In Our Time - Owain Glyndwr

Episode Date: January 31, 2019

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life of the Welsh nobleman, also known as Owen Glendower, who began a revolt against Henry IV in 1400 which was at first very successful. Glyndwr (c1359-c1415) adopted the title Prince of Wales and established a parliament and his own foreign policy, until he was defeated by the future Henry V. Owain Glyndwr escaped and led guerilla attacks for several years but was never betrayed to the English, disappearing without trace.With Huw Pryce Professor of Welsh History at Bangor UniversityHelen Fulton Professor of Medieval Literature at the University of BristolChris Given-Wilson Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at the University of St AndrewsProducer: Simon Tillotson

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our programmes if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoy the programmes. Hello, on September the 16th, 1400, O'england Doers supporters gathered in the Valley of the River Dee where they proclaimed him Prince of Wales.

So began a revolt against the English king, Henry IV. It led to parliaments in Wales, to the capture of English, castles, lords and land, and to alliances which promised Glendor rule over Wales and the Midlands. It took a decade for Henry to regain control. Glendor eluded him, leading skirmishes before disappearing, and according to myth, he didn't die, but lies sleeping in a cave, ready to fight for Wales again. With me to discuss Owen Glendor are Hugh Price, Professor of Welsh History at Bungle University, Helen Fulton, Professor of Medieval Literature at the University of Bristol, and Chris Given Wilson,

Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at the University of St Andrews. Hugh Price, how did Wales, how had it come under English control? Wales had been conquered in the late 13th century by King Edward I, but that was the culmination of about 200 years of attempt to conquer parts of Wales starting soon after the Norman conquest of England in 1066, and the result had been that Wales was divided between parts under the native Welsh rulers and those under marcher lords. And in the 13th century, the princes of Gwyneth in the north-west

had become the most powerful rulers amongst the native princes of Wales. And in 1267, Flewellyn, Flewellyn-up Griffith had been recognised as Prince of Wales by the King of England. But all that came to an end in two wars of Edward I, the first in 1277 and then in 1282 to 3. So Wales was conquered then, but it remained divided. And there were the lands under the crown, the principality in the northwest and the southwest, and about 40 marcher lordships as well. So this process of conquest had gone on for a long time. And in some ways, the idea of this principality had been taken over by the English king.

Edward made his son, Edward the future, Edward II, Prince of Wales. So there's sort of continuity in that sense. You mentioned marcher lords twice. Can you tell the listeners what you mean by that? Marcher lords, these were Norman, later English, lords who came in from England, conquered territories, but held them with a sort of greater degree of freedom and rights than, say, barons held their lands from the king in England.

But they were under the crown of England. But they, in their lordships, had a sort of mixture of Welsh custom and law and English law and by the 14th century in the time of Glendur these lordships were also divided between sort of Welshries and Englishries with different population groups with different

under different laws. What was Owen Glendour's background? Well Owen is interesting because he sort of was an exception to the sort of picture I've drawn so far because he was one of a small number of Welsh lords who held their lands

directly from the Crown of England. Could he be called a marcher lord on a small scale? It went away, but he held it. It was called Welsh barony. So rather than being subject to a marcher lord or the officials of the Principality of Wales, he had a certain autonomy and it gave a certain status, even though the value of the lands was quite small

and the estates were quite small. And he inherited his position, his title, whatever he wanted to call himself, from two aristocratic houses in Welsh. That's right, yes. So he was a descendant of the princes of Powis in sort of northeast Wales, and they'd been buried in the nearby Valley Cruces Abbey, Cistercian Abbey. But he was also, through his mother, descended from the princes of southwest Wales, of De Hebrath.

So he had, if you like, Welsh royal blood from two dynasties. And again, as I understand it, also fought with Richard II as a knight in Scotland, as one of Richard's knights. Well, he had fought. he wasn't actually knighted, but yes, in the 1380s, he'd fought with Richard 2nd in Scotland, and later in with the Earl of Arundel's retinue in France. So he, on several occasions, did fight on the side of the English, yeah, in Scotland and France. I used as a knight because it's used in the note, I suppose that means he had the privileges that were given to English knights.

Well, presumably, I mean, he's fighting as a knight. Yeah, but he doesn't have the sort of, he isn't knighted as that sort of legal status. Helen, Helen Fulton, what signs were at the end of the 1300s that Owen Glendour might be the one to rise up? There are a number of praise poems to Owen Glendour, written before the rebellion began. So through the 1380s and the 1390s, some of the court poets in his area of North East Wales were composing praise poems to Owen Glendour. I mean, they composed praise poems to a number of the Welsh gentry. But there seemed to be a particular number to O'ane, which seemed to indicate that he did have a special status among the poets.

