have believed it would have a civilizing effect. The town became a centre of pilgrimage, and the residents could not pick and choose who should be allowed access to the shrine of St David. Two visits here were the equivalent of one to Rome, and naturally the English were among the most frequent visitors.
Henry’s policy towards Wales, copied by the more effective English kings and a strategy that eventually worked well for Edward I, was ‘divide and rule’. When he saw an opportunity to interfere between two Welsh princes who were at one another’s throats, Henry would take it. Yet his incursions into Wales were designed to inspire awe and fear in the natives, rather than to take administrative control. He had no use for Wales as another region to govern; he merely wished to ensure its continued subservience.
In 1138, Henry’s successor Stephen created the earldom of Pembroke for his retainer Gilbert de Clare, making it clear that he regarded Welsh estates as being in the gift of the king of England, regardless of what the locals might have to say about the matter. Stephen, however, was already engulfed in civil war, as Henry’s legitimate daughter, Matilda, tried to regain the kingdom her father had willed to her. The king had no time to spare for the conquest of Wales, and this was one of the keys to Owain Gwynedd’s ability to rule north Wales, virtually unchallenged, for so long, and to expand southwards into Ceredigion, taking control of it back from the Normans. Owain was the most notable of several native rulers who took advantage of ‘the Anarchy’ to strengthen their own positions.
During this twelve-year period of ‘anarchy’, no one was quite sure who ruled England. This is not to say that the Welsh took no part in the conflict. One knight who had a major role in the civil war was Robert of Gloucester (d.1147), also called Robert of Caen, whom some have identified as the child of Henry I by Nest though it is generally believed that his mother was Sybilla Corbet. As lord of Glamorgan, Robert of Gloucester had his power base in south Wales, and it was to him that the care of the deposed duke of Normandy, Robert Curthose (elder brother of Henry I), had fallen; Curthose was a prisoner in Cardiff Castle from 1126 until his death in 1134. At Cardiff Robert of Gloucester went so far as to mint coins in the name of his half-sister Matilda, whose claim to the throne he loyally supported. Robert had achieved peace in his part of the Marches by making treaties with local Welsh rulers, and was well regarded, for a Norman. He had many Welshmen in his service, as did the earl of Chester, Ranulf, when they jointly defeated King Stephen at Lincoln in 1141.
Henry II, grandson of Henry I, repeated the attempt at Welsh dominance in 1157, to be met with resistance by Owain Gwynedd, that most able of Welsh leaders. The two reached an uneasy settlement by which Henry gained Rhuddlan and some other territories and undertook not to trouble Owain again. The peace did not last, and Owain took back what he had lost in the course of the next decade. In 1165, at the Battle of Crogen near Chirk, Welsh chroniclers proudly report that Henry, accompanied by ‘a host beyond number of the picked warriors of England and Normandy and Flanders and Gascony and Anjou and all the North and Scotland’, was defeated by an alliance of princes that included both Owain Gwynedd and Owain Cyfeiliog. Henry’s last attempt at invasion was defeated by the Welsh weather.
In 1174, however, Owain’s son, Dafydd, married Henry’s half-sister, Emma of Anjou, in an attempt to bring the royal houses closer together and prevent further bloodshed. Emma was illegitimate, the daughter of Geoffrey of Anjou by a mistress. For the Welsh, illegitimacy held no stigma. As far as the royal court of Gwynedd was concerned, Emma was a princess. Henry’s son, King John, would later repeat the experiment, marrying his own illegitimate daughter to Dafydd’s nephew.
Whatever the relationship between Henry II and Wales, he needed to travel through the country in order to reach Ireland, another independent land on which the Norman kings had designs. Henry embarked at the port now known as Milford Haven in 1172. An advance army had already prepared the ground, including many Welshmen; they were led by Richard de Clare, nominal earl of Pembroke, known to history as ‘Strongbow’.
