14

The Welsh Years

The years 1282 to 1285 have to be known as the Welsh years, because Welsh affairs were to dominate them, and Eleanor herself was to spend a very large proportion of her time in that principality. But as with the late 1270s, the summary fails to do justice to the range of Eleanor’s experience – or to the other issues which required attention from her during that time.

Two themes in particular run through these years, in partnership with the dominant Welsh one. The first is the continuing crisis endured by her beloved brother Alfonso, now seriously ill and at odds not just with the King of France but also with his own family. In spring 1282, a staged Cortes would depose him from his throne and launch a civil war which would see each side desert the Reconquista and take Muslim allies to defeat the other.

The second theme, which was to last out Eleanor’s life, was the affairs of Aragon’s monarchy – Eleonora’s future family. Here, a shocking turn of events in Sicily created a problem which was to convulse Europe. On Easter Monday, 30 March 1282, just before Vespers, a major uprising began. Discontent about Charles of Anjou’s autocratic style of government and wider ambitions had been fostered for some time both by the Byzantine Emperor and Pedro of Aragon – who had his own claims to Sicily. As is often the case with this sort of event, a small row escalated unimaginably. Thus, in most traditions, the sparking point was disrespect shown by a French soldier to a Sicilian girl, which resulted in fatal violence on the part of the girl’s protector or husband. The indubitable outcome of these ‘Sicilian Vespers’ was days of slaughter, the seizure of the island, and the destruction of Charles’ fleet at Messina. By the end of May, Ferrante of Aragon was reporting that ‘five Sicilian cities have risen against King Charles and killed all the French living in them’. By mid-June, the accounts which were reaching the English court from Orvieto suggested that Aragon planned to go to the support of the people of Sicily, while Charles, supported by the Pope, was gathering a large force at Naples. Shortly afterwards, Pedro of Aragon confirmed that he had been offered the crown of Sicily by the people – and he intended to take it.¹

But these major events elsewhere in Europe could only be second and third themes for the English royals, who were faced with a major rising of their own in Wales. The upheaval slightly predated both European convulsions and, for all its sudden manifestation, had been long in the making. It had much to do with the day-to-day conditions which were imposed on the Welsh following the terms of the 1277 peace, particularly in the border regions. Border trespasses, disputes about fugitives in both directions, and attempts to assert English jurisdiction over Welsh residents all formed part of these complaints. The most immediate cause which can be found was a spat between Llywelyn and his neighbour Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn over the county of Arwystli, which had been rumbling on for years. The reason for the persistence of both sides was doubtless partly historic, but also, although it mostly consisted of moorland unsuitable for raising crops, it was a strategic route between Mid Wales and the Marches.

The point at issue at this time was the question of proper law. Given that Arwystli was part of Wales and the 1277 treaty entitled Llywelyn to have disputes over property in Wales decided by Welsh law, should the right to the county be decided by English law (as Gruffydd argued) or Welsh law (as Llywelyn claimed)? The point was not actually as simple as it might seem, since there were issues of what law should be used to determine the question of proper law; and moreover, Gruffydd’s claim was as a Marcher lord, not based on Welsh law. But to muddy the waters further, Edward, naturally unwilling to reach a conclusion detrimental to his own lordship and to Gruffydd, who had allied with him in 1277, insisted that the proper forms of litigation be observed, rather than granting Llywelyn the right to have his complaint heard directly by him. This dispute was just one of many which raised similar issues, where original disputes were considerably complicated and delayed by lawyers’ arguments about procedure and proper law. Fundamentally, too, the Welsh considered that the English attempts to define and establish laws was alien to their way of doing business; while Edward and later historians might say that he respected Welsh law where established, the very cage of establishing precedent was inimical to Welsh sensibilities.

By the end of 1281, there had been markers of likely trouble ahead. Llywelyn on his side had reached an agreement with the great Marcher lord Roger Mortimer, an alliance of past enemies which might suggest trouble. In November, frustrated by Llywelyn’s constant complaints, Edward removed the Justiciar of Chester and replaced him with the hardliner Reginald de Grey. While this move would have limited effect on Llywelyn, it directly impacted Llywelyn’s impulsive younger brother Dafydd, who had been given border lands in 1277. The appointment of de Grey was perhaps more than a knee-jerk reaction to the complaints; the combination of this appointment, de Grey’s actions thereafter and the decision of Edward to spend such a period of time in the vicinity of the Marches in late 1281 raises some suspicions that Edward had himself concluded that the deal of 1277 would not work in the long term, and was looking to provoke a decisive fight.²

If that was Edward’s intention, the storm broke shortly after he had returned into the English heartlands. On 21 March 1282, Dafydd decided to communicate his discontent directly and led a band of attackers on Hawarden Castle. A number of men were killed, the castle was burned and its castellan, Roger Clifford, an old and close friend of Edward’s, was taken prisoner. Meanwhile, copycat raids were launched in the south of Wales and against the English border town of Oswestry. This left the recently widowed Llywelyn in an impossible position; he could refuse to join the rebellion and lose all credibility with his countrymen, or he could join what he must have known was a doomed rebellion. He chose the latter option, and commenced attacks on the new castles of Flint and Rhuddlan – the symbols of English oppression.

