Llywelyn ap Gruffudd: Prince of Wales

By J. Beverley Smith

Llywelyn ap Gruffudd: Prince of Wales is an outstanding work by an author with a perceptive understanding of the complexities of his subject. It is clearly, sometimes passionately, written and is destined to be the definitive work on this matter for many generations. This is the first full-length English-language study of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd (c. 1225-1282), prince of Wales. In this scholarly and lucid book J. Beverley Smith offers an in-depth assessment not only of Llywelyn, but of the age in which he lived. The author takes thirteenth-century Wales as a backdrop against which he analyses the relationship between a sense of nationhood and the practical realities of creating a structure to embrace a unified principality of Wales held under the aegis of the English Crown. This examination of the triumphs and subsequent reverses of a ruler of exceptional vision and vigour is a substantial contribution to our understanding of the nature of Welsh politics and the complexities of Anglo-Welsh relations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Wales Press
• Release date: Jan 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781783160839

J. Beverley Smith

J. Beverley Smith was Professor of Welsh History in the Department of History and Welsh History at Aberystwyth University.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Inheritance

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Michaelmas day 1267 Llywelyn ap Gruffudd came before Henry III at Rhyd Chwima, the ford on the Severn a short distance from Montgomery castle. The ford of Montgomery had already become a recognized meeting place where proctors appointed by king and prince often met to resolve matters over which contention had risen on the frontiers between their lands. But the meeting between the king and the prince themselves had a particular significance. On that day Llywelyn did homage to Henry and swore fealty. No account of the event has survived but, if the two men followed the conventions which were well established among medieval nations, Llywelyn would have knelt before the king and placed his hands in his lord’s hands and, when he had done homage in this way, he would have pronounced the solemn words which promised his fidelity in word and deed. Although the proceedings signified that Llywelyn had submitted himself to the king’s lordship, they also served to elevate the prince. Henry had come to the frontier at Montgomery from Shrewsbury where members of his council had joined the prince’s men in prolonged negotiations that ultimately led to a historic peace treaty. Ottobuono, the papal legate who conducted the later stages of the transactions, was able to present the outcome as an agreement which showed that the two nations, after prolonged conflict, had made peace with one another in a manner which brought credit upon both sides. Four days later, King Henry travelled the remaining distance to reach the furthermost part of his kingdom and complete the formalities which signified his wish to honour Llywelyn. In taking the prince’s hands into his own the king recognized the special position that Llywelyn had won for himself by establishing his authority over an extensive part of Wales. For some years already Llywelyn had used the style ‘prince of Wales’ and, by the proceedings on the frontier between the kingdom of England and the principality of Wales, the king indicated his wish to confirm the prince’s right to that exalted style.¹

Llywelyn ap Gruffudd was the first prince in the history of Wales to secure the king of England’s recognition of a title which implicitly proclaimed the unity of a large part of the country under the lordship of a single ruler, and securing Henry’s acknowledgement that an extensive dominion was now vested in one person was a considerable achievement. For, though the prince who came to meet the king sprang from a royal lineage stretching back over centuries, the position which he formally secured in 1267 was entirely the result of his own endeavours. Only one man among the princes of Wales, namely his grandfather Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, or Llywelyn the Great, had ever achieved a comparable measure of unity. The nation’s sense of identity may perhaps be traced to an early period in its history, but the idea of a single political structure embracing the various lands held under Welsh lordship was relatively new. Signs of an aspiration for political coherence may be discerned a little earlier, but the objective came to be a practical proposition only when Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, in the early years of the thirteenth century, was able to bring the princes of Wales together in a military alliance which gave birth to a form of political unity under his lordship. It was an altogether different matter, and still more difficult, to induce the king of England to tolerate a change in the internal organization of Wales which had such profound consequences for the relationship between Wales and England. Not even Llywelyn the Great had been able to surmount this difficulty. By his submission at Rhyd Chwima in 1267 Llywelyn ap Gruffudd registered an achieve ment which stood unique in the history of the nation. This volume attempts to trace the manner by which Llywelyn ap Gruffudd secured that triumph, to make an estimate of his achievement, and to understand how his success was subsequently reversed. A study of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd provides an opportunity to examine a period of momentous importance in the shaping of the nation’s political destiny.

The prince’s achievement was unique, but his endeavour was not without precedent and, in attempting to understand the objectives he set himself and the methods he employed, account needs to be taken of the efforts of his forebears. Particular notice has obviously to be given to Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, a predecessor to whom the grandson frequently referred in pursuing his own ends. Neither of the princes has gained the benefit of a modern historical assessment embodied in a substantial study specifically devoted to them, and much of our understanding necessarily stems from the considered and detailed chapters embodied in the work of John Edward Lloyd.² A reading of the History of Wales suggests that it was Llywelyn ap Iorwerth’s achievement which the author considered to be the supreme accomplishment in the history of medieval Wales. He referred to the thirteenth century, it is true, as ‘the age of the two Llywelyns’, and he acknowledged the primacy which the second Llywelyn established in his time. But in his estimation it was, without doubt, Llywelyn the Great who revealed the subtle blending of the qualities of the statesman with the invincible spirit of a leader in war, who combined the gift of opportunism with the prescience which ensured that the princely interest was never placed in jeopardy, and who skilfully steered his dominion through the vicissitudes of the early years to the security of the period of his maturity. Despite a readiness to recognize the extent of his achievement, the qualities that he perceived in Llywelyn ap Gruffudd hardly matched those which had raised the grandfather above all other princes of the nation. In Lloyd’s view the key to Llywelyn ap Gruffudd’s success lay in fateful circumstances, and the prince possessed neither the judgement nor the instinctive prudence with which his grandfather was so well endowed. Although the second Llywelyn at the peak of his career won an elevated and recognized position which had eluded the first, and though in pursuing his objectives he trod a path already marked out by his predecessor, his triumph was still founded upon an uncertain basis, for so much depended on fickle fortune and transitory advantage. It is a view to which historical opinion may still afford some measure of assent, but one prince need not be diminished in order to respect another. Acknowledging the grandson’s indebtedness to his grandfather’s vision and capability does nothing to lessen the achievement of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd.³ This study thus begins by identify ing the essential features of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd’s political endeav our and estimating the extent to which his objectives had entered into the calculations of the dynasty of Gwynedd in the preceding generations and particularly in the time of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth. Three themes may be readily recognized: the value the princes placed upon their patrimonial inheritance in Gwynedd and their concern for its integrity; their relationships with those who ruled in Powys and Deheubarth and the march of Wales, and particularly their quest for influence in those areas; and their constant concern for the persistently difficult relationship with the kingdom of England.

