Owen Glyndwr and the Last Struggle for Welsh Independence

CHAPTER IV
OWEN AND THE PERCYS 1401

NORTH WALES, as already mentioned, was being now administered by the young Prince Henry, with the help of a council whose headquarters were at Chester. Under their orders, and their most active agent at this time, was Henry Percy, the famous Hotspur, eldest son of the Earl of Northumberland. He was Justice of North Wales and Constable of the castles of Chester, Flint, Conway, Denbigh, and Carnarvon, and had recently been granted the whole island of Anglesey. Hotspur, for obvious reasons, made his headquarters at the high-perched and conveniently situated fortress of Denbigh, which Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, had built at the Edwardian conquest. Its purpose was to overawe the lower portion of the Vale of Clwyd, which had fallen to Lacy’s share at the great division of plunder that signalised the downfall of the last of the Welsh native Princes. The lordship of Denbigh, it may be remarked parenthetically, since the fact becomes one of some significance later on, belonged at this time to the Mortimers, into which famous family Henry Percy had married. The latter, to whose house the King was under such great obligations, was the leading exponent of his master’s policy in Wales, both in matters of peace and war, and had been sufficiently loaded with favours to at least equalise the balance of mutual indebtedness between the houses of Northumberland and Lancaster.

Shakespeare’s fancy and dramatic instinct has played sad havoc in most people’s minds with the mutual attitude of some of the leading figures of this stormy period. It has been sufficiently disproved by his biographers, if not, indeed, by the facts of general history, that Henry of Monmouth was no more the dissipated, light-headed trifler and heartless brawler than was Glyndwr the half-barbarous and wholly boastful personage that Shakespeare has placed upon his stage. The King, it will be remembered, is depicted, in the play that bears his name, as bewailing with embittered eloquence the contrast between the characters of Hotspur and his own son, and making vain laments that the infants had not been changed while they lay side by side in their cradles. It is something of a shock to recall the fact that Henry Percy was a little older than the distraught father himself, and a contemporary, not of the Prince, but of the King, who was now about thirty-five, and many years younger than Glyndwr.

Prince Henry, even now, though not yet fourteen, seems to have had a mind of his own. He had, in truth, to face early the stern facts and hard realities of a life such as would have sobered and matured a less naturally precocious and intelligent nature than his. His youth was not spent in frivolity and debauchery in London, but upon the Welsh border, for the most part, amid the clash of arms or the more trying strain of political responsibility, aggravated by constant want of funds. One might almost say that Henry of Monmouth’s whole early manhood was devoted to a fierce and ceaseless struggle with Glyndwr for that allegiance of the Welsh people to which both laid claim. In later years, as we shall see, it was the tenacity and soldier-like qualities of the Prince that succeeded where veteran warriors had failed, and that ultimately broke the back of Glyndwr’s long and fierce resistance. The King, far from deploring the conduct or character of his valiant son, always treated him with the utmost confidence, and invariably speaks of him in his correspondence with unreserved affection and pride. He was of “spare make,” say the chroniclers who knew him, “tall and well proportioned, exceeding the stature of men, beautiful of visage, and small of bone.” He was of “marvellous strength, pliant and passing swift of limb; and so trained to feats of agility by discipline and exercise, that with one or two of his lords he could on foot readily give chase to a deer without hounds, bow, or sling, and catch the fleetest of the herd.”

Either from a feeling that Hotspur was too strong, or that popular fervour had perhaps been sufficiently aroused to the north of the Dovey, Glyndwr now turned his attention to the southern and midland districts of the country. But before following him there I must say something of the incident which was of chief importance at the opening of this year’s operations.

