The obstinate spear

The Dragon of Chirk (4)

In the years after 1277, Llywelyn found that his defection to the English crown was not a passport to joy. He did not go without rewards: in November 1279 the king granted him and his heirs a weekly market and annual fair at Llanarmon Dyffryn Ceiriog in Cynllaith. This promised to create new wealth in the lordship, but also caused friction with the rival market at Oswestry.

Llywelyn had a bitter ongoing feud with the men of Ellesmere and Oswestry. Ellesmere had only been part of England for about thirty years, since Prince Dafydd ap Llywelyn surrendered it to Henry III. The town was previously part of the marriage portion of King Dafydd ab Owain Gwynedd and Prince Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, when they took English royal wives. By the reign of Edward I, though located in the east of the north Shropshire borderland, Ellesmere still supported a significant Welsh population.

A (possible) bust of Llywelyn the Great

Shortly after the war ended, Llywelyn complained to the king that certain of “the Welsh” were rejoicing at his difficulties. These Welsh can probably be identified with the men of Ellesmere, whom the poet Llygad Gwr encouraged Llywelyn to attack:

“Llywelyn, may there be a host of armed steeds,
And fame and the conquest of the vale of Ceiriog.
Thou brave one of the claim of content and of the long wrathful charge,
Who makes commotion with your men, may they be submissive
To you, the dragon of Chirk, with the obstinate spear;
And burning Whittingdon be yours, overshadowing lord.
And may Ellesmere bear your wounds, thou of the honoured following.
Fleet eagle of spears, of subduing vehemence,
In the front of battle almighty prince…”

To add to his problems, Ellesmere and Oswestry were under the jurisdiction of Roger and John Lestrange of Knockin, whom Llywelyn hated. When Roger gave shelter to the men of Whittingdon, Llywelyn informed the king in no uncertain terms that the Lestranges were:

“...our enemies and challenge us for other lands of our right and to whom we do not propose in the least to show faith nor ought we.”

Of land and lordship

The Dragon of Chirk (3) The war of 1277 ended with mixed fortunes for the sons of Gruffudd ap Madog. They all survived it, though not for very long in the case of Madog, the eldest. He died a month after the Treaty of Aberconwy in November, leaving two young sons and a widow.

Of the others, Gruffydd Fychan was the only one to stand by Prince Llywelyn during the war. He was pardoned by the king and permitted to hold part of Edeirnion and Ial as a tenant-in-chief. Llywelyn Fychan and Owain retained their lands.

A fresh disaster then swept over Powys Fadog. The territory had been subdivided twice in six years, first by Prince Llywelyn and then by King Edward, exposing the weakness of Gruffudd’s dynasty. Suddenly a glut of long-lost heirs popped out of the woodwork, all claiming to be descendants of ancient Powysian princes. These men had long since been deprived of land and lordship, but now they smelled blood.

The claimants included the four sons of Einion ap Gruffudd of Bromfield, who demanded part of Cynllaith; Gruffudd ap Gruffudd of Kinnerton, his three brothers and a certain Iorwerth Fychan, all descendants of Iorwerth Goch ap Maredudd (died 1171), who demanded the lands of Nanheudwy, Mochnant Is Rhaeadr and Cynllaith; and a certain Roger ap Gruffudd of Bromfield, who demanded one-fifth part of Bromfield, Nanheudwy, Ial and Mochnant Is Rhaeadr.

Roger claimed to be another son of Gruffudd ap Madog. If true, this is very odd: he was the only one to have an English name and doesn’t appear on any previous documents or charters. Possibly he was a bastard, fathered by Gruffudd on an unknown Englishwoman. Llywelyn Fychan and his brother Owain denied Roger’s right in court at Montgomery, held at Michaelmas in 1281.

A Welsh judge or ynaid

Llywelyn and his brothers refused to surrender an inch of ground to these upstarts. The sons of Einion ap Gruffudd won their case in respect of the vill of Nancennin, and the king’s bailiff of Dinas Bran was ordered to put them in possession. He reported he could not so because of the power of Llywelyn Fychan, who refused a direct order from royal justices to give up the vill.

A lesson to us all...sort of...

The Dragon of Chirk (2)

On 12 April 1277 Madog ap Gruffudd, eldest son of Gruffudd of Bromfield, defected to the king of England. His brother Llywelyn Fychan had done so back in December 1276, and now he followed suit. Madog was pressured into this decision by Prince Dafydd ap Gruffudd and William Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, who marched an army down from Chester into Powys Fadog.

Professor J Beverly-Smith states that Dafydd and his English ally ‘tore apart’ the unity of northern Powys. This is a rare mistake by Prof B-Smith, since the lordship had already been divided by Prince Llywelyn in 1270.

