Mediæval Wales / Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures

III

GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS

GERALD the Welshman was certainly one of the most remarkable men of letters that the Middle Ages produced—remarkable not merely for the great range of his knowledge, or the voluminousness of his writings, but for the originality of his views and variety of his interests.

In this lecture I intend to give first a general account of his life, and then deal in more detail with his Itinerary through Wales.

We know a great deal about Gerald; he was interested in many things, and not least in himself; he was not troubled by that shrinking sense of his own worthlessness—with the feeling of being not an individual, but a part of a community—which is so characteristic of mediæval writers, and led them often to omit to mention their own names.

Gerald was born about 1146, at Manorbier, in Pembroke—“the most delightful spot in Wales.” His ancestry is interesting. His father was a Norman noble, holding of Glamorgan, William de Barri by name; his mother was the daughter of another Norman noble, Gerald de Windsor of Pembroke, and the famous Nest, daughter of Rhys ap Tudor, the Helen of Wales. He was cousin of the Fitzgeralds who played so important a part in the conquest of Ireland, and connected with Richard Strongbow and the great house of Clare. He thus “moved in the highest circles,” and lived in an atmosphere of great deeds and great traditions.

He was from the first marked out by his own inclinations for an ecclesiastical career. He tells us that when he and his elder brothers used to play as children on the sands of Manorbier his brothers built castles but he always built churches. He received an elementary education from the chaplains of his uncle, the Bishop of St. David’s; he seems to have been slow at learning when a child, and his tutors goaded him on not by the birch rod, but by sarcasm—by declining “Stultus, stultior, stultissimus.” His higher education was not obtained in Wales, and it is singular that he does not notice any place of learning in Wales in all his writings. He studied at Gloucester, and then at Paris, the greatest mediæval university. We have it on his own authority that he was a model student. “So entirely devoted was he to study, having in his acts and in his mind, no sort of levity or coarseness, that whenever the Masters of Arts wished to select a pattern from among the good scholars, they would name Gerald before all others.” Later he lectured at Paris on canon law and theology; his lectures, he tells us, were very popular. He returned thence in 1172, two years after the martyrdom of Thomas Becket, whose example and struggle for the rights of the Church made a deep and lasting impression on him. Gerald soon obtained preferment: he held three livings in Pembroke, one in Oxfordshire, and canonries at Hereford and St. David’s. His energy soon made itself felt. He excommunicated the Welshmen and Flemings who would not pay tithes; and then attacked the sins of the clergy. Most of the Welsh clergy were married, contrary to the laws of the Church. Gerald hated a married priest even more than he hated a monk. The Welsh priest, he says, was wont to keep in his house a female (focaria) “to light his fire but extinguish his virtue.” “How can such a man practice frugality and self-denial with a house full of brawling brats, and a woman for ever extracting money to buy costly robes with long skirts trailing in the dust?” Gerald hated women—the origin of all evil since the world began: observing that in birds of prey the females are stronger than the males, he remarks that this signifies “the female sex is more resolute in all evil than the male.” Among the married clergy he attacked was the Archdeacon of Brecon; and the old man, being forced to choose between his wife and his archdeaconry, preferred his wife. Gerald was made Archdeacon of Brecon. In later years he had qualms of conscience about the part he took in this business.

Between 1180 and 1194 he was often at Court and employed in the king’s affairs. Henry II. selected him as a suitable person to accompany the young prince John to Ireland in 1185, and the result was his two great works—“The Topography,” and “The Conquest of Ireland,” which are the chief and almost the only authorities for Irish history in the Middle Ages. The former work he read publicly at Oxford on his return; it was a great occasion: we must tell it in his own words. “When the work was finished, not wishing to hide his candle under a bushel, but wishing to place it in a candlestick, so that it might give light, he resolved to read it before a vast audience at Oxford, where scholars in England chiefly flourished and excelled in scholarship. And as there were three divisions in the work, and each division occupied a day, the readings lasted three successive days. On the first day, he received and entertained at his lodgings all the poor people of the town; on the second, all the doctors of the different faculties and their best students; and on the third, the rest of the students and the chief men of the town. It was a costly and noble act; and neither present nor past time can furnish any record of such a solemnity having ever taken place in England.”

In 1188 he accompanied the Archbishop of Canterbury in his tour through Wales to preach the Third Crusade. With this we shall deal later.

He was abroad with Henry II. at the time of the old king’s death, and has left a valuable account of his later years in the book “On the Instruction of Princes.” His connection with the Court gave him opportunities for studying the great characters of the time at close quarters, and we have from his pen graphic sketches of many of them. Take this description of Henry II.: “He had a reddish complexion, rather dark, and a large round head. His eyes were gray, bloodshot, and flashed in anger. He had a fiery face; his voice was shaky; he had a deep chest, and long muscular arms, his great round head hanging somewhat forward. He had an enormous belly—though not from gross feeding. Indeed he was temperate in all things, for a prince. To keep down his corpulency, he took immoderate exercise. Even in times of peace he took no rest—hunting furiously all day, and on his return home in the evening seldom sitting down either before or after supper; for in spite of his own fatigue, he would weary out the Court by being constantly on his legs.”

The whole is very interesting and full of life. It occurs in the “Conquest of Ireland,” and is quoted in several of his other works. Gerald’s favourite author was Gerald of Barry, Archdeacon of Brecon.

The next important episode in his life was the struggle for St. David’s (1198-1203). It was really a fight for the independence of the Welsh Church from England and its direct dependence on the Pope. Gerald was elected bishop by the canons of St. David’s, in opposition to the will of King John (whose consent was necessary) and of Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury (whose rights as metropolitan were attacked). Gerald hastened off to Rome to get the Pope’s support, taking with him the most precious offering that he could think of—six of his own books; for Rome had a bad name for bribery—and who could resist such a bribe? But he found it advisable to supplement his books by other promises, especially by the offer to the Pope of tithes from Wales.

The Pope at this time was Innocent III.—the greatest of all the Popes—who brought kings and nations under his feet and held despotic sway over the Universal Church, and stamped out heresy in blood. In the references to him in Gerald’s works he appears in much more human guise. We see him after supper unbending and laughing at Gerald’s anecdotes and cracking jokes of a somewhat risky character with the archdeacon. It is clear that the Pope thoroughly enjoyed the Welshman’s company, but also that he did not take him very seriously as an ecclesiastical statesman. “Let us have some more stories about your archbishop’s bad Latin,” he would say, when Gerald was getting too urgent on the independence of the Welsh Church or his own right to the see of St. David’s.

This archbishop was Hubert Walter, who was much more of a secular administrator than an ecclesiastic, and whose Latin though clear and ready might show a fine contempt for all rules of grammar. Gerald was a stickler for correct Latin grammar; he is great on “howlers.” There is one of his stories, illustrating both the avarice of the Norman prelates and the ignorance of the Welsh clergy: A Welsh priest came to his bishop and said, “I have brought your lordship a present of two hundred oves.” He meant “ova”; but the bishop insisted on the sheep; and the priest probably rubbed up his Latin grammar. Gerald had also other patriotic reasons for his hostility to the archbishop, who as chief justiciary—i.e., chief minister of the king—had recently attacked and defeated the Welsh between the Wye and the Severn. “Blessed be God,” writes Gerald sarcastically to him, “who has taught your hands to war and your fingers to fight, for since the days when Harold almost exterminated the nation, no prince has destroyed so many Welshmen in one battle as your Grace.”

Gerald continued the struggle till 1203, though deserted by the Welsh clergy. “The laity of Wales,” he said, “stood by me; but of the clergy whose battle I was fighting, scarce one.” He was proclaimed as a rebel, and had some narrow escapes of imprisonment or worse—escapes which he owed to his ready wit and which he delights to tell. At last he gave way, and during the remainder of his life we find him at Rome, Lincoln, St. David’s, revising his works and writing new ones, modifying some of his judgments (especially that on Hubert Walter), and encouraging Stephen Langton in the great struggle against John. He was buried at St. David’s, probably in 1223.

We will now return to the “Itinerary through Wales” and the “Description of Wales.” Jerusalem was taken by Saladin in 1187, and the Third Crusade—the Crusade of Richard Cœur de Lion—was preached throughout Europe. In 1188 Archbishop Baldwin made a preaching tour through Wales accompanied by Glanville, the great justiciary of Henry II., and Gerald of Barry. While the primary object was the preaching of the Crusade, the king had an eye to business and saw that the Holy Cause could be utilised for other purposes; it gave an opportunity for the assertion of the metropolitan rights of Canterbury over the Welsh Church, and for a survey of the country by the royal officials, which was not possible under other circumstances. That is why the archbishop and the justiciar accompanied the expedition. It is remarkable that Gerald, the champion of the Welsh Church, should have given his support to it; but he had not fully adopted the patriotic attitude of his later years; and, with him as with most people of the time, the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre was, in theory at any rate, the greatest object in the world; while further, we must not forget that the journey had many attractions for him as an author; it gave him “copy” for a new book, and the chance of reading his Irish Topography to the archbishop. Every day during the journey the archbishop listened to a portion of this book, and at the end took it home to finish. As the journey lasted at least fifty days, one may calculate that it took at most an average of three pages a day to send the archbishop to sleep.

The Itinerary (which was later dedicated to Stephen Langton) contains in the author’s words an account of “the difficult places through which we passed, the names of springs and torrents, the witty sayings, the toils and incidents of the journey, the memorable events of ancient and modern times, and the natural history and description of the country.”

The route pursued was as follows: From Hereford to Radnor, Brecon, Abergavenny, Caerleon, Newport, Cardiff, Llandaff, Ewenny, Margam, Swansea, Kidweli, Carmarthen, Haverford, St. David’s, Cardigan, Strata Florida, thence keeping close to the coast, through Bangor and Chester; and then south by Oswestry, Shrewsbury, Ludlow, to Hereford.

The travellers were well received and entertained both by the Lords Marcher and the Welsh princes. It was especially to the Welsh that their attention was directed, and Welsh princes accompanied them through their territories. The chief was Rhys ap Gruffydd (Gerald’s uncle), prince of South Wales, who was then at the height of his power, and had been made chief justice of South Wales by Henry II., to whom he faithfully adhered. Gwynedd and Powys were then divided among several heirs. One of the princes of Powys, Owain Cyfeiliog, the poet, was distinguished as being the only prince who did not come to meet the archbishop with his people; for which he was excommunicated. Gerald notes that he was an adherent of Henry II., and was “conspicuous for the good management of his territory.” Perhaps that is why he would not have anything to do with the Crusade.

How far was the expedition successful in its primary object in gaining crusaders? The archbishop and justiciar had already taken the cross; they remained true to their vows and went to the Holy Land, the archbishop dying at the siege of Acre, heartbroken at the wickedness of the army. Gerald himself was the first to take the cross in Wales, not acting under the influence of religious enthusiasm, but (as he says himself) “impelled by the urgent requests and promises of the king and persuasions of the archbishop,” who wanted him to act as historian; but Gerald, after setting the example, bought a dispensation and did not go. A number of the lesser Welsh princes soon took the cross. The Lord Rhys himself was eager to do so, but “his wife by female artifices diverted him wholly from his noble purpose.” The wives were all dead against the whole affair. At Hay the wives caught hold of their husbands, and the would-be Crusaders had literally to run away from them to the castle, leaving their cloaks behind them. A nobler spirit of self-sacrifice was shown by the old woman of Cardigan, who, when her only son took the cross, said: “O most beloved Lord Jesus Christ, I give Thee hearty thanks for having conferred on me the blessing of bringing forth a son worthy of Thy service.” This son was probably worth more than the twelve archers of the castle of St. Clears who were forcibly signed with the cross for committing a murder; and one may reasonably look with suspicion on the sudden conversion of “many of the most notorious murderers and robbers of the neighbourhood” at Usk. It was this kind of thing that turned the Holy Land into a sort of convict settlement.

The preachers clearly worked hard and had some trying experiences, and kept up their spirits by little jokes, which Gerald retails. They nearly came to grief in quicksands at the mouth of the river Neath. “Terrible hard country this,” said one of the monks next day in the castle at Swansea. “Some people are never satisfied,” retorted his companion; “you were complaining of its being too soft in the quicksand yesterday.” The mountains were trying to men no longer in their youth; after toiling up one the archbishop sank exhausted on a fallen tree and said to his panting companions, “Can any one enliven the company by whistling a tune?” “Which,” adds Gerald, “is not very easily done by people out of breath.” From whistling the conversation passed to nightingales, which some one said were never found in Wales. “Wise bird, the nightingale,” remarked the archbishop.