Conway will probably be more familiar to the general reader than any other scene of conflict we shall visit in this volume, from the fact of its being so notable a landmark on the highway between England and Ireland. The massive towers and walls of the great castle which Edward the First’s architect, Henry de Elfreton, raised here at the conquest of Wales, still throw their shadows on the broad tidal river that laps their feet. The little town which lies beneath its ramparts and against the shore is still bound fast within a girdle of high, embattled walls, strengthened at measured intervals by nearly thirty towers, and presenting a complete picture of medieval times such as in all Britain is unapproached, while immediately above it, if anything were needed to give further distinction to a scene in itself so eloquent of a storied past, rise to heaven the northern bulwarks of the Snowdon range. Here, in the early spring of this year, within the castle, lay a royal garrison closely beset by the two brothers, William and Rhys ap Tudor, of the ever famous stock of Penmynydd in Anglesey. They had both been excluded from the King’s pardon, together with Glyndwr, among whose lieutenants they were to prove themselves at this period the most formidable to the English power.

Conway Castle, as may readily be believed by those familiar with it, was practically impregnable, so long as a score or two of armed men with sufficient to sustain life and strength remained inside it. The Tudors, however, achieved by stealth what the force at their command could not at that time have accomplished by other means. For while the garrison were at church, a partisan of the Glyndwr faction was introduced into the castle in the disguise of a carpenter, and after killing the warders he admitted William ap Tudor and some forty men. They found a fair stock of provisions within the castle, though, as will be seen, it proved in the end insufficient. The main body of the besiegers retired under Rhys ap Tudor to the hills overlooking the town to await developments. They were not long left in suspense, for the news of the seizure of the castle roused Hotspur to activity, and he hastened to the spot with all the men that he could collect. Conway being one of Edward’s fortified and chartered English towns, the inhabitants were presumably loyal to the King. But Hotspur brought five hundred archers and men-at-arms and great engines, including almost certainly some of the primitive cannon of the period, to bear on the castle. William ap Tudor and his forty men laughed at their efforts till Hotspur, despairing of success by arms, went on to Carnarvon, leaving his whole force behind, to try the effect of starvation on the garrison.

At Carnarvon Henry Percy held his sessions as Justice of North Wales, openly proclaiming a pardon in the name of his master the Prince to all who would come in and give up their arms. From here, too, he sent word in a letter, still extant, that the commons of Carnarvon and Merioneth had come before him, thanking the King and Prince for their clemency and offering to pay the same dues as they had paid King Richard. He also declared that the northern districts, with the exception of the forces at Conway, were rapidly coming back to their allegiance. How sanguine and premature Hotspur was in this declaration will soon be clear enough.

In the meantime much damage had been done to Conway town by both besiegers and besieged. The latter seem to have overestimated the resources they found within the castle, for by the end of April they were making overtures for terms. William ap Tudor offered on behalf of his followers to surrender the place if a full and unconditional pardon should be granted to all inside. Hotspur was inclined to accept this proposal, but the council at Chester and the King himself, getting word of his intention, objected, and with justice, to such leniency. So the negotiations drag on. The King in a letter to his son remarks that, as the castle fell by the carelessness of Henry Percy’s people, that same “dear and faithful cousin” ought to see that it was retaken without concessions to those holding it, and, moreover, pay all the expenses out of his own pocket. In any case he urges that, if he himself is to pay the wages and maintenance of the besieging force, and supply their imposing siege train, he would like to see something more substantial for the outlay than a full and free pardon to the rebels who had caused it. It was the beginning of July before an agreement was finally arrived at, to the effect that if nine of the garrison, not specified, were handed over to justice, the rest should be granted both their lives and a free pardon. The selection of the nine inside the castle was made on a strange method, if method it can be called. For the leaders, having made an arbitrary and privy choice of the victims, had them seized and bound suddenly in the night. They were then handed over to Percy’s troops, who slaughtered them after the usual brutal fashion of the time.

