A Great and Terrible King Read online

  Henry, meanwhile, continued to exhibit his own brand of irresponsibility by failing to take action where it was needed most. Naturally, he failed to curb his son's excesses, just as he failed to correct the bad behaviour of his Lusignan half-brothers. But that was not all. It was now over six years since the king had vowed to go on crusade, and over four years since he had assured more committed crusaders that they would be leaving at midsummer 1256. Here, too, therefore, Henry was seen to have failed. The departure date had passed, and no preparations for an expedition were in place: such gold treasure as the king had amassed for the East had been spent saving Gascony. Not that this deterred Henry, whose inability to take appropriate action was exceeded only by his propensity for embarking on preposterous personal initiatives. In spite of his insolvency, the king was now pursuing a new scheme to install his younger son, Edmund, on the throne of Sicily. The pope, who had suggested the project, had assured Henry that it was a perfectly acceptable alternative to fighting in the Holy Land. The king's subjects in England, however, begged to differ: when parliament was asked to fund the ludicrous adventure the response was a flat refusal. Unable to obtain money by consensual means, Henry demanded more and more fines from his sheriffs, justices and foresters. With each day that passed, throughout the whole kingdom, his government became ever more oppressive and unpopular.

  Then, lastly, there was the queen. Eleanor of Provence was now thirty-three years old, poised precisely between her teenaged son and a husband approaching his fiftieth year. More mature than Edward, more vigorous than Henry, Eleanor was in many respects no less irresponsible than either. A harsh and exacting landlord, she showed no sympathy for the English in their suffering, reciprocating the lack of affection they had shown her since the start. The slip of a girl from those days was gone: in her place stood a grown woman, and behind her a powerful network of expatriate Savoyards. To these people — her own people — the queen did feel responsible, and in recent developments she saw great danger to their position. Her husband favoured his hateful half-brothers, and her son was running out of control. Edward, from the moment of his birth, had been the source of all her power and influence. The more he began to pull away from her, the more she prepared to tighten her embrace.

  2

  The Family Feud

  T

  he trouble began in Wales. The view expressed in 1256 by Edward's chief steward that everything there was progressing according to plan and that the Welsh were in the palm of his hands was, of course, the view of an insensitive and complacent Englishman. To the Welsh of the Four Cantrefs it seemed rather that they were under the heel of the oppressor's boot. For the past decade, ever since Henry III had confiscated their homeland, they had been complaining of the unjust behaviour of royal officials, yet nothing had been done to alleviate their distress. Once the region had been transferred to Edward's control, matters had, if anything, become worse, and it may well be that his visit in the summer of 1256 was the final straw. Until that moment the Welsh might have hoped, like the Gascons, that a new young lord would bring a turn-around in their desperate circumstances. If so, they must have been sadly disillusioned by the arrogant swagger of Edward and his gang of unruly followers. Expectations had been raised, only to be dashed. The people of the Perfeddwlad realised that they would have to look elsewhere in their search for a saviour.

  The obvious candidate was not far to seek. Across the River Conwy, the people of Gwynedd had acquired a new, dynamic and undisputed leader. Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, grandson of Llywelyn the Great, had also suffered the experience of being brought low by the English. In 1247, following Henry Ill's military intervention, he had been obliged to share what little remained of his grandfather's power with his older brother, Owain. Since that time, however, he had worked secretly and assiduously to revive the fortunes of his dynasty. Supremacy in Gwynedd itself had been assured in the summer of 1255 when Llywelyn, then in his early thirties, had defeated Owain in battle and had him cast into prison. Yet victory in arms had not solved all his problems. He still had other, younger brothers to provide for, and only a diminished patrimony that he was unwilling to divide. Llywelyn and his family needed more land, just as surely as the men and women of the Four Cantrefs needed better lordship. The result was not hard to foresee. At the start of November 1256 Llywelyn led his army across the Conwy and swept east through the area of English occupation. "Within a matter of days the region was completely in his hands. Only the new English castles at Dyserth and Deganwy held out.