One serious difficulty they had was that none of them, not even Gerald, knew Welsh sufficiently well to preach in it, though they generally had interpreters. The archbishop, who would sometimes preach away for hours without result, felt this much more than Gerald. He declares he moved crowds to tears though they did not understand a word of what he was saying. But one may take the words of Prince Rhys’s fool as evidence (if any were needed) that ignorance of Welsh weakened the effect. “You owe a great debt, Rhys, to your kinsman the archdeacon, who has taken a hundred or so of your men to serve the Lord; if he had only spoken in Welsh, you wouldn’t have had a soul left.”

In all about three thousand took the cross; but the Crusade was delayed, zeal cooled, and it is probable that comparatively few went. The Itinerarium Regis Ricardi mentions, I think, only one exploit by a Welshman in the Third Crusade; he was an archer, and so a South Walian.

This brings me to one of the incidental notes of great value scattered about the Itinerary. Speaking of the siege of Abergavenny (1182), Gerald tells us that the men of Gwent and Glamorgan excelled all others in the use of the bow, and gives curious evidence of the strength of their shooting. Thus the arrows pierced an oak door four inches thick; they had been left there as a curiosity, and Gerald saw them with their iron points coming through on the inner side. He describes these bows as “made of elm—ugly, unfinished-looking weapons, but astonishingly stiff, large, and strong, and equally useful for long and short shooting.” Add to this that the longbow was not a characteristic English weapon till the latter part of the thirteenth century, that the first battle in which an English king made effective use of archery (at Falkirk, 1298), his infantry consisted mainly of Welshmen; and there can be little doubt that the famous longbow of England, which won the victories of Creçy and Poitiers and Agincourt, and indirectly did much to destroy feudalism and villenage, had its home in South Wales.

Gerald was also a keen observer of nature, and his knowledge of the ways of animals is extensive and peculiar. Perhaps even more marked is his love of the supernatural; he could believe anything, if it was only wonderful enough—except Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History. But I must confine myself to one story—the story of the boy in Gower who (as the root of learning is bitter) played truant and found two little men of pigmy stature, and went with them to their country under the earth, and played games with golden balls with the fairy prince. These little folk were very small—of fair complexion, and long luxuriant hair; and they had horses and dogs to suit their size. They hated nothing so much as lies; “they had no form of public worship, being lovers and reverers, it seemed, of truth.” The boy often went, till he tried to steal a golden ball, and then he could never find fairyland again. But he learnt some of the fairy language, which was like Greek. And then Gerald compares words in different languages, and notes how, for instance, the same word for salt runs through Greek and British and Irish and Latin and French and English and German, and the fairy language, which suggests a close relation between all these peoples in past ages. It is very modern; and it is not without reason that Gerald has been called “the father of comparative philology.”

In his “Description of Wales” Gerald describes the manner of life and characteristics of the people. All are trained to arms, and when the trumpet sounds the alarm, the husbandman rushes as eagerly from his plough as the courtier from his court. Agricultural work takes up little of their time, as they are still mainly in a pastoral stage, living on the produce of their herds, and eating more meat than bread. They fight and undergo hardships and willingly sacrifice their lives for their country and for liberty. They wear little defensive armour, and depend mainly on their mobility; they are not much good at a close engagement, but generally victors in a running fight, relying more on their activity than on their strength.

It was the fashion to keep open house for all comers. “Those who arrive in the morning are entertained till evening with the conversation of young women and the music of the harp; for each house has its young women and harps allotted for the purpose. In each family the art of playing on the harp is held preferable to any other learning; and no nation is so free from jealousy as the Welsh.” After a simple supper (for the people are not addicted to gluttony or drunkenness), “a bed of rushes is placed along the side of the hall, and all in common lie down to sleep with their feet towards the fire. They sleep in the thin cloak and tunic they wear by day. They receive much comfort from the natural heat of the persons lying near them; but when the underside begins to be tired with the hardness of the bed, or the upper one to suffer from the cold, they get up and go to the fire; and then returning to the couch they expose their sides alternately to the cold and to the hardness of the bed.”

Gifted with an acute and rich intellect they excel in whatever studies they pursue, notably in music. They are especially famous for their part-singing, “so that in a company of singers, which one very often meets with in Wales, you will hear as many different parts and voices as there are performers,”(!) and this gift has by long habit become natural to the nation.

“They show a greater respect than other nations to churches and ecclesiastics, to the relics of saints, bells, holy books, and the cross; and hence their churches enjoy more than common tranquillity.”

He then goes on to the other side of the picture: “for history without truth becomes undeserving of its name.” “These people are no less light in mind than in body, and by no means to be relied on. They are easily urged to undertake any action, and as easily checked from prosecuting it.... They never scruple at taking a false oath for the sake of any temporary advantage.... Above all other peoples they are given to removing their neighbours’ landmarks. Hence arise quarrels, murders, conflagrations, and frequent fratricides. It is remarkable that brothers show more affection to each other when dead than when living; for they persecute the living even unto death, but avenge the dead with all their power.”

Finally, as a scientific observer of politics, he discusses how Wales may be conquered and governed, and how the Welsh may resist.

A prince who would subdue this people must give his whole energies to the task for at least a whole year. He must divide their strength, and by bribes and promises endeavour to stir up one against the other, knowing the spirit of hatred and envy which generally prevails among them. He must cut off supplies, build castles, and use light-armed troops and plenty of them; for though many English mercenaries perish in a battle, money will procure as many more; but to the Welsh the loss is for the time irreparable. He recommends that all the English inhabitants of the Marches should be trained to arms; for the Welsh fight for liberty and only a free people can subdue them. His advice to the Welsh is: Unite. “If they would be inseparable, they would be insuperable, being assisted by these three circumstances—a country well defended by nature, a people contented to live upon little, a community whose nobles and commoners alike are trained in the use of arms; and especially as the English fight for power, the Welsh for liberty; the English hirelings for money, the Welsh patriots for their country.”

I hope I may persuade some who do not yet know Gerald to make his acquaintance, and to read either his works on Ireland and Wales, translated in Bohn’s library, or Mr. Henry Owen’s brilliant and delightful volume, “Gerald the Welshman,” my indebtedness to which I wish to acknowledge. Gerald tells us many miracles; but he has himself performed a miracle as wonderful as any he relates; he has kept all the charm and freshness of youth for more than seven hundred years.

