A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain (27 page)

Nevertheless, these early days had been in every other respect quite astonishingly successful. Not for centuries had a king of England begun his reign so peacefully or auspiciously. This success was in large part down to Edward himself. By taking swift but well-considered action on a number of fronts – widespread public consultation, wide-ranging legislation, innovative financial reform – he had won the backing and the respect of his subjects. Or, as one chronicler put it at the time, ‘bound the hearts of his people to him with an inestimable love’. Even the citizens of London, in spite of past differences, had welcomed their new king with much pomp on the eve of his coronation, and thrown a well-lubricated party on the day itself (the water conduit in Cheapside reportedly ran with red and white wine). Back in Westminster, meanwhile, the coronation ceremony had been followed by the coronation banquet, preparations for which had been under way for months. Royal orders for victuals reveal a feast of Solomonic proportions: dozens of peacocks, cranes and swans; hundreds of pigs, boar and oxen; thousands of chickens, rabbits, eels and lampreys. The Palace of Westminster had been especially extended and redecorated for the occasion at a cost of over £1,000, with temporary accommodation for the thousands of guests, and temporary kitchens to feed them.
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Anyone attending this feast would have been struck by more than just the splendour; equally striking was the extent to which the world had moved on. It was not just that one king had replaced another; the whole court had been renewed in recent years. Henry III lay in the abbey next door; Richard of Cornwall was interred at his own foundation at Hailes in Gloucestershire; the butchered remains of Simon de Montfort were buried in the abbey church at Evesham. Peter of Savoy, one of the dominant figures of the previous reign, had died in 1268; his brother, Boniface, the longest serving archbishop of Canterbury since the tenth century, in 1270. The only survivors of note from the old days were Eleanor of Provence and William de Valence, but neither was set to resume the controversial roles they had played earlier in their careers.
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As the old generation had passed away, a new one had risen to take its place. Edward himself, at thirty-five, was in his prime; Eleanor, at thirty-three, still fair and once again pregnant. Robert Burnell, the king’s closest adviser, was probably around the same age, perhaps a little older. And as for the rest of the court, they were all similarly youthful. Of the ten earls then living in England, four were also in the mid-thirties, and four more in their twenties. The septuagenarian earl of Hereford would shortly be succeeded by his twentysomething grandson, which left the earl of Surrey feeling very old at forty-three.
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Edward and his companions had reached the point in their lives were they had ample experience – of politics, of war, of government, of life in general – yet at the same time they retained the vigour and energy to tackle the huge challenges that lay ahead. Their corporate character is captured perfectly by a tale (told somewhat later and therefore perhaps slightly improved with age) about the post-coronation celebrations. During the feast, we are assured, King Alexander of Scotland presented a little diversion of his own devising. A hundred of his knights appeared, alighted from their mounts, and then – to general delight – released them, so that anyone who caught a horse might keep it. Not to be outdone, a number of English earls, including the king’s brother Edmund and the formerly fractious Gilbert de Clare, repeated the exercise, releasing several hundred more.
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Whatever the truth of the story, the coronation of Edward I had clearly been an occasion of great joy. And, as the presence of the king of Scots reminds us, simply everyone had been there to share in it.

Everyone, that is, except the prince of Wales.

