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Llywelyn ap Gruffudd

Prince of Wales

University of Wales Press

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.

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 Gwr, his prince a true king of Wales, of powerful qualities. 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. This royal status might be seen as a residual legacy of a gradually eroded pristine kingship. On the other hand, emphasis might reasonably be placed on the creative vigour by which the potentialities of Welsh kingship came to be realized only in a late era, when those who represented the ancient lineages had ceased to call themselves kings and their territories were not normally described as kingdoms. A calculated retention of the terminology of a royal antiquity was an essential part of the princes' armoury during their last tumultuous generations. The territory over which a prince exerted lordship might still be ateyrnas, the sphere of a king, in the language of a poet, a regnum in the parlance of a lawyer. Possession of a definable territory was a key attribute of kingship and one of enduring relevance. The lawyers' texts convey a keen sense of frontier that may, in one sense, be an admission of political fragmentation, but it may equally reflect a recognition that precise demarcation of political domains was a prerequisite of ordered society. What lay beyond the frontier of gwlad or patria was the gorwlad or aliena patria; its raiding by the host might be sanctioned by custom, but the land beyond the frontier could equally be subject to reciprocal arrangements for the conduct of neighbourly relations including legal process. The frontier bounded a land which was a sphere of jurisdiction and an area where relationships between ruler and ruled were regulated by conventions which governed the rights and obligations of the one and the other. Crucially, too, the territory was the sphere from which the ruler drew the economic resources which sustained his power, and there can be no doubt that the demesnes associated with the princes' courts, and the fiscal obligations centred upon them, represented assets derived from the period of those of the lineage who, exercising stable authority over many generations, had called themselves kings.

The image of kingship which emerges from the work of the twelfth-century court poets, Meilyr Brydydd, Gwalchmai ap Meilyr, Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr, or others, is one of men of lineage who bore responsibility for their territories in a manner appropriate to their royal status. They had a capability for war, and the poets make much of this. Their territories were sometimes at war with one another but the historical record undoubtedly conveys the extent to which Norman intervention exacer bated conflict both between and within the territories. It would be well to be wary lest the endemic strife of the period be seen as necessarily a testimony to an inherently violent society, endlessly indulging its heroic exultation in war. The military prowess of the kings was esteemed by the poets as a means of ensuring the security of the territories with which they were entrusted. The rulers were essentially concerned with the stability of the political order with which their royal status was inextricably linked. Welsh historical writing, represented in Brut y Tywysogyon, while pre serving an account of daunting internal conflict, indicates in the same record of events, and in the encomia to the kings and princes, the value placed upon the cohesive power of rulers who governed their lands securely under God's grace. The manner by which the royal lineage of Gwynedd extricated itself from the adversity in which it found itself in the Norman period, as a result of both alien and native challenges, is the theme of the History of Gruffudd ap Cynan, a work which reveals a skilful blending of modes of thought character istic of contemporary Latin writing with those conserved in the indigenous literary tradition. There is no better guide to the conceptual inheritance to which Llywelyn ap Gruffudd laid claim in the thirteenth century.

Much as the historians of other nations elaborate upon the elevating qualities of the ancient lineages to which they belonged, the author of the History lays stress upon Gruffudd ap Cynan's honourable lineage. He, too, was 'of royal kin' and 'most eminent lineage' and stood on a par with contemporary kings. Describing Gruffudd's efforts to recover and rehabilitate the kingdom of Gwynedd he traces the troubled story of one who ultimately, after successive reverses, was able to establish his authority over a wide area of the historic territory and put his sons to complete the task: Môn and Arllechwedd, Arfon and Llyn, Eifionydd and Ardudwy; Rhos and Rhufoniog, Dyffryn Clwyd and Tegeingl (the 'Four Cantreds' of Perfeddwlad), and Meirionnydd. It was a course which two of Gruffudd's distinguished descendants would pursue in due course. But if the main substance of the History is the tribulation encountered during the tortuous process by which the territory was restored to its furthermost boundaries, emphasis is constantly placed upon the rightfulness of the endeavour and the fact that the communities of the kingdom ultimately acknowledged Gruffudd's lordship. This outcome was not achieved at all swiftly, and the author makes no effort to conceal the fact that Gruffudd's problems stemmed not from Norman power alone but from the failure of the Welsh communities of Gwynedd to respond to his calls upon their loyalty. Gruffudd is likened to Judas Maccabeus in his resistance to foreign oppression, but the Antiochus represented by Hugh of Avranches, earl of Chester, was not his only adversary. Thus the defection of the men of Llyn, which contributed to Gruffudd's defeat at Bron yr Erw, inspires a reflection that Judas Maccabeus, too, had suffered not from alien oppression alone but from betrayal on the part of the men of Israel themselves, for 'from the beginning there was treachery'. Ultimately the men of the cantrefi of Gwynedd received Gruffudd 'as befitted their rightful lord'. The legitimacy of Gruffudd's rule is emphasized time and again, for he was truly their 'rightful lord', one who returned from exile 'to his own possession and his patrimony'. The heroic endeavours of earlier years are vindicated in the rule of a righteous and pious king who brought stability to his kingdom and enabled its people to live in prosperity, and at peace with the king of England, under the kingship of one who ruled under God's protection. Beneath the panegyric the History, itself a composition which blends a conformity to a classical tradition with features of the native prose tales, conveys some important themes in the historical inheritance of indigenous Welsh kingship to which Llywelyn ap Gruffudd became the ultimate inheritor. Lineage, territory and status are inextricably intertwined. But before he was able to take possession of the territorial inheritance by which he could sustain the princely status with which his lineage had been endowed, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd had to surmount serious difficulties which will be recounted presently. No one bestowed an inheritance on Llywelyn: rather he took it to himself by force, and the significance of the decisive action he took at Bryn Derwin in 1255 cannot be understood unless account is taken of the question of the succession to princely inheritance, a vital aspect of the dyn astic aspiration to which the evidence of the previous generations bears ample witness. The royal status depicted in the History of Gruffudd ap Cynan could be maintained only if the patrimonial territory remained undivided under the rule of a single representative of the lineage.

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Excerpted from Llywelyn ap Gruffudd by J. Beverley Smith. Copyright © 1998 J. Beverley Smith. Excerpted by permission of University of Wales Press.
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