The idea of Wales as a country united by language, ethnicity and culture was already widely accepted in the eleventh century, by both native and non-native authors. Politically, however, at the time of the Norman Conquest it remained divided into many small and squabbling kingdoms, of which the three most powerful were Gwynedd in the north, Powys in mid-Wales and Deheubarth in the south. Indeed, the one and only time in its history that the various provinces were brought together under the hegemony of a single native ruler was during the brief period from 1055 to 1063 under King Gruffydd ap Llywelyn, described in one Welsh source as ‘head and shield and defender of the Britons’. The father of the exiled princes Maredudd and Ithel who appear in The Splintered Kingdom, he met his end in 1063 at the hands of his own disaffected followers, having suffered defeat in a fierce campaign directed by a certain Harold Godwineson, then Earl of Wessex, who was approaching the zenith of his power. Following Gruffydd’s death, Wales fragmented once more into its constituent kingdoms.
The Marches posed a particular problem for the newly arrived Normans, whose forces were already dangerously over-extended as they attempted to consolidate their hold over England. For much of this period the default land-boundary between England and Wales was represented by Offa’s Dyke, the ancient earthwork traditionally thought to have been built by the eighth-century Mercian king whose name it bears. However, it was never a fixed frontier; as well as the perennial raiding activity there was also considerable movement of peoples in both directions. The districts of Ewias and Archenfield, for example, had largely Welsh populations but are both recorded in Domesday Book (1086) as belonging to Herefordshire, while Radnor on the western side of the dyke was originally a pre-Conquest Saxon manor. Because of this fluidity of movement and the contested ownership of these lands, the Marches proved difficult to hold down. Maps of the distribution of motte and bailey castles built in England after 1066 show a clear concentration along the Welsh border, demonstrating the efforts that were made to impose control upon this chaotic region. Pre-emptive attack, involving widespread pillage and plunder to subdue the enemy, was often regarded as the best form of defence, and the 1070s and 1080s saw many expeditions of the kind led by Tancred as the Normans attempted both to pacify the borderlands and to extend their dominions.
In some ways the protracted battle for mastery of the Marches mirrors on a smaller scale the long struggle for England that took place in the aftermath of the Norman invasion. The Battle of Hastings is rightly regarded as a watershed moment in our island’s history, and yet it was merely the opening engagement of the Conquest; effective control of the kingdom was only achieved through a series of bitter campaigns. Indeed, every bit as significant as 1066 itself were the years 1069–70, which witnessed arguably the greatest crisis that the invaders had yet faced. A combination of simultaneous rebellions, invasions, raids and risings, from Cornwall in the south to Yorkshire in the north, brought King Guillaume’s newly established realm almost to breaking point, and eventually led to the brutal campaign of retribution known as the Harrying of the North, which systematically devastated Yorkshire and north-east England and left a lasting mark both on the region itself and on our perceptions of the Normans. It is this critical but little-known chapter of the Conquest that forms the backdrop for The Splintered Kingdom.