the special commission appointed when Llewelyn thought himself aggrieved are curious evidence of fair-mindedness in a strong-willed and almost absolute sovereign.  But in one respect Edward was ill-fitted to deal with an uncivilized people.  He was overstrict for the times even in England, where his subjects almost learned, before he died, to regret the anarchy of his father’s reign.  But his officers were nowhere harsher than in Wales, where the people, unaccustomed to a minute legality, complained that they were worse treated than Saracens or Jews.  Old offences were raked up; wrecking was made punishable; the legal taxes were aggravated by customary payments; and distresses were levied on the first goods that came to hand, whether Llewelyn’s own or his subjects’.

The people of the four annexed cantreds were soon ripe for rebellion, David was alienated from the English cause by petty quarrels with Reginald Gray, Justice of Chester, who insisted on making him answer before the English courts, hanged some of his vassals, and carried a military road through his woods.  The Welsh gentlemen complained that they were removed from offices which they had purchased, brought to justice for old offences which ought to have been condoned by the peace, and deprived of their jurisdiction in local courts.  For a time the lady Eleanor tried to mediate between her husband and her cousin.  But it was impossible that a stern, just man like Edward, penetrated with the most advanced doctrine of European legists and deriving his information from English employes, should be able to understand the position of the chief of a semibarbarous nationality, who thought outrages on law matters to be atoned for by fines, while he brooded with implacable rancor over every slight, real or fancied, to his own position as prince of Wales, representative of a dynasty that had ruled “since the time of Camber the son of Brutus.”

Moreover, Llewelyn thought, perhaps unreasonably, that he had been betrayed by Edward.  He said that on the day of his marriage the English King had forced him to subscribe a document to the effect that he would never harbor an English exile or maintain forces against Edward’s will.  There was little in all this that was not implied in Llewelyn’s position as vassal, and he himself did not complain that the conditions had ever been offensively pressed.  A king who had granted such liberal terms as Edward might perhaps claim, with reason, that his conquered vassal should never threaten him with hostilities.  But the offence was none the less deadly, that it was justified by the relations of subject and sovereign.