CHAPTER VII
OWEN AND THE FRENCH 1403-1404
KING Henry’s fourth expedition against Glyndwr, in spite of all the talk, the preparations, the hard-wrung money grants, the prayers and supplications for aid, will make but scant demands upon our space. He spent some days at Hereford, issuing orders for stores to be forwarded to the hard-pressed castles of South Wales from the port of Bristol, though it is obvious that only some of them could be relieved by sea. The names of a few of these may interest Welshmen. They were Llandovery, Crickhoell, Tretower, Abergavenny, Caerleon, Goodrich, Ewyas Harold, Usk, Caerphilly, Ewyas Lacy, Paines, Brampton Bryan, Lyonshall, Dorston, Manorbier, Stapleton, Kidwelly, Lampeter, Brecon, Cardiff, Newport, Milford, Haverford-west, Pembroke, and Tenby.
The King left Hereford about the 15th of September and he was seated a few days later among the ruins of Carmarthen, the very centre of the recent wars and devastations. Glyndwr and his people were, of course, nowhere to be seen, nor did the King show any disposition to hunt for them. He remained about two days at Carmarthen, and contented himself with issuing all kinds of orders, proclamations, pardons, and confiscations, which were for the most so much waste paper. Leaving behind him the Earl of Somerset with an inefficient garrison and no money to pay them, he then faced about, and made the best of his way back again, arriving at Hereford within four days. When one recalls Edward the First, who considered nearly three years of personal residence none too short a time in which to establish order in Wales, which was at that time by no means so wholly hostile as now, the feebleness of Henry’s Welsh policy strikes one with singular force. Had he been his cousin Richard or an Edward the Second, a man sluggish in war and a slave to luxury, the explanation would be simple enough; but though his Court was extravagant, almost culpably so, the King himself was an energetic, serious-minded soldier, and a man of affairs rather than of pleasure. One might well have supposed, after the decisive victory at Shrewsbury, and the firm grip on the throne which the destruction of his domestic enemies gave to the King, that Glyndwr’s hour had at last come.
It is almost wearisome to tell the same old tale of “scuttle,” the same trumpeting forth of orders to captains and governors of castles and Marcher barons to do, with scant men and means, what their master had so conspicuously flinched from with the power of England, such as he had made it, at his command. It is needless to say that the King’s homeward tracks through Wales were obliterated, when his back was turned, like those upon sand, before the returning tide of Owen and his Welshmen, who had swept through Glamorgan and were pressing Cardiff, even while Henry was still travelling homewards. He had hardly reached London before he received piteous letters from the chiefs of the garrison that had been left at Carmarthen, begging him to send the Duke of York there with strong reinforcements or they were lost men, and protesting that in no case could they stay there a day longer than the stipulated month, for their men would not stand by them.
Glyndwr had received some sort of consolation from the French for the blow struck at his English allies on the plains of Shrewsbury. Their corsairs had been harrying the shores of England throughout the summer. Plymouth, Salcombe, and other places had been raided, while flotillas were even now hovering round the coast of Wales, in the interests of Owen. Herefordshire, which had received the long-looked-for King with such unbounded joy in September, and hailed him as its deliverer, was, in October, in as bad a plight as ever, for Glyndwr’s men had again poured over the borders. And though the King with his thousands had come and gone like a dream, the people of Hereford and Gloucester were now glad enough to welcome the Duke of York with nine hundred spearmen and archers. The Courtenays with a force of Devonshire men had been ordered across the Severn sea to relieve Cardiff, but this they failed in doing, as now not only that fortress, but Caerphilly, Newport, Caerleon, and Usk fell into Owen’s hands.
