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Owain Glyndŵr: life of the week
00:56:40
Gideon Brough chronicles the rise of the Welsh national hero, famed for rebelling against the English crown in the late Middle Ages
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- [00:00]
Alex von Tunzelman
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- [01:15]
Gideon Bruff
Are here at the Home Depot, so it's time to get your grilling on. Pick up The Traeger Pro Series 22.
- [01:20]
Alex von Tunzelman
Pellet Grill and Smoker now on special.
- [01:22]
Gideon Bruff
Buy for $389 or was $5.49. Smoke a rack of ribs or bake an apple pie.
- [01:28]
Alex von Tunzelman
This grill is versatile enough to do.
- [01:30]
Gideon Bruff
It all this summer. No matter how you like your steaks.
- [01:33]
Alex von Tunzelman
Your barbecues are guaranteed to be well done.
- [01:36]
Gideon Bruff
Celebrate 4th of July with fast free delivery on select grills right now at the Home Depot. It's up to availability. Your burger is served and this is our finest Pepsi Zero sugar. Its sweet profile perfectly balances the savory notes of your burger.
- [01:55]
Alex von Tunzelman
That is one perfect combination burgers deserve Pepsi. Hello and welcome to Life of the Week from History Extra, where leading historians delve into the lives of history's most intriguing and significant figures. Famed for his dramatic and determined revolt against English rule in the early 15th century, as well as his bold vision for an independent Wales, Owain Glyndur has gone down in history as a symbol of Welsh resistance and a national hero. I spoke to Gideon Bruff to chart the medieval nobleman's emergence as a warrior and a statesman to uncover the man behind the enduring myth. For those who may have heard of Oweng Glyndur, or those who might be completely unfamiliar with him, who was he?
- [02:46]
Gideon Bruff
Owen Glyndwr was a Welsh Nobleman in the 14th and early 15th century. He's famed for leading a revolt, but I contest that's not one of his creation. But during his life, he sort of lived the life of the quintessential Welsh nobleman. So he had this great military career, military background, but also engaged in cultural pursuits, was poetry, and had a bardic circle and lived in a Welsh cultural milieu during his lifetime. But he was equally adept in speaking to English knights and nobles. He rubbed shoulders with knights and earls on military campaigns. And within the sort of context of his revolt, he comes across very much as the wronged man. He's been forced into a revolt against his will. But in some ways, this is what made his name. He would have been a footnote in history unless this happened and history got to see exactly who he was and what he did as a result of the revolt. And Owain was someone who was loved and feared in equal measure. And I think that's exactly the right sort of reputation any medieval noble would have wanted.
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Alex von Tunzelman
And before we really delve in, we need to situate ourselves a little bit in the landscape and the time. Could you explain to us what Wales was like at this time?
- [03:59]
Gideon Bruff
So, mid 14th century Wales was recovering from the first visitation of the Black Death, but of course, there was a ring of English castles and towns across North Wales, which is where Owain was born and grew up, North East Wales, very close to the border with England. The political landscape really is that the native Welsh had very little traction on what happened in their own country. So early medieval Wales, of course, was divided into Welsh kingdoms. By the time Owain's alive, everything is owned by the English crown, and he divided territories up and gave them to marcher lords and other English nobles, who were usually absentee. And if you're looking at the landscape, Wales was mostly forest, with a few tracks going between the towns and the marketplaces.
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Alex von Tunzelman
So if we delve into the life of Owain, he descended from this really prestigious family line. What did his background and upbringing look like?
- [04:55]
Gideon Bruff
He was descended from the three royal houses of Wales, principally his northern Powys, and that was his homeland, if you like. But he was connected to the royal family of Gwynedd very, very faintly, and through a female line, which wasn't that much of a problem for medieval Wales, but also connected to the southern royal family of the Haybarth. So. So he's not unique in that, but he's the leading sort of figure. He's the richest person in Wales. He's the richest native Welshman, at least, although in English terms, he's just a squire, not even a knight, nowhere near being a lord or an earl or a Duke. So he's tiny on an English stage at that point, yet enormous on a Welsh stage.
- [05:37]
Alex von Tunzelman
What was he like throughout his youth? What was his experience?
- [05:40]
Gideon Bruff
It's really interesting that he does virtually nothing. He's invisible for much of his early time. So we think he was born around 1359. And the reason we can sort of pin that sort of date on it is because he appears as a witness in a trial at the Court of Chivalry. It's the Scrope vs. Grosvenor controversy, which was very important in 1386. And other witnesses were famous, such as Geoffrey Chaucer. Owen Glyndur is a young fella of about 27 in the trial notes. He's 27 and more. So we'd guess that it's about 1359, just going back a few years. Then we know that he studied at the Inns of court in the 1370s and he would have been in his mid late teens at that point. Now, the Inns of Court prepared him for a career in law, but the Inns of Court weren't specifically about that. I suppose you could think of it as a finishing school for young gentlemen. He would have rubbed shoulders with other nobles of the time, but he would have learnt warfare, horse riding, weapons as well as, you know, the other things that would make a young courtly gentleman. So at some point between his late teens and his mid-20s, he then returned to Wales. But it's a possibility that he was still there in 1381 when the peasants Revolt hit London. And he would have been one of those young gentlemen that John of Gaunt summoned to come and help defend against the rebels. Though we don't know. But it's a possibilities.
