The Brothers of Gwynedd

by Edith Pargeter

  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.

  As for the prince, he and I drew up his schedule together, and it went directly to the question of what clauses of the treaty had been dishonoured by the English. Seven separate provisions he cited, in each case quoting the exact words of the treaty, in case the archbishop should need to have his memory of it refreshed, and then giving the instances in which it had been flouted, beginning with the clause under which he had sought to have Welsh law over Arwystli, and been denied it upon pretext after pretext. Other clauses concerned the promise that all transgressions committed during the war should be remitted from the treaty date, whereas de Grey, for one, had pursued many individuals for previous offences in the Middle Country. Also the article guaranteeing to various princes those lands they held at the time of the treaty, which afterwards were expropriated, and another assuring the tenants of the Middle Country that under the royal rule they should still enjoy all their traditional rights, which thereafter were gradually taken away from them. And sundry specific cases of incursion by royal officials into territory still indubitably Welsh, with the old grievance over Robert of Leicester and the wrongful distraints made in Chester on his behalf.

  He added also one small but significant matter which I have not before mentioned, for at the time of his marriage at Worcester the king had presented him a document for agreement and seal, binding the prince not to harbour or maintain in his lands any persons contrary to the king's wish. Which he then sealed, partly unwilling to disturb the time, but also seeing no derogation in it, since the king's harbouring and maintaining the prince's Welsh traitors and assassins had been one of the main causes of the war, and he could not well resent agreement to the consideration he himself had so often urged in vain. But later at least one case arose where he found himself pressed to eject from his lands not an English fugitive or malefactor, but one of his own men, against whom the royal officers alleged some ill-supported offence. He therefore added this also to his list, referring drily to the use of such a clause to strip him of his loyal adherents at the king's will, and deprecated the grant of his seal in the common legal phrase used to object to an agreement obtained by duress or fraud.

  "Therefore," he wrote in concluding the tale of his wrongs, and further, the wrongs done to his people, "it ought not to cause wonder to any man, if the aforesaid prince gave his assent to those who began the war." And that was carefully said, for he himself had not begun it, but once begun it was his war whether he would or no, and he could not withhold his countenance from it.

  In addition to this detailed schedule, meant to make one among the rest, he wrote also a long covering letter, personally answering the archbishop's seventeen articles.

  That letter I remember so well that even now I can set it down, if not word for word, in its full sense and passion, and for the sake of those who will enquire into these things in time to come, when justice lives again, here I give it from beginning to end, that no man may be able to say Llewelyn wrote this, or this, falsely, but what he did indeed write shall endure to be set before the judgment. Thus the letter went:

  "To the most reverend father in Christ, the Lord John, by the grace of God archbishop of Canterbury, primate of all England, from his humble and devoted son Llewelyn, prince of Wales, lord of Snowdon, salutation and filial affection, with all manner of reverence, submission and honour.

  "For the heavy labours which your fatherly holiness has assumed at this time, out of the love you bear to us and our nation, we render you grateful thanks, all the more since, as you have intimated to us, you come against the king's will. You ask us to come to the king's peace. Your holiness should know that we are ready to do so, provided the lord king will truly observe that same peace as is due to us and ours. We rejoice that this interlude granted to Wales is at your instance, and you will find no impediments placed in the way of peace by us, for we would rather support your efforts than those of any other. We hope, God willing, there need be no occasion for you to write anything to the pope concerning our pertinacity, nor will you find us spurning your fatherly entreaties and strenuous endeavours, indeed we embrace them with all the warmth of our heart. Nor is it necessary for the king to weight his hand yet further against us, since we are fully prepared to render him obedience, always saving our rights and our laws, a reservation legally permitted to us.

  "The realm of England may well be the special object of the Roman curia's affection, but the aforesaid curia has yet to learn, and must learn, and the lord pope likewise, what evils have been wrought upon us by the English, how the peace formerly made has been violated in all the clauses of the treaty, how churches have been fired and devastated, and ecclesiastical persons, priests, monks and nuns slaughtered, women slain with their children at the breast, hospitals and other houses of religion burned, Welsh people murdered in cemeteries, churches, yes, at the very altar, with other sacrilegious offences horrible to hear. All which are detailed in these rotuli we send in writing for your inspection.

  "Now our best hope is that your fatherly piety may incline kindly towards us, and neither the Roman curia nor the realm of England need be shaken for our sake, provided it is understood in advance that the peace we seek be not only made, but observed. Those who do indeed delight in the shedding of blood are identified manifestly by their deeds, and thus far the English, in their usage of us, have spared none, whether for sex, or age, or weakness, nor passed by any church or sacred place. Such outrages the Welsh have not committed.

