The records of these years of conquest are interesting and sometimes thrilling, but neither edifying nor instructive. They are replete with martial exploits and deeds of daring. Battles are fought, and castles are stormed and burned with wearisome monotony. On both sides there was cruelty and treachery in abundance. A few names stand out as deserving of remembrance. The men who did most to stem the on-coming tide of Norman invasion were Griffith ap Conan, and Griffith ap Rees, both of whom died in the year 1137. The former ruled in Gwynedd, and the latter in Deheubarth; and to a far greater degree than any other Welsh princes of the period they perceived how absolutely essential unity was if Wales was to be saved from becoming a Norman fief. By this time the Welsh had learnt much of the Normans' military art. They fought clad, like their foes, in complete armour; and they knew how to build, how to defend, and how to attack stone castles. Thus the disparity in equipment, which had at first made Welsh armies an easy prey tomuch smaller bodies of Normans, was disappearing. In 1136, the year after the death of Henry I, a great pitched battle was fought at Cardigan between Griffith ap Rees and a league of Norman barons formed in order to crush him; and in this battle the Welsh were victorious. The Normans retreated, and were obliged to abandon much of the land and several of the castles which they had previously held. This is the high-water mark of the power of the Norman barons as distinct from that of the Norman kings.
An even greater ruler then ascended the throne of Gwynedd, the famous Owen Gwynedd, fine soldier, far-sighted statesman, friend of poets, and patron of monks. He perceived, dimly at least, the utter hopelessness of the struggle, which had now begun in earnest, against incorporation in the English kingdom, unless complete national unity could at once be achieved. Henry II now sat on the throne of England; for the times of Stephen and Matilda, so helpful to the enemies of England, were over. Owen persuaded most of the Welsh chieftains to acknowledge his supremacy; and he made an alliance with the princely house of Dinevor, the rulers of South Wales. But for the utter selfishness and thetreachery of his brother there is no knowing but that something like a united Wales might have emerged before the close of Owen's reign. Never was unity so sorely needed; for one of the first enterprises upon which Henry II embarked, when he had made his throne secure, was the subjugation of Wales. But Henry's first venture was unsuccessful. Starting from Chester, he penetrated as far as Rhuddlan; but was there confronted with the great mountain mass of Snowdonia, stretching right into the sea at the Penmaenmawr. He occupied Anglesey, however; but so fierce was the opposition with which he was met that he deemed it wise to come to terms with Owen, and to withdraw.
In 1157 Henry came a second time, but with no better results. Twelve years later he led his armies into Wales for the third time, on this occasion starting from Oswestry, and crossing the mountains into the upper valley of the Dee. At Corwen Owen's army was drawn up in readiness, an army fairly representative of the whole of Wales. Before the English could reach him, however, the wind and the rain had done their work upon the invaders. Baggage was washed away, and to obtain adequate supplies became animpossibility. Angry and disappointed, Henry was obliged hurriedly to retreat. This was the crowning triumph of Owen Gwynedd's life. He had successfully withstood one of the very greatest of English kings. In the November of the same year he died, and was buried in Bangor cathedral.
In the years which immediately followed the death of Owen the dominating figure in Welsh politics was Rees ap Griffith, prince of Deheubarth, the "Lord Rees" as he was generally and familiarly styled. He inherited Owen's policy of unity and consolidation; but this time the work was to proceed from Cardigan, and not from the mountains of the North. The task of repelling the advance of the Normans was now less formidable than it had ever been; for the conquest of Ireland had begun, and the more turbulent and adventurous spirits were finding there an outlet for their energies in just the same way as their grandfathers had done in Wales. When king Henry II passed through Wales on his way to Ireland, he was met by the Lord Rees, and an amicable understanding was arrived at between them. In 1174 Rees was able to give proof of his friendship by assisting Henry to crush a revolt of his barons.Slowly but steadily Rees extended his sway over all the princes and barons of the South; and even over Merioneth beyond the Dovey, the natural boundary between his dominions and those of the princes of Gwynedd. Not only was Rees a great warrior, and an able statesman; he was also a munificent and discriminating patron of culture. An Eisteddfod which he held at Cardigan in 1176 has become famous. There poets and musicians from every part of Wales competed; and so just were the awards that the prize for music was won by the South, and that for poetry by the North.
The closing decade of the twelfth century saw the accession to the throne of Gwynedd of the ablest statesman in the whole history of mediæval Wales. This was Llewelyn, known to English and Welsh historians alike as Llewelyn the Great. It was no novel spectacle to see one of the Welsh thrones occupied by a fine soldier; and great as Llewelyn undoubtedly was in that respect, he was no greater than some of his predecessors and some of his successors. Where he outshines all competitors is in his clear reading of the signs of the times, in his understanding of the politics of England as well as Wales, and in his firmgrasp of a policy which was no fantastic dream but a theory possible of attainment. His long reign of forty-six years (1194-1240) divides itself naturally into some half-dozen periods. In the first period (1194-1201) Llewelyn is fully absorbed in the task of making himself secure on the throne of Gwynedd. His difficulty was with the members of his own family, and with Prince Gwenwynwyn of Powys. The emergence of Gwynedd from the obscurity which had recently overtaken it was also beheld with jealous eyes by the princes of the South. But from all these difficulties Llewelyn soon emerged triumphant. In the course of the struggle he had, however, learnt one thing, and that was that the only hope for Wales lay in submission to the king of England, a submission which would involve only an acknowledgment of overlordship, without the abandonment of one single title of substantial independence. He perceived clearly that to fight for the shadow would probably lead to the loss of the substance; especially as it had now been proved beyond all possibility of doubt that the Welsh princes never would submit permanently and peacefully to one of their own order.
The second period in Llewelyn's reign opens with his marriage to Joan, daughter of King John. The marriage alliance carried with it a political alliance as well. Llewelyn used the brief breathing space which this alliance brought him to the best possible advantage. He made his position in Gwynedd secure, overran Powys, and carried his victorious army as far south as Aberystwyth. There he met the southern princes, and agreed to divide Cardigan with them. Then turning northwards he marched against Ranulf, Earl of Chester, whose castles of Deganwy, Rhuddlan, Holywell, and Mold he captured.
In the meantime John had been viewing the victorious career of his son-in-law with surprise and displeasure. A strong and united Wales was a thing which no king of England could tolerate. In the third period of his reign, therefore, between 1212 and 1215, we find John and Llewelyn in opposition to one another. Twice in the course of one summer did John invade North Wales, penetrating on the second occasion as far as Bangor, where, characteristically enough, he burned the Cathedral, and held the Bishop to ransom. So hard pressed was Llewelyn that he was obliged to send Joan to make full submission toher father on his behalf. But the tide soon turned. The other Welsh chieftains were greatly alarmed at John's manifest intention to dispossess them; and placing themselves under Llewelyn they begged him to lead them. John had also quarrelled with Rome; and the great Innocent III, who then held the Papacy, absolved Llewelyn and the other Welsh princes from their allegiance to the English king. Events in England were also most propitious; for John had by now come into serious conflict with his own nobility, and was soon to be compelled to concede all their demands by the Charter. With the English barons Llewelyn made an alliance; and Magna Carta, when it was eventually signed, contained clauses dealing exclusively with Wales. One of these clauses consisted of a promise that all Welshmen dispossessed of their lands or liberty should recover them. Another declared that all disputes were to be decided in England by English law, in the Marches by March law, and in Wales by Welsh law.