The number of men that Glyndwr had with him at various times is difficult to estimate. Now and then contemporary writers quote the figures. In South Wales lately it will be remembered he had nearly ten thousand. In Carmarthen at another time the number from an equally credible source is estimated at thirty thousand. His spearmen were better than his archers. The Welsh archers, till the Union and the wars with France, had used short bows made generally of twisted twigs and formidable only at a close range. Archery, however, in its highly developed state must have become familiar by this time, through the co-operation of the Welsh in the French wars. The Welsh spears were exceptionally long, and the men of Merioneth had a special reputation for making efficient use of them. They were all, however, eminently light troops, though equipped with steel caps, breastplates, and often with greaves. “In the first attack,” says Giraldus Cambrensis, “the Welsh are more than men, in the second less than women,” and he knew them well. But their want of staunchness under repulse, he takes care to tell us, was temporary. They were a people well-nigh impossible to conquer, he declares, from the rapidity with which they recovered from defeat and the tenacity with which they returned, not always immediately, but sooner or later, to the attack, refusing to acknowledge ultimate defeat, and desperately attached to liberty. Glyndwr had practically no cavalry. Horses were very widely in use, perhaps ponies still more so, amid the mediæval Welsh, and their gentry and nobility went mounted to war from the earliest times. But it is likely that in Wales itself, at any rate, all ranks did their actual fighting on foot.
Of the disposition of Glyndwr’s forces and their personnel beyond a few of his captains we know little. It seems almost certain that the men of the South for the most part fought in the south, and those of the North in the north. If he had a nucleus of soldiers that followed him in his rapid movements from one end of the Principality to the other it was a comparatively small one. In every district he had trusted leaders who looked after his interests, and on his appearance, or at his summons, rallied their followers to battle, and upon their own account made the lives of the beleaguered Saxons in their midst intolerable. By this time, however, and indeed before it, every man who was not a professed subject of the descendant of Llewelyn and of Madoc ap Griffith, had fled Wales, except those who were swelling the population of the ill-victualled and closely beleaguered castles. Glyndwr had before him many a doughty Anglo-Norman warrior, under walls well-nigh impervious to anything but starvation, whose crumbling shells on many a Welsh headland and hilltop still wake memories of the past and stir our fancy.
Lord Audley was at Llandovery, Sir Henry Scrope at Langhame, John Pauncefote held Crickhowl, and James Berkeley, Tretower. At Abergavenny was a Beauchamp, at Goodrich a Neville. The splendid pile of Caerphilly, whose ruins are the largest in Britain, was in the charge of a Châtelaine, Lady Despencer. The noble castle of Manorbier, where Giraldus was born, in that of Sir John Cornwall, while the Earl of Warwick was at Paines, and a Charlton, of course, at Welshpool.
About the same time, some French companies were landing in Carmarthen to add further to the woes of Henry in Wales; and for the comfort of Glyndwr. The King himself was entering London, and to show how little the people of one end of the country sometimes realised what was actually happening at the other, the citizens, who were always his particular friends, gave him quite an enthusiastic reception. It should, however, be remembered that the Londoners had been in great force at Shrewsbury, and the triumphs of that bloody fight were still ringing in men’s ears.
It was not till two years after this that the great French effort was made on Owen’s behalf, of which we shall hear in due course, but even now a few hundred Bretons, as already related, had found their way to Wales. They flinched from the great Pembroke castles and, adventuring upon their own account, crept round the coast of Lleyn and made an attempt upon Carnarvon. A very short stay before that matchless pile of Norman defensive art sufficed upon this occasion for the invaders, though soon afterwards they landed and joined Glyndwr in its investment. The island of Anglesey in the meantime, cut off from the rest of Wales by the castles and “English towns” of Conway and Carnarvon, and its own almost equally formidable stronghold of Beaumaris, had for the moment given in to English reinforcements from Chester, and accepted the freely offered pardon of the Prince of Wales. It is a singular fact that, while so many of Glyndwr’s soldiers, headed by the Tudors, came from Anglesey and near the close of his wars 2000 of its inhabitants were actually in arms, no battle or even skirmish took place there, so far as we know, during the whole period of these operations.
