Leaving his friends to hold the country he had so effectually roused, we next find him in the North, investing the three castles of Carnarvon, Harlech, and Criccieth, and reminding those who in his absence may have faltered in their allegiance that such an attitude was a costly one. Rhys and William ap Tudor from the small stone manor-house in Anglesey that gave a dynasty to Britain are with him again, though the latter, it will be remembered, had sought and gained at Conway the pardon of the King. Robert ap Meredydd of Cefn-y-fan and Gesail-Gyferch near Criccieth, was another trusty henchman of Glyndwr. But Robert’s brother Ievan ap Meredydd stood for the King, and was one of the few men in West Carnarvonshire who did so. He was now in Carnarvon Castle, joint governor with John Bolde, and his brother was outside with Owen, – a little bit of family detail for which, though of no great importance, one is thankful amid the bloody and fiery chaos in which such a vast amount of personality lies forgotten and ingulfed.
It was not long after this that Ievan died in Carnarvon, but so completely occupied was the surrounding country by Owen’s forces and sympathisers, that they had to bring his body round by sea to his old home and bury it secretly in his own parish church of Penmorfa, where his dust still lies. His brother Robert, though he held by Glyndwr throughout most of his long struggle, eventually received the royal pardon, and succeeded to the estates. But even his attachment to the Welsh chieftain had not in any way atoned for his brother’s opposition, or averted the inevitable fate which overtook the property of all Glyndwr’s opponents. Both Cefn-y-fan and Gesail-Gyferch were burnt this year to ashes. At the former the conflagration was so prodigious, says an old local legend, that the ruins smoked and the coals glowed for two whole years afterwards. Gesail-Gyferch was rebuilt by Robert and may be seen to-day, much as he made it, between the villages of Penmorfa and Dolbenmaen. Its owner, when the war was over, married, and had a host of children, from whom innumerable Welsh families are proud to trace their descent. If this gossip about the sons of Meredydd and about Howel Sele may seem too parenthetical, it serves in some sort to illustrate the severance of families and the relentless vengeance which Glyndwr himself executed upon all who opposed him.
In the meantime, while Glyndwr was besieging the castles upon the Carnarvon and Merioneth coast, his great opponent Henry was being sorely pressed. The battle of Pilleth and Mortimer’s captivity had raised a storm among those who had been the King’s friends, and worse things seemed in the air. Prince Thomas, his second son, who was acting as viceroy in Ireland, was reduced by want of money to sore straits, while forty thousand Scotsmen, with numerous French allies in their train, were far outnumbering any forces the Percys unaided could bring against them. But with all this the King was burning to crush Owen and chastise the Welsh, and it was from no want of will or vigour that he had for so many weeks to nurse his wrath. Richard, Earl de Grey, had been left in charge of the South Wales Marches, while the Earl of Arundel was doing his best to keep order north of the Severn. On July 23rd the King was at Lilleshall, in Shropshire. Provisions, arms, and men were pouring into Welshpool, Ludlow, and Montgomery, Hereford, Shrewsbury, and Chester. Money was scarcer than ever, and had to be borrowed in every direction from private individuals. Henry himself was riding restlessly from Shropshire to Lincoln, from Lincoln to Nottingham, and again from Nottingham to his favourite post of observation at Lichfield.
At last all was ready; the reduction of Wales was for once the paramount object of the King’s intentions. Three great armies were to assemble on August the 27th at Chester, Shrewsbury, and Hereford under the commands of the Prince of Wales, the King himself, and the Earl of Warwick respectively. After much delay this mighty host, numbering in all by a general consensus of authorities one hundred thousand men, prepared to set itself in motion.
It was the first week of September when it crossed the border. The troops carried with them fifteen days’ provisions, a precaution much exceeding the ordinary commissariat limitations of those times, but prompted by the bitter memories of three futile and painful campaigns, and more than ever necessary owing to the devastated condition of Wales. With such an army, led by the King himself, England might well think that the Welsh troubles were at an end.
Owen’s character as a magician had been firmly established this long time in Wales. His power of eluding the King’s armies, to say nothing of his occasional victories, and still more of the way in which the elements had seemed to fight for him, had given him even throughout England something of a reputation for necromancy. The practical mind of Henry himself had been disturbed by the strange rumours that had reached him, coupled with his own experiences of that implacable and irrepressible foe who claimed the power of “calling spirits from the vasty deep,” and of being outside “the roll of common men.”
