Owen Glyndwr and the Last Struggle for Welsh Independence

All this happened in August. As early as the preceding June, when Conway was in Welsh hands, the King had meditated a second invasion in person, and had issued summonses to the sheriffs of fourteen counties to meet him at Worcester, but the approaching surrender of Conway and the optimistic reports from Wales that met him as he came west turned him from his purpose. There was no optimism now; all was panic and the King was really coming. The Prince of Wales in the meantime was ordered forward with the levies of the four border counties, while the forces of twenty-two of the western, southern, and midland shires were hurriedly collected by a proclamation sent out upon the 18th of September.

One reads with constant and unabated surprise of the celerity with which these great levies gathered from all parts of the country to the appointed tryst, fully equipped and ready for a campaign. One’s amazement, however, is sensibly modified as the narrative proceeds and discovers them after a week or two of marching in an enemy’s country reduced to their last crust, upon the verge of disaster and starvation, and leaving in their retiring tracks as many victims as might have fallen in quite a sharp engagement.

By the opening of October the King and Prince Henry had entered Wales with a large army. The proclamation of September the 18th, calling out the forces of England, had stated that the greater part of the able-bodied men of Wales had gone over to Owen. Now, however, as this great host pushed its way to Bangor, as had happened before, and would happen again, not a Welshman was to be seen. On every side were the sparse grain-fields long stripped of their produce, the barns empty, the abundant pastures bare of the small black cattle and mountain sheep with which in times of peace and safety they were so liberally sprinkled. On the 8th of October the army was at Bangor, on the 9th at Carnarvon, whose tremendous and impregnable fortress John Bolde defended for the King with about a hundred men. Still seeing no sign of an enemy, they swept in aimless fashion round the western edges of the Snowdon mountains (for the route through them, which was even then a recognised one, would have been too dangerous), arriving in an incredibly short space of time in Cardiganshire, where the King called a halt at the great and historic abbey of Ystradfflur or Strata Florida.

The weather for a wonder favoured the English, and we might be excused for giving our imagination play for a moment and painting in fancy the gorgeous sight that the chivalry of half England, unsoiled by time or tempests or war, with its glinting steel, its gay colours, its flaunting pennons, shining in the October sun, must have displayed as it wound in a long, thin train through those familiar and matchless scenes. The great Cistercian house of Ystradfflur had shared with Conway in olden days the honour of both making and preserving the records of the Principality. Around the building was a cemetery shaded by forty wide-spreading and venerable yew trees. Beneath their shade lay the bones of eleven Welsh Princes of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and perhaps those of the greatest Welsh poet of the age, Dafydd ab Gwilim. Henry cared for none of these things. He allowed the abbey to be gutted and plundered, not sparing even the sacred vessels. He turned the monks out on to the highway, under the plea that two or three of them had favoured Owen, and filled up the measure of desecration by stabling his horses at the high altar.

Meanwhile, Owen and his nimble troops began to show themselves in Cardiganshire, harrying the flanks and rear and outposts of the royal army, cutting off supplies, and causing much discomfort and considerable loss, including the whole camp equipage of the Prince of Wales.

Henry did his best to bring Owen to action, but the Welsh chieftain was much too wary to waste his strength on a doubtful achievement which hunger would of a certainty accomplish for him within a few days. An eminent gentleman of the country, one Llewelyn ab Griffith Vychan of Cayo, comes upon the scene at this point and at the expense of his head relieves the tedium of this brief and ineffectual campaign with a dramatic incident. His position, we are told, was so considerable that he consumed in his house no less than sixteen casks of wine a year; but his patriotism rose superior to his rank and comforts. He offered to guide the royal troops to a spot where they might hope to capture Owen, but instead of doing this he deliberately misled them, to their great cost, and openly declared that he had two sons serving with Glyndwr, and that his own sympathies were with them and their heroic leader. He then bared his neck to the inevitable axe of the executioner, and proved himself thereby to be a hero, whose name, one is glad to think, has been rescued from oblivion.

The King, having attended to the mangling and quartering of this gallant old patriot, crossed the Montgomery hills with his army and hurried down the Severn valley, carrying with him, according to Adam of Usk, a thousand Welsh children as captives. Beyond this capture, he had achieved nothing save some further harrying of a land already sufficiently harried, and the pillaging of an historic and loyal monastery.

