![[FAMILY TREE]](tree.gif)
NOTES
In the Twelfth Century the Middle March, or the Rhwng Gwy a Hafren, was characterized by unrestrained noble violence to a greater degree and for much longer than in any other region in spite of sporadic institutional efforts to repress or contain it. This violence was primarily due, not to any constitutional feature of the March, but to the historical presence there of two particularly successful and long lived families who conceived a vendetta in the 1130s, or perhaps even earlier, and continued to prosecute it well into the thirteenth century. This family war between the Mortimers and the line of Madog ab Idnerth of Maelienydd had a formative influence on the idea of a march. The Mortimer family's male line continued, unbroken, for nearly 400 years, and was for most of that period centered upon their caput of Wigmore in the middle march. Their remarkably long tenure in this region, and the character of their conflicts in it, conditioned political and social relations along the Welsh Border long after the Welsh party to the vendetta had been extinguished.
The singular nature of the Mortimer presence on the march is first apparent during the anarchy of Stephen. In 1140 Stephen made a remarkable grant of the Earldom of Hereford to Robert Beaumont, earl of Leicester in an effort to quell rebellion and secure a military cordon around Miles of Gloucester.[1] Stephen could not afford to ignore the strategic position of Hugh Mortimer on the Welsh march and thus Hugh's fees and those of three other important marchers were excepted from this grant.[2] This exception confirmed the Mortimers in a kind of independence quite unlike that enjoyed by the earls of Chester, or the lords of Glamorgan or Pembroke. In those regions an expectation had developed very early that the crown could count upon a certain political and military support even in the absence of an interfering central authority. At the very least, marcher lords in the south and the north could be expected to work out a modus vivendi that would secure a measure of peace between the Anglo-Norman conquerors and their Welsh tenants. In the middle march, no such expectation was ever established and in the exigencies of civil war, Stephen's grant recognized the essentially ungovernable nature of the middle march.
In 1153, Duke Henry of Normandy also recognized the independence and localized power of the Mortimer family on the march, just as Stephen had in 1140; moreover, Henry recognized that independence in precisely the same way. Henry's grant to Ranulf, earl of Chester, confirms him in nearly all the lands he had accumulated under Stephen, including the town, county and earldom of Staffordshire where Hugh Mortimer was a prominent landholder. But once again, Hugh's fees, and those of a few other prominent lords, were excepted from this grant, notwithstanding Mortimer's earlier adherence to Stephen.[3] The confirmation of Ranulf's extensive claims was a measure of how tentative Henry's position was in 1153, and Henry, like Stephen before him, was prepared to pay a high price to secure the loyalty of a great earl. What is significant to us, however, is that he could not do so at the expense of alienating the relatively minor family of Mortimer because of the volatile nature of the middle march. Given the weakness of his position, Henry was probably also anxious to reassure his barons, of whatever rank, that they would not be arbitrarily disseised as had been done under Stephen.
In the event, Henry's consideration was wasted on Hugh. This Vir Arrogantissimus as Robert de Torigny called him,[4] seems to have concluded, on the strength of Henry's earlier deference, that he could carry on his private wars with the Welsh and defy the King with impunity. In 1155 he fortified his castles at Wigmore, Cleobury and Bridgenorth and held them against Henry in defiance of an order to relinquish them. The King's reaction was swift and violent (thereby sending another, rather different message to his barons). Raising the feudal host of England in a remarkably short time, Henry made of Hugh an object lesson for any others who would defy the king. Interestingly, however, Hugh and Henry were almost immediately reconciled, and the castle at Hugh's caput of Wigmore was returned to him.[5] This stands in striking contrast with the example of Hugh Bigod who around the same time was required to surrender all his castles, at least one of which was not returned for more than eight years.[6] This seems to be a recurrent pattern throughout the long history of the Mortimers' relations with the Crown. Evidently, something about their status was peculiar. No matter how flagrant their defiance, the family nearly always is able to regain the king's friendship, and often with remarkable speed.
It is curious too that, despite the concern shown by both Stephen and Henry for the Mortimers' strategic position on the march, Hugh Mortimer seems to be strangely absent from Henry's Welsh campaigns from 1157 to 1166. Henry's effort in 1157 had been concentrated in the North against Owain ap Gruffudd and had been a disaster on both land and sea. The campaign against Rhys ap Gruffudd in 1163, though more sucessful, had aimed to secure the interests of marcher lords in the South like Walter de Clifford. In 1165 Henry mounted a large and expensive army, again against Owain but it foundered in bad weather in the Berwyn Mountains and had to retreat cum opprobrio as the Annales Cambriae has it.[7] Emboldened by Henry's signal failure, Rhys of Deheubarth in the south and Owain ap Gruffudd in the North pursued their advantage. Royal response was limited to a campaign in 1166 into Tegeingl led by Geoffrey, earl of Essex. This was nearly as disastrous as the campaign of the previous year, and like that one, was of little immediate relevance to Hugh Mortimer's continuing private conflicts with the sons of Madog ap Idnerth.[8]
In all, the Mortimers' record in Henry II's Welsh wars of the late 1150s and early 1160s is remarkably skimpy. Though we cannot conclude from the absence of Hugh's name in the records that he played no part in these campaigns, the fact that he did not distinguish himself in them suggests that he may have thought that the success or failure of Henry's efforts was not particularly his concern. One wonders whether Hugh was even involved in these royal campaigns or whether he was instead simply pursuing his own private war on the borders as he had done in the past. In either case he would have seen nothing in that decade to persuade him that the king was likely to be of much use in his struggle for a piece of Wales. By the same token it would appear that the English Crown was content to allow the Mortimer family an unusual degree of freedom of action on the middle march, offering neither censure nor support for Mortimer ambitions.
Those ambitions throughout most of the twelfth century seem to have consisted of a desire to destroy the family and neighbors of Madog ap Idnerth and take their lands. The Mortimers were already long established in Maelienydd by 1144 when Hugh, according to the Brut Y Tywysogyon, "repaired the castle of Cymaron, and a second time gained possession of Maelienydd".[9] Madog ab Idnerth had probably been the Mortimers' opponent during the first conquest of the cantref, since it was his sons who were in possession of Maelienydd and Elfael in 1144.[10] Madog had been a combatant in the 1136 conflict that had followed the death of Henry I, and it is likely that the feud between the Mortimers and the Sons of Madog began at that time. In 1146 the vendetta continued, for in that year the Brut records that Maredudd ab Madog ab Idnerth was slain by Hugh Mortimer.[11] Though the extent of Mortimer involvement in the region before 1144 is very poorly documented, it is clear that from that time forward, the family's destiny on the March was linked with the territories of Maelienydd and Gwrtheyrnion. Indeed the Mortimer family's destiny would prove to be linked with the entire region of the Rhwng Gwy a Hafren including: Kerry, Kedewyne, Commot Deuddwr, Builth, Elfael and Radnor. Every one of these areas the Mortimers eventually came to possess in the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, either through marriage, as custodians of the crown, or as patrimonial lands in the peculiar tenure of the march.
The origins of the Mortimer claim to Gwrtheyrnion has to do with another Welsh family whose line is less easy to trace than is the family of Madog ab Idnerth. In 1145 Hugh captured and imprisoned a certain Rhys ap Hywel. Rhys's association with the territory of Gwrtheyrnion has been suggested by J.Beverley Smith[12] to whose article The Middle March in the Thirteenth Century I am indebted for much of my reconstruction of this narrative. It appears that Rhys was the son of Hywel ap Maredudd `of Brycheiniog'.[13] This Hywel , in turn, was probably the son of Maredudd ap Bleddyn who had been active against Henry I in Southern Powys, not far from Brycheiniog. The first certain mention of a Lord of Gwrtheyrnion is Einion ap Rhys in 1175, and Smith's suggestion that he was the son of the Rhys imprisoned by Hugh in 1145 is persuasive. With the Mortimers' re-conquest of Maelienydd in 1144, the capture of Rhys in 1145, the murder of Maredudd in 1146, and then the blinding of the still imprisoned Rhys in 1148,[14] the Mortimers had established their claims in the middle march and served notice on their enemies in bloody and unequivocal terms.
The crows that had gathered around the Mortimers' activities in the mid-1140s came home to roost in the mid-1170s. While Royal authority may have been willing to countenance the Mortimers' exceptional freedom and family vendetta in the 1140s and '50s, by the 1170s that feud was beginning to interfere with the expanding spheres of interest of both the Angevin and Welsh Rulers. After the great rebellion of 1173-4, the authority of Henry II was secure, and with the death of the last king of Powys in 1160 and of Owain of Gwynedd in 1170, the authority of Rhys ab Gruffudd of Deheubarth was similarly ascendent in Wales. In 1171 Henry met with Rhys, confirmed him in all his gains and the following year conferred upon him the remarkable title of "justice of all Deheubarth".[15] Implicit in this recognition of Rhys's status was Rhys's obligation to secure the good behavior of his subordinate princes, many of whom were related to him by marriage. These he brought with him to a council with Henry at Gloucester in 1175.[16] The cream of this crop, listed first in the Brut, was Cadwallon ap Madog of Maelienydd, Einion Clud of Elfael and Einion ap Rhys of Gwrtheyrnion. The first two were the brothers of Maredudd ap Madog, and the third was the son of Rhys ap Hywel, the very princes Hugh Mortimer had killed, imprisoned or blinded two decades earlier. Needless to say, the cream of Rhys's client princes in 1175 had little use for Hugh Mortimer, and their antipathy for his family was soon to endanger Rhys's amicable relationship with with Henry.
