IN THE PRECEDING PAGES we have often used the term, "the Welsh
frontier." In many respects, this is a misnomer; South Wales
represented not one, but many frontiers; and in each of its
aspects it profoundly affected the attitudes and activities of
those who came in contact with it.
For the central administration of England, the Welsh frontier
revolved about the pressing, but apparently insoluble, problem of
border defense. From time immemorial, marchers have been both
necessary and dangerous to the development of centralized states.
In the third century after Christ, generals in Pannonia made
an emperor of Rome; in the twentieth century, generals in Algeria
made a president of France. The situation was not much different
in twelfth-century Britain. The rich heartland of England
required security from Welsh attacks, and the central
administration of England was unable to provide this except by
the creation of a marcher class, a permanent, resident, and
relatively independent border guard. The kings of England were
aware of the dangers which this expedient created-if their
central administration could not directly control the Welsh
border, neither could it directly control the powerful noble who
had been established in the area. The crown's only recourse was
to attempt to develop devices for maintaining an indirect
control.
The Norman kings of England succeeded in developing only two such
devices. The first method was to establish personal bonds of
loyalty and solidarity of interest between the marcher lords and
the crown The second method was the establishment and
maintenance
Conclusions 177
of a balance of power between the marchers and the native Welsh.
Both were attempts to avoid and defer, rather than to solve, the
problem, and both were failures. The former method failed because
it was based upon personal relationships which were disrupted
with every change of personnel either at court or on the marches:
hence the marcher revolts in 1075, 1088, 1100, and other years.
The native Welsh played upon this Norman weakness, rising in
rebellion at the death of every monarch and finding their
opponents momentarily paralyzed by the mutual distrust of the new
king and the old frontier nobility. The latter method failed
because maintenance of a balance of power depended upon the
action of a strong central authority. Under a weak or preoccupied
king the delicate balance always broke down. Under William Rufus,
the balance was upset in favor of the Normans; under Stephen, in
favor of the Welsh. In both cases, however, the marchers gained
power and influence in England itself. Each crisis that passed
found the independence of the marcher lords increased, and the
power of the crown in the marcher lordships correspondingly
diminished. Royal frontier policy based on these two methods of
indirect control proved to be incapable of controlling either the
Welsh or the marchers, and yet the twelfth-century kings of
England could apparently devise no better one. Royal policy
regarding the Welsh frontier during this period was nothing more
than a series of variations wrung from these two essential
themes.
For the native Welsh, both chieftains and free tribesman, the
frontier represented the ultimate challenge; one in which the
very bases of the traditional Welsh way of life were threatened
with extinction. The Norman frontier in Wales was a gateway
through which new influences were belligerently forcing their
way.
The political aspects of this intrusion are the more readily
seen. Entering into Wales, the Norman marcher lords moved with a
vengeance into the traditional Welsh political system of
internecine strife and dynastic struggles. The tywysogion
were now confronted with opponents of such efficiency and
organization as to make resistance almost hopeless. Welsh
political organization came very close to complete collapse under
the first shock of this attack. The tactical inability of the
Normans to meet the Welsh in mountain warfare, however, coupled
with ineffectual Norman frontier policies, gained the natives a
brief respite. During this period, the Welsh absorbed enough
elements of Norman organization to allow then to establish
178 The Normans in South Wales
some relatively large and stable political units, notable among
them being the kingdoms of Gwynedd and Deheubarth. These were to
form effective bases for resisting further Norman advances into
Wales until the close of the thirteenth century.
A more silent battle was fought at the same time between the
cultures of the Anglo-Normans and the Welsh. The invaders brought
with them new patterns of speech, dress, agriculture,
architecture, worship, and all of the other things that go to
make up a way of life. These new standards competed with Welsh
traditions for supremacy. Many, such as the lords of Avon, chose
the ways of the invaders and were, in time, absorbed into
Anglo-Norman society. For the great majority of the Welsh,
however, the competition simply provided a stimulus to
expand, develop, and refine their native institutions. During
this period, Welsh culture was solidified into a way of life
which has maintained its essential integrity down to the present
day.
