The Last Plantagenet

by Thomas B. Costain

  The Welsh found their greatest relief in their love of music. In the evenings when the day’s work had been done, a single voice would begin to sing and others would join in the air until the hills resounded with the chorus of the shepherds as they wended their weary way homeward. The barons, who had inherited with their Norman blood little appreciation of poetry or music, had another contemptuous term for the Welsh—“the Singers.”

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  It is generally believed that Owen Glendower was born in 1359, which places him in his forties when the need for his leadership arose. His family was one of the wealthiest in the country and he had large estates in both North and South Wales, as well as the dower lands of his beautiful wife, Margaret Hanmer. He had a good education, including some years at Oxford and a term in the Inns of Court at London. He had then taken up the profession of arms and was in the train of Henry of Bolingbroke when the latter was first exiled to Europe. Apparently he returned before Henry and for some time thereafter was in the service of Richard. This was the natural course for a Welsh gentleman to pursue. All Wales, for reasons which have never been satisfactorily explained, remained loyal to the ineffectual son of the Black Prince through all his ups and downs and his final sad ending. It will be recalled that a small force of Welshmen under Glendower hung on the edge of the company which took Richard from Chester to London, looking for a chance to rescue him.

  Owen Glendower seems to have been the personification of the Welsh race, with all their virtues and their greatnesses and also some of their faults. He was tall and compelling in looks, with vibrant dark eyes, a long nose, a forked beard, and a mouth which combined strength with a hint of urbanity. He believed above everything else in the traditions of the race and so kept about him the best of the native bards. Now minstrels constituted the most consistent of crops in Wales and this meant that Sycharth, the home which Glendower preferred, had to be both large and well provisioned to accommodate all the bards who came there with harps strapped on their shoulders and throats filled with song. One of them, Iolo Goch (the Red Bard), left a curious description of the home of the great patriot. Sycharth stood almost within sight of the frontier with a single line of hills to cut it off from the gentle lands now known as Shropshire, and so it had to be strongly entrenched. It had, says the Red Bard, a gatehouse of stone and a deep moat with the necessary drawbridge. Enclosed within the moat was a cluster of what can only be described as an odd assortment of buildings. There was “a Neapolitan building of eighteen apartments, a wooden structure raised on posts in which were eight apartments for guests, and a church in the form of a cross.” The place clearly was planned to stand siege, for within the confines of the moat were establishments to provide every kind of food. There were well-stocked warehouses, a mill, a spicery, a salt house, orchards, vineyards, fish ponds, a stone pigeon house, a rabbit warren. Three separate tables could be maintained, one of them for the “encampment of bards.” As for the variety of the dishes offered and the capabilities of the cooks, the Red Bard waxes ecstatic on both points. One can imagine him rubbing his well-rounded stomach and rolling his eyes as he descants on the splendor of the roasts and the piquancy of the wines. Sycharth, clearly, was the very ideal of a gentleman’s house in this century which fancied itself close to perfect in everything.

  But Sycharth was close to the domain of the Greys of Ruthin. At the time when Owen settled himself down with his wife and his handsome children and his warbling guests, the head of the Greys was one Reginald, who had become filled with arrogance by the exercise of his absolute power. Between Sycharth and the Red Castle of Ruthin lay a stretch of moorland which both claimed. The dispute over this land led to the wars which must now be told in brief form.

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  When Grey of Ruthin’s craving for that piece of moorland, which was called the common of Croisau, became too urgent to repress, he simply took the property over. One day his men went in and expelled all the tenants of Sycharth who held land there. From the hills where he could see far up the banks of the Dee, Glendower watched this highhanded and wanton thievery but did not meet the move by a resort to arms. This was in Richard’s time and the Welsh magnate, being still of pacific bent, carried the case to the King’s Court in London. He won a verdict and the highly enraged Grey had to give up the land.