If the English had hitherto only half believed that Owen was a wizard, they were in less than a week convinced that he was the very devil himself, against whom twice their hundred thousand men would be of slight avail. Never within man’s memory had there been such a September in the Welsh mountains. The very heavens themselves seemed to descend in sheets of water upon the heads of these magnificent and well-equipped arrays. Dee, Usk, and Wye, with their boisterous tributaries that crossed the English line of march, roared bank-high, and buried all trace of the fords beneath volumes of brown tumbling water, while bridges, homesteads, and such flocks as the Welsh had not driven westward for safety were carried downwards to the sea. In these days of rapid travel it seems incredible that so overwhelming and, for the times, well-found a host, could be beaten in less than a fortnight without striking a blow. It is an object-lesson in medieval warfare worth taking to heart and remembering. Night after night the soldiers lay in the open, drenched to the skin, and half starved on account of the havoc wrought upon their provisions by the weather. The thunder roared, we are told, with fearful voice and the lightning flashed against inky skies, above the heads of that shivering, superstitious host, at the will, it seemed to them, of the magic wand of the accursed Glyndwr. Numbers died from exposure. The royal tent was blown flat, and Henry himself only escaped severe injury by being at the moment in full armour.
The King, Hardyng tells us,
“Had never but tempest foule and raine
As long as he was ay in Wales grounde;
Rockes and mystes, winds and stormes, certaine
All men trowed witches it made that stounde.”
How far the English armies penetrated on this memorable occasion we do not know; but we do know that by the 22nd of September, just a fortnight after they had first crossed the border, there was not an Englishman in Wales outside the castles, while the King himself, a day or two later, was actually back at Berkhampstead, striving, in the domestic seclusion of his own palace, to forget the unspeakable miseries of his humiliating failure. Where Owen distributed his forces through this tempestuous September, there is no evidence; except that, following the inevitable tactics of his race before great invasions, he certainly retired with his forces into the mountains. It was not even necessary on this occasion to fall upon the retreating enemy. But when one reads of the Welsh retiring to the mountains, the natural tendency to think of them huddling among rocks and caves must be resisted. The Welsh mountains, even the loftiest, in those days were very thickly sprinkled with oak forests, and in the innumerable valleys and foot-hills there was splendid pasture for large herds of stock. There must have been plenty of dwellings, too, among these uplands, and the Welsh were adepts at raising temporary shelters of stone thatched with heather.
Owen now might well be excused if he really began to think himself chosen of the gods. At any rate he was justified in the proud boast that Shakespeare at this time puts into his mouth:
“Three times hath Henry Bolingbroke made head
Against my power. Thrice from the banks of Wye
And sandy-bottomed Severn have I sent
Him bootless home, and weather-beaten back.”
Shakespeare is accurate enough so far, but he is sadly astray when he makes the news of Mortimer’s capture and the defeat of Pilleth reach Henry upon the same day as the victory of Percy over the Scots at Homildon. The former was fought in the previous June, whereas the latter took place while Henry was in the very throes of his struggle with the Welsh elements and Owen’s art magic. In fact the news of the crushing defeat of the Scots reached him at the moment of his arrival at home, after his disastrous campaign, and might well have afforded him much consolation, unless perchance the contrast between his own luckless campaign and that of Hotspur tempered his joy and galled his pride.
This same battle of Homildon, or Humbledon, near Wooler, exercised considerable influence upon the affairs of Owen. I have already remarked that forty thousand Scots, having with them many French knights and gentlemen, were across the border. They were commanded by Earl Douglas, who had most of the chivalry and nobility of Scotland at his back. There was no particular excuse for the invasion; it was a marauding expedition, pure and simple, on an immense scale, and it swept through Northumberland and Durham almost unopposed, for the forces of Percy were too inadequate for even his venturous spirit to offer battle.
Laden with the spoils of two counties the Scots turned their faces homeward entirely satisfied with their luck. Unfortunately for them, they elected to divide their forces, ten thousand men, including the commander and all the choice spirits of the army, taking a separate route. As these latter approached the Scottish border they found their path barred by Hotspur, who had slipped round them, with a slightly superior force. They would have been glad enough to get home with their booty, but Percy gave them no option; they had nothing for it but to fight.
The result of the battle was disastrous to the Scots. The English archers broke every effort they made to get to close quarters, and finally routed them with scarcely any assistance from the men-at-arms. An immense number were slain; five hundred were drowned in the Tweed; eighty noblemen and knights, the flower of their chivalry, including the Earl of Douglas himself, were captured. A goodly haul for Percy in the shape of ransom! But it was these very prisoners and this very question of ransom that filled Hotspur’s cup of bitterness against the King and brought about his league with Glyndwr. The congratulations which went speeding northward from Henry to his “dear cousin” were somewhat damped by instructions that the Scottish prisoners were on no account to be set at liberty or ransomed, but were in fact to be handed over to himself – contrary to all custom and privilege. Large sums were already owing to Percy for his outlay in North Wales on the King’s behalf, and he was sullen, as we know, at the King’s neglect of his brother-in-law Mortimer, still lying unransomed in Owen’s hands. He was now enraged, and his rage bore fruit a few months later on the bloody field of Shrewsbury. Nor did Henry see the face of one of his prisoners till they appeared in arms against him, as the price of their liberty, upon that fateful day.
