A time of Welsh insurgency
GRUFFYDD ALED WILLIAMS looks at an enlightening book on a 15th-century leader that makes some contentious claims
The Rise and Fall of Owain Glyn Dwr by Gideon Brough
Owain Glyndwr, the Welsh leader who in 1400 launched what would prove to be a lengthy but ill-fated uprising against English rule, has long inspired writers. Shakespeare’s Owen Glendower in Henry IV Part I is a potent, mystical figure – perhaps the image that inspired William Blake’s wild-looking ‘visionary head’ sketch. Scholars, too, have scrutinised the life and exploits of Owain Glynd r (alternatively rendered as Glyn D r), with benchmarks set by Sir JE Lloyd’s fine narrative history of 1931 and Sir Rees Davies’s magisterial The Revolt of Owain Glyn DwrD (1995). Yet gaps in our knowledge remain – not least how, when and where the rebel, by 1412 essentially a spent force, ended his days.
Gideon Brough’s book certainly fills gaps and is also determinedly revisionist in tone. The author is more interested in military affairs than Lloyd and Davies and covers these matters expertly, particularly in a fine concluding chapter that evaluates the tactics of the Welsh insurgency and the often ineffectual English military response. But the book’s main strength is in examining the diplomatic aspects of Glyndwr’s war, notably the persistent efforts of his envoys to elicit French – specifically, Orleanist – military support. Such efforts prompted an inept French expedition to Wales in 1404 and a better-led enterprise in 1405, during which a Welsh-French force advanced as far as Worcester. Brough convincingly shows how a combination of French factionalism – notably the displacement of Orleanist influence by Burgundian voices at court – skilful English diplomacy and improved English military intelligence effectively thwarted further significant French incursions.
Some of the book’s revisionist claims are, though, unconvincing. His argument that Glynd r was not in fact declaredww Prince of Wales in Septemberw 1400 – an elevation cited in two court records and by Adam Usk and the Dieulacres Chronicle, and consistent with Owain’s own regnal dating of his principate – appears tendentious. And the claim that Glynd r’s wdaughter Catherine and her children were starved to death in prison sits uneasily with issue roll evidence of substantial payments made for their upkeep. They died in 1413, when there was a major plague outbreak.
Brough describes the Annals of Owen Glyn Dwr,D copied by Gruffudd Hiraethog in the mid-16th century, as ‘ late’ and cavalierly dismisses that source’s stated date of death for Glyndwr in September 1415. Yet linguistic features firmly indicate the text’s 15th-century origin. Those concerns aside, Brough adds detail to our knowledge of Glyndwr’s story, particularly the European
dimensions of his revolt.
Gruffydd Aled Williams, emeritus professor of Welsh at Aberystwyth University