But Carnarvon, now at this date, January, 1404, was as a matter of fact in a lamentable condition as regards defenders. The garrison had declined to less than thirty men, and there are letters in Sir Henry Ellis’s collection showing the desperate state to which this and other castles were reduced. It seems at the first sight incredible that such a handful of men could hold so great a fortress against serious attacks. The walls and defences of Carnarvon Castle are to-day much what they were in the times of Glyndwr. It is perhaps almost necessary to walk upon its giddy parapets, to climb its lofty towers, in order to grasp the hopelessly defiant front such a fortress must have shown to those below it before the time of effective artillery: the deep moat upon the town side, the waters of the harbour a hundred feet below the frowning battlements upon the other, the huge gateway from which the portcullis grinned and the upraised drawbridge swung. Twenty-eight men only were inside when Owen with a force of his own people and the French threw themselves against it. The besiegers had engines, “scowes,” and scaling ladders, but the handful of defenders were sufficient, for the time being at any rate, to hurry from point to point, and frustrate all attempts to surmount the lofty walls, though these attempts, no doubt, were made at many points simultaneously. The Constable John Bolde was away, but one Parry, his deputy, was in command. It was urgent that a message should be sent to Chester, acquainting Venables, the governor, of their desperate situation. Not a man, as may well be believed, could be spared, so a woman was despatched to take the news by word of mouth, for few dared in those days to carry letters.
Harlech was in an equally bad plight, its defenders being reduced to twenty-six, but it was as impregnable as Carnarvon, and much smaller. The garrison had been so mistrustful of their governor’s fidelity that they had locked him up. During January their numbers were reduced to sixteen, but they still held manfully out against the Welsh under Howel Vychan. They eventually succeeded in sending word across the bay to Criccieth, and to Conway also, of their condition. Conway had been urgently petitioning the King and assuring him that 400 more men would suffice to hold the castles till the spring, but that then “when the rebels can lie out which they cannot now do” a far greater number would be required; but the King either could not or would not understand. Harlech, grim and grey on its incomparable rocky perch, required fewer defenders even than the rest. The sea then swept over the half-mile strip of land, the “Morfa Harlech,” that now lies dry beneath it, and lapped the base of the lofty rock on whose summit the great Edward’s remotest castle still stands defiant of the ages.12
Henry had issued orders that these sea-girt castles should be looked to by his navy. But Henry’s admirals seem to have had as little liking for Welsh seas as the King himself had for Welsh mountains, though happily some Bristol sailors appear to have done their best to supply the deficiency. Glyndwr, however, was determined to have Harlech without loss of further time. Coming there from Carnarvon he parleyed with the garrison, and offered terms which all but seven accepted. What became of this uncompromising minority it would be hard to say, but at any rate Owen entered into possession and there is good reason to suppose that he planted his family here and made his headquarters upon the historic rock where Brân the Blessed and a long line of less shadowy Welsh chieftains had dwelt, ages before the rearing of these Norman towers.
Later on we hear of his summoning a parliament to Harlech, but during this year the first of these legislative assemblies that he called together met at Machynlleth, as being unquestionably a more convenient rendezvous for Welshmen in general. Hither came “four persons of sufficient consequence” out of each “Cantref” (the old unit of division in Wales), to take counsel for future action and to gather around the throne, upon which they had now seated a crowned Prince of their own race. One of the Welsh gentlemen, however, who attended this historic parliament, came with very different intentions, and this was David ap Llewelyn ap Howel, otherwise known as Davy Gam, or “squint-eyed Davy,” a landowner near Brecon and the scion of a family distinguished both then and for long afterwards, his great-grandfather having fought at Crecy and Poitiers. He himself was a short, long-armed man with red hair and a cast in his eye. In youth he had been compelled to fly from Brecon for killing a neighbour, and indeed he seemed to have enjoyed all his life a somewhat sinister reputation for recklessness and daring. Flying to England he was received into the household of John of Gaunt, where he grew up side by side with Henry of Bolingbroke and was entirely devoted to his service. Henry, when he came into power, had restored Gam to his property and position in Brecon, and moreover bestowed upon him Crown appointments in South Wales. Glyndwr had a brother-in-law named Gam, which has given rise to some confusion, but Davy was at any rate no relation to the Welsh chieftain, though, both having been in Henry’s household, it is probable they knew each other well.
