For four hundred years Wales had been a thorn in the sides of the Saxon kings, a thorn in the sides of the Norman Conquerors and their descendants. The Britons, driven westward by the all-conquering Anglo-Saxons, had taken refuge in the fastnesses of that wild and mountainous region. There they had lived, "a mass of savage herdsmen, clad in the skins and fed by the milk of the cattle they tended, faithless, greedy, and revengeful."[16] Every fresh earldom which the English had wrested from them, often with barbarous injustice and cruelty, had been the signal for some equally barbarous reprisal. The history of the border countries is one perpetual record of raids and fightings, of lands laid waste with fire and sword, flocks and herds driven off, women and children carried into captivity. But in Henry the Second's reign, just as the British race seemed sinking deeper and deeper into barbarism, a strange revival of patriotism took place. The Bards of Britain, for centuries silent, suddenly burst into song again. The praise of every British hero, the glory of every fight, was sung throughout the land; and the sound of the harp heard in every house. These singers of freedom chanted of joy in battle, of their country's liberty, of hatred of the Saxon oppressor. And they sang of their great prince, Llewellyn, "towering above the rest of men with his long red lance, his red helmet of battle crested with a fierce wolf; tender-hearted, wise, witty, ingenious." Wales, stirred by their trumpet calls, had soon burst aflame to drive the Saxon from the land. With a succession of victories for the Welsh prince, Llewellyn--the Lord of Snowdon--the hopes of his people had risen high. The dissensions of Henry the Third's reign had strengthened their hands. Llewellyn the younger, no longer calling himself Lord of Snowdon, but "Prince of Wales," had made himself sovereign of all the Welsh chieftains, and had also allied himself with Simon de Montfort during the great earl's revolt against the king. But now in the very moment of Llewellyn's triumph, the accession of Edward the First to the English throne revived all the old questions of homage to the sovereign. Llewellyn and the King of Scotland were both summoned as vassals of the crown to Edward's coronation--the first that took place in Westminster Abbey as we know it. The King of Scotland came. But the "Prince of Wales" was absent. He did not dispute Edward's right to claim his homage: but excused himself on account of the dangers he would run on a journey to London, by reason of the enmity that existed between him and some of the lords marchers. Six times in two years was he summoned. And to none of these appeals did he vouchsafe the slightest attention.