Owain Glyn Dŵr - Prince of Wales

By R.R. Davies

The story of the Owain Glyndŵr (Glyn Dŵr) rebellion written by the foremost scholar in this field, Rees Davies. A new translation by Gerald Morgan of his popular Welsh-language account of the rebellion. A masterful study of the life and legacy of Glyn Dŵr, whose revolt against the English rule of Wales in the early 15th century ensured his status as a national hero. Reprint.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Y Lolfa
• Release date: Sep 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9781847717634

Book preview

Owain%20Glyndwr%20-%20Prince%20of%20Wales.jpg

First impression: 2009

Second impression: 2010

© Carys Davies & Y Lolfa Cyf., 2009

This book is subject to copyright and may not be reproduced

by any means except for review purposes without

the prior written consent of the publishers.

Photographs courtesy of the author unless noted otherwise

Thanks to CADW for the picture of Harlech Castle; to the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales for the pictures of Kidwelly and Sycharth; and to the National Museum of Wales for the copy of Owain Glyn Dŵr’s seal.

The publisher acknowledges the financial support

of the Welsh Books Council

Cover design: Y Lolfa

ISBN: 9781847711274

E-ISBN: 978-1-84771-763-4

Printed on acid-free and partly recycled paper

and published and bound in Wales by

Y Lolfa Cyf., Talybont, Ceredigion SY24 5HE

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Preface

I had intended for a long time to write a short book in Welsh about Owain Glyn Dŵr, but Lefi Gruffudd of the Lolfa Press (and a former student of mine in what was then the University of Wales, Aberystwyth) deserves the credit for spurring me into action at last. This is a volume of history – although if there is any subject from Welsh history which deserves many novels, then it is the story of Owain and his revolt. But although the author is a historian, I have tried to write for the general reader. Others must decide whether I have succeeded. If you are looking for a full academic study of Owain’s career, this is not, nor will there be, a rival to Sir John Edward Lloyd’s biography Owen Glendower (Oxford, 1931). I have offered my interpretation of the period in The Revolt of Owain Glyn Dŵr (Oxford, 1995, now in its second, paperback edition). In that volume can be found the sources and references which are the foundation of this study.

I have the privilege of having been born and reared in Glyn Dŵr’s own land. In a way this volume is some small repayment for the inheritance I received in that special countryside. It seems therefore appropriate to dedicate the book to the memory of another of the sons of the same district and a lifelong friend, Gareth Evans (Cynwyd, Carmarthen and Aberystwyth).

Rees Davies, 2002

Foreword

Translating this book was for me an act of pietas and tribute to the Welsh historian of my time whom I admired above all others for his extraordinary combination of a razor-sharp mind with great personal warmth. Rees was one of a band of Oxford students who by their enthusiasm and friendship taught me Welsh. I treasure the memory of a visit to his home, and forty years later, already in his last illness, he was willing to share his scholarship in his study at All Souls. I am grateful to his family for allowing me to make this version of a book which Rees wrote from his heart.

A particular challenge of translating Rees’s portrait of Owain Glyn Dŵr lay in a single word, rhyfel. This means ‘war’ in Welsh, and Rees refers frequently to rhyfel Owain, which would of course translate as ‘Owain’s war’. The title of Rees’s great study of Owain is of course The Revolt of Owain Glyn Dŵr, and I have often translated rhyfel as ‘revolt’, although the Welsh for ‘revolt’ is gwrthryfel. I have dared to add a few lines to the original. Some are simply glosses necessary to assist non-Welsh speakers. I have quoted a few lines of Shakespeare’s extraordinary interpretation of Owain, and as an elective Cardi I have included the battle of Hyddgen to which Rees did not refer in his original text, though it is of course mentioned in his English volume. Professor J Beverley Smith not only vetted these additions but kindly saved me from a number of minor errors. Diolch i staff y Lolfa am gynhyrchu’r llyfr.

Gerald Morgan, 2009

Chapter 1 - Sycharth

The story begins in the year 1395 at Sycharth, in Llanilin parish in Powys, a good seven miles from the town of Oswestry. By the standards of the day Sycharth was one of the finest houses in north-east Wales. Even the English who destroyed it said that it was ‘a well-built house’, but that was small beer compared with the description given us by the poet Iolo Goch. No modern estate agent could outdo Iolo’s description of the house, the idealised picture he creates. A goodly timber house on a green hill, says Iolo of Sycharth, surrounded by a moat crossed by a bridge to the entrance. Within there was a series of rooms, some large and public, others small and private. It was roofed with modern tiles from which rose a large chimney, unclouded by smoke. Nor was that all. Around this comfortable mansion was everything that a man and his family could need: a dovecote, a fishpond which yielded pike and trout, an orchard, a vineyard, a mill and deer park, not to mention a profitable farm yielding fine crops, where men, horses and ploughs worked industriously. To crown it all, and especially to content the heart of a peripatetic bard like Iolo, there was a warm welcome and plenty of good Shrewsbury ale.

