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Page 12
to go to Wales. In the conflict that the Bishop of Winchester had engendered between the king and his barons, Geoffrey had been torn by divided loyalties. His every instinctand his intelligencebade him side with Richard Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, and uphold Magna Carta. However, Geoffrey was blood cousin to the king, although through two generations of illegitimacy. Even more important, Henry had been very good to Geoffrey.
Until the advent of Winchester, Geoffrey had been a trusted councillor, and he controlled many royal castles. Moreover, Henry had stubbornly resisted Winchester's desire to strip Geoffrey of his honors and holdings, despite the fact that Geoffrey had opposed Winchester's advice and Henry's fancies. The king's trust demanded loyalty, and Geoffrey had given that loyalty, however much it went against the grain for him.
Then came the debacle at Usk. Again against advice, not only of Geoffrey but of every baron knowledgeable in Welsh affairs, the king had listened to Winchester and had attacked Pembroke's keep at Usk with a mixed army of English levies and foreign mercenaries. But the attack had been doomed to failure even before it started. Raids by Prince Llewelyn's Welsh bands on the baggage train had destroyed siege instruments and deprived Henry's army of essential supplies of food and weapons. And the scorched-earth policy Richard Marshal had learned from his Welsh vassals had made it impossible for Henry's men to live off the land or to restore what had been lost, which precluded a protracted siege. Several direct assaults had been resisted with far greater loss to the king's army than to the defenders at Usk.
To save the king from retreating like a whipped cur with his tail between his legs and looking like an utter fool, a truce had been arranged. Pembroke yielded his castle on the terms that it would be returned in fifteen days, undamaged and with supplies intact, and that the king would then call a council in which the complaints of Pembroke, Gilbert Bassett, and other barons would be considered. Geoffrey, the Bishop of St. David's, and several other churchmen and noblemen had gone surety that the king would keep his word and Usk would be returned to Richard. Instead, a trap had been set to catch and imprison the earl for the "crime" of demanding that Henry obey the terms of the truce.
Richard escaped the trap, and Usk fell back into its master's

 
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