who had carved out estates for themselves along its borders, indignant at Stephen’s desertion of them, and driven to provide for their own safety, had formed alliances by marriage with the native rulers.  Henry had, in fact, to reconquer the country, and to provide safeguards against any military union between the feudal lords of the border and its hostile princes, Owen Gwynneth of the North, and Rhys ap-Gryffyth of the South.  In 1157 he undertook the first of his three expeditions against Wales.  His troops, however, unused to mountain warfare, had but ill success; and it was only when Henry had secured the castles of Flintshire, and gathered a fleet along the coast to stop the importation of corn that Owen was driven in August to do homage for his land.  The next year he penetrated into the mountains of South Wales and took hostages from its ruler, Rhys-ap-Gryffyth; “the honour and glory and beauty and invincible strength of the knights; Rhys, the pillar and saviour of his country, the harbour and defender of the weak, the admiration and terror of his enemies, the sole pillar and hope of South Wales.”

The triumph of the Angevin conqueror was now complete.  The baronage lay crushed at his feet.  The Church was silent.  The royal authority had been pushed, at least in name, to the utmost limits of the island.  The close of this first work of settlement was marked by a royal progress between September 1157 and January 1158 through the whole length of England from Malmesbury to Carlisle.  It was the king’s first visit to the northern shires which he had restored to the English crown; he visited and fortified the most important border castles, and then through the bitter winter months he journeyed to Yorkshire, the fastnesses of the Peak, Nottingham, and the midland and southern counties.  The progress ended at Worcester on Easter Day, 1158.  There the king and queen for the last time wore their crowns in solemn state before the people.  A strange ceremony followed.  In Worcester Cathedral stood the shrine of St. Wulfstan, the last of the English bishops, the saint who had preserved the glory of the old English Church in the days of the Confessor, and carried it on through the troubled time of the Conquest, to whose supernatural resources the Conqueror himself had been forced to yield, and who had since by ever-ready miracle defended his city of Worcester from danger.  On this shrine the king and Queen now laid their crowns, with a solemn vow never again to wear them.  To the people of the West such an act may perhaps have seemed a token that Henry came among them as heir of the English line of kings, and as defender of the English Church and people.