The terror of Gwynedd (2)

 To continue the tale of the two Madogs. In 1287, five years after the killing of Llywelyn the Last, Rhys ap Maredudd went into revolt. He was a direct descendent of ‘The Lord Rhys’, one of the most famous rulers of medieval Wales, but his motives were complicated. Rhys had fought for Edward I in the wars against Llywelyn, and his eventual revolt was driven more by personal rivalry with the Justiciar of South Wales, Robert Tibetot. 

The king was in Gascony, and had little to do with quelling the revolt. That task fell to the regent, Edmund of Cornwall, who raised an army of 11,000 men, drawn from parts of Wales and the Marches. One of those called up to serve was Owain ap Gruffudd (de la Pole), the so-called ‘Terror of London’, who recruited a thousand men from his own lands in Powys to fight Rhys. 

 Among them were our friends, Madog ap Meilyr and Madog ap Eynon. They served as constables of infantry at the siege of Dryslwyn Castle in Ystrad Tywi, where Rhys and his followers were holed up. Their status is reflected in the wage rolls, which show they each rode an armoured war-horse and commanded units of a hundred infantry. 

After the revolt was crushed, the two Madogs continued to prosper in post-Conquest Wales. By 1292 they were working as chief tax officers in the lands of Cyfeiliog and Mawddy in Powys, both part of the lordship of de la Pole. Madog ap Eynon also made himself busy as a sub-taxor and juror of Caereinion, Llannerchudol, Ceri and Cedewain, again within Powys. 

A note on their lord, Owain. He was hailed as ‘the terror of London’ by his court bard, Llywelyn Fardd III, in a work composed c.1294. In the same poem, Llywelyn praised his master for ‘slaying the Brynaich’, an ancient term for the English i.e. the men of Bernicia, a long-extinct northern kingdom. This seems to be one of the last examples of poetry composed in the Age of the Princes in Wales, which gave way to the slightly different poetic tradition of the gentry. It hardly needs saying, but the tale of Edward I slaughtering the bards of Wales is just that, a fairy tale cooked up in the 18th century. Whatever one makes of Longshanks, he had better things to do than chase poets around the hillsides. 

By this stage the theme of slaughtering the English had become a trope in Welsh bardic poetry, and didn’t necessarily reflect current events. Apart from fighting for King Edward, Owain also served as the king’s shield-bearer and standard bearer, and rode behind him on parade. So far as we know, he never fought an Englishman in his life. 

To be continued…