THE KING AND HOTSPUR
1402
As if the world of Britain were not already sufficiently excited, the
spring of 1402 opened with tremendous portents. In the month of
February a comet with its fiery streaming tail, "a terror to the
world," broke across the heavens and set all Europe trembling. The
bards of Wales rose with one voice to the occasion, headed by Iolo
Goch, who recalled the fiery star that heralded the birth of Arthur,
and even that other one which guided the Magi to our Saviour's cradle.
The fiery shapes, too, that "lit the front of heaven" at Owen's birth
were recalled again with a fresh outburst of enthusiasm, and the tail
of this particular comet, which Adam of Usk saw by day as well as by
night, while travelling towards Rome, curled up at times, in the eyes
of credulous Welsh patriots, into a dragon's shape, the badge of Welsh
nationality. Englishmen beheld it pointing at one time towards Wales,
at another towards Scotland, and read in these mysterious changes
portents for the coming year. Thunder-storms of terrific violence
swept over the country. At Danbury, says Holinshed, while the people
were in church, lightning struck the roof and destroyed the chancel,
and while the storm was at its height the devil entered the sacred
building, dressed as a Franciscan friar (one of Owen's well-wishers,
it will be remembered), and leaped three times over the altar from
right to left; then, turning black in the face, he rushed down the
aisle, actually passing between a man's legs, and leaving an
overpowering smell of sulphur in his track. The man's legs were black
ever after, so that there was no doubt about the nature of the
visitant! Other weird things happened in various parts of the country,
which do not concern our story, except to show how strained were men's
imaginations in a year which after all proved fruitful enough of
events.
Whatever faith Owen may have had in his own magical art, he at any
rate did not waste time just now in incantations or in interpreting
the prophecy, but swept down the Vale of Clwyd, making on his way a
final clearance of Grey's desolated property. With much significance,
read by the light of his future relations with the Mortimers and
Percys, he spared the lordship of Denbigh, though its owners were
still his open enemies. Descending the Vale, however, he fell upon
Saint Asaph with merciless hand, destroying the cathedral, the
bishop's palace, and the canon's house. Trevor was at this time the
bishop,--the same, it will be remembered, who warned Henry and his
council against exasperating Owen and the Welsh; he had from the first
gone over to the new King, had prominently assisted at the deposition
of Richard, and had since held many conspicuous offices. He was now a
ruined man, an enforced exile from his diocese, and he must have
derived but poor consolation from reminding his English friends of the
accuracy of his prophecy. He came of the great border House of Trevor,
and, among other things, built the first stone bridge in Wales, which
may yet be seen stemming with five massive arches the turbulent
torrents of the Dee at Llangollen. In the meantime he was a pensioner
on the King, but he will appear later in a character of quite another
sort. An entry of £66, paid to him at this time in lieu of his losses,
appears on the Pell Rolls.
No danger just now threatened from the English border nor, on the
other hand, did any help come to Glyndwr from Ireland or the North.
There was indeed something of a lull in Wales throughout this spring,
unless perhaps for those unfortunate Welshmen who held back from
Glyndwr's cause and yet ventured to remain in the country. They, at
any rate, had not much peace.
To this date is assigned the well-known story of Glyndwr and his
cousin Howel Sele, that gruesome tragedy which has invested the
romantic heights of Nannau with a ceaseless interest to generations of
tourists, and many more generations of Welshmen, and has seized the
fancy of the romancist and the poet. Now Nannau, where Vaughans have
lived for many centuries, enjoys the distinction of being the most
elevated country-seat in Wales, being some eight hundred feet above
Dolgelly, which lies at the base of the beautiful grounds that cover
the isolated hill on whose summit the present mansion stands. It is
famous also, even in a region pre-eminent for its physical charms, for
the surpassing beauty of its outlook, which people from every part of
Britain come annually in thousands to enjoy. To the south the great
mass of Cader Idris rises immediately above, with infinite grandeur.
To the west the Barmouth estuary gleams seaward through a vista of
wood and mountain. To the north the valley of the rushing Mawddach
opens deep into the hills, while to the eastward, where the twin peaks
of the Arans fill the sky, spread those miles of foliage through which
the crystal streams of the Wnion come burrowing and tumbling seawards.