The terms of Madog’s submission hint at pre-existing internal divisions inside Powys. Madog was not to reproach or harm those of his tenants who had already gone over to the king. He would in future hold his lands as a tenant-in-chief of the crown, just as his brother Llywelyn had agreed to separate his lands from the principality of Wales. It was further provided that if Prince Llywelyn drove Madog from his lands, the king was obliged to find houses for Madog and his men to live in.

This agreement undermined Prince Llywelyn’s efforts to take direct control of Powys Fadog at the start of the war. In 1278 Madog’s mother, Emma Audley, claimed that Llywelyn had invaded her lands of Overton and Maelor Saesneg “in time of war” and given them to Madog. Llywelyn’s sister Margaret claimed that Llywelyn had invaded her land in Glyndyfrdwy and given it to Gruffydd Fychan, one of Madog’s brothers.

In summary: the Prince of Wales took his sister’s land and gave it to her brother-in-law and took his sister’s mother-in-law’s land and gave it to her son who was also his sister’s brother-in-law and then the two brothers surrendered to the king who divided the lands all over again and gave them to separate people who were all the same people. Sort of. Probably.

Let that be a lesson to you all.

Awkward arrangements

The Dragon of Chirk (1)

Llywelyn Fychan ap Gruffudd, called the Dragon of Chirk by the poet Llygad Gwr, was one of the sons of Gruffudd ap Madog of Bromfield. When crisis engulfed Wales in 1276, Llywelyn was the first of his brothers to reach an accomodation with Edward I.

The terms of his submission (above) were brokered by Prince Dafydd ap Gruffudd and Guncelin Badlesmere, justice of Chester. It stipulated that should Llywelyn be reconciled with his namesake, Prince Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, his homage would not revert to the Prince of Wales. Instead it would be retained by the king and his heirs, so that Llywelyn’s lands would no longer be part of the principality of Wales.

These unusual terms indicate the depth of Llywelyn’s anger against his prince. It probably stemmed from the division of Powys Fadog in 1270, when Llywelyn’s brother Madog was granted a bigger slice of the territory than himself. Madog was the prince’s brother-in-law and hence more important, so it was unsurprising that he should come first.

The arms of Prince Dafydd ap Gruffudd

There was also the thorny issue of Castell Dinas Bran. After their father’s death, Llywelyn and Madog had come to an awkward arrangement over possession of the castle. The castle stood inside the northern border of Nanheuwdwy, inside the lands of Llywelyn Fychan. However, it had somehow passed into the hands of Madog, though Llywelyn was allowed to occupy a part of it. This unsatisfactory agreement mirrored conditions in Gascony, where the existence of so many gentry obliged them to share their castles.

Finally, Madog agreed to give his brother Llywelyn the value of the castle in land. This was according to the decision of Prince Dafydd and Peter de Montfort; at this point Dafydd appears to have acted as Prince Llywelyn’s ‘viceroy’ in northern Powys, with jurisdiction over the local princes.

The Pillar of Eliseg

Castell Dinas Bran, high above the Dee valley near Llangollen. One of the earliest notices of the castle is in December 1270, when the heirs of Gruffudd ap Madog confirmed grants that their father had made to his wife, Emma Audley. The deed is dated at Dinas Bran, which means that enough of a structure must have existed by then; otherwise the family would have gathered on an exposed hilltop, which seems unlikely.

The reasons for building a stone castle on this lofty perch were twofold. It overlooked the dynastic abbey of Valle Crucis and the pillar or cross of Eliseg, suggesting the lords of Powys Fadog regarded this area as the cradle of their dynasty. Second, the castle shows traces of design influences from Gwynedd, and may have been intended as part of a defensive cordon of strongholds devised by Prince Llywelyn. These also included Ewloe, Dolforwyn, Bryn Amlwg and Rhyd y Briw. The D-tower at Dinas Bran is typical of the design of castles of the princes of Gwynedd.

Gruffudd had died in 1269. Hailed as “potens et prudens” - powerful and discreet - by chroniclers, his loss was a severe blow to Prince Llywelyn, who had already lost another valued advisor, Goronwy ab Ednyfed, in the previous year. The death of these men in quick succession may have been key to Llywelyn’s downfall, since his fortunes declined from 1269 onward.

