The history of Pembrokeshire

Front matter

22101391597

FOLK-LORE & FOLK STORIES OF WALES

By MARIE TREVELYAN

Foreword

THE decision to publish this History was not easily or hastily arrived at. The fact that the manuscript was incomplete presented the greatest difficulty. The author had projected a history that would have dealt with the county to the close of the nineteenth century. His outline included three chapters under the following headings : Georgian Pembrokeshire, The Landing of the French, and Modern Days, which he did not live to write.

A perusal of the present volume by the general reader will, we believe, carry with it a regret at the absence of these chapters. But the shadow of death and the multifarious public engagements of the author interfered wath the execution of his plan.

He was able, however, to deal pretty fully with the Evangelical revival of the eighteenth century, a subject that had long interested him, and the study of which had undoubtedly suggested to his mind the larger undertaking.

The general desire expressed for the appearance of a book thus written from a fresh standpoint, the product of one who, by early training and sympathy, had so many qualifications for treating the matter adequately, and the knowledge of the pleasure the prospect of its appearance gave our brother, overcame our hesitation to a great extent.

VI

Foreword

Still, there remained the fact that no arrangements had been made with the publishers before the death of the author. When, however, we were offered terms which, we were persuaded, would not involve us in pecuniary loss, we ventured to trust the reading public of the county in the hope that the volume would yield both profit and pleasure and satisfy a long-felt want.

We desire to acknowledge our indebtedness to friends, without whose advice and generous aid we could not have seen the volume through the press. Our thanks are due to the Rev. T. Gough Griffiths, who carefully perused the manuscript and satisfied us of its continuity and completeness (within the limits already indicated) ; to Mr. T. C. Rees, for his general superintendence of the issue ; to Mr. H. E. H. James, Director of Education, for his invaluable services in reading the proof sheets ; and to Mr. Llewellyn G. James for compiling the index.

J. AND M. PHILLIPS.

Book I Chapter Page

INTRODUCTORY I

I. DEMETIA : ROMAN AND PRE-ROMAN - - - 20

II. DEMETIA I POST-ROMAN - - - ‘ 29

III. THE' MAKING OF DYFED - - - ‘35

IV. ST. DAVID AND THE BEGINNING OF CHRISTIANITY

IN DYFED - - - 43

V. EARLY CHRISTIANITY : THE APOSTLES OF WALES - 50

VI. FOUR CENTURIES : A. D. 600 TO A. D. IOOO - - 59

VII. THE ELEVENTH CENTURY - - - J 6

Book II

I. THE NORMAN CONQUEST OF DYFED - - '94

II. THE FLEMINGS ----- 12 2

III. GRUFFYDD AP RHYS AND HIS SON - - - I35

IV. THE INVASION OF IRELAND - - . - - 148

V. THE EXPEDITION OF STRONGBOW - - - l68

VI. THE COMING OF KING HENRY - - - ig2

VII. TO THE DEATHS OF EARL RICHARD AND BISHOP

VIII. GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS - - - 228

ix. giraldus cambrensis — continued - - - 252

X. WILLIAM MARSHAL AND HIS SONS - - - 269

XI. AFTER THE MARSHALS .... 308

XII. THE WARS OF EDWARD I. AND THE EDWARDIAN

SETTLEMENT ----- 330

vii

Vlll

Contents book III

CHAPTER PAGE

I. the fourteenth century - - - 351

II. THE REVOLT OF OWEN GLENDOWER - - 367

III. FROM AGINCOURT TO BOSWORTH - - 379

IV. FROM BOSWORTH TO THE REFORMATION - - 396

Book IV

I. THE REFORMATION ----- 4.15

II. ELIZABETHAN PEMBROKESHIRE - - - 434

III. FROM ELIZABETH TO THE CIVIL WAR - - 478

IV. THE CIVIL WAR ----- 490

V. THE PLAGUE AT HAVERFORDWEST (165I-52) - 515

VI. UNDER THE PROTECTORATE - - - - 530

VII. THE RESTORATION ----- 546

Book V

I. AFTER THE REVOLUTION - - - - 556

II. THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL ' 55®

III. THE evangelical revival — continued, - - 577

INDEX - - 5®4

Part I

DEMETIA,” wrote Giraldus Cambrensis — “ Demetia, with its seven cantreds, is the most beautiful district of Wales.”

