Rebellion and Revenge

Abstract

On 16 September 1400, at Glyndyfrdwy in Merioneth, Owain ap Gruffydd Fychan or Owain Glyn Dŵr, lord of Glyndyfrdwy and Cynllaith Owain, was proclaimed prince of Wales and thus began a revolt which was to last for some ten years and which stands at the centre of the history of late medieval Wales. Owain himself was a descendant of the dynasty of northern Powys and was one of the surviving handful of native Welsh lords of royal descent who had retained a small portion of what was left of their patrimony. His ancestors appear from time to time in the records; they seem to have had close relations with their powerful neighbour the earl of Arundel, lord of Chirk and Oswestry and later of Bromfield and Yale, and his father had been steward of the lordship of Oswestry and keeper of the lordship of Ellesmere.¹ His grandmother had been a member of a leading marcher family, the Lestranges, and his own wife was a daughter of Sir David Hanmer, an eminent lawyer and judge. He was the wealthiest member of what was left of the native Welsh aristocracy, with an annual income of about £200; in a poem in his praise Iolo Goch described his main residence at Sycharth.²