Arriving at Shrewsbury before the end of October he disbanded his army, leaving behind him a Wales rather encouraged in its rebellious ways than otherwise, Glyndwr’s reputation in no whit diminished, and his own and his Marchers’ castles as hardly pressed and in as sore a plight as when he set out, with so much pomp and circumstance, less than a month before. It must have been merely to save appearances that he issued a pardon to the “Commons of Cardigan,” with leave to buy back the lands that had been nominally confiscated. He was also good enough to say that on consideration he would allow them to retain their own language, which it seems he had tabooed; this, too, at a time when the life of no Englishman in Cardigan was safe a bowshot away from the Norman castles, when the Welsh of the country were practically masters of the situation and Glyndwr virtually their Prince.

Still Henry meant well. Since he was their King, his manifest duty was to reconquer their country for the Crown, and this was practically the task that lay before him. But then again this is precisely what he did not seem for a long time yet to realise. He was a good soldier, while for his energy and bodily activity one loses oneself in admiration. But he persistently underrated the Welsh position and gave his mind and his energies to other dangers and other interests which were far less pressing. And when he did bend his whole mind to the subjection of Glyndwr, his efforts were ill-directed, and the conditions seemed to be of a kind with which he not only could not grapple but which his very soul abhorred. It remained, as will be seen, for the gallant son, whose frivolity is popularly supposed to have been the bane of his father’s life, by diligence as well as valour, to succeed where the other had ignominiously failed.

Lord Rutland was now appointed to the thorny office of Governor of North Wales, while the Earl of Worcester, a Percy and uncle to Hotspur, was left to face Glyndwr in the southern portion of the Principality. The winter of 1401-2 was at hand, a season when Owen and his Welshmen could fight, but English armies most certainly could not campaign. The castles in the Southern Marches were put in fighting trim, revictualled and reinforced. The chief of those in the interior that Glyndwr had now to face were Lampeter, Cardigan and Builth, Llandovery and Carmarthen, while upon the border the massive and high-perched towers of Montgomery and Powys looked down over the still smoking villages by the Severn’s bank, and girded themselves to stem if need be any repetition of such disaster. Owen seemed to think that his presence in the North after so long an absence would be salutary; so, passing into Carnarvonshire, he appeared before its stubborn capital.

But John Bolde had been reinforced with men and money, and, joined by the burghers of the town, he beat off Glyndwr’s attack and slew three hundred of his men. This was early in November. All North Wales but the castles and the walled towns around them, where such existed, was still friendly to Owen. The chief castles away from the English border, Criccieth, Harlech, Carnarvon, Conway, Snowdon (Dolbadarn), Rhuddlan, and Beaumaris, complete the list of those in royal keeping and may be readily reckoned up, unlike those of South Wales, whose name was legion; while Denbigh and Ruthin were the only Marcher strongholds, apart from those which were in immediate touch with Salop and Cheshire. Now it so happened that, before most of the events narrated in this chapter had taken place, before, indeed, Hotspur had retired in such seeming petulance from North Wales during the preceding summer, he had contrived a meeting with Glyndwr. The scene of the interview is not known; that it occurred, however, is not merely noted by the chroniclers, but Glyndwr’s attitude in connection with it is referred to in the State papers. A council called in November, while Owen was making his attempt on Carnarvon, has upon its minutes, “To know the king’s will about treaty with Glyndwr to return to his allegiance seeing his good intentions relating thereto.” In the interview with Percy, Owen is said to have declared that he was willing to submit, provided that his life should be spared and his property guaranteed to him. Later in the year, as a well-known original letter of the period affirms, “Jankyn Tyby of the North Countre bringeth letteres owt of the North Countre to Owen as thei demed from Henr. son Percy.”

