Owen Glyndwr and the Last Struggle for Welsh Independence / With a Brief Sketch of Welsh History

by A. G. Bradley

Reinforcements of some kind must have reached the ardent young soldier very soon. For within a week or two he exercised a most signal piece of vengeance against Glyndwr and apparently without opposition. This was no less than the complete destruction of Sycherth and Glyndyfrdwy, while Owen was busy upon the Merioneth coast. As all we know of this interesting affair is from the Prince’s own pen, I cannot do better than quote in full the letter by which he communicated the news to his father and his council. The original is preserved in the British Museum, and is in the French language. It is dated May 15th, no year unfortunately being affixed. Some difference of opinion as to the latter detail exists, but this year (1403), the latest of those in dispute, seems to me the likeliest.

Copyright H. H. Hughes.

SYCHERTH, FROM THE NORTH.

“Very dear and entirely well beloved, we greet you much from our whole heart, thanking you, very dearly for the attention you have paid to everything needful that concerned us during our absence, and we pray of you very earnestly the continuance of your good and kind disposition; as our trust is in you. By way of news that have here occurred, if you wish to hear of them, we have among other matters been lately informed that Owen de Glyndowrdy has assembled his forces, and those of other rebels adhering to him in great number; purposing to commit inroads, and in case of any resistance being made to him by the English, to come to battle with them, for so he vaunted to his people. Wherefore we took our forces and marched to a place of the said Oweyn well built, which was his principal mansion, called Saghern [Sycherth], where we thought we should have found him, if he had an inclination to fight in the manner he had said, but on our arrival there, we found nobody; and therefore caused the whole place to be burnt, and several other houses near it belonging to his tenants. We thence marched straight to his other place of Glyndowerdy to seek for him there and we caused a fine lodge in his park to be destroyed by fire, and laid waste all the country around. We there halted for the night and certain of our people sallied forth into the country, and took a gentleman of the neighbourhood who was one of the said Oweyn’s chief captains. This person offered five hundred pounds for his ransom to preserve his life, and to be allowed two weeks for the purpose of raising that sum of money; but the offer was not accepted and he received death, as did several of his companions, who were taken the same day. We then proceeded to the Commote of Edeyrnion in Merionethshire, and there laid waste a fine and populous country; thence we went to Powys, and there being a want of provender in Wales for horses, we made our people carry oats with them and pursued our march; and in order to give you full intelligence of this march of ours and of everything that has occurred here, we send to you our well beloved esquire, John de Waterton, to whom you will be pleased to give entire faith, and credence in what he shall report to you touching the events above mentioned. And may our Lord have you always in his holy keeping. Given under our Seal at Shrewsbury the 15th day of May.”

If, as I think, 1403 is the right year to which we should assign this letter, it may seem strange that Glyndwr should have left his estates to their fate. On the other hand, Sycherth, or Saghern as the Prince calls it, actually touched Offa’s Dyke and the English border, while Glyndyfrdwy, as I have before noted, was within sight of Dinas Brân, the grim outpost of English power. Glyndwr’s attention had been largely devoted to South Wales and was now bent on securing those great castles on the Merioneth and Carnarvon coast, which with their sea connections threatened him perpetually in his rear. Above all, his aspirations had now soared to such a height and the stake he was playing for was so great it is not likely that the loss of a couple of manor-houses and a few other buildings was of much import to him. If he won his cause, they were of no moment at all. If, on the other hand, he lost it, all was over; they would certainly be no longer his. A want of local knowledge has led many historians astray in the matter of these manors of Glyndwr’s, and they have repeated each other’s mistakes, ignoring the Cynllaeth property, and only transferring the name of its much larger house to the banks of the Dee. Even Pennant falls into the error, and is probably responsible for that of many of his successors.

This is the more curious in view of Prince Henry’s letter, distinctly stating that he first destroyed Owen’s principal mansion at that point and naturally so, as it would be the first in his path on the direct route from Shrewsbury, following the valleys of the Vyrnwy and the Tanat, and then up the Cynllaeth brook, where Sycherth lies. Prince Henry’s failure to spell the name of Owen’s residence intelligibly is of no moment whatever, and is almost lucid compared to some of the Norman attempts to render Welsh names into English.

Sir Henry Ellis and others who, though realising that Owen had two separate properties, are not familiar with the district, fall back on Leland, who alludes to Rhaggat, the present seat of the Lloyds, as having been “a place of Glyndwr’s,” and explain Prince Henry’s “Saghern” in that manner. Rhaggat, beyond a doubt, whatever dwelling may then have stood there, was the property of Glyndwr, seeing that it was on his Glyndyfrdwy estate and less than two miles up the Dee from his Glyndyfrdwy house. But the Prince would have had to pass by the latter to reach Rhaggat, reversing the stated order of his operations, whereas his short campaign as described by himself took the objects of his attack, Sycherth, Glyndyfrdwy, and the Vale of Edeyrnion in due order. These are matters, it is true, rather of local than of general interest. Still as the locality is one which great numbers of strangers visit for its beauty, I may perhaps be pardoned for entering somewhat minutely into these details.

While the Prince was thus doing his best upon a small scale near the border, and sore distressed for money to pay his men, the castles of Harlech, Criccieth, Conway, Carnarvon, and Rhuddlan were hard pressed. Being in the royal counties, they were held and manned at the royal charge and were feeling to the full the pinch of poverty. Owen, entirely satisfied with the prospect of their speedy reduction, moved south about the time that the Prince was wasting his property on the Cynllaeth and the Dee. We hear of him in piteous letters for aid, sent by Jankyn Hanard, the Constable of Dynevor Castle, on the Towy, to his brother—Constable of Brecon, who was in but little better plight. In this correspondence the writer declares that Glyndwr dominates the whole neighbouring country with 8240 spears at his back; that Rhys Gethin, the victor of Pilleth, is with him, also Henry Don, Rhys Ddu, and Rhys ap Griffith ap Llewelyn, the son of that gallant gentleman of Cardiganshire who made such a cheerful sacrifice of his head, it will be remembered, two years before, when King Henry was at Strata Florida, trying in vain to come to blows with Owen.