"the greatest man in wales": james ap gruffydd ap hywel and the international opposition...

"The Greatest Man in Wales": James Ap Gruffydd Ap Hywel and the International Oppositionto Henry VIIIAuthor(s): Peter MarshallSource: The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 39, No. 3 (Fall, 2008), pp. 681-704Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20479000 .

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Sixteenth Century Journal XXXIX/3 (2008) ISSN 0361-0160

"The Greatest Man in Wales": James ap Gruffydd ap Hywel and the International

Opposition to Henry VIII Peter Marshall

University of Warwick

This article argues for the historical significance of the career of James ap Gruffydd ap Hywel, a gentleman from south Wales who was the first lay subject of Henry VIII to go into foreign exile as an opponent of the king's break with Rome and repudiation of Queen Catherine. It examines James ap Gruffydd's movements around Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and continental Europe in the 1530s and 1540s, as well as his network of supporters and allies at home and overseas. The pattern of official reactions to James ap Gruffydd's intrigues suggests that historians have underestimated both the significance of exile as a conservative resistance strategy in these years and the importance of the British, particularly Welsh, dimension to the evolution of the Henrician Reformation.

OPPOSITION TO THE HENRICIAN REFORMATION is usually portrayed as a largely internal affair and, with the notable exception of the Pilgrimage of Grace, it tends not to get many marks for participation or effort. More, Fisher, the handful of Car thusians, the bluntly prophetic Nun of Kent-all these were brutally crushed,

while the rest of the political nation was intimidated or cajoled into compliance and collaboration. Yet in focusing so squarely on the regime's success in neutraliz ing opposition at home we risk losing sight of the fact that the most significant opponents of Henry VIII's reforms were to be found overseas. There was the pope, of course, and the Holy Roman Emperor, and, when the mood took them, the rulers of France, Scotland, and various other Catholic states. But there was also a significant group of Henry's own subjects-the exact number unknown, but cer tainly well into treble figures-who over the course of the reign departed the realm to agitate against the king's religious policies. With the exception of Henry's cousin Cardinal Reginald Pole, these exiles have received remarkably little attention from modern historians, particularly in light of the time and effort Henry and his advi sors put into countering their endeavors.1 Yet greater attention to the exiles invites a fresh perspective on the events of the 1530s and '40s: a view from the outside in,

^ee, for example, the virtual absence of the theme in A. G. Dickens, The English Reformation, 2nd ed. (London: Batsford, 1989); Christopher Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and

Society under the Tudors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). The most compendious modern

treatment, G. W Bernard's The King's Reformation: Henry VIII and the Remaking of the English Church

(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), devotes 150 pages to the theme of "Opposition," but its

treatment of exiles is limited to 11.5 pages on Cardinal Pole (213-24).

681



682 Sixteenth Century Journal XXXIX/3 (2008)

and from the inside outwards, which challenges us to consider the Tudor reforma tions in a proper British and European perspective.2

This article addresses the theme in biographical miniature. Its subject is a Welsh gentleman, whose full designation, in accordance with the patronymic naming practices of his country, was James ap Gruffydd ap Hywel. James ap Gruf fydd is far from being a household name, even in the households of modern spe cialists on the early Tudor period. He has no entry in the new Dictionary of National Biography, and virtually none of the modern general works on the Henri cian Reformation contain any reference to him.3 Even the standard modern authorities on Wales in the period mention him only occasionally, and then in passing.4 Nonetheless, this article will argue not only that James was a significant figure in own right, but that his story is emblematic of several underexplored themes and neglected connections in our understanding of the early British refor mations.

James ap Gruffydd ap Hywel was a Welsh landowner of middling wealth and status, probably born around 1490, whose principal residence was the fortified house of Castell Maelgwyn in northeastern Pembrokeshire, though he also owned property in Cardiganshire, Carmarthenshire, and Powys. He sired three children: a son, Jenkyn, by his first wife, Maud, and two daughters, Sage and Elizabeth, from a second marriage contracted in around 1517 to Elizabethan or Ellen, daughter of Owen ap Philip. Like much of the Welsh gentry, James could trace a patrilineal ancestry back to the imagined glories of a princely family, that of Elystan Glod rudd, whose territories were overrun by the Normans in the late eleventh century. In the mid-fifteenth century, James's grandfather, Hywel ap David, was one of

many patrons of the renowned bard Lewys Glyn Cothi, whose verses lamented Welsh subjugation and the crushing of the rebellion of Owain Glyndwr.5

2A preliminary survey of the topic is Peter Marshall, Religious Identities in Henry VIII's England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), chap. 11. See also some useful comments in Ethan Shagan, Popular Politics

and the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 35,124-26; Clare Kellar,

Scotland, England, and the Reformation 1534-1561 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 24-28,

36-45, 71-76.

3An exception is the useful sketch, in the context of Anglo-Scottish diplomatic relations, in

Kellar, Scotland, England and the Reformation, 16-20. There is the tersest of glancing notices in

Dickens, English Reformation, 146, in a listing of "reactionary elements" among the nobility. 4Glanmor Williams, Recovery, Reorientation and Reformation: Wales c. 1415-1642 (Oxford:

Clarendon: 1987), 256-57; idem, Wales and the Reformation (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1997),

57, 111; J. Gwynfor Jones, Early Modern Wales, c. 1525-1640 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 1994), 51; R. A.

Griffiths, "The Extension of Royal Power 1415-1536," in Medieval Pembrokeshire, ed. R. F. Walker

(Haverford West: Pembrokeshire Historical Society, 2002), 259-60; Felicity Heal, Reformation in

Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Clarendon, 2003), 128-29. A fuller, but now seriously dated account is

the last section of W Llewelyn Williams, "A Welsh Insurrection," Y Cymmrodor 16 (1902): 1-93, at

52 ff. There is also a broadly reliable, but frustratingly unreferenced, short essay by Francis Jones, "The

Trail of the Fugitive," Carmarthenshire Historian 7 (1970): 7-19.

5For James's ancestry, see Williams, "Welsh Insurrection," 25-28; Jones, "Trail of the Fugitive," 7

9; Lewys Dwynn, Heraldic Visitations of Wales, ed. S. R. Meyrick, 2 vols. (Llandovery, 1846), 1:62. On

Lewys Glyn Cothi, see Williams, Recovery, Reorientation and Rebellion, 7, 149-50; Dafydd Johnston,



Marshall / James ap Gruffydd & International Opposition to Henry VIII 683

James's most important and prestigious connections, however, came not from

his father's family, but from his mother's. Gruffydd ap Hywel had married Sage, a

daughter of Thomas ap Gruffyd, of the ancient princely house of Dynevor. Her

brother was the redoubtable Sir Rhys ap Thomas, to whom the Tudor dynasty

owed a substantial debt of gratitude. As a formidable power broker in South Wales,

Richard III tried hard to secure Sir Rhys's loyalty, but after Henry Tudor's landing in southwest Pembrokeshire in August 1485, Rhys threw in his lot with the return

ing exile, smoothed his path through Wales, and fought for him valiantly at Bos

worth. The rewards validated the risk. For the remainder of the reign, Rhys was a

dominant figure in Wales, especially after the death in 1495 of the king's uncle,

Jasper Tudor. Rhys's military usefulness to Henry did not end on the battlefield of

Bosworth. He played a prominent role in the suppression of Lambert Simnel's

rebellion of 1487, the Cornish Rebellion of 1497, and the revolt of Perkin Warbeck

in the same year. Regionally, his authority was bolstered by appointments as cham

berlain and justiciar of south Wales and to the stewardship of important royal

estates. There were more glittering honors, too. Rhys was elected a Knight of the

Garter, and his son and heir, Gruffydd, was allowed to become an intimate of

Henry's heir, Prince Arthur. Henry VIII's accession signaled no diminution of favor shown to the family of Rhys, and in 1509 the stewardship of Pembroke was

added to his other responsibilities. His redoubtable military skills were soon called on again, and he commanded a large force during the king's invasion of France in

1513, contributing to the limited, but much-trumpeted successes the campaign garnered.6 It is probable that James ap Gruffydd was one of the group of younger

relatives and retainers Rhys took with him to France. Certainly, in 1516, James was

among the number of Rhys's dependents favored by appointment as a gentleman usher extraordinary of the royal household.7

Sir Rhys's death in 1525 began a sequence of events that would lead to the

spectacular eclipse of his family's authority, the restructuring of royal governance in southwest Wales, and the catapulting of James ap Gruffydd into decades of plot

ting and exile. Rhys entertained high hopes for his son, Gruffydd, but the young man had predeceased him, dying in 1521. Headship of the family thus devolved on Sir Rhys's young grandson, Rhys ap Gruffydd, for whom his grandfather had

"Lewys Glyn Cothi (fl. 1447-1489)," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http:// www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/16571.

6Ralph A. Griffiths, Sir Rhys ap Thomas and His Family: A Study in the Wars of the Roses and

Early Tudor Politics (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1993), chap. 3.

