The pass of Aberconwy

“Therefore the king sent for the Irish, who came and in that part of Wales called Anglesey, depopulated the land by the sword and devastated everything with fire. The Irish have an old hatred of the Welsh and were eager to take vengeance on their enemies.”

 - Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora

In autumn 1245 about 3000 Irish troops landed on Anglesey, destroyed the harvest and exterminated the population. They were summoned by Henry III, who ordered the treasurer of Dublin to pay them the standard wage of tuppence a day from 18-29 October. A few days later the king withdrew from Deganwy. He had achieved his primary aim of strengthening the castle - “like a thorn in Dafydd’s eye” - though the material and human cost was obscene. English and Welsh chroniclers describe corpses piled on the banks of the Conwy, or else rotting on the riverbed.

Henry was showing a brutal determination he had not previously displayed in Wales. He gave orders for the economic blockade to continue, and for the Marchers to continue to attack Dafydd’s allies. He had previously refused an offer of peace from Dafydd’s distain or seneschal, Ednyfed Fychan, and made it plain he intended to break his nephew at any price. Dafydd had been ill for two years. As early as 1244 the prince informed his uncle he could not come to court, since he was suffering from a strange malady. This was a combination of alopecia and onycholysis, which caused his hair and fingernails to fall out. There is a suspicion Dafydd was poisoned, but if so it was a very slow poisoning.

The extreme stress of the war proved too much for Dafydd’s fragile health. He died at his winter court at Aber in Arllechwedd on 25 February 1246, worn out by the effort of keeping “the pass of Aberconwy”. He was forty-five. Dafydd Benfras composed the prince’s elegy (translated and slightly modified by Sir John Lloyd):

“He was a man who sowed the seed of joy for his people,
Of the right royal lineage of kings.
So lordly his gifts, ‘twas strange
He gave not the moon in Heaven!
Ashen of hue this day is the hand of bounty,
The hand that last year kept the pass of Aberconwy.”

Shortly before Dafydd died, a man named Nicholas de Molis arrived in Wales. Nicholas is virtually lost to modern historiography, but his presence sent a ripple of dread through the Welsh chronicles. He had recently smashed the Basques under Thibaut the Troubadour, King of Navarre, and now King Henry unleashed him on Gwynedd.