Dan Snow's History Hit - Owain Glyndwr and The Welsh Revolt

Episode Date: November 29, 2022

England plays Wales in the World Cup today so it only makes sense that Dan looks back at what's often called Wales' last war of Independence against the English. No one quite knows how it began, but on the 16th of September 1400 Owain Glyndwr- a man of affluence from a mixed Anglo-Welsh family took the title of Prince of Wales and lead a bold and bloody rebellion against King Henry IV. Although he was ultimately defeated, Owain Glyndwr is remembered as a welsh hero, reimagined time and again by poets, writers and historians. Historical accounts from this period can sometimes be obscure so Dr Adam Chapman, a lecturer in Medieval History at the Institute of Historical Research joins the podcast to unravel the legend of Owain Glyndwr and sort the myth from the fact.This episode was produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!Download History Hit app from the Google Play store.Download History Hit app from the Apple Store.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. When I was little, we'd get in our car and we'd drive off to see my terrifyingly old great-grandmother. We called her a Great Nine. In North Wales, Nine is what you call your nan or your grandma. We'd drive up to Crickith, one of the most beautiful places in the world, snug, between the mountains of Snowdonia and the glittering waters of Cardigan Bay. Wonderful beach there, a wonderful ruined castle on the headland. And my great nine would tell me

stories about history and about our family, most of which turned out to be complete nonsense. But one of them was about the last Prince of Wales, the last native Welsh Prince of Wales, Hywaen Glyndwr, and how he'd stood up to the English, attempted to drive the English out of Wales and establish an independent Welsh kingdom. Well, given that England are now playing Wales on the international stage in the Football World Cup, I thought this would be a chance to look back at Eoin Glyndwr's revolt. No one knows quite why it began. Edward I, a hundred years earlier, in the late 1200s of the 13th century, he had defeated the last of the Welsh princes and incorporated Wales into his English empire, building a series of mighty castles, some of the

finest castles in the world that you'll be familiar with, particularly around the coasts of north and northwest Wales. A hundred years later, Owen Glyndwr seemed to be living the life of, well, you could say a collaborator. He was living the life of an affluent gentry, an Anglo-Welsh family with mixed pedigree, heritage, traditions. And yet, on the 16th of September, 1400, yet on the 16th of September 1400, Owen Glyndwr rose up in bloody rebellion against the English. Later, English victors would call it the Welsh Revolt or the Glyndwr Rising, but lots of people, especially in Wales, like to refer to it as the last war of independence. Owen Glyndwr has been seized upon by poets, by politicians, by historians, by my great nine, and many since, to tell a story of Welsh history, tell a story of opposition to English conquest. Much of this period is shrouded in obscurity. We have very little idea

what happened. Sometimes we only have one or two fragmentary sources for an important event. But the man who knows those sources is Adam Chapman. He's a lecturer in medieval history at the Institute of Historical Research. If anyone can help us work out what happened during Owen Glendore's revolt, it is Adam. It was an uprising that, as you'll hear, would go on really for decades. It was an uprising that became enmeshed with the politics of the British Isles. In 1399, Henry IV had invaded, deposed his cousin Richard II from the throne, so England had been thrown into tumult.

Big, powerful families like the Percys in the north took advantage of this time of upheaval to press their own claims and ambitions. So there's a lot going on. Plus, it's a time of prolonged struggle against neighbouring France, encompassed within the Hundred Years' War period. So Owen found himself fighting not just in Wales, but involved in the power politics of Britain and Western Europe. So here's Adam to tell us all about O England Doors Revolt

and why it still matters today. Enjoy. Go to war with one another again. And liftoff. And the shuttle has cleared the tower. Adam, thanks very much for coming on the podcast. My pleasure. Thank you for the invitation. So Wales has been fighting before the Normans arrived.

Well, it's been fighting forever between people that live in what is now England, people that live in what is now Wales. But what was the status in the 14th century, after a couple of hundred years of the Normans pushing into Wales and taking on the native princes? By the 14th century it's all sort of settled down a bit. In the late 13th century you have the final defeat of the Prince of Gwynedd, so Llywelyn ap Grettith or Llywelyn the Last was defeated in 1282 at the Battle of Ithon Bridge. And Llywelyn, I'm sorry I get the pronunciation wrong, but Llywelyn was the last, you could sort of say, independent Welsh leader. Yes, that's right.