CASTLES & RELIGIOUS HOUSES. (12^th & 13^th Centuries)

IV

CASTLES

WALES is pre-eminently the land of castles. There are between thirty and forty in Glamorgan alone. The accompanying map, though it is by no means exhaustive, shows the general lie of the castles, which may be divided into three groups, having as their respective bases Chester, Shrewsbury, and Gloucester. But though there is some evidence of an organised plan for the conquest of Wales in the time of William Rufus, it is useless to look for any great and general system of offence or defence, because most of the castles were not built by a centralised government with any such object in view, but by individuals to guard their own territories and protect their independence against either their neighbours or the English king. The great age of castle-building was between 1100 and 1300. Castles play a very small part in the fighting in Wales till the end of the eleventh century. Before that time indeed there were few stone castles anywhere; the usual type, even of the early Norman castles, was a moated mound surrounded by wooden palisades. One hears for instance of a castle being built by William the Conqueror in eight days. An example of this early type of fortress was Pembroke Castle at the end of the eleventh century, “a slender fortress of stakes and turf,” which had the good fortune to be in charge of Gerald of Windsor, grandfather of Giraldus Cambrensis. It stood several sieges, which shows that the siege engines of the Welsh were of a very poor and primitive type. One of these sieges was turned into a blockade, and the garrison was nearly reduced by starvation. The constable had recourse to a time-honoured ruse. “With great prudence he caused four hogs which still remained to be cut into small pieces and thrown down among the enemy. The next day he had recourse to a more refined stratagem: he contrived that a letter from him should fall into the hands of the enemy stating that there was no need for assistance for the next four months.” The besiegers were taken in and dispersed to their homes.

The characteristic types of castles in the twelfth century were the rectangular keep and the shell keep; in the thirteenth the concentric castle. Of the two last we have splendid examples in Cardiff and Caerphilly. Of rectangular keeps there are very few in Wales—Chepstow is the only important one—though there are several on the borders, notably Ludlow. The square keep seems to us most characteristic of Norman military architecture; the Tower of London, Rochester, Newcastle, Castle Rising, are well-known examples, and there are many more in a good state of preservation; there are many more solid square keeps than shell keeps well preserved, but this is simply due to the greater solidity of the former; the shell keeps were far more numerous in the twelfth century; and the reasons for this are obvious—the rectangular keep was much more expensive to build, and it was too heavy to erect on the artificial mounds on which the Norman architects generally founded their castles.

The keep of Cardiff Castle is one of the most perfect shell keeps in existence. It is built on a round artificial mound, surrounded by a wide and deep moat—the mound and moat being, of course, complements of each other. Such mounds and moats are common in all parts of England, and in Normandy. They are not Roman, nor British, nor are they, as Mr. G. T. Clark maintained, characteristic of Anglo-Saxon work. They are essentially Norman, and a good representation of the making of such a mound may be seen in the Bayeux Tapestry, under the heading—‘He orders them to dig a castle.’ When was the Cardiff mound made? Perhaps the short entry in the Brut gives the answer: “1080, the building of Cardiff began.” It would then be surrounded by wooden palisades, and surmounted by a timber structure, as a newly made mound would not stand the masonry. The shell keep was probably built by Robert of Gloucester, and it was probably in the gate-house of this keep, that Robert of Normandy was imprisoned. A shell keep was a ring wall eight or ten feet thick, about thirty feet high, not covered in, and enclosing an open courtyard, round which were placed the buildings—light structures, often wooden sheds, abutting on the ring wall—such as one may see now in the courtyard of Castell Coch. The shell keep was the centre of Robert’s castle, but not the whole. From this time dated the great outer walls on the south and west—walls forty feet high and ten feet thick and solid throughout. The north and east and part of the south sides of the castle precincts are enclosed by banks of earth, beneath which, the walls of a Roman camp have recently been discovered. These banks were capped by a slight embattled wall. Outside along the north, south and east fronts was a moat, formerly fed by the Taff through the Mill leat stream which ran along the west front. The present lodgings, or habitable part of the castle built on either side of the great west wall, date mostly from the fifteenth century. The earlier lodgings were, perhaps, on the same site—though only inside the wall; a great lord did not as a rule live in the keep, except in times of danger.

The area of the enclosure is about ten acres—more suited to a Roman garrison than to a lord marcher of the twelfth century. That the castle was difficult to guard is shown by the success of Ivor Bach’s bold dash, c. 1153-1158. Ivor ap Meyric was Lord of Senghenydd, holding it of William of Gloucester, the Lord of Glamorgan, and, perhaps, had his headquarters in the fortress above the present Castell Coch. “He was,” says Giraldus Cambrensis, “after the manner of the Welsh, owner of a tract of mountain land, of which the earl was trying to deprive him. At that time the Castle of Cardiff was surrounded with high walls, guarded by 120 men at arms, a numerous body of archers and a strong watch. Yet in defiance of all this, Ivor, in the dead of night secretly scaled the walls, seized the earl and countess and their only son, and carried them off to the woods; and did not release them till he had recovered all that had been unjustly taken from him,” and a goodly ransom in addition. Perhaps the most permanent result of this episode was the building of a wall 30 feet high between the keep and the Black Tower—dividing the castle enclosure into two parts and forming an inner or middle ward of less extent, and less liable to danger from such sudden raids.

Cardiff Castle was much more than a place of defence; it was the seat of government. The bailiff of the Castle was ex officio mayor of the town in the Middle Ages. The Castle was also the head and centre of the Lordship of Glamorgan. This was divided into two parts—the shire fee or body, and the members. The shire fee was the southern part; under a sheriff appointed by the chief Lord: the chief landowners owed suit and service—i.e., they attended and were under the jurisdiction of the shire court held monthly in the castle enclosure, and each owed a fixed amount of military service—especially the duty of “castle-guard”—supplying the garrison and keeping the castle in repair. There are indications of the work of the shire court in some of the castle accounts published in the Cardiff Records, e.g., in 1316, an official accounts for 1d., the price of “a cord bought for the hanging of thieves adjudged in the county court: stipend of one man hanging those thieves 4d.” The “members” consisted of ten lordships (several of which were in the hands of Welsh nobles): these were much more independent; each had its own court (with powers of life and death), from which an appeal lay to the Lord’s court at Cardiff: generally they owed no definite service to the Lord (except homage, and sometimes a heriot at death), but on failure of heirs the estate lapsed to the chief Lord. At Cardiff Castle the Lord had his chancery, like the royal chancery on a small scale—issuing writs, recording services and grants of privileges, and legal decisions: practically the whole of these records have been lost—and our knowledge of the organisation of the Lordship is mainly derived from the royal records at times, when owing to minority or escheat, the Lordship was under royal administration. The Lord of Glamorgan owed homage, but no service to the king; and (though this was sometimes disputed by his tenants and the royal lawyers), no appeal lay from his courts to the king’s court. The machinery of government was probably more complete and elaborate in Glamorgan than in any other Marcher Lordship.