Nature showed even a wilder aspect to Glyndwr and the then lord of
Nannau as they took their memorable walk together upon these same
heights five centuries ago.
At that time there stood in the meadows beneath, near the confluence
of the Wnion and the Mawddach, the noble abbey of Cymmer, whose
remains are still a conspicuous object in the landscape. Howel Sele
was by no means an admirer or follower of his cousin Owen, and if
latterly he had not dared openly to oppose him, he had at least held
back; his relationship to the chief alone saving him, no doubt, from
the punishment meted out to others who were less prudent, or less
faint-hearted. The worthy abbot of Cymmer, however, for some motive of
his own, or perhaps in a genuine spirit of Christianity, endeavoured
to promote a better understanding between the relatives, and so far
succeeded that Owen consented to come and visit Howel in peaceful
fashion, bringing with him only a few attendants.
[Illustration: LOOKING UP THE MAWDDACH FROM NANNAU.
Copyright
C. H. Young.]
The meeting took place and an amicable understanding seemed assured.
During the course of the day the two men, so runs the tale, went for a
stroll in the park, Howel, at any rate, carrying his bow. He was
celebrated for his prowess as a marksman, and Owen, catching sight of
a buck through the trees, suggested that his cousin should give him an
exhibition of his skill. Howel, falling in apparently with the
proposal, bent his bow, and having feigned for a moment to take aim at
the deer swung suddenly round and discharged the arrow full at Owen's
breast. The latter, either from singular forethought or by great good
luck, happened to have a shirt of mail beneath his tunic, and the
shaft fell harmlessly to the ground. The fate of Howel was swift and
terrible. Accounts differ somewhat, but they all agree in the
essential fact that neither his wife and family nor his friends ever
set eyes upon the lord of Nannau again. It is supposed that the two
men and their attendants forthwith engaged in deadly combat, Glyndwr
proving the victor, and consigning his cousin to some terrible fate
that was only guessed at long afterwards. In any case, he at once
burnt the old house at Nannau to the ground, and its remains, Pennant
tells us, were yet there in his day,--a hundred years ago. For more
than a generation no man knew what had become of the ill-fated Howel,
but forty years afterwards, near the spot where he was last seen, a
skeleton corresponding to the proportions of the missing man was
found inside a hollow oak tree, and it is said that there were those
still living who could and did explain how the vanquished Howel had
been immured there dead or alive by Glyndwr. The old oak lived on till
the year 1813, and collapsed beneath its weight of years on a still
July night, a few hours after it had been sketched by the celebrated
antiquary, Sir Richard Colt Hoare, who tells us it then measured
twenty-seven feet in girth. It had been an object of pious horror for
all time to the natives of the district, and was known as the "hollow
oak of demons," and dread sounds were heard issuing from its vast
trunk by all who were hardy enough to venture near it after nightfall.
Sir Walter Scott, who once visited Nannau, remembered the weird story
and the haunted oak when he was writing _Marmion_:
"All nations have their omens drear,
Their legends wild of love or fear;
To Cambria look--the peasant see
Bethink him of Glyndowerdy,
And shun the spirit's Blasted Tree."
[Illustration: OLD LODGE AT NANNAU, NEAR THE SITE OF THE "OAK OF
DEMONS."
Copyright
C. H. Young.]
But while Glyndwr was having things pretty much his own way in Wales
throughout the spring of 1402, King Henry was in truth in great
anxiety. To add to his cares and trouble he was much concerned with
endeavours to secure a husband for his daughter Blanche, and a wife
for himself in the person of Joanna of Brittany. For the lavish
expenditure inseparable from these royal alliances he had to squeeze
his people, and they were in no condition to be squeezed, to say
nothing of the fact that his captains and soldiers and garrisons in
Wales were in a state of pecuniary starvation, and here and there in
actual want of food. All this awakened much discontent and there were
serious riots in many places. A plot of which the friars, chiefly
represented by Glyndwr's friends the Franciscans, were the leaders,
was discovered and crushed with much hanging and quartering. Even
Henry's loyal subjects of London turned mutinous and their juries
refused to convict the priests. The aid, however, of a packed jury in
Islington was invoked, who excused themselves for some manifestly
outrageous decisions with the naïve but unanswerable plea that if they
did not hang the prisoners they would be hanged themselves. The report
was still sedulously bruited abroad that Richard was alive, and, if
anything, the idea gained ground; while, to complete the distress of
the King, the Scots were waging open war upon him in the North, and
proving perhaps better allies to Glyndwr than if they had responded to
that warrior's appeals and landed in scattered bands upon the coast of
Wales. The Percys, however, the King's "faithful cousins," confronted
the Scots and were a host in themselves. He despatched his daughter
Blanche and her hardly extracted dower to Germany, and a terrible
example was made of the friars. Glyndwr and the condition of Wales one
can hardly suppose he underestimated, but he permitted himself, at any
rate, to shut his eyes to it.