  Things were different after Henry IV succeeded to the throne. Glendower had openly espoused the cause of the late king and so had no reason to expect favors at Westminster. Grey lost no time in seizing the land a second time. Still relying on the law, Glendower went to London and protested. This time his petition was dismissed without a hearing.

  Bishop Trevor of St. Asaph, who knew Glendower well, was present and strove to show what consequences this rash and unfair procedure might have.

  “Honorable gentlemen,” he said, “you are making a mistake, a grave mistake. This man has much power. Provoke him and he will cause trouble. He can cause more serious trouble than anyone today in all these British isles.”

  It became apparent in time that the good bishop had been right. Owen Glendower was to cause more trouble than anyone in the British islands—England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales—with all the smaller islands thrown in for good measure, the Hebrides, the Shetlands, the Channel Islands.

  Grey of Ruthin, exultant over his legal victory, consolidated his hold on the disputed land by sending in his own settlers with their flocks and herds. With watchful sagacity, Glendower took no steps to oppose him.

  Grey was not yet satisfied. He was determined to complete the ruin of his neighbor. As chief Marcher lord of the north he was supposed to summon all of the king’s liege men to the royal standard when Henry planned his first thrust into Scotland. He neglected to send notice to Glendower and then reported to the king that the Welshman had refused to obey the summons, labeling his neighbor both traitor and coward. Even this did not satisfy the master of the Red Castle. He asked permission, and received the royal assent, to send a force against Glendower and to seize all his possessions as confiscated to the Crown.

  The move was made with more secrecy than might have been expected from one as rash and hot-tempered as Grey. With the assistance of Talbot, he marched one night to Sycharth and surrounded the castle before its owner had any inkling of an attack. The moat and the stone walls, described by Iolo Goch, were strong enough to hold out against this surprise foray long enough for Glendower to escape by a rear postern and to take refuge in the woods. The two Marcher barons sacked the house, killed many of the people, and stole everything worth carrying off. Grey then returned to Ruthin, convinced that he had suitably punished this proud neighbor for daring to oppose his lordly will.

  Soon after this episode the most alarming communications began to reach the king, who was still in Scotland and also his son Prince Hal. The latter now held the title of Prince of Wales and had been left in charge of military operations there. It was proving a hollow dignity for it was impossible to collect any revenue from the Welsh people. The royal chamberlain at Carnarvon wrote that the people “were meeting in secret,” that they were buying arms and horses and stealing where they could not buy. An even more disturbing evidence of racial unrest was that the Welsh students at Oxford (where they went in large numbers and figured furiously in the street riots), and even some at Cambridge, had deserted their hospitia and their books and were banding together to return to Wales, marching in secrecy by night and sleeping by day. Welsh laborers in the cities and towns were leaving their employment and crossing the border. It was very clear that an uprising was being planned, although there was nothing as yet to indicate how general it might become. Nor was there any mention of Owen Glendower.

  On September 20, 1400, the annual fair at Ruthin was being held. The town was bedecked with flags, there were booths in the streets and companies of strolling players and mountebanks to amuse the people. There was even a slightly festive atmosphere to be noticed about the grimly bastioned walls of the Red Castle. In the evening there would be morris da
ncing and singing.

  And then suddenly, swarming down out of the hills, came a large army of Welshmen, some mounted but most of them on foot. They carried their longbows over their shoulders (for the Welsh, who were great archers, had invented that tremendous weapon) and they sang as they marched. The dragon standard of Wales was carried in front, and beneath it rode Owen Glendower, proclaiming himself the real Prince of Wales and heir of the last Llewelyn.

  There were few armed men to defend the town, so it was swept clean of everything. Then, remembering what Grey of Ruthin had done to Sycharth, the town was burned to the ground.

  The honorable gentlemen at Westminster would have been wise to listen to the Bishop of St. Asaph. Owen Glendower was slow to anger but unappeasable when once aroused. All of North Wales was up in arms.

