The Rise and Fall of Owain Glyn Dwr

England, France and the Welsh Rebellion in the Late Middle Ages

Gideon Brough

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781784535933
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781786721105
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

Owain Glyndwr is a towering figure in Welsh history. He was the warrior who led the Welsh Revolt and the last war of Welsh independence (1400-1415). He defeated Henry IV's army, was a worthy opponent of the king's champion, the legendary Henry Percy - 'Hotspur' – and last native Welshman to bear the title Prince of Wales. He held court at Harlech and envisioned an independent Welsh state and church with national universities. Yet Glyndwr's success was short-lived - his ultimate defeat at the hands of the English saw the final abandonment of the Welsh cause by France and his own disappearance into an unmarked grave. Gideon Brough here provides a new biography of this iconic man – as military leader, diplomat, medieval statesman and staunch Welsh nationalist.

part one

The Winds of War

chapter one

The Outbreak of Revolt

… and those in parliament said that they cared not for these bare-footed idiots.1

The course of events which led to the outbreak of the revolt in Wales seems well-established. The conventional account begins with the invasion of part of Owain Glyn Dŵr’s territory by Reginald de Grey, Lord of Ruthin, who also deliberately withheld a royal summons to accompany the new king, Henry IV, on campaign to Scotland in summer 1400. Consequently, when he did not serve the new king on his expedition north, Owain was declared a traitor and his lands were forfeit. Owain’s unsuccessful efforts for a mediated solution to the dispute included representation to Henry IV’s first parliament by John Trefor, bishop of St Asaph. This appeal, tempered with a warning of a possible Welsh revolt, famously drew the scornful remark that those in parliament did not care for the Welsh, and mocked them as ‘bare-footed idiots’. This series of apparent injustices seemingly caused Glyn Dŵr to light the flames of revolt in Wales. The story unfolds further; Owain reportedly gathered his principal supporters and relatives at Glyndyfrdwy on 16 September 1400, where they proclaimed him prince of Wales in defiance of the king. Two days later, Owain led a force, possibly numbering around 300, against Grey’s town of Ruthin, thereby beginning a destructive six-day rampage across north-east Wales, encompassing Ruthin, Denbigh, Rhuddlan, Flint, Hawarden, Holt, Oswestry and Welshpool. Suddenly and evocatively, Owain appeared to have single-handedly caused the Welsh to rise, rally to his banner and strike at their oppressors.2 The accepted account of the revolt, even from its outset at Ruthin in September 1400, unequivocally portrays Owain as the head of a national movement, the leader to whom many Welshmen rallied when summoned and for whose ‘cause’ this rebellion was fought.3

However, the political and military situation in Wales in this period was markedly more complex than has previously been presented. While the actions implicating Owain unquestionably form part of the revolt story, scrutiny of contemporary sources does not fully support the commonly held version of events. In fact, the evidence of the time shows that Owain likely had no involvement in the outbreak of the widespread violence and only a contributory but focal role in the acts of rebellion which flared across Wales in the years 1399 to 1401.

Before Glyn Dŵr took up arms in north-east Wales in September 1400, rebellion erupted in the opposite corner of the country, in Carmarthenshire, in summer 1399. Neither this initial outbreak of violence nor the episodes which immediately followed were instigated by or connected to Owain. The earliest incident of revolt was consequent to Henry Bolingbroke’s uprising against Richard II. In 1398, the king had exiled Henry, who went to the French court. Following the death of Henry’s powerful father, John of Gaunt, in February 1399, Richard seized Bolingbroke’s inheritance. While Richard was campaigning in Ireland, Henry returned from exile and landed in Yorkshire in June. He gathered an army, apparently intending to confront Richard and oblige him to reinstate his inheritance. Richard received news of Bolingbroke’s revolt while in Ireland, from where he set sail with his coterie of advisors and his army as soon as weather permitted. Richard appears to have landed in west Wales on 22 or 24 July 1399.4

The chronicles of the time clearly described the significant disorder which broke out between the Welsh and the English after Richard’s landing in Wales. The Dieulacres Chronicle described how Richard’s army dispersed in west Wales while he travelled to Carmarthen. As it did so, violence erupted; ‘thus they [the Englishmen in the army] were all scattered, and the Welsh despoiled them to a man, so it was only with difficulty that they got back to their homes’.5 This was corroborated by Thomas Walsingham who recorded in his Chronica Maiora:

The king’s followers – magnates, lords or lesser men, regardless of their status – were harassed by Welshmen … Of those who had been with or followed the king, scarcely one escaped unless he was prepared to hand over not only his arms but whatever was in his purse as well.6

