The Brothers of Gwynedd (173 page)

  He went in as he was, dun and plain in leather, to the high chamber, and sent for the friar to be brought in. And when he came, the prince rose and went to meet him, paying him the courtesy and reverence of one noble man saluting another. Brother John delivered the letters he carried, and their bulk caused a brief smile to pluck at Llewelyn's mouth. It was to be expected that the archbishop would use many and ardent words, for he was never one to go sparingly with his tongue or his pen, and it needed little wisdom to foresee that most of the words he had used in these scrolls would be of reproach, accusation and admonition. Yet if he had had nothing at all but these to offer he would not have sent his brother-Franciscan venturing into the mountains.

  "You will understand," said the prince, "that we need time to weigh the archbishop's letters fairly, and also that I may consult my council, since I am acting not only for myself but for Wales. I trust you'll lodge with us and rest here in Dolwyddelan until we have our answer ready."

  "I am to wait for that answer," said Brother John, "as long as may be needful, though I urge haste. I am to carry your word on to meet the archbishop in the king's camp at Rhuddlan. And he prays you may be wisely guided, and provide him an answer that may end this warfare between kinsmen."

  "Justly," said Llewelyn.

  "Justly. So he has said, and so I say also."

  "Tell me," said the prince, "where is Archbishop Peckham now?"

  "I left him the day before yesterday at Aldridge, on his way to Chester. By now he may have reached the city. I do not think he will yet have moved on."

  "Then what the archbishop has to propose to us in these letters is purely his own? The king does not know what he has written?"

  "That is truth," said Brother John. "Indeed, he has taken this step very much against his Grace's will, and expects to incur his displeasure."

  "And if these letters provide a basis for further dealings, in the hope of a settlement, can we rely on truce while the argument goes forward?"

  "For that I shall be able to answer only when I reach Rhuddlan with your reply, which is the chief reason for haste. At present this is but a sounding. But you know my archbishop, and you know that if he is once satisfied you mean to deal, and are in earnest, as he is, he can and will insist on truce being observed, so long as you and he continue to talk to each other like reasonable men."

  It was much to claim for any man, that he could venture into a deadly struggle without Edward's sanction, frustrate Edward's immediate plans, and hold him and all his army still while we bargained for a peace Edward did not want. Yet Llewelyn accepted that word without demur. Even Peckham might attempt it and fail, for all his valour, but he would not stop short of the ultimate effort, and if the truce he made was broken, he would not let even the king go unrebuked, whatever the consequences to himself. There was not much more could be asked of any man.

  "I do not believe," said David bluntly, when Brother John had withdrawn, "in this displeasure of the king's. This friar may be honest in swearing his archbishop comes against Edward's will, Peckham himself may believe it, but I do not. November's on the doorsill, for all his new castles his plans have not gone forward so well as he must have hoped. I think this is Edward's way of sounding out the ground with us, without himself appearing to be bending from his purpose."

  "The better reason for taking advantage of it," said Llewelyn drily. "We dare not over-value our situation or under-value his. We are back where we began, David, in Gwynedd west of Conway, but for those outposts that must draw back to us as soon as Edward moves. We are not broken, nor near it, we have no reason to despair, we are not suing for peace. But by God, we had better not refuse it if it is offered on any reasonable terms. I have watched Edward come to this station once before, and judged him then, as you judge him now, to be weighing his chances and ready to welcome a move for peace. I know the peace I got was hard enough, but it was to my advantage and to his, rather than fight to the end, and we both knew it. This time he has proceeded differently, he is not beset as he was then. This time he began with a longer view than one summer. I do not think he means to stop short of victory. And since we will not tamely yield him everything he wants over a conference table, and I doubt he'll agree to any terms short of that, I advise you to be ready, as I am, to set your back against the rocks of Snowdon, and make him pay dearly for every stone."

We called to Dolwyddelan for that council all the princes and captains and chief tenants of Gwynedd who could then leave their troops and also had with us many councillors from the Middle Country and some from the south, for that castle had then become the court of Wales and its parliament. And there Llewelyn laid the archbishop's letters before his full council.

  Most neatly and methodically they were laid out, the mark of the man in every line, and the very tone of his voice, voluble, hectoring, kindly-meant, sure of its own God-given rightness. In seventeen numbered articles he had drawn up his message to us, and thus they proceeded, though after so long a time I cannot answer for the exact wording. Yet the gist I remember very well:

1. That for the sake of our temporal and spiritual salvation, always dear to him, he was coming in person into our land.

2. That he came against the will of the king, who was said to be greatly displeased at his intervention.

3. That he begged and entreated us for the blood of Christ to return to our unity with the people of England and the king's peace, to which end he intended to do all that man could do.

6. That if we spurned his overtures he intended to write to pope and curia with the grievous news of our obduracy, on account of the deadly sins that were multiplying every day through this discord.

7. That we should note that unless we accepted peace soon, the war would be waged against us with increased fury, beyond our bearing, since the royal power was every day growing greater.

