The Brothers of Gwynedd (132 page)

  Item: Llewelyn ceded to the king, for himself and his heirs, the whole of the Middle Country, those four cantrefs which once had nominally belonged to Edward as prince, with all the rights pertaining, and also conceded into his hands all those lands the royal forces had taken by conquest during the war, and now in fact held. But if any lands had been captured from the prince by others than the crown, and retained, then the king would entertain the prince's claims at law to those lands, and do him justice according to the laws and customs of those parts where they lay.

  Item: The prince was to be absolved from his excommunication, and his lands freed from interdict, and when that was done he was to go to Rhuddlan in state to take the oath of fealty to the king, who would then appoint him a day to visit Westminster and do homage there formally.

  Item: The prince was to release his eldest brother, Owen Goch, who had been many years his prisoner. But here Edward was careful and punctilious towards Llewelyn's honour and rights, for he did accept that Owen's imprisonment had begun when he rose treacherously against his brother, with whom he then shared the rule in Gwynedd, and sought to take all for himself. Therefore his release was hedged about with conditions. He was to be delivered to the king's commissioners, and would then have the choice between coming to definite terms of peace and settlement with Llewelyn by agreement, such agreement to be approved by the king, or else, if he stood on his birthright still, he could remain in royal custody until he had been tried for his insurrection by Welsh law, in the lands where the offence was committed. Then, if the judges found him blameless, he might pursue his claim to equal rights in Gwynedd, and the king would see that the legal process treated him fairly. In this matter I think the king did Llewelyn a good service, for the grievances of Owen Goch had troubled his peace for many years, and this was as good a way of disposing of the incubus as any, and bore the stamp of crown law as well as Welsh law.

  Item: Other prisoners held because of their defection were to be released unconditionally, and many restored to their lands, such as Rhys ap Griffith ap Ednyfed, the high steward's nephew. This was natural practice after a peace. A victorious king could not well leave his adherents in captivity. Among those thus let out of prison was Owen ap Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn, none the worse for Llewelyn's usage, and soon hand in glove with his father in gloating over the prince's diminution, and doing everything possible in law to vex and harass him.

  Item: The names of those Welsh princes, outside Gwynedd, whose homage was to be retained by Llewelyn were stated, and they were but five, Rhys ap Rhys ap Maelgwn of northern Cardigan, and four others, all kinsmen, in Edeyrnion, in Powys. Thus all the other chiefs of Powys and of the south became vassals holding their lands from the crown. And even these five were to be vassals of the prince of Wales only for Llewelyn's lifetime, afterwards reverting to the crown. And yet, though this reduction of his nominal state was very bitter, Llewelyn was left with vassals, and was given in the treaty, most markedly, the title of prince of Wales. Surely Tudor and Goronwy ap Heilyn stood firmly upon this point of courtesy, yet I think it was not at all displeasing to Edward to agree to it. I was and am in ten minds about him.

  Item: All lands which had been occupied during the war because their lords had defected to the king were to be restored to them.

  Item: The king gave over freely to Llewelyn all the lands David owned by hereditary right in Gwynedd, and would compensate David with equal lands elsewhere. But on the death of David or Llewelyn those lands were to revert to the crown. This, I think, was less at David's plea than at Edward's discretion, for he felt it easier and more prudent to keep those two brothers apart, and the simplest way was to remove David's interests and holdings completely from Gwynedd. Though in fact he was less wise when it came to allotting the lands concerned, for he gave him the two inland cantrefs of the Middle Country, and thus placed this divided creature, torn in two between England and Wales, in the marches between the two, where the dissension within could most desperately rend him.

  Item: The king granted to the prince the whole of Anglesey, which was to be handed back to him by the royal army then in possession. Nominally he was to pay an annual rent for the island of a thousand marks, payable at Michaelmas, but this, again, was remitted. The clause was put in to assert formally the king's acquired right there.

  Item: The holders of land in the Middle Country, and the other territories formerly Llewelyn's and now taken over by the king, were to continue undisturbed in their possessions, and enjoy their liberties and customs as before, except for any among them who were regarded by Edward as malefactors, and refused such grace.

  Item: Any legal contentions arising between the prince and any other person were to be determined and decided according to marcher law if they arose in the marches, and by Welsh law if they arose in Wales. So simple-sounding a clause ought not to give rise to complications and entanglements, but indeed matters of law and land are never simple, and here in these few lines endless troubles lay waiting to be hatched.

  Item: Such lords as happened to hold lands both in those portions held by the king and those remaining with Llewelyn should do homage for the first to the king, for the second to the prince.

  Item: The king confirmed to Llewelyn all the lands which the prince then held, without prejudice or threat, and to his heirs after him, except for Anglesey, which was confirmed to Llewelyn for life and afterwards only to the heirs of his body, no others.

  Then followed the guarantees to ensure the keeping of the treaty. The prince was to hand over as hostages for his good faith ten of his noblemen, who would be honourably treated and need fear no penalties. The king promised an early release of these hostages if all went well, and he kept his word. Further, in every cantref held by the prince, twenty good men were to be guarantors annually of his good faith, and withdraw their fealty from him if he defaulted.

No question but this was a grievous constriction upon the prince's greatness, and bound him hand and foot to his dependence henceforth upon Edward, yet it still left him prince of Wales, not shorn of his right and title, not holding his land from Edward, but only, as before, under the power of the king of England. Had David been set up in his place, he would have held his lands directly from the king, and been a prince only by Edward's courtesy. Llewelyn was prince by right, and acknowledged right, that held good on both sides the borders. And though the terms and the safeguards were iron-hard, and meant to be, yet there was in all Edward's conduct of this submission a kind of harsh, unbending tenderness that spared to hurt or abase while he made all fast.

