Llywelyn ap Gruffudd

Prince of Wales

J. Beverley Smith

• Publisher: University of Wales Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781783160839
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Llywelyn ap Gruffudd: Prince of Wales is an outstanding work by an author with a perceptive understanding of the complexities of his subject. It is clearly, sometimes passionately, written and is destined to be the definitive work on this matter for many generations. This is the first full-length English-language study of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd (c. 1225-1282), prince of Wales. In this scholarly and lucid book J. Beverley Smith offers an in-depth assessment not only of Llywelyn, but of the age in which he lived. The author takes thirteenth-century Wales as a backdrop against which he analyses the relationship between a sense of nationhood and the practical realities of creating a structure to embrace a unified principality of Wales held under the aegis of the English Crown. This examination of the triumphs and subsequent reverses of a ruler of exceptional vision and vigour is a substantial contribution to our understanding of the nature of Welsh politics and the complexities of Anglo-Welsh relations.

CHAPTER 1

Inheritance

ON Michaelmas day 1267 Llywelyn ap Gruffudd came before Henry III at Rhyd Chwima, the ford on the Severn a short distance from Montgomery castle. The ford of Montgomery had already become a recognized meeting place where proctors appointed by king and prince often met to resolve matters over which contention had risen on the frontiers between their lands. But the meeting between the king and the prince themselves had a particular significance. On that day Llywelyn did homage to Henry and swore fealty. No account of the event has survived but, if the two men followed the conventions which were well established among medieval nations, Llywelyn would have knelt before the king and placed his hands in his lord’s hands and, when he had done homage in this way, he would have pronounced the solemn words which promised his fidelity in word and deed. Although the proceedings signified that Llywelyn had submitted himself to the king’s lordship, they also served to elevate the prince. Henry had come to the frontier at Montgomery from Shrewsbury where members of his council had joined the prince’s men in prolonged negotiations that ultimately led to a historic peace treaty. Ottobuono, the papal legate who conducted the later stages of the transactions, was able to present the outcome as an agreement which showed that the two nations, after prolonged conflict, had made peace with one another in a manner which brought credit upon both sides. Four days later, King Henry travelled the remaining distance to reach the furthermost part of his kingdom and complete the formalities which signified his wish to honour Llywelyn. In taking the prince’s hands into his own the king recognized the special position that Llywelyn had won for himself by establishing his authority over an extensive part of Wales. For some years already Llywelyn had used the style ‘prince of Wales’ and, by the proceedings on the frontier between the kingdom of England and the principality of Wales, the king indicated his wish to confirm the prince’s right to that exalted style.1

Llywelyn ap Gruffudd was the first prince in the history of Wales to secure the king of England’s recognition of a title which implicitly proclaimed the unity of a large part of the country under the lordship of a single ruler, and securing Henry’s acknowledgement that an extensive dominion was now vested in one person was a considerable achievement. For, though the prince who came to meet the king sprang from a royal lineage stretching back over centuries, the position which he formally secured in 1267 was entirely the result of his own endeavours. Only one man among the princes of Wales, namely his grandfather Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, or Llywelyn the Great, had ever achieved a comparable measure of unity. The nation’s sense of identity may perhaps be traced to an early period in its history, but the idea of a single political structure embracing the various lands held under Welsh lordship was relatively new. Signs of an aspiration for political coherence may be discerned a little earlier, but the objective came to be a practical proposition only when Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, in the early years of the thirteenth century, was able to bring the princes of Wales together in a military alliance which gave birth to a form of political unity under his lordship. It was an altogether different matter, and still more difficult, to induce the king of England to tolerate a change in the internal organization of Wales which had such profound consequences for the relationship between Wales and England. Not even Llywelyn the Great had been able to surmount this difficulty. By his submission at Rhyd Chwima in 1267 Llywelyn ap Gruffudd registered an achieve ment which stood unique in the history of the nation. This volume attempts to trace the manner by which Llywelyn ap Gruffudd secured that triumph, to make an estimate of his achievement, and to understand how his success was subsequently reversed. A study of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd provides an opportunity to examine a period of momentous importance in the shaping of the nation’s political destiny.