7Griffiths, "Extension of Royal Power," 260; Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the

Reign of Henry VIII, ed. J. S. Brewer, J. Gairdner, and R. H. Brodie, 21 vols. (London, 1862-1920), vol.

2, pt. 1, no. 2735 (hereafter LP, followed by vol. [pt., where appropriate], and item nos.). Such

unsalaried court offices were also a means of extending political control in the Welsh localities, as even

nominal membership of the royal house involved a special oath of fidelity to the king: see W R. B.

Robinson, "Henry VIII's Household in the 1520s: The Welsh Connection," Historical Research 68

(1995): 173-90; idem, "Some Welsh Members of Henry VIII's Household in the 1520s," Bulletin of the

Board of Celtic Studies 40 (1993): 157-70. James still appears as a gentleman usher extraordinary on a

household list of 1536: LP, 11(1):2735.




recently arranged a spectacular match with Katherine Howard, daughter of the second Duke of Norfolk and sister of the current one. It soon became painfully evident, however, that the ambitious and headstrong Rhys ap Gruffydd lacked his grandfather's political skills, and equally evident that the crown was not prepared to allow him the same degree of devolved regional authority that his grandfather had exercised. Indeed, upon the death of Sir Rhys, the government clearly decided the time had come to make changes in the governance of south Wales. The king's council in the Marches was restructured under the nominal headship of Princess Mary, and Rhys ap Gruffydd was denied a place on it. Instead of being conferred on his grandson, Sir Rhys's old offices of chamberlain and justiciar were given to the steward of Mary's household, Walter Ferrers, Lord Deveraux, who also suc ceeded Sir Rhys as steward and receiver of Builth. These shifts in royal favor pre cipitated a bitter factional struggle between the two men in Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire. Matters came to a head in June 1529, when Ferrers's and Rhys's retainers clashed during a great sessions held at Carmarthen, and one of the latter was arrested on Ferrers's orders. Subsequently, Rhys forced his way into the royal castle of Carmarthen and seems to have threatened Ferrers with a dagger. As a result, Rhys was himself detained. His wife Katherine meanwhile raised forces from Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire, and Cardiganshire to demand his release. The imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, heard that Katherine had laid siege to Ferrers in Carmarthen castle. Rhys was bailed on the orders of the royal council, but things remained ugly, and in August Ferrers's lieutenant as justiciar was mur dered by two of Rhys's followers. The case duly made its way to Star Chamber, where towards the end of 1529 Wolsey censured both factional leaders.8

The part played by James ap Gruffydd in all this bastard feudal skirmishing is a rather obscure one. He was not named in the county court bill of indictment relating to the disturbances at Carmarthen, but there is no doubt that he took Rhys's part. They were, after all, close kinsmen. James was usually described at the time as Rhys ap Gruffydd's uncle, though, as we have seen, he was in fact a first cousin once removed.9 At some point in 1530 James occupied and fortified Rhys's castle at Newcastle Emlyn, some ten miles to the southeast of Cardigan. On 7 October 1530, the king sent a warrant for James's arrest to Lord Ferrers, alleging that James had "dysobeyed sundry our letters and commandyments," and authorizing Ferrers to use all necessary force to root out this nest of "rebells and dysobedyaunt subiectys." Ferrers evidently called on the assistance of James Leeche, a former mayor of Carmarthen, to effect the arrest, for eighteen years later, Leeche was petitioning Edward VI's privy council for continued payment of an annuity which was partially "in respect of his old service in thapprehencion of

8Williams, "Welsh Insurrection," 6-23; Griffiths, Rhys ap Thomas, 89-99.

9Williams, "Welsh Insurrection," 25-26. Williams, Wales and the Reformation, 57, follows

sixteenth-century imprecision in calling him "uncle to Rhys ap Gruffydd," as do Jones, Early Modern

Wales, 59, and Heal, Reformation in Britain and Ireland, 129n. The editors of LP 6 (p. 733) were still

farther from the mark in describing him as "son of Sir Rice ap Thomas."




James Griffeth Apowell, traitour and outlawe'1 0 James may not have come quietly: we hear in early 1533 of his making regular payments to a neighboring gentleman, and fellow adherent of Rhys, William Vaughan of Cilgerran, concerning his "hurtynge.'1 1 At any event, James was soon in custody in the Tower of London,

where his young kinsman was also committed in October 1530. The precise grounds for Rhys ap Gruffydd's arrest are unclear, though according to Chapuys, it was because he had "threatened to finish what his wife had begun" in the vendetta against Ferrers.12 Rhys was let out again on bail in June 1531, while James continued to languish in the Tower.

So far, little distinguishes any of this from the usual rough-and-tumble of late medieval provincial politics, and the faltering efforts of central government to keep a lid on it. But the tempo soon shifted dramatically: in September 1531 Rhys was suddenly arrested again. On 22 November he was put on trial for treason in king's bench. He was convicted on 27 November, and was beheaded on Tower Hill on 4 December. His death reflected the extent to which the power politics of southwest Wales had begun to entwine themselves with the politics of the king's Great Matter-the campaign to secure a divorce from Catherine of Aragon-and the accompanying crescendo of officially sanctioned agitation against the church.

The charges against Rhys were dramatic ones, relating not to the disturbances in South Wales, but to treasons ostensibly committed in London in the summer of 1531. The indictment alleged that he had discussed with two of his servants, Wil liam Hughes and Edward Llwyd, a prophecy that James of Scotland "with the red hand and the ravens should conquere all England." The "red hand" was an allusion to the fourteenth-century Welsh rebel Owain Lawgoch, the last direct descendent of the princes of Gwynedd, while the ravens were the badge of the ancient British King Urien of Rheged, which formed part of Rhys's coat-of-arms. He was further charged with having added "Fitzurien" to his title. Rhys was also supposed to have mortgaged two of his properties to enable him to travel to the Isle of Man and Ire land en route to Scotland. It was in addition alleged that Edward Llwyd had been sent to the Tower to persuade James ap Gruffydd to join the conspiracy, and that Edward Hughes came to him with a priest so that the confederacy could be sealed by reception of the sacrament.13

How much real substance there was to any of this is impossible to say for cer tain. At the very least, Rhys may have tactlessly celebrated his regal blood in a way that recalled the case of another overmighty subject, Edward Stafford, Duke of

10Acts of the Privy Council, ed. J. R. Dasent, 32 vols. (London, 1890-1907), 2:224 (hereafter APC). nThe National Archive, London (hereafter TNA), State Papers of Henry VIII, 1/81, fol. lOr (LP,

6:1548). ^Calendar of State Papers, Spanish, ed. Pascual de Gayangos et al, 15 vols, in 20 (London, 1862

1954),4(1):460.

13"Objections against Rice Griffith in his Indictment, with the Answers thereunto," Cambrian

Register 2 (1799): 270; Griffiths, Sir Rhys ap Thomas, 100-104.




Buckingham, who had listened to prophecies, and gone to the block in 1521. The immediate political context was clearly also crucial. By mid- 1531 the divorce cam paign was reaching a climacteric, and Rhys was a known partisan of Catherine of Aragon. Ambassador Chapuys heard rumors that Rhys and his Howard wife had spoken disparagingly of Anne Boleyn, and believed that but for this he would have been pardoned. 14

What is clear is that James ap Gruffydd played a critical role in the eventual outcome. According to the notes of the trial compiled by justice John Spelman, Rhys, Hughes, Llwyd, and James were all indicted by a jury of presentment, but only Rhys and Hughes were arraigned in king's bench. The two others gave evi dence for the prosecution, solicited in person by leading members of the king's council, and were subsequently acquitted. In the next reign, James Leeche remem bered James as he who "appeched Sir Rice Griffiths." It was a stunning act of treachery, and generations later Rhys's family had not forgiven it. Though James's precise motivation cannot be fathomed, it seems likely he was offered the classic bargain: the dropping of charges in return for the evidence the government wanted to hear. He had now been in custody for over a year, though by the time the trial took place he had somehow managed to escape from the Tower and claim sanctuary at Westminster. He was escorted from Westminster to give his evidence by the venerable abbot John Islip. 15 James did not get off scot-free. His pardon was to cost him the scorching sum of ?526 13s. 4d., a large part of which was immedi ately assigned to the king in bonds. Six months after Rhys's execution, the financial details were still being worked out. On 13 June 1532, Cromwell wrote Henry that he could not inform him of "the conclusyon of Jamys Gyrffyth ap Howelles matyer," as he had not yet spoken with the Treasurer of the Household. At the same time, commissioners appointed to take possession of Rhys ap Gruffydd's lands in

Wales were also to inquire "what landes, houses or hereditaments James ap Grif fith ap Howell hath."'16 James was still "prisoner at Westminster" on 20 June 1532 when the pardon was finally granted, and he was free to return, under severe financial obligation, to his estates in Wales.17

This, however, concluded only the first act of James's performance on the political stage. Almost a year after his release from Westminster, in the early

ULP, 5:563.

l5The Reports of John Spelman, ed. John Hamilton Baker (London: Seiden Society, 1977), l:xiii,

47-48; APC, 2:50, 224; Griffiths, Sir Rhys ap Thomas, 106-8.

l6LP, 5:657, 724 (9), 1092; Williams, "Welsh Insurrection," 54-56.

