8: Griffith Ap Conan and Griffith Ap Rees
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In the battle of Mynydd Carn, a young chief led the shining shields
of the men of Gwynedd. He was Griffith, the son of a prince of the
line of Cunedda and of a sea-rover's daughter. He was mighty of
limb, fair and straight to see, with the blue eyes and flaxen hair of
the ruling Celt. In battle, he was full of fury and passion; in
peace, he was just and wise. His people saw at first that he could
fight a battle; then they found he could rule a country. And it was
he that was to say to the Norman: "Thus far shalt thou come, and no
further."
When Bleddyn died in 1075, Griffith came to Gwynedd, and found that
his father's lands were under new rulers. Robert of Rhuddlan and
Trahaiarn of Arwystli were mighty foes; but Griffith drove both of
them back; and, by his prowess and success in battle, broke the spell
of conquest which kept Gwynedd in bonds. But his enemies attacked
him again from all sides; and, while Hugh the Wolf and Robert of
Rhuddlan were laying Gwynedd waste, Trahaiarn and Griffith met at the
hard-fought battle of Bron yr Erw. Griffith lost the day, and again
became a sea-rover. He sailed to Dyved, and there he met Rees, the
King of Deheubarth, who also was of the line of Cunedda, and had been
driven from his land by the Normans. The two chiefs joined, and they
crushed Trahaiarn at Mynydd Carn. Then they turned against the
Normans.
Rees soon fell in battle, and left two children, Nest and Griffith.
The beauty of Nest and the genius of Rees ap Griffith fill an
important page in the history of their country. Nest became the
mother of the conquerors of Ireland; Rees became the greatest of all
the kings of South Wales.
The Normans found that the Welsh had taken heart. Of their
opponents, they feared three: Griffith ap Conan, Owen of Powys, and
Griffith ap Rees. The kings of England, the two sons of the
Conqueror—red, brutal William and cool, treacherous Henry—had to
come to help their barons.
Griffith ap Conan had a long life of strife and success. In his
struggle with Hugh the Wolf, he was once in The Wolf's prison, and
more than once he had to flee to the sea. But, backed up by the
liberty-loving sons of Snowdon and by his sea-roving kinsmen, he made
Gwynedd strong and prosperous. He drove the Normans from Anglesey;
he attacked and killed Robert of Rhuddlan; he saw the red King of
England himself forced by storm and rain to beat a retreat from
Snowdon. He was loved by his people during his youth of adventure
and battle, and during his old age of safe counsel and love of peace.
His wife Angharad and his son Owen live with him in the memory of his
country. When he died, in 1137, it was said that he had saved his
people, had ruled them justly, and had given them peace.
In the Severn country the princes of Powys were fighting against the
Normans also, especially against the family of Montgomery. The sons
of Bleddyn—Cadogan, Iorwerth, and Meredith—were driving the
invaders from the valley of the Severn, and from Dyved, defeating
their armies in battle, and storming their castles. Sometimes they
would make alliances with them, and defy the King of England. But it
is difficult to follow each of them. The history of one of them,
Owen ap Cadogan, is like a romance. He was brave and handsome, in
love with Nest, and a very firebrand in politics. The army of Henry
I. was too strong for him, and he had to submit. He then became the
friend of the King of England. It was the aim of the princes of
Powys to be free, not only from the Norman, but also from Griffith of
Gwynedd and Griffith of Deheubarth. They were an able and versatile
family; noble and base deeds, revolting crimes and sweet poems, come
in the stirring story of their lives.
What Griffith did in the north, and the sons of Bleddyn in the east,
Griffith ap Rees did in the south; he showed that the Norman army
could be beaten in battle, and that a Norman castle could be taken by
assault. After his father's death he spent much of his youth in
exile or in hiding: sometimes we find him in Ireland, sometimes in
the court of Griffith ap Conan, sometimes with his sister Nest—now
the wife of Gerald, the custodian of Pembroke Castle. But he had one
aim ever before him—to recover his father's kingdom and to make his
people free. Castle after castle rose—at Swansea, Carmarthen,
Llandovery, Cenarth, Aberystwyth—to warn him that the hold of the
Norman on the land was tightening. He came to the forests of the
Towy; his people rallied round him, and his power extended from the
Towy to the Teivy, and from the Teivy to the Dovey. His wife, the
heroic Gwenllian—who died leading her husband's army against the
Normans—was Griffith ap Conan's daughter. The great final battle
between Griffith and the Normans was fought at Cardigan in 1136, in
which the great prince won a memorable victory over the strongest
army the Normans could put in the field. In 1137 he died, and they
said of him that he had shown his people what they ought to do, and
that he had given them strength to do it.
The work of Griffith ap Conan and Griffith ap Rees was this: they
set bounds to the Norman Conquest, and saved Deheubarth and Gwynedd
from the stern rule of the alien. But, though the Norman was not
allowed to bring his stone castle and cruel law, what good he brought
with him was welcomed. The piety of the Norman, his intellectual
curiosity, and his spirit of adventure, conquered in Welsh districts
where his coat of mail and his castle were not seen.
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