Thursday, 30 May 2019
Push of pike
A subtle hint as to the subject matter of my next project. Giving the Middle Ages a rest for a while...
Wednesday, 29 May 2019
Money, money, money
The development of the medieval principality of Wales under the Llywelyns:
“We can thus see that the political and military achievements of the princes were facilitated, at the very least, by substantial developments in the machinery and personnel of governance. At an even more fundamental level economic growth was also crucial to political innovation: the foundation of trading centres, boroughs and ports was a phenomenon imported into Pura Wallia from the March and beyond, and was both stimulated by, and helped to produce, a major thirteenth-century development of commutation of revenues and rents formerly rendered in kind into ones paid in cash. There were numerous flourishing marketing centres in and near the eastern and southern March in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the importance of their trade with Wales can be judged by the quickness of the English governments to ban trade with Wales at times of Anglo-Welsh wars.” -
D Stephenson In light of the above, some difficult questions have to be asked. Why did so many Welshmen, of all ranks of society, reject Llywelyn ap Gruffudd in 1277? This was the important conflict: “It was in the war of 1282 that killed Llywelyn, but it was in the war of 1277 that he was crushed, reduced to a shadow of his former eminence”.
One reason may have been the efforts of the princes to introduce a cash economy: commutation of traditional services into money payments was viable for who produced a surplus to be sold in markets, but was a daunting prospect for the average peasant, who lived at bare subsistence level. As late as 1318, over forty years after Llywelyn’s death, the community of West Wales complained to Edward II that they ‘were never accustomed to have money in the Welshry’.
Longsword IV pre-order!
Longsword (IV) The Hooded Men is now available for pre-order on Kindle, release date 12 June!
Some of you may recall that Hugh ended the last chapter in disgrace, having failed to reach Acre in time to save the Lord Edward from a Syrian assassin. Now he is sent home to England, carrying a sealed letter that contains his one shot at redemption...
Some of you may recall that Hugh ended the last chapter in disgrace, having failed to reach Acre in time to save the Lord Edward from a Syrian assassin. Now he is sent home to England, carrying a sealed letter that contains his one shot at redemption...
Tuesday, 28 May 2019
The exercise of power
The post mortem inquisition entry from 1278 for Maredudd ap Gruffydd, a lord of south Wales. This serves as an example of the predatory politics of the era, and the crude exercise of power.
The inquisition, conducted by the bailiff of Abergavenny, records that Maredudd held lands in Monmouth and elsewhere in the south. In 1271, while the future King Edward was in the Holy Land, Maredudd was driven from his manors of Edeligion and Llebenydd in Caerleon by Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester. He managed to retain the commote of Hirfryn, which was inherited by his son, Morgan, after Maredudd’s death in 1278.
Morgan initially gave his allegiance to Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Prince of Wales. Llywelyn commanded Morgan to travel into Snowdonia to swear homage and fealty before the prince. The oath of fealty was essentially an appeal to God, whereby a man called down on himself divine punishment if he behaved falsely to his lord. It usually consisted of something like:
"I promise on my faith that I will in the future be faithful to the lord, never cause him harm and will observe my homage to him completely against all persons in good faith and without deceit."
Once Morgan had sworn the oath, Llywelyn ejected his vassal from Hirfryn and left him with nothing. Llywelyn probably did this to regain a foothold in Cantref Bychan in south Wales after his territorial losses there in 1278. Deprived of his inheritance, Morgan had to rebuild his patrimony by entering royal service.
The inquisition, conducted by the bailiff of Abergavenny, records that Maredudd held lands in Monmouth and elsewhere in the south. In 1271, while the future King Edward was in the Holy Land, Maredudd was driven from his manors of Edeligion and Llebenydd in Caerleon by Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester. He managed to retain the commote of Hirfryn, which was inherited by his son, Morgan, after Maredudd’s death in 1278.
Morgan initially gave his allegiance to Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Prince of Wales. Llywelyn commanded Morgan to travel into Snowdonia to swear homage and fealty before the prince. The oath of fealty was essentially an appeal to God, whereby a man called down on himself divine punishment if he behaved falsely to his lord. It usually consisted of something like:
"I promise on my faith that I will in the future be faithful to the lord, never cause him harm and will observe my homage to him completely against all persons in good faith and without deceit."
Once Morgan had sworn the oath, Llywelyn ejected his vassal from Hirfryn and left him with nothing. Llywelyn probably did this to regain a foothold in Cantref Bychan in south Wales after his territorial losses there in 1278. Deprived of his inheritance, Morgan had to rebuild his patrimony by entering royal service.