Two of those robbed when they left Milford were the powerful earls of Rutland and Worcester. The former, Edward of Norwich, was Edward III’s grandson, who became duke of York in 1402 and later died at Agincourt. Worcester, Sir Thomas Percy, had enjoyed a fine career, principally as a royal ambassador, an admiral and a soldier of long campaigning experience. He had served alongside the notables of his time, such as Richard, earl of Arundel, Hugh Calvely and John of Gaunt, to whom he was related. However, he had also experienced a notable defeat at Soubise in France in 1372, where he and another key English commander, Jean de Grailly, were captured by Owain Lawgoch’s men. By the time King Richard reached Flint in north-east Wales, Rutland and Worcester had joined Bolingbroke. The monk of Evesham also noted that ‘[Bolingbroke] was also joined there by Lord Scales and young Thomas, lord Bardolf, who had come from Ireland and had been robbed while passing through Wales’.7

Another period chronicle, the Chronicque de la Traïson et Mort de Richart Deux roy Dengleterre, mentioned Welsh–English violence just over the border in England: ‘as soon as the Duke [Henry] and his people set out from Chester, the Welsh did him great damage; for, whenever they could entrap the English, they killed and stripped them without mercy.’8

Jean Creton, a French knight, was in Richard II’s retinue as it returned from Ireland and travelled through Wales. Creton’s first-hand account, completed by the end of 1402 or early the next year, regaled a tale of the events surrounding Richard’s fall. While his overestimation of the size of the Welsh forces encountered and his claim that they acted out of loyalty to Richard are problematic, his work should be viewed in its contemporary political context.9 Richard was popular at the French court and had married into their royal family. Richard’s father-in-law, King Charles VI, had previously agreed to send troops to support him if required. Creton’s work began to percolate the French courts at a time when the Orleanist faction was increasingly advocating hostilities with Henry. Also, news of the burgeoning revolt in Wales had arrived in Paris, so Creton’s work likely found a receptive audience there. He wrote that he witnessed much fighting between the Welsh and the English, often involving large numbers of combatants: ‘The Welsh, who saw their treason for what it was [Englishmen deserting Richard], attacked them in strength, in groups of one or two thousand … Thus were the English despoiled by the Welsh.’ Creton further related the tale of a horseman who reported to Richard: ‘behold how the English were treated by the Welsh, who had no mercy on them, as they marched like people put to the rout, here ten, here twenty, there forty, there an hundred.’10

Additionally, Creton detailed the probably apocryphal account of a Welsh raid on Henry’s camp in an apparent attempt to free the captive Richard. The incident reportedly took place near Lichfield, almost seventy miles as the crow flies from Flint where Richard was captured.11 Although he described it vividly, this incident seems highly unrealistic. It is more likely an effort to present the Welsh to his French courtly audience as faithful supporters of Richard, as were the French, as well as being committed enemies of Henry, as were many of the French but particularly the rising Orleanist faction. Inevitably, Creton’s work was connected to movements in the French political sphere, and must be considered in that context.12

Despite the confusion caused by Bolingbroke’s revolution, these English and French sources consistently and independently demonstrate that, by August 1399 at the latest, considerable numbers of Welshmen had risen in revolt against the incumbent king of England and the man who subsequently ascended the throne. None of these actions were connected to Owain Glyn Dŵr. Moreover, it is possible that Owain acknowledged the Carmarthenshire-born revolt as the beginning of a wider Welsh rebellion. In November 1401, barely a year after he took up arms, Owain wrote a letter seeking support from the lords of Ireland, characterising the conflict in Wales as one which ‘we have manfully waged [war] for nearly two years past’.13

In 1400, months before Owain appears in the contemporary narrative of the revolt, other incidences of rebellion erupted. First came the Epiphany or Earls’ Revolt, during which English nobles sought to kill Henry IV at a tournament, then restore Richard II. Although it was hatched in December 1399, it briefly came to life in southern England in early January 1400, before being crushed in the same month. At its conclusion, Henry IV had executed the earls of Salisbury, Huntingdon and Kent along with two knights, while the barons Despenser and Lumley were killed by mobs of townsfolk. Edward of Norwich was also implicated, but he is suspected to have reported the plot to Henry, leading to his accomplices’ certain deaths. It seems likely that the Epiphany revolt caused Henry to recognise that Richard, while alive, would remain a focus for opposition. Shortly after, Richard died in unrecorded circumstances in captivity in Pontefract castle.

Days after the demise of that uprising, another rebellion briefly flourished in Cheshire. Although it was quickly smothered, with judicial sessions beginning in March 1400, the leaders were not fully brought to peace through pardons until mid-1401. Due to the fact that Henry Percy junior raised his rebel army in the area in 1403, it is reasonable to suggest that the county was not entirely pacified in 1400 and that it maintained Ricardian sympathies.14 These two English uprisings demonstrate that some in England were also willing to fight against the new king. Within this broader landscape of dissatisfaction over the change of monarch, particularly the manner in which it occurred, other acts of rebellion arose in Wales and merit incorporation into the history of the revolt.

