Letter from Llywelyn, Prince of Wales to John Pecham, archbishop of Canterbury.

( Latin)

To the most reverend father in Christ, the Lord John, by the Grace of God, Archbishop of Canterbury, primate of all England, from his humble and devoted son Llywelyn, prince of Wales, lord of Snowdon, greetings and filial affection, with all manner of reverence, submission and honour.

For the heavy labours which your fatherly holiness has assumed at this time, out of the love you bear to us and our nation, we render you grateful thanks, all the more since, as you have confided to us, you come against the king’s will.

You ask us to come to the king’s peace. Your holiness should know that we are ready to do so, provided the lord king will truly observe that same peace as is due to us and ours.

We rejoice that this interlude granted to Wales is at your instance and you will find no impediments placed in the way of peace by us, for we would rather support your efforts than those of any other.

We hope, God willing, there need be no occasion for you to write anything to the pope concerning our pertinacity nor will you find us spurning your fatherly entreaties and strenuous endeavours, indeed we embrace them with all the warmth of our heart. Nor is it necessary for the king to weigh his hand yet further against us, since we are fully prepared to render him obedience, always saving our rights and laws, a reservation legally permitted to us.

The realm of England may well be the special object of the Roman curia’s affection, but the aforesaid curia has yet to learn, and must learn, and the lord pope likewise, what evils have been wrought upon us by the English, how the peace formerly made has been violated in all the clauses of the treaty, how churches have been fired and devastated, and ecclesiastical persons, priests, monks and nuns slaughtered, women slain with children at their breast, hospitals and other houses of religion burned, Welsh people murdered in cemeteries, churches, yes at the very altar, with other sacrilegious offences horrible to hear. All which are detailed in these rotuli we send you in writing for your inspection.

Now our best hope is that you fatherly piety may incline kindly towards us, and neither the Roman curia nor the realm of England need be shaken for our sake, provide it is understood in advance that the peace we seek be not only made, but observed. Those who do indeed delight in the shedding of blood are identified manifestly by their deeds, and thus far the English, in their usage of us, have spared none, whether for sex, or age, or weakness, nor passed by any church or sacred place. Such outrages the Welsh have not committed.

It does, however, grieve us very deeply to acknowledge that it is true one ransomed prisoner was killed, but we have neither countenanced nor maintained the murderer, for he was wandering the forests as a freebooter.

You speak of certain persons beginning the fighting at a holy season. We ourselves knew nothing of this until after the fact, when it was urged in their defence that if they had not struck then, death and rape threatened them, they dared neither dwell in their own houses at peace nor go about except in arms, and it was fear and despair that caused them to act when they did.

As to the assertion that we are acting against God, and ought to repent as true Christians, seeking God’s grace, if the war continues it shall not be set at our door, provided we can be indemnified as is our due. But while we are disinherited and slaughtered, it behoves us to defend ourselves to the utmost. Where any genuine injuries and damages come into consideration upon either side, we are prepared to make amends for those committed by our men, provided the like amends are made for damages inflicted upon us. In the making and preserving of peace we are similarly ready to assist to the limit of what is due from us. But when royal pacts and treaties made with us are of none effect, as thus far they have not been observed, it is impossible to establish peace, nor when new and unprecedented exactions against us and ours are daily being devised.

In the accompanying rotuli we send to you the catalogue of our wrongs, and of the breaches of that treaty formerly made with us.

We fight because we are forced to fight, for we, and all Wales, are oppressed, subjugated, despoiled, reduced to servitude by the royal officers and bailiffs, in defiance of the form of the peace and of all justice, more maliciously than if we were Saracens or Jews, so that we feel, and have often so protested to the king, that we are left without any remedy.

Always the justiciars and bailiffs grow more savage and cruel, and if these become satiated with their unjust exactions, those in their turn apply themselves to fresh exasperations against the people. To such a pass are we come that they begin to prefer death to life. It is not fitting in such case to threaten greater armies, or move the Church against us. Let us but have peace, and observe it as due, as we have expressed above.

You should not believe all the words of our enemies, Holy Father, the very people who by their deeds oppress and ill-use us, and in their words defame us by attributing to us whatever they choose. They are ever present with you, and we absent, they the oppressors, we the oppressed. In accordance with divine faith, instead of quoting their words in all things, we should rather examine their deeds.

May your holiness long flourish, to the benefit and good order of the Church. Dated at Garth Celyn

First: This is the form of the royal grace drawn up by the king’s noblemen,

The king will provide for him honourably, bestowing upon him an estate to the value of £1000 sterling, with the rank of an earl, in some part of England. This is on the understanding that the said Llywelyn surrenders to the lord king, absolutely, perpetually and peaceably, his possession of Snowdonia.

The king himself will provide for the prince’s daughter, in accordance with his obligations to his own blood-kin. To this end, the noblemen are confident that they will be able to persuade the king’s mind to compassion.

Item Two: If Llywelyn should take a second wife, and by her have male heirs, the noblemen undertake to procure of the lord king that such heirs shall succeed in perpetuity to inherit the earldom of £1000 value.

Item Three: Concerning the people presently subject of the prince in Snowdonia or elsewhere, provision shall be made for them as God sanctions, and as is consistent with the safety, honour and wellbeing of such people. To which course the king’s mind is already strongly inclined since he desires to provide for all his people with conciliatory mercy.

The terms delivered to Prince Dafydd ap Gruffydd, brother of the Prince of Wales.

First: If, to God’s honour and his own, he will take upon him the burden of the Cross, and journey to aid the crusade in the Holy Land, he shall be provided with an establishment suitable to his rank, on condition that he shall never return unless recalled by the king’s mercy.

We shall ask and we are sure effectively, that the lord king shall provide for Dafydd’s children.

Item Two: To all the Welsh, of our own initiative, we add these warnings, that dangers will threaten them ever more gravely as time passes, as we have already admonished them by word of mouth, and written to them most urgently, for it grows infinitely burdensome to continue in arms for a longer time, only in the end to be totally extirpated, for the perils menacing you will every day be aggravated.

Item Three: After a longer time it grows ever more difficult to live in a state of war, in anguish of heart and body, forever among malignant perils, and at last to die in mortal sin and anger.

ItemFour: Which grieves us sorely, if you do not come to peace to the best you may, we dread the necessity of urging ecclesiastical feeling against you to the last extreme, by reason of your excesses, for which there is no way you can be excused. But in which you shall find mercy, if you come to peace.

To the most reverend father in Christ, the Lord John, by the grace of God Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of all England, his obedient son in Christ, Llywelyn, Prince of Wales and Lord of Snowdon, sendeth greeting.

Holy father, as you have counselled, we are ready to come to the king’s grace, if it is offered in a form safe and honourable for us. But the form contained in the articles which were sent to us, is in no particular either safe or honourable, in the judgement of our council and ourselves, indeed, so far from it that all who hear it are astonished, since it tends rather to the destruction and ruin of our people and our person than to our honour and safety.

There is no way in which our council could be brought to permit us to agree to it, even should we so wish, for never would our nobles and subjects consent in the inevitable destruction and dissipation that would surely derive from it.

Wherefore we beg your fatherly holiness, as you are bound to pursue that renewed peace, honourable and secure, for which you have exerted such heroic labours already, to devise some expedient bearing a just relation to those articles we have submitted to you in writing.

It would surely be more honourable, and more consonant with reason, if we should hold from the king those lands in which we have right, rather than to disinherit us, and hand over our lands and our people to strangers.

Though it may please the king to say that he will allow no discussions concerning the Middle Country, or Anglesey, or the other lands bestowed upon his magnates, nevertheless the prince’s council, if peace is to be made at all, will not countenance any departure from the premise that these cantrefs are a part of the unquestionable holding of the prince, lying within the bounds within which the prince and his predecessors have held since the time of Camber, son of Brutus.

Further, they belong to the principality renewed to the prince by confirmation, at the instance of Ottobuono of blessed memory, legate of the apostolic see in the realm of England, with the consent of the lord king and his magnates, as is manifest in the treaty.

Moreover, it is more equitable that the true heirs should hold the said cantrefs, if need be from the lord king for fee and customary service, rather than they should be given over to strangers and newcomers, even though they may have been powerful supporters of the king’s cause.

Further, all the tenants of all the cantrefs of Wales declare with one voice

that they dare not come to the king’s will, to allow him to dispose of them

First, because the lord king has kept neither treaty nor oath nor charter towards their lord prince and themselves from the beginning.

liegemen of the prince, who is prepared to hold the said lands of the king by customary service.

As to the demand that the prince shall submit absolutely to the king’s will, we reply that since not one man of the aforesaid cantrefs would dare to submit himself to that will, neither will the community of Wales permit its prince to do so upon such terms.

As to the king’s magnates guaranteeing to procure an earldom for the prince, we say he need not and should not accept any such provision, procured by the very magnates who are striving to have him disinherited, so that they may posses his lands in Wales.

Item: that the prince is no way bound to forgo his heritage and that of his forebears from the time of Brutus, and again confirmed as his by the papal legate, as is suggested, and accept lands in England where language, manners, laws and customs are foreign to him, and where, moreover, malicious mischiefs may be perpetrated against him, out of hatred, by English neighbours, from whom that land has been expropriated in perpetuity.

Item: Since the king is proposing to deprive the prince of his original inheritance, it seems unbelievable that he will allow him to hold land in England, where he is seen to have no legal right. And similarly, if the prince is not to be allowed to hold the sterile and uncultivated land rightfully his by inheritance from old times, here in Wales, it is incredible to us that in England he will be allowed possession of lands cultivated, fertile and abundant.

Item: That the prince should place the king in possession of Snowdonia, absolutely, perpetually and peaceably. Since Snowdonia is part of the principality of Wales, which he and his ancestors have held since the time of Brutus, as we have said, his council will not permit him to renounce the said lands and accept land less rightfully his in England.

Item: The people of Snowdonia for their part state that even if the prince desired to give the king seisin of them, they themselves would not do homage to any stranger, of whose language, customs and laws they are utterly ignorant. For by doing so they could be brought into perpetual captivity and barbarously treated, as other cantrefs around them have been by the royal bailiffs and officers, more savagely than ever was wreaked upon Saracen enemies, as we have said above, reverend father, in the rotuli we sent to you.’