The Welsh Wars of Independence E-Book

David Moore

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2007

Beschreibung

Independent Wales was defined in the centuries after the Romans withdrew from Britain in AD 410. The wars of Welsh independence encompassed centuries of raids, expeditions, battles and sieges, but they were more than a series of military encounters: they were a political process.

Leseprobe

THE

WELSH WARS

OF INDEPENDENCE

c.410 – c.1415

The History of Wales

Series Editor Professor Gareth Williams, University of Glamorgan

Our curiosity about the past remains insatiable. Interest in the Welsh past is no exception, and exists not only among the Welsh themselves. Partly as the consequence of a general resurgence of interest in the Celts, partly because of the rapidly changing nature of the social and physical landscape of Wales itself, the history of a Wales that was or may have been continually attracts new audiences. While scholarly research finds outlets in academic publishing and leaned journals, its specialist findings are not always accessible to the general reader, who could often benefit from a broader synoptic view. Valuable and often innovative studies in community, family and special-interest history are enthusiastically pursued outside the academy, too. Established scholars and younger researchers will contribute to this new series aimed at illuminating aspects of the Welsh past for a wide readership.

Published David Moore, The Welsh Wars of Independence: c.410-c.1415 ‘Beautifully written, subtle and remarkably perceptive... a major reexamination of a thousand years of Welsh history’ John Davies, author ofThe History of Wales Keith Strange, Merthyr Tydfil: Iron Metropolis

THE

WELSH WARS

OF INDEPENDENCE

c.410 – c.1415

DAVID MOORE

For Meg and Fionn

‘…the people of Snowdon say that even if the prince were willing to give their land to the king, they would nevertheless be unwilling to do homage to a stranger whose language, customs and laws are totally unknown to them.’

Letter from the council of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, prince of Wales, to John Pecham, Archbishop of Canterbury, 11 November 1282 (translated from the Latin by Hilary Peters)

Owen Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them?

William Shakespeare, King Henry the Fourth Part I, Act III, Scene I

This edition first published 2007

The History Press The Mill, Brimscombe Port Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QGwww.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2013

All rights reserved © David Moore, 2005, 2007, 2013

The right of David Moore to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 9648 1

Original typesetting by The History Press

Contents

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Introduction

1

The Origins and Growth of Welsh Kingdoms c.410–1063

2

Wales and the Anglo-Saxons c.577–1063

3

Wales and the Vikings 852–c.1282

4

Norman Conquest and Welsh Resistance 1063–1155

5

The Balance of Power and its Destruction 1155–c.1200

6

Llywelyn ap Iorwerth and his Legacy c.1200–1257

7

Llywelyn ap Gruffudd: the Principality of Wales Won and Lost 1257–1283

8

Conquest and Revolt 1283–c.1415

9

Medieval Wales and the Welsh

10

The Nature, Practice and Loss of Independence

11

Was Welsh Independence Viable?

Notes

Maps

Genealogical Tables

Select Bibliography

Acknowledgements

This book could not have been completed without a great deal of help from others, and I am particularly indebted to Margaret Jones, Anita Hummel ([email protected]) and Tom Hardiment ([email protected]) for the illustrations; to the National Library of Wales for permission to use Margaret Jones’s artwork, and to Dr Paul Joyner, Lona Mason and Gareth Lloyd Hughes for their help with reproducing it; to Hilary Peters for permission to use her translation of Archbishop Pecham’s letters, and to numerous other colleagues at the National Library for their assistance with many aspects of the preparation; to the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales for help with the illustrations; to Meg de Messières for help with the maps; to Professor John Davies for reading the manuscript and offering some valuable observations; to innumerable members of staff (past and present) in the Departments of History and Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Cambridge University and the Departments of History and Welsh History at Bangor and Aberystwyth – and in particular to Professor Tony Carr and Professor Huw Pryce – for many years of guidance and encouragement; to Lord Elis-Thomas for his interest in this project; to Jonathan Reeve and his colleagues at Tempus Publishing and to Professor Gareth Williams for making the experience of producing this volume as painless and enjoyable as possible; and last but not least to my family and friends – especially Niamh Sloyne, Paul Hocker, Cory Mortis-Wait, Vicky Cribb, James Caswell, Meredith Cane, my mum, my dad and my brother Steve – for all their help and advice. I am also very grateful to my children, Meg and Fionn, for sharing my enjoyment of castles and medieval things in general; this book is dedicated to them. Any errors of fact or interpretation in the text are entirely my own.

David Moore

Tre’r-ddôl, 2006

Foreword

By Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomas, Presiding Officer of the National Assembly for Wales.

Wales: End of a Principality

Historians are obliged to rewrite history in each generation, simply because changes in contemporary events mean that we reread the past in new ways. Since Wales came into existence as a European legislative region in 1999, with a democratic parliamentary government grandly styled a ‘national assembly’, a new generation of historians is having to reinterpret the history of this nation within the United Kingdom – and not least to itself!

David Moore’s gripping account of war, diplomacy and struggle points up two intimately related questions: was there any time when Wales could realistically have become an independent nation state under native rule? And was that best achieved by the creation of a principality under the king of England, which eventually allowed foreign princes to be imposed all too easily? For the future, perhaps Wales could give up both scenarios as it assumes national equality within an interdependent, European, United Kingdom.

The present Prince of Wales is undoubtedly the most Cambro-phile member of the English royal family ever to have held the title, and when he becomes King Charles III he will have the opportunity to go down in history as truly the last Prince of Wales. As Wales enters a new era, Prince Charles might finally end the colonial fiction by abolishing the Principality of Wales.

About the Author

David Moore is an Archivist at the National Library of Wales. He was born in Bristol to a Welsh father and an English mother, and received a PhD in History from the University of Wales, Bangor. He lives near Aberystwyth.

Note to the Reader

An x between two dates signifies an unspecified time within this period.