In the year 1213 John had convened a council, in which some have seen the germ out of which grew the future English Parliament. The same idea seems to have found place in the mind of Llewelyn; for on two occasionshe summoned together all the princes of Wales, and all the wise men. So far as we know there was no process of election, and certainly no trace of the principle of representation; nevertheless this council was a distinct advance politically upon anything that had been seen in Wales before. The princes were to act as judges, and all questions of policy were to be debated by them with the assistance of the wise men. The first of these councils assembled at Aberdovey, a convenient meeting-place for Gwynedd, Powys, and the South. The decrees of the council were to be upheld by force; and when Gwenwynwyn of Powys soon after refused to obey, he was instantly crushed and deprived of his lands.
In order to strengthen himself still further, and at the same time to erect a bulwark between him and England, Llewelyn cemented his alliance with the powerful lords of the Marches by giving one of his daughters in marriage to Reginald de Braose, and the other to Ralph Mortimer. This lady Gladys, who married Mortimer, became the ancestress of Elizabeth of York, the mother of Henry VIII. Thus in the veins of the greatest of the Tudors there flowed some of the blood of the ancient royal house of Cunedda.
In the next period of his reign, between 1215 and 1226, we find Llewelyn at war with the Marshalls, the able and warlike Earls of Pembroke. William Marshall was as able a statesman as Llewelyn himself. His aim was to put an end to the turmoil into which England had been plunged by the struggle between king and barons. He was in favour of the Charter; but at the same time it seemed to him that the supremacy of a king was to be preferred to the lawless self-seeking of the great earls. He believed that the welfare of England demanded the existence of a strong central Government; and in this he was unquestionably right. In truth, Marshall was striving to achieve in England the very same thing that Llewelyn had been striving to achieve in Wales. With the death of John, and the accession of the innocent and untried Henry III, the power of the barons began to decline. Unfortunately the great Marshall died in 1219; and a vigorous war broke out between his son and Llewelyn. After some years, however, the younger Marshall lost the favour of the king; and Llewelyn, always quick to adjust his policy to a changed situation, at once concluded an alliance with him. Against such an alliancenothing could stand in Wales. Every castle in the country, with the solitary exception of Carmarthen, fell into their hands, and the king's army was defeated in a great battle at Grosmont.
With the victory of Grosmont the period of Llewelyn's aggressive policy comes to an end. Henceforward he is on the defensive, feeling the on-coming of old age, and desiring above all things to render Wales secure against disintegration after his death. Llewelyn had read correctly the lesson of the past. He knew that, as soon as the strong hand of an able ruler had been removed, the fruits of his policy had been dissipated by his mediocre successors. What he now desired so ardently was to build a Welsh State upon foundations so secure that it would not be overthrown by incapacity on the part of its sovereign. The definite announcement of Llewelyn's policy of dependence upon England produced two parties in Wales, one of them antagonistic to such dependence, the other favourable to it. This ultimately proved to be the rock upon which the plan was wrecked; but it was not until after the death of Llewelyn that the failure of his policy became apparent. While he lived, his genius and hisprestige were sufficient to compel the reluctant acquiescence even of those princes who most strongly disapproved of his policy. An agreement was made with the English king, whereby Wales was to preserve its independence, while its Prince acknowledged his dependence, in the feudal sense, upon England. There was to be perpetual peace between the two kingdoms; and Wales was to support England in all foreign wars.
Llewelyn's eldest son, Griffith, an able and energetic young man, who would naturally have inherited his father's throne, was strongly opposed to the policy which had been adopted. In his view Welsh independence ought to be absolute and complete; and no political dealings with England fought to be carried on at all except on a footing of equality. The young prince was consequently looked upon as the natural leader of the war party. With what reluctance we do not know, Llewelyn made up his mind that Griffith should not inherit his throne, but that it should go to Davydd, the younger of his sons, an effeminate and peace-loving boy. With this purpose in view the aged Prince summoned again the Council of Princes to meet, this time at the Cistercian abbey of Strata Florida. ThereDavydd was duly nominated, and the oaths of allegiance of all the assembled chieftains taken. This was in 1238; and two years later Llewelyn died, and was buried in the monastery of Aberconway.
In the brief intervals of peace which he had enjoyed in the course of his long and strong reign, Llewelyn had proved himself not unmindful of the things of the intellect and the spirit. The Cistercian monks found in him a warm friend. It was at their home of Strata Florida that he summoned the last of his councils; and it was at their home on the slopes of the Conway that he came to sleep his last sleep. While he was reigning, the mendicant Orders had also come to Wales for the first time; and they, likewise, especially the Franciscan Friars, found in him a sympathetic protector; and it was by his favour that they acquired their beautiful home at Llan Vaes in Anglesey. We have seen how he negotiated with the Pope. With the desire of the Welsh Church to be completely independent of Canterbury he was in full sympathy, although he never went so far as to lay claims to the power of appointing Welsh bishops. Like almost all the greater Welsh princes he delighted in music andpoetry, and was a munificent patron of the bard and the minstrel.
In accordance with the decree of the Council Davydd ascended his father's throne, and set himself to walk the path marked out for him. But the task which the great Llewelyn had barely been able to accomplish was far beyond the strength of his less able and less popular son. His brother Griffith had already been suspected of harbouring disloyal thoughts and had been immured by his father in the castle of Criccieth. In 1241 Davydd went to Gloucester, one of the three cities at which the kings of England used regularly to meet their advisers in council, and there did homage to Henry III. Then his real troubles began. The extreme nationalists were determined to put an end to the policy of dependence; and in the person of the imprisoned Griffith they knew that they would find an able and enthusiastic champion. And not only was Davydd opposed by the Welsh diehards; he also found enemies in many of the border princes and barons, who resented the supremacy of Gwynedd. Griffith's wife Senena was free; and she was chosen by the party of opposition to go to the king and plead her husband's cause. Henry III was sufficientlycrafty to discern the opportunity of maintaining a state of discord in Wales, by playing off the one brother against the other. He accordingly decreed that both Davydd and Griffith should come to court, and have their differences settled by Welsh law. It soon became obvious, however, that Henry was not to be trusted by either party. He marched towards Chester, and then commenced to negotiate with Davydd. The king's terms were accepted; and Davydd went with Henry to London, and again swore allegiance. Meanwhile Griffith had been set at liberty. But his liberty was of short duration. Henry imprisoned him in the Tower of London where, in 1244, he met his death while attempting to escape.
In the summer of 1245 Henry gathered together a large army, and marched against North Wales. Deganwy was reached, and a new castle built there. This was waste of valuable time, and ere the work was completed the king found that Davydd had secured powerful allies in the form of famine and winter storms. It was the same old story that could be told of so many of the English invasions of Wales in the Middle—a swift and irresistible advance insummer, a long halt, then the oncoming of winter followed by a retreat which very frequently became a rout. In the next year Davydd died, and was laid to rest in his father's grave at Aberconway, whither, some time later, the body of his brother Griffith was also brought.