There are three poems in particular that I think are quite significant in thinking about O'Awen as a would-be rebel. Two of them are by Yolo Gorg, who's one of the great court poets of the late 14th century. And in one of the poems, Yolo talks about O'Ain as a young man and compares his youth with his manhood as a great soldier, So the poem falls into two halves, the first half, describing his boyhood. And he talks about Owain as being a lovely boy, gentle and kind and not a bully,

and someone who's courteous. And, you know, he sounds like a really lovely character. And in the second half of the poem, Yolo praises him for his warlike exploits in Scotland when he was fighting for Richard II in Scotland. So he praises him as boy and man. and there's a sense that Yolo knew him through his life, saw him grow up as it were, and saw him turn into a fine man. One of his other poems, one of Yolo's other poems to Owen,

describes his genealogy and traces his lineage right back to the three great princely houses of Wales. So the house of Gwyneth in the north-west, the house of De Heibarth in the south, and the house of Powis in eastern and central Wales. so that by tracing this lineage and connecting O'Ane with all the three princely dynasties of pre-1284 Wales, Yolo was really legitimising Owen as a future Prince of Wales.

Was there any sense in these poems that the Welsh were, really the British who had been driven west by the Germans when they came in and they'd taken to Wales and to various other parts of the West Coast, and they were the real thing? That was a very strong message through most of early Welsh literature and there is a 14th century poem to Owen that makes exactly that point by Griffith Llewyd who starts his poem by saying, oh, Wales is in a terrible state, they're completely oppressed by the English

and he talks about the long line of British kings that Geoffrey of Monmouth had talked about in his history of the kings of Britain back in the 12th century. So Griffith Llewyd talks about the great emperor Kistennin, who's Constantine, and Brown, who's Brenius, and Arthur, as the three great emperors among the British kings. And he says they're all gone, and there are three great Welsh knights now. There's Davith Hanma, who was Owen's father-in-law, Hwell of the Axe, who was another great knight, and Sir Gregory Seiss, who Owen fought with in Berwick in Scotland.

So he says there are three, these three great Welsh nights, one of the three, One of them has now died, Soho Well of the Acts. Who is going to take his place? O'Ain will take his place. So O'Ain is positioned exactly as one of the great line of British kings. What grievances did the Welsh have at that time when O'N is preparing to be, may or may not know it, the leader of the revolt? What were the big grievances?

The main grievances, I think, were to do with the towns and the way that the Welsh were excluded from so much of the commercial trade of Wales. Under Edward I first, these great towns had been built around the north and the southeast and the southwest of Wales, and that was where trade was carried on, and a certain prosperity came into Wales as a result of these great towns that were set up by Edward I. But the towns were inhabited by English settlers and burgesses, and for most of the 14th century, the Welsh were not allowed to trade freely in the towns. The English burgesses had a monopoly of trade out to a region of up to 15 miles radius around these towns, the Welsh

had to pay a toll if they were to trade there at all. So there were a number of ways in which the Welsh were excluded from the prosperity of the economy. Thank you, Chris. Given Wilson, we've heard something about the Marcher Laws. How did they impose their rule on the towns that Helen's been talking about, for instance? They lived mostly in castles, I presume, when they had these towns. Well, one of the problems with the Marcher Lords by the end of the 14th century was that a lot of the ones who really counted were tended to be absentees, because one of the processes which had taken place among the marcher lords during the 14th century was that increasingly the lordships had become concentrated in fewer and greater hands.

So there was a small number of very great English aristocrats, such as the Mortimers, the Fitz-Allen Earls of Arendel, the earls and subsequently dukes of Lancaster. who held very great lordships. And of course, their sphere of activity was never going to be the marches of Wales on a regular basis. Their sphere of activity was Westminster

and France and Ireland. So did they put their sons there or did they have Welshmen? Who did they put in charge of these places when they were absentee landlords? Well, they had ministers who administered their lands for them, stewards, bailiffs and so forth.