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  The myth of Glendower’s magic powers became generally believed after the first campaign that King Henry waged to put down the uprising. The Welsh leader had been successful in capturing some of the castles of the Marchers and even in throwing the city of Shrewsbury into a panic. Returning from Scotland, where he had accomplished nothing of note, Henry elected to redeem himself by routing the Welsh without any delay. He called up the levies of all the shires of the Midlands, as well as the border counties, and with a large and well-equipped force struck into the foothills.

  Glendower showed himself at intervals with numerous and noisy followers, with flags flying and instruments blazing away and all the byplay helpful in keeping the Welsh enthusiasm at a fighting pitch. Henry struck at him savagely every time he appeared but always with the same lack of result. The cheering and the music stopped, the proud banners seemed to fade away, and the army was soon invisible. When this had gone on for a month, and the winds which swept down the peaks became cold and harsh with a threat of sleet and snow, the English king called a halt.

  “There is magic in this, and the help of the devil himself,” was the substance of what he said to his lieutenants. “However else, I demand ye tell me, could so many vanish so completely?”

  The barons were entirely in agreement with him. The Fabian tactics of the Scots had prepared them for delaying action, but this went further than they had expected. One minute the enemy would be in full sight and the trees of the foothills would be glistening with steel and filled with bonnets, and then, almost in a trice, the Welsh would disappear and the forests into which the royal forces eagerly plunged would be empty and still.

  “The secrets of Merlin have been revealed to him,” was an opinion often expressed and generally believed. Merlin was associated in their minds with trees. Had he not gone to sleep in the trunk of one centuries before, and did not the Welsh expect him to emerge from it some day and lead them to victory and freedom? Perhaps the spirit of Merlin had entered the body of Owen Glendower.

  The reason for the success of the Welsh in avoiding clashes with the numerically much superior English was simpler than that. They knew every foot of this wild and strange country; they knew where the deep and tortuous valleys led and where the paths penetrated the seemingly pathless forests and where the white waters of the roaring streams, pouring down from the mountains, could be crossed. It was relatively easy to disappear quickly in country such as this.

  And, of course, there were caves in which scouts could lurk and rear guards take quick refuge. For centuries after these events two caves were pointed out as having been used by Glendower in his successful game of hide-and-seek with the infuriated Henry. They were each called Ogov Owain, or Owen’s Cave. It must have been that he used them in his last days when he played a solitary game, for there were no caves in Wales, or elsewhere, which could conceal an army with horses and wagons and supplies.

  Convinced finally that he had the Welsh leader cornered at the base of Snowdon, the great peak of North Wales which is surrounded by the most dense of forests and is accessible only to natives raised in knowledge of their complexities, Henry paraded his hungry troops through the passes and around the beautiful lakes with the greatest difficulty. They saw nothing of the enemy, and the only credit they could claim was that they crossed the water to the Isle of Angelsey and butchered some of the Franciscan friars quartered there, who were suspected of acting as spies for the Welsh patriots.

  It was as late in the season as November 9 when a much disgruntled Henry returned to London and in a fit of spleen gave all of Owen’s lands to the Earl of Somerset, one of his greedy and ubiquitous Beaufort half brothers. No one in England was less pleased at this than Reginald Grey, who had expected this loot would come to him. Later, Parliament passed a general pardon for all Welshmen, with the exception of Owen Glendower and his two brothers, Gwilym and Rhys. But no tendency was shown on the part of the wild hillmen to come forward and lay down their arms.

  In the spring the English under Harry Hotspur (this was before the Percys turned against the king) won a battle in North Wales at Cader Idris, but Owen had no part in the defeat. He had gone south and had conducted, according to reports which reached the king, a great meeting “with the purpose of invading England and of destroying the English tongue.” Henry came out like an enraged lion at this but he did not succeed in doing much in protection of the English tongue. By autumn the insurrection had spread to all parts of the country, and so again the royal forces took to horse and come galloping through the Marcher country to suppress this persistent and bold Welshman. The tireless Glendower came and went like a wraith, doing much damage to any royal corps which fell behind or became entangled in the wild forests and swirling streams.

