The Life and Character of King Henry the Fifth - J. Endell Tyler

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seems to have had sufficient reasons for expressing his doubts as to the accuracy of such a statement. The renown of the Prince as a youthful warrior will easily account for any premature date assigned to his earliest campaign; whilst the age of his father, who was seen at the head of the invading army in Scotland, might perhaps have contributed to a mistake. The King himself, at that time personally little known among his subjects, was not more than thirty-four years old.93 Be this as it may, we have great reason to believe that Henry IV, when he proceeded northward, left the Prince of Wales at home. In the first place, we must remember that, among their primary and most solemn acts after the King's coronation, the Commons, anticipating the certainty of this expedition into Scotland, preferred to him a petition, praying that the Prince by reason of his tender age might not go thither, "nor elsewhere forth of the realm." The letter too of Lord Grey of Ruthyn, to which we must hereafter refer, announcing the turbulent state of Wales, and the necessity of suppressing its disorders with a stronger hand, can best be explained on the supposition that the King was absent at the date of that letter,94 about Midsummer 1400, and that the Prince was at home. Lord Grey addresses his letter to the Prince, and not to the King; though the King, as well as the Prince, had commissioned him to put down the rising disturbances in his neighbourhood.95 Some, perhaps, may think this intelligible on the ground that Lord Grey wrote to Henry as Prince of Wales, and therefore more immediately intrusted with the preservation of its peace. But his suggestion to the Prince to take the advice of the King's council,—"with advice of our liege lord his council,"—is scarcely consistent with the idea of the King himself being at hand to give the necessary directions and a "more plainer commission."

      Be this however as it may: whether Henry of Monmouth's noviciate in arms was passed on the Scotch borders, (for in Ireland, as the companion of Richard, he had been merely a spectator,) or whether, as the evidence seems to preponderate, we consider the chroniclers to have antedated his first campaign, he was not allowed to remain long without being personally engaged in a struggle of far greater magnitude in itself, and of vastly more importance to the whole realm of England, than any one could possibly infer from the brief and cursory references made to it by the historians who are the most generally consulted by our countrymen. The rebellion of Owyn Glyndowr96 is despatched by Hume in less than two octavo pages, though it once certainly struck a panic into the very heart of England, and through the whole of Henry IV.'s reign, more or less, involved a considerable portion of the kingdom in great alarm; carrying devastation far and wide through some of its fairest provinces; and at one period of the struggle, by the succour of Henry's foreign and domestic enemies, with whom the Welsh made common cause, threatening to wrest the sceptre itself from the hands of that monarch. The part which his son Henry of Monmouth was destined to take personally in resisting the progress of this rebellion, and the evidence which the indisputable facts recorded of that protracted contest bear to his character, (facts, most of which are comparatively little known, and many of which are altogether new in history,) seem to require at our hands a somewhat fuller investigation into the origin, progress, and circumstances of this rebellion, than has hitherto been undertaken by our chroniclers.

      CHAPTER V.

       Table of Contents

      the welsh rebellion. — owyn glyndowr. — his former life. — dispute with lord grey of ruthyn. — that lord's letter to prince henry. — hotspur. — his testimony to henry's presence in wales, — to his mercy and his prowess. — henry's despatch to the privy council.

      1400-1401.

      Previously to the accession of Henry IV, Wales had enjoyed, for nearly seventy years, a season of comparative security and rest. During the desperate struggles in the reign of Henry III, in which its inhabitants, chiefly under their Prince Llewellin, fought so resolutely for their freedom, many districts of the Principality, especially the border-lands, had been rendered all but deserts. From this melancholy devastation they had scarcely recovered, when Queen Isabella, wife of Edward II, headed the rebel army against her own husband, who had taken refuge in Glamorganshire; and carried with her the most dreadful of all national scourges,—a sanguinary civil war. The whole country of South Wales, we are told, was so miserably ravaged by these intestine horrors, and the dearth consequent upon them was so excessive, that horses and dogs became at last the ordinary food of the miserable survivors. From the accession of Edward III, and throughout his long reign, Wales seems to have enjoyed undisturbed tranquillity and repose. Its oppressors were improving their fortunes, rapidly and largely, in France, reaping a far more abundant harvest in her rich domains than this impoverished land could have offered to their expectations. Through the whole reign also of Richard II, we hear of no serious calamity having befallen these ancient possessors of Britain. A friendly intercourse seems at that time to have been formed between the Principality and the kingdom at large; and a devoted attachment to the person of the King appears to have sprung up generally among the Welsh, and to have grown into maturity. We may thus consider the natives of Wales to have enjoyed a longer period of rest and peace than had fallen to their lot for centuries before, when the deposition of Richard, who had taken refuge among their strongholds, and in defence of whom they would have risked their property and their lives, prepared them to follow any chieftain who would head his countrymen against the present dynasty, and direct them in their struggle to throw off the English, or rather, perhaps, the Lancastrian yoke.

      The French writer to whom we have so often referred, M. Creton, in describing the creation of Henry of Monmouth as Prince of Wales, employs these remarkable words: "Then arose Duke Henry. His eldest son, who humbly knelt before him, he made Prince of Wales, and gave him the land; but I think he must conquer it if he will have it: for in my opinion the Welsh would on no account allow him to be their lord, for the sorrow, evil, and disgrace which the English, together with his father, had brought upon King Richard." How correctly this foreigner had formed an estimate of the feelings and principles of the Welsh, will best appear from that portion of Henry's life on which we are now entering. His prediction was fully verified by the event. Henry of Monmouth was compelled to conquer Wales for himself; and in a struggle, too, which lasted through an entire third part of his eventful career.

      In accounting for the origin of the civil war in Wales, historians generally dwell on the injustice and insults committed by Lord Grey of Ruthyn on Owyn Glyndowr, and the consequent determination of that resolute chief to take vengeance for the wrongs by which he had been goaded. Probably the far more correct view is to consider the Welsh at large as altogether ready for revolt, and the conduct of Lord Grey as having only instigated Owyn to put himself at their head; at all events to accept the office of leader, to which, as we are told, his countrymen97 elected him. The train was already laid in the unshaken fidelity of the Welsh to their deposed monarch, whom they believed to be still alive98 and in the deadly hatred against all who had assisted Henry of Lancaster in his act of usurpation; the spark was supplied by the resentment of a personal injury. His countrymen were ripe for rebellion, and Owyn was equally ready to direct their counsels, and to head them in the field of battle.

      Owyn Glyndowr was no upstart adventurer. He was of an ancient family, or rather, we must say, of princely extraction, being descended from Llewellin ap Jorwarth Droyndon, Prince of Wales. We have reason to conclude that he succeeded to large hereditary property. The exact time of his birth is not known: most writers have placed it between 1349 and 1354; but it was probably later by five years than the latter of those two dates.99 This extraordinary man, whose unwearied zeal and indomitable bravery, had they taken a different direction, would have merited, humanly speaking, a better fate, was invested by the superstitions of the times with a supernatural character. His vaunt to Hotspur is not so much the offspring of Shakspeare's imagination, as an echo to the popular opinions generally entertained of him:100

      At my birth

       The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,

       The goats ran from the mountains, and the herds

       Were strangely clamorous in the frighted fields.

       These signs have marked me extraordinary,

       And all the courses of my life do show

      

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