WELSH REVERSES
1405
Glyndwr was now, by the lowest estimate, in his forty-sixth year. For
that period, when manhood began early, and old age, if it came at all,
came quickly, he certainly carried his years with remarkable
lightness. Who can say, however, with what feelings he surveyed his
handiwork? From end to end, with almost the sole exception of Anglesey
and Carnarvonshire and western Pembroke, Wales lay desolate and
bleeding. Owen's hands were red, not only with the blood of Saxons,
but with that of old friends and even kinsmen. Red ravage had marked
his steps, and there were few parts of the country that he had not at
some time or other crossed and recrossed in his desolating marches.
Carnarvonshire and western Merioneth and the Plinlimmon Mountains were
full of booty, stock, and valuables brought from Norman-Welsh
lordships and from beyond the English border. The admirers of Glyndwr
would fain believe, and there is something to be said for the theory,
that passion and revenge had no part in the havoc which the Welsh hero
spread throughout his native land, but that it was due to a deliberate
scheme of campaign by which the country was to be made not only too
hot, but too bare, to hold the Saxon.
It would be waste of words to speculate on motives that can never be
divulged and schemes that have left no witnesses. We have at any rate
to face tradition, which counts for much. And this places Glyndwr in
the eyes of most Welshmen, with all his ravagings and burnings, on a
pedestal above the greatest and most patriotic of their older
Princes--above Llewelyn ap Iorwerth, above the last Llewelyn, the son
of Gryffydd, above Owen Gwynedd. The cool-headed student may be much
less enthusiastic. But he will also call to mind the ethics of war in
those days, and then perhaps remember that even in modern conflicts,
whose memories stand out with conspicuous glory, there has been no
very great improvement on the methods of Glyndwr. The Carolinian who
preferred King George to Washington and Congress--and King George
after all was at least no usurper--suffered neither more nor less than
the Welshmen of Glamorgan or Carmarthen or Merioneth who from prudence
or inclination preferred Bolingbroke to Glyndwr. Wars of this type
have ever been ferocious. The Anglo-Americans of the eighteenth
century were a civilised and peaceful people; Glyndwr lived at a time
when war was a trade, ravage its handmaid, and human life of but small
account.
It is quite possible to overestimate the effect upon a country in
those days of even the most merciless treatment. The torch was not the
instrument of irreparable loss that it would have been if applied with
equal freedom only a hundred and fifty years later. Outside the feudal
castles and the great ecclesiastical foundations, there were few
permanent structures of much value either in England or Wales. It was
late in the century with which we are dealing before the manor-house
and grange of the yeoman or country gentleman became buildings of the
style with which careless fancy is apt to associate their names. It is
salutary sometimes to leave the ordinary paths of history and refresh
one's mind with the domestic realities of olden days as they are shown
to us by writers who have given their attention to such humble but
helpful details. The ordinary English manor-house of Glyndwr's time
was a plain wooden building,[13] with an escape-hole in the thatched
roof for the smoke, a floor covered with rushes, and filthy from lack
of change, with bare boards laid on rude supports doing duty as
tables. A little tapestry sometimes relieved the crudeness of the bare
interior where such a crowd of human beings often gathered together.
Here and there an important person built for himself a compromise
between a manor and a castle, Glyndwr himself being an instance to the
point. The average manor-houses of Wales, the abodes of the native
gentry, were certainly no more, probably less, luxurious, and not
often--though some were even then--built of stone. As for the
peasantry, their dwellings in either the England or Wales of that time
were mere huts of mud, wood, or wattle, and were often, no doubt, not
worth the trouble of destroying.
[13] Mr. Denton, in his _England of the Fifteenth Century_, allows
no more than four, and usually only three rooms, to an average
manor-house: one for eating in, with a second, and perhaps a
third, for sleeping; a fire in the centre of the first.
The Welsh of those days, unlike the English, did not group themselves
in villages. Each man not an actual servant, whether he were gentleman
or small yeoman, lived apart upon his property or holding. If we
eliminate the present towns, the country must have been in most parts
almost as thickly populated as it is now. A valuable survival, known
as the _Record of Carnarvon_, a sort of local doomsday book, dating
from the thirteenth century, may be seen to-day, and it gives very
detailed information as to the persons, manors, and freeholds of that
country, and some idea of how well peopled for the times was even the
wildest part of wild Wales. Prince Henry, it will be remembered,
speaks of the Vale of Edeyrnion as a fine and populous country.
