The sun of Scotland

1258. The Comyn alliance with Llywelyn lasted just three months, before the Welsh prince made peace with Henry III. It came to nothing because the Comyn faction soon lost control of events in Scotland.

Outside of their own affinity, there was little support for the Comyns. Earl Walter, the head of the family, was strong enough to retain power for a short while, but he couldn’t hold the King of Scots hostage forever. So much is clear from the treaty with Llywelyn, which said the Comyns would do their best to bring ‘the lord our king’ into the alliance with the Welsh.

This implies the Comyns were unable to control Alexander III. Three months after the treaty, they lost control of the great seal of Scotland, and were obliged to release Alexander’s wife Queen Margaret from custody. At about the same time Alexander resumed his correspondence with Margaret’s father, Henry III.

Margaret was also Edward I’s sister. If either of her sons by Alexander had lived, the next King of Scots would have been Edward’s nephew. As it was the two princes, David and Alexander, both predeceased their father. David died in 1281, aged eight, and Alexander in 1284, aged twenty.

According to the Chronicle of Lanercost, Alexander had the gift of prophecy on his deathbed. He spoke thus:

“On the morrow at sunrise shall set the sun of Scotland. My uncle of England shall fight three battles. Twice he will conquer. In the third he will be overthrown.”

This would seem to be written in hindsight, and refer to Edward I’s wars in Britain. He defeated the Montfortians in England, conquered Wales, but ultimately failed to conquer Scotland. Or it might refer exclusively to the Scottish war.

Scots and Welsh

Right, we shall have another look at Scotland. I broke off last time in the mid-13th century, when the Comyn faction were nearing the height of their power. A lot of people still seem to dismiss the Comyns as traitors or whatever, and don’t quite appreciate how important they were. 

Let’s go from 1257. In this year Earl Walter, head of the Comyn family, made his bid for power by kidnapping Alexander III, the young King of Scots, at Kinross. This enabled the Comyns to regain control of the government and kick out their rivals, headed by Alan Durward. For the past two years, Walter had been trying to leverage the support of the King of England, Henry III, to achieve his aims. Henry was willing, but his own position in England was crumbling away. By 1257 he was in dire straits: Henry was preoccupied with his disastrous attempt to conquer Sicily, the baronial reform movement in England, the illness of his queen and the rise of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd in Wales. 

These issues probably compelled Walter to make his move. Seeing that Henry was a busted flush, he promptly ditched the king and made a new alliance with Llywelyn, who had started to call himself Princeps Wallie; Prince/Overlord of Wales. In 1258 the Comyns took the extraordinary step of allying with Llywelyn and his supporters, which must have put Henry’s nose seriously out of joint. 

 Interestingly, it was Llywelyn who took the initiative in seeking alliance. The agreement didn’t last very long, but it captures the shifting balance of power at this point in time. In short: Comyns and Llywelyn up, Durward and Henry down. 

Attached is a pic of the first part of the agreement. As you can see, the second name on the Welsh witness list is Dafydd, Llywelyn’s notorious brother. At this point he was back onside with Llywelyn, and doing pretty well out of it. That wouldn’t last either.

The Rajputs of Rajasthan

We’ve had a lot of Wales in the past few days. For a change of pace, and to stop people getting bored, let’s look at events in a completely different part of the world. India!

In the 1820s a certain Colonel James Tod, the first British official to visit Rajasthan (a state in northwest India) wrote a history of the region called the Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan. According to John Keay, Tod wrote a glorious narrative of the rajputs, the local sovereign chiefs and princes, which was fit to rival the Western legends of Camelot. 

This went down especially well in Britain, because Tod made the ‘Rajpoot states’ sound very similar to the Anglo-Normans. For instance, they had the same feudal structure, based on a martial system with vassalage and land grants dependent on military service and the supply of fighting men. 

However, Tod condemned the rajputs for their complete inability to unite against a common foe. Quote:

“The closest attention to their history proves beyond contradiction that they were never capable of uniting, even for their own preservation: a breath, a scurrilous stanza of a bard, has severed their closest confederacies. No national head exists among them…and each chief being master of his own house and followers, they are individually too weak to cause us [the British] any harm.”

