Welsh Journals

CYLCHGRAWN LLYFRGELL GENEDLAETHOL CYMRU THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF WALES JOURNAL Volume" II. Summer, 1941 NUMBER 1. BISHOP SULIEN AND HIS FAMILY. When William the Conqueror had completed the reduction of the realm of England, he was able to turn his attention to the Welsh border. His policy was to establish along this front a series of inde- pendent earldoms, and it was thus that Roger Montgomery, his friend and fellow worker, came, in or about 1071, to be earl of Shrewsbury. The strong castle in the loop of the Severn gave ready access to the upper valley of that river ere long the new Montgomery was rising at the site of a notable ford. From this point Arwystli was soon over- run, and, for warriors equipped as the men of earl Roger were, it was then an easy matter to overleap the great mountain barrier of Plyn- limon. In 1073, some two years after the foundation of the earldom, a chronicler, writing very probably at Llanbadarn, puts it on record that the French, so styled by the Welsh annalists because of their language, devastated Ceredigion. The inroad of 1073 was repeated in the following year, and this time, we learn, the captain of the mar- auders was Roger's son, Hugh, now beginning his adventurous career. But these two forays were an indication of what Norman military prowess could achieve, not, as it chanced, a forerunner of immediate conquest. For some twenty years the tide of foreign aggression spent itself upon North Wales the South was left to fight out its own quarrels. By the death of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn, ending a period of Northern domination, room had been made once more for the house of Howel the Good, but it was some time ere Deheubarth settled down under a single ruler of undoubted authority. First, Maredudd ab