Tragic Matilda: Lady of Hay

Book excerpt: Fifty years ago a ghostly skull was seen one night floating across the windows of the battered keep of Hay Castle. Was this the legendary Matilda de Braose - otherwise known as the Lady of Haia (Hay) by the English or the giantess Moll Walbee by the local Welsh - returning to her home after being starved to death by King John? No, it wasn't. Just children playing with a lighted candle in a skull they had found hidden in a hole when they climbed up onto the castle walls. But it could have been given the tumultuous life of this remarkable woman. Matilda was an important, energetic, feisty lady married to the most powerful of the Marcher Lords of the time. During her life she fulfilled many roles included wife, mother, warrior, politician, castle builder, arbitrator and ultimately martyr. As the wife of William de Braose III (the Ogre of Abergavenny) she had 16 children, led her own army into Wales, was besieged by a Welsh army, built Hay Castle in one night, and died after being outlawed and starved to death by King John. Such details are known, but there is much that is unrecorded or only faintly alluded to and as a result numerous stories about Matilda have arisen with varying degrees of possibility and probability. The life of Matilda the Lady of Haia is the material from which legends are made. It deserves to be told and this book covers her life, relations with the local Welsh population, the de Braose falling out with King John and her subsequent death with her son at his hands. It also explores the legends that have arisen about her and provides possible explanations for them, and her legacy set out in the Magna Carta.