With the death of Davydd a disputed succession again arose. The two most obvious claimants, since Davydd had left no children, were Griffith's two sons, Owen Goch and Llewelyn. But Ralph Mortimer also claimed the throne through his wife Gladys, daughter of Llewelyn the Great; and when he died a few months later he transmitted his claims to his son Roger. An entirely new candidate, however, appeared on the scene in the person of the young Prince Edward, son of Henry III and heir to the English throne. The claim was vague, resting upon the agreement come to between Senena on behalf of Griffith, and Henry. In effect all that was claimed by Edward was the territory held by Llewelyn ap Griffith, which comprised the fourcantrefsbetween the Dee and the Conway—Rhos, Rhuvonig, Dyffryn Clwyd, and Tegeingl—and certain lands south of the Dovey; and these he obtained. In Gwynedd Owen andLlewelyn now became joint rulers; and when they had done homage to the English king, they remained unmolested. Llewelyn had inherited a large measure of his grandfather's ability and force of character; and owing to the possession of these qualities he soon began to take the lead in affairs. With high and low alike he was immensely popular. This roused the jealousy of his two brothers, Owen and Davydd, and they rose in revolt against him. But from the start Llewelyn proved himself a most capable soldier. The rebels were swiftly defeated; Davydd escaped, and fled to the English court; while Owen was imprisoned. By the end of the year 1255 Llewelyn was without a rival in the North.
Between Prince Edward and Llewelyn, in so far as the latter represented his grandfather's policy, there was no fundamental conflict of ideal. The essence of that policy was that Wales should remain independent and united, but within the bounds of allegiance to the King of England. To the modern man, who has inherited from the century of the Reformation the conception of national sovereignty, such a position may appear to be an impossible one; but to the man of the Middle Ages, accustomed as he was to the underlying principles of feudalism, there was nothing at all paradoxical in the position. Now in recent years we have again learned the soundness of the principle; and it has become the foundation upon which the British Empire rests. There are many of the elements of real tragedy in this mighty conflict between Edward and Llewelyn. Both were able,valiant, sincere, and high-minded men. Both were statesmen of more than ordinary capacity. It is hard that amodus vivendishould not have been discovered between them; and it looks as if some cruel Fate had placed each of them in a false position of inevitable hostility the one towards the other. To Edward the Welsh appeared in the light only of rebellious subjects. They owed him fealty; and with the strict sense of feudal obligations which, with Edward, amounted almost to an obsession, he viewed their disobedience as the breach of a legal and a moral duty. "The last survivor of that race of traitors" were the words with which the Parliament of Shrewsbury described Davydd, Llewelyn's brother. To Llewelyn and the people of Wales, on the other hand, the struggle was that of an independent State, fighting for the preservation of its independence against the encroachments of a powerful neighbour. It was unfortunate that Edward had come to think of Llewelyn as shifty and faithless, and that Llewelyn had come to think of Edward as cruel, crafty, and deceitful. The two men regarded one another with intense personal hatred and suspicion; and an accommodation which might have proved fairly easy ofattainment in an atmosphere of goodwill and confidence, was rendered quite impossible by the atmosphere of dislike and distrust in which negotiations were conducted.
The trouble began when Henry III presented his son Edward, then a boy of sixteen, with the palatine earldom of Chester, upon the extinction of the great Norman family by which it had hitherto been held. This grant carried with it, as we have seen, certain lands in Wales—the Four Cantrefs, and the lands between the Dovey and Carmarthen Bay. These lands were recent acquisitions of the English Crown; and it was with extreme reluctance that the chieftains of Gwynedd had acquiesced. Nevertheless, all might have been well but for the ruthless policy of anglicisation upon which Edward's officials immediately embarked. Professor Tout is undoubtedly right when he says that "the germ of all Edward's later Welsh policy lies in his early attempts to establish the shire system in his Welsh estates." He might have added with equal truth that therein lies too the germ of all Edward's subsequent troubles in Wales; for the introduction of the shire system meant the substitution of English law for the laws of Howel, a new and different division of thecountry for administrative purposes, and eventually the imposition of English manners and the English language upon the Welsh people.
The brutality of the soldiers left by Edward in the Four Cantrefs infuriated the inhabitants so that they rose in rebellion, and appealed to Llewelyn for help. Llewelyn knew that it would be impolitic for him to go to their assistance; but his chivalrous and patriotic soul was stirred to its depths by their tale of outrage and oppression, and reluctantly he agreed to go. Within the course of a few days the whole country from the Conway to the Dee was overrun. But Llewelyn knew that it would not be possible to confine the struggle within one locality. The whole might of England would be brought against him; and to resist such overwhelming power the united efforts of the whole of Wales would be required. It was thus that Llewelyn, from being the avenger of the wrongs of the people of a small province, came to be the champion of the whole of Wales. The country rose with rare unanimity; and Llewelyn moved on irresistibly towards Chester, where Edward was stationed, impotent in the face of the superior power of his foes. Edward appealed to his father for help; but at first the appealwas met only with a rebuke. In 1257, however, Henry came to his assistance with a big army. He succeeded in reaching Deganwy; but further he was unable to penetrate, and his retreat was disastrous. Indeed the only effect of the whole campaign was to demonstrate to all waverers the feebleness of Henry and the strength of Llewelyn.
Llewelyn was now as powerful as any Welsh prince had ever been; while England was in the throes of the bitter struggle between the king and the barons led by Simon de Montfort. An alliance was concluded between the Welsh and Simon; and the defeat and capture of Henry at Lewes in May 1258 gave Llewelyn a respite in which to consolidate his gains and to strengthen his position. So long as England remained disunited Llewelyn was perfectly secure, but the death of Simon, and the triumph of the king, altered the whole situation. This Llewelyn knew perfectly well, for he was no idle dreamer; and he was then, as indeed always, willing to come to terms with the king upon the old conditions—Wales to be independent, and the Prince of Wales to do homage to the King of England. In September 1267 Henry led an army to Shrewsbury; and with them came the legate Ottobon,for the purpose of negotiating with Llewelyn. The Welsh prince had now, for some years, been excommunicated. Indeed, throughout the long struggle the Church proved itself to be the implacable enemy of Welsh independence. Recognizing the hopelessness and the futility of war against the whole strength of England, Llewelyn, at Shrewsbury, came to terms with Henry; and four days afterwards the terms were embodied in the Treaty of Montgomery. Llewelyn was to do homage to Henry, and to pay him an indemnity. His own position as Prince of Wales was recognized; and he was to retain possession of the Four Cantrefs. This was the position in 1273, when Henry III died.