Giraldus Cambrensis, in his graphic account of his tour with
Archbishop Baldwin in the twelfth century, gives the same impression.
Still the destruction of such buildings as the mass of its people
lived in, even if they were destroyed, was of no vital consequence.
The loss of a year's crop was not irreparable, particularly in a
country where sheep and cattle, which could often be driven away, were
the chief assets of rural life. Glyndwr, to be sure, did what few
other makers of war, even in Wales, had done, for he destroyed some
of the chief ecclesiastical buildings. He burnt, moreover, several of
the small towns and dismantled many castles. "Deflower'd by Glindor"
is a remark frequently in the mouth of old Leland as he went on his
immortal survey not much more than a hundred years later.
The term "rebel," as applied to Glyndwr and those Welshmen who
followed him, is more convenient than logical. However bad a king
Richard may have been, the Welsh had never wavered in their allegiance
to him. However excellent a monarch Henry might have made if he had
been given the chance, he was at least an usurper, and a breaker of
his word. London and parts of England had welcomed him to the throne.
The Percys and innumerable other Englishmen who then and at various
other times conspired against him were rebels beyond a doubt. But the
Welsh had never even been consulted in the _coup d'état_ by which he
seized the crown. They had never recognised him as king nor sworn
allegiance. To them he was simply an usurper and the almost certain
assassin of their late King. If Richard were alive, then Henry could
not be their lawful sovereign. If, on the other hand, he had been done
to death, which either directly or indirectly he surely had been, then
the boy Earl of March, as all the world knew, should be on the throne.
Henry of Monmouth, too, being the son of an usurper, could not
possibly be Prince of Wales. The place was vacant, and the opportunity
for electing one of their own race and blood was too good to be
missed. Whatever historians may choose to call Glyndwr, he was
logically no rebel in a period when allegiance was almost wholly a
personal matter. His enemies, whom he hunted out of Wales or pent up
in their castles, were, on the other hand, from his point of view,
rebels and traitors in recognising the authority and protection of an
usurper. The Welsh people owed no allegiance to the English, but to
the King of England and Wales, to whom for the protection of the isle
of Britain, as the old tradition still ran, they paid a sum of £60,000
a year. In their eyes, as in those of many persons in England and of
most in Europe, Henry was Henry of Lancaster, not King of England. The
Welsh tribute, it is hardly necessary to say, had dwindled, since the
rising of Glyndwr, to insignificant proportions, while the war
expenses it entailed, together with this loss of income, was one of
the chief causes of that impecuniosity which prevented Henry from ever
really showing of what stuff as a ruler he was made.
The chief incident of the early part of the year 1405 was a nearly
successful plot to carry off from the King's keeping the young Earl of
March, the rightful heir to the crown, and his brother. Being nephews
of Sir Edmund Mortimer, the attempt to bring them to Glyndwr's
headquarters in Wales and to the protection of their uncle was a
natural one. The King, who was spending Christmas at Eltham, had left
the boys behind him at Windsor, under the charge of Hugh de Waterton,
Constable of the Castle. Their domestic guardian was the widow of the
Lord Despencer and sister of the Duke of York, who at this time, it
will be remembered, was in joint charge with Prince Henry of Welsh
affairs. The Despencers had been Norman-Welsh barons for some
generations, their interests at this time lying for the most part in
what is now Monmouthshire, and though ostensibly hostile, they had old
ties of blood and propinquity with the house of Mortimer. This
Christmas witnessed one of the many plots against the King's life, but
with these we have nothing to do, except in so far that the moment was
regarded as being a favourable one for making an effort to get hold of
the two royal boys. How unstable were Henry's friends for the most
part may be gathered from the fact that the Duke of York, his trusted
representative in Wales, was himself privy to the scheme.
To Lady Despencer was entrusted the chief part in this dangerous work.
