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MATHRAVAL-EGLOE-YALE

271

the castles of Carreghova, Ruthin, and Chirk, as well as at the following castles, which have not been mentioned before.

MATHRAVAL, Madrael in the Pipe Rolls (Fig. 40), near Meifod in Montgomeryshire, defending the valley of the Vyrnwy.-Here was the chief royal residence of Powys; but the castle was built in John's reign by Roger de Vipont. It occupied 21 acres, and the motte is in one corner of the area, which is square,2 and surrounded only by banks; though ruined foundations are found in parts of the castle. John himself burned the castle in 1211, when the Welsh were besieging it,3 but the Pipe Roll (1212-1213) shows that he afterwards repaired it. [D. H. M.]

EGLOE, or Eulo, called by Leland Castle Yollo.On the Chester and Holywell road, about 8 miles from Holywell. The mention in the Pipe Roll of pikes and ammunition provided for this castle in 1212-1213 is the first ancient allusion to it with which we are acquainted. It is a motte-and-bailey castle, with additions in masonry which are probably of the reign of Henry III. The keep is of the "thimble" plan, a rare instance.* [B. T. S.]

*YALE.-The Brut tells us that in 1148 (read 1150) Owen Gwynedd built a castle in Yale. Powell identified this with Tomen y Rhodwydd, a motte and bailey on the road between Llangollen and Ruthin. Yale, however, is the name of a district, and there can be little doubt that the castle of Yale was the motte and

1 Wade Evans, Welsh Medieval Law, vol. xii.

2 It has in fact every appearance of a Roman camp.

3 Brut, 1211.

4 The castle of Hawarden, which is only about 2 miles from that of Euloe, is not mentioned in any records before 1215; but it is believed to have been a castle of the Norman lords of Mold. It also is on a motte.

bailey at Llanarmon, which for a long period was the caput of Yale.1 Yale undoubtedly belonged to the Normans when Domesday Book was compiled, and it is therefore not unlikely that these earthworks were first thrown up by the Earl of Chester. The castle was burnt by Jorwerth Goch in 1158, but restored by John in 1212. One of the expenses entered for that year is "for iron mallets for breaking the rocks in the ditch of the castle of Yale." This ditch cut in the rock still remains, as well as some foundations on the motte,* which is known as Tomen y Vardra, or the Mount of of the demesne.5

to say.

How long the two last-mentioned groups of castles continued in Anglo-Norman hands we do not attempt North Wales, as is well known, reaped a harvest of new power and prosperity through the civil war of the end of John's reign, and the ability of Llywelyn ap Jorwerth. Our task ends with the reign of John. We have only to remark that until the Pipe Rolls of Henry III.'s reign have been carefully searched, it is impossible to say with certainty what castles of North Wales, or if any, were still held by the English king.

1 I am indebted for this identification to the kindness of Mr A. N. Palmer of Wrexham.

2 D. B., i., 254. The manor is called Gal. It had been waste T. R. E., but was now worth 40s.

3 Pipe Roll (unpublished), 1212-1213.

4 Whereas there is no rock in the ditch of the neighbouring motte of Tomen y Rhodwydd. Pennant (and others following him) most inaccurately describe Tomen y Rhodwydd as two artificial mounts, whereas there is only one, with the usual embanked court. See Appendix K.

"The Maer dref [which Vardra represents] may be described as the home farm of the chieftain." Rhys and Brynmor Jones, The Welsh People, p. 401.

CHAPTER IX

MOTTE-CASTLES IN SOUTH WALES

It is not possible to fix certain dates for all the Norman conquests of the several provinces of South Wales. These conquests proceeded from various points, under different leaders. We might We might have expected that the earliest advances would have been on the Herefordshire border, the earldom of Hereford having been given by William I. to William FitzOsbern, one of his most trusted and energetic servants. Ordericus tells us that FitzOsbern and Walter de Lacy first invaded the district of Brecknock, and defeated three kings of the Welsh.1 This looks as though the conquest of Brecknock was then begun. But it was not completed till the reign of Rufus; in 1093 Bernard of Neufmarché defeated and slew Rhys ap Tudor, King of South Wales, in a battle which the Welsh chronicler speaks of as the fall of the kingdom of the Britons. William FitzOsbern died in 1071, and he had scarcely time to accomplish more than the building of the border castles of Wigmore, Clifford, Ewias, and Monmouth, and the incastellation of Gwent, that is the country between the Wye and the Usk, which had already been conquered by Harold.

