The prison where Owen confined his captives, and of which some remains may still be seen, was near the church at Llansanfraid Glyndyfrdwy; and the place is still called Carchardy Owen Glyndwr. He is said to have died in the sixty-first year of his age.
I trust it will be deemed a pardonable digression, if I now give the sequel of the military career of that loyal and truly brave Welchman, Sir David Gam. I have before recounted that Glyndwr forced him to fly for protection to the court of England, where he continued in favour with King Henry IV. until the death of that monarch. I then find him accompanying his son, King Henry V. on his expedition into France, in the year of our Lord 1415, at the head and in the command of a numerous body of stout and valiant Welchmen, who on all occasions distinguished themselves by their courage and conduct. [174]
To Sir David Gam was assigned the important office of reconnoitring the French army, on the approach of the famous battle of Agincourt. Finding the French nearly ten times more numerous than the English army, he replied to the King’s question as to the enemy’s strength—“An’t please you, my Liege, they are enough to be killed, enough to run away, and enough to be taken prisoners.” The King was well pleased with such an answer from a man of Sir David’s valour.
In the battle which followed, and which was fought on the 25th of October, 1415, the King alighted from his horse to head his footmen, and to encourage them to resist the charge of the second line of the French army, then advancing; when eighteen French cavaliers, who had bound themselves by an oath to kill King Henry, or perish, rushed upon him in a body, and one of them with a blow of his battle-axe so stunned the King that he would have fallen an easy victim, had not Sir David Gam, with his son-in-law, Roger Vaughn, and his kinsman, Walter Llwyd, of Brecknock, seasonably sprung to his rescue. They slew fourteen of the assailants, and delivered the King, when they fell at his feet, covered with wounds. In the heat of the battle, Henry was separated from his brave defenders; but being soon afterwards informed that their wounds were mortal, he immediately repaired to the spot where Sir David and his faithful companions lay; and, as the only recompense in his power then to bestow, he knighted them all three upon the field, where they soon after died. [176]
Thus ended the life of Sir David Gam; but the remembrance of his loyalty, and the fame of his valour, will live, and perpetuate his memory.
“So sleep the brave, who sink to rest,
By all their country’s wishes bless’d.
When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,
Returns to deck their hallow’d mould,
She there shall dress a sweeter sod
Than Fancy’s feet have ever trod.
By fairy hands their knell is rung,
By forms unseen their dirge is sung.
There Honour comes, a pilgrim grey,
To bless the turf that wraps their clay;
And Freedom shall awhile repair,
To dwell a weeping hermit there.”
It is conjectured that Shakspeare took Sir David as a specimen, when he wrote the character of Captain Fluellen, in Henry V.
Returning towards Llangollen from Glyndyfrdwy, along a beautiful level road, made at the expense of Government, with the Berwyn Mountains rising abruptly on the right hand, and the murmuring Dee pursuing its devious course on the left, I pass a small brook, which divides the counties of Merioneth and Denbigh. A pillar on the top of the mountain above is for the same purpose. The views over the Dee are incomparably charming.
LLANGOLLEN
Church.
“Hail, ancient edifice; thine aisle along,
In contemplation wrapt, now let me stray;
And stealing from the idly busy throng,
Devoutly meditate the moral lay.”