Wales in the late 14th century was a turbulent place. The brutal
savaging of Llewelyn the Last and Edward I's stringent policies of
subordinating Wales had left a discontented, cowed nation where any signs of
rebellion were sure to attract support. In 1399-1400 Glyndwr ran up against his
powerful neighbour, Reginald de Grey, Lord of Ruthin, an intimate of the new
king, Henry IV. The quarrel was over common land which Grey had stolen. Glyndwr
could get no justice from the king or parliament. This proud man, over forty
and grey-haired, was visited with insult and malice. There are indications that
Glyndwr made an effort to contact other disaffected Welshmen, and when he
raised his standard outside Ruthin on 16 September 1400, his followers from the
very beginning proclaimed him Prince of Wales. The response was startling and
may have even startled Glyndwr himself. Supported by the Hanmers, other
Norman-Welsh Marchers and the Dean of St Asaph, he attacked Ruthin with several
hundred men and went on to savage every town on north-east Wales. There was an
immediate response from Oxford, where Welsh scholars at once dropped their
books and flocked home. Even more dramatic was the news that Welsh labourers in
England were downing their tools and heading for home. The English Parliament
at once rushed ferociously anti-Welsh legislation on to the books. Henry IV
marched a big army right across North Wales, burning and looting without mercy.
Whole populations scrambled to make their peace. Over the Winter, Glyndwr, with
only seven men, took to the hills. But in the spring of 1401 as the Tudors
snatched Conway Castle by a trick, Owain's little band moved into the centre
and the south. Once more, popular insurrection broke around them, and hundreds
ran to join the rebellion. It was during 1401 that Glyndwr became aware of the
growing power of the rebellion as men of higher rank began to defect to the
cause. In his letters to South Wales he declared himself the liberator
appointed by God to deliver the Welsh race from their oppressors. The English
king, Henry IV, despatched troops and rapidly drew up a range of severely
punitive laws against the Welsh, even outlawing Welsh-language bards and
singers. Battles continued to rage, with Glyndwr capturing Edmund Mortimer, the
Earl of March, in Pilleth in June 1402. Among the leaders of the rebellion in
Flintshire was Ithel ap Iorwerth ap Tudor of Nannerch.
He joined the rebels
when they came to Flintshire and was with them when they attacked the castles
of Flint and Rhuddlan in August 1403, plundering the boroughs and slaying some of the inhabitants.
Another leader was Howel Gwynedd, the great-grandson of Ithel Fychan of Halkyn.
Ithel Fychan's daughter Gwenllian was Owain Glyndwr's grandmother and Howel was
therefore distantly related to Owain. Howel carried out constant raids on the
borough of Flint making their lives miserable. Another leader was Howel ap
Tudur of Mostyn, who was the ancestor of the present Lord Mostyn. By the end of
1403, Glyndwr controlled most of Wales. The twelve-year war which ensued was,
for the English, largely a matter of relieving their isolated castles. Expedition
after expedition was beaten bootless back. Henry IV, beset by Welsh, Scots,
French and rebellious barons, sent in army after army, some of them huge, all
of them futile; he never really got to grips with it and the revolt largely
wore itself out, in a small country blasted, burned and exhausted beyond the
limit of endurance. For the Welsh, it was a Marcher rebellion and a peasant's
revolt which grew into a national guerrilla war. The sheer tenacity of the
rebellion is startling. Few revolts in contemporary Europe lasted more than
some months; no previous Welsh war had lasted much longer. This one raged in
undiminished fury for ten years and did not really end for fifteen. In 1404,
Glyndwr assembled a parliament of four men from every commot in Wales at Machynlleth,
drawing up mutual recognition treaties with France and Spain. At Machynlleth,
he was also crowned king of a free Wales. A second parliament in Harlech took
place a year later, with Glyndwr making plans to carve up England and Wales
into three, as part of an alliance against the English king: Mortimer would
take the south and west of England, Thomas Percy, Earl of Northumberland, would
have the midlands and the north, and himself Wales and the Marches of England.
The English army, however, concentrated with increased vigour on destroying the
Welsh uprising, and the Tripart Indenture was never realized. Disaster struck
in 1408 when the castles of Aberystwyth and Harlech fell to the forces of the
king, and Glyndwr's own family was taken prisoner. The Welsh nation that had
existed for four years took once more to the woods with its prince once more an
outlaw. Owain, with his son Meredudd, and a handful of his best captains,
together with some Scots and Frenchmen, was at large throughout 1409,
devastating wherever he went. Henry V, the new king, twice
offered the rebel leader a pardon, but the old man was apparently too proud to
accept. He died in 1416 aged 61 and was succeeded by his son Meredydd ap Owen who
made a treaty with Henry. What is more remarkable than the civil war the revolt inevitably
became, is the passion, loyalty and vision which came to sustain it. Glyndwr's
men put an end to payments to the lords and the crown; they could raise enough
money to carry on from the parliaments they called, attended by delegates from
all over Wales - the first and last Welsh parliaments in Welsh history. From
ordinary people by the thousands came a loyalty through times often unspeakably
harsh which enabled this old man to lead a divided people one-twelfth the size of
the English against two kings and a dozen armies. Owain Glyndwr was one Welsh
prince who was never betrayed by his own people, not even in the darkest days
when many of them could have saved their skins by doing so. There is no
parallel in the history of the Welsh. The draconian anti-Welsh laws stayed in
place until the accession to the English throne of Henry VII, a Welshman, in
1485. Wales became subsumed into English custom law, and Glyndwr's uprising
became an increasingly powerful symbol of frustrated Welsh independence. Even
today, the shadowy organization that surfaced in the early 1980s to burn
holiday homes of English people and English estate agents dealing in Welsh
property has taken the name 'Meibion Glyndwr, the Sons of Glyndwr'.
The principal results of these risings, and of the havoc wrought by the Wars of the Roses of the later 15th century, were the destruction of the feudal system, the prevalence of robbers, the appropriation by Englishmen of all positions of trust, the enactment of many severe and unjust laws against the Welsh, and the consequent growth of bitter racial feeling. The border barons continued to make unjust exactions, and the rights of citizenship were withheld from the Welsh people. Nevertheless, this period of oppression corresponds in time with the golden age of Welsh poetry.
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The final political reorganization of Wales was the work of Henry VIII's secretary, Thomas Cromwell. The Act of Union of 1536 united Wales to England, and by its operation the former was politically assimilated in all respects to the latter. The liberties as well as the laws of England were extended to the principality, and Wales was now for the first time given parliamentary representation. On the other hand, the Welsh language was completely banished from the official proceedings of the courts, and many old Welsh customs were abolished. (At the same time, under Elizabeth I, the use of Welsh in churches was officially encouraged.) The Act abolished the marcher lordships and divided Wales into shires on the English model, the new shires being Brecknock, Denbigh, Monmouth, Montgomery, and Radnor, while the shires of Glamorgan, Pembroke, Carmarthen, Cardigan, and Merioneth were enlarged.
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