Four years after the council at Gloucester the chronicler of Wigmore, the Mortimer family abbey, records that Cadwallon ap Madog killed some of the men of Roger Mortimer, Hugh's son. In retaliation, Roger took it upon himself to murder his father's old enemy, Cadwallon, the last of the sons of Madog ab Idnerth.[17] Unfortunately for Roger, Cadwallon had been traveling under the King's safe conduct. Ralph Diceto was clearly appalled at these events and concentrates in his chronicle upon the damage that had been done to the king's authority. And he reports that this crime was treated with the utmost seriousness: the Castle of Wigmore was confiscated and Roger and others were imprisoned.[18] In spite of this unusually severe royal censure, Roger, like his father before him, was able to come to terms with the king in a short time, and in 1181, he succeeded to his father's estates without apparent difficulty.[19] Rhys's failure to restrain Cadwallon, and Henry's reaction to the Mortimers' retaliation suggest that, while private war in the middle march could now have broader consequences, the respective rulers of England and South Wales still had as little control over such warfare as the previous generation of rulers had had.
In the 1140s, Royal authority had been disinterested in what was essentially a private war between substantially independent lords on the march. In the 1170s, because of the fragile détente between them, Angevin and Welsh rulers were forced to intervene in this conflict in an attempt to contain it. In the 1190s that détente was crumbling and we find the vendetta between the Mortimers and the Native Princes of Maelienydd emerging again, but now with the active involvement of Royal or princely authority on both sides. In 1195 Roger Mortimer was finally able to expel the sons of Cadwallon ap Madog from Maelienydd and rebuild the castle at Cymaran.[20] This time, however, he was acting with the financial support and endorsement of Richard I.[21] His success was short lived, however, for in the following year the family of Cadwallon, with the help of Rhys ap Gruffudd, defeated a large force led by Roger Mortimer and Hugh de Say in a battle near Radnor in Builth.[22] The Mortimers seem to have held on to Maelienydd in the final years of the century, but they required royal assistance to do it and many marchers were pressed hard by Rhys and his allies.
In the first two decades of the thirteenth century the private war of the Mortimers for control of Maelienydd continued to emerge into an ever wider political arena. Now it was being prosecuted by Princely and Royal principals. Llywelyn ap Iorwerth was expanding his influence across all of Wales and was drawing to himself the support of many of the minor princes of the Middle March. In 1212, provoked by Llywelyn's successes, King John hanged Hywel ab Cadwallon and Hywel's nephew Madog who was being raised in Llywelyn's household.[23] Madog's brothers, Cadwallon and Maredudd were with Llywelyn in the campaign of 1215, having come to his allegiance from Powys.[24] Acting on their behalf, Llywelyn sent a letter to Pandulf of Henry III's regency council in support of the claims to Maelienydd of these grandsons of Cadwallon. In it he warns that the transfer of Maelienydd to Roger Mortimer might result in trouble. Though phrased as a threat of reprisal if his `nephew's' claims were not honored, the letter also amounted to an admission (a convenient admission, it must be said) that Llywelyn had little control over what might happen in the region.
Though the struggle for possession of the Rhwng Gwy a Hafren had now taken on a wider political significance, it nevertheless retained something of the character of a private war. Llywelyn's letter makes it clear that "It will not be Llywelyn's fault if trouble arises in the march between England and Wales."[25] This sentiment is echoed in an agreement between Henry III and the descendents of these nephews of Llywelyn in 1241. These descendents of the original princes of Maelienydd now accepted the lordship of the English king, but in so doing reserved the right to make war on the Mortimers if attacked.[26] Thus, by the mid-thirteenth century the Mortimers had emerged as the victors in what had begun as a family vendetta in the 1130s. Their power and influence had so increased through marriage, conquest, and ultimately royal service, that their private wars had now become the King's concern. The final submission of the descendents of Madog ab Idnerth was to the king, but it is significant that they still had their eyes on the private threat of the family Mortimer.[27] It would not be until the the treaty of Aberconway in 1277 that Roger Mortimer would be legally secure in all his Welsh possessions, but by that time what remained of the Native princes of the middle march were of little account.
Though the Mortimers' conflict in the Rhwng Gwy a Hafren was in the thirteenth century no longer a private affair. the legacy of that vendetta nevertheless continued to influence the character of their actions in the march. Even after the native Welsh lords of both Maelienydd and Gwrtheyrnion had been extinguished, the Mortimers continued in their habit of private violence. It is more than merely ironic that Llywelyn ap Gruffudd should die in 1282 , not in battle with Edward I and the feudal host of England, but in an ambush on the borders of Maelienydd at the hands of the followers of Edmund Mortimer, the great great grandson of the Hugh Mortimer,Vir Arrogantissimus, with whom we began.
We have seen the way in which private war prompted and shaped the intervention of Royal authority in the march. I would like now to at least note the role of legal and ecclesiastical institutions in these developments. During the period of Roger Mortimer's imprisonment for the murder of Cadwallon ap Madog, the chronicle of Wigmore abbey records that a number of Welshmen had been captured in battle and were being held at Wigmore castle. These prisoners escaped and were "kindly received" at the Abbey where their fetters "fell off them by a miracle." These fetters were hung like a trophy in the church and the chronicle makes a point that "The Welshmen remained there in peace until they had leave to go."[28] Shortly after Roger's return from prison, the monks moved their foundation to Shobdon until the king should order Roger "to leave them in peace in God's care".[29] Despite the fact that it was a Mortimer foundation, Wigmore Abbey appears to have been seeking some kind of independent accomodation with the Mortimer's Welsh enemies during the period of Roger Mortimer's imprisonment. Even Wigmore may have been losing patience with the Mortimers' endless and destructive wars in the middle march..
The Cistercian abbey of Cwm Hir in Maelienydd was in a sense the opposite number of the abbey at Wigmore, being the foundation of Cadwallon ap Madog, the Mortimers' rival in Maelienydd. Dr. Pryce has suggested that the prologues to the Cyfnerth redaction of the Welsh laws were authored during this same period and possibly by someone closely associated with Cwm Hir.[30] Given the appointment of Rhys ab Gruffudd as "justice of All Deheubarth" by an Angevin king in 1172, this redaction of the laws of Hywel Dda could be read as an appeal to Rhys to support native Welsh legal culture against an encroaching Angevin model of jurisprudence. I'd like to suggest that, in addition to this interpretation, the redaction of Cyfnerth in this particular time and place may also represent the plea of an embattled ecclesiastical institution, weary of the endemic violence in the Rhwng Gwy a Hafren, for assurances that they would not be abandoned by their prince to the tender mercies of the Mortimer family. If this is the case, then the private wars of the Mortimers would seem to have had long term implications for the distinctive culture that developed in the middle march.
The Mortimers were a singular family; I know of no other English baronial family that could boast such extended success in sustaining and even expanding its patrimony. Roger de Torigny's epithet Vir Arrogantissimus for Hugh Mortimer in 1155, could aptly be applied to the representatives of almost any generation of the Mortimer Family. In Hugh's day, their arrogance was founded upon little more than sheer brass and a bloody minded determination to wrest the cantref of Maelienydd from a long succession of equally bloody minded descendents of Madog ab Idnerth. In later generations the Mortimers were no less arrogant, and their long history of private war on the march did much to shape the character of that borderland. It is no accident that the Mortimer name was so closely associated with that character that they became in 1328, not the earls of Maelienydd or the dukes of Wigmore, but the earls of March.[31]
[1] See R.H.C. Davis, King Stephen, p.41
[2] Regesta Regum Anglonormanorum, v.3 1135-1154, Cronne and Davis (Oxford, 1968) #437. The others who's lands were excepted from this grant are no less significant, especially William de Braose
[3] Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, v.3 1135-1154, Cronne and Davis (Oxford, 1968) #180 pp.65-6
[4] Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II., and Richard I. Vol.IV, The Chronicle of Robert of Torigny. Richard Howlett ed. Rolls Series v.82 pp.184-5
[5] Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II., and Richard I. Vol.IV, The Chronicle of Robert of Torigny. Richard Howlett ed. Rolls Series v.82 pp.184-5; "Mense Julio, nonis ejusdem, Hugo de Mortuo Mari pacificatus est cum rege Henrico, redditis castellis Bruge et Wigemore."
