NOTE GG. Vol. ii. p. 79.

The Conquest of Glamorgan.

I gave a note to the conquest of Glamorgan in the Appendix to vol. v. of the Norman Conquest, p. 820. I look, as I did then, upon the account in what I find it convenient to call the later Brut as thoroughly legendary in its details, though I am perhaps inclined to put rather more faith in the general story than I was then. And I am not so much inclined as I was then to draw the same wide distinction as Mr. Floyd draws between the expeditions led by the King himself and those which partook more or less of the character of private adventure. There was doubtless a difference, when it was King William who called the whole force of England to his standard, and when it was only either Earl Hugh or Robert Fitz-hamon who set out on an expedition on his own account. But both processes were parts of the same general undertaking. Whatever individual lords conquered, they conquered with the King’s approval, to be held by them as his vassals and subjects. He himself stepped in only on great occasions, when the Welsh seemed to be getting too strong for the local lords. The same general work must have been going on all over the country. The only strange thing is that the conquest of Glamorgan, of whose general results there can be no doubt, and of which we have so very full a legendary account, is left out altogether in every really trustworthy history.

Jestin ap Gwrgan must be accepted as a real man, on the strength of his real sons and grandsons (for his sons see N. C. vol. v. p. 821); but that is all that can be said of him. We can hardly carry our faith so far as Mr. John Williams ab Ithel, the Editor of the Brut in the Chronicles and Memorials, who asks us (xxiii) to “consider the great age of the prince of Glamorgan when he died. He is said to have married his first wife A.D. 994”—​it is perhaps prudent to mention the æra—“and to have died at the age of 111, according to others 129.” We Saxons do not venture to believe in the kindred tales of our own Harold and Gyrth. But we learn from Mr. Williams himself, at the very beginning of his Preface, that “the voice of Tradition would not lead us to suppose that the ancient Britons paid any very particular attention to the study of chronology previous to the era of Prydain, son of Aedd the Great, which is variously dated from the year 1780 to 480 before the nativity of Christ.” If centuries went for so little in the days of Prydain, it is not wonderful that decades did not go for much in the days of Jestin. Nor are we surprised to find that Mr. Williams knew the exact number of the descendants of Jestin, who were, like those of Attila, “pene populus.” All that we can say of Jestin’s story, in relation to Robert Fitz-hamon and his companions, is that there is no trustworthy evidence either for or against the story of his invitation to the Norman knights, but that the tale has a legendary sound, and that the date is in any case wrong. If we should be inclined, according to one or two indications (see p. 84), to place the conquest of Glamorgan several years earlier, perhaps even before the death of the Conqueror, we are only carried away yet further from the perfectly certain date of the death of Rhys ap Tewdwr. All that we can say is that the general story may be true, but that the list of settlers given in the later Brut (72 to 75) is largely due to family vanity. The Stradling family, for instance, had nothing to do with the original conquest.

The best account of the whole matter is to be found in Mr. Clark’s first paper on “The Land of Morgan,” in the Archæological Journal, xxxiv. 11. I cannot however admit with him (p. 18) that “it seems probable that to the early Vikings, and not to the later settlements of Flemings or English, is due the Teutonic element which prevails in the topography of lower Pembroke and Gower.” I am quite ready (see p. 95) to admit a certain Scandinavian element; but the Flemish settlement in Pembrokeshire is undoubtedly historical (see N. C. vol. v. p. 855), while we have fair legendary evidence for making the settlement in Gower West-Saxon (see p. 103). The name of Worm’s Head given to the great promontory of Gower, in marked distinction to the Scandinavian Orm’s Head in North Wales, goes a long way to show that the Teutonic settlers in Gower were either Flemish or Saxon, and not Scandinavian.