The prince’s achievement was unique, but his endeavour was not without precedent and, in attempting to understand the objectives he set himself and the methods he employed, account needs to be taken of the efforts of his forebears. Particular notice has obviously to be given to Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, a predecessor to whom the grandson frequently referred in pursuing his own ends. Neither of the princes has gained the benefit of a modern historical assessment embodied in a substantial study specifically devoted to them, and much of our understanding necessarily stems from the considered and detailed chapters embodied in the work of John Edward Lloyd.2 A reading of the History of Wales suggests that it was Llywelyn ap Iorwerth’s achievement which the author considered to be the supreme accomplishment in the history of medieval Wales. He referred to the thirteenth century, it is true, as ‘the age of the two Llywelyns’, and he acknowledged the primacy which the second Llywelyn established in his time. But in his estimation it was, without doubt, Llywelyn the Great who revealed the subtle blending of the qualities of the statesman with the invincible spirit of a leader in war, who combined the gift of opportunism with the prescience which ensured that the princely interest was never placed in jeopardy, and who skilfully steered his dominion through the vicissitudes of the early years to the security of the period of his maturity. Despite a readiness to recognize the extent of his achievement, the qualities that he perceived in Llywelyn ap Gruffudd hardly matched those which had raised the grandfather above all other princes of the nation. In Lloyd’s view the key to Llywelyn ap Gruffudd’s success lay in fateful circumstances, and the prince possessed neither the judgement nor the instinctive prudence with which his grandfather was so well endowed. Although the second Llywelyn at the peak of his career won an elevated and recognized position which had eluded the first, and though in pursuing his objectives he trod a path already marked out by his predecessor, his triumph was still founded upon an uncertain basis, for so much depended on fickle fortune and transitory advantage. It is a view to which historical opinion may still afford some measure of assent, but one prince need not be diminished in order to respect another. Acknowledging the grandson’s indebtedness to his grandfather’s vision and capability does nothing to lessen the achievement of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd.3 This study thus begins by identify ing the essential features of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd’s political endeav our and estimating the extent to which his objectives had entered into the calculations of the dynasty of Gwynedd in the preceding generations and particularly in the time of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth. Three themes may be readily recognized: the value the princes placed upon their patrimonial inheritance in Gwynedd and their concern for its integrity; their relationships with those who ruled in Powys and Deheubarth and the march of Wales, and particularly their quest for influence in those areas; and their constant concern for the persistently difficult relationship with the kingdom of England.

The record of their time shows that the princes were imbued with a consciousness of status which was closely bound up with their historical inheritance. It finds eloquent expression in a statement which Llywelyn ap Gruffudd made during his exchanges with Archbishop Pecham only a few weeks before his death in combat in 1282. Three features may be recognized: a memory of a royal lineage which could be traced back to the Trojan origins of the nation itself; a sense of territory; and a grasp of the legitimate and inherent nature of the status which the lineage maintained upon the patrimonial territory.4 These perceptions may be sensed at a much earlier period in the history of the kingdom of Gwynedd and they are particularly relevant to the manner by which the lineage was able to extricate itself from the adversity in which it was placed in the Norman period.5 There can be no doubt of the gravity of the challenge which confronted the Welsh dynasties in that period, and it could be portrayed as a conflict between one power which represented the virtues and superior capability of a society at the core of Latin Christendom and another less well endowed and a decidedly more fractious society upon its periphery.6 Pecham’s letters to Llywelyn ap Gruffudd reveal the extent to which the church could still view the nation that resisted the English crown as one which had need to be brought more securely within the Christian fold. Pecham was not the first to recognize characteristics in the Welsh which amounted to a flawed morality, and the image cultivated by contemporary commentators placed the nation among the more disadvantaged societies.7 The fragmented nature of political authority, and the disability which arose from it, was perhaps a mark of ineptitude in the ordering of society. There can be no doubt that the fissile political configuration of Wales left the country exposed to alien intervention, but the precise nature of the contrast between Norman and Welsh capabilities might be considered more carefully. Military technology, and expertise in the deployment of military resources, counted for much, and the capacity of the Welsh rulers to adapt themselves to the specifically military needs which confronted them mattered immensely in containing and then reversing the Norman thrust within a generation of the first incursions. But this military effort was a facet of a decidedly political endeavour. The partial but crucial recovery was the work of lineages engaged in salvaging their territories and restoring the power of Welsh kingship.

Attributes of this kingship remained an essential part of the political culture of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The poets who addressed Llywelyn ap Gruffudd or commemorated his death were quite sure of his royal inheritance and his royal quality. ‘Gwir frenin Cymru, cymraisg ddoniau’, proclaimed Llygad Gŵr, his prince a true king of Wales, of powerful qualities.8 Symbols of royal status were cherished, notably the gold coronet (aur dalaith) to which poets referred, a relic which the conqueror of Wales was careful to preserve.9 This royal status might be seen as a residual legacy of a gradually eroded pristine kingship. On th...