As sister to the Duke of York, she was in the King's eyes above all
suspicion. When the latter had left Windsor for Eltham she caused a
locksmith secretly to make false keys, and by means of these, with the
connivance of some servants, she contrived to get her two wards safely
out of the castle precincts, taking with her at the same time her own
son. Horses and attendants were ready in waiting, and the whole party
pushed for the West with all the expedition of which they were
capable. They had passed through Berkshire before the King heard the
news of their escape. When it reached him, however, no time was lost.
Sending out swift messengers upon the track of the fugitives he
himself at once hastened to Windsor. The pursuers were just in time
and overtook the illustrious fugitives in Gloucestershire within a
day's ride of the security which Mortimer and Glyndwr's people were
waiting to afford them in Wales. A lively brush, not without slaughter
on both sides, signalised the meeting, but the lady and the boys were
captured and conveyed back to London. Lady Despencer then revealed the
plot to murder the King, denouncing her brother, the Duke of York, as
a leading conspirator. This was not a sisterly action, and the Duke
loudly denied all knowledge of such dastardly intentions. At this the
lady, whose private reputation was not all that it should have been,
waxed indignant and clamorously demanded a champion to maintain her
declaration with lance and sword. Whereupon a gentleman named William
Maidstone flung down his glove to the Duke in the very presence of the
King. The challenge was accepted, but, the Duke being apparently of
corpulent build and the challenger both at a physical advantage and of
no distinction, the romantic combat never took place. Perhaps the King
wished to get the Duke into his hands without loss of time, for he
seized him and sent him to the Tower instead of into the lists. He was
soon, however, as an illustration of how forgiving Henry could at
times be, pardoned and reinstated to the full in all his honours. His
sister, however, whose tenants were nearly all supporters of Glyndwr,
was stripped of her property. But they, too, were eventually restored,
and their feudal superior, who made no little stir in her time, lies
buried amid the ruins of the old abbey at Reading. The unfortunate
locksmith who had made the keys had both his hands chopped off.
[Illustration: CAERPHILLY CASTLE.
Copyright
F. Frith & Co.]
The castles of Caerleon, Caerphilly, Newport, and Usk had fallen,
and in the manuscripts collected by Iolo Morganwg (Edward Williams),
who flourished in the last century, an apparently contemporaneous
though anonymous writer, has somewhat to say about Glyndwr in Morganwg
or Glamorgan. He tells how Owen came to Cardiff, "destroyed it and won
the castle," demolishing at the same time the castles of Penllan,
Llandochau, Flemington, Dunraven of the Butlers, Tal-y-fan,
Llanblethian, Llangeinor, Malefant, and Penmark, and burning many
villages the men of which would not join him. "The country people
collected round him with one accord and demolished houses and castles
innumerable, laid waste and quite fenceless the lands, and gave them
in common to all." The manuscript goes on to say how Glyndwr "took
away from the rich and powerful and distributed the plunder among the
weak and poor." Many of the higher orders of chieftains had to fly to
England under the protection and support of the King. A bloody battle
took place at Bryn Owen (Stallingdown) near Cowbridge, between Glyndwr
and the King's men. The latter were put to flight after eighteen
hours' hard fighting, "during which the blood was up to the horses'
fetlocks at Pant-y-wenol, that separates both ends of the mountain."
Here beyond a doubt was a fulfilment of one of the dread portents that
attended Owen's birth, when the horses, it will be remembered, in his
father's stable were found standing with the blood running over their
feet. There is no date to this anonymous but evidently sincere and
suggestive narrative, or rather the date assigned to the event is
evidently an error. The matters here spoken of belong to 1403, or
1404, in all probability, though they can only be inserted
parenthetically as one of those scraps of local Welsh testimony from
the period itself that have an interest of their own.
The year 1405 opened with reports that the renowned Rhys Gethin was to
cross the English border with a large force. Prince Henry, now
eighteen years of age, with an experience of war under difficulties
and of carking cares of state such as has fallen to the lot of few men
so young, prepared to make ready for him. Short of men and money, the
young soldier had long begun to show of what mettle he was made and to
give evidence of the ability that was eventually to do more to arrest
the resistance of Glyndwr than all the combined efforts of Lord
Marchers and their royal master.
