Divorced, Beheaded, Died: The History of Britain's Kings and Queens in Bite-Sized Chunks (13 page)

Reigned 1488-1513

James inherited a difficult situation (and much guilt) when his father, the weak and unpopular James III, was killed in a rebellion he himself supported, but he was able to bring Scotland internal peace and the spirit of the Renaissance, and is widely regarded as the most effective of Scotland’s Stewart monarchs. An educated polyglot, James was a patron of arts and sciences. Although he improved Scotland’s military, his preferred tool was diplomacy, strengthening the Auld Alliance with France. He also sought peace with England (notwithstanding a brief pro-Warbeck invasion in 1496), but when Henry VIII invaded France, James had to take sides. He invaded England in 1513, but was defeated and killed at the Battle of Flodden Field, in which some 10,000 Scots were killed. Scotland subsequently lost the stability James had built.

M
ARY
Q
UEEN OF
S
COTS

Reigned 1542–1567

Mary was vivacious, beautiful and clever, but she also had a lack of judgement that she seems to have passed down to some of her descendants.

She was born in 1542 at Linlithgow Palace, the daughter of Mary of Guise and James V of Scotland. She succeeded her father within seven days of her birth. Her mother was French and Mary was brought up as a Catholic, at a time when most Scots were becoming Protestant. At only six months old, she was betrothed to Henry VIII’s son, Edward, but this was repudiated by the Scottish Parliament, so provoking Henry’s invasion of Scotland in 1547 (the ‘Rough Wooing’). She was then betrothed to the French Dauphin and she was sent to live in France at the age of five. At fifteen she was married to the Dauphin, who became Francis II of France in 1559, but died a year later, aged sixteen. They had no children. She returned to Scotland at the age of eighteen, essentially a French Catholic teenager returning to rule a Protestant country.

For a while, Mary managed to get on with her Protestant lords. But she was ambitious to become Queen of England after Elizabeth I. So, in 1565, she married her first cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, which strengthened her position as he had claims to both the Scottish and English thrones. Darnley was handsome but immature, and the marriage was perhaps the mistake that ruined Mary’s life. Darnley was manipulated by some of Mary’s Protestant lords, who convinced him that Mary was having a relationship with her Italian secretary, David Rizzio, who they said had made her pregnant. Darnley and a party of assassins found Rizzio sheltering behind the Queen. They threatened her with a gun, took Rizzio into a nearby room and stabbed him up to fifty-six times, although some sources say he was killed in front of her. Mary was horrified. At this time, one of her confidants was the rugged Earl of Bothwell, who may also have been her lover. She wrote to him of Darnley: ‘Cursed be this poxy fellow that troubleth me this much.’ In 1567 the house at Kirk O’Fields where Darnley was staying was blown up and Darnley was found strangled in the garden. Whether or not Mary and Bothwell were involved in the murder is unknown, but they got the blame for it.

It is then claimed that Bothwell kidnapped and raped Mary and forced her to marry him, though some say that she was a willing participant. The horrified Protestant lords had had enough. They imprisoned Mary and exiled Bothwell, and she was forced to abdicate in favour of her son with Darnley (James VI of Scotland and later James I of England), who was taken away from her and brought up as a Protestant. She was still only twenty-four, and she spent the rest of her life imprisoned, first by the Scots and then, after leading a failed rebellion and fleeing to to England, by the English. She was executed in 1587, on Elizabeth I’s orders, for her alleged involvement in a Catholic plot to usurp the throne of England. In 1603, Elizabeth’s death led to the Union of the Crowns – James succeeded his mother to rule both Scotland and England.

Kings of Wales

Wales has not been an independent entity for much of its history. Until the coming of the Saxons, it was in no sense distinct from ‘England’, as it would become, and indeed was under military rule along with much of the rest of Britain during the Roman period. After the Romans left, native groupings slowly re-emerged in the face of threats from the Saxons and then the Normans. There were local kings, but as far as can be discovered there were no kings of Wales until Wales was cut off from the rest of Britain by the Saxons, when King Offa built his great dyke in the eighth century. The name ‘Wales’ in fact derives from the Saxons, who called the natives ‘the Welsh’, meaning strangers. Eventually, as pressure from the English increased, the Welsh kingdoms were united briefly, before Welsh independence was extinguished by King Edward I in the thirteenth century.

