482 – Eye for an Eye

Welcome to the British History Podcast.

My name is Jamie, and this is episode 482: Eye for an Eye.

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All right, when we left off, I mentioned that while Rufus was in Normandy, things in England had been getting interesting in his absence.

And let's start with Bishop Wachellen.

Now, Wachellen was one of the first people that the bastard had installed in the English church.

He'd actually brought him over directly from Rouen, and this was a very good move.

The bishop was shrewd, and he was loyal to the House of Normandy.

Wachellen was also a brilliant administrator.

He oversaw numerous construction projects.

He also oversaw the royal treasury in Winchester.

And when Lanfrank died, Wachellen provided stability and continuity between the reigns of William the Bastard and his son, William Rufus.

Wachellin even served as regent when Rufus was wrecking havoc over in France.

But here's the thing about that.

He actually served as co-regent right alongside Ranolph Flambard.

And where Wachellin was trustworthy, competent, and hardworking,

Ranolph

wasn't.

But Ranolph was William Rufus's favorite.

And an unscrupulous rival who just happened to have the king's ear was quite a dangerous thing.

And according to the local analyst of Winchester, the king's ever-increasing efforts at extracting wealth from England, which were likely directly enacted by Ranolph, well, they were starting to take a toll on old Bishop Wachellen.

And this reached a breaking point in late 1097, when the king's messengers arrived at Winchester to demand another 200 pounds, right as Bishop Wakellen was trying to celebrate Christmas Mass.

The absolute outrage of it all had strained the bishop's heart to the point where he fell ill.

And on January 3rd of 1098, Bishop Wachellen died.

Now, if you're interested in stability, this is a very bad development.

Wachellen had deep ties to the aristocracy, and he was also liked by the public.

In fact, Wachellen is credited with launching the popular St.

Giles's Fair in Winchester.

This man wasn't just a pillar of society, he was a pillar of Norman control of England.

But if you were Rufus and Ranolph, you would see Wachellen very differently.

For them, he was just another dusty old man from back in the Conqueror's day.

And a man with money and influence who had just kicked it, which meant that that seat was now empty, and until a successor was chosen, all of that money and influence was just sitting there for the taking, meaning the king's taking.

So, despite the risk of instability, the fellas weren't exactly rushing to find a new replacement.

Meanwhile, a bit to the northwest, another issue was brewing.

Do you remember back in 1093 when the Welsh killed Robert of Rivlin and then chucked his head into the sea?

Well, Robert wasn't just a Norman colonizing lord.

He was also the cousin of Earl Hugh Lupus.

And it turned out, Hugh Lupus wasn't a forgive-and-forget kind of guy.

Making matters worse, in the following year, the Welsh successfully ousted Hugh's forces out of most of Gwynedd.

And Hugh wanted those lands back.

But army after army sent by the Regency Council had failed to regain them.

And on top of that, multiple campaigns led by the king himself had similarly failed.

But despite all those losses, Hugh Lupus still considered those lands to be his.

Because I guess he called no take backsies when he stole them from the Welsh that first time.

But that being said, he was also getting older.

It had been decades since the Earl crossed the channel with a conqueror.

And time time changes people, and it had definitely changed Hugh Lupus.

In fact, it had changed him so much that he had a new nickname, Hugh Legreux, meaning Hugh the Fat.

This guy, once known for his immense power and wealth, was now becoming famous for his gluttony, his wastefulness, and his self-aggrandizing extravagancy.

So, while Hugh did want vengeance, he also wasn't very interested in the physically active and unglamorous parts of getting it.

So, Earl Hugh Lupis decided to recruit another Earl, a man who was actually named after him, Earl Hugh Montgomery of Shrewsbury.

Now, the number of Hughes here is just too damn high.

So, for the sake of ease, I'm going to stick with the nickname that we already know and call Earl Hugh Lupis of Chester Lupus, and I'm going to call Earl Hugh Montgomery of Shrewsbury Montgomery.

Cool?

Okay, so Montgomery was the younger brother of Robert of Blem.

And while he doesn't get the level of detail in the record that we get with Robert of Bolem,

it's hard to imagine someone being part of that family and coming out okay.

And we are, of course, already aware of Robert of Blem and his hobbies, but Robert wasn't out of the ordinary for this family.

His grandfather, Lord Talvis, was a known torture enthusiast.

You did not want to be this man's enemy.

Hell, you didn't even want to be a person attending a wedding of a guy that Talvis happened to be mad at on that particular day.

Because yeah,

Talvis did a red wedding.

