At the opening of Henry’s reign the native element in Wales was very distinctly in the ascendent. The old superiority, or primacy, of Gwynedd had once more become a living thing. Llywelyn ap Iorwerth had been for more than twenty years {1194–1216} extending his power over the southern and eastern principalities. He had in 1206 accepted the hand of John’s elder daughter Joan--the child, seemingly, of John’s early dissolved marriage with Isabel of Gloucester[434]--but throughout the civil war his sympathies were openly and actively with John’s enemies. In 1215 he “and the Welsh princes in general” attacked Caermarthen and destroyed the castle, and also took and destroyed most of the other castles in South Wales.[435] On the other hand, his chief rival, Gwenwynwyn, the prince of southern Powys, offered his service to John; whereupon Llywelyn, with “most of the princes,” marched into Powys and “took possession of Gwenwynwyn’s whole territory to himself” in 1216.[436] At the close of 1215 the Bishop of Hereford had died.[437] He was Giles de Breuse, the head of a family whose patrimony--comprising Radnor, Brecon, and Abergavenny in Wales, besides Totnes and Barnstaple in Devonshire and Bramber in Sussex--had been forfeited to the Crown in 1210 under circumstances which made it well-nigh impossible that confidence should ever be restored between the house of Breuse and King John. Giles had indeed, only a few weeks before his death, fined with the King for restitution of all the lands which had been his father’s;[438] but his next brother, Reginald, on succeeding to his hereditary claims, set himself to prosecute them by making common cause with the King’s enemies in Wales. Llywelyn was now at the height of his triumph, not only in Powys, but also in Deheubarth; in 1216, at Aberdovey, in his presence and obviously under his dictation, South Wales was portioned out between the four rival representatives of its sovereign house, Maelgwn and Rhys “the Hoarse” and their nephews “Young Rhys” and Owen.[439] These latter were cousins to Reginald de Breuse.[440] With Llywelyn Reginald formed a closer connexion by taking one of his daughters to wife.[441] In August, 1216, John visited the Welsh border and sought to win the support of some of the princes, and also of Reginald de Breuse, but it “did not avail him anything.”[442] Evidently they all saw in John’s extremity, and after his death in his successor’s youth and helplessness, their long-desired opportunity for revenge; and we can hardly doubt that it was a combination of Welshmen and followers of Reginald de Breuse who attacked Goodrich on the eve of Henry’s coronation. Gualo’s interdict published a fortnight later shows how clearly it was understood that Wales as a whole “held with the barons.”