he Fifth's shield and helmet hang
aloft on a bar above his chantry. All round us are the splendid
monuments of the kings. Richard the Second, Edward the Third and Queen
Phillipa, Henry the Fifth under his beautiful chantry, Henry the Third
in his gorgeous tomb inlaid with marbles and mosaic, Good Queen Eleanor,
and her husband Edward the First--they all are there! "The greatest of
the Plantagenets," as he has been called, lies beneath an enormous
monument of solid gray stone, absolutely plain, without carving, brass
or mosaic. Only his gigantic two-handed sword lies upon it, and along it
runs this inscription:

"_Edwardus Primus Scotorum malleus hic est, 1308. Pactum Serva._"[15]

It is of Edward the First's reign we are to talk. For besides being the
Hammer of the Scots, he conquered the last stronghold of the British
race, and made their land forever a part of England.

For four hundred years Wales had been a thorn in the sides of the Saxon
kings, a thorn in the sides of the Norman Conquerors and their
descendants. The Britons, driven westward by the all-conquering
Anglo-Saxons, had taken refuge in the fastnesses of that wild and
mountainous region. There they had lived, "a mass of savage herdsmen,
clad in the skins and fed by the milk of the cattle they tended,
faithless, greedy, and revengeful."[16] Every fresh earldom which the
English had wrested from them, often with barbarous injustice and
cruelty, had been the signal for some equally barbarous reprisal. The
history of the border countries is one perpetual record of raids and
fightings, of lands laid waste with fire and sword, flocks and herds
driven off, women and children carried into captivity.

But in Henry the Second's reign, just as the British race seemed sinking
deeper and deeper into barbarism, a strange revival of patriotism took
place. The Bards of Britain, for centuries silent, suddenly burst into
song again. The praise of every British hero, the glory of every fight,
was sung throughout the land; and the sound of the harp heard in every
house. These singers of freedom chanted of joy in battle, of their
country's liberty, of hatred of the Saxon oppressor. And they sang of
their great prince, Llewellyn, "towering above the rest of men with his
long red lance, his red helmet of battle crested with a fierce wolf;
tender-hearted, wise, witty, ingenious." Wales, stirred by their trumpet
calls, had soon burst aflame to drive the Saxon from the land.