  "It does, however, grieve us very deeply to acknowledge that it is true one ransomed prisoner was killed, but we have neither countenanced nor maintained the murderer, for he was wandering the forests as a freebooter.

  "You speak of certain persons beginning the fighting at a holy season. We ourselves knew nothing of this until after the fact, when it was urged in their defence that if they had not struck then, death and rape threatened them, they dared neither dwell in their own houses at peace nor go about except in arms, and it was fear and despair that caused them to act when they did.

  "As to the assertion that we are acting against God, and ought to repent as true Christians, seeking God's grace, if the war continues it shall not be set at our door, provided we can be indemnified as is our due. But while we are disinherited and slaughtered, it behoves us to defend ourselves to the utmost. Where any genuine injuries and damages come into consideration upon either side, we are prepared to make amends for those committed by our men, provided the like amends are made for damages inflicted upon us. In the making and preserving of peace we are similarly ready to assist to the limit of what is due from us. But when royal pacts and treaties made with us are of none effect, as thus far they have not been observed, it is impossible to establish peace, nor when new and unprecedented exactions against us and ours are daily being devised. In the accompanying rotuli we send to you the catalogue of our wrongs, and of the breaches of that treaty formerly made with us.

  "We fight because we are forced to fight, fo
r we, and all Wales, are oppressed, subjugated, despoiled, reduced to servitude by the royal officers and bailiffs, in defiance of the form of the peace and of all justice, more maliciously than if we were Saracens or Jews, so that we feel, and have often so protested to the king, that we are left without any remedy. Always the justiciars and bailiffs grow more savage and cruel, and if these become satiated with their unjust exactions, those in their turn apply themselves to fresh exasperations against the people. To such a pass are we come that they begin to prefer death to life. It is not fitting in such case to threaten greater armies, or move the Church against us. Let us but have peace, and observe it as due, as we have expressed above.

  "You should not believe all the words of our enemies, holy father, the very people who by their deeds oppress and ill-use us, and in their words defame us by attributing to us whatever they choose. They are ever present with you, and we absent, they the oppressors, we the oppressed. In accordance with divine faith, instead of quoting their words in all things, you should rather examine their deeds.

  "May your holiness long flourish, to the benefit and good order of the Church."

  "Enough!" said Llewelyn in revulsion and weariness, when we had finished. "There is no more I can do, and no more to be said. I will neither beg nor bend. We have spoken out fully now, and they owe us truce at least until we come to terms, or break off the attempt."

  The next day we delivered all those rotuli to Brother John of Wales, and gave him an escort to see him on his way to Rhuddlan.

  "Carry also," said the prince in farewell, "my thanks and reverences to Archbishop Peckham, for whether he speeds or not, it is great credit to him that he is willing to venture. And if he does not withhold his prayers from us, very surely we will not refuse them."

  "As soon as I can deliver these letters," said the friar, "I will beg him to confirm with the king the matter of truce. And I trust to visit you again, if God wills, in pursuit of peace."

  "It may serve," said David looking after them as they rode down through the fold of the hills until the curve of the track and the deepening of the valley took them from our sight. "If parliament rebels at extorting still more money for Edward's Gascons, if the king of France refuses them passage, if the clergy grudge him his twentieth, and his Italian usurers begin to bite, if the snow blocks the roads soon enough, and ice closes the port at Rhuddlan, if everything in God's earth conspires to hold Edward off from our throats and make him fear for his own, it may serve! If not, our swords must. We knew from the first there was no going back."

  Within three days we were reassured that we had truce, for nothing moved, we had gained a watchful quietness which we took care not to break. The weather was growing stormy, with strong winds from the north-east, though as yet the winter cold had not set in. In Anglesey the English garrison sat still, guarding their heaving bridge but not attempting to cross it, and the king, at Rhuddlan, uttered as yet no word, but launched no arrows either. I know that David had it in mind still that Edward was making a tool of the archbishop, however that worthy soul might preen himself on his bravery and initiative, and believe he was leading where in truth he was most subtly led. I cannot say, even now, whether he was right in this. He well may have been. Nevertheless, we began to believe that there was at least a manner of debate going on in the royal camp by the Clwyd.

