Copyright C. H. Young.
OLD LODGE AT NANNAU, NEAR THE SITE OF THE “OAK OF DEMONS.”
But while Glyndwr was having things pretty much his own way in Wales throughout the spring of 1402, King Henry was in truth in great anxiety. To add to his cares and trouble he was much concerned with endeavours to secure a husband for his daughter Blanche, and a wife for himself in the person of Joanna of Brittany. For the lavish expenditure inseparable from these royal alliances he had to squeeze his people, and they were in no condition to be squeezed, to say nothing of the fact that his captains and soldiers and garrisons in Wales were in a state of pecuniary starvation, and here and there in actual want of food. All this awakened much discontent and there were serious riots in many places. A plot of which the friars, chiefly represented by Glyndwr’s friends the Franciscans, were the leaders, was discovered and crushed with much hanging and quartering. Even Henry’s loyal subjects of London turned mutinous and their juries refused to convict the priests. The aid, however, of a packed jury in Islington was invoked, who excused themselves for some manifestly outrageous decisions with the naïve but unanswerable plea that if they did not hang the prisoners they would be hanged themselves. The report was still sedulously bruited abroad that Richard was alive, and, if anything, the idea gained ground; while, to complete the distress of the King, the Scots were waging open war upon him in the North, and proving perhaps better allies to Glyndwr than if they had responded to that warrior’s appeals and landed in scattered bands upon the coast of Wales. The Percys, however, the King’s “faithful cousins,” confronted the Scots and were a host in themselves. He despatched his daughter Blanche and her hardly extracted dower to Germany, and a terrible example was made of the friars. Glyndwr and the condition of Wales one can hardly suppose he underestimated, but he permitted himself, at any rate, to shut his eyes to it.
Henry’s dream, since mounting the throne, had been an Eastern crusade. So far, however, his own unruly subjects and neighbours had allowed him but little breathing time, and he had been splashed with the mud of almost every county in England and Wales; but now he had gone to Berkhampstead, his favourite palace, to rest and dream of that long-cherished scheme of Eastern adventure.
“So shaken as we are, so wan with care,
Find we a time for frighted peace to pant,
And breathe short-winded accents of new broils
To be commenced in strands afar remote.
No more the thirsty entrance of this soil
Shall daub her lips with her own children’s blood;
No more shall trenching war channel her fields,
Nor bruise her flowerets with the armed hoofs
Of hostile paces.”
But the month of June was not yet out, when all at once there came upon the King at Berkhampstead “a post from Wales laden with heavy news,” which shattered all dreams of Palestine and turned his unwilling thoughts once more to the stormy hills whence came this urgent message.
Late in May, Glyndwr had again left North Wales and with a large force made his way through the present counties of Montgomery and Radnor, and fallen on the as yet unravaged border of Hereford. Now it so happened that among the districts which here suffered the most were those belonging to the young Earl of March, the rightful heir to the throne, and on that account kept secure under lock and key by Henry. This child, for he was nothing more, was descended from Lionel, Duke of Clarence, third son of Edward the Third. His title to the throne stood next to that of Richard, who had himself officially named him as his heir. Henry, sensible of his dangerous claim, kept the boy and his brother under his own charge, leaving their estates in Denbigh and the South Wales Marches to be administered by their uncle, Edmund Mortimer, who was still a young man and not without renown as a soldier. Mortimer and other Lord Marchers had been notified in good time to raise the forces of the border counties and march out to meet the Welsh.
They met upon the border in a narrow valley at Pilleth near Knighton, and the result was wholly disastrous to the English. The Welsh on this occasion were led by Rhys ap Gethin, one of Owen’s most formidable captains, and they utterly overthrew Mortimer’s army, driving it down the narrow valley of the Lugg below Pilleth hill where escape was difficult, and slaying eleven hundred men, among whom were great numbers of knights and gentlemen. Mortimer himself was captured, and it was said, with how much truth does not appear evident, that many of Mortimer’s troops, who were his tenants, and Welshmen, turned their arms against their own side and made a bloody day still bloodier. The story of the outrages of the Welsh women upon the bodies of the slain is a familiar topic of dispute and not a very savoury one.[8] In regard to Owen’s new captive, Mortimer, as the uncle and representative of the rightful heir to the throne, he was of much more actual importance than Grey of Ruthin. But the Welsh chieftain had no personal grudge against the handsome and gallant young soldier who had fallen into his hands by the ordinary fortune of war. Indeed, as we know, he had a kindly feeling for the Percys and the Mortimers; so much so that some of the King’s most ardent friends, as well as Henry himself, strongly hinted that Sir Edmund was no unwilling prisoner, and that it was not wholly the chances of war which had placed him in Owen’s hands. Mortimer’s relations with Glyndwr later on might lend plausibility to such suggestions; but it is difficult to suppose that had the former wished earlier for an alliance with Owen, he would have chosen such an unnecessarily bloody and risky manner of effecting it. Moreover Henry had reason to misrepresent Mortimer’s sentiments, for the question of the hour was his ransom. There can, I think, be little doubt that Mortimer was at first as unwilling a prisoner as Grey. He and Owen may have soon developed a personal liking for each other, but that is of little importance. Mortimer at any rate seems to have been sent to Snowdon, or possibly to Owen’s small prison at Llansantffraid in Glyndyfrdwy, which totters even now in extreme decay upon the banks of the Dee; and ransom no doubt was regarded as the ordinary outcome of the affair by all parties, except the King. For it soon became evident that Henry, not unwilling to see a possible rival in durance vile and safe out of the way, was going to oppose all overtures for his ransom.