A position of trust

A foot in both camps (2)

On 4 January 1278 Goronwy ap Heilyn and two of his companions were permitted access to Eleanor de Montfort at Windsor Castle. Eleanor had been held in custody since 1275, when she and her brother Amaury were captured at sea by English privateers in the service of the king. She was on her way to marry Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, which the king interpreted as a dangerous renewal of the alliance between the Montfort family and the Prince of Wales.

Goronwy must have enjoyed a position of trust at the English court. This was further shown by the king’s order that Goronwy and Eleanor might talk ‘secretly or openly’, as they preferred. In the general spirit of detente, the king was happy to allow Goronwy to pass on whatever private messages he might be carrying from Llywelyn to Eleanor.

Six days later, 10 January, Goronwy was appointed as one of the justices to hear and determine all suits and pleas both of lands and trespasses and wrongs in the marches and in Wales. They were to do justice therein, according to the laws and customs of those parts of where the land lay, or in which trespasses and wrongs had been committed. Goronwy was one of four Welsh justices appointed to this seven-man commission: the others were Hywel ap Meurig, the Archdeacon of Cardigan and Rhys ap Gruffudd.

He continued to enjoy the confidence of the King of England and the Prince of Wales. In December 1278 he and the justice of Chester were ordered to carry out the business concering the restitution of corn in Anglesey. This was an interesting example of Welsh law, in which goods could be claimed by placing a cross on them. Only a justice or ‘ynaid’ could order the cross to be removed and the goods restored to their original owner.

This, therefore, was an important man and a skilled diplomat and lawyer; a familiar figure in the palaces and law courts of England and Wales. In 1281 he was made bailiff of Rhos in the Four Cantreds, placing Goronwy on the border between the new royal administration in Wales and the territory of Prince Llywelyn. It was not a safe place to be.