The Brothers of Gwynedd (147 page)

  "'We have listened attentively in our present parliament to all that the lord prince's attorneys have put forward on his behalf in the cause between him and Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn, concerning Arwystli and certain other lands. We find that the lord prince's attorneys had not been given full powers to act for him in the case, and though we might, therefore, have ruled this as a default and proceeded to judgment in our court, and indeed perhaps ought to have done so, we have instead adjourned the case to our next parliament at Westminster, to a date three weeks after next Easter. Since the peace between us declares that disputes in the march must be decided according to march law, and such as arise in Wales according to the laws and customs of Wales, we order the prince of Wales to appear before us, either in person or by his lawyers, fully empowered by him and well versed in that law which the prince desires, or in the law which the aforementioned Griffith prefers, that justice may be done as God and right decree, and our council approve, and there may no further delays.

  "'Dated at Westminster, the twenty-fifth day of October, in the seventh year of our reign.'"

  He looked up over the scroll. "Not given full powers! How can he say it? He knows you were fully empowered, and fulfilled every condition he laid down. Now he demands you shall come with authority to deal in
either
law, where before he spoke only of Welsh law. "That law which the prince desires,
or
in the law which Griffith prefers…" He is not asking simply for men
versed
in both laws, and able to dispute over which applies—no, he is saying I am to authorise you to go to him prepared to plead by whichever law
he
claims applies! To submit in advance to having my case tried however
he
decrees, when he knows and I know that Arwystli is Welsh to the bedrock, and never has been subject to any law but Welsh."

  "It is a means of delaying for another half-year," said David, smouldering, "and after that he'll find yet another means, and always paying lip-service to justice and law. Still professing he wants no more delays, as if you were the one to blame, and still luring you on to hope, with his virtuous testimony that march law applies to the marches and Welsh law to Wales, as though he were not standing in the way of that very principle. No fox could twist and turn better. Whatever words he uses will always serve his purpose, for he will always reserve to himself the sole right to expound what they mean, in the teeth of language, in the face of truth."

  Llewelyn looked at Master William, whose weary old face was as grim as his own. "Did you gather anything, from all he had to say in court, to give us a better opinion of what he is about? I myself could put a dozen different interpretations upon this letter, and doubtless I have put the worst. Let me know your mind."

  "In my view," said the old man, "his Grace uses words not to expound, but to conceal his meaning. The conclusion I could draw from one sentence he refutes in the next. But one thing was clear. His Grace did not intend to permit the case to begin at this session, whatever pretext might be needed to halt it. No, still one more thing is certain—Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn was in no fear or concern at all, from the first."

  "No, for he had his assurance in advance," said David sourly. "He was contending in a match he knows he will not be allowed to lose."

  "Yet he himself has pleaded Welsh law when it suited him," said Master William. "Last year the men of Montgomery brought suit against him that his fair and market at Pool were to the damage and loss of the king's market at Montgomery, and he retorted with a plea that he need not answer for anything concerning Pool in the king's court, for the town lay in Wales, and every lord having a town in Wales could hold market and fair in his own lands without hindrance. It's true he lost his case then, for it was the king's profit at stake, but nonetheless he stood fast on his Welsh status, not a word then of pleading as a baron holding from the king. This case I cited before his Grace, but I was silenced by the ruling that I was not properly empowered. I was not allowed to proceed."

  "You could not have done more," said Llewelyn consolingly. "Where ears are shut, your eloquence and knowledge are wasted. Never fret for that, it's no fault of yours. So have others pleaded Welsh law," he said, laying the letter by, "and been allowed it. My cousin, Mortimer, for one. It seems the same privilege is not to be allowed to me, unless I fight hard for it. As I will!"

  "What do you mean to do?" asked David, quivering. "Fight, you say! With what weapons?"

  "Law," said Llewelyn emphatically, divining his night and plucking him to earth. "However it may be loaded against me, I have no other permissible weapon, and I shall use none. But whatever the unbalance, I'll contend as long as I have breath, in whatever court Edward may sanction, and by one law and one law only, and we shall see who has the longer endurance. I'll wait his half-year, and send my envoys, empowered to argue to the death in both laws, but not to proceed with my plea in any law but Welsh. And whatever the next shift may be to silence me and sicken me into withdrawal, I will never withdraw. There's more at stake than Arwystli, and for more Welshmen than Llewelyn."

  It was from that day that the prince's faith in King Edward's honesty was first shaken. If he fought on, as he was determined to do, in the name of Welsh rights rather than for any gain he could expect in the matter of Arwystli, it was in the conviction that the scales were weighted against him. But in a sense this was still a legal game, which might be won even against unfair odds. It was not a life and death matter.

  It became so, I believe, that same December, just after we kept St. Nicholas' day. There was a session of the Hopton commission held at Montgomery on the ninth, and Master William's clerk Adam attended, in the case of a Welsh tenant of Mortimer who had a grievance there. He came back in great excitement and indignation, and would see Llewelyn at once.

  "My lord," he said, "I was in court when Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn brought in a plea against the crown for certain lands that were taken from him when he was your vassal, and after the war held by the king. Griffith claimed hereditary right to them, and Mortimer and the bailiff of Montgomery appeared against him for the king, and pleaded Welsh law."

  "So may every man, Welsh, marcher or English, it seems, even the king," said Llewelyn with a wry smile. "Every man, but me. And what had they to urge by Welsh law?"

  "Why, my lord, that a man who claims hereditary right to any land, and fails to prosecute his right for a year and a day, he has forfeited his right. And then Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn rose up in person, and said outright that Welsh law, this so-called law of Howel the Good, ought not to have any force against him, for the king's Grace had it in mind to annul it wholly."