The record of their time shows that the princes were imbued with a consciousness of status which was closely bound up with their historical inheritance. It finds eloquent expression in a statement which Llywelyn ap Gruffudd made during his exchanges with Archbishop Pecham only a few weeks before his death in combat in 1282. Three features may be recognized: a memory of a royal lineage which could be traced back to the Trojan origins of the nation itself; a sense of territory; and a grasp of the legitimate and inherent nature of the status which the lineage maintained upon the patrimonial territory.⁴ These perceptions may be sensed at a much earlier period in the history of the kingdom of Gwynedd and they are particularly relevant to the manner by which the lineage was able to extricate itself from the adversity in which it was placed in the Norman period.⁵ There can be no doubt of the gravity of the challenge which confronted the Welsh dynasties in that period, and it could be portrayed as a conflict between one power which represented the virtues and superior capability of a society at the core of Latin Christendom and another less well endowed and a decidedly more fractious society upon its periphery.⁶ Pecham’s letters to Llywelyn ap Gruffudd reveal the extent to which the church could still view the nation that resisted the English crown as one which had need to be brought more securely within the Christian fold. Pecham was not the first to recognize characteristics in the Welsh which amounted to a flawed morality, and the image cultivated by contemporary commentators placed the nation among the more disadvantaged societies.⁷ The fragmented nature of political authority, and the disability which arose from it, was perhaps a mark of ineptitude in the ordering of society. There can be no doubt that the fissile political configuration of Wales left the country exposed to alien intervention, but the precise nature of the contrast between Norman and Welsh capabilities might be considered more carefully. Military technology, and expertise in the deployment of military resources, counted for much, and the capacity of the Welsh rulers to adapt themselves to the specifically military needs which confronted them mattered immensely in containing and then reversing the Norman thrust within a generation of the first incursions. But this military effort was a facet of a decidedly political endeavour. The partial but crucial recovery was the work of lineages engaged in salvaging their territories and restoring the power of Welsh kingship.

Attributes of this kingship remained an essential part of the political culture of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The poets who addressed Llywelyn ap Gruffudd or commemorated his death were quite sure of his royal inheritance and his royal quality. ‘Gwir frenin Cymru, cymraisg ddoniau’, proclaimed Llygad Gŵr, his prince a true king of Wales, of powerful qualities.⁸ Symbols of royal status were cherished, notably the gold coronet (aur dalaith) to which poets referred, a relic which the conqueror of Wales was careful to preserve.⁹ This royal status might be seen as a residual legacy of a gradually eroded pristine kingship. On the other hand, emphasis might reasonably be placed on the creative vigour by which the potentialities of Welsh kingship came to be realized only in a late era, when those who represented the ancient lineages had ceased to call themselves kings and their territories were not normally described as kingdoms. A calculated retention of the terminology of a royal antiquity was an essential part of the princes’ armoury during their last tumultuous generations. The territory over which a prince exerted lordship might still be a teyrnas, the sphere of a king, in the language of a poet, a regnum in the parlance of a lawyer. Possession of a definable territory was a key attribute of kingship and one of enduring relevance. The lawyers’ texts convey a keen sense of frontier that may, in one sense, be an admission of political fragmentation, but it may equally reflect a recognition that precise demarcation of political domains was a prerequisite of ordered society.¹⁰ What lay beyond the frontier of gwlad or patria was the gorwlad or aliena patria; its raiding by the host might be sanctioned by custom, but the land beyond the frontier could equally be subject to reciprocal arrangements for the conduct of neighbourly relations including legal process. The frontier bounded a land which was a sphere of jurisdiction and an area where relationships between ruler and ruled were regulated by conventions which governed the rights and obligations of the one and the other. Crucially, too, the territory was the sphere from which the ruler drew the economic resources which sustained his power, and there can be no doubt that the demesnes associated with the princes’ courts, and the fiscal obligations centred upon them, represented assets derived from the period of those of the lineage who, exercising stable authority over many generations, had called themselves kings.¹¹

The image of kingship which emerges from the work of the twelfth-century court poets, Meilyr Brydydd, Gwalchmai ap Meilyr, Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr, or others, is one of men of lineage who bore responsibility for their territories in a manner appropriate to their royal status.¹² They had a capability for war, and the poets make much of this. Their territories were sometimes at war with one another but the historical record undoubtedly conveys the extent to which Norman intervention exacer bated conflict both between and within the territories.¹³ It would be well to be wary lest the endemic strife of the period be seen as necessarily a testimony to an inherently violent society, endlessly indulging its heroic exultation in war. The military prowess of the kings was esteemed by the poets as a means of ensuring the security of the territories with which they were entrusted. The rulers were essentially concerned with the stability of the political order with which their royal status was inextricably linked. Welsh historical writing, represented in Brut y Tywysogyon, while pre serving an account of daunting internal conflict, indicates in the same record of events, and in the encomia to the kings and princes, the value placed upon the cohesive power of rulers who governed their lands securely under God’s grace. The manner by which the royal lineage of Gwynedd extricated itself from the adversity in which it found itself in the Norman period, as a result of both alien and native challenges, is the theme of the History of Gruffudd ap Cynan, a work which reveals a skilful blending of modes of thought character istic of contemporary Latin writing with those conserved in the indigenous literary tradition. There is no better guide to the conceptual inheritance to which Llywelyn ap Gruffudd laid claim in the thirteenth century.¹⁴

