17
In the summer months of 1081, William the Conqueror marched along the south coast of Wales. This was William’s first (and only) visit to the region. The occasion was the death of Caradog ap Gruffudd, the ruler of Morgannwg in the south east. Caradog had fallen in battle against Rhys, the powerful ruler of neighbouring Deheubarth. What now beckoned was a power vacuum, into which William and his Normans happily rushed. William headed for Wales almost as soon as he heard of Caradog’s demise. And he and his entourage progressed through Morgannwg to St Davids in the heartlands of Deheubarth. Welsh sources optimistically gloss this as a ‘pilgrimage’, but there can be no doubt as to the reality. William was here to assert authority, not simply to pray to the local patron saint. Important steps had also been taken to realise William’s control, including the erection of a castle at Cardiff, just downstream from the important bishopric at Llandaff. In the coming years, the extension of Norman lordship into southern Wales stepped up apace. No worthy successor was found for Caradog. And while native power structures lived on in upland pockets for another eighty years, slowly but surely, Welsh Morgannwg was becoming Anglo-Norman Glamorgan.1
At the same time, Bernard de Neufmarché was making similar inroads into Brycheiniog, a minor kingdom to the immediate north of Caradog’s Morgannwg. This lay under the nominal overlordship of Rhys. Bernard himself was a distant kinsman of the Conqueror, who made his way across the Channel either late in William’s reign or early in that of Rufus. Bernard soon settled on the march, marrying a local noblewoman, Nest. As her name suggests, Nest was of mixed heritage. Her father was a Norman, the son of one of those who’d first settled in the West Midlands under the Confessor. Her mother, another Nest, was Welsh, the daughter of Gruffudd ap Llywelyn. A wealthy heiress capable of moving within both Norman and Welsh aristocratic worlds (she sometimes went by the Norman designation, Agnes), Nest was the ideal bride for an ambitious young baron like Bernard.
Thanks to these connections, Bernard swiftly established himself. By 1093, he and his men had occupied Talgarth, the traditional capital of Brycheiniog (now a small market town mid-way between Hay-on-Wye and Brecon). And when Rhys sought to expel Bernard, he was decisively defeated in April 1093. Rhys himself fell in the fray, leaving Brycheiniog in Norman hands – and Deheubarth itself undefended. It was this which inspired contemporary observers to comment that all Wales had fallen. Brycheiniog was now becoming the Norman marcher lordship of Brecon.2
The most significant advances into middle and southern Wales, however, were those made by the earls of Shrewsbury. The first of these, Roger de Montgomery, hailed from Upper Normandy and had been one of the Conqueror’s closest companions since youth. During the Hastings campaign, Roger had been tasked (alongside Roger de Beaumont) with advising and supporting Matilda, who was acting as William’s deputy. Soon he was rewarded for his efforts, receiving lands at Arundel and Chichester along with the new Shrewsbury-based earldom of Shropshire. The latter appointment probably came (like that of Hugh to Chester) in response to the rising of Edwin and Morcar in 1068. A reliable hand was now required in the central march – and William’s old friend Roger was the obvious candidate.
Under Roger, Norman influence extended into neighbouring Powys, which had long been ruled from Gwynedd in the north. In 1072, Roger’s son (and future heir) Hugh led a devastating raid up the Severn Valley. The following year, we hear of attacks on Ceredigion and Dyfed in the south west. Soon, Roger and his men began extending more direct control over their neighbours. Symbolic of the earl’s desire to impose his will on Wales was the new castle erected at Hen Domen, within the old kingdom of Powys. This gave birth to the later town of Montgomery (named after the earls) two miles to the south, where the castle was relocated to in the early thirteenth century.
That Roger was seeking to extend (rather than simply defend) his territory is revealed by the castles he erected running up the Severn from this new base.3 Roger’s men looked set to expand beyond Powys into southern Ceredigion (where he now erected a castle at modern Cardigan) and even into Rhys’s kingdom of Deheubarth. As in the north, there was an element of overreach here. During the rebellions of 1094 to 1098, Cardigan was lost, along with the most recent gains in Ceredigion and Dyfed. Welsh power and authority were also resurgent in the Severn valley; and even the symbolic castle of Montgomery was taken in 1095. Only those regions under secure Norman control in 1093 went on to form the basis of the later March. By contrast, those areas still largely free – Ceredigion, much of Gwynedd and parts of Powys – would come to constitute the Principality of Wales; ‘pure Wales’ (pura Wallia), as it was known.4
Roger died just as these risings were beginning to spread, so it fell to his son and heir, Hugh, to respond. Hugh was not Roger’s eldest son. Like the Conqueror, Roger left his Norman estates to his first born, Robert de Bellême, letting Hugh take charge in the considerably richer (but much more precarious) lordships carved out in England and Wales. Hugh would have to work hard to maintain his position. The Normans were on the back foot when he became earl; and the situation was compounded by Hugh’s own involvement in a rebellion against the king. We next catch sight of Hugh in 1098, when he and his northern namesake re-established Norman influence over much of Gwynedd and Powys. Hugh’s death at the end of this expedition, however, effectively marked the end of the line for his family. Hugh’s elder brother, Robert, succeeded to the earldom. But Robert was soon caught up in struggles between the Norman duke and English king, eventually forfeiting his Welsh and English lands.