- [07:03]
Alex von Tunzelman
Things like this seem to happen quite often in his life. When he comes onto his military service later in his life, he's also connected with lots of other familiar names that people might recognise from this period. Could you tell us about this service?
- [07:20]
Gideon Bruff
Sure. His military service really kicked off in 1384, when he was one of almost 300 young Welshmen who served under a Welsh knight called Sir Gregory Syce. And they went up and did a garrison duty in Berwick on the Scottish border. So there he would have probably been involved in border raids and skirmishing with the Scots, but he would have been about 25 at the time. But it's worth noting in 1384 that he was there with his brother. He always serves with his brother Tudor, but he was specifically serving under a Welsh knight who was under the two Henry Percys. So the Earl of Northumberland and Henry Percy, Hotspur. And obviously he was a great character from that period. I think the next real point on his military career was the very next year when Richard II raised a huge army to go and invade Scotland. They took Edinburgh, they burnt it to the ground. But this is. We really get a hint of what Owain was like though. So on the muster list, he's 33rd out of the squires and the, you know, the various kind of lowly knights. He's not very important at this point. But it's from this sort of action of the fighting with the Scots that the English records describe him as an exceptional warrior, an exemplary warrior, which isn't bad coming from the people who would shortly be your enemy. And there's a Welsh poem about him which describes him fighting with his spear and slaughtering Scots and feeding the wolves with all the corpses of the Scots laying around him. And I think the next one really was 1387, which is a fantastic mission. He was summoned into the Earl of Arundel's personal retinue amongst the very best of all the English commanders throughout the medieval period. And Owain has jumped to eighth on the muster list. So he obviously caught people's attention in Scotland. There was a family connection though, because Owain's father served the then Earl of Arundel's father as well, and he had acted as steward for him in Oswald Street. They would have known them as being quite reliable, quite dependable. And in March 1387, the Earl of Arundel is commissioned with raising a fleet to go and attack the French. And it ends up being the Second Battle of Cadzand. There were about 250 ships in the French fleet. They were at anchor, they were gathering troops and supplies and so on. So they were caught somewhat surprised. And I can't help sort of envisaging, if you're a French guard, you were sort of pacing around the deck of one of your ships, kind of quite bored, when out of the mist, you know, this sort of red hulled ship with faces on it sort of drifted towards you with a load of bearded warriors suddenly shouting at you. And then there was a hail of arrows and that's the last thing you saw. Incredibly kind of evocative battle that followed, where it was an enormous victory for the English. Of course, they captured more than 60 ships. It depends which chronicle you read. Then they landed ashore and they conducted a two week raid, which Owain undoubtedly took part in, where they pillaged, set fire to everything, killed as many people as they can, and then they sailed home with their booty. And the last time Owain appears in the sort of military career in service of the English was, well, in 1388. The muster lists are produced and he's first. So whatever he did serving with the Earl of Arundel, it caught everyone's attention. And he is sort of rightly remembered then, therefore, as a very capable warrior. But the names crossed out because he didn't serve. We don't know why, but the fact that he had achieved this as a Welshman serving in English armies, you know, the Welsh were very much the second class, the subclass, if you like. They don't have the same legal rights at all as the English, even within Wales. So for him to be ranked above other English knights, this is quite something. He is obviously someone who's very capable in the battlefield, but at this point he's done nothing rebellious. He shows no signs of being a rebel whatsoever, but that's it as far as we know. He then goes home, puts his feet up, has more children, has the bards singing what an awesome warrior he was, what a great bloke he was, and that's it. He disappears for than a decade.
- [11:19]
Alex von Tunzelman
There's this quiet period and this military prowess that he's obviously developed while he's in service is going to come on to be quite helpful when it comes to the rebellion itself. What actually triggered owain's rebellion in 1400? Was this some long standing grievance? Was it a sudden spark?
- [11:39]
Gideon Bruff
So it's interesting, you know, the traditional story has Owain sparking this rebellion and unfortunately, I would say that it didn't happen that way. The traditional stories has Lord Reginald, the GRE part of Owain's land, then withholding a summons for Owain to go and serve Henry IV on a campaign to Scotland. And then the Bishop of St Asaph petitioned Parliament, from which we get that sort of famous response, which unfortunately they recorded in Latin, which is, et illi des escuris nudepidibus non curare, which is, we don't care about these barefooted idiots. And that's what Parliament said about the Welsh and the threat that they'll revolt. And then Owain was declared a traitor and his lands were forfeit. And then there's sort of the story happily rolls along that in repost, Stowein raised the flag of revolt on 16 September 1400, he raised his sword and the rebellion caught fire and a national hero was born. Unfortunately, it didn't really happen that way. And I know I'm going to make myself incredibly unpopular by saying this, but fortunately for me, this is one of those beautiful moments where in history the timeline comes to my rescue, because we know that rebellion in Wales broke out in the middle of 1399, 22nd or 24th of July to be precise. Richard II returned from Ireland and he had a Welsh contingent and an Irish contingent, and as they landed, they became aware that Henry Bolingbroke had raised an army against Richard and was marching through England. And this sort of sets the sort of touch paper to light, if you like, and the Welsh start fighting the English straight away. And we have a really clear timeline from the mostly English evidence, actually. So Thomas Walsingham's Chronica Majora, the Monk of Evesham, there's another one. The Chronicle of the Betrayal and Death of Richard II describes these details in sort of full. And there was a French knight with Richard II called Jean Creton and he wrote a chronicle which sort of found favor in about 1402, but he was actually there. So he described again in detail how thousands of Englishmen were killed or attacked or stripped or robbed, including Henry's supporters and Richard's supporters. The Welsh weren't rebelling on anyone side, any side of the English debate, they were just rebelling. They'd