Owain Glyn Dŵr and the Day the Welsh Rose.

On 16 September 1400, a remarkable event took place in Glyndyfrdwy in Flintshire, North-East Wales. A Welsh nobleman named Owain ap Gruffudd ap Gruffudd, a local lord, stepped forward and accepted the acclamation of his peers. As a descendant of three ancient Welsh ruling houses, Owain now claimed to be the rightful Prince of Wales (Tywysog Cymru), and pledged to deliver his people from under the servitude of English rule. History remembers this bold and daring figure as Owain Glyn Dŵr.

Who was Glyn Dŵr? Born in the 1350s, Glyn Dŵr boasted an impeccable Welsh pedigree that set him apart from his compatriots. The bard Iolo Goch would often extol Glyn Dŵr’s bloodline, writing he was a ‘boy of princely stock’ who had nothing less than the ‘highest lineage’ in his veins.

Now, the last remaining independent Welsh kingdom of Gwynedd had been conquered by the English in 1282, following kingdoms like Powys, Deheubarth and Gwent which had also fallen during a piecemeal conquest conducted over two centuries. Throughout the fourteenth century, the Welsh had been forced to adjust to English rule of their lands, living effectively as second-class citizens in their homeland. Some adjusted better than others.

Glyn Dŵr did well enough, fostering positive relations with the English. He benefited from the patronage of the wealthy FitzAlan family, and his mentor and father-in-law Sir David Hanmer was a chief justice of the King’s Bench who was able to ensure Glyn Dŵr was able to study law as an apprentice at the Inns of Court in London. He also established a reputation as a military man, serving the English crown on campaign in Scotland in 1384 and in Kent in 1387.

It is clear that Glyn Dŵr was comfortable operating in English society, moving with ease between his two worlds and profiting handsomely, personally and professionally. But change was coming. In 1399, Richard II was deposed upon the English throne and scores of North Welshmen like Glyn Dŵr lost a benefactor who had offered them opportunity.  

That same year, Glyn Dŵr entered an acrimonious land dispute with his neighbour, Reginald Grey, 3^rd Baron Grey of Ruthin. Glyn Dŵr claimed Grey had stolen some common land that lay between their estates but since Grey was a confidante of the new king Henry IV, his claim was dismissed. Offices promised to Glyn Dŵr were withheld from him, and when he heard Grey was planning to burn his lands, the Welshman boasted he had stolen some of the barons horses. Grey pledged to have Glyn Dŵr hanged for theft. The tipping point seems to have come when Grey purposefully withheld a royal summons for Glyn Dŵr requesting his presence on a forthcoming English military expedition to Scotland. To ignore this request was treason. Glyn Dŵr was being prodded and provoked at every turn by Grey.

Glyn Dŵr’s personal frustration coincided with the growing unease among large sections of Welsh society, who fostered scarcely hidden resentment at continuing English rule in Wales. Claims of misgovernment, extortion, and corruption remained at the forefront of Welsh complaints, with English officials and acquisitive landowners often manipulating the two extant legal systems to jealously preserve their privileges.

Each passing year brought fresh grievances, exacerbated by a general upsurge in bardic activity once more desperately attempting to summon a saviour of princely extraction. Welsh hostility fed English fears, whilst English suppression galvanised Welsh spirits, creating an increasingly toxic climate of mutual suspicion which threatened to explode into open revolt given the right spark. That spark proved to be the alienation from royal favour of Owain Glyn Dŵr.

And so, on 16 September 1400, at his ancestral home and surrounded by an intimate collection of kinsmen, neighbours and friends, Glyn Dŵr declared himself Prince of Wales. He was cultured, well-connected, and boasted extensive military experience. His cause was emboldened by the passionate prognostications of his seer, who declared Glyn Dŵr, now regarded as 'the sole head of the Welsh', to be Y Mab Darogan, the long-promised Son of Prophecy who would surface to put  the English to the sword.

In the following days and weeks, the revolt would set Wales ablaze. Glyn Dŵr and his spirited band of followers raided the town of Ruthin, before they swept north through Denbigh and Rhuddlan, then advancing with unbridled fury on Flint, Holt, Oswestry and Welshpool, all English-held towns regarded as centres of oppression.

Over in Anglesey, meanwhile, Glyn Dŵr’s first cousins also raised the banner of revolt, suggesting this uprising was a well-coordinated, cross-country movement fuelled by decades of festering resentment. This group of brothers, Rhys, Gwilym and Maredudd ap Tudur, would prove his most ardent followers across the next decade, the ‘sons of Tudor’ from which the Tudor dynasty would be descended.

This war that began in September 1400 has many politically loaded modern names, the Welsh War of Independence or the Glyn Dŵr revolt, uprising or rebellion, for example, and would ultimately end in a comprehensive English victory. In a war of attrition, the financial might, superior manpower, and military resources of the English crown proved insurmountable. In subsequent years, the Welsh people were placed under even stricter levels of oppression in the aftermath, collectively punished judicially, militarily and economically.

After extraordinary early success, Glyn Dŵr disappeared into the mountains around 1412, his fate unknown. Despite large rewards offered for his capture, he was never betrayed, a measure of the respect Glyn Dŵr retained even at his lowest ebb. The Tudor family story, meanwhile, would shift across Offa’s Dyke as the family were forced to abandon their smoldering homeland. But for a moment in time at the beginning of the fifteenth century, because of Glyn Dŵr, many Welshmen and women had dared to dream.

Whether his intentions were about self-interest, about a sense of nationalism, or a mixture, the revolt’s failure shouldn’t detract from Glyn Dŵr’s extraordinary accomplishment in stirring a deep loyalty in his compatriots unsurpassed by any of his predecessors, particularly since the odds had been stacked against a favourable outcome from the outset. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of Welshmen, had been  willing to sacrifice their lives in pursuit of his grandiose vision for an autonomous Welsh state.

Glyn Dŵr’s legacy is complex, but as with many figures of the past adopted in the present as nationalist heroes, nuance is over thrown to the side. The myth, rather than the wo/man, is what endures. And as time goes on, the real Owain becomes further lost to the mists of time.

There is an interesting addendum to this uprising, though one that almost certainly is not rooted in fact. A later tradition first recorded by Elis Gruffudd in the 1540s work recounts how Glyn Dŵr was walking one morning near Valle Crucis Abbey when he remarked with surprise the abbot had risen early. The abbot scolded Glyn Dŵr in response, pointedly remarking it had been Glyn Dŵr, in fact, who had risen early - by a hundred years.

Though an apocryphal account written with the benefit of hindsight, as the fifteenth century progressed and the glowing embers from a failed revolt burned out, it became clear Owain Glyn Dŵr had not been the Son of Prophecy the legends foretold. His uprising, the only mass revolt against English rule that truly encompassed all of Wales, had been comprehensively crushed. Within half a century, however, would be born a distant relation of Glyn Dŵr who would pick up the mantle on behalf of the Welsh, but his ambitions were not rooted to just being a Prince of Wales. They involved becoming a King of England – Henry Tudor.

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