Battle of Crug Mawr, 1136: how the Welsh routed the Normans

The Welsh chronicler who recorded it could hardly contain himself. The two brothers from the north were "two bold lions" and "the safety, the liberty and the strength" of all the Britons. Their enemies, he wrote, fled "according to their usual custom", and the greater part of them, "like fools", drowned in the river. Behind the rhetoric lies a real catastrophe for the Norman colony in west Wales, played out on a hill and a riverbank outside Cardigan in the autumn of 1136. The battle is one chapter in the military history of Wales.²

Background: why the Welsh rose in 1136

Henry I died on 1 December 1135, and his nephew Stephen of Blois seized the English crown. For three decades Henry had held the Welsh down with castles and a heavy hand; his death loosened every grip at once. Lloyd notes that some settlers in the Norman colonies had read the signs months earlier, sold everything and left.³

The revolt began within weeks. On 1 January 1136 Hywel ap Maredudd of Brycheiniog defeated the Normans and English of Gower between Loughor and Swansea, killing more than 500 of them. Gruffydd ap Rhys, heir of the old kings of Deheubarth, rode north to ask the sons of Gruffudd ap Cynan, king of Gwynedd, for help. While he was away his wife Gwenllian, a daughter of the king of Gwynedd, led an attack on Kidwelly and was killed in the rout, with one of her sons; the field still bears her name, Maes Gwenllian.⁴

Then came the blow that opened Ceredigion. In April 1136 Richard fitz Gilbert de Clare, the Norman lord of the province, rode from Abergavenny towards Brecon. Gerald of Wales, writing half a century later, says he dismissed his escort at the wooded pass of Coed Grwyne and rode on unarmed, preceded by a minstrel and a singer, until the Welsh of Gwent fell on him from the thickets and killed him and many of his followers. Ceredigion was suddenly without a lord.⁵

Owain and Cadwaladr, already masters of Meirionydd across the Dyfi, moved at once. In a first campaign they burned the castles of Walter de Bec and of the Clares at Aberystwyth, then, joined by Hywel ap Maredudd and Madog ab Idnerth, took the castles of Richard de la Mare, Dineirth and Caerwedros, and went home loaded with plunder. Ceredigion had belonged to Deheubarth, not Gwynedd, but in Lloyd's judgment that did not delay them for a moment.⁶

Armies and commanders

The Welsh. About Michaelmas the brothers came back, this time with Gruffydd ap Rhys, Hywel ap Maredudd, Madog ab Idnerth and the sons of Hywel. Owain, later called Owain Gwynedd, was the more cautious and capable of the two; his biographer in the Dictionary of Welsh Biography sees the southern campaigns as a diversion that served his real aim, the consolidation of Gwynedd. The Brut gives the host as about 6,000 fine foot and 2,000 horsemen in mail.⁷

That last detail matters. Gerald of Wales observed that the Welsh had learned the use of arms and horses from the Normans and the English, and Lloyd reads the Brut's figure as evidence that by 1136 the Welsh could put heavy cavalry into the field as well as their old national infantry. The chronicle's numbers are round and probably inflated, but they describe a real army, not a raiding band.⁸

The Normans and Flemings. Against them came, in the Brut's words, "all the Flemings, and all the marchers, and all the French" of the south. The leaders were Stephen, the constable of Cardigan Castle; Robert fitz Martin, lord of Cemais; and William and Maurice, sons of Gerald of Windsor. The Flemings were settlers from Rhos, in Pembrokeshire. The Acts of King Stephen, written on the English side, puts the force at 3,000: Richard fitz Gilbert's horsemen joined by men from the neighboring towns and castles.⁹

The battle

The Welsh made straight for Cardigan, hoping that its fall would complete the conquest of Ceredigion. The army of Norman south Wales met them at Crug Mawr, the "great mound", about two miles out of the town. Lloyd calls it an obstinate battle, on which the fortunes of the foreigners in Deheubarth hinged for many a long day.¹⁰