A second letter of Henry Percy’s to the council demonstrates conclusively how seriously he had been at fault in his previous estimate. This time he writes from Denbigh under date of May 17th, pressing for the payment of arrears in view of the desperate state of North Wales, and further declaring that if he did not receive some money shortly he must resign his position to others and leave the country by the end of the month. But Hotspur rose superior to his threats; for at the end of May, at his own risk and expense, he made an expedition against a force of Glyndwr’s people that were in arms around Dolgelly. He was accompanied by the Earl of Arundel and Sir Hugh Browe, a gentleman of Cheshire. An action was fought of an indecisive nature at the foot of Cader Idris, after which Percy returned to Denbigh. Finding here no answer to his urgent appeal for support, he threw up all his Welsh appointments in disgust and left the country for the more congenial and familiar neighbourhood of the Scottish border. For he held office here also, being joined with his father in the wardenship of the Eastern Marches of Scotland.

Hotspur was even now, at this early stage and with some apparent cause, in no very good humour with the King. It is certain, too, that Glyndwr at this time had some special liking for the Percys, though they were his open enemies, and it is almost beyond question that they had a personal interview at some place and date unknown during the summer.

Leaving North Wales in a seething and turbulent state, with local partisans heading bands of insurgents (if men who resist an usurper can be called insurgents) in various parts of the country, we must turn to Owen and the South. Crossing the Dovey, Glyndwr had sought the mountain range that divides Cardigan from what is now Radnorshire (then known as the district of Melenydd), and raised his standard upon the rounded summit of Plinlimmon. It was a fine position, lying midway between North and South Wales, within sight of the sea and at the same time within striking distance of the fertile districts of the Centre and the South. Behind him lay the populous seaboard strip of Ceredigion created at Edward’s conquest into the county of Cardigan. Before him lay Radnor, and Carmarthen, and the fat lordships of Brycheiniog, to be welded later into the modern county of Brecon. Along the Cardiganshire coast in Owen’s rear a string of castles frowned out upon the Irish Sea, held, since it was a royal county, by the constables of the King, who were sometimes of English, sometimes of Welsh, nationality. Inland, as far as the Herefordshire border, was a confused network of lordships, held for the most part direct from the King on feudal tenure by English or Anglo-Welsh nobles, and each dominated by one or more grim castles of prodigious strength, against which the feeble engines and guns of those days hurled their missiles with small effect. Some of these were royal or quasi-royal property and looked to the Crown for their defence. The majority, however, had to be maintained and held by owners against the King’s enemies, subject to confiscation in case of any deficiency in zeal or precaution. Ordinarily impregnable though the walls were, the garrisons, as we shall see, were mostly small, and they were incapable of making much impression upon the surrounding country when once it became openly hostile and armed.

South Wales had as yet shown no great disposition to move. Some riots and bloodshed at Abergavenny had been almost the sum total of its patriotic activity. Now, however, that the Dragon Standard was actually floating on Plinlimmon and the already renowned Owen, with a band of chosen followers, was calling the South to arms, there was no lack of response. The bards had been busy preparing the way on the south as well as on the north of the Dovey. In the words of Pennant:

“They animated the nation by recalling to mind the great exploits of their ancestors, their struggles for liberty, their successful contests with the Saxon and Norman race for upwards of eight centuries. They rehearsed the cruelty of their antagonists, and did not forget the savage policy of the first Edward to their proscribed brethren. They brought before their countrymen the remembrance of ancient prophecies. They showed the hero Glyndwr to be descended from the ancient race of our Princes, and pronounced that in him was to be expected the completion of our oracular Merlin. The band of minstrels now struck up. The harp, the ‘crwth,’ and the pipe filled up the measure of enthusiasm which the other had begun to inspire. They rushed to battle, fearless of the event, like their great ancestry, moved by the Druids’ songs, and scorned death which conferred immortality in reward of their valour.”

Glyndwr now fell with heavy hand upon this southern country, crossing the headwaters of the Severn and the Wye, and pressing hard upon the Marches of Carmarthen. The common people rose on every side and joined the forces that acted either under his leadership or in his name. Those who did not join him, as was certainly the case with a majority of the upper class at this early period, had to find refuge in the castles or to fly to safer regions, leaving their property at the mercy of the insurgents. But a battle was fought at the opening of this campaign on the summit of Mynydd Hyddgant, a hill in the Plinlimmon group, that did more, perhaps, to rouse enthusiasm for Glyndwr than even the strains of the bards or his own desolating marches.