Loyaulté me Lie
The cost of loyalty: how the Plantagenets retained the duchy of Gascony after the loss of the Angevin empire:
“Yet no regime could afford to alienate its supporters, and it was unwise to take too many castles and tolls into royal or ducal possession. By 1294 five-sixths of the castles within the duchy of Aquitaine were held by the nobility: thus, of 130 fortresses in the Agenais, only six were in ducal hands. The price of loyalty was high. A small ducal domain - Edward I held only twenty castles in Aquitaine in the 1290s - ensured the survival of his regime and the Plantagenets consciously and purposefully alienated most of their Gascon assets, with the important exception of the wine customs collected at Bordeaux. The principal beneficiaries of these grants were the middling and lesser nobility.”
- Malcom Vale, The Origins of the Hundred Years War.
The benefit of this policy of decentralisation was shown in 1294, when the French invaded Gascony. Of the 112 Gascon nobles summoned to arms by Edward I, about 90 responded. Most of those who defected to Philip IV were concentrated in the Agenais on the northeast frontier of the duchy. Edward had only acquired the Agenais a few years earlier, so these men had in effect reverted to their ‘natural lord’, the king of France.
Pictured are the castles of La Réole and the Château de Foix, which lay inside the old duchy of Gascony, also called Guyenne or Aquitaine.
“Yet no regime could afford to alienate its supporters, and it was unwise to take too many castles and tolls into royal or ducal possession. By 1294 five-sixths of the castles within the duchy of Aquitaine were held by the nobility: thus, of 130 fortresses in the Agenais, only six were in ducal hands. The price of loyalty was high. A small ducal domain - Edward I held only twenty castles in Aquitaine in the 1290s - ensured the survival of his regime and the Plantagenets consciously and purposefully alienated most of their Gascon assets, with the important exception of the wine customs collected at Bordeaux. The principal beneficiaries of these grants were the middling and lesser nobility.”
- Malcom Vale, The Origins of the Hundred Years War.
The benefit of this policy of decentralisation was shown in 1294, when the French invaded Gascony. Of the 112 Gascon nobles summoned to arms by Edward I, about 90 responded. Most of those who defected to Philip IV were concentrated in the Agenais on the northeast frontier of the duchy. Edward had only acquired the Agenais a few years earlier, so these men had in effect reverted to their ‘natural lord’, the king of France.
Pictured are the castles of La Réole and the Château de Foix, which lay inside the old duchy of Gascony, also called Guyenne or Aquitaine.
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| Château de Foix |
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| La Réole |
Monday, 27 May 2019
King Arthur and King Edward
The tournament at Hem-Monacu in France in 1278 had a strong Arthurian theme: the participants dressed as up as the Knights of the Round Table, and scenes from the legend were played out between jousts. From the outset, the herald proclaimed that the tournament was held in honour of Queen Guinevere, represented by a supposedly allegorical figure called the ‘dame de Courtoisie’. The dame was played by the sister of Aubert de Longueval, one of the organisers.
The dame was also the central figure of the tornoi, and held court on a scaffold raised above the arena. Before the jousts began, she gave an explanatory prologue to the crowd. During interludes between combats, she would explain her plans for the rest of the day’s proceedings. Some of her exposition, recorded by the poet Sarassin, reveals much about contemporary attitudes towards Edward I and English knights.
At the start of the tornoi, the dame urges that King Arthur and his knights should be invited to compete: “...en le Haute Bretainge, De coi li Graaus nous ensegne, Que le rois Artus en fu sires.”
A version of the Trojan conquest of Britain was then recited, followed by Merlin’s construction of Stonehenge. Finally the Knights of the Round Table are invoked:
“La [en Angleterrej trueve on les bons jousteours, Les durs, les roides et les fors. Lancelos... Et Gavains... Et cil de la Table Reonde, Qui furent li millor du monde, La sont chevalier de valour, La sont mout de bon jousteour, La sont li chevalier hardi. Cix qui en est sires et rois ... preus et largues et courtois, ... le... roi Edouwart.”
(There [in England] you'll find good fighters, hard men, tough and strong. Lancelot and Gawain and the men of the Round Table, who were the best in the world. There are knights of reputation, there are many good jousters, there are brave knights. ... and him who is their lord and king, the valiant, generous and benevolent
king Edward.')
