Alms for a leper
Two battles in two days.
November 1294. Much of Wales was in revolt against Edward I, who had to call off a planned campaign to Gascony and divert his army to quash the rebellion.
n 11 November Henry de Lacy, earl of Lincoln, was defeated by his own Welsh tenants somewhere near Denbigh. Few details survive of the battle, which is only reported in two English chronicles. Lincoln had rushed up from Portsmouth with only a small force, perhaps as few as a hundred men, and probably fell into an ambush.
The defeat was serious enough to persuade Edward to change his strategy. Instead of entering North Wales via the usual coastal route, he entered via Wrexham and the Vale of Clwyd, en route to Conwy. His itinerary shows him moving about this area, taking the submissions of those men who had defeated Lincoln.
Further south, the English did better. The royal castle at Builth was under siege by the Welsh, probably led by Cynan ap Maredudd, one of the five leaders of the revolt.
John Giffard, lord of Builth, organised a rescue operation. Full details of this mini-campaign are on the Pipe Roll (first pic). The account shows that the castle had a garrison of three heavy and three light cavalry, twenty crossbowmen and forty archers. Giffard’s relief force was made up of ten knights, twenty troopers and forty light cavalry.
The entry also shows that Giffard made five attempts to hack his way through the Welsh siege lines. Four times he was repelled, but Giffard was persistent. On the fifth attempt, the day after Lacy’s defeat at Denbigh, he finally got through and broke the siege.
Cynan was the only one of the Welsh leaders to be executed; interestingly, two of them were not in revolt at all, but acting as Edward's agents against the Marcher lords.
After the revolt was crushed, Cynan was found hiding in a church, claiming to be a leper. Edward ordered a doctor to check him over, since lepers were exempt from the death penalty. The Welshman was given a clean bill of health, and packed off to the gallows at Hereford.
