For five years all seemed to go well, though underneath the apparent calm a storm was gradually gathering.  The Welsh of the ceded districts bitterly resented the imposition of a strange yoke and complained that the king had broken his promise to respect their laws.  “Are the Welsh worse than Jews?” was their cry, “and yet the king allows the Jews to follow their own laws in England.”  But Edward coldly answered that, though it would be a breach of his coronation oath to maintain customs of Howel the Good, which were contrary to the Decalogue, he was willing to listen to specific complaints.  It was, however, a very difficult matter to persuade Edward’s bailiffs and agents to carry out his commands, and many acts of oppression were wrought for which there was no redress.  Nobles like David and Rhys found their franchises threatened by the encroachments of the neighbouring shire-courts.  Lesser Welshmen were liable to be robbed and insulted by the workmen who were building Edward’s castles, or by the soldiers who were garrisoning them.  At last even the Welsh who had helped Edward to put down Llewelyn saw that they had been preparing their own ruin, and turned to their former enemy for the redress refused them at Westminster.  David himself made common cause with his brother, and the spirit of resistance spread among the half-hearted Cymry of the south.  Edward’s oppression did more than Llewelyn’s triumphs to weld together the Welsh clans into a single people.  A rising was planned in the strictest secrecy; and on the eve of Palm Sunday, March 21, 1282, David swooped down on Hawarden, a weak castle in private hands, and captured it.  Llewelyn promptly crossed the Conway and turned his arms against the royal strongholds of Flint and Rhuddlan, which withstood him, though he devastated the countryside in every direction.  Meanwhile David hurried south and found the local lords in Cardigan and the vale of Towy already in arms.  With their help he captured the castles of the upper Towy, but lower down the river Rhys remained staunch to the king, whereupon David hurried over the hills to Cardiganshire and took Aberystwyth.  North and south were in full revolt.

Edward, taken unawares, prepared to reassert his authority.  Certain faithful barons were “affectionately requested” to serve the king for pay, and a fairly large army was gathered together, though the scattered character of the rebellion necessitated its acting in small bands.  Meanwhile the military tenants and the Cinque Ports were summoned to join in an attack on Llewelyn on the lines of the campaign of 1277.  Edward’s task was more difficult than on the previous occasion.  Though Rhuddlan, not Chester as in 1277, had become his starting-point against Gwynedd, he dared not advance so long as David threatened his left flank from Denbigh, and the rising in the south was far more formidable than that of five years before.  A considerable part of the levies had to be despatched to the help of Earl Gilbert