seen a chance. The touch paper was lit and this rebellion went on, and it went on sporadically in different parts of Wales. We know that there is really hazy evidence of Tudor rebellion in North West Wales, sort of Anglesey area. But at the same time, when Henry IV does act, he heads for the Tudors and not for Owain. So Owain's not mentioned in any of this at this stage. And this is rages for over a year essay rages. But it'll pop up here and someone will be attacked. Another group will arrive in another part of Wales and set fire to stuff and rob people and slaughter people, you know, as rebellions tend to do later. Crown evidence names various other people like Rhys Gethin being involved in revolt in August 1400. And none of it involves Owain. So nothing has involved Oain up until September. The traditional kind of story, it's not true, or at least aspects of it are true. Henry IV's first parliament sat between October and November 1399. So if there was a petition to Parliament, as we've been led to believe it happened then. So if we look at the dates, you know, October, November 1399, that means that if it's September 1400, he was weighted over a year for legal redress and he's gone through the Proper processes. That's not really a rebel activity, is it, you know? Well, I wonder what the law courts will say in my favour. And the issue of the withheld summons? Yeah, it's quite possible that Henry sent a specific summons and Reginald de Grey withheld it. But everyone knew of the campaign against Scotland that was building. It was announced in Parliament previously, so he would have known about it. He might not have known that he was expected to go. But it's one of those things where it would have been a good idea to present yourself to a new king, to show your loyalty. But English nobles did the same as Owain and didn't turn up. And they similarly had their estate seized and they were branded traitors as well. So it wasn't just a plot against Owain, but at the same time, Reginald de Grey was a classic opportunist and a horrendously violent man with a brutal reputation. And this might have presented him with an opportunity, given that he was one of Henry IV's personal friends. So the likelihood that Henry would have found in favour of some relatively unknown Welsh squire who'd been retired for a decade, it's beyond zero. And, you know, Henry then did a clever thing and he gave Irwine's prime estates to his illegitimate brother, John Beaufort, the Earl of Somerset. And tying in the illegitimate side of his family, that's a really clever move, because he then, to keep his estates, would have to defend against the rebels. So then that brings us to the sort of explosion, if you like, of violent activity in northeast Wales in September 1400. And on the 18th of September, Ruthin was sacked. And then there's this sort of great story of a campaign lasting six days, which went in an arc around northeast Wales, attacking castles, ambushing English troops had been sent to rescue castles and towns that were being besieged. It ended on the 23rd or 24th of September, you know, miles to the south in Oswald street and Welshpool. If you look at the mileage involved and the number of actions being fought, no one group could perform that activity. So that tells us there's more than one rebellion going on, or there's more than one group. And unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your perspective on history, Owain has the finger pointed at him for everything, eventually, but not initially. And so Henry IV returned from the Scottish border, eventually heard of trouble in Wales, but Owain isn't named in any of that evidence. And he then headed into North Wales. He passed very close to Owain's estates, but didn't attack them or do anything to them or didn't go looking for Owain. Instead, he went specifically to Bangor and then to Carnarvon, which is in the Tudor heartland. So he was probably looking for the Tudors. He certainly named the Tudors and someone else called Rhys Gethin. So in the initial part of Henry's attempt to suppress the rebellion, Owain doesn't feature. And then I suppose if we then look at the sources that tell us about this sort of magnificent thing that arose afterwards, of Owain planting the flag and raising his sword. There are three sources. One was the chronicler called Adam Uske. He's great fun, Adam Uske. He's such a liar, but he's so much fun. And we know that he sided with Owain at some point, but then when he saw the revolt failing, he rewrote his chronicle to sort of paint Owain as terrible and the rebels as idiots. But also, Adam Eske was not there. There's two slightly more credible sources and they're both legal proceedings now, one we can kind of put to one side quite easily, and that's a. It's a legal case against someone called John Kynaston, who was accused of cattle rustling and stabbing people along the border. It says that John Kynaston and his son, who was out with Owain Glyndour, who proclaimed himself Prince of Wales. This is obviously borrowed from somewhere else. Where it was borrowed from was legal proceedings which took place in Ostenstree on 25 October, and Owain was one of 295 names that appear on this roll who were all being fined. If I can just sort of reveal a quote for you, because it puts it perfectly in context and you have to understand that proclaiming yourself Prince of Wales would be a major step, but this is to put the frame around it that his supporters had elevated him as their Prince of Wales and that Owen had claimed that he plotted the death of King Henry, the extinction forever of the crown and regality of King Henry, all of his successors, the kings of England, and the death of Henry, Prince of Wales, as well as all of the magnates and nobles of England, and also the death, destruction and everlasting obliteration of the whole English language. He sounds quite a terrifying figure, doesn't he? But at the same time, you have to situate that claim as being so fantastical that it couldn't possibly be true. You're a squire, you've got a few mates, you've been declared a traitor. Is this the next rational step? And do you have the power to carry out these claims, and the answer clearly is no, but this is the root of the story. And obviously 20th century historians in Wales saw this and they said, oh, wow, there's evidence that he proclaimed himself the Prince of Wales. This is solid evidence, too. This is good. This is a Crown source. It's illegal proceedings. It must be true. As if legal proceedings in the Middle Ages were never dubious at all. However, I've got to say that this is a little trick that the kings of England quite often pulled. Henry IV did it in 1401 when he said that the Welsh rebels planned to enter the realm, destroy the king, all of his lieges and our English language, which actually he said in French, which you can see the irony of that. So it's a ploy. So that's the evidence for Owain's claim to be Prince of Wales, and no one who accused him of that was present. I think if you've got any sort of balance, you need to ask yourself questions on that.
