Owain Glyndŵr
Owain ap Gruffudd Fychan or Owain Glyndŵr was a Welsh aristocrat, soldier and military commander in the late Middle Ages, who led a 15-year-long Welsh revolt with the aim of ending English rule in Wales. He was an educated lawyer, forming the first Welsh parliament under his rule, and was the last native-born Welshman to claim the title Prince of Wales.
During the year 1400, Owain, a Welsh soldier and Lord of Glyndyfrdwy had a dispute with a neighbouring English Lord, the event which spiralled into a national revolt pitted common Welsh countrymen and nobles against the English military. In response to the rebellion, discriminatory penal laws were implemented against the Welsh people; this deepened civil unrest and significantly increased support for Owain across Wales. Then, in 1404, after a series of successful castle sieges and several battlefield victories for the Welsh, Owain gained control of most of Wales and held a parliament in Machynlleth in the presence of envoys from France with representatives from the entirety of Wales. Military aid was given to the rebellion from France, Brittany, and Scotland. Owain claimed in the Pennal Letter of 1406 that he would build two universities, one in North Wales and one in South Wales as well as reinstate the supposed ancient archbishopric of St Davids, thereby establishing independent Welsh church.
The war continued, and over the next several years, the English gradually gained control of large parts of Wales. By 1409 Owain's last remaining castles of Harlech and Aberystwyth had been captured by English forces. Owain refused two royal pardons and retreated to the Welsh hills and mountains with his remaining forces, where he continued to resist English rule by using guerrilla warfare tactics, until his disappearance in 1415, when he was recorded as having died by one of his followers, Adam of Usk.
Owain was never captured or killed, and he was also never betrayed despite being a fugitive of the law with a large bounty. In Welsh culture he acquired a mythical status alongside Cadwaladr, Cynon ap Clydno and King Arthur as a folk hero – 'The Foretold Son'. In William Shakespeare's play Henry IV, Part 1 he appears as the character Owen Glendower as a king rather than a prince.
Early life
Owain ap Gruffudd Fychan was born in or before 1359 at the court of Sycharth in Cynllaith, located in the northeastern reaches of the Welsh Marches close to the border with England. Owain's father Gruffudd Fychan was descended from a younger brother of Llywelyn Fychan ap Gruffudd, the last lord of Northern Powys who was killed in the Edwardian conquest of Wales alongside Llywelyn ap Gruffudd. Gruffudd Fychan was baron of Glyndyfrdwy and Cynllaith in his own right. Owain's father was dead by 1370, which left his mother Elen ferch Tomas a widow whilst he was still a boy. Owain's mother was from Iscoed, Ceredigion, and was a descendant of Gruffudd, eldest son of the Lord Rhys, prince of Deheubarth. Through his father, Owain could boast senior, if remote, ancestry from Madog ap Maredudd of Powys. However, his mother's lineage granted him descent from the Second Dynasty of Gwynedd no fewer than in three discrete instances, as her ancestors had married daughters of Gruffudd ap Cynan, Tomas ap Rhodri, and Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, whose daughter Angharad ferch Llywelyn was both Owain's progenitor and the daughter of Joan, whose father in turn was King John. This tripartite descent from all three of the major dynasties of pre-Conquest Wales made Owain a unique figure in late fourteenth century Wales. This peculiar attribute is commented upon by the poet Iolo Goch, who sang to Owain a poem before his rebellion celebrating his ancestry and encouraging him to demand his legal rights under English rule to Powys as the senior representative of its old dynasty.Early career
The young Owain ap Gruffudd Fychan was possibly fostered at the home of David Hanmer, a rising lawyer shortly to be a justice of the King's Bench, or at the home of Richard FitzAlan, 3rd Earl of Arundel. Owain is then thought to have been sent to London to study law at the Inns of Court, as a student in Westminster, London, for over a period of seven years. He was possibly in London during the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. By 1384, he was living in Wales and married to David's daughter, Margaret Hanmer; their marriage took place, perhaps in 1383, in St Chad's Church, Hanmer in north-east Wales. Although other sources state that they were married in the 1370s. They started a large family and Owain established himself as the squire of his ancestral lands at Sycharth and Glyndyfrdwy.Owain joined the king's military service in 1384 when he undertook garrison duty under the Welshman Sir Gregory Sais on the English–Scottish border at Berwick-upon-Tweed. His surname Sais, meaning 'Englishman' in Welsh, refers to his ability to speak English, not common in Wales at the time. In August 1385, he served King Richard II under the command of John of Gaunt, again in Scotland. Then, in 1386, he was called to give evidence at the High Court of Chivalry, in the Scrope v Grosvenor trial at Chester on 3 September that year. In March 1387, Owain fought as a squire to Richard FitzAlan, 4th Earl of Arundel, where he saw action in the English Channel at the defeat of a Franco-Spanish-Flemish fleet off the coast of Kent during the Battle of Margate. Upon the death in late 1387 of his father-in-law, Sir David Hanmer, knighted earlier that same year by the then King of England, Richard II, Owain returned to Wales as executor of his estate. Owain next served as a squire to Henry Bolingbroke, son of John of Gaunt, at the short Battle of Radcot Bridge in December 1387. From 1384 until 1388 he had been active in military service and had gained three full years of military experience in different theatres, and had witnessed some key events and noteworthy people at first hand.
