Reginald Gray, Justice of Chester, who insisted on making him answer
before the English courts, hanged some of his vassals, and carried a
military road through his woods. The Welsh gentlemen complained that
they were removed from offices which they had purchased, brought to
justice for old offences which ought to have been condoned by the
peace, and deprived of their jurisdiction in local courts. For a time
the lady Eleanor tried to mediate between her husband and her cousin.
But it was impossible that a stern, just man like Edward, penetrated
with the most advanced doctrine of European legists and deriving his
information from English employes, should be able to understand the
position of the chief of a semibarbarous nationality, who thought
outrages on law matters to be atoned for by fines, while he brooded
with implacable rancor over every slight, real or fancied, to his own
position as prince of Wales, representative of a dynasty that had
ruled "since the time of Camber the son of Brutus."

Moreover, Llewelyn thought, perhaps unreasonably, that he had been
betrayed by Edward. He said that on the day of his marriage the
English King had forced him to subscribe a document to the effect that
he would never harbor an English exile or maintain forces against
Edward's will. There was little in all this that was not implied in
Llewelyn's position as vassal, and he himself did not complain that
the conditions had ever been offensively pressed. A king who had
granted such liberal terms as Edward might perhaps claim, with reason,
that his conquered vassal should never threaten him with hostilities.
But the offence was none the less deadly, that it was justified by the
relations of subject and sovereign.

A curious superstition precipitated an outbreak, In the time of Henry
I some Norman had fabricated the so-called prophecies of Merlin, which
were designed to reconcile the Welsh to the Norman Conquest. Henry was
designated in them as the lion of justice, and it was given as a sign
of his reign that the symbol of commerce would be split and the half
be round. The prophecy had already been fulfilled by the regulation
for breaking coin at the mint, and making the half-penny a round piece
by itself. In 1279 Edward issued the farthing as an entire coin. The
change recalled the memory of Merlin's prophecy; and the vague
oracles, that had been compiled to describe Henry's dominion over the
Saxons, were easily interpreted to mean t