Adam Gurdun, part the next

Back to the bold Sir Adam.

In 1251 the Sheriff of Dorset, Henry of Earley, was replaced by Elias de Rabayn. Elias was a Poitevin and had only arrived at the English court in 1248, probably in the entourage of Henry III’s Lusignan half-brothers. He soon made his presence felt in Dorset.

The king granted Elias the wardship of the lands and two daughters of Stephen of Bayeux, an old man who had just inherited a barony in Lincolnshire and two manors in Dorset. Just before he died, Stephen was ‘persuaded’ by the king to marry one of his daughters, Maud, to Elias. The entire estate was then settled on the couple and the other daughter, Joan, disinherited. Joan was sent to Sixhills convent in Lincolnshire, a favourite dumping ground for unwanted female gentlefolk. In 1253 she was abducted by Elias and smuggled off abroad, to be married to a Poitevin nobleman. She never saw England again, though her son later returned to try and claim his inheritance.

 It may be that Henry appointed Elias as Sheriff of Dorset to stifle local opposition to his marriage. The new sheriff didn’t help matters by screwing down hard on the locals: he and his deputy, Walter Burges, were accused of extortion. In February 1253 Walter was violently assaulted by the people of Shaftesbury, a rare experience for Henry III’s sheriffs and unprecedented in Dorset. Elias and Walter also engaged in a power struggle with the Earl of Gloucester, and began to stockpile weapons at Corfe Castle.

Another of the king’s half-brothers, Aymer de Lusignan, also threw his weight around in Dorset. As bishop-elect of Winchester, Aymer grabbed the port of Weymouth, the manor of Wyke and the island of Portland, in the teeth of protests from local landowners. Aymer also got permission to fortify Portland by a royal licence obtained from a council packed with his friends, while his bailiff squeezed tolls from local shipping. His activities were condemned in the Petition of the Barons:

“No-one shall be allowed to fortify a castle upon a harbour, or upon an island within a harbour, unless by the consent of the council of the whole realm of England.”

By the early 1260s Dorset was ready to boil over. All the protesters lacked was a leader. Step forward Adam Gurdun. In June 1263 the justices in eyre at Sherborne in Dorset reported they dared not leave the town, for “the enemies of the lord king were going with flags flying through the country plundering loyal subjects”.

The ‘loyal subjects’ were the king’s supporters in the region. Adam’s revolt had begun.

Private thoughts

One of the pleasures of researching the Civil War era is the amount of surviving information: private and public correspondence, charters, manuals, satirical pamphlets etc etc. Great heaps of the stuff. The more intimate material, which rarely survives for the medieval era, gives an insight into the private thoughts of individuals.

The below was written in 1638 by Bevil Grenville, a royalist commander and nobleman of Devon and Cornwall, on the eve of war with Scotland: "I cannot contain myself within my doors when the King of England's standard waves in the field upon so just occasions, the cause being such as must make all those that die in it little inferior to Martyrs. And for mine own part I desire to acquire an honest name in an honourable grave. I never loved my life or ease so much as to shun an occasion which if I should I were unworthy of the profession I have held, or to succeed those ancestors of mine, who have so many of them in several ages sacrificed their lives for their country."

 Bevil seems to have been well aware he would not survive. In 1643 he led the charge of Cornish infantry at the Battle of Lansdowne near Bath in Somerset. As the fight raged, his skull was broken by a pole-axe and he was carried off the field to a nearby rectory, where he died the same day. His Cornishmen refused to serve under any other leader and returned home.

Above is a pic of Bevil's monument, which stands on Lansdowne Hill near Bath.

The best kisser in the kingdom...

Christopher Hibbert's description of Prince Rupert of the Rhine, Charles I's nephew and dashing cavalry officer. Woof, woof!

"Yet Rupert was far more than a rough, handsome soldier of fortune with a taste for fancy clothes, fringed boots, feathered hats, scarlet sashes and long curled hair; he was more than a cavalry leader of undeniable skill and courage. He was highly intelligent, a remarkable linguist, an artist of uncommon merit, a man with an inventive skill and curiosity of mind that was to give as much pleasure to his later years of sickness and premature old age as the several mistresses who visited him in his rooms at Windsor Castle."

God save the King!

Let's take a break from the medieval era for a moment, and move forward in time to a blustery summer's day in Nottingham on 22 August 1642. On that day Charles I unfurled his standard of war on the summit of the highest tower of Nottingham Castle, heralding the start of the English Civil War - or the War of the Three Kingdoms, or the British & Irish Civil Wars (delete or add to taste). 

Charles I

From the evidence given by eye-witnesses at the trial of the King in 1649, we learn the following particulars concerning the raising of his standard:—

"Robert Large, painter, of the town and county of Nottingham, deposed upon oath that in the summer of 1642 he painted, by command of my Lord Beaumont, the great standard of war that was placed upon the high tower of the Castle of Nottingham, and that he often saw the King thereabouts, at the same time that his standard was erected and displayed.”

"Samuel Lawson, of Nottingham, maltster, aged 30 years or thereabouts, sworn and examined, saith: That about August, 1642, he this deponent saw the King’s standard brought forth of Nottingham Castle, borne upon divers gentlemen’s shoulders, who (as the report was) were noblemen; and he saw the same carried by them on the Hill close adjoining the Castle, with a herald before it; and there the said standard was erected, with great shouting, acclamations, and sound of drums and trumpets; and that when the said standard was so erected there was a proclamation made; and that he, this deponent, saw the King present at the erecting thereof.”

We are told the standard was “a large red streamer, pennon shaped, cloven at the end, attached to a long red staff having about twenty supporters, and bore next the staff a St. George’s Cross, then an escutcheon of the Royal Arms, with a hand pointing to the crown above it, and the legend:

"GIVE UNTO CAESAR HIS DUE,"

together with two other crowns, each surmounted by a lion passant."