Mostly this was an intruded English class of superior administrators. Under them, there were also Welsh administrators. But one of the big problems for the Welsh was that they could rise so far in the service of the English,

but they could not rise further. You talked about Owen being a knight earlier on. When he fights with the Earl of Arundel, he's actually listed among 127 esquires in the Earl of Arundel's retin. which he is a great man in Wales. He has great lineage and so forth. But in the bigger picture, in the Anglo-Welch picture,

he really isn't a very big man at all. Just to clear this knight up, I heard Helen say that he was a knight in Welsh terms. No, he wasn't knighted in the way that he said. No, but he was called a knight. But he was sometimes called a knight, but more often a baron, a baron. The Marcher Lords had almost unchallenged control,

within their lordships. There were perhaps 40, perhaps 50 marcher lordships. Some of them were really quite small, but some of them were quite enormous. Some of the big ones like Powys and Denby and Brecken, Pembroke, these were very large lordships indeed. And within them, the marcher lords enjoyed enormous privileges. For example, they enjoyed the privilege of private warfare, they enjoyed the privilege of judicial supremacy. The king's writ did not run within the marcher lordships, as the saying went at the time. and thus they also enjoyed enormous profitability from their Marcher lordships. It's difficult to reimagine the way that the Normans just carved up this country, isn't it? Well, this was a borderland. I mean, March obviously meant borderland.

And this was, it was a buffer zone. Yeah, but they were still carving it up. Oh, they were carving it up. They most certainly were. I mean, something like two-thirds of Wales. Basically, the whole of the South and a lot of the East was held under Marcher Lordships and the rest was the principality of Wales in the 14th century. Now we're going to settle on the year 1400. The king was Henry VIII, who was thought to be a usurper because Richard II,

he was supposed to have been heavily involved in the death, murder perhaps, of Richard the 2nd. Did that make him weak or other things as well? What made Henry IV a weak king in practical terms was his circumstances. I think it's important to state that Henry VIII personally, was not a weak man. He actually had many of the qualities, which had his circumstances been rather different, could, I think, have made him a very good king indeed. But his circumstances, because of the perceived illegitimacy of his title, he was consistently challenged, particularly during the first five or six years of his reign. There were many people who thought that he was not

the legitimate heir to the throne of England. That legitimized, rebellion. It legitimised attacks upon England by England's traditional enemies, the Scots, the French, and of course, in the longer term, the Welsh. Hugh Price, what sparked the rebuild then? When did it start? How did it start? For Owen himself, it looked very unlikely that someone like that who'd accommodated himself to the conquest regime, who'd served in the King's Army, who'd studied at the ends of court as a young man, it seems, in London, who's... who'd inherited his estates, that someone like that would rise up.

I think it's partly personal dissatisfaction that, as Chris says, someone like that could only go so far in sort of English service. Wasn't there a date where he and his family and his followers declared that he was Prince of Wales and the thing got going,

wasn't there a date? So could you tell us where it was, and where this date mattered? Sure. They met on the 16th of September 1400 at Owain's estate in Glimdavdoui on the River Dee. And he was there, according to a later report, there were his in-laws, the Hanma in-laws,

a number of other supporters, his brother, and a number of other people. And according to the source, they elected him as their Prince of Wales. So, yes, there was this event, it appears, which then led to various attacks on towns in North East Wales and so on. Were the Tudor brothers there? They weren't there as far as we know.

No, they seemed to operate... They were two Tudor brothers, and they seemed originally to have operated independently, and the following year they capture Conway Castle, one of the big Edwardian castles, by sort of pretending to be workmen going in and take it for two months. And rather cunningly going on on Good Friday, when most of the people who worked in the castle,

defended the castle were some distance away at mass. Yes, exactly, yes. So that was an interesting story of that. And then later they become associated with O'Reide, if you like. Helen Fulton, what were the earliest successors of the revolt? Did he meet, as being described at this place, and then get going? Pretty much straight away, yes. He had a lot of family support, the extended family and all their retainers

and their supporters formed his original army, as it were. and they began more or less straight away sacking and burning the English towns in the north-east in Flintshire. So the first target was Rithin, which was the town owned by his neighbour, Reginald Grey, Lord Grey of Rithin, who was the one that Owen began the dispute with, and that seems to have sparked this incredible resentment and opposition to the oppression that he felt the Welsh were under. So he started with Rithin and went on from there. So was this the sort of warfare he employed all the time, sort of guerrilla warfare? Very much so, really.

Not very many men, 300, 400, 200,000. Have you gotten any numbers? I have absolutely no idea how many would be off and on. It was all sort of hit and run stuff at the beginning. Certainly a lot of guerrilla warfare at the beginning. What did you get after he hit and then why did he run? He didn't occupy these towns. He didn't. No, he just sacked them and burnt them and then went on to another one. Sacked and looted. Yes. And then the revolts spread to the northwest and then down into the southwest as well. And was considered to be successful?