The news of the rebellion reached Edward and Eleanor on 25 March, on the Wednesday before Easter, when they were observing Holy Week from the Abbey of Malmesbury. Eleanor, now just over forty, was approaching the end of the first trimester of yet another pregnancy. Moving to Devizes Castle for the Easter weekend, all plans for the next months had to be cancelled and new plans for a move into Wales made. The royal party stayed put for nearly a month, sending out streams of messengers and orders, and summoning all necessary advisers to consult from there. The usual suspects were put in place: de Grey took the Chester command, with Roger Mortimer in the central Marches and Robert Tybetot on the west.³

As far as Eleanor was concerned, this move to a war footing will have involved finishing off such transactions as could be completed at once, and otherwise putting her properties into holding status. As she was a hands-on manager of her property empire, acquisitions (except in Wales) almost shut down for the next two years. Two final transactions were closed off before the court moved to Gloucester: the acquisition on 29 March of an advowson and some land in Norfolk and on 8 April 1282 of some land in Derbyshire, near her existing holdings. Oddly enough, this land came indirectly from the loyal Welsh lord Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn.⁴

Summonses having gone out for a muster of forces at Worcester on 17 May, the royal party moved to Gloucester at the end of April, arriving in Worcester itself just ahead of the date set. Further writs were then issued for feudal levies to be at Rhuddlan at the start of August – about the time Eleanor’s baby was due. In fact, Edward and Eleanor – accompanied by Eleanora and Joan – reached Rhuddlan in early July, after a stop in Chester for most of June. Rhuddlan Castle, begun in 1277, was already complete, the bulk of work having been finished by 1280. The site on the banks of the River Clwyd had been connected to the sea by turning the final stretch of river into a canal by straightening and dredging it – a hugely time-consuming and expensive task. The siege which Rhuddlan Castle had faced had been thrown off in June, but it is likely that some damages were still being made good on the royal party’s arrival – certainly Edward borrowed some money from Eleanor for the Rhuddlan works at about this time.⁵

In early August, Eleanor gave birth to Elizabeth, who would be consequently known as Elizabeth of Rhuddlan. Despite the efforts which had gone in to civilising the place for Eleanor, with the installation of the garden, decorative seating and fishpond and the presence of her resident goldsmith, it would hardly have been a peaceful venue for childbirth. Apart from the constant round of messengers, Edward was using Rhuddlan as the base for troop assembly; by the end of August there were 750 cavalry and about 8,000 troops based there. However, Eleanor appears to have taken the bustle in her stride, making a gift of £10 to some minstrels who helped celebrate her churching and buying a range of small necessaries for Elizabeth – a basin, some tankards, a storage chest and a bucket.

While the troops assembled, issues further afield were not forgotten. In particular, on 15 August, Eleanor’s eldest daughter, Eleanora, now nearly fourteen, was married by proxy to Alphonso of Aragon, with John de Vescy playing the part of the bride. This event indicates that while Edward and Eleanor had initially been disquieted by the Aragonese role in the Sicilian Vespers, they were nonetheless minded to proceed with the match. It seems that Eleanor’s views were very influential in the conduct of the marriage negotiations: the documents were kept in a group, and one bears a depiction of the figure of a speedy courier holding in his hand a banner – of Castile. So it was Eleanor’s messengers, it would seem, who were doing the legwork on this tricky diplomatic issue. But the rushing of the marriage seems to have been a tactical move on the part of the Aragonese. Pedro of Aragon landed in Sicily at the end of the month, being proclaimed king on 4 September. Within weeks, he had been excommunicated by the Pope. Eleanora had thus been married into a family at war with the papacy.

Meanwhile, Eleanor was also busy exercising her influence in relation to Alfonso’s problems. In June 1282, Alfonso had written to Edward asking him to give Eleanor full credence in relation to matters she would discuss with him – indicating that she had had detailed correspondence with Alfonso. Later in the year she wrote to the King of Aragon on Alfonso’s behalf, and persuaded Edward, despite his own needs, to arrange for Gaston de Béarn to take a hundred Gascon knights to Alfonso’s assistance. Even so, Alfonso continued to seek assistance.⁶

But these problems would have to await resolution; the requirements of the Welsh war were more imperative. The retaking of Anglesey, such a success in 1277, was prioritised under former Crusader and Gascon seneschal Luke de Tany. To ensure shock and awe, this time a different strategic twist was used; it was decided to construct a pontoon bridge from Anglesey to the mainland in order to give a further attack route which would outflank Llywelyn’s defences. This approach is interesting because this use of pontoon bridges was far from orthodox. It was not unheard of, dating back many centuries, but was an approach which had somewhat fallen into disuse in the Middle Ages. Given that fact, it is perhaps interesting to note that it is (again) a technique commended by Vegetius, who suggests the use of small, light boats lashed together to form a bridge. Although the scheme was not without difficulty – since the technique was unfamiliar, the boats originally brought were too heavy to be transported, and new ones had to be purchased at Chester – the bridge was completed by November 1282.⁷

Meanwhile, Edward was elsewhere, leading the forces moving inwards from Rhuddlan. In late August and early September he led an attack on Ruthin and Llangernyw. Following the success of this attack, he returned to Rhuddlan in late September before setting off again against Dafydd’s bases in mid-October, returning victorious in early November. But the good news will have been seriously offset by the news of the death of Roger Mortimer in early October, possibly as a result of his exertions in his sector of the campaign. Mortimer was about eight years older than Edward, and his formal retirement from tournaments in 1279 indicates that his health may not have been good, but it will nonetheless have been a memento mori for the crusading group now gathered in Wales – Mortimer was still only about fifty at his death.