It was in 1188, during the latter part of Henry II’s reign, that Gerald of Wales (alternatively called ‘Giraldus Cambrensis’ in Latin and ‘Gerallt Cymro’ in Welsh) made his famous journey through the land. He travelled in the entourage of the archbishop of Canterbury, Baldwin of Exeter, on a campaign to recruit men for the Third Crusade. Gerald was a clergyman, of mixed Norman and Welsh blood. His grandmother was the notorious Nest, princess of Deheubarth and former mistress of King Henry I. Nest was sometimes known as ‘the Helen of Wales’ because of her ability to stir men to violence. The de Clares had obtained some of their west Wales lands from Henry I, when that king dispossessed his former allies, Cadwgan ap Bleddyn (1051–1111) and his son Owain, as a result of Owain’s action in running off with Nest, thus shaming her Norman husband. Owain ap Cadwgan continued in the king’s service, but this did not prevent Gerald of Windsor from pursuing him to his death in 1116. Angharad, Gerald’s daughter by Nest, was the mother of Gerald of Wales.
Although he could claim royal blood on his Welsh side, Gerald was unsuccessful in his attempts to achieve the status of bishop. His rejection seems to have been based on his very Welshness, leading to his being considered potentially unreliable as an enforcer of the archbishop of Canterbury’s edicts. Gerald was, however, close to the young king, serving Henry II as chaplain; and he was the ideal choice as a companion and interpreter for Baldwin. He had indeed already accompanied Henry’s son, Prince John, to Ireland in 1185.
The new archbishop of York, enthroned in 1189, was Geoffrey, an illegitimate son of the king. Gerald quickly became one of Geoffrey’s staunchest supporters. When the archbishop’s half-brother took the throne as King Richard I, both Geoffrey and Gerald fell out of favour. Gerald became more outspoken in his criticisms of secular authority, and his former relationship with Prince John did not enable him to obtain high office in the church even when John became king in 1199.
Although individual Englishmen were free to come and go within Wales, the country was considered dangerous in parts. Hills, forests and rivers were all hazards, and the language barrier did not help. In his Descriptio Cambriae, written in 1194, Gerald recommends to his monarch that the final conquest of Wales (which Henry II had recognized as being still a long way off) should be attempted only with men who knew the terrain. Only the Marches could provide such men, he warns, and even they would have difficulty with the guerrilla tactics employed by the Welsh. It would be better for the king of England to bide his time and rely on the continual internal divisions of the Welsh princes to weaken the opposition.
The stand-off continued into the reign of King John, who formed an alliance with Owain Gwynedd’s grandson, Llywelyn Fawr (‘the Great’). As in the previous generation, the alliance was cemented through marriage to an illegitimate princess, this time Joan, called Siwan by the Welsh. Joan’s career as princess of Gwynedd is well known. Despite the period she spent under house-arrest after being caught with a lover, William de Braose, there is written evidence that she did, in the course of her life, succeed in helping to keep the peace between her husband and her father, and later between Llywelyn and her half-brother, King Henry III. Most importantly, she left a legitimate son who could succeed Llywelyn as prince.
The man to whom the earldom of Pembroke had passed, after the death of the great Marcher lord Richard de Clare, was William Marshal, de Braose’s father-in-law. Marshal was a renowned soldier, called by some ‘the greatest knight that ever lived’. Through his 1189 marriage to Isabel, the daughter of ‘Strongbow’, William Marshal came into possession of vast estates scattered through Ireland (where County Clare is named after his wife’s family), England (where the village of Clare in Suffolk was named after their place of origin) and south Wales. Marshal played a leading role in the defeat of Rhys ap Gruffydd in 1192, and ten years later was made custodian of Cardigan castle by King John. He went on to appropriate the lordship of Emlyn from Maelgwn ap Rhys (c.1170–1230). In 1212, at the age of nearly 70, Marshal was still a leading figure in the campaign against the Welsh, this time joining the king to fight against the up-and-coming Welsh leader, Llywelyn Fawr. That he bore no personal hostility towards the Welsh is evinced by his voluntary return of two castles