The close of this year was marked by no events of note; marriage bells were in the air, for the King was espousing Joanna of Brittany, and Mortimer, now embittered against Henry, allied himself with Glyndwr’s fortunes and married his fourth daughter, Jane.
Mortimer’s alliance was indeed of immense value to Glyndwr. He was not only the guardian and natural protector of the rightful heir to the throne, his nephew, but he was a possibly acceptable candidate himself, in the event of a fresh shuffling of the cards. He had moreover large possessions and castles in the South Wales Marches, and in the Vale of Clwyd, whose occupants would now be irrevocably committed to the Welsh cause.
The monk of Evesham tells us that the marriage was celebrated with the greatest solemnity about the end of November, though where the ceremony took place we do not know. A fortnight afterwards Mortimer wrote to his Radnor tenants this letter in French, which has been fortunately preserved and is now in the British Museum:
“Very dear and well-beloved, I greet you much and make known to you that Oweyn Glyndwr has raised a quarrel of which the object is, if King Richard be alive, to restore him to his crown; and if not that, my honoured nephew, who is the right heir to the said crown, shall be King of England, and that the said Oweyn will assert his right in Wales. And I, seeing and considering that the said quarrel is good and reasonable, have consented to join in it, and to aid and maintain it, and by the grace of God to a good end, Amen. I ardently hope, and from my heart, that you will support and enable me to bring this struggle of mine to a successful issue. I have moreover to inform you that the lordships of Melenyth, Werthresson, Rayadr, the Commote of Udor, Arwystly, Keveilloc, and Kereynon are lately come into our possession. Wherefore I moreover entreat you that you will forbear making inroad into my said lands, or doing any damage to my said tenantry, and that you furnish them with provisions at a certain reasonable price, as you would wish that I should treat you; and upon this very point be pleased to send me an answer. Very dear and well-beloved, God give you grace to prosper in your beginnings, and to arrive at a happy time. Written at Melenyth the 13th day of December.
“Edmund Mortimer.
“To my very dear and well-beloved John Greyndor, Howell Vaughan, and all the gentles and commons of Radnor, and Prestremde.”9
This note was no doubt chiefly aimed at Sir John Greyndor, or Grindor, who guarded the King’s interests and commanded several castles at various times. It was the last incident of moment in the year 1402.
CHAPTER VI
THE BATTLE OF SHREWSBURY 1403
THE opening of the year 1403 was a time full of promise for Owen’s cause. The western castles by whose capture he set such store were hard pressed. Llandovery in the Vale of Towy had been reduced; Llandeilo Fawr, close by, burnt. The noble castle of Dynevor, which had been the royal seat of the Princes of South Wales, was in difficulties, and a descent on the southern shores of England by the French was once more looked for. The Scots, too, had again plucked up their courage, and threatened to give trouble. King Henry was begging or demanding loans from all sorts and conditions of men, that he might be enabled to hold his own against the Welsh, the Scots, and the French. His affairs in truth were anything but prosperous. The Prince of Wales, however, was at his post at Shrewsbury, though pressing for men and money. He informs his father that Glyndwr is preparing to invade England, and Henry communicates the disquieting news to his council, though this is somewhat later, since in May the Prince is writing urgent letters for relief. In these he declares that his soldiers will remain no longer with him unless they are paid, and that Glyndwr is levying all the power of North and South Wales to destroy the Marches and the adjoining counties of England. The Prince goes on to say: “If our men are withdrawn from us we must retire to England and be disgraced forever. At present we have very great expenses, and we have raised the largest sum in our power to meet them from our little stock of jewels.” This, it may perhaps be again remarked, is the London roué and trifler of popular fancy!
“Our two castles of Harlech and Lampadarn are besieged and we must relieve and victual them within ten days, and besides that protect the March around us with one-third of our forces. And now since we have fully shown the state of these districts, please to take such measures as shall seem best to you for the safety of these same parts. And be well assured we have fully shown to you the peril of whatever may happen here if remedy be not sent in time.”
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.
“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.