Much as the historians of other nations elaborate upon the elevating qualities of the ancient lineages to which they belonged, the author of the History lays stress upon Gruffudd ap Cynan’s honourable lineage. He, too, was ‘of royal kin’ and ‘most eminent lineage’ and stood on a par with contemporary kings.¹⁵ Describing Gruffudd’s efforts to recover and rehabilitate the kingdom of Gwynedd he traces the troubled story of one who ultimately, after successive reverses, was able to establish his authority over a wide area of the historic territory and put his sons to complete the task: Môn and Arllechwedd, Arfon and Llŷn, Eifionydd and Ardudwy; Rhos and Rhufoniog, Dyffryn Clwyd and Tegeingl (the ‘Four Cantreds’ of Perfeddwlad), and Meirionnydd. It was a course which two of Gruffudd’s distinguished descendants would pursue in due course. But if the main substance of the History is the tribulation encountered during the tortuous process by which the territory was restored to its furthermost boundaries, emphasis is constantly placed upon the rightfulness of the endeavour and the fact that the communities of the kingdom ultimately acknowledged Gruffudd’s lordship. This outcome was not achieved at all swiftly, and the author makes no effort to conceal the fact that Gruffudd’s problems stemmed not from Norman power alone but from the failure of the Welsh communities of Gwynedd to respond to his calls upon their loyalty. Gruffudd is likened to Judas Maccabeus in his resistance to foreign oppression, but the Antiochus represented by Hugh of Avranches, earl of Chester, was not his only adversary. Thus the defection of the men of Llŷn, which contributed to Gruffudd’s defeat at Bron yr Erw, inspires a reflection that Judas Maccabeus, too, had suffered not from alien oppression alone but from betrayal on the part of the men of Israel themselves, for ‘from the beginning there was treachery’.¹⁶ Ultimately the men of the cantrefi of Gwynedd received Gruffudd ‘as befitted their rightful lord’. The legitimacy of Gruffudd’s rule is emphasized time and again, for he was truly their ‘rightful lord’, one who returned from exile ‘to his own possession and his patrimony’.¹⁷ The heroic endeavours of earlier years are vindicated in the rule of a righteous and pious king who brought stability to his kingdom and enabled its people to live in prosperity, and at peace with the king of England, under the kingship of one who ruled under God’s protection. Beneath the panegyric the History, itself a composition which blends a conformity to a classical tradition with features of the native prose tales, conveys some important themes in the historical inheritance of indigenous Welsh kingship to which Llywelyn ap Gruffudd became the ultimate inheritor.¹⁸ Lineage, territory and status are inextricably intertwined. But before he was able to take possession of the territorial inheritance by which he could sustain the princely status with which his lineage had been endowed, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd had to surmount serious difficulties which will be recounted presently. No one bestowed an inheritance on Llywelyn: rather he took it to himself by force, and the significance of the decisive action he took at Bryn Derwin in 1255 cannot be understood unless account is taken of the question of the succession to princely inheritance, a vital aspect of the dyn astic aspiration to which the evidence of the previous generations bears ample witness. The royal status depicted in the History of Gruffudd ap Cynan could be maintained only if the patrimonial territory remained undivided under the rule of a single representative of the lineage.

The need to ensure that the inheritance is conserved in its entirety from generation to generation may be counted among the abiding concerns of dynasties of the medieval West. A continuing attentiveness to the succession may be discerned in the kingdom of France and in its several principalities, and historical studies have recognized the care with which royal and noble lineages of many lands sought to ensure the integrity of the territory. Welsh kingdoms have often been envisaged very differently, deemed to be inexor ably subject upon the death of a king, in accordance with the dictates of Welsh law, to equal division between his sons.¹⁹ The Welsh lawbooks, of which several important texts derive from the thirteenth century, certainly deal in some detail with the manner in which an inheritance in land is divided.²⁰ These expositions of partible inheritance are concerned, however, not with succession to kingdoms but with the practice which applied to the lands of free proprietors. The lawyers’ guidance on dynastic practice, the succession of kingdoms, is less explicit, but its indications are quite clear.²¹ The provision for the succession has two complementary features.²² In the lawyers’ estimation there is but one heir to the throne, known in the Welsh texts as edling or gwrthrychiad, in the Latin texts as heres or successor.²³ The single heir, who is accorded a place of particular honour at court, is raised from among the near kinsmen of the king who constitute the ‘royal members’ (aelodau brenin, membra regis). Designation is made by the ruling king, and the edling is the one ‘to whom the king gives hope and expectation’. The kingdom is bestowed in its entirety upon a single heir and, according to a further provision, each of the other ‘royal members’ was provided with an estate so that thereafter his status was determined not by his membership of the royal kindred but in accordance with the status of the land bestowed upon him.²⁴ An apanage was thereby created within the bounds of the kingdom to be vested in the heir to the throne, allowing each of his near kinsmen maintenance and honourable status in a manner which in no way undermined the entirety or the integrity of the kingdom.

The theory of dynastic succession which may be elicited from the Welsh lawbooks reveals features closely comparable with practices consistently followed by the Capetian dynasty of France, whereby the heir to the throne is elevated as rex designatus and, more gradually, provision came to be made within the inheritance for other members of the lineage.²⁵ The testimony of the lawbooks, which can be informed by comparative study of the evidence for Ireland, indicates that the indivisibility of the royal inheritance was recognized, but that a multiple eligibility to the throne within the kindred left the succession indeterminate. Consistent adherence to a practice whereby a designation was made in each generation was conducive, however, to a more determinate patrilineal succession.²⁶ The lawyers’ statements thus point to a conception of the succession which stands in marked contrast to the obligatory division of the kingdom often attributed to the law of Wales. Admittedly, study of each of the three major kingdoms of twelfth-century Wales provides evidence of fragmentation: Powys after Madog ap Maredudd in 1160, Gwynedd after Owain Gwynedd in 1170 and Deheubarth after Rhys ap Gruffudd in 1197. Each kingdom was sundered, and it might seem that the lawyers who sought to safeguard the principle of the indivisibility of the kingdom had laboured in vain. A distinction needs to be drawn, however, between division made by dynastic intent and that which was the result of a compromise made when the king’s designation was frustrated, the heir designate’s position challenged, and a contest waged in which no one among the contenders was able to secure an ascendancy. It is unquestionably the second alternative which commends itself if the manner in which each of the three kingdoms came to be divided is carefully considered.²⁷ The year 1160 saw the death of the king who, as the author of Breuddwyd Rhonabwy remembered, had ruled Powys in its entirety (yn ei therfynau) for a generation. But even more grievous for the kingdom than the death of the elderly Madog ap Maredudd was the killing of his son Llywelyn ap Madog within the year. Llywelyn may safely be identified as the heir to Powys, the person, in the words of the chronicler, ‘in whom lay the hope of all Powys’.²⁸ He fell at an early stage in a conflict which saw Owain Cyfeiliog, a son of the elder brother of Madog ap Maredudd, use the apanage which he had been given in Cyfeiliog as a territorial basis from which he strove to win the succession for himself. Other contenders joined the fray. This was no squabble among the co-heirs of Madog ap Maredudd over their respective shares of the kingdom, but rather a conflict within the royal kindred to secure Powys in its entirety. The court poet Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr indicated quite clearly the dread significance of Llywelyn ap Madog’s death: ‘Marw Madog mawr im eilyw, / Lladd Llywelyn llwyr dilyw.’ The death of Madog brought great distress, the killing of Llywelyn total destruction.²⁹ The poet’s words reflect the chronicler’s perception of the significance of Llywelyn’s death in his comment upon the expectations centred upon the young man. They, in turn, echo the eternal hope to which an Irish lawyer had given expression several centuries earlier when he recognized in the tánaise ríg a person ‘to whom the entire túath looked for kingship without strife’.³⁰ It was not in accordance with dynastic intent that Powys came to be sundered, nor Deheubarth. Rhys ap Gruffudd intended that his son Gruffudd ap Rhys should follow him in the rule of the kingdom, thereby designating a younger son who was born within marriage in preference to his eldest son, Maelgwn ap Rhys, who was not so. Rhys ap Gruffudd’s will was frustrated by the violent reaction of the rejected bastard son. In this case again an apanage, bestowed to provide for one of the royal kindred not raised to be heir to the throne, came to be a power base in a conflict waged for twenty years until a partition left Deheubarth divided forever.³¹

