Little England beyond Wales is a name that has been applied to an area of southern Pembrokeshire and southwestern Carmarthenshire in Wales, which has been English rather than Welsh in language and culture for many centuries despite its remoteness from England. Its origins may lie in the Irish, Norse, Norman, Flemish and Saxon settlement that took place in this area more than in other areas of South West Wales. Its northern boundary is known as the Landsker Line. A number of writers and scholars, ancient and modern, have discussed how and when this difference came about, and why it should persist, with no clear explanation coming to the fore.
Etymology
The language boundary between this region and the area to the north where Welsh is more commonly spoken, sometimes known as the Landsker Line, is noted for its sharpness and resilience. Although it is probably much older, the first known approximation of "Little England beyond Wales" was in the 16th century, when William Camden called the area Anglia Transwalliana.
History Between 350 and 400, an Irish tribe known as the Déisi settled in the region known to the Romans as Demetae. The Déisi merged with the local Welsh, with the regional name underlying Demetae evolving into Dyfed (410–920), which existed as an independent petty kingdom. The area became part of the kingdom of Deheubarth (920–1197), but it is unclear when it became distinguished from other parts of Wales. Welsh scholar Dr B. G. Charles surveyed the evidence for early non-Welsh settlements in the area. The Norse raided in the 9th and 10th centuries, and some may have settled, as they did in Gwynedd further north. There are scattered Scandinavian placenames in the area, mostly in the Hundred of Roose, north and west of the River Cleddau. The medieval Welsh chronicle Brut y Tywysogion mentions many battles in southwest Wales and sackings of Menevia (St David's) in the pre-Norman period. Sometimes these were stated to be conflicts with Saxons, sometimes with people of unspecified origin. The Saxons influenced the language. John Trevisa, writing in 1387, said: Both the Flemynges that woneth in the west side of Wales. Nabbeth y left here strange speech, and speketh Saxon lych y now.
Arnulf's Rebellion Arnulf de Montgomery the Earl of Pembroke rose in revolt against Henry I and was as a result disinherited. Up to that point Pembroke had been a fairly typical Marcher county, but after the rebellion was put down it became far more like an English shire, with intermediate landholders enjoying more independence.
Flemish settlement
The Flemish immigration was of Flemish people from England, rather than directly from Flanders, and first started in 1105. A last batch of Flemings were sent to southwest Wales by King Henry in about 1111. Unsurprisingly, then, the Flemish language did not survive in the local dialect. According to George Owen of Henllys, writing in 1603, in 1155, under the orders of the new King Henry II, another wave of Flemings were sent to Rhys ap Gruffydd's West Wales territories. Gerald of Wales (c.1146-c.1223) and Brut y Tywysogyon recorded that "Flemings" were settled in south Pembrokeshire soon after the Norman invasion of Wales in the early 12th century. Gerald says this took place specifically in Roose. The Flemish were noted for their skill in the construction of castles, which were built throughout the Norman territories in Pembrokeshire. The previous inhabitants were said to have "lost their land", but this could mean either a total expulsion of the existing population, or merely a replacement of the land-owning class.
Castle building and peace The development of Haverfordwest as the castle and borough controlling Roose dates from this period; this plantation occurred under the auspices of the Norman invaders. The Normans placed the whole of southwest Wales under military control, establishing castles over the entire area, as far north as Cardigan. What followed, starting with the reign of Edward I in the late 13th century, was 100 years of peace, particularly in "Little England", marked by the Edwardian conquest of Wales, which must have compounded the tendency of Welsh to become a minor language in the region. With the failure of Owain Glyndŵr's revolt in the early 15th century, in which no fighting took place in "little England", came punitive laws affecting Wales, though these were, for reasons historians have not been able to ascertain, applied less rigorously here than elsewhere in Wales.
Tudor period National awareness of the region was made much of in the 15th century with the birth of Henry Tudor at Pembroke Castle and his eventual accession to the English throne after beginning his campaign in southwest Wales. At the end of the Tudor period, George Owen produced his Description of Penbrokshire (sic), completed in 1603. The work is essentially a geographical analysis of the languages in the county, and his writings provide the vital source for all subsequent commentators. He is the first to emphasize the sharpness of the linguistic boundary. He said: ...yet do these two nations keep each from dealings with the other, as mere strangers, so that the meaner sort of people will not, or do not usually, join together in marriage, although they be in one hundred (and sometimes in the same parish), nor commerce nor buy but in open fairs, so that you shall find in one parish a pathway parting the Welsh and English, and the one side speak all English, the other all Welsh, and differing in tilling and in measuring of their land, and divers other matters. Of Little England, he added: (They) keep their language among themselves without receiving the Welsh speech or learning any part thereof, and hold themselves so close to the same that to this day they wonder at a Welshman coming among them, the one neighbour saying to the other "Look there goeth a Welshman". Owen described the linguistic frontier in some detail, and his 1603 line is shown on the map. His description indicates that some northern parts had been re-colonised by Welsh speakers. The disruptions of the post-Black Death period may account for this.
Modern period
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