  The English court was at Windsor when the news broke. Henry III favoured a diplomatic response and wrote to Llywelyn expressing his surprise and disappointment. As for his son's reaction, we have the testimony of Matthew Paris: 'Edward was determined to check the impetuous rashness of the Welsh, to punish their presumption, and to wage war against them to their extermination.' Such intentions, though, were frustrated by the onset of foul weather. 'The whole winter that year,' Paris explained, 'was so wet and stormy that the entire country of Wales. . . was utterly inaccessible to the English, and thus Edward's labour and expenditure of money were fruidess and of no avail.'

  Money was, in fact, the truly insurmountable problem. Edward had immediately recognised that his own financial resources would be insufficient for a war in Wales. His first instinct had been to rush to his uncle, Richard of Cornwall, who had furnished him with a loan of 4,000 marks (£2,666). But by December it was all was gone, and Richard had no more money to give, so Edward turned to his parents for aid. Their money, however, was tied up in the disastrous scheme to obtain the throne of Sicily for Edward's younger brother. The grandeur of his folly in embarking on this project was starting to dawn on Henry, in line with the mounting criticism it was attracting from his subjects. In January 1257, for example, his latest request for funds was rejected by a specially convened assembly of Cistercian abbots. In such circumstances, the king would have already been ill disposed to hear his eldest son's appeal for assistance. As it was, given their recent tussles over authority, and Edward's express desire for greater independence, he was also able to relish the irony of the situation. When, in February, Edward again beseeched his father for assistance in Wales, Henry could not resist the obvious rejoinder.' What is it to me?' he reportedly demanded. 'The land is yours by my gift.' The rebellion, he advised, was an opportunity to be seized; Edward should make a name for himself, so that his enemies might fear him in the future. 'As for me,' the king concluded, 'I am concerned with other business.' Edward, in short, was on his own.

  Llywelyn, meanwhile, was winning lots of new friends. Other dispossessed Welsh lords were flocking to his banner, and he was restoring them to their lands,'keeping nothing for himself but fame and honour', in the words of a Welsh chronicler. Having driven the English out of north Wales, Llywelyn was now pushing south. In December and January he had marched his forces into Deheubarth and Powys, the two other ancient 'kingdoms' of Wales. By February their success was such that they were able to launch attacks on the English lordships along the south Welsh coast. In Kidwelly and in Gower the foreigners were thrown onto the defensive, and the castle at Swansea was burned to the ground. Llywelyn's power and fame were growing daily. 'The Welsh followed him,' said one English writer, 'as if they were glued to him.'

  His drive into south Wales brought Llywelyn into a new arena of contention with his principal adversary. Edward's endowment had also included a number of lordships and castles in the south, and it was from these positions — principally his castles at Carmarthen and Cardigan — that the king's son elected to strike back. Cardigan, in particular, located on the west coast, had the advantage that it could be supplied from Ireland, and this process was already under way when the English counteroffensive was launched at the end of May. Edward himself was still in Westminster at the time, and just as well, for the result was an unmitigated disaster. No sooner had his troops set out from Carmarthen than they came under heavy attack from the Welsh, and when, on 2 June, the two sides met in open
battle, Edward's army, including its commander, was completely wiped out.