17LP, 5:318 (19), 657, 1139 (18); Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell, ed. Roger Bigelow Merriman, 2 vols. (Oxford, Clarendon), 1:345. There is a curious entry among Cromwell's notes of

"obligations" in September 1532, that one John Hughes was under obligation to Sir William Kingston (constable of the Tower) and Sir Edmund Walsingham that James ap Gruffydd "shall be true prisoner in the Tower": LP, 5:1285 (3). Presumably, this was to encourage production of the unpaid portion of

his fine. For years to come, James's debts to the king would be faithfully recorded in official

memoranda: LP, 6:1613; 8:169 (1, 2); 10:1257.




summer of 1533, he boarded a coal boat at Kidwelly on the south coast of Pem brokeshire and sailed to the village of Uphill in Somerset. With him went wife Ellen and daughter Sage as well as John a Morgan (a kinsman), John Bean Teaw, John "a pen berere" (Pen-y-Buarth, near Emlyn?), James's servant David Williams, a gunner named John Owen, and John Lewes, a mariner. The party also included one Englishman: Henry Ellington, a Bristol merchant who had been James's fellow prisoner in the Tower and had run errands for him since. At Uphill, James char tered a larger ship, loaded it with a cargo of beans, and on the night of 2 June 1533 set sail for Youghal in Ireland.

Though the beans were sold at a profit, this was no commercial voyage. It is possible that James fled because he was starting to find his financial obligations intolerable-he told Ellington he feared he would be put in prison if he defaulted in his payments "concerning the hurtynge of William Vaughan." Perhaps he feared the taint of Rhys's treason had left him forever a marked man, or perhaps his con science had told him it was time at last to make a stand for principle. The ostensi ble reason for the voyage was to purchase Irish horses. David Williams later reported that James told him he had received a letter "from the queen's grace," commanding him "to provide hobbeyes for her grace in Irelond." Earlier commen tators have assumed this demonstrates that James ap Gruffydd was in contact with Catherine of Aragon.18 But any reference to the "queen's grace" in official docu ments compiled in the summer of 1533 must surely refer to the new queen, rather than the old. Indeed, after asking Ellington where the best place was to buy horses (apparently, Drogheda), James told him that he would buy four there-one for the king, one for the queen, one for Master Cromwell and another for Sir Edward Bainton (Anne Boleyn's chamberlain). Yet James had no intention of returning to England with hobbies for Anne Boleyn. At Drogheda, he revealed that the plan was to sail to Scotland, and the group landed at Whithorn on the southwestern Machars peninsula on Midsummer Eve.

It seems unlikely to be coincidence that the king of Scots arrived at the very place a mere three days later-James must surely have known in advance that his royal namesake was expected. St Ninian's Abbey, Whithorn, was a place of pil grimage, and accompanying James V was the abbot's brother, Lord Fleming. James ap Gruffydd secured a meeting with Fleming at the abbey, and the latter spoke warmly of him to the king. James subsequently repaired to Edinburgh, where he remained a month in the house of Richard Lundell, a servant to the king's secre tary. During this period he met several times with the royal chancellor and trea surer, and received a generous subsidy. Apparently he had also been granted the use of a castle southwest of the capital, and "the Scottes kyng, heryng the woman named hys dowghter to be fayr and abowt the age off xv years, repared to the sade castell and dyd speak with the sade gentylman." The king was soon back again, on account of "the bewtye of his dowghter.i"19

18Williams, "Welsh Insurrection," 61; Jones, "Trail of the Fugitive," 11, who sees the letter as

"hinting that he should flee to Ireland."

19British Library (hereafter BL), Cotton MS Cal. B. 3, fol. 260r (LP, 6:803).




News filtering south that a mysterious English or Welsh gentleman was

receiving favor at the Scottish court resulted in a flurry of diplomatic and surveil lance activity through the summer of 1533. Henry's commissioners meeting with their Scottish counterparts on the border at the end of June were instructed to

raise the case of "the gentilman of Wales" recently arrived with his company at St.

Ninians. They assured Henry that they had spoken to the Scots about it in no uncertain terms, making clear "that your Highnes dothe not a little marveile, whye that the King thair maister, intending to enter amytie and peas, woll receive main

teyne or supporte withynne hs realme any youre rebelles, as of liklihoode this

Welshe man is." On 2 July, William Dacre, warden of the West March, wrote to

inform Henry that the said "gentilman of Wailes ... names hym self uncle to Ryse of Wailes."20 Just over a week later, Sir Thomas Warton, writing from Newcastle, confirmed this connection: he was said to be the uncle of Rhys ap Gruffydd, "some

sayeth he ys hys systers son." The report was in response to a direct request for information from Henry himself. Two of the other commissioners in Berwick, Sir Thomas Clifford and Sir George Lawson, muddied the waters by stating that the fugitive was "namying himself Ryse," and confessing that they could not say "what is the cause of his cummynge." They had, however, sent word to English agents in

Edinburgh "to have the verey true knowledge of his cummyng, and what his name

is, and of his qualities?''21 Only on 20 July was Dacre able to provide the correct

name: the Welshman, "who was long in prison in London," called himself James

Griffith, though Dacre mistakenly thought him to be the son of Sir Rhys ap Thomas. The positive identification was confirmed in a letter to the king from the Earl of Northumberland on 26 July: "I am enformed this Walshman that is now in Scotland is called James Aphowell, and is runnen theder for socar and refuge." Northumberland added that he did not think he would be able "to abyde and kepe himself and his trayne of servauntes long in Scotand.&22

It is worth asking ourselves why the English authorities, and the king himself, should have been displaying such anxious interest in the identity and activities of a destitute refugee of only low to middling status, albeit one who had played a role in a recent high-profile treason trial. In part, we may be observing the paranoid, and partially impotent, control freakery that Henry's regime evinced in its attitude towards all exiled opponents. Over the next couple of years, for example, English ambassadors in Scotland would persistently pester their hosts about the presence there of English Observant Franciscans.23 But James was no friar. Uniquely, at this

stage of the Reformation, he was a lay Catholic exile, and one with military expe

20State Papers Published under the Authority of His Majesty's Commission, King Henry VIII, 11

vols. (London, 1830-52) (hereafter SP), 4:651 (LP, 6:802); SP, 4:647 (LP, 6:750).

21BL, Cotton MS Cal. B. 3, fol. 260r (LP, 6:803); SP, 4:652-53 (LP, 6:828).

22BL, Cotton MS Cal. B. 3, fol. 31v (LP, 6:876); Cotton MS Calig. B. 7, fol. 182v (LP, 6:895).

23Marshall, Religious Identities, 240-41.




rience. He was also a Welshman. For a variety of reasons, the situation in south Wales was high on the list of government concerns in the early 1 530s, and of close personal interest to the king himself. In 1532, the power deficit in the south and west of the country, consequent upon the fall of Rhys ap Gruffydd, was addressed in a dramatically unexpected way. At a ceremony held at Windsor Castle on the

morning of 1 September, Anne Boleyn was created Marchioness of Pembroke in her own right and endowed with royal lordships in the area. The king's intended now outranked all earls and other marquises, and possessed a status appropriate to a forthcoming meeting with Francis I of France.24 It would be absurd to suppose that royal patronage to Anne was motivated primarily by a desire to improve the governance of Pembrokeshire, but the selection of the particular title and endow ments may well have been informed by a perception that the region was in danger of becoming perilously out of sync with the priorities of royal policy.

When Anne's client, the reforming cleric William Barlow, was in 1534 appointed prior of the Pembrokeshire Augustinian house of Haverfordwest, he bemoaned the shocking religious backwardness of the region: there was in the whole country "no diocese I suppose more corrupted nor none so far out of frame" as the bishopric of St. Davids. When Barlow himself became bishop there in 1536, his opinion had hardly improved: the place "hath be allwayes esteemed a delicate doughter of Rome, naturally resemblinge her mother in shameless confucion"25 In fact, there was relatively little Anglophone evangelicals like Barlow could do to shift the religious complexion of a region where many may have found Latin more familiar, and certainly more congenial, than English. Through the mid-1530s, a string of priests and laymen from south Wales were summoned before the council in the Marches for seditious talk about the king and his new headship of the church.26 The specific discontents of southwest Wales could also reverberate across the Bristol Channel: in early 1532, for example, news of the execution of Rhys ap Gruffydd prompted treasonous talk among the prisoners held in Ilchester jail, Somerset.27

Treasonous talk was to be heard in many parts of the Tudor state in these years. Yet we cannot simply assume, as some modern commentators have done, that "Welsh allegiance to the [Tudor] dynasty was never seriously put to the test"

24Eric Iv?s, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 158-59; Griffiths, "Extension of Royal Power," 260. This must help to explain why James claimed to have been

commissioned by Anne to buy horses, and may even add substance to the claim.

