Northumberland and Cumberland passed into Henry's hands. Malcolm and his
successor William followed him in his wars and attended at his courts,
and whatever Henry's actual authority might be, in the eyes of his
English subjects at least he ruled to the farthest borders of Scotland.
He next turned to the settlement of Wales. The civil war had violently
interrupted the peaceful processes by which Henry I. sought to bring the
Welsh under English law. The princes of Wales had practically regained
their independence, while the Norman lords who had carved out estates for
themselves along its borders, indignant at Stephen's desertion of them,
and driven to provide for their own safety, had formed alliances by
marriage with the native rulers. Henry had, in fact, to reconquer the
country, and to provide safeguards against any military union between the
feudal lords of the border and its hostile princes, Owen Gwynneth of the
North, and Rhys ap-Gryffyth of the South. In 1157 he undertook the first
of his three expeditions against Wales. His troops, however, unused to
mountain warfare, had but ill success; and it was only when Henry had
secured the castles of Flintshire, and gathered a fleet along the coast
to stop the importation of corn that Owen was driven in August to do
homage for his land. The next year he penetrated into the mountains of
South Wales and took hostages from its ruler, Rhys-ap-Gryffyth; "the
honour and glory and beauty and invincible strength of the knights; Rhys,
the pillar and saviour of his country, the harbour and defender of the
weak, the admiration and terror of his enemies, the sole pillar and hope
of South Wales."

The triumph of the Angevin conqueror was now complete. The baronage lay
crushed at his feet. The Church was silent. The royal authority had been
pushed, at least in name, to the utmost limits of the island. The close
of this first work of settlement was marked by a royal progress between
September 1157 and January 1158 through the whole length of England from
Malmesbury to Carlisle. It was the king's first visit to the northern
shires which he had restored to the English crown; he visited and
fortified the most important border castles, and then through the bitter
winter months he journeyed to Yorkshire, the fastnesses of the Peak,
Nottingham, and the midland and southern counties. The progress ended at
Worcester on Easter Day, 1158. There the king and queen for the last
time wore their crowns