Introduction

When Owain Glyn Dŵr was declared prince of Wales by a few close associates at Glyndyfrdwy on 16 September 1400, he initiated a rebellion which was to become conscious of itself as a war of Welsh independence. But this was no new nation struggling to assert itself. Welsh autonomy could be traced back 1,000 years to the period after the Roman occupation, and Gerald of Wales, writing in the late twelfth century, remarked that the Welsh were noted for their love of arms and the ferocity with which they defended their independence. By 1400, however, that independence had long since been lost; it had been sapped and destroyed piecemeal by centuries of warfare, settlement, economic colonisation and legal imposition, beginning with the incursions of the Saxons in the fifth century and culminating in Edward I’s conquest of the principality of Wales in 1283. Paradoxically, however, the vision of Welsh independence was broadest when its chances of being realised were at their bleakest. The Glyn Dŵr revolt was a desperate and ultimately doomed attempt to rekindle a sovereignty that had long since been extinguished, yet it nevertheless seared itself into the political and cultural psyche of southern Britain for centuries. Few educated minds in medieval Wales or England were unaware of the prophecies of Merlin, particularly after they were circulated by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 1130s: the Welsh longed for a son of prophecy to deliver them from their conquerors, and both they and the English saw in Glyn Dŵr an attempt to restore the ‘kingdom of the Britons’ – the oldest surviving native polity in the Island of Britain – which had once held most of the island, and which aspired to do so again.

Prophecy and reality, however, are very different things. For all the rhetoric, Glyn Dŵr was attempting little more in practical terms than the restoration of the thirteenth-century principality of Wales, the last bastion of native Welsh independence. That task alone was a daunting one, for it required him to succeed where all of his predecessors had ultimately failed. Long before Owain’s time – and long before there was any such notion as ‘Wales’ or the ‘Welsh’ – the Britons had been subjected to centuries of Roman rule, and when eventually they had carved out autonomous kingdoms among the ruins of imperial decline, many of them had soon lost their lands and their authority to new invaders from overseas. Even in the areas where indigenous rulers maintained their hard-won independence, it had been increasingly fragile, ambiguous, malleable and compromised from the ninth century onwards, and in the end it had proved unsustainable. In this light, it is worth noting that the paradoxes inherent within Glyn Dŵr’s own ambitions would have been much more apparent had he been able to fulfil them. Although Owain takes pride of place in the nationalist mythology of later times, it was primarily the struggles of his predecessors which decided the fate of Welsh independence, and in particular those in the four centuries which preceded 1283. The English showed themselves both willing and able to destabilise Welsh kingdoms in the ninth century, and the Welsh made their first submissions to an Anglo-Saxon king in the same period. By 1283, Welsh independence had been eroded to the point that not only was almost the whole of Wales in the hands of a conquering king of England and his barons, but it was universally accepted that a Welsh kingdom could forfeit to the English crown. The relationship between English overlordship and the legitimist aspirations of the Welsh was always a very uneasy one, and its implications struck deep into the hearts and minds of communities and individuals throughout Wales, from the highest to the lowest. The politics of native Wales were perennially torn between prophecy and the art of the possible.

This book is not a military history. Much of it is concerned with the victories, defeats, alliances and compromises of the rulers of native Wales, but its main purpose is to investigate how they illustrate the nature and practice of political independence. What did independence mean? How was it established? How did it function? How did it come to be under threat, and from whom? How did the Welsh protect it? And why did they finally fail? It is a complex story, influenced by the decline of the Roman empire, conquest and settlement by Irish, Saxons, Vikings and Normans, the strengthening and centralisation of England, the changing political, social and economic climate throughout western Christendom, and the way the Welsh defined and redefined themselves and their country. All of these themes appear in the first eight chapters, which trace developments chronologically, but it would be next to impossible to weave all of them satisfactorily into a strict narrative, so the most important concepts – namely the creation of a Welsh nation and the nature of political authority in Wales, with reference to the European context – are given more detailed consideration in the final three chapters.

With hindsight, it is easy to assume that the story of Welsh independence is that of the native principality of Wales, which was given a difficult birth at Montgomery in 1267 and died prematurely with Llywelyn ap Gruffudd in 1282. It is even easier to misread the medieval world in terms of modern concepts of sovereignty and national unity (whether Welsh, British or English), and to forget that – notwithstanding the tendency towards isolationism since the Reformation – both Wales and England were enthusiastic parts of a pan-European cultural, spiritual and political world throughout the period covered by this book. The history of any country can only be understood if it is first remembered that the past itself is a different country. The very existence of Wales as a recognisable entity was never a foregone conclusion, and Llywelyn and Glyn Dŵr were almost a millennium away when the first Welsh kingdoms emerged. The country was always fragmented, and the numerous autonomous kingdoms were as interested in preserving their freedom from each other as they were in resisting foreign intrusion. Furthermore, Welsh subjection to the English was anything but inevitable, and owed a great deal to the remarkably rapid and in many ways very unlikely development of a kingdom of England. Moreover, most of those who took part in the events which shaped the fortunes of western Britain for 1,000 years would scarcely have recognised the anachronistic concept of ‘independence’ – let alone ‘Welsh independence’ – any more than they would have considered themselves ‘medieval’ or ‘sub-Roman’. Their kingdoms were ‘independent’ by default, and their most eloquent expositions of nationality and independence came only when those things were on the verge of being crushed. By then, it was often too late.

The concept of ‘Welsh wars of independence’ is valid, however, if only because history is necessarily written looking backwards. Welsh kingdoms practised completely autonomous secular government from the time they ceased to recognise Roman rule until the time they accepted English overlordship and eventually conquest, and much if not most of that independence was lost as a direct consequence of war. Furthermore, the subject is topical. Both the prince of Wales and Welsh independence still excite controversy today, and the devolution of power from Westminster to the National Assembly for Wales in 1999 indicated that Glyn Dŵr’s vision of a unified, separate Wales has left an indelible mark on British politics, however differently that vision might be interpreted today.

Conflict is a recurring theme in human history, and the medieval period was no exception. Warfare played a crucial part in defining political authority, and it was as vicious in the Middle Ages as in any other age. Contemporary sources report regular instances of massacres, decapitations and mutilations committed by the Welsh and other nationalities in Wales, both against each other and among themselves. Early medieval poets revelled in gory descriptions of battle, sometimes describing casualties as food for ravens and wolves, and the biographer of Gruffudd ap Cynan was particularly graphic in recalling how an Irish mercenary butchered Trahaearn ap Caradog at Mynydd Carn in 1081: ‘Gucharki the Irishman made bacon of him as of a pig’.1

Cruelty was often condemned, but violence was an accepted political and governmental tool, and the highest moral authorities sanctioned the use of extreme measures when established authority was threatened. The church considered it perfectly acceptable, for instance, that Louis VI of France had a Flemish rebel eaten alive by a rabid dog. A man could commit no greater crime than treachery against his lord, and this accounts for the severity exhibited in the treatment of many rebels, notably Edward I’s punishment of Dafydd ap Gruffudd, who was hanged, disembowelled, beheaded and cut into four pieces, which were displayed throughout England in 1283.