It can be clearly seen that the frontier experience of the Welsh
provided them with a powerful stimulus to political and cultural
unity. Norman pressure led the Welsh to emphasize those common
elements which distinguished them from their enemies. The greater
the Norman political and cultural pressure, the greater was the
impetus to Welsh unity. We have seen the disorganized and
fratricidal character of Welsh society before the advent of the
Normans. After a century of frontier experience, however, a
Welshman was able to tell Henry II,
This nation, O king, may now, as in former times, be harassed,
and in a great measure weakened and destroyed by your and other
powers, and it will often prevail by its laudable exertions; but
it can never be totally subdued through the wrath of man, unless
the wrath of God shall concur. Nor do I think, that any other
nation than this of Wales, or any other language, whatever may
hereafter come to pass, shall, in the day of severe examination
before the Supreme Judge, answer for this corner of the
earth.1
There is a spirit of nationalism in these words which was new in
Welsh history. It is a spirit which was born on the frontier.
Our primary concern, however, has been with neither the Welsh nor
the crown, but with those people who settled the frontier and
eventually formed the bases for the development of
Cambro-Norman
1Giraldus Cambrensis, Opera, eds. J. S.
Brewer et al.,
Part VI (Itinerarium Kambriae), p. 227.
Conclusions 179
society. What aspect did the frontier present to them? This is
not an easy question to answer; as we have often emphasized, the
frontier was not a location, but a process, and the character of
this process changed with the passage of time.
The Welsh frontier of the year 1070 lay along Offa's Dyke, the
traditional western limit of Anglo-Saxon settlement. By this
year, however, it was a political concept rather than an
actuality, for the lands lying immediately behind the frontier
lay ravaged and depopulated. Fifteen years of Welsh
incursions coupled with the disorders attending the Norman
Conquest of England, had succeeded in driving the limits of
English settlement and effective political control a good
distance eastward. Villages lay everywhere deserted, and oaks
were springing up in what were once well-tilled fields. There lay
no barrier between the unpacified Welsh chieftains and the rich
heartland of England.
William the Conqueror determined that the security of England
required a strong western border defense and the re-establishment
of the traditional western political frontier. For such a policy
to be effective, it was necessary that the English lands lying
immediately along the frontier be repopulated and redeveloped,
and so settlers were imported. These immigrants were not moving
into a new land to seek a new way of life, but rather were being
imported into an old land to perform the specific function of
border guard.
Despite this fact, the Welsh frontier offered its settlers great
opportunities. In order to counterbalance the insecurity and the
onerous duties attending such frontier life, the crown and other
developers of the region found it necessary to offer extensive
grants of liberty to immigrants. By 1081, William I had succeeded
in establishing a rapport with the Welsh chieftains, and the
period of extreme insecurity along the Welsh border came to an
end. By the time of Domesday redevelopment was progressing
rapidly, and the region gave every sign of increasing prosperity.
Admittedly, the Welsh frontier of the reign of William the
Conqueror was an artificially induced process this did not affect
the result. The hallmark of the Welsh frontier of Domesday lay in
the relative freedom of its inhabitants and the potential riches
it offered settlers.
The nature of the frontier process was drastically altered in the
closing decade of the eleventh century, when, under William Rufus
the royal policy of maintaining a balance of power to insure
peace
180 The Normans in South Wales
along the border was allowed to collapse. The frontiers of Norman
political control and of Norman settlement now moved into regions
formerly occupied by the independent Welsh buffer states. The
frontier of political control moved far more rapidly than the
line of actual Norman settlement, but the events of the Welsh
rebellion showed clearly enough that this was a dangerous policy.
Under the pressure of violent Welsh resistance, the limit of
Norman political power was made to coincide more closely with the
frontier of actual settlement. Under Henry I, the frontier was
again stabilized, and a measure of peace brought to those areas
now occupied by the Normans.