By then Gwynedd, too, had endured a period of adversity which began shortly after the death of Owain Gwynedd when the eldest son, Hywel ab Owain Gwynedd, was struck down by his half-brothers Dafydd and Rhodri at the battle of Pentraeth. The division of Gwynedd was no part of Owain Gwynedd’s purpose. He had maintained Gwynedd in its entirety, yielding nothing to his younger brother Cadwaladr except an apanage within the borders of his own kingdom, and eliminating Cunedda, the son of his elder brother Cadwallon. A king who could bring himself to castrate and blind a young man of his own kindred can hardly have intended anything for the future except that his kingdom should remain in its entirety under the secure rule of a single heir.³² Which of his sons was the chosen successor is uncertain. The searing grief expressed in Peryf ap Cedifor’s englynion commemorating Hywel ab Owain Gwynedd may reflect the close affinity of a foster brother but, on the other hand, the poet’s reference to Hywel’s ‘irresistible claim’ (hawl diachor) may provide a genuine indication of Owain Gwynedd’s wishes for the future. It could well have been a matter of deep regret in the kingdom as a whole that the son of the mighty king of Gwynedd lay upon the battlefield: ‘Bod mab brenin gwyn Gwynedd, / Yn gorwedd yn yr aerfa.’³³

Hywel’s death brought no end to the conflict and, no one among his kinsmen securing complete supremacy, Gwynedd became divided through the successive compromises made among those who contended for the inheritance.³⁴ The situation in the kingdom fluctuated, but remained essentially unchanged, until Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, a grandson of Owain Gwynedd, resolved the succession by force and declared anew the vital principle of the integrity of the Welsh kingdom. By 1201, when he swore an oath of fealty to King John, Llywelyn had established an irrefutable claim to be recognized, in succession to Owain Gwynedd and Gruffudd ap Cynan, as the rightful lord of his patrimony.³⁵ He styled himself ‘prince of Gwynedd’ (princeps Northwallie), ensuring that the idea of a principality (principatus) was henceforth reflected in the usage of official records. The territory of the principality was a Gwynedd extending from the Dyfi to the Dee, and it is the single heir to an integral royal estate who presents himself with assured authority in the early charters to the Cistercian houses of Aberconwy and Cymer.³⁶ The two documents provide a clear affirmation that a single jurisdiction extended over the cantrefi which appear as provinces (provincia) in the territorial entity between the two rivers. Within the territory, a kinsman of the prince, such as Hywel ap Gruffudd in Meirionnydd, might hold an estate as a tenant of the prince. He would be a former ‘royal member’ whose status was now determined by the land bestowed upon him, for all authority was vested in the prince unless it were delegated to another by his enfeoffment. Indigenous Welsh lordship was not inherent to cantref or cwmwd (commote); these were rather administrative organs by which the prince’s authority was mediated throughout the land.³⁷ Llywelyn ap Iorwerth’s assertion of power in Gwynedd brought, along with the resuscita tion of the patrimonial territory, the restoration of the royal inheritance of the dynasty and its embodiment in the idea of a principality.

Llywelyn ap Iorwerth adhered to the traditional dynastic objective when he came to make provision for the succession to his inheritance by a formal ordinance in 1220.³⁸ He declared that it was his wish that his inheritance should descend to Dafydd, his son by his wife Joan, a daughter of King John. The significance of the ordinance lies in the fact that Llywelyn chose Dafydd as his heir in preference to Gruffudd, his elder son born by Tangwystl, a woman who had never been the prince’s wedded wife. This was not the first occasion on which Llywelyn had set aside his first-born son. Even before the birth of Dafydd, in an acute crisis which he faced following John’s intervention in Gwynedd in 1211, Llywelyn had to submit to the king’s will and agree that, if he died without an heir of his body by his wife, Gwynedd would fall to the king and Gruffudd would have only that which the king might choose to provide for him.³⁹ It is thus as a disinherited bastard son, that Gruffudd ap Llywelyn, the father of the prince who is the subject of this study, makes his first appearance in the historical record. Four years later Llywelyn was absolved from the severe terms imposed upon him in 1211 and he secured Gruffudd’s release from the king’s custody.⁴⁰ Even so, when the prince came to decide the future of his dominion for himself there was no change of fortune for Gruffudd. Dafydd ap Llywelyn was the younger son, but a son by a wedded wife who was a daughter of a king of England had a two-fold advantage over the son of Tangwystl. Gruffudd was an Ishmael, born of Llywelyn’s concubine, a son neither by the prince’s wife nor a daughter of the house of Anjou. Many historians have noticed the prince’s ordinance and gathered that the effect of Llywelyn’s decision was to deny Gruffudd that share of the inheritance which was due to him by Welsh law by adopting, for the first time in the history of the lineage, the principle that the inheritance should not be divided on the death of its ruler.⁴¹ The words from the Book of Genesis quoted in the text might seem to justify this reading of Llywelyn’s intention: ‘in his country there was a despicable custom that the son of the handmaiden should be heir with the freeborn son, and illegitimate sons could possess the inheritance with the legitimate’. He now abolished a custom which stood at variance with the laws of God and man. But Llywelyn’s enactment was not issued to establish any novel principle that the dominion should remain undivided. The principle of the indivisibility of the inheritance was already an essential feature of dynastic intent. The effect of the ordinance was to establish that, adhering to the practice of choosing a single heir, an illegitimate son could not be considered for the succession upon terms of parity with a legitimate son. Gruffudd was eliminated from con sidera tion as a successor to Llywelyn because he was a bastard son. The prince’s ordinance was concerned, not with the bane of partible succession but with the burden of illegitimacy. Dafydd was chosen as edling in preference to Gruffudd.