Well, it sort of took a while to get some momentum going. 1401, 1402, he was still sort of having these battles. Then in 402, of course, he captured Edmund Mortimer, and that was a big coup to capture Edmund Mortimer, one of the great lords of the land. Can you develop that, Chris? The capture of Edmund Mortimer. Oh, the capture of Edmund Mortimer, which was at the Battle of Brindglass in June 1402, this was one of the major turning points of the revolt.

The Battle of Brin Glass was one of the few real pitched battles between Welsh and English armies. There were probably about 2,000 people on each side. It was fought in Powis, just close to the Anglo-Welish border. But what was important about Edmund Mortimer was, firstly, that he was a man of tremendous lineage. He was the great-grandson of Edward III. He was the brother of Roger Earl of March, who many people thought would have been the legitimate heir to the throne had he not died in 1398, a year before the revolution, and he was the uncle of another Edmund Mortimer who was only eight years old in 1399, but who many people thought ought to be king of England because of his descent rather than Henry IV.

And I mean, Edmund Mortimer had other vital connections as well. He, his sister Elizabeth, was married to Hotspur, the junior Henry Percy, the son of the Earl of Northumberland, and a major, excuse me, a major figure in the early years of Henry the fourth's reign. and he also, to say the Mortimer's had a certain popularity in Wales, I think that's true in the 14th century. I don't think that was true in the 13th century, but I think in the 14th century, the Mortimers had a certain popularity in Wales

because they could also trace their ancestry back to Llewellyn the Great in the early 13th century. So they had Welsh ancestry as well. So here was a man with a wide range of connections which Glendor could hopefully employ on his side. And vast estates and vast wealth. And he married one of Glendor's daughters. Well, yes. He was captured.

And he was in effect the man in charge of the Middle March at this time because his nephew, as I said, was only eight years old and was kept under fairly close watch by Henry IV. And so his uncle, Edmund, the Edmund Mortimer, we're talking about, was the man who was kind of in control of the vast Mortimer estates in the Middle March. Now, when Mortimer was captured at Bringlass, there were rumours that he had colluded in his own capture. And Henry IV, that may have been true, and Henry IV clearly believed that it was true.

And the logical thing to do would have been to ransom him, which is what had been done with Reginald Gray of Rithin earlier in the year when he'd been captured. Henry IV refused to ransom him. This drove Hotspur furious. This made Hotspur furious with Henry IV. And it turned out that Henry IV was probably right because he did indeed marry. Edmund Mortimer did indeed marry Katrina, the daughter. On the 30th of November 1402,

he married Katrina, the daughter of Glendor, declared his defection to the Welsh cause, wrote to his tenants, advising them to defect from the English illegitimate usurper and support Glendour and the Mortimer cause and remained faithful to Glendour's cause for the next seven years the rest of his life. So this was massively important, Hugh Price.

What other alliances was Glendur seeking, and what did he get? Well, he was very aware of the need to get outside support, and early on he sends messengers over to the Lords of Ireland and the King of France, and letters are preserved, where he appeals to a sort of common origin from Brutus, and says the prophecy says that they should all come and sort of help the Welsh. But nothing much came with that.

The most important alliance was with the French, which really took off in 1404. An alliance is negotiated. And this leads the following year to a major French force coming in to South West Wales and being very active in South Wales, possibly some of it reaching as far as Worcester, And that alliance continued through to 1407. So this was a way of exploiting sort of wider tensions between England and France, of course, as well.

Were Ireland and Scotland reluctant to join in, or were they just not up to it? I think, well, in the case of Scotland, it was unfortunate that the mythology that, oh, I'd used, was out of date in their view. They didn't think they were descended from Brutus anymore, but from a Scoter, daughter of the Pharaoh. So this wasn't perhaps the best way of winning them over. And I think the King of Scotland wasn't in a position, nor were the Irish Lords in any case to give practical support. Helen, Helen Fulton, the word prophecies we mentioned two or three times,

and he had his own profit, we're told, as might be a poet. Can you tell us about this person with whom he travel? and he seems to have taken quite a bit of nudges off. There is a prophet or a seer perhaps advisor in his retinue. Krach Finant, his name was, and there are references to him being O'Anglindu's profit. But what that meant in terms of whether he made prophecies or foretold what was going to happen, we don't know.

Oh dear. But there was also a reference to O'ane seeking the help of another prophet or another man who understood prophecy, a man called Hockin Aptomos from the Gower from South Wales. And Owen apparently asked to see Hopkins to consult him about telling him what was going to happen. This was in 1403 what was going to become of him. And Hopkins prophesied that he would be captured. I mean, the prophecy didn't come true, but that was what Hopkins said.

