CHAPTER III
1
TO the English, Wales had always been a troublesome neighbor. To the Welsh, England was a constant threat to their liberty.
The Welsh were what was left (with additional population pockets in Cornwall and Devonshire) of the inhabitants of the island who had fought so bravely against the Romans, the natives who were called in Rome “the black singers.” They were an imaginative race, poetic, high-strung, brave, and much given to singing and the harp. Back into their mountainous corner, their interests were limited, as were their opportunities for prosperity and abundance. They had faithful memories for the heroes of the past and they still believed that Arthur, the pendragon of glorious memory, would shake off his cerements someday and rise from the grave to lead them again to greatness.
They were in a fortunate position to carry on persistent warfare with the English. They could swoop through the passes in the hills and harry the countryside and then defy retaliation by retiring into the almost impassable land above which stood white-topped Snowdon. Although they were seldom united among themselves, the black singers could keep their wooded glens free of alien feet. This hit-and-run warfare had been going on for centuries when the Normans came over. William the Conqueror decided that something decisive must be done. He led one force into the mountains, getting as far as St. David’s, and then decided that the risks outweighed the possible gains. As a second-best measure he decided to “contain” the mountaineers. The strip of country that bordered on the Welsh foothills, and through which all invading forces going in either direction had to pass, was converted into a feudal no man’s land. The country was divided among three Norman leaders, Hugo the Wolf, William Fitz-Osborn, and Roger de Montgomery. These palatine earls were given full control of their respective counties, in return for which they were to maintain armed troops in the field and assume the responsibility of holding the Welsh in check. This system had been in effect for nearly two hundred years when Edward came to the throne, and the earls had become known as Marcher Barons. Their control of the land had become so absolute that it was said “the king’s writ did not run north of the Wye”; in other words, that they ruled in their own right and could wink at kingly powers. Political refugees were safe if they could get across the Wye.
A second move made by the resourceful Conqueror had been more successful. He had laid hands on southern Wales, which lacked the high barriers, and through the instrumentality of one Robert Fitz-Hamon had constructed a string of stone strongholds running from the Wye to the port of Milford Haven.
Edward fixed his piercing eye on Wales and he did not admire the prospect. His writ must run not only through the Marcher country but into the deepest fastnesses of the high Welsh hills. As a further stimulant, he was keenly conscious of the assistance Wales had given Simon de Montfort in the closing phases of his father’s reign. That was a score to be wiped off the slate.
He made up his mind that the problem of Wales must now be settled once and for all.
2
At the start of his reign, however, Edward had not anticipated trouble because the ruler of the mountain country, Llewelyn ab Gruffydd, had made a most advantageous treaty with Henry III and was believed to be in a pacific mood. There was another reason which should have inclined the Welsh leader to peace. Some years before, when Simon de Montfort had raised the baronage against the feckless old king, the young Llewelyn had visited the commoner leader and had seen his daughter, Eleanor, who was called in the family the Demoiselle. Simon’s wife was a sister of King Henry and had passed on to the Demoiselle a full share of the Plantagenet beauty. The Welsh prince had fallen instantaneously and completely in love with the girl and, when he left, it was with the understanding they would be married when peace in the country had been restored. Even after Simon’s defeat and death and the confiscation of all the great estates and castles of the De Montforts, the infatuated Llewelyn still desired nothing better than to claim his promised bride. The Demoiselle had to fly to France with her mother after the battle of Evesham, and it was not until the mother’s death that she was put on a ship to recross the Channel and join her lover.
Here was a chance for a state coup which could not be overlooked. Edward sent four vessels to lurk behind the Scilly Islands, with orders to seize the French vessel and carry off the Demoiselle. A brother who had accompanied her was sent to Corfe Castle as a prisoner, but the fair Eleanor was taken to Windsor Castle and kept there in semi-confinement for three years. During that time she was dangled before Llewelyn’s eyes as a bribe for his good behavior.
Before the capture of the Demoiselle, however, a clash had been imminent. Hostilities blazed up all along the Marcher country, and the Welsh forces won successes at various points. Incensed by the defeat of an English army at Kidwelly, Edward decided on a major invasion and gathered a large force at Chester. Two other armies were to strike at the same time, one moving out from Shrewsbury under the command of Henry de Lacy and a second poised against South Wales under the Earl of Hereford. At the same moment an English fleet occupied the Menai Strait and cut off the Isle of Anglesey from all communication with Wales. Llewelyn depended on the food supplies which reached him from Anglesey and he now found himself at a desperate pass.
The outcome was easy to foresee. Edward was an aggressive general, striking hard and fast and often, and under the pressure he exerted along the Conway River the Welsh were forced back into the cover of the wooded hillsides surrounding Snowdon. Here they held out bravely. Edward did not sit down and wait for starvation to complete his triumph. While the Welsh tightened their belts and held on grimly, he proceeded to build several strong castles at strategic points and to strengthen those at Conway and Chester. In late autumn Llewelyn gave in and sent out word that he was prepared to make terms.
A treaty was signed at Conway on November 9 by which the Welsh prince gave up South Wales to the English and agreed to pay a fine of fifty thousand pounds. Anglesey was restored to him with the understanding that a yearly rental of one thousand marks was to be paid for it. The terms were hard, but later Edward agreed to remit the fine. This was generous because the Welsh prince, reduced to ruling a small part of the country around Snowdon, would have found it impossible to raise such an enormous sum.
The next year Llewelyn was summoned to meet the king at Worcester and to his delight found Eleanor de Montfort there with the royal family. She had remained constant to him through all the trials and delays, and they were married on October 13 at the door of the cathedral, a large number of the nobility of England having gathered to witness the ceremony. The happy couple, who found they were as much in love as ever, left at once for Wales. It seemed that at last the peace between the two countries had been established on a firm basis.
