Elizabeth
de Ferrers
–
a footnote in history
By
Anna Belfrage
Most of us are destined to pass through
this life and be quickly forgotten, buried in the huge drifts of human life
that border history. Only those that truly stick out—whether for good or
bad—get a moment or two of air-time, and for obvious reasons most of these
highlighted people tend to be rulers. And men.
Obviously, there are just as many women as
men lurking along the margins of recorded history. One of those long-gone women
about whom we know almost nothing is Elizabeth Ferrers. And yet, to judge from
what little we do know, this woman had more than her fair share of loss and
grief in her life.
I am presently finalising a book set in
the closing decades of the 13th century called His Castilian Hawk.
This is Elizabeth’s time, this is when she and the people she cared about
breathed and lived. But while most of us have heard of Edward I and his
conquest of Wales, or of Dafydd ap Gruffudd, Elizabeth’s husband, who died so
gruesomely in Shrewsbury in 1283, we know next to nothing about her. Elizabeth
is one of those who’ve been relegated to being nothing more than a footnote in
history, very much due to the fact that her family was more or less wiped out
by Edward I.
Elizabeth was the youngest child of
William de Ferrers, the powerful and respected Earl of Derby. This was a man
with a surfeit of daughters. Two marriages left him with ten girls and only two
sons. Elizabeth was married while still relatively young to William Marshal.
(Not the William Marshal but a more obscure relative) That marriage
ended when her husband died at The Battle of Evesham. Some while later,
Elizabeth Ferrers was wed to Dafydd ap Gruffudd.
Was this her choice? Likely not. At the
time, Dafydd was estranged from his brother, Llewellyn ap Gruffudd. Well, if
we’re going to be quite correct, he’d been trying to capitalise on the general
unrest that followed upon the collapse of Montfort’s control over England.
Llewellyn had been a close ally of Montfort. Dafydd chose to present himself as
a loyal supporter of the English king, Henry III, and his son, the future
Edward I.
So there was Dafydd, kicking his heels at
the English court while longing for the green valleys of home. Maybe the
English king hoped to tie the younger of the Welsh princes to him by offering
him an English bride. Or maybe his decision to marry Elizabeth to Dafydd was a
reflection on just how pissed off he was with Elizabeth’s brother, Robert de
Ferrers. The young Earl of Derby had sided
with Montfort, apparently due to a personal dislike of Prince Edward. In
the aftermath of Evesham, Ferrers stubbornly refused to come to terms with his
king and would, due to his own behaviour, end up losing his title, his lands,
his wealth, his influence. Not the brother a defenceless woman needed to do
battle on her behalf.
Dafydd was ten years or so older than
Elizabeth. Yes, he was Welsh, but after many years at the English court,
probably came across like any other Anglo-Norman nobleman. Whether Elizabeth
liked her husband was neither here nor there. She was his wife and would have
no choice but to accompany him through the ups and downs of his life. Seeing as
Dafydd comes across as a somewhat volatile character, Elizabeth was in for
quite the ride.
Dafydd made his peace with his brother in
1267—briefly. When Edward, now king of England, and Llewellyn faced off yet
again in 1274, Dafydd happily joined Edward’s side, resenting the fact that his
brother wouldn’t grant him as much land as Dafydd felt entitled to. What
Elizabeth may have thought of all this is unknown, but when Dafydd was in one
of his “I love you, my brother” phase, Elizabeth was likely in Wales, when he
was “I love you better, my liege” phase, she’d be tagging along to England.
Llewellyn’s attempts to retain his hold on
all of Wales failed. To be honest, his hold had never been all that strong: to
the south and east the English Marcher lords held sway and the other Welsh
princelings weren’t always that thrilled at recognising the House of Gwynedd as
primus inter pares. When Edward assembled a huge host and managed to
deprive Llewellyn of the harvests on Anglesey, Llewellyn had no choice but to
parley and the Treaty of Aberconwy in 1277 was an excruciatingly humiliating
document whereby Llewellyn’s power base was substantially reduced to comprise
the lands west of River Conwy.
Dafydd, however, was a happy camper as the
treaty called for Llewellyn to hand over the land he’d held east of the river
to his younger brother. Edward was an even happier camper as he had effectively
collared the Welsh dragon. So pleased was Edward that he could even be
magnanimous and preside over Llewellyn’s much delayed wedding to Eleanor de
Montfort. (Delayed because Edward had kidnapped the bride)
By the year 1277, Elizabeth and Dafydd had
been married for over a decade. There were two surviving sons that we know of,
yet another Llewellyn and an Owain. The eldest would have been eight or ten,
the youngest a toddler. Likely there had been other childbirths, but if so no
records survive. Other than the boys, the Dafydd/Elizabeth household also
included a number of girls, but these seem to have been Dafydd’s daughters by
women other than his wife. Difficult to handle, I imagine. Unless Elizabeth
disliked sharing her bed with her husband beyond the dutiful embraces required
to conceive an heir and a spare. Alternatively, one or two of those girls were,
in fact, Elizabeth’s daughters as well. Given future events, it seems a bit
unlikely as Elizabeth’s youngest child, a daughter named Gwladys, is named in
documents while the rest remain anonymous.