“There is great peril for me,” continues the panic-stricken Constable, “for they [Glyndwr’s soldiers] have made a vow that they will all have us ded therein; wherefor I pray thee that thou wilt not boggle us, but send to us warning within a short time whether we schule have any help or no.” The garrison, he reports, are fainting, in victuals and men, and they would all be glad enough to steal away to Brecon, where the castle is in a better state for holding out. “Jenkin ap Llewelyn, William Gwyn, Thomas ap David, and moni other gentils be in person with Owen.” He tells also of the capture of Carmarthen just effected by Glyndwr, – both town and castles, – with a loss of fifty men to the defenders. A second letter, written early in July, a few days only after the first one and from the same frightened commandant, describes Glyndwr as still halting in his mind as to whether or no he should burn Carmarthen. It goes on to relate how Owen and most of his army moved forward to the great castle of Kidwelly, which stood upon the seacoast near the mouth of the Towy, some ten miles distant.
But in the meantime the Anglo-Flemings from Western Pembroke and Gower, of all districts in Wales the most hostile to a Cymric revival, were coming up again in strong force, under their lord and governor, Thomas Earl Carew. Glyndwr halted on July 9th at St. Clear’s and opened negotiations with Carew, influenced probably by the view that Western Pembroke with its sturdy Teutonic stock, and line of impregnable castles, would prove more difficult to conquer and to hold than the effort was worth. While pourparlers were proceeding, he sent forward seven hundred men, to discover if it were possible to get to the rear of the Anglo-Flemish force, but they were cut off to a man and killed. This was the most serious loss the Welsh had yet sustained. Carew, however, did not follow up his advantage, and Glyndwr, who, we are told, had much booty stored in what was left of Carmarthen, made his headquarters there for several days.
It is impossible to follow Owen step by step through the hurly-burly of ruin, fire, and slaughter which he created during this summer in South Wales. It would be wearisome work, even if we could track his steps from castle to castle, and from town to town with accuracy. But there is ample enough evidence of his handiwork and of the terror he spread, in the panic-stricken correspondence that came out of the Marches from all sorts of people during these months, and which anyone may read to-day. We hear from time to time of his lieutenants, of Rhys Gethin, the Tudors, and many others, but no name in the minds of men ever seems to approach that of the dread chief, who was the life and organiser of every movement. Whether Owen is present in person at a siege or a battle or not, it is always with his enemies, “Owen’s men,” and “Owen’s intentions,” “Owen’s magic, ambition, and wickedness”; and at the terror of his name nervous people and monks were trembling far into the midland counties. An invasion of England was thoroughly expected at various times during 1403, and such a visit from a warrior who could call at will the lightning and the tempest to his aid, and whose track was marked by a desolation, so it was rumoured, more pitiless than even medieval ethics approved of, was a terrible eventuality. In the eastern counties men were informed for certain that he was soon to be at Northampton, while the monks of St. Albans hung a supplication upon the chancel wall to the Almighty God to spare them from Glyndwr.
John Faireford, Receiver of Brecon, writes urgently to the authorities of the county of Hereford, telling them how all the gentry of Carmarthen had now risen treasonably against the King, and how his friend, the Constable of Dynevor, was in vain appealing to him for help; how Owain Glyndwr with his false troops was at Llandover, the men of that castle being assured to him, and the Welsh soldiers all lying around the castle at their ease; and again how Glyndwr was on his march to that very town of Brecon for the destruction of the same, “which God avert.” Faireford begs them to rally all the counties round and to prepare them at once for resisting these same rebels with all haste possible for the avoiding of greater peril. “And you will know,” writes he, “that all the Welsh nation, being taken a little by surprise, is adhering to this evil purpose of rebellion, and if any expedition of cavalry can be made be pleased to do that first in these Lordships of Brecon and Cantref Sellys.”
Within a few days a letter from the same hand is forwarded to the King himself.
“My most noble and dread Lord, I have received at Brecon certain letters addressed to me by John Skidmore, the which enclosed within this letter, I present unto your high person by the bearer of these, that it may please your gracious lordship to consider the mischief and perils comprised in them, and to ordain thereupon speedy remedy for the destruction and resistance of the rebels in those parts of South Wales, who are treacherously raised against you and your Majesty, so that your castles and towns and the faithful men in them be not thus ruined and destroyed for lack of aid and succour. And besides, may it please your lordship to know that the rebels of this your lordship of Brecon, together with their adherents, are lying near the town of Brecon doing all the mischief they can to its town and neighbourhood, and they purpose, all of them together, to burn all pertaining to the English in these same parts if they be not resisted in haste. The whole of the Welsh nation are by all these said parties conformed in this rebellion, and with good will consent together as only appears from day to day. May it please your royal Majesty to ordain a final destruction of all the false nation aforesaid, or otherwise all your faithful ones in these parts are in great peril.”
The sheriff of Hereford had been warned by the King to proceed against Brecon with the forces of his county, and relieve the siege. This he reports later, that he has done with some success; slaying 240 of the Welsh, though with what loss to himself he refrains from mentioning. This diversion seems in no way to have relieved the general situation; for after describing the fight at Brecon he goes on to state that