On the other hand, I should not like you to think that Wales was more
barbarous than England, or Llywelyn less civilised than Edward I.
Giraldus Cambrensis saw a prince going barefoot, and the fussy little
Archbishop Peckham saw that Welsh marriage customs were not what he
liked; and many historians, who have never read a line of Welsh
poetry, take for granted that the conquest of Wales was a new victory
for civilisation.

In many ways Wales was more civilised than England at that time. Its
law was more simple and less developed, it is true; but it was more
just in many cases, and certainly more humane. Was it not better
that the land should belong to the people, and that the youngest son
should have the same chance as the eldest? And, in crime, was it not
better that if no opportunity for atonement was given, the death of
the criminal was to be a merciful one? In the reign of John, a Welsh
hostage, a little boy of seven, was hanged at Shrewsbury, because his
father, a South Wales chief, had rebelled. In the reign of Edward
I., the miserable David was dragged at the tails of horses through
the streets of the same town, and the tortures inflicted on the dying
man were too horrible to describe to modern ears. And what the
Norman baron did, his Welsh tenant learnt to do. In Wales you get
fierce frays and frequent shedding of blood; on the borders you get
callous cruelty to a prisoner, or the disfiguring of dead bodies--
even that of Simon de Montfort, the greatest statesman of the Middle
Ages in England--on the battlefield when all passion was spent.

Take the rulers of Wales again. Griffith ap Conan and Llywelyn the
Great had the energy and the foresight, though their sphere was so
much smaller, of Henry II. And what English king, except Alfred,