The accession of Edward I completely altered the situation. He and Llewelyn were ancient enemies, and each was, from the first, on the lookout for assault and aggressions on the part of the other. Edward was crowned in London, upon his return from the Holy Land in August 1274. In accordance with feudal usage he summoned the King of Scotland and the Prince of Wales to do homage to him. Alexander of Scotland obeyed and went; but Llewelyn refused. He sought to justify his refusal on the ground that Edward had proved so faithless in the past that he darenot venture his life inside the English capital; furthermore he accused Edward of having broken the Treaty of Montgomery. A year elapsed; and then Edward came to Chester, and again summoned Llewelyn to his presence. Acting on the advice of his council, Llewelyn refused to go; and Edward returned to London in deep displeasure. At this juncture Fate played into the hands of the English king. Llewelyn was betrothed to Eleanor, daughter of Simon de Montfort, at that time living with her mother in France. It was arranged that she should come over in 1275 for the purpose of getting married; but on the way she was captured by a vessel from Bristol and taken to London, where Edward kept her in captivity. The crafty monarch saw his opportunity. Eleanor should not become the wife of Llewelyn until the latter had performed the long-delayed act of homage. This condition Llewelyn indignantly refused; and in 1277 war began. The English army moved in four divisions, one from Chester, one from Shrewsbury, one from Hereford, and one from Carmarthen. South Wales was speedily reduced to subjection; and Llewelyn presently found himself besieged in the fastnesses of Snowdonia, an army hemming himin on the land side, while a fleet from the Cinque Ports rendered escape by sea impossible. Perceiving that further resistance would be useless, in November 1277 he signed the Treaty of Rhuddlan in Edward's presence. The terms of the treaty were severe—an indemnity of fifty thousand marks, the restoration of the Four Cantrefs, a yearly rent to be paid for Anglesey, all barons except those of Snowdon to hold their lands of the English king, the title Prince of Wales to cease with Llewelyn's life, and Llewelyn to come to England once every year to do homage. It was made a condition that the inhabitants of the Four Cantrefs were to be allowed to retain their old customs, and to be judged by their own laws. Eleanor was then released; and her marriage to Llewelyn took place at Worcester in October 1278.
It is well known by all historians and statesmen that a too severe treaty is always the parent of new wars, and the Treaty of Rhuddlan was undoubtedly too severe. The latent discontent which was felt throughout Wales, and especially in the North, was greatly exacerbated by the oppressive administration of the king's Welsh lands by his officials. Justice was denied. Englishmenmight murder and steal with impunity so long as their victims were only Welsh. Offices were sold; and extortionate fines were exacted. The old Welsh laws were disregarded, the excuse being that they conflicted with the king's superior sense of justice. So terrible was the oppression, and so impossible was it to obtain redress by constitutional means, that in 1282 revolts broke out in many parts of the country. Llewelyn had scrupulously abstained from giving the least encouragement to any of these revolts; but once they had broken out of their own accord, he perceived how essential it was that they should be directed by one mind, and placed himself at their head.
This time Edward determined to make an end of his troublesome vassal, and to crush the independent power of the Welsh chieftain once and for all. Llewelyn prepared himself to meet the enormous English army which was marching against him, his mind filled with evil forebodings, and his heart heavy with sorrow at the recent death of his wife. The meddlesome Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury, after first excommunicating Llewelyn, tried to mediate. But Edward insisted upon unconditional surrender, andthat Llewelyn would not stoop to make. Meanwhile winter was coming on, and Edward had only succeeded in reaching Penmaenmawr. To try to penetrate the towering mountain barrier of Arfon at that season of the year would be reckless folly; and so he retreated to Rhuddlan to await the return of spring.
Accorded this brief respite, Llewelyn paid what was intended to be a flying visit to South Wales, in order to encourage his allies. In a lonely dell near Builth, on December 11th, the last Prince of Wales was slain in a chance skirmish with some Cheshire soldiers who were quite ignorant of his identity. He was refused Christian burial by the Archbishop; and whether his body eventually found a resting place within the sacred precincts of Cwm Hir, as tradition says it did, we have no means of ascertaining.
With the death of Llewelyn the rebellion instantly collapsed, except that his brother Davydd, who had once betrayed him, kept up a show of resistance in the heart of Snowdonia. But in March 1284 he was betrayed and captured, and sent by Edward in chains to Shrewsbury to abide his trial. Davydd was unquestionably a bad man; but it is difficult to conceive of any degree of turpitudemeriting the dreadful penalties which were inflicted upon him. A special Parliament was summoned to meet at Shrewsbury; and it was this body, representing, as we may fairly assume that it did, the finest intellect and character in the England of the day, that, sitting in cold blood, condemned the hapless prisoner to be drawn at the tails of horses through the streets of Shrewsbury, to be hanged, to be disembowelled while still alive, then to be quartered and beheaded. English historians have been known to contrast the superior civilization of the England of Edward I with the barbarity of the Wales of Llewelyn. One might well invite them to think the matter over afresh in the light of the doings of the Parliament of Shrewsbury. About the native Welsh princes, Owen M. Edwards has finely and truly said that "they had never tortured a prisoner, or betrayed a guest, or wreaked inhuman vengeance on a fallen enemy."
Wales was now conquered, and the "English Justinian" could proceed with the task of organization. In this work he was keenly interested, as is vouched for by the fact that he spent the greater part of the succeeding two years in the country. From Rhuddlan,in 1284, he issued the great Statute of Wales which, until the changes wrought by Henry VIII, remained the foundation upon which the government of Wales rested. The shire principle was extended. In the north Anglesey, Carnarvon, and Merioneth were made into shires, under the jurisdiction of the Justice of Snowdon. Likewise Flint became a shire under the jurisdiction of the Justice of Chester. In the south Cardigan and Carmarthen were made shires under the Justice of South Wales. There were to be County Courts as in England; and twice every year the new official, the sheriff, was to make his tourn through the commotes. The main body of Welsh law was to remain in force; but it was subject to a good deal of modification. For the protection of the land, and especially for the subjugation of Llewelyn's stronghold of Gwynedd, a circle of the newly-devised concentric castles was built—Conway, Beaumaris, Carnarvon, Criccieth, and Harlech. In order to break the old tribal system, and in order to anglicise the population as much as possible, the growth of towns was encouraged. These were given special privileges by Royal Charter. Cardigan, Builth, Montgomery, Welshpool, Rhuddlan, Aberystwyth, Carnarvon, Conway, Criccieth,Harlech, Caerwys, Beaumaris, and Newburgh were among those which received charters from Edward I; while Edward II gave charters to Bala, Llanfyllin, Cardiff, Usk, Caerleon, Newport, Cowbridge, and Neath.
In 1284 Edward, accompanied by his wife Eleanor, made a tour of the Principality. At the beginning of the tour Edward, the first English Prince of Wales, had been born; and, according to tradition, had been presented by his father publicly to the people of Carnarvon. From Carnarvon the royal progress wended its way to Nevin, where a splendid tournament was held. From Nevin it proceeded to Aberystwyth, and thence to St. David, and finally to Bristol.
But Edward was destined never to find rest in his relations with either Scotland or Wales. In 1294 a rebellion broke out, caused by the injustice of the new sheriffs. It was fairly general, breaking out simultaneously in Dyfed in Glamorgan, and in the North. Again the king led an army to Conway; and in a comparatively short time the rebellion was quelled. It was not, however, altogether fruitless. Edward seems to have realised that his policy was goading the country into revolt, and that a greater measure of clemency would servehis interests better. At all events administration became, for a time at least, more pure and less harsh. The last attempt to win independence for Wales in the reign of Edward I was, curiously enough, made by a Norman lord, Sir Thomas Turberville. He entered into an agreement with the French, by which he was to bring Wales to their assistance in their war against England, the reward for this service being the Principality itself. Before anything had been done, however, the plot was discovered; and Turberville's head was placed to rot on the Tower of London.
