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.
[Illustration: CARNARVON CASTLE.
Copyright
F. Frith & Co.]
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]
[12] That ships could reach the gate at the foot of the rock of
Harlech is undoubted. What course the water took or how much of
the Morfa was actually under water is a matter of uncertainty.
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.
[Illustration: MACHYNLLETH.
Copyright
F. Frith & Co.]
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.
[Illustration: OWEN'S COUNCIL HOUSE, DOLGELLY.
Copyright
C. H. Young.]
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.
[Illustration: HARLECH.
Copyright
F. Frith & Co.]
Those to whom such things appeal will see much that is appropriate in
the gathering of Glyndwr, his bards, his warriors, his priests, his
counsellors, at Harlech during this winter which perhaps marked the
high-tide of his renown. His wife, "the best of wives," with the fair
Katherine, wife of Mortimer, was here, and a crowd of dames, we may be
well assured, whose manors were not at that time, with their husbands
in the field, the safest of abodes for lonely females. Owen's three
married daughters were not here, for the Scudamores, Monningtons, and
Crofts, whose names they bore, being Herefordshire men, were all upon
the other side. Edmund Mortimer, of course, was present, and it is
strange how a soldier of such repute and of so vigorous a stock should
have sunk his individuality so absolutely in that of his masterful
father-in-law. Glyndwr's two elder sons, now grown to man's estate,
Griffith and Meredith, and his own younger brother, Tudor, who was
soon to fall, with his brother-in-law, John Hanmer, just returned from
his French mission, complete the family group that we may be fairly
justified in picturing at Harlech, assembled round the person of their
now crowned Prince. Rhys Gethin, the victor of Pilleth and the terror
of the South Wales Marches, was probably there, and the two Tudors of
Penmynydd, whom from first to last several thousand men had followed
across the Menai from the still unmolested fields of Anglesey. Yonge
the Chancellor, too, fresh from France, Llewelyn Bifort, whom, with
the consent of the Avignon Pope, Owen had nominated to the wasted
estate and the burnt cathedral of Bangor, and Bishop Trevor of St.
Asaph, most eminent of them all, were at Harlech beyond a doubt.
Robert ap Jevan of Ystymtegid in Eivioneth was most probably there,
with Rhys Dwy, "a great master among them," who was executed in London
eight years later, and last, but by no means least, Owen's faithful
laureate, Griffith Llwyd, or "Iolo Goch," who, among all the bards
that had tuned their voices and their harps to Owen's praise and been
stirred to ecstasy by his successes, stood first and chief.
Glyndwr had in truth no cause to complain of his chief bard, who was a
veteran in song when war came to stimulate him to patriotic frenzy,
and the stirring tones in which he sang of his Prince's deeds were
echoed by every native harp in Wales.
"Immortal fame shall be thy meed,
Due to every glorious deed,
Which latest annals shall record,
Beloved and victorious Lord,
Grace, wisdom, valour, all are thine,
Owain Glyndowerdy divine,
Meet emblem of a two-edged sword,
Dreaded in war, in peace adored.
"Loud fame has told thy gallant deeds,
In every word a Saxon bleeds,
Terror and flight together came,
Obedient to thy mighty name;
Death in the van with ample stride
Hew'd thee a passage deep and wide,
Stubborn as steel thy nervous chest
With more than mortal strength possessed."
Though a metrical translation may be unsatisfactory enough to the
Celtic scholar, this rendering will not be without interest to English
readers as giving the sense, at any rate, of words addressed to
Glyndwr by the man nearest to his person. The fourteenth century was
the halcyon period of Welsh song; Dafydd ap Gwylim, the greatest of
all Welsh love-poets, was still alive in Glyndwr's youth, while Gutyn
Owen was almost a contemporary. Welsh poetry had attuned itself, since
the Edwardian conquest had brought comparative peace in Wales, to
gentler and more literary themes. The joys of agriculture and country
life, the happiness of the peasant, the song of birds, the murmur of
streams, and, above all, the gentler passions of human nature had
supplanted to a great extent the fiercer notes of martial eulogies,
the pæans of victory, and the plaintive wails over long-past but
unforgotten defeats. It is strange, too, that this flow of song should
have signalised a century when the profession of a wandering minstrel
was in Wales for the first time ostracised by law.
But the old martial minstrelsy was not dead. The yearning of the
soldier and the man of ancient race to emulate the deeds or the
supposed deeds of his predecessors, and to be the subject after death
of bardic eulogy in hall or castle, was still strong. It helped many a
warrior to meet with cheerfulness a bloody death, or with the memory
of heroic deeds performed to sink with resignation at the hands of
disease or old age into the cold grave.
[Decoration]
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