The Brothers of Gwynedd

  In early May a rider came into Bala from Rhys Fychan in Carreg Cennen, one of the lancers of his household, grinning so broadly his news could be nothing but a good joke. He was brought to Llewelyn in the mews, where the prince was busy with his hawks, and bent the knee to him very perfunctorily in his haste to get to his message.

  "My lord," he said, "I bring you brotherly greetings from Rhys Fychan, and sisterly from the Lady Gladys. And I am bidden to ask you where it will please you to take delivery of the person of your traitor, Meredith ap Rhys Gryg, to be tried by his peers?"

  There was a general outcry then of astonishment and triumph, and everyone within earshot dropped what he was about and listened without concealment.

  "What, has Rhys got the old felon into his hands at last?" said Llewelyn. "Now how and when did this come about? I thought he had gone to earth for life, and we should have to dig him out with siege engines."

  "My lord," said the man, broad-smiling with pleasure, "after the lambing Meredith began raiding our stock, and we lost a few yearlings to him and made no sign. Then a week ago Rhys Fychan pastured some of his best ewes with their lambs not far from Dynevor, where they could be seen from the towers, for we knew Meredith was there, the first visit he's paid there since Cilgerran. There was none but the shepherd with the flock, but we had a good strong company in cover close by."

  "And he took the bait in person?" said Llewelyn, marvelling. "He has herdsmen and lances enough. You might have got but a poor catch for your trouble."

  "Ah, but, my lord, Meredith's hatred to Rhys is such, he grudges letting even his knights into his feud. Rhys knew him well enough, he came himself to make his choice, he must show his hand in any stroke against his nephew. And he brought a pretty little company in attendance on him, good men, but few. We took them all, with no loss, and no hurt but a few scratches. It was brisk, but we had their measure. And we took Meredith. He is in Carreg Cennen, and he is yours to do with what you will."

  "Come," said Llewelyn, and helped him away to the hall, "we must share this with Goronwy and Tudor, and send word out to the rest. This is not my quarrel, but the quarrel of Wales."

  So they debated and made their plans, more gravely once the jest had been enjoyed, and rightly enjoyed, for it was bloodless and just, and there was no killing in any man's mind, as Meredith had brought about all that killing at Cilgerran. There was no doubt but that Llewelyn must move against Meredith as any monarch moves against the traitor, else his claim and style as prince of Wales was of no value. Also the time was approaching when our truce agreement would run out, and we knew that the formal summons to the summer muster against Wales was already issued, and thus far remained in force. We knew, or it came very close to knowing, that this was a matter of form, and the muster would never take place. But for all those who had not our knowledge of the pressures and persuasions in England, the demonstration of genuine power and confidence was essential. So was the right use of Meredith, my lord's first traitor, deep in his debt and absolute in ingratitude. We did not want him slain, we did not want him hurt, we wanted him disciplined, curbed, spared, and brought to submission.

  On the twenty-eighth day of May all the great vassals of Wales assembled to sit in judgment. Even Rhodri, the third of the princes of Gwynedd, came from his manor in Lleyn, where commonly he tended to hang aloof between scorn and jealousy, half minding his own lands, half envying the prowess of David, his junior, and wholly resentful of what outdid him, while he spared to attempt rivalry. He read much in Welsh law in those days, privately and secretly, and brooded on Llewelyn's admitted departure from it. But he said never a word.

  Before this great assembly Meredith ap Rhys Gryg was brought and charged with treason. And in this matter there was none, not even Rhodri, could charge breach of law against the prince. He presided, but he took no accuser's part, and the verdict was left to the assembly.

  Meredith was brought in pinioned, but loosed in the court at Llewelyn's order. He looked in bright, aggressive health and untamed, that square, bearded, loudmouthed, lusty man, fatally easy to like, and indeed his liking had proved fatal to more than one. He made no submission, and very volubly and fiercely defended himself by accusing all opposed to him. But he could not deny his oath of fealty, for most of those present had witnessed it. Nor could he well deny his breaking of it, which all had seen. The assembly convicted him and, against his obdurate refusal to submit, committed him to imprisonment at his lord's will in the castle of Criccieth.

  "Let him stew a while," said Llewelyn, after he had been taken away, "and he may come to his senses and his fealty again. I would not let so gross an offence pass, for the sake of Wales, but I cannot altogether forget how he fought at Cymerau. If he returns to his troth it shall not be made hard for him, but securities I must have."

  But for a long time Meredith ap Rhys Gryg maintained his obstinacy in his prison, while his men in the south, led by his sons, held fast to all his castles but otherwise lay very low, not anxious to provoke an attack which the king, in time of truce, could not prevent or censure. Perhaps he hoped that King Henry would refuse to renew the truce now that it was about to lapse, and would come to his vassal's rescue in arms. If so, he was soon disillusioned, for very shortly after he was shut up in Criccieth the expected approach was made on the king's behalf, and Llewelyn sent out letters of safe-conduct for the royal proctors to meet his own envoys at the ford of Montgomery, at the hamlet called Rhyd Chwima, chief of the traditional places of parley on the border. There the truce was extended in the same form for another full year. Once again Llewelyn offered a large indemnity, as high as sixteen thousand marks, for a full peace, but King Henry remained stubborn, and refused the wider agreement.