But this was a serious matter. It was a bit like going to the Delphic Oracle, that sort of thing. You took notice of these things. Well, it seems as though Owen did take notice of prophecy, but he was really part of a whole culture in which prophecy was regarded as a form of history, as a form of identity, and a form of political legitimacy. So he took notice of prophecy because it had political power.

So we have him conquering, taking towns, Mortimer was on his side. What size was his force? How was he becoming much richer? Was he better armed? Were people flocking to join him? What was going on? There were a lot more people were joining him from 403, 40404, probably 1405

was the height of his power. And by then most of Wales was sort of up in arms. So he would have had thousands and thousands of men on his side. So that was really the height of his power. We told he had a vision. Did he have a strategy? Well, I think his strategy was outlined in the tripartite indenture. What's called the tripartite indenture was a sort of document that he drew up with his two allies,

the Earl of Northumberland and Edmund Mortimer, to divide England and Wales into three between the three of them. So Owen was to have Wales and a large part of what we would now call the West Midlands. Mortimer was to have the north of England. and the Earl of Northumberland was to have the north of England and Mortimer was to have the south of England. So it was divided between the three of them. So I suppose if he had a strategy, that was it, to get Wales for himself, to have Wales as an independent territory.

Was this regarded at the time as a serious proposition? Well, I think it was by the Welsh, probably not so much by the English, but certainly by the Welsh. This is something they'd been talking about, writing about, writing about producing prophecies about ever since sort of the 9th, 10th century. It was a very, very old idea in Wales

that Wales, having been the original rulers of Britain, would become the rulers of Britain again. Given the comparative strengths of the English and the Welsh, why was he so successful for quite a long time, quite a few years, were English particularly weak? Henry IV came and was knocked back, came, was knocked back, did it about. at least three times. What was going on there?

Four times. Four times. I said at least three. You did. You did. Sorry about that, Tendigel. Yes. Perhaps I could start answering that question by just developing on what Helen was says and what you said.

Was the tripartite indenture regarded as a practical proposition? I don't think it would have been very difficult at the time to regard it as a practical proposition. But I think the important thing, and this is one of the fundamental points about Owen, is that he projects a vision of what an independent Wales could look like. And the tripartite indenture was part of that.

And holding parliaments and trying to establish a separate Archbishopric of St. David's and having his own seals and appointing his own chancellor, and trying to establish universities, wanting to establish universities, in Wales. All these are the sort of things which make the Welsh people see what an independent Wales could look like. And the other thing is, from the beginning, he tried to make this a national revolt. When he first, on the 16th of September 1400, he declares himself Prince of Wales, the first native Prince of Wales for over 100 years. This is always in his eyes. national revolt and that in fact that brings people to him it gives the welshan idea of what

they might be able to achieve did this cause any annoyance in london where they had their own prince of wells at this time almost certainly almost certainly i mean of course he was absolutely never regarded with any legitimacy but you you you asked the the first question you initially asked was why was he so successful england was of course in terms of population about ten times larger than Wales, about two and a half million, whereas Wales was about 250,000 population. Why was Glyndor so successful? The period of his greatest successes

coincided with the period of Henry IV's greatest troubles. And following the capture of Mortimer, what Henry was confronted with was his worst nightmare, which was the alliance of Glyndor, the Persis, and Mortimer against him. The people who could take a stand on the legitimacy, well, the illegitimacy of Henry IV and the legitimacy of the Mortimer claim,

and who had immense military power at their disposal. The Persis had great military power at their disposal. And of course, they were also for the English, and Henry at this time was facing invasions from the Scots, a naval war with the French, constant rebellions at home questioning his own legitimacy and he was also fighting a war in what to the English was completely unfamiliar territory.

Geography and climate were very much against the English and the sort of war that Owen's men were fighting, the guerrilla war, this was ideal territory for it. Hugh Price is there any, do we have any sense from the record, really, how well he thought he was doing, how well the Welsh thought he was doing in 1404, did they think, here we go, we've got it. The Wales is back in our own hands.

I think that Owein and his sort of close circle of supporter certainly thought they were doing well once they had the French alliance, the fact that they developed that. And in 1406, he sends a famous letter, the so-called Penal letter, which was dated at a place called Penal near Mahantheth in mid- Wales, to the French court, saying that the Welsh were ready now to change allegiance

to the Pope in Avignon, the Pope supported by the French king. This was linked to what Chris was saying about asking for an independent Welsh church. There were two popes at the time. There was a cism, one in, that's exactly. And the King of England and the province of Canterbury, which Wales was part of, supported the one in Rome.