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Sycharth, the location of Owain’s court.

Crown copyright, RCAHMW.

It is of course possible that the elderly Iolo Goch idealised his description of Sycharth to some degree. Nothing is more likely to please the owner of a house than praising his taste and his hospitality. However, Sycharth was by the standards of the age a special house – or rather, mansion. Only a man of comfortable means could afford such a home, planning and extending it according to the latest fashion. That man was Owain ap Gruffudd Fychan ap Gruffudd, better known to us as Owain Glyn Dŵr. Let us therefore introduce him, remembering that although Sycharth may have been his chief residence, he took the name Glyn Dŵr from his other residence, Glyndyfrdwy, between Corwen and Llangollen.

Owain Glyn Dŵr’s princely lineage

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In 1395 he was no longer a young man, having probably reached the age of forty. His years of adventure and travel were in the past, and responsibilities for family, house and estates were now his priorities. He could look forward to years of enjoying his success and his status, and of securing his future. What kind of a man was he?

His contemporaries would have begun to answer that question by discussing his lineage, his family tree. That was the measure of the time. Certainly Owain’s descent was remarkable. Nobody needed to flatter or lie in the recital of Owain’s genealogy; it was the finest in Wales. He could trace his paternal line at Sycharth and in Powys back through the centuries directly to Bleddyn ap Cynfyn, Prince of Powys, who died in 1075. On his mother’s side his lineage was in direct descent from such heroes of the past as the Lord Rhys (d. 1197) and his grandfather Rhys ap Tewdwr (d. 1093), who is considered the founder of the royal line of Deheubarth. The blood of two of the three great princely families of Wales therefore ran in Owain’s veins.

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What then of the third family, that of Gwynedd, the lineage which came nearest to realising the dream of a united and independent Wales, until broken by the fall of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd in 1282? Here Owain did not have the same strong claims as he did in Powys and the south. However, two factors were in his favour. His great-grandmother Gwenllïan was descended from Gruffudd ap Cynan, Prince of Gwynedd (d. 1137). Admittedly this connection would not carry much weight today, but in medieval Wales such a connection could be dwelt on by a bard or genealogist. The second and more important factor was that the direct male line of Gwynedd had undeniably become extinct in 1378. Its last representative was Owain Lawgoch, whose claim to rule Wales had been supported by the King of France, but who had been assassinated by an English spy in the pay of the Crown; we shall meet him again in chapter 4. In his youth Owain Glyn Dŵr would have heard of the military feats of the earlier Owain on the European continent, and of the treachery which led to his death. In fact, Owain Lawgoch’s murder was Owain Glyn Dŵr’s opportunity, because no other man in Wales had such a good claim to be a direct descendant of the Welsh princes. Additionally, it could be argued that on Glyn Dŵr’s shoulders fell the responsibility for revenging Owain Lawgoch’s death and making real the dream of restoring a native Welsh prince in Wales.

In 1395, to be sure, there was no hint that Owain Glyn Dŵr intended anything of the sort. The bards were happy to praise Owain’s ancestry when addressing him in verse, but there is no suggestion that his descent meant anything more to him than harmless bragging. Owain lived in the present, and that present appeared on the whole to be both comfortable and acceptable. Had he been asked in 1395 to look back over his career to date, he could easily have picked out some major achievements.

He would have recalled how, when still a boy, he had lost his father and lived in the care of his mother, a woman whose Welsh bore a Ceredigion accent. The Earl of Arundel – one of the principal earls of England in his day, Lord of Chirk, Oswestry and Welsh Maelor – had been kind to his mother while a widow, which was hardly surprising since Owain’s father Gruffudd had been one of the earl’s officers. Owain would have been right to expect that he in turn would profit from the support and patronage of the Fitzalans, the Arundel family.

During his youth, Owain made one particular connection which would colour the rest of his life. He spent a period, perhaps as a foster-son, in the home of David Hanmer in Maelor Saesneg, in the district of Bangor Is-coed. The Hanmers were a family of English origin, moving in the English circles of Cheshire and Shropshire. There was nothing to be surprised at in this mingling of Welsh and English in Glyn Dŵr’s life. After all, one of his grandmothers was Elizabeth Lestrange of Knockin, Shropshire. Nor was it always the Welsh who came under the influence of the English. The English of the border counties had learnt to live side-by-side with the Welsh, learning their language and choosing marriage partners from among them. This had happened to David Hanmer himself, the man who received the young Glyn Dŵr on his hearth. David’s wife was Angharad, daughter of Llywelyn Ddu of Chirk. Both Welsh and English were to be heard in the Hanmer household, which like Sycharth was visited by Welsh poets.

There was, however, another side to David Hanmer. He was after all a