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Different borders of Wales

Alex Richards

Domesday Clock update: 1.5 Williams till Midknight
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So having done some research on Wales for the latest thing in my graphic's thread, the one thing I was most struck by is the fact that while the areas annexed to Herefordshire and Shropshire in the 1536 Act had generally been seen as integrally Welsh until that point, Flintshire (save for Mold, Hawarden and Hopedale which initially were attached to Denbighshire) had regularly been grouped with Cheshire- it had been incorporated as a Hundred of Cheshire in the Domesday Book and the heir to the throne was usually created as Earl of Chester and Flint.

So what if this prior logic had been followed and Flintshire (including English Maelor) was annexed to Cheshire by the 1536 Act instead of remaining a part of Wales- either in addition to the annexations further south, or instead of them.
 
It would be interesting to consider what the minimum and maximum extent of Wales could be, with the caveat that (for such an exercise to be illuminating) both Wales and England should be recognisable entities. By which I mean MaxWales isn't "no Anglo-Saxons, Wales reaches from Yarmouth to Barmouth"; MinWales, by the same token, shouldn't be "Everything but Anglesey and Holyhead are overrun by the English, Wales is accessed via the Menai Straits bridge".
 
There was one attempt to recreate a larger Wales and have England forced to recognise it in 1405, during the Owain Glyn Dwr revolt against King Henry IV (who had overthrown his cousin Richard II in 1399 and probably murdered him). Richard's closest genealogical heir, the under-age Edmund Mortimer (born 1391), who had had his rights to the succession ignored in 1399 by a rigged Parliament arranged by Henry's faction, was being sponsored as a potential replacement for Henry by English noble rebels, led by the great NE dynasty of Percy (earls of Northumberland) who had already tried to overthrow Henry in 1403 only to be defeated in battle at Shrewsbury. Now the refugee head of the Percies, the earl of Northumberland, linked up with Glyn Dwr (by now in control of most of Wales excepting parts of the SE and isolated towns and castles held for Henry) and the latter's French backers to conspire to put Mortimer on the throne; M was a hostage of Henry's and was in detention at Windsor Castle but in Feb 1405 his female guardian was persuaded to help him and his brother escape. They headed for Wales on horseback but were caught up near Cirencester by Henry's men and recaptured - though unlike with Richard III in 1483, Henry did not arrange for his nuisancesome boy rivals to 'disappear' after that.
A 'Triple Alliance' of Glyn Dwr, Mortimer's uncle Sir Edmund Mortimer (a general of Henry's who had been captured by and defected to Glyn Dwr), and Northumberland arranged a formal treaty to divide up England after the near-escape - and called in French troops to help an invasion of England via S Wales. (This reached a few miles short of Worcester before fizzling out, its smallish army outnumbered by the English and too nervous to fight an open battle.) Under this treaty, Glyn Dwr was to have an extended Wales reaching to the R Severn and the R Trent (presumably incorporating all Shropshire and Staffs and probably Cheshire in an arc NW of Shrewsbury) and Northumberland was to rule the North from the Humber to the Tweed and Solway; Mortimer was to have the rest.

If the alliance, with Edmund Mortimer junior escaped to lead it as per the original plan, had defeated Henry IV and his highly successful warlord son and heir Prince Henry (later H V), then aged 18 and leading the war in Wales, this could have been implemented - though they would have needed a larger French contingent and/or major English defections to defeat the better-equipped and larger English army. Given that Henry IV had just executed the archbishop of York for trying to join the plot and had had a major collapse in health (fortunately only brief) that could have immobilised him and his army, with the illness spoken of as divine revenge for killing the archbishop and thus undermining his men's morale, this could have caused defections and defeat. If the treaty had been implemented by 'King Edmund' c. 1406 Glyn Dwr could have technically ruled to the Severn and annexed Shrops, Herefordshire, Monmouth etc - though the new border would not have been easily defensible and he did not have the populace or troops available to resettle it and evict the existing landowners so more likely he would have had to just accept the homage and taxes of the locals. Given the small size of GD's army and the larger resources available to England it is unlikely to have lasted once he died (he was born c.1350) and the English recovered; but it could have re-established a degree of Welsh politico-military rule of the border counties if he had managed to evict major English lords and hold their castles and then establish a secure dynasty backed up by France (which would have had to avoid its OTL civil wars after 1407 to be of much use). A re-established Welsh principality under the House of Glyn Dwr allied to a pacific 'King Edmund' could then have ruled to the lower Severn in the S and the Dee in the N, at least for a few decades.
 
I've come across that one before, but it really does feel like the sort of Hail Mary shot that just doesn't have staying power- I suspect the Mortimers wouldn't have been able to hold onto the throne for long, and any monarch seeking to secure their power would seize the Mortimer lands in Wales, and may well then just incorporate those (at this point Denbigh, most of Montgomeryshire and most of Radnorshire) with existing royal territories in Pembroke and Monmouth as grounds to just annex Wales to England entirely.

As for the minimum and maximum possible for Wales, Absolute maximum for a PoD in the 9th-10th Centuries is probably boundaries on Severn and Dee, but I think that's unlikely. More likely IMO is Hereford, Leominster, Ludlow, Shrewsbury and Chester as literally border forts.

Smallest possible Wales depends on exactly how you define it- 'literally just Gwynedd' is possible, but perhaps not quite meeting requirements. I think you could easily have Rhuddlan-defined Flintshire end up in Cheshire, and then Wales is just the remaining counties of the Principality as defined below. Possibly with Aberystwyth added to give territorial continutity.