10. That it caused him bitter grief to hear the Welsh described as crueller than the Saracens, since those take Christians prisoner for ransom, but as he had heard, the Welsh cut the throats of their prisoners on the spot, as if they delighted only in the shedding of blood, or, which was even worse, hand over the bodies of the murdered for ransom.

11. That nothing could excuse those who had launched a seditious, homicidal and destructive war at a time peculiarly sacred to the Redeemer.

12. That he begged us to return to true Christian penitence, since we could not long sustain this war we had begun.

13. That he begged us to inform him how we believed the disturbance of the king's peace, the public mischief and all other ills attendant, could be amended.

14. That he begged us to inform him how, at this stage, peace could be effectively re-established. Though it seemed vain indeed to believe in the establishment of peace, when it had been so assiduously violated.

15. Since the Welsh claimed that their laws and the terms of their treaty had not been honoured, let them state in detail the particulars complained of.

16. That we should note that even if it were true, as we alleged, though he had no knowledge of it, that the Welsh had been derogated to an inferior status, yet that in no way justified them in being judges of their own cause, that they should thus attack the king's majesty.

17. That unless some method of re-establishing peace were found, we should be proceeded against to the utmost by degree, military, ecclesiastical and parliamentary.

  "He has learned nothing, understands nothing, and offers nothing," said David with scorn, when we had all heard this reading. "We should have known! He sees but one side throughout. And do you note any word there of a
just
peace?"

  "He knows but one side because he has heard but one side," said the prince. "At least here he is asking us to put the other, and by my counsel, so we shall, and fully. He asks for our views on how the bitterness can be healed, the peace re-made. He asks us to enumerate our complaints, and say what clauses of the treaty have been broken. Those details we have by heart, for good reason, now let him hear every one, whether he can feel the smart of them as we have felt it, or no. It is our one opportunity."

  There were some among us more ready to be hopeful than he, and some who had less faith in the archbishop's sincerity, yet there was no man present who could afford to say other than yes to the invitation offered us. Late into the night and all the next day we clerks laboured with drafting and copying, answering one by one all the charges made against us, and setting out our own case for taking action in arms when all other redress was denied us, and compiling the huge list of wrongs done to us, and the treaty obligations spurned and broken to our damage since the peace of Aberconway. We had among our complainants the most trusted of Edward's Welsh judges, for Goronwy ap Heilyn, Hopton's colleague on the bench, had cast in his lot in angry despair of justice with David and the men of the Middle Country, and from this on acted as steward to David to the end. For more than four years he had done his best, both as justice and as bailiff of Rhos, to keep the balance between English and Welsh and do right to both, but when the breakage came he could do no other but go with Wales, for it was Wales that suffered wrong without remedy.

  Eleven separate schedules of grievances we compiled among us, seven being from individual princes and chiefs, and four presenting the complaints of whole regions. These were from Rhos, Tegaingl, Penllyn and Ystrad Alun. They varied in details as to forests thinned without leave, taxes exacted without right, arbitrary English law imposed where Welsh law applied, meadows misappropriated, vils occupied by force or extorted to add to the holdings of favoured hangers-on, but all cried out in grievous unison that an English tyranny had robbed them not only of their Welsh laws, which had been solemnly guaranteed by treaty, but even of their local customs which harmed none, and further, had proceeded against them with ever-increasing harshness and injustice, in many cases, even by the English law the administrators claimed to uphold. The men of the Middle Country denounced the exactions and cruelties of Reginald de Grey in Chester, those of Ystrad Alun the overbearing rule of Roger Clifford, those of Penllyn burned against the constable of Oswestry. From the prince to the cottager in the remote tref it was the same story, and that story was true.

  Those who submitted schedules of their personal wrongs, apart from the prince himself, were David, all three of the nephews from Ystrad Tywi, Rhys Wyndod separately, and Griffith and Llewelyn together, all disinherited of lands rightfully theirs by the crown, the sons of Meredith ap Owen from Cardigan, Goronwy ap Heilyn, and Llewelyn ap Griffith ap Madoc of Maelor. Besides unjust disinheritance and expropriations, all complained of the interference of the king's officials within their lawful Welsh courts, of the arrogance of royal administrators who enforced attendance at their convenience wherever they chose, in defiance of old custom, of the exaction of illegal dues, interference with free movement and trade, and the infliction of English penalties, even to death, where a more humane Welsh law ought to have applied.

  I think I myself had not fully realised, until we compounded all this formidable body of evidence in one great accusation, how universal was the attack upon all forms of Welsh life and usage, and how, when seen whole, it could no longer be regarded as the almost accidental product of high-handed and unfeeling officialdom, but emerged as purposeful and deliberate policy, using the resources of Edward's legal mind in pursuit of his ambition. His first object, so it seemed to me, was to extend, by all possible means, the lands on which he could impose English shire systems. His second was to rid all such lands of their Welsh customs and laws, and subject them to English common law and English organisation. His small bailiffs and tax-men were as they were, overbearing and harsh, because they divined, even if they did not fully understand, what was required of them. The shape their actions took, Edward gave them. They may, at times, have gone further than he would have wished them to go, but if so, it was but a difference of judgment due to limited intelligence. He had no quarrel with those excesses that were successful for his policies.