And what about Owain Glyndwr? He is now a Welsh hero, but his family, they were intimately connected with the English regime when he would have been born. That's right. And one of the biggest surprises, really, is that he went and claimed that Welsh bit of his inheritance and looked to those bits of his ancestry and those bits of authority, because by the time his rebellion starts in 1400, he's probably about 50. His family are connected to two of the Welsh princely lines, that of Powys and of Dehebuff, which is say, West Wales, so Cardiff and Sheffield, effectively. But he is an officer in one of the lordships along the Isles of Arundel. He fights in Arundel's retinues in 1387 and 1388

in France. He goes and serves in Scotland in the 1384-85. And we should say fighting for the English king. Absolutely, yes, yes. I mean, he's from the English perspective. And by his own account, there's a case at the Court of Chivalry called the Scroop-Grovener trial, which is all about who has the right to use a particular coat of arms. And Scroop and Grovener have arrived at the same coat of arms. And he gives evidence to that trial. And he gives the evidence as an Esquire of the English realm. As far as the English are concerned, as far as most of his contemporaries, Welsh too, are concerned, he's just another Welsh Esquire. One at the wealthier end, sure, with a sort of more impressive lineage than most, but that's all he is. Although all is doing a lot of work given what happens next. So he's an absolutely normal member of the Welsh squirearchy.

He's got a military career. He's got administrative commitments. There are stories that he was educated at the Inns of Court in London, so he knew law. But certainly what we can say is he spoke at least four languages. So he knew Welsh, English, Latin, and French. He's well-educated. He's an impressive figure in his own right.

He knows his ancestry. He knows the ground, but he's also, he's part of the English realm. He's part of the status quo in the 14th century. So he's a guy from Welsh, descent from Welsh royalty, but generations after Wales has basically been conquered. He's having a conventional sort of aristocratic life of an English minor noble. So what happens? I wish I knew, is the honest answer. And there are various schools of thought about it. Probably the best known, but also probably wrong,

is that it was a simple land dispute that got out of hand with his neighbour, Lord Creafish. But declaring yourself Prince of Wales seems a bit of a jump, just because you're having a bit of trouble over who owns that field or who owns that bit of land. There are suggestions that he was not accorded the status that he felt he should have been, but again, it seems something of an overreaction. I think what we need to look to really is the context of England at the time, which is Richard II had been deposed in 1399. This meant that there is a degree of political instability in England. It opens up opportunities to do things.

Not quite all bets are off, but if you think you've got a cause, you can push as various parts of the English nobility did several times. as various parts of the English nobility did several times. The king, Henry IV, has dubious validity, and thus that opens up the opportunities and possibilities to do other things, to explore other ways of being and thinking. So what precisely his motivation was in 1400, we don't know. All we know is that on September the 16th, 1400, at Sechath, which is his home in England, in the Dee Valley near Llangollen in North East Wales,

he said, I am Prince of Wales. And he did so in the presence of, well, we know the names for about 30 individuals, but then clearly more. It's a public event. It is an event where people say, I was there. We know who was there because at Rhythyn and at Oswestry, juries of English people have just had their towns burned, come together people say, I was there. We know who was there because at Thrifton and at Oswestry,

juries of English people who've just had their towns burned come together and say, oh yeah, Owen said he was doing this. He said he was going to become Prince of Wales and these people were there, which is remarkable. So what does he mean by being Prince of Wales at that time? Difficult to say. So you've got Henry IV, he's nicked the throne off his cousin, Richard II. Proves a bit unpopular, all sorts of instability. He's got this kid who's going to be Henry V one day, who's at that stage really a child.

And Owen organises this rebellion. What form does it take? You mentioned burning towns. These English almost colony settlements, places that people will be familiar with, places like Conway, often fortified, often with a big castle. Is he just sacking these places? What's going on? Yeah, pretty much. He's using the techniques he learned as part of the English war machine. He's going in, he's burning, he's saying, the King of England, or your Lord, because it's not just the King, it's the March of Lords as well, cannot defend you. He's undermining their authority by

action. So he's burning the place. This is what the aristocracy do. They think that's perfectly fine. They don't care about the peasantry. They don't care about the residents of those towns, whoever they are, because those towns are mixed communities. They're not just English. They're not colonial settler communities as such. They are established. They've been there 100, 150 years. There are Welsh communities in those towns. There are English communities. there 100 150 years there are welsh communities in those towns there are english communities so they burn the place they clearly make an effort to attack english or royal interest it's probably more accurate to say so and this is clearly planned over a long time because it's not just one force that's doing this there's a multiple attacks at the same time in what's clearly a

coordinated plan and the towns make a good symbol and obviously the English respond and respond quite quickly and quite effectively because basically between September 1400 and April 1401 Owen's forces basically get beaten a lot they lose pretty much every engagement they fight 1401 is interesting because on Good Friday, 1401, two of Owain's supporters, the Reesangwilemabtidia, who are from Anglesey, they, with 35 other people, walk into Conwy Castle by the Garrison of Church, because the Garrison of Church for the Good Friday Mass, in the town, because there isn't a chapel with a priest and a roof on near the castle at that point. Some of the accounts suggest that they said, well, we've come here to do some repairs,

which is interesting in itself. Welsh people do repairs on English castles. This is perfect, even in a time of war. Anyway, Rhys and Gollum and their mates walk in, close the gates, and the garrison are left somewhat embarrassed in church, having realised they've been locked out of their own castle. And the only person more upset than the garrison, I suspect, is Henry IV, who says,

well, it's your officers, to his son, Henry Prince of Wales, it's your officers that have lost this castle, it's your job to get it back. And the resulting siege or altercation, negotiation, lasts several months. So ultimately, I think five of Rhys and Glym's men are executed, but the other 30 go free. Rhys and Glym's men are executed, but the other 30 go free. Rhys and Gullivan's own houses, of course, have been burnt at this point.

The English respond quickly and burn Sechaf. They burn the homes of the leading gentry. But mostly they go on the run. Owen goes on the run at this point. So it is a process called chevauchée, which is basically riding in, looting and burning as you go, and then riding out again before you have any chance to get into trouble. This is what the English do in France. And it's what the Welsh have been doing on the borders of England for centuries. So it's quite routine behaviour in some respects.

And you've got the Prince of Wales, the other Prince of Wales, the young Henry V, a teenager winning his spurs. So people will be familiar with Agincourt and his extraordinary campaigns in France. He led armies, apparently, didn't he, and learned his trade here in North Wales. What about the Battle of Pyllith or Brynglas in 1402? Is that a turning point? Because then Owain defeats an English force,

a proper army, a conventional force in the field. Tell me about that. Yeah, so Pilaf for Brynglas. It's interesting because, as you say, you know, it's an organised English force that are met in the field on their own terms and lose. And the reason they lose ultimately is because they're out fought on the battlefield. Owain picks a position at the top of the hill. The English force has come up from the bottom and, you know,

good defensive position and they get routed. The other interesting thing that happens, of course, is that Edmund Mortimer, who is also related to the English royal line, gets captured. And then you have what appears initially to be a bargaining chip. Standard ransoming, capture someone important, you sell them back to the English crown for money. One of the great mysteries of Owen's rebellion is how he funded it all. We don't know. He clearly had money coming in. It's probably he just took over the mechanisms of governance and authority from the English and extorted his own taxation. We know people in England are selling things to the Welsh rebels because the English enact laws against it, which is always a bit embarrassing

when your own people are undermining your own military effect. So Plithef is interesting because it's a Welsh victory on straightforward military terms, but it also sets up the capability to intervene in English politics because with Edmund Mortimer,

you have someone with a claim to the throne as good, more or less, as Henry IV, but on the Welsh side. There was a famous scene in Henry IV, part one, which glosses all this. You have Mortimer, you have Owain being very bombastic and I'm the son of prophecy and all that sort of thing. And Edmund Mortimer saying, who marries one of Owain's daughters? Owain has a great many daughters and a great many sons, and they are married into the English gentry. They are married into the milieu in which Owen exists beforehand. There are always suspicions about those people who married Owen's children as to which side they were really on. John Scudamore

married another of Owen's daughters, and there's a wonderful letter from him when he's besieged by his father-in-law in Carrick Kennan and Carmarthenshire. And he says in the letter, with his family, so presumably Owen's daughter is in there too, being besieged by the forces led by her dad. And that must, the family dynamic of this does not make sense to modernise. But clearly, there's something matters more than blood in this period.

And that's something we just can't access. Would that we could, but it's just one of the many incoherent things to our eyes that just don't make sense. Listen to Dan Snow's history. I'm talking about Owen Glyndor's revolt. More after this. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and on my podcast, Not Just the Tudors, from History Hit, we talk about everything from what Queen Consort Camilla could learn from the Renaissance. Really, when we begin to look at Queen Consorts, we notice that there's a lot of ways that women could have authority through their relationship with the king. To how you should never upstage

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rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. So after this battle, Owen really does properly control parts of Wales, doesn't he? And he actually captures the castles, these mighty castles that people will be so familiar with, largely, not entirely, but largely built by the English. He now flies his flag above them. He's the Prince of Wales. He comes up with plans for church. He does international diplomacy. Is this really the last gasp of an independent Wales? No. He's trying to invent something new. That's what's really interesting about it, actually,

because the international diplomacy is partly a function of being in opposition to England. When you're in opposition to England, you look for allies. Owen succeeds in making his rebellion a proxy war against the English, which means he can draw in support from France. The international diplomacy he mentioned is Peneletta, the way he writes the French crown and says, this is my manifesto for Wales, which will be to have parliaments, to have two universities, one for the North, one for the South, to realign the church so that there is an Archbishop Brickett St David's, and that Archbishop rules over not only the Welsh diocese, but some of

the English ones too. And I will also, because there's a papal schism at the time, and there's a French Pope and an Italian Pope, I will be loyal to the French papacy. So that is the price of getting French support, which he does succeed in doing. In 1404, the French send a large armed force with things like artillery, with cavalry, to support the Welsh resistance. They can do that because they see this as part of a wider conflict, a European conflict. So this Welsh example is only exactly the same as what's happening in Scotland. The Scots are a separate kingdom, of course, and they're loyal to the French. You find in Brittany, in Flanders, in Normandy later, and in all across the Iberian Peninsula,

you find people picking a side of the English or the French, as suits their own personal or domestic politics. Europe is riven by proxy conflicts, and England and France are at the centre of it all. I want to come back to this, for me, this extraordinary moment, this forgotten moment of British history. People talk about 1066 and last invasions and this kind of nonsense, which is clearly, anyone listening to this podcast will know that the channel's been crossed many times since then. But this is really one of those extraordinary examples a big french army lands joins up with england or advances into england and there's this extraordinary standoff it's almost one of the great battles of british history but it doesn't happen they get to a hill above worcester supposedly

it's basically one chronicle that says and they get to a hill above Worcester, and for whatever reason, the English on one side, the Welsh and the French allies on the other, and they choose not to join battle. And that's obviously lost in a variety of ways. The Welsh say, well, it's expedient. The English say, well, they're cowards. But people don't like to go into big battles because the risks are really very great.

You might end up dead. And look at recent precedents from their point of view. Poitiers in 1356, French king gets captured and sends France into civil war, conflict and strife and huge political problems for the next 50 years. Maybe that's what the French allies had in mind. They thought, we don't actually want to risk this for that. If we win, great, you know, but what if we lose? People don't like going to big battles because there is that good chance you're going to end up dead. So they set themselves up, but they don't go through with it. It's one of the many unanswered questions about Gondor's Rebellion. We don't really know

why. Wish we did, you know, it's one of the ones I'd love an answer to. But the other great possibility is that at Aberystwyth, a couple of years later, which has been besieged by the English, Henry challenges Owen to single combat. It's a good chivalric thing to do, and the Welsh say no. But you imagine, you know, somebody's in their 50s, an experienced soldier in their 50s against, you know, a 16, 17-year-old. My money's on the 50-year-old because he's been through the battles before and he's come out alive. So it's a bold thing to do, but it's done out of piety in Henry's case. He wants to reduce the prospect of bloodshed.

Henry's a very pious man, as is Owen in some ways, but he's got a lot more riding on it. And you talk about young Henry there growing up, you're more confident about fighting Henry V than I am, I've got to say. You're a bit more bullish there. But if he is unlucky in his adversary, although we don't know how much direct control Henry would have had over his forces and whether his dad gave him sort of competent military advisors, he's one of the great geniuses of English military history. He would become one. And there's a brutal series of sieges in which this English force, led by young Henry, slowly retakes North Wales. These great castles, some of themundore's regime, if you like. It's where he holds his second parliament in 1407.

And he gets the full force of English royal military power thrown against it. It's a set piece engagement. I mean, they've sent artillery to Aberystwyth a bit earlier. One of the guns blew up, which is something that happens with guns in this period. But Harlech is one of those places, if you don't know it, it's set against the mountains of Marionne,

against the sea. You can resupply it from the sea very easily, but you can't break out of it very easily. It's quite easy to pin down from the landward side because, I mean, Harlech, even today, it's one road in, one road out. Or you can go over the mountains. Quite easy to blockade. And it's quite easy to pin people down within it and the same thing happens at instantly

the 1460s and again during the civil wars in the 17th century harlech is there standing alone and is able to hold up for a very long time although in the latter two cases because it's more hassle than it's worth to take it but in 1409 you can say let's send the guns from the tower let's build a large army of experienced men by this point they've been fighting for the best part of a decade henry is a great leader sure but he's building on the experience of english wars in france and the experience of men whose careers have been 10 15 20 or 30 years even in the making so he's got lots to draw on. He's a leader because he's positioned. He's clearly very good at it.

He has a talent and aptitude for it. But he's able to do what he does because he's got a system of military infrastructure in England that has been built up fighting the French, fighting the Scots for 50 years. There's lots of experience, lots of effort, lots of wherewithal and know-how that Henry is able to pull upon

and does very skilfully. And the loss of Harlech Castle, it's eventually taken and it goes to being a kind of guerrilla leader, outlaw, and he's never found. How does the revolt go from there? It sort of peters out a bit because you lose that control of territory.

What I would say is that it's a revolt that fades rather than is ended. Harlech is important because it's the last sort of significant castle or structure held. But until Glendour dies, which is probably around about the time of Agincourt, so we reckon Glendour died about sometime September, maybe October 1415, which at the point Henry is achieving his greatest victory, his sort of first opponent fades off the scene and dies. But while Henry is making his preparations for France, he has to make huge efforts to take control and make sure that Wales doesn't reignite again. He recruits Welsh soldiers to go with him in 1415 from South Wales, because that's stable enough, that's secure enough. North Wales, no. There's a wonderful letter from one of

the rebels to the English saying, here I am, this is where I am, but you can't reach me. I've tried to come to peace with you, and this is in 1412. So he's still an open rebel at this time. to peace with you. And this is in 1412. So he's still an open rebel at this time. Glendore is never captured, never given up. There are lots of stories about where he died, about how he managed to achieve that. The Scudamores in Herefordshire, he's possibly spent out his days there. We don't know. But the stories are good because they draw on things like Arthurian myth. He becomes the once and future king. But in terms of Owen the man, he probably dies about 1415, and Henry is still worried that Wales might rebel again in his absence. He offers Owen pardon before he goes, and Owen clearly says no, which is interesting in itself. The English crown know who to ask to reach him, but they don't know

how to get at him. 1416, a year later, he asks Owen again, but clearly they know that Owen has died, so they ask his last surviving free son. They offer him pardon. He eventually comes to terms five years later. So that sense that rebellion is not quite over is a decade or more after the actual business of defeating it militarily is concluded, which is amazing, really. It means the rebellion lasts in one way, shape or form for 20 years. What does Owain mean today in modern Wales? Certainly he's become a figure in which to hang things on. I mean, the 16th of September is now celebrated as Owain Glandor Day.

I don't think it was widely at least 20 or 30 years ago. You know, he's become adopted as a figurehead. Although the manifesto he drew up, which lies in one copy in the Archive National in Paris, it's only become widely known since it was published in the early 20th century. But that manifesto has shaped political thinking in Wales ever since. There's a statue of Owen as one of the heroes of Wales in Cardiff City Hall, along with the poet David Aquilam, along with Llyodd Argyll, Llyodd and the Last, Gerald of Wales. He's sort of in a pantheon of figures that the elite of Wales have chosen to adopt

as part of their forefathers, almost mythical figures in a way. But the interesting thing about Owain is, you know, that happens very quickly after he's died. The praise poetry of the 15th century is full of references to Owain as they are to references to heroes from Greek myth, the great Welsh princes. He becomes just one of the stock characters you could be related to and how your ancestry could be celebrated. That happens quite quickly. But he's still there today. He survives because, I think, one of the key things he did was, in his communications to the French, he set up a series of where Wales was, a set of physical boundaries. That's new. That hadn't

happened before. So up the River Severn, up the River Mersey, the River Dee, that was defined as Wales, as a territory we could call Wales. That's the one thing that he did that was genuinely new. Everything else, you could say he was chancing his arm, he was trying to sort of subvert and bring together various different people's ideas of what being in opposition to the English might mean. But he gave that a geographical expression, and that's really interesting, and that's the thing I think people have held on to. But otherwise, giving the English a bloody nose always goes down well and still does there was a tweet this morning from

the England and Wales cricket board you know encouraging Wales and lots of people hadn't realised it was the England and Wales cricket board we're quite confused by this but he's not someone that's I think known in English context very well at all well Adam you brought it to my when he talked about people claiming dissent in wonderful praise poetry from Glendore. Because when I was young, I used to listen to my great nine telling me that we were also descended from Glendore. And maybe it was true. Maybe it's true. At this distance, probably we all are. Exactly. Listen, we've had Adam Rutherford on the podcast talking about how we're all descended from the same ancestor.

Thank you very much for coming on the podcast. My pleasure. Thank you, Dan.