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

by A. G. Bradley

It is an easy run by sea of twenty miles or so from Harlech to the farther capes of Lleyn where the romantic island of Bardsey, sanctified by the bones of its twenty thousand saints, lifts its head to an imposing height above the waves. To Aberdaron, just short of the farthest point of the mainland, then came Glyndwr, bringing with him Mortimer and no doubt others of his court. It was on February 28, 1406, that the meeting took place when the somewhat notable Indenture of Agreement was signed by the three contracting parties. The date of this proceeding has been by no means undisputed, but of all moments this particular one seems the most likely and has the sanction of the most recent and exhaustive historians of the period.

The bards had been prolific and reminiscent during this quiet winter, and there seemed special call as well as scope for their songs and forecasts. The ancient prophecies of Merlin that were never allowed to slumber, regarding the future of Britain and the Welsh race, were now heard as loudly as they had been before the battle of Shrewsbury, interpreted in various ways in uncouth and strange metaphor. Henry was the “mouldwharp cursed of God’s own mouth.” A dragon would come from the north and with him a wolf from the west, whose tails would be tied together. Fearful things would happen upon the banks of the Thames and its channel would be choked with corpses. The rivers of England would run with blood. The “mouldwharp” would then be hunted out of the country by the dragon, the lion, and the wolf, or, in other words, by Glyndwr, Percy, and Mortimer. He would then be drowned and his kingdom divided between his three triumphant foes.

Who framed the Indenture is not known; perhaps Glyndwr himself, since he had been a barrister in his youth and was certainly a ready penman. The chronicler tells us that the contracting parties swore fidelity to each other upon the gospels before putting their names to the articles, and then proceeds to give what purports to be the full text of the latter in Latin, of which the following is a translation.

“This year the Earl of Northumberland made a league and covenant and friendship with Owyn Glyndwr and Edmund Mortimer, son of the late Earl of March, in certain articles of the form and tenor following: In the first place that these Lords, Owyn, the Earl, and Edmund shall henceforth be mutually joined, confederate, united and bound by the bond of a true league and true friendship and sure and good union. Again that every one of these Lords shall will and pursue, and also procure, the honour and welfare of one another; and shall in good faith, hinder any losses and distresses which shall come to his knowledge, by anyone whatsoever intended to be inflicted on either of them. Every one also of them shall act and do with another all and every of those things, which ought to be done by good true and faithful friends to good, true and faithful friends, laying aside all deceit and fraud. Also, if ever any of the said Lords shall know and learn of any loss or damage intended against another by any persons whatsoever, he shall signify it to the others as speedily as possible, and assist them in that particular, that each may take such measures as may seem good against such malicious purposes; and they shall be anxious to prevent such injuries in good faith; also they shall assist each other to the utmost of their power in the time of necessity. Also if by God’s appointment it should appear to the said Lords in process of time that they are the same persons of whom the Prophet speaks, between whom the Government of the Greater Britain ought to be divided and parted, then they and every one of them shall labour to their utmost to bring this effectually to be accomplished. Each of them, also, shall be content with that portion of the kingdom aforesaid, limited as below, without further exaction or superiority; yea, each of them in such proportion assigned to him shall enjoy liberty. Also between the same Lords it is unanimously covenanted and agreed that the said Owyn and his heirs shall have the whole of Cambria or Wales, by the borders, limits and boundaries underwritten divided from Lœgira, which is commonly called England; namely from the Severn Sea as the river Severn leads from the sea, going down to the north gate of the city of Worcester; and from that gate straight to the Ash tree, commonly called in the Cambrian or Welsh language Owen Margion, which grows on the highway from Bridgenorth to Kynvar; thence by the highway direct, which is usually called the old or ancient way, to the head or source of the river Trent: thence to the head or source of the river Mense; thence as that river leads to the sea, going down within the borders, limits and boundaries above written. And the aforesaid Earl of Northumberland shall have for himself and his heirs the counties below written, namely, Northumberland, Westmoreland, Lancashire, York, Lincoln, Nottingham, Derby, Stafford, Leicester, Northampton, Warwick, and Norfolk. And the Lord Edmund shall have all the rest of the whole of England, entirely to him and his heirs. Also should any battle, riot or discord fall out between two of the said Lords (may it never be) then the third of the said Lords, calling to himself good and faithful counsel, shall duly rectify such discord, riot and battle; whose approval or sentence the discordant parties shall be held bound to obey. They shall also be faithful to defend the kingdom against all men; saving the oak on the part of the said Owyn given to the most illustrious Prince Charles by the Grace of God King of the French, in the league and covenant between them made. And that the same be, all and singular, well and faithfully observed, the said Lords Owyn, the Earl, and Edmund, by the holy body of the Lord which they now steadfastly look upon and by the holy gospels of God by them now bodily touched, have sworn to observe the premises all and singular to their utmost, inviolably; and have caused their seals to be mutually affixed thereto.”

Little, however, was to come of all this. Earl Percy and Bardolph, after spending some two years partly under Glyndwr’s protection and partly in France, found their way back to Scotland and in the spring of 1408 played their last stake. Their fatuous attempt with a small and ill-disciplined force of countrymen to overturn Henry’s throne was easily defeated at Bramham Moor in Yorkshire by the sheriff of that county, and their heads and limbs were suspended from the gateways of various English cities as a testimony to the dismal failure which the great house of Percy had made of its persistent efforts to depose the King it had created.

