A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain (39 page)

Other symbolic events had already been contrived at Caernarfon to reinforce the connection. The previous year, during his hostage-taking tour, Edward had ‘discovered’ the body of the Emperor Maximus there; on the king’s orders, it was exhumed and then reburied in the local church. Here, in other words, was a repeat performance of the disinterment of Arthur some five years earlier, and to much the same purpose. Maximus was said to be the father of Constantine; Constantine was known to be the grandfather of Arthur – Geoffrey of Monmouth had said so. It was no coincidence that, around the same time, Edward had been presented with a coronet that had once belonged to Llywelyn, which was said to be ‘Arthur’s crown’. In the spring of 1284, once the royal goldsmith had rendered it more impressive, this trophy was sent to England. At some point soon after, Edward’s oldest son and heir, Alfonso, presented it at the shrine of Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey.
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Back in Wales, the search for symbols of conquest and the celebration of victory continued in a similarly Arthurian vein. For most of June, including his forty-fifth birthday, the king chose to keep his court at Llyn Cwm Dulyn, a deep, dark lake in the mountains to the south of Caernarfon, reputed to have mystical properties. At the end of July he held a magnificent ‘Round Table’ tournament at Nefyn, a remote little town where the prophecies of Merlin were said to have been found. In early August he toured the far reaches of the Ll
n peninsula, even the tiny islands off the coast. Edward was evidently revelling in his discoveries, and the knowledge that he had been further and seen more than any of his predecessors. Excepting Arthur, of course.
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It was not until the middle of August that the festivities began to wind down. By 13 August the king was back at Caernarfon, and on 22 August he set out east along the coast, back in the direction of England. It was probably on that day that messengers from England arrived to meet him, with the news that Alfonso was dead.

Peaceful Endeavours

C
ontemporary chroniclers, if they noticed it, maintained a discreet silence; posterity, as a result, has also failed to register its alarming significance. But it can hardly have escaped the attention of Edward I, engaged as he was in the summer of 1284 with the manipulation of myth and search for historical validation: Alfonso, the son and heir to whom he had recently dispatched ‘Arthur’s crown’ for presentation at the high altar of Westminster Abbey, had died on 19 August – the very date on which, ten years earlier, the king himself had stood in the same sacred space on the day of his coronation.
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To a man who had proclaimed that his recent conquest was proof of the unerring dispositions of divine providence, such a coincidence must surely have been more than a little jarring. Alfonso, ten years old at the time of his death, had passed beyond the more perilous years of infancy that had claimed the lives of his predeceased brothers. The toys that Edward had bought him – which included a wooden castle and a miniature siege-engine – had already been exchanged for hawks, hounds and horses. It was premature to call the boy, as one chronicler did, ‘the hope of knighthood’, but surely no exaggeration for the same writer to suggest that Alfonso had been ‘a comfort to his father’. As Archbishop Pecham put it his letter of condolence to the king, ‘the child … was the hope of us all’. Once again, death had robbed the realm of its future security, and left the succession dangling on the fate of a four-month-old baby.
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Nevertheless, Edward, as usual, succeeded in disguising his discomfort. Alfonso was swiftly buried in Westminster Abbey, a week after his death, and with neither of his parents present. Such apparent indifference might seem callous, or perhaps be thought typically medieval, but neither was necessarily the case. Henry III and his queen, for example, had shown great and public concern during the sicknesses of their children and exhibited extreme grief when one of them (a girl called Katherine) had died at a young age. But Katherine was seemingly their sole casualty; their eldest son and his wife, by contrast, had not been nearly so lucky. Edward and Eleanor’s first three children – all daughters – had died before the couple departed on crusade and, within four more years, their eldest sons had likewise been lowered into early graves. Given such a record, it would be understandable if the king and queen came to regard their children with greater detachment than most parents. Other evidence, however, suggests that, in spite of their frequent absences, the king and queen were neither emotionally distant nor uninvolved. Edward’s presents for his son, like the similar gifts he showered on his daughters, are reasonable indicators of genuine affection. Eleanor regularly wrote letters asking after her children’s health. And, while she was unable to attend his funeral, the queen had Alfonso’s heart preserved, in order that it could one day be buried with her own.
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What prevented Edward and Eleanor from rushing back to Westminster that August was an overriding commitment to completing their business in Wales. With the conquest and the celebrations over, the king had elected to embark on a victory tour that would take in the whole country. In September, as a prelude, he travelled to his new abbey at Vale Royal in Cheshire and presented the monks with yet another significant trophy – a silver chalice, made from the melted seal matrices of Llywelyn, Dafydd and Eleanor de Montfort. This was followed a few days later by another festive assembly, which took place on the border at Overton. According to royal financial accounts, a thousand Welsh minstrels gathered there, presumably to perform for the court’s entertainment during the fortnight that followed. It was not until early October that Edward crossed the River Dee and the tour began in earnest. The rest of that month was spent visiting each of the new castles in north Wales – Conwy, Caernarfon and Harlech. Then, in November, it was the turn of west Wales, and for the first time the king got to see his castles at Aberystwyth and Cardigan, as well as the cathedral at St David’s. Finally, in December, Edward and Eleanor moved into the south of the country. Until this point they had been accompanied only by their friends and servants (Robert Burnell, Otto de Grandson and John de Vescy are the foremost witnesses to royal charters), but now they were joined, and welcomed, by several of their great magnates in turn. At the castles of Cardiff, Caldicot and Chepstow, the earls of Gloucester, Hereford and Norfolk were all pleased to play host to the court, which consequently swelled in size as the tour, and the year, drew to a close. Around 21 December the king and his companions took ship across the Severn estuary to Bristol, where they stopped to celebrate Christmas.
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The overriding question now became: what next? Wales was completely subjugated, its native dynasties tamed or extinguished, its history and symbols of independence erased or appropriated. England was at peace, its people inspired by their king’s triumph, its nobles united as never before in their sense of shared achievement. Gascony was beset by its normal array of problems, but faced no immediate crisis and required no urgent intervention; Ireland was no more troublesome, nor alluring, than usual. Edward, and the tireless Eleanor, given their recent exertions, might well have been forgiven had they decided to take a well-earned rest, and allowed themselves to lapse into the kind of easy routine they had been enjoying before the fateful rebellion had been raised.

Instead they decided to go on crusade again. Edward had always intended to return to the Holy Land. But, as he had made clear in his correspondence with one pope after the next (the turnover since 1274 had been tremendous – no fewer than six in ten years, including one who had lasted only a month), affairs in England must for the time being take first priority. During this decade, Edward had repeatedly emphasised that his brother Edmund was an experienced crusader who would be more than happy to lead an English army in his place. The popes, however, had ultimately rejected this suggestion. What was needed, they averred, was a leader of international renown who would rally all of Christendom behind his banner. And only Edward, whose earlier exploits in the East were already the stuff of legend, could truly take on such a role.
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And so, in the end, Edward agreed to go. His decision was announced early in 1284, in the wake of his Welsh conquest, and the two events are probably not unconnected. At the height of his power, filled with a sense of divine purpose, grateful to God for granting him victory: here was a king newly inspired, ready again to confront the greatest challenge his age could offer.
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To follow one colossal and costly conflict with another in this way might seem to be imprudent, even wholly impracticable; but in fact this was not the case. This time, Edward would not be a junior partner, scrabbling around for funds. On the contrary, as the papacy’s chosen leader, he expected the papacy’s full financial support, and by 1284 this looked set to be very substantial. For much of the past decade, and in the face of strong opposition in England, Rome had been taxing the churches of Europe in anticipation of a new expedition. For six continuous years from 1274, 10 per cent of all ecclesiastical income had been relentlessly harvested, with the result that, in every major church and abbey, sacks of silver pennies were sitting, waiting to be spent. (Edward, indeed, was well aware of their existence: in the spring of 1283, incensed by the clergy’s refusal to subsidise the Welsh war, he had angrily ordered this money seized. It was a move that had made even his bankers blanch, and the sacks were soon returned, for the most part unopened.) Impressive as these funds were, however (they totalled about £130,000), Edward knew from experience that they would not be enough; his first, unsuccessful crusade had cost at least £100,000. Negotiations with Rome were therefore ongoing in 1284. Pope Martin IV – three years into his pontificate, and still going strong – had offered to tax the Church for another three years; Edward, in response, had suggested that ten years might be nearer the mark.
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Such long-distance haggling was time consuming and tedious, but there was no question that a compromise could be reached in due course. The obstacle to a new crusade in 1284 was not financial, nor volitional, but political. Edward could hardly lead a great Christian coalition to fight the infidel when the kings of western Europe were poised on the brink of war with each other.

The cause of contention, once again, was Sicily. In the thirty years since it had ensnared Henry III, the island had continued to act as a focus for the rivalries of Europe’s rulers. For a while, it is true, matters there had seemed settled. In the late 1260s Charles of Anjou had taken up the pope’s offer of the Sicilian crown and forcefully established his authority. Within a few years – even by the time of Edward’s visits during his first crusade – his power appeared to be unshakeable. But Charles had gone on to overplay his hand in pursuit of a dream of Mediterranean empire. In 1271 he had acquired the kingdom of Albania; in 1277 he bought the title ‘king of Jerusalem’; by the start of the 1280s he was planning to capture the city of Constantinople. And yet, all the time he was expanding eastwards, the ambitious Angevin was neglecting, and abusing, the core of his power. To raise the armies for his campaigns, Charles subjected Sicily to the harshest measures: taxes were raised in ever greater sums, deserters were punished with death, and the threat of reprisals against their wives and children. By the spring of 1282 the islanders had decided that they would stand for no more. On Easter Monday that year, with the cry ‘Death to the French!’, they rose up, killing their oppressors, or sending them fleeing to the Italian mainland.
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This revolt, known because of its timing as the Sicilian Vespers, came just a week after the similar anti-colonial uprising in distant Wales, and provoked a similar reaction from the ousted overlord. ‘We intend,’ said Charles of Anjou, ‘to confront the rebel island of Sicily with an army by land, and a fleet by sea, to bring about the total collapse and confusion of our enemies and rebels.’ And had the Sicilians, like the Welsh, stood alone, he might well have succeeded.
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But the Sicilians were not alone. On the contrary, they were backed by an international coalition of malcontents, all of whom had been itching to curb the rise of Angevin power. The emperor of Constantinople, fearful for his own security, was one. Peter of Aragon, king of Spain’s second most sizeable kingdom, was another. His queen was a daughter of the Hohenstaufen – the once great dynasty whose power Charles of Anjou had terminated – and, as such, regarded herself as Sicily’s rightful heir. Within a few weeks of the rebellion, Peter set sail from Spain to aid the islanders in their struggle and to uphold his wife’s claim. On 1 September he reached Palermo, where he was greeted by rapturous crowds, and had himself crowned as Sicily’s new king.
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