25Three Chapters of Letters Relating to the Suppression of Monasteries, ed. Thomas Wright (1843), 79, 208. Modern assessments broadly concur: W. Rees, "The Union of England and Wales," Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1937): 49-52; Williams, Wales and the

Reformation, chap. 3. On Barlow's connection with Anne, Ives, Life and Death, 261-62.

26LP, 7:1310; 8:509; 12 (1), 969, 1202; 12 (2), 1057. North Wales was still less settled and adjusted to the priorities of the Tudor state. See Michael A. Jones, "Bishop Rowland Lee and the Welsh

Settlement of 1536," Welsh History Review 20 (2000): 227-53.

27G. R. Elton, Policy and Police: The Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas

Cromwell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 110-12.




at any point in the sixteenth century.28 There was to be no rebellion in Wales in 1536, as there was to be across northern England. But this may owe less to an inherited and unshakable loyalty to a dynasty with Welsh roots, than to a con certed attempt to bind the local gentry to the crown through ties of patronage, a process facilitated by the opportunities for status, office, and profit consequent upon the "shiring" of Wales under the 1536 Act of Union.29 Henry had never been seen in the north of England, but in the summer of 1535 he made an extended progress to the Welsh borders. In mid-August, Chapuys reported that the king was "still in the confines of Wales, hunting and traversing the country.' His intention, significantly, was "to gain the people."30

Chapuys was taking a close interest in the condition of Wales. In early November 1534, he wrote to Charles V about the situation of the king's cousin, Reginald Pole, and about "the disposition of the people of Wales." Concerning the latter, Chapuys thought they were "very angry at the ill treatment of the Queen and Princess, and also at what is done against the faith, for they have always been good Christians." There had been dangerously mutinous reactions to "a certain execu tion" (Rhys ap Gruffydd), and things there were in such a state that, if the emperor

were to send even a small expeditionary force, "everybody would declare himself for you." It was being reported, he added, that "the people only wait for a chief to take the field.'31 Chapuys evidently had Pole in mind for this function, but in the eyes of the regime, it was one that James ap Gruffydd might plausibly undertake.

It was certainly a role that James himself seemed all too willing to assume. A government informant in 1533 wrote that, since arriving in Scotland, James had reported himself to be "the gretest man in Wales, and rightfully discended of bloode to be Prynce of Wales." He had asked the chancellor of Scotland for three thousand troops to take back with him, and boasted that "he, with the Lyon of Scotlande, should subdue all Englond"-an alarming echo of the prophecy which had supposedly seduced Rhys ap Gruffydd.32 In July, Dacre reported that James ap Gruffydd was boasting to the lords of the Scottish council how he and his friends could raise ten thousand men in Wales.33 Much of this, of course, was bombast and bluster. But James was by no means all empty talk: evidence was soon forth coming of his determination to fish in the troubled waters of southwest Wales. At the very moment of his arrival in Scotland, James had sent two of his servants into

2 Peter Roberts, "Tudor Wales, National Identity and the British Inheritance," in British

Consciousness and Identity: The Making of Britain, 1533-1707, ed. Brendan Bradshaw and Peter

Roberts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 19. See also Williams, Wales and the

Reformation, 38,152. 29Brendan Bradshaw, "The Tudor Reformation and Revolution in Wales and Ireland: The

Origins of the British Problem," in The British Problem, c. 1534-1707, ed. Brendan Bradshaw and John Morrill (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 1996), 46-53.

30LP, 9:58.

31LP, 7:1368.

32TNA, SP 1/81, fol. 59v (LP, 6:1591).

33BL, Cotton MS Cal. B. 3, fol. 32r (LP, 6:876).




Wales.34 One of these was David Williams, who was arrested later that year in the house of one Thomas Lewes, and was interrogated by Cromwell's nephew, Rich ard, from a list of questions personally prepared by his uncle. From Williams, the regime first heard the full account of how James had escaped from Wales as well as

more about his range of contacts in Scotland. But Williams was also pressed on "what aid he [James] had out of this realm to the support of himself, his wife, and his servants?" And also on "why he came from his master now, and what letters or tokens he had to his master's friends in England or Wales?" The answers con founded any hope that James ap Griffith was merely a friendless and rootless wan derer. Williams confessed that Thomas ap Rother of Krengarth was a great friend of James's and had offered him three hundred men. Other great friends included Walter ap John, David Meredith, and Rether ap Davyd ap Jenkyn, in whose house James had stayed on his journey out of Wales. David Vaughan of Kidwelly had accompanied him to the point of embarkation. Williams added that James often complained of the difficulty of sending letters to another sympathizer, one Francis Nevile in England.35

This was information that was taken seriously and acted upon. Cromwell's "remembrances" in 1534 twice recorded the necessity "to send into Wales for those who were supposed to be of counsel with James Griffith ap Howell, the traitor' and also to bring to London "him that would have conveyed James Griffith Aphowell's man."36 Of the well-wishers named by Williams, David Vaughan at least was brought to book. In early 1536, Bishop Rowland Lee, president of the council in the Marches, reported that he had been formally accused before the council by Cromwell's servant Jankin Lloyd, for "assisting to the rebellion [of] James ap Howell Griffith."37 Some months before that, Cromwell had recorded a reminder "to examine the person that came from the traitor James Griffith Ap Howell."38 This might refer to a further interrogation of Williams (whose ultimate fate is unknown), but more likely it concerns another emissary to Wales, the sailor John Lewes, who like Williams had fled with James in June 1533.39 In August 1535, Lewes was arrested at Thornbury in Gloucestershire and ordered to be taken to the Marshalsea prison in London. But en route at Hounslow he brutally murdered two of the servants of the marshal of the household as they lay in their beds. This marked him out for exemplary punishment, orchestrated at the highest level. Cromwell's notes for the following year reminded him to make preparations for "a bill for the execution of him that came from James Griffith ap Howell," and an act of attainder against Lewes was duly passed in the 1536 parliament. Attainder pre ambles were apt occasions for official propaganda, and the act began by noting

34BL, Cotton MS Cal. B. 3, fol. 31v (LP, 6:876).

35TNA, SP 1/81, fols. 59v-60r (LP, 6:1591).

36LP, 7:50, 108.

37TNA, SP 1/103, fol. 197r (LP, 10:764).

38LP, 9:498.

39This depends on the identification of John Lewes with the "Lewes, a mariner" in David

Wilhams's list of James's original adherents: LP, 6:1591.




that James ap Gruffydd ap Hywel, late of Pembroke in South Wales, "the kynges naturall subject borne:" had long rebelliously and against his allegiance dwelled "in the parties beyonde the see." Lewes had traitorously taken himself to him, and afterwards had "resorted into diverse places of this realme entendyng to have com pacted with diverse persons for execucyon of those his trayterous purposes." Quite what these purposes were was not specified, but Lewes was to suffer the unusual fate of having his arms stricken off before his execution, "in terrible example of other such myschevously disposed persones."40 By the time Lewes was executed, evidence had emerged of yet more sympathizers with James in Wales and of poten tial interest in his cause among members of the Welsh diaspora. In September 1535, Sir William Fitzwilliam, treasurer of the royal household, wrote to Cromwell from the garrison town of Calais, after being approached by a Welsh soldier there, Robert ap Raynolds. Robert told him that an alderman of the town, William John son, had brought to him a letter from David Lloyd ap Owen of Machynlleth in Powys, asking for news of James ap Gruffydd, "wheder he bee alive or no ... and how he dooth." The loyal Raynolds had added that David Lloyd "is oon of the rich est men in Wales, and ... meanes not well." Fitzwilliam recommended that Lloyd be apprehended and offered to send Raynolds and Johnson for a personal inter view with the king.41

In all of this fluster of news and activity around the person of James ap Gruf fydd we can discern a real anxiety on the regime's part about the security situation in Wales and about the looming specter of a Scottish-Welsh axis threatening war, rebellion and foreign military intervention. Alarming rumors were in the air. In July 1532, the Venetian ambassador in London reported home that "here every body says ... that the King of Scotland is preparing for war against England with the favour and assistance of the Welsh:" and in the late summer of 1533 the govern

ment received a report from Flanders that the imperial admiral Andrea Doria was preparing an attack on Calais with three hundred galleys, "and that the Welshe menne and the Scottes should ayde and assiste hym to make warre against the king of England.c42

Yet it was the triangulation with a third troubled part of the North Atlantic isles which made James ap Gruffydd appear a particularly formidable opponent. He had in the first instance sailed to Ireland, and his captured servant David Wil liams was closely examined as to how he had been received there.43 The dissident vicar of Isleworth in Middlesex, John Hale, was accused in May 1534 of having said after the execution of Rhys ap Gruffydd that the Welsh "will join and take part

40LP, 10:254; Statutes of the Realm, ed. A. Luders et al. (London, 1810-28), 3:629-30 (27 Hen.

VIII, c. 59); Stanford E. Lehmberg, "Parliamentary Attainder in the Reign of Henry VIII," Historical

Journal 18 (1975): 675-702, at 680.

