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

by A. G. Bradley

“Most dread and sovereign Lord and Father, at your high command in your other gracious letters, I have removed with my small household to the city of Worcester, and may it please your Royal Highness to know that the Welsh have made a descent on Herefordshire, burning and destroying the county with very great force, and with a supply of provisions for fifteen days.” The Prince goes on to say that the Welsh are assembled with all their power, and to save the county of Hereford he has sent for all sorts of considerable persons (mentioned by name) to meet him at Worcester. In conjunction with these he tells the King he will “do to the utmost of his little power,” and then comes the inevitable want of money and the impossibility of maintaining troops in the field or meeting the expenses of the garrisons. Another letter from the same hand a few days afterwards warned the King still more urgently of the pressing danger and declared how impossible it was to keep his troops upon the frontier without pay or provisions.

There is no evidence that these strong representations brought any satisfaction to the anxious writers. The sieges of those castles not yet taken Owen continued to prosecute with vigour, while his captains continued to desolate the border counties. Glyndwr was much too skilful a strategist to undertake a serious expedition into England. The cause of Richard and Mortimer, which would have been his only war-cry, had been shattered, so far as England was concerned, at Shrewsbury. All Glyndwr wanted was Wales, and at present he virtually possessed it. He felt confident now, moreover, of substantial assistance from the French King, and when that arrived he might perhaps take the initiative seriously against Henry on behalf of his son-in-law’s family. Nor is there any doubt but that he was greatly indebted for the extraordinary position he had achieved to the chronic impecuniosity of his enemy, and perhaps indeed to his own reputation for magic art. Who can say?

One brief and spirited campaign, however, distinguished this summer, or more probably the late spring of 1404, for the actual date is uncertain. It was undertaken by a strong force which Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, led right through the present county of Montgomery. Glyndwr threw himself across the Earl’s path at Mynydd-cwm-du (“the black mountain hollow”): a fierce battle ensued, in which the Welsh were defeated and were so closely pressed that Owen’s banner was captured and he himself very nearly taken. Warwick does not seem to have followed up his advantage; on the contrary, Glyndwr, rallying his men, followed the Earl back to the Herefordshire border whither the usual lack of provender had sent him, and there turned the tables on his enemy, beating him badly in a pitched battle at Craig-y-dorth. The scene of this second encounter is on the road between Chepstow and Monmouth, near Trelog common.

Early in August, 1404, the Shropshire Marches were so sorely pressed, and the English defences so worn out, that the council were compelled to listen to the urgent appeals of the Salopians and grant the people of that county leave to make terms with Owen on their own account and pay him exemption money. The same privilege had also to be extended to Edward de Charleton, Lord of Powys, who from his “Castle de la Pole” (Welshpool) made a truce with the Welsh. It is worthy of note that the people of Welshpool, though practically all of Welsh blood, stood by their lord and resisted Owen throughout the whole of the struggle. For this reason Charleton gave them a fresh charter immensely enlarging the boundaries of the borough, which to this day occupies the unique position of extending over something like twenty thousand acres.

Towards the end of August, King Henry was forced once more to turn his attention to Wales. The scandal and the danger were growing grievous. So he held a council at Tutbury, the minutes of which are significant. Eight bishops, eighteen abbots and priors, nineteen great lords and barons, and ninety-six representatives of counties, we are told, attended it. The news was here confirmed that the French had equipped sixty vessels in the port of Harfleur and were about to fill them with soldiers and proceed to Owen’s assistance. It was decided, however, that since the King was not at present able to raise an army sufficiently imposing for his high estate, he should remain at Tutbury till the meeting of Parliament in October. As campaigning against Owen even in the summer season had sufficient horrors for the King, the logic of deferring the expedition till November can only be explained by sheer lack of money. At least one would have supposed so if Henry had not burked the whole question, turned his back once more on his lost and desolated province, and hastened to the North.

Prince John, the King’s second son, was now joined with Prince Henry in the titular Governorship of the South Wales Marches, and the royal brothers were voted two thousand five hundred archers and men-at-arms. How many of these they got is another story, of which we have no certain knowledge. For a fortnight it was all they could do to hold their own as they pushed slowly through to the relief of Coity Castle (now Oldcastle Bridgend), which was being bravely defended by Sir Alexander Berkrolles.

With the exception of the chronic pressure on the still resisting castles, this autumn and winter was comparatively quiet in Wales, for the excellent reason that Owen had it all his own way. Aberystwith had fallen soon after Harlech; and those of my readers who are familiar with the wave-washed situation of the ruins of the later Norman castle which still mark the site of the ancient palace of Cadwallader, may well wonder why a spot so accessible from a score of English seaports should have been abandoned to its fate. The tower and monastery of Llanbadarn, too, hard by, became a favourite resting-place of Owen’s at this time, and it was here he ratified this winter his treaty with the King of France. But as his family and that of Mortimer would appear to have made Harlech their headquarters, and as later on he summoned his second parliament to that historic spot, it is more than likely that the late autumn and winter months saw the old castle the gathering-point of the bards, and the rallying-place of Owen’s faithful captains—a court, in fact, and one more adequately housed by far than that other one at the mansion on the Dee, since reduced to a heap of ashes. As one wanders to-day amid the grim walls of Harlech and presses the soft turf that centuries of sun and showers and sea mists have spread over what was once the floor of its great banqueting hall, the scenes that it must have witnessed in this winter of 1404 are well calculated to stir the fancy and captivate the imagination. Death and battle have been in ancient times busy enough around the rock of Harlech and upon the green slopes of the Ardudwy Mountains that from high above its grey towers look out upon the sea. From the days of Brân the Blessed, the first Christian Prince, whose fortress, Twr Bronwen, men say, stood upon this matchless site, till those of the fighting Maelgwyn, King of Gwynedd, when the coasts of Wales were strewn with the victims of plague and battle, it was a notable spot. From Colwyn ap Tangno, the fountainhead of half the pedigrees in North-west Wales, till forty years after Glyndwr’s time, when, in the Wars of the Roses, David ap Sinion made that celebrated defence against Lord Herbert which inspired the writing of the stirring and immortal march, Harlech was a focus of strife, the delight of the bard, the glory of the minstrel. Of all Welsh castles, save the fragment of Dinas Brân,—and that is indeed saying much,—it is the most proudly placed; and the great medieval fortress, still in its exterior so perfect, is well worthy of its site. Amid a pile of mountains to the north Snowdon lifts its shapely peak; far westward into the shining sea stretches the long arm of West Carnarvon, throwing up here and there its shadowy outstanding peaks till it fades into the dim horizon behind which Ireland lies. As the eye travels southward, the lofty headlands of Merioneth give way to the fainter capes of Cardigan, and upon the verge of sight in clear weather the wild coast of Pembroke, its rugged outline softened by distance, lies low between sea and sky.

Copyright F. Frith & Co.