King Richard was distracted by a growing conflict with the Lords Appellant from this time on. Owain's opportunities were further limited by the death of Sir Gregory Sais in 1390 and the sidelining of FitzAlan, and he probably returned to his stable Welsh estates, living there quietly for ten years during his forties. The bard Iolo Goch, himself a Welsh Lord, visited Owain in Sycharth in the 1390s and wrote a number of odes to Owain, praising his host's liberality and writing of Sycharth, "Very rarely was a bolt or lock to be seen there."
Prelude to rebellion
In the late 1390s, a series of events occurred which cornered Owain, and forced his ambitions towards a rebellion. The events would later be called the Welsh Revolt, the Glyndŵr Rising, or the Last War of Independence. His neighbour, Baron Grey of Ruthin, had seized control of some land, for which Owain appealed to the English Parliament; however, Owain's petition for redress was ignored. Later, in 1400, Lord Grey did not inform Owain in time about a royal command to levy feudal troops for Scottish border service, thus enabling him to call Owain a traitor in London court circles. Lord Grey had stature in the royal court of Henry IV. The law courts refused to hear the case, or it was delayed because Lord Grey prevented Owain's letter from reaching the King, which would have repercussions. Sources state that Owain was under threat because he had written an angry letter to Lord Grey, boasting that lands had come into his possession, and he had stolen some of Lord Grey's horses; and believing Lord Grey had threatened to "burn and slay" within his lands, he threatened retaliation in the same manner. Lord Grey then denied making the initial threat to burn and slay, and replied that he would take the incriminating letter to Henry IV's council and that Owain would hang for the admission of theft and treason contained within the letter. The deposed king, Richard II, had support in Wales, and in January 1400 serious civil disorder broke out in the English border city of Chester after the public execution of an officer of Richard II.Rebellion
At Sycharth, in Glyndyfrdwy on 16 September 1400, in front of his immediate family, his in-laws, Welsh people from Berwyn, friends from North-East Wales, the Dean of St Asaph totalling 300 men, Owain Glyndŵr prophecised that he was the person to save his people from the English invasions, and proclaimed himself the Prince of Wales. The following day, he instigated a 15-year rebellion against the rule of Henry IV. Then came a number of initial confrontations between Henry IV and Owain's followers in September and October 1400, as the revolt began to spread around North Wales. Owain was immediately proclaimed Prince of Wales by his followers and subsequently launched an assault on Lord Grey's territories, burning Ruthin, they continued to Denbigh, Rhuddlan, Flint, Holt, Oswestry and Welshpool, all of which were seen as English towns in Wales. The initial revolt got the attention of the King of England after letters were sent asking for military assistance to combat the Welsh rebels. Much of northern and central Wales went over to Owain, and from then on, he would only make an appearance to attack his enemy, his army using effective guerrilla warfare tactics against the English occupying territories.On Good Friday 1401, 40 of Glyndwr's men who were led by his cousins, Rhys ap Tudur and Gwilym ap Tudur took Conwy Castle in North Wales. In response, King Henry IV appointed Henry Percy to bring the country to order. A month later, the King and the English parliament issued an amnesty on 10 March which applied to all rebels with the exception of Owain and his cousins, the Tudurs; however, both the Tudurs were eventually pardoned after they gave up Conwy Castle on 28 May that same year. Hotspur won a battle at Cadair Idris two days later, but that was to be his final service for the King of England, as he retired his command as leader of the English troops after dealing with Owain. During that time in the spring of 1401, Owain appears in South Wales.