Gam had hitherto and naturally been a staunch King’s man; he now, however, feigned conversion and attended the parliament at Machynlleth, not to do homage to Owen, but to kill him. The almost certain death to which he exposed himself in case of success prompts one to something like admiration for so single-minded and fearless an avenger. But his intentions were by some means discovered and his rash project nipped in the bud. He was seized and doomed to the cruel fate which the nature of his crime made inevitable. Old friends and relatives, however, were in strength at Machynlleth and successfully interceded for his life. Perhaps Glyndwr was induced to this act of clemency by the reflection that imprisonment for an indefinite period, as practised by himself and others at that time, was a worse punishment than torture and death to a man of spirit. Whether the captive lay in the dungeons of Dolbadarn under Snowdon, at Harlech, or in the still surviving prison house (Cachardy Owen) at Llansantffraid-Glyndyfrdwy, we do not hear. He probably tasted the sweets of all of them and must indeed have spent a miserable time in those later years when Owen was himself at bay in the mountains and more or less of a fugitive.
But Davy was freed eventually, though only just before the final disappearance of Glyndwr, and lived to fight at the King’s side at Agincourt together with his son-in-law Roger Vychan, where both fell gloriously on that memorable day. He is said to have been knighted on the field while dying and to be moreover the original of Shakespeare’s Fluellin, and to have made the memorable reply to Henry V. when returning from a survey of the vast French hosts just before the battle: “There are enough to kill, enough to take prisoners, and enough to run away.”
When next Glyndwr went campaigning through Brecon he took the opportunity of burning his would-be murderer’s mansion of Cyrnwigen. A well-known tradition relates how, while the flames were leaping high around the devoted homestead, Owen addressed David Gam’s bailiff who was gazing disconsolately at the scene, in an englyn, which by some means has found its way down to posterity and is well known in Wales. Seeing that it is the only instance we have of so great a patron of bards breaking out himself into verse, I venture to print it here. There have been various translations; this is one of them:
“Canst thou a little red man descry,
Looking around for his dwelling fair?
Tell him it under the bank doth lie,
And its brow the mark of a coal doth bear.”
No special effort was made this spring from England to break Glyndwr’s power or to relieve the castles. While some of Owen’s captains were hovering on the Marches, the chief himself, having dismissed his parliament, moved with his principal councillors to Dolgelly. Tradition still points out the house at Machynlleth where gathered the first and almost the only approach to a parliament that ever met in Wales. It stands nearly opposite the gates of Plâs Machynlleth, an unnoticeable portion of the street in fact, a long low building now in part adapted to the needs of a private residence, and having nothing suggestive about it but the thickness of its walls. The chief outcome of this conference at Dolgelly of “sufficient persons” from all over Wales, was a much more formal and serious overture to the French King than the letters of 1402. Glyndwr had now fully donned the mantle of royalty and wrote to the King of France as a brother and an equal, proposing to make an offensive and defensive alliance with him.
The ambassadors chosen for the conduct of this important business were Griffith Yonge, doctor of laws, Owen’s Chancellor, and his own brother-in-law, John Hanmer. The instrument is in Latin, “Dated at Dolgelly on the 10th day of May 1404 and in the fourth year of our principality,” and begins: “Owen by the grace of God, Prince of Wales,” etc. The two Welsh plenipotentiaries crossed the sea without misadventure and were received in a most friendly manner at Paris by the French King. His representative, the Count de la Marche, signed the treaty upon July 14th, together with Hanmer and Yonge, at the house of Ferdinand de Corby, Chancellor of France, several bishops and other notabilities being present. By this instrument Glyndwr and the French King entered into a solemn league and covenant to assist each other against all the attacks of Henry of Lancaster (Charles had never yet recognised him as King) and his allies. The Welshmen signed the document on behalf of “our illustrious and most dread Lord, Owen, Prince of Wales.” The treaty was ratified on the 12th of January following at Llanbadarn near Aberystwith. The seal which Glyndwr now used in all his transactions represents the hero himself, with a biforked beard, seated on a chair, holding a sceptre in his right hand and a globe in his left, and has recently been adopted as the corporate arms of Machynlleth. Nor should it be overlooked that Owen sent a list of all the chief harbours and roads of Wales to Charles, while the latter in return loaded the Welsh ambassadors with presents for their master, including a gilded helmet, a cuirass, and sword, as an earnest of his promised help.
About the same time as the departure of Owen’s mission to France, he wrote another letter, which is extant. It is not of much importance, except as an illustration of the confidence he felt at this time in his ultimate success. It is addressed to “our dear and entirely well beloved Henry Don,” urging his co-operation, and concluding with the remark: “Their sway is ending and victory coming to us, as from the first, none could doubt God had so ordered.”
Among other signs of Glyndwr’s increased importance this year, was the coming over to his cause of that Tudor Trevor, Bishop of St. Asaph, who it will be remembered had warned the King and his council against despising Owen’s peaceful appeal for justice against Grey of Ruthin, and urgently protested against those ill-fated and misplaced sneers at the “barfoots.”
It was Trevor’s cathedral at St. Asaph, of course, and its precincts, which Glyndwr had so ruthlessly burned in 1402. The Bishop had since then been not only supported by grants from the English exchequer, but had well earned them by much serious official work in the King’s service. Whether his Welsh blood warmed at the prospects of a revived Cambrian independence or whether ambition was the keynote of his actions, no one may know. At any rate it was not want or neglect at the hands of the King that drove him back into the arms of Owen. The latter gave him a cordial welcome, and it must be said for Trevor that through good and ill he proved faithful to his new master’s cause. Militant clerics were common enough in those times. Trevor, with the martial instincts of the great border race from which he sprang, and whose history is written deep for centuries beside the Ceiriog and the Dee, had been in the thick of the fight at Shrewsbury beneath the King’s banner. He now followed Glyndwr both in the council and in the field, dying eventually in Paris, a fugitive and an exile, in the year 1410.
All through this spring Owen’s followers on the borders were making life upon the English side intolerable. Bonfires were laid ready for the match on every hill. The thirty towers and castles that guarded Shropshire were helpless to stem the tide. The county was again laid waste to the very walls of Shrewsbury and many of the population fled to other parts of England for a livelihood. Archdeacon Kingeston at Hereford once again takes up his pen and paints a lamentable picture:
“The Welsh rebels in great numbers have entered Archenfield [a division of the county] and there they have burnt houses, killed the inhabitants, taken prisoners and ravaged the country to the great dishonour of our King and the unsupportable damage of the country. We have often advertised the King that such mischief would befall us, we have also now certain information that within the next eight days the rebels are resolved to make an attack in the March of Wales to its utter ruin, if speedy succour be not sent. True it is indeed that we have no power to shelter us except that of Lord Richard of York and his men, which is far too little to defend us; we implore you to consider this very perilous and pitiable case and to pray our Sovereign Lord that he will come in his Royal person or send some person with sufficient power to rescue us from the invasion of the said rebels. Otherwise we shall be utterly destroyed, which God forbid; whoever comes will as we are led to believe have to engage in battle, or will have a very severe struggle with the rebels. And for God’s sake remember that honourable and valiant man, the Lord Abergavenny [William Beauchamp], who is on the very point of destruction if he be not rescued. Written in haste at Hereford, June 10th.”
A fortnight later the dread of Owen’s advance was emphasised by Prince Henry himself, who was still, in conjunction with the Duke of York, in charge of the Welsh wars.
“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.