Chapter 1

Now in these days were hotte wars upon the Marches of Wales.
LEWIS'S _History._

The Chronicles, from which this narrative is extracted, assure us,
that during the long period when the Welsh princes maintained
their independence, the year 1187 was peculiarly marked as
favourable to peace betwixt them and their warlike neighbours, the
Lords Marchers, who inhabited those formidable castles on the
frontiers of the ancient British, on the ruins of which the
traveller gazes with wonder. This was the time when Baldwin,
Archbishop of Canterbury, accompanied by the learned Giraldus de
Barri, afterwards Bishop of Saint David's, preached the Crusade
from castle to castle, from town to town; awakened the inmost
valleys of his native Cambria with the call to arms for recovery
of the Holy Sepulchre; and, while he deprecated the feuds and wars
of Christian men against each other, held out to the martial
spirit of the age a general object of ambition, and a scene of
adventure, where the favour of Heaven, as well as earthy renown,
was to reward the successful champions.

Yet the British chieftains, among the thousands whom this spirit-
stirring summons called from their native land to a distant and
perilous expedition, had perhaps the best excuse for declining the
summons. The superior skill of the Anglo-Norman knights, who were
engaged in constant inroads on the Welsh frontier, and who were
frequently detaching from it large portions, which they fortified
with castles, thus making good what they had won, was avenged,
indeed, but not compensated, by the furious inroads of the
British, who, like the billows of a retiring tide, rolled on
successively, with noise, fury, and devastation; but, on each
retreat, yielded ground insensibly to their invaders.

A union among the native princes might have opposed a strong and
permanent barrier to the encroachments of the strangers; but they
were, unhappily, as much at discord among themselves as they were
with the Normans, and were constantly engaged in private war with
each other, of which the common enemy had the sole advantage.

The invitation to the Crusade promised something at least of
novelty to a nation peculiarly ardent in their temper; and it was
accepted by many, regardless of the consequences which must ensue,
to the country which they left defenceless. Even the most
celebrated enemies of the Saxon and Norman race laid aside their
enmity against the invaders of their country, to enrol themselves
under the banners of the Crusade.

Amongst these was reckoned Gwenwyn, (or more properly Gwenwynwen,
though we retain the briefer appellative,) a British prince who
continued exercising a precarious sovereignty over such parts of
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