kingdoms, it was aided in its struggle against Mercia by the weakness of its assailant, the youngest and feeblest of the English states, as well as by an internal warfare which distracted the energies of the invaders.  But Mercia had no sooner risen to supremacy among the English kingdoms than it took the work of conquest vigorously in hand.  Offa tore from Wales the border-land between the Severn and the Wye; the raids of his successors carried fire and sword into the heart of the country; and an acknowledgement of the Mercian overlordship was wrested from the Welsh princes.  On the fall of Mercia this overlordship passed to the West-Saxon kings, and the Laws of Howel Dda own the payment of a yearly tribute by “the prince of Aberffraw” to “the King of London.”  The weakness of England during her long struggle with the Danes revived the hopes of British independence; it was the co-operation of the Welsh on which the northmen reckoned in their attack on the house of Ecgberht.  But with the fall of the Danelaw the British princes were again brought to submission, and when in the midst of the Confessor’s reign the Welsh seized on a quarrel between the houses of Leofric and Godwine to cross the border and carry their attacks into England itself, the victories of Harold reasserted the English supremacy.  Disembarking on the coast his light-armed troops he penetrated to the heart of the mountains, and the successors of the Welsh prince Gruffydd, whose head was the trophy of the campaign, swore to observe the old fealty and render the old tribute to the English Crown.

[Sidenote:  Wales and the Normans]

A far more desperate struggle began when the wave of Norman conquest broke on the Welsh frontier.  A chain of great earldoms, settled by William along the border-land, at once bridled the old marauding forays.  From his county palatine of Chester Hugh the Wolf harried Flintshire into a desert, Robert of Belesme in his earldom of Shrewsbury “slew the Welsh,” says a chronicler, “like sheep, conquered them, enslaved them and flayed them with nails of iron.”  The earldom of Gloucester curbed Britain along the lower Severn.  Backed by these greater baronies a horde of lesser adventurers obtained the royal “licence to make conquest on the Welsh.”  Monmouth and Abergavenny were seized and guarded by Norman castellans; Bernard of Neufmarche won the lordship of Brecknock; Roger of Montgomery raised the town and fortress in Powysland which still preserves his name.  A great rising of the whole people in the days of the second William won back some of this Norman spoil.  The new castle of Montgomery was burned, Brecknock and Cardigan were cleared of the invaders, and the Welsh poured ravaging over the English border.  Twice the Red King carried his arms fruitlessly among the mountains against enemies who took refuge in their fastnesses till famine and hardship drove his broken host into retreat.  The wiser policy of Henry the First fell back on his father’s