And the return to Rhuddlan brought even worse news, this time from Anglesey. The pontoon bridge scheme had misfired horribly. An English force either chanced an attack in the hope of catching Llywelyn, who was nearby, or were ambushed while on a routine sortie. Trying to regain the pontoon bridge, they were either prevented from reaching it by a change in the tide or the bridge was damaged in the force of the tide and the retreat. The result was catastrophic. Luke de Tany and Roger Clifford’s son both drowned, Robert Burnell lost two brothers and Otho de Grandison barely escaped with his life. The disaster at Anglesey predictably gave new heart to the Welsh, and Edward had no choice but to redouble his efforts. So, on 24 November, more writs were despatched around the country.⁸

But even as troops began to arrive at Rhuddlan, the Welsh suffered their own, even larger disaster. On 11 December 1282, Llywelyn himself was killed. Save that he was killed at some point close to the River Irfon at a little place called Cilmeri (where a memorial stands to this day), the story is unclear. He may have fallen in battle or in the process of returning to join his troops. He may have been there in hopes that if the fight in Mid Wales could be turned – its leadership being in a state of flux following Mortimer’s death – the entire war could be brought to a successful conclusion before Edward could gain traction in Gwynedd. One interesting version has his death occurring as a result of a conspiracy led by Roger Mortimer of Chirk, the second surviving son of Roger Mortimer, who is said to have pretended that he would come over to Llywelyn’s side and bring his men with him. Certainly, if Mortimer of Chirk’s reputation is justified, such a ruse might not be beyond the bounds of possibility; he had lost two wards in suspicious circumstances in 1277 and was later to win a reputation for unscrupulousness. Another version points the finger at his bookish older brother, Edmund. He had originally been the second son, destined for the Church, and became the heir to his formidable father only on the unexpected death of his older brother. Edward clearly had reservations about his ability to stand in his father’s shoes, and had delayed confirming him in his lands. He therefore had a point to prove – and was present sufficiently close to the death to have items from the body to pass to Robert Burnell. But whatever the reason Llywelyn was there, the result was simple: the end of the Welsh war was in sight. Having lost their one acknowledged leader, there could be only one outcome.⁹

The death of Llywelyn was therefore the cause of great celebrations in the royal party. His head was brought to Edward, who sent it to be displayed to the army at Anglesey before it was sent to London, where it was carried through the streets and pilloried. Finally, it was displayed on the Tower battlements, where it apparently remained for some years. Within days, Dafydd had sent his hostage Roger de Clifford to seek peace terms. Equally speedily, Edward rejected the offer; only surrender was acceptable.¹⁰

Meanwhile, the Aragonese marriage again provided cause for discussion and concern. The proxy marriage having been performed, the Aragonese sought Eleanora’s actual marriage, tactfully not via the excommunicate Pedro but instead by letter from Queen Constance. Edward’s reply, on 12 January 1283, makes clear that the English monarchs were troubled both by the prospect of sending Eleanora into a family at odds with the papacy and by the conflict now inevitable between Aragon and France. Edward therefore politely but firmly refused to send his daughter before at least the beginning of the next year. Trapped between obligations both to Aragon and France, it may well have been a relief when a papal Bull emerged shortly thereafter, effectively preventing the marriage by expressly excluding descendants of Pedro from the dispensation allowing Eleanora to marry any person within the fourth degree of consanguinity and enjoining Edward to make no connections with enemies of the Holy See. Pedro, however, continued to correspond with Eleanor in a friendly fashion. He wrote to her in February 1283, plainly in answer to a letter of her own expressing anxiety for her brother, to report on the state of negotiations between Alfonso and Sancho and to promise his best endeavours to reunite the pair.¹¹

Meanwhile, the Welsh resistance gradually crumbled – with some active encouragement from Edward’s team. In January, the key castle of Dolwyddelan was placed under siege and soon surrendered. It is apparent that Eleanor was keenly waiting to hear news of her husband’s success and welfare, because the records show her paying two messengers who brought rumours of the castle’s fall on 4 January. By March 1283, Edward felt secure enough to move his headquarters to Conwy, which was the principal residence of the princes of Gwynedd and therefore represented a hugely significant move in PR terms. With him went Eleanor. Her presence there is testified by the emergency provision of hangings for her rooms, the laying of a lawn, and the construction of a garden structured, as at Rhuddlan, around fencing from tun barrels. To make certain that all was ready to an acceptable standard, she even sent ahead one of her squires to make sure the new planting was well watered in. Even in war, Eleanor expected domestic standards to be maintained.

At once plans were laid to largely dismantle the existing palace and build a castle which was an unequivocal statement of the power of the English king. The castle which was built here is a massive edifice of roughly rectangular shape arranged around two baileys and set with eight substantial round towers. Built from rubble masonry, it was originally rendered and whitewashed, like the White Tower in London, thereby ensuring that all eyes must be drawn to it. But a new castle was not enough. To emphasise further the defeat of the Welsh, the ancient priory of Aberconwy, where the kings of Wales (including Llywelyn the Great) were buried, was dismantled and administrative offices were built over it, and while the great hall of the Welsh kings was left intact, it was now inconsequential, attached to the side of the new town walls and in the shadow of the grand new hall.

The approach taken with Conwy marks an appropriate point at which to consider the Welsh new towns more generally. In 1277, Edward had begun the process of seeding new towns into the Welsh conquered territories with the building of Rhuddlan and Flint; this he now continued with Conwy, Caernarfon and others. Rhuddlan and Conwy together demonstrate some key points. First, in both, a decision was taken to move the castle and town to some extent, thereby obliterating features which were totems for the local population. Secondly, although what is most notable in the records and the survivals is the castle, the castle was only a part of the building programme – the construction of a new town, built to be prosperous, was equally important. Thirdly, attention was given to privileges which were to attach to the town, both to boost its chances of economic survival and to attract to it new inhabitants, who would themselves assist in this endeavour. Thus in Rhuddlan, a charter of liberties to encourage new burgesses was issued in November 1278, granting them essentially the same privileges as Hereford. This charter of liberties was then in turn granted to Flint, Conwy and Caernarfon. Immigrants were encouraged, and taxes were remitted in the early years to encourage the building and improving of the town. Similarly, Aberystwyth, commenced by Edmund of Lancaster at about the same time as Rhuddlan, was chosen with a view to supplanting existing Welsh castles and was quickly granted the rights of Henry III’s town of New Montgomery: a market, two fairs and a gild merchant.