The question whether the Edwardian conquest was a benefit or a misfortune to Wales in the long run is one to which no certain answer can be given. In so far as it put an end to the rivalries and the internecine strife which, for centuries, had convulsed the land, it was an unalloyed blessing. But there were signs that Welshmen had already learnt the lesson of the past; and that they were willing, without the drastic measures applied to them from without, to set their own house in order. The multiplication of small States is now, no doubt, an evil; but the same cannot be said with confidence about the Middle Ages. Theassertion of writers, unable themselves to read a line of Welsh, that the culture of England in the latter half of the thirteenth century was superior to that of Wales is certainly untrue. Indeed the direct contrary is the fact. Welsh literature, both prose and poetry, was far ahead of that of England; and the Welsh language had attained a decidedly higher stage of development. Welsh customs were "barbarous" only in the sense in which all that is strange is considered barbarous by the man of insular mind. We have now learned (and it is our good fortune that we have learned) that a nation can live its own free life of the mind and the spirit while forming, for political purposes, part of a larger body called a State; but it does not follow that, in the thirteenth century, a nation could exist at all without enjoying a large measure of political independence, if not sovereignty itself. Llewelyn may have been crafty, proud, and impulsive; but it is equally true that Edward was harsh, perfidious, and a narrow legalist always thinking in terms of strict feudal law. His plea that the amending or abrogating of Welsh laws was for the good of the Welsh people themselves is the excuse which strong empires have always made useof when seeking to justify the subjugation and assimilation of small nations. He talked much about justice; but this justice, which sounded so fair in theory, resolved itself in practice into the oppression and cruelty of ruthless and unsympathetic foreign officials. At heart what Edward most desired was not that Welshmen should remain Welshmen and be at peace with him, but that they should as quickly as possible be turned into Englishmen. It has been noted that in the towns which Edward founded in Wales English was the language of the people down to the close of the sixteenth century.
With the death of Edward I Wales settled down to a long period of comparative tranquillity. The next eighty years were as peaceful a time as the unhappy country had enjoyed for centuries. Edward II was now on the throne of England; and his Welsh birth, his mild disposition, and his obvious desire to deal justly with the Principality caused him to be regarded with trust and even with affection. On two occasions during the reign the new Welsh shires were allowed to send representatives to the English Parliament. All forms of lawlessness were sternly repressed. The consequence was that the Welsh people began, as they had never done before, to turn their attention to trade and the accumulation of wealth. The fourteenth century witnessed a great increase in industry and commerce all over Western Europe, and both England and Wales participated in theincrease. Edward III conferred a most precious benefit upon Wales by bringing it within the scope of the Statute of Staple. In 1332 Shrewsbury and Carmarthen were constituted staple towns for the Principality. Then came the Black Death, which swept over England and Wales in the year 1349. The amount of immediate distress which it occasioned was immense; but some of its results were good. The fact that among the labouring classes the rate of mortality had been something like fifty per cent. made labour very scarce; and in spite of the efforts of Parliament to control the situation by means of Statutes of Labourers, the economic and social position of the villeins was immensely improved. But it was not in Wales only that Welshmen were bettering their position; they were covering themselves with glory on all the great battlefields of Europe. The fourteenth century was the age of the long bow; with it the finest victories of the Hundred Years' War were won; and the home of the long bow was Wales. The weapon had been in use for a long time in border wars, and its superiority to the cross bow had been clearly demonstrated. The Black Prince, who became Prince of Wales in 1343, was immenselypopular in the Principality, and a large body of archers and spearmen from Wales followed him to the French wars. At Crécy there were five thousand Welsh troops; and it was at the close of that battle that the Prince assumed the crest and the motto which ever since have been worn by all Princes of Wales. No lover of English literature is ever likely to forget the pages in which Shakespeare has drawn an amusing but kindly caricature of the Welshmen who distinguished themselves on the field of Agincourt. But it was not only in the armies of their own sovereign that Welshmen were to be found; they were, throughout the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, among the most famous mercenary troops in Europe. Many of them fought in the French armies against the Black Prince and against Henry V. Owen of Wales, the friend of the greatcondottiereBertrand du Guesclin, won much fame as the leader of a Free Company. This Owen, however, was much more than a successful mercenary captain: he remembered the land of his birth; and the great ambition of his life was to win back Welsh independence with the assistance of France and Spain.
The Black Death had very adversely affectedthe monastic life of Wales. Even in the thirteenth century—the golden age of monasticism—Wales was too poor a country to support such princely foundations as Fountains or St. Albans. Its monasteries were, for the most part, small, drawing what wealth they possessed from acres of barren mountain land. As we have already seen, Wales, from the first coming of Christianity into the country, had its monastic foundations. So far back as the sixth century, those of Bangor Iscoed and Llantwit Major were famous throughout Christendom. The rule of St. Benedict, which dates from that century, seems to have found much favour in Wales; for in South Wales alone there were some fifteen Benedictine houses, one of them being an abbey, and the remaining ones priories. Soon, however, these priories fell into evil odour; for they were "alien" in the sense that they belonged to some foreign abbey whose abbot used them merely for the purpose of augmenting his revenues. The great Cluniac reformation of the tenth century had singularly little influence upon the religious life of Wales, and only three priories were established in the country. The lives of the monks who inhabited them were notoriouslylax, and gave considerable scandal even in that age of easy morals. It was the Cistercian Order, however, that seems to have won the religious heart of the Welsh people. All the most famous religious houses in Wales—Strata Florida, Strata Marcella, Aberconway, Valle Crucis, Basingwerk, Cwm Hir, Margam, Whitland, Neath, Dore, Grace Dieu, Tintern, Cymer, and Llantarnan—were Cistercian. For the most part the monks favoured the cause of national independence. They were not great scholars, nor did any particular sanctity pertain to their lives; but they were excellent farmers, their conduct was at least decent, they were witnesses after their fashion to the value of the spiritual life, and they occasionally wrote chronicles like theAnnales Cambriæand theBrutwhich are invaluable to the historian of to-day.
The Friars, too, found a warm welcome in many parts of Wales. The Cistercian monks were to be found in remote and lonely valleys, or on the edge of high and bleak moorlands; the Friars, on the other hand, were to be found in the towns, among the busiest haunts of men. Towns in Wales were few and insignificant, so we do not find the Friars occupying the position of importance which they sosoon acquired in England. Nevertheless the Dominicans had houses at Bangor, Rhuddlan, Brecon, Haverfordwest, and Cardiff, while the Franciscans were to be found at Carmarthen, Cardiff, and Llan Vaes. In addition to the two great Orders, there was a settlement of White Friars (Carmelites) at Denbigh, and one of the Austin Friars at Newport. In Wales all the Friars seem to have been energetic preachers and lecturers; and in that way they did much to diffuse what learning they themselves were possessed of among the common people.
The Black Death greatly reduced the numbers of the monks. Their rents fell very considerably in value, and they consequently became extremely poor. Nevertheless the second half of the fourteenth century witnessed a remarkable religious awakening in the country. There was a new and enquiring spirit abroad, and Wales turned an interested, and occasionally a sympathetic, ear to the teaching of the Lollards. The Catholic Church, as represented by its two great officers, the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury, had so often shown itself to be the enemy of Welsh liberty that the people of Wales listened with much favour to the teaching of Walter Brute,one of Wycliffe's disciples, when he began to preach in the Marches in 1391. That the official religion had fallen into considerable contempt in Wales is indicated by the insulting tone of many of the triads in which it was the fashion of the day for literary men to express themselves. "Three things are objects of derision," says one of these, "an old hag displaying her finery, an old man trying to show his agility, and an old priest drunk." Another tells us that "Three things there are which he who can may love—a fat priest singing Mass, the cry of a soul in the clutches of the Fiend, and an English song."
In the quarrel between Richard II and his barons the sympathy of Wales was with the king; and it was in Wales that the final struggle between the unhappy monarch and Henry Bolingbroke took place. The king, who had been in Ireland, landed at Milford Haven, to find that Henry was with an army at Bristol. By a forced march he reached Conway; and then travelled from castle to castle in North Wales looking for support. He met Henry at Flint, surrendered, and was first deposed and afterwards murdered. Then Henry IV ruled in his stead. From the beginning of his reign the new king seems tohave regarded Wales with a good deal of suspicion and dislike. After a long period of mild government, a note of severity again makes itself audible in the statutes passed dealing exclusively with Wales. There is a harsh and aggressive flavour in their very titles—"Certain restraints laid on Welshmen," "The Lords Marchers to keep ward in their castles," "Welshmen shall not purchase lands in England," "Englishmen shall not be convict in Wales," "As to minstrels and vagabonds in Wales," "Welshmen not to carry arms," "No armour or victuals to be carried into Wales," "Welshmen not to have castles," "No Welshman shall bear office in Wales," "Castles and walled towns in Wales to be kept by Englishmen," "Englishmen married to Welsh women not to have office in Wales," etc. It was in such an atmosphere of mutual suspicion and dislike that the rebellion of Owen Glyndwr broke out.
In the long roll of Welsh history which we have been unfolding there are many illustrious names—Cunedda Wledig, Howel Dda, Owen Gwynedd, the Lord Rees, Llewelyn Fawr, and Llewelyn the last Prince of Wales: but of all the men of the Middle Ages no one has so touched the heart and fired the imagination of Wales as Owen Glyndwr. For all Welsh people he stands alone and supreme, the ideal Welshman of all time. Both the beginning and the end of his life are shrouded in obscurity. It was only for some half-dozen years that he occupied a foremost place in the politics of his day. He left behind him no solid gain of any kind, but at best a vague tradition and an unrealised dream. Yet in spite of all that his hold upon his countrymen has never relaxed; and when the bonds in which the national spirit had been confined for more than three hundred years were beginning to breakin the first half of the nineteenth century, it was his name that was invoked, and his dreams that were recalled. Gardiner once said that the two typical Englishmen of all time were Shakespeare and Oliver Cromwell; the one in the realm of thought, the other in the realm of action. Wales owes no such divided allegiance: the Welsh spirit at its best is typified in one man—Owen Glyndwr. Owen was a direct descendant of the princely house of Powys, a line of princes which had played a none too illustrious part in the struggle for independence. The family was a wealthy one, and Owen spent his early years in passing from one of his father's country houses to the other. The real home of the family was the exquisitely beautiful Glyndyfrdwy, a narrow valley through which the limpid waters of the Dee flow between thickly wooded banks, above which rise the heather-clad slopes of the Berwyns. Close at hand are Valle Crucis and Dinas Bran; and not far off is the entrance to the fertile and lovely Vale of Clwyd. Even the year of Owen's birth is uncertain. Tradition varies; but the best evidence at our disposal points to 1359 as the date. Wealthy and well-connected young men in those days used frequently to study law for some yearsat the Inns of Court, a training which was regarded as more aristocratic than residence at the University of Oxford. Owen seems to have gone up to London, and to have spent some time in listening to cases argued in Westminster Hall, then the home of the Common Law Courts. Shakespeare is probably right when he makes Owen lay claim to the possession of the best culture of the day—
"I can speak English, lord, as well as you;For I was trained up in the English court;Where, being but young, I framed to the harpMany an English ditty lovely well,And gave the tongue a helpful ornament."
The pursuit of Law is not commonly associated by us with either poetry or romance; nevertheless it is in the Courts that Owen seems to have met his future wife, the daughter of Sir David Hanmer, one of the Justices of the King's Bench. The wedding probably took place in 1380, when Owen was only twenty-one years old. The period of legal training was followed by a course of training in the use of arms. In 1385 Owen followed Richard II to Scotland, where he won much credit by his prowess in the field. But it isa mistake to imagine that he was ever a blind partisan of Richard. Later, when it became opportune to profess belief in the existence of Richard in order to imperil the throne of his successor, Owen was perfectly willing to do so; but in these early years, long before it had ever occurred to him that he might lead a Welsh revolt against England, he was a follower of Henry Bolingbroke, and, if tradition speaks correctly, one of his esquires. According to another account he also was, at one period, esquire to his neighbour the Earl of Arundel, lord of Oswestry, Chirk, and Cynllaith. How many years were spent in this sort of novitiate we have no means of ascertaining; all we know for certain is that, before 1400, Owen was living the customary life of a Welsh country gentleman, at his two houses of Glyndyfrdwy and Sycherth.
Wales at that time was seething with discontent; a discontent which was partly political, and partly social. The country was warmly attached to King Richard, and looked upon Henry IV as a usurper and an assassin. It was also being borne in upon the people that England was now determined to extirpate the Welsh language, and to destroy finally every trace of Welsh nationality. The fourteenthcentury had witnessed in many of the countries of Western Europe a rapid development of the national spirit, and both England and Wales were among those which had participated in it. In addition to political grievances, there were also social grievances, felt more especially in the South. But even when we have taken all these things into full account, the universality, the spontaneity, and the warmth of the rebellion of 1401 remain something of a mystery. One thing is certain, and that is that Wales was solidly behind Owen; and that it was the North and the middle parts of the country, regions in which political preponderated over social grievances, which led the revolt.
The great rebellion began with a personal quarrel between Owen and his arrogant neighbour Lord Grey of Ruthin. In 1400 the king had summoned Owen to assist him in his Scottish expedition. The summons had been entrusted to Lord Grey to deliver; but he, wishing to sow discord between Henry and Owen, neglected to transmit it. The king was angry with Owen, and with greater justice Owen was angry with Grey. Owen's wrath took the eloquent form of a merciless raid upon his enemy's estates, in the course ofwhich certain members of his household were slain. Grey, determined to retaliate, gathered together his forces and marched against Glyndyfrdwy. But the whole country was now up in arms; and supported by a strong body of followers, Owen was able to burn the town of Ruthin to the ground. Owen then openly declared himself the deliverer of Wales from the English yoke; and so serious a view did the king take of the situation that, without delay, he marched into Carnarvonshire. He was greatly incensed; and his anger was proved by the burning, without any provocation, of the house of the Franciscans at Llan Vaes. Owen, not strong enough as yet to meet the king in battle, retired into the mountain recesses, and Henry had to content himself with declaring all his lands forfeited. Meanwhile the flame of rebellion spread; and Owen was joined not only by people from every part of Wales, but by young Welshmen from Oxford, from London, and from beyond the seas. He had now planted his standard of the red dragon on the slopes of Plinlimmon; and there, safe from the clutches of all invading armies, he proceeded with the task of organization, making frequent dashes into the neighbouring counties, and capturing towns, castles,and abbeys. The capture of the strong castle of Conway by nephews of Owen in the spring of 1401 brought Henry again to Wales, this time accompanied by Earl Percy. Conway was quickly recaptured. Percy, after marching through Carnarvonshire, reached the foot of Cader Idris, where he won a victory. Nevertheless the crushing of the rebellion, and the capture of Owen, seemed to be as remote as ever. In the autumn of the same year the energetic and persistent king came again, marched through Merionethshire, harried Cardiganshire, and stabled his horses near the high altar of the abbey of Strata Florida. Owen meanwhile hung on the skirts of his army, capturing stragglers, and cutting off supplies; and again the baffled monarch was compelled to return to his own country.