C
UNEDDA
W
LEDIG AP
E
DERN

Reigned
c.
450–460

Cunedda (or Kenneth) means ‘good lord’. Cunedda seems to have been descended from a Roman land-owning official. He was given the title of Wledig (meaning ‘holder of lands’), which is shared with only a few other early Welsh kings and Magnus Maximus, who was declared Roman Emperor in Britain. Possibly under orders from Maximus Vortigern in the fifth century, Cunedda and his people were moved from their ancestral home north of Hadrian’s Wall to northern Wales (founding the Kingdom of Gwnedd), apparently to defend Britain from the marauding Irish. The powerful Gwynedd dynasty was thus founded and would last until Welsh independence was lost in the thirteenth century.

C
ADWALADR
F
ENDIGAID AP
C
ADWALLON

Reigned
c.
655–682

Cadwallader the Blessed was born in around 632. He was King of Gwynedd, but supposedly also claimed the role of High King of Britain. He is said to have been the last king to make a serious attempt to stem the inexorable advance of the Saxons. He attacked the Saxons in Somerset without lasting effect and spent the rest of his reign in Wales establishing monasteries. The Welsh treated him as a saint, although he was never officially canonized. His standard depicted a red dragon, which became the symbol of Henry Tudor and is on the national flag of Wales; Henry himself was keen to be seen as the embodiment of the spirit of Cadwallader.

R
HODRI
M
AWR AP
M
ERFYN

Reigned 844–878

Rhodri the Great was the first king to rule the majority of Wales. He achieved this through dynastic marriage and military power. His father was King of Gwynedd and when his mother’s uncle died he also inherited Powys in the east. In 872 his wife Angharad’s brother drowned and Rhodri added Seisyllwg in southern Wales to his kingdom. Rhodri is remembered for a famous victory against the Vikings in 856, when he killed the Danish leader, Gorm. In 878 he clashed with Alfred the Great of England and was killed.

H
YWEL
D
DA AP
C
ADELL

Reigned 942–950

Hywel the Good was the grandson of Rhodri the Great and son of Cadell of Deheubarth. Hywel was born around 880 and became King of Dyfed in the south-west, which was conquered by Cadell and granted by marriage, in 905. After his cousin, Idwal Foel, died in 942, he seized power in Gwynedd. He adopted a policy of peace with the Saxons, forming an alliance with Athelstan of England. The Welsh did not therefore join the alliance of anti-English kings that was defeated by Athelstan at the Battle of Brunanburh in 937.

Hywel was very well educated and went on pilgrimage to Rome. Although his kingdom split again after his death, his codification of Welsh laws was a unifying factor in the foundation of the Welsh legal system until it was abolished by the English in the sixteenth century.

G
RUFFYDD AP
L
LYWELYN

Reigned 1039–1063 (Ruled over all Wales 1051-1063)

Gruffydd is the only king to have controlled the whole of Wales. He was already King of Powys when he usurped the throne of Gwynedd in 1039 after the incumbent was killed, possibly on Gruffydd’s orders. He defeated an English army near Welshpool on the River Severn, killing the brother of the Earl of Mercia and then defeated Hywel ab Edwin, the great-grandson of Hywel Dda, and married his wife. After several setbacks, he defeated Hywel’s successor and gained Deheubarth (Seisyllwg and Dyfed). In 1055 he allied himself with Ælfgãr, ex-Earl of Mercia and enemy of Harold Godwinson (Harold II), burnt down Hereford and incorporated Gwent in the south-east into his kingdom, thus becoming king of all of Wales from 1057 to 1063. He was described as ‘prodigal, watchful, active, bold, quick-witted, affable, lecherous, wicked, treacherous, and pitiless’.

Finally, after Ælfgãr’s death Harold Godwinson, helped by his brother Tostig, took Gruffydd on and forced him to retreat to Snowdonia, where he was murdered by one of his own men.

O
WAIN
G
WYNEDD AP
G
RUFFYDD

Reigned 1137–1170

Owain was born in around 1100. From 1120 he fought with his brothers against the Normans, who were looking to expand their territories into Wales. In 1137 he inherited Gwynedd from his father. Initially he shared the kingdom with his brother Cadwalladr, but in 1143 Cadwalladr was implicated in a murder and Owain ruled alone from then on. He expanded the borders of Gwynedd to the east while England was powerless during the anarchy brought by the civil war of King Stephen’s reign. In 1157, Henry II invaded, aided by Cadwalladr, and although Owain defeated Henry on Anglesey, a truce was agreed in which Owain had to cede his newly conquered lands, although he later retook them.

In 1163 Owain made a truce with the ruler of Deheubarth, Rhys ap Gruffudd, uniting the Welsh in an alliance. In 1165 Henry II invaded again, but the terrible Welsh weather enabled the united Welsh to avoid a pitched battle and send a frustrated Henry back home.

