In 1174, however, Owain’s son, Dafydd, married Henry’s half-sister, Emma of Anjou, in an attempt to bring the royal houses closer together and prevent further bloodshed. Emma was illegitimate, the daughter of Geoffrey of Anjou by a mistress. For the Welsh, illegitimacy held no stigma. As far as the royal court of Gwynedd was concerned, Emma was a princess. Henry’s son, King John, would later repeat the experiment, marrying his own illegitimate daughter to Dafydd’s nephew.
Whatever the relationship between Henry II and Wales, he needed to travel through the country in order to reach Ireland, another independent land on which the Norman kings had designs. Henry embarked at the port now known as Milford Haven in 1172. An advance army had already prepared the ground, including many Welshmen; they were led by Richard de Clare, nominal earl of Pembroke, known to history as ‘Strongbow’.
It was in 1188, during the latter part of Henry II’s reign, that Gerald of Wales (alternatively called ‘Giraldus Cambrensis’ in Latin and ‘Gerallt Cymro’ in Welsh) made his famous journey through the land. He travelled in the entourage of the archbishop of Canterbury, Baldwin of Exeter, on a campaign to recruit men for the Third Crusade. Gerald was a clergyman, of mixed Norman and Welsh blood. His grandmother was the notorious Nest, princess of Deheubarth and former mistress of King Henry I. Nest was sometimes known as ‘the Helen of Wales’ because of her ability to stir men to violence. The de Clares had obtained some of their west Wales lands from Henry I, when that king dispossessed his former allies, Cadwgan ap Bleddyn (1051–1111) and his son Owain, as a result of Owain’s action in running off with Nest, thus shaming her Norman husband. Owain ap Cadwgan continued in the king’s service, but this did not prevent Gerald of Windsor from pursuing him to his death in 1116. Angharad, Gerald’s daughter by Nest, was the mother of Gerald of Wales.
Although he could claim royal blood on his Welsh side, Gerald was unsuccessful in his attempts to achieve the status of bishop. His rejection seems to have been based on his very Welshness, leading to his being considered potentially unreliable as an enforcer of the archbishop of Canterbury’s edicts. Gerald was, however, close to the young king, serving Henry II as chaplain; and he was the ideal choice as a companion and interpreter for Baldwin. He had indeed already accompanied Henry’s son, Prince John, to Ireland in 1185.
The new archbishop of York, enthroned in 1189, was Geoffrey, an illegitimate son of the king. Gerald quickly became one of Geoffrey’s staunchest supporters. When the archbishop’s half-brother took the throne as King Richard I, both Geoffrey and Gerald fell out of favour. Gerald became more outspoken in his criticisms of secular authority, and his former relationship with Prince John did not enable him to obtain high office in the church even when John became king in 1199.
Although individual Englishmen were free to come and go within Wales, the country was considered dangerous in parts. Hills, forests and rivers were all hazards, and the language barrier did not help. In his Descriptio Cambriae, written in 1194, Gerald recommends to his monarch that the final conquest of Wales (which Henry II had recognized as being still a long way off) should be attempted only with men who knew the terrain. Only the Marches could provide such men, he warns, and even they would have difficulty with the guerrilla tactics employed by the Welsh. It would be better for the king of England to bide his time and rely on the continual internal divisions of the Welsh princes to weaken the opposition.
The stand-off continued into the reign of King John, who formed an alliance with Owain Gwynedd’s grandson, Llywelyn Fawr (‘the Great’). As in the previous generation, the alliance was cemented through marriage to an illegitimate princess, this time Joan, called Siwan by the Welsh. Joan’s career as princess of Gwynedd is well known. Despite the period she spent under house-arrest after being caught with a lover, William de Braose, there is written evidence that she did, in the course of her life, succeed in helping to keep the peace between her husband and her father, and later between Llywelyn and her half-brother, King Henry III. Most importantly, she left a legitimate son who could succeed Llywelyn as prince.
The man to whom the earldom of Pembroke had passed, after the death of the great Marcher lord Richard de Clare, was William Marshal, de Braose’s father-in-law. Marshal was a renowned soldier, called by some ‘the greatest knight that ever lived’. Through his 1189 marriage to Isabel, the daughter of ‘Strongbow’, William Marshal came into possession of vast estates scattered through Ireland (where County Clare is named after his wife’s family), England (where the village of Clare in Suffolk was named after their place of origin) and south Wales. Marshal played a leading role in the defeat of Rhys ap Gruffydd in 1192, and ten years later was made custodian of Cardigan castle by King John. He went on to appropriate the lordship of Emlyn from Maelgwn ap Rhys (c.1170–1230). In 1212, at the age of nearly 70, Marshal was still a leading figure in the campaign against the Welsh, this time joining the king to fight against the up-and-coming Welsh leader, Llywelyn Fawr. That he bore no personal hostility towards the Welsh is evinced by his voluntary return of two castles to Llywelyn as soon as peace terms were agreed.
Llywelyn wisely did not rely on his wife’s family ties with the English monarchy. In 1212 (after his father-in-law, the king of England, had been excommunicated by the pope), Llywelyn wrote to the king of France, Philippe II, referring to an embassy he had received from that king. Llywelyn’s letter promises that he and his heirs will ally themselves with Philippe and his heirs, having their friends and enemies in common. In return, he expects Philippe to recognize him as ruler of Wales. Although he refers to the other princes of Wales, it is very clear that Llywelyn considers himself their unchallenged leader, and regards their status as subservient to his own. He has a very clear sense of his own royalty.
By the time Llywelyn’s career reached its apogee in the 1220s, William Marshal was dead. His son and namesake continued in loyalty to the English crown, and retook the castles of Cardigan and Carmarthen which his father had given up to Llywelyn. In this struggle against the prince of Gwynedd, Marshal junior allied himself with lesser Welsh princes, such as Cynan ap Hywel ap Rhys, who did not wish to be dominated by Gwynedd. (Cynan’s reward was the lordship of Emlyn.) This reveals a more complex situation than we have been tempted to recognize by the age-old tales of English oppression. The reality was that the Welsh were answerable to no one ruler, and resistance to English domination (whether by individuals or by groups) had as much to do with that unwillingness to be controlled as it did to a hatred of the English.
Llywelyn, having outlived the second William Marshal, allied himself with the latter’s son, Richard, when the new earl fell out with King John’s successor, Henry III, during the 1230s. Between them, Richard Marshal and Llywelyn Fawr soon controlled the southern Welsh border. The areas not yet under the control of the Marcher lords were known, in Latin, as ‘Pura Wallia’, and Llywelyn controlled most of these, and indeed most of north Wales. The Peace of Middle, negotiated in 1234, ensured that Llywelyn retained firm control of his principality until the end of his life.
Llywelyn was in no awe of his brother-in-law the king, whom he had known from a small child. When, in 1230, Llywelyn’s wife and Henry’s half-sister Joan was discovered in a liaison with William de Braose, lord of Abergavenny, whom Llywelyn had entertained in good faith, de Braose was immediately executed by the cuckolded husband. After a brief banishment from court, Joan was forgiven and welcomed back into the marital home. Llywelyn genuinely loved her, but one might question whether he would have been so lenient had he not had to take into account the risk of offending the king of England. Not only did he allow Joan to resume her place at his side, but he allowed his son, Dafydd, to go ahead with the marriage that had already been arranged, to none other than de Braose’s daughter, Isabella. Political alliances would seem