Mediaeval Wales Part 2

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 astonis.h.i.+ngly 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 Crecy 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 b.a.l.l.s 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 wors.h.i.+p, 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 hards.h.i.+ps 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 a.s.sisted by these three circ.u.mstances--a country well defended by nature, a people contented to live upon little, a community whose n.o.bles 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CASTLES & RELIGIOUS HOUSES. (12th & 13th 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 a.s.sistance 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 sh.e.l.l 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 sh.e.l.l keeps well preserved, but this is simply due to the greater solidity of the former; the sh.e.l.l 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 sh.e.l.l 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 sh.e.l.l 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 sh.e.l.l 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, ab.u.t.ting on the ring wall--such as one may see now in the courtyard of Castell Coch. The sh.e.l.l 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 Lords.h.i.+p of Glamorgan. This was divided into two parts--the s.h.i.+re fee or body, and the members. The s.h.i.+re 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 s.h.i.+re 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 s.h.i.+re 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 lords.h.i.+ps (several of which were in the hands of Welsh n.o.bles): 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 Lords.h.i.+p is mainly derived from the royal records at times, when owing to minority or escheat, the Lords.h.i.+p 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 Lords.h.i.+p.

Caerphilly Castle had not the political importance of Cardiff, but far surpa.s.ses 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CARDIFF CASTLE. (12th Century)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAERPHILLY CASTLE. (13th Century)]

Caerphilly is described by the latest historian of the Art of War as the grandest specimen of its cla.s.s; it represents the high-water mark of mediaeval military architecture in this country, and was the model of Edward I.'s great castles in the north. It ill.u.s.trates 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 ma.s.sive 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce would prevent the concentration of large bodies of a.s.sailants 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 b.u.t.tresses and projecting towers from which the intervening s.p.a.ces are easily commanded, culminating in the great gate-house near the centre, and terminating at both ends in cl.u.s.ters 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 s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.sailants 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 hara.s.sing a.s.sailants 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 mediaeval 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 ill.u.s.trations 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 hors.e.m.e.n 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 a.s.sociated 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 a.s.semblies or chapters, and these general a.s.semblies 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, "G.o.d found out the Crusades as a way to reconcile religion and the world"--was it not possible to serve G.o.d _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 cla.s.s 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 doc.u.ments.

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 a.s.sailants' 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.