Llywelyn undoubtedly appreciated that Gruffudd’s response to this decision would be quite crucial and, as soon as Dafydd was designated heir, he made provision for Gruffudd in accordance with the established practices of his lineage. Gruffudd, a member of the royal kindred not granted the singular status of heir apparent, was given a broad estate in Meirionnydd and Ardudwy. He was conceded his apanage within the kingdom and was allowed to exercise lordship there as a tenant of his father, with a view to becoming, in due course, a tenant of his brother. Gruffudd would not stand for this, and it appears that the intemperate son created havoc throughout the territory granted to him in retaliation for his exclusion from the succession.⁴² With four years’ detention in the king’s prison behind him Gruffudd now faced his father’s wrath. He was deprived of the lands previously given to him, and, though father and son were then reconciled, renewed dissension led to an incarceration which was to last for six years.⁴³ Gruffudd’s years were spent in virtually unrelieved tribulation, his children – Owain, Llywelyn, Dafydd, Rhodri, Gwladus and Margaret – spending their young years in painful awareness of the anguish of the rejected bastard son of the prince of Gwynedd. After the death of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth they witnessed a contest between Dafydd ap Llywelyn and Gruffudd ap Llywelyn which enabled the king of England to forego the pledge by which he had endorsed Dafydd’s succession and, ostensibly embracing Gruffudd but doing nothing on his behalf, bring upon Gwynedd a new threat to its future.⁴⁴ Llywelyn ap Gruffudd’s first triumph lay in his ability to lift the men of Gwynedd from the dire state in which they found themselves by the middle years of the thirteenth century, direct their minds to the long-established objectives of his lineage, and bring them to realize anew that Gwynedd’s security could only be ensured if a single prince ruled an entire and integrated inheritance.

The vision of an entire Gwynedd was not the only inspiration which Llywelyn ap Gruffudd drew from his grandfather. Llywelyn ap Iorwerth fully intended that his heir should succeed, not only to his patrimonial dominion, but to the broader supremacy which he had come to establish, beyond the bounds of Gwynedd, in the lands of the former kingdoms of Powys and Deheubarth. This was a major achievement and an entirely new departure in Welsh political history. At the end of the twelfth century Giraldus Cambrensis harboured no doubt that the main reason for the undoing of the Welsh was their stubborn refusal to submit themselves, as did other peoples that lived prosperously, to the dominion of a single king.⁴⁵ Ambivalences in the author’s loyalties are no doubt reflected in the alternative prognoses which he embodied in the last pages of the Description of Wales. The nation could remain invincible; equally it could succumb to conquest, and much depended not only upon the king of England’s commitment to purposeful military effort but upon his capacity to create dissension among the Welsh themselves and stir them up against one another.⁴⁶ Yet, apart from the influence of his conflicting loyalties, Giraldus’s remarks may reflect the ideas current among those who, representing the values of the nations who formed the core of Latin Christendom, saw the peoples upon the peripheries much in the image of the barbarian.⁴⁷ Ordered political society was no part of their capability, and Wales could have counted among the lands which exemplified the political incapacity of the nations on the fringes of the Christian world. The historical record from the late eleventh century onward certainly indicates that, quite apart from the adversities in which the several political entities of Wales often found themselves, it was only rarely that their rulers had been brought together even in transitory military alliance, let alone anything better. Indeed, the cohesive political movement inaugurated under the leader ship of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth early in the thirteenth century might reasonably be said to have had only one auspicious precedent. This was the alliance formed in the last years of Owain Gwynedd. At that time, the annalist some what grandiloquently relates, the whole of Gwynedd, Deheubarth and Powys joined together to cast off the Norman yoke, brought together in resistance to Henry II’s attempt to reduce Wales by force.⁴⁸ Careful consideration of Henry’s objectives and of the nature of the alliance formed against him might suggest a less graphic account and, in any case, the combined military effort proved short-lived. Yet, this brief period provides some indication of a desire, at least in Owain Gwynedd’s province, for a more permanent association founded upon what might be portrayed as the historic supremacy of Gwynedd. One clear sign appears in Owain’s decision to adopt a new style. It was from a position of strength at this time of assertiveness that Owain ceased to present himself as ‘king of Gwynedd’, making a change from king to prince at his own will and not in response to prompting on the part of the king of England. The true nature of Owain’s underlying political aspiration is suggested by the fact that he appears to have styled himself not prince of Gwynedd but ‘prince of the Welsh’ (princeps Wallensium).⁴⁹ He was seeking something more than a combined, but necessarily short-lived, effort in war. These indications come, however, only at a late stage in the prince’s career and, with his death, whatever hopes may have been cherished in Gwynedd that cohesive endeavour in war might be made permanent in a political association were completely shattered as Owain’s kingdom came to be sundered into several parts. It fell to Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, when he had rehabilitated the kingdom, to breath new spirit into the aspiration for a wider supremacy.

