Early Medieval Wales :: British History

Early Medieval Wales Towards the end of the 6th century the Angles and Saxons in eastern Britain began to entertain designs on the western lands. The inability of the independent western peoples to unify against this threat left the most powerful kingdom, Gwynedd, as the center of cultural and political resistance, a position it has retained until today. The weaker groups were unable to hold the invaders and after the Battle of Dyrham, near Gloucester in 577, the Britons in Cornwall were separated from those in Wales who became similarly cut off from their northern kin in Cumbria after the Battle of Chester in 616. Though still geographically in a state of change, Wales could now be said to exist. At this point, the racial mix in Wales was probably little different from that to the east, where Saxon numbers were small, but Wales was held together by the people's resistance to the Saxons. The Welsh started to refer to themselves as Cymry (fellow countrymen), not by the Saxon term used by English-speakers today, which is generally thought to mean either foreigners or Romanized people. Wales, like England in the Dark Ages, was a land of multiple kingships. The rugged terrain, with impenetrable mountain massifs and inhospitable upland ranges, broken by river valleys, did not make for a unified control or a unified development. The boundary with England was not marked by natural defences, and productive lowland areas as well as profitable upland pastures were open to frequent attacks. Not until Offa of Mercia built his dyke in the second half of the 8th century was there a definable frontier, and that was designed mainly to deter Welsh attacks and control trade across the new border. It was much the longest as well as the most striking man-made boundary in the whole of western medieval Europe, and clearly came to play an important role in shaping the perception of the extent and identity of Wales. Small local communities acknowledged a ruler whose principal function might seem at times to wage war on his neighbors and to plunder their lands. In general, war made them defensive. The principal divisions of Wales (right) were the four major kingdoms or principalities. Gwynedd was based on the Snowdonia massif and on Anglesey. Powys stretched from the borders of Mercia into central Wales. Dyfed, in the south-west, has been thought to represent the survival of very early traditions, some pre-Roman, some linked with the settlement of those who spoke the Goedelic form of Celtic.