This testing time begins with the Conqueror's famous winter march of 1070 from York to Chester, and ends with the proclamation of Edward II as Prince of Wales at Carnarvon in 1301. In the course of this period of well nigh two centuries and a half there were years of comparative tranquillity; but on the whole it appears to us like one long incessant struggle. It divides itself naturally into two. In the first period we find the Norman barons conducting campaigns in Wales in their own private interest, each one {65} fighting for himself, and taking possession of as much land as he could lay hands on and retain. It was no more a war of England against Wales than the adventure of the Conqueror had been a war of Normandy against England. It was part of the policy of the first Norman kings to direct the embarrassing and overflowing martial energy of their followers into the innocuous channel of the Welsh wars. Whether they destroyed the Welsh, or whether the Welsh destroyed them, was matter of indifference to their royal master. But this period is of short duration; and is followed at once by another, in which we find the King of England himself taking an interest in the conquest of Wales, and not infrequently leading expeditions in person into its mountain recesses. It was the astute Henry I who began to see that the barons who had established themselves in Wales might easily grow so powerful as to be able successfully to defy the royal will. Indeed at one period it did seem as if that fine soldier and politician, Robert of Belesme, Earl of Shrewsbury, would succeed in winning the allegiance of all the Welsh princes, and in establishing a Norman-Welsh kingdom of the West, which would be completely independent {66} of England. In this there would have been nothing impossible, or even unusual. It was the kind of thing that the Normans had been doing in various parts of Europe in the course of the preceding hundred years; and if the Duke of Normandy had succeeded in creating a Norman-English kingdom, why should not the Earl of Shrewsbury succeed in establishing a Norman-Welsh kingdom. The scheme failed through jealousy on the part of the other Norman barons, the Welsh people's love of independence, and the hostility of the Norman and Angevin kings.