  The killing of so many Englishmen, especially ones of rank, meant that the war in Wales was no longer something that Henry III could reasonably ignore. The king now accepted that he would have to intervene in person, and to this end a royal army was ordered to muster at Chester in August. In the middle of that month both father and son advanced into north Wales at the head of these forces, intending to strike at the heart of Llywelyn's power. Here too, however, the English response failed as a result of its undue haste. Although the king's host quickly regained control of the Four Cantrefs, raising the sieges of Dyserth and Deganwy in the process, it lacked the supplies to progress any further. Ships that should have arrived from Ireland failed to appear. After vainly scanning the horizon at Deganwy for a week, Henry announced that he was giving up. Less than a month after they had set out from Chester, his army began their retreat, harassed all the while by attacks from the Welsh. By October the king was back in Westminster.7

  The failure of the English assault left Llywelyn stronger than ever. As the royal armies withdrew, the Welsh leader was able to reoccupy the Four Cantrefs and resume his attacks on their two castles. More than this, however, he could now plausibly maintain that his power was irresistible. Those Welsh lords who had until this point regarded themselves merely as his allies were persuaded - no doubt forcibly in some cases - that Llywelyn was, in fact, their rightful superior. Throughout the winter of 1257-58, Llywelyn concentrated on eliciting such admissions, seeking to transform his military triumph into something greater still - an acknowledged political supremacy. By March his purpose was achieved, and he was trying out a new title to match his enhanced status. No longer simply 'lord of Snowdon', he was now, in addition, 'prince of Wales'.

  During those same winter months, Edward was also redefining himself and his relationship with those around him. The fiasco in Wales had made one thing abundantly clear: his parents, and especially his mother, had failed him, and not only on the issue of money. Eleanor and her Savoyard circle had controlled Edward's affairs since the day he was born. His administration and estates, including those in Wales now lost to Llywelyn, had from the first been administered by men of his mother's choosing. Edward was now determined that this would no longer be the case. As he prepared for a renewed offensive in the spring, he began to reshape his entourage along lines of his own devising, introducing men who possessed the kind of talents that he personally prized. Henry of Almain, son of Richard of Cornwall, the cousin with whom Edward had grown up at Windsor, was one such. But there were also brand-new associates with whom Edward had come into contact only by virtue of the outbreak of war. These men were the lords of the March ofWales.

  The March of Wales was a term applied to the numerous lordships spread along the south Welsh coast and the country's eastern border with England. Carved out in the wake of the Norman Conquest, and aggressively expanded whenever subsequent opportunity allowed, these lordships were by their nature opposed to the polities of native Wales. At the same time, however, they formed no part of England. Having conquered their lands without royal assistance, the lords of the March had developed the theory that they were not answerable to the English Crown. 'In the March of Wales,' so their maxim went, 'the king's writ does not run.' The March, as a consequence, was literally a law unto itself: its lordships were governed like little, self-contained kingdoms, and relations between them and their Welsh neighbours were regulated according to Marcher rules. Most often this meant that matters were decided by force, and Marcher lords therefore tended to be an anachronistic breed. Such men kept their castles in good repair at all times, and their swords within easy reach.

  Llywelyn, in his exuberance, had not only reversed the conquests of Henry III; he had also intruded himself into the March, and thereby provoked the Marchers' wrath. This made them natural allies for Edward, and before Christmas 1257 several of their number had joined his inner circle. Roger Clifford, for example, was the latest in a long line of lords who took their name from Clifford Castle in Herefordshire, and who took their position as Marchers seriously (one of his relatives once famously forced the bearer of a royal writ to eat it - parchment, wax seal and all). In November 1257 Edward sent Clifford to Carmarthen in order to restock its castle, ready for the renewal of war.

  In these developments there was plenty to alarm the queen and her advisers, who had already been given cause to worry in recent years by the independent direction in which Edward's activities had been leading him. Not until too late, however, did they perceive the logical outcome of his increasing fraternisation with the violent men of the March and his continuing need for ready cash. Only in the spring of 1258 did it become apparent, when Edward, in return for substantial loans, mortgaged several of his English manors to the Marcher lord of Pembroke and his brother, the bishop-elect of Winchester. Which is to say, when he struck a deal with William and Aymer de Valence, his notorious Lusignan half-uncles. The queen's worst enemies had become her son's principal allies.

