His best chance lay in the exhaustion of his enemy, but Edward stuck grimly to his task.  His coffers were exhausted, and his army for the most part went home.  Yet Edward tarried at Rhuddlan for over six months, dividing his energy between watching the Welsh and replenishing his treasure and troops.  His treasurer, John Kirkby, wandered from shire to shire soliciting voluntary contributions.  Then in January, 1283, an anomalous parliament was summoned, consisting mainly of ecclesiastics, knights of the shire, and burgesses, and meeting in two divisions, at York and at Northampton, according as the members came from the northern or southern ecclesiastical provinces.  The grant of a thirtieth so little satisfied the king that he laid violent hands on the crusading-tenth, which was deposited in the Temple.  Meanwhile the chivalry of Gascony and Ponthieu were tempted by high wages to supply the void left by the retirement of the English.

Early in 1283 a gallant force from beyond sea, among which figured the Counts of Armagnac and Bigorre, reached Rhuddlan.  After their arrival the king took the offensive, crossed the Conway and transferred his headquarters to the Cistercian abbey of Aberconway.  Fearful once more of being enclosed in the mountains, David sought a new hiding-place among the heights of Cader Idris.  He shifted his quarters to the castle of Bere, hidden away in a remote valley sloping down from the mountain to the sea.  The unwearied Edward once more issued summonses for a fresh campaign.  David was at the extremity of his resources.  Before the new arrivals enabled Edward to move, William of Valence marched up from the south, and in April forced Bere to surrender.  David fled before the siege began; but he was a fugitive without an army, and the campaign was reduced to a weary tracking out of the last little bands that still scorned to surrender.  In June David was betrayed by men of his own tongue, and Edward summoned for Michaelmas at Shrewsbury a parliament whose chief business was the trial of David.  On October 3 the last Cymric Prince of Wales suffered the ignominious doom of a traitor, a murderer, and a blasphemer.  The magnates then adjourned to the chancellor’s neighbouring seat of Acton Burnell, where the rejoicings incident to the king’s visit to his friend’s new mansion were combined with passing the statute of Merchants.

Edward’s love of thoroughness made him linger in Wales to settle the government of the newly won lands.  His first care was to hold Snowdon with the ring of fortresses which, in their ruin, still bear abiding witness to the solidity of the conqueror’s work.  Round each castle arose a new town, created as artificially as were the bastides of Aquitaine, within whose walls English traders and settlers were tempted by high privileges to take up their abodes, and whose strictly military character was emphasised by the general provision that the constable of the castle was to be ex officio the mayor of the