Welsh Journals

Search over 450 titles and 1.2 million pages

THE SUPPORTERS OF RICHARD MARSHAL, EARL OF PEMBROKE, IN THE REBELLION OF 1233-1234. RICHARD Marshal's rebellion of 1233 offers an excellent opportunity to discover on what human resources an earl might be able to rely when choosing the perilous path of defying his king. The evidence available makes it possible in many cases, though by no means all, to identify the particular link or links of kinship, friendship, feudal tenure, military or administrative service which were sufficiently strong to induce men to follow the Marshal into rebellion. It should be possible to discover whether there was a 'Marshal affinity', handed down to Richard from his elder brother William, which could be relied on to form the hard core of resistance. While Richard Marshal was not as isolated a rebel as William de Forz had been in 1221-2, the following he commanded was not, in fact, large. Between eighty and ninety men can be shown to have been involved to some extent in the rebellion, but some of these were no more than suspected adherents of the Marshal and many fell out at an early stage. Probably no more than sixty men took an active part at some stage or other. This figure hardly compares with the 450 tenants in the northern counties alone who made their peace in 1217.1 The Marshal rebellion was indeed on a very small scale compared to that of 1215-17, when half of the most important barons of England rose against King John.2 It must be admitted at the outset that the Marshal was not the leader of a full-blooded baronial rebellion: as such, it simply failed to get off the ground. Smallness of scale does have the advantage, however, of the investigator not being overwhelmed by numbers. Even so, many of the known rebels remain obscure figures, of whom little is known other than their names. The rebellion was not confined to England and Wales. The possession by the Marshal family of their inheritance from Strongbow, the great lordship of Leinster, involved them in another theatre of war. However, no attempt is made here to identify royalists and rebels in Ireland: that would require a separate and difficult detailed study. Contemporary English and Welsh chroniclers record the activities of the leading rebels, Richard Marshal himself and his principal supporters, Gilbert Basset and Richard Siward. The main source of evidence for his followers is the Close Rolls for 1233-4, which record in considerable detail seizures of rebels' lands, their submissions, temporary or permanent, and their final pardons and restorations. The rebellion may be divided into three phases, the J. C. Holt, The Northerners (Oxford, 1961), p. 37. 2 A. Beadles, 'The Opponents of King John', History Today, XIX (1979), 284.