In answer Owen expressed his affection for the Earl of Northumberland and the confidence he felt in him. The King was then informed of the proceedings, and with his consent a messenger was sent from Earl Percy to Mortimer, whose sister, as Hotspur’s wife, was his daughter-in-law. Through the medium of Mortimer, soon to become so closely allied to Glyndwr, the latter is reported to have declared his willingness for peace, protesting that he was not to blame for the havoc wrought in Wales, and that he had been deprived of his patrimony, meaning no doubt the northern slice of Glyndyfrdwy which Grey, after being defeated at law, had annexed by force, with connivance of the King’s council. He added that he would readily meet the Earl of Northumberland on the English border, as was required of him, but that he feared outside treachery to his person, as a man who had made such a host of enemies may well have done. He also declared that, if he came to Shropshire, the Commons would raise a clamour and say that he came to destroy all those who spoke English. That Hotspur had seen Glyndwr earlier in the summer is distinctly stated by Hardyng, who was Hotspur’s own page. The fact that Percy did not take the opportunity to treacherously seize the Welsh chieftain was afterwards made one of the grievances urged by the King when he had other really serious ones against his old comrade. It may well, however, be suspected that some of these mysterious overtures in which the Percys and Mortimer figured so prominently contained the germs of the alliance that followed later between Glyndwr and the two great English houses.

No such suspicions, however, were as yet in the air, and Glyndwr retired, with his captains and his bards, into winter quarters at Glyndyfrdwy. Here, through the short days and long nights, the sounds of song and revelry sounded in the ancient Welsh fashion above the tumbling breakers of the Dee. The very accessibility of the spot to the strong border castles showed the reality at this time of Owen’s power. The great pile of Chirk was not a dozen miles off, Dinas Brân was within easy sight, and the Arundels, who held them both, were no less mighty than the Greys who lay amid the ashes of Ruthin across the ridges to the north. But the whole country towards England, to Wrexham upon the one hand and to Oswestry on the other, and even to Ellesmere and that detached fragment of Flint known then as “Maelor Saesnag,” was in open or secret sympathy with what had now become a national movement. More men of note, too, and property were with Owen this winter. The rising in its origin had been markedly democratic. The labour agitations that during the century just completed had stirred England, had not left Wales untouched. There, too, the times had changed for the lower orders. The Norman heel pressed more heavily upon them than it did upon their native masters, who were often on friendly terms and connected by marriage with the conquerors’ families, while the very fact that Norman feudal customs had grown so general made it harder for the poor. The Welsh gentry as a class had hitherto fought somewhat shy of the Dragon Standard. Many, especially from South Wales, had fled to England. Now, however, everyone outside the immediate shelter of the castles had to declare himself for Owen or the King. And at this moment there was not much choice, – for those, at any rate, who set any store by their safety.

To make matters worse for Henry, the Scots had again declared war in November, and in December Glyndwr made a dash for the great stronghold of Harlech. This was only saved to the King, for the time being, by the timely despatch of four hundred archers and one hundred men-at-arms from the Prince of Wales’s headquarters at Chester. Owen, however, achieved this winter what must have been, to himself at any rate, a more satisfactory success than even the taking of Harlech, and this was the capture of his old enemy, Reginald, Lord Grey of Ruthin.

It was on the last day of January, according to Adam of Usk, that Glyndwr crossed the wild hills dividing his own territory from that of Grey, and, dropping down into the Vale of Clwyd, appeared before Ruthin. There are several versions of this notable encounter. All point to the fact that Owen exercised some strategy in drawing his enemy, with the comparatively small force at his command, out of his stronghold, and then fell on him with overpowering numbers.

An old tale recounts that the Welsh leader drove a number of stakes into the ground in a wooded place and caused his men to hang their helmets on them to represent a small force, while the men themselves lurked in ambush upon either side; and that he caused the shoes of his horses to be reversed to make Grey think that he had retreated. The fight took place, according to one tradition, close to Ruthin; another declares that Brynsaithmarchog (“the hill of the seven knights”), half way to Corwen, was the scene of it. But this is of little moment to other than local antiquaries. Grey’s force was surrounded and cut to pieces; that haughty baron himself was taken prisoner, and carried off at once, with a view to making so notable a captive secure against all attempt at rescue, to the Snowdon mountains. The tables were indeed turned on the greedy and tyrannical Lord Marcher who had been the primary cause of all this trouble that had fallen upon Wales and England. Glyndwr would not have been human had he not then drained to the last drop the cup of a revenge so sweet, and Grey was immured in the castle of Dolbadarn, whose lonely tower, still standing between the Llanberis lakes and at the foot of Snowdon, is so familiar to the modern tourist. His treatment as a prisoner, amid the snows of those cold mountains, was not indulgent, if his friends in England are to be believed. But such a captive was too valuable to make experiments upon in the matter of torture or starvation. Owen regarded him as worth something more than his weight in gold, and gold was of infinite value to his cause. So he proceeded to assess Grey’s ransom at the formidable sum of ten thousand marks, no easy amount for even the greater barons of that time to realise.