Owain made an alliance with the King of France and was able to retain Welsh independence during his lifetime. Castles and monasteries were built and the Welsh state developed in the relatively peaceful years of Owain’s reign.

L
LYWELYN
F
AWR AP
I
ORWERTH

Reigned 1195–1240

Llywelyn the Great was the grandson of Owain Gwynedd and, like him, was a great leader who dominated Wales and kept the English at bay.

He was born in 1173 and at the age of fifteen may have already have been at war with his uncles Daffyd and Rhodri ab Owain, who had divided Gwynedd between them. When he became ruler in 1200, he made a treaty of loyalty to King John and then sealed the relationship by marrying John’s illegitimate daughter, Joan. In 1209 he fought for John against the Scots, and in Wales annexed lands in south Powys.

He soon fell out with John, however, and an English invasion aided by other Welsh princes in 1211 forced him to retreat to Snowdonia. He sent his wife to make peace with John, which ended the war but cost him land on his eastern border. But by clever alliances with Welsh princes, the King of France and the barons who had forced John to sign the Magna Carta, he consolidated his position as the unopposed leader of Wales, driving the English from North Wales and taking Shrewsbury in 1215.

Following the death of King John in 1216, Llywelyn signed a peace treaty with Henry III, but for the next few years he fought a series of campaigns against the Norman lords in the borders of Wales. In 1230 William de Braose, of Abergavenny, visiting to arrange a marriage between his daughter and Llywelyn’s son Dafydd, was found alone in a room with Llywelyn’s wife. William was hanged and Joan placed under house arrest. She was forgiven after a year of disgrace.

In 1234 a further peace treaty was made with England, which was sustained until the end of Llywelyn’s life. In 1237 he suffered a stroke and his son Daffydd took over the reins. He died peacefully in 1240.

D
AFYDD AP
L
LYWELYN

Reigned 1240–1246

Dafydd was the legitimate son of Llywelyn the Great, but Llywelyn had an older illegitimate son, Gruffydd, who enjoyed wide support. In Welsh law, illegitimate children had rights of inheritance if acknowledged by their father. Llywelyn, however, went out of his way to ensure that Dafydd became king, although he began to use the style ‘Prince of Wales’.

In 1241, when Daffydd showed signs of planning an alliance with Louis IX of France (Saint Louis), Henry III invaded Gwynedd, and to secure peace Dafydd had to surrender all his territories outside of Gwynedd and hand over his elder half-brother, Gruffydd, to Henry. Gruffydd was kept in the Tower of London but attempted to escape by knotting sheets together to make a rope. Unfortunately it broke and he fell to his death. With the hostage dead, Daffydd could ally himself to other Welsh princes to attack English possessions. In 1245 Henry invaded again and met stiff resistance from Dafydd. A truce was agreed, but Dafydd died suddenly in 1246. With no heir, Gruffydd’s sons took power.

L
LYWELYN AP
G
RUFFYDD (
L
LYWELYN
E
IN
L
LYW
O
LAF –
L
LYWELN,
O
UR
L
AST
L
EADER)

Reigned 1246–1282

Llywelyn the Last was the last native Prince of Wales before Wales was conquered and subjugated to England by Edward I.

When Dafydd ap Llywelyn died without an heir in 1246, Henry III allowed Dafydd’s nephews, Llywelyn and Owain, to rule western Gwynedd jointly, although he took their eastern lands. When their younger brother Dafydd came of age, Henry announced that he too was to have a share of the kingdom. Llywelyn refused to give up more land and his brothers allied themselves against him, but he defeated them in 1255 at the Battle of Bryn Derwin.

Llywelyn soon managed to reclaim eastern Gwynedd (whose people resented occupation) and began expanding south. He allied himself with Simon de Montfort against Henry III, and after the defeat of de Montfort, he agreed a treaty with Henry in 1267 that saw him acknowledged as Prince of Wales.

But this was the high point of his reign. He stopped paying the tribute demanded by the treaty and arranged a marriage with de Montfort’s daughter, Eleanor. This provoked the new King, Edward I, into an overwhelming English invasion in 1277 and the enforcement of a peace treaty that saw Llywelyn pushed back to north-west Gwynedd.

In 1282 Llywelyn’s brother Dafydd provoked a Welsh revolt, which Llywelyn felt obliged to support. Llywelyn was killed in an attack at Orewin Bridge. His head was taken to London and stuck on a gate at the Tower of London, where it remained for fifteen years. Dafydd attempted to continue the war, but Edward’s forces constructed a ring of massive fortresses, dismantled the Welsh principalities and brought Wales under English rule.