As if to contradict himself, Tod then pointed out that the rajputs had bravely resisted Muslim aggression, and listed a string of patriotic heroes of Rajasthan. The first of these was Pirthi-raj, properly known as Prithviraj III of the Chahamana (Chauhan) dynasty, who ruled an extensive kingdom in northern Rajasthan and the eastern Punjab from 1177. I know nothing whatever of this interesting fellow, so we shall have a closer look at him next.

Note: I also know absolutely bugger-all about the medieval history of India, and am getting all my information from John Keay’s book and online sources. If I get things wrong, which I surely will, blame them.

Glory, glory

 If we move outside North Wales, the shifts of power in the post-Conquest period become more evident. This was all about power, of course.

In the south and west, Edward I had destroyed most of the princes or ‘tywysog’. The survivors, after 1283, were Rhys ap Maredudd and Llywelyn ab Owain. Rhys had done extremely well by supporting the king in previous wars, at the expense of everyone else. Llywelyn survived because he was underage, and not important enough to be done away with.

Rhys was a shrewd man, but in 1287 he miscalculated and went into revolt. If he hoped to drive out the English and set himself up as a new Princeps Wallie, then he was living in cloud-cuckoo land. Most of his followers abandoned him, or even joined the massive royal army sent to crush the revolt.

One of those who turned against Rhys was a certain Goronwy Goch (the Red). Goronwy was of distinguished ancestry, which meant everything in medieval Wales: in Welsh pedigrees he was known as Arglwydd Llangathen—lord (dominus) of Llangathen, where he had his residence. He had been a senior figure at Rhys’s court, where he served as constable of the great castle of Dryslwyn. 

When his master turned against the king, Goronwy promptly enlisted in the king’s army. We should not judge him: he had only copied the example of Rhys, a collaborator who profited from the downfall of his neighbours and kinsmen. The royal household accounts show Goronwy served as a sergeant, riding an armoured warhorse and receiving the high wage of 12d (pence) a day: the average infantryman got 1 or 2d. He was present at the siege of Dryslwyn, where the castle walls were battered down by royal artillery. Rhys escaped the debacle, but was eventually captured and hanged at York.

Goronwy continued to ride high. He was made steward of Cantref Mawr in Ystrad Tywi, served as a tax officer in Dryslwyn lordship and gobbled up the profits of local estates and mills. He was very much a member of the rising ‘ministerial elite’ in Wales, who formed the nucleus of the gentry class. These ruthless men would clamber over the wreckage of the medieval principality, booting aside the past and clawing their way to supremacy in Wales and England. They are a Welsh success story, if arguably not a very glorious one.

Glory, glory. What does it mean, anyway? To my cynical middle-aged eyes, it seems to be shorthand for lost wars and futile causes, usually ending on a bloodstained scaffold. The hells with that.

Heirs to the Princes (2)

Following on from yesterday, and the latest study on post-conquest Wales. This is a huge subject, full of details and nuance, which can be difficult to convey on social media. I have chosen to start with the aftermath of the major Welsh revolt of 1294-5, which threatened to unravel Edward I’s conquest. This ties in with some of my own research from a few years ago. 

David Stephenson has now established there were five major risings in Wales in 1294-5: not four, as traditionally supposed. They were led by Madog ap Llywelyn in north Wales; Maelgwn ap Rhys in Ceredigion; Morgan ap Maredudd in Glamorgan; Meurig ap Dafydd in Abergavenny, and Cynan ap Maredudd in Brecon and adjacent lordships. 

Edward’s response to these men was notably less savage than the previous revolt in 1282-3, when he had Dafydd ap Gruffudd brutally executed at Shrewsbury. Madog and Maelgwn were imprisoned, Morgan was pardoned, while Meurig appears to have been recruited into the army in Flanders. Only Cynan was executed, after he tried to fool the king by pretending to have leprosy. 

