How different if Owain Glyndwr had won
A LARGE number of Frenchmen will invade Wales later this week to support their team in a rugby battle for second place in this year’s Six Nations championship.
A little-known part of our nation’s history took place in August 1405, however, when a force of more than 5,000 Frenchmen landed in Milford Haven to support Owain Glyndwr in his fight against the English usurper, Henry Bolingbroke.
This Franco-Welsh force travelled through South Wales and into England in order to confront Bolingbroke. Their destination was Six Ashes – or the “Onennau Meigion” – which had been described by Myrddin (Merlin) many centuries earlier as a point on the ancient border between Wales and England. The army of Cadwallon ap Cadfan, the King of Gwynedd, had defeated Penda of Mercia in the area in the seventh century.
Bolingbroke intercepted and stopped Glyndwr’s army at Woodbury Hill near Worcester before it could reach the Onennau Meigion, but at noon on Easter Saturday, March 31, the Owain Glyndwr Society will unveil a noticeboard at Six Ashes – halfway between Stourbridge and Bridgnorth on the A458 – to commemorate this ancient landmark.
If Glyndwr had been successful in defeating Bolingbroke then England and Wales would have been divided equally between Owain, Henry Percy and Edmund Mortimer as described in the Tripartite Indenture of 1405.
Events such as this aim to raise awareness of our country’s history and promote the stories of the Age of the Princes and Owain Glyndwr, in particular – but it would also be good to see a Welsh victory against the French on Saturday!