Yet in no other part of the Principality is there to be found among the people so much readiness to acquiesce in the depreciation of their own county as there is among the inhabitants of old Demetia. Of this singular phenomenon we have only one explanation to offer. For many centuries the county has been divided into two sections. Neither the spread of the English language in the north nor the large infusion of Welsh blood among the population of the south has fused Teutonic and Celtic Pembrokeshire into one. This permanent division has been hitherto a formidable obstacle to the growth of a spirit of local patriotism, such as animates the people of Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire.

Yet there is no county in Wales of which the inhabitants have more reason to be proud. The last few years has witnessed a local outburst of archaeological enthusiasm, which on that side has done much to redress the unjust neglect with which it had long been treated. But its

i historical interest is not the only, nor even the principal, charm of the “ premier county.” Pembrokeshire scenery has an abundance and variety of natural beauty, of which few of its inhabitants seem to be aware. The great forest that once spread over the central tract has almost entirely disappeared. The woods that formerly clothed the northern slopes of the Presselly range are but scantily represented now. Still, Pembrokeshire abounds in spots of exquisite beauty — secluded glens that lie far from the main thoroughfares, hamlets that nestle beneath the rounded hill-tops, valleys whose loveliness startles the casual visitor into astonished admiration. The writer can never forget his first visit to one such nook. The main road is sufficiently uninteresting, but a stroll of a few hundred yards brings one into the midst of delightful sylvan scenery, while beyond lie the blue waters of Milford Haven. Nor is this charming valley without its historical associations. The churchyard that overlooks its northern end is believed to be the last resting-place of one of the members of the grim High Court of Justice, who in the evil days of the Restoration found here a shelter among the kindly country-folk. On the south side of the churchyard is an exceptionally fine British earthwork, which tradition, as old as the days of the Conquest, links with the name of King Arthur’s nephew, Wal wayne, — the Gawain of whom Tennyson sings :

“ Light was Gawain in life and light in death.”

The church in whose porch the hunted Puritan died has made way for a handsome modem structure. Some thirty years ago the Rector was the saintly Sir William Dunbar, in early life a friend of Edward Irving, for whose memory he never ceased to cherish an affectionate

regard.

Such is one of the many lovely spots of Pembrokeshire. Then there is the unrivalled coast -line. There is a weird fascination in the bold headlands and frowning cliffs of Carnarvonshire, with their background of cloudwrapped mountain peaks. But even Carnarvonshire cannot enter into competition with Pembrokeshire and its alternation of cape and creek, islet and roadstead and stormy frith. Westward its contour is broken by the Bay of St. Bride, inhospitable enough to the tempestdriven sailor, for scant shelter will be found there, but a splendid sheet of water as it spreads out before the landsman’s eye ; while on each side of the entrance rise the tall cliffs of islands which still bear the names the Vikings gave them a thousand years ago. Only those can rightly appreciate its changeful beauty who are familiar with its aspect at all seasons — who have watched it not only beneath the brilliant sky of June, but in spring and autumn, when the purple cloud-shadows chase one another across its surface, and in winter, when it is white with crested surges, and the foam is seen breaking over the Lighthouse Rock, twelve miles away.

A fine view of the bay and of North-West Pembrokeshire is obtained from Cam Lleidi, the pointed rock that rises from the northern cliff, a mile from St. David’s. The peninsula of Dewisland (David’s Land) lies at our feet. In the foreground the roofs of the little city cluster round the cathedral towers. In the distance is Roch Castle (the Castle of the Rock), the outpost of the Teutonic colonists against the Welsh, whom they had dispossessed. About three-quarters of a mile to the west of us is the promontory of St. David’s Head, the Land’s End of Wales, where the Warrior’s Dyke — a broad rampart of unhewn, uncemented stone — still guards, as it has done for millenniums, the hut -circles, the so-called “ huts of the Gaels,” whose name attests their connection with some one of the vanished or vanquished races. Between the Head and Carn Lleidi are long lines of stonework, the remains of a huge fortress, perhaps contemporary with the Warrior’s Dyke, but never completed. Possibly it dawned upon the builders that the barren waterless waste was unsuitable for a permanent camp of refuge.

South of the Head stretch the sands of Whitesand Bay, near the northern end of which have been found traces of a Christian settlement at least as old as the days of St. David. Further south, Ramsey Island is separated from the mainland by the broad but perilous Sound. Beyond, the sea is studded with the miniature archipelago known as the Bishop and Clerks. Between Ramsey Sound and the city is the fortification-crowned rock which bears the name of Boia, the chieftain who figures in legend as the inveterate enemy of St. David. Eastward of the city gleam the waters of Dowrog Pool, near which passes an ancient British trackway. The whole district abounds in prehistoric remains, earthworks, maenhirs, cromlechs, and ogham stones.

On the cliffs overlooking St. Bride's Bay are fine specimens of the old cliff-castles. One of these, between Caerfai and Caerbwdy, is of the three-walled type, the middle wall being the highest and the inner wall the lowest. This camp, curiously enough, has its exact counterpart directly opposite, near St. Bride's, on the southern shore.

Ramsey and St. Margaret’s on the north, and Skomar on the south, keep watch and ward over the entrance to the bay, the rugged outline of the southern island contrasting strikingly with the gently swelling hills and smoother contour of its northern neighbour. On Skomar there are traces of primitive dwellings and evidences of interments so numerous as to suggest the idea that the bleak rocky islet was the last refuge of some tribe, driven from the mainland by more numerous or better -armed invaders. Between Skomar and the peninsula of Roose rush and swirl the waters of the dreaded Jack Sound.

A short journey along the coast leads us past another cliff-castle — in good preservation, but of a ruder type than those we have seen in St. Bride’s Bay — past the beautiful but rarely visited Marloes Sands, past West Dale, to the romantically situated lighthouse of St. Ann’s, where the full force of the Atlantic surges breaks on the lofty cliffs, which they have carved into a thousand fantastic forms.

Immediately beyond St. Ann’s is Brunt, the traditional landing-place of Richmond, in August, 1485 ; though it is not easy to understand why he should have landed here instead of at Dale, just inside the harbour, for we are now at the entrance to Milford Haven — the great " Midfiord ” which penetrates into the heart of the county. Has not Shakespeare sung the praises of “ this same blessed Milford ” ? We are in no danger of forgetting that, for we are reminded of it in season and out of season. The one feature of their county over which all Pembrokeshire men wax enthusiastic is their “ far-famed haven,” with its magnificent possibilities — possibilities that have been so slow of transmutation into fact, but which in the last decade have become something better than a dream. The development of the trade of Milford, if it does not realize the sanguine fancies of a former generation, yet has been sufficient to transform the little town, once as sleepy as a dead city of the Zuyder Zee, into a bustling seaport, with new streets spreading out into the county on all sides.

At first the Government Dockyard was at Milford, until the exorbitant price demanded by the local landowner for additional ground provoked the Admiralty into removing it higher up the harbour to Pater or Patrickchurch, now Pembroke Dock. Opposite to Pembroke Dock is Neyland (misnamed New Milford), the terminus of the Great Western Railway, and for many years the starting-point of the steamers that plied to Waterford and Cork.

The commercial possibilities of the Haven concern only the part from Neyland and Pembroke Dock westward, but its upper reaches are well worth exploring. On one of its eastern branches stands the dismantled castle of Carew (see footnote).* Go there, if you can, when the tide is full beneath its walls, and the sun, ere he sinks behind the hills of Roose, floods the valley with golden light. Then it looks scarcely less imposing than when Sir Rhys ap Thomas, to whom the Tudors owed their crown, feasted the chivalry of South Wales within its precincts. Better still will it be to “ visit it by pale moonlight.” As the silver sheen falls on rounded turret and mullioned window, it requires little imagination to see Sir John Perrot — Bluff Harry’s unacknowledged son — coming forth to welcome his guests, the Pembrokeshire men whom he loved so well. Loyal and true were they to him throughout the brilliant, stormy, licentious, patriotic career, which found its tragic, undeserved close in a traitor’s cell. Near the churchyard of Carew is a fine cross, one of the tallest in the Principality, with finely carved ornament of an early Celtic type. In the churchyard a humble stone marks the resting-place of “ John Relly, Preacher of the Gospel but the story of the brothers James and John Relly, evangelists, hymn -writers, and theologians, will be told in a later chapter.

At the southern side of the entrance to the Carew Estuary are the woods of Cosheston, and on the northern, Lawrenny Castle, a tastefully-built modem house, stands in a small park ringed with fine trees. Just opposite, on the western shore of the Haven, the ruined peel-tower of Benton Castle rises amid masses of foliage that slope down to the water’s edge. It is here that the visitor is most forcibly reminded of the Dart. Were the banks of the Cleddau as well wooded throughout as they are in parts, the Devonshire river, which its admirers fondly

* Pronounced "Cdrew,” not “Car6w” — the Welsh “ Caerau.”

call the English Rhine, would have a foimidable rival of its fame. There is a pleasant stretch of water before we come to Picton Point. On the left hand, up a deep combe, lies the large fishing-village of Llangwm. It is a pretty sight when the little flotilla set out for their night’s work in the land-locked waters of the great harbour, outside which their small craft rarely, if ever, venture. Many a stalwart form recalls their Scandinavian ancestry, while the quaintly pretty costumes of the women, who share the toils of their fathers and brothers, add to the picturesqueness of the scene.

Just between the meeting streams of the Western and Eastern Cleddau, embowered in its ancient woods, is Picton Castle, the only castle in Wales (almost the only one in Great Britain) which has never been dismantled, has never ceased to be inhabited, and has never passed out of the possession of the descendants of its founder. Its history is interwoven with the history of the county.

In the seventeenth century its Puritan lords were resolute opponents of the Stuart tyranny. Loyal to the Parliament and to the Protectorate, they were faithful to the “ good old cause ” in its darkest hours, and after the Revolution were devoted adherents of the new settlement. The “ good Sir John ” who lived far into the reign of George II. worthily sustained the religious and political traditions of his family. By a strange irony of fortune, the sturdy old Puritan, the patron and friend of Whitefield, became the grandfather of Horace Walpole and the father of a zealous Jacobite. The younger Sir John was the secret leader of the malcontents when Pembrokeshire, in the ’45, was a hotbed of Jacobite intrigue ; but this aberration was only temporary, for in the next generation Picton reverted to its hereditary Whiggism.

Eastward of Picton, and also delightfully wooded, is the demesne of Slebech. This comparatively modem house occupies the site of a famous preceptory of the

Knights of St. John. The course of the Eastern Cleddau may be followed (not all the way by water) under Canaston Wood, where the Parliamentary forces lay in ambush before their final victory on Colby Moor, as far as the ruins of Llawhaden Castle, the baronial residence of the medieval Bishops. The Western Cleddau (the main stream) is navigable, when the tide serves, to Haverfordwest. About halfway on the left bank, just below the modem house of Boulston, are the ruins of the old mansion of the Wogans, once the most influential family in the county ; and adjoining is the diminutive parish church, where many of them were buried. Like their neighbours of Picton, the Wogans were Roundheads. One of them, Thomas Wogan, Member for Cardigan, signed the death-warrant of King Charles, and is said to have been the mysterious fugitive who died at Walwyn’s Castle. Nearer to Haverfordwest, on the right bank, is the church of Haroldston St. Issells, associated alike with memories of seventeenth-century Puritanism and of eighteenth-century Evangelicalism ; for Peregrine Phillips, one of the ejected of 1662, lies buried there, and its walls have echoed to the voice of Howell Davies, the Methodist Apostle of Pembrokeshire. This church of Evangelical and Puritan memories, of Norman (or possibly Flemish) construction, bearing a Scandinavian nam i, and dedicated to an Armorican missionary, is in itself an epitome of Pembrokeshire history. The church of Uzmaston that crowns the hill-top on the opposite bank is of similar origin, also bears a Scandinavian name, and is dedicated tc the same Celtic saint. Looking up the valley, through which the Merlin’s (rather Marian’s = Maudlen’s = Magdalen’s) Brook flows down to join the Cleddau, we catch a glimpse of the ruins of Haroldston, the home of the Perrots. Here lived Sir James Perrot, the illegitimate son of Sir John, a stout-hearted Puritan who braved the ire of James I., and sadly harassed his unfortunate Catholic neighbours. Here, too, lived Herbert Perrot, the protector of Peregrine Phillips, and also a later Herbert, the original of Sir Roger de Coverley. Within these crumbling walls Addison first met his future wife, the Countess of Warwick.

Before us is Haverfordwest, the county town of Pembrokeshire, though not its name-town. The proper name of the town is Haverford, and Haverford only. It is styled Haverfordia in all old documents. The " west ” was added, probably in the fourteenth century, by some bungling officials who persisted in confusing the Scandinavian Haverford ( = Havre-fiord) with the Saxon Hereford, though the county town, Haverfordwest, is a town and county of itself, having its own Quarter Sessions, Sheriff, and Lord-Lieutenant. Until, by the iconoclastic Local Government Act of 1888, it was merged in the administrative county of Pembroke, its independence of the county which surrounded it was complete ; e.g., in 1656 the Corporation, in an official document, asserted that a recent Act of Parliament dealing with Wales had no force in Haverfordwest, because, while it enumerated the twelve counties and Monmouthshire, it did not name the county of Haverfordwest.

In the seventeenth century it was the second town in Wales, if not the first, Carmarthen being its only rival.

To the history of the old town, Briton and Scandinavian, Norman and Fleming, have contributed their several shares. Anglo-Norman conquerors, Celtic immigrants and French invaders, have played their parts here, Protestant martyr and Catholic confessor, Anglican prelate and Puritan lecturer, Celtic orator and Methodist, revivalist and German Quietist have in their turn influenced its religious life.

We cannot stay to describe the Edwardian castle, now a mere shell, but externally little damaged, that occupies the site of the ruder structure built by Gilbert de Clare.

Nor can we visit St. Mary’s Church, with its exquisite Early English work, unsurpassed save at Salisbury Cathedral, and its fine Tudor roof, the work of the peaceful days that followed the crowning mercy of Bosworth Field. Yet before we turn away, let us climb the Parade Hill, overlooking the Valley of the Cleddau. North-west the view is bounded by the Lion Rock of Trefgam ; eastward it extends over the highlands of Central Pembrokeshire to the foot of the Presselly Hills. Three miles off is the “ Rath Rings,” a large earthwork closely resembling the elaborately planned fortification of Walwyn’s Castle. A little farther off is Wiston, whose castle has never been rebuilt since its destruction in the formidable Welsh invasions of 1220. South-west, at a bend of the valley, the prospect is closed by the woods of Boulston. It is a pity that that disagreeable necessity of civilization, the railway, should mar a landscape so beautiful ; but of a summer evening, when the winding river-bed is filled by the rising tide, and coasting vessels and pleasure boats pass and repass, even the utilitarian ugliness of the railway embankment is forgotten in the charm of its surroundings. The valley looks its loveliest when the spring-tides flood the marshes and transform it into a land-locked estuary, while from the waters that lave the hillocks at their feet rise the ivy-clad ruins of the great church of St. Thomas of Canterbury, gilded by the morning sun, or decked by the moonbeams with fantastic tracery.

Then indeed the landscape is one of marvellous beauty. Perchance this eulogy may seem excessive — the extravagance of the writer’s love for the scenes of his boyhood. Yet this same view of the Cleddau by moonlight won the enthusiastic admiration of one who had seen many men and many lands. This was how it came about. In October, 1865, the old church of St. Martin’s was reopened after restoration of a rather sweeping character. The preacher in the morning was Bishop Thirlwall, the ii greatest of the successors of St. David. In the evening the pulpit was occupied by the late Dean Phillips, probably the most popular preacher among the clergy of the diocese ; but the most distinguished member of the morning congregation, who had escaped recognition in the crowded edifice, was not present at the second service. Early that evening a Haverfordwest shopkeeper, standing at his door, was accosted by a clergyman and his wife, who asked the way to the castle. He took them to a room in his house which commanded a fine view of the old fortress, and then offered his services as their guide round the town. Of course they went to the Parade. It was a brilliant moonlight night, and a high tide filled the valley. The visitors were enchanted with the landscape, and expressed their admiration in glowing terms. At the close of their ramble, they thanked their guide warmly, and gave him a cordial invitation to the Deanery of Westminster. When the good man found that he had been acting as cicerone to Dean Stanley and Lady Augusta, he felt like one who had been “ entertaining angels unawares.” Several years after, the writer, one summer evening, passed near the railway-station an open carriage containing two elderly clergymen. One face in particular attracted him by its expression of keen intelligence, and haunted him with a sense of familiarity. On his way up High Street he met his friend, the hero of the incident just narrated, who exclaimed : “ Who do you think has been here ? Dean Stanley !” The Dean had been staying at St. David’s, with Dean Wellesley of Windsor, and would not leave Haverfordwest without calling upon the gentleman whose courtesy to a stranger he had not forgotten. Lady Augusta was not with him now. The shadow of the great sorrow was resting upon his closing years. A few months later he passed out of that shadow into the everlasting light —

“ When from earth’s foreign inn he turned And went home to his wife.”