  This was a moment of crisis for Eleanor and her Savoyard circle. They had of late been losing the struggle against the Lusignans for Henry Ill's affections. If they lost their long-established control of Edward to their rivals they stood to be permanently undone. The danger hardly required further emphasis, but this was provided anyway, when on 1 April Aymer de Valence sent an armed gang to attack the property of one of the queen's closest advisers — an act of lawlessness reminiscent of his earlier assault against her uncle Boniface, but worse in that on this occasion one of the defenders died.

  By the time parliament met in Westminster a week later, the Savoyards had decided to take action against the Lusignans. To put their plan into effect they sought additional support among the other aristocrats in attendance and found no shortage of willing and powerful allies. Since their first arrival in England Henry Ill's half-brothers had by their arrogant and lawless behaviour made many enemies among the great men of his court. Even while parliament was in session, William de Valence began to quarrel violently with other English lords, openly accusing them of failing to prosecute the war in Wales with sufficient vigour, and going so far as to accuse them of colluding treasonably with the Welsh. Ironically, the men he accused were in collusion by this point -but only with each other, and in a plot to remove their accuser and his brothers from England for good.

  As the conspiracy around the queen closed ranks, however, she and her Savoyard supporters were evidently advised by their new aristocratic allies that assistance came at a price. Appalling as the Lusignans were, everyone accepted that the responsibility for correcting their behaviour had ultimately rested with the king. Yet for years Henry had failed to curb his half-brothers' excesses, turning a blind eye to even the gravest of misdemeanours. At the start of the present parliament, when a complaint had been laid before him about Aymer de Valence's most recent murderous attack, the king had simply brushed the matter aside and tried to make light of the offence.

  Moreover, his indulgence of the Lusignans was just one aspect of Henry's ineptitude. Parliament had been summoned, after all, to discuss how to address the disaster that was still unfolding in Wales, and also the ludicrous business involving Sicily. It was the latter, above all, that really marked Henry down as a vir simplex, a man severely lacking in sound judgement. Not only was the scheme inherently unfeasible; the king's failure to obtain a tax to fund it had led him to demand unreasonably large sums from his local officials. Across the country, sheriffs, foresters and justices were extorting excessive sums; the whole kingdom was paying the price for Henrys woeful lack of common sense. If, therefore, the king was to be compelled to sort out his half-brothers, he must also be compelled to attend to counsels beyond those of his wife and her uncles, the other architects of the Sicilian scheme. It was a deal that the Savoyards were ready to strike. To preserve their power over Henry and Edward, they were willing to see them both constrained.'3

  It was the last day of Apr
il, and the Easter parliament was drawing to a close. Two days before, the king, still focused on the Sicilian business, had asked for a new tax. Today he would receive his answer. At around nine in the morning Henry was seated in the Great Hall of the Palace of Westminster, when suddenly a multitude of knights and barons appeared before him. They were armed — that is, they were wearing their armour; their swords, as a mark of respect, they had left at the door. The threat of force, though, remained abundantly clear. 'What is this, my lords?' asked the trembling king. 'Am I your captive?'

  'No, my lord, no,' replied Roger Bigod, the earl of Norfolk, who stood at the front of the crowd. What they wanted, he explained, was the removal of the 'wretched and intolerable' Lusignans, and a promise from the king that in future he would attend to the counsels of the company now confronting him.

  And the company was formidable. Besides Bigod, two other earls had joined the Savoyard conspiracy. Richard de Clare, earl of Gloucester, was one; Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, was the other. Their status was significant: earls were the only noblemen of rank in thirteenth-century England (there were no dukes or marquises above them), and in total they numbered only about a dozen. But what really mattered in this instance was the raw power on display. Bigod, Clare and Montfort all had extensive estates and, as a consequence, massive incomes, which in turn gave them the wherewithal to recruit and reward others. In addition, Bigod and Montfort had reputations as fearsome warriors. Together, the three earls and their followers formed an irresistible force. Henry saw that he had no choice but to comply with their demands, and swore on the gospels that he would accept their counsels.