Walter Map and the Matter of Britain. Joshua Byron Smith

Marcher at court could be expedient, especially if one is quick with a memorable anecdote. In this regard, Walter’s behavior with Becket has a performative aspect about it; being a Marcher at court means being able to discourse on the Welsh. Becket’s request for insight surely was not the only time Walter was called on to explain the Welsh. Walter knew about the pretentions of the diocese of St. Davids, which he apparently denigrated on numerous occasions.⁶⁰ Moreover, other passages in the De nugis curialium have the polished feel of repeated recitation. The Welsh are scrupulous (probi) only in their unscrupulousness (improbitate).⁶¹ They value hospitality to a fault, so much so that a Welshman once killed his wife for insulting a guest.⁶² Plunder and theft are so important to the Welsh that few grow old willingly: “Die young, or beg old,” as they say.⁶³ So rash and irrational are the Welsh when angry that they will even kill their friends out of spite.⁶⁴ True to form, Walter can furnish an exemplary story for each of these claims. These short stories are crafted to distill the essence of the Welsh into a few pithy words: they show that Walter is a man in the habit of explaining the Welsh.

      Walter was not, however, the only Welsh specialist at Henry’s court. Gerald of Wales was rewarded, though not as much as he hoped, for his local knowledge of Wales during his time as a royal clerk.⁶⁵ He often boasts of his usefulness in dealing with the Welsh. Indeed, according to Gerald, he was first summoned to Henry’s aid when the king was “in the borders of the March, for the purpose of pacifying Wales.”⁶⁶ Moreover, Gerald’s Marcher family knew how to counter the military tactics of the Welsh, and their strategies proved successful in invading Ireland as well.⁶⁷ Gerald, ever eager to please, invoked his Marcher expertise to advise Henry and his court on cultural and military matters pertaining to the Welsh. Walter played the same role, and his royal invitation to possess the revenues of the archdeaconry of Brecon in 1202 might attest to the fact that he could parlay his Marcher know-how to his advantage.⁶⁸ There was profit to be had in knowledge of the Welsh, and Marchers seem to have cornered the market.

      Gerald’s comments on Walter also speak to the complexity of the March: Walter knows the mores not only of the Welsh but “of both people of the land” (gentis utriusque terrae).⁶⁹ The other people to whom Gerald is referring are, of course, the Anglo-Norman Marcher aristocracy. Walter knew what it was like to live in a frontier society, and he was certainly comfortable in a Marcher milieu. He traded tales with Marcher barons, knights, aristocrats, and bishops.⁷⁰ Several of his stories are rooted in the March, and they respond to the peculiar situation of living on the border, recording dangerous Welsh raids and buttressing contemporary property rights with the misty past of legend. And his church of Westbury-on-Severn lay in an area of southwestern Herefordshire where Welsh presence was strong. This benefice, in effect, made Walter a member of the Marcher gentility, though in a modest fashion.

      It is tempting to overstate the importance of Walter’s status as a Marcher. It was, after all, just one of the many identities available to him. He was also English, and a member of the French-speaking English elite at that. And he was at home in the international world of Latin Christendom. He was entertained by Marie de Champagne and her husband, Count Henry, at their chateau in Troyes, and he was one of Henry II’s representatives at the Third Lateran Council.⁷¹ Although Walter’s vocation as a secular cleric caused him less angst than it did Peter of Blois, his day-to-day life as a churchman, both in and out of court, held clear importance to him; the strong moral and didactic overtones of his satire show that he thought both monastic and curial life needed reform.⁷² Yet Walter’s reputed role in producing the Lancelot-Grail Cycle suggests that one of the most salient of these identities was status as a learned intermediary between Wales and England. Walter’s exemplum for Thomas Becket bears this out. It does not end by stating only that threat of violence at the tip of a sword is all that is needed to subjugate the Welsh. Rather, Walter tells us what happens to Franco, the wandering German knight who inadvertently threatened the king of France: “And to let you know what came of Franco when his men had reached him, the king at once held him back, by praising him greatly as he tried to flee in fear, and the king told his men how bravely and courteously he had made him carry the stone back, and he gave him Crépy-en-Valois as his inheritance.”⁷³ Walter has already authorized us to read this parable in terms of Anglo-Welsh relations. Although he leaves this ending unglossed, the meaning is plain to see. The threat of violence, though of utmost importance, cannot on its own fashion a long-lasting political solution. The English must accommodate the Welsh in some manner, allow them some degree of respectability. By identifying Crépy-en-Valois (“Crespium in Valesio”) as the specific site of the Franco’s inheritance, Walter may well be punning off the French word for Wales (attested as Gales, Galeys, Wales, and so on), in effect suggesting that the English king grant the Welsh at least some land to control.⁷⁴ And Henry II did just that when he adopted a strategy of rapprochement in his later dealings with Wales, especially after 1171.⁷⁵ In this regard, Walter’s anecdote mirrors royal policy. To be clear, what Walter is advocating is not a pro-Welsh policy but merely a reflection of the reality of the accommodation and coexistence that obtained throughout the March. Walter, when dealing with the Welsh and border culture in general, shows the savvy and flexibility that one would expect of a Marcher who gladly flaunted his specialist knowledge when requested.