- [21:10]
Alex von Tunzelman
From these somewhat dubious beginnings, then, how did the rebellion really get rolling? How did it play out in the first few years of the 15th century?
- [21:19]
Gideon Bruff
The early years, sort of stretching, say, 1401 to the end of 1403, were initially quite quiet. Owain Glyndwr discussed his situation with Hotspur. They met on the border, where Hotspur then presented to Parliament and told Parliament that ow Angela do had denied the things he'd been accused of. However, instead of focusing on what he'd actually denied, he just made this sort of generic denial claim to Parliament. And there's a sort of great exchange between Hotspur, who was a warrior, and the other knights in the parliaments, asked him why he hadn't tried to capture or assassinate Owain at this parley. And Hotspur is supposed to have shaken his fist at the rest of Parliament, saying, you courtier knights think these things are easy. Out in the battlefield, it's much different. And so you can see that there are sort of frictions and sort of tensions between the various English factions. And during 1401, we know that there was a sort of great deal of this sort of sporadic fighting, classic rebel activity, ambushes, raids, that sort of thing. But pinning it down is difficult. There is an alleged battle called the Battle of Hydgen, which, again, the evidence for it puts 120 resolute Welshmen against 1500 English troops. And, of course, the 120 give the 1500 a proper beating, which you'd say is probably slightly inaccurate on the numerical terms at least. However, we know there's fighting and the Welsh were getting the upper hand. But interestingly, the Tudor brothers appear at this stage, and they took Conwy Castle with a fabulous ruse. One of their men went and knocked on the gate on Easter Sunday while the garrison was at prayer. The men who answered the door were set upon, murdered. They opened the gates and the Tudors then scuttled in with their forces, captured the garrison at prayer and took all their weapons and then held the castle for a number of months. Now, what they were doing is they were asking for a pardon. They said, look, you know, Henry, you've declared us traitors and all of our lands forfeit. What we'll say is that we'll give you this castle back and all of your troops, and we won't kill them all, and you can have it back as long as we get a pardon. And at no point in their negotiations do they mention Oenglan Dur. They don't mention getting a pardon for him, even though they're allegedly faintly related. And historians have tended to lump them in together, saying that the Tudors served Owain at this point. Now, one of the two Tudor brothers, Rhys, then did serve Owain. Gwilym, the other one didn't. But it's at some point during 1401, you know, Owain must have been out in the woods somewhere, and he must have been poking the fire with a few of his sort of retainers around him, and he must have thought, well, if I surrender, I'll be executed for being a traitor, and if I fight and I lose, I'll be killed for being a traitor and a rebel. So what do I do? Which do I choose? And at some point, you must decide, well, I'm going to fight, then I'm just going to show them what I'm made of. I want my land back, I want my son to be able to claim his inheritance. We don't know when this happened, but it clearly happened at some point during 1401, because he wrote letters to the lords of Ireland saying, you don't know who I am, but I'm fighting the English. Can you send us a troops? And they didn't. But he also wrote to the King of Scotland. And we know because we have the letters. The other letters were captured along the way. And he asked the same thing of the King of Scotland, and he said that essentially we're brothers down the same timeline. That didn't work. Robert III was a very weak king and was under a lot of pressure from his own nobles as well as the English. So that didn't sort of carry any weight with either, Unfortunately. Now, during 1401, between 1401 and 1403, Parliament enacted a load of anti Welsh laws. So the Welsh were not allowed to carry weap, go into English towns unaccompanied, they weren't allowed to hold land or marry English people and a whole load of similar restrictive laws like that. And then Henry IV did something which this probably went against him as well. He sort of led troops into Wales after the rebels during sort of summer, late summer, 1401. And again our friend Adam Musk turns up with another great story, which again, might not be true. Is that because Henry couldn't find the rebels and they led him on a wild goose chase around South West Wales, Wales, spending a lot of money because medieval armies are really expensive to keep in the field. So Henry IV is said to have rounded up a thousand children and taken them off into slavery in England. Now, if ever you want to incite a populace into rebellion, I would imagine that stealing a thousand children would pretty much do it. Then 1402 came along, which was a great year. Halley's comets in the sky. So obviously some things, some terrible and wonderful things are going to happen to someone. April Lord the Grey is ambushed and captured. So Owain's enemy is suddenly in Owain's hands. I think it's quite interesting that Owain didn't slaughter him. Owain's a gentleman, he's honourable, so he ransomed him and he kept