The indefinable weird flapping thing

 It is October, the month of Halloween and fading light and the dying of the year. My favourite season, being the miserable sod that I am. I jest, of course: I’m only miserable 98% of the time. 

We are also entering the season of ghost stories, one of my obsessions. Here, then, is a short tale from the monk of Byland Abbey, written down in 1400:

“Concerning another ghost that followed William of Bradeforth and cried “ How, how, how,” thrice on three occasions. It happened that on the fourth night about midnight he went back to the New Place from the village of Ampleforth, and as he was returning by the road he heard a terrible voice shouting far behind him, and as it were on the hill side; and a little after it cried again in like manner but nearer, and the third time it screamed at the cross-roads ahead of him; and at last he saw a pale horse and his dog barked a little, but then hid itself in great fear between the legs of the said William. Whereupon he commanded the spirit in the name of the Lord and in virtue of the blood of Jesus Christ to depart and not to block his path. And when he heard this he withdrew like a revolving piece of canvas with four corners and kept on turning. So that it seems that he was a ghost that mightily desired to be conjured and to receive effective help.”

As usual in these Byland tales, the ghost is dispelled or tamed (conjured) by invoking Christ. I find this very creepy, reminiscent of MR James: the indefinable, weird, flapping thing stalking William down the road, making screaming noises. What the hell is it, exactly? What does it want? Like every good writer of ghost stories, the monk left plenty to the imagination.

Denying Christ

 #OTD in 1307, Philip the Fair had every Knight Templar in France arrested on charges of heresy. The specific charges ran thus: 

"...when professing, the brothers were required to deny Christ, to spit on the Cross, and to place three 'obscene kisses' on the lower spine, the navel and the mouth; they were obliged to indulge in carnal relations with other members of the order, if requested; and finally they wore a small belt which had been consecrated by touching a strange idol, which looked like a human head with a long beard." 

And so on. When I was researching Anglo-French relations in this period, it was interesting to discover that one of Philip's inquisitors was Jean de Varenne; a baron of Ponthieu who had previously done military service for France in Flanders, as a proxy for his immediate overlord Edward I, who was Count of Ponthieu as well as King of England. Complicated times, very.

Judgement of blood

#OTD in 1283 Prince Dafydd of Wales was executed at Shrewsbury. He was the first nobleman (but not the first man) to be hanged, drawn and quartered in the British Isles. It is often said that he was executed for ‘high treason’. That is incorrect, because such a penalty did not yet exist on the statute book. He was killed for several capital crimes, described by the annals of Dunstable. Quote:  

‘Because he was a traitor to the lord king, for whom he had done military service, he was drawn slowly by a horse to the place of his hanging. Because he had murdered Fulk Trigald and other English noblemen, he was disembowelled and his viscera burned. Because he had plotted the death of the king in several places in England, his body was divided and sent to the corners of England, to the terror of those inclined to doing evil. His head, however, is at the Tower of London, affixed to the highest stake, facing the sea.’ 

In the eyes of the king and his justices, Dafydd had committed crimes against God and man and deserved to suffer four or five different deaths. He was also excommunicate, which rendered him effectively soulless. To destroy his body, as was done at Shrewsbury, was to exterminate him utterly. In addition, an excommunicate could be killed in any way, without fear of censure.  

Dafydd spent much of his career in the service of Edward I, who granted him lands and a rich marriage. The king also funded the construction of Dafydd’s castle of Caergwrle (see pic) in the lordship of Hopedale. In return the Welshman served in Edward’s armies in England and Wales.  

He seems to have been driven by hatred and envy of his eldest brother, Llywelyn the Last. It is difficult to know where the guilt lay, since Llywelyn had equally difficult relationships with his three other siblings. Like most men of power, he was overbearing, and insisted upon absolute obedience. 

Whatever Dafydd’s motives, he could not command the same loyalty as Llywelyn. When he became prince, in early 1283, his countrymen quickly fell away from him. By June he was being hunted by teams of Welshmen in Edward’s service, including some of his own former retainers. He was finally cornered by Iorwerth Penwyn (white-head), a landholder of Gwynedd, while his eldest son was taken prisoner by Dafydd Fychan, a man of West Wales. Dafydd was handed over to the king, his former paymaster, who insisted on a judgement of blood. 

The siege of St Michael's Mount

#OTD in 1473 John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford, descended on St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall. He was accompanied by his three brothers, Viscount Beaumont, and a force of some eighty men.  

