The history of Cheshire during the two centuries after the coming of the Normans is a record of the incursions of the Welsh, and of the continued attempts of the English to resist them. The country was reduced to a deplorable condition. The Welsh raided and ravaged the lands next their borders. English armies came to Cheshire, consumed the produce of the farms, and often burned the corn and killed the live-stock lest the Welsh should seek for plunder. Many of these raids find no place in history; only those are recorded which were attended by startling results. We can mention only a few of them. In 1093 they came, led by Griffith ap Conan, and made great slaughter. They fought a great battle at Nantwich during the rule of Hugh Lupus. In 1121 they made a raid and burned two castles, Shocklach and Malpas, celebrated for its bad road. In 1150 they came again, but were cut off on their return at Nantwich. King Henry II. in 1156 came with an army and encamped on Saltney Marsh. Ten years later he came by sea with an army to Chester, determining to crush the Welsh by invading their territory; but his heart failed him, and he abandoned the enterprise. In 1212 these terrible Welshmen took castles, killed the garrisons, burned several towns, and returned home rejoicing laden with plunder. King John marched to Chester determined to punish these outrageous folk who loved fighting, but he had certain troubles with his barons which need not be here chronicled; and being assured that if he marched against the foe he would be either assassinated or handed over to the tender mercies of the marauders, he preferred to hie him back to London. Matthew Paris, the old chronicler, tells us much about these terrible doings--how in 1245 Henry III. tried in vain to conquer them, and then caused a fearful famine in Cheshire by destroying all the corn and produce, including the salt pits, lest the Welsh should gain plunder; how again in 1256 the Welsh invaded the country and ravaged it to the very gates of the city, and by way of reminder repeated the process in the next year. Even the stark Prince Edward they defeated, and King Henry came himself with a mighty army to reduce them to order. He adopted the usual tactics of burning the provisions of the poor Cheshire farmers, and was thus hoist on his own petard, as his army could not find food, and the expedition was abandoned. Then James, Lord Audley, who on returning from abroad found his castles burnt and his retainers slaughtered, being mightily enraged, marched into Wales to slay these terrible folk. He killed many, but he might as well have tried to sweep back the waves that beat on the Wirral shore. The pertinacious foe only retaliated and attacked his lands again. And so the fight went on backwards and forwards, houses and castles being burnt, men and women slain, crops destroyed, until the whole county was reduced to a howling, desolate wilderness. The duel between Prince Llewellyn and Edward I. is well known.