Lord the Grey's son captive, you know, while waiting for the ransom to turn up. But he survived too, you know, Owain played by the rules, probably still hoping in some way for a settlement. But then, summer 1402, 22nd of June, there's the famous confrontation on the slopes of Bryn Gl, and it's a resounding Welsh victory. Owain has done something very clever. He has inserted a unit of his own men into the English army. That's not unusual. Welsh troops would fight against pretty much anyone for money. It's a martial society, it's a very militarized society. And what they did mid battle, just as the lines were closing, Owain's archers discharged a volley into the back of the English troops, who were about to receive a downhill charge from the Welsh who were on top of the hill. And the result was total devastation. Even Shakespeare wrote about it. The Earl of March, Edmund Mortimer, was captured. The only knight with any Welsh blood, Thomas Clanvau, was also captured and everyone else was killed. But again, if I may, there's a great quote from the period which after the battle of Bryn Glas, we hear a chronicler wrote, my heart trembles when I think of this dire blow against English rule inflicted by Owen, like another Assyrian, the rod of God's anger, he vented his fury with fire and sword in unprecedented tyrannies. How great a quote is that? I mean, you know, this is sort of the level of fear that he's producing in contemporary society. They know that this guy means business and he's just utterly massacred the army you've raised to send against him. And now he holds your commander and legal claimants to the throne captive. And now ow England again spoke to the Percy's, probably trying to mediate some sort of sett. Hopefully that would be the end of it. And the Percy's were allied to the Mortimers and, you know, I now held one of the Mortimers. As a side note, I would also say that it's sort of quite important that Louis of Orleans suddenly is in charge of the French government. Now. Louis of Orleans hates Henry Bolingbroke and Jean Creton has just appeared in the French court with his chronicle saying about these amazing Welsh warriors who hate the English and are prosecuting a war against them. And news of Bryn Glass probably filtered through as far as the French court. And then, so 1403, you can see that Henry IV and the Crown troops take a more defensive posture. So those in the English border counties make truces with the Welsh rebels. So the rebels are the power in the border counties. You can sort of understand by the stage that the Crown forces have given up the interior of Wales as lost, the rebels begin to besiege some of the massive castles, Aberystwyth, Harlech and Cardiff. Harlech has to be rescued by Prince Henry. The besiegers melt away into the woods until Henry went again and then they came back and put the siege back in place. Whereas Owain Glyndwr was in South Wales and he raised an army. He sent a letter. One of the interesting features of Owain is that we have some of his letters and he always comes across as really angry. He's a really angry man. This is what sort of suggests to me that he feels aggrieved, that he was kind of innocent. He didn't have anything to do with these rebellions and the killing of people early on and only did so when he had no other choice. And in the letter he basically gives the medieval equivalent of, if you don't turn up and side with me, I'm coming to see you. And that's what no one wanted, really. So Owain raises this enormous army, and at least the English commanders of the valley which he marched down, they claimed it was 8240 strong. Now, how do you count that many when you're on a battlement going, 1, 2, 3, 4. You can't. But the idea is, the idea that they were giving to the Crown was that this is too big an army for us to deal with. We've surrendered because we can't handle them. And Owain's army marched down the Towy Valley to Carmarthen, which. It's difficult to talk about capitals, but if we can sort of loosely and perhaps a bit lazily use that term. Carmarthen is the English capital in Wales, and it's taken by this massive Welsh army and completely destroyed throughout Wales for the rest of the year. We have letters which still exist from the various commanders of the castles, especially the ones on the coast, and they're all afraid and they're all sort of saying, look, please come and rescue us, please come rescue us. The rebels are coming. And Henry gives up trying to go across land at this point. So they're resupplied by sea because the interior is gone, like I said. And it's another sort of really key piece is that the French, the Bretons and the Welsh attacked Kidwelly together in October 1403. So we know that there's some sort of communication going on between Owain and the French at this point. And so you have this sort of joint force, probably reconnaissance, just to see what was going on, what they could do. And they set about Kidwelli. They don't take the castle, but they take the town and slaughter people, set things on fire, nick everything, you know, standard medieval day out. And then the siege is resumed at Aberystwyth, Harlech and Cardiff by the end of the year, you know, all of which would soon fall. And then I suppose we get on to 1404.
- [31:36]
Alex von Tunzelman
And 1404 was a really big year for Owain. What exactly went down?