Henry's dream, since mounting the throne, had been an Eastern crusade.
So far, however, his own unruly subjects and neighbours had allowed
him but little breathing time, and he had been splashed with the mud
of almost every county in England and Wales; but now he had gone to
Berkhampstead, his favourite palace, to rest and dream of that
long-cherished scheme of Eastern adventure.
"So shaken as we are, so wan with care,
Find we a time for frighted peace to pant,
And breathe short-winded accents of new broils
To be commenced in strands afar remote.
No more the thirsty entrance of this soil
Shall daub her lips with her own children's blood;
No more shall trenching war channel her fields,
Nor bruise her flowerets with the armed hoofs
Of hostile paces."
But the month of June was not yet out, when all at once there came
upon the King at Berkhampstead "a post from Wales laden with heavy
news," which shattered all dreams of Palestine and turned his
unwilling thoughts once more to the stormy hills whence came this
urgent message.
Late in May, Glyndwr had again left North Wales and with a large force
made his way through the present counties of Montgomery and Radnor,
and fallen on the as yet unravaged border of Hereford. Now it so
happened that among the districts which here suffered the most were
those belonging to the young Earl of March, the rightful heir to the
throne, and on that account kept secure under lock and key by Henry.
This child, for he was nothing more, was descended from Lionel, Duke
of Clarence, third son of Edward the Third. His title to the throne
stood next to that of Richard, who had himself officially named him as
his heir. Henry, sensible of his dangerous claim, kept the boy and his
brother under his own charge, leaving their estates in Denbigh and the
South Wales Marches to be administered by their uncle, Edmund
Mortimer, who was still a young man and not without renown as a
soldier. Mortimer and other Lord Marchers had been notified in good
time to raise the forces of the border counties and march out to meet
the Welsh.
They met upon the border in a narrow valley at Pilleth near Knighton,
and the result was wholly disastrous to the English. The Welsh on this
occasion were led by Rhys ap Gethin, one of Owen's most formidable
captains, and they utterly overthrew Mortimer's army, driving it down
the narrow valley of the Lugg below Pilleth hill where escape was
difficult, and slaying eleven hundred men, among whom were great
numbers of knights and gentlemen. Mortimer himself was captured, and
it was said, with how much truth does not appear evident, that many of
Mortimer's troops, who were his tenants, and Welshmen, turned their
arms against their own side and made a bloody day still bloodier. The
story of the outrages of the Welsh women upon the bodies of the slain
is a familiar topic of dispute and not a very savoury one.[8] In
regard to Owen's new captive, Mortimer, as the uncle and
representative of the rightful heir to the throne, he was of much more
actual importance than Grey of Ruthin. But the Welsh chieftain had no
personal grudge against the handsome and gallant young soldier who had
fallen into his hands by the ordinary fortune of war. Indeed, as we
know, he had a kindly feeling for the Percys and the Mortimers; so
much so that some of the King's most ardent friends, as well as Henry
himself, strongly hinted that Sir Edmund was no unwilling prisoner,
and that it was not wholly the chances of war which had placed him in
Owen's hands. Mortimer's relations with Glyndwr later on might lend
plausibility to such suggestions; but it is difficult to suppose that
had the former wished earlier for an alliance with Owen, he would have
chosen such an unnecessarily bloody and risky manner of effecting it.
