He possessed a seeing eye, and was always quick to seize upon a trait of character, and to note an interesting custom. He was also tremendously fond of gossip; and the more marvellous the tale the greater his delight in relating it. His attitude towards the Welsh people was somewhat supercilious; he regarded them with a queer mixture of sympathy and contempt. Nevertheless the picture which he paints is not an unpleasing one. They were a people well advanced in civilization, though decidedly less polished and cultivated than the Normans. Their chief pursuits were pastoral; and for recreation they preferred fighting to aught else, and next to that hunting. They delighted in music and oratory. They were brave, frugal, hospitable, and witty. Their reverence for religion, and for everything which bore the stamp of antiquity, was extreme. But side by side with these virtues were vices of a by no means amiable character. They were careless of truth, unreliable, lacking in persistence, quarrelsome, litigious, and intensely superstitious. In fact the pages of Giraldus are the locus classicus of the "perfidious Welshman" who has been the butt of shallow writers in modern times.

With their love of battle and of sport the mediæval Welsh were a hardy and a comely race. Both men and women wore their hair short; and the men shaved their faces, except for the upper lip. Cleanliness was one of their outstanding characteristics. They indulged freely in the bath, a habit which perhaps had been handed down from Roman times. Of their teeth they took the utmost care, cleaning them several times in the course of a day. Owen M. Edwards has thus admirably summarized what Gerald tells us about the domestic habits of the people: "The great hall rose among the cowsheds and sheepfolds. Its hospitable door was always open. 'No one of this nation ever begs'; the wayfarer lays his arms down at the door and enters as an honoured guest. Water is offered. If he allows his feet to be washed, he means to stay over night; if he refuses, he wishes to partake of a meal only. In each family the harp was played, and this was the chief means of entertaining guests. The principal meal was prepared at sunset. The hall was strewn with fresh rushes. The guests and members of the family sat down in messes of three, and partook of thin oaten cakes, broth, and chopped meat from wooden bowls and trenchers. The host and hostess attended to the wants of every one, and themselves partook last. Towards evening the hall was laid out for sleeping. The beds were arranged around the walls—rushes covered with the coarse cloth manufactured in the country. In the middle of the hall the peat or wood fire burnt night and day."

CHAPTER V
THE FIGHT FOR INDEPENDENCE

The Norman Conquest of 1066 was almost as epoch-making in the history of Wales as it was in that of England. In Wales its effects were as decisive, though very different, as they were in the neighbouring country. In England the first and most important result was the unification of the whole country under a strong central government vested in the person of the king. Prior to the Conquest there had been a steady movement in the direction of unity; and at different times, under a particularly strong monarch, it had almost been achieved. But such unity was at best precarious; and the great earls of Wessex, Mercia, and Northumbria were, to all intents and purposes, independent princes. William the Conqueror, partly from design, partly by accident, broke up these mighty earldoms. This was the beginning of a long struggle between the king and the great feudatories, a struggle which ended with victory for monarchy and centralization. England in consequence became definitely and for ever one country, with one ruler and one law. This unity is precisely what Wales failed to achieve, and the failure is the greatest tragedy in its history. Before the Norman Conquest Wales had been divided into three great divisions—Gwynedd, Powys, and Deheubarth; and although the rulers of the other two divisions yielded a grudging theoretical homage to the lord of Gwynedd, he exercised in practice no authority over them. With the coming of the Normans the supreme test had arrived. The Welsh people were presented, as so many other nations have been presented before and since, with two alternatives: they might sink all differences in the presence of alien enemies, and by forming themselves into one powerful State successfully resist invasion and so preserve their independence; or, in the alternative, remain divided and consequently prove an easy prey to their foes. Before this test the Welsh people failed. The princes showed that they set greater store upon their own glory and dignity than upon the safety of the country as a whole; and time and again they refused to lay aside their rivalries and jealousies in order to present a united front to the enemy. A love of liberty and independence had been born, and they were to inspire a desperate resistance against overwhelming odds on several occasions; but the one condition absolutely essential if independence was to be preserved the Welsh princes were not willing to accept. And so the people of Wales, turning their backs upon this splendid opportunity, began to tread that long road of political failure and futility which made them ultimately a mere appanage of England, and which, but for the efforts of bards and men of letters in the creation of a precious national literature, would have led inevitably to the total extinction of the Welsh nation.

This testing time begins with the Conqueror's famous winter march of 1070 from York to Chester, and ends with the proclamation of Edward II as Prince of Wales at Carnarvon in 1301. In the course of this period of well nigh two centuries and a half there were years of comparative tranquillity; but on the whole it appears to us like one long incessant struggle. It divides itself naturally into two. In the first period we find the Norman barons conducting campaigns in Wales in their own private interest, each one fighting for himself, and taking possession of as much land as he could lay hands on and retain. It was no more a war of England against Wales than the adventure of the Conqueror had been a war of Normandy against England. It was part of the policy of the first Norman kings to direct the embarrassing and overflowing martial energy of their followers into the innocuous channel of the Welsh wars. Whether they destroyed the Welsh, or whether the Welsh destroyed them, was matter of indifference to their royal master. But this period is of short duration; and is followed at once by another, in which we find the King of England himself taking an interest in the conquest of Wales, and not infrequently leading expeditions in person into its mountain recesses. It was the astute Henry I who began to see that the barons who had established themselves in Wales might easily grow so powerful as to be able successfully to defy the royal will. Indeed at one period it did seem as if that fine soldier and politician, Robert of Belesme, Earl of Shrewsbury, would succeed in winning the allegiance of all the Welsh princes, and in establishing a Norman-Welsh kingdom of the West, which would be completely independent of England. In this there would have been nothing impossible, or even unusual. It was the kind of thing that the Normans had been doing in various parts of Europe in the course of the preceding hundred years; and if the Duke of Normandy had succeeded in creating a Norman-English kingdom, why should not the Earl of Shrewsbury succeed in establishing a Norman-Welsh kingdom. The scheme failed through jealousy on the part of the other Norman barons, the Welsh people's love of independence, and the hostility of the Norman and Angevin kings.