Far more troublesome and dangerous vassals than the Scot king were the native princes of Wales. In ancient times Wales had been divided into three kingdoms: Gwynedd, answering roughly to the modern counties of Flint, part of Denbigh, Carnarvon, Anglesey, and the western part of Merioneth; Powys, stretching from the mouth of the Dee to the river Wye, and including, besides the southern part of what is now Denbighshire and the eastern part of Merioneth, the present shires of Montgomery and Radnor; and Deheubarth, which included, besides the remaining shires of the modern South Wales, the district of Monmouth as far east as the Wye. These three kingdoms had been separate and independent, although a sort of overlordship or primacy seems to have been recognized as appertaining to the Kings of Gwynedd. By the end of the twelfth century Gwynedd was the only one of these three States which remained purely Welsh in population and government. The whole of Deheubarth and the greater part of Powys were dotted over with Norman castles, every one of which was the capital of a lordship held by a baron of Norman or English race, owning allegiance to no one save the English King.[433] Neither these “marcher lords” nor their sovereign, however, had made any real progress towards conquering the country or its people; they were, so to say, detachments of a feudal host encamped here and there in a foreign land, and surrounded by a native population which still maintained its own customs and laws and recognized no authority except that of its own hereditary chieftains. Between the two peoples there was a bitter racial and national feud; but the relations between the Norman lords marchers and the Welsh princes varied greatly. It was not for the interest of the former to quarrel unnecessarily with their Welsh neighbours at any time; and when they themselves chanced to be in rebellion against their own sovereign--as was the case with some of them, notably with the great house of Breuse in south-eastern Wales, in the latter years of John’s reign--they naturally found it convenient to make alliance with the native rulers of the land. These, on the other hand, were often at feud among themselves, and did not scruple to make use of the marchers’ aid against one another when it suited them, though at other times they were ready to make common cause against the common enemy. [Sidenote: 1216]