  Settling down into winter headquarters somewhere in the safety of the mysterious sentinels of Snowdon, Owen Glendower devoted himself to a full winter of planning and negotiation. He wrote letters to the kings of France and Scotland, soliciting their help, and similar letters to the kings and chiefs of Ireland. Promises came back from both France and Scotland, but nothing very definite; enough, barely, to keep his hopes high and his will strong to go on fighting. He indulged in one foray only, which took him down to the sands of Dee and a systematic harrying of the lands of Grey of Ruthin.

  In the Middle Ages comets always aroused fears and strange speculations. When one appeared in the sky that spring, the Welsh people in the deep valleys, who could see little above them, climbed the rocky sides of the mountains and gazed in awe and aroused hope. The shepherds in the hills, who spent many of their nights under this new light in the sky, became filled with a rapt belief that it meant God had sent Owen Glendower to lead them.

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  The year 1401 saw Glendower accomplishing one success after another. He was as relentless as though fighting a civil war. The southern Welsh, who had comfortable homes and were averse to supporting this fierce leader from the north, were driven out and their homes burned. Anyone not fighting for him was an enemy and must be treated as such. Although the common people saw in his rising star the answer to centuries of prayer, the lords of the manors were not in any sense unanimous. This drove the supposed magician to bitter methods of extermination.

  Grey of Ruthin had been in London when his lands were raided, but immediately on his return the Welsh bands swooped down for a second time. Grey came out to face them and fell into an ambush. Many of his men were killed and he himself was taken prisoner. He probably expected a short shrift but instead he was taken to the region at Snowdon where the rebel sanctuary was located. He may have been taken in blindfolded or it may have been that the country thereabouts was so wild that no outsider could hope to find a way through it. The master of Ruthin, at any rate, was kept in extreme anxiety and exasperation throughout the summer, and in great physical discomfort. His sorrowing family had given the captive baron up for lost, knowing that the Welsh had not been taking prisoners, and so they were astonished when word was received that he was still alive.

  Glendower had a crafty twist to his mind and he understood, moreover, the character of his prisoner. He had thought of a better revenge on this personal enemy: he would hol
d him for ransom and fix the price of freedom at a very high figure. In one contemporary chronicle (Adam of Usk) the ransom is set at £16,000, but the best information places it at a more understandable total, 10,000 marks, of which 6000 were to be paid on Martinmas Day, November 11, on his release. His eldest son was to be turned over as a hostage for the payment of the balance.

  Grey was kept in a confinement described as inhumanly harsh, perhaps in a cave but certainly not in the temporary house that Glendower had erected for his family somewhere close to the historic peak. He chafed at the conditions and grew ill with the uncertainty. Finally duly accredited messengers arrived with the first payment concealed in their saddlebags, and with his son John (a brave young fellow who later died in the great Battle of Agincourt) ready to take his place. It seemed that Parliament had met and had agreed to the negotiations. The king had made a personal contribution, but not a large one, for there was never a time during Henry’s brief and unhappy reign when he was not in desperate straits for money.

  The crafty Glendower had chosen the punishment hardest for his one-time neighbor to bear. Grey arrived back at Ruthin to find his lands black from burning, his stock driven off, even the Red Castle in neglected condition. Although he succeeded in raising the balance and in getting his son out of rebel hands, he never recovered from the financial difficulties into which he had been plunged. He was to live for thirty years more and to raise a second family, but always he labored unhappily under the shadow of debt.

  A more agreeable prisoner in the rebel camp was Edmund Mortimer, uncle to the two sons of the Earl of March, who stood closer in the line of succession than the house of Lancaster. Mortimer had marched against the rebels with a considerable army raised in Herefordshire but, being an indifferent general, had been defeated with heavy losses. Owen took his illustrious captive back into the wilds about Snowdon and lodged him in comfort with the members of his own family.