CARDIFF RECORDS.
CHAPTER I. The Winning of Glamorgan.
DURING the last five years of the
19th and the first of the 20th
century, I have had the great
privilege of being permitted to
transcribe whatever materials I
required from the collection of
Welsh MSS. accumulated by that
zealous patron of Cambrian art,
music and letters, the late Lady
Llanover (Gwenynen Gwent.) (fn. 1) For this privilege I am
indebted to the signal kindness and hospitality of the
Honourable Mrs. Herbert of Llanover (fn. 2) (Gwenynen
Llanofor), which also enables me to lay before my readers
such extracts from that collection as come within the scope
of the present work. A few words upon the Llanover MSS. will
not be inappropriate by way of introduction. Lady Llanover was
one of the most energetic members of the Cymreigyddion y Fenni
("Abergavenny Cambricists"), a society which flourished in the
thirties of the 19th century and did excellent work for the cause
of Welsh literature. Later on, the Cymreigyddion dwindled away,
and eventually became extinct; whereupon their manuscripts came
into Lady Llanover's possession, and were deposited at Llanover
House. There they remained, in a large wooden chest in the
library, until the death of their aged possessor, which occurred
a few weeks before I first saw them. During the fifty years, or
so, that these books were in the keeping of Lady Llanover, it
was not always easy for students to obtain access to them;
and, indeed, the treasures seem to have been but little disturbed
by anyone—for when, by Mrs. Herbert's desire, I took them out
of their coffin, they were in such a state of damp and mildew
as must in a few years more have reduced them to powder. Well
aware of the inestimable value of these manuscripts, Mrs. Herbert
promptly took measures to secure their safety for the future; and
the collection is gradually becoming known to the world of letters.
My transcripts make a thick volume, but only a small proportion
bears reference to Cardiff. This portion I am happy to present to
the readers of the "Cardiff Records." Most of the Llanover MSS.
are copies in the handwriting of Edward Williams (Iolo Morganwg),
that grand old genius who, in the 18th century, laid the foundation
not only of the national Eisteddfod, but of modern Welsh literature.
"Iolo" was a careful and reliable copyist, for his time, but not so
infallible in this respect as some of his admirers have claimed for
him. His transcripts are bound in dark red canvas cloth, unlettered.
Some of the MSS. in this collection are originals, written in the
16th and 17th centuries. Of these, most were collected by Iolo
Morganwg; a few were presented to Lady Llanover. Perhaps
the most valuable of them are two thick quarto paper books consisting of Welsh poems, by various bards, in the handwriting of
Llewelyn Sion of Llangewydd. In the collection are also many of
"Iolo's" original manuscripts, treating of the Gorsedd and other
Welsh antiquities. So much having been stated with regard to the
provenance of the documents contained in this chapter, we will now
turn our attention to "The Winning of Glamorgan," by which title
are to be understood the various MSS. treating of the Norman
conquest of Cardiff and the important County of which it has always
been the capital.
There are extant many Welsh legends concerning the Conquest
of Glamorgan by the Normans in the reign of William Rufus. In the
absence of a detailed account of that conquest from Anglo-Norman
sources, the fund of information supplied by these Welsh stories is
interesting and valuable. They are characteristically Celtic; that is
to say, they present a picturesque array of events, accounting in a
romantic manner for the hard, unpoetic fact that Glamorgan was
conquered by an alien invader. This is always necessary to the Celt.
To be overcome by the Teuton is to him far less of a misfortune than
to be destitute of an epic which shall clothe "regrettable incidents"
in the language of romance and appropriate all the glory to the
vanquished—say, rather, to the betrayed. It follows that the Welsh
stories are not to be taken literally. Indeed, who that knows the
Celt would think of reading Celtic chronicles as if they were
railway time-tables? The value of our local legends lies in their
idyllic picturesqueness, in the seductive art which transports us,
malgré nous, into the Celtic dreamland; where, in a magic mist, is
conjured up a vision of kindly Cambro-British kings, courteous
princes, lovely heiresses, tyrannical Norman barons, holy bishops and
faithful clansmen, moving ghostlike about the shining, fertile Vale of
Glamorgan, with its fruit-laden trees and babbling trout-streams, its
turretted castles, hospitable manor-houses and whitelimed homesteads.