Edward’s inspiration for the programme of town building has been considerably debated, with the bastides of Gascony usually posited as the source. Stylistically, there is of course much to be said for this theory. However, the bastides of Gascony were not associated with war or conquest, and the treatment of conquered territory was something of a novelty for recent Plantagenet kings, who had lost far more territory than they had gained. Nor were the Welsh new towns pure new towns, built on bare ground; the majority, like Rhuddlan, Conwy and Aberystwyth, were reincarnations of existing towns. Similarly, while plainly some of the architectural idiom for the castles can be found in Savoy, in particular St Georges d’Esperanche, that was a peaceful villa nova.

Here, it seems, there is a noticeable parallel with Eleanor’s experience. Her childhood had featured close contact with the business of conquest and its aftermath, and in particular the development of existing conquered towns into stable and prosperous units of their new nation. She had experience of a paradigm which saw a conquering king turning his administrative attention to a newly acquired town, reclaiming or amending key features of that town in line with his own vision and putting in place economic measures to encourage settlement of new townspeople to dilute the existing population and boost the economic success of the town. It is suggested that this experience, conveyed to Edward and his other advisers, whose experience was unlikely to have offered them such insights, was at least a part of the thinking which lay behind these developments and fed into the perspectives offered by the foundations of Gascony and Savoy.

Residence at Conwy, where both builders’ and military bills will now have been pouring in, will only have brought home the financial difficulties which the war had caused. While some voluntary loans had been made by towns, further funds were needed urgently. Parliament voted for a tax in January, but money trickled in slowly. So in March, with the evidence of financial need before his eyes, Edward simply ordered the seizure of the crusading monies gathered years before and which had so long hung fire. While Pecham eventually persuaded him to return it, the forceful gesture did achieve what was probably intended – a sizeable grant from the clergy.¹²

Meanwhile, with war effectively over, Eleanor was once again taking up the reins of her property business to a limited extent. In late February, Edward conveyed to her Dafydd’s castle at Hope – a modern castle, building having commenced in 1277. Over the succeeding months, Eleanor and Adam de Cretyng, who was to be her bailiff in this area for a year or so, seem to have sought out a useful package of nearby properties over the summer: a manor in May, followed by the whole of the Maelor Saesneg or English-speaking border lands east of the Dee and associated hamlets, pasture and advowsons. The latter was acquired by an exchange with Robert de Crevequer for her Soham and Ditton holdings in Cambridgeshire, which were slightly detached from her main holdings geographically. Other than this local work, the only property business Eleanor conducted was to take a wardship near her Hampshire lands.¹³

But the war was not quite over. Although the last major castle, Llywelyn the Great’s castle of Castell y Bere, surrendered on 25 April after a ten-day siege, one task still remained: to find Dafydd.

While the searchers were out, a fantastic distraction appeared: in May, a Roman sarcophagus was found at the coastal town of Arfon, near the Roman fort of Segontium. Folk memory associated the site with Magnus Maximus, reputedly the father of the Emperor Constantine and the husband of Empress Helena, the discoverer of the True Cross. Folk tales and Geoffrey of Monmouth also posited Magnus Maximus as the first independent ruler of all Britain. Of course, both folk tales and Geoffrey of Monmouth were very wide of the mark. Magnus Maximus was the Roman leader in Britain in the late fourth century for a few years before leaving to pursue his imperial ambitions – unsuccessfully. What happened to his family after his execution is unclear, but there is no evidence to suggest a connection to Constantine’s father Constantius Chlorus, or to his mother. What may have occurred is a conflation of folk tales, which had Magnus Maximus finding his true love in a Welsh girl called Elen and being succeeded in Britain by a leader called Constantine, with the facts of later and unconnected history. Regardless, this romantic tale will have provided fuel for the misidentification of the owner of the sarcophagus as Magnus Maximus or Constantine. So in mid-May Edward and Eleanor headed to Dolwyddelan Castle, where they stayed until the beginning of June, and the reputed body of Magnus Maximus was reinterred in the local church on Edward’s orders. It will have been during this visit that plans were first hatched for the building of a new castle on the site, since by June work had already started at what was to be known as Caernarfon.¹⁴

This little-known vignette helps to make sense of much that has been regarded as puzzling about Caernarfon: why Edward, having started a massive project such as Conwy, would then change his mind about the main power base for Wales; why he choose this lesser site; and why, unlike Conwy, the structure is very much Roman in design terms, with strong echoes of the Roman Pharos tower at Dover. There is a parallel with the annexation of the supposed graves of Arthur and Guinevere: a supposed King of Britain was being claimed by Edward, and his resting place turned into the centre of English power over Wales. Past kings were gone; it was Plantagenet power which had to be respected. The message is repeated in the massive and highly fortified gatehouse which was erected in the latter phase of building, which features above the doorway a life-size statue of an enthroned king.

However, there are perhaps traces of Eleanor’s involvement in the design of the castle too. Dominating the outer ward of the castle stands the Eagle Tower, which was the first part of the castle to be built. This has two interesting features, both of which can be linked to Eleanor. Firstly, it features three tall projecting turrets emerging out of the main polygonal tower; this is an exact echo of the castle depicted on the arms of Castile, and, although they were not completed until well into Edward II’s reign, there seems a possibility that they were part of the original design inserted at Eleanor’s instance or as an ‘in joke’ for Eleanor’s benefit. The shape and structure of the tower, after all, had to be planned from the outset.