[6] i.e. 1157. Warren, Henry II, pp.67-8
[7] Annales Cambriae, p. 50
[8] For good figures on the extent of Royal investment in both these campaigns and for their narrative see: Paul Latimer "Henry II's Campaign Against the Welsh in 1165," Welsh History Review, v.14 #4, 1989, pp.523-52
[9] Brut Y Tywysogyon, or the Chronicle of the Princes RBH; Thomas Jones, ed., p.119
[10] Lloyd, HW, p.477; note also Lloyd's reconstruction of the family tree, p.406 n.31 "Cadwgan was the son of Elstan Glodrydd (Bruts, 302, and Mostyn MS. 117, as cited by Evans, Rep. i. p. 63. II. d), who is well known as the founder of the fifth of the "Royal Tribes" of Wales, but of whom nothing is recorded on any good authority. Besides Idnerth, Cadwgan had two other sons, Goronwy and Llywelyn (Jesus Coll. MS. 20 in Cymr. viii. 88, Nos. xxx. and xxii.), who appear in 1075 and 1077 as opponents of Rhys ab Owain (Trans. Cymr. 1899-1900, 174, note).Goronwy, or Gronw (d.1101), was the father of the Hywel ap Gronw mentioned in the text of the above paragraph (d.1106); Llywelyn was slain in 1099 by the men of Brycheiniog. The sphere of influence of the family was Buellt and Rhwng Gwy a Hafren; from it, through Madog ab Idnerth (d.1140), sprang the later princes of Maelienydd and of Elfael."
[11] Brut Y Tywysogyon, or the Chronicle of the Princes RBH; Thomas Jones, ed., p.121
[12] J. Beverley Smith, "The Middle March in the Thirteenth Century," Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, #24, 1070-'72, p.79
[13] Brut Y Tywysogyon, or the Chronicle of the Princes RBH; Thomas Jones, ed., p.115 (note Hywel killed by his own men in 1142 ibid. p.119)
[14] Ann. Camb. check source
[15] Brut Y Tywysogyon, RBH, p.159; Lloyd, II., p.543
[16] Brut Y Tywysogyon, RBH, p.165; Lloyd, II., p.544
[17] Einion Clud of Elfael had died in 1177. Brut Y Tywysogyon, RBH, p.169
[18] De Cito and the Anglo-Norman chronicle of Wigmore Abbey
[19] Eyton. Shropshire, iv. 204-5
[20] Brut Y Tywysogyon, RBH, p.175
[21] P.R. 7 Richard I, pp. 13, 108p.13 Mich. 1195 - Abbas de Persore [blank] xl s. ut sit quietus de misericordia sua quia non misit milites suos in exercitu de camarun. Sicut summonitus fuit.p.108 - Herefordscr' in Wal' - Et Rogero de mortem' xxli de reparatione castelli camarun per breve H. Cant' Archiepiscopi. Et Hugoni de Say c s. ad firmandum castellum de Bledewach per breve eiusdem.
[22] BT-RBH p.179
[23] BT-RBH, p. 203
[24] J.B.Smith says from Deheubarth, (middle march in the 13th cent. p.81, n.7) but BT-RBH, says that among the princes in the expedition of 1215, "the two sons of Maelgwn ap Cadwallon." came from Powys. (BT-RBH p.207)
[25] Calendar of Ancient Correspondence pertaining to Wales p.8-9
[26] Littere Wallie, pp. 54-58; Mat.Par. Chron. Maj. (rolls ser.), iv. 319-20; and see especially the comments of J.G.Edwards on the significance of these documents
[27] Note that J.B. Smith has published the charters from the Liber Niger de Wigmore that are clearly the instruments by which the native lordship of Gwerthrynion is extinguished in the latter quarter of the thirteenth century.
[28] The Anglo-Norman chronicle of Wigmore Abbey, J.C. Dickinson and P.T. Ricketts eds., p.437; "and since Roger, his son and heir, was being held prisoner by the king for the death of one Cadwalan who had killed his men,(Et pur ceo que Roger, sun fiz et heir, fut tenuz en la garde le roy pur la mort de un Cadwalan a noun, le quel lé seons tuerent) the ministers of the king took possession of the castle of Wigmore with its appurtenances; at this time thirteen Welshmen were captured in battle, and were held prisoner, firmly fettered, in the castle of Wigmore. As their warders were sleeping one night, they made their escape as far as the abbey, where they were kindly received and refreshed with food and drink, and the irons with which they were fettered fell off them by miracle, and these irons were displayed in the church, and the Welshmen remained there in peace until they had leave to go back to their own country without hindrance.
[29] ibid.
[30] Huw Pryce, "The Prologues to the Welsh Lawbooks" BBCS, 33 (1987) 151-187. See especially pp. 153-4.
[31] how about the Mortimers as prototypes for marcher lordship? typical, prototypical, emblematic, exemplary, or whatever: