John ‘le Boeuf’ Giffard, 1st Baron Giffard, Lord of Brimpsfield (1231-99)
John Giffard was one of those dynamic larger-than-life figures of the high medieval era who seem to owe more to fiction than reality. A complex but not untypical mixture of forest outlaw, royal councillor, baronial gangster and professional soldier, his nickname of ‘le Boeuf’ - the Beef - hints at the kind of man he was. Giffard’s nickname and certain elements of his career may have inspired the character of Sir Reginald Front-de-Boeuf, one of the trio of splendid knightly villains in Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe.
As a youth Giffard saw much service against the Welsh, taking part in the royal campaigns of 1246, 1247 and 1248, first as an esquire and then a fully fledged knight. Doubtless hardened by these experiences, he made his mark in the early 1260s as an adherent of Simon de Montfort, the rebellious Earl of Leicester. His antics on behalf of de Montfort earned him a mention in The Song of the Barons, composed by a pro-baronial minstrel. Part of the couplet mentioning Giffard has not survived, but the fragments that remain translate as follows:
‘Sir John Giffard ought well to be named, who had scarcely a…in this riding-bout…and he was always forward…valiant and wise and active…and of great renown….’
Giffard’s deeds in this era are the stuff of balladry. In early 1263 a dispute between the two rival sheriffs of Gloucestershire, the Montfortian William de Traci and the royalist Maci de Besile, spilled over into violence. De Besile went armed into the court at Gloucester where de Traci was sitting in session, seized his rival by the hair and dragged him through the streets to the castle. In response Giffard and Roger de Clifford stormed Gloucester Castle, released de Traci, seized de Besile and carried him off prisoner into the Welsh marshes. They also found time to kill a carpenter who had shot two of Giffard’s esquires, raid de Besile’s estate at Sherston and steal his cattle.
For Giffard’s next trick, he descended upon the Hundred Court at Quedgeley, where the Royal Constable had summoned him to answer charges of treason. Giffard came, but in full armour and with troops at his back. The Constable and jury scattered in panic, followed closely by Giffard, who slew a few of them before arriving before the walls of royalist-held Gloucester. Here it was decided to take the city by stratagem. Along with his ally, John de Balun, Giffard disguised himself as a Welsh wool merchant. Carrying woolpacks and wearing a distinctive style of long Welsh cloak, they deceived the porters into letting them through the gates. Once inside they threw off their disguises, slew the guards and admitted the rest of the baronial army. The city was overrun but the garrison of the castle held firm. Enter Prince Edward, who came hurrying up with royal reinforcements and attempted to storm the walls. Repulsed, Edward hopped into an empty boat moored beside the Severn and rowed across with some men to reinforce the garrison. Not to be outdone in terms of theatrical heroics, Giffard launched an attack on the abbey by climbing the wall of the abbey orchard - no doubt stopping to gather a few apples on the way. Eventually a truce was brokered by the Abbot of Gloucester and Bishop of Worcester, whereby Giffard and the other rebels agreed to withdraw.
We next hear of Giffard at the Battle of Lewes, where he was unhorsed during the first savage cavalry assault led by Edward. Taken prisoner and carried off to Lewes Castle, Giffard must have scarce credited his good fortune when news arrived that the royalists were defeated. Soon after Lewes he broke with de Montfort after a dispute over ransoms for Richard of Cornwall (Henry III’s brother) and other prisoners taken at Lewes. Giffard fled to join forces with Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester. Together they blocked de Montfort’s tour of Gloucestershire, took Gloucester and destroyed all available shipping, ruining de Montfort’s hopes of crossing the Severn. At the ‘murder of Evesham’ in 1265, where the Montfortian cause was exterminated in a spate of noble bloodletting unseen since Hastings, Giffard played his part: chosen as a member of the death-squad instructed by Edward to hunt down de Montfort on the field, he was with Roger de Mortimer in the last moments, when de Montfort fell to his knees and was skewered through the neck by Mortimer’s lance.
