always seemed doomed to remember when there was a
chance of its doing harm; and just at this time some blind old gentleman
with a harp and a long white beard, who was an excellent person, but had
become of an unknown age and tedious, burst out with a declaration that
Merlin had predicted that when English money had become round, a Prince
of Wales would be crowned in London. Now, King Edward had recently
forbidden the English penny to be cut into halves and quarters for
halfpence and farthings, and had actually introduced a round coin;
therefore, the Welsh people said this was the time Merlin meant, and rose
accordingly.

King Edward had bought over PRINCE DAVID, Llewellyn's brother, by heaping
favours upon him; but he was the first to revolt, being perhaps troubled
in his conscience. One stormy night, he surprised the Castle of
Hawarden, in possession of which an English nobleman had been left;
killed the whole garrison, and carried off the nobleman a prisoner to
Snowdon. Upon this, the Welsh people rose like one man. King Edward,
with his army, marching from Worcester to the Menai Strait, crossed
it--near to where the wonderful tubular iron bridge now, in days so
different, makes a passage for railway trains--by a bridge of boats that
enabled forty men to march abreast. He subdued the Island of Anglesea,
and sent his men forward to observe the enemy. The sudden appearance of
the Welsh created a panic among them, and they fell back to the bridge.
The tide had in the meantime risen and separated the boats; the Welsh
pursuing them, they were driven into the sea, and there they sunk, in
their heavy iron armour, by thousands. After this victory Llewellyn,
helped by the severe winter-weather of Wales, gained another battle; but
the King ordering a portion of his English army to advance through South
Wales, and catch him between two foes, and Llewellyn bravely turning to
meet this new enemy, he was surprised and killed--very meanly, for he was
unarmed and defenceless. His head was struck off and sent to London,
where it was fixed upon the Tower, encircled with a wreath, some say of
ivy, some say of willow, some say of silver, to make it look like a
ghastly coin in ridicule of the prediction.

David, however, still held out for six months, though eagerly sought
after by the King, and hunted by his own countrymen. One of them finally
betrayed him with his wife and children. He was sentenced to be hanged,
drawn, and q