hat a Welsh prince should be
crowned at London, and retrieve what its natives regarded as the lost
dominion of the principality.

Llewelyn, it is said, consulted a witch, who assured him that he
should ride crowned through Westcheap. But the Prince of Wales also
relied on less visionary assurances. The "quo-warranto" commission was
prosecuting its labors vigorously, and had produced a widespread
discontent in England, where men said openly that the King would not
suffer them to reap their own corn or mow their grass. Llewelyn was in
correspondence with the malcontents, and received promises of support.
His brother David was easily induced to join the rebellion, and began
it on Palm Sunday, 1282, by storming the castle of Hawarden, and
making Roger de Clifford, its lord and Edward's sheriff, his prisoner.
Flint and Rhuddlan were next reduced, and the Welsh spread over the
marches, waging a war of singular ferocity, slaying, and even burning,
young and old women and sick people in the villages. The rebellion
found Edward unprepared, but he met it with equal vigor and
efficiency. Making Shrewsbury his head-quarters, and moving the
exchequer and king's bench to it, he summoned troops not only from all
England, but from Gascony.

It is possible that the foreign recruits were intended to strengthen
the King's hands against subjects of doubtful fidelity, but no real
embarrassment from the disaffected was sustained. The troops mustered
operated in two armies, which started from Rhuddlan and Worcester, and
enclosed Llewelyn, as before, from north and south. Meanwhile the
ships of the Cinque Ports reduced Anglesey, "the noblest feather in
Llewelyn's wing," as Edward joyfully observed. But the King was
faithful to his old policy of a blockade. A bridge of ships was thrown
across the Menai Straits, and the forests between Wales proper and the
English border were hewn down by an army of pioneers. The King's
banner, the golden dragon, showed that quarter would be given.

As the war lasted on, negotiations were attempted; and the Archbishop
of Canterbury, who had threatened the last sentence of the Church
against Llewelyn and his adherents, was sent over to Snowdon to hold a
conference. Llewelyn had already been warned that it was idle to
expect assistance from Rome. He was now summoned to submit at
discretion, with a hope--so expressed as to be a promise--that he and
the natives of the revolted districts would have mercy shown the