In June, Owain scored his first major victory in the field at Mynydd Hyddgen on Pumlumon; however, retaliation by Henry IV on Strata Florida Abbey was to follow in October that same year. The rebel uprising had occupied all of North Wales; labourers seized whatever weapons they could, and farmers sold their cattle to buy arms. Secret meetings were held everywhere, and bards "wandered about as messengers of sedition". Henry IV heard of a Welsh uprising at Leicester; Henry's army wandered North Wales to Anglesey and drove out Franciscan friars who favoured Richard II. All the while Owain, who was in hiding, had his estate at Sycharth forfeited by the King to John Beaufort, 1st Earl of Somerset on 9 November 1400. Then, by autumn, Gwynedd and Ceredigion and Powys adhered to the rising against the English rule by supporting the rebellion. Owain's attempts at stoking rebellion with help from the Scottish and Irish were quashed, with the English showing no mercy and hanging some messengers.
As a response to the situation of warfare in Wales, the English Parliament between 1401 and 1402 enacted penal laws against the Welsh, designed to coerce submission in Wales, but the result was to create resentment that pushed many Welshmen into the rebellion. In the same year, Owain captured his archenemy Baron Grey de Ruthyn. He held him for almost a year until he received a substantial ransom from Henry. In June 1402, Owain defeated an English force led by Sir Edmund Mortimer near Pilleth, where Mortimer was captured. Owain offered to release Mortimer for a large ransom but, in sharp contrast to his attitude to de Grey, Henry IV refused to pay. Mortimer's nephew could be said to have had a greater claim to the English throne than Henry himself, so his speedy release was not an option. In response, Mortimer negotiated an alliance with Owain and married one of Owain's daughters. It is also in 1402 that mention of the French and the people of Flanders helping Owain's daughter Janet, who was negotiating on the continent for her father for two years until 1404.
News of the rebellion's success spread across Europe, and Owain began to receive naval support from Scotland and Brittany. He also received the support of King Charles VI of France, who agreed to send French troops and supplies to aid the rebellion. In 1403 Glyndwr had amassed an army of 4,000 in his first division, and 12,000 soldiers in total. A Welsh army including a French contingent assimilated into forces mainly from Glamorgan and the Rhondda Valleys region commanded by Owain Glyndŵr, his senior general Rhys Gethin and Cadwgan, Lord of Glyn Rhondda, defeated a large English invasion force reputedly led by King Henry IV himself at the Battle of Stalling Down in Glamorgan.
Owain, facing years on the run, finally lost his estate in the spring of 1403, when Prince Henry as usual marched into Wales unopposed and burnt down Owain's houses at Sycharth and Glyndyfrdwy, as well as the commote of Edeirnion and parts of Powys. Owain continued to besiege towns and burn down castles; for 10 days in July that year, he toured the south and southwest of Wales until all of the south joined arms in rebelling against English rule. These actions induced an internal rebellion against the King of England, with the Percys joining the rising. It is around this stage of Owain's life that Hywel Sele, a cousin of the Welsh prince, attempted to assassinate Glyndŵr at the Nannau estate.
In 1403, the revolt became truly national in Wales. Royal officials reported that Welsh students at Oxford and Cambridge Universities were leaving their studies to join Owain, and also that Welsh labourers and craftsmen were abandoning their employers in England and returning to Wales. Owain could also draw on Welsh troops seasoned by the English campaigns in France and Scotland. Hundreds of Welsh archers and experienced men-at-arms left the English service to join the rebellion.
In 1404, Owain's forces took Aberystwyth Castle and Harlech Castle, then continued to ravage the south by burning Cardiff Castle. Then, a court was held at Harlech and Gruffydd Young was appointed as the Welsh Chancellor. There had been communication to Louis I, Duke of Orléans in Paris to try to open the Welsh ports to French trade.