After the conquest of Wales by Edward I. a Constitution was drawn up at
Rhuddlan in 1284, which was included among the statutes of the realm.
English law was introduced. In the matter of succession to land, Welsh
custom was to be followed. Upon a death occurring, estates continued to
be divisible among all the children.
“The general constitutional effect was that the Principality was
considered a distinct parcel of the Kingdom of England, ruled,
however, by English laws, save so far as these were not modified by
the provisions of the statute.”[3]
I have already told the story of Llewelyn, the last of the Welsh
princes, and of his treacherous and unprincipled brother David, but I
may here enter into fuller particulars of the end of David.
He had been a fugitive with his wife and children in the forests and
mountains, hunted from place to place, with a few tenants accompanying
him, grumbling at short commons and wretched quarters, casting sidelong
glances at the English, and wondering whether they would not secure
better meals and more comfortable lodgings if they turned against their
lord and prince. And this desire took effect; for their own base ends
they betrayed him to the English king. With the same measure with which
he had dealt with his brother Llewelyn, it was meted to him. Delivered
over to the hereditary enemies of his race by men of his own household,
tongue, and blood, he was brought before Edward at Rhuddlan, and with
him were handed over the crown of King Arthur and the rest of the
regalia of Wales.
On the last day of September, 1283, Edward held a parliament at
Shrewsbury for the trial of David, who was condemned to be hanged,
cut down whilst still breathing, his belly sliced open, and his still
palpitating heart plucked out. Then his body was chopped in pieces,
and the parts distributed for exhibition in certain English towns. His
head, forwarded to London, was placed on a spike above the gatehouse of
the Tower. His steward, “faithful found, among the faithless faithful
only he,” was also convicted of high treason, and was condemned to be
torn to pieces by horses.
Edward, the second son of the King, was born at Carnarvon on April
25th, 1284, and the story goes that King Edward, then at Rhuddlan,
having assembled there the principal men of Wales, announced to them
that as the royal race of Cunedda was extinct, he would give to them
a Prince of Wales who could speak no word of English, and who was a
native of the Principality. The chieftains replied that this they
would accept, and to him they would yield obedience. Thereupon Edward
presented to them his infant son, recently born at Carnarvon.
By the death of Alphonso, Edward’s eldest son, at Windsor, this Prince
Edward became heir-apparent to the throne.
Some of the jewels of the Welsh regalia were used for the decoration of
the shrine of Edward the Confessor at Westminster.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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