Modern and contemporary sources refer to a revolt by the Tudors in north-west Wales and Anglesey prior or, perhaps, in a similar period to Owain’s attack on Ruthin. Some accounts, probably inaccurately, describe the Tudors in combat against King Henry. While certain recent authors connect this poorly evidenced act of Tudor rebellion to Owain’s attack on Ruthin, nothing from the time explicitly does so.15 It is compelling that in October 1400, Henry’s expeditionary force marched to Bangor and then Caernarfon, in the Tudor heartland. Although Henry’s army briefly passed though Ruthin, it did not stop at Glyndyfrdwy, nor destroy it, nor did Henry or his agents seek Owain at that time. Therefore, it seems clear that at that moment, while in north Wales, the king acted as though the Tudor rising posed the more serious threat.

Also, before September 1400, north Wales experienced other acts of violence consistent with revolts, yet nothing contemporary connects these events to Owain either. Lord Grey reported widespread disorder in north Wales to Henry, Prince of Wales.16 A later legal proceeding against a Denbighshire man, Dafydd ap Cadwaladr Ddu, retrospectively dated the start of his rebellious activities, in league with others, to 17 August 1400. Owain was yet to enter the fray, but rebellion had already erupted in south-west, north-west and north-east Wales.17

*****

It is at this point that Owain Glyn Dŵr began to appear on documents recording the Welsh rebellions. At some unknown date, the well-known events took place which brought into collision the original protagonists. First, Lord Grey invaded Croesau, part of Owain’s land, seizing it for himself. Then, parliament refused to support the Welshman’s consequent petition for justice, ignoring advice from the bishop of St Asaph that the Welsh might revolt if justice were not seen to be done. Certain of those in parliament scoffed that the Welsh were a rabble of ‘bare-footed idiots’ belonging to ‘a nation of little reputation’.18

The parliamentary session in question was Henry IV’s first parliament, which sat between 6 October and 19 November 1399. The bishop of St Asaph and Lord Grey of Ruthin attended; it was during this sitting that Henry IV announced his plan to attack Scotland. No such Welsh affairs appear in Richard II’s last parliament in September 1397, while Henry’s second parliament sat in 1401 and debated the violence which had already occurred in Wales. This dates Grey’s attack on Owain’s land as prior to October 1399. This suggests that Glyn Dŵr waited a year for redress, while following the appropriate appeal processes. Such a man appears a reluctant rebel, particularly when significant numbers of Welshmen had already taken up arms.19

When Owain failed to join the new king on the expedition to Scotland in summer 1400, Henry declared him a traitor and his lands forfeit. On the same charge, Henry inflicted similar sanctions on English nobles also. Lord Grey had reputedly withheld a royal summons destined for Glyn Dŵr and was thus responsible for Owain’s disinheritance.20 In riposte, Owain and his supporters supposedly gathered at Glyndyfrdwy on 16 September 1400, where they allegedly proclaimed him prince of Wales. Contemporary records named Owain among the many who sacked Ruthin on 18 September 1400 and then conducted a six-day campaign against English towns in north-east Wales.21

However, there are a number of significant problems with the traditional story of the beginning of Owain’s revolt. First, Henry IV issued orders on 19 September from Northampton, where he had stopped on his march south: he was not marching towards Wales. He wrote two orders; one called for troops and fencible men from several counties to muster in order to accompany him and suppress unspecified hostilities in Wales, the other demanded the mobilisation of troops for the defence of castles in Cheshire against the Welsh.22 In neither order did he mention Owain because the news from Wales delivered to Henry could not have concerned the attack on Ruthin. There was no standing messenger network during this period and, at well over 100 miles away, Henry was too far away for a message to reach him in that time, had the messengers even known the marching king’s whereabouts. Henry’s orders of 19 September almost certainly referred to widespread disturbances in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Note on place names and people involved
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part One: The Winds of War
• 1: The Outbreak of Revolt
• 2: Rebels and Risings
• Part Two: Rise
• 3: ‘Owen … the Rod of God’s Anger’
• 4: Owain, Prince
• 5: The Ambitions of the French Courtly Factions
• Part Three: Glyn Dŵr’s Diplomacy
• 6: The Alliance of 1404
• 7: An Orleanist Coup?
• 8: The Two French Invasions of 1405
• 9: Invasion and Truce?
• 10: The Pennal Declaration
• Part Four: Fall
• 11: English Diplomatic Manoeuvring
• 12: Ailing France, Rising England
• 13: Constance – A Last Stand for Wales?
• 14: Owain’s Last Days?
• Conclusions
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography