Richard & John: Kings at War (63 page)

This was premature, for the wily Llewellyn was merely playing for time. The following year he pulled off the stroke that William of Scotland had tried and failed, namely securing an alliance with Philip Augustus.
⁶¹
Secure in this powerful pledge of foreign support, Llewellyn denounced the treaty his wife had negotiated the year before. Angrily John took to the field once more. He diverted an impressive host assembled for a projected campaign in France to Chester and made such thorough preparations that no less than 8,500 men were dragooned into service as labourers for a massive castle-building project he had in mind. So determined was John that eighteen galleys and other naval craft were earmarked for an amphibious assault on Wales.
⁶²
Yet another baronial conspiracy distracted John so that he was unable to advance into Wales for the fire-and-sword chastisement he had intended; frustrated and therefore in a state of homicidal anger, he hanged 28 of the Welsh hostages. This was a bad mistake: Welsh princes who had previously been suspicious of Llewellyn’s ambitions now came to suspect John of wanting to have the whole of Wales under his dominion - a return to the situation under Henry I a hundred years earlier. When Llewellyn raised his standard as the purported saviour of Wales, his rivals joined him against the ‘English tyrant’. John perfectly verified the description by putting a price on the head of every Welshman delivered to him.
⁶³
While the barons and a new war with Philip Augustus preoccupied John, Llewellyn seized his chance and by the end of 1213 was again dominant in most of Wales. His real moment of glory came in the year 1215. While John and the barons argued and agonised over Magna Carta, Llewelyn swept all before him; Shrewsbury, Cardigan and Carmarthen all fell to his armies.
⁶⁴
It is amazing that some historians still seem impressed by John’s dubious achievements in Wales. His policy there was characterised by myopic short-termism, and he made the particular mistake of taking Gwenwynwyn out of the political equation, allowing Llewellyn to become over-powerful.

John was no more successful long-term in Ireland. Since his ill-starred voyage there in 1185, much had happened but even to a wily politician like John most of it must have seemed esoteric and obscure. Richard I has often been blamed for having no interest in England but he had even less in Ireland, and did not even deprive John of his title of Lord of Ireland when his other fiefs were taken away from him in 1194. The result was near-chaos, with bloodshed, mayhem, revolt, rebellion and mini-civil wars the norm, and native Irish princes and English interlopers making a series of ad hoc indiscriminate alliances. It has been suggested that one factor in the chaos was that nearly all the leading actors in the English invasion of Ireland died young (Strongbow, Hugh de Lacy the elder, Robert FitzStephen, Maurice FitzGerald, Ramond le Gros, Miles of Cogan), leaving minors, heiresses or indirect descendants as successors; consequently the fiefs were temporarily administered by Crown agents who were woefully ignorant of conditions in Ireland.
⁶⁵
Meanwhile feuds between the native O’Conors and O’Briens weakened the position of the indigenous Irish in Connacht and Munster, making straight the ways for the English conquerors; Rory O’Conor, the last high king of Ireland, died in 1198. When Henry II died the dominant English figure in Ireland was the swashbuckling adventurer John de Courcy, who had conquered Ulster, Cortes-like, with a handful of men and been appointed justiciar by Henry. In circumstances that remain obscure de Courcy fell foul of Richard and was removed as justiciar in 1191 but, so murky are the sources for this decade, we do not know who, if anyone, succeeded him in this post. As de Courcy’s star dipped, another energetic Norman conqueror moved into the power vacuum. This was William de Burgh, who conquered most of modern Limerick and Tipperary and began meddling in the affairs of the all-Irish province of Connacht. Meanwhile the sons of Hugh de Lacy allied themselves with John de Courcy and attempted the conquest of Munster and Leinster.
⁶⁶

John the great centraliser tried to rationalise the chaos in Ireland and began by appointing Meiler FitzHenry as justiciar.
⁶⁷
He neutralised John de Courcy in Leinster by strengthening the position of William Marshal, who had extensive holdings there, although he had never visited Ireland. He cajoled, bribed or persuaded the de Lacy brothers to jettison de Courcy and work closely with Meiler instead, and broke de Courcy by transferring the lordship of Ulster to Hugh de Lacy in 1205.
⁶⁸
Most of all, he employed accelerated promotion to boost the position of his favourite William de Braose. Scion of an ancient Norman family that had come over with William the Conqueror after the conquest of 1066, de Braose came to the fore around 1180 when he succeeded his father as a lord of the Welsh Marches and acquired the reputation of being tough, fearless and ruthless.
⁶⁹
Richard had liked his martial qualities and John appreciated them too, though there was always a time-bomb ticking away in the John-de Braose relationship, since de Braose knew the full facts about the murder of Arthur, and John knew that he knew.
⁷⁰
In the early years of John’s reign de Braose prospered mightily: he quickly became the most powerful English baron in South Wales, rich marriages were arranged for his children and one of his sons was given a bishopric; John even wrote off his extensive debts to Henry and Richard.
⁷¹
A man of chilling ambition, he persuaded John to make him lord of Limerick in Ireland also, which brought him into immediate collision with William de Burgh, who was still governor of Limerick city.
⁷²
At first de Braose had difficulty enforcing his new land grant, as de Burgh and other Leinster grant holders did not relish their demotion from tenants-in-chief of the king to undertenants of de Braose and initially de Burgh and the other recalcitrants were supported by the justiciar Meiler. But in 1203 clear orders went out from John in England; the justiciar was ordered to ally himself with the de Lacy brothers and expel de Burgh from Limerick, which was duly accomplished.
⁷³
Evidently John then had second thoughts, or his machiavellian instinct for divide and rule got the better of him, for he restored all his Irish lands to him (except the ones in Connacht he did not control but which de Burgh, typically, still laid claim to).
⁷⁴

John wanted to control Ireland personally and he wanted deputies he could rely on, which meant that at first he leaned on de Braose and William Marshal, but John’s almost reflex instincts of mistrust meant that he encouraged the English adventurers in Ireland to engage in a ‘potentially deadly game of snakes and ladders’
⁷⁵
in which treachery, murder and hostage-taking were reliable constants. Apart from the internecine struggle for dominance in Ulster, Leinster and Munster, all the Norman adventurers had their eyes fixed farther afield, on Connacht, the only province still under native Irish rule.
⁷⁶
The death of Roderic O’Conor in 1198 was the signal for civil war in Connacht between his sons, in which the English took an avid part. John de Courcy and the Lacys (Walter and Hugh, whose power base was in Meath) supported Cathal Crovderg O’Conor while William de Burgh and his Limerick acolytes backed Cathal Carrach, who was at first victorious. Then the new justiciar Meiler FitzHenry led the cohorts of Leinster against Cathal Carrach and turned the tables in a campaign in which Carrach was slain and his brother emerged triumphant.
⁷⁷
De Burgh then tried to stage a coup against Crovderg but was himself expelled. Yet the unfortunate Irish ruler had no illusions about the ambitions of the Normans to cross the Shannon and reduce him to vassalage. Crovderg would eventually ‘solve’ his problem by ceding two-thirds of Connacht to John himself, leapfrogging over his adventurer-barons, in return for the sum of one hundred marks a year, on the sole condition that the remaining third was guaranteed to him and his heirs in perpetuity. John accepted this deal but overegged the pudding by insisting that Meiler FitzHenry chose the two-thirds to be ceded. Not surprisingly, Crovderg refused these humiliating terms, and there the matter rested until John came to Ireland in person in 1210.
⁷⁸

