A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain

by Marc Morris

  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.64

  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

  It 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.1

  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.2

  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.3

  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.4

  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.5

  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.6

  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.7

  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.8

  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.9

  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’.10

  Thus the antagonisms between Llywelyn and the Marchers, exacerbated by the attitude of the regents, continued to mount. The summer of 1273 saw what amounted to an arms race between the prince and Roger Mortimer, with both men rushing to build or repair castles in the vicinity of Montgomery. When the regents, writing in the king’s name, ordered the prince to cease construction of his new castle at Dolforwyn, his response was brilliantly contemptuous. ‘We received letters in your majesty’s name,’ he began, ‘but we are sure that they did not have your consent.’ Nevertheless, for all his mocking, his letter to the absent Edward contains one sentiment that was undoubtedly sincere. ‘If you were present in your kingdom, as we hope, such an order would not have been sent.’ Llywelyn knew that the best chance for détente between England and Wales was Edward’s swift return.11

  Why, then, did he pointedly snub the king by failing to attend his coronation? The answer must be in part that Anglo-Welsh relations had deteriorated to such an extent by August 1274 that the prince would not have felt safe travelling to the ceremony. There was, however, another reason for his decision to stay away that day. Llywelyn had an additional difficulty, bigger even than his dispute with the Marchers, a problem so fundamental that it can be summed up in a single word: Wales.

  Today Wales is celebrated for its untamed natural beauty. Forests, fast-flowing rivers and mountains: all are marketed to tourists in search of splendid scenery and adventure. In the Middle Ages the landscape excited much the same kind of response. Llywelyn’s great-great-grandfather, Hywel ab Owain Gwynedd, was given to writing poetry in praise of his homeland. ‘I love its beaches and its mountains,’ he declared, ‘its water meadows and its valleys,’ before going on to enumerate a few more of his favourite things: its soldiers, its horses, and, of course, ‘its lovely women’.12

  No doubt his great-great-grandson enjoyed listening to such songs at his court and shared the sentiments they expressed. However, for a man who wanted to build a strong, united state, the Welsh landscape was an enormous hindrance. A more prosaic and analytical twelfth-century writer summed up the problem precisely. ‘Because of its high mountains, deep valleys and extensive forests,’ wrote Gerald of Wales, ‘not to mention its rivers and marches, Wales is not of easy access.’ Such natural obstacles frustrated travel and communication, rendering government slow and laborious. The Welsh landscape, in short, promoted division rather than unity.13

  A more serious problem for the rulers of Wales, which flowed from the landscape, was the state of the Welsh economy. Mountains and forests might move men to poetry, but they are not terribly productive in financial terms. Llywelyn, in a letter written at the very end of his career, candidly admitted as much, contrasting the ‘fertile and abundant land in England’ with ‘the barren and uncultivated land due to him by hereditary right’. Of course, upland to a certain height could be used for pasturage, and this was an important mainstay of the Welsh economy, but in many other respects Wales was severely underdeveloped. There were, for instance, almost no towns worthy of note. The amount of coin in circulation was extremely limited, and what little currency there was came from England. Matters were starting to improve somewhat in Llywelyn’s day, thanks in part to the attempts that he and his immediate ancestors had made to foster and encourage trade. Change, however, was exceedingly slow in coming, and the returns were meagre in the extreme. To take one particularly telling example, it has been calculated that Llywelyn’s total customs revenue was around £17 a year – hardly a lordly sum, never mind a princely one, but above all a figure that pales into utter insignificance when compared with the annual £10,000 that Edward collected in England.14

  The comparative poverty of Wales would not have been such a problem for Llywelyn had he not set such a high value on being a prince. Unfortunately, the Treaty of Montgomery had come at a hefty premium. Since the 1250s Llywelyn’s desire to have his title recognised by Henry III had led him to offer the king larger and larger sums of money. When his status was finally admitted in 1267, the price of acknowledgement was fixed at 25,000 marks (£16,667). Llywelyn agreed that, after an initial down payment of 5,000 marks, he would pay off the remainder at a rate of 3,000 marks (£2,000) a year. This was, to say the least, a plan predicated on an extremely optimistic assessment of his spending power. A generous modern estimate of his income suggests that it might have peaked in the 1260s at around £6,000 a year. At the v
ery least, therefore, the prince had agreed to forego a third of his annual revenue, possible more, and this at a time when he was having to find extra money to defend a much-enlarged border, building and garrisoning castles like Dolforwyn.15

  Llywelyn, in short, had mortgaged his principality at a rate that was impossibly high. As early as 1270 he was having difficulty keeping up with repayments, and the following year he stopped paying altogether. By the time Edward returned he was three years in arrears. Of course, the prince himself would never admit that this descent into debt was caused by his insurmountable financial difficulties. Instead, he chose to maintain that non-payment was a political decision – retaliation for the English government’s failure to address his grievances. ‘The money is ready to be paid to your attorneys,’ he wrote to the regents in February 1274, ‘provided that … you compel the earl of Gloucester, Humphrey de Bohun and the other Marchers to restore to us the lands they have unjustly occupied.’ But this was bluff and bluster. Later complaints about his oppressive rule show that Llywelyn was relying on increasingly extortionate methods to raise money; the notion that he was sitting on a big pile of treasure in 1274 is ludicrous. The reality was that by this date he had bled his principality dry and could not afford to have his grievances settled. What he needed was renegotiation with England, and this explains the provocative stance he took against its new king.16

  For the same financial reasons, Edward, when he finally returned to England, was prepared to be extremely patient with Llywelyn. His crusading debts were so great that he was willing to overlook the prince’s snub if it meant getting his hands on the outstanding cash. As early as December 1272 the regents had stressed in their letters to Llywelyn that their master was in urgent need of the annual payment because he was ‘bound to diverse creditors in a great sum of money’. Edward’s own attitude is revealed in a letter he sent in the spring after his return to the sheriff of Shropshire, who was charged with bringing an end to the ongoing hostilities in the March. When the king stressed that ‘he did not want Llywelyn to have any reason for complaining about the settlement made’, and urged the sheriff to ‘act with circumspection’ to ensure that the prince was satisfied, the logic was clear enough: if Llywelyn had no reason to complain, he would have no excuse not to pay up.17