Rumour on this occasion proved true, for Rhys, passing through
Glamorgan with eight thousand men and skirting Abergavenny, attacked
the border town of Grosmont, in the valley of the Monnow, and burnt it
to the ground. Grosmont had hitherto been a flourishing place, but it
never recovered from the blow then dealt it. In Camden's time the
remains of streets and causeways could be traced beneath the turf of
the surrounding fields in evidence of its vanished glories. To-day it
is a picturesque and peaceful village crowning a high ridge, from
which a glorious prospect can be enjoyed of the vale of the Monnow
with the sparkling river hurrying downwards between lofty hills to
meet the Wye. A simple street, and that a short one, is all that
remains, while an old town hall speaks eloquently of its departed
importance. A cruciform church of great age with an octagonal tower
and spire springing from the centre lends force to the tradition of
Grosmont's former glories. Above all, the walls of the Norman castle,
whence issued Prince Henry's gallant band, still stand hard by the
village, their reddish stonework half hidden amid a mass of ivy and
the foliage of embowering trees; the moat half full of the leaves of
many autumns, the ramparts green with the turf of ages; a quiet enough
spot now but for the song of birds and the tumble of the river upon
its rocks three hundred feet below. It was here that Glyndwr's forces
met with their first serious disaster upon the border, for the Prince,
together with Gilbert Talbot and Sir Edward Newport, sallying out of
the castle, attacked Rhys Gethin and inflicted upon the Welsh a severe
and bloody defeat, completely routing them with a loss of eight
hundred men left dead upon the field. It is especially stated in some
accounts that no quarter was given, and only one prisoner taken alive
and spared for ransom, of whom Prince Henry, in a letter to his father
which is worth transcribing, speaks as "a great chieftain."
"My most redoubted and most Sovereign Lord and father, I
sincerely pray that God will graciously show His miraculous
aid towards you in all places, praised be He in all His works,
for on Wednesday the eleventh of this present month of March,
your rebels of the parts of Glamorgan, Morgannok, Usk,
Netherwent, and Overwent, assembled to the number of eight
thousand men, according to their own account, and they went
on the same Wednesday, in the morning, and burnt a part of
your town of Grossmont within your Lordship of Monmouth and
Jennoia [_sic_]. Presently went out my well beloved cousin the
Lord Talbot and the small body of my household, and with them
joined your faithful and valiant knights William Newport and
John Greindor, the which formed but a small power in the
whole; but true it is indeed that victory is not in the
multitude of people, and this was well proved there, but in
the power of God, and there by the aid of the blessed Trinity,
your people gained the field, and vanquished all the said
rebels, and slew of them by fair account in field, by the time
of their return from the pursuit, some say eight hundred,
others a thousand, being questioned upon pain of death;
nevertheless whether it were one or the other I will not
contend, and to inform you fully of all that has been done, I
send you a person worthy of credit therein, my faithful
servant the bearer of this letter, who was at the engagement
and performed his duty well, as he has always done. And such
amends has God ordained you for the burning of your houses in
your aforesaid town, and of prisoners were none taken except
one, a great chief among them, whom I would have sent to you
but he cannot yet ride at ease.
"Written at Hereford the said Wednesday at night.
"Your most humble and obedient son,
"Henry."
Glyndwr, as soon as he heard of the disaster on the Monnow, pushed up
fresh forces under his brother Tudor to meet the fugitives from
Grosmont, with a view to wipe out, if possible, that crushing defeat.
What strength they got, if any, from Rhys Gethin's scattered army
there is no evidence, but in less than a week they encountered the
Prince himself advancing into Wales with a considerable force, and at
Mynydd-y-Pwll-Melyn, in Brecon, received a defeat more calamitous than
even that of Grosmont. Fifteen hundred of the Welsh were killed or
taken prisoners. Among the slain was Owen's brother Tudor himself; and
so like the chief was he in face and form that for some time there was
much rejoicing, and the news was bruited about that the dreaded
Glyndwr was in truth dead. The spirits of the English were sadly
damped when the absence of a wart under the left eye, a distinguishing
mark of Glyndwr, proclaimed that their joy was premature, and that it
was the dead face of his younger brother on which they were gazing.