The Disobedient Prince

I
t might seem strange – it is certainly ironic – that the earliest surviving evidence of preparation for Edward’s coronation is a polite letter from Llywelyn ap Gruffudd acknowledging receipt of his invitation. Given the differences between the two men in the not-too-distant past, one might well wonder why the Welshman was even included on the guest list. The full story of their relationship, however, has yet to be told.
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We parted company with Llywelyn in 1263 at a moment of great triumph. In September that year the self-proclaimed prince had finally captured the royal castles at Dyserth and Deganwy, thereby achieving an objective that had occupied him since the start of his war against the English some seven years earlier. Henry III had spent thousands of pounds on these new fortresses, intending that they should secure his grip on the Four Cantrefs, his ‘new conquest in Wales’. But, thanks to the comprehensive destruction wrought by Llywelyn that autumn, all that remains today of these once mighty buildings is a few scattered rocks. After their fall, the prince’s power in Wales was entirely uncontested.
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Edward might have avenged these assaults had it not been for Simon de Montfort. As it was, that same summer saw Montfort supersede Llywelyn as Edward’s principal
bête noire
. Not that Llywelyn was forgotten or forgiven in the course of the struggle that followed. During the next two years the prince compounded his crimes by lending material support to Montfort, though he had the good sense not to turn up for the fatal encounter at Evesham.
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It was in the months immediately after the civil war that the long-standing quarrel was officially patched up. Edward, as part of his prepara tions for crusade, became a signatory to the peace his father agreed with Llywelyn in 1267. This provided the occasion for what was apparently their first meeting, and it evidently marked the beginning of some sort of personal understanding. Two years later, after they had met for a second time, Llywelyn wrote to Henry III that he had been ‘delighted’ by Edward’s visit. Similarly, once Edward had departed for the East, the king could write to Llywelyn and describe his son as ‘the friend of the prince’. Relations, therefore, were cordial. There was nothing insincere or implausible about Edward’s wish to have Llywelyn attend his coronation.
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And yet, in the event, the Welsh leader chose not to come. To understand why – and why his absence was significant – we need to travel back to 1267, and the peace that was made between England and Wales.

By the summer of 1267 it had become clear to even the most insensible Englishmen that peace with Wales was no longer an option but a necessity. Henry III, for example, had once hoped to reverse Llywelyn’s conquests, and for this reason had long refused to grant the prince anything more than a series of temporary truces. Four years of civil discord in England, however, had forced him to reconsider his position. With his subjects bitterly divided and his treasury completely drained, the king realised that he had no option but to recognise the reality of Llywelyn’s power. In August 1267 he took his court, including both his sons, to the Welsh border, and began for the first time to negotiate in earnest.

The outcome, the so-called Treaty of Montgomery, handed to Llywelyn almost all the prizes he had sought since the start of his career. The Four Cantrefs of Perfeddwlad, his first and most significant conquest, were officially surrendered; so too was Edward’s castle and lordship of Builth, snatched in the summer of 1260. These and other territorial gains, however, constituted only one part of the package: equally momentous was the English king’s acceptance of Llywelyn’s supremacy throughout Wales as a whole. The homages of other Welsh lords, which Henry had once claimed as his own, were now ceded to Llywelyn, making him truly the master of his country.

Lastly, in accordance with his pre-eminent status, Llywelyn was afforded recognition of the title he had selected for himself back in 1258. In the words of the Treaty of Montgomery itself, drawn up by delegates on 25 September, ‘the king, wishing to magnify the person of Llywelyn,’ granted that ‘Llywelyn and his heirs shall be, and shall be called, princes of Wales’. This was indeed the glittering jewel in the Welsh leader’s new crown, for such recognition had never been afforded to any of his predecessors, not even his namesake grandfather, Llywelyn the Great.