Glyndwr for his part was neither now, nor yet to be at any future time, in a position to help his friends outside Wales. His power had passed its zenith, though its decline is not marked by any special incidents in this year 1406. Much the most interesting event to be noted by the student of his career and period, at this turning-point of his fortunes, is a letter he wrote to the King of France, almost immediately after his return from the rendezvous with Northumberland and Bardolph. His headquarters in the early spring of this year seem to have been at Machynlleth, for the letter in question was written from Pennal, a village about four miles from this ancient outpost of Powys. Before touching, however, on the main object of this memorable communication, it will be well to recall the fact that the remnants of the French invaders of the previous year were just leaving Wales, to the great relief of Owen. But his disappointment at the nature of the help the French King had sent on this occasion by no means discouraged him from looking in the same direction for more effectual support.

It was now the period of the Papal Schism. For nearly thirty years there had been two rival popes, the one at Rome, the other at Avignon, and Catholic Europe was divided into two camps, the countries who adhered to the one spiritual chief professing to regard the followers of the other as heretics unfit to breathe the air of this world and without hope of pardon in the next. The Christian Church was shaken to its foundations and degenerated into an arena of venomous strife. Nor was this only a war of words, beliefs, interdicts, and sacerdotal fulminations, for 200,000 lives are said to have been lost over this squabble for the vicarship of Christ. Pious men deplored the lamentable state to which those who should have been the upholders of religion had reduced it. France, of course, in common with Spain, maintained the cause of her own Pope. England held to the Roman Pontiff, but even apart from the Lollard element, which was now considerable, regarded the wearisome dispute with a large measure of contemptuous indifference. Scotland as a matter of course took the opposite side to England. There was no sentiment about “the island” among the Anglo-Normans who lived north of the Tweed and who had resisted successfully every attempt of their kinsmen on the south of it to include them in their scheme of government. They were all aliens alike so far as those who had power were concerned, and would not have understood, probably, that strange sort of lingering loyalty to the soil that in spite of everything still survived among the remnant of the Britons. Glyndwr, of course, had acted directly against this ancient theory, but mercenary soldiers were now such a feature of military life that the importation of these Frenchmen was perhaps of less significance, more particularly as foreign troops were continually serving in England in the pay of various kings. Now, however, as a bait to the French King and to quicken his interest in his cause, Glyndwr offered to take Wales over to the allegiance of the Avignon Pope. In this Pennal letter Owen dwells at some length upon the details of the elections of the rival popes which the French King himself had sent over to him, and he excuses himself for following the English lead in the past and adhering to the Roman Pontiff on the score of not having hitherto been properly informed regarding the rights and wrongs of this same election. He recapitulates the promises made to him by the King if he would acknowledge Benedict XIII. and not his rival, Gregory XII.

After holding a council of the “princes of his race,” prelates, and other clergy he had decided to acknowledge the Avignon Pope. He begs the King of France, as interested in the well-being of the Church of Wales, to exert his influence with the Pope and prevail upon him to grant certain favours which he proceeds to enumerate:

In the first place, that all ecclesiastical censures pronounced either by the late Clement or Benedict against Wales or himself or his subjects should be cancelled. Furthermore that they should be released from the obligation of all oaths taken to the so-called Urban and Boniface lately deceased and to their supporters. That Benedict should ratify ordinations and appointments to benefices and titles (ordines collatos titulos) held or given by prelates, dispensations, and official acts of notaries, “involving jeopardy of souls or hurt to us and our subjects from the time of Gregory XI.” Owen urges that Menevia (St. Davids) should be restored to its original condition as a Metropolitan church, which it held from the time of that saint himself, its archbishop and confessor, and under twenty-four archbishops after him, whose names, beginning with Clind and ending with the significantly Anglo-Saxon patronymic of Thompson, are herein set forth. Formerly, the writer goes on to say, St. Davids had under it the suffragan sees of Exeter, Bath, Hereford, Worcester, Leicester (now transferred to Coventry), Lichfield, St. Asaph, Bangor, Llandaff, and should rightly have them still, but the Saxon barbarians subordinated them to Canterbury. In language that in later centuries was to be so often and so vainly repeated, he represents that none but Welsh-speaking clergy should be appointed, from the metropolitan down to the curate. He requests also that all grants of Welsh parish churches to English monasteries or colleges should be annulled and that the rightful patrons should be compelled to present fit and proper persons to ordinaries, that freedom should be granted to himself and his heirs for their chapel, and all the privileges, immunities, and exemptions which it enjoyed under their predecessors. Curiously significant, too, and suggestive, is the point he makes of liberty to found two universities, one for North and one for South Wales. Indeed this is justly regarded as one of many bits of evidence that Owen was not merely a battle-field hero, an avenging patriot, an enemy of tyrants, but that he possessed the art of constructive statesmanship had he been given the opportunity to prove it. The educational zeal that does so much honour to modern Wales is fond of pointing to Glyndwr as the original mover in that matter of a Welsh national university which has so recently been brought to a successful issue. King Henry in this letter is naturally an object of special invective, and Owen prays that Benedict will sanction a crusade in the customary form against the usurper Henry of Lancaster for burning down churches and cathedrals, and for beheading, hanging, and quartering Welsh clergy, including mendicant friars, and for being a schismatic. The writer would appear by this to have unladen his conscience of the burden of the smoking ruins of Bangor and St. Asaph and of many, it is to be feared, less noteworthy edifices. Indeed, we find him earlier in his career excusing himself for these sacrilegious deeds and putting the onus of them on the uncontrollable fury of his followers. But the verdict of posterity has in no way been shaken by these lame apologies. Finally he asks the French King to make interest with Benedict for plenary forgiveness for his sins and those of his heirs, his subjects, and his men of whatsoever nation, provided they are orthodox, for the whole duration of the war with Henry of Lancaster.[14]

[14] This letter, which covers many folio pages, has never been printed. It is in indifferent Latin with the usual abbreviations. In the matter of making and elucidating copies of it at the Record Office, Mr. Hubert Hall gave me some valuable assistance, as also did Mr. C. M. Bull. [Back]