41TNA, SP 1/96, fols. 85v-86r (LP, 9:319). For the prevalence of Welshmen in the Calais garrison, see Prys T. J. Morgan, "The Welsh at Calais," Welsh History Review 2 (1964): 181-85.

42Calendar of State Papers, Venetian, ed. Rawdon Brown et al., 9 vols. (London, 1864-98)

(hereafter CSPV), 4:792; BL, Cotton MS Galba, B. 10, fol. 41v (LP, 6:902).

43LP, 6:1591.



Marshall / James ap Gruffydd e& International Opposition to Henry VIII 693

with the Irish, and so invade our realm."44 Within a few weeks of this, pro-papal rebellion in Ireland was no longer a troubling possibility, but a present reality,

under the charismatic leadership of the young Earl of Kildare, "Silken Thomas" Fitzgerald.45 The Irish situation was watched closely from London by Chapuys, ever hopeful of an enforced reversal of the Reformation in England and eager to identify a linked crisis of royal authority through the Celtic lands. Chapuys's letters to the emperor in the late summer of 1534 reported not only that attempts to recruit soldiers in the Marches of Wales for putting down the Irish rebellion were

being met with sullen resistance, but that volunteers from Scotland and Wales were rallying to Kildare's banner. Chapuys' reading of the overall strategic situation had in fact a remarkably Welsh accent. He argued that "Ireland is of no little importance, especially considering its vicinity to Wales, which forms the chief strength of England," adding that the Welsh "require only a chief to do as the

others do." Courtesy of Chapuys, we know that James ap Gruffydd returned to Ire

land for a time in September 1534: "a Welsh gentleman, who was a fugitive in Scot

land, has crossed to Ireland, which will not diminish the troubles of those here, for he is a man of courage and good sense, and of the principal lineage to Wales, who

could put the King to terrible confusion by his partisans if the affairs of Kildare continue to prosper."46 This was wishful thinking-the Kildare Rebellion was to be crushed within a year-but it was not absurdly optimistic, and if Henry VIII's gov ernment actually knew that James had returned to Ireland, its fears would undoubtedly have mirrored Chapuys' hopes. For a few months at least, James ap

Gruffydd ap Hywel seemed to be "the British Problem" personified. The British dilemma of the early Tudor state was not, however, a purely back

yard difficulty, but was directly linked to the broader international politics of Western Europe. James did not sail to Ireland directly from Scotland in 1534, but traveled there from northern Germany. In May 1534, Cromwell heard that James and his wife had arrived in the territory of the Duke of Holstein, at a town ten miles from Lubeck. Before the end of the month, James had met with the duke, and, characteristically, had puffed himself up as "a great man of England, and ban ished for the Princess Dowager's sake." Henry's envoy at Hamburg, Thomas Legh, reported with satisfaction on 25 May that James had "heard of me and privily went his way, some say to Ferdinand, others to the Emperor."47 In fact, following his

44LP, 8:609. He added that if they did, "they shall have aid and strength enough in England." 450n the Kildare Rebellion, see Steven G. Ellis, "The Kildare Rebellion and the Early Henrician

Reformation," Historical Journal 19 (1976): 807-30; Laurence McCorristine, The Revolt of Silken

Thomas: A Challenge to Henry VIII (Dublin: Wolfhound, 1987).

46LP, 7:957, 1057, 1141, 1193. See also the accusation of the reformer John Barlow in 1536 that

the conservative clergy of southwest Wales "assisted in the late rebellion in Ireland"; LP, 10:19.

47LP, 7:650, 710. Legh was part of the diplomatic initiative in north Germany to open

negotiations with the Schmalkaldic League: see Rory McEntegart, Henry VIII, the League of Schmalkalden, and the English Reformation (London: Boydell, 2002), 22-24. The towns of Hamburg and L?beck had already opted for reform by 1534, though the princely territory of Holstein was not to

adopt the Reformation until 1542: Euan Cameron, The European Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon,

1991), 217, 269.




brief foray to Ireland, James returned to efforts he had been making for almost a year to gain admittance to the imperial Netherlands, currently under the regency of Charles V's sister, Mary. Shortly after his arrival in Scotland in 1533, James had met in Leith with a Scotsman lately come from Mary's court. This Scotsman there "dyd here myche goodness of the said Jaymys," for the Lady Mary had been told that "hye was a gret lord banyshed owt off Yngland for takyng part with the olde Queen," and she wished to have him with her "by caus she hard tell that he myght do mych in Walls." Immediately, James had ordered his servant Henry Ellington to carry a letter to Mary, and secured from the Scottish Council a license to travel into Flanders.48

This news was surely pregnant with familiar foreboding for the Tudor author ities. Barely a generation before, a previous female ruler of the Netherlands, Rich ard III's sister Margaret of York, had offered material and military support to the Yorkist pretenders Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck. They had each in turn enjoyed crucial backing in Ireland, and Warbeck had been graciously received by James IV of Scotland. Both rebels were defeated by Henry VII, but not before they had been able to raise significant rebellions on English soil.49 Mary was keen to offer similar assistance to James ap Gruffydd, yet his negotiations with the Bur gundian court were from the outset severely compromised. James's envoy, Henry Ellington, was a reluctant exile, who later claimed that he had refused to accom pany James from Ireland to Scotland, agreeing to do so only when "Davy" Wil liams threatened to throw him overboard. On arriving in Antwerp in November 1533, Ellington got in touch with Cromwell's man of business, Stephen Vaughan, handed over to him James's letter to the regent, and offered to arrange the capture of James himself, "yf yt be the kyng's grace plessure to furnyshe me with a ship." Vaughan sent Ellington, along with James's letter and "other of his writing," back to Cromwell in England. But Cromwell decided to play a long game, instructing Ellington to return to Flanders, deliver his letter as instructed, and collect any reply. Thus on 1 December Ellington arrived in Brussels and presented his missive to Mary's chancellor, the archbishop of Palermo, Jean de Carondelet. The answer that returned from the regent was cautious but encouraging. She could not supply James with the ship he had asked for without the emperor's express permission, for "they have nothing adoing agaynst the reame of Ynglande." Nonetheless, she assured him that if he came to the Netherlands he would be made welcome there. But Cromwell's scheme to entrap James and embarrass the imperial authorities soon fell apart. After returning from Brussels to Antwerp, Ellington was recog nized at mass by a Scot who had made the crossing from Scotland in the same ship as he, a man who "lovis the said Jamys well." This Scotsman had already made inquiries among the English at Antwerp and had discovered Ellington's unsched uled trip to London. He denounced him to the authorities, who imprisoned him and threatened him with the wrack, inducing him to confess that he had shown

48TNA, SP 1/181, fols. lOr-v (LP, 6:1548). 49Christine Weightman, Margaret of York: Duchess of Burgundy 1446-1503 (Stroud: Alan Sutton,

1989), 148-86.




James's letters to Henry VIII's council. Pathetically, Ellington begged Cromwell from his Flemish prison cell not to withdraw his favor simply because "this besse nes wolde not be closse kept."50

Although Cromwell's intelligence operation had been foiled, diplomatic pres sure could still be applied. In mid-December 1533, Henry's ambassador at the Burgundian court, John Hackett, secured a meeting with Carondelet, and demanded assurances that the regent had offered no safe conduct to "a gentyll man owt of Waelles," who was swearing "that he would do thEmperour and hyr Grace grete serwyce" against the king of England. Carondelet responded that he was well aware of the treaty obligations between Henry and Charles not to entertain each other's rebels. The regent had refused to meet personally with James's envoy, and had remitted the matter to the council.51 Yet for all the suave and not wholly con vincing assurances, James was gradually moving closer to his goal of Burgundian support and recognition. By the end of 1534, he had taken up residence in the semi-sovereign lordship of Buren in the northern Netherlandish province of Gelderland, where the count granted him and Ellen a house. Stephen Vaughan told his master that "the knave sent his wife to the queen of Hungary with an inter preter to show her griefs." Mary had given her 100 guilders.52 By September 1535, it was reported that James himself had met twice with the regent in Flanders. Robert ap Raynolds, the Welsh Calais loyalist, volunteered to resort to him there, and by feigning friendship "knowe the hole bothom of his stomake."53

It seems likely, or at least possible, that James remained in the Netherlands throughout 1535, but in the spring of 1536 he was on the move again, probably as a result of sustained diplomatic pressure from the English government. Before the beginning of April, Mary had replied to Henry's letters "for the delivery of two rebels and fugitives of this realm." The reply was the one the English authorities wanted to hear, for Chapuys found Thomas Cromwell "very well satisfied with the Queen's letters' telling him "five or six times" that it was a good beginning for "the preservation of the amity of which we had so often talked."54 James found himself expelled from Netherlandish territory. But who was the other rebel and fugitive? A letter of 23 March from Henry VIII to an agent in Germany, Laurence Stayber, identifies James's companion as "a rebel named Henry Philipp." His is a more familiar name among English Reformation historians than that of James ap Gruf fydd, albeit for inglorious reasons. Phillips was the English exile in Louvain who in 1535 betrayed William Tyndale to the imperial authorities in Antwerp, resulting in the reformer's being burned at the stake the following year. In Louvain, Phillips had become notorious for his railing against King Henry. We do not know how he and James ap Gruffydd met, but they clearly recognized each other as kindred

50TNA, SP 1/80, fol. 106r; 1/81, fols 8r-llr (LP, 6:1448, 1547-48).

