King Dafydd II had been king for 12 years by the time of the breakout of war, however, the army had been severely degraded during these years, with most attention lavished on the Welsh Navy with new dockyards being built in Milford Haven, Bristol (Caerodor) and Beaumaris. The Prince of Powys and the Duke of the March (Llewellyn and Edmund) had been charged with the job of modernising the Welsh Army as relations between Catholic Wales and Protestant England hit a new low with the arrival of the House of Hanover and the failure of "the fifteen" (the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion).