The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

As the war lasted on, negotiations were attempted; and the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had threatened the last sentence of the Church against Llewelyn and his adherents, was sent over to Snowdon to hold a conference. Llewelyn had already been warned that it was idle to expect assistance from Rome. He was now summoned to submit at discretion, with a hope—so expressed as to be a promise—that he and the natives of the revolted districts would have mercy shown them. In private he was informed that, on condition of surrendering Wales, he should receive a county in England and a pension of one thousand pounds a year. David was to go to the Holy Land, and not return except by the King's permission. These terms were undoubtedly hard, but could not be called unreasonable, as, by the subjugation of Anglesey, the principality was reduced to the two modern counties of Merionethshire and Carnarvonshire. Llewelyn and his barons preferred to die fighting sword in hand for position and liberty. The Primate excommunicated them and withdrew.

About the time of this interview, November 6th, there was a sharp skirmish at Bangor. Some of the Earl of Gloucester's troops crossed over before the bridge was completed, except for low-water mark, and were surprised and routed, with the loss of their leader and fourteen bannerets, by the Welsh. This encouraged Llewelyn to resume offensive operations, and he poured troops into Cardigan to ravage the lands of a Welshman in the English interest. The English forces in Radnor marched up along the left bank of the Wye, and came in sight of the enemy at Buelth, December 10th. Llewelyn was surprised during a reconnaissance and killed by an English knight, Stephen de Frankton. After a short but brilliant encounter, in which the English charged up the brow of a hill and routed the enemy with loss, they examined the dead bodies, and for the first time knew that Llewelyn was among the slain. A letter was found on his person giving a list, in false names, of the English nobles with whom he was in correspondence, but either the cipher was undiscoverable or the matter was hushed up by the King's discretion.

Llewelyn, dying under church ban, was denied Christian sepulture. His head, crowned with a garland of silver ivy-leaves, was carried on the point of a lance through London, and exposed on the battlements of the Tower. The prophecy that he should ride crowned through London had been fatally fulfilled.

With the death of Llewelyn the Welsh war was virtually at an end. With all his faults of temper and judgment, he had shown himself a man of courage and capacity, who identified his own cause with his people's. But David, though now implicated in the rebellion beyond hope of pardon, had fought under the English banner against his countrymen, with the wish to dismember the principality. The Welsh cannot be accused of fickleness if they became languid in a struggle against overwhelming power and a king who had shown them more tenderness than their leader for the time. David's one castle of Bere was starved into surrender by the Earl of Pembroke, and David himself taken in a bog by some Welsh in the English interest. His last remaining adherent, Rees ap Walwayn, surrendered, on hearing of his lord's captivity, and was sent prisoner to the Tower. For David himself a sadder fate was reserved. His request for a personal interview with his injured sovereign was refused. Edward did not care to speak with a man whom he had no thought of pardoning. He at once summoned a parliament of barons, judges, and burgesses to meet at Shrewsbury, September 29th, and decide on the prisoner's fate. It is evident that Edward was incensed in no common measure against the traitor whom, as he expressed it, he had "taken up as an exile, nourished as an orphan, endowed from his own lands, and placed among the lords of our palace," and who had repaid these benefits by a sudden and savage war.

Nevertheless, the King, from policy or from temperament, resolved to associate the whole nation in a great act of justice on a man of princely lineage. The sentence, which excited no horror at the time, was probably passed without a dissentient voice. David was sentenced, as a traitor, to be drawn slowly to the gallows; as a murderer, to be hanged; as one who had shed blood during Passion-tide, to be disembowelled after death; and for plotting the King's death, his dismembered limbs were to be sent to Winchester, York, Northampton, and Bristol. Seldom has a shameful and violent death been better merited than by a double-dyed traitor like David, false by turns to his country and his king; nor could justice be better honored than by making the last penalty of rebellion fall upon the guilty Prince, rather than on his followers.