And Talvis' daughter, Mabel, was apparently cut from a similar cloth.

And when Mabel Mabel wasn't plotting murders, she was out there poisoning people, sometimes by accident.

And can you imagine being so prolific with your plots that people even know about the times when you tried to poison one person, but accidentally poisoned someone else?

And this was the mother of Robert of Balem and Hugh Montgomery.

And actually, Mabel's behavior was so bad that eventually a bunch of nobles conspired to chop her head off, which they did, while Montgomery was there in the same home.

So the point I'm driving at here is that outrageous acts of murder and torture were something of a family tradition, and they weren't a secret.

Everyone knew about this family, and Montgomery was very much a family man.

The record of his life reveals that he joined in on many of his brother's rebellions and his wars and his

other activities as well.

And it was this Hugh Montgomery that Lupus was recruiting to help him seize Gwyneth.

And Montgomery, for his part, was all about it.

For one, he liked war, but he also had a beef with the Welsh in particular.

as they had kicked his teeth in more than once.

First with Montgomery Castle, and later, after he reconciled with the king, during the four years worth of battles along the Welsh marches, which, given the state of the border, he had clearly lost.

Basically, both of these earls had a grudge, and at least one of them came from a family that probably would have freaked out Hannibal Lecter.

And so it's no surprise that in 1098, when the forces of Montgomery and Lupus crossed into Wales, things got ugly fast.

Even what passed for restraint and honor in the 11th century got tossed right out the window.

And I suspect that the shamefulness of it all is why the chronicle blithely skims over it.

But luckily for us, Florence of Worcester had no interest in letting Lupus or Montgomery off the hook.

And from him, we know that the Earls led a combined army through North Wales and crossed the River Conway.

Now, King Griffith Ap Kunin of Gwynedd and King Kedwaganap Blethen of Powys had already raised their forces, and alongside those troops were Gruffyth's Hiberno-Norse mercenaries that he had hired from Dublin.

So they weren't going to take this invasion lying down.

But, at the same time, the Welsh way of war differed from the chivalric Normans.

So, rather than meeting the horsebros on the field of battle, which would have played right into the Normans' strengths, the Welsh did what they have been doing for years now.

They melted away, denying the Earls the battle that they sought, and then crossed the Menai Strait into Anglesey.

Griffith's biographer tells us that the plan here was to make the island a fortress.

I mean, horses can swim, but not in a way that a knight can wage war from their back.

And how well a knight could swim really would depend on how much armor they decided to put on that day.

So crossing was going to be a problem.

Now, granted, ships would make the crossing easier, but the trouble with that was that one, the Hughes didn't have any ships, and two, Griffith's mercenaries from Dublin did.

So even if the Normans could somehow get their hands on some ships, they would find themselves immediately under attack by Griffith's Hiberno-Norse pirates who were very, very experienced at fighting at sea.

So the Welsh plan here was pretty good.

Anglesey was an incredibly tough nut to crack.

And yet Lupus and Montgomery weren't going home.

Instead, they set up camp and prepared their next move.

Because Lupus had seen this sort of situation before.

King William had dealt with something similar in Northumbria.

And the way that the bastard had handled the Norse who had allied with the Northumbrians had taught Lupus an important lesson about how the Norse valued loyalty.

Specifically, they didn't.

And the one thing that we can learn from history, and that generals apparently never seem to, is that mercenaries play by their own rules.

And these men out of Dublin were not bound by the codes of honor that were holding the Welsh together.

So while while Griffith had hired them, that didn't mean they wouldn't take a new contract if the price was right.

And Lupus, who had a reputation for being quite loose with his money, was more than happy to make sure that price was right.

Sometime later, while Griffith, Kedwagan, and their forces were on Anglesey, the Dublin mercenaries quietly drifted across the strait, landed at the Norman camp, and then returned with a bunch of Norman knights on board.

Wave after wave of Normans were ferried across the strait and into Anglesey.

In a panic, the two Welsh kings boarded a ship and fled for Ireland, leaving their allies and soldiers behind to suffer the consequences.

Every time with these rich people.

Now, a local priest named Chenred did try and organize the abandoned Welshmen, doing his best to advise and counsel them as to what to do next.

But the chaos caused by the flight of their leaders and the betrayal of their Dublin mercenaries had proved to be too much, and the Normans overran them.

What followed was a massacre.

But you don't bring a member of the Bolem family on a campaign if you're just looking to do normal battlefield murder.

So once the army was broken and Anglesey was undefended, Montgomery had his men round up the people of the island, because he had something he wanted to try.