After his escape from the Lancastrian defeat at Barnet, Oxford had fled to Scotland, and then to France. After receiving promises of support from King Louis, he took to piracy off the Isle of Thanet in Kent, and made several futile attempts to land in Essex, where he and his mother Elizabeth Howard were the greater landowners.  

Oxford’s decision to seize the Mount was more intelligent than it may appear. He held land in Cornwall, and was of a Cornish line through his grandmother, Alice Sergeaux. The earl had hopes of stirring up a revolt against Edward IV. Warkworth’s Chronicle noted that Oxford ‘and his men came down into cuntre of Cornwale and hade riyhte good chere of the comons’. 

However, the occupation of a remote stronghold in Cornwall was of little use unless Oxford could attract major support in England. That is precisely what he hoped to do: his ally, George Duke of Clarence, was a regional power in the southwest. He also needed foreign aid, and his capture of the Mount may have been an attempt to persuade Louis that an invasion could be successful.   

Oxford’s plan was undone by poor timing and bad weather. His envoys (including his youngest brother, Richard) did not reach Paris until the following February, by which time the Mount was under siege. One French ship was sent to resupply the castle, but had to turn back in a storm. 

Edward IV was alive to the danger in the south-west. As early as 5 June 1473, he wrote to the Sheriff of Devon warning him of rumours that Oxford intended to land in that county. When he heard of Oxford’s capture of the Mount, Edward quickly appointed a number of Cornish knights and esquires to besiege the castle. The most senior were Sir John Arundell of Tenrice and Henry Bodrugan, a notoriously corrupt landowner.  

At first the siege went badly for the Yorkists. Arundell was killed in a skirmish on the sands, and was replaced by Bodrugan, who did very little. It was reported that he held friendly talks with Oxford, and levied extortionate taxes on the Cornish for the siege, which vanished into his very deep pockets.  

At last Edward took action. In December 1473 he issued a fresh commission, in which Bodrugan was joined by John Fortescue, an esquire of the body, and the Sheriff of Cornwall. The Mount was now blockaded, land and sea, by a force of four ships, three hundred soldiers and some artillery. There was bitter fighting, in which both sides suffered heavily, and Oxford himself wounded in the face by an arrow.   

The siege was ended by the public offer of a pardon to any man who would submit and swear fealty to King Edward. This excluded Oxford, his brothers George and Thomas, and Viscount Beaumont, who were only offered life and limb. They were promptly deserted by their men, who scrambled to take the pardon, and forced to surrender.  

The four were brought before Edward IV, who imprisoned Oxford at Hammes Castle in the Pale of Calais. The earl’s brothers appear to have been held in custody at the Yorkist court, although the youngest, Richard, remained at liberty in France. In late 1484 Oxford staged a dramatic escape, and joined Henry Tudor in time to lead the vanguard at Bosworth.  

John de Vere was as tough and ruthless as any other nobleman of the time, but had some attractive traits. He was remembered as a ‘good lord’ in Essex and East Anglia, and cared for his old friend, Beaumont, when the latter fell prey to mental illness. After Beaumont’s death, Oxford married his widow, Elizabeth Scrope.

The Terror of Gwynedd (4, and last)

On 19 June 1312 Piers Gaveston, Edward II’s notorious favourite, was taken onto Blacklow Hill in Warwickshire. There, watched from afar by Thomas of Lancaster and several others, he was butchered by two Welshmen. One ran him through with a sword, then the other cut off his head. 

Over a year later, October 1313, Edward pardoned all those who were implicated in Gaveston’s death. Apart from Lancaster himself, this included many of his followers. Amongst them was Madog ap Meilir, one of the subjects of this series of posts.

To recap: Madog was a landholder of the Powysian March, who had risen high in the service of Edward I and served as a military captain and tax officer. He was a retainer of Owain ap Gruffudd/de le Pole, lord of southern Powys. After Owain’s death in 1294, Madog switched to the household of his younger brother, Gwilym. In 1295 he served in the royal army that won the battle of Maes Moydog. 

After that he vanishes from the record until his appearance on the pardon roll in 1313. He is one of nine Welshmen (by my count) on the very long list of men whom Edward pardoned - very reluctantly, no doubt - for the slaughter of his favourite.

Thus, sometime between 1295 and 1312, Madog abandoned his long career as a Plantagenet loyalist and joined the political enemies of the new king, Edward II. He might even have been one of the two Welshmen who hacked Piers to death on Blacklow, although we cannot be certain. Even if not, he was definitely amongst Lancaster’s following.

