Owen Glendower, or to give the correct Welsh pronunciation of his name, Owain Glyndwr, was a Prince of Wales but he was not the Prince of Wales. This was a title that had been reserved for the first born son of the King of England ever since Edward I’s effective colonisation of Wales in 1283. Welsh Princes’ regularly had to pay homage to the English King, their culture was denuded, their language suppressed, they were a ruled people. Even so, he was to claim the title and lead the last great Welsh rebellion against English domination. Yet independence for the Welsh had been for so long the stuff of dreams, reflected more in ballad and song than in any semblance of a political reality. Owain Glyndwr was to try to make that independence a reality.

But Glyndwr was not a natural rebel. He had been educated in England, and had studied to be a lawyer at the Inns of Court at Westminster, he was an attendant to the Duke of Arundel, regularly attended the English Court and had fought loyally alongside the English King in his campaign against the Scots. He had never been a particularly ambitious man and for ten years was happy to retire and live quietly on his estates in Wales. So there was nothing to indicate in his early life that he would become the fulcrum for the last great campaign for Welsh independence.

On 29 September, 1499, however, King Richard II was deposed by Edward Bolingbroke and forced to abdicate. Glyndwr had always been seen to be Richard’s man and he had never been entirely trusted by Bolingbroke. Wales was also the one part of the country where Richard remained popular, so suspicions remained high. The Welsh rebellion itself, however, was to be sparked by personal animosities. Owain Glyndwr was a lord of the Glyndyrdwy and they had an ancient and festering feud with their English neighbours, the Grey’s of Ruthin. It had been Sir Reginald Grey’s responsibility to summon Glyndwr to serve in the recently crowned Edward IV’s military campaign in Scotland, he had not done so. On his return a furious Edward summoned Gyndwr to attend Court where he would be charged with treason. Glyndwr’s response was not to deny the charge, beg forgiveness, or prostrate himself before the King, but instead to set Wales ablaze.

When a loyal official of the deposed and by now deceased, murdered, King Richard, was executed in the border town of Chester what had begun as a protest soon turned into a riot, and then a rebellion. On 16 September, 1400, the already estranged Glyndwr was invited to lead the rebellion and was crowned Prince of Wales. The rebellion quickly spread and the ever-elusive Glyndwr led a brilliantly successful military campaign that saw the great fortresses of Wales built by Edward I to buttress English dominance and power in Wales fall one by one. By the Spring of 1401, he had overrun north Wales and captured the towns of Flint, Ruthin, Oswestry and Welshpool. He then defeated an English army at the Battle of Mynydd Hyddgen in June. By the Winter he had captured his old enemy Lord Grey and the English commander in Wales Lord Mortimer. Glyndwr, who was never noted for his cruelty and was considered by those who knew him to be an easy-going man, invited Mortimer to live in his household and later married his daughter to him. With north Wales conquered he now began to raid south where he joined forces with the Twdr’s (later the Tudor dynasty of England). In 1402, the English Parliament passed penal anti-Welsh laws in an attempt to suppress the rebellion but with no forces able to enforce them they proved ineffective. They did, however, infuriate the Welsh. Glyndwr, who had evidently tapped into a strong Welsh yearning for freedom, now saw his army reinforced as Welsh students were reported to be leaving English Universities to join the rebellion, and Welsh labourers and artisans in England downed tools to return home.

As the rebellion grew so did Glyndwr’s ambitions, and he was now intriguing with Henry Percy (Shakespeare’s Hotspur) the son of the Duke of Northumberland to depose Henry IV or at least to create separate Kingdom’s of Wales and North England. He was also negotiating with the French and Irish for support. The Irish negotiations came to nothing, and Henry Percy was killed at the Battle of Shrewsbury on 21 September, 1403. Glyndwr, however, remained undeterred and the French did indeed supply an invasion force. Confident now and with the support of his ally, Glyndwr went some way towards establishing a Welsh Government, establishing an independent Welsh Church, and formally declaring for an independent Welsh State. Glyndwr now decided to take the war into England itself. As preparations for the invasion were being made, in the Spring of 1405, a Welsh army went down to a catastrophic defeat at Pwll Melyn, in which its commander, Glyndwr’s son Gruffud, was killed. This followed hard on the heels of an earlier defeat at nearby Grosmont. Even so, the invasion would go ahead. 

In June, 1405, the Welsh and English armies faced each other at Woodbury Hill in Worcestershire, and for 8 days they glared at one another, hurled abuse, but refused to fight. Earlier defeats had slowed the momentum of Glyndwr’s rebellion. His French allies, perceiving that the tide was turning, were reluctant to become involved. They would stand aside from any fight. Glyndwr decided to turn his army around and head back to Wales. By 1406, the French had gone.

Glyndwr continued his rebellion for another 4 years and though no longer able to put substantial forces in the field he proved himself astute at guerilla warfare, but the dream of a Wales free of English domination was breathing its last. In 1410, he made one last effort to take the war to England by invading Shropshire but it proved impossible to sustain the campaign. Then to everyone’s surprise Glyndwr simply disappeared. He never surrendered, he was never captured, elusive to the last he was never found. It is believed he died in Herefordshire in England around 1417, but no one really knows. What is known is that the last hurrah of Welsh freedom died with him.