Such attitudes help to explain the bitterness of much of the fighting in the medieval period, as both Welsh and English rulers sought to intensify their lordship in Wales. Developments in military technology also helped to brutalise warfare, as did the gradual territorialisation of authority. What had been a matter of raids for booty and strikes against members of rival dynasties became full-scale attempts to control whole regions. Total warfare tactics aimed at starving the enemy were employed in successive English campaigns against Gwynedd, and the Welsh in turn routinely adopted a ‘scorched earth’ policy between the Dee and the Conwy as they retreated into the fastnesses of Snowdonia. The climate in which fighting was conducted is illustrated by the refusal of the garrison of Llandovery to surrender in 1213 unless they were allowed to keep ‘their lives and their members intact’,2 and Henry III’s campaign against Dafydd ap Llywelyn in 1245 provides a microcosm of this culture of violence. Starving, freezing soldiers of both sides fought desperately over food at the mouth of the river Conwy, and Henry executed several Welsh hostages in the resulting tension. The Welsh retaliated by hanging and beheading their prisoners, cutting some of them into pieces, and this in turn was answered by the promise of a shilling for every Welsh head brought to the king. There are numerous similar examples; atrocities were commonplace, and it is not necessary to go into them all.

This book is intended for a wider audience than would be the case with a specialist monograph, so the use of academic apparatus has been restricted. Footnotes are used only to identify quotations, and the bibliography is select, but there should be enough information to make it fairly easy for readers to pursue their interest in this subject further. The maps give a broad idea of the main divisions of Wales, but for more detail see William Rees’s Historical Atlas of Wales; similarly, the illustrations are intended to be evocative rather than forensic reconstructions, and the genealogical tables are by necessity not comprehensive. Personal and place names are given in their native forms, except where this might lead to confusion for English-speaking readers. English place names are introduced to reflect prolonged subjection to English rule, so Morgannwg eventually becomes Glamorgan, Ceredigion becomes Cardiganshire, Môn becomes Anglesey, and so on. Inevitably, however, there is an element of inconsistency, the only justification for which is that it reflects the complexity, contradiction and fluidity which in many ways characterised the medieval world.

1

The Origins and Growth of Welsh Kingdomsc.410–1063

Roman and Sub-Roman Britain

THE END OF ROMAN RULE

Britain was conquered and ruled by the Roman empire for three-and-a-half centuries after the emperor Claudius invaded in AD 43. It was apparently during this period that ‘Britain’ – by which was meant the Roman diocese of Britannia, separated from the rest of the island by Hadrian’s wall in the north – was first envisaged as a single unit, and much of the south and east of the island became heavily romanised. But it was always a frontier outpost, and it came under regular attack from Irish, Pictish, Frankish and especially Saxon raiders from the third century onwards, especially after the empire began to collapse in the late fourth century. It was now only a matter of time until the Romano-Britons were left to their own devices. Power was increasingly devolved as central authority weakened, and many of the frontline Roman troops were removed in 383, when Magnus Maximus, a Spanish leader of the army in Britain, invaded Gaul and overthrew the emperor Gratian, seizing much of the western empire for himself. The missing legions were never properly replaced, although Stilicho may have brought reinforcements for a campaign against the barbarian raiders in 398, only to take them away again in order to counter an invasion of Italy by the Goths in 401. Defensive responsibilities now lay firmly on the shoulders of local officials, many of whom were native tribal leaders. As a result, many parts of Britain seem to have enjoyed a considerable degree of self-determination by the turn of the fifth century. The Britons were recovering their de facto independence by default.

In the winter of 406 and 407, a huge Germanic force comprising Vandals, Suebi, Alans, Alemanni and others crossed the frozen river Rhine into the Roman diocese of Gaul, causing such chaos that the very name of the Vandals became synonymous with wanton destruction. Determined to resist this potentially mortal threat to the western empire, the Roman authorities responded over the next few years by withdrawing most of their remaining troops from Britain to the continent. The Britons asked for imperial help against barbarian attacks, and their alarm at the deteriorating situation both at home and in Gaul contributed to the emergence of three usurpers in quick succession from the army in Britain. The last of them, Constantine, imposed himself in Gaul, but his removal of troops from Britain weakened the defences still further. It did not help that Britain was now ruled at a distance, from Arles, or that Irish and Saxon attacks were renewed in 408. Frustrated with increasingly ineffectual Roman government, the Romano-British upper classes revolted against Constantine in 409. Rome itself was sacked by the Goths in 410, and in the same year the emperor Honorius, now resident at Ravenna, advised the Britons that they would have to fend for themselves, at least for the time being. The Romans never came back.

In many ways, the Britons were already well used to managing their own affairs. They maintained trade and other contacts with the continent, and much of the economic prosperity, social sophistication and cultural vitality that had characterised Roman rule remained. For centuries to come, even the barbarian invaders of Britain lived in a world which was recognisably sub-Roman. But the collapse of the empire was inevitably accompanied by considerable political and administrative dislocation. Very little is known about the politics of fifth- and sixth-century Britain – a fact which in itself speaks volumes about the levels of disruption – but most of the vast and complex structure of Roman financial, judicial and urban administration was no longer in place, and defence was now a priority. The most striking symptom of the new political climate was the reoccupation of Iron Age hillforts across Britain between the fifth and the seventh centuries.