Not that it could be said that Llywelyn won swift response to his initiatives in the early years of the thirteenth century. The lords of the fragmented territories of Powys and Deheubarth, for their part, saw his intervention in their lands as an unwelcome interference to be resisted with all their might, and their reaction was advantageous to John when, in 1211, he set about the subjugation of Gwynedd. There is, indeed, some resemblance between the circumstances of John’s offensive in 1211 and Edward I’s assault in 1282, for Gwynedd came perilously close to extinction early in the century.⁵⁰ The memory of the strong position which the crown established in Wales in the reign of John remained vivid in the time of Henry III, and a restoration of the situation created in the early years of the century became the crown’s declared purpose in the period following the death of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth.⁵¹ John penetrated Perfeddwlad and forced the Conwy to enter Snowdonia itself. In his extremity Llywelyn was constrained to acknowledge that further resist ance was futile and, as the chronicler relates, he sent his wife to plead with her father on his behalf and assuage his anger. Severe terms were imposed on the prince even so. He faced the prospect of his dominion being ceded to the king at his death, if he had no heir by the king’s daughter. Subjected to a severe punitive tribute, Llywelyn was confined to Gwynedd Uwch Conwy, yielding Perfeddwlad to the king forever, and he was deprived of any influence beyond its bounds.⁵² But within months of his mortification, availing himself of the reaction of the princes of Wales to the signs that John proposed to secure the crown’s control upon them for all time, Llywelyn put himself at the head of a formidable alliance. In the lands where he had recently met resistance he now won active support, and the castles by which John had sought to consolidate his conquest were systematically erased. Within a year Llywelyn was able to respond positively to an invitation from Philip Augustus of France and declare his willingness to join the king in firm alliance. He did so as one who was able to speak for all the princes of Wales combined together in indis soluble union.⁵³ Llywelyn placed King Philip’s letter in the aumbries of his church for safe-keeping, and put his seal to a document which indicated that a significant change in the political situation in the lands of the princes was now in train. Almost instantly, the dire version of Giraldus’s prognosis gave way to the other.

The conflict of the reign of John became a crucible in which the princes forged a broad dominion founded on the supremacy of the lineage of Aberffraw. Unlike Owain Gwynedd, his grandson did not change his style but remained ‘prince of Gwynedd’ for some time.⁵⁴ There are other signs, however, that Llywelyn ap Iorwerth applied himself to nothing less than the task of transforming a war alliance into a political community. The new departure found a theoretical exposition in the lawyers’ conception of Wales not as a land of three independent kingdoms but one with an internal unity and a new relationship with England. The existence of three historical kingdoms – Gwynedd, Powys and Deheubarth, ruled from the principal courts of Aberffraw, Mathrafal and Dinefwr – is still recognized, but one of the courts – Aberffraw – is accorded a supremacy over the others.⁵⁵ In a form of words with an implicit invocation of historical precedent, the king of Aberffraw is said to pay royal tribute (mechdeyrn ddyled) to the king of England when he receives his land from the king of England; and then all the kings of Wales should receive their lands from the king of Aberffraw and pay him royal tribute.⁵⁶ The antiquity of the mode of expression hardly conceals the novelty of a theory which, propounding the idea that a royal tribute was paid by the one to the other, placed the lords of Wales in a position in which they were tenants of the prince of Aberffraw and he alone a tenant of the king of England. The theory involves recognition of the kingship of London, the ancient British inheritance, and the creation of the principality of Aberffraw in dependence upon it. Implicit in this pattern of relationships is the notion that authority is delegated by the crown of London to the prince who wears the coronet of Aberffraw, and by the prince of Aberffraw to the other lords of Wales. It is essentially a notion of enfeoffment, bearing the marks of contemporary practice and, though it is difficult to trace the origins of a concept such as this, the formulation may represent a response on the part of the lawyers of Gwynedd to Llywelyn ap Iorwerth’s resolve to grasp the opportunity which presented itself during the traumatic conflicts of the reign of King John.⁵⁷

The practical effect of these changed political fortunes may be traced in the evidence of the years from 1212 onward. By 1215, in the wake of his cooperation with the English barons who opposed the king, and with his endeavours facilitated by mediation on the part of Archbishop Langton, Llywelyn secured the abrogation of the discomforting agreement that he had been forced to make four years previously. Llywelyn’s deliverance is embodied in Magna Carta and the conflict between king and prince was stayed for a while, but the charter hardly reflects the extent of the change which had by then been brought about in Wales.⁵⁸ Evidence of the following year suggests very strongly that the princes, now resorting to arms once more, were responding not to the demands of war alone but to specifically political needs as well. At a gathering of the princes of Wales before Llywelyn a partition was made of the lands of Deheubarth, resolving the discord that had rent the lineage for twenty years.⁵⁹ In time of war the princes were undertaking among themselves a responsibility of a kind which might normally have been reserved to the king of England. The manner by which Deheubarth was partitioned thus suggests that the lords of its several parts were accom modating themselves in a new political association. The precise nature of the bonds which now held the princes of Wales together may be recognized with some confidence, for there is an indication in the testimony of the chronicler that one of them, Gwenwynwyn ab Owain Cyfeiliog, lord of Powys Wenwynwyn, entered into a covenant with Llywelyn forged by homage and fealty.⁶⁰ If a bond of this kind was made in this instance it is likely that Llywelyn had entered into comparable agreements with each of the other princes allied with him in war. The leader in military alliance assumed the role of lord, his erstwhile allies were now his vassals. It was by virtue of these covenants that the political relationship envisaged by the lawyers, in the notion that royal tribute was due to the court of Aberffraw, came to be put to effect, unless, as has already been intimated, the lawyers’ formulation was itself a response to the practical achievement now registered by Llywelyn ap Iorwerth.