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The weight of population and resources in favour of a united England and against Wales would inevitably mean that the Welsh would be overwhelmed (in the long run rather than the short run if they had managed to be led by a good general or had overseas help) and be pushed back once England was united - ie after the union of Wessex and Mercia and reconquest of the 'Danelaw' / Northumbria in the 910s. The most serious attempt by York Viking rebels plus outside help from the Scots, Strathclyde (then a part Celtic, part Gaelic sub-state and ally of Scotland) and the Viking state of Dublin to overthrow the conquest of all N England by Wessex-Mercia was in 937, led by the capable and well-resourced Dublin warlord Olaf Guthfrithson, and once King Athelstan of 'England' (ie Wessex/ Mercia/ Danelaw), ruling from 924-5-939, had defeated this at the battle of Brunanburh the union of England was relatively secure and so the Welsh were at a permanent disadvantage - though York rebelled again with overseas Viking help in 939-44 and 947-54 and on the first occasion Olaf G helped them, took York and temporarily took the Danelaw too but soon died in battle. In 937, 941-44 and 954 the new 'English' state defeated the rebellion and retook York to restore the union by force , winning each time - presumably due to greater resources and operating on interior lines of communication as well as having better (royal) generals and a more coherent army.

After this the Welsh were at a permanent disadvantage and so likely to lose any insecure frontier territory (eg Flintshire, Herefordshire or lowland Gwent) in the long run even before the advent of cavalry and secure walled castles for England with the Norman invasion in 1066 tipped the balance further. Added to this, Wales was usually divided into four separate dynastic kingdoms - Gwynedd in the N, Powys in the centre (G and P were united from 844 onwards to the 1060s), Dyfed/ Deheubarth in the SW, and Glamorgan plus Gwent in the SE), and occasional unity by means of conquest and/or a dynastic alliance was rare and not long-lasting. The dynastic union of G, P and D in 942-50 under Hywel 'the Good' was by consent not conquest by a brilliant general, and pacific lawgiver Hywel kept out of the coalitions against the English both as king of Deheubarth in 937 and as king of all Wales after 942; in 1055-63 Wales was reunited by force by Gruffydd ap Llywelyn of Gwynedd, a highly capable general and politician, and he even forced King Edward 'the Confessor' to return Herefs West of the Wye to him by treaty but he was then overthrown by Harold Godwinson by invasion from England in 1063. Even an insecurely united Wales under a good leader - who was still resented by excluded rivals and at risk of a revolt at any point - could not prevail against England if E was united, as in the 940s and in 1063, so it was not just the Norman Conquest that tipped the scales.

But until the union of Wessex and Mercia under Alfred the Great's son Edward in the 910s there is a possibility of a stronger Wales holding onto wider territories - if it had been one state not four and at that one state run by a succession of strong single leaders with good armies and funds, , which would mean a different inheritance-system so that only the eldest son of a reigning king has the right of succession not all his sons, as in England. To do that you would need a more Romanised Wales, ie more towns and more Roman landlord dynasties plus a 'Roman' as well as tribal 'Celtic'/ British literary and legal culture, surviving from the C5th onwards , and so the predominance of a stable kingship looking back to the Roman Empire as its origin plus Roman law . Also, the small tribal-based kingdoms of post-Roman Wales would have had to be eclipsed before the chaos of the Viking raids in the C9th by one state under one dynasty,or at least to recognise one state as their national leader - the best chance for this lay with the strongest military power of the C6th, Gwynedd in the N, which had a 'national 'leader in Maelgwyn in the 520s-40s and later a powerful warlord, Cadwallon, and a capable army in the 620s-30s which was able to wipe out the Anglo-Saxon army of neighbouring Northumbria,kill its king Edwin, and ravage Yorkshire and the NE in a massive onslaught in 633-4. If the successes of Gwynedd in the 630s - soon reversed by a Northumbrian revival - had led to a long-term 'national' and better-resourced Welsh state in the C7th, possibly far wealthier and trading with the Mediterranean via SW Welsh ports surviving from Roman times, and then the Welsh had fought off the Vikings due to having a coherent fleet (big 'Ifs', all of this), then Wales might have been in a better position to hang onto a stronger frontier in the East. In the long term, the best chances for Wales would be a stronger surviving 'Roman' ethos and greater resources in the C5th and C6th fostering a coherent state - as united by greater long-term success for their post-Roman warlords fighting the new 'Anglo-Saxon' kingships emerging in lowland SE Britain, with or without any 'King Arthur'?


The failure of England to unite,or at least do so so quickly, would help a lot - eg if the early
kingdom of central England,Mercia, had been destroyed as a coherent force permanently by its Northumbrian foes in their clashes in 642 (Maserfelth,prob Oswestry) or 655 (Winwaed, near Leeds) and broken up - the Northumbrians did this in OTL 655 but it revived in 658 - so the Welsh did not have a major power on their border. No Offa, no Offa's Dyke - a R Severn frontier? Or Cadwallon finishes off
Northumbria (then still with a considerable Welsh/ Briton population in the Pennines and Lancs/ Cumbria)
and sets up a group of sub-states there as his vassals, incl Cumbria (indep British state to the 610s)and
Elmet and so secures Northern resources and allies to fight Mercia. The unwieldy new Northumbrian state of the early C7th nearly fell to Gwynedd, so if this is permanent then we have a 'Celtic'-led political order N of the Humber and the balance of power in the region is shifted long-term - provided that Gwynedd has the leadership to keep the Anglo-Saxons as his military inferiors and can use their mutual rivalries to keep them disunited.

If the Vikings destroy King Alfred in 871 or 878, Wessex stays broken up and England is a group of feuding Viking lordships, so a united Wales could stay as a regional power for longer. But in the long term, the advantages would still lie with England.
 
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