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It professes to have been written under the direction of Rhiwallon the Physician and his sons Kadwgan, Gruffydd, and Einion; and they are called "the ablest and most eminent of the physicians of their time and of the time of Rhys Gryg, their lord, and the lord of Dinevor, the nobleman who kept their rights and privileges whole unto them, as was meet."
The weakness and dissensions which characterized the reign of Henry the Third enabled Llewelyn ap Jorwerth to preserve a practical independence till the close of his life, when a fresh acknowledgement of the English supremacy was wrested from him by Archbishop Edmund. But the triumphs of his arms were renewed by Llewelyn the son of Gruffydd, who followed him in 1246.
And to Llywelyn ap Gruffydd the prospect was even more tempting than to Llywelyn ap Iorwerth. The Barons' War weakened the power of England, and the necessities of Simon de Montfort led him to enter into an alliance with Llywelyn. The expansion of Gwynedd was great and rapid. Llywelyn's rule extended as far south as Merthyr, and made itself felt on the shores of Carmarthen Bay.
"If you fear my poor voice now, what will it be when all Wales is ringing with this last foul deed?" Tad breathed hard, then caught her wrists suddenly, crushing them in his fierceness: "Listen, Gwenith. After all I'm no Tavis I'm Gruffydd, and I love you." She shrank away with wide, fearful eyes, her breath coming in little painful gasps. "What what do you mean, Tad?" "I love you, Gwen." "And ?"
They hung around him sullenly, but as he looked them up and down the sick man's eyes took on a new keenness and a low, throaty laugh that was half a growl escaped him. "Well, Cedric, man, what devil's game have you been playing of late? and, Tad, you black rascal ah, 'twas a pity you were born to Gruffydd instead of me.
Again and again Henry the Second was driven to retreat from the impregnable fastnesses where the "Lords of Snowdon," the princes of the house of Gruffydd ap Conan, claimed supremacy over the whole of Wales. Once in the pass of Consilt a cry arose that the king was slain, Henry of Essex flung down the royal standard, and the king's desperate efforts could hardly save his army from utter rout.
Disembarking on the coast his light-armed troops he penetrated to the heart of the mountains, and the successors of the Welsh prince Gruffydd, whose head was the trophy of the campaign, swore to observe the old fealty and render the old tribute to the English Crown. A far more desperate struggle began when the wave of Norman conquest broke on the Welsh frontier.
"In Denbighshire," I replied, "near the mountain Hiraethog, from which circumstance he called himself in poetry Gruffydd Hiraethog." "When did he flourish?" "About the middle of the sixteenth century." "What did he write?" "A great many didactic pieces," said I in one of which is a famous couplet to this effect: "He who satire loves to sing On himself will satire bring."
He himself, a native of Jersey, appears to have derived much of it from the "Historia Britonum" of Gruffydd ab Arthur, commonly known as "Geoffrey of Monmouth," born 1128, who himself professes to have translated from a British original. It is, however, very possible that Wace may have had access, like Geoffrey, to independent sources of information.
Nevertheless, relying on the possibility of its being the sacred tree, I behaved just as I should have done had I been quite certain of the fact. Taking off my hat I knelt down and kissed its root, repeating lines from Gruffydd Gryg, with which I blended some of my own in order to accommodate what I said to present circumstances:
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