Anyway: 1277 and Dafydd had at last come
into his own. It didn’t take him long to realise just how hard Llewellyn’s life
had been, always threatened by the encroaching presence of the English who, by
now, had settled themselves all around Gwynedd. Edward was busy building castles
along the approaches to Gwynedd—magnificent things that sent a very loud
message as to who was the real power in Wales.
Inevitably, Dafydd ended up in yet another
conflict. This time, he directed his anger at Edward and the king’s
determination to implement English law in those areas of Wales he controlled.
Plus Dafydd probably felt he’d deserved more than the two measly cantrefs he’d
received at the Treaty of Aberconwy. He managed to rope in several other
dissatisfied Welsh princes and rose in rebellion. While Llewellyn probably
cursed his brother to hell and back privately, he had no option but to join in.
For a couple of months a Welsh victory did not seem entirely impossible. Until
Edward got his war machine moving.
Edward was incensed by Dafydd’s betrayal.
One must remember that Edward had seen first hand just how dangerous a powerful
and rebellious subject could be—witness Simon de Montfort vs Henry III,
Edward’s father. But part of Edward was likely pleased: Dafydd had handed him
the excuse Edward needed to once and for all crush all Welsh resistance.
What did Elizabeth do in all this? I think
she was afraid. All the time. She knew Edward made an implacable foe, that if
this went wrong, Dafydd would not survive. And if Dafydd wasn’t around, what would
happen to her sons? To her?
A devastated Llewellyn lost his wife in
childbirth in the summer of 1282 and was then likely tricked into a trap
masterminded by certain Marcher lords. In the resulting fighting, Llewellyn
died, his head presented to Edward in December of 1282.
For some months, Dafydd was Prince of
Wales—months spent mostly on the run with his family while Edward tightened the
noose around his most hated traitor.
It all came to an end in the summer of
1283. Dafydd was captured together with his wife, his youngest son and all
those girls. Neither Dafydd nor Elizabeth held any illusions about what awaited
Dafydd: death. But I guess none of them expected he would be put to death in
such a cruel manner. Dafydd ap Gruffydd has the doubtful distinction of being
the first person of noble birth to be hanged, drawn and quartered.
What neither of them could have known is
how ruthless Edward would be towards their children. Once Edward’s men captured
their eldest son, he arranged for both boys—at the time fourteen and eight or
so—to be taken to Bristol Castle, there to be locked up for the rest of their
lives.
And as to Gwladus, she was taken from her
mother and sent to a Gilbertine convent in Lancashire. She would live and die
as a nun, far from her mother, her homeland. Her cousin, Llewellyn’s daughter,
was likewise dispatched to a convent—but a different one.
So there was Elizabeth. Not only had she
just been widowed but she’d had all of her children torn from her. No matter
that Gwladus was a babe, that little Owain was still a child with downy cheeks
and knobbly knees, they were taken from her. Did she beg, did she plead? Well,
what mother wouldn’t? So yes, I think she did. But it did not avail her. Edward
Plantagenet intended to erase this Welsh dynasty from the face of the
earth.
Elizabeth would never see her children
again and as to her own fate, well, she’d had her moment in the limelight. With
Dafydd dead and her sons locked away, Elizabeth became irrelevant. We don’t
know what happened to her. It’s as if her life stopped in 1283. I suppose that
she would have agreed. To lose it all like that must leave a person permanently
maimed.
Some have put forward the theory that
Elizabeth was wed to another man. If so, we don’t know to whom or if she became
the mother of other children. Some say she retired to Wales and was buried
there several years later. I hope she died before her eldest son in 1287, but
God does not seem to have been kind to Elizabeth, so likely she didn’t. I hope
she never found out about the king’s order that her sons be kept in fortified
cages at night. But life being as it is, I suspect someone made sure to tell
her.
In my novel, Elizabeth remains a
marginalised figure, a woman who wanders through the pages exuding harrowing
grief. But I have added a twist: my Elizabeth is given a weak ray of hope.
Whether or not that hope will blossom into brightness or shrivel and die is, as
yet, undecided. It sort of depends on my protagonists.
Well over eight hundred years ago,
Elizabeth Ferrers was born. What did she look like, how did her laughter sound?
Was she passionate or cold, did she have someone to comfort her when she wept
for the life she had lost, the future her children were robbed of? We don’t
know. But it takes a person seriously lacking in empathy not to be affected by
the tragedies that befell her—and her children.
Anna Belfrage
Had Anna been
allowed to choose, she’d have become a time-traveller. As this was impossible,
she became a financial professional with two absorbing interests: history and
writing. Anna has authored the acclaimed time travelling series The Graham Saga, set in 17th
century Scotland and Maryland, as well as the equally acclaimed medieval series
The King’s Greatest Enemy which is
set in 14th century England.
She has recently released Smoke
in Her Eyes, the second in her latest series, The Wanderer. This time, she steps out of her normal historical
context and delivers fast-paced contemporary romantic suspense with paranormal
and time-slip ingredients. She has loved writing it – she hopes her readers
will like reading it just as much.
Find
out more about Anna by visiting her websiteor her Amazon page. Follow Anna on Twitter or on Facebook.
Thank you for inviting me to visit your blog, Mary Anne!
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