- [31:42]
Gideon Bruff
Quite a few things happened. So Aberystwyth, Harlech and Cardiff all fell to the rebels. They besieged and took them. And although the rebels held Aberystwyth and Harleth, they just sacked Cardiff and nicked everything and killed everyone and destroyed it as best they could, because it's probably a bit too far away from the sort of the rebel heartland, if you like. It's too close to England, it's too close to Bristol, where troops can Come and make things difficult for them. But this is really key, because what had previously been a rural revolt, now they've got two huge castles. This is a new state that has suddenly arisen. You know, on the medieval maps, Wales is now an entity, whether Henry liked it or not. And we know that by April, the bishops of St Asaph and Bangor had joined them. But one of the key things of 1404 is that it's the first native parliament. So the first Welsh parliament held by native Welshmen for over a century is held in Machyntleth. Imagine what that must have been like. Now, imagine you've been a warrior in the Hundred Years War. You've been away to France and Scotland and Ireland and you fought all these battles. You're viewed as being one of the great warriors. You're invited to this parliament. You might have been a clergyman or a merchant or someone of great standing because of your bloodline and heritage, or the amount of sort of land you held, all invited to this one hall. Now you are suddenly standing amongst fellow Welshmen. You're in charge of your own country for the first time in over a century. Imagine that feeling of what they must have said to each other, the roar that must have gone up when Owain climbed onto a stage. Whatever he said, we don't know. Unfortunately, it's not recorded. But that must have been such a. Such an evocative event and such a hugely powerful event. If anything, he's led them to victory militarily. He's also shown them that they can do it on their own, too, because I don't think he's the sole leader in all of this. He uses local strongmen or warlords or power brokers, whichever words you prefer, and they hold these areas for him. But suddenly they're all together and we know that there's a treaty with France in May that year. It gives us an insight into medieval diplomacy. And all of a sudden, Owain's very good at it. But it's probably due to the bishops and the clerics and the academics turning up and going, yeah, I know how to phrase this. No, no, never mind. The will slaughter everyone. Let's do the we want to be friends, we'll be your faithful allies. And of course, the French respond. And the French, throughout the rest of the revolt, rebellion and actually thereafter proved to be excellent and faithful allies to the Welsh. And so then throughout the year, we know that a French naval force starts bombarding Caernarfon and they attempt to attack Caernarfon. The castle there, along with sort of the Welsh. And there was a battle on Anglesey the following year where the French and the Welsh defeat all of the Crown forces and English troops from Ireland. So it's probably them that did that. But the French are gathering a fleet now. They're very good on their words. And the evidence, we could still find it in the royal and historical letters of Henry iv. And I say that because no one believes me. The size of the fleet and the size of the army was absolutely enormous. The numbers given are 15,000 armored and equipped men. So a fighting force of 15,000. And they specifically state that the French intention is to land in Wales, occupy the castles and rebuild the castles and to hold Wales. And the French wrote to the Castilians and said, look, we're going to go and attack the English. You want to come? And the Castilians go, yeah, sure. And there's all these chronicles and letters that they detail the mission. And so by August, they're all parked in Brittany, there's the French fleet, the Bretons have turned up, the Castilians have turned up and there's this sort of. Of special moment. They're going to seize Wales and they're going to populate it and occupy all the castles. But guess what happens? Nothing. Because the noble that they've appointed, Jacques de Bourbon, he's in his mid-20s, so he doesn't want to go off and fight. He's hanging around Paris, he's getting drunk and he's chasing ladies and eventually sort of kicked out of Paris and forced to go to Brittany to join the fleet. And he takes his time. So bear in mind the fleet is ready to sail in August, Jacques turns up in November and he decided not to go to Wales. November, Channel, probably a lot of storms, quite a difficult crossing. So he instead just raided the south coast of England and tried to take the Isle of Wight. That was beaten back and the whole thing's a complete disaster. And so 1404, it must have been really frustrating. You can imagine, you know, Owain with his spear across his shoulder, looking out at sea, you know, where are the French? I don't think he was that impressed, to be honest. So 1405 comes along. Now, of course, there's a disaster in 1405 where the battle of Pithmellin, where Owain's brother Tudor was killed and his son Gruffydd was captured. And he had a rabble rousing priest, he had a number of rabble rousing priests, but one in particular called John o' Powell and He was killed in this fight as well, where they didn't do their homework first, unfortunately, in May, they went on a little raid, a raiding force, and unfortunately, they rode straight into an invading army which they hadn't notice. It didn't go well for them, we'll put it that way. But 1405 was sort of more interesting and more sort of well known for the French. Now, French pride had been wounded, so they raised another army, unfortunately a much, much smaller one, because they had other things going on in France. But they sent an army into Wales. And there are two versions of it. There's one by a chronicler at the Chronicle of St. Denis, and he said that the army was about two and a half, 3,000 strong. And they arrived in West Wales and they did very little, and then they returned the following spring. But bear in mind, that means that there's a French army parked on lands that Henry would claim for almost a year. The other chronicle was written by Enguert de Monstrelet, who was a warrior, so he was a soldier, and he would have known some of the people who went. And he sort of set off with a much bigger army, he says, 12,000. And they had this sort of great chevauche across South Wales, where they attacked and slaughtered and captured and did stuff, you know, these great tales. And they sort of swept across Glamorgan and they have this sort of standoff with the English army under Henry iv. Now, this isn't in the English records anyway, but it's in the French records. According to the French chronicle, there were duels between the various factions every day. About 200 people died in the duelling and fighting on the field between these two armies that are parked against one another. But the Frenchman he named, they did actually die on this expedition. So does that give credibility to monster lay's version, or do we believe the monk who hated the government, spending all the money on things like this when they should have been building churches or raising armies to go and liberate the Holy Land? So, you know, what I sort of suggest is that when these two armies met, they actually arranged some sort of truce, because otherwise Henry didn't pursue the French. If there's a truce enforcement, then Henry can't pursue the French. And in 1406, nothing happens. There's no warfare at all. There's a fight on Anglesey, but you could argue, well, that's kind of nibbling around the edges of the truce. So something must have happened between these two armies, and we don't know. And I suppose the other sort of factor that sort of comes into force with sort of the following year is that you have Owain making this sort of great declaration, the Penal Declaration, where he sets out this vision of a Welsh state of the document itself is very long and most people don't bother reading it, but if you read all of it, from first word to last word, it's pretty interesting. It describes the fact that the Welsh will support the French candidate for the papal schism, the sort of rupture between the church that's happening at this time. And then tacked on to the end. This is where Owain steps in again. There's a number of points, about 10 points, where he sets out his vision for a Welsh state. You know, so Welsh universities, a Welsh church. But there's a cracking quote, if I may. So here we hear Owain's angry voice again and it's great fun because although he's laid out his. The sort of foundations of a state, he wants the French and everyone else to turn up and help him. So Benedict XIII is the name of the French pope. He asks that the Lord Benedict brand as heretics and cause to be tortured in the usual manner. Henry of Lancaster, the intruder of the kingdom of England and the usurper of the crown of the same kingdom and his adherents, and of their own free will, they have burnt or caused to be burned so many cathedral convents, churches, that they have savagely hung, beheaded and quartered archbishops, bishops, prelates, priests, religious men, as they would madmen and beggars, or caused the same to be done. And then his next clause says, and that the same Lord Benedict shall grant to us our heirs and subjects and adherents of whatsoever nation they may be, who wage war against the aforesaid invader and intruder, as long as hold the orthodox faith full remission of our sins, and that remission continue as long as the war between us, our heirs and our subjects, and the aforesaid Henry, his heirs and subjects, shall endure. This is quite clearly asking for a holy war or a crusade against the English. This is the language of the times, just. It's framed in Owain's kind of aggressive, angry way. And so that's why he makes really good reading.