51SP, 7:527 (LP, 6:1523).

52LP, 7:1567. On the constitutional status of Buren, see Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its

Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477-1806 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 67-68.

53TNA, SP 1/96, fol. 85r (LP, 9:319). 54

LP, 10:601.




spirits, and when things became hot in the Netherlands they decided to travel together to Italy. Stayber was ordered to intercept them on their passage through Germany, and to dispatch James back to England. Henry's "wanted poster" sketch is an interesting inversion of the Welshman's own self-image, extending even to the erasure of his ethnicity. He was "an English subject of low birth, guilty of trea son, robbery, manslaughter and sacrilege."55 At the same time, Henry wrote to the city authorities of Nuremberg, asking them to arrest the two "criminals" if they passed through their territory. The apprehension of James ap Gruffydd was a task to which the king assigned a high priority. He commissioned his ambassador at the imperial court, Richard Pate, to brief the emperor about James's and Phillips's "grievous crimes against both the King and their neighbours." Henry followed this up with a letter directly to Charles, informing him that the men had taken refuge in his territories, "where they stir up causes of dissension" and that they were going on to Italy. He hoped Charles would deliver them to Pate for punishment.56

Despite these diplomatic fulminations, James remained at liberty, but the little we know about his life in 1536/7 suggests a hand-to-mouth existence around var ious German towns. Some evidence for this comes from a surprising source. In the spring of 1537, James was in Wittenberg, of all places, and secured an interview with Philip Melanchthon, who subsequently wrote a letter of recommendation for him to the Nuremberg reformer Vitus Theodorus. Melanchton's sympathetic pen portrait owes much to James's evident talent for inventive self-promotion. He was a man who had "held land of his own in which he could raise a force of 12,000 armed men." He was moreover "governor of Wales," but spoke too freely against the divorce. "To him was particularly commended the daughter of the first queen, because she had the title of Princess of Wales, and therefore he grieved at the con tumelies put upon her." James told Melanchthon that after the king had put him in prison, where he spent a year and three months, "he escaped by making a rope out of cloth." (He clearly omitted to add that he had remained in sanctuary at West minster, and had testified against Rhys ap Gruffydd.) Melanchthon begged Vitus "to receive and console him. His exile is long, his misfortune long, and he seems a

modest man. Here he has asked for nothing. I think he takes little pleasure in the court."57 In addition to bearing witness to James's evident charm and plausibility, the letter suggests the palpable lack of sympathy for Henry and his matrimonial policy felt in some Lutheran circles in Germany.

More on James's movements can be gleaned from a fragmentary letter of March 1538, sent to Thomas Cranmer from Augsburg by his client, the English man Thomas Theobald. James had evidently been in that city, and also at Regens burg, Ulm, and Tiibingen. Theobald congratulated himself on his ability to make

55LP, 10:529. On Phillips's career, see David Daniell, William Tyndale: A Biography (New Haven:

Yale University Press, 1994), chap. 14 (though this makes no mention of his association with James).

56LP, 10:530, 535.

57Philippi Melanchthonis Opera, ed. C. G. Bretscheider (Halle, 1836), 3:335; my translation,

drawing on the full summary in LP, 12 (1):845. The incident has escaped the attention of a recent

study: John Schofield, Philip Melanchthon and the English Reformation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006).




life difficult for the exile. He had informed the city authorities in Tiibingen of "the tray[son] off James Poel and his abuses," and they had duly promised to punish him if he came there again. For, according to Theobald, "in all Dochelond they do great[ly] abhorre traytors." Similarly, the chief persons in Augsburg had said that "yf thys ynformation had come unto them from the kyng his grace of England at suche tyme as he was here, then [they] wold have taken hym and wortheley pon esshed hym." Theobald was unimpressed with the efforts of Laurence Stayber, observing that "Staber myght have taken him undowted iff he wold." If the king wanted him taken, "I cowld goo ... to make as myche schyfte in that behalf as Law rence Staber," for all the chief gentlemen of the Tiibingen region "do hilie favour me." Theobald in fact was on his way to Italy, and worried that when he had gone, James would make suit to the Duke of Wiirttemberg, "as he has done to other prynces." Yet he was quietly confident that he had neutralized any such approach in advance.

The letter also contained an intriguing account of a secret meeting Theobald held in Tubingen with "one off his cheff comp [anions]," a Welshman who had married James ap Gruffydd's daughter, Sage-the girl who had once bedazzled the king of Scots. This Welshman was now offering to deliver James into Theobald's hands. Theobald smelled a rat and declined the proposal. The man told him that James was at present with the Duke of Saxony, which Theobald knew to be untrue. He was prepared to lend the man money, as his wife "was great with chyld" and condescendingly told him that "the Kyng's [grace] dyd know better where he [James] was then he cowld ynforme [me], and yf hys grace had byn desyrous to have had hyme take [n], he had not now byn at lybertye"-which was something of a stretching of the facts. Nonetheless, Theobald protected the man from arrest by the Tubingen authorities, stating that the miserable condition he found himself in

was punishment enough, and that he was "a banysshed man, as I dyd marke by the burnyng of his ha[nd].8

The identity of this second potential deserter from James's coterie is con firmed by Privy Council minutes of September 1540, which record the return to England of one "Philip ap Henry alias Philip Apary alias [blank] Vaughan," who had long been in the company of James ap Howell, and had married his daughter at Regensburg. The councillors hoped they would be able to "suck some material thing of him," and he was granted a pardon.59 It is tempting to identify "Philip ap Henry" with James's known associate Henry Phillips,60 but events prove them to be different individuals. In fact, it is possible that Philip ap Henry alias Vaughan was William Vaughan-a Welshman who had fled England for manslaughter, and who in May 1537 had approached Cromwell's agent John Hutton in the Nether lands with an offer to inveigle himself as a government agent into the service of Cardinal Pole. Henry Phillips, who was acquainted with Pole's factotum Michael Throckmorton, had offered to secure Vaughan a position with the cardinal. This

58BL, Cotton MS Vit. B. 21, fol. 151 (LP, 13 [1]:592).

59LP, 16:32, 34,160, 947 (74). 60The line taken by Jones, "Trail of the Fugitive," 16-17.




was at a time when the government was desperate to neutralize Reginald Pole and had dispatched an assassin to France with a "hand goon." Yet Pole apparently man aged to "turn" Vaughan, who remained, for the moment at least, a reliably obdu rate opponent of the government at home.61

Whether or not the two Vaughans were one and the same, the linkage with Henry Phillips serves to bring the figure of Reginald Pole firmly into the center of this narrative. Pole is an exile as celebrated in modern historiography as James ap

Gruffydd is marginal and forgotten.62 By 1536/7, Pole had emerged as Henry VIII's leading overseas opponent, having declared his true opinion of the king's proceedings in his book Pro ecclesiasticae unitatis defensione, and having been appointed papal legate to coordinate action by the Catholic powers against schis matic England. Concerns over the "British" threat to Henry, which was exempli fied by the early travels of James ap Gruffydd and which seemed so acute in 1533/ 4, were now subsumed into the imperative to deflect the pan-European schemes of a formidable exiled leader-one who was both a Yorkist prince by blood and a prince of the church by papal appointment. This was not so much the opening of a second front as a broadening of the first. As we have seen, Reginald Pole had played a central role in Chapuys's reveries about popular rebellion in Wales, even before his open declaration against the divorce and break with Rome. The Spanish consul in Venice, Martin de Cornoca, had also stressed in August 1534 how Pole's father, Sir Richard, was "a worthy knight of Wales," and how "the whole of Wales is devoted to his house." On account of the beheading of "Don Ris ... the whole prov ince is alienated from the king."63 In welcoming William Vaughan into his service in 1537, Pole himself celebrated his Welsh ancestry: "as I am infurmyd, you be banysshid owt of your native countrey as well as I." Pole "reioissid to se a Welch man, ffor that his grandfather cam owt of Wallis."64 It was almost inevitable that James ap Gruffydd, after trying his luck at the princely courts of the Netherlands and of central and southern Germany, would gravitate towards the orbit of Regi nald Pole. A number of other exiles were doing likewise at this time.65

Once again, Thomas Theobald is our window on events. He was in Padua by October 1538, and his letters to Cranmer and Cromwell reveal that Henry Phillips and James ap Gruffydd had arrived in Italy during the late summer to present themselves to the cardinal. Phillips had sought out Pole in Padua, but because he arrived arrayed like a "Swycer' or a "rufflyng man of warre' clad in a pair of "Almayn bottes," and with a series of inconsistencies in his story, Pole and his entourage suspected him as a spy for Cromwell and caused him to be banned from

See Thomas F. Mayer, "If Martyrs are to be Exchanged for Martyrs: The Kidnappings of

William Tyndale and Reginald Pole," Archiv f?r Reformationsgeschichte 81 (1990): 297-301; idem, "A

Diet for Henry VIII: The Failure of Reginald Pole's 1537 Legation," Journal of British Studies 26 (1987): 317-31.