The conflicts of the early years of the thirteenth century proved to be the means by which the princes came together, not for purposes of war alone, but to establish a political order. The supremacy of Aberffraw was acknowledged and a new structure created, not by military might, but by a unifying common will. Understandably, the crown was reluctant to concede that the princes were anything more than allies of Llywelyn, and he no more than their leader. This became clear early in 1218 when Llywelyn met the council of the young King Henry III as part of the process by which the realm was pacified after the civil war.⁶¹ The changes in the internal relationships among the princes had important implications for their relations with the crown, considered presently, and the crown would not endorse those changes. The princes’ object ives would evidently not be fulfilled at once, but they were not abandoned. Llywelyn’s purposes were revealed in what emerges from his discussions with the king’s council over the position of Maelienydd, a lordship in the central sector of the march of Wales.⁶² For over a century or more its Welsh lineage had been resisting the power of successive members of the family of Mortimer. From their base at Wigmore the Mortimers had striven to extend their lordship over Maelienydd and raised their castle at Cymaron. They looked, too, for possession of the neighbouring lordship of Gwerthrynion and the intensity of the struggle is graphically reflected in Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr’s elegy to Cadwallon ap Madog.⁶³ Their hold on these lands remained uncertain, even so, and it was not until the very end of the twelfth century that Roger Mortimer achieved a position where he could make a benefaction to the Cistercian monks of Cwm-hir in thanksgiving to God for his victory at Cymaron and in remembrance of the soldiers who had fallen in the campaign.⁶⁴ The final battle was still to be fought, and in the mean time the exiled young lords of Maelienydd were given refuge in Gwynedd by Llywelyn ap Iorwerth. The lineages of Aberffraw and Wigmore were thus engaged in the tortuous relationship which was to prove such a conspicuous feature of thirteenth-century political history. Llywelyn ap Gruffudd would wrestle with the Mortimers from the very earliest initiatives of his political career to the day on which he fell in battle, and it was the Mortimer claim to Maelienydd which exercised Llywelyn ap Iorwerth’s mind in 1220. Emphasizing what had already been said during his negotiations with the king’s council, Llywelyn insisted that it would be futile for Hugh Mortimer to attempt to remove its Welsh lords. Their homage belonged to his principality, and he would defend the land with the utmost vigour.⁶⁵ The letter provides the earliest known text in which the word ‘principality’ (principatum) is used to convey the idea of a broad political entity under the supremacy of Aberffraw. Formal recognition of this principality had evidently been broached in the discussions with the royal council, only to be postponed to an indefinite future. Llywelyn had not, even so, abandoned his determination to secure a settlement ‘in justice and equity according to the status of Wales’.⁶⁶ His political objectives remained unchanged, and he was determined that in the fullness of time Gwynedd, Powys, Deheubarth and parts of the march would be incorporated in a wider principality. Llywelyn ap Gruffudd’s second achievement, in the period of his ascendancy, would be to re-establish this broader unity.

It is clear that the endeavours of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth to secure the political unity of a wide area of Wales cannot be treated entirely separately from his concern with the relationship between Wales and England. The compulsions which brought Llywelyn ap Iorwerth and Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, each in turn in their years of supremacy, to seek the crown’s recognition of the authority which they exercised in Wales may not be altogether easy to comprehend. Part of the explanation lies in the prominent place generally accorded to lordship, and the inter-relationship of lordships, in political associations. Part stems more specifically from the fact that, for several generations, political relationships in Wales had not been formulated in isolation from the English crown. Internal associations and the connection with the crown were, in effect, two facets of the same problem. The precedents whereby the crown dealt directly with the several, and increasingly numerous, seigniories of Wales were very firmly established. Any appreciable adjustment in Welsh relationships would need royal recognition, and the stability of any changed order would depend on royal consent. Recognition could not, even so, guarantee a prince the loyalty of the lords of Wales, as Llywelyn ap Gruffudd was to find in due course, but without the imprimatur of the king of England the prospects for a viable political association among the lordships of Wales would remain uncertain. The changes brought about in the early thirteenth century meant the undoing of bonds which, for a very long time, had held every king or prince or lord, each one separately and directly, in fealty to the king of England.⁶⁷ They created a breach with a tradition deeply rooted in the experience of the two nations, and Llywelyn ap Gruffudd’s strenuous efforts to resolve this problem would prove to be an important aspect of his political policy.⁶⁸

The relationship with the crown had developed gradually and may have reached its definitive form in the reign of Henry II, for certainly by then it was established that the lords of Wales should do homage and fealty to the king.⁶⁹ The reference in the Four Branches of the Mabinogi to Manawydan’s journey to Oxford to do homage to Caswallon may bear rather late overtones, but a bond of one kind or another had been forged for a considerable time.⁷⁰ By 1216, however, these links had been severed as the princes of Wales revoked their allegiance by making war against their king, and a new political unity came into being in their lands. Llywelyn recognized that the relationships made among themselves in conditions of conflict could not stand in perpetuity without the crown’s consent, and he confronted the issue when, alone among the princes of Wales, he went to meet the king’s council at Worcester in 1218. The meeting was part of the process by which, in accord ance with the terms of the treaty of Lambeth the previous year, peace was restored in the realm of England after the turmoil of the civil war.⁷¹ Llywelyn looked for nothing less than an acknowledgement on the king’s part that it was now appropriate that the direct relationship between the crown and the lords of Wales be replaced by one in which he stood as an intermediary between the king and the princes of Wales. He sought the king’s assent to what had been achieved in time of war. It is not difficult to envisage, however, that Henry’s councillors would be reluctant to yield anything to Llywelyn on a matter of such consequence while the king was under age. They were prepared to acknowledge his leadership and the influence which he exercised upon the princes but, in the carefully chosen term to which the chancery was to adhere thereafter, they were no more than his inprisii: they were his allies rather than his tenants; he was their leader, not their lord.⁷² Resistance on the part of the council on this issue, quite apart from indicating an unwillingness to contemplate such a significant breach with traditional relationships, was dictated by the principle embodied in the treaty of Lambeth whereby it was agreed that those returning to the king’s fealty should accept the status quo ante bellum.⁷³ It was on this basis that peace terms were offered to Llywelyn and Alexander II of Scotland. For Llywelyn the matters at issue concerned both territory, for extensive lands had been won from the marcher lords, and the new relationships which he had established with the princes. Entrusted with the custody of the royal castles of Cardigan and Carmarthen and the lands associated with them, he was now required to fulfil a pledge that he would make every effort to ensure that the conquered lands were restored and, quite crucially, bring the princes back into their old allegiance so that each of them did homage and fealty to the king as before.⁷⁴ The outcome of the negotiations at Worcester fell far short of Llywelyn’s expectations. So soon after securing his supremacy Llywelyn was made an agent of the crown charged to return the princes of Wales to their ancient loyalties.⁷⁵

This incongenial task was neither readily nor easily accomplished. Certainly, though some of the princes returned to the king’s fealty quite soon, those of Deheubarth, who had shared their patrimony under the aegis of Prince Llywelyn in 1216, did so only with marked reluctance. Their unwilling ness to go to the king and fulfil their obligations was noticed by the Welsh chronicler, and it is not difficult to understand their tardiness.⁷⁶ The patrim ony divided between them in time of war consisted not only of the lands formerly held by Rhys ap Gruffudd but also several areas of Deheubarth, long since ceded to the marcher lords, that had been reappropriated by the princes during their recent campaigns. Rhys Gryg, in particular, would suffer a considerable diminution of his dominion, for he ruled from Dinefwr a lordship that included, not only Ystrad Tywi as it had been held by his father, but a territory broadened to include Cydweli and Gower, taken from their marcher lords, and Gwidigada, wrested from the king.⁷⁷ In his view these were lands to be colonized anew and retained for ever, the chronicler noting that the English had been driven out of Gower ‘without ever hope of returning’.⁷⁸ Circumstances changed abruptly. The Welsh political community was rent as Llywelyn, who had only recently vested Gower in Rhys Gryg, now pressed him to respond to the demands made upon him and return to the king’s fealty. Custodian of the castles of Carmarthen and Cardigan and responsible for the royal lands associated with them in south-west Wales by the agreement of 1218, Llywelyn was placed in an invidious position.⁷⁹ It is likely that it was during this crisis that Llywarch ap Llywelyn, a poet of Llywelyn’s court, made his way to Dinefwr to address the recalcitrant lord of Ystrad Tywi, and that it was a poet in the role of mediator who composed the fine eulogy which recalls Rhys Gryg’s triumphs on the battlefield during the forceful campaigns waged alongside the prince of Gwynedd.⁸⁰

