Conquering Wales: The Wars of 1277 and 1282-83
A Border Problem Edward Inherited
When Edward I returned from crusade in 1274 to be crowned, the most powerful Welsh ruler was Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Prince of Wales. By the Treaty of Montgomery (1267) Henry III had recognised Llywelyn as overlord of most of native Wales, in return for an annual tribute and an act of homage to the English king. Llywelyn refused to perform this homage to the new king five times between 1274 and 1276. He also refused to surrender his brother Dafydd, who had fled to England after a failed plot, and announced his intention to marry Eleanor de Montfort, daughter of the rebel Simon de Montfort. To Edward this was open defiance.
Edward’s war of 1277 grew from Llywelyn’s repeated refusal to perform homage, his shelter of his rebel brother Dafydd and his planned marriage to the daughter of Simon de Montfort. From the king’s view, the prince of Wales had broken every condition of the 1267 Treaty of Montgomery.
The First Welsh War, 1277
In November 1276 Edward declared Llywelyn a rebel and began preparing a campaign. The army that crossed the border in summer 1277 was unlike any earlier English force in Wales. Three columns advanced, supported by a fleet from the Cinque Ports that controlled the sea around Anglesey. Edward used hundreds of foresters to clear roads through the Welsh woodlands so that his cavalry and supplies could move. Anglesey, the ‘granary of Snowdonia’, was occupied. Cut off from his harvest, Llywelyn was starved into surrender by November.
The first war ended with the Treaty of Aberconwy. Llywelyn kept the title Prince of Wales but lost most of his lands east of the Conwy River, and was reduced to a small principality of Gwynedd. He performed homage to Edward at Westminster at Christmas 1277. The Crown began building a first ring of castles — Flint, Rhuddlan, Builth and Aberystwyth — to garrison the new royal lands.
The Second Welsh War, 1282–83
The peace did not last. On Palm Sunday 1282, Llywelyn’s brother Dafydd, who had switched sides to Edward in 1277 and felt his rewards were inadequate, attacked the English-held Hawarden Castle and massacred its garrison. Other Welsh princes joined him. Llywelyn, surprised by the rising, was forced into a war he had not chosen. Edward’s response was overwhelming — an army of more than 15,000 men, paid for in part by loans from the Riccardi of Lucca and a tax on the wool trade.
The decisive moment came on 11 December 1282 at Cilmeri in mid-Wales. Llywelyn was caught with a small escort by an English patrol and killed; his head was struck off and sent to London, where it was paraded through the streets and displayed on the Tower. With Llywelyn dead, native Welsh resistance broke. His brother Dafydd ap Gruffudd was hunted down in summer 1283, betrayed and tried at Shrewsbury for treason. He was the first English nobleman ever sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered — the punishment Edward had devised for the rebellion.
The Statute of Rhuddlan, 1284
In March 1284 Edward issued the Statute of Rhuddlan, also known as the Statute of Wales. It dismantled the principality. The lands of Llywelyn became royal property. Gwynedd was divided into the new English-style counties of Anglesey, Caernarfon and Merioneth, with Cardigan and Carmarthen further south. Each had a sheriff, an exchequer and a system of writs and royal courts based on English common law — though some Welsh customs, such as partible inheritance, were tolerated. The Marcher lordships in eastern Wales kept their semi-independent status. The conquest had transformed political geography forever.
In autumn 1294 Madog ap Llywelyn led a large rebellion against the new English administration, taking advantage of Edward’s plans for a French campaign. Several castles were attacked and the unfinished works at Caernarfon were briefly captured and burned. Edward broke off his French expedition and crushed the rising in spring 1295. The lesson Edward drew was simple: the existing castle ring was not enough. He commissioned a final masterwork at Beaumaris on Anglesey to close the gap.
The Iron Ring of Castles
After the second war, Edward ordered the most ambitious castle programme in medieval Europe. Around the conquered north and west of Wales he built or rebuilt a chain of stone fortresses — later historians called this the ‘Iron Ring’. The four greatest were begun in 1283 and 1295: Conwy, Caernarfon, Harlech and Beaumaris. Each was placed where a fleet from England could resupply it by sea, so a Welsh rising could not starve the garrison. The total cost ran to roughly £80,000 across the programme — an enormous sum, equivalent to several years of royal income.
The architect of the programme was a Savoyard mason, Master James of St George. He brought ideas from the Alps: concentric walls (a lower outer wall ringing a higher inner wall), polygonal towers and gatehouses that were small fortresses in their own right. Each castle was paired with a planned planted borough — a walled town settled with English merchants and craftsmen who paid rents directly to the king. Welsh inhabitants were excluded from these new towns by royal charter. The castles were instruments of military, political and economic control all at once.
The Iron Ring was a class of post-conquest fortifications — Conwy, Caernarfon, Harlech and Beaumaris — built or rebuilt after 1283 under Master James of St George. Each was sea-supplied, paired with a planted English borough and cost roughly £80,000 across the whole programme.
Costs and Consequences
The Welsh wars settled the political map of the British Isles for good. After 1284 Wales was no longer a separate principality. Edward’s eldest surviving son was created Prince of Wales in 1301 — the title English heirs to the throne have used ever since. The financial cost, however, was crushing. Castles, garrisons and campaign costs forced Edward into ever heavier taxation, including the wool tax of 1294, and into permanent dependence on Italian banking houses. When the Riccardi of Lucca collapsed under the strain in 1294, the king’s war chest collapsed with it — just as the Madog rising was starting.