And so Orain is really showing his independence, saying, well, I'm willing to go with the other one to build up this French alliance. And he's wanting this independent church of Wales, and an Archbishop of St. David's, and he reels out all these names as supposed early Archbishops of St. David's and so on. And that also links to the tripartite indenture,

because it includes diocese in England, like Exeter, Bath, Worcester, and so on. So again, it's this sort of irredentist Wales, which is trying to take over more, perhaps prosperous, economically, you know, more wealthy parts of Midland, England, and Somerset and so forth. Does Welsh prosperity begin to grow under his, or is he destroying so many towns that there's not much left for anybody? In the short term, I think destruction is the main consequence of the rising and the campaigns against O'Ine as well.

So I don't think prosperity in the short term came at all, and it would take a long time for Wales to recover, actually, from the rising. But in terms of the vision, I assume that was one of his aims. along with trying to build up a civil service of clergy and so on. Helen, there seems he's quite a spread. Universities, the church, Parliament, watch parliaments. He's got, he has more than a vision. Well, I suppose you could call it a division. Were people at that time writing about him in those terms?

No, not really. There isn't much written about him in Welsh during the revolt. There are one or two isolated poems. Well, I think the praise poets really had to toe the line as regards English government. The praise poets, yeah. Yeah, the English government never fell during the revolt. You know, the revolt was a rebellion, but it didn't bring down English government. English government went on in Wales, often much reduced, often courts weren't held when they were supposed to.

It was very hard to collect taxes and money at that time because the rebels were everywhere. So there was a lot of chaos and breakdown in civil society, but it didn't fall completely. So I think the praise poets sort of took to the ground, as it were, and kept to the people who were loyal to the crown, who remained loyal to the crown. And some did, and many came back to the crown after having followed O'ane. They then sought pardon from the king and returned under the king's banner. So there was a lot of towing and froing, and we just don't have many poems written to or about O'N during the rebellion.

There's one rather nice one written as if from a rebel lair out in the woodland where some of Owain's rebels are holed up and they come out to make sort of smash and grab raids on passing English people on the high roads and then hide back in the woods again and there's a nice poem written by someone who, from that viewpoint of the rebel out in the woodland enjoying the woodland lifestyle. But that's quite an unusual one. Chris, Gavin Wilson, how did English regain?

control. How and when? The years 1404 to 5 were the high water mark of Owens' revolt. By 1406, the tide has turned. There are, I think, two main reasons for this. One is because everything has quite suddenly got a lot easier for Henry IV. He has dealt with the Great Revolt of the Perseys in 1403. He has dealt with the rising of Archbishop's Group in the north of England in 1405. that is the end of major domestic revolts within England. Henry is now relatively secure on the throne. The Scottish king is captured, or at least the man who is on the very cusp of becoming the Scottish king,

James I is captured, spends the next 18 years in an English jail. The Duke of Orleans, who is the great enemy of the English from France, is assassinated in Paris in 1407. The Earl of Northumberland himself dies in early. early 1408 making a last desperate attempt to a topple Henry the 4th. Everything is getting easier. In addition, Henry now has much more money. Parliaments have at last started to be generous towards him. During the first four or five years of his reign, he had been so bankrupt, he wasn't able

to put more than about £4,000 a year into the attempt to suppress the Welsh rebellion. From four 14.06 onwards, 1405 to six onwards, he's putting £12,000 or more a year. That enables him to set up the permanent garrisons within Wales, which is really the only way to control this sort of bushfire type of rebellion. Really, by 1407, the revolt is more or less over. What's your view of what happened to Owen after his forces were defeated? It's likely, I think, that he took refuge with. with one or more of his daughters

who had married gentry and sort of Herefordshire in that area. There are quite a lot of traditions, evidence for him, perhaps ending his days there. But we can't be sure, obviously. But I think the idea is that he was just someone who was fleeing from his enemies and sort of living a very sort of hand-mouthed existence.

It's probably untrue. And it is... Why is it probably untrue? Well, I think that if you've been so precarious, would have been captured probably, and it's very interesting that he was never betrayed, which is very different from a number of the 13th century earlier rulers of Wales, never betrayed. You know, he, as far as we know, dies in his bed. Very probably.