It must not be supposed, however, that the Welsh account of the
"Winning of Glamorgan by the Norman Lords" is fiction of the
stamp of "Amadis de Gaule." It is legend of the stratum which
holds a rich deposit of fossilised history, and gives us, perhaps, more
knowledge of the time and place it deals with than many a scientific
composition. To begin with, its genealogies are instructive. The
habit of sneering at Welsh pedigrees is best fostered by ignorance of
the original documents. In spite of some almost inevitable errors of
identity, such as the confusion of Iestyn ap Gwrgan with Iestyn ap
Owain ap Hywel Dda, the descents given in these manuscripts are
evidently made out in all good faith and follow genuine tradition.
What is, perhaps, peculiarly noteworthy about these Glamorgan
legends is their mixture of Celtic and Norman lore. Iestyn ap
Gwrgan and his Welsh clansmen are commingled with the mail-clad
barons of Robert Fitzhamon, fresh from Normandy; while the scenes
shift between the massive masonry of the invaders' newly-built castles
in the Vale, to the dry-stone fortresses of the Welsh chieftains on the
distant hilltops. This makes the stories breathe the true spirit of
the Glamorgan Vale, where traces of the Norman are inextricably
mingled with the native antiquities; where Welsh St. Donat's holds
aloof from an English counterpart, while Flemingston jostles Llancarfan and Bonvilston elbows Llantrithyd. So also (at least according
to the Welsh epic) the laws administered by the officers of the
Norman Fitzhamon were the "apostolic" laws of Morgan Mwynfawr
and his successors of the ancient race; and the divisions of the high
Lordship under the alien Lords followed the boundaries laid down
centuries before the Conquest. The inevitable result of this amalgamation of Celt and Latin-Teuton was the evolution of a strong and
talented race, with gifts of poetry, music and art derived from
Ivernian great-grandmothers, a knowledge of organisation and
administration inherited from Celto-Roman grandfathers, and a
capacity for wholesale wickedness drawn from its Viking sires.
The long association of the adaptable Norman with the all-absorbing
Celt was inevitably destined to end, as it did in other lands, in producing an aristocratic class which, with all its feudal exclusiveness,
was more Welsh than the Welsh; and which has done more to spread
the influence of Welsh literature, in particular, than any pure Briton
who ever lived.
The reader may notice in these documents a certain amount of
confusion on the subject of the actual boundaries and extent of the
ancient Kingdoms of Glamorgan and Gwent, and of the subordinate
Lordship of Gwentllwg. The discrepancy in the statements as to
the western limit of Glamorgan is inconsiderable, and the Crymlyn
brook is now accepted for this boundary. (See ante, Vol. II., p. 2.)
With regard to the eastern confines, however, the accounts are
conflicting; the Taff, (fn. 3) the Rhymny and the Usk being variously
given as the division between Glamorgan and Gwent, and the Taff
and the Rhymny as the western boundary of Gwentllwg. An
additional complication is introduced by the limitations of the modern
Counties of Glamorgan (in Welsh Morganwg) and Monmouthshire,
which latter is called in Welsh both Sir Fynwy and also loosely,
Gwent. (fn. 4)
The following may, I think, be safely taken as a correct statement of the case. The old Welsh kingdom of Glamorgan extended
from the Crymlyn brook, near Neath, on the west, to the river Usk
on the east; that of Gwent from the Usk to the Severn at Gloucester
bridge. Glamorgan and Gwent together formed a region anciently
known as Morganwg, which included sundry minor territories.
Gwentllwg, one of these, reached from the river Taff westward
along the Severn shore to the Usk, and therefore lay within
Glamorgan, not in Gwent.
Some valuable documents in the Welsh language are printed in
the "Myvyrian Archaiology" and the "Iolo MSS.," and should be
consulted by the student who is specially interested in the history
and genealogies of the Welsh Princes and the Norman Lords of
Glamorgan. The same is to be said of the chronicle compiled in
English by Rice Merrick (Rhys Meuric), in 1578, and re-edited by
the late Mr. Andrew Corbett.
Although I have here copied from the manuscripts of Iolo
Morganwg some particulars which refer to the lesser lordships,
apart from direct reference to the town of Cardiff, it must not be
thought that the matter is foreign to the history of the County
Borough. It should be borne in mind that Cardiff was the head and
heart of mediæval Glamorgan, and that these minor manors were
governed by the Chief Lord from Cardiff Castle. A collection of
Cardiff records would be incomplete if it omitted all reference to the
"members" which were so closely dependent on the Caput Baroniæ.
It will be well, in this place, to call the reader's attention to the
shields of arms which form the head-pieces of the present Volume.
They are the armorial bearings of the later mediæval Lords of
Glamorgan and of the various lesser lordships, and of many of the
old Welsh gentry of the County. These coats of arms will be fully
explained in the Addenda to this book.