IRISH AND SAXON SETTLEMENT

Barbarian raids continued unabated, and in many cases they were accompanied by colonisation. The Irish, in particular, seem to have settled in several parts of what later became Wales. Memorial stones bearing inscriptions in the Irish writing system known as ogam indicate a strong Irish influence in Dyfed, Brycheiniog and Gwynedd, and the ninth-century Historia Brittonum recounts a tradition that the Irish were expelled from Gwynedd by a certain Cunedda, apparently in the fifth century. Llŷn may even owe its name to an Irish tribe, the Uí Liatháin, who are said to have had a fort in Britain. The dynasties of Dyfed and Brycheiniog claimed Irish ancestry by the tenth century, and further weight is added to the likelihood of Irish settlement in Dyfed by place-name evidence, and moreover by the Expulsion of the Déisi, an Irish account which was composed by the ninth century. According to this source, a group known as the Déisi were expelled from Meath to Leinster and thence to Demed, where they made themselves kings, probably during the fifth century. Their first leader in Wales is named as Eochaid mac Artchorp, and a Tewdos ap Rhain of Dyfed is claimed as an eighth-century descendant of the Déisi; this ties in neatly with the later Welsh genealogical tradition of Dyfed. Taken together with the erection of memorial stones upon which Latin was inscribed as well as ogam, this would appear to suggest that an intrusive Irish aristocratic elite took power in Dyfed during the fifth century, retaining the memory of their origins, but also imitating Roman practices, apparently in an effort to gain prestige by identifying themselves with the memory of Roman rule. Furthermore, Welsh interest in Ireland was not restricted to contacts with settlers. The early Welsh annals all exhibit a particular interest in Ireland, and British missionaries travelled there in the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries. Irish monks later visited Wales, and the story of Branwen in Pedeir Keinc y Mabinogi also reveals close connections with Ireland, perhaps dating from much earlier times.

At the same time as Irish influence was increasing in western Britain, unprecedented numbers of Saxons were invading and settling in the south and east. Despite the twelfth-century protestations of Geoffrey of Monmouth, however, there is no evidence of a significant British exodus from these areas, or of widespread genocide, although there was certainly conflict, which could occasionally be very bloody. The Britons were led to a victory in 429 by the Gaulish bishop Germanus of Auxerre, and later accounts in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tell of Saxon advances in Kent and the south, including numerous fights from which the Britons fled as from fire. Nevertheless, despite the violence, and despite a well-attested migration from the south and west of Britain to Gaul – and especially to Armorica (later known as Brittany) – archaeological and genetic evidence suggests that most of the existing population in the conquered and settled areas remained where it was, gradually assimilating with the newcomers, who do not seem to have overwhelmed it numerically.

The British political reaction to these developments appears to have been mixed, not least because neither the ‘Saxons’ nor the ‘Britons’ were homogeneous peoples, either culturally or – more markedly – politically. Infighting appears to have been widespread between factions on both sides. Some Romano-Britons in the fifth century seem to have continued a policy established by the Romans as early as the third century, whereby Germanic tribes were allowed to settle in Britain in return for military service as foederati, and these mercenaries could prove useful against both barbarian attacks and rival British leaders, as well as against any attempt to reassert Roman authority from the continent. The British monk Gildas, writing in the middle of the sixth century, describes a fifth-century alliance between a certain proud tyrant and the Saxons, who later revolted against him, and in the eighth century the Northumbrian monk Bede named this man as Vortigern (Gwrtheyrn) and the Saxon leaders as Hengist and Horsa. Other British leaders resisted the invaders. One of them, Ambrosius Aurelianus (Emrys Wledig), is described by Gildas as a Roman dignitary, and he may have been responsible for a British victory at Badon Hill. By the ninth century, this battle was described by Historia Brittonum as the last of twelve won against the Saxons by a certain Arthur, who is also said to have met his death fighting Medrawd at Camlann in 537.

These are all semi-legendary figures, and there is no compelling reason to associate any of them specifically with Wales. Many of their deeds are consistent with what is known from reliable historical and archaeological evidence, but it is impossible to be certain about their real identities, roles or importance, or even the fact of their existence. They cannot be placed geographically with any precision, and most of the material relating to them is either very vague and confused or consists of literary, legendary and mythical accretions dating from centuries after their deaths. The all-conquering Arthur, for example, is mentioned in passing in poetry which may date from as early as the turn of the seventh century, but he does not emerge as the chief battle leader (dux bellorum) of the Britons until the ninth century, when Historia Brittonum claimed that he was personally responsible for every one of 960 Saxon casualties at Badon Hill. Such literary devices were embellished further by the tenth-century Annales Cambriae, which say that Arthur carried the cross of Jesus Christ on his shoulders at Badon Hill for three days and three nights. Gildas, however, does not mention Arthur at all – a very surprising omission given that his De Excidio Britanniae (‘On the Ruin of Britain’), written in the 540s, was particularly concerned with the prowess and Christian virtues of prominent contemporary and recent British leaders in the context of Saxon invasion. Even more significantly, neither Arthur nor Ambrosius was claimed as an ancestor by early medieval Welsh dynasties – another strange omission, since genealogy was one of the most effective tools for legitimising political authority in early Wales. Genealogists were all too ready to claim descent from Magnus Maximus, Brutus, Adam and even God, but none of them mentioned Arthur until he became established as a literary icon in the later Middle Ages.

Whether or not these British leaders were real people, composite creations or entirely fictional characters, there is no doubt that various groups of Saxons had established control of large parts of southern and eastern Britain by the late fifth century. By that time, almost the whole of the western Roman empire had fallen to barbarian invasion. The only exception was Britain, where independent Romano-British rule remained in the north and west; and that, too, would have been considered ‘barbarian’ by Roman standards. The British kingdoms in what was later northern England and southern Scotland retained their independence until the demise of Strathclyde/Cumbria in the later ninth century, and sixth-century figures such as Urien ap Cynfarch (‘Urien Rheged’) and Rhydderch ap Tudwal (‘Rhydderch Hen/Hael’) were fondly remembered in Welsh literature as heroes of yr Hen Ogledd (‘the Old North’). The earliest surviving Welsh poetry, Aneirin’s Gododdin, concerns the defeat of the warband of Mynyddog Mwynfawr of Manaw Gododdin (in the region later known as Lothian) at the turn of the seventh century, in an attempt to recover the Roman fort at Catraeth (Catterick) from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Deira, which in turn was annexed by its neighbour Bernicia in 604 to form Northumbria. Autonomous British rule also persisted in Cornwall until the tenth century, but the longest survival was in Wales, where Gwynedd remained independent until the thirteenth century.

