T he twelve-year war which ensued was, for the English, largely a matter of relieving their isolated castles. Expedition after expedition was beaten bootless back.
Henry IV, beset by Welsh, Scots, French and rebellious barons, sent in army after army, some of them huge, all of them futile; he never really got to grips with it and the revolt largely wore itself out, in a small country blasted, burned and exhausted beyond the limit of endurance. For the Welsh, it was a Marcher rebellion and a peasant's revolt which grew into a national guerrilla war.
The sheer tenacity of the rebellion is startling. Few revolts in contemporary Europe lasted more than some months; no previous Welsh war had lasted much longer. This one raged in undiminished fury for ten years and did not really end for fifteen. I n , Glyndwr assembled a parliament of four men from every commot in Wales at Machynlleth, drawing up mutual recognition treaties with France and Spain.
At Machynlleth, he was also crowned king of a free Wales. A second parliament in Harlech took place a year later, with Glyndwr making plans to carve up England and Wales into three, as part of an alliance against the English king: Mortimer would take the south and west of England, Thomas Percy, earl of Northumberland, would have the midlands and the north, and himself Wales and the Marches of England.
The English army, however, concentrated with increased vigor on destroying the Welsh uprising, and the Tripart Indenture was never realized. W hat is more remarkable than the civil war the revolt inevitably became, is the passion, loyalty and vision which came to sustain it. Glyndwr's men put an end to payments to the lords and the crown; they could raise enough money to carry on from the parliaments they called, attended by delegates from all over Wales - the first and last Welsh parliaments in Welsh history.
From ordinary people by the thousands came a loyalty through times often unspeakably harsh which enabled this old man to lead a divided people one-twelfth the size of the English against two kings and a dozen armies. Owain Glyndwr was one Welsh prince who was never betrayed by his own people, not even in the darkest days when many of them could have saved their skins by doing so. There is no parallel in the history of the Welsh. Wales became subsumed into English custom law, and Glyndwr's uprising became an increasingly powerful symbol of frustrated Welsh independence.
But Glyndwr was not being forgotten in the misery. In his play, Henry IV, Shakespeare portrays Owain Glyndwr as a wild, exotic, magical and spiritual man, playing up the romantic 'Celtic' traits. In the 19th century his life and legacy was beginning to be re-evaluated as the Welsh 'nation' began to find its voice once more. The discovery of his seal and letters were proof that he was a national leader of some importance - a learned head of a country with diplomatic ties as any other head of state might.
The nationalist movement has always held Owain Glyndwr in high regard, but he is now a figure of mass culture in Wales, with statues and monuments alongside pub and street names commemorating him. What are these? Search term:. Read more. This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets CSS enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience.
Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets CSS if you are able to do so. This page has been archived and is no longer updated. Find out more about page archiving. Wales History. Owain Glyndwr. Bookmark this page: delicious Digg Reddit Stumbleupon facebook What are these? See also. While this report was overblown, the Welsh rising under Owain Glyndwr certainly unleashed considerable violence and destruction. And, after the collapse of the rising, Welsh attitudes tended to be ambivalent at best.
These posthumous images of Glyndwr offer fascinating insights into the ideals projected on to him by later generations. However, simply to paint him as a hero or villain would be to miss his significance in the context of his own time.
Before there had been little to indicate that Owain would rise against the crown. Yet that was only part of the picture. Within Welsh society Owain occupied a special place thanks to his descent, through his father, from the princes of northern Powys, and, through his mother, those of Deheubarth. After Owain Lawgoch Owain of the Red Hand , the last male descendant of the dynasty of Gwynedd and a would-be Prince of Wales, had been assassinated by an English agent in France in , Owain Glyndwr had the strongest ties to the princely dynasties of the era before the conquest of The weakness of the new Lancastrian dynasty may also have helped tip the scales in favour of the decision to revolt.
Possibly the immediate catalyst was a territorial dispute with Reginald Grey, Lord of Ruthin. Yet the recognition of Owain as Prince of Wales in September was not simply an impetuous response to a sense of personal slight.
The meeting at Glyndyfrdwy was a stage-managed occasion that deliberately evoked the past in order to challenge the foundations of English rule in Wales.
Owain drove the message home on his great seal. As so often in the Middle Ages, revolutionary change was presented as the restoration of a more authentic past.
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