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Following his seizure of the English crown, William the Conqueror's Norman lords established bases along the Welsh border from where they carried out raids into Wales.

They found a country still in dynastic disarray after the death in 1063 of the Welsh high king Gruffudd ap Llywelyn. In 1081 William visited St David's, ostensibly to show his respects but in reality as a demonstration of his power to the native rulers. Treaties were negotiated but the gloves came off after William's death in 1087.

In the absence of a restraining power on the English throne, independent Norman lords started carving out mini-kingdoms in Wales. First to go were Brecon and Pembroke, followed by Glamorgan. Before the end of the 11th century Norman presences were established in west Wales thanks to their special weapon, the . It appears that the Welsh were about to suffer the same fate as the English and go under the Norman yoke.

With the Normans hammering on the door, the Welsh church responded by producing works such as the 'Life of St David'. This was written by Rhigyfarch, son of Bishop Sulien, at the Welsh monastery in Llanbadarn, near Aberystwyth, in around 1090. The intention was to resist the intrusive influence of Canterbury which followed hard on the heels of the Norman attacks.

Written some 600 years after St David's death, many of the stories in the 'Life' are standard religious mythology, but there is enough biographical detail to show that David was a seminal figure in Welsh Christianity. Indeed, it may have led to his canonisation by Pope Callistus II in 1123, making him the only 'official' Welsh saint from the 'Age of the Saints'.

The new Norman rulers came face to face with a Welsh church which still retained many of its ancient characteristics. A number of the began life as native monasteries or clasau, often set within circular churchyards, whilst some of the smaller ones were first established as dependent chapels of a mother church, or as the private chapel of a local Welsh lord or noble.

Much of organised Welsh Christian tradition baffled the new bosses, such as a lack of dioceses with properly geographically-defined boundaries, and the tradition of priests marrying and raising families to serve in the church. The Normans introduced territorially defined dioceses, but their attempt to enforce clerical celibacy was not totally successful and cases of married priests with families lasted down to the Reformation.

These religious reforms were another means of tightening the . The first bishop to swear an oath of allegiance to the archbishop of Canterbury was Urban of Llandaf in 1107, and by the middle of the century all Welsh bishops had followed suit. Another example of these reforms was the introduction of continental monasteries. The monastic order most closely associated with Norman rule was that established by St Benedict. And just as the first Norman castle in Wales was built at Chepstow in 1067, so its first Benedictine monastery was also built at Chepstow in 1071.

In the middle of the 12th century another monastic order from France, the Cistercians, came to Wales. Within some 30 years of their arrival the 'White Monks', unlike the Benedectines, had 'gone native', a situation which had real consequences for future Norman ambitions to conquer Wales.