Meanwhile in the rest of Ireland the faction-fighting and semi-civil war between the English adventurers continued. The six-headed dragon of discord comprised de Braose, de Burgh, John de Courcy, the Lacy brothers and Meiler FitzHenry. When Meiler and Walter Lacy fell out, having cooperated earlier to dish John de Courcy, John tried to punish both by granting the entire custody of Limerick to de Braose. John at various times dealt with the adventurers he did not favour by summoning them to England; this was the fate both of John de Courcy and Walter Lacy.
⁷⁹
But Meiler FitzHenry upset John’s plans by promptly falling out with de Braose; in exasperation John privately vowed to replace his justiciar. The already cloudy Irish waters were further muddied when William Marshal insisted, against the wishes of a most reluctant king, on visiting his Irish domains in 1207 - Marshal was lord of Leinster by virtue of his 1189 marriage to Isabelle, Strongbow’s daughter. Marshal was a big fish in the Angevin empire considered as a totality and in Ireland he was more like a leviathan in the power stakes. Predictably the turbulent justiciar especially resented his coming and appealed to John. John did what he always did in such circumstances, which was to summon both men back to England. This would-be clever move solved nothing for both the followers of Marshal and Meiler FitzHenry carried on a war by proxy, ranging from intrigue to battlefield encounters. Meanwhile John made his preferences clear by welcoming Meiler and cold-shouldering Marshal.
⁸⁰
John then detained Marshal in England and sent Meiler back to Ireland, roundly declaring that no one had a right to question his justiciar’s rights to sieze fiefs if he (John) commanded it; he also ordered Marshal’s knights to return to England.
⁸¹
This ukase was aimed at Marshal, but Meiler saw the chance to use it to strike also at de Braose. This was a bad miscalculation, for de Braose was still John’s special favourite, and when Meiler moved against the de Braose interests in Limerick, John sharply rebuked his justiciar.
⁸²

William Marshal often sailed close to the wind when dealing with the Angevin monarchs and never more so than when dealing with John. So far from recalling knights from Ireland, he sent more over as reinforcements; secret messages had reached him from his followers in Ireland adamantly insisting that if they crossed the Irish Sea, Meiler would seize their lands. Marshal decided to present John with a fait accompli. He urged his men to an all-out effort, which turned out successfully when with the help of Hugh Lacy the Marshal faction defeated Meiler and took him prisoner.
⁸³
Meiler had already poisoned John’s mind against Marshal so John thought of a characteristic way to take revenge. One day at the end of January 1208, as John and Marshal were riding out of Guildford together, the king said he had just heard dramatic news from Ireland. Marshal immediately knew this was a lie, either because he knew John so well and could read his body language or, more likely, because he knew that the stormy Irish Sea was at its most tempestuous that winter, with alarmingly high wave heights reported, so that it was impossible for any courier to have crossed to England. John made up a story that Meiler had heavily defeated Marshal’s knights near Kilkenny, hoping to cast his too-mighty subject into despondency. The poker-faced Marshal simply replied: ‘Certainly, sire, it is a pity about the knights. They were after all your subjects, which makes the affair only more regrettable. ’
⁸⁴
But when John finally learned the truth and realised that Marshal had the whip hand in Ireland, he bowed to necessity and allowed him to depart for Ireland, this time in semi-disgrace. From April 1208, for five years, Marshal remained in Ireland while John’s fit of the sulks continued, finally bringing peace to Leinster where all John’s lieutenants had failed.
⁸⁵

Meiler FitzHenry’s poison against Marshal, assiduously poured into the king’s ear, availed him nothing, but the similar dose of venom directed at de Braose finally worked. Gradually John came to feel that de Braose had abused his trust by unilateral conspiracy with the Lacys and the Welsh rebels. Disillusioned with de Braose, stuck with Marshal and exasperated with Meiler’s ineffectiveness, the pragmatic John made it clear that Marshal’s hegemony in Ireland had his blessing, confirmed Walter Lacy as lord of Meath (April 1208), and put in four royal commissioners over Meiler in Ireland; FitzHenry lingered on in this lame-duck capacity until John put him out of his misery at the end of 1209 by replacing him as justiciar with John Gray, bishop of Norwich.
⁸⁶
But Meiler’s shirt of Nessus had at least put paid to de Braose. No one has ever satisfactorily explained why John turned so viciously on his erstwhile favourite - though the sources tend to indicate that de Braose’s habitual and persistent financial dishonesty was at the root of it - but there was no mistaking the savage vindictiveness when he did so. John broke decisively with de Braose and ordered all his Welsh lands forfeit. The desperate de Braose tried to head off utter disgrace by promising he would pay his debts, offering castles as payment and pledging his grandson as hostage.
⁸⁷
But de Braose’s strong-minded wife Maud refused to hand over this hostage, saying publicly that John had murdered Arthur and could not be trusted with the custody of minors. Already furiously angry when this was reported to him, John virtually exploded when he heard that de Braose had surrendered the agreed castles and was now trying to retake them. He proclaimed him outlaw and foul traitor.
⁸⁸