Up to the close of 1401 Owen had been nothing more than a guerrilla leader who, had he been captured, might with perfect justice have been put to death as a rebel. And had that fate befallen him then, his career would have but little interest save for the curious and the professional student. It was the next two years that proved that Owen was a statesman of the first rank, as well as an able military leader. He began at once to lookout for suitable alliances, and in making them he met with marked success. His early enemy, Lord Grey, fell a prisoner into his hands, and was converted into an ally by marriage with one of Owen's daughters. At the same time successful negotiations were entered into with the native chieftains of Ireland, the French king, the king of Scotland, and the discontented Percies. At the battle of Bryn Glas Edmund Mortimer was captured. He, likewise, was married to one of the Welsh leader's daughters, and encouraged to desert Henry, and to claim the throne of England for his own nephew the Earl of March. For the third time Henry marched into Wales, this time with an immense army. But the elusive and ubiquitous Glyndwr could nowhere be brought to bay; and wind, rain, and floods played havoc with the English hosts. Henry had now quarrelled openly with the Percies. Owen, Mortimer, and Percy Hotspur met on the shore of remote and desolate Aberdaron; and there they agreed upon a plan for the tripartite division of England and Wales.
Owen was then at the height of his power, but in the very hour of triumph he on two occasions only barely escaped death at the hand of an assassin. On the first occasion hewas walking with his cousin Howel Sele in his park at Nannau near Dolgelly. Suddenly a doe appeared, and Owen called upon Howel to shoot. But the faithless Howel turned his bow against Owen; and the arrow glanced off from the coat of mail which he invariably wore beneath his ordinary dress. From that hour no man ever saw Howel Sele; but years afterwards a human skeleton was discovered in a hollow tree close to the spot where the encounter must have taken place. The second attempt was made by Davydd Gam. He had come to Machynlleth to attend the Parliament which Owen had summoned there. Fortunately for him, as well as for his intended victim, the plot was discovered, and Davydd lived to meet a more honourable death on the field of Agincourt.
The alliance concluded at Aberdaron was destined to be short-lived; for the Percies were crushed by Henry at the battle of Shrewsbury. Owen has been repeatedly blamed for wasting time in ravaging South Wales instead of keeping tryst with his allies, and joining them before the king's forces had come upon the scene. The censure is probably undeserved. It was vital to the success of their plans that South Wales should be leftbehind them incapable of further resistance; and, furthermore, it is likely that the Percies had, at the last moment, altered their plans and marched on Shrewsbury, instead of meeting Owen in the vicinity of Ludlow. But we cannot so readily exonerate Owen from blame for neglecting to fall upon the king's army, tired and disorganized as it must have been after the battle. Not to do so was the greatest blunder of his whole career.
Prince Henry, afterwards to become so famous as the victor of Agincourt and the conqueror of France, had now been appointed Lieutenant of Wales, and the war was carried on with increased vigour and ruthlessness. Henry ravaged North Wales, and burned to the ground Owen's home of Sycherth. Nevertheless the power of Owen steadily increased. In 1404 he summoned Parliaments to Dolgelly and Machynlleth. These Parliaments were not a revival of Llewelyn's Council of Princes, but deliberate imitations of the English Parliament. He was now styling himself "Owen by the grace of God Prince of Wales"; and he was treated by foreign potentates as sovereign of an independent country. He had his own Great Seal, his Privy Seal, his chancery, and his courts of law. He concluded analliance with France in January 1405, and some time later a force of fifteen hundred Frenchmen landed at Milford, and captured Carmarthen. They remained in Wales until early in the following year; but the assistance which they rendered to the national cause appears to have been negligible. But the friendship between Owen and Charles of France continued; and in 1406, in a letter addressed from Pennal, we find Owen telling the French king what his aims were,i.e., to create a Wales territorially free, to create an independent Welsh Church, and to create two Universities, one for North, and one for South Wales.
Owen had also succeeded in winning the support of the Pope, or rather of one of the Popes; for those were the days of the Great Schism, and there were rival claimants for the throne of St. Peter. Owen decided to withdraw the spiritual allegiance of Wales from the Roman Pope, Gregory XII, and to transfer it to Peter de Luna, then dwelling in Avignon, and calling himself Pope Benedict XIII. In return, of course, Owen expected the Pope to acknowledge the independence of Wales. John Trevor, bishop of St. Asaph, had already gone over to the nationalist side; and Owen,with the Pope's consent, nominated Llewelyn Bifort to the see of Bangor. Apparently this prelate was never recognised by the English Church; but he was present some years later at the Council of Constance, signing himself as "Ludovicus Bangorensis." In the North Wales dioceses, at least, the national party was supreme between 1404 and 1408, and in a lesser degree in those of the South as well.
The project of founding two national Universities, it seems, never found any sort of realization in Owen's day, nor indeed for close upon five centuries afterwards. But the plan in itself is sufficient to rebut the ridiculous calumny that Owen was an uncivilized barbarian. It is a pity that the age which saw the founding of Universities at St. Andrews, Prague, Vienna, Louvain, Cracow, Cologne, Padua, Heidelberg, Leipzig, Erfurt, Pesth, Würtzburg, and Rostock, should not have witnessed the founding of one in Wales as well. What a difference the existence of such an institution would have made in the national character, and in the whole outlook of the people, we can only regretfully conjecture. For centuries young Welshmen flocked eagerly to Oxford, to Cambridge, and to some of thefamous European seats of learning; but the culture of Wales ran in other channels, undisciplined and amateurish, and, despite its wonderful charm and fascination, lacking in classic restraint and breadth of outlook.
Owen's success reached its culmination in 1405. From that time on his star was steadily on the wane, although for years he kept up a brave, and sometimes successful, resistance. A plan to secure the person of the young Earl of March, and to proclaim him King of England, miscarried. Slowly but surely the pressure of Henry's armies, and those of the Lords Marchers, was beginning to tell. Most of the grievances of the peasants had wisely been redressed, and they longed for the time when they could till their fields in peace, unmolested by the armies of either friend or foe. Owen's high ideals were beyond the comprehension of the selfish and illiterate labouring classes upon whom he had depended for his strength; and they now deserted in hundreds from his camp. The generaldébâclewas assisted by the young Henry's policy of studied clemency. He was no foreigner, but a rival Prince of Wales; and he strove to prove that he cared just as much as did Owen for the welfare of his Welsh subjects. The abbot of ValleCrucis was perfectly right when he told Owen that he had risen a century too soon.
In the closing years of his life Owen was no better than a fugitive. Indeed, so completely had all traces of rebellion disappeared, that no particular effort was made to effect his capture. Where he lived, and how he lived, was unknown to his contemporaries as it is to us. Sometimes he would appear, clad as a common labourer; then vanish again, and not be seen for months. In its poverty and its loneliness it is a pathetic close to so splendid and so romantic a career. The young Henry had succeeded his father as King of England in 1413, and in 1415 he offered a free pardon to Owen. The pardon was, however, refused. That is the last fact which we know about the fallen leader. When he died, or where he is buried, we do not know; but a tradition, to which perhaps some credence may be given, tells us that at the end he came home to his beloved Glyndyfrdwy, and that his bones lie close by at Corwen. All his friends had long since been dispersed; some were dead, some languished in English prisons, others were living abroad in exile. Of the State which Owen had attempted to construct not a vestige remained, and the ideals which he hadcherished remained for centuries forgotten. But in tradition his name always loomed large on both sides of the border. How powerfully he had impressed the people of England is proved by the place which is accorded to him by Shakespeare. The Glendower of the great dramatist is a compound of cunning and simplicity, of amiability and uncouthness; but his considered verdict is that—
"In faith he is a worthy gentleman,Exceeding well read, and profitedIn strange concealments; valiant as a lion,And wondrous affable, and as bountifulAs mines of India."
