“Had never but tempest foule and raine
As long as he was ay in Wales grounde;
Rockes and mystes, winds and stormes, certaine
All men trowed witches it made that stounde.”
How far the English armies penetrated on this memorable occasion we do not know; but we do know that by the 22nd of September, just a fortnight after they had first crossed the border, there was not an Englishman in Wales outside the castles, while the King himself, a day or two later, was actually back at Berkhampstead, striving, in the domestic seclusion of his own palace, to forget the unspeakable miseries of his humiliating failure. Where Owen distributed his forces through this tempestuous September, there is no evidence; except that, following the inevitable tactics of his race before great invasions, he certainly retired with his forces into the mountains. It was not even necessary on this occasion to fall upon the retreating enemy. But when one reads of the Welsh retiring to the mountains, the natural tendency to think of them huddling among rocks and caves must be resisted. The Welsh mountains, even the loftiest, in those days were very thickly sprinkled with oak forests, and in the innumerable valleys and foot-hills there was splendid pasture for large herds of stock. There must have been plenty of dwellings, too, among these uplands, and the Welsh were adepts at raising temporary shelters of stone thatched with heather.
Owen now might well be excused if he really began to think himself chosen of the gods. At any rate he was justified in the proud boast that Shakespeare at this time puts into his mouth:
“Three times hath Henry Bolingbroke made head
Against my power. Thrice from the banks of Wye
And sandy-bottomed Severn have I sent
Him bootless home, and weather-beaten back.”
Shakespeare is accurate enough so far, but he is sadly astray when he makes the news of Mortimer’s capture and the defeat of Pilleth reach Henry upon the same day as the victory of Percy over the Scots at Homildon. The former was fought in the previous June, whereas the latter took place while Henry was in the very throes of his struggle with the Welsh elements and Owen’s art magic. In fact the news of the crushing defeat of the Scots reached him at the moment of his arrival at home, after his disastrous campaign, and might well have afforded him much consolation, unless perchance the contrast between his own luckless campaign and that of Hotspur tempered his joy and galled his pride.
This same battle of Homildon, or Humbledon, near Wooler, exercised considerable influence upon the affairs of Owen. I have already remarked that forty thousand Scots, having with them many French knights and gentlemen, were across the border. They were commanded by Earl Douglas, who had most of the chivalry and nobility of Scotland at his back. There was no particular excuse for the invasion; it was a marauding expedition, pure and simple, on an immense scale, and it swept through Northumberland and Durham almost unopposed, for the forces of Percy were too inadequate for even his venturous spirit to offer battle.
Laden with the spoils of two counties the Scots turned their faces homeward entirely satisfied with their luck. Unfortunately for them, they elected to divide their forces, ten thousand men, including the commander and all the choice spirits of the army, taking a separate route. As these latter approached the Scottish border they found their path barred by Hotspur, who had slipped round them, with a slightly superior force. They would have been glad enough to get home with their booty, but Percy gave them no option; they had nothing for it but to fight.
The result of the battle was disastrous to the Scots. The English archers broke every effort they made to get to close quarters, and finally routed them with scarcely any assistance from the men-at-arms. An immense number were slain; five hundred were drowned in the Tweed; eighty noblemen and knights, the flower of their chivalry, including the Earl of Douglas himself, were captured. A goodly haul for Percy in the shape of ransom! But it was these very prisoners and this very question of ransom that filled Hotspur’s cup of bitterness against the King and brought about his league with Glyndwr. The congratulations which went speeding northward from Henry to his “dear cousin” were somewhat damped by instructions that the Scottish prisoners were on no account to be set at liberty or ransomed, but were in fact to be handed over to himself—contrary to all custom and privilege. Large sums were already owing to Percy for his outlay in North Wales on the King’s behalf, and he was sullen, as we know, at the King’s neglect of his brother-in-law Mortimer, still lying unransomed in Owen’s hands. He was now enraged, and his rage bore fruit a few months later on the bloody field of Shrewsbury. Nor did Henry see the face of one of his prisoners till they appeared in arms against him, as the price of their liberty, upon that fateful day.
The close of this year was marked by no events of note; marriage bells were in the air, for the King was espousing Joanna of Brittany, and Mortimer, now embittered against Henry, allied himself with Glyndwr’s fortunes and married his fourth daughter, Jane.
Mortimer’s alliance was indeed of immense value to Glyndwr. He was not only the guardian and natural protector of the rightful heir to the throne, his nephew, but he was a possibly acceptable candidate himself, in the event of a fresh shuffling of the cards. He had moreover large possessions and castles in the South Wales Marches, and in the Vale of Clwyd, whose occupants would now be irrevocably committed to the Welsh cause.