On 24 December 1296 Edward sent a letter to John de Havering, his officer in North Wales. He informed Havering that the men of Snowdon and Anglesey had reported a rumour to the king, in which certain things ‘had been suggested’ whereby the king ought to hold them suspect. In response, Edward assured the North Welsh that he had every confidence in their loyalty. He then ordered Havering to deal with those spreading rumours: 

“…the king orders John to so chastise any liars as shall be found henceforth in his bailiwick that the punishment shall strike terror into others saying the like things.” 

That was not all. Edward was engaged upon a ‘charm offensive’, as Stephenson puts it, aimed at winning over the Welsh. His letter to Havering was followed by a subsequent order, on 3 December, in which the king assured certain Welshmen that he held them in no suspicion, but regarded them as his ‘faithful and devoted servants’. 

These men were the abbot of Aberconwy, Thomas Danvers, Tudur ap Goronwy, and Hywel ap Cynwrig. Edward’s willingness to pardon Tudur in particular was remarkable, given the Welshman’s role in the recent revolt. We shall look at that next. 

Note: Apologies if these Wales posts are a bit long-winded, but the devil really is in the detail. Besides, there is enough glib rubbish on the internet. We’re supposed to get history out of books, not AI and memes and Chatgpt.

Heirs to the Princes (1)

This volume just arrived. David Stephenson is (imo) the best current historian of medieval Wales, especially the period of the Edwardian conquest and its aftermath.

David argues for a complete re-assessment of this era, from the later years of Edward I up to the Black Death. After 1295 a 'new order' of aristocratic leadership emerged in Wales, which worked in co-operation with the English crown up until the mid-14th century. At that point the relationship started to break down, culminating in the revolt of Owain Glyndwr. 

This is a very detailed argument, drawing on close analysis of the record evidence. There are this who will simply refuse to accept it - I know from experience how difficult it can be to have reasonable discussions about Edward I and Wales, and to persuade people to consider new perspectives. That's fine, but I'm not here to offend anyone or get into arguments. If what follows makes you angry, then ignore me. Nobody has to agree with anything, obviously.

To start with, David quotes a passage by his old tutor, the late RR Davies:

"The difference between English and Welsh in fourteenth-century Wales was in part - and we need not mince our words here - that between conqueror and conquered, between a foreign government and commercial elite and an unprivileged native society; between settlers and natives. It was a contrast which permeated many aspects of Welsh life of the period - those of office-holding in church and state, of the redistribution of land in favour of a settler caste, of urban privileges and marketing prohibitions".

This might, in a nutshell, be taken as a fair reflection of the popular understanding of post-Conquest Wales (minus some of the more extreme language). But how true is it, really? We shall find out...

Rebellion against Henry III (1)

To go right back to the beginning (or 2019, when I wrote my book).The Second Barons’ War in England began in 1259 and officially ended in 1267, although violence and political unrest continued into the reign of Edward I. At a stretch, you could even argue that his reign was an interregnum, after which it all erupted again under Edward II. 

Broadly speaking, the war was triggered by protests against the rule of Henry III. These included the king’s financial extravagance, his reliance on hated foreigners, military blunders in Wales and corrupted administration. Then there was the Sicily business, whereby Henry planned to invade Sicily and plant his second son, Edmund, on the throne. 

 Some recent historians (well, one) have argued that the Sicily venture was in fact a misunderstood stroke of genius on Henry’s part. All I can say in response is that none of his barons thought so, especially since he wanted them to pay for it. Coming on top of everything else, this was the last straw. After years of bitter arguing, political tensions began to slide into violence. 

The first serious outbreak occurred in northern England, as shown by surviving court records and sheriff’s accounts. In 1260 Peter Percy, Sheriff of Yorkshire, claimed expenses for the wages of knights and crossbowmen in pursuing Sir John d’Eyville, Adam Newmarket and Richard Foliot and their company over five days in November. Meanwhile two more northerners, Robert de Ros and Alexander Kirketon, were arrested for committing acts of violence near Pontefract. 

For some years I corresponded with Oscar de Vill (sadly no longer with us) a descendant of Sir John via a cadet branch of the family in Warwickshire. Oscar kindly provided me with a great deal of his research on the d’Eyvill family and their long history as rebels and outlaws in this period. They should be better-known, really, as the real drivers of rebellion in the north for almost fifty years.