Caerphilly Castle had not the political importance of Cardiff, but far surpasses it as a fortress. By the strength and position of Caerphilly, one may measure the power of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd after the Barons’ War and before the accession of Edward I. The Prince of Wales had extended his sway down as far as Brecon, and Welshmen everywhere were looking to him as the restorer of their country’s independence. Among them was the Welsh Lord of Senghenydd, one of the chief “members” of Glamorgan, and his overlord probably saw reason to suspect his loyalty. An alliance between him and Llywelyn would open the lower Taff Valley to the Welsh prince and give him command of the hill country north of Cardiff. It was on the lands of the lord of Senghenydd that Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, built Castell Coch and Caerphilly.

CARDIFF CASTLE. (12^th Century)

CAERPHILLY CASTLE. (13^th Century)

Caerphilly is described by the latest historian of the Art of War as the grandest specimen of its class; it represents the high-water mark of mediæval military architecture in this country, and was the model of Edward I.’s great castles in the north. It illustrates the influence of the Crusades on Western Europe, being an instance of the “concentric” system of defences, of which the walls of Constantinople afford the most magnificent example, and which the Crusaders adopted in many of their great fortresses in the East.

Caerphilly Castle consists of three lines of defences, and the way in which these supplement each other shows that the work in all essentials was designed as a great whole; it did not grow up bit by bit. There are of course many evidences of alterations and rebuilding at later times; the buildings in the middle ward, on the south side, seem to be later additions; the hall appears to have been enlarged, and the tracery of the windows suggests the fourteenth century; the state-rooms to the west of the hall have been much altered; but such alterations as appear are confined to the habitable part of the castle, and do not affect it as a military work. It has been suggested that the castle may have been greatly enlarged in the latter years of Edward II., when it played an important part in connection with the division of the Gloucester inheritance and the younger Despenser’s ambitions. There are a number of notices of the castle in the chronicles and public records of that time, but apparently no references to any building operations. And the unity of plan is evidence that the whole dated from the same time.

The castle is built on a tongue of gravel nearly surrounded by low, marshy land, forming a sort of peninsula; a stream on the south running eastwards to the Rhymny; and two springs on the north. By damming these waters and cutting through the tongue of gravel an artificial island was secured for the site of the castle. The inner ward, or central part of the castle, consists of a quadrangle with a large round tower at each corner: in the centre of the east and west side are massive gate-houses defended by portcullises; from the projecting corner towers all the intervening wall was commanded. The gateways communicate with the second line of defence or middle ward. This completely encircles the inner ward, on a much lower level; it is a narrow space bounded by a wall, with low, semi-circular bastions at the corners; it is commanded at every point from the inner ward; the narrowness of the space would prevent the concentration of large bodies of assailants or the use of battering-rams, and communication is at several points stopped by walls or buildings jutting out from the inner ward. The middle ward had strong gate-houses at the east and west ends, and was completely surrounded by water—east and west by a moat, north and south the moat widens into lakes: note how on the north a narrow ridge of gravel has been used to ensure a water moat on that side, in case there was not enough water to flood the whole lake. These lakes form part of the third line of defence or outer ward, which includes also on the west the “horn-work” and on the east the grand front. The horn-work is about three acres in extent, surrounded by a wall 15 feet high, which is of the nature of an escarpment, the ground rising above it. It is entirely surrounded by a moat, and connected with the middle ward on one side and the mainland on the other by drawbridges. It would probably be used for grazing purposes, and thus would be of great value to the garrison; but so far as the actual defences of the castle are concerned, a lake would have been much more effective; the nature of the ground would however have prevented this. The horn-work was intended to cover the only side upon which the castle was open to an attack from level ground, and to occupy what would otherwise have been a dangerous platform.

The eastern side of the outer ward—the grand front—is a most imposing structure. It is a wall about 250 yards long, and in some parts 60 feet high, furnished with buttresses and projecting towers from which the intervening spaces are easily commanded, culminating in the great gate-house near the centre, and terminating at both ends in clusters of towers which protect the sally-ports. On the outside is a moat spanned by a double drawbridge. The northern part of this front, which was probably occupied by stables, would in dry weather be the least defensible part of the castle; but it was cut off from the rest by an embattled wall running from the gate-house to the inner moat and pierced only by one small and portcullised gate. The southern half was more important and stronger. It crossed the stream at the dam, the walls being 15 feet thick where subjected to the pressure of the water, and the strong group of towers at the end—on the other side of the stream—guarded the dam on which the safety of the castle largely depended; the wall and towers here form a semicircle, curving back into the edge of the lake, so as to avoid the danger of being outflanked.

On the inside of the grand front were various buildings, such as the mill. This eastern line was divided from the middle ward by a moat 45 feet wide—a space which is too wide to be spanned by a single drawbridge, and as there are no signs of the foundations of a central pier, it seems probable that the bridge rested on a wooden support, which could be removed when necessary, and the assailants plunged into the moat below.

There are a large number of interesting details connected with both the military functions of the castle and its domestic economy. There were at least four exits (not counting the two water-gates); this would give the garrison opportunities of harassing assailants by sallies, and would make a much larger army necessary in order to blockade the castle; contrast the single narrow entrance to the Norman keep—high up in the wall and visible to all outside. The water-gates are worth studying, especially the methods of protecting the eastern water-gate—two grates with a shoot above and between them. One should notice, too, the “splaying” of the outer wall, by which missiles from the top would be projected outwards; and also the use of the mill-stream to carry away the refuse of the garderobe tower. And there are many other points, to which one would like to call attention, if time allowed.