The second interesting feature is the tower’s eyrie of birds, which originally comprised three eagles, one for each of the turrets. There is a very obvious Roman link in the inclusion of the eagles, symbol of Rome’s victorious legions, and they can therefore be seen simply as another imperial statement. But they can also (with a bit of manipulation) be linked to a story called ‘The Dream of Macsen Wledig’ in the Welsh Mabinogion – a collection of quasi-historical folk tales which was emerging in written form at the time. In that story, Magnus Maximus (or Macsen Wledig as he is in the Welsh version) had a dream in which he travelled to a great city in Wales with a castle with coloured walls, and turrets and a throne decorated with golden eagles, where he found his true love, Elen. The parallel with Caernarfon is striking – was it intended? It seems very possible that it was, and by Eleanor.

Eleanor, after all, can be shown to have had an interest in local myths; this is seen both in her apparent recounting of the Northumbrian Escanor story to Girard of Amiens and in her commissioning of the Ponthevin Isembart romance. What is more, there is further evidence, to which we shall come, that someone in the royal party – again most likely to be Eleanor – had been making themselves familiar with the Welsh folk tales.

There is another resonance in the Eagle Tower which suggests Eleanor’s design input. The eagles also echo Edward’s love of birds and falconry –which also appears to have been possessed by young Alphonso, judging by the clever and repeated depictions of birds in the Alphonso Psalter. These, of course, were inserted at Eleanor’s instruction – as was the bird on the top of the Charing mews fountain. The eyrie therefore may well also have been intended as a joke for the benefit of Edward or Alphonso – or both.

All in all, it seems that the Caernarfon trip provided an entertaining and fruitful diversion while news of Dafydd was awaited.¹⁵

And in June, not long after work had commenced at Caernarfon, the long-awaited news arrived. Dafydd was taken at the foot of Mount Snowdon; triumphant messages were despatched at once to Edward’s supporters. In defeat, the Welsh princes’ treasure was also yielded up. In June, Edward was presented with the Cross of Neith, a fragment of the True Cross which thereafter accompanied him on all his travels, gaining in luxurious adornment as the years went by. It would also be at around this time, with the Welsh war apparently finally over, that the future Edward II was conceived.¹⁶

But there remained plenty to do – on more than one front. In proper military style, July and most of August then constituted mopping-up operations: the royal party returned to Conwy to take possession of Dafydd (destined for a horrible end) and numerous hostages to ensure Welsh good behaviour, and a further trip was undertaken to Caernarfon to see how the initial works were progressing. Meanwhile, though Eleanora’s match was on ice, others were not. Alphonso would turn ten years old in November 1283 – an event marked by Eleanor with special offerings of alms – and plans could be made seriously for his marriage. Accordingly, his bride’s dowry was agreed in August 1283 and work was proceeding on the beautiful illustrated psalter which Eleanor commissioned to mark the wedding.

And naturally Eleanor wanted to view her new properties. So on the way to Chester in late August there was a two-day stop at Hope Castle, formerly property of Dafydd. Since Eleanor had selected her properties carefully, a stop here would have her well placed to survey the other five of the six properties she had acquired, all grouped tidily, as was her wont, on the road between Flint and Whitchurch (the modern A541). However, the stop was hardly the uneventful one planned. On the second night of the stay, 27 August, the castle caught fire; and it was no small blaze. Eleanor, Edward and their party barely escaped with their lives. The castle was reduced to rubble and never rebuilt.¹⁷

From Chester it was back into the more usual routine of the royal court for a short time. A stay of a few weeks in and around Macclesfield enabled Eleanor to review her dower property there, as well as some new acquisitions just on the English side of her new Welsh properties and her easterly Derbyshire properties, before the court headed back in a south-westerly direction to Shrewsbury, where Parliament had been summoned. The first act of the Parliament on convening on 30 September 1283 was the trial of Dafydd for treason. On 2 October, he was hanged, drawn and quartered, meaning he was dragged by horses to the scaffold, hanged alive (part strangled by a small drop insufficient to break the neck), his bowels were removed and burned before his eyes, and he was finally cut into four pieces. This sentence is probably well known to the reader, since in later years it became fairly formulaic. But at this point in time it actually reflected four separate sentences, for Dafydd’s four crimes against the English king: treason, homicide, committing crimes at the holy season of Easter and plotting the king’s death. It reflected the genuine outrage felt by Edward at what he perceived to be Dafydd’s ingratitude and the horror felt by many at a revolt timed to coincide with the holy season of Easter. As with the receipt of Llywelyn’s head, it is likely that the pregnant Eleanor observed this novel horror; certainly non-participation in the event seems to have been viewed with disapproval, judging by the fine which the people of Lincoln incurred for refusing to take one of the quarters of the late prince. Dafydd’s head, mockingly crowned with ivy, was sent to join that of his brother at the Tower.¹⁸

Following this, the rest of the year was spent in touring the Welsh Marches and giving thanks for the victory. Along the way, remembrance of Roger Mortimer was not forgotten: special alms offerings were made for the anniversary of his death and a stay – perhaps coinciding with the wedding of Edmund Mortimer to Eleanor’s cousin Margaret de Fiennes – was made at his castle of Wigmore, before they headed back to Rhuddlan for Christmas. Here, 500 extra paupers were fed on Christmas Day on the advice of William of Hotham. As usual, there was little in the way of a holiday; by 28 December the party were off again – this time through the winter cold to York. The purpose of the trip was to be present at the consecration in York Minster on Sunday 9 January of Anthony Bek as Bishop of Durham and to play a personal part in the translation of the body of St William of York to a more elevated burial place behind the high altar. Edward was one of the bearers of the saint’s remains. As usual, it would appear that Eleanor’s mind was not far from work; she was to acquire a manor north of York later that year.