The fate of the Montgomerys mirrors that of many other early marcher lords. William fitz Osbern’s earldom of Hereford, established around the same time as those of Roger and Hugh of Chester, had already disappeared by 1075. And if that of Hugh d’Avranches fared better for a time, it too eventually fell to the vagaries of fortune. An initial challenge was posed by Hugh’s death in 1101, which left his son, the young Richard, as heir. Richard had scarcely come of age when disaster struck again: he and his half-brother perished aboard the White Ship in 1120, bringing the dynasty to an abrupt end. Still, the achievements of these early marchers lived on. The most ambitious gains of the 1080s and 1090s may have proved abortive, but capillary expansion into the lowland regions of southern, central and north-eastern Wales changed the face of the region, laying the foundations for the March.
It is important not to present such expansion in terms of a clash of cultures. The Welsh and Normans may often have been at loggerheads; and, in the long run, there would be major socio-political fault lines between the March and Principality. But in practice, relations between the two were pragmatic, running the full gamut from hatred and hostility to friendship and alliance. The same Gruffudd ap Cynan who was ejected from Anglesey by Hugh d’Avranches and Hugh de Montgomery in 1098 returned with Hugh’s support the following year. Indeed, as common as Cambro-Norman conflicts were those between the many independent and semi-independent Welsh rulers. It was these which often first drew the Normans into the region, as in the case of Gruffudd and Gwynedd. Nor were the Anglo-Norman ranks any more disciplined. Men such as Hugh d’Avranches and Roger de Montgomery were competitors as much as co-operators, and violent struggles between marcher lords were no rarity.
As in the Mediterranean, the Normans found a fragmented political world here, in which making inroads was easy but effecting lasting conquests difficult. The landscape also bore similarities, being marked by hills, mountains and valleys. This mitigated the technological advantage the Normans otherwise enjoyed. Only in the lowland areas of the south and north east could their mounted knights make a real impact – not coincidentally, the first regions to fall to them and the heart of the future March. Fortifications were also less effective in such terrain. Wales may boast more castles than any other part of the British Isles, but few of these are to be found on land higher than 600 ft (c.180 m) above sea level, an elevation exceeded by much of central and northern Wales. Geographical and political fragmentation went hand in hand here, and the Normans regularly found themselves facing a bewildering array of local princes.
In the early years, the Normans thus did little more than add an additional strand to the complex web of local Welsh politics. Soon, however, this began to change. In the 1080s, the most important political conflicts were ones between native princes; after 1093, they tended to be between Welsh and Normans. Local rulers continued to compete with one another, but there was now an increasing sense of the need to co-operate against a common foe. On both sides, this new hostility started to find ideological expression. The Welsh turned to the native tradition of history and prophecy – to tales of a time when they (in the guise of the ancient Britons) had dominated the island and to predictions that they would do so again. These found their most famous (if idiosyncratic) expression when refracted through the literary lens of Geoffrey of Monmouth, the ultimate source of the later Arthurian legends. Geoffrey was an Anglo-Norman, but hailed from the march. He happily plundered Welsh legends for his own purpose, introducing the rest of Europe to such figures as Arthur and Merlin. Reworking these materials, Geoffrey’s English contemporaries were soon able to stake their own claims to Arthur’s legacy.5
The most lasting effect of this estrangement is to be found in the cultural chauvinism of the Anglo-Norman marcher lords. In England, the Normans had found a society not dissimilar to that of their native Normandy. They might at times cast aspersions on the local population; but behind such statements lay an understanding of how society operated, and often a grudging respect for the cultural and military achievements of the English. Such common ground was harder to find in Wales. Here the Normans were confronted with a much less hierarchical society, in which power was distributed more equally; peasants were freer and lords more constrained. In absolute terms, Wales was also much poorer. Its hills and mountains did little to generate wealth in an economy heavily dependent on arable farming. Without large agrarian surpluses, there was little call for (and ability to support) the urban settlements which drove economic growth elsewhere. On account of these features, Welsh principalities tended to be smaller and weaker than their English or French counterparts; and when wider-ranging polities were formed (as under Gruffudd ap Llywelyn), they proved fleeting. The cumulative effect of these differences was to make Wales a far stranger place.
These were not the only differences. Welsh society was one in which self-help was the order of the day. Feuding and cattle rustling were common. To Norman eyes, it was a land beyond the rule of law. Later Anglo-Norman observers contrasted the Welsh ‘land of war’ with the English ‘land of peace’. Even in the practice of war, the Welsh stood out. Norman aristocrats did not eschew violence, but they possessed a strong sense of esprit de corps. Fellow nobles might be killed in the heat of battle, but they were not to be butchered while fleeing – and every effort was made to keep casualties to a minimum. The same rules did not apply to Wales, where (as in pre-Conquest England) it was common to enslave, kill and mutilate hostages – and even rival members of the same family – well into the thirteenth century.
The natural response to these differences, particularly when emotions ran high, was condescension. The marcher lords thus became the original ex-pats. Their aim was to exploit or replace the natives, the result often being an uncomfortable apartheid. This served to discourage cultural exchange. The Welsh eventually adopted many of the trappings of western European elite culture, including castles, sealed charters and elements of the chivalric ethos. But they proved far less keen on doing so than their English or Scottish counterparts.6
Much as they did in the Holy Land, the Normans served a higher purpose in Wales (or so they liked to believe). This was a civilising mission, which presumed the inferiority of the local population. It was an effective, but deeply dehumanising calling. It was also one which ensured that such efforts were not restricted to Wales.