62The standard study is now Thomas F. Mayer, Reginald Pole: Prince and Prophet (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2000).

63LP, 7:1040.

64TNA, SP 1/121, fol. 135v (LP, 12 [2]:107).

65Marshall, Religious Identities, 234-35, 249-51.




Venetian territory. Theobald's informant on this was Pole's right-hand man

Michael Throckmorton, who seems (unwisely) to have trusted the fellow English man. Throckmorton had also heard that James ap Gruffydd came to Rome in

search of the cardinal, but having heard of his behavior, Pole suspected him as he

did Phillips and would no doubt send him away. As Theobald mockingly

observed, "every wagyng of a strawe makethe them nowe afrayd.66 Yet it seems

that James may have worked his charm yet again and overcome Pole's suspicions,

for by the end of 1538 there is firm evidence that he had entered the cardinal's ser

vice. A servant of Cromwell's named Anthony Budgegood fled to the continent in

that year, intending to join the cardinal in Rome. He came via Bologna, where he

met with James ap Gruffydd, who informed him that Pole was at Venice and redi

rected him thither. He also warned Budgegood against trusting an Englishman called John Lee, who according to James sent reports monthly back to England.67

At the decade's end, the English government had not forgotten James ap

Gruffydd. In May 1539, in the wake of the so-called Exeter Conspiracy, the gov

ernment responded to the evidence of disaffection, at home and abroad, with a

massive act of attainder, naming no fewer than fifty-three individuals. A dozen or

so of these were exiles, men who had "most traitorously adhered and submitted

themselves unto the Bishopp of Rome'" Pole, naturally, headed the list, but with

him were attainted Henry Phillips and "James Griffith Appowel, late of London."

A few weeks later, one Thomas Rolffe was appointed to be auditor of James's pos

sessions, now forfeit to the crown.68

From this point onward, James's movements become increasingly difficult for us to track. It makes sense to believe that he traveled in Pole's entourage, accompa nying him to the imperial court at Toledo in 1539 and then to Viterbo in 1540,

though there is no firm evidence of this. There is a faint echo of James's presence in the apologia prepared for the Privy Council by Thomas Wyatt in 1541, after his

consignment to the Tower on charges of treason. Wyatt denied any contact with

English traitors during his time as an ambassador in Spain and in Paris, but he

admitted that he had forgotten to mention one brief encounter involving "a lyghte

fellowe, a gunner, that was an Inglyssheman and came owt of Irelande with an

Irysshe traytor cawled Iames (I have forgot his other name)." The man could barely

speak English, and Wyatt chased him from his house, despite the fact that he was

promising "to advertise me of that Iames comminge agayne." The whole thing

"was of no valew."69 Quite possibly, Wyatt was here confusing a Welsh for an Irish

traitor (one that had traveled at least twice into Ireland). One of the company

66BL, Cotton MS Nero B. 6, fols. 125r, 137v (LP, 13 [2]:507-8).

67LP, 14 (1):1. 6831 Hen. VIII, c. 15 (LP, 14 [1]:867 [15]; copy in BL, Lansdowne MS 515, fols. 34r-43v); LP, 14

(1):1192(3). 69Life and Letters of Sir Thomas Wyatt, ed. Kenneth Muir (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press,

1963), 179.




named by David Williams as accompanying James to Ireland in 1533 was John

Owen, "a goner."70 If this was a potential opportunity to track or capture James ap Gruffydd, Wyatt does not seem to have given it much consideration, though he had reasons in 1541 for downplaying its significance.

Another sighting the following year was taken much more seriously, though it

turns out to be equally befogged. In August 1542, Sir Thomas Seymour, Henry's

ambassador to Ferdinand, king of the Romans, reported from Budapest that he had recently been visited by an Englishman, Lawrence Grey, who told him that two of their countrymen had recently arrived in Vienna. These were none other than the nefarious duo of Henry Phillips and James ap Gruffydd. Grey had quar relled with Phillips and denounced him as a traitor to the town authorities of

Vienna, who had detained him pending Grey's production of firm evidence. If it were proved, he could expect to lose his eyes, but Grey had hopes that Phillips would suffer a still greater punishment, since he had heard that Phillips had con

fessed to being a onetime agent for the Turks. James ap Gruffydd meanwhile, whom Seymour considered to be "the rancowr trayter, was armed with a letter from the pope, asking Ferdinand to put him in command of two thousand hussars, "the best light horse of Hongerey" Seymour reflected that James must have high hopes of this commission, or else he would not have delayed his return to Rome by waiting for the king to arrive in Vienna from Nuremberg. "The caws whey I

mestrwst hym the morre," Seymour added, "ys that he seyeth that, who so ever

seyeth that Harey Pfelepes ys nott a nonest trew man, he ys unonest hym selff." Seymour proposed riding posthaste to Vienna to examine the parties.71

But Lawrence Grey had made a mistake. He told Seymour that James was using an alias, and "doth name hym self to be Robart Bramton." When Seymour wrote again from Vienna on 5 September, it was with the frustrating news that Fer dinand had refused to detain the two men, apparently unimpressed with the alle gation about the one's spying for the Turks, and pointing out that the other was the emperor's servant. This confirms the mistaken identity. Robert Brampton, or Branceter, was an Englishman who had been in Charles V's service for over a dozen years, and who for almost as long had been a thorn in the side of the English authorities. He was alleged to have secretly visited the Marquis of Exeter as an agent of Pole's in the aftermath of the Pilgrimage of Grace, and in 1539 he was included in the act of attainder with Phillips, James ap Gruffydd, and other leading exiles. That same year Thomas Wyatt had forcibly detained him in Paris with the intention of sending him back to England, before Charles V's intervention had obliged him to release him. Ferdinand's governor of Vienna confirmed to Seymour that the Englishman he was interested in was the same Robert Branceter who "had been pout in trobell by Mr Wyett in France."72 Given the known association with

70TNA, SP 1/81, fol. 59r (LP, 6:1591).

7lSP, 9:108-9 (LP, 17:583).

72SP, 9:141-45 (LP, xvii. 748). On Branceter's colorful career, see J. J. Scarisbrick, "The First

Englishman Round the Cape of Good Hope?" Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 34 (1961): 165-77; Marshall, Religious Identities, 264-65.




Phillips (with whom Branceter had consorted in Louvain a couple of years earlier), Grey's mistake is understandable. It is also a tribute to James ap Gruffydd's con tinuing status as one of the most high-profile and reviled external enemies of the regime. Due to the failure of the editors of the state papers to disaggregate the two exiles, the conflation of James ap Gruffydd and Robert Branceter has persisted into some modern scholarly works.73

The remainder of James's story, which takes us beyond the reign of Henry VIII, can be rehearsed quite briefly. He is invisible for most of the 1540s, but pops up again at the end of the decade, still in the service of Cardinal Pole. As we have seen, he was described as "traitor and outlaw" in James Leeche's petition to the Privy Council of October 1548.74 However, in that same month, Pole received a message via an intermediary that Edward VI's government, in the person of Pro tector Somerset, was prepared to open direct negotiations. In response, Pole dis patched an embassy to England headed by the exiled priest Richard Hilliard. In a letter of May 1549 carried by Hilliard to the papal nuncio in France, Pole warmly commended another member of the party, "Captain Griffith [Grifetto]" and asked the nuncio to look to his interests, in case it transpired that he would have to remain in England or return to France "with the intention of serving his most Christian Majesty, and of obtaining some suitable stipend from him." Whether James was chosen for this sensitive mission on account of his diplomatic skills or because Pole was sending him as a subtle reminder of his ability to cause trouble at home for the English authorities is a matter for conjecture. The envoys were received (apparently cordially) by Somerset, who pointedly presented them with a copy of the new Book of Common Prayer to deliver to Pole. In the event, the rebel lions of the summer of 1549, and Somerset's consequent fall from power, meant the tentative rapprochement came to nothing.75

James had reported in person to the cardinal by early October 1549, and most likely remained in his service until both of their long exiles finally came to an end

with the accession of Mary Tudor. In advance of Pole's own homecoming in 1554, James returned once more to his native Pembrokeshire. Not uncharacteristically for a mid-Tudor gentleman, his arrival was soon entangled in litigation. In 1554/5, James launched several suits in Chancery to recover goods and property unlaw fully kept from him since he had been "driven and compellyd to departe oute of the realme of England [sic] unto foren partyes." One of James's bills accused David

Mortimer and his undertenant Henry Powell of unjustly withholding lands in the

parish of Manordeifi, which James had purchased around 1517; another charged Jenkin David ap David with retaining tithes and oblations of the rectory of Ystrad in Cardiganshire, of which James had once been farmer; a third claimed that Swellin ap Griffith had appropriated goods-two cows, twenty pewter vessels, and

73See, for example, Rees, "Union of England and Wales," 48; George Parks, "The Reformation

and the Hospice 1514-1559," Venerabile 21 (1962): 208; The Correspondence of Reginald Pole, 3 vols., ed. Thomas F. Mayer (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002-4), 1:195-96, 229n; 2:26-27, 60.