Among the prisoners, however, was his son Gryffydd, who was sent by
the Prince to London and confined in the Tower, statements of money
allowed for his maintenance there appearing from time to time on the
Rolls. Gryffydd's (Griffin he is there called) fellow-prisoner is Owen
ap Gryffydd, the son probably of the valiant Cardiganshire gentleman
whom Henry quartered in 1402. A year later the young King of Scotland,
whose life was safer there, no doubt, than in his own country, was the
companion of Glyndwr's son. The Iolo manuscript before mentioned tells
us:
"In 1405 a bloody battle attended with great slaughter that in
severity was scarcely ever exceeded in Wales took place on
Pwll Melin; Gryffyth ap Owen and his men were taken and many
of them imprisoned, but many were put to death when captured,
whereupon all Glamorgan turned Saxon except a small number who
followed their lord to North Wales."
These two severe defeats were a great blow to Owen's prestige. They
caused numbers of his adherents in South Wales to fall away and to
seek that pardon which the King, to do him justice, was at all times
very free in extending to Welshmen. Indeed, it would almost seem as if
he himself secretly recognised the fact that they had much justice on
their side and were rebels rather in name than in actual fact.
About the time of the second of these two victories over the Welsh,
the King, encouraged no doubt by such successes, began making great
preparations for a personal expedition against Glyndwr. His activity
in other parts, for the North was always simmering, had been
prodigious. He now arrived at Hereford early in May, full of
determination to support in person the zeal so lately aroused in his
hard-worked constables and lieutenants, and once and for all to
suppress the accursed magician who for five years had so entirely got
the better of him.
But Glyndwr previous to these defeats had sent emissaries to the
North. Three of his immediate councillors were in Northumberland in
secret conclave with its crafty and ill-advised Earl. The King, it
will be remembered, had not only forgiven Percy but had restored to
him all his confiscated estates. That he was prepared again to risk
the substance for the shadow (to say nothing of committing an act of
ingratitude that even for those days was indecent) is conclusive
evidence that his dead son, Hotspur, was not the evil genius his
father had with poor spirit represented him to be when craving mercy
from the King. Glyndwr, however, had nothing to do with the old Earl's
conscience when for the second time he seemed anxious for an alliance.
Bishop Trevor, with Bifort, Glyndwr's Bishop of Bangor, and David
Daron, Dean of Bangor, were now all in the North intriguing with
Northumberland. In the early days of the Welsh rising Glyndwr seemed
to have some personal and even sentimental leaning towards the Percys.
There was nothing of that, however, in his present attitude, which was
purely a business one, seeing that the French, as he thought, and
rightly so, were on the point of coming to his assistance, and the
North about to rise in arms against Henry. Even the loss of men and of
his own prestige, entailed by the defeats of Grosmont and Pwll-Melyn
and the falling away of Glamorgan, might be much more than
counterbalanced. The first mutterings of the outbreak came from York,
but they were loud enough to pull the King up at Hereford and start
him at full speed for Yorkshire. Once more his sorely tried servants
in Wales had to do as best they could without him, though some
compensation in the way of men and supplies was sent to their relief.
It is not within my province to follow Henry's operations this summer
in the North, but it is necessary to our narrative to state that Percy
escaped from York only just in time, having refused the really
magnanimous conditions of pardon that the King sent on to him. He
fled to Scotland, taking with him his fellow-conspirator, Earl
Bardolph, and Glyndwr's three emissaries, Trevor, Bifort, and David
Daron. Another Welshman of Owen's party, however, who has not been
hitherto mentioned, Sir John Griffith, was caught at York and
executed. Many persons besides Percy were implicated in the plot,
Archbishop Scrope for one, whose execution, with many accompanying
indignities, sent a thrill of horror throughout Britain and Europe;
Judge Gascoine's courageous refusal to sentence the prelate being, of
course, one of the familiar incidents of the reign. For the second
time the Percy estates were confiscated, while the suppression of the
revolt and the punishment of the rebels kept the King lingering for a
long time in the North. At the end of July he received the serious
news that the French had landed in South Wales, and, hurrying
southward, reached Worcester about the 10th of August, to find Glyndwr
with some ten thousand Welshmen and nearly half as many French within
nine miles of that city.
