Chapter XI - THE WELSH MARCH

Summary

Like the English, the Welsh in the Dark Ages were divided into a number of small kingdoms. At times during the ninth and tenth centuries, two or more of the kingdoms had been brought together under a single rule, but the details are obscure. In the eleventh century Gruffydd ap Llewellyn of Gwynedd succeeded in uniting the various divisions. Thus strengthened, he faced the common enemy to the east, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, under the year 1052, tells how ‘Griffin the Welsh king’ plundered western Herefordshire almost as far as Leominster. To Gruffydd must also be attributed many of the wasted villages that, in 1066, stretched from Rhuddlan southwards towards Gwent (Fig. 84). The Herefordshire folios (181) speak of the ravaging of Archenfield by ‘Grifin and Blein’ (see pp. 252–3), and we also hear of his control of Gwent (162). After further warfare along the Herefordshire border, an attempt at conciliation was made by a group of English notables, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records, under the year 1056, how Gruffydd swore to be a faithful under-king to Edward the Confessor. We do not know whether an entry in the Cheshire folios (263) refers to this time. It says that King Edward gave Gruffydd all the land beyond the river Dee (tota terra iacebat trans aquam quae De vocatur), and there is specific reference in another entry to his manor of Bistre (269).