Florence of Worcester reports that Montgomery had his men cut the hands and feet off of his prisoners, and then cut the genitals off of the men, and then cut out their eyes.

Now others were executed outright, which, incredibly, was the best possible outcome for someone falling into the hands of Montgomery.

And I'm using hands very specifically here because Florence makes it clear that the Earl wasn't just ordering all of this torture, mutilation, and murder.

He was right in there getting his hands dirty.

For example, there's Chenred, that priest who was advising the Welsh.

Well, he was dragged out of his church and presumably to the Norman camp, where Florence tells us Earl Montgomery himself cut off his genitals, cut out his tongue, and tore one of his eyes out by hand.

And the two earls and their knights were meticulous in their work, because this went on for a full week, seven long days of them scouring an island only a bit smaller than London for anyone that they could kidnap, mutilate, and murder.

Meanwhile, a little to the north, King Magnus Barefoot of Norway was sailing through the Irish Sea, and we're told that he had a fleet of six ships, and that among the crew was a man with a rather famous name.

So, get this.

Many years ago, Magnus' grandfather, King Harold Hadrada, as well as his father Olaf, had invaded England.

And you might recall that it hadn't gone well.

Hadrada was killed by King Harold Godwinson, and Olaf was captured.

Well, Harold Godwinson had allowed Olaf to return home before he rode off to deal with William in the south.

And we all know how that went.

Well, many years later, Harold Godwinson's namesake, Harold, son of Harold Godwinson, was still exiled and hunted.

And so eventually, he came to the Norse court, which was now being reigned reigned over by Olaf's son, King Magnus Barefoot.

And Magnus Barefoot welcomed the exiled Harold into his court as a way of repaying the Godwinsons for their courteous and honorable treatment of his father, Olaf.

And that is how Harold, son of Harold Godwinson, was on board this ship with King Magnus Barefoot.

It's one of those things that sounds more like fiction than history, but it's right there in the record.

Anyway, so King Magnus, Harold, and the fleet were touring Orkney, the Hebrides, and the Isle of Man.

Now, these were all territories under the Norse crown at this point, so basically, this looks very much like a typical royal tour, collecting taxes and that kind of thing.

But Orderic had a very different take on it.

According to him, King Magnus had married an Irish princess, and the marriage had gone bad.

So he was sailing south to kick the hell out of the Irish.

Though, when he got close to Ireland, he realized that there were a lot of soldiers just milling around on the shore, so he thought better of it and sailed to the Isle of Man instead.

Now, there's a few problems with this version of the tale.

First, Orderic is the only person who claims Magnus had married an Irish princess.

No other record of such a marriage exists.

Second, Second, Magnus had six ships with him.

Six,

not exactly a war fleet for an invasion against anything, and certainly not against an Irish king.

Third, we know our favorite monk has a habit of spicing things up and doing some creative editing in order to fit his predetermined narrative.

And in Orderic's account, Montgomery is his hero and Magnus is his villain.

And you heard that right.

Orderick tells us that Montgomery was a good guy.

In fact, he was the only member of the Blem family who was courteous and amiable.

And by his telling, the Hughes invasion of Wales was actually an English defense maneuver against the vile Magnus barefoot.

Which makes no sense, because the invasion of Wales happens first.

On top of that, this story is also probably why Orderick skips past all of that inconvenient torture and mutilation of the locals, because it's really hard to spin that as the activity of your good guy.

So basically, I'm guessing that Orderk was just being Orderic here.

And actually, Magnus was doing what the other records indicate.

Sailing around the coast of Britain with his six ships, making sure that the local nobility remembered that the answer to him,

and then collecting taxes.

Pretty typical 11th century stuff.

And when he finished his business on the Isle of Man, Magnus ordered his small fleet to sail south for her sister island, Anglesey.

And on Anglesey, the Earls and their men were having a grand time.

Our records make it quite clear that Montgomery was doing what he and his family loved to do.

And as for Lupus,

well, we don't have a detailed account of his actions, but given the commentary surrounding him at this point in his life, I'm guessing he was more focused on his lunch and let his subordinates handle the atrocities.

But regardless of whether the Earls were focusing on beef bourguignon or on mass castration, their revelry was put on pause when scouts spotted a fleet of ships closing in.

Now, Montgomery was the first to get word, and he gathered what troops he had on hand and rushed to the shore, sending messengers to the other companies ordering them to join him immediately.

And there, on the shoreline, they dug in.

Back on the ships, King Magnus was nearing shore, and

oh,

that didn't look friendly.