Well, possibly. Well, possibly. But I think, you know, there's some good evidence that he died in September 1415, and recent workers sort of shown that. So it's just true. We can't say for certain where and when he died, but I think these family connections and it's interesting again that they're along

the sort of marcher areas of Wales is probably where he was protected and not betrayed as they said so we don't know much about him but he then, his death that is when did he become as it were famous in Wales when did the Welsh take to him in a big way because as you say very little was written about him at the time

when was more when was more written about him and when was a lot written about him? I think in the decades after his death, so the 1420s, 1430s, he began to be revived as a man who was a great ancestor of many of the gentry families. So his name is alluded to as an ancestor of all the big marcher Welsh families. And then as we get more towards the Wars of the Roses, you get more prophetic poetry about prophesying the next big leader for Wales. So hopes are placed in Edward of York, but also in Jasper Tudor and then in his nephew, Henry Tudor. Great hopes are placed in these men.

And they're seen as the latest in a line of which O'Ane was one in the past. So O'Awayne becomes repurposed as one of a line of great leaders or would-be leaders of Wales who've shown the way and become exemplars and models for people like the Tudors to. follow. Was there any sense in the writing that the English having taken ever Wales through the Tudors, the Welsh took over England? I think by the time we get to 1485, yes, that's probably something that many of the Welsh thought was a just thing to happen, that what they thought of as a Welsh king should take the throne in 1485. But I think it took the whole of the 15th century for that to come about. As I understand it, he's in the 19th century where his reputation

rose very high. Why was that and what happened? His reputation really increased from the sort of late 18th century. Thomas Pennant, the zoologist and travel writer, included a very long section on Glendur in his tour in Wales, and then described him as a hero. And this is really quite a change, because Tudor historians of Wales had been rather dismissive. He was almost a bit of an embarrassment.

One of them talked about a fool's paradise that the poets had sort of led him astrayed into trying to create. But Pennant makes him appear more heroic, using all sorts of sources and folklore. And I think there had been a lot of folklore about O'Ina's a sort of heroic fighter, possibly a future deliverer of the Welsh. But in the 19th century, with the British Empire becoming more powerful, he changes into, if you like, an emblem of Welsh military prowess.

And this really reaches its height in the First World War. And in the centenary, the fifth centenary of his death in 1915, He's actually being put alongside a Thomas Picton, who was killed at Waterloo, as a great hero that the Welsh should look to and be inspired to join the army and fight for the rights of other small nations like Serbia or Belgium. So it's quite a change. And also, it's interesting people, I think by the Edwardian period in the early 20th century, you get a lot of boys being called, Oh, England or Jones or Williams or whatever.

So it really does take off, but within a sort of British imperial. context, sort of paradoxically. Are there any other aspects of his legacy, do you think, Chris? Well, the immediate aftermath of the revolt sees, of course, the restoration of English authority in Wales. There is no reign of terror. That's important to emphasise. Where the English exact retribution is through the pockets of the Welsh.

There are vast fines. This, in the longer term, is not a very good idea. Wales is economically devastated. The people are now impoverished by the imposition of these crimes. What we see is a decline. in lordly revenues in Wales and the weakening of marcher and English lordship.

What they are also obliged to do is really to put back into power, into local power in Wales precisely those people who had been Owen's major supporters. So is it, or could you say it once, as if it had never been, Helen? No, I wouldn't say that at all.

I think it made a major change. in the Welsh sense of themselves as having the possibility of being a nation. And I think that feeling lasted over the centuries. And it's interesting that the legacy did remain very alive, 18th, 19th, even 20th century. And today, of course, there is a Glendor University in North East Wales in his own area. Glendor University represents that sense of what Owen wanted for the northeast. Of course, I agree with what Helen says. I think that there is one very big question, which,

Owen Lindauer's revolt does not answer. That is, what is the status of the Welsh within the English polity? They have no parliamentary representation. They are unequal in English law, under English law. That is something which is not really sorted out until Henry VIII and the Laws in Wales Acts of 1535 and 1542.

Well, thank you very much. Chris Given Wilson, Helen Fulton and Hugh Price. Next week it's Aristotle's Biology. How is pioneering scientific study of animals influenced his ideas, thanks for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. Well, I think there's a bit more to say about the sort of whole idea of legitimacy.

The idea that Owen presented himself as the heir and, in sense, restorer of a political tradition that had been brought to an end in 1282. And it's interesting when he writes to the French court, he says, well I am now the successor to Llewellyn Abgriffith, who was killed in 1282, and also Owen of Wales, who was killed by an English agent in 1378, who had been fighting for the French against the English in the Hundred Years' War,

and was the last male descendant of one of Llewelyn's brothers. And so he sees himself as part of that tradition, and on his seal he has the four lions of Guinness on shields, showing that he's taking over that tradition, which is, I think, also interesting. And he's very much talking about my forefathers, the Princes of Wales. So it's in a sense wiping out what's happened since 1282 with English Princes of Wales and saying, now we're back to normal, this is a restoration of a native political tradition of the idea of a native polity of Wales.

