perhaps troubled in his conscience. One stormy night, he surprised
the Castle of Hawarden, in possession of which an English nobleman
had been left; killed the whole garrison, and carried off the
nobleman a prisoner to Snowdon. Upon this, the Welsh people rose
like one man. King Edward, with his army, marching from Worcester
to the Menai Strait, crossed it – near to where the wonderful
tubular iron bridge now, in days so different, makes a passage for
railway trains – by a bridge of boats that enabled forty men to
march abreast. He subdued the Island of Anglesea, and sent his men
forward to observe the enemy. The sudden appearance of the Welsh
created a panic among them, and they fell back to the bridge. The
tide had in the meantime risen and separated the boats; the Welsh
pursuing them, they were driven into the sea, and there they sunk,
in their heavy iron armour, by thousands. After this victory
Llewellyn, helped by the severe winter-weather of Wales, gained
another battle; but the King ordering a portion of his English army
to advance through South Wales, and catch him between two foes, and
Llewellyn bravely turning to meet this new enemy, he was surprised
and killed – very meanly, for he was unarmed and defenceless. His
head was struck off and sent to London, where it was fixed upon the
Tower, encircled with a wreath, some say of ivy, some say of
willow, some say of silver, to make it look like a ghastly coin in
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Dickens, Charles – A Child’s History of England
ridicule of the prediction.
David, however, still held out for six months, though eagerly
sought after by the King, and hunted by his own countrymen. One of
them finally betrayed him with his wife and children. He was
sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered; and from that time
this became the established punishment of Traitors in England – a
punishment wholly without excuse, as being revolting, vile, and
cruel, after its object is dead; and which has no sense in it, as
its only real degradation (and that nothing can blot out) is to the
country that permits on any consideration such abominable
barbarity.
Wales was now subdued. The Queen giving birth to a young prince in
the Castle of Carnarvon, the King showed him to the Welsh people as
their countryman, and called him Prince of Wales; a title that has
ever since been borne by the heir-apparent to the English throne –
which that little Prince soon became, by the death of his elder
brother. The King did better things for the Welsh than that, by
improving their laws and encouraging their trade. Disturbances
still took place, chiefly occasioned by the avarice and pride of
the English Lords, on whom Welsh lands and castles had been
bestowed; but they were subdued, and the country never rose again.
There is a legend that to prevent the people from being incited to
rebellion by the songs of their bards and harpers, Edward had them
all put to death. Some of them may have fallen among other men who
held out against the King; but this general slaughter is, I think,
a fancy of the harpers themselves, who, I dare say, made a song
about it many years afterwards, and sang it by the Welsh firesides
until it came to be believed.
The foreign war of the reign of Edward the First arose in this way.
The crews of two vessels, one a Norman ship, and the other an
English ship, happened to go to the same place in their boats to
fill their casks with fresh water. Being rough angry fellows, they
began to quarrel, and then to fight – the English with their fists;
the Normans with their knives – and, in the fight, a Norman was
killed. The Norman crew, instead of revenging themselves upon
those English sailors with whom they had quarrelled (who were too
strong for them, I suspect), took to their ship again in a great
rage, attacked the first English ship they met, laid hold of an
unoffending merchant who happened to be on board, and brutally