Care was taken to mark respectfully the death of the heir to Alexander III of Scotland, an event which left Alexander’s baby granddaughter, daughter of Erik II of Norway and Margaret of Scotland, heir presumptive to the throne of Scotland. Eleanor herself marked separately the death of one of Dafydd’s daughters, taken captive after his defeat, who would otherwise have been destined with her sisters to a life in an English abbey.¹⁹

The party then passed south to Eleanor’s properties in Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire and what would appear to have been a general review of her business to see what acquisitions could be made in the near future. It would seem that each of her local agents will have met her, and produced their reports and suggestions. By 11 February at Lincoln, Eleanor (now well into the third trimester of her latest pregnancy) had conducted enough of a review to carry out a very busy day’s business acquiring convenient wardships, advowsons and knights’ fees in Cambridgeshire, Essex, Gloucestershire, Somerset, Suffolk, Sussex and Wiltshire. Business complete, in March the party then returned to Wales via Chester. Here, Eleanor was obviously impressed with the recluse of St Martin’s church, later giving money to the recluse and paying for work at the church.²⁰

The year 1284 was marked out for consolidation and publicity in Wales. Having won the war, the territory needed to be settled – another echo of Eleanor’s childhood. So the 1284 Welsh tour commenced in mid-March at Rhuddlan. Here, consolidation was on show – building was plainly going on in the town around the castle – and Eleanor was seen to encourage it, giving wood, nails and hinges to assist in the construction of the church of St John, as well as a donation for Rhuddlan’s own recluse. Donations also flowed from her to the Rhuddlan Dominicans and those of Bangor, while the friars and clergy who visited court were liberally looked after.²¹

It was also at Rhuddlan that the main administrative tool of settlement, the Statute of Wales, was passed on 19 March 1284. The purpose of this statute was to set out clearly how Wales would be governed, defining the hierarchy of royal officials who would govern and where Welsh law would continue to be permissible (in a number of circumstances as regarded civil claims). Interestingly, and again suggesting Eleanor’s influence in Wales, it was in a sense a parallel to Ferdinand III’s fueros for conquered territories in the Spanish peninsula, and followed the same format, trying to harmonise the laws and procedures of the new territory with those of the conquering nation. It also avoided the problems which Alfonso X had encountered in trying to impose an overarching legal code without regard to local customs. Therefore, while the wording of the statute and the balance drawn between Welsh and English law was almost certainly predominantly the work of Robert Burnell, with assistance from the members of the commission which had been appointed to report on Welsh law, it seems quite likely that Eleanor was involved with the discussions which led up to the statute and the overarching question of the balance to be struck between harmonisation and maintaining facets of law and practice familiar to the local inhabitants.

From Rhuddlan, the royal party moved at the end of the month to the two building sites, first to Conwy and then to Caernarfon. Conwy, of course, had already been civilised for Eleanor. Now Caernarfon, too, was made as congenial to her tastes as a building site could be, with a ready-made lawned garden in which she could pass any fine days as she waited for the arrival of the next baby.²²

It was at the latter location that Eleanor received the news of the death, on 4 April 1284, of her brother Alfonso. His health utterly broken, anathematised by his son as a mad leper, the terrible effects of his illnesses meant that he spent the last months of his life almost alone in Seville. From his deathbed he laid a curse on the undutiful Sancho and sent bitter reproaches to Edward for his failure to provide any assistance. One of the few items of value which he still had to leave in his will was some fine brocade, sent to him in better times by Eleanor. As Eleanor arranged with Edward for their son Alphonso to present the reputed crown of King Arthur at the shrine of St Edward at Westminster, it will not have been lost on her that his godfather and namesake had been so desperate and without help that he was forced to sell their father’s crown to the Emir of Morocco. Yet for all this, to the very end, Alfonso earned his title of the Learned King: he was still finalising the General Estoria, the Cantigas de Santa Maria and his handbook on chess in his final days, and writing of the solace which the pleasures of the mind give against life’s miseries.²³

Still mourning Alfonso, Eleanor prepared for the birth of her next child. It was at Caernarfon, either in temporary apartments or in the partially constructed Eagle Tower (which had been built to three storeys and given a temporary roof), that Eleanor gave birth on 25 April 1284 to the son who was to become Edward II but until his accession was known as Edward of Caernarfon. It seems fairly clear that the birth of the next child at this historically resonant site was fully intended as a further symbolic annexation of the Welsh mythology: young Edward annexed the role of Constantine. Although the famous story of Edward presenting the Welsh with an heir who knew no word of English is plainly untrue (not least because Edward was only a second son), the birth of Edward at Caernarfon marked Wales as the territory of the English Crown even more powerfully than that of Elizabeth at Rhuddlan. It also seems very likely that the decision to bear Edward in this location was Eleanor’s own. Other options – such as Conwy and Rhuddlan – were obviously available, and the location must therefore have been deliberate. Edward seems unlikely to have exerted pressure; but Eleanor, with her understanding of mythmaking, would be likely to appreciate the value of the gesture.

Almost at once, a destiny seemed to await this new baby. Alexander III of Scotland had a female heir presumptive: Margaret of Norway, known to history as the Maid of Norway. Her age (one year old) was perfect for Edward of Caernarfon, and would enable him, although only the second son of the English king, to rule Scotland and Norway. At present, the project remained provisional, but the idea that through young Margaret ‘much good may yet come to pass’, to quote the practically minded Alexander in his correspondence with Edward, remained in the air.

