id="page27"/>Several commotes made a cantrev, many cantrevs made a kingdom, many kingdoms made Wales.

In each commote there were two kinds of people—the free or high-born, and the low-born or serfs.  These may have been the conquering Celt and the conquered Iberian.  It was very difficult for those in the lower class to rise to the higher; but, after passing through the storms of a thousand years, the old dark line of separation was quite lost sight of.

The free family lived in a great house—in the hendre (“old homestead”) in winter, and in the mountain havoty (“summer house”) in summer.  The sides of the house were made of giant forest trees, their boughs meeting at the top and supporting the roof tree.  The fire burnt in the middle of the hall.  Round the walls the family beds were arranged.  The family was governed by the head of the household (penteulu), whose word was law.

The highest family in the land was that of the king.  In his hall all took their own places, his chief of the household, his priest, his steward, his falconer, his judge, his bard, his chief huntsman, his mediciner, and others.  The chief royal residences were Aberffraw in Môn, Mathraval in Powys, and Dynevor in Deheubarth.

Old Welsh law was very unlike the law we obey now.  I cannot tell you much about it in a short book like this, but it is worth noticing that it was very humane.  We do not get in it the savage and vindictive punishments we get in some laws.  I give you some extracts from the old laws of the Welsh.

The king was to be honoured.  According to the laws of Gwynedd, if any one did violence in his presence he had to pay a great fine—a hundred cows, and a white bull with red ears, for every cantrev the king ruled; a rod of gold as long as the king himself, and as thick as his little finger; and a plate of gold, as broad as the king’s face, and as thick as a ploughman’s nail.

The judge, whether of the king’s court or of the courts of his subjects, was to be learned, just, and wise.  Thus, according to the laws of Dyved, was an inexperienced judge to be prepared for his great office; he was to remain in the court in the king’s company, to listen to the pleas of judges who came from the country, to learn the laws and customs that were in force, especially the three main divisions of law, and the value of all tame animals, and of all wild beasts and birds that were of use to men.  He was to listen especially to the difficult cases that were brought to the court, to be solved by the wisdom of the king.  When he had lived thus for a year, he was to be brought to the church by the chaplain; and there, over the relics and before the altar, he swore, in the presence of the great officers of the king’s court, that he would never knowingly do injustice, for money or love or hate.  He is then brought to the king, and the officers tell the king that he has taken the solemn oath.  Then the king accepts him as a judge, and gives him his place.  When he leaves, the king gives him a golden chessboard, and the queen gold rings, and these he is never to part with.

I will tell you about one other officer—the falconer.  Falconry was the favourite pastime of the kings and nobles of the time; indeed, everybody found it very exciting to watch the long struggle in the air between the trained falcon and its prey, as each bird tried every skill of wing and talon that it knew.  The falconer was to drink very sparingly in the king’s hall, for fear the falcons might suffer; and his lodging was to be in the king’s barn, not in the king’s hall, lest the smoke from the great fire-place should dim the falcon’s sight.

VII
THE NORMANS

On the death of Griffith ap Llywelyn, many princes tried to become supreme.  Bleddyn of Powys, a good and merciful prince, became the most important.

In January 1070, when the snow lay thick on the mountains, William, the Norman Conqueror, appeared at Chester with an army.  He had defeated and killed Harold, the conqueror of Griffith ap Llywelyn, in 1066; he had crushed the power of the Mercian allies of Bleddyn; he had struck terror into the wild north, and England lay at his feet.

He turned back from Chester, but he placed on the borders a number of barons who were to conquer Wales, as he had conquered England.  They had a measure of his ability, of his energy, and of his ambition.

The two great Norman traits were wisdom and courage; but the one was often mere cunning, and the other brutal ferocity.  But no one like the Norman had yet appeared in Wales—no one with a vision so clear, or with so hard a grip.  A hard, worldly, tenacious, calculating race they were; and they turned their faces resolutely towards Wales.

From England, Wales can be entered and attacked along three valleys—along the Dee, the Severn, and the Wye.  At Chester, Hugh of Avranches, called “The Wolf,” placed himself.  From its walls he could look over and covet the Welsh hills, as he could have looked over the Breton hills from Avranches.  He loved war and the chase: he despised industry, he cared not for religion; he was a man of strong passions, but he was generous, and he respected worth of character.  One of his followers, Robert, had all his vices and few of his virtues.  It was he who extended the dominions of the Earl of Chester along the north coast to the Clwyd, where he built a castle at Rhuddlan; and thence on to the valley of the Conway, where he built a castle at Deganwy.  The cruelty of Robert shocked even the Normans of his time.  He even set foot in Anglesey, which looked temptingly near from Deganwy, and built a castle at Aberlleiniog.

At Shrewsbury, where the Severn, after leaving the mountains of Wales, turns to the south, Roger of Montgomery was placed, with his wife Mabel, an energetic little woman, hated and feared by all.  Roger himself, while ever ready to fight, preferred to get what he wanted by persuasion; he was not less cruel than Hugh of Chester, but he was less fond of war.  He and his sons pushed their way up the Severn, and built a castle at Montgomery.

To Hereford, on the Wye, William Fitz-Osbern came.  He was the ablest, perhaps, of all the followers of the Conqueror.  He entered Wales; he saw it from the Wye to the sea, and he thought it was not large enough, and that it was too far from the political life of the time.  So he went back to Normandy, but he left his sons William and Roger behind him.  William had his father’s wisdom.  Roger had his father’s recklessness in action; he rebelled against his own king, and found himself in prison.  The king sent him, on the day of Christ’s Passion, a robe of silk and rarest ermine.  The caged baron made a roaring fire, and cast the robe into it.  “By the light of God,” said William the Conqueror, for that was his wicked oath, “he shall never leave his prison.”

But another Norman, Bernard of Neufmarché, came to take his place.  He built his castle at Brecon, and defeated and killed Rees, the King of Deheubarth; and, with great energy, he took possession of the upper valleys of the Wye and the Usk.

Further south William the Conqueror himself came to Cardiff, and possibly built a castle.  The Norman conquest of the south coast of Wales was exceedingly rapid, and castle after castle rose to mark the new victorious advances—Coety, Cenfig, Neath, Kidwelly, Pembroke, Newport,