  Llewelyn was still as stone for a moment. Then he said, and his voice was quiet and mild: "Did he indeed say so? Loud as ever?"

  "Loud, my lord, and certain, and without shame. As one having official knowledge. Wherever the king's writ now runs, he said, law is to be the king's law. And then the justices were horribly disturbed and out of countenance and Hopton spoke up in a great hurry, and said they did not believe, for their part, that the king wished to annul the law
in toto,
but only to correct certain parts of it which were not wholly in accordance with right, and to remove some which were no way acceptable, and manifestly ought to be removed."

  "Yes," said Llewelyn, with the dry rustle of a laugh, "doubtless Griffith has spoken too soon. It is his way." He was silent for a moment, deep in black and brooding thought, and then he roused himself to thank Adam and dismiss him. "You have done me good service," he said, "and it shall not be forgotten. Let Master William know what you have heard."

  When we were alone he said ruefully: "Out of the mouths of infants and fools truth drops at the wrong moment. I should be grateful to Griffith for letting me know the worst."

  I said, though without certainty, that I would not take Griffith's word, thus used in court argument concerning his own interests, for what was in King Edward's mind.

  "Neither would I," said Llewelyn, "if Hopton had not rushed so hastily to put a better gloss on it. He tried to sweeten it liberally, but note, he did not deny it. There must be truth in it! He means to bring all Wales, all that he holds, all that is not my principality and safe from him, into the jurisdiction of English law, as well as into his shire order and under his bailiffs. And yet he promised to all Welshmen, as he promised to me, our own law unviolated. It is written into the treaty, and it should bind him, as God knows it does bind me. And I still cannot believe," he said, fretting at old memories and doubts, "that all the time that treaty was making, clause by clause, he was in deliberate bad faith. I cannot believe it! It never showed in him or in his envoys. There was hard bargaining to hold what we held, and when it was ceded, I believe that was done as honestly as it was grudgingly. Had it been light to give, he would have given it lightly."

  And I, too, remembered every day of that month-long negotiation, and it was fought fiercely, but I believe cleanly. But my mind misgave me that we were dealing with one who entered into undertakings in good faith enough, and yet when they began to irk him could find the most just and virtuous reasons for qualifying or discarding them, who could re-examine his own given word, and convince himself that it meant something quite other than it said, and that he would be false and recreant if he did not follow the newly-discovered spirit and repudiate the letter. Studied from under that drooping eyelid of his, that alone marred his grandeur as it had marred his father's grace, doubtless words slid obliquely from their original sense to spell out what Edward desired them to mean.

  "His own law naturally seems to him the best, for us as for the English," said Llewelyn, "that I can understand. And ours, being alien, may seem to him distasteful and disordered. But he has promised to observe it faithfully, and let him twist and recant as he will, and with all the power in his hands, if I must fight him to the end of my life to pin him to his word, I will do it. If he prevails against me, what hope will any other Welshman have of justice? I am bound by the treaty, there is no weapon allowed me but law, and even that, it seems, even that I must wield with my hands manacled."

This matter of the Arwystli suit, which had now become a touchstone to determine the king's sincerity or duplicity, and affected every man of Welsh blood who had a grievance at law and hoped to right it by the code he knew and trusted, was not the only cause of vexation to the prince at this time, though it was the gravest. There were many other suits entangling him, some of them malicious and brought only to plague him, some collusive, to afford Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn legal cover, and assist him to manipulate the irritating delays in which he took such pleasure.

  There was also another matter which had dragged on for some years, and was causing great annoyance and loss. Before the recent war a certain merchant ship had come to wreck in rough weather off our coast, and the men of Gwynedd had fished ashore such of the crew as survived, and salvaged all the goods the ship was carrying, which then legally belonged to the prince, who held right of wreck in all his lands. But after the peace was made, and the rush to law began, the owner of the vessel, one Robert of Leicester and a rich man, went to the king with the tale that his ship had not been lost by wreck, and the prince had no right to the goods she carried, and so he had obtained royal letters enabling him to bring suit for recovery of his merchandise or its value in the Chester shire-court, where naturally he had no difficulty in getting judgment in his favour.

  Now this was in any case wrong in law, for the suit, if he wished to press his claim, should have been brought in the land where the loss complained of occurred, that is, in Llewelyn's own court in Wales, and therefore its process in Chester was an affront and infringement of the prince's sovereign right. In addition to this, the justice of Chester from then on proceeded to distrain on whatever property of Llewelyn fell into his hands, and as we relied on Chester for much of our buying of necessities, we suddenly found it unsafe to send there to buy in supplies, for as fast as they were paid for they were seized for their value against the sum claimed by Robert of Leicester. The prince suffered diminution of his right by the slight of his court, a challenge to his right of wreck which could never have arisen by Welsh law, and the repeated loss of his purchases, together with danger to his messengers if they attempted to keep them, for the justiciar's men were not gentle.

  There were also, of course, those clashes along the border which wise chiefs discouraged, but also took for granted, and paid out the compensation due when just complaints were made against their men. This had always been done on an even footing, each side in conference with the other either admitting or disputing the charges made, until sensible agreement was reached, and each paid its score fairly. But at this time such encroachments were greatly aggravated along the marches of Salop, led by Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn and his sons, and willingly aided by many of the local men, and when Tudor went to the border to meet the sheriff of Salop and make mutual amends for all trespasses then charged, notwithstanding that most of the Welsh offences had already been paid for and the steward was willing to amend those remaining, the sheriff refused to make any such amends on his part unless he should receive direct orders from the king to do so. This again was not only an unjust imbalance, but a breach of treaty, though Llewelyn did not therefore charge it against Edward himself, for we knew only too well that the king's officials were arrogant and exacting beyond their master, and he could not know everything that was going on in all parts of his kingdom.