MATRIMONIAL ALLIANCES OF THE ROYAL FAMILY OF ENGLAND WITH THE PRINCES AND MAGNATES OF WALES,

WITH THE CAUSES LEADING THERETO.

On the surface of the subject of the conquest of England by William Duke of Normandy, as far as the people to the west of the river Severn were concerned in that great event, might have been observed a speck, the germ of future consequences of the most momentous kind to the fortunes of the Cymry; but which being as yet undeveloped, produced not, at the time, that bitter hostility which an event of so alarming a character was calculated to inspire; but, on the contrary, sentiments of complacency; thinking, as could not but do the Cymry, from the antecedents of their history, that the vengeance of Heaven had at length overtaken the slayers of their brethren and the appropriators of their soil: in a word, they regarded the invaders as the avengers of their own wrongs, and, to a certain extent, as doing that which, with all their efforts, they themselves had been unable to accomplish.

Of this picture we must now make a reversal, by turning to the feelings entertained by the conquerors of England towards those who were beyond the pale of their conquest, the Cymry of Wales, to whose territory they laid no claim. Their chief, the Norman duke, founding his claim solely on the will of Edward the Confessor, a document which, whether forthcoming or not, (a matter of some doubt), was not pretended to embrace Wales, of which the testator, or supposed testator, himself was not in possession; the consequence of this was that Wales long stood in a totally different relation to the Normans from what England and its inhabitants did; for, as has been well observed, "væ victis!"

and whilst the Welsh for two centuries, till subdued by Edward I, were treated with the respect due to an independent nation, the inhabitants of England were robbed, spoiled, and treated with every species of ignominy, and finally, were considered as totally unworthy of forming matrimonial alliances with the reigning family, notwithstanding the solitary exception of Henry the First's politic marriage with the niece of Edgar Atheling, heir to the English throne.

Before, however, I proceed to shew the difference of the Welsh, in this respect, from the English, I wish to say a few words on the subject of Duke William's fitness for a testamentary bequest by Edward the Confessor, supposing such bequest to have been actually made him; which, however, seems very uncertain, judging, as we do, by the light of English history in other cases of disputed succession. Whether we look to the case of Stephen and Henry II in early Norman history, to Henry VII and his competitors, or to Lady Jane Grey and Queen Mary at a later period, all stood in approximate affinity to the crown by consanguinity. But how stood the case with William of Normandy? The following genealogical sketch will best answer that question.

RICHARD, first Duke of Normandy,
surnamed "Sans Peur," died 960

Gunilda, a Danish
lady

Ethelred II, king of England, who, to avoid the incursions of the Danes, fled into Normandy, died 1016

Edward the Confessor, king of England, educated at the ner's court of Normandy, but asdaughter cended the English throne, of 1041, died 5 Jany. 1066, s.p. Falaise

William, fifth Duke of Normandy, and conqueror of England.

By which it will be seen that though William the Conqueror was, indeed, related to Edward the Confessor, he was related to him on the wrong side, on the Norman instead of the English side; and this, in any claim to the English crown, amounted to nothing, absolutely nothing, and therefore his acquisition has been well termed a conquest, which it really was.

And now on the intermarriages between the Welsh and this thereafter, and in some sort to this day, sovereign house of England.

The first we find is that of Emma, daughter of the Empress Maud (grandaughter of the Conqueror), and sister of King Henry II, with David, son of Owen Gwynedd, Prince of North Wales, by whom she had Gwenllian, who, though niece to the king (Henry II), married one of her own paternal stock, viz., Griffith ap Cadwgan, Prince of Powis.

The next I find is Eleanor of Montfort, grandaughter of King John and niece of Henry III, who married Prince Llewelyn, 3 Oct. 1271, and died 1280.

And Edward I married his grandaughter, Eleanor de la Barre, to Llewelyn ap Owen, the representative of the sovereign princes of South Wales.