We must now return to Wales and to the earlier part of the summer,
that we may learn how this transformation came about within so short a
time. After Glyndwr's two defeats in March, and the subsequent panic
among the men of Glamorgan and no doubt also among those of Gwent and
parts of Brycheiniog, the chieftain himself with a following of tried
and still trusty men went to North Wales. Welsh historians, following
one another, paint most dismal pictures of Owen this summer,
representing him as a solitary wanderer, travelling incognito about
the country, sometimes alone, sometimes with a handful of faithful
followers, now lurking in friends' houses, now hiding in mountain
caverns, but always dogged by relentless foes. All these things he did
in after years with sufficient tenacity to satisfy the most
enthusiastic lover of romance. That his condition can have come to
such a pass in the summer of 1405 is too manifestly absurd to be worth
discussion. He had received, it is true, a blow severe enough to
discourage the localities near which it happened, and probably to
frighten a good many of his friends in other parts. It is possible,
too, some may have sued secretly for pardon. But when we consider that
in March all Wales except certain castles was faithful, and that his
troops were attacking the English border when repulsed; that in May
the King and his lieutenants were only preparing to invade Wales; that
no operations of moment were so far as we know executed during the
early summer against the Welsh; and finally that in July Glyndwr met
the French at Tenby with ten thousand men behind him, it is quite
incredible that 1405 can have been the season in which he spent months
as an outcast and a wanderer. We may, I think, take it as certain that
Glyndwr's star had not yet sensibly declined, and that what he had
recently lost might well be considered as more than cancelled by the
appearance in Milford Bay of 140 French ships full of soldiers.
While the coming of the French was still an uncertainty, it is
probable that there was considerable depression even among Owen's
immediate followers. But neither he nor they were cherishing it in
caves and solitudes. On the contrary, another parliament, similarly
constituted to the former one at Machynlleth, was summoned to Harlech.
Of the result of its deliberations we know nothing, but a letter of
the period suggests that Glyndwr was not wholly without thought of
making terms in case of the non-arrival of the French. At the same
time this is not quite in keeping with the stubborn resistance that in
after years, when all hope had fled, he maintained with such heroic
fortitude. Two of the county representatives, at any rate, who came to
Harlech on this occasion were trimmers or worse. David Whitmore and
Ievan ap Meredydd were supposed to represent his interests in Flint,
but we are told that, before departing for the West, they held private
communication with Sir John Stanley, who was in charge of the
important castle of Hope for the King. To be brief, they went as spies
rather than as supporters, and with the intention of keeping the
English informed of what took place. But it was now already summer and
while this season was still at its height, the event which Glyndwr was
hoping and looking for took place.
The French had made many attempts in the preceding year to reach
Wales; a few, as we know, touched the coast, and lent some slight
assistance at Carnarvon and elsewhere. Now, however, a more successful
effort and upon an infinitely larger scale was made, and 140 ships
found their way from Brest to Milford without any mishap save the loss
of their horses from lack of fresh water. The number of troops
carried by this fleet is variously estimated at from about 3000 to
12,000 men. Madame De Lussan, the French historian of the period, is
very definite so far as she goes, for without mentioning the grand
total she states that there were among them 800 men-at-arms, 600
crossbows, and 1200 foot-soldiers, all picked troops. But then, again,
the French "man-at-arms" of the period included a squire, a page, and
three archers, so that the entire French force probably numbered from
4000 to 5000 men. The command was nominally in the hands of Jean de
Rieux, Marshal of France, but the Sire de Hugueville was the leading
spirit, not only in the inception but also in the conduct of the
enterprise. He had actually sold to the Church his large estate of
Agencourt near Montdidier, and devoted the proceeds to the adventure
which he had so much at heart. There seems at any rate to have been no
stint of money in the undertaking, for it is particularly noted what
bravery of apparel and fine trappings distinguished this French army
when it landed at Milford Haven. The fleet left Brest on July 22nd and
arrived early in August in excellent condition, with the exception, as
I have said, of the horses, which had all been thrown overboard.
Glyndwr in the meantime had heard that the French were on the sea,
and, moving down into Pembrokeshire with 10,000 men, he joined forces
with them almost immediately upon their landing.