The Emergence of Independent Welsh Kingdoms

CIVITATES INTO KINGDOMS

In the late Roman period, the region which was to become Wales had been part of the province of Britannia Prima, which was probably based on a capital (caput) at Cirencester. Provinces were normally divided into civitates, the territorial extent of which usually corresponded with tribal areas. There were two of them in Wales: that of the Silures in the relatively romanised south-east, and that of the Demetae in the southwest, with capitals at Caerwent and Carmarthen respectively. North and central Wales, the land of the Ordovices, may have been rural districts (pagi), or perhaps a military zone administered from York. After the Romans left, and perhaps even before, political authority seems to have gravitated towards the inhabitants of the hillforts in many areas, to the extent that Degannwy and Dinas Emrys were given strong political associations in early Welsh literature. Britain was no longer a colony of an empire which stretched from the Atlantic to the Sahara and the Euphrates; it was now a patchwork of small independent units. The civitates were becoming kingdoms.

The establishment of native kingdoms in Britain was helped by the relative independence of provinces and civitates from centralised control, in comparison with the situation elsewhere in the Roman empire. British tribal leadership and identities survived through the Roman period in many areas, with the result that political units were less integrated, more self-sufficient and therefore more durable than many of their continental counterparts. This was particularly true in the less romanised west and north, where the survival of native rule was aided further by remoteness from Saxon incursions, as well as by terrain which was both economically unattractive and militarily difficult in comparison with southern and eastern Britain. Archaeological evidence suggests Romano-British continuity at sites such as Dinas Emrys and possibly Degannwy, and many of the first Welsh kings were probably the heirs of late Roman provincial administration. Continuity from the Roman administrative past is also suggested by the fact that the first Welsh kingdoms were defined primarily by territory rather than by population groups.

GWYNEDD AND DYFED

By the time Gildas wrote in the 540s, several Welsh kingdoms were experiencing at least the second generation of native kingship. Maglocunus (Maelgwn) is said to have seized Gwynedd from his uncle, killing many kings in doing so, and Vortepor (Gwrthefyr), king of the Demetae, is described as the bad son of a good father. Most of these new Welsh dynasties seem to have been home-grown. The dynasty of Gwynedd, for instance, probably originated in Môn, although later tradition relates that Cunedda, the ruler of the Votadini in Manaw Gododdin, introduced himself into Gwynedd and brought with him sons whose names (and those of their sons) – including Meirion, Rhufen, Dunod, Ceredig, Dogfael and Edern – matched those of the later kingdoms and cantrefi of Meirionnydd, Rhufoniog, Dunoding, Ceredigion, Dogfaeling (Dyffryn Clwyd) and Edeirnion. There is archaeological evidence for a connection between Gwynedd and northern Britain, notably Pictland, in this period, but there is no conclusive evidence to substantiate the Cunedda story, which seems to represent part of a ninth-century attempt to legitimate the rule of the family of Merfyn Frych. Merfyn, like Cunedda, was an outsider, and the rest of the story bears the hallmarks of onomastic tradition – the sons were very likely invented to explain the place names, and moreover to create an impression of unity in Gwynedd and its ninth-century satellites. Nevertheless, it remains that there were significant numbers of incomers, and they may well have affected existing polities in Wales and possibly created new ones. Vortepor was probably a member of an Irish dynasty which established itself in Dyfed, and it is entirely plausible that there may also have been some British migration into Wales as the Saxons asserted themselves in the east. This was a time of flux and change and, although there was a considerable degree of continuity and stability, it is not even safe to assume that every part of Wales had become part of a kingdom by the end of the seventh century.

It is significant that the only two indisputably Welsh kings mentioned by Gildas were those of Gwynedd and Dyfed. It was only ever the rulers of these kingdoms whom the chroniclers styled ‘kings of the Britons’, and they played a central role in Welsh political life until the thirteenth century, especially after they were brought together dynastically in the ninth century. Maelgwn Gwynedd died of yellow plague around 547, and his successors in the seventh century included Cadwallon ap Cadfan, who extended the power of Gwynedd into Northumbria for a time in the 630s, and Cadwaladr ap Cadwallon, who died in Rome in 682 and was remembered by the native Welsh chronicle Brut y Tywysogyon as the last British king to contest with the Saxons for supremacy in Britain. This dynasty continued to rule Gwynedd until the death of Hywel ap Rhodri in 825. Hywel was replaced by Merfyn Frych ap Gwriad, who probably came from Man, and who founded a dynasty which was to dominate Welsh politics for centuries. When Merfyn died in 844, he was succeeded by his son, Rhodri Mawr, who extended the power of Gwynedd into Powys and Ceredigion. Rhodri was the offspring of a marriage between Merfyn and Nest of Powys, and as a result he was able to take Powys when its king, Cyngen, died in 856; similarly, Rhodri married the sister of Gwgan ap Meurig of Ceredigion and seized the kingdom when Gwgan drowned in 872. These successes, together with a victory over the Vikings in 856, ensured that Gwynedd became more powerful under Rhodri than it had been for two centuries. Moreover, in dissolving both Powys and Ceredigion as autonomous political entities, Rhodri demonstrated that there was no greater threat to the independence of Welsh kingdoms than aggression from other Welsh kingdoms. The end of Rhodri’s reign was marked by defeat at the hands of the Vikings in 877 and death in battle with the English (probably the Mercians) in 878, but his son, Anarawd, restored the power of Gwynedd. Anarawd defeated the English in 881 and raided south, where Hyfaidd ap Bledri of Dyfed and Elise ap Tewdwr of Brycheiniog were driven to seek English protection from him, only for Anarawd himself to make terms with Wessex, whose military support he occasionally used in his campaigns. When he died in 916, Anarawd was hailed by the Brut as ‘king of the Britons’.1