Whatever his good points, Edward II had a disastrous habit of losing the support of his father’s old loyalists: Madog is just one of numerous examples. While the king was popular with some of the Welsh gentry, he was opposed by others. As for Madog himself, he does not appear again in the record, and probably died before the end of the reign. 

The poisoned treaty

 #OTD in 1267 the Treaty of Montgomery was ratified between Henry III and Prince Llywelyn the Last of Wales. The treaty was Llywelyn’s greatest achievement: he became the first and only ‘native’ Prince of Wales/Princeps Wallie to be formally recognised by a King of England. However, contrary to popular belief, it did not make him the ruler of an independent state. 

There are sixteen clauses to the treaty. The key clause is number 13. Quote: 

 “For the principality, lands, homages and concessions the same prince and his successors are bound to perform and do to the lord king and his successors the fealty, homage and accustomed and due service that he or his ancestors were accustomed and bound to do and perform to the kings of England.” 

Thus, Llywelyn bound himself and his heirs as perpetual vassals of the English crown. The key advantage, from his perspective, was that in future all the other Welsh rulers would do homage and fealty to him, rather than the King of England. Llywelyn in turn did homage to the king, his overlord. 

Furthermore, Llywelyn agreed to pay a mortgage of 25,000 marks (about £18,000) for his title, to be paid in annual instalments. In the event, he could not meet this or his other financial obligations. His administration was unpopular and oppressive, and a string of military defeats ended in his death, in December 1282, assassinated by his Mortimer cousins. Six months later Gwynedd was conquered by the armies of Edward I.

The terror of Gwynedd (3)

 The battle of Maes Moydog was fought in Powys, North Wales, in March 1295. In some ways it was similar to the battle of Falkirk, fought three years later. An Anglo-Welsh army used missile troops to defeat an army of Welsh spearmen, after the latter had repulsed a cavalry charge. 

The Welsh army was led by Prince Madog ap Llywelyn, a great-great-grandson of Owain Gwynedd (died 1170), the first Welsh ruler to adopt the title Princeps Wallie/Walenses, or overlord of the Welsh. After taking Edward I’s castles of Caernarfon, Denbigh, Ruthin and Hawarden, Madog marched down into Powys. Quote: 

 “Know that the army of Montgomery went to Oswestry to take a prey. And then the prince [Madog] came down to Powis with all the elite Welshmen.” - chronicle of Hagnaby The phrase “to take a prey” is a biblical expression from Ezekiel Chapter XXXVIII, 11-13: “Verse 12: To take a spoil and to take a prey; to turn thy hand upon desolate places that are now inhabited, and upon the people that are gathered out of the nations, which have gotten cattle and goods, that dwell in the midst of the land.” 

The army of Montgomery was led by the Earl of Warwick. Just like Wallace at Falkirk, the location of Madog’s army was revealed to him by spies. This crucial local intelligence enabled Warwick to steal a march on the Welsh prince and attack his army on the morning of 5th March. There, on a flat open field, Madog was routed with the loss of six hundred men. 

Now, amongst Warwick’s army were our friends, Madog ap Meilyr and Madog ap Eynon. As local men, with an intimate knowledge of the district, they would have had local informants able to track Prince Madog’s forces and report on his movements to the earl. More than anyone, they were response for the prince’s defeat. 

While the battle raged, Madog’s baggage train was attacked by another detachment of the king’s men, who came from ‘Thessewait’. This is a garbled English spelling of Y Tair Swydd, a district of the Lower Severn Valley centred on Welshpool. It was noticed as a source of Powysian soldiers: during the previous war of 1282-3 over seven hundred had been raised from Y Tair Swydd alone. These men were Welsh. 

The battle of Maes Moydog is usually defined as a straight England v Wales affair. Once again, at the risk of making myself tedious, that is simply not true. To judge from their actions, the men of Powys saw Madog’s invasion as just that: a continuation of the ancient wars of Gwynedd and Powys. They had rejected his predecessor, Llywelyn the Last, and they weren’t having him either.

Sources: The Montgomeryshire Collections/Casgliadau Malden, Volume 106; the battle of Maes Moydog by Dr Peter Barton

Heirs to the Princes: The Welsh Ministerial Elite by David Stephenson

Edward I (Yale Monarchs) by Michael Prestwich

Welsh Soldiers in the Later Middle Ages by Adam Chapman

Medieval Powys: Kingdom, Principality & Lordships by David Stephenson