Adam Gurdun (continued)

The tale of Sir Adam (continued) In 1253 Adam Gurdun is granted a reward for his military service in Poitou and Gascony: on 10 December, at Bazas in Gascony, Henry III gives him a licence for life to hunt the hare, fox, cat and badger in the forests of Southampton, but not to take the king’s great deer. The following May he is granted exemption from further service if he can find a sergeant to serve for forty days in his stead. 

Wigmore Castle in Shropshire

Adam clearly enjoys a life of soldiering. When another war breaks out in 1257, this time against the Welsh, he again serves in person. By now Adam has been drawn into the affinity of Roger Mortimer, lord of Wigmore on the Welsh March, and serves under his command. Mortimer’s contingent is part of a separate army ordered to support Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford, in his command of the Marches from Montgomery to Glamorgan. Adam, therefore, is not part of the king’s army that marches from Chester to Deganwy.

King Henry gets no further as his advance is crippled by supply problems and skilful Welsh guerilla attacks. The king has unfurled his dragon banner and threatened to ‘exterminate the Welsh’; instead he is forced to retreat, ‘the inglorious king, his treasure much squandered, laughed at and mocked by the enemy’ (Matthew Paris). Henry shows considerable personal courage, riding at the head of his troops, but that cannot make up for dismal planning and the famine and disease that sweeps through his army.

Illustration of medieval soldiers, taken from the Douce Apocalpyse

Adam is having a slightly better time of it in the Middle March. His captain, Roger Mortimer, has his own objectives to pursue against Prince Llywelyn ap Gruffudd. Llywelyn has broken the Treaty of Gwrtherynion, agreed with Mortimer’s father, in which the Welsh prince swore he would never invade the Mortimer lordships of Gwrtherynion and Maelienydd. In 1256 he abjured the treaty and carried fire and sword into these lands, making a lifelong enemy of his cousins Mortimer. Bad move.

Not much is known of Mortimer’s service against the Welsh in 1257, but he seems to hold his ground. On 28 December he is given licence to fortify his town of Radnor against the Welsh, and on the following day grants an extra letter of protection to Adam Gurdun. The knight of Hampshire has survived the harrowing ordeal of war in Wales.