Not a mean tribute from the victor to the vanquished rebel!
The seventy years which followed the death of Owen Glyndwr was, both for England and for Wales, as miserable a period as any in their whole history. Owing to the untimely death of Henry V, the feeble Henry VI became king; and he had not been long on the throne before the bitter feud between Yorkists and Lancastrians broke out. During the Wars of the Roses the arm of government was paralysed, and the strong did what appeared right in his own eyes. Many Welshmen found life in the English armies abroad more tolerable than life in Wales; while of those who remained at home, too many became bandits like the Highlanders in the reign of George II. Both Yorkists and Lancastrians had interests in Wales. Edward IV was a Mortimer, a descendant of Prince Llewelyn, and the seat of his strength was the country around Ludlow. The chief Lancastrian strongholdin Wales was the coast, from Pembroke to Anglesey. Thus Wales was divided against itself. At Mortimer's Cross, in 1461, Welshmen fought against Welshmen; and Owen Tudor was captured, and afterwards beheaded at Hereford, in accordance with the fate meted out to the vanquished in those barbarous days. Harlech castle, which had been the last fortress to fly the flag of Glyndwr, and which at a later date was to be the last of Charles I's strongholds to surrender, held out stubbornly for Lancaster. "I held a castle in France," boasted Davydd ap Sinion, its defender, "until every old woman in Wales had heard of it. I will hold a castle in Wales until every old woman in France has heard of it." The boast was a vain one. Harlech fell; but the siege had given to the world one of the finest marching songs ever sung by man.
The eyes of Welshmen and Englishmen alike were now beginning to be turned to that house of Tudor, whose head had lost his life after Mortimer's Cross. Owen Tudor had married Catherine, the widow of king Henry V. There had been two children of the marriage, Edmund and Jasper, the former Earl of Richmond, and the latter Earl of Pembroke. Edmund had married Margaret Beaufort, heiress of Johnof Gaunt; and to them a son, called Henry, had been born. This young lad was now living in exile in Brittany, and it was there that emissaries from England sought him out from time to time, telling him how the country was groaning under the evils of the times, and how all common men were yearning for the advent of a strong ruler who would restore peace and ordered government. The cruelties of the usurper Richard III brought matters to a head. At length the cautious Henry was convinced of the possibility of success. In 1485 he landed at Haverfordwest, and marched to Cardigan. The greater part of South Wales at once declared for him. Then he marched north, passing through Machynlleth, Newtown, Welshpool, and Shrewsbury. North Wales was held by the Stanleys; and it was only at the last moment that they declared for Henry. The crisis was reached on Bosworth Field, where, in the space of a few hours, Richard lost both his throne and his life, and Henry was proclaimed king in his stead. At long last the prophecies of the Welsh bards had been fulfilled: a Welsh prince had ascended the throne of England. A year later the new king married Elizabeth of York, a descendant, as we have already seen, ofthe great Llewelyn. From his mother, therefore, as well as from his father, Henry VIII inherited Welsh blood; and it is little to be wondered at that he paid so much attention to the affairs of the Principality. It was noted by all that the first Tudor sovereign refused to rest his claim to the throne upon anything except conquest. Upon his entrance into London after the battle of Bosworth he proceeded in state to St. Paul's, and there had a solemnTe Deumsung for his victory. It was as much a Welsh conquest of England as the expedition of 1066 was a Norman conquest of England. A considerable part of Henry's army had been composed of Welshmen, and one of the three standards displayed by him upon the field bore the device of the famous red dragon. His first-born son was christened Arthur.
Such being Henry VII's solicitude to demonstrate his Welsh origin, it is disappointing to find that he did so little for the Principality in the course of his reign. On the whole the country was neglected. By means of the Star Chamber, and the statutes against Livery and Maintenance, Henry crushed the English nobles, the "over-mighty subjects" who had been troubling the peace of the realmso sorely. But although the Welsh, and especially the border lords, were at least as turbulent and as contemptuous of all law, he allowed them to remain unmolested; and one of them—Sir Rhys ap Thomas—came to wield almost despotic power throughout South Wales. This able, ambitious, and politic man appears to have been a great favourite with both the first two Tudor sovereigns. He had enthusiastically espoused the cause of Henry of Richmond when he was as yet a landless adventurer; and it was mainly owing to his influence that Henry's reception in South Wales had been so very cordial and unanimous. So powerful did he become after Henry's coronation, that an old Welsh couplet tells us that: "The king owns the whole island—except that part which belongs to Sir Rhys." In Henry VII's reign his favour, if anything, was enhanced. Familiarly he was alluded to as "Father Rhys." The extensive Dinevor estates were his; while in addition he held the offices of Chief Justice, and Chamberlain, of South Wales. So great was his power that he could snap his fingers in the face of the Court of the Marches, which sat impotent at Ludlow. Sir Rhys died in 1525, on the eve of momentous changes in English politics.His death marks the close of an epoch in the history of Wales.
In the year 1493 Henry sent his eldest son Arthur to hold his Court at Ludlow. The ancient castle there, with its round Temple chapel within, whose well-preserved walls still look so grand and imposing, is the centre of Welsh political life throughout the Tudor period. It was the great age of government by council. An attempt to circumscribe the power of the Popes by such means had been one of the burning topics of discussion within the Church all through the fifteenth century. The Yorkish and Tudor kings saw in the council a perfect instrument of arbitrary power, by which the deficiencies of the Common Law could be corrected, and by which the authority of the central government could be made to prevail against feudal lawlessness. The Court of Star Chamber, long before its final abolition by the Long Parliament, had won the hatred of all lovers of justice and good government; but it must never be forgotten that, in the early years of its existence, this same Council was the great upholder of law, and the sole effective protector of the weak against the strong. The Tudor Councils—Star Chamber, High Commission, of the North,of the Welsh Marches—were above the ordinary law, in the sense that they administered a sort of criminal equity. It was a drastic and a dangerous remedy to use; but it was none too drastic for the evils of the day; and only the most pedantic believers in liberty could condemn it.
Edward IV, and not Henry VII, was the first type of the new Renaissance sovereign to rule in England; and he it was who first created the Court of the Welsh Marches, in 1471. But the troubles of those chaotic years were greater even than such a body could deal with, and consequently we find it doing practically nothing. In 1501 William Smyth, Bishop of Lincoln and founder of Brasenose College, became the first real Lord President of the Court of the Council of the Marches. Unhappily Prince Arthur died in 1502, and during the remainder of his reign Henry paid no attention whatsoever to Wales. The policy pursued by Smyth was one of conciliation; and as a result of his government, there was at least a growth in loyalty, if not in public order. He retained his office until his death in 1514, but does not appear to have resided at Ludlow after 1509, the year of Henry VII's death.