Welsh Journals

AN ARISTOCRACY IN DECLINE: THE NATIVE WELSH LORDS AFTER THE EDWARDIAN CONQUEST1 THE handful of Welsh lords descended from royal houses and surviving the Edwardian Conquest continued to rule in what little was left of their ancestral lands and still enjoyed many of their traditional rights. Wales had in the past been a land of many kings, each one supreme in his own small territory and equal in status to his neighbours, but from the ninth century there had been attempts (particularly by the dynasty of Gwynedd) to impose some kind of unity. It was not an easy task, for no king was willing to submit himself to one of his neighbours of his own free will, and the agents of unification were of necessity the sword and the marriage contract. Moreover, the rule of partible succession meant that however hard a ruler might strive to build up a united realm it would be divided among his sons at his death and the process would have to start all over again. Nevertheless, the ambition to create a united Wales was never forgotten. Once the Norman advance had been halted in the twelfth century, the royal house of Gwynedd emerged as the most powerful and ambitious of the Welsh dynasties and it was from this direction that the final attempt to create a united Wales was to come. Since the ninth century Welsh rulers had from time to time been prepared to accept some sort of vague English overlordship, and on several occasions in the twelfth century they did homage and fealty to the king.2 The princes of Gwynedd seem to have seen the significance of this. If Welsh lords could be bound to the king of England by ties of homage and fealty, the same ties could just as easily bind them to the prince of Gwynedd. For the next century, the princes worked to unite Wales through the feudal bond. Rulers would be persuaded or forced to do homage and fealty to the prince, accepting him as their feudal overlord, while he in turn would do homage and fealty to the king of England on behalf of them all. In the words of Sir Maurice Powicke, 'the prince of Gwynedd was to be the keystone in an arch of kings'.3 1 This is an extended and revised version of a paper read at Gregynog in May 1968. 1 am grateful to Mr. Keith Williams-Jones and to Dr. Ralph A. Griffiths for reading it in manuscript and for their comments; the responsibility for the views expressed and for any errors is entirely mine. Relations between Welsh rulers are discussed by Glyn Roberts, 'Wales on the Eve of the Norman Conquest', in A. J. Roderick (ed.). Wales through the Ages, I (1959), 79-80. 3 F. M. Powicke. The Thirteenth Century (1953), p. 386. For discussion of the Gwynedd policy, see Powicke, loc. cit.; T. Jones Pierce, 'The Age of the Princes', in D. M. Lloyd (ed.), The Historical Basis of Welsh Nationalism (1950), pp. 50-53, and J. G. Edwards (ed.). Littere Wallie (1940), p. xliv.