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

by A. G. Bradley

Copyright F. Frith & Co.

CAERPHILLY CASTLE.

The castles of Caerleon, Caerphilly, Newport, and Usk had fallen, and in the manuscripts collected by Iolo Morganwg (Edward Williams), who flourished in the last century, an apparently contemporaneous though anonymous writer, has somewhat to say about Glyndwr in Morganwg or Glamorgan. He tells how Owen came to Cardiff, “destroyed it and won the castle,” demolishing at the same time the castles of Penllan, Llandochau, Flemington, Dunraven of the Butlers, Tal-y-fan, Llanblethian, Llangeinor, Malefant, and Penmark, and burning many villages the men of which would not join him. “The country people collected round him with one accord and demolished houses and castles innumerable, laid waste and quite fenceless the lands, and gave them in common to all.” The manuscript goes on to say how Glyndwr “took away from the rich and powerful and distributed the plunder among the weak and poor.” Many of the higher orders of chieftains had to fly to England under the protection and support of the King. A bloody battle took place at Bryn Owen (Stallingdown) near Cowbridge, between Glyndwr and the King’s men. The latter were put to flight after eighteen hours’ hard fighting, “during which the blood was up to the horses’ fetlocks at Pant-y-wenol, that separates both ends of the mountain.” Here beyond a doubt was a fulfilment of one of the dread portents that attended Owen’s birth, when the horses, it will be remembered, in his father’s stable were found standing with the blood running over their feet. There is no date to this anonymous but evidently sincere and suggestive narrative, or rather the date assigned to the event is evidently an error. The matters here spoken of belong to 1403, or 1404, in all probability, though they can only be inserted parenthetically as one of those scraps of local Welsh testimony from the period itself that have an interest of their own.

The year 1405 opened with reports that the renowned Rhys Gethin was to cross the English border with a large force. Prince Henry, now eighteen years of age, with an experience of war under difficulties and of carking cares of state such as has fallen to the lot of few men so young, prepared to make ready for him. Short of men and money, the young soldier had long begun to show of what mettle he was made and to give evidence of the ability that was eventually to do more to arrest the resistance of Glyndwr than all the combined efforts of Lord Marchers and their royal master.

Rumour on this occasion proved true, for Rhys, passing through Glamorgan with eight thousand men and skirting Abergavenny, attacked the border town of Grosmont, in the valley of the Monnow, and burnt it to the ground. Grosmont had hitherto been a flourishing place, but it never recovered from the blow then dealt it. In Camden’s time the remains of streets and causeways could be traced beneath the turf of the surrounding fields in evidence of its vanished glories. To-day it is a picturesque and peaceful village crowning a high ridge, from which a glorious prospect can be enjoyed of the vale of the Monnow with the sparkling river hurrying downwards between lofty hills to meet the Wye. A simple street, and that a short one, is all that remains, while an old town hall speaks eloquently of its departed importance. A cruciform church of great age with an octagonal tower and spire springing from the centre lends force to the tradition of Grosmont’s former glories. Above all, the walls of the Norman castle, whence issued Prince Henry’s gallant band, still stand hard by the village, their reddish stonework half hidden amid a mass of ivy and the foliage of embowering trees; the moat half full of the leaves of many autumns, the ramparts green with the turf of ages; a quiet enough spot now but for the song of birds and the tumble of the river upon its rocks three hundred feet below. It was here that Glyndwr’s forces met with their first serious disaster upon the border, for the Prince, together with Gilbert Talbot and Sir Edward Newport, sallying out of the castle, attacked Rhys Gethin and inflicted upon the Welsh a severe and bloody defeat, completely routing them with a loss of eight hundred men left dead upon the field. It is especially stated in some accounts that no quarter was given, and only one prisoner taken alive and spared for ransom, of whom Prince Henry, in a letter to his father which is worth transcribing, speaks as “a great chieftain.”

“My most redoubted and most Sovereign Lord and father, I sincerely pray that God will graciously show His miraculous aid towards you in all places, praised be He in all His works, for on Wednesday the eleventh of this present month of March, your rebels of the parts of Glamorgan, Morgannok, Usk, Netherwent, and Overwent, assembled to the number of eight thousand men, according to their own account, and they went on the same Wednesday, in the morning, and burnt a part of your town of Grossmont within your Lordship of Monmouth and Jennoia [sic]. Presently went out my well beloved cousin the Lord Talbot and the small body of my household, and with them joined your faithful and valiant knights William Newport and John Greindor, the which formed but a small power in the whole; but true it is indeed that victory is not in the multitude of people, and this was well proved there, but in the power of God, and there by the aid of the blessed Trinity, your people gained the field, and vanquished all the said rebels, and slew of them by fair account in field, by the time of their return from the pursuit, some say eight hundred, others a thousand, being questioned upon pain of death; nevertheless whether it were one or the other I will not contend, and to inform you fully of all that has been done, I send you a person worthy of credit therein, my faithful servant the bearer of this letter, who was at the engagement and performed his duty well, as he has always done. And such amends has God ordained you for the burning of your houses in your aforesaid town, and of prisoners were none taken except one, a great chief among them, whom I would have sent to you but he cannot yet ride at ease.

“Written at Hereford the said Wednesday at night.

“Your most humble and obedient son,

“Henry.”

Glyndwr, as soon as he heard of the disaster on the Monnow, pushed up fresh forces under his brother Tudor to meet the fugitives from Grosmont, with a view to wipe out, if possible, that crushing defeat. What strength they got, if any, from Rhys Gethin’s scattered army there is no evidence, but in less than a week they encountered the Prince himself advancing into Wales with a considerable force, and at Mynydd-y-Pwll-Melyn, in Brecon, received a defeat more calamitous than even that of Grosmont. Fifteen hundred of the Welsh were killed or taken prisoners. Among the slain was Owen’s brother Tudor himself; and so like the chief was he in face and form that for some time there was much rejoicing, and the news was bruited about that the dreaded Glyndwr was in truth dead. The spirits of the English were sadly damped when the absence of a wart under the left eye, a distinguishing mark of Glyndwr, proclaimed that their joy was premature, and that it was the dead face of his younger brother on which they were gazing. Among the prisoners, however, was his son Gryffydd, who was sent by the Prince to London and confined in the Tower, statements of money allowed for his maintenance there appearing from time to time on the Rolls. Gryffydd’s (Griffin he is there called) fellow-prisoner is Owen ap Gryffydd, the son probably of the valiant Cardiganshire gentleman whom Henry quartered in 1402. A year later the young King of Scotland, whose life was safer there, no doubt, than in his own country, was the companion of Glyndwr’s son. The Iolo manuscript before mentioned tells us:

“In 1405 a bloody battle attended with great slaughter that in severity was scarcely ever exceeded in Wales took place on Pwll Melin; Gryffyth ap Owen and his men were taken and many of them imprisoned, but many were put to death when captured, whereupon all Glamorgan turned Saxon except a small number who followed their lord to North Wales.”

These two severe defeats were a great blow to Owen’s prestige. They caused numbers of his adherents in South Wales to fall away and to seek that pardon which the King, to do him justice, was at all times very free in extending to Welshmen. Indeed, it would almost seem as if he himself secretly recognised the fact that they had much justice on their side and were rebels rather in name than in actual fact.