The King was greatly distressed when he heard of his favourite’s fate and pictured him as chained to the wall in some noisome dungeon in the heart of those dreary mountains, at the thought of which he shuddered. Rescue was impossible, for the very frontiers of Wales defied him, while the heart of Snowdonia, the natural fortress of the Welsh nation, was at that time almost as far beyond the reach of his arm as Greenland; moreover he had the Scots just now upon his hands.

Grey’s captivity lasted nearly a year. Greatly concerned in the matter though the King was, it was not till the following October that he appointed a commission to treat with Glyndwr for his favourite’s ransom. This commission consisted of Sir William de Roos, Sir Richard de Grey, Sir William de Willoughby, Sir William de Zouche, Sir Hugh Hals, and six other less distinguished people. Glyndwr agreed to release his prisoner in consideration of ten thousand marks, six thousand to be paid within a month, and hostages, in the person of his eldest son and others, to be delivered to him as guaranty for the remaining four thousand. The Bishop of London and others were then ordered to sell the manor of Hertleigh in Kent, and Grey was to be excused for six years from the burdensome tax then laid on absentee Irish landowners amounting to one-third of their rentals. These payments left him, we are told, a poor man for life. His Ruthin property had been destroyed by Glyndwr himself, and the latter’s triumph was complete when the Lord Marcher had to make a humiliating agreement not to bear arms against him for the rest of his life. Hardyng, the rhyming chronicler, does not omit this notable incident:

“Soone after was the same Lord Grey in feeldeFightyng taken and holden prisoner,By Owayne, so that him in prison helde,Tyll his ransome was made and financeTen thousand marke, and fully payed were dearFor whiche he was so poor than all his lyfeThat no power he had to werr ne strife.”

An unfounded, as well as quite improbable, tradition has found its way into many accounts, which represents Owen as compelling Grey to marry one of his daughters.

While these stirring events were taking place, Glyndwr’s thoughts and his correspondence were busy travelling oversea. He was sending letters both to the King of Scotland and the native chieftains of Ireland, soliciting their aid. At this time, too, a certain knight of Cardiganshire named David ap Tevan Goy, who for twenty years had been fighting against the Saracens, with various Eastern Christians, was sent on Owen’s behalf by the King of France to the King of Scotland. He was captured, however, by English sailors and imprisoned in the Tower of London.

Glyndwr’s own messengers were equally unfortunate, for letters he sent to Robert of Scotland and the Irish chieftains were seized in Ireland and their bearers beheaded. Adam of Usk has fortunately left us a copy of them. Glyndwr had as yet no chancellor or secretary at his side that we know of. And, indeed, being a man of the world and a well-educated one, it may safely be assumed that he wrote these letters himself. We have so little from his own hand; his personality is in some respects so vague and shadowy; his deeds and their results comprise such a vast deal more of the material from which the man himself has to be judged than is usually the case, that one feels disinclined to omit the smallest detail which brings him, as an individual, more distinctly to the mind. I shall therefore insert the whole text of the captured letters. The first is to the King of Scotland, the second to the lords of Ireland.