Three days later the royal standard was unfurled again, this time on an open field on the north side of the castle wall (now marked by a tablet). It took twenty men to carry the banner into the field, and they had to hold it upright after digging an insufficiently deep hole with daggers and knives. The royal herald made a mess of his speech, and then a strong gust of wind blew the standard down. Not a very auspicious start for the royalists.

Adam Gurdun (continued)

The tale of Sir Adam (continued) In 1253 Adam Gurdun is granted a reward for his military service in Poitou and Gascony: on 10 December, at Bazas in Gascony, Henry III gives him a licence for life to hunt the hare, fox, cat and badger in the forests of Southampton, but not to take the king’s great deer. The following May he is granted exemption from further service if he can find a sergeant to serve for forty days in his stead. 

Wigmore Castle in Shropshire

Adam clearly enjoys a life of soldiering. When another war breaks out in 1257, this time against the Welsh, he again serves in person. By now Adam has been drawn into the affinity of Roger Mortimer, lord of Wigmore on the Welsh March, and serves under his command. Mortimer’s contingent is part of a separate army ordered to support Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford, in his command of the Marches from Montgomery to Glamorgan. Adam, therefore, is not part of the king’s army that marches from Chester to Deganwy.

King Henry gets no further as his advance is crippled by supply problems and skilful Welsh guerilla attacks. The king has unfurled his dragon banner and threatened to ‘exterminate the Welsh’; instead he is forced to retreat, ‘the inglorious king, his treasure much squandered, laughed at and mocked by the enemy’ (Matthew Paris). Henry shows considerable personal courage, riding at the head of his troops, but that cannot make up for dismal planning and the famine and disease that sweeps through his army.

Illustration of medieval soldiers, taken from the Douce Apocalpyse

Adam is having a slightly better time of it in the Middle March. His captain, Roger Mortimer, has his own objectives to pursue against Prince Llywelyn ap Gruffudd. Llywelyn has broken the Treaty of Gwrtherynion, agreed with Mortimer’s father, in which the Welsh prince swore he would never invade the Mortimer lordships of Gwrtherynion and Maelienydd. In 1256 he abjured the treaty and carried fire and sword into these lands, making a lifelong enemy of his cousins Mortimer. Bad move.

Not much is known of Mortimer’s service against the Welsh in 1257, but he seems to hold his ground. On 28 December he is given licence to fortify his town of Radnor against the Welsh, and on the following day grants an extra letter of protection to Adam Gurdun. The knight of Hampshire has survived the harrowing ordeal of war in Wales.

Adam Gurdun (continued)

The tale of Sir Adam (continued)

After his traumatic experience on the Poitou campaign in 1242, Adam Gurdun had a better time in Gascony a decade later. The duchy was in chaos, thanks to Simon de Montfort’s mismanagement as seneschal and the revolt of Gaston, vicomte de Béarn. This caused neighbouring princes to cast greedy eyes upon it, in particular Alfonso the Wise, King of Castile. After he succeeded his father, Ferdinand, in 1252, Alfonso renewed his dynastic claim to Gascony.

La Réole

All this left Henry III with no choice but to sail to Gascony in person to sort out the mess. Adam was once again summoned to go with his king overseas. Alongside him were the likes of Ralph Bakepuz, a Derbyshire knight who would later fight against Henry’s army at Chesterfield; Humphrey de Bohun, destined to perish in the squalor of a dungeon at Beeston Castle after the battle of Evesham; Hamo Lestrange, who would marry the heiress of Beirut and die in the Holy Land; Fulk Fitzwarin, who would drown in a muddy pool at the Battle of Lewes; Roger Mortimer of Wigmore, whose successors would murder the Prince of Wales, depose Edward II and nearly depose Edward III. An interesting bunch, though I personally wouldn’t have them round for tea.

The duchy of Gascony

In August 1253 the royal fleet sailed up the Gironde to Bordeaux, the chief city of Gascony. Like his father, King John, Henry could soldier when he was in the mood. He fought a determined and energetic campaign, though it took months to reduce the towns and castles of the lower Garonne and Dordogne. The diehard rebels, most of them bitter enemies of Montfort, shut themselves up behind the walls of La Réole (pictured above). Henry deprived the rebels of their allies by negotiating treaties with King Louis of France, the lord of Albret, the Counts of Comminges and Armagnac, and Gaston himself. The lords of Albret in particular would remain steadfastly loyal to the Angevin regime for decades, until they were alienated by Edward II and the rise of Piers Gaveston. 

Adam Gurdun

The tale of Sir Adam.

Sir Adam Gurdun was born into a very minor landed Hampshire family. Nothing is known of his early years, except that he chose the path of a career soldier and first saw action on Henry III's campaign to recover Poitou in 1242. Adam's name appears on a long roll of knights given protection to go beyond seas with the king.

Adam had some ill-fated companions. Alongside him on the roll is Philip Basset, who suffered a billion wounds at the Battle of Lewes in 1264; Stephen Bauzan, hacked to death by the Welsh at Cymerau in 1257; Alan la Zouche, murdered by Earl Warenne in the king's presence at Westminster in 1268. There's also a man named Vassal Affoylinis, who sounds like an obscure skin disease.

Nothing is known of Adam's personal experience in Poitou, though it can't have been a happy one. Deserted by his allies, and surprised at the military aggression of the French king, Louis IX (Saint Louis), Henry's campaign ended in disaster. Adam may have got his sword wet in the skirmishes at Taillebourg and Saintes, where the English were well beaten and forced to retreat into Gascony.

Pictured above is The Battle of Taillebourg won by Saint Louis, by Eugène Delacroix (Galerie des Batailles, Palace of Versailles)