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

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…

The terror of Gwynedd

Leaping back to Wales, because I have just received a new journal and want to chatter on about it. Dr David Stephenson’s excellent new book, Heirs to the Princes, contains a handy breakdown of those Welshmen who held office after the Edwardian Conquest: the new aristocracy or ‘Welsh ministerial elite’, as Stephenson calls them. 

To an extent the ‘conquest of Wales’ is an illusion: what Edward I actually did was conquer Gwynedd and its dependencies, not the entire country. Even then, after a major revolt in 1294-5, he was obliged to compromise with the Welsh gentry i.e. the people who mattered. To understand the course of events in Wales, we have to dig deep into the source materials and study individuals. Two of those who caught my eye were Madog ap Eynon and Madog ap Meilyr. 

The two Madogs were gentry of the Powysian March: Madog ap Eynon and his brothers held tenements and land in Llanerchudol and Castle Caerenion, while Madog ap Meilyr held tenements near Welshpool. They were both closely associated with Owain ap Gruffudd, a powerful lord of southern Powys, hailed by his court bards as ‘the terror of London’. 

He also might be described as the terror of Gwynedd. Owain and his family, the royal house of Mathrafal, were bitterly opposed to the rulers of Gwynedd, who wished to impose their power on the whole of Wales. This dynastic feud went back several centuries. Madog ap Meilyr first appears in a witness list dated December 1276 (third pic). Here, Madog is one of some twenty Welshmen listed as sureties for the fidelity to Prince Llywelyn the Last of a named individual. This is a man with the interesting name of ‘Gruffudd ap Budyr ihossan’, which translates as ‘Gruffudd son of Budyr of the dirty hose’. In other words, Budyr was known for having dirty trousers. 

The document may sound dull, but it is crucial to our understanding. It is one of at least sixty examples, in which Llywelyn the Last forced his subjects to act as surety for Welshmen whom he suspected of disloyalty. These strongly imply that Llywelyn was struggling to control many of the Welsh outside Gwynedd, who had no desire to submit to a prince they regarded as an outsider. Moreover, a very oppressive one. 

To be continued…