“Most high and Mighty and redoubted Lord and Cousin, I commend me to your most High and Royal Majesty, humbly as it beseemeth me with all honour and reverence. Most redoubted Lord and Sovereign Cousin, please it you and your most high Majesty to know that Brutus, your most noble ancestor and mine, which was the first crowned King who dwelt in this realm of England, which of old times was called Great Britain. The which Brutus begat three sons; to wit, Albanact, Locrine, and Camber, from which same Albanact you are descended in direct line. And the issue of the same Camber reigned loyally down to Cadwalladar, who was the last crowned King of the people, and from whom I, your simple Cousin am descended in direct line; and after whose decease, I and my ancestors and all my said people have been and still are, under the tyranny and bondage of mine and your mortal enemies, the Saxons; whereof you most redoubted Lord and very Sovereign Cousin, have good knowledge. And from this tyranny and bondage the prophecy saith that I shall be delivered by the help and succour of your Royal Majesty. But most redoubted Lord and Sovereign Cousin, I make a grievous plaint to your Royal Majesty, and most Sovereign Cousinship, that it faileth me much in soldiers, therefore most redoubted Lord and very Sovereign Cousin, I humbly beseech you kneeling upon my knees, that it may please your Royal Majesty to send me a certain number of soldiers, who may aid me and withstand, with God’s help, mine and your enemies, having regard most redoubted Lord and very Sovereign Cousin to the chastisement of this mischief and of all the many past mischiefs which I and my ancestors of Wales have suffered at the hands of mine and your mortal enemies. And be it understood, most redoubted Lord and very Sovereign Cousin that I shall not fail all the days of my life to be bounden to do your service and to repay you. And in that I cannot send unto you all my business in writing, I send these present bearers fully informed in all things, to whom be pleased to give faith and belief in what they shall say to you by word of mouth. From my Court, most redoubted Lord and very Sovereign Cousin, may the Almighty Lord have you in his keeping.”

The letter to the Irish lords runs thus:

“Health and fulness of love most dread Lord and most trusty Cousin. Be it known unto you that a great discord or war hath arisen between us and our and your deadly enemies, the Saxons; which war we have manfully waged now for nearly two years past, and henceforth mean and hope to wage and carry out to a good and effectual end, by the grace of God our Saviour, and by your help and countenance. But seeing that it is commonly reported by the prophecy, that before we can have the upper hand in this behalf, you and yours, our well beloved Cousins in Ireland must stretch forth thereto a helping hand, therefore most dread Lord and trusty Cousin, with heart and soul we pray you that of your horse and foot soldiers, for the succour of us and our people who now this long while are oppressed by our enemies and yours, as well as to oppose the treacherous and deceitful will of those same enemies, you despatch to us as many as you shall be able with convenience and honour, saving in all things your honourable State, as quickly as may seem good to you. Delay not to do this by the love we bear you and as we put our trust in you, although we be unknown to you, seeing that, most dread Lord and Cousin, so long as we shall be able to manfully wage this war in our borders, as doubtless is dear to you, you and all the other Chiefs of your land of Ireland will in the meantime have welcome peace and calm repose. And because, my Lord Cousin, the bearers of these presents shall make things known to you more fully by word of mouth, if it please you, you shall give credence to them in all things which they shall say to you on our behalf, and you may trustfully confide to them whatsoever you will, dread Lord and Cousin, that we your poor cousin shall do. Dread Lord and Cousin, may the Almighty preserve your reverence and Lordship in long life and good fortune.

“Written in North Wales on the twenty-ninth day of November [1401].”

CHAPTER V

THE KING AND HOTSPUR 1402

AS if the world of Britain were not already sufficiently excited, the spring of 1402 opened with tremendous portents. In the month of February a comet with its fiery streaming tail, “a terror to the world,” broke across the heavens and set all Europe trembling. The bards of Wales rose with one voice to the occasion, headed by Iolo Goch, who recalled the fiery star that heralded the birth of Arthur, and even that other one which guided the Magi to our Saviour’s cradle.

The fiery shapes, too, that “lit the front of heaven” at Owen’s birth were recalled again with a fresh outburst of enthusiasm, and the tail of this particular comet, which Adam of Usk saw by day as well as by night, while travelling towards Rome, curled up at times, in the eyes of credulous Welsh patriots, into a dragon’s shape, the badge of Welsh nationality. Englishmen beheld it pointing at one time towards Wales, at another towards Scotland, and read in these mysterious changes portents for the coming year. Thunder-storms of terrific violence swept over the country. At Danbury, says Holinshed, while the people were in church, lightning struck the roof and destroyed the chancel, and while the storm was at its height the devil entered the sacred building, dressed as a Franciscan friar (one of Owen’s well-wishers, it will be remembered), and leaped three times over the altar from right to left; then, turning black in the face, he rushed down the aisle, actually passing between a man’s legs, and leaving an overpowering smell of sulphur in his track. The man’s legs were black ever after, so that there was no doubt about the nature of the visitant! Other weird things happened in various parts of the country, which do not concern our story, except to show how strained were men’s imaginations in a year which after all proved fruitful enough of events.