The Flemings in Wales at that time were not confined to Western Pembroke, but had still strong colonies below Carmarthen, in the Glamorgan promontory of Gower, and some footing in South Cardiganshire. Whether they had actually felt the hand of Glyndwr upon their borders, or whether they deemed it better to take the initiative, they at any rate collected a force of some fifteen hundred men, and marching northward to the Cardigan mountains, surprised the Welsh leader as he was encamped on the summit of Mynydd Hyddgant, with a body of less than five hundred men around him. The Flemish strategy was creditable, seeing that it was carried out by slow-witted and slow-footed lowlanders against nimble mountaineers and so astute a chieftain. Owen found himself surrounded by a force thrice the number of his own, and either death or capture seemed inevitable. As the latter meant the former, he was not long in choosing his course, and putting himself at the head of his warriors he attacked the Flemings with such fury that he and most of his band escaped, leaving two hundred of their enemies dead upon the mountain slope. This personal feat of arms was worth five thousand men to Owen. It was all that was wanted to fill the measure of his prestige and decide every wavering Welshman in his favour.

For this whole summer Glyndwr was fighting and ravaging throughout South and Mid-Wales. The lands of the English as well as of those Welshmen who would not join him were ruthlessly harried. Stock was carried off, homesteads were burned, even castles here and there were taken, when ill-provisioned and undermanned. New Radnor under Sir John Grendor was stormed and the sixty defenders hung upon the ramparts by way of encouragement to others to yield. The noble abbey of Cwmhir too, whose ruins still slowly crumble in a remote Radnorshire valley, felt Glyndwr’s pitiless hand, being utterly destroyed. His animosity to the Church was intelligible, though for his method of showing it nothing indeed can be said. The Welsh Church, though its personnel was largely native, was, with the exception of the Franciscan order, mostly hostile to Glyndwr and upon the side of the English Government. Bards and priests, moreover, were irreconcilable enemies. The latter had in some sort usurped the position the former had once held, and now the patron and the hero of the bards, who were once more lifting up their heads, was not likely to be acceptable to the clergy. This, however, would be a poor excuse for an iconoclasm that would set a Welsh torch to noble foundations built and endowed for the most part with Welsh money.

Glyndwr in the meantime swept down the Severn valley, burning on his way the small town of Montgomery, and coming only to a halt where the border borough of Welshpool lay nestling between the high hills through which the Severn rushes out into the fat plains of Shropshire.

The great Red Castle of Powys, then called “Pole,” overlooked in those days, as it does in these, the town it sheltered. The famous Shropshire family of Charlton were then, and for generations afterwards, its lords and owners. From its walls Glyndwr and his forces were now driven back by Edward Charlton with his garrison and the levies of the neighbourhood, which remained throughout the war staunch to its lord and the King. The repulse of Owen, however, was not accomplished without much hard fighting and the destruction of all the suburbs of the town.

But these sallies from castles and walled towns could do little more than protect their inmates. Mid- and South Wales literally bristled with feudal castles containing garrisons of, for the most part, less than a hundred men. These scattered handfuls were unable to leave their posts and act in unison, and when the abandonment of North Wales by Hotspur gave further confidence to those who had risen, or would like to rise, for Glyndwr, the greater part of South Wales fell into line with the Centre and the North. From the border to the sea Owen was now, so far as the open country was concerned, irresistible. Nor was it only within the bounds of Wales that men who were unfriendly to Glyndwr had cause to tremble. The rapid progress of his arms had already spread terror along the border, and created something like a panic even in England. The idea of a Welsh invasion spread to comparatively remote parts, and urgent letters carried by hard-riding messengers went hurrying to the King from beleaguered Marchers and scared abbots, beseeching him to come in person to their rescue.

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 Hen^r. 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.