Moreover Henry had reason to misrepresent Mortimer's sentiments, for
the question of the hour was his ransom. There can, I think, be little
doubt that Mortimer was at first as unwilling a prisoner as Grey. He
and Owen may have soon developed a personal liking for each other, but
that is of little importance. Mortimer at any rate seems to have been
sent to Snowdon, or possibly to Owen's small prison at Llansantffraid
in Glyndyfrdwy, which totters even now in extreme decay upon the banks
of the Dee; and ransom no doubt was regarded as the ordinary outcome
of the affair by all parties, except the King. For it soon became
evident that Henry, not unwilling to see a possible rival in durance
vile and safe out of the way, was going to oppose all overtures for
his ransom.
[8] Some thirty years ago the farmers of the district drove their
ploughs into the old sod which from time immemorial had covered
the long, steep slope of Pilleth hill, or Bryn Glâs. In turning it
up they came upon masses of human bones all collected in one spot,
which indicated without a doubt the burying-place of the battle of
1402. The space was withdrawn from cultivation and a grove of
trees was planted on it, which have now grown to a large size and
form a prominent object in the valley.
Hotspur, Mortimer's brother-in-law, waxed hot and angry, as of late he
had been apt to do with the King, but he was far away in the North
looking after the Scottish invaders. He now wrote to Henry that it was
a strange thing, seeing the great concern he had showed for Grey of
Ruthin, that he should act thus towards a subject who was of even
greater consequence, and moreover his (Percy's) brother-in-law.
Getting no satisfaction, according to Leland, who quotes from an old
chronicle, the fiery Hotspur went southward himself to Henry and
demanded in no gentle terms the right to ransom his wife's brother. To
this demand the King replied that he would not strengthen those who
were his enemies by paying money to them. Hotspur retorted warmly
"that the King owed it to those who had risked their lives upon his
account, to come to their aid when in peril." The King rejoined
angrily, "You are a traitor; you would succour the enemies of myself
and my kingdom." "I am no traitor," said Percy, "but faithful and
speak in good faith." The King then drew his sword; whereupon Hotspur,
exclaiming, "Not here, but on the field of battle," left the royal
presence, as it happened, for ever.
This famous interview is practically endorsed by the rhymer Hardyng,
Hotspur's personal attendant:
"Sir Henry sawe no grace for Mortimer,
His wife's brother; he went away unkende
To Berwyk so, and after came no nere,
Afore thei met at Shrowesbury in fere
Wher then thei fought for cause of his extent,
He purposed had Mortimer his coronement."
Hardyng in the preceding verse gives two other reasons for the
defection of the Percys, and though our story has not yet reached that
notable crisis, the lines may perhaps be quoted here:
"The King hym blamed for he toke not Owen,
When he came to him on his assurance,
And he answered then to the King again,
He might not so kepe his affiaunce,
To shame himself, with such a variaunce
The King blamed him for his prisoner,
Th' Erle Douglas, for cause he was not there."
This distinct statement from such an authority that Hotspur had met
Glyndwr, referring of course to the previous year in Wales, should be
conclusive, though it is not creditable to Henry's honour that he
should throw in Hotspur's face the fact of his having failed to act
treacherously towards the Welshman. The reference to the Earl of
Douglas will become plain shortly.
The victory of Pilleth had caused great enthusiasm among the Welsh,
and made a particularly marked impression upon the southern and
south-eastern districts, where the Norman baronial houses were strong,
and where even the Welsh "gentiles" had by no means as yet given an
eager welcome to Owen's dragon standard with its accompaniment of
flaming torches and pitiless spears. Hundreds of hitherto half-hearted
Welshmen now joined Glyndwr, who, flushed with victory and strong in
its prestige, turned fiercely upon Glamorgan and went plundering,
burning, and ravaging his way through that fair county, taking little
reck of the score or two of Norman castles so strong in defence but at
this time so powerless for offence. He fell on Cardiff and destroyed
the whole town, saving only the street where stood a religious house
of his friends, or at any rate Henry's enemies, the Franciscans.
Turning eastward he then sacked and burnt the bishop's palace at
Llandaff, stormed Abergavenny Castle, and destroyed the town.
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.
[Illustration: PILLETH HILL, RADNORSHIRE.
Copyright
R. St. John Boddington.]
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]
[9] Presteign.
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.
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