invaders from the valley of the Severn, and from Dyved, defeating
their armies in battle, and storming their castles. Sometimes they
would make alliances with them, and defy the King of England. But it
is difficult to follow each of them. The history of one of them,
Owen ap Cadogan, is like a romance. He was brave and handsome, in
love with Nest, and a very firebrand in politics. The army of Henry
I. was too strong for him, and he had to submit. He then became the
friend of the King of England. It was the aim of the princes of
Powys to be free, not only from the Norman, but also from Griffith of
Gwynedd and Griffith of Deheubarth. They were an able and versatile
family; noble and base deeds, revolting crimes and sweet poems, come
in the stirring story of their lives.

What Griffith did in the north, and the sons of Bleddyn in the east,
Griffith ap Rees did in the south; he showed that the Norman army
could be beaten in battle, and that a Norman castle could be taken by
assault. After his father's death he spent much of his youth in
exile or in hiding: sometimes we find him in Ireland, sometimes in
the court of Griffith ap Conan, sometimes with his sister Nest--now
the wife of Gerald, the custodian of Pembroke Castle. But he had one
aim ever before him--to recover his father's kingdom and to make his
people free. Castle after castle rose--at Swansea, Carmarthen,
Llandovery, Cenarth, Aberystwyth--to warn him that the hold of the
Norman on the land was tightening. He came to the forests of the
Towy; his people rallied round him, and his power extended from the
Towy to the Teivy, and from the Teivy to the Dovey. His wife, the
heroic Gwenllian--who died leading her husband's army against the
Normans--was Griffith ap Conan's daughter. The great final battle
between Griffith and the Normans was fought at Cardigan in 1136, in
which the great prince won a memorable victory over the strongest