Following the death of Gruffudd, his lordship was divided among four of his sons. Prince Llywelyn gave Maelor Gymraeg and Maelor Saesneg to Madog, and half of Glyndyfrdwy. Llywelyn Fychan, the Dragon of Chirk, got Nanheudwy, part of Cynllaith, part of Mochnant and Carreghofa. Gruffydd Fychan, a direct ancestor of Owain Glyn Dwr, got part of Glyndyfrdwy and Ial, while Owain got Bangor Is Coed and another part of Cynllaith. Madog’s primacy among the brothers is shown in the record of the trial of Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn in 1274, where Madog witnessed the main record of the trial.

Elderly Welsh harpists

“The historians doubt it, but it strongly stands in the legend that Edward I of England sent 500 Welsh bards to the stake after his victory over the Welsh (1277) to prevent them from arousing the country and destroying English rule by telling of the glorious past of their nation.” -

Janos Anary, the Hungarian poet who wrote The Bards of Wales (A walesi wárdok).

In this famous poem, composed in 1857, Edward Longshanks has a gigantic hissy fit and orders all the bards in Wales to be burnt at the stake. The poem was really meant as an analogy for Hapsburg control of Hungary and the repressive policies of Alexander von Bach, but the legend of flash-fried Welsh bards still finds the occasional echo today.

If any bard of Edward’s day was lined up for the stake, that man was surely Llygad Gwr. Llygad had been the court poet of Gruffudd ap Madog, whom the king must have regarded as a traitor; Gruffudd spent decades in English service before arranging the slaughter of Edward’s soldiers at Cymerau and defecting to Prince Llywelyn. Llygad also composed praise songs for Llywelyn, reckoned the most ‘nationalist’ poetry in Wales before the days of Owain Glyn Dwr.

Even so, it seems the wicked tyrant had bigger fish to fry than an elderly Welsh harpist. Surviving tax rolls (attached) show that Llygad Gwyr - “Legeth gour”, in the clumsy spelling of an English clerk - was alive and well in the vill of Carrog in the parish of Corwen in 1291. This makes sense, since Corwen lay inside the territory of Edeirnion, once held by Llygad’s old master Gruffudd ap Madog.

The record shows that Llygad, who must have been a very old man by 1291, paid 2 shillings 8.5 pence in tax: a good example of the excruciating attention to detail of the new royal administration in Wales. As such he was the second highest taxpayer in the vill after Madog ab Gruffydd Mal. This man could possibly be identified as Madog Grupl, Glyn Dwr’s great-grandfather.

Thus it seems that King Ted preferred to charge the bards of Wales VAT rather than chase them with a packet of firelighters. Within three generations Welsh poets such as Iolo Goch were composing praise poems to Edward’s descendents. For money, of course; what goes round comes round.

The crowned one of Mathrafal

The closeness of the relationship between Gruffudd ap Madog and Llywelyn ap Gruffudd was made apparent in 1258, when Llywelyn proposed to marry his sister Margaret to his new ally. Gruffudd also took the opportunity to seize those lands in Powys that had been held by his brothers, especially those of Hywel. Consequently Hywel ap Madog remained loyal to the English and received cash gifts from Henry III. In October Henry wrote to Hywel condoning his efforts to recover his lost lands, but warned him not to disturb the truce that existed between the king and the Welsh. Quite how Hywel was supposed to take back his lands without disturbing the peace is unclear, but he was doubtless grateful for the money.

The parity or partnership with equals between Llywelyn and Gruffudd could not last long. Llywelyn first assumed the title Prince of Wales in March 1258, in an agreement between Scottish and Welsh lords in which Gruffudd was named third in the list of Welsh rulers, after Llywelyn and his brother Dafydd. A man who would be king (or prince) could have no equals, and Gruffudd found himself slowly relegated to the B-list.

The fragile nature of Gruffudd’s relationship with Llywelyn is implied in the poetry of Llygad Gwr. In 1258, Llygad emphasised Gruffudd’s rightful lordship over Powys:

“Gruffudd…a ddalio Powys” (may Gruffudd hold Powys)

“Ohonawd henyw dadanudd” (the recovery of a patrimony springs from you)

In a slightly later poem, Llygad changes his tune somewhat and praises Llywelyn as supreme in Gwynedd and the war-leader active from Pulford to Cydweli. He is also praised as the “crowned one of Mathrafal”. Mathrafal, at least as far as Gwynedd jurists were concerned, was the chief court of Powys.

Llywelyn’s influence in Powys was also demonstrated by his agreement with Gruffudd ap Gwenwynwyn in December 1263. Among the lands Llywelyn restored to Gruffudd was Deuddwr, part of Y Tair Swydd. Deuddwr had been a bone of contention between Gwenwynwyn and Gruffudd ap Madog, and Llywelyn chose to award it to the former.

[The grassy bump in the ground is all that remains of Mathrafal castle]