"I am back where I began," said Llewelyn, facing the truth stonily. "Well, I was

not ashamed to be prince of half Gwynedd-beyond-Conway once, and now I am prince of the whole of it, and why should I be ashamed?"

  For him there was no repining. He set himself to fill the place he had accepted open-eyed, and to maintain it, and for all his losses it was still a place any earl of England would have envied him.

  Immediately on the sealing of the treaty he set to work to execute all the necessary deeds to put all its clauses into effect, and on the day of the ratification, the tenth day of November, Llewelyn rode in state to Rhuddlan to meet the king and take the oath of fealty. The king's plenipotentiaries, Robert Tybetot and Anthony Bek, with others of the king's council and the bishop of St. Asaph, escorted him to within three miles of Rhuddlan, and there he was met by Edward's chancellor, that same Robert Burnell who had once brought the prince the homage of Meredith ap Rhys Gryg at Edward's request, and now came with all ceremony and honour to lead a prince to a king, rather than a vanquished man to the victor. With him came the earl of Lincoln, Henry de Lacy, who was as close a friend to the king as was Tybetot. And this noble escort was to be in attendance on the guest in Rhuddlan, and accompany him safely back to his own country afterwards.

  Resolute and practical as he was, I knew well that not even Llewelyn could swallow so bitter a draught as this treaty without pain. To have half his lands hacked away from him, to lose all but five of his vassal princes and all his present hope for the Wales of his vision, was to be lopped of half his heart and drained of half his blood. The hurt of this coming ordeal might have been terrible indeed, had Edward been in a mood for vengeance. Instead, nothing could have been done that he did not do, to make it endurable. Whatever happened afterwards, whatever he did to others, I remember the Edward of that day with gratitude, for he was tender of Llewelyn's face as of his own, and paid him all the honour and deference due to an equal. Set it to the balance of his account in the judgment. To the end of my life I shall always be in more than one mind about Edward.

  The king's hall at Rhuddlan was a great structure of timber then, but the stone foundations of his new castle were already in, and the walls beginning to rise. Edward's knights were gathered to welcome the prince's party, squires came to hold his stirrup and take his bridle. The earl of Lincoln and Bishop Burnell—for he was bishop of Bath and Wells as well as chancellor—ushered Llewelyn into the hall and into Edward's presence, and the glitter of that military court, spare and deprived of the grace of women, made a fitting setting for the meeting of those two men. War was the business that had brought them together, war lost and won, and soldiers know the fickleness of victory and defeat, and the narrowness of the gap between them. A man does not mock what may be his own fate tomorrow, or a year hence, at least, no wise man.

  The king was seated in state, with his officers about him, when Llewelyn entered the hall. Edward was in rich, dark colours as always, very properly and carefully royal, and wearing a thin gold coronet, and at all points prepared to dominate, if not to daunt. His heavy-featured face, never given to smiling, remained aloof and stern throughout. Yet when Llewelyn advanced up the hall to him with his long, straight stride, weathered and brown and sombre, Edward suddenly rose from his seat and came to meet him those few paces that counted as a golden gift in my eyes, and astonished the prince into smiling. They stood a charmed moment face to face, quite still, each of them held. Edward was the taller by a head, but so he was among all those who surrounded and served him. And it disquieted Llewelyn not a whit that he must tilt back his head to look up at him, any more than it awes a noble child, who must do as much for the meanest grown man.

  "The lord prince is very welcome to our court," said Edward, and gave him his hand, and Llewelyn bent the knee to him briefly, and kissed the hand. "I hope this day," said Edward, "instead of an ending, may be counted as a new beginning between us."

  "That is my intent," said Llewelyn. "I have accepted these dues, and I shall pay them. The proof shall not be in words, but the first earnest well may."

  In due form before that assembled court he rehearsed the oath of fealty, in a loud, clear voice, and with wide-open, deep eyes upon Edward's face. And after that they sat down together, and went forward with the business of the day with due ceremony but briskly. There the king formally remitted the great fine, and the annual rent for Anglesey in perpetuity, and Llewelyn was left to pay only the residue of the old debt under the treaty of Montgomery, the money he had been withholding as a means of getting his grievances set right. Edward promised release for the hostages within half a year, which showed that he was relieved and reassured thus far in his meeting with his defeated enemy. And Llewelyn, seeing that the king, whatever his successes and prospects, was direly in need of ready money, paid two thousand marks of the money due from him on the spot, to the keeper of the royal wardrobe.

  In such mutual considerations and such a strange but true accord did this halfdreaded meeting pass. Those two had met several times in old days, at conferences on the border, but briefly and upon precise business, and since Edward became king they had never met at all, and that was a strange metamorphosis, creating a new Edward. Now they came face to face, sat elbow to elbow at the board, and the enemies they had hated and confronted at distance were only illusions and dreams. At Rhuddlan they were new-born, each to the other. The business of the treaty, though heavy and grave and blotting out everything else until it was done, seemed but the veil that waited to be withdrawn from between them.

  Afterwards they feasted the prince, and he was set at Edward's right hand at the high table, and they came to the open, easy talk of host and guest together. From my place lower in the hall I watched them, and marvelled, and yet did not marvel, for the world is full of exaltations and basements, but men are men, and each is the man he is, and neither height nor depth changes the soul of a steadfast man. And what they said to each other I never knew, but for some few utterances that carried in a quietness.