The intermarriages of the highest Norman nobles, and those nearest the throne, with the Welsh during the same period, are almost too numerous to admit of enumeration in this place; but all shewing the same fact of respect for a nation as yet unsubdued, and, notwithstanding recent ungenerous theories to the contrary, aborigines of the soil; yet we may mention Ralph Mortimer, one of the early progenitors of the house of York, who married Gwladys, the daughter of Llewelyn ap Iorwerth, Prince of North Wales. For the rest we refer to York's Catalogue of Honour, Brook and Vincent's Catalogues of the Nobility of England, in which will be found ample verification of what we here assert of the numerous matrimonial alliances of the ancient Norman nobility of England with the Cymry of Wales.

In respect to the conquest of England, Sir Bernard

Burke, in his Royal Descents, whilst treating of the despotism thereby established (vol. i, p. 12), says "with a cruelty that it is to be hoped has few parallels in the history of mankind, William dispersed his followers over the country with injunctions that they should spare neither man nor beast, but should involve houses, corn, and implements of husbandry, as well as all that had the breath of life, in one common destruction. Such an order was not likely to find any mitigation in the hands of a people like the Normans. One hundred thousand natives were inhumanly slaughtered; and for nine years not a patch of cultivated ground could be seen between York and Durham"; and in such manner, affirms the historian, “did William make himself undisputed master of England"; and, he continues, "the Normans in a little time became possessed of all the lands in the kingdom, and the Anglo-Saxon families of rank and wealth were either swept off or merged into the body of the (common) people." With a people so humbled and prostrate before their conquerors, and regarded by them, as, says the same authority, "no more than the hogs they fattened for the market," it is not to be wondered at if no matrimonial alliances were made, for these in some sort would have implied equality. They, in fact, had too much contempt for a people whom they had subjugated in a single battle," and whose lands they already possessed, to enter into such contracts with them; for the Normans were proud, haughty, and arrogant; and when they had no longer any foreign foe to encounter, they exercised their pugnacious qualities in disputes amongst themselves, of so fierce a kind, especially in the contests between York and Lancaster, that at the end of four centuries scarcely a representative, in the male line, remained of all those proud barons that had overrun and monopolized the soil. Of all the peers assembled in King Henry the Seventh's parliament, in 1485, it is asserted that only nine (including in that number some of a very questionable kind) were of the ancienne noblesse; and at this time the oldest peer, as to creation, is only

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of the date of Henry III, a century and a half, or more, from the Conquest; and this, too, in the female line, and through innumerable twistings and windings which it must have required a skilful herald to trace to such result as that of placing him at the head of the English nobility in point of antiquity.

Penrhos House, Weston-super-Mare.

EDWARD S. BYAM.

INDEX TO "LLYFR COCH ASAPH."

COPIED OUT OF A MS. IN THE BISHOP'S LIBRARY AT

ST. ASAPH.

[The References at the commencement of each paragraph represent the original MS., folio and page; those at the end, the pages in the existing MSS. (marked " Dd" and "Coch Asaph No. 2"), where a Transcript may be found.]

Summa Libri Rubei Assaphens communiter dicti Llyfr Coch Assaph, exscripta 26° Octobris 1602.

Fol. 1.-Deest.

2a.-Copia recordi curiæ Dominii de Denbigh testificans quod Reignaldus E'pus de S'to Asaph et Decanus et Capitulum ejusdem clamant quasdam libertates &c. in villis de Meriadog, Henllan, Llanyvyth, Llangernew, Branan, Bodnod, Treflech, Bodgynnwn et Llansannan. A'o D'ni 1291. Scribitur in capite paginæ b.

3a.-Annualia quædam beneficiorum Dioceseos.

61

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3a.-Nomina Villarum quas Malgunus Rex dedit Kentigerno Ep'o et successoribus suis Ep'is de Llanelwy, etc.

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36.-Quoddam Registrum L. Assavens. Ep'i datum die Mercurii in Septimana Pentecostes a'o 1294 cons' a'o 2o (non potest totum legi).

Indulgentia concessa iis qui pro animabus defunctorum orant. Indulgentia concessa iis qui aliquid dant ad fabricam

Ecclesiæ de No'.

4a.-Collacio Canoniæ Jo. ap Adam annulo investituræ.

Collacio Rectoris Llanarmon in Yale; R. Gwenysgor; R. Corwen; V. Kegidva; R. Llanwyddelan; Porcio Llanrhaidr; Collacio V. Wrexham cum assignatione partis decimarum. Dat'