The army that didn't vanish

It’s almost that time of year again - no, not Christmas. I refer to the death of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Prince of Wales, on 10 or 11 December 1282.

The usual populist stuff is doing the rounds at the moment. One particular conspiracy theory refuses to go away. In his book ‘Ghosts on the Fairway: the Army that Vanished’ the late Anthony Edwards suggested that Llywelyn and his men were all murdered, after being lured to a peace conference in which they were persuaded to put down their weapons. After this act of remarkable stupidity, they were all slaughtered and dumped under a nearby field, which is now a golf course. Edwards challenged his critics to dig up the golf course. Nobody took him up on that, so - the theory goes - it must be true.

Edwards based his suggestion on the following line from the Chronicle of Peterborough:

“Furthermore, not one of the prince’s cavalry escaped death, but they were killed with 3000 of the foot and also the three magnates of the land who died with him; namely, Almafar, who was lord of Llanbadarn Fawr, Rhys ap Gruffudd, who was seneschal of all the land of the prince, and thirdly, it is thought, Llywelyn Fychan, who was lord of Bromfield; of the English, truly it is said, none in that place were killed or wounded”.

Because the chronicler states that no English were harmed, Edwards came up with his truce theory. To be fair to the author, it was only a suggestion on his part. It is now accepted and aggressively marketed as fact in certain quarters.

The Peterborough chronicler also states that Llywelyn’s army consisted of 160 cavalry and 7000 footsoldiers. If only 3000 of the foot were killed, that means the rest got away. If the Welsh had laid down their arms, it is difficult to see how over half the army could have escaped. This point is seldom acknowledged or discussed, because it is inconvenient to the narrative. You either use the source in full, or you don't. You don't get to pick and choose what you like and dump the rest.

Peterborough aside, there are over thirty chronicle, poetry and letter sources for the death of Llywelyn, English and Welsh, contemporary or near-contemporary. Many conflict with each other, a few make no sense at all, virtually all of them have some kind of spin or political bias. The one reasonable certainty is that Llywelyn was lured to an ambush by his cousins, Edmund and Roger Mortimer, and executed by their retainers. His army had either already been put to flight, or was ambushed and routed shortly afterwards. The context and motive for the killing is complicated, and can be traced all the way back to the time of Llywelyn the Great.

But people don’t like complicated. It gets in the way. It makes them think, and question, and engage with unpleasant realities they would rather ignore or avoid. People don’t like that sort of thing. I know I don’t.

Too bad. I doubt Llywelyn liked having his head cut off, but that’s what he got.