Torraist Gaerfyrddin, torföedd – ar Ffrainc,

Llawer Ffranc ar adwedd;

Ac Abertawy, tref dyhedd,

Tyrioedd briw – a heddiw neud hedd!

A Saint Clêr a’r claer wyndiredd,

Nid Saeson y maon a’i medd;

Yn Abertawy, terrwyn allwedd – Lloegr,

Neud llwyr weddw y gwragedd.

The awdl conveys, with the celebration of military prowess, an intimation of a wish for reconciliation between the two princes. Rhys Gryg’s spirited resistance might be borne in mind when account is taken of the complex relationship between Llywelyn ap Gruffudd and Rhys’s successors, Maredudd ap Rhys Gryg and Rhys ap Maredudd, which figures so prom inently in the later course of events. The poet’s entreaties were no more effective than the king’s command and Llywelyn ap Iorwerth had to lead an army to Ystrad Tywi in the summer of 1220 and compel Rhys Gryg to accede to the terms which the prince had accepted at Worcester more than two years before.⁸¹ He came to the castle of Dinefwr where the court had once possessed authority over Deheubarth in its entirety, but found it ruined as Rhys Gryg had dismantled the fortification in anticipation of his coming: ‘olim famosum nunc autem ruinosum, ad quod tanquam ad caput Suthwallie pertinebat dignitates totius Suthwallie’.⁸² Llywelyn went on to Carmarthen and an encounter in which Rhys Gryg was wounded, before ‘the shield of Ystrad Tywi’ succumbed to the pressure exerted upon him and agreed to do his homage to the king and swear fealty.⁸³ Llywelyn accomplished his mission, and the polity created in time of war was undone.

The years which followed Llywelyn’s return to the king’s fealty in 1218 were a troubled period as the prince tried to reconcile his responsibility as royal custodian and mediator with his natural inclination to maintain the position he had established by his forceful action in the preceding years.⁸⁴ While he acted with some vigour in Ystrad Tywi in 1220, he did a good deal less than the English government required of him in returning the lands which had been taken from the marchers in the years of conflict. Urged to do so with necessary force, and promised military support if it were needed, the prince did not prove assiduous in restoring this aspect of the status quo. The marchers were, indeed, still liable to the prince’s retribution, though the out come, in one instance, proved decidedly counter-productive. His onslaught upon the lands of the lordship of Pembroke after his intervention in Ystrad Tywi provoked telling reaction on the part of William Marshal three years later. Unwilling to tolerate the territorial dispositions which Llywelyn had made to his disadvantage, Marshal recovered his own and, wresting the crown’s possessions from Llywelyn, effectively discharged the prince from any responsibility as custodian of the king’s interests in Deheubarth. He lost custody of Montgomery, which had also been granted to him at Worcester, and endured a largely self-inflicted reverse following his attack on Kinnerley in Shropshire. For some years thereafter he showed more restraint but he certainly maintained his power over a wide area, holding the lords of Powys Fadog and Deheubarth in an allegiance which greatly curtailed the king’s authority in those regions. He maintained his hold, too, on Powys Wen wyn wyn, placed in his custody for the minority of Gruffudd ap Gwen wyn wyn.⁸⁵ Among marcher lands in his possession were Maelienydd, Gwerthrynion and, by his agreement with William de Braose for the marriage of the marcher’s daughter with Dafydd ap Llywelyn, Builth. Powerful campaigns in the period 1228–34 enabled him to re-establish something of the supremacy he had first asserted in the reign of John, and the style he now adopted reflected the confidence which came with the triumphs of his successive offensives. The ‘prince of Gwynedd’ became ‘prince of Aberffraw and lord of Snowdon’, a style which evoked the concept of a wider unity under the aegis of his lineage.⁸⁶ Yet he still faced enormous difficulty in his efforts to secure the crown’s recognition of his position, his problem underlined by the king’s unwillingness to countenance his wish that his heir should inherit his broader authority. Llywelyn had secured the pope’s confirmation of his ordinance designating Dafydd as his heir but the matter was not allowed to rest there. Some years later he wrote to the papal court again to convey that, at the instance of King Henry as he avowed, he had secured from the magnates of Wales an oath of fealty to his primogenitus. Pope Honorius duly bestowed his blessing upon the action taken on behalf of one whose parents, he recalled, had given him to the Roman church as an alumnus, and Dafydd had been received into the protection of the apostolic see.⁸⁷ Dafydd would later recall these exchanges – transactions that had made him a ward of the papal court – in an appeal for the pope’s support that will be noticed presently. But his father’s initiative in seeking papal support had no effect on the view of the succession taken at the English court. Henry had certainly recognized Dafydd as Llywelyn’s heir in accordance with the prince’s ordinance, but when Dafydd did homage to the king in 1229 Henry did no more than pledge his readiness to maintain the young man in those ‘rights and privileges’ which would come to him upon his father’s death.⁸⁸ These were left entirely undefined and the devastating effect of this calculated ambiguity on the king’s part would be appreciated when Henry came to offer his interpretation of their meaning upon Llywelyn’s death. The prince’s new style, despite its evocative connotations, still bore the mark of compromise. For Llywelyn, it was a title to be used in expectation of a full recognition of his position; for the king, the prince’s position had no validity beyond armed might and, while chancery usage respected the prince’s wish in regard to his style, the king would tolerate the situation it represented only for as long as it took to see it effaced.

Essential to the fulfilment of Llywelyn’s aspirations was a treaty of peace which would