The history of Caerphilly in the Middle Ages need not detain us long. It was besieged by Llywelyn in 1271, while it was being built. Llywelyn declared he could have taken it in three days if he had not been persuaded to submit the dispute to the arbitration of the king. It is clear that the castle was not finished; shortly after this Gilbert de Clare obtained license from the king to “enditch” the castle: such license was not, as a rule, required in the Marches (as it was in England) and was only necessary now because the king was acting as arbitrator. The Earl of Gloucester kept possession. We next hear of it in 1315, when it resisted the attack of Llywelyn Bren. It was then in the hands of the king, pending the division of the Gloucester inheritance among the three co-heiresses. In 1318 Caerphilly, with the rest of Glamorgan, was granted to the younger Despenser, who perhaps enlarged the hall and made the other alterations referred to above. Edward II. was there for a few days when flying for his life; had he trusted to Caerphilly, instead of fleeing further through South Wales, he might have saved his head and his crown; at any rate, there would have been a great siege to add to the history of mediæval warfare. The king’s adherents held out in Caerphilly for months, and only surrendered when, the king being dead, there was nothing more to fight for, and they were allowed to go free. Happy is the castle which has no history. The perfection of Caerphilly as a fortress saved it from serious attacks.

In conclusion, I will give two illustrations of the relations between the garrison of a castle and those outside. The first refers to Swansea. There is a curious Charter of King John to the good men of Swansea, in which he releases them from the “custom of eating” forced on them by the men of the castle. This would be a solid variation of the liquid scot-ales or free drinks which officials and garrisons were in the habit of exacting from their neighbours, and which were among the most persistent grievances in the Middle Ages.

The second concerns Builth, and is taken from the Patent Rolls of Edward II. in 1315. Builth was then in the hands of the king, to whom the townsfolk appeal for redress of grievances. The community complain that, though they are only bound to carry timber to the castle twice a week, they are often forced to carry it three times a week and more, and victuals too; and the men of the castle compel them to plough their lands and cut their corn, and hold them to ransom if they refuse; and they carry away from the houses of the said complainants divers kind of victuals—lambs, geese, hens, &c.—and pay only one quarter of their value, or nothing at all; and though the complainants gave the keeper of the castle £120 that they might be free from such oppressions, he took the money and oppresses them just the same. Further, the courts which the people have to attend are multiplied; and recently the court was held at a time when so great a flood had happened that neither horsemen nor footmen could approach the court, and so thirty-six men and women, fearing the cruelty of the bailiffs, entered a boat and were overwhelmed in the rush of the river. And one night men of the castle, maliciously seeking occasion against the commonalty of the town, went out of the castle and pretended to besiege it and shot arrows at it; and then secretly re-entered the castle and declared the townsfolk had been attacking the castle. And on this account many burgesses were imprisoned in the castle and ill-treated, and their swine maliciously killed. And things are so intolerable that many of the greater burgesses have left the country, and the residue, without speedy remedy, cannot remain.

Life was evidently dull in a castle: one had to play practical jokes to relieve the monotony; and life was anything but pleasant outside a castle. The castles of Wales are much more attractive to us to-day than they were to those who lived in them or round them six or seven hundred years ago.

V

RELIGIOUS HOUSES

IN speaking of the Religious Houses in Wales I shall deal with those which flourished in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—the period we have hitherto been studying—though it is tempting to go back to the glories of the old Welsh monasteries of the sixth century, such as Llantwit Major and Bangor Iscoed, whose dim memories must always exercise a strong fascination. The monasteries of this early type had fallen on evil days in Wales, as in Ireland and elsewhere, before the twelfth century, many had been wiped out by the Danes; and those that remained seem to have lost the spirit of life (save in a few distant islands or inaccessible mountains), and made no struggle for existence against the vigorous invasion of the new monasticism.

We shall be concerned with two kinds of religious houses—namely, the houses of monks and the houses of friars. And, first, let us consider in briefest outline the main course of development of the religious orders in the Roman Church. The Rule of St. Benedict (†541) was adopted by all monks: the essential features of it were prayer, labour, silence, a common life and common property. But among the early Benedictines each monastery was independent and self-governing, though an abbey might have priories in some measure connected with it. The result was that in the course of time the discipline and life of monasteries varied infinitely; and there was no co-operation for self-defence among the various monasteries. Hence in the tenth century arose the Cluniac order—the first attempt at organisation—the Abbot of Clugny became head of a vast number of monasteries in different countries of Europe; the priors of these owed allegiance to the Abbot of Clugny, were appointed by him, and paid revenues to the head abbey and the general fund of the Order. This organisation was thus monarchical—despotic; the Abbot of Clugny was a pope of monasticism. The movement acquired enormous influence on the Church as a whole, getting control of the papacy, insisting that the Church should be independent of the State, and that celibacy of the clergy should be practically enforced. But the Cluniacs instead of withdrawing from the world began to dominate it, losing many of the essential features of monasticism. Hence another reform movement arose about 1100, that of the Cistercian Order, which is associated with the name of St. Bernard. This aimed at reviving the Benedictine rule in all its strictness, insisting especially on manual labour. Cistercian houses were founded in desolate places, as far removed from populous centres as possible. But the Order differed from the early Benedictines in organisation. Each Cistercian house was independent and self-governing, electing its own abbot; but all the abbots were bound to come together at stated times for general assemblies or chapters, and these general assemblies were the supreme governing body in the Order. Thus unity was established; the organisation was close, but not monarchical; the Order was a great federation. This is the highest point reached in monastic development.

But about the time of the Crusades another ideal made itself felt. Hitherto the religious man withdrew from the world: but, as an old chronicler put it, “God found out the Crusades as a way to reconcile religion and the world”—was it not possible to serve God in the world? The knight did it; he went on fighting, but he fought for the Holy Sepulchre. The Military Orders (Templars and Hospitallers) combined the life of a monk with the life of a soldier. The Regular or Augustinian Canons combined the life of a monk with the life of a parish priest. And this ideal—new to the Middle Ages—received its highest realisation in the Dominican and Franciscan friars. The monk left the world in order to become religious; the friar aimed at making the world religious. The monk’s main object was to save his own soul; the friar’s, to save the souls of others.