74APC, 2:224.

75CSPV, 5:560; Mayer, Pole, 169-74; Correspondence of Pole, 2:25-27, 31, 60.




twenty bushels of wheat-which James had been obliged to leave behind when he "upon grett consideracions hym thereunto movinge att the same time, departed owt of this Realme&"76 Sometime between that departure and his return, James's wife Ellen must have died, for shortly after October 1553 he married for the third time. In 1556 or '57 he instigated two further Chancery suits for recovery of loans and sureties made by his new wife, most likely a widow of at least moderate means.77

Although by now an old man, James ap Gruffydd possessed talent for intrigue and religious factionalism that was not quite exhausted. In 1555, he played a role in the fall and execution on charges of heresy of the Protestant bishop of St. David's, Robert Ferrar. According to the martyrologist John Foxe, he was one of the witnesses in the case against whom the deposed bishop took exception at his trial, James having given his evidence at the house of George Constantine, brother in-law to the co-promoter of the case against Ferrar, Thomas Lee.78 Was James ap

Gruffydd still a force to be reckoned with in Pembrokeshire? In his reply to the Chancery bill, David Mortimer described how his accuser had once been "the ruler of these countreys where the premises lyeth."79Yet the possibility that he returned to a very different legacy is implied by a document compiled years later, at the start of the reign of Charles I. The writer was Henry Rice, great-grandson of the executed Rhys ap Gruffydd, and his intention was to exonerate his ancestor from all charges of disloyalty as part of a bid for renewed royal favor. James is the villain of the piece, "a man of mean estate," who had brought false witness against Rhys in revenge for the latter's having him arrested "for counterfeiting the great seal" In a marginal annotation to the manuscript, Henry Rice noted:

James ap Griffith (a man banished for divers treasons and excepted in all pardons) did confess beyond seas to divers of his acquaintance this dam nable practise of his against Rice and being sore troubled he returned home with intent to acknowledge his offence and to submit himself to my grandfather. But he (my grandfather not enduring to heare of him) retirid himself into Cardiganshire where he died most miserably. There are some yet alive will affirm this from my grandfather's mouth.80

Did James ap Gruffydd then return to south Wales in triumph and authority, or as a man scarred and broken by long absence and by the murky circumstances of his departure twenty years before?81 The question is perhaps unanswerable since we know nothing for certain of the conditions in which he died, but posing it brings

76TNA, C 1/1354/95-96; 1355/53-54; 1355/65.

77TNA, C 1/1433/51; 1433/55. Confusingly, the first (badly mutilated) bill gives the wife's name

as Sybil, the second as Cicely. 78John Foxe, Actes and Monumentes (London, 1563), 1093; (1583), 1550. On the Ferrar case, see

Glanmor Williams, Welsh Reformation Essays (Cardiff: University of Wales Press: 1967), 124-25.

79TNA,C 1/1354/96.

80Rice, "Objections against Rice Griffiths," 275; Griffiths, Sir Rhys ap Thomas, 288.

81In 1555, James's lands in Cenarth were reported to be in the queen's hands for debt: TNA, LR 1/

229, fol. 125r (cf. Griffiths, Sir Rhys ap Thomas, 107n).




into sharper focus some of the intrinsic paradoxes of the exile phenomenon, closer consideration of which forms the conclusion to this essay.

The twenty-year Odyssey of James ap Gruffydd has important lessons to teach us about the potential of Catholic resistance to the Henrician Reformation and the coercive capacities of the early Tudor state. From one perspective, it is a story both of heroic subversion and of governmental impotence. James success fully defied the English authorities for the space of two decades. It proved impos sible to apprehend him directly, or to persuade foreign governments to restrain

and repatriate him. Indeed, his recurrent capacity to win marks of favor from those governments, combined with his claims to be able to raise large-scale rebel lion in Wales, sent periodic shivers down the spine of the regime. The Henrician state's faltering efforts to track and capture James ap Gruffydd, no less than the bungled attempts to kidnap or assassinate Reginald Pole, expose the severe limita tions of its coercive and information-gathering abilities. Yet at the same time, James's career from 1533 suggests some of the evident shortcomings of long-term exile as a viable and effective resistance strategy.

In the first place, the leverage that exiles like James could exert with their hosts was always going to be limited, whatever the degree of sympathy they evoked. The rulers of larger states, like James V of Scotland or the Regent Mary in Burgundy, were undoubtedly conscious of a moral duty to defend Catholicism and Catholics, but ultimately they regarded exiles, particularly lay exiles, as a political card to be retained or discarded in the pursuit of diplomatic advantage. Smaller states, like the German princely courts and civic municipalities around which James flitted in 1536/7, were usually more nervous of Henry VIII's displeasure, and with them diplomatic pressure was more likely to be effective. There was no such thing in the sixteenth century as an internationally recognized right of asylum for political refugees, and, as English agents like Thomas Theobald real ized, accusations of treason could evoke a genuine frisson of revulsion in politi cally conformist societies. Even in territories loyal to Rome, English Catholic exiles had to tread a fine line between being welcomed as innocent martyrs of con science and being rejected as troublesome political malcontents.

James ap Gruffydd's experiences also illustrate some of the weaknesses inher ent in the fugitive's condition. Trust was always an issue. After his arrival in Scot

land, Thomas Wharton heard reports that "the sayme Apowell is partly suspectyde to be in Scotlande as a spye for the King oure master."82 James's departure from Scotland was delayed in late July 1533 when the council summoned him and impounded his ship, the consequence of a ferocious altercation with another

Welsh exile, who made charges against him "concerning the accusation of Risse

put to execution"83 We have also seen the suspicions that James and Henry Phil

82TNA, SP 1/78, fol. 41r (LP, 6:907).

83LP, 6:892. Wharton stated that James's accuser was one "Upp Risse," though this is a very uncertain identification.




lips aroused in their offer of service to Reginald Pole. The doubts are understand able: exiles lived in a world of double agents and potential double agents. Indeed, we have come across several of these among James ap Gruffydd's own personal fol lowing as the material and psychological pressures of exile took their toll. Henry Ellington, John Owen, even his son-in-law, Philip ap Henry alias Vaughan, were men who offered to betray him to the agents of the crown. The economic uncer tainties of exile could also exert intolerable strain on sympathizers at home. One of these who did not accompany James into exile in 1533 was his only son, Jenkyn. Following the attainder of 1539, Jenkyn petitioned Thomas Cromwell, lamenting that he "hath noo landes nor other lyvyng of certyntie whereby he shuld lyve upon," and begging of charity to be admitted "unto your lordships service." It seems likely that Cromwell did find a modest office for Jenkyn, who afterwards took the anglicized surname Powell and claimed the status of esquire.84 For all James's brave talk of the thousands of men he could call into the field in Wales, there was always a vast asymmetry of power between the exiles and those who still controlled the levers of command in their homeland.

Yet if, in the end, James ap Gruffydd was more a minor than major league player in the power politics of the Henrician Reformation, his story ought none theless to prompt us to think afresh about the process in a number of ways. We need, for example, to recognize how developments in ostensibly remote parts of the realm are not some barely connected subplot, but a constituent element of the bigger story. The study of the early Reformation in Wales has long been a highly specialized business, and it has concerned itself fundamentally with an internalist narrative of (slow) assimilation and conversion.85 It has made remarkably little mark on most of the major recent assessments of the formulation and implemen tation of Henry VIII's religious policies as a whole, and historians of the first stages of the English Reformation have been noticeably less willing than their late Tudor and early Stuart counterparts to embrace the "British dimension" to their sub ject.86 Yet as the hopes and anxieties generated by James ap Gruffydd so clearly suggest, the situation of Wales was integral to the strategic thinking of both oppo nents and supporters of the Tudor regime, and was also inextricably linked to the circumstances of Ireland and Scotland. James's precipitate departure from the realm in 1533 is an unmistakable reminder that, from its very inception, the "English Reformation" was an international event, and that the politics of Cilger ran, Kidwelly, and Carmarthen were connected by a strong thread to those of

Westminster, Holyrood, and papal Rome.

84TNA, SP 1/162, fol. 124r (LP, 15:1029 [35]); Williams, "Welsh Insurrection," 26, 88-89.

85The standard work remains Williams, Wales and the Reformation. But see Bradshaw, "Tudor

Reformation and Revolution in Wales and Ireland"; idem, "The English Reformation and Identity Formation in Ireland and Wales," in British Consciousness and Identity, 42-111.

8 There are, for example, no index entries to Wales in Bernard, King's Reformation; Shagan,

Popular Politics; or Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400

1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). The notable exceptions are Kellar, Scotland, England and the Reformation, and Heal, Reformation in Britain and Ireland.



"the greatest man in wales": james ap gruffydd ap hywel and the international opposition...

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