2

It seems probable that Pembrokeshire was one

1 Ordericus, ii., 218, 219 (edition Prévost). 2 Bruty Tywysogion, 1091.

of the earliest Norman conquests in South Wales, as in 1073 and 1074 the Brut tells of two expeditions of "the French" into Dyfed, a region which included not only what we now call Pembrokeshire, but also Strath Towy, which comprised an extensive district on both sides of the valley of the Towy.' The Annales Cambria name Hugh de Montgomeri, Earl Roger's eldest son, in connection with the second of these expeditions, seven years before the expedition of King William into Wales in 1081.2 The House of Montgomeri certainly took the most conspicuous part in the conquest of Dyfed and Cardigan, which was completed, according to the Brut, in 1093.3 Arnulf of Montgomeri, fifth son of Earl Roger, was the leader of this conquest. But his father must at the same time have been operating in Cardigan, as the building of the castle of Cilgerran, which is on the very borders of Pembroke and Cardigan, is attributed to him.

How far Earl Roger made himself master of Ceredigion it is impossible to say. Later writers say that he built the castle of Cardigan, but we have not been able to find any early authority for this statement, which in itself is not improbable. Powell's History makes him do homage to William Rufus for the lordship of Cardigan, but here again the authority is doubtful. The fact

1 Brut, 1071. "The French ravage Ceredigion (Cardigan) and Dyfed"; 1072, "The French devastated Ceredigion a second time.

A.-S. C., 1081. "This year the king led an army into Wales, and there he set free many hundred persons"-doubtless, as Mr Freeman remarks, captives taken previously by the Welsh. The Brut treats this expedition as merely a pilgrimage to St David's !

3 "Then the French came into Dyfed and Ceredigion, which they have still retained, and fortified the castles, and seized upon all the land of the Britons." Brut, 10911093.

• Powell's History of Wales professes to be founded on that of Caradoc, a Welsh monk of the 12th century; but it is impossible to say how much of it is Caradoc, and how much Powell, or Wynne, his augmentor.

NORMANS IN CARDIGAN

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that a castle in or near Aberystwyth was not built until 1109 may indicate that the conquest of Northern Cardigan was not completed till it became the portion of the De Clares. This took place in 1109, when Henry I. deposed Cadwgan, a Welsh prince whom he had made Lord of Cardigan, and gave the lordship to Gilbert de Clare, who immediately proceeded to build the above-mentioned castle, and to restore Earl Roger's castle at Cilgerran (Dingeraint). From this time the castle and district of Cardigan continued to be an appanage of the House of Clare (of course with frequent interruptions from Welsh invasions), and of the family of William Marshall, to whom the Clare lands came. by marriage. The authority of these earls was suspended during the reign of Henry II., when he made Rhys ap Griffith, who had possessed himself of Ceredigion by conquest, Justiciar of South Wales, but in the reigns of John and Henry III., the Close Rolls show that Cardigan Castle and county were generally in the hands of the Marshalls.

2

3

The conquest of Pembrokeshire must have been closely followed by that of what is now Carmarthenshire, which was then reckoned as part of Dyfed. We first hear of the castle of Rhyd y Gors in 1094, but it evidently existed earlier. This castle we believe to have been the important castle of Carmarthen (see post). It was founded by William, son of Baldwin, sheriff of Devon, and cousin of the Gilbert de Clare who at a later period was made Lord of Cardigan by

1 Brut, 1107.

2 "In the Brut, Ystrad Towy does not only mean the vale of Towy, but a very large district, embracing most of Carmarthenshire and part of Glamorganshire. Welsh Historical Documents, by Egerton Phillimore, in Cymmrodor, vol. xi.

3 Brut, 1092.

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