Despite its likely shortcomings as a residence, the king and queen stayed at Caernarfon until June, when, over Edward’s birthday, a two-week break was taken at the remote manor of Baladeulyn. This had two attractions which harmonised with recent themes: first, it was on the site of a Roman palace; and secondly, it was close to the supposed burial place of Mabon ab Madron, a hero who features in the Mabinogion, and also to the site where another hero of those tales, Lleu, was supposed to have transformed into an eagle. During this period, the court seems to have properly got away from the cares of the world, with the manor surrounded by royal tents and pavilions supplied from Chester and Edward getting lost in the woods at night (the payment to the local lad who set him right remains in the records). Amusingly enough, local tradition has it that during this visit the local lord Tudor ap Einion was dispossessed of all his lands by the greed of King Edward’s wife ‘Matilda’ before being restored to them by the king. Needless to say, there is no evidence which supports this story.²⁴

But outside affairs, in particular Eleanora’s marriage, continued to press. In May, Edward had announced to the Pope his intention of going on Crusade again, subject to two small riders: a deal on financing and the procuring of peace in Europe. In other words, Edward and Eleanor were keen to prevent Pope Martin from exacerbating the European position – and Eleanora’s prospects – by declaring a Crusade against Aragon. This seemed likely to be his next move unless distracted, since he had already offered Aragon to Charles of Valois, Philip III’s second son, and had invested him as king in May 1284. The ploy failed; Martin, a Frenchman, owing his elevation to the French king’s interest, nonetheless declared the Crusade against Aragon on 4 June. To add to the intractability of the Sicilian–Aragonese problem, the very next day, during a major naval engagement off Naples, an epochal event occurred: Charles of Anjou’s son Charles of Salerno was captured by the Aragonese. The capture of the heir to Sicily by the excommunicate Aragonese provided further escalation where none was needed, and was to prove a sticking point for peace for years to come. The wider Crusade – and Eleanora’s match – was consequently stalled for the foreseeable future.²⁵

In July, another break was taken at Nefyn, where Edward and Eleanor held their first Round Table. Much has been made of the fact that this was a location resonant in Welsh mythology: the prophecies of Merlin were said to have been found here. However, despite the description of the tournament by the chroniclers and the Arthurian connection, there appear to have been no very striking Arthurian aspects in the staging; the event was simply a jousting tournament, with one team captained by the Earl of Lincoln and the other by the Earl of Ulster. It was, however, a major tournament into which much organisation will have been put, and involving many knights (apparently both domestic and foreign) in considerable travel, expense and inconvenience. It therefore plainly had a point. Part of that point will have been to again reinforce the position of Edward as King of England and Wales, and any location in Gwynedd could have made this point. But also, as with Conwy and Caernarfon, Edward chose in Nefyn the site of a Welsh princely residence. It was also, tellingly, the location from which Llywelyn and Eleanor de Montfort had written their last letters to Edward in early 1282. So while the Arthurian connection did also help to offer a parallel between Edward and King Arthur, the predominant point was a straightforward political one. The event itself seems to have been very hearty, and very heartily enjoyed. Aside from the jousting, there was also apparently dancing, which was entered into with such enthusiasm that the floor of the hall collapsed.²⁶

Once the crowds of visitors had departed, the main royal party passed onwards along the coast to the end of the Llŷn peninsula, including taking a trip to Bardsey Island. Extra offerings were made for this trip both prior to departure and while on the island.²⁷

However, the triumphant and light-hearted mood of the summer changed in an instant shortly after their return to Conwy in mid-August. Messengers reached the king and queen with the worst possible news: Alphonso was dead, having died on 19 August 1284 – the tenth anniversary of Edward and Eleanor’s coronation.

The cause of Alphonso’s death is not recorded, and the chroniclers hardly mention his death, perhaps out of tact; or more likely because he had, to date, been more or less invisible in the nursery. The extent of this tragedy for Eleanor and Edward is difficult to gauge at this distance in time. Dynastically, of course, it was close to their worst nightmare; the succession now hung on the life of young Edward, barely four months old and subject to all the illnesses of childhood. There was no guarantee that, with Eleanor now forty-two years of age, any more pregnancies would be viable or successful – or that they would result in boys who would live. The irony of the timing will have seemed particularly bitter, coming as it did both at the moment of their greatest triumph, when Edward had established himself as a conquering king in fact; and also almost exactly at the time when Alphonso, aged nearly eleven, would have been reckoned to have weathered the highest-risk period of childhood. Indeed, his presentation of the alleged crown of Arthur at the tomb of the Confessor shows that he had begun to carry out some public duties, as was only the case once a prince or princess was deemed to have emerged safely from childhood.

What doubtless made the loss even worse was that the very limited material available suggests that Alphonso had promised well; a poignant thought, given that young Edward turned out to be a real candidate for England’s worst king. That evidence is contained in a letter of condolence from Archbishop Pecham which described Alphonso as ‘the hope of us all’. While Salzman dismisses the tributes of the chroniclers (‘flower of youth’, ‘hope of knighthood’, ‘comfort to his father’) as the kind of flannel which would have been applied to any youthfully deceasing prince, the tribute from Pecham, with his high moral standards and unrelenting tendency to call a spade a spade, is worth noting. It suggests that that scrupulous academic himself thought well of Alphonso; else he would have confined himself to expressions of sympathy for Edward’s grief, or kept quiet, as he appears to have done in due course on the death of Eleanor.