Well, fair enough.

Relations between the Welsh and the Norse had been a bit dicey over the years, so probably out of an abundance of caution, King Magnus ordered that a red shield be placed on the mast, which we're told was a sign of peace and trade during this time.

Essentially, he was doing the maritime version of saying, hey, is this gas station open?

And after leaving it up for a while to make sure that everyone could see it, the fleet approached the shore.

Back on shore, Montgomery and his men, who had just spent a full week carrying out war crimes, were a bit on edge.

King Griffith had grown up in Dublin, and he he had family links to Norway.

And the Normans right now were being supported by Hiberno-Norse mercenaries, but they were also men who, as Montgomery was all too aware of, were perfectly happy to switch sides if the price was right.

And now, right there off the shore, was a freaking Norse fleet.

And then it started moving towards the shore.

which meant there was only one thing to do.

And can you imagine the look on King Magnus' face when his ships beached?

And instead of being met by some sort of Welsh trade official, he was instead met by a Norman cavalry charge?

What the hell was going on?

Well, screw it.

While he didn't know what was happening right now, he could find out once these fools on the beach were dead.

Because Magnus was an 11th century Norse king.

So it's not like he was sailing around with a bunch of bean counters and new recruits.

These were the king's men, and they no doubt had earned their proximity to the crown through repeated demonstrations of skill and bravery.

So they got into a defensive position with shields locked and weapons readied just in time as Montgomery and his forces slammed into them.

Florence tells us that the Earl had, quote, a large body of men-at-arms, end quote, with him.

And depending on the type of ships that Magnus had in his fleet, on the Norse side, you could be looking at hundreds of men.

So the fighting here would have been fierce.

But in the clash of arms, Magnus spied a figure who set himself apart.

A man who seemed to be in command.

So the Norse king stood up on the bow of his ship to get a better shot and drew his bow and loosed an arrow.

It sunk directly into the eye of Earl Hugh Montgomery.

And Florence of Worcester's writing at this point gets downright gleeful.

And I get it, it's hard to not enjoy the poetry of this little detail.

As if God Himself had claimed an eye for an eye in vengeance for poor Father Chenred.

And this is actually precisely how Florence saw it.

Orderic, on the other hand, was horrified.

He insisted that the devil must have instigated such a terrible shot.

And I will say this: if it was the devil who did this, he's got a wicked sense of humor and, frankly, an excellent sense of justice.

But divine intervention or not, Montgomery fell from his horse and into the waters of the strait, dead.

And the morale of the Normans broke instantly, and they retreated from the shore.

Soon thereafter, Magnus sent word to Lupus, whose weight was becoming famous enough that even Magnus was referring to him as Hugh the Stout.

And the Norse king basically said, Hey, um,

I'm sorry I killed your fella.

I didn't want to.

Honestly, I didn't want to fight at all.

I'm not looking to seize lands owned by others.

I was just out here settling my own lands.

So, uh, we good?

Now, in all honesty, it is unclear whether or not Magnus considered Anglesey to be part of his domain, or whether he was basically stopping by for a refuel.

Even his statement to Lupus here is ambiguous on that fact.

But my best guess is that he arrived to trade, but again, the records are a bit too vague to be absolutely certain.

Regardless of whether or not Magnus was asserting control over Anglesey or not, Lupus looked at the Norse king's message and basically said, dude, I am too fat for this, and he hightailed it back for Chester.

As for Montgomery, well, he was still dead.

And actually, when he fell into the water, he was wearing a ton of armor, so he sank really quickly, and deep enough that apparently they couldn't find his body until the tide went out.

But eventually, his men did drag him onto the shore, loaded him onto a cart, and took him back to Shrewsbury.

And it was a journey that took them 17 days.

So I bet he looked and smelled amazing by the time they finally interred him.

Now, obviously, this whole situation had been an absolute debacle.

So naturally, word of it spread very quickly, and it had some immediate effects.

In Ireland, King Griffith Apkunen began to make preparations to retake Gwyneth, because clearly this lupus guy didn't have much fight left in him.

And over in Maine, at the camp of King Rufus, well, with Montgomery gone, his brother, Balem, was next in line for his properties.

And on top of that, Balem also had cash, which Rufus needed.

So, in exchange for a payment of 3,000 pounds, Full inheritance was cleared, which made Robert of Balem the lord of all of his father's English lands in addition to the continental properties, thus making him the most powerful and wealthy magnate in all of England and Normandy combined.

I'm sure it'll be fine.

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