When, therefore, the peace process at Montgomery was concluded four days later, it represented a climax not merely for Llywelyn but for his dynasty as a whole. He and Henry came face to face, probably at the ancient ford across the River Severn where their ancestors had been accustomed to meet in times past, in order that the newly minted prince could perform his homage. Llywelyn knelt before the king of England with pleasure. This act of subservience promised to cement his achievement, and thus marked the greatest moment to date in his astonishingly successful career.
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The problem was that a lasting peace between England and Wales required more than the restoration of cordial relations between Henry and Llywelyn, or, for that matter, between the prince and the king’s eldest son. It also depended on a similar degree of civility being maintained between Llywelyn and his immediate neighbours, and this was an altogether more ambitious aspiration. The Marcher lordships that fringed the heartlands of native Wales were, almost by their very nature, opposed to the preservation of such stability; in general, their owners were inclined by temperament and tradition to expand their power at Welsh expense. In 1267 the chances of peace in this turbulent arena looked even more remote than usual, for all the recent expansion had been achieved by Llywelyn. During the course of his struggle with the English Crown, the prince had carried war into the March and occupied large swathes of territory. The drafters of the Treaty of Montgomery had done their best to address the disputes that had arisen as a result; it was agreed in general terms that Llywelyn would restore all the Marcher lands he had taken. There were, however, certain named exceptions that the prince was permitted to retain, much to the chagrin of their former owners. Worse still, there were ominous silences in the treaty, which suggest that some disputes had been too contentious even to consider for inclusion. The lords of these areas were not about to take their losses to Llywelyn lying down.
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The most glaring omission from the new peace was any mention of the argument already brewing between the prince and Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester. Gilbert, as we have seen, was an irascible young man, enormously powerful and determined in defence of his rights. After the recent civil war in England, his sense of self-importance must have been running more than usually high – he was, after all, the only figure of consequence to have fought on the winning side at both Lewes
and
Evesham. He was, therefore, unlikely to disregard what he saw as an unwarranted intrusion into his lands in south Wales by Llywelyn: at the beginning of 1267, the prince had pushed into Gilbert’s lordship of Glamorgan. In April the following year, therefore, the earl responded in kind, moving his men into the disputed region and commencing the construction of a new castle.
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The fear that this escalating row would upset the fragile peace was what brought Edward back to Montgomery in the summer of 1269 for his second meeting with Llywelyn. It is further proof of the amicable turn their relationship had taken in the wake of the treaty that Edward actually favoured the prince in his arbitration, accepting his right to hold some of Gilbert’s territory. The earl, when he learned of this, was furious – it became one of his chief grievances in the subsequent row with Edward that threatened to derail their planned crusade, and dictated one of the key provisions in their subsequent peace agreement. Gilbert agreed that he would follow Edward east, but only on condition that Henry III intervened in Wales and sorted out the earl’s quarrel with Llywelyn.
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Gilbert never set sail. On 13 October 1270, just a few weeks after Edward’s departure, Llywelyn invaded Glamorgan and destroyed the earl’s new castle. From that point on, their dispute became a matter of pure force, and the earl proved that he could deliver an enormous punch. In 1271 he was back in possession of his lordship, and work on his castle was resumed. The scale of his effort can still be appreciated today, for the fortress he fashioned – Caerphilly – remains one of the mightiest examples of medieval architecture, and was at that time the single greatest castle in the British Isles (its concentric design predated Edward’s similar work at the Tower of London by several years). Llywelyn swore he would destroy it, but in the end his resources proved unequal to the task. By 1273, Caerphilly was almost completed, and it was clear that Gilbert had won their struggle.
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From that point on Llywelyn’s problems began to multiply. The failure of his speculative expansion into Glamorgan and the earl of Gloucester’s success in resisting it, encouraged other Marcher lords to start trying their luck in the hope of reversing the prince’s earlier gains, even those ones supposedly guaranteed to him by the Treaty of Montgomery. Humphrey de Bohun, for example, heir to the earldom of Hereford, began in 1273 to reassert with force his ancestral claim to Brecon, operating in conjunction with several of his Marcher neighbours. This was a clear violation of the treaty’s terms but, following the death of Henry III, Llywelyn found it almost impossible to ensure that those terms were properly enforced. It was not so much that royal government was weaker after the old king’s departure – Henry had hardly been much more effective while he was alive; rather the problem lay in the inherent bias of the regency regime. There were good reasons behind Edward’s decision to include his old friend Roger Mortimer on his team of caretaker-governors; Montfort’s killer was a strong man to have holding the reins of power. Yet Mortimer, as the most pugnacious Marcher lord of all, was unlikely to lend a sympathetic ear to any complaints from Llywelyn, his long-time enemy. Nor, more surprisingly, were his fellow regents, not even the normally judicious Robert Burnell. Their conniving collective mindset in the case of Humphrey de Bohun’s illegal intervention in Brecon is strikingly revealed in a surviving letter. Having inspected the Treaty of Montgomery, Burnell discovered that, alas, ‘the land of Brecon’ had indeed been ceded to the prince of Wales; but, as he went on to explain to Mortimer, nothing was written about who should hold the
castles
in the region. It was, therefore, ‘very expedient to defend them, and to give effective assistance for their defence’. Unsurprisingly, Llywelyn took the view that his right to Brecon comprehended the possession of the fortifications within it, and continued with his efforts to expel Bohun and his allies. The regents responded by adopting a morally superior tone, declaring themselves shocked that the prince ‘had presumed to besiege and occupy the castles’, and tut-tutting that his behaviour led to ‘the very great disturbance of the peace’.
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