Personally, too, it is likely to have been a huge blow. Alphonso was the child who had spent the greatest portion of his childhood with his parents, having been born en route from the Crusade and in the nursery during their most domestic years, when time with the younger children was feasible and obviously frequently achieved. There also seems every sign of his having developed tastes which gave him common ground with each parent. Thus a castle and a siege engine had been carefully made for him, while the psalter prepared for him indicates that he was taking pleasure in reading from an early age – very probably under Eleanor’s personal tutelage. As he grew older, his tastes in hunting reflected the preferences of both his parents – he had both hawks (like his father) and hounds (like his mother) – and the eager-looking hunting boy in the psalter may well be intended as a depiction of him. Altogether, it would be astounding if his loss were not a huge source of personal grief to Eleanor – almost certainly more than any of her other deceased children, all of whom died younger and had had much less contact with her. It is therefore no surprise to find her stipulating that his heart be reserved for burial with hers at the London house of the Dominicans.

Some might suggest that the absence of Eleanor and Edward from his funeral indicates (as with the death of young Henry) a lack of concern for his fate. However, on this occasion attendance was absolutely not feasible; it was the height of summer and the king and queen were over a week’s journey from London. The exact date of the funeral is unknown, but it appears likely to have been on or around 27 August and presided over by Archbishop Pecham, who on this date wrote reassuring the Abbot of Westminster that whenever he officiated there at the request of the king, the queen consort or the queen mother, no infringement on the exemptions of Westminster was intended. The right thing to do was what they did, ensuring that his funeral was conducted appropriately and soldiering on with the work which they had in hand. Alphonso’s heart was duly buried according to Eleanor’s wishes at the house of the London Blackfriars. His body joined those of his lost siblings, Katherine, Joan, John and Henry, at Westminster Abbey.²⁸

It is hard to imagine that either Eleanor or Edward took any joy in the remainder of the triumphant program for the rest of the year. It is a mark of their joint determination and sense of duty that the program went ahead without apparent alteration. So in early September the king and queen visited Vale Royal, where they presented the monks with a chalice of silver made from the seal matrices of Llywelyn, Dafydd and Eleanor de Montfort the younger. They even maintained their plans for a big celebration at Overton in late September, lasting for the best part of two weeks, at which a thousand Welsh minstrels were assembled to help celebrate the end of an independent Wales.

In another ironic touch, this celebration coincided with a further personal blow. Henry of Brittany, a younger child of Edward’s sister, who appears to have been part of young John and Henry’s establishment and to have joined the court as he grew, died in September. He was buried at Bangor and lavish arrangements were made for masses in his memory, while his horses were despatched to Eleanor of Provence, who had minded the nursery when he was small. The arrangements for this foster son’s mourning rebut the accusations levelled at Eleanor and Edward as unfeeling parents – as also do the preparations which were made to ensure the visit of the surviving children. The nursery party was at Acton Burnell in September, and Robert Burnell was authorised to get plenty of venison in for them. Moving the children’s household this far was a major undertaking; it would only have been done if their parents had a strong wish to see them.

More sentiment can be seen towards the end of October. On 1 November, Edward and Eleanor would have been married for thirty years; it seems likely that it was in memory of their first meeting that one of them arranged for baby Edward to make special donations throughout the last week in October.

The final part of the 1284 tour was a massive procession around the coast of Wales – beating the bounds on a national scale. To commence, the new castles at Conwy and Caernarfon were inspected, plus the other northern Welsh castles. At Harlech, as with Conwy, the original hall of the Welsh princes was to be retained as a subsidiary part of the new imperial structure, pointing up for all eternity the superiority of the English style and resources. In November, the progress moved out of North Wales through Bere and Llanbedr and then followed the coast via Aberystwyth to Cardigan and south to Haverford. At Haverford, the party turned inland to Carmarthen, Kidwelly and Oystermouth in Glamorgan.²⁹

All along the way, free boroughs were created around key castles, encouraging commercial development and prosperity around the new marks of power. Meanwhile, Edward and Eleanor’s closest associates were appointed to positions of power in the new Wales: Otho de Grandison became Justiciar of North Wales and Robert Tybetot occupied the equivalent position in West Wales.

Finally, in mid-December, the party reached Cardiff. There the official court reception began, with a festivity at Cardiff Castle hosted by the Earl of Gloucester. This was a particularly important and sensitive event – and not just because of Gilbert the Red’s notorious touchiness. For during the Welsh years there had first evolved a new idea for binding this most powerful and prickly of characters safely to the Crown: Joan, now without a foreign match, was to become Gloucester’s wife, and the annulment of his marriage was now pending before the papal court. So the celebrations at Cardiff marked not just the final round in the triumph of the campaigners, but also the formal welcome of Joan to her future home.

Following this grand event, further receptions were hosted by two further magnates with whom relations had been not entirely easy. The first was held at Caldicot by the Earl of Hereford, he whose dubious heritage was being atoned for by his marriage to Eleanor’s cousin Mathilde de Fiennes. The final reception was by Roger Bigod, the Earl of Norfolk. His family’s involvement in the Barons’ War had been partly prompted by a sense of being outside the royal magic circle, and nothing had changed in this respect; there was an uneasy state of truce between him and Edward, who would later pursue him for his debts to the Crown. As with the Herefords, Eleanor may well have provided a means to easier relations – she had shared Geoffrey de Aspale’s services with Bigod for some time. The party took place at Chepstow, where the refurbished castle of the Bigods perched on a clifftop above the River Wye, and considerable expenditure was undertaken by the host to please the king, with Bigod’s steward being sent as far as Sussex to provision the feast.

After this slightly minatory series of visits, the court crossed to Bristol to rejoin the children for the Christmas season. Wales was declared settled. The most difficult earls had shown their adherence. It was time to move on.³⁰