The Irish line of Dyfed became extinct with the death of Llywarch ap Hyfaidd in 904, and Anarawd’s brother, Cadell, took control of the kingdom. Cadell also secured Ystrad Tywi, and the new composite entity came increasingly to be known as Deheubarth – although for a long time the name was as much a geographical reference to southern Wales in general as the name of any particular kingdom. Cadell’s son, Hywel, assumed sole rule of Deheubarth when another son, Clydog, died in 920, and a period of conflict between the two branches of the descendants of Merfyn was brought to an end when Hywel took Gwynedd after the death of Idwal Foel in 942. Hywel held both kingdoms until his death in 949, and also added Brycheiniog before 944. Only Morgannwg lay outside Hywel’s sphere of influence, and he entered into closer relations with the English. His name regularly appears at the head of the list of secular witnesses to English charters, above the names of other Welsh rulers, and like Anarawd he was styled ‘king of the Britons’ by Welsh annalists.2 Hywel’s prestige was such that he was known to later generations as Hywel Dda (‘the Good’), an epithet which is first recorded in the 1120s, probably inspired by a hagiographical cult. His hegemony quickly fell apart after his death, however. There was immediately conflict between Hywel’s sons and those of Idwal, who recovered Gwynedd after a victory at Carno in 949. By 952, Iago and Idwal ab Idwal were attacking Dyfed, and it seems that a victory at Llanrwst in 954 enabled them to raid Ceredigion later in the year. Nevertheless, despite the loss of Gwynedd, Hywel’s son Owain established himself in Dyfed. His son Einion attacked Gŵyr in 970 and 977, and he held Brycheiniog by 983, only to be killed in 984 by the men of Gwent, where he seems to have harboured ambitions. Owain ap Hywel survived until 988, and another of his sons, Maredudd, turned his attentions towards Gwynedd, where there had been a long-running dynastic conflict since the killing of Rhodri ab Idwal Foel in 968. Iago ab Idwal had ruled there for a time, but he had been driven out by Hywel ap Ieuaf in 974 and again in 979, and Iago’s son, Cystennin, had been killed when he attacked Môn in 980. When Hywel died in 985, Maredudd ab Owain was quick to take advantage. He killed Hywel’s brother Cadwallon in 986 and took tribute from Gwynedd and Môn, extending his influence further into Powys by 992. In 994, however, his power in the north was lost when the sons of Meurig defeated him at Llangwm in Gwynedd. At its peak, however, Maredudd’s authority had almost rivalled that of Hywel Dda, and he may still have enjoyed some degree of control in the southeast when he died in 999. He too was commemorated as ‘king of the Britons’.3

POWYS

The origins of Powys are more obscure. The Cuneglasus (Cynlas) mentioned by Gildas may have borne rule somewhere in what was later north-eastern Wales and the English Midlands, either in Rhos or in the remains of the civitas of the Cornovii, which had been based on Wroxeter and later the Wrekin. Cynan ap Brochfael can be identified more securely; he was active in north-east Wales in the late sixth century, and he is also said to have attacked Môn, Dyfed, Gwent and Brycheiniog. By the ninth century (or possibly the seventh, depending on which date is accepted for the composition of the corpus of poetry known as Canu Taliesin), it was believed that Cynan was a member of the Cadelling dynasty, the founders of the dynasty of Powys. At the same time, however, the ninth-century Canu Heledd, a group of poems which forms part of Canu Llywarch Hen, associates another dynasty with Powys, mourning the deaths of Cynddylan ap Cyndrwyn and his brothers and their subsequent dispossession by the Saxons. The places named identify Cynddylan’s territory as lying in what later became Shropshire, as well as in eastern Powys. An earlier poem, Marwnad Cynddylan, also tells of a Cynddylan, ruler of Dogfaeling, fighting at Lichfield, apparently against the Christian British population there. The descendants of Penda of Mercia are known to have controlled the Wrekin area by the late seventh century, and it is possible that they drove out Cynddylan’s Powys dynasty earlier in the century. It is not clear whether these were a branch of the Cadellings, whether they coexisted with them, or whether they were a rival dynasty, but it is likely that the removal of Cynddylan would have allowed the Cadellings to expand southwards into the central borders. Nevertheless, Powys seems to have remained an ill-defined kingdom. There is no definite use of the name ‘Powys’ in relation to either a king or the kingdom until 808, when Annales Cambriae record the death of Cadell, king of Powys. By that time the kingdom was being weakened by English attacks, and the last member of the Powys line, Cyngen, died in Rome in 856. After Rhodri Mawr’s seizure of the kingdom, there were no more independent rulers of Powys until 1063.

OTHER KINGDOMS

According to the seventh-century Life of St Samson, a kingdom of Gwent existed in the sixth century, possibly inhabiting the shell of the Roman civitas of the Silures – the name Gwent is derived from Venta Silurum, the Roman name for Caerwent. If charters in the twelfth-century Liber Landavensis can be relied upon as evidence for the early medieval period, they indicate a power base in Gwent Uwch Coed which was superseded in the seventh century by kings around the mouth of the Wye, where the dynasty of Meurig ap Tewdrig extended its influence until no more minor kings are mentioned by the middle of the eighth century. This hegemony included both Gwent and new territories to the west, and it came to be known as Glywysing, after Glywys, the supposed founder of the dynasty. Kings of Gwent seem to have co-existed with those of Glywysing in an inferior role, and the name of Gwent, while still a recognised regional name, was no longer the name of the dominant kingdom. The kingship of Glywysing was shared between brothers and cousins after the death of Ithel in 745, and this situation persisted until Morgan Hen introduced a new dynasty and created a unified kingship of Morgannwg in the middle of the tenth century. Morgan died in 974, by which time Gwent had become separate from Morgannwg; Nowy ap Gwriad styled himself king of Gwent around 950, and his son and grandsons followed suit. Throughout this period, there is no record that Gwent, Glywysing or Morgannwg had any contact on the political level with the rest of Wales until outsiders intruded themselves into the area in the early eleventh century.