I rushed in with the business. Was there just a closing of the waters and nothing much had happened? You reared up with that one, Helen. What else do you like to say? Well, I'm thinking about the Chronicles and what sort of led to the representation of what's called Owen Glendower in Shakespeare's, Henry IV, where did Shakespeare get that idea of Owen Glendower

from this sort of strange wizard, prophet-like man speaking half? The bastard deeps. Yeah, sort of skimble-scamble stuff. Shakespeare's really rather condescending. Yes, but he gets it from Hall and Holland shared those chronicles, which represent Owen in this very pejorative way. Why did they want to represent him in a pejorative way?

Well, he'd been such a rebel against the English, but it was interesting that he still rouses that sense of, you know, fury in English writers of the 16th century, that they still see him as this terrible person. On the other hand, Shakespeare, it was a kanny chap, and he knew that the tutors were there, and this was a, you could say, had a kinship with the Tudors, and he wouldn't guide him his way to offend him, would he?

Well, he did, obviously. I don't think they saw him as having much to do with the Tudors, really. I don't think they saw him as, you know, part of the Tudor family, as it were. I think it's worth possibly saying a little bit more about Henry VIII than his Laws in Wales Act. This is something which actually is quite popular with a lot of the Welsh, because it does bring them, it gives them part. representation and it brings them into equality with the English under the law. They are brought

under English law. What of course is unpopular about that legislation is the suppression, although it's not quite a suppression, of Welsh language and with it Welsh culture and Welsh identity. This is really the annexation of Wales into England, into the English administrative system. And it's always been kind of separate before that, but now it is brought into the English administration. But I don't know if Hugh and Helen would agree with me, but the laws in Wales actually looked upon quite favourably by quite a lot of the Welsh. I think that is true. I mean, it reminds me, of course, that one has to also think of the penal statutes that Henry

the Fourth Parliament issued against the Welsh, which were very much resented. And these Tudor historians who were rather critical of Glendor were even harsher about these penal statutes and how the Welsh were treated as second-class citizens and so on. So the so-called acts of union under Henry VIII was seen as giving the Welsh in a sense freedom by being put on the same sort of legal footing as the English

and having the same rights. So I think that the sort of sense of discrimination was sharpened certainly by the English response to the rising as well as by the whole destructive business of the wars that went on when Glendour and his men were fighting in Wales. Yes, I think that's. That's one of the reasons why the rebellion went on as long as it did, were those punitive laws that were passed in 1401 and 1402 against the world.

And racist, yes, that's right. I mean, the unfortunate thing about those, it was kind of like an overreaction by the English Parliament and the English king, Henry VIII, who was... And the Prince of Wales. And the Prince of Wales. It was very cheesed off about someone else trying to call himself the Prince of Wales. And the Prince of Wales. It was kind of an overreaction. And there were two main problems I would identify. One is that actually, you know, over 120 years since the Edwardian completion of the conquest, gradually, slowly, there had been a meshing of societies, slowly, you know, intermarriage and so forth.

It inevitably happens when people live with each other. The other thing is those anti-Welish statutes of the Parliaments of 1401 and 1402, they make no discrimination between Welshmen, all those who'd remained loyal to Henry IV during the uprisings, they too are classified as, you know, sub-people, as it were, not equal under English law. So that caused an awful lot of... Yes, it brought more people to O'A's cause, didn't it? Yes, and made the rebellion last long. A very unfortunate overreaction from the English point of view.

I think a producer's chafing at the bit on the door. To get us out. No, no, I need a coffee to tea or coffee. Is someone to your coffee? Not for me, thank you. Tea? Tea. Yeah, tea. Two cheese.

I'm fine. In our time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon Tillotson. It's 1994 and two pop stars are flying to a remote Scottish island. Is your seatbelt on Jimmy? With two suitcases. Yes. Each containing half a million pounds. Doing that thing where you pull it around yourself and it looks like it's fastened.

They're about to do something really stupid. Shall I take your suitcases? Are really clever. No. No. You decide. This is the story. of two men who burned a million pounds of their own money.

Why? Why would you do that? How to Burn a Million Quid by Sean Grundy and Kara Jennings. Download the free BBC Sounds app and subscribe or visit BBC.com.com.ukay slash sounds.