The leader of the rebellion was Owain Glyndwr (b. 1359), lord of Glyndyfrdwy near Llangollen in north-east Wales. Though he was descended from a royal house, there is nothing in Glyndwr’s early career to suggest that he was a potential Welsh ‘Braveheart’ figure. He studied law at the Inns of Court, became a squire to the earl of Arundel and fought loyally in Richard II’s army in Scotland. Richard’s deposition by Henry IV in 1399 may have strained Glyndwr’s loyalty, but it was a property dispute with his neighbour Lord Grey, the English lord of Ruthin, that tipped him over into open revolt. Angry that Grey had seized land he thought his own, Glyndwr burned Ruthin in September 1400. After Glyndwr’s supporters proclaimed him Prince of Wales the revolt spread with electrifying speed. Welsh students even ran away from Oxford to join in. The English reacted quickly but to little effect. Glyndwr rarely sought open battle, preferring the irregular tactics that had served the Welsh so well in the past. By the end of 1403 the English hold on Wales appeared to have been broken: even parts of the English border shires came under Welsh control. Just a few dozen isolated English garrisons hung on grimly in their besieged castles. Henry IV’s usurpation had made him enemies of the powerful Percy and Mortimer families, who allied with Glyndwr. If they succeeded in overthrowing Henry, they agreed that Glyndwr would be granted a principality that included all of Wales, plus the English shires of Cheshire, Shropshire, Herefordshire and part of Gloucestershire. Glyndwr laid ambitious plans for an independent Principality of Wales, with its own parliament, civil service, universities and independent church with an archbishopric at St David’s in Pembrokeshire. The defeat of his English allies at the battle of Shrewsbury in 1403 probably doomed Glyndwr’s rebellion to ultimate failure - to be secure in the long term he needed the recognition only a sympathetic English government would willingly provide - but this was not immediately apparent because he soon found new allies in the French, who sent an expeditionary force to Wales in 1405. The French proved to be fainthearted allies. They invaded England, took Worcester but retreated at the first sign of opposition and went home in 1406, having achieved nothing.
The withdrawal of the French was the turning point of the rebellion. With no possibility now of outside support or recognition, Glyndwr’s supporters began to waver, Henry IV had by now got over the political
Plate 20 Seal of Owain Glyndwr Source: Patricia Aithie/Ffotograff
Troubles of his early years and was able to concentrate on reconquering Wales. By 1408, resistance was confined to the mountains of the north, where it continued for another four years or so. Glyndwr went into hiding after 1410 and was never apprehended by the English. It is thought likely that he died and was buried secretly at his daughter’s home at Monnington Court in Herefordshire sometime after Henry V offered him a pardon, which he refused, in 1415, but there remains considerable uncertainty about his last years. Even in the sixteenth century, the belief persisted that he was still holding out in the hills, biding his time. The immediate legacy of Glyndwr’s revolt was a devastated countryside and a raft of repressive anti-Welsh legislation that remained in force until Henry VII, of the Welsh Tudor family, came to the throne in 1485. The failure of the revolt effectively killed off Welsh aspirations for independence, and in future Welsh political ambitions were focused on achieving equal status with the English. In cultural terms, this was not achieved until the twentieth century, but in legal terms it came with the Act of Union in 1536 which abolished the marcher lordships and all legal distinctions between the English and Welsh, saw the country divided into shires and gave it the right to parliamentary representation. Wales thereby lost its legal identity, but the Act did ensure that, at a local level at least, the Welsh would be governed by ‘magistrates of their own nation’. This guaranteed that Wales would not come to be thought of as simply part of England. The Act of Union made English the language of law and administration and this posed an obvious threat to the Welsh language. That the Welsh language was able to hold its own was largely an unintended consequence of the Reformation, which was of course taking place at the same time as the Act of Union. While the Reformation failed to win popular acceptance in England’s other Celtic dependency of Ireland, Protestantism (and later Nonconformity) put down deep roots in Wales. This was because, in contrast to Ireland, religious texts were quickly made available in the native language. Welsh translations of the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed and the Ten Commandments were published as early as 1547. Translations of the Prayer Book and the Scriptures followed. The Roman Catholic church had forbidden the translation of the Scriptures into vernacular languages but now any literate lay person could get a religious education. The opportunity was seized upon eagerly, and as a result Welsh found a new role as the language of religion, so ensuring both its survival and its continuing central role in the identity of the Welsh people.
World History