- [41:15]
Alex von Tunzelman
Of course, the agreement with the French wasn't the only agreement Owain had. There was also another one on the cards. Could you tell us about that?
- [41:23]
Gideon Bruff
Sure. So Owain had an alliance with the Percy. So at this point, only Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, is left alive, but of course, he heads a fairly powerful faction. And the Mortimers, Edmund Mortimer is now allied to Owain because he was captured at Brynglas and to save his skin, he married one of Owain's daughters. Between them they create this agreement which is known as the Tripartite Indenture. And they agreed to divide England up between the Percy's would have the north, the Mortimers would have the south of England and a much enlarged Wales would go to Owain. And this is the agreement which was no doubt shared with the French. We know this because in late 1406 King Charles, or at least the court of King Charles, wrote to Henry Percy senior and said, well, we sent an army there and you didn't turn up. So I think that the idea was that the Percy's were supposed to have risen in 1405 and there was a rising in York, but it was suppressed before the French landed. And so we know that they are sort of all entwined somewhere along the line. And unfortunately for the Percy's at least dies in battle in 1408 on Bramham Moor where Henry Percy is killed.
- [42:38]
Alex von Tunzelman
And from roughly the middle of this decade, the rebellion really seems to start to falter. Why was this?
- [42:47]
Gideon Bruff
So the decline of the Welsh rebellion didn't happen on the battlefield initially. This is where you sort of see the English brilliance, sort of the intelligence of Henry IV and all of his advisors. Because what they do is they realise that Wales is a problem, it's a hard nut to crack. And if they've got the French on their side, at some point this is going to go the way of the rebels and the French. So they realize that the Welsh aren't in a position to invade England and that's never their stated aim anyway. Anyway. So brilliantly they work on factions in the French court and they work a division between the major factions. In 1406 they form an alliance with the Burgundians who are opposed to the Orleanists. And the kind of cracks appear in the edifice of the French court. And this is how the French support is drawn away. And three sort of critical things happen in 1407 while the English realize that the Burgundians are doing this well. And at the end of 1407, Louis of Orleans, the sort of head of the Orleanist party, was assassinated in Paris by the Burgundian faction, at least henchmen loyal to the Burgundians. So Prince Henry in that year also leads an army against Aberystwyth Castle and begins besieging it. And this little fragment of evidence, the English kind of school the French Ambassadors on what they want to happen in any sort of truce, and they say that. That the said Owain must be subject to the crown, so he's specifically named. And if the French falter at any point, it's this one, because they give him up, but they're sliding into civil war. So you have the truce where the commander of the Welsh garrison asks the truce and says, look, I need to go and speak to Owain, and if Owain agrees, I'll hand the castle over to you, no problem. If he doesn't, then obviously I have to defend it again. This is one of those sort of flowery details that crops into Owain's story as to whether it's true or not, is when Hristi, who was the commander of the Aberystwyth garrison, asked if he could surrender. Owen's supposed to have whipped out his axe and held it to his neck and said, if you say that again, I'm going to cut your head off. Like I said, he's loved and feared in equal measure. And so then the story goes that he then returned to Aberystudh and they fought out this epic Siege. It lasted 16 months, and eventually they. They surrendered. The Welsh surrendered Aberystwyth. And the English had sort of long believed that Aberystwyth was the key. And so they turned their attention. During 1408, they turned their attention to Harlech, which is the siege of Hadleigh, and Edmund Mortimer is killed in the fighting. But then Owain's wife, at least one of his daughters, and the children she had had by Edmund Mortimer, they're all captured. The notion that Owain was there and escaped somehow, it's impossible the besieging army would have filtered everyone emerging. And so his family was captured and they spent the rest of their lives in captivity. Unfortunately, they would die away in 1413. Now, I can't help thinking whether this is a ploy by Henry IV and then Henry V to keep Owain quiet because he does nothing. Now, if they said, look, we've got your family. If you cut the rebellion out, they'll live. But then at some point where they realize he's lost his power, you know, the French aren't coming back because in 1411, the English diplomats have just run rings around the French. The rebellion has kind of gone. Harlech has fallen, Aberystwyth has fallen. They don't hold any of these kind of urban centers whereby they can say to the French or the Scots or the Irish, look, come and help us here. This is our capital. Come and join us. That's all gone. And it's reverted to being a sort of a peasant rebellion in woods, the guerrilla fighting and so on, which does continue, but not on the same scale and not with the same numbers. So as that's kind of withered away, I can't help thinking that Glyndor's family, that they're either allowed to die or that they were killed because they were in the Tower of London. And I wonder whether that was more of a ploy. We hold the power over you and now we're going to exert our power over you and they're going to die. Now, it's true that there were lots of messages sent to Owain and his supporters about accepting a pardon, admitting that they were wrong and that they should never have turned against their liege lord. And Owain steadfastly refuses, much to his credit, I feel, and certainly history remembers him well because of that. But no one gives him away either. And there must have been the ability and possibility of doing so, but no one does. So it faded away in many ways. Again, must have been really frustrating for Ay, not because of anything that he did. This is the English ambassadors doing brilliantly in France and working this. The fissures in the cracks of the French court and exploiting them brilliantly.