In this verse, King Edward has been fused with the legendary King Arthur and in fact displaced him: it is now Edward, not Arthur, who leads Lancelot and Gawain and the men of the Round Table. This would have been music to Edward’s ears, not least because it came from a French trouvére rather than his own English minstrels. It would have been sheer wormwood for the Capetian king, Philip III, who had to endure a number of unflattering comparisons between himself and cousin Edward, usually from the troubadours of Aragon and southern France.
(Thanks to Rich Price for the translation.)
The dame was also the central figure of the tornoi, and held court on a scaffold raised above the arena. Before the jousts began, she gave an explanatory prologue to the crowd. During interludes between combats, she would explain her plans for the rest of the day’s proceedings. Some of her exposition, recorded by the poet Sarassin, reveals much about contemporary attitudes towards Edward I and English knights.
At the start of the tornoi, the dame urges that King Arthur and his knights should be invited to compete: “...en le Haute Bretainge, De coi li Graaus nous ensegne, Que le rois Artus en fu sires.”
A version of the Trojan conquest of Britain was then recited, followed by Merlin’s construction of Stonehenge. Finally the Knights of the Round Table are invoked:
“La [en Angleterrej trueve on les bons jousteours, Les durs, les roides et les fors. Lancelos... Et Gavains... Et cil de la Table Reonde, Qui furent li millor du monde, La sont chevalier de valour, La sont mout de bon jousteour, La sont li chevalier hardi. Cix qui en est sires et rois ... preus et largues et courtois, ... le... roi Edouwart.”
(There [in England] you'll find good fighters, hard men, tough and strong. Lancelot and Gawain and the men of the Round Table, who were the best in the world. There are knights of reputation, there are many good jousters, there are brave knights. ... and him who is their lord and king, the valiant, generous and benevolent
 |
| Edward I |
In this verse, King Edward has been fused with the legendary King Arthur and in fact displaced him: it is now Edward, not Arthur, who leads Lancelot and Gawain and the men of the Round Table. This would have been music to Edward’s ears, not least because it came from a French trouvére rather than his own English minstrels. It would have been sheer wormwood for the Capetian king, Philip III, who had to endure a number of unflattering comparisons between himself and cousin Edward, usually from the troubadours of Aragon and southern France.
(Thanks to Rich Price for the translation.)
Castles in Wales
The importance of castle-building in the nascent Welsh state of the 1200s:
“As the major politics of the later twelfth and thirteenth centuries began to be characterized by the building of stone castles, whose significance was administrative and political as much as military, we find castle staff, castellans and castle clerks. Such castles were relatively numerous in Gwynedd, appearing throughout that land, as at Dolbadarn, Dolwyddelan, Castell y Bere, Degannwy, Ewloe, Dinas Emrys, Carndochan and Criccieth, but were also built or developed by the rulers of Gwynedd or their allies in locations beyond the heartlands of the Llywelyns, as at Dinas Bran above the Dee, Dolforwyn in Cedewain, Bryn Amlwg at the point where Ceri, Maelieneydd and Clun lordships met, and Rhyd y Briw (Sennybridge). In other territories, less amenable to Venedotian control, regional lords maintained important castles at Pool (Powis Castle), the caput of southern Powys and Llandovery, Dinefwr and Dryslwyn in Ystrad Tywi. The very look of the land in pura Wallia was changing: castles, courts and towns had a greater appearance of permanence; governance was making its mark”. -
D Stephenson
Pictured are Dolwyddelan, Castell Dinas Bran and Ewloe.
“As the major politics of the later twelfth and thirteenth centuries began to be characterized by the building of stone castles, whose significance was administrative and political as much as military, we find castle staff, castellans and castle clerks. Such castles were relatively numerous in Gwynedd, appearing throughout that land, as at Dolbadarn, Dolwyddelan, Castell y Bere, Degannwy, Ewloe, Dinas Emrys, Carndochan and Criccieth, but were also built or developed by the rulers of Gwynedd or their allies in locations beyond the heartlands of the Llywelyns, as at Dinas Bran above the Dee, Dolforwyn in Cedewain, Bryn Amlwg at the point where Ceri, Maelieneydd and Clun lordships met, and Rhyd y Briw (Sennybridge). In other territories, less amenable to Venedotian control, regional lords maintained important castles at Pool (Powis Castle), the caput of southern Powys and Llandovery, Dinefwr and Dryslwyn in Ystrad Tywi. The very look of the land in pura Wallia was changing: castles, courts and towns had a greater appearance of permanence; governance was making its mark”. -
D Stephenson
Pictured are Dolwyddelan, Castell Dinas Bran and Ewloe.
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