We have, however, omitted to mention one locality, probably the best known to our readers. The two places in Pembrokeshire most frequented by tourists are the grey cathedral that stands in the treeless peninsula of the north-west, and the modem watering-place which from its south-western coast looks out over Carmarthen Bay. Not that Tenby is a town of yesterday. The last syllable of its name has led many to attribute to it a Danish origin — an illustration of the danger of a little learning. The “ by ” is not the Danish “ by ” of Derby( Whitby, or Grimsby. Its parallel is to be found not on the shores of the North Sea, but in the Vale of Clwyd. In ancient Welsh manuscript it is called “ Dinbych-y-Pyscod ” — i.e., Dinbych of the Fishes or the Fisheries — “Dinbych” being “ little fort.” The Denbigh of South Wales is at least as old as the Christian era. The traces of Roman rule in Pembrokeshire are slight, chiefly numismatic. But such as they are, they point to an occupation of the district in the last quarter of the first century, and to a settlement of some kind at Tenby, which may have been either a health-resort or a minor naval station, possibly both. Coins of Vespasian, Marcus Aurelius, Faustina, Probus, Maximinus, Carausius, Constantine, Constantine II., and Constans have been found in the town or in the immediate neighbourhood. The evidence thus covers nearly the whole period of Roman rule in Britain. But the strangest of all these numismatic finds was a Graeco- Bactrian coin of the second century b.c., which was dug up at the Esplanade in 1880, close to the place where a coin of Vespasian had been dug up two years before. Perhaps it was a “ keepsake ” of some Roman soldier, dropped as he was strolling along the cliffs, enjoying the magnificent sea-view, or looking across to the green slopes of Caldey. Thus Tenby is associated with the beginnings of the history of Demetia, for it is with the arrival of the Romans that the first glimmerings of the light of history become faintly visible.

Part II

The population of Pembrokeshire includes a comparatively large element derived from pre-Celtic or even pre-Aryan races. The Euskarians* are largely represented in North Pembrokeshire. Many a sturdy yeoman and honest peasant is the lineal descendant of the tribes whose chieftains have for millenniums been lying beneath the huge mounds raised by their kinsmen’s reverent hands. Coming nearer to historic times, the successive waves of Celtic immigration are distinctly traceable. The Goidels have left slight, but sufficient, indications of their presence. It is more than probable that they, with the Iberians whom they found here and subdued, and with whom they became amalgamated, were the occupants of South-West Wales under the Roman rule.

It was, in truth, a strangely mixed population that occupied this corner of Wales in the first century of our era, and it would be difficult to determine which of the various elements — Euskarian, Iberian, Goidelic — was really predominant. The Romans certainly conquered Dyfed at an early date, but the only undoubted memorials of their presence are a few coins in the Tenby Museum and the course, traceable here and there, of their road from Maridunum (Carmarthen) to Menevia. It is at last definitely settled that at Ambleston, eight miles from Haverfordwest, there was a small Roman station, probably the Ad Vicesimum, which reckless sceptics had consigned to the region of exploded myths. A great part of the Celtic remains and traditions belongs to the late Roman period, or to the centuries that intervened before the Teutonic conquest. In the fifth century the advent of

* In despair of finding a more suitable name, I have adopted Euskarian as= aborigines.

a Brythonic family or clan, probably from Cumbria or Strathclyde, brought something like order into the Celtic chaos. The new dynasty, the House of Cunedda, is associated in legend with the Christianization of Dyfed. St. David himself was a cadet of a branch of the royal family. The work in which he was engaged was completed by the Irish and Armorican missionaries, to whom, and not to any English or Roman clergy, tradition consistently points as the evangelizers of the villages and hamlets of West Wales. Their names, often grotesquely disguised, are preserved in the dedications of many of the Anglo-Norman churches. Whether the suzerainty of the successors of Alfred extended so far in any effective sense may be doubted ; but before the fall of the Saxon Monarchy, Scandinavian settlements around the coasts and up the great fiord had begun the Teutonization of the county. This fact is sufficiently attested by the nomenclature of the islands, parishes, and villages.

The Norman Conquest was effected in 1093 and 1094. The main stream of conquest came from the north, through Radnor, Brecon, and South Cardigan, but it was the already half-Teutonized districts of the south that became thoroughly Anglicized. The Flemish settlements in the twelfth century completed the process. Henceforth Dyfed was divided, racially and linguistically, into two sections, of which the boundary has been practically unchanged for seven hundred years. The four centuries that intervened between the settlement of the Flemings and the age of the Reformation may be roughly divided into five periods.