There was no time to be lost and the united armies turned first to
Haverford-west, an Anglo-Flemish centre of some importance. The town
was soon taken and burnt, but the great Norman castle proved
altogether too hard a task even for so large a force. So, falling
back, Glyndwr and his French allies marched to Tenby, laying waste the
Flemish settlements, though they had to look helplessly on while an
English fleet attacked the French ships and destroyed fifteen of them.
Thence under Glyndwr's guidance the army moved on to Carmarthen, which
surrendered without much resistance. Glamorgan, it will be remembered,
had fallen away from its allegiance to the Welsh cause, so Glyndwr
took it on his route towards England and gave the backsliders of that
unfortunate county some experience of his relentless methods. Passing
on thence through Herefordshire in a fashion of which we know nothing
but may readily guess, the allied forces entered Worcestershire and
arrived within nine miles of the capital of that county just as King
Henry reached it.
As early as the beginning of July, when the King first heard of the
intended French invasion, he had issued proclamation to the sheriffs
of several counties to be in readiness with their forces, and it was
these that must now have been his chief support at Worcester. On his
way south he had issued another summons to the forces of Herefordshire
and the lower counties to muster at the city of Hereford. It was now
about the middle of August, and without more delay he marched his army
out from Worcester to meet the formidable combination that had
penetrated so far into his kingdom.
The spot where Glyndwr and Hugueville encamped their forces was an
old British fort on the summit of Woodbury hill and is still known as
Owen's camp. Pennant visited it and made careful notes and
observations. It covers, he says, about twenty-seven acres and is
surrounded by a single foss. The hill itself is lofty and of an oblong
form. One end is connected with the Abberly hills, which, with this
one of Woodbury, form a crescent, the hollow between constituting an
ideal arena for a battle-ground.
When the King arrived he proceeded to take up his position on the
northern ridge, and the two armies lay for eight days, both so
admirably placed that each feared to give advantage to the other by
moving out and risking so great a stake in the gage of battle.
Skirmishing, however, went on daily in the valley below. The brave
spirits of either army descended into the arena and performed
individual deeds of arms between and in sight of both camps. "They had
a fine slope," says Pennant, "to run down, the Welsh having a hollowed
way as if formed especially for the purpose."
Some four or five hundred men in all fell during this week of
desultory skirmishing, including some French knights of note. One
might well have looked, at this crisis, for some decisive and fierce
fight like that of Shrewsbury, which should live in history. Never had
Glyndwr penetrated so far into Saxon territory; never before had ten
thousand Welshmen threatened Worcester as invaders; never since
England had become a united country had a hostile French army sat
down in its very heart as this one was now doing.
But the King at any rate showed his wisdom in not venturing on a
battle. He had ample provisions behind him and was gathering strength.
Glyndwr and Hugueville, on the other hand, had wasted the country on
their route, and they were running short of food. Yet even if Glyndwr
had struck at once and gained a victory, it is quite certain that with
his friends in the North already crushed he would not have been able
with what was left of his fifteen thousand or so Welsh and French, to
affect in any way the fortunes of England by merely capturing
Worcester, and would have himself been in imminent danger. Moreover,
as the King clung to the top of the hill and had perhaps nearly as
many men with him as the enemy, the risk attending an attack would
have been still greater. The Franco-Welsh army, too, had a good deal
of booty among them, which to most of the individuals composing it was
probably a leading item for consideration.
When his enemies struck their camp and commenced their backward march
to Wales, the King essayed to follow them, and found it no easy task
in a region already twice traversed by a hungry and hostile army. He
took some provisions with him, but after eighteen waggon-loads of
these had been captured by Glyndwr's hungry soldiers he gave up his
barren attempts to harass their rapid march. Hall's account of this
campaign does not tally with the account of the invaders, as is
perhaps natural, and he probably drew to some extent on his
imagination when he described Henry's pursuit in such curiously
quaint language:
"From hills to dales," he writes, "from dales to woodes, from
woodes to marshes, and yet he could never have them at an
advantage. A worlde it was to see his quotidian removings, his
busy and painful wanderings, his troublesome and uncertayne
abiding, his continual mocian, his daily peregrenacion in the
desert fells and craggy mountains of that barrenne infertile
and depopulate country."