The Demoiselle (her girlhood name clung to her all through her life) was not destined to much married happiness. Two years later she died in childbirth, leaving a daughter who was given the name of Gwenllian.
After a few years of peace, Llewelyn decided on another effort to rid the country of the English. There had been continuous irritations. Archbishop Peckham was at odds with the Welsh because of some fumbling efforts to bring the churches in the two countries into closer harmony. The subordinate officials of the king were aggressive and greedy, and the Marcher barons as usual were looking for gains. And behind all this there was a prediction by the wizard Merlin which all Wales began to talk about. Someday, Merlin had declared, a Llewelyn would wear the crown of Brutus and reign over England as well as Wales. Was this the Llewelyn he had meant? Finally the prince’s brother David, who had been allied with the English up to this time, came back and began secretly to urge Llewelyn to strike.
Accordingly Llewelyn struck. On the eve of Palm Sunday, 1282, when all should have been peace in the land, the Welshmen marched out to a wild piping and the roll of national songs sung by thousands of fine voices. At first, success perched on the banners of the Welsh leader. Had Merlin been right? Roger Clifford, one of the English leaders, was beaten and taken prisoner. Two mighty earls were sent to the rightabout. The English were building a bridge across the Menai Strait. In an excess of bravado three hundred English and Gascon soldiers crossed over before it was completed. The tide came in and cut them off, and the Welsh proceeded to wipe them out to a man.
Convinced that the full tide of success was running his way, Llewelyn committed the folly of taking his slender forces down into the open to face the might of Edward. In a relatively small skirmish near the upper waters of the Severn he was defeated and killed.
In view of the prediction of Merlin, Edward had the head of the fallen prince cut off and exposed on a pole above the Tower of London, crowned with ivy.
Gwenllian, the infant daughter of Llewelyn, was taken to England. When she grew old enough she took the vows at the convent of Sempringham. It may have been devotion on her part or the result of a desire on the part of the government at Westminster to have the Welsh royal line come to an end.
David, the turbulent brother, was still at large. He was finally trapped, through information supplied by some of his countrymen, in a boggy stretch of land near Snowdon and taken to Rhuddlan with his wife, two sons, and seven daughters. He had been at odds with Llewelyn most of his life and had fought on the king’s side until the final campaign; and his role of double traitor seems to have roused a deep resentment in the English. He was taken to Shrewsbury and tried before a Parliament summoned for the purpose. There he was condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered as a traitor. Some authorities say that this method of execution was invented for his benefit. As a traitor to his knightly vows he was to be dragged at the heels of horses to the place of execution. Here he was to be hanged by the neck as a punishment for murders he had committed. He was to be cut down, however, before consciousness had left him and then, for profaning the week of the Lord’s passion, his entrails were to be cut out. Finally, for plotting against the king’s life, his head was to be chopped off and his body divided into four parts.
Whether or not the parliamentary judges were responsible for this dreadful method of execution, the gruesome spectacle seemed to find favor. For centuries thereafter it was used to dispose of men who had been convicted of treason. There would be a case, in fact, during the reign of Henry IV when official animosity against a convicted traitor, a man of low degree, would be so great that the various stages of the sentence would be carried out in different cities.
The head of the unfortunate David was elevated above the Tower of London beside that of his brother (of which little was left by that time). The cities of York and Winchester engaged in a dispute for possession of his right shoulder, and Winchester won. The three other quarters were awarded to York, Bristol, and Northampton.
David’s qualities had not endeared him to his countrymen while he was alive, but the manner of his death made him a martyr in their eyes. The bards sang songs about him for centuries thereafter.
3
It became evident that Edward had something of his builder father in him when he turned his attention to the castles of England. He realized that they were ill planned and that something must be done about them. The Norman stronghold had been built for one purpose only, defense. It was a grim structure of high, thick walls surrounded by a moat. Inside there were no provisions for the comfort of the occupants. The sanitary arrangements were crude, in fact almost nonexistent; the bedchambers were little more than holes sunk into the walls and lacking light and ventilation. It had now become apparent that even for defense this type of castle was not the best. It lacked the means of interfering with besiegers. Archers who had to station themselves at narrow slits in the immensely thick walls had no chance of directing a deadly fire on attacking forces. By the later part of the reign of Henry III a move was being made to have bastions at the corners of all defense walls so that a cross fire could be maintained by the archers.
Edward now began to build an entirely different type of castle. It was on what was called the “concentric” system, consisting of several lines of defense which had to be passed in turn. The great strongholds he raised in Wales—Caernarvon and Conway in particular—were mighty fortresses and so substantially raised that much of the masonry is still intact. In addition to being practical from a defense standpoint, they displayed a marked advance in the living quarters. Conway, which became a favorite with the royal family, was quite sumptuous, with a stately great hall and chambers with plastered walls and glass windows.
But even while Edward spent his time and thought on his castles, not to mention the great cost of them, the trend in the world at large was running the other way. Men were beginning to discover comfort and were no longer willing to exist in stately pig wallows. The manor house was being developed. Gradually the homes of the nobility would be built with an eye to ease and dignity in living. Where it was felt that more security was needed than a brick manor house could afford, a compromise was effected by raising the walls higher and giving them crenelated tops. In time it became necessary to have the royal assent to this method of fortifying a country house. The rapidity with which the tendency to live in fortified castles went out is best demonstrated by the number of permits to crenelate a manor house issued in consecutive reigns. There were 181 granted in the reign of Edward III, sixty by Richard II, eight by Henry IV, one by Henry V.