We will now turn to the monasteries in Wales. Of the older Benedictine houses there were about fifteen, almost all in South Wales, and all except one were not abbeys but priories, or cells, i.e., they were dependent on some abbey elsewhere. A number of them belonged to some foreign abbey, especially the earliest. This was the case with the Priory of Monmouth, founded by the Breton Wihenoc, which belonged to the Abbey of St. Florence of Saumur (Anjou); and this was the case too with the priories of Abergavenny and Pembroke. These “alien priories” were simply used by the abbeys abroad as sources of revenue; they were foreign, unpopular, and during the French war in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries most of them were suppressed and their revenues appropriated by the Crown. The same applies to the three Cluniac cells established in Wales, such as St. Clears, which seems only to have contained the prior and one monk, who did not live with much strictness, though Gerald of Barry says the Cluniacs here were better than they were abroad, and not nearly so bad as the Cistercians. The life of monks in these outlying cells, where they were not under any supervision, and where there was no “public opinion” of the monastery to keep them straight, was generally very lax; they lived liked laymen, looking after the estates (generally wasting them), and without much regard to their vows: “they lived like beasts,” says Gerald. Thus the Lord Rhys had to eject the monks from one cell, because of the charges brought against them by the fathers and husbands of the surrounding district, who declared that they would leave and go to England if the evil was not stopped.

Another class of houses were those founded as priories or cells of English abbeys. Thus the Priory at Brecon was a cell of Battle Abbey, founded by Bernard of Newmarch, and largely endowed by the Braoses; Ewenny, founded by Maurice de Londres, was a cell to St. Peter’s, Gloucester. All these of course, like the alien priories, were founded by the Norman conquerors, and for two purposes: Firstly, for the souls of the founder and his family, a very necessary provision; the Normans were in their way a devout people and made sacrifices to win the favour of heaven. William de Braose used to give his clerks “something extra” for inserting pious expressions in his legal documents. Secondly, these houses also served as castles and stations for garrisons. Take, for instance, Ewenny; it is much more like a castle than a religious house, with its great embattled walls and towers, and magnificent gate-house furnished with a triple portcullis and “shoots,” or holes in the roof above for pouring molten lead on the assailants’ heads. The De Londres family were businesslike as well as pious; Ewenny’s prime object was to help them to gain heaven, it also helped them to gain the earth. The close and constant connection which these houses maintained with their mother abbeys in England and abroad always kept them Anglo-Norman in sympathies—foreign garrisons. But while recognising this aspect of the monastic houses in Wales, one must avoid exaggerating it, as, e.g., Mr. Willis Bund does. He regards all the monasteries as founded solely with this political object: “to represent,” he says, “a Welsh prince as founder of a religious house in South Wales after 1066 is representing him as the worst of traitors. Bad as the Welsh chieftains were, even they would have hesitated to introduce into their country what were really Norman garrisons;” and he rejects the idea of a Welsh prince founding Strata Florida. Now these remarks are only applicable to those religious houses which were dependencies on some English or foreign abbey; they do not apply to the Cistercian monasteries, all of which were practically equal and self-governing; each elected its own head and was not under foreign dictation. While the whole Cistercian Order formed an united body for purposes of monastic life and discipline, each abbey identified itself in a very remarkable way with the local or national aspirations of the people round, from whom its monks were drawn. Some of the Cistercian monasteries in Ireland refused to admit any Englishman. Some of the Cistercian abbeys in Wales were the warmest supporters of Welsh independence.

The Welsh princes felt the need of providing for the safety of their souls just as the Norman barons did, and the souls of both parties needed a great deal of saving. Further, the Welsh were not cut off from the great movements of the world; they felt like every other country in Europe the waves of religious enthusiasm, which resulted in the twelfth century in the spread of the Cistercians, in the thirteenth century in the spread of the friars. In the twelfth century the acts most pleasing to God were generally thought to be taking the Cross and endowing a Cistercian monastery. Again, though many of the Welsh chiefs were mere creatures of impulse, there were others who looked to the future. The Lord Rhys was an acute man of the world, who was not averse to improving his property. He possessed great tracts of mountain land, which was practically worthless; he saw Cistercian monks elsewhere, not exactly making such tracts blossom like the rose, but, at any rate, utilising them for pasture land, keeping flocks of sheep, becoming the great wool-growers for all Europe; why should he not hand over his worthless property to Cistercians, and by so doing lay up for himself treasure in heaven and on earth? Mr. Willis Bund says, “How unnatural for any Welsh prince to found a Cistercian abbey!” Surely it was the most natural thing in the world.

The Cistercians had far greater influence in Wales than any other monastic order. The Cistercian abbeys were Aberconway, Basingwerk, Valle Crucis, Strata Marcella, Cymer, Strata Florida, Cwm Hir, Whitland, Neath, Margam, Llantarnam, Tintern, Grace Dieu, Dore. We have in Gerald a very unfavourable and prejudiced witness on the Cistercians. He tells with pious horror and human satisfaction the story of the abbot of Strata Marcella, who was a great founder of nunneries, and at length eloped with a nun (he soon repented and came back to his abbey, preferring the bread and water of affliction to the nun). Gerald had a personal grudge against the Cistercians; wanting to raise money he had pawned his library to the monks of Strata Florida, and when he tried to redeem the books they declared they had bought them, and would not give them up.

The Cistercians certainly drove hard bargains, and insisted on their rights to the uttermost farthing. In reading the history of any of these Cistercian houses—the history, say, of Margam by Mr. Trice Martin—one’s first feeling is one of disappointment: it is nearly all about property. When one looks through to find evidences of spiritual influence one finds instead prosecutions for poaching. Did they have schools and teach the youth of the country round? I have found no evidence of it. Why should they? Monks never professed to be learned men or to be teachers. Many were both, but it was a disputed question whether they were not in this contravening their rule. At any rate, it was going outside their duty. Their business was to serve God—to perform divine services—and in the intervals to keep out of mischief by manual labour, and to perform works of charity. Margam was specially famous for this last.

Margam Abbey was founded by Robert of Gloucester, in 1147, and the brother of St. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, the most important man in Europe in his time, came over to arrange about the establishment of the house. It was endowed with lands by both English and Welsh, such as the Earl of Gloucester and the Lord of Senghenydd. William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, granted the monks freedom from toll in all his boroughs in Wales and Ireland. The Braoses gave them the privilege of “buying and selling freely all manner of merchandise without toll” in Gower, and they had the right to all wrecks along the coast near Kenfig. We find the abbot asserting his fishing rights sometimes by excommunicating poachers, sometimes by the more effective method of haling them before the Shire Court at Cardiff and getting them fined 3d. a head. The monks of Margam obtained also a footing in Bristol through the Earls of Gloucester, a great commercial advantage to them for the sale of their wool both in England and abroad.