- [47:45]
Alex von Tunzelman
And if we look back at Owain himself, there's so much going on at this stage after 1412, we don't really know what happened. Nothing certain is known about Owain. What are the theories?
- [48:00]
Gideon Bruff
Well, so there are a number of theories that he lived with his daughter Alice, who had married John Skidmore, who lived on the English borders, and that he lived up the rest of his life quietly. We just don't know. The Crown sent a number of offers of pardon and they actually sent John, Duke of Bedford, who was Henry V's brother, immensely powerful man. So they weren't messing around. They were treating Owain with the respect that perhaps he would have felt that he was due by sending the second most powerful man in England to go and talk to him. And Owen refused someone else to talk to him. He said, the upshot is, no, I'm not going to surrender. No, I'm not going to accept the pardon, and this will go on until I die and I don't care. But it's impossible to know. I mean, I think he would have lived out in the woods and he'd have stayed there, angrily poking his fire. It would have worked. We nearly got it. Just said, I'm not Surrendering. He's a proud man, he's an honourable man. You know, perhaps he would have chosen to just die quietly, but I don't know. I'm not sure. One thing that we ignore is that the Crown was able to send numerous offers of pardon and submission to him. So I think they had a pretty good idea of where he was, but they didn't go after him. And I think that would have ignited, if they had found him and killed him, that would have ignited the Welsh again. So it worked for them and for Owain, for him never to be found, never to be given up, and for him to sort of die quietly and in some ways slip off into myth and legend. You know, him and Arthur are kind of fist bumping in a cave somewhere, waiting to be called upon to come and save the Welsh.
- [49:28]
Alex von Tunzelman
He's got an extraordinary legacy from this proud gentleman with military prowess that was feared and revered by his contemporaries, never betrayed to this Welsh mythic hero. What can this tell us about both how his contemporaries understood him, but also how he's been seen since?
- [49:50]
Gideon Bruff
I think that his contemporaries grew to see him in a different light once the rebellion really caught fire. The Welsh, who'd served with him on his military campaigns, and also the English knights and earls, they would have known that he was someone not to be taken lightly. But he grew into this much bigger figure, you know, a head of state, a leader, a prince, if you like. I think, reluctantly, at the beginning, you know, he doesn't use the Prince of Wales title, although he was credited with claiming it in 1400. When he wrote to the Irish in 1401, he didn't use the title. He said he was Lord of Glyndoverdwy, which is a tiny, tiny little estate in North Wales, minuscule. And he does the same when he writes to the King of Scotland, doesn't mention he's the Prince of Wales, which would have been. This would have been the moment, I'm the Prince of Wales, can you help me out? That would have been the right time. But he only did it in 1404 when he wrote to the French, because he had to. The French couldn't really got involved with some random minor noble, not even a knight. Let's bear that in mind. So it's only once he has to show what he's made of during the rebellion that he becomes more than what he would probably have ever been. You just lived out his life quietly, and then in more recent times, obviously, he's become reborn several times. He's had several lives at Owain. And now he's viewed as a great national hero. I know that a great historian of the 20th century described him as the father of modern Welsh nationalism. I would say that he wasn't. He didn't understand parliamentary democracy, and the notion of giving peas like us a vote would have been as alien to him as it was to anyone else of his generation. But I get the meaning that he's a figure that is revered in modern Wales, just as it was during his lifetime and interestingly, in the aftermath. If anyone had hated him, they could have then said so freely afterwards, once he was gone. And instead, what you get is there's a corpus of poetry that is so reverential and it's very emotional about how he's lost and how his vision for Wales was great and what an excellent Welshman he was. He's this great figure. You know, he was genuinely loved, and we know that he went to the funeral of people who'd fallen in battle for him. So as well as being the sort of character who'd say, turn up or else, he's a man who genuinely presented himself with humility to the people who fought with him. So, again, in modern Wales, you see the flags flying at the rugby games. Wrexham University used to be called Glyndwr University, and there was a campaign to have the Principality Stadium, the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. People in Wales wanted to name it the Glyndwr Stadium. So he looms large in Welsh society. So he's still this huge figure in Welsh history and society.
- [52:40]
Alex von Tunzelman
That was Gideon Bruff speaking to me. Emily Briffet. Gideon is a lecturer at the Open University and author of the Rise and Fall of Owain, Glyndon, England, France and the Welsh Rebellion in the Late Middle Ages. This is history's heroes, people with purpose, brave ideas and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, sonny, you'll have as good a face.
- [53:13]
Gideon Bruff
As any of us when I'm done with you.
- [53:15]
Alex von Tunzelman
Join me, Alex von Tunzelman for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes. Wherever you get your podcasts.