Where exactly it was fought is uncertain. The traditional site rests on Gerald of Wales, whose family fought in the battle: riding from Cardigan towards Lampeter in 1188, he left Crug Mawr on his left hand and recalled that here Gruffydd, son of Rhys ap Tewdwr, had won a signal victory. The Royal Commission identifies Crug Mawr with the steep conical hill now called Banc y Warren, or possibly the whole ridge running northeast from Cardigan towards Aberporth. The Breviate chronicle, however, says the armies gave battle "before the castle", which would put the fighting close to Cardigan and the Teifi.¹¹

Of the fighting itself the chronicles say little. The Brut says only that it was cruel on every side and that the Normans and Flemings broke. The Acts of King Stephen describes the Welsh foot advancing in three bodies, in military order, and defeating the horsemen, pursuing them with shouts and flights of arrows. The Breviate chronicle adds that the horse trampled down the foot.¹²

Who won the Battle of Crug Mawr?

The rout became a massacre at the river. The beaten army fled south towards the Teifi and Cemais beyond it. The bridge across the river broke, probably, Lloyd suggests, under the weight of the fugitives crowding over it, and hundreds who had escaped the sword drowned, until the stream was clogged with the bodies of men and horses. Those who fled into the town fared no better: the Welsh set it on fire, and the flames took the church of Holy Trinity that the colonists had founded.¹³

The Brut counts about 3,000 Anglo-Norman and Flemish dead, killed, burned, trampled or drowned, and has the princes going home "happy and rejoicing" with an immense number of prisoners, costly garments and arms. Lloyd adds that many captive women were carried off to Gwynedd. Skulls cleft by battle axes, the Royal Commission notes, were reported dug up near Cardigan Bridge in later times.¹⁴

Aftermath: a castle that would not fall

Only the castle stood. A small company of Richard fitz Gilbert's people held it, among them his widow, a sister of the Earl of Chester. Lloyd sees the failure to take it as proof of the strength of Norman defenses in that age; the Acts of King Stephen calls it impregnably fortified, though closely invested and short of food. Under Henry I, Lloyd argues, the victory would have availed the Welsh little, because a royal army would soon have relieved the garrison. Under Stephen no such army came.¹⁵

Stephen asked Miles of Gloucester to rescue the widow, and Miles brought her out and went no further. A later expedition under Richard's brother Baldwin, with knights and 500 archers paid by the king, got no further than Brecon: the Welsh had blocked the mountain roads with felled trees, and Baldwin spent his money and went home. The king gave up and left the Welsh to themselves.¹⁶ › The Anarchy, 1135 to 1154

The revolt rolled on. In 1137 Gruffydd ap Rhys swept through the Flemish settlements of Rhos, then died within the year, a few months after Gruffudd ap Cynan, Owain's father. Owain and Cadwaladr returned to Ceredigion a third time, destroyed more castles and took Carmarthen. In 1138 they brought a Danish fleet of fifteen ships into the mouth of the Teifi to besiege Cardigan by land and sea, and failed again. Ceredigion was divided between Cadwaladr in the north and Owain's son Hywel in the south.¹⁷

Why the Battle of Crug Mawr mattered

The Royal Commission calls Crug Mawr the culmination of the revolts that followed Henry I's death, a Welsh victory that re-established Welsh lordship over much of southern and central west Wales at the expense of the Anglo-Norman and Flemish lords. For Owain it was the first great success of a career that made him, in the words of his biographer, the ruler who set the native princes of Wales alongside the great feudal magnates of his time.¹⁸

Gruffydd ap Rhys did not live to see the fruits. It fell to his youngest son, Rhys ap Gruffydd, born in the years before the revolt, to rebuild the family's fortunes; as the Lord Rhys he later took Cardigan and Cilgerran and rebuilt Cardigan Castle in stone and mortar. In Gerald's time Crug Mawr had already gathered legends: a tumulus on the summit was said to fit itself to anyone who lay on it, and armor left there overnight was found broken by morning.¹⁹

Where is the Crug Mawr battlefield today?

Banc y Warren rises beside the road from Cardigan towards Aberaeron, near Penparc, in the community of Llangoedmor. The Royal Commission lists the battle in its inventory of historic battlefields in Wales, while warning that the precise location of Crug Mawr is not altogether clear. Cardigan Castle, rebuilt in stone by the Lord Rhys, still stands above the Teifi beside the bridge.²⁰