Their lands and privileges were not always, of course, free gifts. Thus in the twelfth century Gilbert Burdin grants land to Margam, and in return the abbot gives 20s. to the grantor, a gold coin to his wife, and red shoes to each of his children. In 1325 John Nichol, of Kenfig, gave his property to the abbey in return for a life annuity. He was to receive daily one loaf, two cakes, and a gallon of beer; also 6s. 8d. for wages, four pairs of shoes (price 12d.), a quarter of oats, and pasture for two beasts.

The annual revenue of Margam was returned as 500 marks in 1383, but before that time the abbey had suffered severely from inundations, sea and sand covering whole villages and much of the best property of the house; and the finances were in a bad way. These were improved by grants of the tithes of parish churches—a favourite form of gift to a monastery, but a great scandal. The rectorial tithes were paid to a monastery, while the monks at best put in some under-paid vicar to look after the parish. Generally, wherever there is a vicar instead of a rector in England or Wales the explanation is the appropriation of the tithes by a monastery.

What did Margam do with its income? The first charge was the support of about forty monks and forty lay brethren. Next there were the construction and keeping in repair of the church and other monastic buildings; and, thirdly, the expense of charity and hospitality. The monasteries were the hotels of the Middle Ages, except that they made no charges, and Margam was celebrated for its hospitality for centuries. Gerald, the enemy of monks, says: “This noble abbey was more celebrated for its charitable deeds than any other of that order in Wales. And as a reward for that abundant charity which the monastery had always, in times of need, exercised towards strangers and the poor, in a season of approaching famine their corn and provisions were divinely increased, like the widow’s cruse of oil.” Two centuries later we find the Pope bearing witness to the well-known and universal hospitality of the Abbey of Margam. It was placed on the main road between Bristol and Ireland, at a distance from other places of refuge, and so was continually overrun by rich and poor strangers, the poor evidently preponderating. In this connection I will give one instance of wise charity on the part of these monks from the end of the twelfth century. Hugh, son of Robert of Llancarven, gives the abbey some land in return for “four marks of silver and a young ox, given to him in his great need by the Abbot.” The monastery performed some of the services of the modern bank.

Strata Florida presents some different characteristics. Like most Cistercian houses, it lay off the beaten track. It was founded in 1164 by the Lord Rhys, near the site of an older monastery. It was endowed with large expanse of lands, mostly mountain pastures, and the monks soon began building their church and refectory and cloister. The monastery was completed in 1201, when “the monks came to the new church, which had been erected of splendid workmanship.” The architectural details of this church are peculiar and almost unique. Mr. S. W. Williams notices especially the large amount of interlacing work in the carving, which one sees in the old Celtic crosses, and which is so characteristic of Celtic art. The convent seems to have become very soon essentially Welsh. Nearly all the abbots have Welsh names. It was the burial-place of the princes of South Wales; but as they were, after the Lord Rhys, quite unimportant, its political interest is connected with the princes of Gwynedd. When in the thirteenth century the princes of North Wales were attracting the allegiance of the South Welsh also they found Strata Florida a convenient place for important political assemblies. It was here that Llywelyn ap Iorwerth summoned all the Welsh chiefs to do homage to his son David. The monastery suffered damage during the wars of Edward I., who in 1284 granted it £78 for repairs. But it suffered the worst injuries during the rebellion of Owen Glyndwr, when the English troops used it as a barracks, and stabled their horses in church and choir.

The patriotic tone of Strata Florida is expressed in the Welsh chronicles written there. The later part of the Annales Cambriæ was written there, and the Brut y Tywysogion. At Margam also a chronicle was composed which has been preserved. When an abbey decided to begin a chronicle, the first step was to borrow a chronicle from some other house; thus Margam, founded by Robert of Gloucester, copied out the Chronicle of William of Malmesbury, which was dedicated to Robert of Gloucester. The monks of Strata Florida copied out the earlier portion of the Annales Cambriæ. These chronicles of course only became of historical value when they become independent and contemporary. They do not confine themselves to the monastery or local history, but relate events of general interest—to the whole of Britain and to all Europe—intermixed with notices of the burning of a monastic barn or the death of the local abbot. Knowledge of the great world came to an abbey through the travellers who stayed there; through political or ecclesiastical assemblies held there; and through public documents sent to the monks for safekeeping or to be copied. We generally do not know who wrote these chronicles; they were rather the work of the community than of the individual monks. “Every year (so runs a regulation on the subject) the volume is placed in the scriptorium, with loose sheets of paper or parchment attached to it, in which any monk may enter notes of events which seem to him important. At the end of the year, not any one who likes, but he to whom it is commanded, shall write in the volume as briefly as he can what he thinks of all these loose notes is truest and best to be handed down to posterity.” “Thus it was that a monastic chronicle grew, like a monastic house, by the labour of different hands and at different times; but of the heads that planned it, of the hands that executed it, no satisfactory record was preserved. The individual is lost in the community.”

Coming now to the Friaries in Wales, we find ourselves in a different atmosphere. The friars were not troubled with questions of property: they had none; they depended for their livelihood on the alms of the faithful. Again, speaking generally, one may say that while the Benedictine priory is found under the shadow of a castle, and the Cistercian abbey in the heart of the country, the friaries were built in the slums of the towns. As there were few towns in Wales, the houses of the Mendicant Orders were not numerous or important. The Dominicans (or Black Friars) had houses at Bangor, Rhuddlan, Brecon, Haverfordwest, and Cardiff; the Franciscans (or Grey Friars) at Cardiff, Carmarthen, and Llanfaes; the Carmelites (or White Friars) at Denbigh; and the Austin Friars at Newport in Monmouthshire. It is remarkable that the Dominicans had more houses in Wales than the Franciscans; though the Franciscans—the mystic apostles of love—were more in sympathy with the Celtic spirit than the Dominicans, the stern champions of orthodoxy. Francis of Assisi strove to reproduce again on earth the life of Christ—in the letter and in the spirit; and the religious poetry of Wales in the thirteenth century is saturated with Franciscan feeling—full of intense realisation of the childhood and suffering of Christ, the humanity of God. This may be illustrated by the following poem by a Welsh friar of the thirteenth century, Madawc ap Gwallter:—