      The parable of the armed German knight is not the only story in the De nugis curialium that reads as political commentary on the Welsh. Walter’s story of Cynan the Fearless plays on anxiety over Welsh military raids, anxiety that was very real for Walter and his fellow border dwellers. The story takes place “over the Severn in Glamorgan,” in an area that had been under Anglo-Norman control for the better part of a century, and it describes a raid on a certain “valiant and rich” knight in typical Welsh fashion.⁷⁶ Welsh military resistance in the March most commonly took the form of swift, guerrilla-style attacks, as the Welsh were generally reluctant to be drawn into large-scale military campaigns.⁷⁷ They frequently attacked at night and utilized wooded areas to surprise their enemies, whereupon they would melt back into the forest to escape unharried.⁷⁸ The tactics that Cynan’s band employs are the same: Cynan “left the forest that towers over the whole district by himself, with a large band hidden in it, and he devised a murderous ambush for the innocent man.”⁷⁹ Moreover, Cynan and his band do not attack the knight’s house openly, but try to sneak through a window in secret (furtim).⁸⁰ There can be no doubt that Walter portrays Cynan as a typical Welsh raider; it is a portrait that no Marcher would fail to recognize. And Walter Map himself was clearly familiar with the tactics of Welsh raiders in the March, whether from his acquaintances or firsthand experience, though likely both.⁸¹

      In addition to depicting the reality of border skirmishes, the tale presents Cynan not as a powerful scourge but as a humbled and contrite raider.⁸² It does so by emphasizing a Welsh stereotype—the importance of hospitality to the Welsh. Here, the knight whom Cynan and his band are set to attack receives a guest. Cynan, not wanting to breach his people’s reverence for hospitality, beseeches his companions to hold back. Cynan’s speech has strong religious overtones: “for he has received a knight with hospitality who, as is our custom, sought it out in the name of charity, and in him he has God for a guest, and with God any battle is unequal.”⁸³ By echoing Abraham and Sarah’s reception of the three guests who are in fact angels of the Lord, Cynan’s willingness to hold hospitality sacred makes his subsequent violation of it all the more striking.⁸⁴ After his companions browbeat him into acquiescence by mocking his name—“how rightly he is called fearless!”—Cynan leads his crew toward the house, where, alerted by the guard dogs, the guest lies armed and ready.⁸⁵ Two of Cynan’s nephews are caught unaware and killed. The story ends with more religious imagery; as Cynan carries the corpses away, he remarks, “I knew that God was in there, and I know that Judas Maccabaeus, the strongest champion of God, said: ‘For the success of war is not in the multitude of the army, but strength cometh from heaven,’ and therefore I was afraid to prolong this attack; and the Lord did not forget to take vengeance on my nephews for the pride of their abuse.”⁸⁶ With these words the story ends. And Cynan, recognizing his errors, retreats back into the woods.

      This tale is a wonderful piece of fantasy for a Marcher audience