Many Welsh kingdoms were shortlived, and there may well have been some whose existence is no longer known. Documentary evidence from Liber Landavensis attests kings in Brycheiniog by the middle of the eighth century, but Brycheiniog was often attacked by other Welsh kingdoms, and it eventually submitted to Wessex in the ninth century in the hope of protection; no kings are recorded there after Tewdwr ab Elise, who was active around 925. Other material in Liber Landavensis also suggests the existence of kingdoms of Ergyng and Gŵyr, as well as one around Cardiff, in the late sixth and early seventh centuries – there was also a king Ffernfael in Buellt around 800, but nothing else is known of his kingdom. An otherwise unrecorded kingdom of Rhufoniog was conquered by the Saxons in 816, and in this context it may be significant that early genealogical material records more dynastic lines than there were known kingdoms; on this evidence, Rhos, Meirionnydd and Dunoding (Eifionydd and Ardudwy) may all have been kingdoms in the sixth and seventh centuries. Similarly, although the first recorded king of Ceredigion is Arthen, who died in 807, the dynasty traced its ancestry back to Cunedda, suggesting that both the dynasty and the kingdom may have originated in a much earlier period. Such evidence should be treated very cautiously; genealogical trickery was a common Welsh obsession, and another Ceredigion tradition of later centuries asserted that Arthen’s father, Seisyll, had annexed Ystrad Tywi to make a kingdom of Seisyllwg – contemporary sources, on the other hand, never refer to the kingdom as anything but Ceredigion. What is certain is that Ceredigion was always a recognised political unit, and has remained so, but that it had no independent kings after it fell to Rhodri Mawr in 872.

LATER DEVELOPMENTS

New dynasties arose in eleventh-century Wales, bringing with them significant changes. The rise of Llywelyn ap Seisyll was meteoric. He emerged from obscure origins – possibly in Powys – to become king of Gwynedd in 1018, and by 1022 he is described by the Brut as ‘the supreme and most praiseworthy king of all Britain’.4 By that time he apparently controlled Deheubarth, and defended it against an intruder named Rhain. Gwynedd was held by Iago ab Idwal after Llywelyn’s death in 1023, and the balance of power shifted towards the south, where Rhydderch ap Iestyn was considered to rule all of Wales. Rhydderch hailed from Gwent, but he held at least parts of Morgannwg, and he concentrated most of his efforts in Deheubarth, which he held until he was killed in 1033. He was succeeded in Morgannwg by his son Gruffudd, and in Deheubarth by Hywel ab Edwin, who ruled there until 1039. In that year, Gruffudd, the son of Llywelyn ap Seisyll, seized control of Gwynedd, Powys and Deheubarth in a devastating series of attacks. He first took Gwynedd after Iago ab Idwal was killed, and then defeated a Mercian force in Powys before turning south to exile Hywel from Deheubarth. Hywel returned, only to be defeated at Pencader in 1041 and killed in 1044. The new dynasty of Morgannwg still had designs on Deheubarth, however, and it may have been the sons of Rhydderch who lay behind an attack on Gruffudd ap Llywelyn’s war-band by the men of Ystrad Tywi in 1047. Gruffudd retaliated by ravaging Ystrad Tywi and Dyfed, and he killed Gruffudd ap Rhydderch in 1056, as a result of which he seems to have exercised some degree of authority in Morgannwg.

These events marked a watershed in Welsh politics. The tendency to combine political interests in both the south-west and the southeast was a new departure, reflected in the increasing use of the term ‘Deheubarth’ during this period. Furthermore, Gruffudd ap Llywelyn’s rule over almost the whole of Wales from the late 1050s was unprecedented. It was not matched in its geographical extent by any medieval Welsh king or prince except Owain Glyn Dŵr, and it brought Wales into direct conflict for the first time with the most powerful ruler in Britain: the king of England.

2

Wales and the Anglo-Saxonsc.577-1063

Origins of the Anglo-Welsh Border

According to the A version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the West Saxon king Ceawlin defeated three British leaders – named as Cynfael, Cynddyddan and Ffernfael – at Deorham (Dyrham) in 577, and consequently gained control of Gloucester, Cirencester and Bath. The Chronicle’s account may not be entirely reliable, since it dates from three centuries or more after the events it describes, but the battle of Dyrham is a symbolic milestone in the history of Wales nonetheless. Ceawlin seems to have been based in the Thames valley, and he had apparently already beaten the Britons at Barbury Castle in Wiltshire in 556, and reportedly went on to do so again at Fethanleag (Stoke Lyne in Oxfordshire) in 584. His successes may well have been reversed when he was expelled after a battle at Woden’s Barrow in Wiltshire in 592, but the Saxons were in the English West Country and Midlands to stay. By the 620s, or more likely the 630s, Penda of Mercia fought the West Saxons Cynegils and Cwichelm at Cirencester, and he seems to have annexed the surrounding area. The precise details of what happened in the late sixth and early seventh centuries may never be established beyond doubt, but it is clear that the Britons of the south west became separated from those north of the Bristol Channel as Saxon power was extended into the lower Severn valley. This was an important development in the territorial definition of Wales and Cornwall, and it may well have been around this time that a border was drawn on the Wye between what later became Gwent and England.

The establishment of the border between England and Wales was a far more complicated and obscure process than can be pinned down by particular events. Concepts of the ‘Welsh’ and the ‘English’ as peoples began to emerge in the seventh century, although neither ‘Wales’ nor ‘England’ existed until much later. Relations between them were often violent. In Welsh literary tradition, much of the material in Canu Llywarch Hen – notably Canu Heledd – points to a protracted conflict in the Shropshire area from which the Welsh emerged dispossessed and traumatised, and place-name evidence also indicates Mercian incursions into Powys in the seventh century. This was far from the whole picture, however. Canu Llywarch Hen also suggests that the hapless Cynddylan ap Cyndrwyn was allied with Penda in 642, and the intermingling of Old English and Old Welsh place names in the border area suggests peaceful English settlement at an early date. Moreover, although there is little doubt that the Saxon population was spreading westwards and settling in what later became the English Midlands and the Welsh borders, this does not necessarily reveal much about who exercised political control. Saxons might voluntarily accept the rule of Welsh kings in return for permission to settle; the areas in which they lived might be re-conquered by the Welsh; and Welsh populations could similarly be subjected to the Saxons. English settlement in the Cheshire area, for instance, was well advanced by the early seventh century, and expanded into northeast Wales from then onwards, leaving a preponderance of Old English place names in the region – but political control of the cantrefi of Rhos, Rhufoniog, Tegeingl and Dyffryn Clwyd oscillated between the English and the Welsh until the very last days of Welsh independence. Not for nothing was the area between Snowdonia and Chester known as the Perfeddwlad (‘Middle Country’). Similarly, the personal names of tenants of Maelor Gymraeg in 1086 suggest that most of them were of non-Welsh origin, whereas the dynasty of the Magonsaete (a tributary kingdom of Mercia in modern Herefordshire) had British blood, and numerous Welsh-speaking communities remained on the English side of the border; many of them survived until the eleventh century and beyond, in some cases until fairly recently. The eleventh- or twelfth-century Dunsæte Ordinance contains evidence of Anglo-Saxon laws (apparently dating from the tenth century) relating to a border community in Herefordshire where there were both Welsh and English populations, and similar laws are found in Domesday Book in 1086. As late as the thirteenth century, the town of Hereford – which by then had been the seat of an English earldom and county for 200 years – was still usually regarded as being in Wallia.

