old tribute to the English Crown.


[Sidenote: Wales and the Normans]

A far more desperate struggle began when the wave of Norman conquest broke
on the Welsh frontier. A chain of great earldoms, settled by William along
the border-land, at once bridled the old marauding forays. From his county
palatine of Chester Hugh the Wolf harried Flintshire into a desert, Robert
of Belesme in his earldom of Shrewsbury "slew the Welsh," says a
chronicler, "like sheep, conquered them, enslaved them and flayed them with
nails of iron." The earldom of Gloucester curbed Britain along the lower
Severn. Backed by these greater baronies a horde of lesser adventurers
obtained the royal "licence to make conquest on the Welsh." Monmouth and
Abergavenny were seized and guarded by Norman castellans; Bernard of
Neufmarché won the lordship of Brecknock; Roger of Montgomery raised the
town and fortress in Powysland which still preserves his name. A great
rising of the whole people in the days of the second William won back some
of this Norman spoil. The new castle of Montgomery was burned, Brecknock
and Cardigan were cleared of the invaders, and the Welsh poured ravaging
over the English border. Twice the Red King carried his arms fruitlessly
among the mountains against enemies who took refuge in their fastnesses
till famine and hardship drove his broken host into retreat. The wiser
policy of Henry the First fell back on his father's system of gradual
conquest. A new tide of invasion flowed along the southern coast, where the
land was level and open and accessible from the sea. The attack was aided
by strife in the country itself. Robert Fitz-Hamo, the lord of Gloucester,
was summoned to his aid by a Welsh chieftain; and his defeat of Rhys ap
Tewdor, the last prince under whom Southern Wales was united, produced an
anarchy which enabled Robert to land safely on the coast of Glamorgan, to