Читать книгу The Three Edwards: The Pageant of England - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 11

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At the start of his reign, however, Edward had not anticipated trouble because the ruler of the mountain country, Llewelyn ab Gruffydd, had made a most advantageous treaty with Henry III and was believed to be in a pacific mood. There was another reason which should have inclined the Welsh leader to peace. Some years before, when Simon de Montfort had raised the baronage against the feckless old king, the young Llewelyn had visited the commoner leader and had seen his daughter, Eleanor, who was called in the family the Demoiselle. Simon’s wife was a sister of King Henry and had passed on to the Demoiselle a full share of the Plantagenet beauty. The Welsh prince had fallen instantaneously and completely in love with the girl and, when he left, it was with the understanding they would be married when peace in the country had been restored. Even after Simon’s defeat and death and the confiscation of all the great estates and castles of the De Montforts, the infatuated Llewelyn still desired nothing better than to claim his promised bride. The Demoiselle had to fly to France with her mother after the battle of Evesham, and it was not until the mother’s death that she was put on a ship to recross the Channel and join her lover.

Here was a chance for a state coup which could not be overlooked. Edward sent four vessels to lurk behind the Scilly Islands, with orders to seize the French vessel and carry off the Demoiselle. A brother who had accompanied her was sent to Corfe Castle as a prisoner, but the fair Eleanor was taken to Windsor Castle and kept there in semi-confinement for three years. During that time she was dangled before Llewelyn’s eyes as a bribe for his good behavior.

Before the capture of the Demoiselle, however, a clash had been imminent. Hostilities blazed up all along the Marcher country, and the Welsh forces won successes at various points. Incensed by the defeat of an English army at Kidwelly, Edward decided on a major invasion and gathered a large force at Chester. Two other armies were to strike at the same time, one moving out from Shrewsbury under the command of Henry de Lacy and a second poised against South Wales under the Earl of Hereford. At the same moment an English fleet occupied the Menai Strait and cut off the Isle of Anglesey from all communication with Wales. Llewelyn depended on the food supplies which reached him from Anglesey and he now found himself at a desperate pass.

The outcome was easy to foresee. Edward was an aggressive general, striking hard and fast and often, and under the pressure he exerted along the Conway River the Welsh were forced back into the cover of the wooded hillsides surrounding Snowdon. Here they held out bravely. Edward did not sit down and wait for starvation to complete his triumph. While the Welsh tightened their belts and held on grimly, he proceeded to build several strong castles at strategic points and to strengthen those at Conway and Chester. In late autumn Llewelyn gave in and sent out word that he was prepared to make terms.

A treaty was signed at Conway on November 9 by which the Welsh prince gave up South Wales to the English and agreed to pay a fine of fifty thousand pounds. Anglesey was restored to him with the understanding that a yearly rental of one thousand marks was to be paid for it. The terms were hard, but later Edward agreed to remit the fine. This was generous because the Welsh prince, reduced to ruling a small part of the country around Snowdon, would have found it impossible to raise such an enormous sum.

The next year Llewelyn was summoned to meet the king at Worcester and to his delight found Eleanor de Montfort there with the royal family. She had remained constant to him through all the trials and delays, and they were married on October 13 at the door of the cathedral, a large number of the nobility of England having gathered to witness the ceremony. The happy couple, who found they were as much in love as ever, left at once for Wales. It seemed that at last the peace between the two countries had been established on a firm basis.

The Demoiselle (her girlhood name clung to her all through her life) was not destined to much married happiness. Two years later she died in childbirth, leaving a daughter who was given the name of Gwenllian.

After a few years of peace, Llewelyn decided on another effort to rid the country of the English. There had been continuous irritations. Archbishop Peckham was at odds with the Welsh because of some fumbling efforts to bring the churches in the two countries into closer harmony. The subordinate officials of the king were aggressive and greedy, and the Marcher barons as usual were looking for gains. And behind all this there was a prediction by the wizard Merlin which all Wales began to talk about. Someday, Merlin had declared, a Llewelyn would wear the crown of Brutus and reign over England as well as Wales. Was this the Llewelyn he had meant? Finally the prince’s brother David, who had been allied with the English up to this time, came back and began secretly to urge Llewelyn to strike.

Accordingly Llewelyn struck. On the eve of Palm Sunday, 1282, when all should have been peace in the land, the Welshmen marched out to a wild piping and the roll of national songs sung by thousands of fine voices. At first, success perched on the banners of the Welsh leader. Had Merlin been right? Roger Clifford, one of the English leaders, was beaten and taken prisoner. Two mighty earls were sent to the rightabout. The English were building a bridge across the Menai Strait. In an excess of bravado three hundred English and Gascon soldiers crossed over before it was completed. The tide came in and cut them off, and the Welsh proceeded to wipe them out to a man.

Convinced that the full tide of success was running his way, Llewelyn committed the folly of taking his slender forces down into the open to face the might of Edward. In a relatively small skirmish near the upper waters of the Severn he was defeated and killed.

In view of the prediction of Merlin, Edward had the head of the fallen prince cut off and exposed on a pole above the Tower of London, crowned with ivy.

Gwenllian, the infant daughter of Llewelyn, was taken to England. When she grew old enough she took the vows at the convent of Sempringham. It may have been devotion on her part or the result of a desire on the part of the government at Westminster to have the Welsh royal line come to an end.

David, the turbulent brother, was still at large. He was finally trapped, through information supplied by some of his countrymen, in a boggy stretch of land near Snowdon and taken to Rhuddlan with his wife, two sons, and seven daughters. He had been at odds with Llewelyn most of his life and had fought on the king’s side until the final campaign; and his role of double traitor seems to have roused a deep resentment in the English. He was taken to Shrewsbury and tried before a Parliament summoned for the purpose. There he was condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered as a traitor. Some authorities say that this method of execution was invented for his benefit. As a traitor to his knightly vows he was to be dragged at the heels of horses to the place of execution. Here he was to be hanged by the neck as a punishment for murders he had committed. He was to be cut down, however, before consciousness had left him and then, for profaning the week of the Lord’s passion, his entrails were to be cut out. Finally, for plotting against the king’s life, his head was to be chopped off and his body divided into four parts.

Whether or not the parliamentary judges were responsible for this dreadful method of execution, the gruesome spectacle seemed to find favor. For centuries thereafter it was used to dispose of men who had been convicted of treason. There would be a case, in fact, during the reign of Henry IV when official animosity against a convicted traitor, a man of low degree, would be so great that the various stages of the sentence would be carried out in different cities.

The head of the unfortunate David was elevated above the Tower of London beside that of his brother (of which little was left by that time). The cities of York and Winchester engaged in a dispute for possession of his right shoulder, and Winchester won. The three other quarters were awarded to York, Bristol, and Northampton.

David’s qualities had not endeared him to his countrymen while he was alive, but the manner of his death made him a martyr in their eyes. The bards sang songs about him for centuries thereafter.