One of my interests is the history of medieval Wales, in particular the Welsh princes of the thirteenth century. Here is today's post on shifting loyalties...
The above is a bond dated 7 November 1271, whereby Meurig ap Llywelyn had to provide sureties of 100 marks to Prince Llywelyn ap Gruffudd to secure the release of a hostage, taken by the prince as a guarantee of Meurig’s loyalty. This bond was sealed at Llywelyn’s castle of Rhyd y Briw inside Brecon. On the same day and at the same castle, Einion Sais had to put his seal to a similar agreement, whereby he used the same sureties for the sum of 200 marks for his provision of a hostage for his future fidelity to the prince.
Meurig and Einion were both landholders in Brecon. Of the two, Einion was probably the more powerful and held a castle at Penpont in the Usk valley. They both appear on the list of troop-leaders under the command of Hywel ap Meurig in 1277, in which they and Einion ap Madog served as mounted constables in the army of the Middle March. The loyalty of all these men to the Prince of Wales, suspect in 1271, was non-existent by 1277.
Thus the first cracks in Llywelyn’s principality occurred in the Middle March (Brecon, Radnor and adjacent areas) among the native lords and freemen. Whatever Llywelyn had to offer these men was rejected. This was their choice, not something forced upon them by Edward I or the great Marcher lords: Hywel was in sole command of the all-Welsh army that drove Llywelyn from the marchlands in 1277 and invaded southern Gwynedd. To cast them as victims or puppets is to rob them of ‘agency’, to use a current buzzword.
All of which casts another perspective on Llywelyn’s demise in 1282:
“It was surely no coincidence that the lands which Einion ap Madog acquired, in a deed that was witnessed or sealed by many of those men, can be identified as, in all probability, the very territory in the lordship of Builth to which Llywelyn ap Gruffudd was lured to his death in December 1282. It is difficult to avoid the suspicion that Einion ap Madog and some of his associates were deeply involved in the circumstances of the prince’s death. In this last case opposition to the imposition of princely rule seems likely to have had ultimately fatal consequences for the prince himself”. -
Dr David Stephenson
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