A good deal can be said of the century that was to elapse before our story opens, but not much that is of vital import. In 1295, thirteen years after the conquest, Madoc ap Meredith, a connection of Llewelyn’s, made a last attempt to rouse the Welsh. It proved abortive, but was serious enough to stop Edward from going to France, and to take him down to Conway, where it is said that on a certain occasion a high tide cut him off from his men, and nearly delivered him into the hands of the insurgents.
Wales through the fourteenth century.
It would be too much to say that the next hundred years in Wales were those of peace and prosperity. But by comparison with the past they might not untruly be called so. No serious friction occurred between the two races; while the long wars with France and constant broils with Scotland engrossed the attention of the Welsh aristocracy, both Norman and native. Nor, again, was it only the nobles and gentry that found respite from their domestic quarrels in a combined activity upon the unfortunate soil of France. Welsh soldiers as well as Welsh gentlemen served by thousands in the armies of England, and few people remember that about a third of the victorious army at Cressy were Welshmen. This long companionship in arms and partnership in almost unparallelled glories must have done something to lessen the instinctive antipathy with which the two peoples had from time immemorial regarded each other. Yet how much of the ancient enmity survived, only requiring some spark to kindle it, will be evident enough as I proceed to the main part of my story, and the doings of the indomitable Welshman who is its hero.
CHAPTER II
BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE
1359-1399
“... At my birth
The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes;
The goats ran from the mountains, and the herds
Were strangely clamorous to the frighted fields.
These signs have marked me extraordinary,
And all the courses of my life do show,
I am not in the roll of common men.”
IN these famous lines the Glyndwr of Shakespeare, though not, perhaps, a very faithful portrait of the true Glyndwr, tells us of those dread portents which heralded his birth. Thus far, however, tradition rings true enough in the lines of the great poet, and is even shorn of some of the most fearsome details it has sent down to us through various channels. Shakespeare’s Glyndwr might, for instance, have told us, what all Welshmen of his day were well assured of, that on that memorable night the horses of Griffith Vychan, his father, were found standing in their stables up to their fetlocks in blood; and how he himself, while still an infant in his nurse’s arms, was accustomed to greet with demonstrations of delight the sight of a sword or spear and allow those around him no peace till the deadly weapon was placed in his baby hand.