  The king's mind was then on France, rather than Wales, for in the winter of that year he set out for Paris, and there the great treaty between France and England was sealed at last. After, they said, much haggling over family details, just as Cynan had foretold. But signed and sealed it was, and King Henry duly did homage to King Louis for those Gascon possessions he held on the mainland of France, and became a peer of that country.

  Now it was while the king was still absent in France, and laid low with a tertian fever at St. Omer, that the thing happened which was ever afterwards railed at by the English as a breach of the truce, but which we saw in another light. Truly the truce was broken, but not first by us. And this is how it fell out.

  Early in a hard January a messenger came riding into Aber from the cantref of Builth, where the royal castle was held for Prince Edward by Roger Mortimer, the greatest lord of the middle march. Roger, through his mother, who was a daughter of Llewelyn Fawr, was first-cousin to my prince, and there was a free sort of respect and even liking between them, though they seldom met. But inevitably they were also rivals and in a manner enemies, and neither would yield a point of vantage to the other, or to the relationship between them. Indeed it was impossible they should, Mortimer being on his father's side, where his inheritance and his obligations lay, all English, and the king's castellan into the bargain, while Llewelyn was utterly bound by his duty and devotion to Wales. But between them there was no ill-feeling, each acknowledging the other's needs and loyalties. But no quarter, either. An honourable but a difficult bond.

  The messenger came in a lather and a great indignation, clamouring that Mortimer had expelled from their holdings the Welsh tenants of Meredith ap Owen, our loyal Meredith, in the cantref of Builth, desiring to have English holders about the castle there. Granted he was responsible for the trust he had taken on, but he had no right to turn out local tenants who had done no wrong.

  "Be easy," said Llewelyn to the envoy from the injured Welshmen, and clapped an arm about his shoulders. "Go eat, and rest, and follow us at leisure; you shall find your homestead ready to be occupied again."

  "Not so!" said the fellow, burning and happy. "If you ride, my lord, so do I ride with you."

  And so he did, when we drew in the muster at short notice, l
eft orders to the outlying chieftains to follow, and rode south into Builth in the January snow.

  They were never prepared for the speed with which we could move, and that even in the winter. We burst into Builth like the blizzard that followed us, and swept it clear as the north-west gale drove the frozen snow. Those raw English tenants of Mortimer's tucked up their gowns and ran like hares, and the exiled Welsh farmers—for that is land that can be farmed, not like our bleak and beautiful mountains—came flooding back on our heels with knife in one hand and wife in the other and the children not far behind, padding through the drifts with their dogs at heel. In every homestead and holding from which they had been driven, we replaced them, restoring a balance that had been violated in defiance of troth. Where, then, was the breach of trace?

  It was not any part of Llewelyn's plan, when we rode out from Aber, to attack the castle of Builth, or to go beyond the violated territories. And thus far we had not set a foot outside our rights, or infringed any part of the agreements to which we were sworn. Whether we were entitled to do so at this point is a delicate question. I know whose hand set this tide in motion, and it was not ours. But to stay it, once launched, was not so simple a matter. Tides must run their course before they turn, and so did ours. Llewelyn swept by Builth on an impetus that could not be stayed, dropped, as it were a calf ripe for birth, a third of his following to encircle the castle, and surged westwards into Dyfed, halting only when the town of Tenby was in flames. Then we withdrew homewards, without haste, consolidating as we passed. But the noose about the castle of Builth remained close and deadly behind us, twined by the men of the cantref, who had their own revenges to take, and drawing ever softly and tenderly tighter as the year wore into spring.

  Now, though we did not know it until many weeks later, this action of Llewelyn's, like a fire in the underbrush, ran unseen and broke out in distant places long after we were already satisfied with our expedition and on the way home, intending nothing further against the peace, and believing the flames already put out. As we pieced together the story from Meurig's messages, and from certain word-of-mouth reports gathered from Cynan himself at the ford of Montgomery in August, when in spite of all the trace was again renewed, this was the way of it:

  King Henry in his shivering convalescence at St. Omer received the news of the Welsh attack upon Builth and Dyfed, doubtless omitting or glossing over the reason for it, and was greatly alarmed. He was obliged by the Provisions, which laid down the dates of the three parliaments, to be back in England for the second day of February, when the Candlemas session should begin, but he was held in France not only by his sickness, but also until he could get from home the money necessary to pay his temporary debts in France. In his fright over Builth he wrote to Hugh Bigod, the justiciar, and ordered him to postpone the Candlemas parliament until he came home, and in the meantime to put aside everything else, and turn all his resources to relieving Builth and guarding the marches. There was to be no parliament without the monarch.

  To do him justice, no doubt he expected to delay the proceedings no more than a week or two, but in the end the delay was longer, and its effects more serious. For the earl of Leicester, also on his way home from that prolonged and courtly convocation in Paris, reached England at the end of January, and took fire when he heard of King Henry's order. The dates of the three parliaments were a sacred part of the agreement to which king, prince and nobles had voluntarily set their seals and given their oaths, and here was the king, after his old arbitrary fashion, countermanding parliament on no authority but his own, and trampling his oath underfoot.

  It seems a somewhat small infringement, but in truth I think it was not so. For what was dismaying was that the king should feel perfectly at liberty to take back power into his own hands without a word, almost without a thought, never even considering that any man might object, so lightly his oath lay upon him, and always would. And the force of the earl's reaction showed that in his heart, whether known to himself or not, he had never trusted that oath to be heavier than thistledown, and knew that if its breach was passed over now in a little thing, it would be useless to attempt to enforce it later in many great things. At any rate, he took a high and angry line in the meetings of the council, protesting that the king had no right to interfere with the proper calling of parliament, and refusing to countenance the despatch of a money aid to him until it could be done in the proper manner, through parliament.

  Thus Henry in St. Omer sat and fretted over ever more frightening reports from home, that Dyfed was in flames, that the earl of Leicester was at odds with the count of Savoy and in defiance of the royal orders, and that Edward was much in Earl Simon's company and much under his influence. Which was certainly true, but the king saw in it more than I think was there to be seen. Other and worse rumours haunted him in his convalescence: that ships bearing armed men and barded horses had set sail for England without royal licence, that the Lusignan brothers were collecting mercenaries in Brittany, that Simon himself had sent for foreign troops. Which last was certainly untrue. It seems that Henry's tormented mind went in terror of civil war in England, and was even inclined to believe that his son, under the guidance of the earl of Leicester, was about to make a bid for the throne, and depose his own father. The king was a sick man, and very easily frightened when he felt himself threatened or forsaken.

  Forced still to sit biting his nails for want of the money to pay his debts and leave, even when he felt well enough to make the crossing, he wrote to the justiciar again, sending him secret orders to summon a picked force of lords with their armed followings to London by a day late in April. The order came just before Easter, and Cynan said afterwards that the chancery clerks worked day and night to get the writs out in time, all the more desperately because they had to cease all their labours for Good Friday. And what was most marked was that the name of the earl of Leicester was not upon the list of those summoned. Henry had heard by then that Edward was with Earl Simon, and that in protest against the rupture of the parliamentary order they intended to hold a parliament in London in the teeth of Gloucester and the more timorous or orthodox of the council. In a frenzy of suspicion King Henry ordered that the city of London should be closed against his son and his brother-in-law, and strong forces recruited to keep the peace. And the minute he could clear his debts and redeem the jewels he had pledged for money meantime (doubtless he had King Louis' help in that matter) he sailed for home and rushed to Westminster.

  As soon as he knew the king was come, Prince Edward hurried to him to pay his respects and make his peace, whether in truly injured innocence or having thought better of a folly I should hesitate to say, but that his associate in the affair was Earl Simon, and of him I could not believe that he nursed any intent against the crown, or would ever have encouraged it in the young man who followed and worshipped him. So I hold Edward innocent of anything more than standing fast on the absolute observance of the Provisions concerning parliament.

  But so did not King Henry. They say he refused to see him at first, afraid of weakening out of love once he set eyes on him. Later he relented and, if he did not altogether believe the young man's protestations of loyalty and love, he forebore from saying so, and they were reconciled. But the King, still suspicious, thought best to send his son out of the kingdom for a while, to busy himself in running the affairs of Gascony.

  Much of this we did not learn until the middle of the summer, by which time we ourselves had added one more anxiety to the king's troubles. For in July the castle of Builth, round which the men of the cantref were still squatting happily like hounds round an earth, was taken by night, and almost without a blow. There were some among the guards there who hated their overseers far more than they hated the Welsh and, though they gave out that the gate had been stormed by a surprise assault while a foraging party was being let in, the truth is that they opened to our men wilfully, and stood by to see the fortress taken. Rhys Fychan came in haste with his forces from Carreg Cennen
, and razed the place to the ground.

  Yet in spite of this offence, the royal muster, called as usual about the time of the ending of the truce, was again countermanded, and late in August Bishop Richard of Bangor and Abbot Anian of Aberconway met the English commissioners again at the ford of Montgomery, and this time procured a truce for two years instead of one. If we could not get a full peace, we managed with the next best thing, peace by stages, a year or two gained at a time.

  It was while the commissioners were conferring, in a camp in the summer meadows on our side of the ford, that I got the greater part of the true story of that Easter alarm from Cynan, who was there in attendance. On our side of the river the ground rises gradually in many folds, on the English side somewhat more steeply into the wooded hills that hide the rock and castle and town of Montgomery, a mile or so distant. There are plenty of quiet thickets there where men may talk privately, as we did.

  "I tell you this," said Cynan, "the king has a feeling for the shifts of other men's minds, and though he may be too easily hopeful, yet he is often right. This clash has shaken a great many of those who felt themselves touched with suspicion by contagion, and they are busy withdrawing silently, every day another inch or two away from their sworn devotion to the reform. The balance swings gradually King Henry's way. Some were affrighted, a few were truly shocked, none of them want to risk such a tussle again. The king feels the bit between his teeth, and when his confidence is high he can be desperately bold."