The frontier between the Welsh and the English did not so much mark a national, cultural or ethnic boundary as the territorial limit of consistently effective kingship. On both sides of the border, such power was exercised locally. The boundary between Powys and Mercia seems to have become stabilised around the middle of the seventh century, and by 700 the southern part of the border between England and Wales probably lay roughly where it is today; the fact that it has lasted so long is no doubt closely linked to the sharp geographical contrasts in the area, and their effect on cultural differences. The northern frontier was less well defined, and there is no reason to suppose that the present western border of Cheshire represents any early medieval political boundary. In 616, Æþelfrith of Northumbria defeated Selyf ap Cynan of Powys (and possibly forces from Gwynedd) in a battle at Chester, after which the monks of Bangor-on-Dee, who had come to pray for a Welsh success, were allegedly massacred. This may have dislodged a Welsh dynasty (possibly the Cadelling) from north-east Wales, but there was no immediate imposition of English rule in Cheshire, and these events do not seem to have established a border between the English and the Welsh, or separated Wales from the British kingdoms of the North. Whereas there were early English kingdoms in parts of the southern and western Midlands, there was none in Cheshire.

English Involvement in Wales

NORTHUMBRIA

Æþelfrith had made clear the aggressive intentions of Northumbria towards Wales, and in 632 his successor Eadwine besieged Cadwallon ap Cadfan of Gwynedd in Môn. Bede, writing in Northumbria 100 years later, suggests that Eadwine took possession of both Môn and Man, at least for a time, and the Welsh poems known as the triads also refer to him fighting in Llŷn. But whatever else the Northumbrian influence in north Wales was, it was shortlived. Cadwallon responded with a devastating series of blows which illustrated both his authority and the breadth of his political horizons. Allying himself with Penda of Mercia in 633 or 634, apparently as the senior partner, he invaded Northumbria and killed Eadwine in battle at Hatfield Chase, thereby becoming the only independent Welsh king in recorded history to have overthrown an English royal dynasty. Not content with this, Cadwallon ravaged Northumbria, destroying all opposition, and according to Bede he ruled from York for a time. Northumbria may even have disintegrated into its constituent parts of Bernicia and Deira, but its recovery was swift; in 634 or 635, the new Northumbrian king Oswald fought and killed Cadwallon at Heavenfield near Hexham.

Cadwallon had demonstrated that a Welsh king could exert a significant influence in Anglo-Saxon politics. Had it not been for his intervention, Northumbria might well have asserted itself as the most powerful kingdom in England. As it was, Eadwine’s defeat enabled Penda to establish Mercia as the dominant power in the English Midlands for the next two decades, and he appears to have continued his policy of making alliances with the Welsh. Forces from Powys and possibly Gwynedd may have been allied with him when he defeated and killed Oswald at Maserfelth near Oswestry in 642, and his recovery of Welsh treasures from the Northumbrian Oswiu in 655 seems to indicate friendly relations with Cadwallon’s successor, Cadfael ap Cynfyn. Cadfael may well have been present when Penda was killed by Oswiu at Winwaed in Northumbria in the same year.

MERCIA

There were no more significant Welsh attacks on England for 400 years after Cadwallon’s death. The English, on the other hand, attacked Wales regularly throughout the early medieval period, to the extent that Domesday Book records that the customs of Hereford in the late eleventh century included an obligation on the men of the town to accompany the king’s sheriff on expeditions into Wales. Indeed, the very name of Hereford defined it in Old English as the ford suitable for troops, who as often as not were crossing the Wye on their way into Wales. Aggression against the Welsh had become institutionalised, and for much of the eighth and ninth centuries it was led by Mercia.

Æþelbald of Mercia came into conflict with the Welsh of Glywysing in the first half of the eighth century, and he was joined in another attack by Cuthred of Wessex in 743, but it was Æþelbald’s successor, Offa, who made the greatest impression on the Welsh. Offa united Mercia, and went on to achieve dominance over all the English kingdoms south of the Humber in the second half of the eighth century. His prestige was on a European scale – he was treated as an equal by Charlemagne, who became Holy Roman Emperor in 800 – and his influence was inevitably felt in Wales, where he was and still is best remembered for the dyke which bears his name.

A hundred years after Offa’s death in 796, Asser, the Welsh courtier and biographer of Ælfred of Wessex, was of the opinion that the Mercian king had caused a great dyke to be built ‘from sea to sea’ between the English and the Welsh.1 The dyke certainly existed – much of it is still there – but archaeology has raised many doubts about its purpose and extent, and also the date of its construction. The west-facing ditch and palisade suggests some defensive function against the Welsh, and troops may have been available from villages nearby, but the dyke was not fortified and there was apparently no garrison. Nor does it seem to have been meant as a frontier control with designated crossing points, since many of the apparent gaps in it are not original; although it was not well defended, there was clearly an intention that the dyke should be difficult to cross. Furthermore, its structure varies from place to place, and there are significant gaps in it between Treuddyn and the sea in the north, in Ergyng, and also in the south; Asser’s phrase ‘from sea to sea (de mari usque ad mare)’ was a common literary device, often used by Bede and Gildas, and usually intended to convey a sense of great distance rather than an accurate measurement. Some sections in the Midlands seem to have been constructed long before Offa’s time, and other parts in the north and south, including the ditch on the eastern bank of the Wye, were probably added on in the ninth century or even later. There is also an entirely separate Wat’s dyke to the east of Offa’s dyke, which extended it from the Severn to Holywell, probably at a later date. In short, Offa’s dyke was not a unitary work, carried out to some master plan; it was defensible without being overtly military; it was intended to restrict cross-border movement without preventing it altogether; it did not demarcate a final and comprehensive boundary between England and Wales; and it was not necessarily built by Offa.