But the Franco-Welsh army was soon deep in the heart of Wales, and
Henry, having given up the pursuit in much more summary fashion than
Hall would have us believe in the face of dates, was concentrating his
forces at Hereford. Prince Henry had already done something to harass
the march of the Welsh through Monmouth. Sir John Grendor was
negotiating with Owen's supporters in the valley of the Usk. Sir John
Berkrolles still held the great castle of Coity with the utmost
difficulty, and the Bristol captains who had enabled Harlech to hold
out so long were now ordered down the Bristol channel with supplies
for the still beleaguered garrisons of South Wales.
On September 10th Henry with a large force commenced his fifth
invasion of Wales. The reader, wearied no doubt by the chronicle of
these futile endeavours, might now well look for some tangible result,
some crushing blow. There is nothing, however, but the old, old story
to tell. The King entered Glamorgan and succeeded in relieving the
single castle of Coity; he then turned tail, and the Welsh at once, as
in every case but one, when there was no need for it, sprang upon his
back. Besides his spears and arrows Glyndwr once more worked with his
magic wand. The heavens descended and the floods came and soaked and
buffeted the hapless monarch and his still more wretched and
ill-provisioned troops. Every river ran bank-high and every brook was
in flood; and the clumsy carts that carried the commissariat were
captured by Glyndwr's men or whirled away in the rapids. The old story
of 1402 was repeated in the autumn of 1405. The royal army on their
return had to cross the valley of the Rhondda, where the national
cause, though more than once suppressed, was always vigorous and
responded to its famous war-cry, "Cadwgan, whet thy battle-axe." This
valley runs from the westward into the Taff at Pontypridd and is now
astir with the hum of grimy industry and bright with the flare of
forges. It was then a hive of fighting stock-farmers fired with a
great enthusiasm for Glyndwr.
"There was a certain Cadwgan," says the old Iolo manuscript
already quoted, "who was a leader among the men of the valley
and a doughty henchman of Glyndwr, and when it became
necessary for him to call the people to battle he used to
march up and down the valley whetting his axe. So when Owen
came to Glyn Rhondda he would say, 'Cadwgan, whet thy
battle-axe,' and the moment he was heard to do so all living
persons collected about him in military array and from that
day to this the battle shout of Glyn Rhondda has been
'Cadwgan, whet thy battle-axe.'"
By October 1st the King was back at Worcester. It would be of little
profit to relate the various orders he gave for resisting and
pacifying the Welsh, nor yet to give the names of the various Lord
Marchers whom he ordered to proceed upon expeditions with small
forces, where he himself had failed with large ones. One is not
surprised to find that Owen and his French allies had Wales for the
most part to themselves and were unmolested during the winter. The
greater part of the French, however, returned home again before
Christmas, some seventeen hundred remaining, for whom Glyndwr found
comfortable quarters. He seems to have been greatly disappointed at
the departure of the others, as well as at the conduct of those who
remained. The alliance, indeed, proved unsatisfactory to both parties.
The French individually counted on booty as their reward, whereas they
found for the most part a plundered and ravaged country. It is
possible, too, there may have been some racial friction between the
Welsh and their French allies. At any rate the latter, as one of their
old chroniclers remarks, did not do much bragging when they got home
to Brittany, nor did those who remained in Wales conduct themselves by
any means to the satisfaction of Glyndwr, but were altogether too much
given up to thoughts of plundering their friends. Upon the whole their
motives were too obvious and the prospect of further assistance from
them not very cheering.
Western Pembroke in the meantime (Little England beyond Wales),
finding itself cut off from all assistance, in spite of the girdle of
splendid castles by which it was protected, began to find Glyndwr at
last too much for it. The earldom was in abeyance and Sir Francis
À'Court was governor of the county and known as Lord of Pembroke. He
called together the representatives of the district, who solemnly
agreed to pay Glyndwr the sum of £200 for a truce to last until the
following May. So Pembroke, having humbled itself and in so doing
having humbled England, which had thus failed it in its hour of need,
had peace. And Glyndwr, still supreme, but not without some cause for
depression, returned to Harlech to take counsel with his friends and
prepare for a year that promised to be exceptionally fruitful of good
or ill.
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[Illustration: MANORBIER CASTLE.
Copyright
F. Frith & Co.]
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