Giffard’s later career was mostly concerned with Wales, where his expertise and knowledge of Welsh warfare proved invaluable to Edward I. A bachelor until he was 39, Giffard chose a wife in his own distinctive idiom - as John Cleese might say - by illegally abducting a widow named Maud de Longespee and spiriting her off to Brimpsfield Castle. He was eventually allowed to marry her by paying a fine of 300 marks for marrying without consent. The lady’s thoughts are unknown, but the marriage seemed happy enough. Maud bore Giffard two daughters and possibly conspired with him in an extremely murky incident that still baffles historians to this day.
In 1282 the Welsh rose in revolt under their prince, Llewellyn ap Gruffydd. Giffard had served against Llewellyn in the first Edwardian war of 1277, and was now summoned to arms again. In the winter of 1282 things were going badly for the English. The Earl of Gloucester’s defeat at Llandeilo was followed by a more serious reverse at Moel-y-don on the Anglesey strait, where Luke de Tany and some 300 bannerets were drowned. King Edward withdrew to Rhuddlan to summon reinforcements from Gascony, while his commanders elsewhere were forced onto the defensive.
To make things worse, Roger de Mortimer, Edward’s most able captain in Wales, died in October 1282. His command in Montgomery was given over to Roger l’Estrange, while Builth was turned over to Giffard. Thus l’Estrange and Giffard, along with the late Mortimer’s kinsmen Edmund and Roger de Mortimer of Chirk, were on the scene when Llewellyn advanced into the region at the head of 7000 men. What happened next, the details of how precisely Llewellyn was lured to his death and the flower of his army destroyed by the Marchers at Irfon Bridge, is a perhaps unknowable mystery. At least fourteen sources, English and Welsh, give slightly differing accounts of the prince’s demise.
One later poem describes Llewellyn meeting a mysterious gentlewoman in a tryst (his wife Eleanor de Montfort would not have been happy). A few days after Llewellyn’s death John Pecham, Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote to Giffard’s wife Maud de Longespee in response to her entreaty that her late cousin - she was kin to Llewellyn - be absolved of his excommunication and buried in consecrated ground. This was impossible, he replied, unless there was evidence of his repentance before death. He therefore asked Maud to fetch ‘any of those who were present at his death’ to bring evidence of his penitence. This is a strange request, to say the least: presumably the only persons present at Llewellyn’s death were the soldiers who killed him. Pecham does also mention that Llewellyn asked for a priest to absolve him before he died. Perhaps the tale of the tryst stemmed from Maud’s involvement in the affair, which in turn gives rise to a suspicion that she played some part in luring the last native Prince of Wales to his doom: after all, her husband was a commander on the English side, and she was a blood-relation to Llewellyn. After 1282 Giffard stood high in favour with Edward, and was constantly re-granted presents of Welsh land despite losing them in various rebellions. This, as John Morris, suggests, argues that Giffard had done some great service to the crown, the most obvious being the killing of Llewellyn in a ruthless gangland-style assassination.
Even in his latter years ‘the Beef’ continued to play a vital role in Edward’s Welsh campaigns. When the whole of Wales rose against English rule in 1294 under Madog ap Llewellyn, Edward managed to get himself trapped by a Welsh army inside Conway Castle. The Earl of Warwick hurried up to his aid and broke Madog’s army in an engagement at Maes Moydog in Powys, where longbowmen were used in tandem with the English cavalry. Shortly afterwards Edward proclaimed he wished to ‘show his gratitude to John Giffard, has taken him under his special protection and defence on account of his bodily infirmity; and also because quite recently he and his men have powerfully aided the king in the king’s Welsh campaign’. This remarkable entry suggests Giffard was wounded in the fighting against Madog and possibly advised Warwick on his strategy at Maes Moydog. If so then Giffard was present at Lewes, Evesham, Irfon Bridge and Maes Moydog, making him one of the most important English soldier-barons of the period.
By this time Giffard’s wife Maud had died without male issue. He twice remarried and at the age of 54 finally managed to father two sons, John and Edmund, by his third wife Margaret Neville. He was twice summoned to Parliament in 1295 and 1298 and appointed a member of Prince Edward - later Edward II’s - council in 1298 when England briefly threatened to collapse into civil war. Men who live by the sword are generally said to die by it, but this maxim didn't apply to Giffard. The old warrior expired peacefully on 29th May 1299, aged 68, at manor of Boynton in Wiltshire. He was buried in the Abbey Church at Malmesbury.
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