  But when the expected messenger came at last, on the first day of November, under a black and purple sky of towering, scudding cloud, it was not the lean, austere friar for whom we had kept watch. One of the prince's regular patrols escorted into Dolwyddelan, in a driving shower of rain, two horsemen of whom one was plainly groom and servant to the other, and held back obsequiously at his heels. The other sat solidly in the saddle, bedded down like a woolsack, but hopped down energetically enough in the courtyard, shook the rain from his cloak, and putting back the hood showed us the round, self-important, concerned face, not of Brother John of Wales, but of Brother John Peckham, archbishop of Canterbury.

  CHAPTER IX

  I am come in person, my lord prince," said the archbishop, when we had lodged and fed and served him in every point as well as a castle under war conditions could, "because it seemed to me that those documents you sent me deserve that I should, and need every care I can bring to them. I have obtained his Grace's consent to a state of truce while we confer, and I assure you it will not be broken by his orders. I trust I may rely on you as far."

  "You may, my lord," said Llewelyn. "I, too, have given my orders."

  The archbishop stretched out his toes gratefully to the warmth of the brazier in the high chamber, for the nights were growing chill, and he had ridden far, and in very buffeting winds. I doubt if we had then the table to offer him that Edward could have mounted at Rhuddlan, for we went very sparsely fed ourselves, to husband what resources we had for the winter. But give him his due, this priest valued his appetite very little, and the offering of hospitality high, and our ceremonial heated water and towel for his weary feet had perhaps charmed him more than venison and wine. He looked round the private circle of us there, the prince, David, Tudor the high steward of Wales, the chaplain, Llewelyn, the prince's nephew, myself and Goronwy ap Heilyn as David's seneschal. "I have only good remembrances of the lord prince's hospitality and kindness in Carnarvon, and I grieve all the more at this dissension with which we labour here today, that so severs us."

  "I, too," said Llewelyn. "But I do not think it severs us two. For my part, I feel no gulf between. I am too conscious of your former benefits and ever-present goodwill. Such other duties as I bear, however sacred, do not obscure these."

  "You greatly encourage me," said Peckham. "And now that we meet again, I beg you'll let me say how much it grieves me that we miss one face that graced our last meeting." He was hesitant and soft of voice, the only time I ever saw or heard him so. "I have sorrowed greatly," he said, "for your untimely loss in the death of your lady, the princess. God's purposes are sometimes cloudy to us, but doubtless he best knows his own way, and we see but with imperfect vision."

  "Doubtless," said Llewelyn, courteous and patient as always when any tried to speak to him of her, and he gave thanks, but as always with a closed and forbidding face, so that the archbishop forbore from treading in further, but sighed and shook himself, and turned to business.

  "I have studied all those rotuli you sent me, and I grant that these are very grave complaints. I brought them to the king's notice, and begged him to give them judicial remedy, and to hold them as sufficient excuse for the faults committed. I fear his Grace did not receive my intercession with any favour, for in his view the offence is inexcusable, since these grievances were not first referred to him as the head and fount of justice. If they had been so referred he would have been ready, as he always is, to give proper remedy where it is due, and no honest supplicant need fear rebuff, or resort to other and lawless means of redress."

  At that his fine delivery, which was by then assured and sonorous, was broken by the stir of indignation that rippled through all of us, and by David's gasp of unbelief.

  "He dared say so?" he cried and drew in furious breath, but Llewelyn laid a hand on his arm, and he recoiled into angry silence.

  "His Grace's memory," said the prince hardly, "is at fault. Every one of those matters of which I, personally, complain has been referred to him for redress time and time again, in his courts, yes, but also directly to his own hand and ear. In letter after letter I have informed him in every detail of my frustration over Arwystli, and let him know that I held it gross injustice, and required a remedy. Every one of those other wrongs I have brought to him, cited the treaty to him, demanded justice, but never obtained it. If now he claims I have passed him by, and makes that his reason for finding this insurrection inexcusable, then I say outright, he says what is not true. And since justice has been refused me at his hands a score of times already, if he expects me to put more trust in it the one-and-twentieth time, he insults both my wit and your credulity. As
for my magnates, they will answer for themselves."

  And so they did, David first and most fiercely, recounting almost word for word the letters he had written to Edward, complaining of law that cited him to the Chester shire-court to answer for land purely Welsh. He spoke also for all the men of his two cantrefs, in whose name he had many times raised the issues that troubled them, but always without redress.

  "To claim now that these have never been brought to him requires more effrontery than a king should use even towards his brother-kings, let alone those people over whom he has sovereign power, and towards whom he carries a sovereign's responsibility. It is unworthy to resort to lies," he said in a steady, black blaze of rage, and his voice low, deliberate and sweet, as always when he was most deadly in his anger.