The frontier now lay in what was essentially a new land, beyond
the traditional limits of English society. No longer were the
settlers attempting to reinforce the traditional claims of the
English kings, or guaranteeing the heartland of England some
degree of security from Welsh attack. The settlers were moving
out on their own, creating new social units-manors, lordships,
abbeys, bourgs-where none had existed before, and they
were creating them in a region which lay beyond the power of the
traditional institutions of social control. The settlers of the
Welsh frontier of the early twelfth century were uniquely free to
work out their own way of life, and to determine their own
destinies.
The results of this short period of freedom of action are
disappointing; the general effect was not progressive, but highly
reactionary. The social order generated by the Welsh frontier
represented a reversion to a pure and archaic feudal prototype.
Perhaps nowhere in Europe could a more classic example of
feudalism be found than in the marcher lordships of Brecknock and
Glamorgan established during this period. We see no growth of a
yeoman farmer class; the settlers instead imported manorialism in
its purest form. The bourgs which were established simply
followed the model of Breteuil, a prototype already a
half-century old. A more perfect example of social and cultural
continuity could scarcely be found; the most highly Normanized
society to be found anywhere, including Normandy, was on the
marches of Wales.
Perhaps the influence of the frontier would in time have produced
a more egalitarian way of life. The settlers were not allowed
this time. With the anarchy of Stephen, the balance of power was
once more upset, and this time in favor of the resurgent and
dynamic Welsh. The Welsh frontier once more assumed the character
of a garrison society and became a beleaguered and insecure
outpost.
Conclusions 181
Social experimentation and individual freedom were luxuries which
these people could not afford. Their feudalized way of life
offered them a responsive and effective organization with which
to meet the daily threat of Welsh attack and was thus
retained.
Under Henry II, peace was once again restored to the border,
although it was more or less upon Welsh terms. The possibility of
marcher political expansion had come to an end, but so too had
the ever-present Welsh menace. As the arable lowland zone of
Wales was slowly filled up and brought under cultivation, the
Welsh frontier presented yet another aspect to settlers. It now
lay somewhere around the 600-foot contour line, at the hither
edge of the Welsh uplands. These areas now challenged the
settlers to cross the line and take up the task of developing
untilled moors and slopes. Crossing of this frontier demanded the
development of new social techniques. The earlier Welsh frontiers
had been conquered by the traditional feudal-manorial social
organization but this was no longer sufficient for the Welsh
uplands could support neither manor nor mounted knight. It could,
on the other hand, have supported a substantial population of
Cambro-Norman yeoman farmers and pastoralists, organized in a
frontier militia.
The Welsh frontier of the mid-twelfth century challenged the
settlers to abandon their traditional corporate institutions, and
to develop a system based upon the individualism which might
allow them to cross the frontier and begin the exploitation of
the uplands. They failed to respond to this challenge, instead
they clung to an institutionalized way of life which effectively
restricted them to those lowland areas of Wales which could
support such an organization. With their failure, the Welsh
frontier drew to an end.
In view of its complexity, it is difficult to define the frontier
process in South Wales in terms of any single characteristic. It
is, on the other hand, possible to discern the operation of
certain basic forces which helped to determine the course which
this process would take. The forces derived from the very nature
of the land where the process took place and from the basic tools
with which the settlers dealt with their environment. This entire
account of the Norman frontier in South Wales has been more or
less simply a study in human ecology, but such a study is of some
value in testing some traditional concepts regarding the nature
of the frontier process
182 The Normans in South Wales
at the "hither edge of free land."2 The Welsh frontier
illustrated the inadequacy of this simple definition when the
limits of Cambro-Norman society came to a rest firmly and finally
at the 600-foot contour line. The world did not end at this line;
a few feet further up the slope lay great tracts of free land,
waiting for the cultivation of clover, barley, alfalfa, oats,
broccoli, beets, and a host of other crops. Land sufficient for a
thousand farms and a hundred ranches lay within easy reach of the
Cambro-Normans, and yet the Welsh frontier came to a halt and to
an end at this "hither edge of free land." The question is,
why?
The answer is simple. Although the Welsh slopes and uplands were
suitable for the cultivation of a number of crops, they were not
suitable for the cultivation of wheat, and wheat was the basis of
Anglo-Norman society. The Anglo-Norman manor could not sustain
itself without a yearly crop of wheat, and hence the
Cambro-Norman manors of South Wales were restricted to those
limited areas which could support the growth of
wheat.3 This was an important factor, because Anglo-
or Cambro-Norman society was simply a complex superstructure
reared upon the basis of manorial agriculture. Only in very
special circumstances could either castle or bourg
flourish in the absence of nearby manors to sustain them. At the
same time, Cambro-Norman agronomy was not such as to allow
them to improve the capacity of the land to any great extent.
Fertilization and crop rotation were quite rudimentary, while
drainage and deep-ploughing were virtually unknown. Land which
could not support both extensive and intensive wheat cultivation,
and do so without artificial improvement, was not, in terms of
twelfth-century English society, "free land." It was, as Giraldus
Cambrensis suggested, "a desert," and unsuited for human
habitation.
But what of the effects of the frontier? Turner's answer was that
"the most important effect of the frontier has been in the
promotion of democracy . . . the frontier is productive of
individualism. Complex society is precipitated by the
wilderness into a kind of primitive organization based on the
family."4 This was certainly not true of the Welsh
frontier. The early settlers were lured to the border by the
promise of liberty, but it is important to note that the forms
this
2F. J. Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in
American History," The Turner Thesis, ed. G. R.
Taylor, p. 14.
3W. Rees, An Historical Atlas of Wales from
Early to Modern Times, plate 47.
4Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier," p. 14.
Conclusions 183
liberty took were dictated by the peculiar characteristics of the
"complex society" of medieval England. Unattached men-at-arms
were guaranteed a limitation of fines, burghers were given the
liberal laws of Breteuil, hospites were allowed assarts,
bovarii were granted the legal forms of freedom, and,
finally, the lords themselves obtained extensive immunities. The
liberty of the Welsh frontier was not a freedom from social
control, but freedom Within an accepted social framework. Society
did not break down in the wilderness of the Welsh frontier,
although it did undergo certain modifications.
Nowhere, however, do we see the development of "a kind of
primitive organization based on the family." On the contrary, the
palmiest days of the conquest of South Wales instead saw the
accelerated growth of the manor, feudal lordship, bourg,
and priory as the primary social institutions of the frontier.
Except for the accidental resemblance between feudalism and local
sovereignty, the Welsh frontier nowhere exhibited the slightest
tendency to promote individualism or to develop a social
structure based upon the family unit. In this aspect, the
Welsh frontier was quite unlike the American.
The reasons behind this divergence are not difficult to discover.
Turner erred when he characterized the frontier emphasis upon the
family unit simply as a reversion to a primitive social and
economic organization. The basic institution of twelfth-century
England had been the cooperative village manor. Even as early
as the thirteenth century, however, this agrarian organization
had begun to break down in a process which was accelerated by the
Black Death of the fourteenth century and the emergence of
capitalistic agriculture beginning in the fifteenth century. By
the seventeenth century, the manor had been replaced by the
family as the basic unit of agricultural exploitation in England.
The other, corporate, institutions which characterized English
society of this period were of a secondary nature, and were
ultimately based upon the activities of the yeoman and tenant
farmers. Thus the emphasis upon the family unit along the
American frontier represented no reversion, but precisely the
sort of agrarian structure we should expect to see
seventeenth-century Englishmen establish on virgin ground.
The social organization of a people is one of the most powerful
tools with which they seek to control and exploit their
environment, and there is a tendency for them to accentuate and
emphasize the development of successful institutions. The basic
unit for the exploitation of land among the English of the
seventeenth century was the
184 The Normans in South Wales
family, and its success along the American frontier led to an
accentuation of its importance, and an attending growth of
individualism. The basic unit of the Anglo-Normans of the twelfth
century, on the other hand, was the manor, and its success in
South Wales led to the development of a heightened form of
feudalism. Thus the difference between the two frontiers. The
effect of the frontier changes was in neither case drastic, nor
did it produce basic changes in the social order; it simply
accentuated and emphasized tendencies which were already present.
The new societies were but caricatures of the old.
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